The Iron Dream Read Online Free Page B

doggedly.
    "Of course I understand! Don't you understand that you're under the influence of a Dominator?"
    For a moment, the officer looked Feric square in the eye. Feric channeled every ounce of will he could muster into his gaze. A spark from his steely blue eyes seemed to jump the gap for a moment and glow fitfully in the pupils of the Helder officer.
    "Surely ... surely," the fellow muttered with a certain uneasiness, "surely you must be mistaken? . . ."
    At that moment, a chime rang inside the duplicator, and Feric's certificate dropped into the hopper. The sound caused the Helder officer to look away from Feric's eyes and Feric could sense that the fragile effect of the psychic counterforce he had been so strenuously projecting had been shattered by this caprice of circumstance.
    The officer took the certificate from the hopper and handed it to Feric. "By accepting this certificate, Trueman Jaggar," he said with perfunctory ceremony, "you accept all the rights and responsibilities of a citizen of the High Republic of Heldon and a certified true man. You may participate in the public life of Heldon, vote for and hold office, serve in the military forces of the High Republic, leave and enter the fatherland at will. You may not marry or propagate without the written permission of the Ministry of Genetic Purity, under pain of death. Knowing this, and of your own free will, do you accept citizenship in the High Republic of Heldon?"
    Feric stared at the certificate which lay hard and smooth and glossy in his hand. On its clear plastic surface was engraved his name and date of certification, his fingertip patterns, his color photograph, and the signature of Dr. Heimat. This elegant artifact was suitably embellished with ornate scrollwork and swastikas in red and black which lent it a proper dignity of appearance. For years, even before his coming to manhood, Feric had 27
    dreamed of the moment when this sacred document would be his proudest possession. Now his appreciation of this moment was ruined by the defilement of the stringent genetic standards without which the certificate became a mean-ingless bit of plastic and pigment.
    "Surely you are not going to reject Helder citizenship at this point?" the Helder officer said, displaying for the first time a hint of emotion, albeit nothing nobler than petty bureaucratic annoyance.
    "I accept citizenship," Feric muttered, tucking the document carefully into his strong leather wallet which was firmly secured to his horsehide belt. As he strode toward the bridge entrance, he vowed that he would cling to this sacred privilege with more tenacity than this lot of sorry specimens had. He would avenge this outrage a thousandfold before he would let go of the Doms. A millionfold would still be insufficient.
    2
    A cool breeze swirled Feric's blue cloak about him as he stepped out onto the uncovered bridge over the Ulm.
    The bridge bed consisted of wooden walkways on either side of a stone roadway, both wood and stone worn to polished smoothness by the passage of countless leather soles and latex wheels. The gentle wind blew across from Heldon, carrying the pleasant odor of the Emerald Wood to Feric's nostrils, helping to clear away the stink of the customs fortress and, for that matter, of all Borgravia.

    With powerful strides, Feric set out across the bridge toward his destiny in the High Republic. A few steamers passed by him roaring smoke, clanging iron, hissing steam, but otherwise traffic seemed quite light, and the only pedestrians visible were perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him up the walkway. As a consequence, Feric was able to wrap himself in solitude as he walked, and contemplate what lay before him.
    What lay before him was, in short, all that really 28
    mattered in the world: the High Republic of Heldon, in which the future of true humanity resided, if the true human genotype were to have a future at all. The states bordering the fatherland were comparatively rich in human