Her gratitude he endured with soldier's courage, but as Fant escorted her back to her home in Sennar, the knight swung round to face Portolis with fierce accusation. "You foresaw this!"

But the mage shook his head. "Not so," he said gravely. "That all might not turn out as you had wished, yes, I saw that, but needed scant magic to do so. It was pikestaff plain your love was not returned, else what need had you of me? Yet who could have foretold such generosity and greatness of soul as was displayed by the lady Dianora in freely offering that which she had no reason to give but to honor a word she had thought unfulfillable, or by yourself in willingly abandoning a goal you had unswervingly sought and beggared yourself to achieve? I own I am baffled as to how to comport myself in the face of such unselfishness. For your heart I have no salve save the healing hand of time, but out of gratitude for what you have taught me of magnanimity, you shall find when you return to your home the seven thousand seven hundred seven and seventy kraybecks of gold you devoted to this enterprise. I think, Sir Rand, you shall prosper to the end of your days."

The knight tried to decline this unexpected boon, but the mage Portolis was insistent, maintaining that any lesser action would leave him meanspirited in his own eyes. Not much later he departed the town of Sennar, never to return, but his magic stayed on. Forever after, the garden he had brought into being was sere and bare in summer, but bore abundantly when everywhere else frost held sway.

Nor was he a mean prophet, as Rand soon became one of the wealthiest men in the town of Sennar. His name became known all through the Empire of Kar V'Shem, for there was no work of philanthropy in which he failed to play a major role. In time he took a wife, and it is not to be doubted he loved her very much indeed. But until the end of his long and illustrious life, each year's Midwinter Day found him in Portolis's enchanted garden: the fruits thereof were out of season, but no denying they were sweet.

Alternate history stories are not really about the alternate worlds in which their authors set them. They're about our own world, as seen through the funhouse mirror of a changed past. They're thought experiments, testing the parameters of ideas in frameworks different from our own. "The Last Article" is an example of the type: a confrontation of extremes which, in our world, never met?and just as well, too.

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. Mohandas Gandhi

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The tank rumbled down the Rajpath, past the ruins of the Memorial Arch, toward the India Gate. The gateway arch was still standing, although it had taken a couple of shell hits in the fighting before New Delhi fell. The Union Jack fluttered above it.

British troops lined both sides of the Rajpath, watching silently as the tank rolled past them. Their khaki uniforms were filthy and torn; many wore bandages. They had the weary, past-caring stares of beaten men, though the Army of India had fought until flesh and munitions gave out.

The India Gate drew near. A military band, smartened up for the occasion, began to play as the tank went past. The bagpipes sounded thin and lost in the hot, humid air.

A single man stood waiting in the shadow of the Gate. Field Marshal Walther Model leaned down into the cupola of the Panzer IV. "No one can match the British at ceremonies of this sort," he said to his aide.

Major Dieter Lasch laughed, a bit unkindly. "They've had enough practice, sir," he answered, raising his voice to be heard over the flatulent roar of the tank's engine.

"What is that tune?" the field marshal asked. "Does it have a meaning?"

"It's called 'The World Turned Upside Down,'" said Lasch, who had been involved with his British opposite number in planning the formal surrender. "Lord Cornwallis's army musicians played it when he yielded to the Americans at Yorktown."

"Ah, the Americans." Model was for a moment so lost in his own thoughts that his monocle threatened to slip from his right eye. He screwed it back in. The single lens was the only thing he shared with the clich?d image of a high German officer. He was no lean, hawk-faced Prussian. But his rounded features were unyielding, and his stocky body sustained the energy of his will better than the thin, dyspeptic frames of so many aristocrats. "The Americans," he repeated. "Well, that will be the next step, won't it? But enough. One thing at a time."

The panzer stopped. The driver switched off the engine. The sudden quiet was startling. Model leaped nimbly down. He had been leaping down from tanks for eight years now, since his days as a staff officer for the IV Corps in the Polish campaign.

The man in the shadows stepped forward, saluted. Flashbulbs lit his long, tired face as German photographers recorded the moment for history. The Englishman ignored cameras and cameramen alike. "Field Marshal Model," he said politely. He might have been about to discuss the weather.

Model admired his sangfroid. "Field Marshal Auchinleck," he replied, returning the salute and giving Auchinleck a last few seconds to remain his equal. Then he came back to the matter at hand. "Field Marshal, have you signed the instrument of surrender of the British Army of India to the forces of the Reich?"

"I have," Auchinleck replied. He reached into the left blouse pocket of his battledress, removed a folded sheet of paper. Before handing it to Model, though, he said, "I should like to request your permission to make a brief statement at this time."

"Of course, sir. You may say what you like, at whatever length you like." In victory, Model could afford to be magnanimous. He had even granted Marshal Zhukov leave to speak in the Soviet capitulation at Kuibishev, before the marshal was taken out and shot.

"I thank you." Auchinleck stiffly dipped his head. "I will say, then, that I find the terms I have been forced to accept to be cruelly hard on the brave men who have served under my command."

"That is your privilege, sir." But Model's round face was no longer kindly, and his voice had iron in it as he replied, "I must remind you, however, that my treating with you at all under the rules of war is an act of mercy for which Berlin may yet reprimand me. When Britain surrendered in 1941, all Imperial forces were also ordered to lay down their arms. I daresay you did not expect us to come so far, but I would be within my rights in reckoning you no more than so many bandits."

A slow flush darkened Auchinleck's cheeks. "We gave you a bloody good run, for bandits."

"So you did." Model remained polite. He did not say he would ten times rather fight straight-up battles than deal with the partisans who to this day harassed the Germans and their allies in occupied Russia. "Have you anything further to add?"

"No, sir, I do not." Auchinleck gave the German the signed surrender, handed him his sidearm. Model put the pistol in the empty holster he wore for the occasion. It did not fit well; the holster was made for a Walther P38, not this man-killing brute of a Webley and Scott. That mattered little, though?the ceremony was almost over.

Auchinleck and Model exchanged salutes for the last time. The British field marshal stepped away. A German lieutenant came up to lead him into captivity.

Major Lasch waved his left hand. The Union Jack came down from the flagpole on the India Gate. The swastika rose to replace it.

Lasch tapped discreetly on the door, stuck his head into the field marshal's office. "That Indian politician is here for his appointment with you, sir."