Magestic 2, p.132
Magestic 2, page 132
‘A new day will soon dawn over a free and democratic Europe, and we will help you to rebuild. We will supply you with medicines, and technology to produce abundant energy. This is an opportunity for you all, a new beginning.’
That night, sat on my allocated camp bed, I considered that I was back in the shit, back at Mawlini in a tent and fighting The Brotherhood again, only now I had a nuclear war to contend with as well. A part of me wanted to fix this, but a part of me most definitely wanted to be back in Canada, making aircraft. Right now I would have been happy to find out what mischief Toby had gotten up to in school.
The next morning, I woke to find that several European countries had declared independence, and were now in touch with the American administration. France, Spain and Portugal, Iceland, Norway and Ireland had all broken away from the union they had with Greater Germany. It was positive news, and it lifted my spirits a little.
But then I considered the lack of contact with 2047, and if a disaster had befallen that world; my world. The lack of contact with Baldy’s world gave me hope, since the same disaster should not have affected both worlds. We even tried to contact Jimmy’s old world, a permanently manned presence at the portal there, but we couldn’t get a signal. I worried about my family in 2047, about Helen and the girls, and about people I knew, but I also thought about the waste of losing a world like that, and all the work that I had put into it.
My stomach turned as I considered possible scenarios, but the lack of contact with Jimmy’s old world suggested that the problem was here, this end somehow. We still had 1938, and that was peaceful, so retreat there was a possibility.
I worried about Susan and the kids, and sent them a message via Lobster, my new reality being that I would need to get to Berlin to jump through to 1938 and to see them. The Brotherhood stood between me and Berlin, as well as a few angry Germans. It was not even like we had any decent aircraft with which to reach Berlin.
After breakfast, I sat with the drone operators responsible for Russia. ‘Report,’ I said, little energy in my voice today.
‘We have found the bomb assembly plant in Siberia, near the Chinese border. It is in cave, tall mountains nearby.’
‘Impregnable then,’ I noted.
‘We’ve killed all the workers going in and out, and the people controlling the dam that powers the facility. The local towns have been hit with EMP, many people there killed, many cars and trucks set alight over the past twelve hours. If anyone comes from the cave, they will be killed, sir.’
‘Good. And the Russian leadership?’
‘They were in a place south of Moscow, sir, we tracked the radio signals. When they moved by car before dawn we killed them all.’
‘And EMPs?’
‘We hit twenty-four cities, sir, and Moscow. In the east, we hit the army close to the Japanese.’
‘Hit the Russian military right across the country,’ I ordered, and wandered next door.
Ngomo Jnr greeted me. ‘We think we have all German hardware destroyed, now attacking trucks and tanks.’
‘US Marines?
‘Four thousand near Berlin already, disarming the German soldiers and helping the radiation victims. More will fly to Berlin on the other world, many by boat, but many are in Japan in 1938.’
‘Long trip for them,’ I noted with a sigh. ‘When you’re happy that you have all the German missiles, move a few drones towards Japan, flying them across Russia, and destroy any military hardware as you go. Start building a list of Japanese assets, and check there’s nothing under the ice floes. Check the tally with the Americans. Oh, and disperse men from this place. Send tents and operators to other locations, hidden locations. One good nuke here and we lose control of these drones.’
Ngomo Jnr nodded. ‘I’ll send some to Forward Base, others to the desert ten miles away. They can dig in.’
‘Send some today, just in case the Americans do want to dominate this world.’
A Major approached. ‘Sir,’ he called, indicating for me to step away from the others. ‘Sir, we intercept and record the people in the White House, phone calls, and the Pentagon.’
‘And?’
‘A conversation, a General Mathews. He says that the Russian bomb on the plane, it was him – it was them, sir.’
‘How?’ I puzzled.
‘They give the bomb to the Russian before, to sneak into London by ship.’
I took a deep breath and blew out, staring past the officer and at lines of men lugging boxes. ‘It’s done, there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘I don’t think the President knew about it, sir. Not the bomb for London, or the plane.’
I took a moment. ‘Who else was involved?’
‘The CIA man, sir, the Director. Do we say anything, sir?’
‘I’m not sure what it would achieve, the damage is done. Don’t mention it to anyone else, I’ll deal with it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I had hardly time to take a sip of water when Kennedy called. ‘Are you up early?’ I asked.
‘Caught a few hours sleep, still on Air Force One, but at a military base. The news from Europe is positive, many countries coming over to our side.’
‘They’re not going over to your side, they want their independence, and they’ll not swap one imposed union for another. They’ll have free and fair elections, and be free countries to trade with whoever they like, or else.’
There was a pause. ‘That’s what we desire. But what of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia?’
‘Those you can invade and hold for a decade, till they’re ready to be free and independent. But holding them comes at a price.’
‘A price?’
‘Yes, you’ll have to pay for reconstruction, and to feed the people, or you’ll have ten years of starving disaffected citizens setting off bombs near American servicemen. Your aim, Mister President, is to convert them to happy democratic citizens, not to punish them … or to keep them down. If you do try and keep them down then you’re just making next year’s enemy.’
