Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

Waffing stepped up to the microphone and gestured for silence; in a moment a great hush filled the packed stadium. Waffing’s introduction was surprisingly brief and to the point.

“Sons of the Swastika, fellow patriots, true Helder everywhere, I present the Supreme Commander of the Sons of the Swastika, our great and glorious leader, Peric Jaggarl”

At this, the scene in Heldhime Stadium became pure bedlam. The great crowd seemed determined to shout itself hoarse, while the sea of torches on the arena floor tossed madly, and the SS men in the great black swastika formation saluted again and again in perfect and fervent unison. Slowly, Feric climbed the stairs and emerged onto the speaker’s platform and into this awe-inspiring universe of name and cheering and massed saluting. At the sight of this heroic figure in his tight-fitting black-and-chrome uniform, his red swastika cloak trailing majestically behind him, the Great Truncheon of Held secured to his studded leather belt, twin red lightning-bolts emblazoned on each of his high black boots, the enthusiasm of the great throng reached a new fever pitch of frenzy.

Feric clapped Waning on the shoulder as he departed and then stood alone on the white platform at the hub of the great black swastika gleaming in the fiery sea of massed torches. He was totally surrounded, engulfed, by cheering, saluting, arm-waving Helder, the focus of the souls of thousands of people he could see all around him and millions more waiting for his word throughout the length and breadth of the land. The roar of the crowd was like the legendary heaven-shattering sky thunder of the ancients in intensity and magnificence, a sound that enveloped Feric’s being in mythic grandeur.

Standing at the exact focal point in space and time of this turning point in history, his soul the center of a sea of patriotic fire, Feric felt the power of cosmic destiny flow through him and fill his being with the racial will of the Helder people. In a very real sense, he was the pinnacle of the evolutionary force; when he spoke, he would advance the course of human evolution toward a new height of racial purity by an act of his own will. Through his lips would speak the collective voice of true humanity. At the moment of such an act, he was the Party, he was the racial will; he was Heldon.

At the peak of the ovation, Feric raised his hand in the Party salute, and the almost instant silence was even more awe-inspiring than the tumult had been. The breath of the whole world seemed to be held in anticipation, waiting for him to speak.

“Fellow Helder,” he said simply, the echoes of his voice reverberating back to him and filling the massive silence with his presence, “I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for a seat on the Council of State. I stand alone as the standard bearer of the Sons of the Swastika, for I run for the Council not to join the decadent rabble who control that farce as one Councillor among equals, but the better to bring this cabal of limp-wristed traitors and cowards crashing down in pieces into the rubbish-heap of history. Election of a Swastika majority on the Council would not be enough to save true humanity from the perils that beset it; even a Council composed entirely of Sons of the Swastika would not suffice. Heroic challenges demand heroic acts!”

Deliberately, so that none might miss the gesture, Feric placed his right hand upon the hilt of the Great Truncheon of Held, though he refrained from drawing the noble weapon.

“Once this Great Truncheon was the sceptre of the kings of Heldon; now I wield it, not as claimant to any royal title, but as the instrument of our racial will. I take part in this ludicrous election only to allow the racial will to make itself known by my election to a Council seat!

Once elected, I will base my actions not on the dictates of some numerical majority, nor out of some sense of fealty to petty-fogging legalism, but on the principle of unswerving loyalty to the racial will, to the genetic purity of Heldon, and to the cause of total human victory over all mutants and mongrels everywhere!”

At this, the crowded stadium once more broke into a prolonged and absolutely thunderous ovation, while the SS men in the swastika formation saluted again and again with iron perfection and fanatic force.

Feric removed his hand from the hilt of the Steel Commander and held it up for silence. Instantly, a great hush came over the stadium; by extension, Feric could feel this expectant quiet extending to millions of souls in public squares all over the nation, for in this moment all Heldon was bound together in the mystic communion of the racial will.

Speaking somewhat more measuredly, Feric filled the waiting void with words that struck a noble chord in every Holder breast. “Today I call upon every true man in Heldon, every patriot, every specimen of the true human genotype, every denizen of this wide realm that walks on two feet like a man, to rise up in a great body of enraged heroes and carry the Sons of the Swastika, as the bearers of our racial cause and the cause of sapient evolution, to total and final victory!”

Once again, Feric’s right hand went to the hilt of the Great Truncheon of Held. “I do not beg for your votes like the unmanly bourgeois politicians!” he shouted. “Nor do I seek to capture your votes with guile like the Universalist lackeys of the foul subhuman Dominators. As the human embodiment of the racial will, I command them as my right! And I command morel I command every true son of Heldon to take to the streets tonight in overwhelming force. With your massed presence and patriotic fanaticism, I command you to convince all you encounter of the righteousness of our cause, the irresistibility of our will, and the certainty of our final and total victory!

Should Universalist scum show their wretched faces, smash their skulls and grind their ruined bodies beneath the soles of your booted feet! Should supporters of other parties remonstrate with you by word or deed, persuade those capable of reason, and ram the others aside! Let the forces of the Swastika march throughout Heldon this night and far into dawn! Make the streets ours!”

With this, Feric drew the Great Truncheon of Held and thrust it toward the heavens, a huge shaft of gleaming metal aimed at the stars; the glistening headball sucked up the power of the massed torchlight and flung bolts of this physical manifestation of the racial force flying to every section of the stadium, and via the airwaves to all Heldon.

At this signal, the thousands of Knights and SS men began a circular close-order march around the hub of the speaker’s platform, filling the stadium and all Heldon with the drumfire thunder of high-stepping steel-shod boots. From above, the great circle of flame on the arena floor seemed virtually motionless while the great black SS swastika rotated about Feric endlessly and irresistibly, like the grinding wheel of fate.

To Feric, it seemed as if he stood at the axis of the world, with all Heldon rotating at his feet, the racial will pivoting about his being, as he brought his speech to a crashing climax.

“Hail Heldon!” he shouted with every last physical and mental fiber of his being. “Hail the Swastika! Hail final victory!”

Standing in the center of the great revolving swastika, the epicenter of the nationwide eruption of racial will, his body thrumming to the heady thunder of fourteen thousand marching feet, Feric felt a total fusion with his people, as if every Helder now pouring into the streets throughout the land were an extension of his flesh, his being.

And from a hundred thousand throats in the stadium, from millions of new Swastika fanatics choking every public square in the nation, the reply came in one great racial voice from amidst groves and forests of outstretched arms, the racial will itself speaking in a transcendent bellow that shook the very land with its thunder: “HAIL