In The Presence of mine Enemies

by Harry Turtledove

  Roxane started to doze. Every so often, she'd say, "I'm awake," in a small, faraway voice. She was still little, even if she would have indignantly denied it.

  One by one, the girls did drop off to sleep. Snores replaced Roxane's protests. A couple of the girls Anna's age were snoring by the time Francesca gave in and slept. Alicia wasn't surprised. She knew how stubborn Francesca was.

  By two in the morning, snores and deep breathing filled the Gimpels' living room. Alicia's sleeping bag lay next to Anna's. Not only were they best friends, but the party was in Alicia's house. She doubly had the right to be there. Her voice a tiny whisper, she asked, "Are you still awake?"

  "No," Anna whispered back, and they both laughed.

  "Did you have a happy birthday?" Alicia asked.

  Anna nodded. Alicia could barely see the motion. "I'll say," Anna answered.

  "Good. I'm glad," Alicia said, and then, "How are…things?"

  "Things are all right with me." Anna poked her head up to make sure nobody else was awake and listening. Alicia did the same. She'd been sure Anna would know how she meantthings, and she'd been right. Her friend even used the same word and the same little pause to ask, "How are…things with you?"

  "They're not too bad, I guess." But Alicia couldn't leave it at that. She went on, "I think it's harder when other people in the house don't know." She stuck her head up and listened again. This would be a very bad time to find out Francesca was only pretending to sleep.

  "I believe that," Anna said. Now she paused before continuing, "Gottlieb told me the same thing once. I was really little when he found out. I was younger than Roxane." She laughed at the follies of her youth. "He must have wanted to kick me a whole bunch of times."

  Alicia had wanted to kick her sisters plenty of times. The trouble was, they kicked back. The other trouble was…"It's what you learn in school. It's what you see on the televisor. It's-it's just everything, that's all. I believed all that stuff till I found out." In a tinier voice yet, she added, "Part of me still wants to believe it."

  "Oh, thank you!" Anna said. Alicia blinked. Anna explained: "I was afraid I was the only one who thought things like that." They both came halfway out of their sleeping bags so they could hug each other.

  Not once, Alicia realized, had either one of them said the word Jew. Even if one of the other girls were listening, she wouldn't know what they were talking about. They were both so very careful. They had to be. If they weren't careful, they were dead. Alicia had known that was what happened to Jews long before she knew she was one.

  Anna asked her, "What do you think of the new Fuhrer? "

  "I was going to ask you the same thing!" Alicia exclaimed. She liked it when she and Anna thought the same way. Nobody else thought like her, except her father every once in a while. Since Anna had asked the question first, she had to answer it: "He seems…better, anyhow."

  "He does, doesn't he?" Anna said. "He talks about how there ought to be laws, not just…the triumph of the will." They'd both seen the film. Everybody saw it, in school and on the televisor. It was old. You could tell when you watched it. But it had a kick like a mule even so.

  "You know the lady who made that movie?" Alicia asked. Anna nodded. Alicia said, "She died just a few years ago. She was over a hundred-even older than Kurt Haldweim." She shivered, remembering how she'd filed past the late Fuhrer 's shrunken, wizened corpse as it lay in state in the Great Hall.

  "That's scary," Anna said. Now Alicia nodded. Anna went on, "When your sisters…talk about things they don't know about, how do you stand it?"

  "I don't know," Alicia answered. "Just after I first found out, it really used to drive me crazy. Now it doesn't, or not so much, anyway. They don't know any better, and they can't for a while. They're too little."

  "That's funny," Anna said. Alicia made a soft, inquiring noise. Her friend went on, "Gottlieb said almost the same thing to me-almost the same thing about me-after I finally did find out what was what." The last few words came out muffled by a yawn.

  Alicia yawned, too. They were both up long past their usual bedtime. Of course, that was what slumber parties were for. Alicia's head went down. "I think I am going to sleep now," she said. "Happy birthday again."

  "It was the happiest!" Anna said. In a couple of minutes, both of them were snoring with the other girls.

  Something peculiar was happening in Adolf Hitler Platz when Heinrich Gimpel and Willi Dorsch got off the bus from South Station. Heinrich asked, "What's going on?" He had trouble seeing, not only because of the mist and light drizzle themselves but because of the way they spattered his glasses.

