Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Petra Loewenstein had been working on the project for only four weeks, but she had already taken a strong dislike to Colonel Schlacht, a dislike which she felt was heartily reciprocated. This fact alone was sufficient to make her contemplate his expected reaction to her report at their impending meeting with less than enthusiasm.

  Many factors accounted for her dislike of the S.S. Colonel. His initial reaction to her transfer from Dr. Mengele’s staff at Auschwitz had perhaps set the tone for their subsequent relationship. Schlacht had been less than happy to see her when she reported to his office. There was, he had later confided to Festhaller within range of Petra’s hearing, a decidedly ‘un-Aryan’ quality to the woman, and he was less than pleased with the fact that she was indeed a woman, and a civilian as well. He had looked at her papers with an irritated meticulousness as if he were seeking an excuse to send her back to Mengele at the camp in Poland. He had found none. Himmler’s order directed Mengele to transfer a chemist of his choice to Schlacht’s project, and Petra Loewenstein was the chemist of his choice. "Loewenstein," Schlacht had muttered, his eyes fixed on the transfer order. "Your name sounds suspiciously Jewish. And ‘Loewenstein’ instead of … "

  "Yes, no umlaut over the ‘o’," she finished for him, and then enunciated the spelling variations of every subsequent proper noun. "Loewenstein, not Löwenstein. I am a Rhinelander, Herr Colonel. I was born in the town of Arweiler in the RhineValley…"

  "What does that have to do with…"

  "…and as you probably know…"

  "Fräulein!" Schlacht said angrily, "I do not appreciate being interrupted!"

  "Neither do I!" Petra replied in a cold, even tone. They glared at each other for a moment. "As I was saying, I am from Arweiler in the Rhineland. Many Rhinelanders use the ‘oe’ instead of the ‘o-umlaut.’ Dr. Goebbels, for example, instead of Dr. Göbbels," she said, spelling both forms of the propaganda minister’s last name.

  Schlacht drummed his fingers on his desk with irritation. "The French influence, I suppose." She shrugged. "But your name, regardless of how your spell it…it sounds Jewish…"

  "And yet it is not," Petra had responded. "My racial credentials are there with my orders. I am an Aryan, Herr Colonel."

  Schlacht had leaned back in his chair to appraise her. She was shorter than average though by no means diminutive, and darker of complexion than most Germans. She had a somehow Latin cast to her features, though Schlacht knew that her records verified her German ancestry. He glanced down at her papers. Petra Loewenstein, born Arweiler, December 16, 1918, twenty-six years old. Both parents deceased. No living relatives of record. Bachelor’s degree in Biology, 1937, University of Tübingen. Graduate work in Chemistry, 1937 through 1939, University of Berlin. Employed by I.G. Farben as a staff chemist, 1939 to 1942. Volunteered for service on Mengele’s staff, 1942. Serving at Auschwitz since that time. Volunteered for transfer to S.S. headquarters in Budapest. "Why did you volunteer?" he asked.

  "I beg your pardon, Herr Colonel?"

  "Why did you volunteer for service on this project?"

  "I am a student of genetics," she had replied. "When Dr. Mengele explained to us what the project involved, I realized immediately the priceless opportunity which studying a werewolf offered to me. Such dramatic genetic mutation is..."

  "How did you know that we are studying a werewolf? That is a state secret." His cold blue eyes had been boring into her brown ones as he spoke.

  "No doubt it is, Herr Colonel," she had replied. "And inasmuch as Dr. Mengele is Reichsführer Himmler’s chief researcher in the field of genetics, the fact that he chose to share the secret with me should serve as further evidence of his trust in my abilities and my loyalty."

  Schlacht had not liked her response and the verbal jousting at which she seemed to be besting him, so he changed the subject. "Perhaps before we make your transfer final you should have the opportunity to examine the subject?"

  "As you wish, Colonel," she replied.

