The Iron Dream (18 page)

As the convoy turned off the boulevard and barreled up the drive, the good folk lining the walkway broke into spontaneous Party salutes and fervent shouts of "Hail Jaggar!" which continued until the command car had reached the entrance portico. For his part, Feric returned the greeting with an outstretched salute which he maintained until the command car had come to a halt, to the delight of all.

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The SS escort dismounted as Feric stepped down from his car, and while six of them remained at rigid attention in front of the short flight of marble stairs, much to the discomfort of the army functionaries, the two flag bearers preceded Feric up the stairs, while the final two SS men formed an honor guard behind him. Just before entering the building, Feric paused, executed a heel-clicking turn, and favored the crowd with another Party salute. To the answering massed chant of "Hail Jaggar!" Feric and his SS escort then entered the Palace of State.

Feric marched down a long hallway with white marble walls, a red, white, and black tiled floor, and a lushly painted ceiling, toward a set of great arched wooden doors decorated with heavy brasswork, flanked on either side by a soldier of the regular army. The steel-soled boots of the SS honor guard beat a crisp martial rhythm on the gleaming tiled floor as the troop approached these ceremonial functionaries. The flag bearers came to a smart halt facing the soldiers with clicks of their heels, a pounding of the ends of their staffs against the tile. Party salutes, and a hearty "Hail Jaggar!" Behind these fine SS men, Feric halted for a moment as the two soldiers, torn between their natural inclination to return the salutation and their pusillanimous orders, hesitated in confusion. Finally, they contented themselves with opening the double doors, and Feric, preceded by his standard bearers and followed by his other two SS guards, marched into the Council chamber.

The chamber was a small rotunda in the center of which was a large round table of gleaming black wood inlaid with white-and-red tile. Nine chairs of a matching style were spaced evenly around the circumference of the table; all save one of them occupied by truely unsavory specimens. These creatures acted like bugs suddenly exposed to the light as Feric and his troops strode into the room, scuttling uneasily in their seats, and openly displaying unmanly consternation. Surrounded by his honor guard, Feric marched to the empty chair and seated himself as the four SS men came to rigid attention behind his seat, clicked their heels, saluted, and roared "Hail Jaggar!"

"Remove your ruffians from the Council chamber at once," wheezed a rheumy old creature whom Feric recognized as Larus Krull, the senile Libertarian leader. •

"On the contrary," Feric rejoined, "the SS elite will 119

eject your useless carcasses from this establishment in due course."

"There is no precedent for private guards in this chamber, Trueman Jaggar," whined a foppish individual in florid blue and gold. This was Rossback, one of the three Traditionalists, an utter cretin.

"I have now remedied that lack," Feric replied dryly.

"I demand that you remove your men at once!" insisted Guilder, a notorious toady of Krull's.

"We must vote on the question," said the Universalist, Lorst Gelbart. This was a truly repellent mound of protoplasm, but when the pustulant creature opened its mouth to break wind, the other wretches displayed a strange deference, instantly falling silent and paying rapt attention to Gelbart's words. And no wonder, for it only took one quick glance from Feric's trained eye to discern that this Gelbart, with his greasy black hair, crude blue tunic, and beady, rodentlike eyes, was actually a Dominator! The odor of Dom was fairly exuded by his coarse and unwashed skin. If the foul creature had not yet totally enmeshed the Council in a dominance pattern, it was clearly only a matter of time, and not much of that by the look of things!

Therefore, there was no point in wasting time with foppish niceties. "I did not come to this meeting to exchange banter or haggle over points of protocol, much as such pastimes may be to the liking of specimens such as yourselves," Feric said, turning a disdainful gaze on each of the human Councillors in turn, so that there would be no doubt of the contempt in which he held them. When his eyes met Gelbart's, there seemed to be a strange moment of mutual recognition of the facts of the matter, though the stinking Dom prudently made no attempt to draw Feric into his psychic web.

"I am here to present the basic program of the Sons of the Swastika and to demand its total and immediate im-plementation," Feric continued. "The racial will demands nothing less."

