Metal Man

by Ben Stevens

  Men… and women.

  Different.

  It thought of the word ‘woman’ again and a picture briefly flashed up, so quickly it could not properly see it before it vanished again.

  A dark-haired – woman – smiling…

  A smile.

  It could not smile.

  So why even visualize a… woman… smiling…?

  A woman cried – not that woman appearing for a split-second in the darkness – and it froze. It knew that it did this now. Knew that it would do so again, if it heard this cry. That it would freeze. Rendered immobile.

  That scream – that was the word. Another new word that was at once also somehow entirely familiar.

  Men… it could attack… and kill… men.

  But not these – women.

  There had been another cry.

  Brittle and –

  A strange thought: a stick being stirred in a dark muddy pool?

  Too many new words and disturbing images occurring. It felt as though such things had set… something… whirring fast inside of it –

  Felt? What did this word even mean?

  Another cry. A baby. Another flash of a picture. That dark-haired smiling woman was now holding… a baby…

  It felt something else now. Some feeling of warmth.

  This feeling stirred another flashed image. Four men crouched away from those other men gathered outside that place it had been ordered to enter.

  It thought it had seen… had known...? them before; yet this was impossible.

  But that sensation of warmth; of…

  Affection.

  The word flashed inside it just like the pictures. Another new word whose meaning it felt rather than consciously recognized.

  But…

  This feeling of warmth dissipated now. Other images, lasting longer although it almost did not – want – them too.

  A big man. Damaged face: his nose. The recollection of that damaged nose stirred something else; but what this was, was not clear.

  Another, more distant memory. The stick stirring the muddy pool more deeply.

  Shouting… a sudden blow…

  But this man with the damaged face pulling at the baby and…

  The whirring within it seemed to be getting ever louder and faster. It did not breathe but somehow it felt choked by…

  By…

  Anger.

  Another new word; another new feeling somehow instantly recognized. It had released this man when ordered but it had wanted to destroy him.

  When ordered… That order coming from another man. A face somehow already familiar. But again that whirring increasing; more anger.

  A superior it had to obey but –

  Someone it already hated. The feeling intensifying now. Giving it yet more new vocabulary.

  Detested.

  Something still hovering on the edge of its consciousness.

  Something it was searching for; trying to grasp at with its clinical metal thoughts as it lay there in the whirring darkness…

  A name.

  It wanted a name.

  For that man…

  And for all these other faces it was now recognizing…

  15

  Evening had fallen. Reinhardt left the cobbled courtyard ringed by the non-descript buildings, below which was located the secret research bunker, and again began the short walk towards his favorite restaurant.

  It was freezing cold; snowing slightly. Christmastime for anyone who had something to celebrate. Reinhardt kept his hands stuck firmly in the pockets of his thick black coat.

  He noticed an attractive woman walking towards him, met her eyes and briefly saw the shock and revulsion at his appearance register in her face. He was used to it by now – for he’d been on the receiving end of such a reaction his entire life.

  But the terrible facial injuries he’d suffered in that train crash, while still a baby, didn’t mean that he’d never had a relationship. Anyone speaking to him for any length of time soon realized that he was not only an extremely intelligent man, but also modest and caring.

  Such character attributes had been enough for Helga to see past his physical imperfections – and for three years they’d been blissfully happy…

  As he walked, Reinhardt again blinked back the tears as he remembered her. That smile; the blonde hair. How the hell was it possible that a woman like that, so healthy – never drinking, never smoking – and in her early thirties, could be struck down with cancer?

  The doctors had done the best they could, but it had been hopeless from the start. She’d died, stoically bearing the pain that must have been awful in spite of the morphine she was given, barely four months after diagnosis.

  That day, something also died in Reinhardt. The idea that this life might ever have some sort of ‘happy ending’. He was a disfigured man whose beautiful, still-young wife had been cruelly struck down with a truly horrible disease.

  And now she was dead, along with Reinhardt’s previous sense of happiness…

  He went to her funeral (still visited the grave regularly to lay flowers and such), and now lived for his work. When he was involved with projects of such breathtaking complexity as the Metal Man, attempting to present the ideas of the genius, half-Jewish scientist Schroder to his superiors – to someone like the very Fuhrer himself – then he could, at least for a while, forget that aching void existing inside of him…

  *

  Inside the restaurant, Reinhardt ordered chicken and then sat thinking. Undoubtedly, Schroder had been completely shocked by what he’d been told – this directive of Adolf Hitler’s that a new Metal Man should be constructed once a week…

  Were there even the materials available for such a massive project? To say nothing of the expense – for everyone knew Germany was now on its knees, even if to say this out loud was to invite arrest or worse…

  The bell tinkled inside the small, exclusive restaurant as the door opened and Gestapo Major Fleischer entered.

