One Thousand Years (24 page)

Was
he making a subtle racist jab, McHenry wondered, or was that a
genuine attempt to be polite? He decided it best to play aloof and
disinterested. He looked at the masthead. It was the
Chicago
Defender
. “Thank you, Private. I'll look at it later.”

Dalton nodded and went to a radio that sat atop a cabinet. It was large,
bulky, and primitive-looking to McHenry, now that he'd seen the
future. After it warmed up, the soldier turned the knob to find a
station broadcasting at this hour.

“I'd like to hear the latest news, if there is any,”
McHenry said, trying to sound more at ease.

“That's
fine with me,” he said. Then, thinking better, he added,
“Sir.” Presently, he found a station reciting sports
scores.

McHenry
looked back to the clock. It shouldn't have taken so long. He
wondered if Donaldson was playing with the controls. It might solve
so many problems if the Tiger could just explode.

The
voice on the radio was now talking about the war. It was the victory
at Monte Cassino again. Nothing new to McHenry. Then the reporter
was talking about Germany, playing brief clips of Roosevelt and
Churchill. Then he heard Hitler shouting on the radio.

Without
thinking, McHenry rose to attention. He quickly realized his
faux
pas
, but not quickly enough to avoid generating a look of
puzzlement from Dalton. Before he could think of something to say,
Donaldson returned, the emergency kit in his hand, and a friendlier
look on his face. He ordered Dalton outside.

“Let's
start over,” he said. “Call me Ward.”

McHenry
shook the man's outstretched hand, deciding then that it's best to
tell the real story. Or, most of the real story. Secrecy would
serve him well. “I'm Sam.”

“I
see the Luftwaffe emblem,” said Donaldson. “I know it's
not a zeppelin. I know it's not a rocket. What is it, and how did
you get it, and why is it here?”

“I'll
be frank with you,” McHenry said. “I'm not on a secret
mission. I just wasn't sure you would believe the whole truth.”

“Try
it.”

“I'll
start from the beginning. I am a pilot in the 99th Fighter Squadron.
We're in the Mediterranean Theater. I was flying out of Italy.”

“I
heard about you guys. There's an article about your squadron in that
Negro paper. You're a long way from where you're supposed to be.”

“I had to ditch into the sea in April. Engine trouble. I would have
been killed but I was rescued by Nazis.” McHenry paused here,
unsure. Was seeing the outside of the Tiger really enough that
Donaldson would believe him? He went this far. He might as well say
it. “But these Nazis were from the future.”

“That's
a time machine?” Donaldson laughed, without the slightest
pause, having gone in an instant from receptive to skeptical to
dismissive. “There won't be Nazis in the future, Sam. The war
in Europe will be over by Christmas. We're not going to lose.”

“It's
worse than losing. We're giving up. They'll get a negotiated
settlement.”

Donaldson
was now going from dismissive to outright angry. “The
President will never settle. Those defeatists begging for a peace
settlement have already been exposed for what they are. They really
don't care about peace at all. Half of them are outright Nazi
sympathizers. The other half simply hate the Roosevelt
administration.”

“Roosevelt
will be dead of a stroke in a couple of weeks,” McHenry said
grimly. But as distressing as Donaldson's disbelief was, McHenry
noticed — and appreciated — the anger behind his words.
This was a man who could fight, not just now, but in the future when
it mattered.

“Vice
President Wallace wouldn't settle either,” Donaldson said
slowly. It was a half-hearted statement but McHenry was still losing
him for the moment.

“I'm
guessing you didn't go inside the ship.”

“I
didn't see how to open a hatch. I gave it a long walkaround.”

“That's
how I got this uniform,” McHenry said quickly. He was going to
open the emergency kit. The display functions would surely convince
anybody, but then he looked again at his uniform. “The
material itself looks the same as ours but it's not like the real
ones at all. It's tough. It never wrinkles. Coffee stains come
right out. I've worn this for a couple of days, and it feels fresh,
like I just took it off the clothesline.”

Donaldson
looked more dismissive.

