It took me some time to realize the origin of this word, but it’s obvious enough: Auslandsdeutsche, the Germans who existed similarly cut off from the main body of their culture. With these two common loan words suggesting a marked domination at some time of the German language, I asked Alex—and I must confess almost fearfully—“Then did Germany win the war?”
He not unnaturally countered with, “Which war?”
“The Second World War. Started in 1939. ”
“Second?” Alex paused. “Oh, yes. Stephen once telled me that they—you used to have numbers for wars before historians simply called 1900’s Century of Wars. But as to who winned which . . . who remembers?”
Brent paused, and wished for Stephen’s ears to determine the nature of that small noise outside. Or was it pure imagination? He went on:
These three—Stephen, Alex, and Krasna—have proved to be the ideal hosts for a traveler of my nature. Any devout believer in Cosmos, any loyal upholder of the Stasis would have turned me over to the Stappers for my first slip in speech or ideas.
They seem to be part of what corresponds to the Underground Movements of my own century. They try to accomplish a sort of boring from within, a subtle sowing of doubts as to the Stasis. Eventually they hope for more positive action; so far it is purely mental sabotage aimed at—
It was a noise. Brent set down his stylus and moved along the wall as quietly as possible to the door. He held his breath while the door slid gently inward. Then as the figure entered, he pounced.
Stappers have close-cropped hair and flat manly chests. Brent released the girl abruptly and muttered a confused apology.
“It bees only me,” she said shyly. “Krasna. Doed I startle you?”
“A bit,” he confessed. “Alex and Stephen warned me what might happen if a Stapper stumbled in here.”
“I be sorry, John.”
“It’s all right. But you shouldn’t be wandering around alone at night like this. In fact, you shouldn’t be mixed up in this at all. Leave it to Stephen and Alex and me.
“Mans!” she pouted. “Don’t you think womans have any right to fun?”
“I don’t know that fun’s exactly the word. But since you’re here, milady, let me extend the hospitality of the camp. Alex left me some bond. That poison grows on you. And tell me, why’s it called that?”
“Stephen telled me once, but I can’t— Oh yes. When they prohibited all drinking because drinking makes you think world bees better than it really bees and of course if you make yourself different world that bees against Stasis and so they prohibited it but they keeped on using it for medical purposes and that beed in warehouses and pretty soon no one knowed any other kind of liquor so it bees called bond. Only I don’t see why.”
“I don’t suppose,” Brent remarked, “that anybody in this century has ever heard of one Gracie Allen, but her spirit is immortal. The liquor in the warehouses was probably kept under government bond.”
“Oh—” she said meekly. “I’ll remember. You know everything, don’t you?”
Brent looked at her suspiciously, but there was no irony in the remark. “How’s the old lady getting on?”
“Fine. She bees sleeping now at last. Alex gived her some dormitin. She bees nice, John.”
“And yet your voice sounds worried. What’s wrong?”
“She bees so much like my mother, only, of course, I don’t remember my mother much because I beed so little when Stappers taked my father and then my mother doedn’t live very long but I do remember her some and your old lady bees so much like her. I wish I haved knowed my mother goodlier, John. She beed dear. She—” She lowered her voice in the tone of one imparting a great secret. “She cooked.”
Brent remembered their tasteless supper of extracts, concentrates, and synthetics, and shuddered. “I wish you had known her, Krasna.”
“You know what cooking means? You go out and you dig up roots and you pick leaves off of plants and some people they even used to take animals, and then you apply heat and—”
“I know. I used to be a fair-to-middling cook myself, some five hundred years ago. If you could lead me to a bed of coals, a clove of garlic, and a two-inch steak, milady, I’d guarantee to make your eyes pop.”
“Garlic? Steak?” Her eyes were wide with wonder. “What be those?”
Brent explained. For ten minutes he talked of the joys of food, of the sheer ecstatic satisfaction of good eating that passes the love of woman, the raptures of art, or the wonders of science. Then her questions poured forth.
“Stephen learns things out of books and Alex learns things in lab but I can’t do that so goodly and they both make fun of me only you be real and I can learn things from you, John, and it bees wonderful. Tell me—”
And Krasna, with a greedy ear, listened.
“You know,” Brent muttered, more to himself than to Krasna as he finished his exposition of life lived unstatically, “I gave a particular damn about politics, but now I look back at my friends that liked Hitler and my friends that loved Stalin and my friends that thought there was much to be said for Franco . . . if only the boys could avoid a few minor errors like killing Jews or holding purge trials. This was what they all wanted: the Perfect State—the Stasis. God, if they could see—!”
At his feet Krasna stirred restlessly. “Tell
