philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives.
Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the
components.
We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition
is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.
The Daimler started with Captain Wegener in the back, a blackshirt on each side, machine gun
on lap. Blackshirt behind the wheel.
Suppose it is a deception even now, Wegener thought as the sedan moved at high speed through
Berlin traffic. They are not taking me to SS General Heydrich at the Leibstandarte Division 0KW;
they are taking me to a Partei jail, there to maim me and finally kill me. But I have chosen; I chose
to return to Germany; I chose to risk capture before I could reach Abwehr people and protection.
Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose
it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately. He watched the Berlin houses pass.
My own Volk, he thought; you and I, again together.
To the three SS men he said, 'How are things? Any recent developments in the political
situation? I've been away for several weeks, before Bormann' s death, in fact.'
The man to his right answered, 'There's naturally plenty of hysterical mob support for the Little
Doctor. It was the mob that swept him into office. However, it's unlikely that when more sober
elements prevail they'll want to support a cripple and demagogue who depends on inflaming the
mass with his lies and spellbinding.'
'I see,' Wegener said.
It goes on, he thought. The internecine hate. Perhaps the seeds are there, in that. They will eat
one another at last, and leave the rest of us here and there in the world, still alive. Still enough of us
once more to build and hope and make a few simple plans.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, Juliana Frink reached Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the downtown
business section, across from the enormous old train depot, she stopped at a cigar store and bought
two afternoon newspapers. Parked at the curb she searched until she at last found the item.
VACATION ENDS IN FATAL SLASHING
Sought for questioning concerning the fatal slashing of her husband in their swank rooms at the
President Garner Hotel in Denver, Mr. Joe Cinnadella of Canon City, according to hotel employees,
left immediately after what must have been the tragic climax of a marital quarrel. Razor blades
found in the room, ironically supplied as a convenience by the hotel to its guests, apparently were
used by Mrs. Cinnadella, described as dark, attractive, well-dressed and slender, about thirty, to
slash the throat of her husband, whose body was found by Theodore Ferris, hotel employee who
had picked up shirts from Cinnadella just half an hour earlier and was returning them as instructed,
only to come onto the grisly scene. The hotel suite, police said, showed signs of struggle,
suggesting that a violent argument had . . .
So he's dead, Juliana thought as she folded up the newspaper. And not only that, they don't have
my name right; they don't know who I am or anything about me.
Much less anxious now, she drove on until she found a suitable motel; there she made
arrangements for a room and carried her possessions in from the car. From now on I don't have to