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cortical and subcortical portions of our brains finally
triggered the breakthrough."
"You're as much a romantic here as you are back
home," Kane said.
As a sudden notion occurred to him, he swiveled
his head swiftly toward her. "If this is what it takes
to complete the mind-body fusion, Grant is on his
own."
Brigid surprised him by laughing. "I don't think
the sex act is the prerequisite stimulus. It's the stim-
ulation of areas in the brain."
Standing up, but keeping the sheet wrapped toga-
like around her, she said, "I apologize if I sounded
like I was accusing you of taking advantage of me.
I was in a state of shock, disoriented."
He gave her a small smile. "And at least we know
what it's like."
She nodded gravely. "On this casement, anyway.
How are your memories?"
"Of what? Of where we're from, of how we got
here, of the last ten minutes?"
Sounding aggrieved, she said, "No, of this Earth's
Kane. ''
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He frowned slightly, pondering, recollecting. After
a few moments he said, "Pretty bloody and brutal.
A single-minded fixation on advancement by any
means necessary." He did a poor job of disguising a
look of disgust. "I'm a ruthless, stone-cold bastard,
far worse than I ever was in Cobaltville. I'm a mur-
derer, a backstabber, a liar, a rapist and I'm the most
arrogant son of a bitch I ever met. What about you?"
Her eyes went distant and vague. "Fairly medio-
cre. I'm having an affair with a married colonel. I
don't like him, but I hope he can get me promoted.
He likes to hurt me. I'm very paranoid and depressed
much of the time."
"1 can't imagine why. So much for personal his-
tory. What about world history?"
They compared notes, matching their analogues'
memories with each other. The year was the same,
2199 A.D. by the old calendar, but that wasn't much
of a revelation. Their conscious minds, their identities
were not moving up or down along the hyperdimen-
sions but sideways.
Not surprisingly, Brigid's font of knowledge was
deeper than Kane's. His information was primarily
doctrine and dogma. Any of the mysteries or contra-
dictions of the world, his parallel self tended to dis-
count as not relevant to the priorities of his life.
Roamers and outlanders were essentially the same
disenfranchised groups as on their own world. These
versions were descendants of the generation who wit-
nessed the Nazi invasion and occupation of America.
They retreated from the cities, the villages, the urban
areas.
They struck a truce among the Indian tribes on
reservations and thus began a long, sporadic guerrilla
war. It wasn't an active resistance. The warriors were
too spread out, too poorly armed to do more than
stage ambushes and acts of terrorism every now and
then.
When the city-state of Calgary declared its inde-
pendence from the Reich six years before and exe-
cuted the viceroy, a horde of Roamers massed on the
Canadian border to help repel the inevitable invasion
force from America.
Whether the Reich had been victorious or not was
still an open question. After a dozen skirmishes and
two halfway major engagements, the rebel armies
simply drifted away, melting into the wilderness, al-
lowing the Reich to reclaim Calgary, which was a
classic Pyrrhic victory, since the city had been burned
to the ground.
"Before we-" Kane cleared his throat self-
consciously. "Earlier you said something about the
Archon Directorate."
Brigid nodded, pacing the small room, face intent
"It's about the only halfway interesting memory I-
she has."
She stopped pacing, took a breath and declared,
"It's not much different than what Lakesh initially
told us months ago, back when we first arrived at
Cerberus. Secret societies that flourished in Germany
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after World War I, like the Vqi and the Thule, were
in contact with the Archons-their liaison was an en-
tity called Balam."
"Why am I not surprised," Kane put in dourly.
"These societies struck a pact with the Archons.
In exchange for superior technology, Germany con-
quered the world for them and hybridized much of
the human population. Their agenda seems to be the
same as on our own Earth-that their race's genes
live on.
"Also in the file was a mention of a Colonel
Thrush, who apparently acted as the Directorate's
frontline observer. She-I-assumed that this colonel
was the ancestor of the field marshal."
Grimly, Kane said, "More than likely they're the
same man or thing. What about the Totality Concept?
Anything pertaining to gateway units or time-travel
experiments?'
She shook her head' 'No. I surmise that once Ger-
many was given the secret of atomic weapons and
they won the war, there was no need for it As we
know, the Totality Concept on our Earth was little
more than subterfuge, a fifty-year plan to bring about
a global holocaust."
''Which this casement avoided when the Third
Reich won World War n."
He sucked on a tooth reflectively. "There are a lot
of similarities between the two Earths, especially the
Purity Control Foundation and the obsession with eu-
genics. But what part does Thrush play in all of this?
I mean, everything has been accomplished, right? He
should have proclaimed himself Glorious Grand Em-
peror of the Universe by now, and not play solider."
"He doesn't operate like that," Brigid said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]