  Reinhardt met the small, blazing eyes in the skull-like face, sudden worry but also something like anger squirming in his guts. How the hell had Fleischer even known he was here? Was he being followed?

  This was the second time that the Gestapo Major had intruded upon his meal…

  ‘My dear Captain,’ lisped Fleischer, waving away one of the waitresses as he sat down at the small table opposite Reinhardt. There was something in the Gestapo man’s face that chilled Reinhardt to the bone. A strange look of triumph…

  ‘Major Fleischer,’ he returned, trying (as so many did) to keep his voice even. ‘How can I help you?’

  For several moments, the Gestapo man said nothing. Just stared and directed his skull-like smile towards Reinhardt.

  Then in that soft, lisping voice, he said –

  ‘The last time we spoke, Captain, was in relation to the strange ability one of your employees has to circumnavigate the Nuremberg Laws…’

  ‘Firstly, Major,’ began Reinhardt with real irritation, ‘Jonas Schroder is not an ‘employee’ of mine. I am merely his superior at a research laboratory whose existence you should not even know about. A laboratory, I may say, which the Fuhrer himself…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ repeated Fleischer, still smiling as he waved away Reinhardt’s protests. ‘You would be surprised at how many things I do know about, Captain. How many… shall we say secrets, I am able to unearth. Sometimes people try to conceal certain things from me, but always I find them out.

  ‘All it takes is time, and a certain methodical patience.’

  Something in what the Gestapo Major was saying made Reinhardt suddenly, urgently need to urinate. There was a sly hinting; an insinuation that Reinhardt himself had been hiding something…

  Again the Gestapo man fell into silence, staring steadily at Reinhardt. There was no question now that he was enjoying this mental torment.

  Reinhardt forced himself to say: ‘I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, Major.’

 
Fleischer chuckled, an obscene sound made deep down in his throat.

  ‘Oh, but I believe you do, Captain. I realize now that it’s only natural you should have worked so hard to protect this half-Jewish scientist of yours…’

  He paused, as the blood pumped loudly inside Reinhardt’s ears and his sight almost dimmed. He thought he was about to pass out from sheer terror…

  ‘After all, my dear Wilhelm Reinhardt, you are fully Jewish yourself,’ said the Gestapo man then.

  16

  In the near-darkness of the cavernous laboratory (only two strip lights shining above, which was exactly how Schroder wanted it), the half-Jewish scientist stood and gazed down at his creation lying on the metal table.

  ‘Who were you?’ said Schroder softly. ‘What kind of soldier must you have been, to now show these signs of rebellion?’

  No reply.

  Only the humming of the machines lining the walls as the Metal Man recharged. And yet Schroder had partially activated the machine with the human parts. It was not in that state which approximated to ‘sleep’, and which was required for the Metal Man’s non-mechanical components.

  (Not that any of the other scientists were aware of this – they believed the Metal Man was just periodically ‘shut down’ for maintenance.)

  ‘What is happening in – there?’ whispered Schroder, leaning down and putting his mouth close to the machine’s listening apparatus on the right-hand side. This could hardly have been called an ‘ear’; in appearance, it was more like the metallic grill of a field-radio.

  ‘Have I made something with a conscience – or was that conscience already there?’ continued Schroder.

  He then gave a mirthless chuckle.

  ‘Yes – a robot with human parts, devised as a killing machine to serve its Nazi masters, which is now refusing direct orders given to it during active service,’ he declared. ‘Dear, oh dear – that is not so good. And now it seems I have to build more of you…?’

  At that moment, one of the double-doors leading into the laboratory crashed open.

  Schroder spun round, squinting his eyes behind the glasses to try and make out who was stood there in the near-darkness.

  ‘Wilhelm?’ he said then. ‘Is that you?’

  The figure advanced slowly. Schroder felt fear seize his insides.

  Then the figure came into the weak light emitted by the two strip lights shining directly above, and the half-Jewish scientist almost gave a sigh of relief as he saw that it was his disfigured superior.

  But something was wrong – the expression on that badly scarred face… The strange look to the eyes…

  Never had Schroder seen Reinhardt looking like this before…

  ‘You want to know some truths, Schroder?’ demanded Reinhardt.

  Something was wrong, thought the half-Jewish scientist. Reinhardt’s voice sounded slurred – half-drugged or drunk. Also this use of Jonas Schroder’s surname, even though this bizarre ‘conversation’ (such as it was) was taking place in private.

