So in fifteen minutes the Josef would go down. And from him it would bring only cheers, not tears.
But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly. You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too short a period to develop it in.
"Message for you, Captain."
It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and to the point.
Attention Captain United States Vessel Oahu:
Help urgently requested. If aid not granted immediately, all is lost.
Constantin Simenovich,
Captain, People's Warship Josef Dzugashvili.
He had a brief mental picture of a young man lying in the shambles of Berlin calling out the same words. And what had he received?
He buried the thought.
The detached viewpoint. Political systems evolved, he thought, they never remained the same. The French Revolution had spawned a thousand human monsters and the blood had run in the streets. But out of it all had come a democratic nation. And a thousand years from now, what would the Combine be? A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history.