He swooped in low and spotted looters moving down a wide avenue, reaching into broken windows to fill their carts, becoming motionless shadows at the siren sound.

  Young trees swayed in a summer wind, filling him with a sense of vast expectation; but a sad song played somewhere at the edge of hearing, drawing him to a hidden center of memory. Abolishing all barriers to motion, he hunted the instrument to a tavern, only to find a piano with painted-on keys.

  He blossomed upward out of the bar and surveyed his city, admiring its blue-metal hues and ebony streets. An azure sky swam in the windows. A wall of glass caught his dark shape as he passed by.

  He dropped through a roof into a maze of hallways, where the crystal doorknobs sparkled, imprisoning light from the shining chandeliers which he had installed. Rooms tumbled through him, measured spaces replacing every moment of his memory as he penetrated the walls.

  Architectural thought, as well as steel, held the city together; it would endure as long as he held it whole in his brain.

  He emerged into one hotel room at random and stopped to gaze out through the tall windows at the flood rising in the streets below.

  But the city stood firm as the water covered his windows.

  Giant eels swam through the city of granite and water, peering in at him and slipping away.

  The watery sky became still as slate. Weathervanes turned doubtfully in the deep, elusive currents—race horses, roosters, arrows and rockets, whirlygigs of every shape and size. Silence held his lost memories as he stared through the yellow curtains and remembered the lake on that cold night when he had waited for dawn to light up the south. . . .

  What other profession offered as much? Travel, the display of cleverness, honesty in life-and-death situations, the opportunity to be different persons. Historic events had pulled him into play as surely as his father had drawn him from the dark through the knothole of his mother’s womb, involving him in the world’s sorrows, compelling him to act. . . .

  The city needed a lot of improving, he realized as the waters receded. He took a giant step through the walls of the hotel and peered into the side streets. Garbage waited in blind alleys; lice danced in the dust.

  The city was not perfect; he might die of its faults if he weren’t careful about repairs. Buildings needed new facades; streets had to be patched or resurfaced, so that vehicles could get by potholes without his intervention. If he did well enough, his city would stand forever.

  He turned and saw that the looters were gone from the avenue of green trees, but the sad song still played on the mock piano. Leaves scattered from the branches, covering the sidewalks and gutters. Time wound forward in his city; he would have to hurry repairs.

  A chill gust raked the curling leaves on the avenue. Patches of red, orange, and gold swirled into the blue sky. Shadows stabbed into the streets, draping themselves across walls and windows. A black tide was swallowing his city. . . .

  His eye pulled back into his head and he looked around his cell. Where was his tray? It always came at the same time. He stood perfectly still, waiting.

  Click.

  The squeak pierced him as the door opened.

  “Good afternoon,” the fat man said as he came in and set the tray down on the bed. He stood there, flexing his pink fingers, searching the room with suspicious eyes. “Well, enjoy your food, fella,” he mumbled finally. His heavy black shoes whispered on the hard floor. The door squeaked shut; the lock clicked.

  He sat down on the bed, leaned over the tray, and examined the delivery. Then he stripped the foil from the soft chocolate and emptied the bowl of soup into the garbage bag. The water in the paper cup would go into the lake of course, but on the whole it was a meager shipment of materials; mostly scrap; not enough for major construction. Couldn’t they see what he was up against? His life depended on these deliveries. He would die if the city fell. Eternity was at stake here.

  He stood up wearily, wandered to the door and peered through the small window. The black floor in the hall glistened from washing, but the green walls needed paint.

  The hospital echoed with voices—ordering, announcing, requesting; an endless flow of names being called to action. He listened, filling with anger; they never called his name.

  He turned away and considered the tabletop. He had, after all, been fortunate to get the matchboxes, the foil, tins, toothpicks, cups and watercolors, with which to build his city in the first place. More was needed, of course, but the basics were here; that much would always be his, whatever the shortages.

  He squatted and brought his eyes level with the tabletop. The city stretched away to the window, merging with the skyline outside. The avenue of green trees was unbroken, right through the bars.

  He stood up, snatched a bit of foil from the tray, and began to work it into a new façade for one of the Northside buildings. As he shaped the material, he remembered that he still had a large matchbox under the bed, filled with bits of balsa wood and plastic; but even that wouldn’t be enough to finish the job.

  The rich sections of town had all the money. Wealth bought durability, so repairs were infrequent. The poor had their labor and the privilege of useless protest. They didn’t know that the power to hit back was yours only if you were willing to outweigh the world, using your strength because it was there, only waiting to be used as no power in the world could be used; better than cowering or complaining, more effective than persuasion; as powerful as wealth.

  Everything is possible if you’re willing to do anything.

  He touched the table, rocking it slightly; small waves broke on the lake shore. He took the cup of water from the tray and poured it in, then brought his face low over the calming surface. The liquid was lifeless, but all he needed was some lightning to change that.

  He stood up straight and looked out through the bars. Wind was whipping up whitecaps on the distant lake. The clouds on the horizon resembled bruised flesh.