  "Looks like…" Willi brought up his hand. Heinrich wondered why. His friend didn't wear glasses. Maybe the hand helped the visor on his cap keep water out of his eyes. Maybe he just thought the gesture looked impressive. After peering, he said, "I will be damned. Looks like some Dutchmen are holding a demonstration over there."

  "Dutchmen?" Heinrich echoed. Then, between raindrops, he too got a glimpse of the red, white, and blue flag with the stripes laid out horizontally, not vertically as in the French tricolor. A couple of dozen men and women huddled beneath the damp banner. A few of them carried signs. Distance and rain kept Heinrich from making out the words. He would have had to do some guessing, anyway; Dutch had a teasing almost-familiarity to someone who spoke German and English.

  "Vrijheid!" the Dutch shouted. Heinrich didn't have to do much guessing to figure out what that meant. It was very close to Freiheit, the German word for freedom."Vrijheid!"

  Willi got it, too. "Where are the Security Police?" he demanded.

  "Here they come." If Heinrich was dismayed-and he was-he didn't show it.

  "About time," Willi said, which showed what he thought.

  The men in black tunics and trousers trotted briskly across the square. They carried truncheons and pistols; a couple of them had assault rifles. Would it be arrests or a massacre? Lights blazing and sirens howling, police wagons followed the troopers. It turned out to be arrests. The Dutchmen and — women didn't try to flee. They kept calling,"Vrijheit!" as the Security Police herded them into the wagons, which screeched away. Adolf Hitler Platz was quiet again. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than three minutes.

  "They must have been out of their minds," Willi said. "They don't have the faintest idea when they've got it good. Bunch of damned fools, like those Danes. Give 'em a little, treat 'em halfway decent because they're Aryans, and what do they do? Do they thank you? Hell, no! They grab with both hands, that's what."

  "Maybe they're taking the new Fuhrer seriously," Heinrich said as he and Willi went up the stairs to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters.

  Willi gave him an odd look. "Maybe they're taking Buckligertoo seriously," he said. "What'll we see next? Poles shouting for freedom? Russians? Jews?" He threw back his head and laughed.

  So did Heinrich. The idea was, when you got down to it, pretty funny. He tried to imagine some of the handful of surviving Jews in Berlin getting out there in the middle of that enormous square and clamoring for their freedom. Would the Security Police even need to come? Or would ordinary people beat and stone them to death before the men in black uniforms got there? Everyone here, or as near as made no difference, had that same casual loathing for Jews.

  "Do you think…" Willi sounded as if he'd decided to take Heinrich seriously after all instead of laughing at him. "Do you think Buckligerintends for things like this to happen?"

  Heinrich didn't even try to answer that till the security guards had checked their identification cards and waved them through into the building. Then he said, "I doubt it. Who would? But how can you make changes in the way things work if you can't even talk about changes without getting arrested?"

  "Oh, come on," Willi said. "These were Dutchmen. The others were a bunch of crazy Danes. You didn't see any real Germans out there, did you?"

  "Not a one," Heinrich agreed. He wondered if he ever would. The Party had spent the last t
hree generations teaching the Germans to be docile to their rulers, no matter how ferocious they were when they put on uniforms and marched off to war. Could they nerve themselves to speak their minds? After three generations of Nazi propaganda, did they have any minds to speak? He wasn't an optimist. On a question like that, he couldn't afford optimism. The cost of being wrong was too high.

  "Coffee!" Willi exclaimed when they got to the room where they worked. He disappeared, presumably heading for the canteen, and came back five minutes later with a foam cup from which fragrant steam rose. He gulped it down, then sighed blissfully. "Ahhh!"

  Heinrich wanted a cup, too. Even so, he said, "I've seen drunks who didn't cozy up to a bottle of cheap schnapps the way you did with that coffee."

  "If you're going to enjoy something, you shouldenjoy it, shouldn't you?" Willi said. "Why only go halfway?"

