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Challenge: Stronger Soviet Union at the End of World War II

There Will Always Be An England (part 5)

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Raymond Oakes, Ray to his friends, paced in the waiting room at six in the morning on February 25, 1955 as his wife had their first son.  The world remembers that day for a different sun, the brief one the Nazis created on a depopulated island off the German Kongo.

 Ray didn't hear about the German-made sun, the first of three that blossomed within the next month, for several hours. The crowd around the TV caught his eye, but he ignored it, engaged in his own worries. He discovered what had happened when his pacing took him near the waiting room's bulky black and white TV. The TV showed the mushroom cloud and said President Dewey would address the nation in the evening.

Ray missed the speech because he finally got a chance to see his wife and his incredibly tiny, incredibly fragile son. Nobody offered to let him hold the little boy and he didn't feel any urge to do so. I would drop it...him.

The doctor told him to get home and get some sleep. He drove his three-year-old Studebaker sedan to an empty ranch-style house in the Misty Ridge subdivision, upper-middle class and recently torn from a cornfield. Raymond hadn't thought much about the German atomic bomb blast at the hospital or on the way home.  Another piece of German bombast, like their satellites and space station and moon base.  The Fuhrer was on TV when he got home, looking old and paunchy in his gaudy uniform as he spoke and the interpreter passed on the words, touting the new German weapons as a demonstration of German power, but also a symbol of the Reich’s desire for peace.

How does that even make sense?  Raymond wished the fat German a massive coronary, but Herman Goering droned on.  The commentators pulled back from the old Nazi’s speech.  Douglas Edwards of CBS News came on.  “This just in: British Prime Minister Eden has announced that the British Commonwealth has developed the same technology the Germans used for their super-bomb, and will be testing it in Australia within the month.  French Premier Faure has announced a similar test.  Neither Italy’s King Vittorio Emanuele IV nor Josef Stalin, the increasingly reclusive General Secretary of the Soviet Union, have had any comments so far.”

News anchor Douglas Edwards summarized President Dewey's speech. A lot of nothing. Blah blah concerned this new technology will escalate tensions in Europe. Blah blah confirms the wisdom of US policies of avoiding entangling European alliances. Blah blah our technology is the best in the world. Except in ship-building, rockets, and now super-bombs. Blah blah the power of the new German bomb is unknown, and may or may not represent a breakthrough in power. Except that it's obvious from the pictures that it does unless they managed to fake the size of the explosion.

Ray's engineering mind did a order of magnitude calculation. He went back over his figures a couple of times, writing them down on the back of an ink-stained receipt, and finally figuring that he had to be misplacing a decimal point. He tossed the paper on his desk.

Nazis. A bunch of bloody-handed idiots. And now they ruin my son's special day. "Daniel Oakes." He said the name out loud. There was still some question as to whether that would be the little boy's final name. Ray liked the sound of it. Jenny, his wife, was less enthusiastic.

Ray didn't quite know what to make of the new German bomb. Like most Americans, he worried in a background way about the continuing tensions in Europe, but also insulated from it, at least in his own mind, by the decades of alarms that seemed inevitably headed toward another Great War, but which never quite got there, not in the nearly forty years since the guns fell silent in 1918.

The oceans also provided psychological insulation, though not as much as they once did. German (and French, British and Italian) satellites passed over the US daily, advertising their owners' global reach. The German dominance of shipping worried Raymond when he thought about it, which wasn't often. German airliners in South and Central America also worried him, though there the US proved itself capable of kicking Nazi butt technologically and economically.

Ray didn't often worry about the kind of world his son would grow up in. The Great Depression with its decades of misery was part of his parents' world, inescapable in his childhood.  It shaped his view of the future, but finally become a thing of bad memories and political scare tactics over ten years ago.

He was concerned that the US might be left behind as the Europeans fanned out over the solar system. The Dewey Administration seemed oblivious to the potential of rockets, though they paid lip service to a US space program and grudgingly accepted the funds that Congress pushed on them. The big aerospace companies had private programs, as did the big three auto companies, but they were dwarfed by the big European programs.

Ray didn't intend to fall asleep in front of the TV, but he did. The black dial phone woke him late that evening. He heard a familiar voice. "Raymond, we have a job for you. "

"I have a job, and a son. Daniel Oakes." I hope.  I love that name.

"Congratulations.  You’re doing well as a commercial pilot too, I hear.”

"Very well.  I’m happy.  I’m looking forward to time with my son and my wife.  You aren’t part of my plans.”

"The Germans aren’t part of my plans or your plans,” the familiar voice said.  “But there they are.  Their rockets can send satellites over the United States.  And now they have super bombs.  I’m sure you calculated the power to weight ratio.”

"The bomb is too heavy to fit on a rocket,” Raymond said.  “We’ve stayed out of Europe’s problems.  The Germans don’t worry me.”  His voice betrayed the uncertainty that lurked in the back of his mind.  He felt a fierce surge of protectiveness toward his son, still untouched by his hands and only glimpsed for a few minutes. Careful.  That’s what he wants.  A decision made from fear.

"It will certainly fit in one of their bombers.  And are you sure they won’t make it smaller?  Maybe not in a month, but in a year or five years.  You're in this for the long haul now.  That's what having a kid is all about, isn't it?"

Ray leaned his head back, stared at the white-tiled ceiling and thought about a little boy Daniel! playing in a crib, taking his first steps, saying his first words, tossing a soft oversized ball to his dad, all in the shadow of Goring's rockets and the big German jet bombers coming over the North Pole, equipped with the new bomb.

"There isn’t a lot I can do about it," Ray said.  "They have this super bomb and we don't.  It's a good thing we stay out of European politics."

"Except that we don't have any friends in Europe, and if Germany decides to put a couple of battleships off Brazil or Mexico we'll have to keep those bombs and missiles in mind when we decide what to do about it.  Or if Goring and company screw up the German economy beyond redemption, do you think they won't come to us and politely but firmly tell us that cut-rate loans will be necessary, with their super bombs sitting at the negotiating table, with the threat of burning US cities sitting in the back of everybody's minds?"

"What do want me to do?". That wasn't something he wanted to ask, not exhausted, not on this special day.  Not with Daniel's life just starting.  He asked it anyway, his voice resigned.

The voice at the other end of the line, the voice from another life, one before wife or Daniel, didn’t change.  No hint of triumph.  No relief.  No emotion at all.  “Meet me at Eagle Park.  Nine tomorrow morning.  Call in sick to work.  You should be done in time for work Monday.  Oh, and congratulations.  I’ll have a cigar for you tomorrow.”  Those last words sounded warm and sincere, an oddity given their source.

Ray sat staring at the receiver as the dial tone grew angry. Finally he put it firmly back on its battleship-solid black base. Thoughts of Daniel and his wife clung to a corner of his brain as he shifted to a rusty but still solid set of habits. He pulled a box off the top shelf of his closet and extracted a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol, along with a magazine and a box of ammo. He checked the mechanism, then paused and stared at the weapon. He saw the nearly hairless, fragile face of his son, still red from the trauma of birth in the air between him and the weapon. Finally he filled the magazine. For you, Daniel. I hope.

Posted on Feb 4, 2012.

 

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What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.