He quickly looked down at his controls, and saw that they were still set to stun. Cursing silently, he adjusted the power, took aim again, and fired just as it had climbed to the limit of his field of vision.
The V-2 exploded into a million flaming pieces.
"This man is a spy," said Yodel, turning and indicating Xaviar with a certain amount of satisfaction. "Place him under arrest. As for you, Werner—I'll deal with you later." He threw his overcoat about his shoulders. "And now, if you all will excuse me, I have an important phone call to make to Berlin."
"General, I don't know what went wrong," said Werner, his face drenched in sweat, his hands balled up into tight little fists. "But it did work . . . you saw it work."
"I saw four million deutsch marks rise a few hundred yards into the air and then turn into a pile of scrap metal," said Yodel coldly. "What do you propose to do with a rocket that flies less than a mile, Colonel Werner? Ask the British if they would mind moving a little closer?"
He turned on his heel and left.
"Well, don't just stand there!" yelled Werner. "Take the English spy out of here!"
Troy saluted, moved quickly to Xaviar, beating a couple of other officers who were approaching the Galactican, and took him by the shoulder. As he walked to the door, Jamie joined him and took Xaviar's other arm.
"But rockets will work!" said Werner, staring out at the launching area. "We will have to spend more time, but they will work."
"Sure they will," whispered one orderly to another. "And someday we'll land on the moon as well!"
It was all the two orderlies could do not to laugh out loud.
27
RECONSTRUCTED FROM
TROY'S DEBRIEFING SESSION:
They bound Xaviar securely and deposited him in a Viper, simultaneously awaking the little girl and removing her.
When they returned to where Jamie was keeping Guidry busy talking, they turned the girl over to the American officer.
"Take good care of her, Colonel," said Troy.
"What?" he said. "You're leaving me with a child in the middle of enemy territory?"
"You'll be all right," said Jamie. "By eight hours from now, there won't be a German soldier within two hundred miles of here."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's almost sunset," said Jamie. "That means you're just a few hours from June 6, 1944."
"So what?" asked Guidry.
"Tomorrow is D-Day," said Jamie. "The greatest military invasion in history will be in full flow before daybreak. The Germans will transfer every officer and infantryman they have to Normandy."
"Normandy?" he repeated unbelievingly. "No one's crazy enough to land in Normandy."
"Let's just say that no one's crazy enough to anticipate it," said Jamie with a smile.
"The trains to the concentration camps aren't scheduled to leave until tomorrow morning," added Troy. "So if you just wait until the Nazis have left the area, you can probably free all the Jewish prisoners and reunite this little girl with her family without firing a shot. Then just march them to the sea. I guarantee the Germans will be otherwise occupied."
"Isn't it about time I found out who you people are?" said Guidry, but without any aggressiveness this time.
"Colonel, give me your dog tags for a minute," said Jamie.
He did as she asked. She pulled a sharp instrument out of her pocket and scratched "WATERGATE—1972" on the back of the tags.
"Someday, thirty years or so from now," she said, returning the tags, "when you're showing your medals and mementos to your grandchildren, take a look at what I just did."
"Watergate, 1972," he read. "I don't understand. Is it an address?"
"Just remember," said Jamie.
28
RECONSTRUCTED FROM
TROY'S DEBRIEFING SESSION (Continued):
The Vipers were visible again, their energizers having run down, but no one had yet discovered them. Troy pulled Xaviar out and stood him on his feet.
"You're all fools!" he said wildly. "I could have saved mankind, and you ruined my opportunity!"
"It's hard to save mankind when you begin by killing millions who would otherwise have lived, Xaviar," said Troy.
"You're a bleeding heart, just like your grandfather!" snapped Xaviar.
"Xaviar, we're going to take you back and let the Council of Twelve decide exactly what to do with you. Dillon, untie him."
"If you give me any trouble," said Dillon, removing Xaviar's bonds, "I'll stun you and carry you to your seat."
"Oh, I have every intention of leaving this place," said Xaviar bitterly. "You three didn't exactly lend any lustre or credibility to my reputation here." He touched something on his belt. "Yes, I'm leaving here—but not with you! I wish you all good luck—and good hunting!"
With that he vanished. Troy and Dillon dove through the air, hoping to make contact with him, but all they managed to do was collide with the sound of Xaviar's mocking laughter.
"Why not blanket the area with your stun ray, or whatever you call it?" asked Jamie.
"Because if he's hit by it, there's no guarantee we could find him before some Germans wandered over this way. And we can't afford to let the invisibility field fall into their hands if they stumble across him before we do," said Troy. "How did he get his hands on a field, anyway?"
"My fault," said Dillon. "I removed your controls when you were wounded, since they didn't work anyway. I guess he found them and fixed them."
"Even with his hands tied?" asked Jamie.
"He's a brilliant man, Jamie," said Troy, "even if he is a bit unbalanced. He had the freedom to maneuver his fingers, and he had about ten minutes to work."
"But you had longer than that and couldn't fix it," she protested.
"I'm a warrior," said Troy. "Xaviar's one too, of course, but he's also a scientist, or at least a technician."
