The Project Gutenberg eBook of Never meet again
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Title: Never meet again
Author: Algis Budrys
Illustrator: Bill Bowman
Release date: October 13, 2023 [eBook #71868]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEVER MEET AGAIN ***
Never Meet Again
By Algis Budrys
Illustrated by Bill Bowman
_He had spent fifteen patient years of
painstaking work, all to construct an
exit--which could be used only once!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity March 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The breeze soughed through the linden trees. It was warm and gentle
as it drifted along the boulevard. It tugged at the dresses of the
girls strolling with their young men and stirred their modishly cut
hair. It set the banners atop the government buildings to flapping,
and it brought with it the sound of a jet aircraft--a Heinkel or a
Messerschmitt--rising into the sky from Tempelhof Aerodrome. But when
it touched Professor Kempfer on his bench it brought him only the scent
of the Parisian perfumes and the sight of gaily colored frocks swaying
around the girls' long, healthy legs.
Doctor Professor Kempfer straightened his exhausted shoulders and
raised his heavy head. His deep, strained eyes struggled to break
through their now habitual dull stare.
It was spring again, he realized in faint surprise. The pretty girls
were eating their lunches hastily once more, so that they and their
young men could stroll along _Unter Den Linden_, and the young men in
the broad-shouldered jackets were clear-eyed and full of their own
awakening strength.
And of course Professor Kempfer wore no overcoat today. He was not
quite the comic pedant who wore his galoshes in the sunshine. It was
only that he had forgotten, for the moment. The strain of these last
few days had been very great.
All these months--these years--he had been doing his
government-subsidized research and the other thing, too. Four or
five hours for the government, and then a full day on the much more
important thing no one knew about. Twelve, sixteen hours a day. Home to
his very nice government apartment, where Frau Ritter, the housekeeper,
had his supper ready. The supper eaten, to bed. And in the morning;
cocoa, a bit of pastry, and to work. At noon he would leave his
laboratory for a little while, to come here and eat the slice of black
bread and cheese Frau Ritter had wrapped in waxed paper and put in his
pocket before he left the house.
But it was over, now. Not the government sinecure--that was just made
work for the old savant who, after all, held the Knight's Cross of
the Iron Cross for his work with the anti-submarine radar detector.
That, of course, had been fifteen years ago. If they could not quite
pension him off, still no one expected anything of a feeble old man
puttering around the apparatus they had given him to play with.
And they were right, of course. Nothing _would_ ever come of it. But
the other thing....
That was done, now. After this last little rest he would go back to his
laboratory in the _Himmlerstrasse_ and take the final step. So now he
could let himself relax and feel the warmth of the sun.
* * * * *
Professor Kempfer smiled wearily at the sunshine. The good, constant
sun, he thought, that gives of itself to all of us, no matter who or
where we are. Spring ... April, 1958.
Had it really been fifteen years--and sixteen years since the end of
the war? It didn't seem possible. But then one day had been exactly
like another for him, with only an electric light in the basement where
his real apparatus was, an electric light that never told him whether
it was morning, noon, or night.
I have become a cave-dweller! he thought with sudden realization. I
have forgotten to think in terms of serial time. What an odd little
trick I have played on myself!
Had he _really_ been coming here, to this bench, every clear day for
_fifteen_ years? Impossible! But....
He counted on his fingers. 1940 was the year England had surrendered,
with its air force destroyed and the Luftwaffe flying unchallenged air
cover for the swift invasion. He had been sent to England late that
year, to supervise the shipment home of the ultra-short wave-length
radar from the Royal Navy's anti-submarine warfare school. And 1941
was the year the U-boats took firm control of the Atlantic. 1942 was
the year the Russians lost at Stalingrad, starved by the millions, and
surrendered to a Wehrmacht fed on shiploads of Argentinian beef. 1942
was the end of the war, yes.
So it _had_ been that long.
I have become an indrawn old man, he thought to himself in bemusement.
So very busy with myself ... and the world has gone by, even while
I sat here and might have watched it, if I'd taken the trouble. The
world....
He took the sandwich from his coat pocket, unwrapped it, and began to
eat. But after the first few bites he forgot it, and held it in one
hand while he stared sightlessly in front of him.
His pale, mobile lips fell into a wry smile. The world--the vigorous
young world, so full of strength, so confident ... while I worked in my
cellar like some Bolshevik dreaming of a fantastic bomb that would wipe
out all my enemies at a stroke.