  "Follow me," he said and then led her from his office down the stairs toward the dungeon. He glanced at her as she reached into her purse and pulled out a surgical mask and surgical cap and began to put them on as they walked. "What they devil are those things for? You aren’t going to perform surgery. "

  "I wish merely to guard against the possibility of viral or bacterial infection." The two pieces of cloth covered her entire face but for a narrow slit at the level of the eyes.

  Schlacht had laughed. "This is ridiculous! The man doesn’t carry any infection!"

  Her eyes met his as she asked, "How do you know?"

  Schlacht, of course, did not know. The possibility that Kaldy was infected with something contagious had never occurred to him, and he was annoyed that the woman had thought of something which he had not.

  Petra reviewed that initial conversation in her mind as, file folder in hand, she approached Schlacht’s office, the onetime drawing room of the Magyar nobleman whose residence this palace had once been. She knew that the Colonel was not going to be pleased with her report, even as he had not been pleased with anything about her.

  She entered the anteroom and nodded a curt greeting to Vogel, who responded in kind. Schlacht’s adjutant was not certain as to the status of the woman, unsure whether she was his subordinate, equal or superior, and was content to regard her with the same neutral courtesy with which she regarded him. He rose from his desk as she entered the room and announced her presence to his chief, but afforded her only the most perfunctory bow as he opened the door to the office.

  Petra entered and allowed her gaze to move quickly around the room. All of the faces were familiar to her, and only one was welcome. She smiled slightly at Gottfried von Weyrauch, her daily companion in observing Kaldy, and he returned her smile. He is a kind man, she thought as she seated herself in the chair beside him, harmless and inoffensive. It was obvious to her that Weyrauch was also a weakling and in all likelihood a hypocrite as well, but that did not matter to her. He was not a threat to her, and thus he was acceptable; the added fact that he was friendly served merely to make her daily proximity to him easier to manage.

  Not so his wife. Petra and Louisa might have been expected to see in each other allies or companions or at least two people drawn together by the obviously common bond of gender, two women of the same approximate age in an armed, male, S.S. world; but Louisa had made no effort to hide her opinion of anyone who would willingly assist the Nazis in their racial experiments. To Louisa, Petra was the enemy, nothing more, and gender was an irrelevant factor. Petra, too strong to need a confidante and too devoted to her research to waste time fretting over Louisa’s dislike of her, reciprocated her cordial hostility.

  Of Festhaller she knew much, and desired to know no more. The scientists with whom she had been working at Auschwitz were educated men, dedicated to what they perceived as the necessary accumulation of scientific data; if the means by which knowledge grew was unfortunately cruel and at times repugnant to her, Petra at least knew that Mengele and the others were scientists. Festhaller, she had decided from the outset of their acquaintance, was an ignoramus. Her dislike of him was increased by the fact that whenever she and he were in close proximity to each other, he seemed to develop wandering hands. What made it even more distasteful was the fact that Festhaller seemed forever in need of a bath.

  And there, sitting behind his desk, arrogant, self-important, pathetically imperious, was Colonel Helmuth Schlacht. It was he who spoke first as the office door closed behind her. "So, Fräulein Loewenstein, at last! I hope that the scheduling of our meeting did not too greatly interfere with your free time?"

  She seated herself in the only empty chair in the room, between Weyrauch and Festhaller. "I am not late by choice, Herr Colonel," she said demurely. "Your secretarial staff was late making copies of the written reports that Dr. Weyrauch and I wish to share with you and Professor Festhaller." As she spoke she took several sheets of typed paper fromt
he file folder and passed them to the others. "We seem to have run up against some serious problems in our research, and Dr. Weyrauch and I decided that a full account ofour progress thus far should be made available to you."

  "Lack of progress, more like it," Festhaller muttered.

  "Yes, Herr Professor, I agree with your correction," Schlacht said, taking his copies of her report and dropping them down onto the desk unread. He turned to Weyrauch and said, "Gottfried, I cannot be here every minute of every day. I trusted you to supervise the research while I was in Romania, and I return to find nothing accomplished. Four full weeks, and absolutely nothing accomplished!"

