His mobile phone, now using the scratched-together network that the British had set up, buzzed. “Are you ready?” Ambassador King asked. “The politicians are getting impatient.”
“I ought to show them snuff videos or porno movies,” Palter replied wryly, thinking how conservative 1940s America would react to some of the filth that splashed across the Internet. Hoover was already understanding the implications, demanding that Congress pass laws to control the spread of $100 laptops, $500 broadcasting systems, and $50 mobile phones.
“Just get on with the movie,” King snapped. He sounded stressed; life as a black man in 1940s America wasn’t fun. Apart from politicians, the audience included reporters, Hollywood producers and dozens of people who would be influential.
“Yes, sir,” he said, with more respect than was perhaps necessary. He meant it; compared to King, his life was simple and easy. “Broadcasting now.”
He nodded to one of the assistants, who lowered the lights. He clicked on PLAY, and the laptop hummed as it sent signals from the DVD player to the projector, projecting the film against the white screen. The cinema’s owners were already asking if they could buy one of the projectors for themselves; it was far better than their standard projectors. The theme music from Independence Day started to play, and he sat back and watched as the massive spacecraft approached the moon. For a while, he could escape into fantasy.
“A most impressive young man,” President Roosevelt commented, as Will Smith pronounced his classic line. “And not, clearly, someone who was given the post because of his colour.”
Ambassador King nodded. “By the ideal time of 2015, it was generally accepted that someone’s skin colour and sexual orientation” – they’d already had leers when Smith’s wife had pole danced – “wasn’t affecting them one way or the other. We had gone through the repression stage, and trying to escape the overcompensation stage. Colin Powel was a good man, but Arthur Roberts should never have been allowed near the centre of power.” He scowled. “Bastard set back the expected black president for ten years.”
Roosevelt smiled from his wheelchair. “What happened to him?”
“The man wanted to be president, and he could be charming, so he talked the Democratic Party – yes, your party – into letting him be one of the candidates,” King said. “And then he pressured people into voting for him because he was black; there was nothing else to him, but his colour.” He snorted. “And then it turned out that there was… irregularities in his accounts, and then he denounced it all as a smear campaign, and…”
King chuckled. “In the end, the middle-class blacks voted Republican in a body,” he said. “The shouts of outrage had grown so loud that no one knew what had happened, at all. He was trying to run in 2016, but the Party Convention was very against the idea.”
Roosevelt’s eyes narrowed. “Is there a reason in particular that you’re telling me this story?”
“Merely to illustrate my point,” King said. “The system you have now, even in the Deep South, is designed to hold the coloured man down. That we avoided race war was a matter of sheer good luck, it could have been a lot worse. It might well have become a lot worse if Roberts had been elected President. You have to prevent that from happening.”
Roosevelt shook his tired head. “You know what he’s saying about me,” he said. King nodded; Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Willkie, was making capital out of Roosevelt’s death in 1944, and of the lists of broken promises that had surfaced from the future. It didn’t help that Wallace, who would have been Roosevelt’s running mate, had started to set up his own party, ignoring claims that he was a Soviet Agent. The FBI had demanded the right to investigate him, and Willkie was making capital out of Roosevelt’s reluctance.
“You can’t loose,” King said, and hoped that that was true. He looked up at the scene; President Whitmore was preparing to lead the fight against the aliens.
“With craft like that, how could we lose?” He heard General Marshall whisper behind him. “What do the British need us for?”
King scowled to himself. Isolationist feeling within the US was growing as more and more of the history, the future, was revealed. Brutal racial attacks, directed against Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans and others, occurred daily. They didn’t understand how the British could run out of weapons, they didn’t understand how long a precision weapon took to make. Canada was already arming the Contemporary British forces; under pressure the United States had sent several of the army divisions to the Philippines. The situation in the Far East was worsening; interception of Japanese messages suggested that the Japanese were preparing to jump.
“I have the feeling that I’m on the Titanic,” Roosevelt muttered. King lifted an eyebrow. “Too many balls to juggle, and too much to do. Are you aware that the British have refused to sell us the equipment to make these little gadgets?”
He lifted a mobile phone and waved it under King’s nose. “I had expected it,” King admitted.
“A lot of people are annoyed about that,” Roosevelt said. “They are demanding, demanding, that I force you to make them give us the technology.”
King scowled, wishing for the patience of his legendary ancestor. “There’s something of an element of tit-for-tat in it; your future self would have slowed the British nuclear program,” he said. “In the same vein, you know what they found at Feltwell; evidence that the future Americans were reading commercial encryption codes and using them for commercial gain. Some Parliamentary committees were considering laying charges against the USAF and NSA staff.”
“Did you know that LeMay was demanding that I create the USAF right now?” Roosevelt asked. “All the fame of being proved right seems to have gone to his head.” King shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” Roosevelt continued, “the priority is forcing our own system forward.”
“You might become involved in the war against Japan,” King said. On the screen, Whitmore was launching his second missile at the alien ship. A cheer went up as the missile slammed into the hull of the ship.
“And Willkie thinks that we can avoid one,” Roosevelt said. “He thinks that the British will kick Japan out of the war without our help.” He scowled. “And the Red spies, such as Laurence Duggan and Harry Dexter White, don’t help either.”
“That depends,” King said. He looked over at the president he admired. “Do you really want the British dictating the peace settlement of the war? Unless America joins the war, your ability to affect the outcome of the conflict will be limited, in fact practically non-existent.”
Roosevelt fell into an uneasy silence. The movie came to an end. Colonel Palter stepped up in front of the screen. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “What we are about to show you is not fictional. This is footage taken by a patrol deep within enemy territory, within the very heart of darkness.”
Roosevelt looked up as images from Poland, burning houses, raped Polish women, slaughtered Polish men and kidnapped children began to be displayed. A silence fell as the images rolled on; death camps, gulags, the slave camps of Germany…