For the first time in his malcontent life, Anton Metzger became a man of action. The action was simple. It consisted in seizing the Führer’s arm from behind and twisting it till the automatic fell, then in holding both arms pinioned while the knife carved into the plump flesh of the Führer’s throat.
The three-way battle had been furious and bloody, but its outcome was never in doubt. Schweinspitzen’s paratroops were rashly too few to achieve anything. The Hitler’s men might have put up a successful resistance by themselves even after their Führer’s death, but the disconcerting presence of two sets of enemies, one in their own uniforms, umnanned them. The Tyrannicides and the natives had won a total victory in the triangular confusion.
Now Metzger stood with Lyman Harding and surveyed the carnage. “I owe you my life,” Harding said. “The soteron garments I’d planned on for protection couldn’t be used with this servant-disguise scheme, and there was no other way of getting in. And the world owes you a hell of a lot more than I do.”
“I owe you,” Metzer said in English, “more than I could ever explain.”
“But look. Maybe you can tell me something. What went on with those the paratroops? They came just at the perfect time for a cover for us and I don’t know as we’d have made it without them; but who were they?”
“They were an attempt at a palace revolution, led by one Captain Schweinspitzen.” Metzger kept his eyes from the crumpled heap of blue-black cloth that covered the body of his one-time friend Felix. A machine gun had reached in the air and he had indeed dangled on high, a parachuting corpse.
“But it was crazy. He didn’t have a chance to get away with that attack. Why did he—”
“He believed that it had been prophesied. I’m afraid it’s partly my own fault for being overingenious in my interpretations. You see—” And Metzger explained about the American prophecy. “So,” he concluded, “the prophecy did come true in detail, all save the last line. And it was fulfilled because it existed. Without the prophecy, Schweinspitzen would never have conceived such a plot.”
Harding was laughing, a titanic Bunyanesque laugh that seemed disproportionate even to the paradox of the prophecy or to the nervous release following the bloody victory.
“It is a curious paradox,” Metzger said. “I wonder if that is the only true way in which prophecy can function, bringing about its own fulfillment. I wonder if the author of that prophecy—”
Harding managed to stop laughing and had to wipe his eyes. “That’s just it,” he gasped. “The author of the prophecy. You see, my friend, he was my greatgrandpappy.”
“What?”
“Fact. I know that prophecy. The family managed to save some of Greatgrandfather de Camp’s stuff—he was a writer—from the great book-burnings and it’s sort of a tradition that all of us should read it. Swell screwy stuff it is, too. But I remember the prophecy, and it’s all a gag.”
“A gag?”
“A joke. A hoax. Great-grandfather wrote an article to disprove prophecy, and made his point by writing a limerick of pure nonsense so vague and cryptic that it’d be bound to be twisted into prophetic fame sometime in the course of history. In fact, it’s saved history. Gosh, would this slay the old man!”
“Pure nonsense,” Metzger mused, “and fulfilled in every detailed word, except for the last line.” Suddenly he said, “Tyrannicides! Is that just what people call you or what you really call yourselves?”
“Well, we mostly call us the Tyros, just for the hell of it. But the full name is Canadian-American Tyrannicides—sometimes just the initials— Oh!”
Comprehension lit his face as he followed Metzger’s eyes. In the shambles of the banquet a couple of his boys had started a crap game.
The CAT. were throwing dice at the feast.
Lyman Harding whistled. “Great-grandpappy didn’t know his own strength.”
NOTE: The de Camp “prophecy” is an actual one; see Esquire, December, 1942. The lines quoted from Nostradamus are, of course, also actual; those cited by Hitler are from the Nazi propaganda pamphlet, “Nostradamus Prophecies About the War,” by Norab.
The Other Inauguration
From the Journal of Peter Lanroyd, Ph.D.:
Mon Nov 5 84: To any man even remotely interested in politics, let alone one as involved as I am, every 1st Tue of every 4th Nov must seem like one of the crucial if-points of history. From every American presidential election stem 2 vitally different worlds, not only for U S but for world as a whole.
It’s easy enough, esp for a Prof of Polit Hist, to find examples—1860, 1912, 1932 . . . & equally easy, if you’re honest with yourself & forget you’re a party politician, to think of times when it didn’t matter much of a special damn who won an election. Hayes-Tilden . . . biggest controversy, biggest outrage on voters in U S history . . . yet how much of an if-effect?
But this is different. 1984 (damn Mr Orwell’s long-dead soul! he jinxed the year!) is the key if-crux as ever was in U S hist. And on Wed Nov 7 my classes are going to expect a few illuminating remarks—wh are going to have to come from me, scholar, & forget about the County Central Comm.
So I’ve recanvassed my precinct (looks pretty good for a Berkeley Hill precinct, too; might come damn close to carrying it), I’ve done everything I can before the election itself; & I can put in a few minutes trying to be non-partyobjective why this year of race 1984 is so if-vital.
Historical b g:
A) U S always goes for 2-party system, whatever the names.
B) The Great Years 1952/76 when we had, almost for 1st time, honest 2-partyism. Gradual development (started 52 by Morse, Byrnes, Shivers, etc) of cleancut parties of “right” & “left” (both, of course, to the right of a European “center” party). Maybe get a class laugh out of