‘Point taken. And Russia?’
‘Wiped out, they won’t be bothering anyone for a few decades. And if you invade that territory you deserve all you get. It’s vast, and you’ll just make enemies of them.’
‘We have no desire to invade Russia. What of the US Marines you mentioned?’
‘They’re already in Germany, disarming the soldiers. There’ll be little left for you to do when you get there.’
‘We’re calling up reservists, thinking about conscription as well.’
‘That would be over-kill. How’re you coping with Boston?’
‘Many people survived in basements, all walking out of the city, but all suffering from radiation poisoning.’
‘Our drugs will fix that very quickly.’
‘We now have thousands of medics there, the drugs flown in,’ Kennedy reported.
‘Think what it could have been like.’
‘There are a lot of folks around here doing just that, even the Joint Chiefs,’ Kennedy admitted.
‘Any desire to wind back time?’ I nudged.
‘We’ll stay as we are, unless you force a unilateral move.’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you all learnt something from Boston, something you needed to learn.’
‘I think you’re right. Nuclear war is all about scenarios in computers ... till it hits you head on. Have you made contact with your world?’
‘No, which means it’s serious. At their end, they could take a hundred years to try and fix something, and they haven’t, so the problem may be here.’
‘Caused by the nuclear explosions?’
‘It’s possible, and right now it’s more than just a coincidence. Listen, while you’re on, can you send me oil-drilling equipment and mining equipment, around to Mombasa as quickly as you can. I need to make this continent a nation of consumers. That’ll boost world trade.’
‘We’re keen to do so,’ Kennedy assured me.
I took a moment, and a deep breath. ‘Are you alone your end?’
‘I could be.’
‘Do so.’
After a moment, he said, ‘OK.’
‘Did you sanction a sneak nuclear attack on London anytime recently?’
‘No. Why..?’
‘Your General Mathews and your CIA Director did. That bomb, the one the Russians used, it was supplied to them for an attack on London by ship.’
‘You ... have proof?’
‘Yes, but I don’t intend using it, neither would you. But ... if you asked me to arrange a heart attack or two, I would be amenable to it.’
‘Swept under the rug.’
‘The alternative ... is that you wake up dead one morning at the hands of your own people.’
There was a long pause. ‘Do what you feel is appropriate in the circumstances.’ He hung up.
I stood holding the phone and looking at it, a good thirty seconds, then decided to cause a heart attack or two, and from forty thousand feet. I gave the order. The next time the men stepped across a parking lot they’d fall.
I wandered over to the far side of the base, where our light aircraft operated from a strip of compacted sand. The aircraft appeared to be two-seaters, low wing, T-tail. Facing a pilot, I asked, ‘What’s the range on these?’
‘It’s a diesel engine, sir, but it also has solar power and microwave energy.’
‘Microwave?’
‘We can fire microwave up to it, sir, to give it some energy, and down from a drone.’
‘What’s the range on fuel?’
‘About five hundred miles, sir.’
‘And with solar power?’
‘Another two hundred, sir.’
‘And with drone microwave energy,’ I pressed.
‘If we have the drone in place, a thousand miles or more.’
I grabbed a data-pad from a pilot sat in a tent. Unfortunately, I found that Berlin was three thousand miles away. The Suez Canal had been blocked by The Brotherhood years earlier, rusted hulks left blocking the once-important shipping route. Sailing around Africa was a possibility, so was accepting a flight on a US military aircraft bound for Angola, thereafter a ship or further US military flight up to Europe.
I decided to stay, at least for a few months. This was important, fixing this place, and it was a critical time for this world. I made a happy home in the corner of the officers’ tent, grabbed combats and boots, and set up controlling both the global drones and the African soldiers. And this was all oddly familiar, sand everywhere, hanging my boots up at night.
I got a call through to Susan via Berlin, a long chat. She wasn’t happy, and worried for me, Mary concerned. Toby didn’t care, even to talk with me on the phone.
A month later, now tanned and a little sick of the desert, I took one of the light aircraft across to Forward Base, enjoying the rain I found there. A huge tented city greeted me, a few concrete or brick buildings already up, more again under construction in the distance. I called together as many senior people as could be quickly assembled.
‘There’s still no word from 2047, and it’s pointless speculating what happened there. We ... are here, and here we’ll stay till the job is done. You all know what to do, and what the priorities are. The Japanese will trade with us, so too the Americans and South Americans, as well as the new nations in Europe. So we need to get our ore, gold, and diamonds to the coast.
‘We should concentrate on gold and diamonds to start with, and make some money. That money can be used to hire ships, and those ships can move ore to the markets, as well as bring much needed equipment back. Disperse the people here so that we can drill oil on Zanzibar, and in western Africa, and rip-up unnecessary train track so that it can be laid through Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya to Mombasa. That ... is the priority. The second priority is the track to Angola, which I understand is already underway.
‘It will take time, but the process will accelerate as the months go by. The Americans have promised more equipment, and some has already been delivered. We also have South American countries keen to trade with us, especially for oil, they’re even prepared to drill for it under license.
