The court looked at the Leader, then at Frenchy.
In a moment, chaos had broken out. Women screamed — there was a rush to the heavy doors. Men's voices rose, shouted. Then came the crack of the first gun, followed by others. In a moment the hall was milling and ringing with shots, groans and shouts.
On the dais, the Leader lay, twisting and uttering guttural moans. The pack was at frenzied war. Those who had considered the Leader immortal — and many had — were bewildered, terrified. Those who had planned to succeed him now hardly knew what to do. Several of them shot themselves there and then.
I was lying on the bed smoking when Frenchy ran in, slammed and bolted the doors behind the guards and her pursuers. Her hair was dishevelled, she held the scarlet cloak round her. "Out of the window," she yelled, ripping it off. Underneath, her white dress was in ribbons.
I got up on to the window-sill and helped her after me. I looked down towards the courtyard far below. I clung to the sill.
"Go on!"
I reached out and got a grip on a drainpipe. I began to slide down it, the metal chafing my hands. She followed.
At the bottom, I paused, helped her down the last few feet and pointed at a staff car that was parked near the gates. Guards had left the gates and were probably taking part in the indoor festivities. There was only one there and he hadn't seen us. He was looking warily out along the road, as if expecting attack.
We skipped over the lawn and got into the car. I started up.
At the gate, the guard, seeing a general's insignia on the car, automatically stepped aside. Then he saw us, did a double-take, and it was too late. We roared down that road, away from there.
The road ahead was clear.
True to form, Frenchy had found and put on an officer's white mac from the back seat.
I slowed down. There was no point in doing 80 towards any danger on the road.
"And have you lost your power?" I asked her.
"Don't know," she gave me an irresponsible grin.
"What was going on below? It sounded like a battlefield."
She told me.
"The Leader's finished. His successors are fighting among themselves. This is the end of the Thousand Year Reich." She grinned again. "I did it."
"Oh, come now," I protested. "Anyway I think we'll try to get back to England?"
"Why?"
"Because if the Empire's crumbling, England will go first. It's an island. They'll withdraw the legions to defend the Empire — it's traditional."
"Can we make it?"
"Not now. We'll get out of Germany and then lie low for a few days until the news leaks out in France. Once things start to break down, the organisation will disintegrate and we'll get help.
We bowled on merrily, whistling and singing.
'Frenchy Steiner' was Hilary Bailey's first U.S. publication (reprinted in The Saint, 1966, from The Best of New Worlds); her most recent was 'Dr. Gelabius' in England Swings SF. In private life, Miss Bailey is Mrs. Michael Moorcock, wife of the editor of New Worlds — but life for the Moorcocks is seldom private, with Britain's controversial new 'magazine of speculative fiction' doing most of its growing in the middle of their living-room floor.
Bob Shaw is not-quite-British: a North Irish journalist — columnist and science correspondent for The Belfast Telegraph — and author of perhaps a dozen short stories and one novel, Night Walk (Banner, 1966). Although his first fiction sale in 1953 was to the New York Post, he was almost unknown in the U.S. until 'Light of Other Days' appeared in Analog, and was promptly selected for inclusion in both The World's Best Science Fiction: 1967 (Ace) and Nebula Award Stories Two (Doubleday) — as well as being a (very close) runner-up for both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1966.
One extraordinary thing about the story is that it is actually science fiction. Time-travel, long a favourite device (with or without magical or scientifabulous vehicles) for both classical and contemporary fabulators, philosophers, and science fiction writers, has lately gone the way of the Bug-eyed Monster: out of print onto the screen. But the topic of Time itself — its phenomenology, properties, effects, metaphysics — is as hot in the laboratories and academies as it is pervasive in new speculative fiction. (Especially in Britain: Fred Hoyle's October the First Is Too Late; Aldiss' 'Man in His Time' and Cryptozoic; almost anything by Ballard or Langdon Jones. In America, one thinks primarily of Dick, Leiber, and Delany.) 'Light of Other Days' incorporates a plausible, intriguing, and new idea about the physics of light in relation to Time.
Light of other Days
Bob Shaw
Leaving the village behind, we followed the heady sweeps of the road up into a land of slow glass.
I had never seen one of the farms before and at first found them slightly eerie — an effect heightened by imagination and circumstance. The car's turbine was pulling smoothly and quietly in the damp air so that we seemed to be carried over the convolutions of the road in a kind of supernatural silence. On our right the mountain sifted down into an incredibly perfect valley of timeless pine, and everywhere stood the great frames of slow glass, drinking light. An occasional flash of afternoon sunlight on their wind bracing created an illusion of movement, but in fact the frames were deserted. The rows of windows had been standing on the hillside for years, staring into the valley, and men only cleaned them in the middle of the night when their human presence would not matter to the thirsty glass.
They were fascinating, but Selina and I didn't mention the windows. I think we hated each other so much we both were reluctant to sully anything new by drawing it into the nexus of our emotions. The holiday, I had begun to realise, was a stupid idea in the first place. I had thought it would cure everything, but, of course, it didn't stop Selina being pregnant and, worst still, it didn't even stop her being angry about being pregnant.
Rationalising our dismay over her condition, we had circulated the usual statements to the effect that we would have liked having children — but later on, at the proper time. Selina's pregnancy had cost us her well-paid job and with it the new house we had been negotiating and which was far beyond the reach of my income from poetry. But the real source of our annoyance was that we were face to face with the realisation that people who say they want children later always mean they want children never. Our nevers were thrumming with the knowledge that we, who had thought ourselves so unique, had fallen into the same biological trap as every mindless rutting creature which ever existed.
The road took us along the southern slopes of Ben Cruachan until we began to catch glimpses of the gray Atlantic far ahead. I had just cut our speed to absorb the view better when I noticed the sign spiked to a gatepost. It said: 'SLOW GLASS — QUALITY HIGH, PRICES LOW — J. R. HAGAN.' On an impulse I stopped the car on the verge, wincing slightly as tough grasses whipped noisily at the bodywork.
"Why have we stopped?" Selina's neat, smoke-silver head turned in surprise.
"Look at that sign. Let's go up and see what there is. The stuff might be reasonably priced out here."
Selina's voice was pitched high with scorn as she refused, but I was too taken with my idea to listen. I had an illogical conviction that doing something extravagant and crazy would set us right again.