“Let
me show you something,” McHenry said. “Let's compare
wings.” He opened his jacket, reached inside his shirt and
pulled the clasps off the pilot wings from his shirt. Donaldson
hesitated only for a moment. His eyes noticeably widened when
McHenry's shirt stretched so easily. His own shirt had to be
unbuttoned in order to pull off his own wings.

“Compare the silver. Try bending mine.
You've never seen metal as strong and as light as this,”
said McHenry, letting Donaldson hold both sets of wings.
The normal wings were not that heavy. It was a small
piece of metal. But the advanced material of McHenry's wings were so
noticeably lighter. He was confident Donaldson would believe it all
now.

*

“The
American had been detected entering the atmosphere,” said
Hamilton. “The flight path leads to China.”

“That's
all?” asked Dale from the back seat.

“This
was seventy-five minutes ago,” said Hamilton. He detached the
satellite connection. “He's invisible again. He may not have
made a landing. We will be able to find him when we're closer in.”

Bamberg
switched the dome from nav to sensor mode. They would be hitting
atmosphere soon, and he wanted one more look at the full display.
“Who here thinks McHenry is stupid enough not to know the
rechner would be picking up on his interest in China?”

“He's
a twentieth-century old-timer,” Hamilton said. “He
doesn't have the intellect of an
Übermensch
.”

“He
is smarter than you give him credit for,” said Vinson from the
back seat.

“I
saw no evidence of that.”

“And
yet, he was told, time and time again, that escape was impossible,”
Bamberg snickered.

“Hamilton,”
Dale interrupted. “It may be prudent to touch the region's
monitoring satellite before we descend any further. It could have
observed his landing by now.”

Hamilton
looked down at his side-panel. “That will waste at least half
an hour. We still have a chance to stop him before he alters the
future.”

“We
will waste three hours if we reach China and it turns out he landed
in Guam,” said Bamberg.

“Or
Pearl Harbor,” said Dale.

*

Once
convinced, Donaldson had taken to understanding the situation
immediately. He called the two men on guard duty and had them close
the hangar doors. There would be a shift change at 0400, but the men
would gladly stay on for the rest of the morning. In this way, the
Tiger's presence would remain a close secret. Now, it was time to
take it to a higher authority.

“No
one senior who might be watched,” McHenry cautioned. He hadn't
taken the time to detail the full panoply of his experience aboard
Göring
but Donaldson
appeared to accept that without
question.

“Not a problem,” Donaldson replied.
He reached into a locker and pulled out two hats, tossing one to McHenry.
“My squadron C.O. is with the rest of the squadron that moved west.
This detachment is run by a lieutenant colonel.
But I do have to tell someone.
You can't ask me to keep a hangar closed on my own authority.”

McHenry nodded, picked up the emergency kit,
and grabbed the newspaper on the way out the door.
“For the flight. I'm hoping for a long trip.”

“That
ship in the hangar can travel through time?” asked Donaldson,
once the jeep was in gear.

“No,
it's only for normal space, short range. It can make it as far as
the other planets.
Think of it as a combo C-47 and B-25.”

“She's armed?”

“It
was just under maintenance. It only has beam weapons right now.
That's more deadly than anything we've got but it's small potatoes
compared to what it could have, and much less than what the
Göring
has. That's their main ship. But fully armed, these could
destroy cities with atomic bombs if they wanted to.”

Donaldson
looked bewildered.

“Atomic weapons are real,
although different than H. G. Wells described.”

“It's not that.
I just read a story about atomic bombs in
Astounding
last month.
Everything seems more real now.”

They
arrived at the officers' quarters and walked along the sidewalk to a
door at the far end.

The
lights turned on, a moment after Donaldson knocked. Then the door
opened, revealing an unshaven man in his mid-thirties wearing only
his underwear.

“May
we come in, Colonel?”

Blanding
looked over at McHenry, and then back to Donaldson. “No. What
do you need?”

“I
have a story to tell you, sir.”

“Are
you giving me a story or just an excuse?”

He
motioned Donaldson to come inside. Donaldson looked back at McHenry
apologetically.