But what I have is not a bomb, and I have no enemies. I am an honored
citizen of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Hitler is
thirteen years dead in his auto accident, and the new chancellor is a
different sort of man. He has promised us no war with the Americans.
We have peace, and triumph, and these create a different sort of
atmosphere than do war and desperation. We have relaxed, now. We have
the fruit of our victory--what do we not have, in our empire of a
thousand years? Western civilization is safe at last from the hordes of
the East. Our future is assured. There is nothing, no one to fight, and
these young people walking here have never known a moment's doubt, an
instant's question of their place in an endlessly bright tomorrow. I
will soon die, and the rest of us who knew the old days will die soon
enough. It will all belong to the young people--all this eternal world.
It belongs to them already. It is just that some of us old ones have
not yet gotten altogether out of the way.
He stared out at the strolling crowds. How many years can I possibly
have left to me? Three? Two? Four? I could die tomorrow.
He sat absolutely still for a moment, listening to the thick old blood
slurring through his veins, to the thready flutter of his heart. It
hurt his eyes to see. It hurt his throat to breathe. The skin of his
hands was like spotted old paper.
Fifteen years of work. Fifteen years in his cellar, building what he
had built--for what? Was his apparatus going to change anything? Would
it detract even one trifle from this empire? Would it alter the life of
even one citizen in that golden tomorrow?
This world would go on exactly as it was. Nothing would change in the
least. So, what had he worked for? For himself? For this outworn husk
of one man?
Seen in that light, he looked like a very stupid man. Stupid,
foolish--monomaniacal.
Dear God, he thought with a rush of terrible intensity, am I now going
to persuade myself not to use what I have built?
For all these years he had worked, worked--without stopping, without
thinking. Now, in this first hour of rest, was he suddenly going to
spit on it all?
* * * * *
A stout bulk settled on the bench beside him. "Jochim," the complacent
voice said.
Professor Kempfer looked up. "Ah, Georg!" he said with an embarrassed
laugh, "You startled me."
Doctor Professor Georg Tanzler guffawed heartily. "Oh, Jochim, Jochim!"
he chuckled, shaking his head. "What a type you are! A thousand times
I've found you here at noon, and each time it seems as if it surprises
you. What do you think about, here on your bench?"
Professor Kempfer let his eyes stray. "Oh, I don't know," he said
gently. "I look at the young people."
"The girls--" Tanzler's elbow dug roguishly into his side. "The girls,
eh, Jochim?"
A veil drew over Professor Kempfer's eyes. "No," he whispered, "Not
like that. No."
"What, then?"
"Nothing," Professor Kempfer said dully. "I look at nothing."
Tanzler's mood changed instantly. "So," he declared with precision.
"I thought as much. Everyone knows you are working night and day, even
though there is no need for it." Tanzler resurrected a chuckle. "We are
not in any great hurry now. It's not as if we were pressed by anyone.
The Australians and Canadians are fenced off by our navy. The Americans
have their hands full in Asia. And your project, whatever it may be,
will help no one if you kill yourself with overwork."
"You know there is no project," Professor Kempfer whispered. "You know
it is all just busy work. No one reads my reports. No one checks my
results. They give me the equipment I ask for, and do not mind, as long
as it is not too much. You know that quite well. Why pretend otherwise?"
Tanzler sucked his lips. Then he shrugged. "Well, if you realize, then
you realize," he said cheerfully. Then he changed expression again, and
laid his hand on Professor Kempfer's arm in comradely fashion. "Jochim.
It has been fifteen years. Must you still try to bury yourself?"
Sixteen, Professor Kempfer corrected, and then realized Tanzler was
not thinking of the end of the war. Sixteen years since then, yes, but
fifteen since Marthe died. Only fifteen?
I _must_ learn to think in terms of serial time again. He realized
Tanzler was waiting for a response, and mustered a shrug.
"Jochim! Have you been listening to me?"
"Listening? Of course, Georg."
"Of course!" Tanzler snorted, his moustaches fluttering. "Jochim,"
he said positively, "it is not as if we were young men, I admit. But
life goes on, even for us old crocks." Tanzler was a good five years
Kempfer's junior. "We must look ahead--we must live for a future. We
cannot let ourselves sink into the past. I realize you were very fond
of Marthe. Every man is fond of his wife--that goes without saying. But
fifteen years, Jochim! Surely, it is proper to grieve. But to _mourn_,
like this--this is not _healthy_!"
