Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

“We should be within sight of Bora soon,” Waffing said.

“Or at least what’s left of it. I’m afraid the air force isn’t leaving very much for us to destroy.”

Two more wings of dive-bombers roared eastward across the empty wastelands on their way to Bora.

“My only remaining desire is to kill the last Dominator on earth with the Great Truncheon of Held itself,” Feric said. “This seems only fitting. I hope that our pilots spare the life of one Dominator so that this final war may be ended with appropriate ceremony. As for the rest of Bora, they can turn it into a steaming ruin before we reach it, for all I care.”

Waffing laughed. “You question the total efficiency of our pilots?” he japed. “I really don’t think that the chances of anything surviving our bombing are very good.”

“Surely we will be left one Dominator?” Feric said.

“Are our bombers really as good as all that?”

Waning waved his arms in the air as if to take in all of conquered Zind in their sweep. Within sight of the command car, there was not a single trace of living protoplasm native to the putrid gray landscape, nor an intact artifact crafted by the minions of Zind. “The proof is all around you, my Commander,” he said.

Feric laughed. “It’s very strange,” he said, “to be hoping that the Helder air force will be performing with something less than its accustomed efficiencyi”

An hour later, Waffing’s boast concerning the efficiency of the bomber pilots proved to be more than justified. To the east, across a desolate gray plain studded with rank patches of radiation jungle, Feric saw a huge blotch of fire, like the mouth of some gigantic volcano. As the command car and its flanking lines of troops roared toward this massive conflagration, crushing the radiation jungle under steel tank treads and then setting the rubble ablaze with flamethrowers, Feric could see swarms of planes circling and swooping over the burning city, dropping yet more napalm cannisters and high explosives on the funeral pyre of the Dominators of Zind. Even at this distance, the heat given off by the fire was clearly discernible.

“Not much chance of anything surviving that, my Commander,” Waning said, quaffing an entire mug of beer in three gulps. “I’m afraid I must apologize for the prowess of our pilots!”

Feric could not find it in his heart to be really angry.

Who could but rejoice at the sight of the last stronghold of the final enemy of true humanity going up in billowing flames! Beside the racial joy of this sight, his disappointment at not being able to dispatch the last Dominator on earth by his own hand was, after all, a trivial matter.

Across the plain, there was a sudden upsurge in the flames consuming Bora. The massive individual fires consuming the city seemed to merge into an enormous fireball, which the Helder planes had to hasten to avoid. This earthbound sun hovered over the doomed city for a long bright moment; then it soared upward as if seeking to return to its rightful place in the heavens. In its van, an enormous pillar of fire at least a mile wide and as tall as the clouds fountained into the sky. Amazingly enough, this flaming beacon persisted as the Helder army bore down on the city.

“Our planes have ignited a firestorm!” Waffing exclaimed. “Army scientists predicted such a possibility—that fierce enough bombing could generate a pillar of flame that would burn until all combustibles in the area are consumed. It seemed like an extravagance until now.”

“It looks like the legendary Fire of the Ancients,” Bogel whispered.

Waffing nodded. “It’s the next best thing,” he said.

“For myself,” said Remler, his blue eyes glistening, “the sight has an awesome beauty.” He wet his lips with beer without for an instant taking his eyes off the great fountain of fire that gushed red-orange brilliance into the heavens.

Feric could well understand what the SS Commandant felt. For his part, the sight of the Bora Firestorm ignited two distinct pleasurable responses: the patriotic and the aesthetic. The total flaming destmction of the last scrap of resistance to complete Helder domination of the habitable earth was something that could only set any true human’s heart to soaring. At the same time, the abstract spectacle of this magnificent, unthinkably huge gusher of fire turning the very universe a rich deep orange struck a deep chord in his aesthetic sensibilities, in and of itself. Thus Feric perceived the Bora Firestorm as a true and high work of art: noble and uplifting in its inner meaning for the true human spirit, and sensually stimulating in style and form. Only a final touch was needed to create a visual epic that would inspire the people of Heldon and immortalize this pinnacle of human history for all time to come.

“Bogel, do you have camera planes in the air over Bora?”

“Of course, my Commander! What sort of High Commander of Public Will would be foolish enough to miss the opportunity to film the climactic moment of human history? We are now broadcasting to every public square in Heldon as well as preserving the spectacle for posterity.”

“Very well then, Bogel, I’ll give your cameras something to fit the dignity and significance of the moment that will delight the eye as welll”

Feric chose to view the spectacle from a camera plane with Bogel, for this would be the best possible vantage from which to observe the work of art he had wrought; moreover, this aerial view would be the image burned into the folklore of true humanity for all time.

The camera plane spiraled dizzyingly upward, high over the pillar of fire that was Bora, turning Bogel’s face a sickly shade of green and giving Feric himself no little discomfort. Finally the plane reached a height of over ten thousand feet, leveled off, began circling the Firestorm, and turned its cameras on the spectacle below.

Ferie had used SS motorcyclists and freshly polished black tanks to form an enormous swastika of men and machines centered on the fountain of fire that was the final funeral pyre of the putrescence that had been Zind.

From this great height, the sight below took the breach away: a huge gleaming black swastika with an enormous pillar of fire soaring toward the heavens out of its center and casting rich orange highlights off the burnished black metal of the massed fighting machines.

“It’s beautiful, Feric,” Bogel said softly.

Feric opened his microphone to give the final orders to Waning, who was supervising on the ground. “It’s not quite completed yet,” he told Bogel. Then he began issuing orders to the men below.

“March!”

Below, the glistening black swastika began to rotate about the central axis of the pillar of fire. A great Helder army formed into the sacred racial emblem executed a massive victory march around the burning capital of true humanity’s final enemy.

“Open fire!”

From the huge swastika circling the great flame, there now erupted a universe of smoke and sparkle and flame, as every tank opened up with its cannon and every SS motorcyclist fired a stream of bright tracers with his submachine gun, all directed inward to feed the raging firestorm at the heart of the grand spectacle.

Now the incredible final victory pageant was complete and the transcendent glory of the moment properly celebrated. Far below, a swastika of smoke and fire revolved about the raging funeral pyre of the Dominator mutation, and in a large sense of every defilement, small or large, of the human gene pool. The vast sparkling swastika of ten thousand bright stars set off against gleaming black metal rotating about the immense pillar of billowing orange flames was a sight to stir the soul with its sheer immensity and physical beauty alone. But the symbolism pleased an even more noble level of the human spirit: the great circling swastika of fire and metal was the visual epitomization of Helder idealism and Helder power in the eyes of even the simplest of men; likewise no one could mistake the captive fountain of fire for other than what it was, the funeral pyre of Zind. Thus the spectacle was both perfectly symbolic of the final victory of the forces of Heldon over the putrescence of Zind and the actual historical moment of that victory itself; a pinnacle of human history, and that event’s celebration in a great work of art, all in one.