02. The Shadow Dancers by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online

with tunnels packed with explosives that would leave a crater half a mile wide."
    "There's gates front and back," I noted.
    "Not much better. Built like Sam's prison. Reinforced metal and concrete and heavily defended so that any assault on the gates would have to be over open ground. We could use a small missile to blow them, but we'd never get enough people inside without tremendous losses and, of course, enough time to blow the place."
    "Air drop?" Sam suggested.
    "Again, possible, but he's got radar and air defenses that could pick up a pigeon at half a mile. A small force could get in, we think, but it would be hamstrung. It'd have to move to get him, and to do that it would have to pass a spider's web of television monitors wired to a central security control in the basement of the place. We can get them in, but we can't get to him and take him out without discovery no matter how hard we figure it."
    "Bill-if he don't know you know he's gone bad, why this fort?" I wondered. "I mean, this ain't what the average station has."
    "You're right, of course. That's the station there, to the back and left of the main house. Maybe fifty yards. The other outbuildings are quarters for the guards and supply houses and-other things. The reason it is the way it is is basically because Vogel lives in a world where that kind of thing is necessary for the health of somebody in his position. In fact, we helped set up some of the defenses initially to protect the station, and we figure he's made a lot of changes since then to protect against us as well."
    In the world of Rupert Vogel, it seemed, we lost World War II. I ain't top clear on the history, neither, but it goes somethin' like this: the Germans didn't get bogged down in Russia because they attacked in the spring and won before winter set in, finally gettin' the Japs to attack Siberia and put the squeeze on. Then they turned back to England and with so many men and airplanes they finally wiped out the air defenses and invaded. We, on the other hand, spent almost all our time goin' against Japan. We mighta done somethin', too, but the Germans got their missiles goin' and managed to use the time to perfect the A-bomb ahead of us. We got it about the same time they did, but they had the way to deliver it, off ships and from friendly places in South America or somethin'. They nuked Norfolk and San Diego and places like that and that was the end of it.
    Not that it weren't real messy and bloody when they came in, but we never had to face this kind of army before, one that didn't care who it killed or what it had to do. Everybody got IDs and papers, and couldn't sneeze without bein' checked. Then folks got classified, kinda South Africastyle. The Jews all got shipped to camps in Georgia and Nevada and it was pretty clear what happened to them there. The folks with good German or Italian or even English names and backgrounds, they got the best treatment if they was cooperative, and lots were. We was beat good. These folks got to be the managers and bosses if they wasn't already. Then the rest of the Europeans, they got a second-class thing and they did the work in the factories, mines, you name it. All the Orientals got shipped to Japan or China or someplace.
    That left the ten percent who was black, and there was a lot more of us than there were Jews or Orientals. They put us in the camps like the rest, and millions died, but they also used us. It was like they turned the clock back a hundred years. We became the lab animals for their experiments and medical stuff, others were trained as personal servants-slaves, really-to the big boys, and some of 'em, the big Nazi lords, even kept us tike pets and bred us. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach, and Sam wasn't lookin' none too good, neither. He sure wouldn't survive in this new world, and his parents woulda been gassed. Thing was, a Bill Markham woulda come put pretty good unless he was one of them patriotic principled types. With