  "Because sometimes all the way is too far?" Heinrich suggested. Willi laughed at him again. It wasn't surprising that he should. National Socialist ideology scorned the idea of restraint. It always had. Heinrich wondered if Heinz Buckliger could change that, or if it had even occurred to the new Fuhrer to try. He had his doubts.

  He also had his work. He got some coffee for himself. With it unmelodramatically sitting there on the desk in front of him, he got down to business. Sure enough, with their assessments reduced, the Americans were paying even less than they had been. They were trying to see just how much the Reich would let them get away with before it clamped down. If he hadn't already been sure they would do that, it would have infuriated him.

  The coffee hadn't had time to get cold before the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Analysis section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking."

  "Guten Morgen, Herr Gimpel," an American-accented voice said. "Charlie Cox here.Wie geht's mit Ihnen? "

  "I'm fine, thanks," Heinrich answered automatically. Then he blinked. "It's not morning where you are, Herr Cox. It's still the middle of last night. Are you up early or up late?"

  "Late," Cox said easily. "I wanted to ask you something unofficial."

  "Well, go ahead," Heinrich told him. "Of course, an answer to a question like that is worth its weight in gold."

  "Aber naturlich,"Cox said. He knew the answer wouldn't really be unofficial, then. By the nature of things, it couldn't be. That meant the "unofficial" question wasn't, either. Cox proceeded to ask it: "Just exactly how serious is Herr Buckliger about reforming the National Socialist system?"

  "That's a good question," Heinrich said. He could see why the American and his leaders wanted to find out. A lot of other people in the Germanic Empire and in the Greater German Reich wanted to find out, too. Heinrich wouldn't have been surprised if Heinz Buckliger were one of them. He went on, "The only thing I can tell you, though, is that I don't know."

  "Unofficially, dammit." Charlie Cox sounded annoyed.

  You idiot. Don't you think there's a bug on this phone? Someone will be listening to you-and to me-if not right this second, then when he plays a tape. Aloud, Heinrich replied, "Official or unofficial, you'd get the same answer from me. Come on, Charlie. Use your head."You'd better. "I'm not at the level that makes policy. All I do is carry it out."

  "the Fuhrer talks to you," Cox said.

  So that news had got across the Atlantic, had it? Either it had spread more widely than Heinrich thought or the Americans had better spies than Intelligence gave them credit for. That wasn't Heinrich's immediate worry, though. He said, "For heaven's sake, he just asked me for a few figures sohe could set policy. That's what the Fuhrerprinzip is all about."

  "Ja,"Cox agreed. "But if he likes the first edition as much as he says he does, how much does he care about the Fuhrerprinzip? "

  A lot of people in the Empire and in the Reich were also wondering about that. "I'm very sorry," Heinrich said, "but I still don't know. If you want advice-"

  "I'll take whatever you give me," the American broke in. "You've always seemed like a decent fellow."

  Are you naive enough to assume that about anyone in the Reich,or do you think I'm naive enough to be flattered? In a way, Heinrichwas flattered, but not in a way that would do Cox any good. He said, "The only real advice I can give you is, wait and see. What the Fuhrer does will show you exactly what he has in mind."

  "I was hoping for a little advance warning." But he must have realized he wouldn't get it from Heinrich. With what might have been either a sigh or a yawn, he said, "All right. I'm going on home to bed. Thanks for your time,Herr Gimpel." He hung up.

  So did Heinrich, with quite unnecessary force. Willi said, "Sounded like somebody was trying to get something out of you."

  "An American," Heinrich said. "I think I'd better write up a report." If he did, the people surely monitoring the line would have less reason to read disloyalty into anything he'd said. As he began to type, though, he wondered how much good it would do. If the powers that be decided he was disloyal, they wouldn't worry about evidence. They'd invent some or do without and just get rid of him.

  Will they, under this Fuhrer?That Heinrich could wonder said how much things had changed-and how much they hadn't.

  Walther Stutzman was a straight-thinking, rational man. He had to be, to make himself a success at the Zeiss computer works. Every so often, though, he found himself bemused by what he and a few others did-had to do-to keep themselves hidden from the all-too-nearly omniscient eye of the state.

