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Transcriber note: This etext was produced from Fantastic UniverseScience Fiction July 1959. Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
Crossroads of Destiny
by
H. Beam Piper
No wonder he'd been so interested in the talk of whether our people accepted these theories!
* * * * *
Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, inLONE STAR PLANET (FU, March 1957), later published as A PLANET FORTEXANS (Ace Books), will find the present story a challengingdeparture--this possibility that the history we know may not beabsolute....
* * * * *
CROSSROADS OF DESTINY
I still have the dollar bill. It's in my box at the bank, and I thinkthat's where it will stay. I simply won't destroy it, but I can think ofnobody to whom I'd be willing to show it--certainly nobody at thecollege, my History Department colleagues least of all. Merely to tellthe story would brand me irredeemably as a crackpot, but crackpots aretolerated, even on college faculties. It's only when they beginproducing physical evidence that they get themselves actively resented.
* * * * *
When I went into the club-car for a nightcap before going back to mycompartment to turn in, there were five men there, sitting together.
One was an Army officer, with the insignia and badges of a StaffIntelligence colonel. Next to him was a man of about my own age, withsandy hair and a bony, Scottish looking face, who sat staring silentlyinto a highball which he held in both hands. Across the aisle, anelderly man, who could have been a lawyer or a banker, was smoking acigar over a glass of port, and beside him sat a plump and slightly toowell groomed individual who had a tall colorless drink, probablygin-and-tonic. The fifth man, separated from him by a vacant chair,seemed to be dividing his attention between a book on his lap and theconversation, in which he was taking no part. I sat down beside thesandy-haired man; as I did so and rang for the waiter, the colonel wassaying:
"No, that wouldn't. I can think of a better one. Suppose you haveColumbus get his ships from Henry the Seventh of England and sail underthe English instead of the Spanish flag. You know, he did try to getEnglish backing, before he went to Spain, but King Henry turned himdown. That could be changed."
I pricked up my ears. The period from 1492 to the Revolution is myspecial field of American history, and I knew, at once, the enormousdifference that would have made. It was a moment later that I realizedhow oddly the colonel had expressed the idea, and by that time the plumpman was speaking.
"Yes, that would work," he agreed. "Those kings made decisions, most ofthe time, on whether or not they had a hangover, or what some courtfavorite thought." He got out a notebook and pen and scribbled briefly."I'll hand that to the planning staff when I get to New York. That'sHenry the Seventh, not Henry the Eighth? Right. We'll fix it so thatColumbus will catch him when he's in a good humor."
That was too much. I turned to the man beside me.
"What goes on?" I asked. "Has somebody invented a time machine?"
He looked up from the drink he was contemplating and gave me a grin.
"Sounds like it, doesn't it? Why, no; our friend here is getting up atelevision program. Tell the gentleman about it," he urged the plump manacross the aisle.
The waiter arrived at that moment. The plump man, who seemed to needlittle urging, waited until I had ordered a drink and then began tellingme what a positively sensational idea it was.
"We're calling it _Crossroads of Destiny_," he said. "It'll be a series,one half-hour show a week; in each episode, we'll take some historicevent and show how history could have been changed if something hadhappened differently. We dramatize the event up to that point just as itreally happened, and then a commentary-voice comes on and announces thatthis is the Crossroads of Destiny; this is where history could have beencompletely changed. Then he gives a resume of what really did happen,and then he says, '_But_--suppose so and so had done this and that,instead of such and such.' Then we pick up the dramatization at thatpoint, only we show it the way it might have happened. Like this thingabout Columbus; we'll show how it could have happened, and end withColumbus wading ashore with his sword in one hand and a flag in theother, just like the painting, only it'll be the English flag, andColumbus will shout: 'I take possession of this new land in the name ofHis Majesty, Henry the Seventh of England!'" He brandishedhis drink, to the visible consternation of the elderly man beside him."And then, the sailors all sing _God Save the King_."
"Which wasn't written till about 1745," I couldn't help mentioning.
"Huh?" The plump man looked startled. "Are you sure?" Then he decidedthat I was, and shrugged. "Well, they can all shout, 'God Save KingHenry!' or 'St. George for England!' or something. Then, at the end, weintroduce the program guest, some history expert, a real name, and hetells how he thinks history would have been changed if it had happenedthis way."
The conservatively dressed gentleman beside him wanted to know how longhe expected to keep the show running.
"The crossroads will give out before long," he added.
"The sponsor'll give out first," I said. "History is just one damncrossroads after another." I mentioned, in passing, that I taught thesubject. "Why, since the beginning of this century, we've had enough ofthem to keep the show running for a year."
"We have about twenty already written and ready to produce," the plumpman said comfortably, "and ideas for twice as many that the planningstaff is working on now."
The elderly man accepted that and took another cautious sip of wine.
"What I wonder, though, is whether you can really say that history canbe changed."
"Well, of course--" The television man was taken aback; one always seemsto be when a basic assumption is questioned. "Of course, we only knowwhat really did happen, but it stands to reason if something hadhappened differently, the results would have been different, doesn'tit?"
"But it seems to me that everything would work out the same in the longrun. There'd be some differences at the time, but over the yearswouldn't they all cancel out?"
"_Non, non, Monsieur!_" the man with the book, who had been outside theconversation until now, told him earnestly. "Make no mistake; 'istoreecan be shange'!"
I looked at him curiously. The accent sounded French, but it wasn'tquite right. He was some kind of a foreigner, though; I'd swear that henever bought the clothes he was wearing in this country. The way thesuit fitted, and the cut of it, and the shirt-collar, and the necktie.The book he was reading was Langmuir's _Social History of the AmericanPeople_--not one of my favorites, a bit too much on the doctrinaireside, but what a bookshop clerk would give a foreigner looking forsomething to explain America.
"What do you think, Professor?" the plump man was asking me.
"It would work out the other way. The differences wouldn't cancel out;they'd accumulate. Say something happened a century ago, to throw apresidential election the other way. You'd get different people at thehead of the government, opposite lines of policy taken, and eventuallywe'd be getting into different wars with different enemies at differenttimes, and different batches of young men killed before they could marryand have families--different people being born or not being born. Thatwould mean different ideas, good or bad, being advanced; different bookswritten; different inventions, and different social and economicproblems as a consequence."
"Look, he's only giving himself a century," the colonel added. "Think ofthe changes if this thing we were
discussing, Columbus sailing under theEnglish flag, had happened. Or suppose Leif Ericson had been able toplant a permanent colony in America in the Eleventh Century, or if theSaracens had won the Battle of Tours. Try to imagine the world today ifany of those things had happened. One thing you can be sure of--anyerrors you make in trying to imagine such a world will be on the side ofover-conservatism."
The sandy-haired man beside me, who had been using his highball for acrystal ball, must have glimpsed in it what he was looking for. Hefinished the drink, set the empty glass on the stand-tray beside him,and reached back to push the button.
"I don't think you realize just how good an idea you have,
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