Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/60

 Pacific Coast as far as the Canadian Border; where the states of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada should have been, appeared the Mormon Republic. "This is our country, Congreve," whispered Brigham softly, "our Godgiven land."

Considerable territory in the Central States lay simply marked American Indian Federation. "A British protectorate," remarked the consul.

Congreve sat down abruptly. "I don't understand it," he breathed dazedly.

The Consul smiled sympathetically. "I'm afraid you have been suffering delusions, my boy. That Louisiana spy was using you as a defenseless tool."

Congreve looked up again. "Nonsense!" he snapped, suddenly defiant. "The United States of America, my country, is no delusion." But his eyes fell on that map and his spirits sagged again.

URING the next few days Congreve went around hopelessly befuddled. He had finally been forced to take everything about him at its face value. Things were so very obviously real. But it was the similarities rather than the differences which staggered him. For example, the homeland of the British, the seat of His Majesty's Government, was not known as England but Britton. Scotland, Wales, and Eire were on the map, but he soon found that there was nowhere near the amount of distinction among them that he had known. The money, with the crowned head of the King, the people, American-seeming, yet possessed of a certain oddness about them that indicated the man of a British Dominion, the soldiers and flags, and the papers especially the papers.

The news, their very make-up was the manner of London papers, though there did seem to be a degree of Americanization about them. And the headlines, such as: REVOLT SWEEPS FLORIDA, VASQUEZ OUT, or REPORT SECRET MANEUVERS ON MISSISSIPPI FRONTIER, and such like. And Europe was all garbled too. Everything was different, yet things were subtly as he had known them. Names were similar, sometime identical, as were fashions—these, however, never reached beyond similarity.

He looked into history. That, too, was markedly similar (and different). There were fundamentally the same migrations of people, the same general movements of nations, the same general wars. But their dates (relatively) were different.

There had been an American Revolution. It had broken out around 1778, the revolutionary forces had been commanded by a General from Virginia. But his name was Rawlins, not Washington. But the British had put down the rebels and executed their leaders. However, within a century economic forces had culminated in a dominionship for the colonies and from that time on they attained a degree of independence approaching, but not exactly like, the politico-economic and geographic independence of the United States he knew.

In 1800 an adventurer from Corsica had arisen in France and had gained power and set up an Empire. His name was Marinet and he looked a great deal like Napoleon. In many ways he was greater than Napoleon. But he ruled a longer time, and as one result the territory of Louisiana never left French control, becoming an Empire under a cousin