One Thousand Years (5 page)

A
chime sounded, prompting the doctor to tap the swastika button on his
collar. “Evers,” he said.

A
woman's voice spoke. McHenry recognized only the word “
Amerikaner”
and assumed that was about him. He was startled that a woman was
aboard the ship, but kept this thought to himself.

“
Jawohl!”
replied Dr. Evers. He
released the button and stood. “The
Kommandant
is ready to see you now. Are you ready to see more of the ship?”

“Certainly,” McHenry said.
He stood and took one more sip of his coffee. It had
not cooled off in the slightest. “One more thing, Doctor.
What if we had seen your ship; would that change anything?”

“It
might have ramifications,” the doctor conceded. “But do
not build up false hopes. We know what we are doing. We have been
very meticulous in our work.”

The doors opened for them as Dr. Evers led the way out of his office,
through the familiar dispensary and out into a long wide corridor.
There were, indeed, women aboard the ship. They passed several men
and women wearing Luftwaffe blue or SS black. All were tall and fit
like the others McHenry had seen thus far. Even the women towered over him.
This
master race
was Hitler's dream come true.
And astonishingly, it included people of all races working as equals.

They
smiled and nodded their heads in silent greeting as they passed in
the corridor. Everyone seemed respectful and friendly enough. He
was not prepared to meet these men and women as friends.

They
reached an elevator and stepped in. “
Kontrolle,”
the doctor ordered. It
took a long second for McHenry to understand that the command was
meant for the elevator, then the doors closed and he quickly
understood that elevators no longer needed attendants. He could feel
the pull of upward and then sideways motion. Their movements felt so
swift that they seemed to be moving a considerable distance. They
watched an indicator move along a diagram of the vessel.

“How
big is this ship?” McHenry asked.

“Over
nine kilometers in length. That includes the engines. The actual
living environment is less than half that. That is large enough that
it might have been visible from the Earth if it was not designed to
be hidden.”

“Visible
from where...?” But there was no time to finish the question.
The doors opened and he immediately saw a black sky. The two men
climbed a short stairway up into the ship's large control room.
McHenry stopped momentarily and stood in awe. There didn't seem to
be a ceiling. They were in a dome surrounded by stars. And right
below them was the planet Earth.

*

“It has been
claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates
dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries,
processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used
either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.”
—
Vice President Henry A. Wallace (April 9, 1944)

McHenry
stared out across the dome. This was his familiar Earth seen from a
new and heretofore impossible vantage point. It couldn't be a real
window, he realized, although his depth perception gave the illusion
that it was. There were faint grid marks of latitude and longitude
on the planet. Another more-distant blue grid marked the background
of space itself. Numbers and symbols appeared in the foreground,
sometimes flashing or highlighted by colorful borders. They all
looked to McHenry like finely-detailed cartoon images overlapping a
real sky.

The
ship's large control room had at least a dozen men and women, mostly
in blue Luftwaffe uniforms working at various stations. View screens
surrounded every station; some displays appeared momentarily in the
background of the dome and disappeared just as suddenly. The center
area held two large chairs facing forward. The stern-faced
Oberführer
Mtubo was standing beside one — one of
four SS officers present. The other chair was obviously meant for
the
Kommandant
. This was, surprisingly to McHenry, a woman.

Luftwaffe-Oberst
— Colonel, that is — Petra Volker looked very much like a
woman proud of the ship she commanded. “Greetings, Lieutenant
McHenry. Welcome to the
Göring
.” She held out her
large hand.

“Thank
you,” McHenry replied. He was still unsure how to address
these people. He tried to consider himself a P.O.W. They shook
hands firmly.

At
first glance, the fair-haired and clean-cut
Kommandant
seemed
to McHenry as being not being older than anyone else. She looked,
perhaps, not older than thirty, judging by the smoothness of her
features. But her stoic and confident manners somehow implied this
was a much older woman. Only then did it start to dawn on McHenry
that the Nazis had beaten mortality just as they had conquered
everything else.

“I
didn't realize your ship was in outer space,” said McHenry.

The
Kommandant
laughed heartily. “The doctor has been
babying you — eh Doctor? Do not blame him, Lieutenant. The
entire crew has been, as you might say, on pins and needles. We all
know this must all be quite overwhelming.”

McHenry
sat there feeling unexpectedly shy and hesitant. He tried to
remember his P.O.W. instructions and his oath as an officer, and he
searched his memory for anything he was taught that could be applied
here. These people already knew his name and who-knows-what-else.
No one had asked a single question. No interrogation was necessary.

He
looked out over the sea to the south. “That's the Med, isn't
it?”

“Yes,
it's getting dark down there now.”

“That's
about where I ditched my plane,” he said numbly. “But I
guess you know that.” Most of it was coming back to him now.
He hoped the men got back okay.

“We
knew precisely where you were going down. The ship that tried to
pick you up had a log entry about you, which included the
coordinates. We knew everything about you before you were selected.
Traveling through time is not something we can afford to be careless
about.”

“I
know. The doctor told me all about it.”

“Then
you understand the seriousness of the situation here,” Mtubo
interjected. “And the risks we undertook to rescue you.”

“Yes,
I do. I just don't understand why.”

“You
are a relic of history, Lieutenant,” Mtubo answered with some
disdain. “That makes you an interesting item.”

“Do
not question your good fortune,” the
Kommandant
said,
turning back to where Germany and western Europe were fading in the
distance. “Men are giving their lives by the thousands back
there. You will be remembered as a hero back home, like all the
others, but you also have a second chance at life.”

McHenry
turned his back and looked ahead. The moon shone down on a dark
planet now. “I'll have to play this one day at a time,”
he said finally, turning back to face the
Kommandant
.