  Never before had Reinhardt addressed Schroder so, when it was only the two of them talking.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Schroder finally. ‘What is the matter with you? Are you drunk – I have never seen this before.’

  ‘Not drunk, my dear Jonas,’ returned Reinhardt. ‘Just already dead, perhaps.’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’

  ‘You want to know where your mother is?’ the Captain of the secret research lab suddenly questioned. ‘I’ll tell you where she is – in hell. Just like every full-blooded Jew who’s ‘disappeared’ from out of society.

  ‘Haven’t you released that yet, Jonas – or are you so cosseted, down here in this laboratory of yours, that you’re blind to what has been happening all over Germany?’

  ‘What in hell’s name are you talking about, Wilhelm?’ asked Schroder slowly, his mouth dry.

  Reinhardt suddenly looked as though he might collapse. He put one hand on the edge of the large table the Metal Man was lying upon.

  ‘Your mother was arrested and sent to a concentration camp called Mittelbruck in Poland, near a town that is close to the German-Polish border. The letters you have purportedly been receiving from her are fake, written by someone who is skilled at imitating peoples’ handwriting. For the purpose of you continuing to assist the Third Reich with your creations, such a deception was deemed necessary.’

  ‘What?’ cried Schroder, now appearing as though he would collapse himself. ‘Are you mad? What are you saying?’

  ‘The truth, Jonas,’ returned Reinhardt forcefully, the expression on his disfigured face terrible. ‘And I had to go along with this gross deception – I had no choice. I had to lie to you, day after day after day.

  ‘But today, the deception stops – for all of us.’

  ‘What do you mean, Wilhelm?’ asked Schroder, his voice little more than a whisper. His hands were clenched into fists; at any second, it seemed, he would launch a physical attack on his superior.

  ‘I am a Jew, Jonas – a full-blooded Jew.’

  ‘You… what…’

  ‘Wait – hear me out. I was travelling with my original parents – my Jewish parents – as a baby, when there was that train crash I have previously told you about. The one that caused – this.’

  With this last word, Reinhardt briefly waved his right hand in front of his face.

  ‘My parents were killed instantly, while I was rushed to hospital, not expected to survive. Two other people had been travelling in the same, first-class carriage as my parents and me. A young and prosperous married couple, who strangely managed to escape with nothing more than a few scratches.

  ‘But they took a distinct interest in my recovery, with the male – Mr. Reinhardt – even paying for a specialist in facial surgery to travel up from Frankfurt…

  ‘They’d been talking to my parents before the crash, you see. Had even struck up a fledgling friendship of sorts. And now my parents were dead and…

  ‘Well, the Reinhardts had been trying for years to have a child, but with a cruel lack of success. And it was becoming ever more apparent that the Spielmanns – my parents – had been a somewhat private couple, with no close relatives or friends...

  ‘Certainly no one who wanted to claim this baby of theirs, now no longer considered as being in danger of death but still so facially disfigured…

  ‘Mr. Reinhardt – who became the only father I have ever known – quickly and efficiently arranged my adoption. He considered that it was what the Spielmanns would have wanted anyway.

  ‘My new father was a wealthy man, my mother devoted to her new son. They almost considered this strange quirk of fate to be a gift from God Himself – excepting the death of my ‘original’ parents, as it were. To anyone they met who did not know them very well, they simply pretended that I was their own son – they did not even mention the matter of my adoption.

  ‘I have not yet said that I was only seven days old at the time of the train crash! Really, it is a miracle that I survived… In any case, my circumcision ritual – as a Jewish baby boy – was due to take place the following day. That is, eight days after birth, in accordance with Jewish tradition.

  ‘Obviously, it never happened – something that until today, along with my facial injuries, served to conceal what one might call my ‘Jewish identity’.

  ‘Anyway, my father had my name changed and such. There was only one document alluding to this, just one, until recently forgotten and dust-covered in the records’ department of Hegensdorf town hall. That’s a tiny, rural town in eastern Germany, by the way. Where my wealthy parents had one of their several properties.

  ‘Later, when I became a teenager, only then did my father inform me of who my real parents had been – and thus about my Jewish heritage. And already detecting the anti-Semitism starting to creep through Germany, he advised me never to speak of who my real parents had been.

  ‘But just recently, Major Fleisher of the Berlin Gestapo found that long-f
orgotten certificate concerning my adoption in the records’ department of that town hall. And was thus able to trace the name of my original parents back to their hometown of Ahlach – and have their Jewish ancestry confirmed.’

  ‘You – you’re a Jew?’ Schroder could only stammer helplessly. ‘And my mother… This place she has been sent… What do you mean with all this, you are telling me…?’