Making history

goofiness. Once travelled with him in a carriage to Parliament with her fingers jammed in the door in agony and never told him because she didn't want to put him off his preparations for a big speech. Another time, she was in a garden with a couple of Victorian ladies and they tittered blushingly at a naked male statue's generous endowment. "Oh that's nothing," she said, "you should see my Dizzy when he's in the bath." He described his final years as being his "anecdotage". What else do you want to know?'

Steve didn't look up from the book. 'Give me the titles of some of his other novels.'

'Phew, don't want much, do you? Well, his first was called something like Dorian Gray. Obviously not that, but something like it. Vivien Greyi Was that it? There was another called The Young Duke, his last was Endymion, I know that. Wrote it in 1880. And I'm pretty sure there was another one with a woman's name in the title ... Henrietta, I think. Henrietta Tempest, something like that?' 'Henrietta Temple, actually,' said Steve closing the book. 'Okay, so you know some history. What does that mean?' 'You tell me,' I said. 'Does it square with what you know of me? Let me tell you every American president this century.'

'Oh, like, big deal. Every schoolkid of ten can do that.' 'Listen,' I said. 'William McKinley (assassinated 1901), Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Wood-row Wilson, Warren G Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C Hoover, FDR, FDR, FDR, Harry S Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, Eisenhower again, John F Kennedy (assassinated '63), Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Nixon again (resigned '74), Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Reagan again, George Bush and finally, ladies and gentlemen, the forty-second President of these United States, Bill Clinton of Little Rock, Arkansas. How's that?' There was a puzzled look on Steve's face. 'I kinda got lost somewhere in the middle.'

'Of course you did, after FDR, right?'

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'Right. There was a whole load of names there I never heard before. And you said Nixon resigned?'

'So you've heard of Nixon then?' 'Come on, Mikey. Get real.'

'Richard Milhouse Nixon, Tricky Dicky. Resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment in 1973.'

'For your information Richard Nixon was President three times from i960 to 1972.'

'I see. But Kennedy, Carter, Bush, LBJ, Clinton ... they mean nothing to you?'

'My little brother is called Clinton, but he sure as hell isn't president.'

'There! You see?' I lit another cigarette and started to pace up and down. 'Everything you know is different from what I know. How can that be?'

'Your accent is different than it was yesterday. Some ways, you're a different person than you were. I see that. But, Mikey, it's your head. It's all in your head.'

'Oh, and a crack to the skull gave me a scholar's knowledge of European history did it? It gave me the details of American Presidents you've never heard of and about whom I could talk in front of a lie detector for two hours without causing the needle to tremble once. It filled my mind with movies and songs and stories you've never heard before? Play it again Sam. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. The force may be with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. The Truth Is Out There. Hasta la vista, baby. Catch 22. There will be no white wash at the White House. The Tin Drum. What's The Story, Morning Glory? Schindler's List. The name's Bond, James Bond. Ich bin ein Berliner. Catcher in the Rye. You may say that

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Perhaps some day you'll join me, and the wo-o-o-rld will live as one. Beam me up, Scotty. I shall return. Sing if you're glad to be gay, sing if you're happy that way. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Never, in the field of human conflict has so

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much been owed by so many to so few. One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. From Here to Eternity. Never mind the bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols. The Bridge on the River Kwai. Marlene Dietrich. ET phone home. What good is sitting, alone in a room, come hear, the music play, life is a cabaret, old friend, it's only a cabaret. The Zapruda film and the grassy knoll. The Dirty Dozen. It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, football's coming home. Where Eagles Dare. I smoked it but I didn't inhale. Where's the beef? Read my lips, no new taxes. Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? We've got some work for you now. There!'

I paused for breath, sweating from the combination of effort, exhilaration and hot pepperoni. On Steve's face I saw an expression in which admiration, astonishment, amusement, bafflement and fear were racing for the lead. Astonishment was ahead by half a length, but the others were pressing hard.

'Face up to it Steve, I'm giving you a problem here that you can't solve by talking about bumps and amnesia. I come from somewhere else.' I ruffled my hair to allow air to pass through and cool the sweat. 'Don't think I don't know how mad I'm sounding. God knows, I've seen enough movies to know how hard it is for the alien timetravelling hero to persuade anyone to listen to him. They usually end up by turning him in.'

'Time travel?' Steve closed his eyes tight in despair. 'Oh Jesus, Mikey, you need help. You can't be ...'

'That's not what I meant.'

'Let me call Doc Ballinger,' he pleaded. 'Mikey, I don't know what's happening, but ... I care about you, I mean I care about what happens to you, I don't want you to go nuts.'

1 know what you mean, Steve, but please, just listen. That's not what I'm saying. I haven't travelled in time. That is, not exactly. It's just that time has ... time has travelled in me. No, that's not right. Listen to me, will you? Just listen. I'll tell you a story. Imagine it's just an idea, okay, a

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plot for a movie, something like that? Hear it with open ears ... what's the phrase? Without prejudice. Hear it without prejudice. Interrupt only if something is unclear. And when you've heard it, then you can decide what to do. Deal?'