"So what do we do now?" she asked.
"We tell Adama that history is unchanged but Xaviar is still on the loose," said Dillon.
"There's an old expression where I come from to describe a situation like this," said Jamie. "The operation was a success, but the patient died."
Nobody laughed.
29
FROM THE ADAMA JOURNALS:
And so they are back, and the operation was a mixed success.
And yet, to my amazement, a number of our people think that Xaviar had the right idea, that it is just and proper to go back into Earth's past and change things, advance things.
Of course, they say that they wouldn't help people like the Nazis or the Inquisitors; they'd only help the sides that fought for the right . . . and I cannot make them understand that this is just as wrong.
Stop Germany from becoming a major power again for World War Two and you may kill off an Einstein, a von Braun, a Willy Ley—for all three men emigrated, and all three might have been killed instead had the English and the French been given better weapons at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Even a seemingly little thing, like helping the Americans win independence a little earlier against the British, has vast and unforeseen consequences. Give them a "super weapon" and John Adams won't have to bully the Continental Congress into debating the wisdom of fighting for independence, and as a result Thomas Jefferson won't have to write his magnificent Declaration of Independence, and the United States may be formed along wholly different lines.
The Napoleonic Wars? Help the British and the map of Europe would be a totally different thing; help the French and the British would never produce a Gladstone or a Disraeli or a Churchill.
Or, to use a more delicate situation, take the North African theater during World War One. If we were to aid the English, who were under the command of a man called Allenby but whose fortunes rose or fell with the magnificent warrior known as Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab states today would be British colonies. If we would have helped the Ottoman Empire, most Arabs would be speaking Turkish today. Had we given our technology
to the Arabs themselves, they would have driven Israel into the sea in 1947.
And yet, say those who would have us do these things, who really cares if the Arabs speak English, Turkish, or Arabic? If they can't come to our aid, there won't be any of them left to speak in any language once the Cylons discover them. According to their arguments, and some credence must be given to them, it is better to change Earth's history, to even end (or cause never to happen) a few million lives, in order to bring Earth's technology and weaponry up to our own level— because the alternative is the total destruction of the Earth by the Cylon fleet, if not now, in a few years or a century. And Doctor Zee does confirm that Earth, under its present rate of development, won't be ready to withstand the Cylons for another seven or eight centuries.
And always is the memory that we had colonies and battlestars that were capable of defending themselves from the Cylons, and all that remains of them is the Galactica.
The people who propound these views are not half-crazed reprobates like Xaviar. They're good, decent men and women who feel that this is the only way to save either Earth or ourselves. Thus far Doctor Zee and I have carried the vote of the council, but how much longer we can do so I do not know.
And, speaking of Xaviar, where is he?
My grandson thwarted him in 1944, but he is still on the loose, traversing the corridors of Time with but a single thought: to hasten Earth's power to destroy before her citizens are ready for such power. A needle in a haystack is far easier to find than a single madman in a timestream. For once we begin looking for him again, we must not only pinpoint the When of his plans, but also the Where. Earth isn't a very big planet, astronomically speaking, but it's quite big enough for a single man to hide on.
So Doctor Zee continues to monitor all aspects of Earth's daily life: its maps, its weaponry, its news reports, its religions, its technology, looking for a change, a clue that will point out that Xaviar has been tinkering with the past, speeding things up abnormally.
As for my grandson, I heard his debriefing sessions with Doctor Zee, and words cannot express the pride I feel. It is true that Xaviar is still at large, but the things that Troy accomplished, the split-second decisions that he had to make, the privations he underwent at the hands of the Nazi barbarians, the fact that history did remain unchanged . . . words fail me.
Truly, he is Boxey no longer. And I know that Apollo would have been as proud of Captain Troy as I am.
Lieutenant Dillon, too, comported himself with honor and distinction. I must confess that I used to have my doubts about him. He's not as quick to grasp all the subtleties of a situation as Troy, and he was always too eager to charge into action, lasers blazing, without first considering all the ramifications of his actions. He is still reminiscent of what Jamie Hamilton calls a bull in a China shop, but most of the rough edges have been smoothed away, and he has my highest commendations for his actions on his trip to the past.
Jamie Hamilton was probably the key. She was able to advise Troy and Dillon on certain customs and procedures, and I truly doubt that they would have prevented Xaviar from accomplishing his goals without her help. Also, based on the debriefing sessions, she was willing to place herself in mortal danger on more than one occasion, and her courage was unquestionably as much an asset to our two warriors as was her knowledge.
Indeed, she would have made a fine Galactican—but why not? She is a fine Earthling, and what, really, is the difference?
30
RECONSTRUCTED FROM
XAVIAR'S SECRET JOURNAL:
Xaviar strode aimlessly through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, debating his next move.
He still had the invisibility field, of course; and he had a small arsenal aboard his Viper, which was hidden in an abandoned barn out at the edge of the Mojave Desert.
But what he didn't have was a power base. He couldn't return to the Galactica's library tapes to find out what he needed to know, and there was no feasible way of replenishing his ammunition when he ran out.