One bright spark singed through the quiet barriers Professor Kempfer
had thought perfect. "Were _you_ ever in a camp, Georg?" he demanded,
shaking with pent-up violence.
"A camp?" Tanzler was taken aback. "I? Of course not, Jochim! But--but
you and Marthe were not in a real _lager_--it was just a ... a....
Well, you were under the State's protection! After all, Jochim!"
Professor Kempfer said stubbornly: "But Marthe _died_. Under the
State's protection."
"These things _happen_, Jochim! After all, you're a reasonable
man--Marthe--tuberculosis--even sulfa has its limitations--that might
have happened to _anyone_!"
"She did not have tuberculosis in 1939, when we were placed under the
State's protection. And when I finally said yes, I would go to work for
them, and they gave me the radar detector to work on, they promised me
it was only a little congestion in her bronchiae and that as soon as
she was well they would bring her home. And the war ended, and they
did _not_ bring her home. I was given the Knight's Cross from Hitler's
hands, personally, but they did _not_ bring her home. And the last time
I went to the sanitarium to see her, she was _dead_. And they paid for
it all, and gave me my laboratory here, and an apartment, and clothes,
and food, and a very good housekeeper, but Marthe was _dead_."
"Fifteen _years_, Jochim! Have you not forgiven us?"
"No. For a little while today--just a little while ago--I thought I
might. But--no."
Tanzler puffed out his lips and fluttered them with an exhaled breath.
"So," he said. "What are you going to do to us for it?"
Professor Kempfer shook his head. "To you? What should I do to you? The
men who arranged these things are all dead, or dying. If I had some
means of hurting the Reich--and I do not--how could I revenge myself on
these children?" He looked toward the passersby. "What am I to them,
or they to me? No--no, I am going to do nothing to you."
Tanzler raised his eyebrows and put his thick fingertips together. "If
you are going to do nothing to us, then what are you going to do to
yourself?"
"I am going to go away." Already, Professor Kempfer was ashamed of his
outburst. He felt he had controverted his essential character. A man of
science, after all--a thinking, _reasoning_ man--could not let himself
descend to emotional levels. Professor Kempfer was embarrassed to think
that Tanzler might believe this sort of lapse was typical of him.
"Who am I," he tried to explain, "to be judge and jury over a whole
nation--an empire? Who is one man, to decide good and evil? I look
at these youngsters, and I envy them with all my heart. To be young;
to find all the world arranged in orderly fashion for one's special
benefit; to have been placed on a surfboard, free to ride the crest of
the wave forever, and never to have to swim at all! Who am I, Georg?
Who am I?
"But I do not like it here. So I am going away."
Tanzler looked at him enigmatically. "To Carlsbad. For the radium
waters. Very healthful. We'll go together." He began pawing Professor
Kempfer's arm with great heartiness. "A splendid idea! I'll get the
seats reserved on the morning train. We'll have a holiday, eh, Jochim?"
"No!" He struggled to his feet, pulling Tanzler's hand away from his
arm. "_No!_" He staggered when Tanzler gave way. He began to walk fast,
faster than he had walked in years. He looked over his shoulder, and
saw Tanzler lumbering after him.
He began to run. He raised an arm. "Taxi! _Taxi!_" He lurched toward
the curb, while the strolling young people looked at him wide-eyed.
* * * * *
He hurried through the ground floor laboratory, his heart pumping
wildly. His eyes were fixed on the plain gray door to the fire stairs,
and he fumbled in his trousers pocket for the key. He stumbled against
a bench and sent apparatus crashing over. At the door, he steadied
himself and, using both hands, slipped the key into the lock. Once
through the door, he slammed it shut and locked it again, and listened
to the hoarse whistle of his breath in his nostrils.
Then, down the fire stairs he clattered, open-mouthed. Tanzler. Tanzler
would be at a telephone, somewhere. Perhaps the State Police were out
in the streets, in their cars, coming here, already.
He wrenched open the basement door, and locked it behind him in the
darkness before he turned on the lights. With his chest aching, he
braced himself on widespread feet and looked at the dull sheen of
yellow light on the racks of gray metal cabinets. They rose about him
like the blocks of a Mayan temple, with dials for carvings and pilot
lights for jewels, and he moved down the narrow aisle between them,
slowly and quietly now, like a last, enfeebled acolyte. As he walked he
threw switches, and the cabinets began to resonate in chorus.