  "That’s, uh, that’s not entirely correct, Helmuth," Weyrauch said in what for him was almost an act of open rebellion. "In any scientific research, the elimination of possibilities is as important as the discovery of..."

  "Don’t waste my time with excuses," Schlacht interrupted him. "You were never in the army, Gottfried. One of the cardinal principles of tactics is that an indefensible position should be abandoned." His cousin muttered something under her breath, and he thought that he heard the word ‘Stalingrad.’ "I beg your pardon, Louisa?" he asked coldly. "Did you say something?"

  "Nothing of any interest to you," she replied. "I wish to be excused from this meeting of yours, Helmuth. I don’t even know why you ordered me to attend."

  "You were invited, my dear, not ordered," he said, smiling, knowing full well that she had been given no choice in the matter. "And your presence is necessary. You have been spending quite a bit of time in conversation with the old Gypsy, and you may be doing some more conversing with him before this day is out."

  Weyrauch decided to make an attempt at bringing Schlacht’s attention back to the project, fearing that yet another bitter confrontation between his wife and her cousin might be dangerous. "If you would take a few moments to read the reports, Helmuth, you might..."

  "Summarize them for me," he ordered, his tone that of a busy man who did not have the time to read reports.

  "Well... very well." All the time spent writing these things, and he won’t even read them, Weyrauch thought sadly. "As you know, I have been spending my time observing Kaldy and Petra has been attempting chemical analyses of..."

  "Yes, yes, I know all that," Schlacht said impatiently. "What have been the results?"

  Weyrauch took a deep breath. "My observations have yielded some rather peculiar facts. Kaldy does not eat, he does not drink, he does not sleep. He neither urinates nor defecates. As far as I can see, he does not perspire."

  "That is impossible," Festhaller objected. "What you are referring to are basic functions, vital functions of the human body."

  "Precisely the point," Petra said. "Apparently, Kaldy is not a human being. And it goes farther than that. I have attempted to take blood samples for analysis, but I have been unable to force a hypodermic needle through his skin. I even had one of your guards attempt to force a needle into him, Herr Colonel, but his skin cannot be pierced."

  Schlachtleaned forward. "Is this true, Gottfried?"

  "Yes, entirely true," Weyrauch replied.

  "I also attempted to take some skin scrapings for microscopic examination," Petra went on. "There is always some dead skin on the surface of the body, flakes which can be scraped off with a scalpel, but not on Kaldy. His skin does not regenerate, his nails do not grow, his hair does not grow, which means of course..."

  "Yes, yes," Festhaller said excitedly. "It means that there is no cell decay, that his physical body is in a state of permanence."

  "Except on the nights of the full moon," Schlacht observed.

  "Yes," Petra said. "And I am certain that some biochemical connection exists. When the transformation occurs, every cell in his body must mutate, change form down to the molecular level; and at all other times, every cell of his body remains in stasis, unchanging, not even subject to the normal process of decay and replacement, not in need of nourishment or rest or waste evacuation."

  Schlacht nodded. "And his invulnerability? That too is connected?"

  "It must be," Petra replied. "We don’t know how. Logically, of course, I have to point out that a wound, a bullet hole or a stab wound or the destructive results of a bomb blast, involves cellular disruption. It may be that his body, for whatever reason, is so resistant to cellular disruption that the results are what we would have to regard as practical invulnerability."

  "But wait," Festhaller said. "We know that when he is in his animal state he is invulnerable, but in his human state..."

  "The same condition exists," Petra said. "The mutation seems to be self-contained, unaffected by any external factors."

  "Except moonlight." Schlacht said thoughtfully.

  "We don’t know that for sure," Petra said. "We don’t understand the chemical process involved, let alone the role of moonlight as a catalyst." She paused. "Inasmuch as moonlight is nothing more than reflected sunlight, logically it can have no effect whatsoever. If light were truly the catalyst, Kaldy should be in his wolf form whenever the sun shines. Light is light. Moonlight should not have any particular effect."

