philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

Reiss nodded. Or the old general might be involved in commercial speculations, a good deal of
which went on in San Francisco. Connections he had made while in service would be of use to him
now that he was retired. Or was he retired? The message called him General, not Retired General.
'As soon as you have the picture.' Reiss said, 'pass copies right on to our people at the airport and
down at the harbor. He may have already come in. You know how long it takes them to get this sort
of thing to us.' And of course if the general had already reached San Francisco, Berlin would be
angry at the PSA consulate. The consulate should have been able to intercept him — before the
order from Berlin had even been sent.
Pferdehuf said, 'I'll stamp-date the coded radiogram from Berlin, so if any question comes up
later on, we can show exactly when we received it. Right to the hour.'
'Thank you,' Reiss said. The people in Berlin were past masters at transferring responsibility, and
he was weary of being stuck. It had happened too many times. 'Just to be on the safe side,' he said,
'I think I'd better have you answer that message. Say, 'Your instructions abysmally tardy. Person
already reported in area. Possibility of successful intercept remote at this stage.' Put something
along those lines into shape and send it. Keep it good and vague. You understand.'
Pferdehuf nodded. 'I'll send it right off. And keep a record of the exact date and moment it was
sent.' He shut the door after him.
You have to watch out, Reiss reflected, or all at once you find yourself consul to a bunch of
niggers on an island off the coast of South Africa. And the next you know, you have a black
mammy for a mistress, and ten or eleven little pickaninnies calling you daddy.
Reseating himself at his breakfast table he lit an Egyptian Simon Arzt Cigarette Number 70,
carefully reclosing the metal tin.
It did not appear that he would be interrupted for a little while now, so from his briefcase he took
the book he had been reading, opened to his placemark, made himself comfortable, and resumed
where he had last been forced to stop.
. . . Had he actually walked streets of quiet cars, Sunday morning peace of the Tiergarten, so far away?
Another life. Ice cream, a taste that could never have existed. Now they boiled nettles and were glad to get
them. God, he cried out. Won't they stop? The huge British tanks came on. Another building, it might have
been an apartment house or a store, a school or office; he could not tell — the ruins toppled, slid into
fragments. Below in the rubble another handful of survivors buried, without even the sound of death. Death
had spread out everywhere equally, over the living, the hurt, the corpses layer after layer that already had
begun to smell. The stinking, quivering corpse of Berlin, the eyeless turrets still upraised, disappearing
without protest like this one, this nameless edifice that man had once put up with pride.
His arms, the boy noticed, were covered with the film of gray, the ash, partly inorganic, partly the burned
sifting final produce of life. All mixed now, the boy knew, and wiped it from him. He did not think much
further; he had another thought that captured his mind if there was thinking to be done over the screams and
the hump hump of the shells. Hunger. For six days he had eaten nothing but the nettles, and now they were
gone. The pasture of weeds had disappeared into a single vast crater of earth. Other dim, gaunt figures had
appeared at the rim, like the boy, had stood silent and then drifted away. An old mother with a babushka tied
about her gray head, basket — empty — under her arm. A one-armed man, his eyes empty as the basket. A
girl. Faded now back into the litter of slashed trees in which the boy Eric hid.
And still the snake came on.
Would it ever end? the boy asked, addressing no one. And if it did, what then? Would they fill their bellies,
these —
'Freiherr,' Pferdehuf's voice came. 'Sorry to interrupt you. Just one word.'
Reiss jumped, shut his book. 'Certainly.'
How that man can write, he thought. Completely carried me away. Real. Fall of Berlin to the
British, as vivid as if it had actually taken place. Brrr. He shivered.