Ben Bova - Cafe Coup

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Ben Bova The Cafe Coup The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or do they? Two time travelers will find out for themselves in the latest

story from the prolific author of Mars, Brothers, and many other novels and

works of nonfiction. Paris was not friendly to Americans in the soft

springtime of 1922. The French didn't care much for the English, either, and

they hated the victorious Germans, of course. I couldn't blame them very

much. The Great War had been over for more than three years, yet Paris had

still not recovered its gaiety, its light and color, despite the hordes of

boisterous German tourists who spent so freely on the boulevards. More likely,

because of them. I sat in one of the crowded sidewalk cafes beneath a

splendid warm sun, waiting for my lovely wife to show up. Because of all the

Germans, I was forced to share my minuscule round table with a tall, gaunt

Frenchman who looked me over with suspicious eyes. "You are an American?" he

asked, looking down his prominent nose at me. His accent was worse than mine,

certainly not Parisian. "No," I answered truthfully. Then I lied, "I'm from

New Zealand." It was as far away in distance as my real birthplace was in

time. "Ah," he said with an exhalation of breath that was somewhere between a

sigh and a snort. "Your countrymen fought well at Gallipoli. Were you

there?" "No," I said. "I was too young." That apparently puzzled him.

Obviously I was of an age to fight in the Great War. But in fact, I hadn't

been born when the British Empire troops were decimated at Gallipoli. I hadn't

been born in the twentieth century at all. "Were you in the war?" I asked

needlessly. "But certainly. To the very last moment I fought the Boche." "It

was a great tragedy." "The Americans betrayed us," he muttered. My brows

rose a few millimeters. He was quite tall for a Frenchman, but painfully thin.

Half starved. Even his eyes looked hungry. The inflation, of course. It cost a

basketful of francs, literally, to buy a loaf of bread. I wondered how he

could afford the price of an aperitif. Despite the warm afternoon he had

wrapped himself in a shabby old leather coat, worn shiny at the elbows. From

what I could see there were hardly any Frenchmen in the cafe; mostly raucous

Germans roaring with laughter and heartily pounding on the little tables as

they bellowed for more beer. To my amazement, the waiters had learned to speak

German. "Wilson," my companion continued bitterly. "He had the gall to speak

of Lafayette." "I thought that the American president was the one who

arranged the armistice." "Yes, with his fourteen points. Fourteen daggers

plunged into the heart of France." "Really?" "The Americans should have

entered the war on our side! Instead they sat idly by and watched us bleed to

death while their bankers extorted every gram of gold we possessed." "But the

Americans had no reason to go to war," I protested mildly. "France needed

them! When their pitiful little colonies rebelled against the British lion,

France was the only nation to come to their aid. They owe their existence to

France, yet when we needed them they turned their backs on us." That was

largely my fault, although he didn't know it. I averted the sinking of the

Lusitania by the German U-boat. It took enormous energies, but my darling wife

arranged it so that the Lusitania was crawling along at a mere five knots that

fateful morning. I convinced Lieutenant Walther Schwieger, skipper of the

U-20, that it was safe enough to surface and hold the British liner captive

with the deck gun while a boarding party searched for the ammunition that I

knew the English had stored aboard her. The entire affair was handled with

great tact and honor. No shots were fired, no lives were lost, and the 123

American passengers arrived safely in Liverpool with glowing stories of how

correct, how chivalrous, the German U-boat sailors had been. America remained

neutral throughout the Great War. Indeed, a good deal of anti-British

sentiment swept the United States, especially the midwest, when their

newspapers reported that the British were transporting military contraband in

secret and thus risking the lives of American passengers. "Well," I said,

beckoning to the waiter for two more Pernods, "the war is over and we must

face the future as best we can." "Yes," said my companion gloomily. "I

agree." One group of burly Germans was being particularly obnoxious, singing

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bawdy songs as they waved their beer glasses to and fro, slopping the foaming