Of course, the jaws of these old windbags fell open at the sound of such a forthright statement, and the pack of them gulped and gasped like beached fish. Gelbart, for his part, maintained his inhumanly cold expression throughout.

Ignoring the impotent silent protests, Feric ticked off the basic Party demands. "Firstly, the Treaty of Karmak 120

must be renounced and all mongrels and mutants forever barred from every inch of Helder soil. Secondly, the racial purity laws must be enforced with renewed rigor, and because of the laxness of late which has allowed all sorts of contaminants to infiltrate the Helder gene pool. Classification Camps must be established throughout the nation where all Helder whose genetic purity can at all be called into question will be held until their pedigrees and genetic patterns are thoroughly reexamined. Those found to be genetically contaminated will be given the choice of exile or sterilization."

Feric stared at Gelbart evenly, without betraying emotion; he sensed, however, that the Dom knew full well that Feric had smelled him out. "Any Dominators that are discovered," Feric said, "will of course be slain. Thirdly, the size of the army must be speedily tripled so that we may deal properly with the mutant hordes that surround us. Finally, in order that this new national policy be carried out with the utmost vigor and force, this Council must vote to suspend the constitution and grant me emergency powers to rule by decree."

"The man is mad!" shrilled old Pillbarm, the dean of the Traditionalists, a dried-up old prune who had not yet displayed the capacity for human speech.

Instantly, Feric was on his feet, the Great Truncheon of Held in his hand, a towering figure of righteous wrath.

"Do any of you dare defend the contamination of the gene pool by mutants and mongrels? Will you defend the lives of Dominator filth with your own? Will you stand before the Helder people and declare that a position of weakness is preferable to a policy of utter force and iron resolve?"

There was no reaction to this ringing challenge; that alone was sure indication that Gelbart's dominance pattern was all but established. As if by command, the cowardly wretches held back and waited for the Dom itself to reply.

"All this talk of genetic purity is long out of date, Jaggar," Gelbart said with a cruel little smile. "Already many of the people are demanding that great masses of mutants be imported to perform the distasteful labor necessary to maintain a high civilization. Soon Heldon will realize that much the best course is to breed mindless creatures, protoplasmic robots, if you will, in the manner 121

of Zind. You are shouting in a whirlwind. The natural sloth of human beings is your implacable foe."

Feric ignored Gelbart entirely; there was no point in reasoning with a Dom, and even less in trying to persuade his craven victims to do their racial duty. The only thing that would set to right the pestilence that ate at the heart of Heldon was the ruthless application of force.

Feric sheathed the Steel Commander, but remained standing, and raked each member of the Council in turn with his steely gaze. All save Gelbart—who of course was beyond such human reaction—withered in turn under the psychic onslaught.

"I have done my duty as a true human and given you fair warning and an opportunity to lend yourself without coercion to the expression of the racial will," Feric said evenly. "Unless you immediately vote to accept the Party program forthwith, you are openly declaring the moral bankruptcy of the government of the High Republic. You call down the consequences on your own heads."

Only Gelbart had the impudency to reply to this solemn warning. "Do you dare to threaten the Council of State of the High Republic, Jaggar? Even a Councillor may be arrested for treason."

The grotesque humor of this puling Dom actually accusing a true human of treason to Heldon was almost enough to make Feric burst out laughing despite the righteous fury aroused in his heart by this ultimate perfidy.

"I'd like to see this collection of old dung try to arrest the Knights of the Swastika and the SS for treason!" Feric roared. "We'd soon see who would be hanging from traitors' gibbets!"

With this rejoinder, Feric turned on his heels and stalked out of the Council chamber.

Upon his election to the Council of State, Feric had moved the Party's national headquarters to a spacious compound near the center of Heldhime, roughly equidis-tant from the Palace of State and Star Keep, headquarters of the Army Star Command, and bivouac for the city garrison. The new headquarters had been the palatial residence of an industrialist who had been persuaded to lease it to the Sons of the Swastika for a nominal sum.

