In The Presence Of My Enemies

He wondered if Heinrich even heard him. His friend went on without even a pause for breath: "But if you change things a second time, they may decide the system hiccuped once but now it's back to normal, or they may decide somebody who isn't supposed to has access to it and can fiddle with it whenever he pleases."

Walther Stutzman nodded again. "I see it like that, too."

"All right, then," Heinrich said. "Both ways, if they think it's a hiccup, everything is fine. So which is more likely and more dangerous-them questioning the Kleins or them questioning the software in the database system? With the Kleins, it goes from no Jews in the woodpile to a few possible Jews in the woodpile a long time ago."

"On paper," Walther said. The Kleins were as Jewish as the Stutzmans or the Gimpels. He needed to make sure Heinrich remembered that. "If they have a baby with Tay-Sachs disease, that's a red flag about what they really are."

"It's a red flag, but it's not proof. This diseasecan happen to gentiles, too," Heinrich said.

"If the genealogical authorities want to snoop, they're liable to find enough proof to satisfy them," Walther said. "And there's no law that says they can't question the Kleinsand check the database programming."

Heinrich looked astonished. Maybe he'd been so caught up ineither-or that that hadn't occurred to him. Walther wished it hadn't occurred to him, too. Unfortunately, it was all too likely to occur to the authorities. He said, "This isn't damned if I do or damned if I don't. It's liable to be damned if I doand damned if I don't."

"I'm afraid you're right," Heinrich said.

"I'm afraid I'm right, too," Walther said. "And I'm afraid, period."

"You'd better be afraid. We'd all better be afraid," Heinrich said somberly. "If we're not afraid, we're dead. I think our best chance is sitting tight now, though. There's nothing to show the Kleins had any way to fiddle with the genealogical records, is there? He's a musician, and she's a Hausfrau. They can't lean on them too hard, not when the changes are so small."

He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as well as Walther. "Theycan do anything they want," Walther said bluntly, and his friend winced and nodded, for that was undoubtedly true. He went on, "What they choose to do…may be a different story. I hope you're right about that. So you think we ought to wait and see what happens, then?"

"Don't you think that's our best bet?" Heinrich asked.

Walther Stutzman sighed. "Overall, probably," he said. "But it's liable to be rough as hell on the Kleins. They're already trying to deal with what their baby has. If the genealogical authorities or the Security Police land on them, too-well, how much can one family take?"

Heinrich didn't answer. Walther hadn't expected him to. No one could answer that question for himself till the time of testing came, let alone for anyone else. Instead, Heinrich came back with a question of his own: "If you change the Kleins' records again, don't you think the genealogical authorities and the Security Police are liable to land onyou? How much can you take, Walther?"

And that was the other side of the coin. "I don't know," Walther said. "Here's hoping I don't have to find out, and the Kleins don't, either."

"That's interesting." Heinrich Gimpel tapped his copy of the Volkischer Beobachter to show Willi Dorsch what was interesting.

Willi shifted on the commuter-train seat beside Heinrich. "Which?" he said. "Oh, the story about the budget? Well, what to you expect Buckliger to say? Easy enough to promise to bring things under control. Doing it?" He shook his head. "Don't hold your breath."

"He sounds like he means it, though." Heinrich read out loud: "'For too long, the Greater German Reich has balanced its budget only with the aid of tribute from other lands within the Germanic Empire. If we are the greatest nation the world has known, should we not be able to pay our own way?'"

"Hell with that," Willi said. "Make the other bastards pay instead. They're the ones who lost. You wait and see. He's got it off his chest now: the new Fuhrer can talk tough. But nothing's going to change."

Willi usually had good political sense. Heinrich reminded himself of that. Still, he couldn't help adding, "He's going on about high labor costs, too, and how we need to be honestly competitive and not just dictate favorable exchange rates to the rest of the world. We can't quite dictate to the Japanese, and look how their electronics have come on the past ten years."

"Are you going to tell me they stack up to Zeiss?" Willi snorted. "Don't make me laugh."

"A friend of mine works for Zeiss, and he's not laughing," Heinrich said. "You're right-what the Japanese make isn't as good as our stuff. But it's good enough to work, and it's a lot cheaper. For people who haven't got a whole lot of Reichsmarks to spend-"

"People who think like Jews," Willi broke in.