In The Presence Of My Enemies

"I want to try to figure out what to do nextbefore we run dry. We have plundered much of the world. But how long can that go on? Many of the folk of Western Europe and North America are as Aryan as we are. How long can we justify in racial terms their continued exploitation?"

Charlie Lynton had said things like that at the gathering of the British Union of Fascists. Susanna hadn't expected to hear them from him. Hearing them from the Fuhrer was like a thunderclap. Like Lynton, Buckliger was using fascist ideology to cloak doing things that would have appalled his predecessors.

"Further conquest is not an option for us, as it was for Hitler and Himmler," he continued. "Forty years ago, we were lucky the United States didn't do us more damage. We could bring the Empire of Japan to its knees tomorrow-but if we did, Japan would bring us to our knees, too. Both we and the Japanese have too many rockets to make war anything but mutual suicide.

"So what are we to do? Things aren't the way they were in our fathers' time, and they certainly aren't the way they were in our grandfathers' time. Do we go on looking at our troubles in the same old way? This, it seems to me, is foolishness. When Hitler saw the Reich with troubles that were new in his time, did he answer them the way his parents and grandparents had? Of course not! He changed with the times. We must always change with the times, or the times will change without us."

"He's doing it again!" Susanna exclaimed, too excited to keep quiet. Fascist ideology didn't lend itself to change. What was fascism, after all, but reaction on the march? But, like Charlie Lynton, Heinz Buckliger had seen that, if he appealed to well-established authority to justify the changes he was making, he might have a chance of getting away with them. The Party Bonzen -and the Party rank and file-were surely listening to him along with everybody else. What did they think? Did they understand what they were hearing?

Or am I the one who's wrong?Susanna wondered.Am I hearing what I want to hear, listening with my heart and not my head? The last time she'd done that was with the boyfriend who'd turned out to be a lush, the one Heinrich still teased her about every now and then.

She cursed softly. Lost in her own thoughts, she'd missed a few sentences of what Buckliger was saying. "…greater responsiveness to the needs and desires of the Volk as a whole," was where she started paying attention again. "Of course we cannot and will not challenge the primacy of the Party and of National Socialist ideals, but are we not all Aryans together?"

When he saidof course, he sometimes meant anything but. How many people would see that? Instead of going into detail, as she'd hoped he would, he continued, "This is a topic I will return to in times to come. Staying on old ground is always safe and certain. That is the reason so many of us like it so well. Finding a new way is harder. We may make mistakes. We probably will. But, if we keep going long enough, we will find ourselves in a place we never could have reached by sticking with the tried and true. Let us make the journey together. Good night." the Fuhrer 's study vanished from Susanna's televisor screen-from televisor screens all over the Reich. Horst Witzleben's familiar newsroom replaced it. The broadcaster said, "That was, of course, Heinz

Buckliger,Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire." When Witzleben saidof course, he meant it. He blinked a couple of times before going on, "An extraordinary address. A memorable address. the Fuhrer set his mark on the Reich. As he leads us, as he guides us, so we shall go. That is our only proper-indeed, our only possible-course. A new era is upon us, and in times to come, as the Fuhrer said, we shall learn exactly what this means. For now, good night, and I return you to your regularly scheduled programming."

Regularly scheduled programming was a vacuous quiz show. To Susanna, the hardest question was why anyone would watch it. People did, though. She heard them talking about it.

Whatshe wanted to talk about was Buckliger's speech. She hurried to the telephone.The Gimpels or the Stutzmans? she wondered as she picked it up. After a moment's hesitation, though, she replaced the handset in the cradle without calling anyone. After a speech like that, weren't the phone lines too likely to be monitored? And wasn't she likely to be under some suspicion anyhow, as someone who knew the Kleins? Better safe than sorry. That wasn't heroic, but it was probably smart.

No one called her that night, either. Heinz Buckliger talked about abandoning old ground and striking out in new directions. The people living in the Greater German Reich were only too familiar with the old ground, and with its minefields. Buckliger might lead. After so long making such careful calculations, could the people follow?