Waiting inside the hollow speaker's platform with Lar Waffing for the rally to begin, Feric was filled with an almost unbearable elation; this mass meeting with its announcement of his candidacy would be the climax of the most exciting week he had yet spent in Heldon. His first visit to the greatest city in the world, with its heroic architecture and advanced technology, was thrilling enough for its own sake, but, more to the point at this juncture, Heldhime was in every way the center of power in Heldon. Here the Council sat, and here were headquartered the government ministries, the Star Command, and most of the great industrial concerns of the High Republic. The most advanced scientific research and production facilities were in Heldhime. The reigns of power were here to be grasped.
Waning had introduced Feric in high economic circles, as well as to important members of the Army Star Command. Many of the industrialists had poured funds into the Party coffers, and to a man the generals had proven to be opponents of the Universalists and the Doms; many openly admitted that they longed for the day when they would be ordered to crush these vermin. For his part, Feric left them with the solemn promise that when he became ruler of Heldon, they would have their wish and then some.
Further, Feric's fame had come to the capital before him, and little crowds of cheering citizens formed around him fhe instant he showed his face in public. Officers he had never seen greeted him with enthusiastic Party salutes. When he attended the theater, he was given a three-minute standing ovation by the audience as he entered his box.
Thus he awaited the commencement of the rally with a 105
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sense of keen anticipation and overwhelming self-confidence.
As the public television coverage commenced, Lar Waning, massively impressive in his black Party uniform and red swastika cloak, shook his hand for luck, and then puffed up the wooden stairway, appearing on the speaker's platform to an avalanche of massed cheering and saluting.
The hour of destiny had come! At this very instant, Bogel would be speaking in Walder's Am Square, where thousands would be gathered about the public television receiver to hear Feric's speech. Similar mass torchlight rallies were being held around public television receivers in every city, town, and village in Heldon, and officials of the Sons of the Swastika, great and small, were at this very moment preparing to announce him.
Waffing stepped up to the microphone and gestured for silence; in a moment a great hush filled the packed stadium. Waffing's introduction was surprisingly brief and to the point.
"Sons of the Swastika, fellow patriots, true Helder everywhere, I present the Supreme Commander of the Sons of the Swastika, our great and glorious leader, Peric Jaggarl"
At this, the scene in Heldhime Stadium became pure bedlam. The great crowd seemed determined to shout itself hoarse, while the sea of torches on the arena floor tossed madly, and the SS men in the great black swastika formation saluted again and again in perfect and fervent unison. Slowly, Feric climbed the stairs and emerged onto the speaker's platform and into this awe-inspiring universe of name and cheering and massed saluting. At the sight of this heroic figure in his tight-fitting black-and-chrome uniform, his red swastika cloak trailing majestically behind him, the Great Truncheon of Held secured to his studded leather belt, twin red lightning-bolts emblazoned on each of his high black boots, the enthusiasm of the great throng reached a new fever pitch of frenzy.
Feric clapped Waning on the shoulder as he departed and then stood alone on the white platform at the hub of the great black swastika gleaming in the fiery sea of massed torches. He was totally surrounded, engulfed, by cheering, saluting, arm-waving Helder, the focus of the souls of thousands of people he could see all around him and millions more waiting for his word throughout the length and breadth of the land. The roar of the crowd was like 106
the legendary heaven-shattering sky thunder of the ancients in intensity and magnificence, a sound that enveloped Feric's being in mythic grandeur.
Standing at the exact focal point in space and time of this turning point in history, his soul the center of a sea of patriotic fire, Feric felt the power of cosmic destiny flow through him and fill his being with the racial will of the Helder people. In a very real sense, he was the pinnacle of the evolutionary force; when he spoke, he would advance the course of human evolution toward a new height of racial purity by an act of his own will. Through his lips would speak the collective voice of true humanity. At the moment of such an act, he was the Party, he was the racial will; he was Heldon.
