Brion Bayard, an American diplomat on assignment in Stockholm, Sweden,
attempts to evade a man following him, only to find himself kidnapped
by agents of the Imperium from a parallel world. Taken to the home
world of the Imperium, he is introduced to the aristocratic members of
the government, which rules most of the civilized world from London,
having been formed by the union of the British Empire, which included
America, and the German and Austro-Hungarian empires of Europe, with
neutral Sweden added as an impartial component of the mixture. He is
impressed by the commitment to duty of the Imperial officials he meets
and drawn to a particularly noble lady. Surprisingly, the Imperial
officials also include an analogue of Hermann Göring who – as Nazi
Germany never existed – is a fairly honest and decent person,
completely free of the crimes he would have committed in our history,
The main reason for Bayard's abduction, however, is that the Imperium
is under attack from another parallel world.
The Maxoni-Cocini drive, invented in the Imperium universe by Italian
scientists/experimenters Giulio Maxoni and Carlo Cocini at the end of
the 19th century, is the technology for traveling between worlds and
is extremely dangerous. Only if several sensitive parameters are tuned
exactly can disaster be avoided and the trans-world transportation
effect be achieved. Almost all worlds where its development is
attempted or even inadvertently stumbled upon are destroyed, often in
bizarre and horrible ways.
The collection of time lines where such disasters have occurred is
known as the Blight, and the rare ones where the Earth survives are
known as Blight Insulars, or BIs. BI-1 is the Imperium, where, by rare
chance, the Maxoni-Cocini drive was successfully developed. The
Imperium has become rich and powerful by trading with time lines
beyond the Blight. BI-3 is Bayard's home world, where the technology
never developed. The raids are coming from BI-2, a chaotic world where
Imperial Germany won the First World War but failed to consolidate its
victory, with a chaotic and highly destructive war continuing to sweep
the planet for generations. This world, which was not believed to have
the Maxoni-Cocini drive until it became the origin of increasingly
destructive raids, is currently ruled by a dictator, who happens to be
an analogue of... Brion Bayard.
Bayard undergoes extensive training to substitute for his double,
presumably after killing him, and take over the other government,
shutting off the raids. The plan falls through almost as soon as he
arrives in the new world. For some reason, almost nobody believes in
his impersonation. The reason becomes apparent when he meets the other
Bayard, who had lost both legs in a battle years before, but who has
concealed that fact from the public.
However, this other Bayard is not the evil dictator he is portrayed to
be. He greets his double as a brother, and tells him how, after being
a military officer dedicated to saving the soldiers under his command,
he became a dictator after the government he served disintegrated, and
undertook an effort to save what was left of shattered world. He is
based in Algiers, which was less damaged than other parts of the
world, and used the remnants of the former French Colonial Government
as the nucleus of his fledgling World Government. He knows nothing of
the raids on the Imperium. The two Bayards talk over a gourmet meal
and discover they have much in common, including similar histories.
Bayard the dictator is abruptly assassinated by the real conspirators,
who are working for power-hungry factions in the Imperium itself,
using stolen technology. Bayard himself is scheduled for a showy
execution, after suitable amputation surgery, to allow the conspiracy
to consolidate its hold on their world by publicly eliminating the
dictator. Eventually he is able to escape back to the Imperium and
expose the conspirators. Offered a chance to return to his Earth, or
become a high-ranking Imperium officer, he looks at the noble lady who
has become so important to him, and declares, "Home is where the heart
is."
