Dictatorship -- Fiction; Inventors -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
The sun of that forgotten day sank behind banks of purple cloud, and as
lights glowed throughout the village and from the windows of the house,
the watcher from the future remembered from old stories the comfort
and intimacy that would be within its walls. He thought of the radiant
golden girl whose eyes caressed her companion, the girl whose bearing
had the freedom and intelligence which now had almost passed from the
women of the world, because like the men they knew themselves absolute
slaves of the despot in the tower. The Master felt an irrational surge
of rage toward the girl, long since dead, whose living body he could
behold in the time screen. What right had she to look like that, with
open, fearless eyes, oblivious of his power?
He slammed the visor down on his desk with a vicious curse. "Technician
Heidkamp, at once," he snarled. In a moment Heidkamp, gravely saluting,
appeared on the visiscreen.
"Heidkamp, you spoke of a time travelling machine. Can you build me
one?"
"That is a far more complex and difficult matter than the building of
the visor, your Excellency. The formulae are not yet complete...."
"In thirty days you must build me a conveyance to bring a woman to me
from 1940, alive and unharmed."
"But your Excellency! The formulae, the experiments, the safety
factors!" Heidkamp's imperturbability for once was shaken at the
Master's preposterous demand.
The Master's breath came fast with rage. "Have you forgotten your
lesson of this afternoon? If you cannot carry out my instructions, the
execution of the weather experts will prove child's play compared to
the tortures I shall devise for you. Report at thirteen tomorrow."
He touched the screen into darkness, and slept at his desk until the
morning sun was high over the city.
The rest of the morning he devoted to conferences with his captains in
various parts of the world, in regard to their keeping of the Peace.
His secret police were everywhere, and were themselves watched by
spies, who underwent periodic hypnotic examinations in the Master's
presence, lest they should be disloyal. So perfect was the organization
that nowhere could a man say a word against the Master or his Peace and
be safe from his vengeance.
But of late that vengeance had been withheld as its wielder watched the
growth of a revolutionary society, the New Day, whose hope spread among
his subjects swift as fungus thru rotting wood. They were building
power for his overthrow and for establishment of the democratic world
state which he had so falsely promised, and the Master was aware that
they were the most brilliant and determined antagonists he had known
since the establishment of his Peace. They had found ways to screen
their thoughts against his detectors, but no way to keep his agents out
of their organization, so that his spies sat in their high councils and
betrayed them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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