The aisle led him, irrevocably, to the focal point. He read what the
dials on the master panel told him, and watched the power demand meter
inch into the green.
If they think to open the building circuit breakers!
If they shoot through the door!
_If I was wrong!_
Now there were people hammering on the door. Desperately weary, he
depressed the firing switch.
There was a galvanic thrum, half pain, half pleasure, as the vibratory
rate of his body's atoms was changed by an infinitesimal degree. Then
he stood in dank darkness, breathing musty air, while whatever parts of
his equipment had been included in the field fell to the floor.
Behind him, he left nothing. Vital resistors had, by design, come with
him. The overloaded apparatus in the basement laboratory began to
stench and burn under the surge of full power, and to sputter in Georg
Tanzler's face.
* * * * *
The basement he was in was not identical with the one he had left. That
could only mean that in this Berlin, something serious had happened to
at least one building on the Himmlerstrasse. Professor Kempfer searched
through the darkness with weary patience until he found a door, and
while he searched he considered the thought that some upheaval,
man-made or natural, had filled in the ground for dozens of meters
above his head, leaving only this one pocket of emptiness into which
his apparatus had shunted him.
When he finally found the door he leaned against it for some time, and
then he gently eased it open. There was nothing but blackness on the
other side, and at his first step he tripped and sprawled on a narrow
flight of stairs, bruising a hip badly. He found his footing again. On
quivering legs he climbed slowly and as silently as he could, clinging
to the harsh, newly-sawed wood of the bannister. He could not seem to
catch his breath. He had to gulp for air, and the darkness was shot
through with red swirlings.
He reached the top of the stairs, and another door. There was harsh
gray light seeping around it, and he listened intently, allowing for
the quick suck and thud of the pulse in his ears. When he heard nothing
for a long time, he opened it. He was at the end of a long corridor
lined with doors, and at the end there was another door opening on the
street.
Eager to get out of the building, and yet reluctant to leave as much
as he knew of this world, he moved down the corridor with exaggerated
caution.
It was a shoddy building. The paint on the walls was cheap, and the
linoleum on the floor was scuffed and warped. There were cracks in the
plastering. Everything was rough--half finished, with paint slapped
over it, everything drab. There were numbers on the doors, and dirty
rope mats in front of them. It was an apartment house, then--but from
the way the doors were jammed almost against each other, the apartments
had to be no more than cubicles.
Dreary, he thought. Dreary, dreary--who would live in such a place? Who
would put up an apartment house for people of mediocre means in this
neighborhood?
But when he reached the street, he saw that it was humpy and
cobblestoned, the cobbling badly patched, and that all the buildings
were like this one--gray-faced, hulking, ugly. There was not a
building he recognized--not a stick or stone of the _Himmlerstrasse_
with its fresh cement roadway and its sapling trees growing along
the sidewalk. And yet he knew he must be on the exact spot where the
_Himmlerstrasse_ had been--was--and he could not quite understand.
He began to walk in the direction of _Unter Den Linden_. He was far
from sure he could reach it on foot, in his condition, but he would
pass through the most familiar parts of the city, and could perhaps get
some inkling of what had happened.
* * * * *
He had suspected that the probability world his apparatus could most
easily adjust him for would be one in which Germany had lost the war.
That was a large, dramatic difference, and though he had refined his
work as well as he could, any first model of any equipment was bound to
be relatively insensitive.
But as he walked along, he found himself chilled and repelled by what
he saw.
Nothing was the same. Nothing. Even the layout of the streets had
changed a little. There were new buildings everywhere--new buildings
of a style and workmanship that had made them old in atmosphere the
day they were completed. It was the kind of total reconstruction that
he had no doubt the builders stubbornly proclaimed was "Good as New,"
because to say it was as good as the old Berlin would have been to
invite bitter smiles.
The people in the streets were grim, gray-faced, and shoddy. They
stared blankly at him and his suit, and once a dumpy woman carrying
a string bag full of lumpy packages turned to her similar companion
and muttered as he passed that he looked like an American with his
extravagant clothes.
The phrase frightened him. What kind of war had it been, that there
would still be Americans to be hated in Berlin in 1958? How long could
it possibly have lasted, to account for so many old buildings gone?
What had pounded Germany so cruelly? And yet even the "new" buildings
were genuinely some years old. Why an American? Why not an Englishman
or Frenchman?