  Lightning reached into the waters outside, and things crawled forward from the back of his mind, gnawing toward his eyes. Memory finally belched up the unfolding rose of the nuclear blast; it pulsed before him again, melting flesh, metal, and stone. North of the lake, the shock wave stripped the forest from the land, leaving only charred stumps sticking out of the black earth.

  He worshipped the explosion, hoping to appease its wrath, but the carnal bloom only crushed him back into himself. He floated down into the cold fathoms of sunken rooms, and there he lingered in a rheumatic corner, waiting before a threatening door. A whispering crowded around him. The door flew open, and he bloodied himself again on the shards of oddly shaped memories.

  He saw four pairs of squinting eyes floating around the dimly lit table.

  “One city—purely as a convincer. They’ll give in after that, but they have to know that we mean to do it.”

  “Why not set it off in the desert?” his own voice asked, and he despised its meek concern. “If we warn them . . .”

  “No, no, no! They have to know it’s not just a threat.” A pair of hands moved on the table. Badly bitten fingernails drummed on the plastic covering.

  “We could leave them an empty bomb mechanism somewhere, maybe a copy of of the plans . . .”

  The right hand made a fist and struck the table. “No! Words won’t be good enough. An empty casing will suggest that we don’t have the fissionables to make the bomb go.” The hands were open, pressing down on the table. “One bomb in a major city, one in a minor. One backup, so we always have a next move, if we need it.”

  “What if they start to evacuate?” The same whining voice.

  “We’ll tell them—if they start, off it goes. They won’t have time.”

  A glowing coal drifted in the dark above the table. Fingers took it and lit a fresh cigarette. Chapped lips appeared as a face leaned under the light. Smoke curled up into the hanging lamp.

  “We won’t have to set off a bomb, if we do this right.” The hands slipped away into the darkness.

  He remembered the long train rolling out of Chicago, carrying thousands of coffins.

  Click.

  He whirled and saw eyes in the cell door window. For a moment he was looking in at himself, and he knew suddenly what he would see. He blinked, straining to wipe out the mushroom, but the fireball swelled, burning his eyes and melting his skin, searing his bones with the secret fire of stars.

  He cried out and struck at the city, crushing matchbox buildings, pounding clay figures into lumps, crumpling foil roofs, splintering toothpick antennas, shattering plastic facades and mirrored windows. The lake rippled, flooding the streets and spilling onto the floor.

  Click.

  The door opened a crack, then closed. The eyes retreated into the hall.

  He staggered over and put his ear to the cold metal.

  “Poor bastard,” the thunder announced in the limbo of the passage, “he’s remembered again. You were right.”

  “I’d better get a tray filled for him,” the fat man said.

  A silence.

  “You really do feel sorry for him, don’t you?”

  The words lost their meaning as the healing silence crept into him again, the containing, merciful silence, and he sat down to wait, watching the water run across the floor.

  An age passed. It was twilight again outside the bars. The overhead light winked on. He stood up and looked out over his city. A titanic will stirred within his healing silence, bidding him to survive and act. He would rebuild with an effort as great as nature’s, and his city would stand again as thought and steel. The risen dead would occupy its rooms and public places; trees would blossom and music would play. He would stroll down the green avenue and check into his favorite hotel, where the sun filtered in through yellow gauze curtains and the room service was pleasant and prompt.

  The cell door clicked, but the knothole of memory was again closed, the pain gone. The fat man came in and set the tray down at the edge of the city.

  “Here’s your stuff, fella, just what you need.”

  There was no food, but the tray was piled high with toothpick boxes, wrappers, jars of paint, a small roll of aluminum foil, large scraps of wood and plastic, tubes of glue, gobs of clay, bunches of rubber bands, rolls of tape, lettering stencils, thumbtacks, pins, a small stapler, even a pack of paper clips—

  “Pretty good?” the fat man asked, half smiling.

  —everything he would need to rebuild his city.

  The Eichmann Variations

  If any single event of this century (in truth, millions of related “events,” all fueled by the benighted gas of Hitler’s social philosophy) unequivocally destroys the notion that humanity has been evolving morally and spiritually, as well as materially and technologically, that event is the Holocaust. To find such a subject handled with fresh and dynamic insight in an sf story of little over 3,000 words would seem at first as unlikely as discovering intelligent life at a Ku Klux Klan rally, but George Zebrowski’s “The Eichmann Variations” is that story, and this is its first appearance in print. A startling and economical alternate-history tale, “The Eichmann Variations” examines the questions of guilt, vengeance, and atonement without surrendering to either sensationalism or maudlin handwringing. Zebrowski’s best-known novel is Macrolife, a work vast in setting and philosophical scope. Here, however, he proves that he can compress as well as enlarge, and that even a story as brief and intense as this one can illuminate.

  The beast must die;

  and the man as well;

  one and the other.

  —Brahms, Songs

  O Germany—

  Hearing the speeches that ring from your house

  one laughs.

