philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

But he knew he never would.
Just be glad, he thought. And keep moving.
A bit of his mind declared, And then back to Ed. I have to find my way back to the workshop,
down there in that basement. Pick up where I left off, making the jewelry, using my hands.
Working and not thinking, not looking up or trying to understand. I must keep busy. I must turn the
pieces out.
Block by block he hurried through the darkening city. Struggling to get back as soon as possible
to the fixed, comprehensible place he had been.
When he got there he found Ed McCarthy seated at the bench, eating his dinner. Two
sandwiches, a thermos of tea, a banana, several cookies. Frank Frink stood in the doorway, gasping.
At last Ed heard him and turned around. 'I had the impression you were dead,' he said. He
chewed, swallowed rhythmically, took another bite.
By the bench, Ed had their little electric heater going; Frank went over to it and crouched down,
warming his hands.
'Good to see you back,' Ed said. He banged Frank twice on the back, then returned to his
sandwich. He said nothing more; the only sounds 'were the whirr of the heater fan and Ed's
chewing.
Laying his coat over a chair, Frank collected a handful of half-completed silver segments and
carried them to the arbor. He screwed a wool buffing wheel onto the spindle, started up the motor;
he dressed the wheel with bobbing compound, put on the mask to protect his eyes, and then seated
on a stool began removing the fire scale from the segments, one by one.
15
Captain Rudolf Wegener, at the moment traveling under the cover name Conrad Goltz, a dealer in
medical supplies on a wholesale basis, peered through the window of the Lufthansa ME9-E rocket
ship. Europe ahead. How quickly, he thought. We will be landing at Tempelhofer Feld in
approximately seven minutes.
I wonder what I accomplished, he thought as he watched the land mass grow. It is up to General
Tedeki, now. Whatever he can do in the Home Islands. But at least we got the information to them.
We did what we could.
He thought, But there is no reason to be optimistic. Probably the Japanese can do nothing to
change the course of German internal politics. The Goebbels Government is in power, and probably
will stand. After it is consolidated, it will turn once more to the notion of Dandelion. And another
major section of the planet will be destroyed, with its population, for a deranged, fanatic ideal.
Suppose eventually they, the Nazis, destroy it all? Leave it a sterile ash? They could; they have
the hydrogen bomb. And no doubt they would; their thinking tends toward that Götterdämmerung.
They may well crave it, be actively seeking it, a final holocaust for everyone.
And what will that leave, that Third World Insanity? Will that put an end to all life, of every
kind, everywhere? When our planet becomes a dead planet, by our own hands?
He could not believe that. Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life
somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be
world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive.
Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical — I believe it, he said to himself.
A loudspeaker said, 'Meine Damen undHerren. Achiung, bitte.'