“And
what marvelous days you will have,” the
Kommandant
said
brightly. “Doctor!”

Dr.
Evers stepped forward. “
Ja,
Kommandant!”

“Show
Herr McHenry his quarters, and then let him see the ship.”

“
Jawohl!”

The
Kommandant
pivoted formally to McHenry. “The men will
look in on you to ensure you learn your way about the ship. If you
need any medical assistance, be sure that the doctor attends to your
needs.”

“Thank
you, ma'am.” McHenry winced slightly as he heard himself say
the word
ma'am
.
He needed to be respectful, and cordial, but not subservient. But
he felt better about it when he saw Mtubo's stern glare. He took one
last look at the land on the horizon and then followed the doctor
down the short stairway to the open elevator doors.

The
doctor issued a command to the elevator, and the doors closed. They
moved sideways and then downward. “We have prepared a private
room for you. We will stop there so that you know where it is and
then we will have dinner. I am sure you are hungry.”

“You've read my mind, Doctor.”

“Good.
Leutnant
Vinson might be there. You will meet more of the
crew over time, but it might be best if we start with the pilots.”

The
door to his room had his name beside it. There was a number under
his name. McHenry recognized the last five digits as part of his
Army serial number. The rest was not familiar.

“That
is your personal number,” the doctor said. “It is
actually five hundred years old. The Reich integrated everyone into
the system that could be accounted for — living or dead.”

“I
see,” McHenry said numbly. He didn't like that the Reich knew
who he was.

“Of
course, you were long dead at the time,” the doctor added.

“Listed
as killed by a bird, no doubt.”

The
room itself was small but very comfortable. This could almost have
been a stateroom on board any passenger ship. As if to highlight
that point, there was even a placard with emergency instructions on
the wall by the door.

The
doctor showed him that the desk converts into a bed, and then
remembered to explain he could adjust the temperature and lighting
simply by calling out to the ship's main machine. “
Rechner,
Fenster.”
The back wall dissolved into a window. Unlike the tactical view in
Kontrolle
, this looked like a clear window without the embedded
graphics. They were evidently passing Asia and heading out over the
Pacific.

“Wow!”
McHenry exclaimed, startled. “Is that a real window?”

“No,
there are no windows on this ship. The rechner is just giving us a
view from one of the outside sensors. This can also show maps and
pictures and even books. I am certain you will use it a lot.”

McHenry
remained awestruck, and was pleased that he would be able to have
such a view in his room. The picture gave a perspective of depth
with perfect clarity. “I'll have to remember the word
Fenster
.”

“Ah,
do not worry. The rechner understands English perfectly well. Tell
it what you want. It will ask for clarification if there is any
chance of confusion. I think you will find some advantage to living
in our time.”

*

A nearly empty officers' mess was just down the hall from
McHenry's quarters. He would come to find out this was the officers'
mess reserved for the pilots — those who pilot the ship, and
those who pilot the smaller spacecraft. The door opened
automatically.

From
the doorway, McHenry could see the room was clean and efficiently
designed with three large portraits on the opposite wall. He
recognized Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring in two of the
pictures, with likenesses appearing more muscular than the original
twentieth-century men. The center portrait, slightly larger than the
others, was that of a blonde woman, short-haired, and wearing a brown
uniform. There could be no doubting who she was.

This
Führer
had a beautiful face, with the distracting
exception of a piercing and determined stare. Had he not known
better, and had she not had that stern, resolute expression, McHenry
would have thought that the most powerful woman in the
thirtieth-century was also in her mid-twenties.

Dr.
Evers paused at the door with McHenry. “May we enter?”

“Yes, certainly,” answered one of the men inside.
There were only three men in the room,
although it could easily accommodate two dozen.
One of them was Vinson.

“Let
me introduce two of our other pilots,” Vinson said as McHenry
and the doctor came in. “Here is Otto Barr and Lars Bamberg.”
Each stood as they shook McHenry's hand, and all of them towered
over him even though they were bending slightly.

The
three Luftwaffe pilots shared the superhuman build and height now
standard in the thirtieth-century. They all seemed very much alike
but for the fact that Barr was a black man, evidently a naturally
jovial man, despite the fact that he sported a Hitler mustache.
McHenry was still getting used to the idea of seeing the mixture of
races in the Reich. He was intrigued that this society had evolved
to a point where their very equality had become unremarkable.
Indeed, the more obvious difference between the three was that Barr
and Bamberg had Iron Crosses under their collars, and Vinson did not.

“Have
you eaten yet?” asked the doctor as they took their seats
around a circular table. A thankful McHenry took the chair facing
away from from the portraits. It raised itself for his shorter
stature automatically.

“We
thought we would wait,” Bamberg said. “Adolf thought you
would be coming by. Are you ready for some of the best food you ever
tasted?”

“What's
for dinner?” asked McHenry.

“We
shall see.” said Vinson. He spoke a command to the rechner
again. The pad in the center of the table opened and five trays
appeared with piping hot food. “Pork with rice. What would
you like to drink?”

“Have
you got a Coke?”

“Coke?”

“Cola,”
Barr said. “I
will have one too.”

“Same,”
Bamberg said, and the doctor nodded, raising his thumb.

“Rechner,
five colas,” Vinson ordered. Five drinks appeared.

The
sodas were not quite cold enough for McHenry's tastes. They were
very good but they were distinctly different. The Coca-Cola Company
evidently didn't survive Nazism. The food, however, was excellent.
“My compliments to the chef,” McHenry said.

“So
what is the pilot talk nowadays?” asked the doctor.

“Our
little Adolf is in love,” said Barr.