Free One Thousand Years by Randolph Beck Page B

sitting position. “But to tell you the truth, we would
have been a little disappointed if you didn't try to escape. I,
myself, would have been very disappointed.”
    She
was studying him in an imperious manner. “You might have
gotten away if this ship was on a regular mission. I don't know if
the Luftwaffe ordinarily locks the escape pods. But this mission is
different. We'd all prefer to die here in orbit rather than risk
contaminating history.”
    “It
wouldn't bother me a bit either,” McHenry remarked.
    “That's
not very nice,” she laughed, apparently brushing off his anger.
She reached over to shake his hand. “My name is Kathy Dale.
I was on the flight to recover you.”
    Startled,
McHenry understood who this was. This
must be the woman Vinson was smitten with. Now he understood why. She may be over one hundred years old, but
she had the perpetual youth and vitality shared by everyone he had
seen. She was truly beautiful, and exhibited a confident attitude.
But, beautiful as she was, there was that hideous pitch-black Nazi
uniform... He took her hand cautiously, and shook it firmly.
    “ Oberführer Mtubo asked me to look in on you today,” she continued. “He
thought you might appreciate meeting someone from North America. I
was born and raised in Chicago.”
    “Then
what's a nice lady like you doing in a uniform like that?”
Nothing he had seen, not even a black Nazi, had prepared him for speaking
with an American in that uniform. And a lady at that.
    “Oh,
I know all this must be very disorienting. One day Germany is your
enemy, and then you wake up and everything's different.”
    “It's not different at all.” McHenry gestured toward the planet below them on the view screen. “The war is still going on, isn't it?”
    “I'm
sorry, Sam,” Dale said. “This is old history for us.
And it's over for you, too. It ended for you the moment your plane
sank into the sea. You must accept this. Be glad you're
still alive! You've lived to see that America will recover from its
defeat, and the American racism you and your ancestors have suffered
through will be defeated as well.”
    “I'm a soldier,” he reminded her.
“I swore an oath.”
    But it was even more than that. Much more. Black troops were often
relegated to non-combat positions in this war. The men in his own
squadron had to prove themselves time and time again. The right
to fight was something that
he, his friends, and those before them had all worked hard for. He
couldn't let them down. Then there were the squadron commander, and
even a few of the white officers who had supported their training.
He couldn't let any of them down. He just wouldn't.
    “You
fought to the best of your ability,” Dale responded. “History
remembers you that way. And even if you returned, what could you do
to change the outcome? Germany will still win the war, and the
United States will still accept peace. The Great Depression will
resume. Did you ever realize how deeply mired in debt your President
Roosevelt has put the country to fight his immoral war? Believe me,
you don't need to go back to that. You'd be just another unemployed
black man in an America where hypocrisy and unfairness are
commonplace.”
    “Don't
tell me Nazis outlawed unfairness,” he scoffed.
    “Who else could?”
    “You mean, it takes a dictator.”
    “No, it takes a reordering of society.
Just as war is a cause that can discipline a society,
military values can advance society in peaceful ways.
We take the direction of a society out of the hands of
the oligarchs of wealth, and channel it into more
productive purposes for the whole nation.”
    She paused, but only for a moment before continuing.
“I will concede that the National Socialist Party of this time,
that which is down there now,” she gestured
toward the image of the Earth outside, “regards its own form of
nationalism as confined to the German-speaking race. But they have
always been reaching out to new allies, not