In fact, he wasn't sure what he was doing here in 1980, a few weeks after he had departed for the World War Two era. Certainly he was no more familiar with the customs of Los Angeles in 1980 than he had been with Obersalzberg in 1944, and while he naturally spoke the language with perfect enunciation, he knew he would be woefully inadequate in coping with slang and colloquialisms for a few days.
Probably, he decided, it was because the Galactica was here in this era. Adama and his crew were his mortal enemies now—but they were also the only familiar thing about this strange section of the galaxy, and he knew that if he got in serious trouble here he could always get the Galacticans to pull his chestnuts out of the fire simply by threatening to reveal his origin to the locals.
And if that didn't work, he decided with a grim smile, there were always the Cylons. He would threaten to expose Earth to them, and if Adama didn't sue for peace or truce at that point, he'd actually carry through with his threat.
Others had tried dealing and intriguing with the Cylons in the past, he knew, and had always come to grief—but he was no ordinary man. He was Xaviar, and neither Adama nor the Cylons were going to stand in his way as he sought—what?
What did he want? He examined his thoughts and emotions carefully, looked into the deepest recesses of his soul, and finally admitted what he had known ever since Obersalzberg: the Galactica didn't matter to him at all. He was no longer interested in the fate of his countrymen, indeed even of his entire species.
Oh, he wanted them to live. After all, what good is it to preside over an empire if there is no one around to know of it? But empire was what he was after, what he craved all the way down to the marrow of his bones.
Let Adama and Troy and Boomer and all those other bleeding hearts and do-gooders worry about the Cylons. He would live out his life in comfort—no: in luxury—and let future generations, if any, take care of themselves. Life could be good aboard a battlestar, especially one like the Galactica, but it could be even better with a city or a nation or an entire world at his disposal, with three billion bodies struggling to do his bidding.
He'd end the silly notion of democracy, of course. It only worked in peacetime anyway. The Council of Twelve was incredibly slow in its deliberations; if warriors such as Apollo and Starbuck and Troy and himself and even Adama had always waited for the council to tell them what to do, the Cylons would have destroyed them a dozen times over. He and he alone would make all decisions, and his first decision would be which women (he had already abolished the notion of monogamy, in his mind) he would choose to have his children and thus make certain that the Xaviar line would not perish.
Another thing he would do would be to give his subjects the power of interstellar, or possibly even inter-galactic, flight. Then, rather than trying to defend this mudball of a planet, they would swarm out to the stars, setting up a hundred, a thousand, new colonies of humanity—each to be ruled, of course, by one of his sons or daughters.
But when to begin? (Make that a capitalized When, he amended.) Ancient Rome? Da Vinci's Renaissance? Stalin's Russia? The America of 1980?
He didn't know. He was convinced that he would have an easier time of it if he took over a totalitarian state, since free men usually relinquished their liberty with the greatest reluctance . . . but he also knew that the first duty of political power was to perpetuate itself, and it would be much more difficult to infiltrate and ultimately take possession of the power structure of a totalitarian state than a democracy. After all, totalitarians preserved themselves; democrats only preserved their political systems.
And he could make a democratic system work for him. Man was not a social or a political animal, as Adama thought, but a competitive animal. The elective process was built around this competitive urge, channeled it into useful directions, and with his technology and the psychological breakthroughs that had been made among his people over the eons, he would have an enormous competitive edge. After it was over, after he had taken power
legally, that would be the proper time to do away with the system. Hitler was a primitive, hampered by his technology and a streak of madness, but he had been on the right track. Xaviar openly approved of the man and his methods; he just didn't like the results—but Xaviar was no Hitler, and his results would be a lot better.
There were a few obstacles to overcome, to be sure. Adama's grandson, for one. Troy and his idiot companion, Dillon, would be after him again before long, once that disgusting teenaged mutant aboard the Galactica pinpointed his location in Time and Space, and he would have to be ready for them. He had escaped in Germany, but that had been through a stroke of luck, and Xaviar didn't like to count on luck.
This time he would need an ally, someone who would help him maneuver his way through the customs and mores of late 20th Century America, someone with the vision to see the dynasty that Xaviar planned to build. He would be well rewarded for his loyalty and his aid—at least as long as he was useful. After that, well, what was one aide more or less?
But who should this ally be?
Simple: who had Troy and Dillon gotten in touch with? Who would be ready to accept him for what he was?
Not the girl they had in Germany, that was for sure. They'd already had time to thoroughly brainwash her; she wouldn't be willing to change sides now, not even to join a sure winner like himself.
Then who else?
Mortinson!
The Nobel Prize winner. He'd have a mind, too. He'd know who Xaviar was, and he'd probably know about the Cylons, and he wouldn't have had much time alone with Troy and Dillon, so he could easily be swayed.
Easily? Well, there were ways and then there were ways, and Xaviar had means of persuading people who did not wish to be persuaded.
And, unable to separate fantasy and reality in the confused passageways of his brain, Xaviar set off to find Doctor Alfred Mortinson.
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Battlestar Galactica 5 - Galactica Discovers Earth Page 12