philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

men reached behind him until his fingers touched one of his meat forks. He brought the fork out
and held it.
Juliana said, 'Denver is getting one of those heat-resistant runways so that Lufthansa rockets can
land there.'
None of the three men moved or spoke. The other customers sat silently.
Finally the fry cook said, 'One flew over around sundown.'
'It wasn't going to Denver,' Juliana said. 'It was going west, to the Coast.'
By degrees, the two truck drivers reseated themselves. The older man mumbled, 'I always forget;
they're a little yellow out here.'
The fry cook said. 'No Japs killed Jews, in the war or after. No Japs built ovens.'
'Too bad they didn't,' the older truck driver said. But, picking up his coffee cup, he resumed
eating.
Yellow, Juliana thought. Yes, I suppose it's true. We love the Japs out here.
'Where are you staying?' she asked, speaking to the young truck driver, Joe. 'Overnight.'
'I don't know,' he answered. 'I just got out of the truck to come in here. I don't like this whole
state. Maybe I'll sleep in the truck.'
'The Honey Bee Motel isn't too bad,' the fry cook said.
'Okay,' the young truck driver said. 'Maybe I'll stay there. If they don't mind me being Italian.' He
had a definite accent, although he tried to hide it.
Watching him, Juliana thought, It's idealism that makes him that bitter. Asking too much out of
life. Always moving on, restless and griped. I'm the same way; I couldn't stay on the West Coast
and eventually I won't be able to stand it here. Weren't the old-timers like that? But, she thought,
now the frontier isn't here; it's the other planets.
She thought: He and I could sign up for one of those colonizing rocket ships. But the Germans
would disbar him because of his skin and me because of my dark hair. Those pale skinny Nordic
SS fairies in those training castles in Bavaria. This guy — Joe whatever — hasn't even got the right
expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in
nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith. Yes, that's how they are. They're not idealists like Joe
and me; they're cynics with utter faith. It's a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy — that maiming
those German psychiatrists do as a poor substitute for psychotherapy.
Their trouble, she decided, is with sex; they did something foul with it back in the 'thirties, and it
has gotten worse. Hitler started it with his — what was she? His sister? Aunt? Niece? And his
family was inbred already; his mother and father were cousins. They're all committing incest, going
back to the original sin of lusting for their own mothers. That's why they, those elite SS fairies,
have that angelic simper, that blond babylike innocence; they're saving themselves for Mama. Or
for each other.
And who is Mama for them? she wondered. The leader, Herr Bormann, who is supposed to be
dying? Or — the Sick One.
Old Adolf, supposed to be in a sanitarium somewhere, living out his life of senile paresis.
Syphilis of the brain, dating back to his poor days as a bum in Vienna. . . long black coat, dirty
underwear, flophouses.
Obviously, it was God's sardonic vengeance, right out of some silent movie. That awful man
struck down by an internal filth, the historic plague for man's wickedness.
And the horrible part was that the present-day German Empire was a product of that brain. First a
political party, then a nation, then half the world. And the Nazis themselves had diagnosed it,
identified it; that quack herbal medicine man who had treated Hitler, that Dr. Morell who had dosed