The Simulacra

‘Karp discloses vast government secret!' the news machine screeched to everyone within hearing distance. ‘Der Alte a simulacrum! New one already being built!'

The news machine began to wheel off in search of other customers. No one was buying here. Everyone had become frozen. It was dream-like to Dr Superb; he shut his eyes, thinking to himself, I have difficulty believing this. Terrible difficulty.

‘Karp employee steals entire plans for next der Alte simulacrum!' the news machine, now half a block away, shrilled.

The sound of it echoed. ‘Makes plans public!'

All these years, Dr Superb thought. We've worshipped a dummy. A being inert and devoid of life.

Opening his eyes, he saw Wilder Pembroke, bent grotesquely as he strained to hear the departing racket of the news machine; Pembroke took a few steps after it, as if hypnotized by it.

Pembroke, as he departed, dwindled as before. I've got to go after him, Dr Superb realized. Make him full-sized, real again so I can do to him what I have to. The jack handle became more slippery, so drenched that he could hardly hold on to it.

‘Pembroke!' he called.

The figure halted, bleakly smiling. ‘So now you know both of them. You're uniquely informed, Superb.' Pembroke walked back up the sidewalk towards him. ‘I have some advice. I suggest that you call a reporting machine and give it your news, too. Are you afraid to?'

Superb managed to say, ‘It's -- too much, all at once. I have to think.' Confused, he listened to the yammer of the news machine; it's voice was still audible.

‘But you will tell,' Pembroke said. ‘Eventually.' Still smiling, he brought out his service pistol and aimed it, expertly, at Superb's temple. ‘I order you to, doctor.' He walked slowly along the sidewalk, up to Dr Superb. ‘There's no time left, now, because Karp und Sohnen has made its move. This is the moment, doctor, the Augenblick -- as our German friends say. Don't you agree?'

‘I'll -- call a reporting machine,' Superb said.

‘Don't give your source, doctor. I'll come back inside with you, I think.' Pembroke urged Dr Superb back up the steps of the building, to the front door of his office. ‘Just say that one of your patients, a Ge, revealed it to you in confidence, but you feel it's too important to be kept quiet.'

‘All right,' Superb said, Nodding.

‘And don't worry about the psychological effect on the nation,' Pembroke said. ‘On the masses of Bes. I think they'll be able to withstand it, once the initial shock has worn off. There will be a reaction, of course; I expect it to demolish the system of government. Wouldn't you agree? By that I mean there will be no further der Altes and no more so-called "Nicole," and no more division into Ge and Be. Because we'll all be Ges, now. Correct?'

‘Yes,' Superb said, as step by step he walked through the outer office, past Amanda Conners who stared speechlessly at him and Pembroke.

Half to himself Pembroke murmured, ‘All I'm worried about is Bertold Goltz's reaction. Everything else seems to be in order but that's the one factor I can't quite seem to anticipate.'

Superb halted, turned to Amanda. ‘Get The New YorkTimes reporting machine for me on the phone, please.'

Picking up the phone, Amanda numbly dialled.

Ashen-faced, Maury Frauenzimmer swallowed noisily, put down the newspaper and mumbled to Chic, ‘Do you know which of us leaked the news?' His flesh hung in wattles, as if death were creeping over him.

‘I -- ‘

‘It was your brother Vince. Whom you just brought in here from Karp. Well, this is the end of us. Vince was acting for Karp; they never fired him -- they sent him.' Maury crumpled up the newspaper with both hands. ‘God, if only you'd emigrated. If you'd gone he never would have managed to get in here; I wouldn't have hired him without your say-so.' He raised his panic-filled eyes and stared at Chic.

‘Why didn't I let you go?'

Outside the Frauenzimmer Associates factory building a news machine shrilled,' ... vast government secret! Der Alte a simulacrum! New one already being built!' It began all over again, then, mechanically controlled by its central circuits.

‘Destroy it,' Maury croaked at Chic. ‘That -- machine out there. Make it leave, in the name of god.'

Chic said thickly, ‘It won't go. I tried. When I first heard it.' The two of them faced each other, he and his boss Maury Frauenzimmer, neither of them able to speak. Anyhow, there was nothing to say. It was the end of their business. And perhaps of their lives.

At last Maury said, ‘Those Loony Luke lots. Those jalopy jungles. The government closed all of them down, didn't it?'

Chic said, ‘Why?'

‘Because I want to emigrate,' Maury said. ‘I have to get out of here. So do you.'

‘They're closed,' Chic agreed, nodding.

‘You know what we're seeing?' Maury said. ‘This is a coup. A plot against the government of the USEA, by someone or a lot of someones. And they're people inside the apparatus, not outsiders like Goltz. And they're working with the cartels, with Karp, the biggest of them all. They've got a lot of power. This is no street fight. No vulgar brawl.'

He mopped his red, perspiration-soaked face with his handkerchief. ‘I feel ill. Goddamit, we've been brought into it, you and me; the NP boys will be here any minute.'

‘But they must know we didn't intend -- ‘

‘They know nothing. They'll be arresting everybody. Up and down.'

Far off a siren sounded. Maury, wide-eyed, listened.

14

As soon as she understood the situation Nicole Thibodeaux gave the order for the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, to be killed.

It was necessary. Very possibly the revolutionary clique had ties with him; in any case she could not take the risk.

Far too much was involved.

In a hidden courtyard of the White House a squad of soldiers from the nearby Army base did the required job; she listened absently to the faint, almost inaudible sound of their high-powered laser rifles, thinking to herself that this -- the death of this man -- proved how little power he had held in the Third Reich. For his death caused no alteration in her time, in the present; the event did not produce even a ripple of alteration. It was a commentary on the governmental structure of Nazi Germany.

Next, she called in NP Commissioner Wilder Pembroke.

‘I want a report,' she informed him, ‘as to exactly what support the Karps are drawing from. In addition to their own resources. Obviously, they wouldn't have gone ahead with this unless they felt they could count on allies.' She eyed the top NP official with deliberate, rigorously calculated intensity. ‘How do the National Police stand?'

Wilder Pembroke said calmly, ‘We're ready to deal with the plotters.' He did not seem disturbed; in fact, she thought, he was even more self-possessed than usual. ‘As a matter of fact we've already begun rounding them up. Karp employees and executives, and the personnel of the Frauenzimmer outfit. And anyone else who's involved; we're working on that aspect, using von Lessinger's equipment.'

‘Why weren't you prepared for this by means of the von Lessinger principle?' Nicole asked sharply.

‘Admittedly, this was there. But only as the most meagre possibility. One in a million, of the possible alternative futures. It never occurred to us -- ‘

‘You've just lost your job,' Nicole said. ‘Send in your staff. I'll choose a new police commissioner from among them.'

Colouring, incredulous, Pembroke stammered, ‘But at every given moment there's a raft of dangerous alternatives so malign that if we -- ‘