The mansion itself fiad been divided up into apartments for Feric, Bogel, Waning, Render and Best, dormitories 122

for lesser Party functionaries, meeting rooms and offices, while two thousand SS were housed in tents pitched on the broad expanse of lawn within the high stone wall of the compound. Motorcycles and cars were kept in various outbuildings and sheds; machine-gun positions had been emplaced every fifty yards along the walkway atop the wall. In addition, five howitzers, heavily camouflaged, were secreted within the compound. All in all, the Party headquarters was a fortress sufficient to stand off the city garrison for some time without reinforcements.

Nevertheless, such reinforcements were readily at hand, for five thousand Knights of the Swastika under the direct command of Stag Stopa were barracked on the outskirts of Heldhime, not fifteen minutes by motorcycle from Party headquarters. One word from Feric, and these storm troops would roar into the city and crush any besiegers of the headquarters' compound from behind.

Three weeks after the election, Feric called a meeting in his private sitting room to firm up final plans for dealing with the Dominator-controlled Council. This was a somewhat grandiose chamber, all blue paint, rich tapestries, and ornate giltwork, which Feric favored solely for the large balcony from which the night view of Heldhime was a carpet of the light resplendent under the dark grandeur of the heavens. Feric, Bogel, Waffing, and Best sat in plush chairs around a round rosewood table over tankards of ale, awaiting the uncharacteristically tardy Remler.

"As I see it," Bogel said, "our problem is to seize power behind a facade of legalism so that there will be no question of whose orders the army will carry out. Would not the Star Command instantly accept Feric as absolute ruler of Heldon if there were sufficient legal pretext?"

This had been addressed to Lar Waffing, who took a long drink of ale while pondering his response. Laying his wooden tankard down on the table and refilling it from the small keg thereon, he delivered his considered opinion.

"No doubt at all that the Star Command wants a Heldon under the Swastika, for we're the only ones that promise the action that all good soldiers crave," Waffing said. "However, the generals are pledged to defend the lawful government of Heldon and pride will not permit them to betray their honor. Forceful action at this time might very well precipitate civil war."

Feric was sorely vexed by the situation. Gelbart had 123

formulated an ordinance calling for the disarming of the SS and the disbanding of the Knights; once his slaveys had passed it, the fat would really be in the fire. Clearly, it would be best to strike before events placed the Star Command in a position where their only choices were open capitulation to Party force or the initiation of civil war. Still, an out-and-out coup would confront the army with the same situation!

"Further," Waning said, "the Star Command is growing quite uneasy about the Knights and Stag Stopa. They see that Stopa retains a certain personal following since his lieutenants are all ex-Avengers with loyalty—"

Suddenly, Bors Remler burst into the room, his thin face flushed, and almost feverish, his blue eyes burning.

"What's taken you so long to—"

"My Commander," Remler said excitedly, as he threw himself into the chair at Feric's left hand, "I must report the existence of a plot against your person and the Party by Stag Stopa in collusion with the Council of State!"

"What?"

The words fairly poured out of the SS Commandant. "I had taken the precaution of secreting SS agents in the hierarchy of the Knights as a matter of course," he said.

"Tonight I received a report of the utmost urgency. Stopa has met with agents of Gelbart and possibly of Zind as well. A squad of uniformed Knights will slay the Star Command the night the resolution banning the Party storm troops is passed. This will goad the army into civil war against the Party. Apparently; Stopa has been promised supreme military command by Gelbart after the hostilities have been concluded; possibly Zind has offered him the position of overlord of Heldon, for surely the result of such a civil war will be the destruction of the bulk of the fighting forces of Heldon, leaving us open to easy conquest by the hordes of Zind. No doubt Stopa will be slain by Zind agents during the confusion; he is too na?ve to realize this."

A great collective gasp was clearly audible when Remler had finished. For his part, Feric was deeply hurt and shocked. "I've never doubted Stopa's loyalty to the cause and to my person!" he declared.

"I have ample proof, my Commander!" Remler insisted.

"I don't for a moment doubt it," Feric assured him.

"But I'm surprised and troubled by this development.

Obviously, Stopa must be dealt with, but I take no pleasure in the necessity."

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