  Hitler had thundered that there was a Jewish conspiracy against the German Volk, against the Reich. At the time, he'd been talking through his hat. The Jews hadn't been plotting against Germany. Most of the Jewsin Germany had thought of themselves as being as German as anybody else. Now, on the other hand…

  Now the handful of Jews remaining in Berlin, in Germany as a whole, had to conspire against the Reich if they wanted to go on breathing. Hitler's extermination camps had had the ironic effect of calling into being what hadn't existed when he started making speeches. Even now, it wasn't the sort of conspiracy he meant. It didn't aim to take over the Reich, just to hide the few surviving Jews from it. But a conspiracy it undoubtedly was.

  Here sat Walther, controlling computer codes that would have earned him a bullet in the back of the neck if anyone knew he had them. Some of the codes erased his tracks after he'd used others, which made discovering him harder. Over at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Heinrich Gimpel kept his ear to the ground. There was a Jew in a fairly high place in the Foreign Ministry. There were even three or four in the SS. Walther had helped create false pedigrees for a couple of them. The others he just knew about; he wasn't sure how they'd established their bona fides. His own work there still worried him. If it unraveled, so much was liable to unravel with it. Several other important ministries also held a Jew or two.

  When a Jew in one place heard something that might be important, others soon found out about it. A chief undersecretary or a deputy assistant minister could meet with a friend at dinner or telephone a colleague in another ministry-sometimes not a Jew himself, but someone who could be expected to spread the news to the Jew who needed to know it. Heinrich said the American phrase was a grapevine. That fit well enough.

  And that chief undersecretary or deputy assistant minister sometimes got to propose a policy that-purely by chance, of course (of course!)-made things a little easier, a little safer, for the Jews. Or, bureaucracy being what it was, one of those functionaries could sometimes ignore or soften a directive that might have hurt his people. Very often, one bad scheme blocked was worth three good ones started.

  A Jewish conspiracy at the heart of the Reich. Hitler would have had kittens. He would have ordered all the Jews killed, and made horrible examples of the Germans who'd missed them. Walther thought of knives and piano-wire nooses. Himmler would have killed the Jews and made examples of some Germans, too, but he would have got rid of them more humanely. Kurt Haldweim would have got rid of the Jews and reprimanded, maybe demoted, the Germans.

  Heinz Buckliger? Walther scratched his head. He
didn't know. He didn't dare find out. Who would dare, when the consequences for being wrong were so irrevocable? For the first time in his life, though, he could think of the Fuhrer without a shudder right afterwards.

  "Hey, Walther! What are you doing in there?"

  The booming voice jerked him out of his reverie. "Nothing much, boss," he answered honestly, hiding a start, too. "Just woolgathering, I'm afraid."

  "You?" Gustav Priepke boomed laughter. "That'll be the day. Listen, something's come up, and I need you to take a shot at it."

  Walther had told the truth, and Priepke hadn't believed him. That was what he got for having a reputation for working hard. If he'd had a name for doing nothing, he could have been working on six things at once and his boss wouldn't have believed that, either. He did his best to look bright and attentive, even if he didn't feel that way. "What is it?" he asked.

  "The new operating system-what else?" Priepke answered. "We've got to make it work, or else." He didn't say or else what, but he didn't have to. The project was long overdue. That it was so long overdue made it harder, too.

  "Well, there is one obvious answer we haven't tried yet," Walther said.

  "What's that?" his boss asked. "I thought we'd done all the obvious things."

  Walther shook his head. "No, there's one thing we haven't done that could save us a lot of time." Priepke let out an interrogative grunt. Walther said, "We could see how much Japanese code we can steal or adapt."

  "Donnerwetter!" Gustav Priepke looked at him as if he'd suggested turning every Ratskeller in the Reich into a sushi bar. "What a bastardly idea! What the Japs know about real programming-"

  "Is just what we need right now," Walther broke in.

  "Jesus Christ!" Priepke said harshly. "You know what Hitler said about the Japs in Mein Kampf. If they didn't have Aryans to steal ideas from, their culture would freeze solid again likethat." He snapped his fingers.

  "Do you want to talk about politics or computers?" Walther asked. "I don't care about politics. I don't care at all. What I care about are computers. The Japanese have some ideas we can use, and I think we can extract them without too much trouble. Which counts for more, ideology or the operating system?"