“I'll
be in the jeep, said McHenry sullenly. The fate of the world is at
stake, the entire future of mankind, and yet he has to wait for jim
crow protocol.

He
took the newspaper from the jeep, and stepped toward a lamppost
adjacent to the building. It was a fine spot to read, but instead of
reading, he realized that he was out in the open. Looking all around
him, his mental reflexes came back from when he was flying his P-40.
This would be an easy shot for one of those SS robots
, he
realized.

Most
likely, he imagined, they would be wearing U.S. Army uniforms. It
would be done unobtrusively, so as not to draw attention to
themselves, or they would be changing history even more. They might
prefer that he's hidden. Then he realized that, when they get within
a mile, it'll probably be too late for him to get away. There was no
sense worrying about close-quarter combat. He needed to get off the
island as fast as possible.

He
opened the paper to start reading when Donaldson came out again.
Blanding was behind him, fully dressed now, but badly needing a
shave.

“Back
to the hangar,” Donaldson beckoned.

*

Briefing
Lt. Col. Blanding might been more difficult than first thought,
but he became a different man when he saw the inside of the Tiger.
McHenry sat at the controls; Blanding sat beside him; and Donaldson
stood behind, just awestruck.

“
Rechner, aufleuchten!
” McHenry ordered the Tiger's rechner.
The dome was now displaying the view from inside of the hangar. They
could see the night outside beyond as though it was daylight. The
two guards, Dalton and Williams, were clearly at their posts
whispering to each other. The presence of the hangar doors and walls
were noticeable but it was not a barrier to the view of the distance.
McHenry knew that, despite the lesser spectacle, for them it must be
something like how he felt when he first saw the Earth in
Kontrolle
.

“I've
got to hand it to you, Lieutenant,” said Blanding. “I
don't know how you managed to steal this thing, but you've got to be
one brilliant son-of-a-bitch.”

“You
believe it now, sir?” asked McHenry.

“Why
are these seats so big?” asked Blanding.

“They're
bigger than we are.”

“What
kind of ordnance do we have?”

“It's
a beam weapon of a sort, but nothing we can use against them, and
nothing we can remove. They were finishing an overhaul when I
commandeered it.” McHenry left it at that. The time was
wasting away. He considered saying good-bye, and leaving it all in
their hands. But he needed one more thing from them. Something big.
McHenry reached toward the control panel. “I'm sorry, sir.
We need to get out of here. I don't know how long we've got. I've
burned over an hour already, and I still need something from you.”

“Hold
on a second, son,” Blanding interrupted. “Yes, I do
believe you. Right now, I'll believe anything you want to say. But
this is a strategic asset. I am not just leaving it here for these
Krauts.”

“The
knowledge I have is a strategic asset, sir,” McHenry said. “It
will be lost as soon as they get me. This ship will be gone soon.
There is nothing we can do to stop them from either taking it or
blowing it up.”

“Colonel
Blanding is right, Sam,” said Donaldson. “This is just
too much to give up. We can win the war right here — with both
Germany and Japan.”

Exasperated,
McHenry shook his head. “No, we can't.
They
won't let
us win the war. If we did win the war, they can take over any time
they want. They want history to go on exactly as it did for them
before. That's the only thing stopping them from doing anything they
want to do.” After a pause, he corrected himself: “Well,
that's almost the only thing.”

Eyebrows
raised a fraction, the two other men looked over at McHenry.

“Sorry,
Ward,” McHenry apologized. “You'd better step outside.
This is need-to-know.”

“What?
I'm no...,” Donaldson started to protest.

“Nothing
personal. This stays compartmentalized. They'll get to us each
eventually, and they will find out everything you know. The only
chance we have is if one of us survives, and the information is
separated.”

“Got
it,” Donaldson acknowledged warily. “I'll be outside.”
He took one more quick look around the dome, and then stepped toward
the door.

“Donaldson,
hold on,” the colonel called, pulling his keys out of his
pocket. “Go to the vests in the lockers. Get your pistol, and
then get mine for McHenry.”