He walked the gray streets, looking with a numb sense of settling
shock at this grim Berlin. He saw men in shapeless uniform caps, brown
trousers, cheap boots and sleazy blue shirts. They wore armbands with
_Volkspolizei_ printed on them. Some of them had not bothered to shave
this morning or to dress in fresh uniforms. The civilians looked
at them sidelong and then pretended not to have seen them. For an
undefinable but well-remembered reason, Professor Kempfer slipped by
them as inconspicuously as possible.
He grappled at what he saw with the dulled resources of his overtired
intellect, but there was no point of reference with which to begin. He
even wondered if perhaps the war was somehow still being fought, with
unimaginable alliances and unthinkable antagonists, with all resources
thrown into a brutal, dogged struggle from which all hope of both
defeat and victory were gone, and only endless straining effort loomed
up from the future.
Then he turned the corner and saw the stubby military car, and soldiers
in baggy uniforms with red stars on their caps. They were parked
under a weatherbeaten sign which read, in German above a few lines
in unreadable Cyrillic characters: _Attention! You Are Leaving the
U.S.S.R. Zone of Occupation. You Are Entering the American Zone of
Occupation. Show Your Papers._
God in heaven! he thought, recoiling. The Bolsheviks. And he was on
their side of the line. He turned abruptly, but did not move for
an instant. The skin of his face felt tight. Then he broke into a
stumbling walk, back the way he had come.
He had not come into this world blindly. He had not dared bring any
goods from his apartment, of course. Not with Frau Ritter to observe
him. Nor had he expected that his Reichsmarks would be of any use. He
had provided for this by wearing two diamond-set rings. He had expected
to have to walk down to the jewelry district before he could begin to
settle into this world, but he had expected no further difficulty.
He had expected Germany to have lost the war. Germany had lost another
war within his lifetime, and fifteen years later it would have taken
intense study for a man in his present position to detect it.
Professor Kempfer had thought it out, slowly, systematically. He had
not thought that a Soviet checkpoint might lie between him and the
jewelry district.
* * * * *
It was growing cold, as the afternoon settled down. It had not been as
warm a day to begin with, he suspected, as it had been in his Berlin.
He wondered how it might be, that Germany's losing a war could change
the weather, but the important thing was that he was shivering. He was
beginning to attract attention not only for his suit but for his lack
of a coat.
He had now no place to go, no place to stay the night, no way of
getting food. He had no papers, and no knowledge of where to get them
or what sort of maneuver would be required to keep him safe from
arrest. If anything could save him from arrest. By Russians.
Professor Kempfer began to walk with dragging steps, his body sagging
and numb. More and more of the passersby were looking at him sharply.
They might well have an instinct for a hunted man. He did not dare look
at the occasional policeman.
He was an old man. He had run today, and shaken with nervous
anticipation, and finished fifteen years' work, and it had all been a
nightmarish error. He felt his heart begin to beat unnaturally in his
ears, and he felt a leaping flutter begin in his chest. He stopped,
and swayed, and then he forced himself to cross the sidewalk so he
could lean against a building. He braced his back and bent his knees a
little, and let his hands dangle at his sides.
The thought came to him that there was an escape for him into one more
world. His shoulder-blades scraped a few centimeters downward against
the wall.
There were people watching him. They ringed him in at a distance of
about two meters, looking at him with almost childish curiosity. But
there was something about them that made Professor Kempfer wonder at
the conditions that could produce such children. As he looked back at
them, he thought that perhaps they all wanted to help him--that would
account for their not going on about their business. But they did not
know what sort of complications their help might bring to them--except
that there would certainly be complications. So none of them approached
him. They gathered around him, watching, in a crowd that would
momentarily attract a _volkspolizier_.
He looked at them dumbly, breathing as well as he could, his palms flat
against the wall. There were stocky old women, round-shouldered men,
younger men with pinched faces, and young girls with an incalculable
wisdom in their eyes. And there was a bird-like older woman, coming
quickly along the sidewalk, glancing at him curiously, then hurrying
by, skirting around the crowd....
There was one possibility of his escape to this world that Professor
Kempfer had not allowed himself to consider. He pushed himself away
from the wall, scattering the crowd as though by physical force, and
lurched toward the passing woman.
"_Marthe!_"
She whirled, her purse flying to the ground. Her hand went to her
mouth. She whispered, through her knuckles: "Jochim ... Jochim...." He
clutched her, and they supported each other. "Jochim ... the American
bombers killed you in Hamburg ... yesterday I sent money to put flowers
on your grave ... Jochim...."
