Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

Feric opened the meeting without formalities; the atmosphere was more that of a meeting of comrades to discuss battlefield strategy than of a bourgeois party hot-air session. “Our ultimate goal is the re-establishment of true human rule over the habitable earth and the extinction of all subhuman sapients. The first major step in this direction must be to establish the absolute rule of the Swastika in Heldon. We must now take practical steps to bring us to total power.”

This forthright statement was greeted with fervent enthusiasm. Remler in particular seemed to shine with fanatic fire; his icy blue eyes and thin aquiline features radiated an almost papable patriotic frenzy.

“With five hundred cycles and five thousand trooperSr the Knights can take Walder in a day,” Stopa promised.

“With a thousand cycles and ten thousand men, we’ll march on Heldhime and squash the bugs with our boots!”

“It’s not that simple,” Waning said, without raising his voice in anger. “If the Knights take Walder or march on the capital, the government will order the army to crush us. Rather than display fear in the face of an armed enemy, the Star Command will move against us and our cause will be lost. We cannot hope to defeat the regular army in an all-out civil war.”

“I myself favor the electoral method,” Bogel said.

“There will be a Council election soon; all nine seats will be at stake. I feel confident that we can elect at least Feric to the Council. With Feric in Heldhime as a Councillor, we certainly should be able to place four more men on the Council in the election after that, only five years hence.”

Render’s thin, shiny face blazed with indignation. “We cannot think of waiting five years to seize power!” he exclaimed. “How many genes will be lost in five years?

How much deeper will the Doms worm their way into the body of Heldon? How much stronger will the Universalists grow? It is our sacred racial duty to seize absolute power with the least possible delay!”

“Well spoken!” Feric declared. There was no doubt that he had chosen well when he picked Remler out of the ranks to head the SS. The fellow was a brilliant but utterly pragmatic idealist and he had stated the moral imperative precisely. The twin red lightning bolts that Feric had made the special ensign of the SS well suited his vigor and style; Remler was a fine model for the elite of genetic purebreds he would command.

Remler’s speech had only confirmed the moral and pragmatic suitability of the plan upon which Feric had already decided. To commit the Party to seeking power by means^ of decadent electoral legalism alone would be treason to the sacred cause of genetic purity. However, a political campaign would give Party propaganda a most useful focus, and, more to the point, each candidate for the Council was given one hour of national television time a week to use as he saw fit.

“I have decided our immediate course,” Feric declared.

“I and I alone will seek a Council seat. The fact that my candidacy will give us access to one hour of public television a week to fill with our own propaganda—which need not be confined to the banalities of electoral politics—is enough to convince me to run. Throughout the campaign, we’ll stage mass rallies and displays of force. We’ll drive the Universalists from the streets with fist and iron and make things hot enough for the Traditionalists and Libertarians as well. The goal will not be so much to win the election as to impress the patriotic people of Heldon with our determination to gain power and our genetic and ideological fitness to wield it. We will deliberately call down the wrath of the Universalist goon squads upon us for the purpose of getting them to put their skulls in position for bashing. The Party will not be used as a tool for winning the election; rather the election will be used as a tool for furthering the Party’s ultimate ends.”

At this, even the idealistic Remler joined in the general applause. The instrument of final victory had been forged; now it would be wielded with ruthless fanaticism and overwhelming force.

Heldhime Municipal Stadium was a vast concrete bowl that seated well over one hundred thousand people, and on the evening of the first mass rally of the Sons of the Swastika ever to be held in the capital, every last inch of seating room, and standing room as well, was packed solid with true humanity. The upper rim of the grandstand as well as the inner wall of the arena had been festooned with resplendent red, white, and black swastika bunting, which made for a fervent patriotic atmosphere.

A speaker’s platform had been erected in the exact center of the arena floor; this was a simple cube of white-painted wood ten feet on a side. Upon it, the speaker would be visible from every comer of the stadium.

Surrounding the speaker’s platform and filling the arena floor was a sea of uniforms and fire. Eight thousand Knights of the Swastika in their brown leather uniforms stood at attention holding flaming torches aloft. Among these Knights stood two thousand Swastika Squadsmen in black leather uniforms with special black capes, forming a great swastika of men centered on the speaker’s platform.

Since the SS formation was torchless, the appearance of the arena floor from the upper rim of the stadium where Feric had had television cameras placed was that of a great circle of fire on which was emblazoned a giant black swastika that gleamed like some fantastic metal in the massed torchlight. The pure white speaker’s platform stood out in the center of this huge black swastika like the hub of the universe.

Waiting inside the hollow speaker’s platform with Lar Waffing for the rally to begin, Feric was filled with an almost unbearable elation; this mass meeting with its announcement of his candidacy would be the climax of the most exciting week he had yet spent in Heldon. His first visit to the greatest city in the world, with its heroic architecture and advanced technology, was thrilling enough for its own sake, but, more to the point at this juncture, Heldhime was in every way the center of power in Heldon. Here the Council sat, and here were headquartered the government ministries, the Star Command, and most of the great industrial concerns of the High Republic. The most advanced scientific research and production facilities were in Heldhime. The reigns of power were here to be grasped.

Waning had introduced Feric in high economic circles, as well as to important members of the Army Star Command. Many of the industrialists had poured funds into the Party coffers, and to a man the generals had proven to be opponents of the Universalists and the Doms; many openly admitted that they longed for the day when they would be ordered to crush these vermin. For his part, Feric left them with the solemn promise that when he became ruler of Heldon, they would have their wish and then some.

Further, Feric’s fame had come to the capital before him, and little crowds of cheering citizens formed around him fhe instant he showed his face in public. Officers he had never seen greeted him with enthusiastic Party salutes. When he attended the theater, he was given a three-minute standing ovation by the audience as he entered his box.

Thus he awaited the commencement of the rally with a sense of keen anticipation and overwhelming self-confidence.

As the public television coverage commenced, Lar Waning, massively impressive in his black Party uniform and red swastika cloak, shook his hand for luck, and then puffed up the wooden stairway, appearing on the speaker’s platform to an avalanche of massed cheering and saluting.

The hour of destiny had come! At this very instant, Bogel would be speaking in Walder’s Am Square, where thousands would be gathered about the public television receiver to hear Feric’s speech. Similar mass torchlight rallies were being held around public television receivers in every city, town, and village in Heldon, and officials of the Sons of the Swastika, great and small, were at this very moment preparing to announce him.