Weaver by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online Page B

example. It is a basic principle that one should pursue a defeated enemy. Milch argued we should have mounted an airborne invasion as soon as we reached the ocean, in June.’
    Julia said, ‘I think the Fuhrer continues to hope that my countrymen will come to their senses. After all England’s land army is severely depleted after the bulk of it was lost at Dunkirk.’
    ‘It’s true Hitler has made peace offerings,’ Josef said. ‘With sensible terms: a free hand in Europe in return for the security of the British Empire. All ignored or rebuffed. How unreasonable! Especially when you see how well we treat the conquered French.’ He grabbed the top of Claudine’s thigh and squeezed it.
    ‘You’re a pig, Josef,’ Ernst murmured. The talk of war seemed unrealistic, a fantasy in the bright summer sunlight, amid the gentle sound of voices, the clink of cutlery and glasses. ‘Do you think we will invade, Josef, when it comes to it?’
    ‘Well, what do you think? The invasion fleet is in the harbour just over there. That doesn’t come cheap, you know; every barge that’s brought here can’t be lugging machine parts or coal up and down the Rhine.’
    ‘True. But we need a show of strength to keep the British on the ropes, don’t we? If the barges ever sailed, the Royal Navy would overwhelm the Kriegsmarine - it has a ten-to-one advantage. We would be chopped to matchsticks.’

    ‘But it could be even worse,’ Julia said. ‘After France fell Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to sink the French fleet in its Algerian ports. But his cabinet overruled him; the Navy was ordered back. And so Germany took the French Navy, one of the most powerful and most modern in the world. What a mistake for the British!’
    ‘Yes,’ Josef said. ‘They lacked the confidence to strike - or the foolhardiness.’
    ‘The English are all cowards,’ Julia said lightly.
    That stung Ernst, who had fought the English in the Low Countries. ‘And what is it you want, madam, save for the prostration of your own people?’
    She was unperturbed. ‘On the contrary, it is what I offer him that interests Josef in me, I think.’
    Josef grinned. ‘Don’t think she wants me for my body. I hope that we will soon be engaged in a great enterprise together.’
    ‘What madness are you cooking up now, Josef?’
    Julia dug into her canvas bag and brought out a couple of books. ‘Do you read English, Ernst? I’m afraid I have no German translations, not yet.’
    He fingered the books. One was a battered volume titled If It Had Happened Otherwise, published in 1931, edited by somebody called J.C. Squire. The other was actually a magazine, he saw, with a garish cover; it was called Unknown. It was a year old.
    Julia said, ‘The Squire book is a collection of essays, speculations on how history might have developed differently if certain key events had taken another course. What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, for instance?’
    Claudine glanced at the book. ‘There is an essay here by Churchill!’
    ‘As for the magazine-’ Julia tapped the contents page with a manicured finger. ‘This is the item of interest.’ It was a contribution from an author called L. Sprague de Camp, and it was called ‘Lest Darkness Fall’. ‘De Camp’s serial imagines a man gone back in time to a Rome on the point of falling to the barbarians. What if that collapse could have been averted?’
    Ernst clumsily translated the title into German. ‘What is all this, Josef?’
    His brother clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Do you ever have the feeling that history went wrong, Ernst? I mean, everything we do is entirely shaped by the past. If not for our ignominious defeat in the west in the first war, if not for the spiteful settlement of Versailles, we would not be sitting herenow - yes? And take that further. What if you could change history so that, for example, Germany did not lose the first war?’
    ‘History developed as it did through necessity.’
    Julia