  "But it seems to have a most profound effect," Festhaller said, laughing slightly. "A most dramatic effect, if I recall correctly."

  Schlacht drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. "There are too many unanswered questions here," he muttered. "I dislike unanswered questions."

  "Herr Colonel," Petra said, "we are dealing here with a phenomenon unknown to science, something which has, just this moment, passed from the realm of myth into the light of scientific inquiry. We cannot hope to understand it fully in so short a period of time."

  "But time, Fräulein Loewenstein, is the one thing of which we have a short supply," Schlacht said curtly. "As Professor Festhaller knows, this is not a project devoted merely to the acquisition of abstract scientific knowledge. There are military ramifications to all of this." He turned to Weyrauch. "What have been the results of the interrogations? What have we learned about Kaldy’s origins?"

  Weyrauch shrugged. "Kaldy is not cooperative, Helmuth. He spends most of his time staring off into space, and questioning him is very similar to speaking with a wax dummy."

  Schlacht’s face grew red with anger. "What in God’s name is wrong with you, Gottfried?" he shouted. "I gave you the authority to use whatever means necessary to obtain information from the prisoner. Why haven’t you used them?"

  "Herr Colonel," Petra interjected, her voice soft and patient, "the conventional devices of interrogation, pain and the threat of death, are of singularly little use with someone who apparently cannot be injured or killed."

  Schlacht stood up from behind his desk and walked to the door of his office. He opened the door and said, "Vogel!"

  His adjutant snapped to attention in the anteroom. "Herr Colonel?"

  "Have the two Gypsies brought up here at once." He slammed the door without waiting to hear Vogel’s affirmative response, and turned back to Petra. "We shall see what methods will be effective in eliciting cooperation from our friend Herr Kaldy."

  Louisa, who had been doing her best not even to listen what was being said, jumped to her feet and shouted, "Helmuth, don’t you dare hurt those men!"

  Schlacht spun around and approached her menacingly. "Or you willdo what, Louisa?" He waited for the response which he knew would not be forthcoming. "This is not fifteen years ago, cousin, and I will not tolerate your impertinence indefinitely. Do not think for a moment that your relationship with me makes you as invulnerable as your Gypsy friend. Our concentration camps can easily accommodate one more loud-mouthed traitor."

  "Helmuth..." Weyrauch began nervously.

  "Shut up, Gottfried," Schlacht snapped. "And control your wife’s tongue, or you will both regret it." Weyrauch fell obediently silent as Louisa sat down, frightened and angry.

  Festhaller spoke calmly, as if the confrontation had not just occurred. "As I see it, we need to learn the following things from him: one, how he became a w
erewolf in the first place, and why, if there is a why; two, what understanding he has, if any, of the process of the change."

  "And three," Petra added, "how he can be killed or injured."

  "We are not at the moment interested in killing him," Schlacht replied, calming down slightly.

  "No," Petra said, "but we are interested in analyzing his physical body, and we cannot do that if we cannot pierce his skin. We must know if he can be injured or killed, because such information may enable us to extract blood and tissue for analysis."

  Schlacht nodded. "Good thinking, Fräulein." He paused thoughtfully. "The legends speak about the power of silver..."

  "Yes, the silver bullet," Petra said. "I attempted to scrape his skin with a blade of solid silver. It was ineffective. Silver seems to have no more of an effect on him than any other material." Louisa remembered what Blasko had told her about trying unsuccessfully to kill Kaldy with a silver bullet, but she did not mention it. Why should I? she thought dismally. It would be fine with me if Kaldy killed each and every Nazi in Europe.

  "The legends are untrue, in other words," Schlacht said.

  "Possibly," Petra replied. "Again, we are still operating largely in the dark. But I repeat, we must learn how he can be killed or injured." As she spoke she reached into her purse and took out her surgical mask and surgical cap. Schlacht and Festhaller exchanged amused looks as she donned them. "I repeat my recommendation, gentlemen," she said. "Inasmuch as we do not know what we are dealing with here, I suggest that you follow my example and guard yourselves from infection."