“He will be charged with treason, I imagine,” I said to my darling wife as we sat that evening at the very same sidewalk cafe. The very same table, in fact.
“I doubt that they’ll give him more than a slap on the wrist,” she said. “He seems to be a hero to everyone in Paris.”
“Not to the Germans,” I said.
She smiled at me. “The Germans take him as a joke.” She understood German perfectly and could eavesdrop on their shouted conversations quite easily. “He is no joke.”
We both turned to the dark little man sitting at the next table; we were packed in so close that his chair almost touched mine. He was a particularly ugly man, with lank black hair and the swarthy face of a born conspirator. His eyes were small, reptilian, and his upper lip was twisted by a curving scar. “Charles de Gaulle will be the savior of France,” he said. He was absolutely serious. Grim, even.
“If he’s not guillotined for treason,” I replied lightly. Yet inwardly I began to tremble.
“You were here. You saw how he rallied the men of France.”
“All two dozen of them,” I quipped.
He looked at me with angry eyes. “Next time it will be different. We will not rely on cowards and turncoats like Petain. Next time we will take the government and bring all of France under his leadership. Then. . .”
He hesitated, glancing around as if the police might be listening.
“Then?” my wife coaxed.
He lowered his voice. “Then revenge on Germany and all those who betrayed us.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“You’ll see. Next time we will win. Next time we will have all of France with us. And then all of Europe. And then, the world.”
My jaw must have dropped open. It was all going to happen anyway. The French would rearm. Led by a ruthless, fanatical de Gaulle, they would plunge Europe into a second world war. All my efforts were for nothing. The world that we had left would continue to exist—or be even worse.
He turned his reptilian eyes to my lovely wife. Although many of the German women were blond, she was far more beautiful than any of them.
“You are Aryan?” he asked, his tone suddenly menacing.
She was nonplussed. “Aryan? I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do,” he said, almost hissing the words. “Next time it will go hard on the Aryans. You’ll see.”
I sank my head in my hands and wept openly.
REMEMBER, CAESAR
One little phrase, “What if. . . ?” has been the beginning of many a science-fiction story.
Wars are started by old men (and sometimes old women) who sit at home and direct their troops. They are fought by young men (and sometimes young women) who do the bleeding and the dying.
But what if the dangers, the risks, the terror of battle could be brought home to the leaders who can sit out a war in a bombproof bunker, far from the fighting front?
And what if modern technology could produce a suit that makes its wearer invisible?
A “cloak of invisibility” is not terribly far from our current technological capabilities. Could that second “What if. . . ?” be used to answer the first one?
We have never renounced the use of terror.
—VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN
She was alone and she was scared.
Apara Jaheen held her breath as the two plainclothes security guards walked past her. They both held ugly, deadly black machine pistols casually in their hands as they made their rounds along the corridor.
They can’t see you, Apara told herself. You’re invisible.
Still, she held her breath.
She knew that her stealth suit shimmered ever so slightly in the glareless light from the fluorescents that lined the ceiling of the corridor. You had to be looking for that delicate little ripple in the air, actively seeking it, to detect it at all. And even then you would think it was merely a trick your eyes played on you, a flicker that was gone before it even registered consciously in your mind.
