The Iron Dream (36 page)

Feric's mood and that of his companions lightened somewhat as they stood in the open air once more, with nothing apparently amiss.

"I see no Fire of the Ancients, my Commander," Best said.

"Bah, the old monster was simply mad," Waning said, and Feric found himself agreeing with this estimate.

"Perhaps," Bogel said uneasily, "but you yourself told us that the Doms were attempting to exhume the nuclear weapons of the ancients."

This remark darkened the mood of the group once more, and Ferie realized that there was no point, one way or the other, in lingering in this grim place waiting for a catastrophe that might never come. He led the party back to the command car and continued with the tour of the ruined city as if nothing untoward had occurred.

For several minutes, the command car, with its motorcycle escort, drove on through the ashes, kicking up gray clouds, and sighting nothing. Feric and the others had refreshed themselves from the beer keg, and the mad Dom in his undergound chamber with his threats of nuclear destruction seemed quite improbable and unreal.

Suddenly the very sky seemed to explode; an enormous burst of light flashed into existence on the eastern horizon, a glare brighter than a thousand noonday suns that filled 233

half the sky with its brilliance and leached the rest of all color.

Feric's stomach filled with sickness even as he rubbed his nearly blinded eyes, for there was no mistaking such a thing for anything but the Fire of the Ancients. Moments later, the terrible, world-filling glare faded somewhat to reveal an enormous orange fireball ten times the apparent diameter of the sun hovering balefully over the eastern horizon.

Slowly, this enormous bubble of fire drifted upward, sucking a great boiling black cloud of rubble into the sky in its wake as it ascended. Moments later, the fiery, billowing cloud was fully formed and not a man within sight of it could fail to recognize the bone-chilling sight of the legendary ensign and dreaded incarnation of the Fire of the Ancients, the Mushroom Pillar Cloud.

No one could utter a word in the sight of this ghastly poisoned celestial toadstool. The size of the explosion and its power were beyond all human comprehension. There was no reason to doubt that the threat of the last Dominator had not been empty.

Many minutes later, the world was shattered by a clap of thunder that seemed to split the sky, that became an earthquake rumble without diminishing in intensity. At the same time, Feric felt the air smash at him with the force of a physical blow; the SS were swept off their motorcycles like so many scraps of paper, and the sturdy steel of the command car creaked and groaned.

The sighing, whining, roaring, hot caustic wind that followed seemed to Feric to be the last expiring breath of true humanity. He could all but feel the radioactive pestilence seeping into his germ plasm.

But even as the radioactive toadstool belched its genetic poison into the atmosphere of the earth, Feric Jaggar determined that the pure human genotype would survive because it must survive. Failure would not be tolerated from himself or anyone else. Humanity would be saved by a sheer act of will if need be. If a miracle were needed, every last Helder would be totally committed to bringing it about or to die trying.

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14

In the grim days following the detonation of the monstrous final weapon of Zind, only the fanatic will of Feric Jaggar and the iron discipline of the Helder people kept all humanity from falling into despair and apathy. As the fetid cloud dispersed its poison throughout the atmosphere of the earth, many plants began to sicken and die, the young, the old, and the infirm broke out in horrid sores and pustules, and nearly two million true humans expired in agony.

^ Rather than deal with these symptoms of radiation disease, Feric devoted the full resources of the new World Empire of Heldon entirely to the preservation of the true human genotype. Within two months, SS genetic scientists had fully confirmed the horrid truth: there was not a true human on the face of the earth with germ plasm capable of breeding true. Even Feric himself was affected. The last generation of humanity had already been born—the Helder gene pool was now capable of producing naught but vile mutants and obscene monstrosities.

Not three days after a sallow, thoroughly shaken Remler had delivered this racial death-warrant, Feric had made the hardest decision in his life, and stood before television cameras with Waffing, Remler, Bogel, and Best at his side to proclaim to his mourning and stricken people the course of action that Heldon would now take.