"It was a mistake. It was all a mistake. Marthe ... we have found each
other...."
* * * * *
From a distance, she had not changed very much at all. Watching her
move about the room as he lay, warm and clean, terribly tired, in her
bed, he thought to himself that she had not aged half as much as he.
But when she bent over him with the cup of hot soup in her hand, he saw
the sharp lines in her face, around her eyes and mouth, and when she
spoke he heard the dry note in her voice.
How many years? he thought. How many years of loneliness and grief?
_When_ had the Americans bombed Hamburg? How? What kind of aircraft
could bomb Germany from bases in the Western Hemisphere?
They had so much to explain to each other. As she worked to make him
comfortable, the questions flew between them.
"It was something I stumbled on. The theory of probability worlds--of
alternate universes. Assuming that the characteristic would be a
difference in atomic vibration--minute, you understand; almost
infinitely minute--assuming that somewhere in the gross universe every
possible variation of every event _must_ take place--then if some means
could be found to alter the vibratory rate within a field, then any
object in that field would automatically become part of the universe
corresponding to that vibratory rate....
"Marthe, I can bore you later. Tell me about _Hamburg_. Tell me how we
lost the war. Tell me about Berlin."
He listened while she told him how their enemies had ringed them
in--how the great white wastes of Russia had swallowed their men, and
the British fire bombers had murdered children in the night. How the
Wehrmacht fought, and fought, and smashed their enemies back time after
time, until all the best soldiers were dead. And how the Americans,
with their dollars, had poured out countless tons of equipment to make
up for their inability to fight. How, at the last, the vulture fleets
of bombers had rumbled inexhaustibly across the sky, killing, killing,
killing, until all the German homes and German families had been
destroyed. And how now the Americans, with their hellish bomb that had
killed a hundred thousand Japanese civilians, now bestrode the world
and tried to bully it, with their bombs and their dollars, into final
submission.
How? Professor Kempfer thought. How could such a thing have happened?
Slowly, he pieced it together, mortified to find himself annoyed
when Marthe interrupted with constant questions about his Berlin and
especially about his equipment.
And, pieced together, it still refused to seem logical.
How could anyone believe that Goering, in the face of all good
sense, would turn the Luftwaffe from destroying the R.A.F. bases to
a ridiculous attack on English cities? How could anyone believe that
German electronics scientists could persistently refuse to believe
ultra-shortwave radar was practical--refuse to believe it even when the
Allied hunter planes were finding surfaced submarines at night with
terrible accuracy?
What kind of nightmare world was this, with Germany divided and the
Russians in control of Europe, in control of Asia, reaching for the
Middle East that no Russian, not even the dreaming czars, had seriously
expected ever to attain?
"Marthe--we must get out of this place. We must. I will have to rebuild
my machine." It would be incredibly difficult. Working clandestinely as
he must, scraping components together--even now that the work had been
done once, it would take several years.
Professor Kempfer looked inside himself to find the strength he would
need. And it was not there. It simply was gone, used up, burnt out,
eaten out.
"Marthe, you will have to help me. I must take some of your strength.
I will need so many things--identity papers, some kind of work so we
can eat, money to buy equipment...." His voice trailed away. It was so
much, and there was so little time left for him. Yet, somehow, they
must do it.
A hopelessness, a feeling of inevitable defeat, came over him. It was
this world. It was poisoning him.
Marthe's hand touched his brow. "Hush, Jochim. Go to sleep. Don't
worry. Everything is all right, now. My poor Jochim, how terrible you
look! But everything will be all right. I must go back to work, now. I
am hours late already. I will come back as soon as I can. Go to sleep,
Jochim."
He let his breath out in a long, tired sigh. He reached up and touched
her hand. "Marthe...."
* * * * *
He awoke to Marthe's soft urging. Before he opened his eyes he had
taken her hand from his shoulder and clasped it tightly. Marthe let the
contact linger for a moment, then broke it gently.
"Jochim--my superior at the Ministry is here to see you."
He opened his eyes and sat up. "Who?"
"Colonel Lubintsev, from the People's Government Ministerium, where I
work. He would like to speak to you." She touched him reassuringly.
"Don't worry. It's all right. I spoke to him--I explained. He's not
here to arrest you. He's waiting in the other room."
