The Vengeance of Rome
- Автор: Муркок Майкл
- Серия: Between The Wars #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Vengeance of Rome». Краткое содержание книги:
The English-speaking von Schirach possessed an interest in engineering and futuristic invention he had not revealed to me. Here were Frank Reade, Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, Science and Invention, Amazing Science Stories, Air Wonder Stories, Scientific American, Dusty Ayres and his Battle Aces and a dozen others. There were German and French tales from Jules Verne and his followers. Stories featuring Fantomas, Die Fledermaus and Doctor Mabuse were less imaginative. A rather primitive version of my articulated submarine was anticipated in a tale called ‘Into the Maelstrom’. My flying cities drawn for the American pulp covers in lurid colours were at last part of the common idea of the future. Here were visionaries much like myself. Rather than suspect them of stealing my ideas, for indeed I had anticipated them in almost every sphere, I acknowledged these writers and artists as equals, confirmation that I was not alone! Here were men who thought like me, who had the same kind of practical and romantic imagination. Possibly, at some future date, we could all come together as one scientific family to bring reason and order to the world. Within a generation we could abolish disease and hold death itself at bay. We would grow food for the whole planet and ensure no one was ever hungry. Great aerial ships could carry goods cheaply and quickly from place to place delivering food and medicines where they were needed. All that was required was the political will and the vision of business to back it; then we should have had not the bleak, mechanistic future of Metropolis, but the clean, aesthetic nobility of Things to Come, with white motorways curving between green hills, twisting alongside glittering lakes and sparkling rivers beneath blue and sunny skies, on which electrical cars move silently, directed by robot guides with sensors buried in roads, cars and lamp-posts to ensure the impossibility of a crash. It was H. G. Wells’s great dream. Out of the ashes of war rises a virgin world, ruled by wise, well-educated men, eugenically perfect, who guide us through to the new path which takes us directly to a bright, wholesome future, without disease, deformity or risk. A well-regulated but humane future, emphasising education, health, stability and predictability, the great boons and the continuing goals of a rational scientific society. This was the vision of von Schirach as well as Röhm and Strasser, but the shoulders expected to carry the burden of our plan into the second half of the twentieth century were simply not strong enough for the task. Germany did not fail Hitler. Hitler, it must be said, in the end failed Germany.
What a different world it would have been if the Strassers, Röhm and Hoch, for instance, had controlled the National Socialist Party. Röhm would have kept his ‘pact of steel’ with Stalin and become partners to create an economic miracle to revive Europe with Russia and Germany at its head. German influence on Russia would have modified the Bolsheviks, forcing them eventually to restore the Tsar, while Germany would return some form of monarch to the throne. In Munich, of course, there was a powerful argument for replacing the Kaiser with one of the Wittelbachs. This might well have happened under Röhm, though he would have limited such a ruler’s powers.
An admirer of Cromwell, Röhm was an egalitarian through and through but would have preferred a traditional beneficent monarch to a contemporary dictator. He never intended so much power to be concentrated in one man’s hands.
Röhm continued to make rare visits to Corneliusstrasse, now a comfortable apartment for myself and my occasional visitors. I could also now offer them wine and coffee or a snack, though Röhm never ate and rarely drank when he came, usually after dark. I was always glad to see him, if only for a couple of hours to break the monotony of my life. I had little money and little freedom of movement. Röhm still advised me to lie low. Frequently I was at my wits’ end for something to do. I complained to him that I felt the loss of music, of ordinary boulevard acquaintances. He told me to be patient. He would take care of things. We both had to be careful. Hitler had not forgotten that evening at Tegernsee. I had best become used to a quiet, uneventful life. An eventful one would not be to my taste. Wasn’t that a little vague? I asked.
Röhm apologised Soon he would be able to relax. At present Hitler was proving a handful. He was back in the running but going up and down emotionally like a whore’s drawers. Handling him was very tiring. They were getting new recruits into the SA every day. Quality as well as quantity, he said. First-rate officer material. There could be no objection any longer from the Reichswehr. The sooner his boys were incorporated into the regular army, the better for all. The SA numbers were certainly making Hitler’s Big Business friends look up, and the army was equally aware of the troops which could be very quickly fielded.
I read the newspapers only occasionally, usually helping myself to a free copy of the VB from the boy on the corner. He knew me now, but never seemed comfortable with my dipping into his barrow. I did not care what he thought. I had tried and failed to make friends with him. The Völkischer Beobachter was inclined to go into paroxysms of extravagant praise for the man I had last seen in the flesh in Tegernsee, covered in blood and excrement and gasping for more. It is a tribute to his peculiar magnetism that when I saw him enlarged on the great cinema screen, I was fascinated and convinced!
Many mocked Hitler as an imitator of Charlie Chaplin. They do not realise how much Hitler admired Chaplin, though the feeling was not mutual. Hitler was able to speak to us all because of his common touch, which meant that he enjoyed ordinary pleasures quite as much as the more esoteric escapes of the powerful. He understood the media because he understood what we wanted from it. And he gave us exactly what we wanted. I was not among them, but I have known grown men used to brutal authority moved to tears by their love of the Führer. I suppose I was too well informed and too wise ever to have that kind of response. My heart has always belonged to God rather than Man.
I found von Schirach’s collection of scientific magazines far more interesting than speculation about whether the socialists or the nationalists or the communists or the Catholic centrists were going to win this election or that vote. Such things were confusing for the average German, let alone a foreigner like myself.
For the first week or two that she and her family were back in the market Zoyea was quietly self-contained. Her smiles were artificial, entirely for the audience. In repose her face became rather serious and thoughtful.
Platonically I longed for her. Indeed, I longed for any feminine company. I could not feel complete without some sort of woman friend. I do not speak of lust but of my humanity, my need to be a whole man. Moreover, I could not afford to pay a whore. I had just enough for my basic needs. Even if I was careful, my store of sneg would be gone by the middle of January. Röhm could not be relied upon. He was still in Berlin more than he was in Munich. If he wasn’t in Berlin he was at a rally in Hamburg or a political meeting in Cologne.
Not only was I growing starved of intellectual company, I was sure someone had followed me to Munich, perhaps one of my enemies. Röhm constantly reassured me that Hitler was not on to me. Yet it seemed he would soon see Röhm as the link between himself and the creature who had brought him to catharsis that night. Could Röhm be followed without his knowledge? My only consolation was that Hitler’s men would be looking for a girl. Yet might they consider me the link between the girl and Röhm? Twice von Schirach passed on information. Someone had been enquiring for me in the beer cellars and cabarets. I begged him to remain discreet.