For the occasion, Feric had dressed himself in his sleek black uniform, and had had the chrome brightwork and the Great Truncheon of Held polished for hours so that every inch of metal on his person shone like diamond. He stood on a low dias with a great scarlet swastika flag behind him for a backdrop. At his feet, his High Commanders stood in similarly brilliant uniforms; it was essential that the heroism of the Helder people be raised to the utmost. Feric had told absolutely no one of his plan; he required a spontaneous demonstration of support from his 235

High Commanders for all Heldon to see, for what he was ordering would be the greatest test of loyalty to the Swastika yet faced by the Helder people.

"My fellow Helder," he began simply, "what I must say today will be brief, inescapable, and brutally blunt. As has already been announced, the gene pool of Heldon has been completely and permanently contaminated by the perfidious last act of the wretched Dominators, who have paid for their evil and vileness by total extinction. This means that the germ plasm of each and every one of us is capable of producing no offspring but vile and degenerate mutants. Clearly, the production of such a posterity is an absolutely unacceptable anathema to everything that the Swastika stands for."

He paused for a long moment to let it sink in, to ensure that no Holder was unclear as to the full import of the situation. Then, when all Heldon was sunk in unbearable gloom, he gave his people hope.

"For some time, SS race scientists have been working on the technique of cloning. If a snippet of flesh can be used to grow a human being artificially, the exact genotype of our finest specimens—the purebred supermen of the SS—may be duplicated in the next generation without dilution. Thus, in one generation we can advance human evolution a thousand years and produce a race of blond giants fully seven feet tall with the physiques of gods and an average intelligence on the genius level. Out of the tragedy of genetic contamination, we can create the final triumph of human racial purity. For the radiation that has mangled our germ plasm beyond all hope of repair has not contaminated our somatic tissue whatever—from the cells of our SS purebreds may be cloned the new master race! The next generation of Helder will consist entirely of clones whose genetic endowment is that of the finest SS

purebreds living today!"

Once more Feric paused, watching the gleam and sparkle return to the eyes of everyone present, technicians and High Commanders alike. From a vision of final doom, the Helder people had been transported to the raptures of a dream of ultimate racial glory. Surely they would now be ready to make the sacrifices such a goal required!

"Though SS scientists are close to perfecting his technique, much heroic effort is still called for on the part of the SS before the production of a master race of SS clones becomes assured. Therefore I have decided as your Su-236

preme Commander that every last Helder must involve himself in a truly heroic act that will inspire superhuman fanaticism on the part of these scientists by making the price of failure the total extinction of sapience on this planet and the prize to be won by success the creation of a purebred master race capable and worthy of inheriting the entire universe for all time.

"Within the next three months every Helder will be processed through the Classification Camps. There, we will all be sterilized, rendered permanently incapable of suc-cumbing to any foul temptation to reproduce our damaged genes by conventional sexual means. Either Heldon will produce a posterity of purebred SS clones, or no posterity at all! Racial transcendence or racial death!"

The backs of the High Commanders visibly stiffened.

Feric was confident that the Helder people had been fired to a similar fanatic resolution all up and down the land, for although the SS scientists still remained the key to the situation, he had given every last Helder a means by which to contribute his own heroic dedication to the sacred cause. The glory of final triumph would be personally shared by all!

"As a personal demonstration of my own total loyalty to the sacred cause of the Swastika and the production of an SS master race, I myself will be the first to undergo sterilization, followed by my High Commanders, the entire SS, and then the Helder people. Hail Heldon! Hail Final Victory! Hail the Master Race!"

The last words had hardly left Feric's lips when Bogel, Remler, Waning, and Best clicked their heels with a vigor that took even Feric by surprise, snapped to attention with backbreaking force, shot out their arms like steel pistons in the Party salute, and shouted "Hail Jaggar!" with a superhuman fury, their eyes blazing with the transcendent power of the racial wilL

With the fervor of the Helder people raised to incredible heights of racial consciousness and iron determination, destiny could hardly have denied to this race of heroes the success and dominion that such self-sacrificing patriotism commanded.