'I guess so.'

I moved the books and carts to one side of the desk and hauled myself onto it, swinging my legs below me. Steve sat on the floor tailor-fashion, looking up at me like a toddler on the playmat at story time.

'Okay,' I said. 'Imagine a guy. A youngish guy. English. About my age. He's researching for a history doctorate in an English University town. Let's call it Cambridge ...' Times passes. The sun sinks slowly in the west. Sounds penetrate the room. Basketballs slapping on the corridor floor. The squeal of skidding trainers. Blue-grass music playing in the room above. Doors slamming. Shouts. The flicking of towels on flesh. A badly tuned guitar across the hall. Distant bells chiming the hours that slip past unheeded.

'... a pizza, some coke and some absolutely disgusting jam doughnuts and came back to this dorm building, this Henry Hall. There he decided to tell his new friend Steve everything that had happened, telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God. The End.'

I stood from the desk and stretched. Darkness had fallen outside and within Henry Hall silence reigned.

Steve stayed down on the floor. His only movement was to lean forward from time to time and flick the end of the cigarette into the cola can, which was now so full of butts and sludge that it had long since ceased to fizz at each new fall of hot ash.

'What I don't understand,' he said at last, 'is how come, if this is all true, how come you can remember about it?' 'Exactly!' I said. 'That's what beats me too,' I said. 'I mean if my body is out here, then why is my consciousness still part of the old world?'

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'I guess,' said Steve slowly. 'I guess if this guy Zuckermann was generating an artificial quantum singularity and you got caught in the event horizon then maybe ... I don't know ...' he shrugged helplessly. 'Heck, Mikey, nothing you've said means anything to me.'

'But you do believe me? You do, don't you?'

He spread his hands. 'I can't think of a better explanation for the way you've been behaving. But in theory this could happen all the time, you know? Maybe it's happened many times before. We'd never know it. Maybe there's a thousand twentieth centuries. A million.

All with different outcomes. You generated one of your own and you're stuck in it.'

'That's it,' I said. 'But in my arrogance I thought I'd generated a better one. I thought if Hitler wasn't born the century would have less to be ashamed of. I suppose I should have known better. The circumstances were still the same in Europe. There was still a vacuum in Germany waiting to be filled. There was still fifty years of antiSemitism and nationalism ready to be exploited. There was still a Versailles Treaty and a Wall Street Crash and a Great Depression. But one thing at least

'What?'

'Well, this Rudolf Gloder, this Fiihrer. I mean, at least he wasn't as bad as Hitler. From what I could tell of him from that book he was human at least, sane. I mean there weren't any death camps, no Zyklon B, no holocaust, no frothing monomania, no genocide.'

Steve stood slowly, easing the cramp in his legs. 'Oh Mikey,' he said sorrowfully. 'Oh Mikey, you don't know what you're saying.'

I stared at him. 'What do you mean?'

'This Hitler of yours, what happened to him?'

'He committed suicide as the Russians were pressing in on Berlin on one side and the Americans and British on the other. Shot himself and was burned in petrol in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. 30th April, 1945.'

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'I think maybe,' said Steve going over to the computer, 'that it's time you had a look at some of these carts.'

He picked one up from the pile we had collected at the library, a small square box about three inches by

four, and half an inch thick. He pulled at the casing and removed a smaller square of black plastic.

'Why can't you tell me what it is you want me to know?' 'Unlike you,' said Steve, pushing the black square into a slit below the computer's monitor, I'm no history scholar.' 'So this is what, some sort of video then? Or is it like a CD ROM?'

'It's not like anything,' said Steve. 'It's a cart. It's just a cart.'

I looked around the desk with a helpless air. 'And where's the keyboard?'

Steve shook his head. 'Heck Mikey, what do you think this is, a frigging piano?' He flicked a switch on the monitor and the screen lit up in orange and black. 'You wanna watch from the beginning?'

He tossed me the cart's casing. I looked at its title, printed in thick black German gothic above a huge flaming swastika.

The fall of Europe

'Oh shit,' I said, filled with bowel-dropping dread. 'Yes. From the beginning.'

Steve put his finger on the surface of the TV and a menu flashed up, blue lettering in big block squares. He touched the first square. A faint spinning noise came from the interior of the computer and almost immediately an orchestral fanfare blasted from speakers in the corners of the room. Steve dived towards a fader switch and the volume dropped. Not before the wall was

thumped and a bleary shout had toM us to keep the frigging noise down.

Steve handed me some earphones and guided my hands to the volume fader.

'Donaldson and Webb Wo-o-rld History Series!' a voice proclaimed, as if announcing a heavyweight title bout.

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'The Fall of Europe.' The menu faded to a title screen, in the same gothic lettering.

I dropped down into the chair in front of the monitor.

The film, and it was a kind of film - marginally interactive, allowing me to pause and access little side-boxes of information using my finger on the screen - seemed to me to be aimed more at schools than at an Ivy League major, but it was just what I needed.

Just what I didn't need.