beer on themselves and their neighboring tables. No one complained. No one

dared to say a word. The German army still occupied much of France. My

companion's face was white with fury. Yet even he restrained himself. But I

noticed that he glanced at the watch on his wrist every few moments, as if he

were expecting someone. Or something. If anyone had betrayed France, it was

I. The world that I had been born into was a cesspool of violence and hate,

crumbling into tribal savagery all across the globe. Only a few oases of

safety existed, tucked in remote areas far from the filthy, disease-ridden

cities and the swarms of ignorant, vicious monsters who raped and murdered

until they themselves were raped and murdered. Once they discovered our

solar-powered city, tucked high in the Sierra Oriental, I knew that the end

was near. Stupidly, they attacked us, like a wild barbarian horde. We

slaughtered them with laser beams and heat-seeking bullets. Instead of driving

them away, that only whetted their appetite. Their survivors laid siege to

our mountaintop. We laughed, at first, to think their pitiful handful of

ragged ignoramuses could overcome our walled city, with its high-tech weaponry

and endless energy from the sun. Yet somehow they spread the word to others of

their kind. Day after day we watched their numbers grow, a tattered,

threadbare pack of rats surrounding us, watching, waiting until their numbers

were so huge they could swarm us under despite our weapons. They were united

in their bloodlust and their greed. They saw loot and power on our mountaintop

and they wanted both. At night I could see their campfires down below us, like

the red eyes of rats watching and waiting. Our council was divided. Some

urged that we sally out against the besiegers, attack them and drive them

away. But it was already too late for that. Their numbers were far too large,

and even if we drove them away they would return, now that they knew we

existed. Others wanted to flee into space, to leave Earth altogether and

build colonies off the planet. We had the technology to build and maintain the

solar power satellites, they pointed out. It was only one technological step

farther to build habitats in space. But when we put the numbers through a

computer analysis, it showed that to build a habitat large enough to house us

all permanently would be beyond our current resources -- and we could not

enlarge our resource base as long as we were encircled by the barbarians. I

had worked on the time translator since my student days. It took enormous

energy to move objects through time, far too much for all of us to escape that

way. Yet I saw a possibility of hope. If I could find a nexus, a pivotal

point in time, perhaps I could change the world. Perhaps I could alter events

to such an extent that this miserable world of terror and pain would dissolve,

disappear, and a better world replace it. I became obsessed with the

possibility. "But you'll destroy this world," my wife gasped, shocked when I

finally told her of my scheme. "What of it?" I snapped. "Is this world so

delightful that you want it to continue?" She sank wearily onto the lab

bench. "What will happen to our families? Our friends? What will happen to

us?" "You and I will make the translation. We will live in an earlier, better

time." "And the others?" I shrugged. "I don't know. The mathematics isn't

clear. But even if they disappear, the world that replaces them in this time

will be better than the world we're in now." "Do you really think

so?" "We'll make it better!" The fools on the council disagreed, naturally.

No one had translated through time, they pointed out. The energy even for a

preliminary experiment would be prohibitively high. We needed that energy for

our weapons. None of them believed I could change a thing. They weren't

afraid that they would be erased from existence, their world line snuffed out

like a candle flame. No, in their blind ignorance they insisted that an

attempt at time translation would consume so much energy that we would be left

defenseless against the besieging savages outside our walls. "The savages

will no longer exist," I told them. "None of this world line will exist, once

I've made the proper change in the world line." They voted me down. They

would rather face the barbarians than give up their existence, even if it

meant a better world would replace the one they knew. I accepted their

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BenBovaTheCafeCoupThemorethingschange,themoretheystaythesame.Ordothey?TwotimetravelerswillfindoutforthemselvesinthelateststoryfromtheprolificauthorofMars,Brothers,andmanyothernovelsandworksofnonfiction.PariswasnotfriendlytoAmericansinthesoftspringtimeof1922.TheFrenchdidn'tcaremuchfortheEnglish,eithe...

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Ben Bova - Cafe Coup

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