‘I can inform you that American forces have quelled Germany with the aid of our US Marines, and that some units of those US Marines have crossed into North Africa from Spain, fighting The Brotherhood there. Our own soldiers have moved into Saudi Arabia, and secured the oil producing regions in the east. American military units have landed, as well as oil drilling equipment.
‘Kenyan Rifles have moved from Europe into Turkey, removing the fighters as they go, and American warships have entered the Mediterranean. I can also confirm that in an odd move, ten thousand American enlisted men and five thousand British enlisted men from 1938, have crossed to Berlin-1984, and are assisting with peacekeeping there. Men from 1938 are assisting men from 1984.
‘Modern day American units have landed in Italy, and have given sea passage to the Rifles, across to Malta and Tunisia, a separate group surrounding Alexandria in Egypt, a third group marching on Cairo. The Americans have been made aware of oil in Libya, on the coast, and they plan on moving in and pumping it to boost the European economy – as well as make a buck.
‘Our work here is progressing well, and peace – of a sort - has been achieved. We’re talking to the Japanese, who now realise that we could destroy their nuclear arsenal. They’re willing, reluctantly, to decommission weapons for oil and trade.
‘I know that many of you would like to get a message home, we all would, but the work you’re doing here is vital for this planet. You all volunteered, mostly because everything back there had been done already. Here, the challenges are great, the work hard, but the purpose a noble one. Here, you can make a difference to the lives of people, a real difference.’
I spent almost four weeks at Forward Base, creating a mini-parliament, although we didn’t have the fine building that Rudd’s parliament enjoyed in 1938. The local workforce was keen and cheap, paid in cold coins, the gold mined by us in the Congo. We soon had an efficient internal economy, and a rapidly growing economy.
Then, one day four weeks later, an American transport landed, a large aircraft with four propellers. It disgorged mining equipment, plus a team of US diplomats, their liaisons to our kingdom in the jungle. That transport offered me a lift, and I packed up quickly, soon on a flight up to Malta with my original bodyguards, all of us now heavily tanned. We refuelled on Malta, American military jets now based there, and flew on north to Berlin in one leg, landing not far from the portal itself.
En route, I had chatted to the pilots about Germany, which was where the pilots were based most of the time. But the centre of Berlin was still a no-go zone, radiation lingering around metal structures. Those who had survived the blast had been injected by either black-market drugs, or free drugs issued by Lobster and his men, most victims making a good recovery. The people of 1938 very kindly donated drugs and sent them through, most everyone that needed an injection receiving one.
The American Army had landed in Belgium, at Antwerp of all places, after most of the countries of Europe had declared themselves neutral. That Army moved unopposed to the German border, where they marched across finding little resistance. But in the weeks that had followed the crossing, hundreds of US soldiers had been killed in small skirmishes and ambushes, mines left under dirt tracks, or wired to lampposts. The US forces spread out north, US Marines already in the south and fighting die-hard Nazis in Bavaria.
By time the 1984 US Army had crept slowly towards Berlin, American and British servicemen from 1938 were holding the German border with Poland and moving south towards Czechoslovakia, the men having just come from another war-torn German landscape. They found the clothes here odd, the training shoes cool, and the electronic calculators fascinating. They took casualties in Czechoslovakia, but for the most part the indigenous peoples were starving and in no mood for a fight. A bar of chocolate bought valuable intel on resistance.
The US President of 1938 had organised food parcels, and an ant-like chain of men sent them through the portal. As I landed, those parcels were being placed onto trucks being driven by German soldiers in grey uniforms with armbands, the armbands signifying that they were now working for the US Army.
Lobster greeted me off the plane. ‘You still here?’ I asked him, shaking his giant black steak of a hand.
‘Yes, but now many soldiers, so we sit on fat arses and do little.’
‘Hand over to the US Marines, and move your remaining people to Africa.’
‘Thank you, sir. We need a little action to work off the calories.’
‘How is it around here?’ I asked as we boarded a jeep.
‘The people are hungry, not happy, they steal food and kill each other, but there is no war,’ Lobster reported as we drove around to the portal, my guards in a second jeep.
‘It’ll take time,’ I said with a sigh. ‘So will Africa. But we have a good little economy going in the Congo.’
‘And no word from home?’ Lobster asked.
‘No, nothing.’
‘Mister Jimmy, he builds a machine in Britain.’
‘Yes,’ I confirmed.
‘But I know something many people do not know,’ Lobster began. ‘We have now made contact with the scientist in Mister Jimmy’s old world, from Canada. The scientist in Mister Jimmy’s old world, they dial up 2047, and they cannot open a portal either.’
‘No?’ I asked, not having known that contact had been made.
Lobster offered me a worried look. ‘No. They say it is like no time after 2047, in any place.’
Thoughts of Helen and the girls hit me like a punch to the chest, the thought that 2047 could be gone too terrible to bear. ‘Did they ... try our world at other dates?’
‘They cannot open to our world at any date, but can open to many other places,’ Lobster reported.
