The Battle for Terra Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

you."
    "Colonel Aldridge expects you at oh-eight hundred tomorrow, Major—level five, turn right. Office with the flags out front. Officers' mess is level three—just follow the herd."
    "I will. Thank you, Captain."
    "Good night," said Grady, pulling the door shut. His foosteps receded down the hall.
    On the whole, thought John, slipping into the too-hard bed, I'd rather be with Zahava, in that little villa near Caesarea.
    He dreamed of reporting to the CO's office, where a long line of John Harrisons waited, each dressed as a UC major. An argument broke out as to who was the real John Harrison—an argument growing louder until the office flew open and Guan-Sharick-the-blonde stepped out, wearing a UC colonel's uniform. The S'Cotar looked at them, then threw back its head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

3
    It might all have ended much sooner, differently, had Hitler survived Wolfsschanze. Stalin's refusal to ratify the Basel Accord and his subsequent catastrophic use of biological weapons, uniting Germany and the Allies against Russia, would not have occurred had von Stauffenberg's briefcase been less well placed. The war would have been fought to its bleak conclusion, surely no later than mid-1946.
    — John Harrison The Second World War: Key Variables and Consequences (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, submitted to the Faculty of History, McGill University)
     
    '' 'Reassigned Urban Command by order Lieutenant General Quentin Harwood, Director, Central Ingelligence.' " Colonel Aldridge unhooked his wire-rim bifocals, setting them down on John's file. "You must have stomped some big, hairy toes, Major. You were evidently very much in the general's favor, not long ago. The CIA did send you for your doctorate."
    Tall, thin—gaunt, really, thought Harrison—Aldridge was a man of strange contrasts. The boxy white office was too small for his awards and memorabilia: diplomas (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., all history, all Harvard); a lacquer-framed Chinese calligraphy (Lao-tzu, 6th century B.C.E.), and a faded black-and-white photograph of a mixed group of U.S. Army and Wehrmacht officers beside a blasted T-32 tank. This last was captioned "The Ukraine. Summer, 1949."
    "The general didn't care for certain arguments in my dissertation, sir. I was ordered here the day after receiving my diploma. My phone calls to the Agency aren't—weren't returned." John was fairly certain, from the way Guan-Sharick had structured everything, that General Harwood had long been replaced by one of the Illusion Master's transmutes.
    "You're in good company, Major," said Aldridge. "Urban Command has few volunteers. Everyone starts fresh here—killers, rapists, deserters, intellectuals. Do your four years well and you'll get a good posting.
    "Sit, please."
    John sat.
    "You know, Major," said Aldridge, leaning back in his chair, "the longer I'm at this job, the more I flirt with Marxism."
    Aldridge's face held John: a craggy, weathered New England patriarchal face, seemingly lifted from a John Singleton Copley canvas and set atop the long, black-uniformed body. Colonel's eagles, silver star with oak leaf cluster and the Wehrmacht liaison ribbon lent the final incongruities. James Lowell Munroe Aldridge, soldier, scholar, Yankee; gauleiter of Boston, military governor of what remained of the Athens of America. An iconoclastic Boston Brahmin, Guan-Sharick had said of Aldridge.
    "How's that, sir?" asked John.
    "I come more and more to believe in economic deter minism, Major," said the colonel. "Why do you think anarchy's triumphed in so many of our cities? Why do you think we're here, an encircled garrison defending the remnants of civilization in the urban enclaves?" Soft, cultured, a hint of steel beneath, his was a voice made for the Socratic method.
    There'd been a chilling note in Guan-Sharick's briefing about the consequences of free speech. John answered carefully. "The War, Colonel. We've never recovered from the War."
    "The German War, the