He looked at Marthe dumbly. "I--I must get dressed," he managed to say
after a while.
"No--no, he wants you to stay in bed. He knows you're exhausted. He
asked me to assure you it would be all right. Rest in bed. I'll get
him."
Professor Kempfer sank back. He looked unseeingly up at the ceiling
until he heard the sound of a chair being drawn up beside him, and then
he slowly turned his head.
Colonel Lubintsev was a stocky, ruddy-faced man with gray bristles on
his scalp. He had an astonishingly boyish smile. "Doctor Professor
Kempfer, I am honored to meet you," he said. "Lubintsev, Colonel,
assigned as advisor to the People's Government Ministerium." He
extended his hand gravely, and Professor Kempfer shook it with a
conscious effort.
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Professor Kempfer mumbled.
"Not at all, Doctor Professor. Not at all. Do you mind if I smoke?"
"Please." He watched the colonel touch a lighter to a long cigarette
while Marthe quickly found a saucer for an ashtray. The colonel nodded
his thanks to Marthe, puffed on the cigarette, and addressed himself to
Professor Kempfer while Marthe sat down on a chair against the far wall.
"I have inspected your dossier," Colonel Lubintsev said. "That is,"
with a smile, "our dossier on your late counterpart. I see you fit
the photographs as well as could be expected. We will have to make a
further identification, of course, but I rather think that will be a
formality." He smiled again. "I am fully prepared to accept your story.
It is too fantastic not to be true. Of course, sometimes foreign agents
choose their cover stories with that idea in mind, but not in this
case, I think. If what has happened to you could happen to any man, our
dossier indicates Jochim Kempfer might well be that man." Again, the
smile. "In any counterpart."
"You have a dossier," Professor Kempfer said.
Colonel Lubintsev's eyebrows went up in a pleased grin. "Oh, yes.
When we liberated your nation, we knew exactly what scientists were
deserving of our assistance in their work, and where to find them. We
had laboratories, project agendas, living quarters--everything!--all
ready for them. But I must admit, we did not think we would ever be
able to accommodate you."
"But now you can."
"Yes!" Once more, Colonel Lubintsev smiled like a little boy with great
fun in store. "The possibilities of your device are as infinite as the
universe! Think of the enormous help to the people of your nation, for
example, if they could draw on machine tools and equipment from such
alternate places as the one you have just left." Colonel Lubintsev
waved his cigarette. "Or if, when the Americans attack us, we can
transport bombs from a world where the revolution is an accomplished
fact, and have them appear in North America in this."
Professor Kempfer sat up in bed. "Marthe! Marthe, why have you done
this to me?"
"Hush, Jochim," she said. "Please. Don't tire yourself. I have done
nothing to you. You will have care, now. We will be able to live
together in a nice villa, and you will be able to work, and we will be
together."
"Marthe--"
She shook her head, her lips pursed primly. "Please, Jochim. Times have
changed a great deal, here. I explained to the Colonel that your head
was probably still full of the old Nazi propaganda. He understands.
You will learn to see it for what it was. And you will help put the
Americans back in their place." Her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
"All the years I went to visit your grave as often as I could. All the
years I paid for flowers, and all the nights I cried for you."
"But I am _here_, Marthe! I am here! I am not dead."
"Jochim, Jochim," she said gently. "Am I to have had all my grief for
nothing?"
"I have brought a technical expert with me," Colonel Lubintsev went on
as though nothing had happened. "If you will tell him what facilities
you will need, we can begin preliminary work immediately." He rose to
his feet. "I will send him in. I myself must be going." He put out
his cigarette, and extended his hand. "I have been honored, Doctor
Professor Kempfer."
"Yes," Professor Kempfer whispered. "Yes. Honored." He raised his hand,
pushed it toward the colonel's, but could not hold it up long enough to
reach. It fell back to the coverlet, woodenly, and Professor Kempfer
could not find the strength to move it. "Goodbye."
He heard the colonel walk out with a few murmured words for Marthe. He
was quite tired, and he heard only a sort of hum.
He turned his head when the technical expert came in. The man was all
eagerness, all enthusiasm:
"Jochim! This is amazing! Perhaps I should introduce myself--I worked
with your counterpart during the war--we were quite good friends--I am
Georg Tanzler. Jochim! How _are_ you!"
Professor Kempfer looked up. His lips twisted. "I think I am going away
again, Georg," he whispered.
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