'Here,' said Steve, 'this goes with it.' The clear plastic casing of the cart-holder contained a shiny printed cover, like the cover of a CD album. Steve pulled it out and gave it to me and from time to time I referred to this leaflet as I watched.

Donaldson and Webb Educational Media Cartridges Series 3. World History. Part V: The Fall Of Europe Search index Track 1

May 1932 The Nazi Party elected to the Reichstag. Versailles Treaty renegotiated with Britain, France and America. Pact with Stalin.

Track 2 1933-34 Track 3 1935-36 Track 4 1937 Track 5 1938 PtI

Launch of Deutschwagen Rotary Engined Automobile. Development of miniature evacuated tube components transforms burgeoning German electronics industry.

Edinburgh Agreement ensures mutual trade arrangements between British Empire and The New Reich. Licensing of German technological developments in return for British rubber concessions and use of eastern trade routes. Berlin Olympics attended by President Roosevelt and King George V.

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German-wide social welfare and national insurance scheme launched. Austria and Germany united. Gloder awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Addresses League of Nations on 'The Modern State'.

Fourth Nazi Congress: shock announcement by Gloder of development at Gottingen Institute of weaponry harnessing power of the atom. Paris Conference boycotted by Germany. Detonation of atomic bombs devastates Moscow and Leningrad, killing Stalin and entire

Politburo. German invasion of Soviet Union. Annexation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey and the Baltic States. Track 6

1938 Pt.2 Capitulation of Scandinavia, Benelux,

France and the United Kingdom. First Greater German Reich Conference in Berlin attended by King Edward VIII of Great Britain, Marshal Petain, Benito Mussolini, Generalissimo Franco and other heads of state. Terms of cooperation agreed with United States of America. Mutual agreement brokered by Germany to divide Pacific control between America and Imperial Japan. British possessions in India, Australia and Africa effectively under German control. Canada allowed to remain neutral. Track 7

1939 All Jews forced to evacuate countries under the control of Greater German Reich and emigrate to new 'Jewish Free State' in area carved out between Montenegro and Herzegovina under control of Reichsminister Heydrich. American protests ignored. Rebellion in Britain quashed, over five thousand executed, including leading politicians and the Duke of York, brother of British King.

Track 1940-4 8 Track 1942 Track

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1943 Track

I .United States announces separate development of atom bomb. State of Cold War between Greater Germany and America. All diplomatic contacts closed.

9

Rumours of ill-treatment and mass-murder of citizens of Balkan Jewish Free State bring America to the brink of nuclear war with Greater Germany. Announcements of innovations in Germany rocketry and electronic telemetry cause United States government to back down. Rebellion in Russia ruthlessly crushed.

10

Unified system of education imposed across New Europe. German to become first language of all Europeans. Discovery by Berlin government of secret American supplies to resistance movement in Portugal brings new threat of war between the United States and Germany.

11 Credits. Copyright notice. Course notes. Suggested reading.

I watched the whole cart, Steve told me afterwards, with my mouth open. It seems my attitude never shifted, my hands never moved, my legs never crossed or uncrossed, massaging my

my shoulder never dropped. It was as if, he said, I was in a state of near catalepsy. Only the movement of my eyes between the screen and the printed search index in my hands betrayed any sign of life or consciousness.

When it had finished, Steve leaned forward, flicked a switch on the computer and put a hand on my shoulder. I stared into the screen's grey emptiness as the cart slid from its drive.

'Oh Christ,' I said, in a kind of whimper. 'What have I done? What have I done?'

'Hey, don't worry,' said Steve, shoulders. 'It's history. It's all history.'

'Steve, what happened to the Jews? This Jewish Free State, does it still exist?'

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'Look that was years ago, things have changed now. America and Europe are on pretty good terms. Europe even has free elections. More or less free.'

'You haven't answered my question. The Jews, what about them?'

'There aren't any. Not in Europe.'

'You mean they were moved? To Israel? What happened?' A sudden loud knock on the door caused Steve to whip his hand from my shoulder and leap back to the centre of the room. In answer to my raised eyebrows he shook his head, as puzzled as me as to who the hell might be calling on me at one o'clock in the morning.

The knock came again, louder this time. 'Come in!' I said.

Two men entered the room. They both wore the same checked short-sleeved shirts I had seen earlier in the day when Steve and I had sat at a table next to them

in the outside courtyard of the Alchemist and Barrister while they bickered over maps.

Natural History

Still waters run deep

'Find me a map of the area,' said Kremer. 'A geological map. The latest.'

Bauer scribbled on a request form, which he packed into a small, brass torpedo. Going over to the wall he asked Kremer how late he imagined they would be working that evening.

Kremer, hunched over the microscope, said nothing. Bauer slipped the torpedo into the communication tube. He smacked the cap closed and listened as the torpedo was sucked away and clattered down the pipework on its journey to the first-floor typing pool. He looked at his watch: thirty-four minutes past five. Hartmann, Head of Documents maintained that any document in the university could be retrieved and delivered within fifteen minutes. He had promised to buy Bauer a whole litre of Berliner white beer if he failed to live up to this proud boast by so much as a second. This should be a good

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