The entire Helder people marched straight through the Classification Camps without so much as a murmur of protest. Indeed the only major problem in completing the sterilization of the Helder people was that the good folk 237

had some tendency to fight and bicker among themselves for early places in the Camps; this represented merely good-humored contests in patriotic dedication rather than serious acrimony, and the SS completed the task well within the three-month deadline that Feric had set.

Soon thereafter, Remler jubilantly announced that the first viable SS clone fetuses had been produced. Eight months later, these experimental milestones were successfully brought to term. Soon after that, the first functioning clone factory was completed, and nine months later Feric, guided by the beaming Remler, arrived at the Feric Jaggar Reproduction Works to personally witness the decanting of the first full batch of SS supermen from the cloning vats.

This edifice was a huge spotless white cube adorned only by great black swastikas on each of its faces. With the SS honor guard standing at rigid attention, Render led Feric through the main entrance of the building and through a long and somewhat confusing series of halls, chambers, and corridors, all of which were tiled in gleaming white. The shining white walls reflected the trim black leather uniforms and scarlet swastika capes of the tall blond SS technicians who seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the Reproduction Works with bustle, energy, and determination, scientific acolytes in the temple of racial purity.

"There's no denying that this place is really humming, Remler!" Feric exclaimed, as Remler opened a white door and ushered him into one of the great cloning vat chambers. This was a large oblong room with white walls and tiny white tiles on the floor, each adorned with a miniature black swastika. It was almost completely given over to row after row of gleaming white porcelain vats, two hundred of them in all. At the head of each vat was a white porcelain console housing pumps, instruments, and other medical apparatus; in each vat a seven-foot blond giant floated in yellowish nutrient fluid, eyes closed in blissful sleep.

A television camera had been set up for the occasion near the front row of vats; before these twenty ellipsoid porcelain wombs, twenty tall, blond SS scientists in black-dress uniforms with scarlet swastika capes and high black boots stood at perfect attention.

As Feric entered the chamber, fhese prime specimens snapped out a massed Party salute and shouted "Hail Jag-238

gar!" with utmost vigor and dash. Feric returned the salute smartly, then strode to the microphone that had been set up facing the cloning vats.

"My fellow Helder," he said, staring straight at the twenty SS heroes whose eyes blazed like chips of the finest blue steel with the triumph they had wrought, "today, at last, we are to witness the emergence of the first of the new master race fully grown from the cloning vats of the first reproduction works to go into regular round-the-clock mass production of SS purebreds. These magnificent specimens, cultured from the tissues of none but the absolute genetic cream of the SS, will spring to life fully grown, with godlike "physiques and razor-sharp minds, needing no more than six months of intensive instruction and in-doctrination to take their places as full-fledged members of the SS and citizens of Heldon."

Fire seemed to sparkle in the eyes of the SS scientists; Feric favored these fellows by meeting their fanatic gaze with his own before he went on.

"Within six months, ten more reproduction works will begin operation, by the end of next year, there will be two dozen turning out a million SS purebreds a year, and within five years Heldon will have the capacity to produce the amazing total of ten million SS supermen per year! This should be a sufficient productive capacity to totally repopulate the habitable earth with the master race within twenty years. Today we begin this repoputation of the earth with the genetic supermen that humanity has dreamed of creating for a thousand years, and a master race that will continue to advance to ever greater heights of genetic purity and evolutionary brilliance, since its reproduction will be done strictly according to the highest eugenic principles in the strictly controlled conditions of the reproduction works, leaving nothing whatsoever to the vagaries of chance.

"SS scientists, I salute you for your great triumph of eugenic research! High Commander Remler, I salute you for the spirit of total self-sacrificing fanaticism that you have instilled in each and every magnificent specimen in the ranks of the SS! People of Heldon, I salute you for your selfless dedication to the cause of the Swastika and to my own person! Hail Heldoni Hail the Swastika! Hail the Master Race!"