  But whoever sees you, reaches for his knife.

  —Bertold Brecht

  And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations—as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world—we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.

  —Hannah Arendt,

  Eichmann in Jerusalem

  1

  I learned the details after the war. Jewish scientists had been gathered in America to create a vengeance weapon against us. It happened very much in the way described in those fantastic American pulp magazines that von Braun was always reading (he kept up his subscription through a neutral country once the war started). A team of physicists got together at a secret desert laboratory and concocted the atomic bomb out of decades-old theories.

  I didn’t believe that Berlin, Munich, and Dresden had disappeared completely until I saw the Life magazine photos published after the formal surrender in 1946. By then I had been for some months in the Argentine, living quietly, hoping to finish out my life in solitude.

  The Japanese had avoided atomic attack by surrendering shortly after their agents reported the magnitude of the blasts in Europe. I don’t blame myself for being skeptical; who would have believed such a story, especially after our bad experience with the V-2 wonder weapons? Always too expensive and impractical, Speer had complained, who knew something of engineering as well as financial planning.

  I watched the Jews build their Israel for twenty years, growing in power and prestige, until it dominated the Middle East. Everybody loved them, but how could it be otherwise? Their first miracle, the Manna Machine, took sand and through certain physico-biological manipulations of basic patterns produced edibles of any kind, as well as any other physical object or resource. Solar Power was endless, so the machine ran without stop, giving away as much stomach support as Israel’s neighbors demanded. I read about it in Reader’s Digest.

  The world fell into a stupor of peace as the Semites gifted the planet with their easy solutions. But it was all on the surface; these magicians would just as easily have worked for our Fuehrer if he had courted them, if their very existence had not been such a blinding abomination. We were too zealous in our convictions. Since it is in the nature of the lower orders to go where they are welcome, these sorcerers would have built for us the greatest bakeries in Europe, and our armies would have marched to victory on the bread transubstantiated from the raw material of the underfolk.

  Now, with their stomachs satisfied and their homeland secure, they began to refine their tastes for revenge. I was captured in 1961, as I was strolling by the seashore, and taken to Jerusalem aboard a luxurious submarine. It seems that their Maimonides Mentality, a sophisticated artificial intelligence that also plans economies, had finally been able to predict where I might be found, on the basis of elaborate probabilities and shabby scraps of gossip. It had taken a picture of my footsteps, as well as my bald head, from a satellite.

  A world benefiting so greatly from Israeli science and technology looked the other way when I was kidnapped. Nazis were merely a strange and rare form of humanity collected by their Jewish benefactors, for private reasons.

  2

  Ten gallows.

  They die by metric count, these scarecrows who wear my face. Each morning I am duplicated ten times and forced to watch the execution.

  The faces seem puzzled as they stare at me. Who am I? they wonder, knowing full well who they are. Why am I not with them on the block? Do they all have my memories? Or are they blank die cuts, wearing my wrinkles? They are innocent, even if they remember what is in my brain.

  What can I care for my doubles?

  I imagine rushing forward to mingle with them, thus denying my captors the satisfaction of seeing the original perish, except as the hidden member of a group. Any one of us will answer to being the original, except that the Doppelgangers are innocent!

  Why? How can that be?

  Because they did not exist when my so-called crimes were committed! Only the pattern of specific memories is guilty. I will not rush among my doubles; I do not wish to die anonymously.

  They force me to watch as the bodies are fed into the fusion torch, which consumes utterly, leaving only a gas from which basic elements can be reclaimed. What we could have done with that! The final solution would have been completed by 1941.

  3

  The point of killing your racial enemies lies in denying them their future, the embodiment of their children. The stream of history is diverted, given a different character than it might have had; but now cultures live or die where once individuals of unconscious species clashed for glorious possession of plain, sea, forest or sky.

  They are manlier, these scientific Jews; they are not fearful of wielding power. Once they were constrained and cowardly; a good number were homosexual. What did they know of true freedom, they who would not dare do what was in their hearts? A true man listens to the abyss, to the inner song that the Fuehrer knew so well. A few years after the war I read that some of the survivors were developing nostalgia for the war, for the death camps, for slavehood.

  4

  This morning, one year after my imprisonment, I dreamed of a pit. A huge, dark beast came into it on all fours. Its skin was sandpapery, grayblack, covered with sores. It stood up on all fours and spoke to the crowd pressing in around the guard rail.

  “The world is not mine,” it said as the crowd drew back, horrified by its massive body. “This my father taught me, that the world is not mine.” The voice was soft, cultivated, threatening.

  The crowd gasped and whispered, and moved closer to observe the tragic, apelike face.

  “They captured it at the headwaters of the Amazon,” someone said. “It’s descended from giant tree otters.”

  I didn’t want to look into the beast’s eyes. The lights in the arena flickered. It grew dark.

  “You see,” the same voice said, “it’s not really intelligent. A very kind, sensitive man taught it that speech, but it’s nothing but a kind of mimicry . . .”