The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  Flynn O’Conner ached. When he tried to stretch kinks from his muscles, the heavy iron shackles connecting his wrists to the stone wall behind him rattled faintly. Burns covered his forearms. Two fingers—broken, then badly reset after his first week of questioning—throbbed dully.

  But he hadn’t talked. He clung to that one bit of knowledge like a lifeline. He hadn’t revealed his part in the plot. The Nazis must still wonder if the papers had made it out of Germany.

  The only question that remained was…would anyone find them in Baron Ogilvy’s washroom? Perhaps he had hidden them too well. Perhaps he should have given them to Gerty to hold for him. He sighed inwardly. No, it might have embroiled her in this mess. What else could he have done? What else should he have done?

  He kept reliving those last few minutes of freedom in his mind, wondering what he could have done to protect himself, or short of that, to make sure the German invasion plans made it safely to the U.S. Embassy in Austria.

  The months of interrogation…the starvation, the beatings, the torture…it would all be for nothing if the plans didn’t make their way to proper hands.

  Keys jangled outside, then the door to his cell slowly opened. Through swollen eyes, Flynn glared up at the man silhouetted in the doorway.

  “Up!” the guard said in German.

  “I have told you everything,” Flynn said.

  “The interrogation is over.”

  He gaped. “Over?”

  “Ja. You are being taken away from here. On your feet!”

  Flynn looked down at his battered, starved body. They couldn’t release him looking like this, could they? It would be an international scandal. No, they were going to execute him, he thought. After months of torture he would have thought it a welcome release, but he realized he didn’t want to die. He wanted escape…and revenge.

  He raised his head defiantly. Well, if he had to face a firing squad, he would die knowing he hadn’t betrayed his country. That would be one small comfort.

  The guard stalked forward and unfastened Flynn’s shackles. Then he dumped out a small bag of clothing…shoes, socks, a light jacket.

  “Put them on.”

  Flynn massaged his aching wrists. Curious…why would they give him shoes and a jacket if they were going to execute him? Or could this be another elaborate torture? A promise of freedom which would be quickly yanked away?

  He steeled himself to the inevitable, then with trembling hands began to pull on the socks and shoes, then the jacket. Rising, he staggered from the cell with all the dignity he could muster. Not much, he thought grimly.

  When they left the building, he blinked in the sudden brightness of daylight. An inch of snow covered the ground, and an icy wind made him shiver.

  Instead of a firing squad, the guard led him to a covered truck much like the one that had brought him here. A few other prisoners were being loaded aboard. At his guard’s prodding, he climbed in and sat on the wooden bench. He had survived. The interrogation had ended, and he was still alive. He had won.

  The guards climbed in and raised the clapboard, and the truck pulled out. As they drove, Flynn gazed out at snow-covered fields, barren orchards, and distant mountains. The guards made no effort to tie the rear of the truck closed with canvas flaps, so he figured it didn’t matter if he knew where they went.

  * * * *

  As the hours wore on, they stopped several times for fuel and to stretch and relieve themselves. The guards provided cheese, crusty brown bread, and watery red wine for dinner. Flynn ate voraciously. Still the journey continued.

  They seemed to be heading into the Rhine area of Germany, he thought. He began seeing castles on distant hilltops. Night fell and still they drove.

  They finally turned off on a steep, winding road, full of switch-backs and hairpin turns. They ascended rapidly.

  When the truck finally stopped, the guards marshaled everyone out. They were at a large castle. Flynn stared up at high stone battlements and watch towers equipped with machine guns. It was like something out one of his friend Erol’s adventure movies.

  The guards made them line up. He stood shivering beside the other prisoners as papers were signed. The usual German efficiency, he thought; starved, beaten, and half dead though they were, they all had to be counted and signed for.

  “Bitte,” a young man in a white coat said. He had round wire-rim glasses, a small mustache, and a clipboard. “Komst du mit mir.” He indicated a door into one of the keep’s larger buildings. Light blazed from the high, narrow windows. At least it looked warm inside, Flynn thought, shuffling forward with the others.

  “My name is Heinrich Mueller,” the man in the lab coat went on in German. “You are to be our…guests.”

  “What is this place?” Flynn asked him. “Why are we here?”

  The young man said nothing, but led the way to the door, opened it, and held it open for them. The soldiers prodded them forward, and Flynn found himself in a large room that might have once been a feudal lord’s banquet hall. Now it seemed to be a hospital of some kind. Medical equipment sat everywhere—examination tables, surgical tools, and even an operating theater off to one side. Flynn felt relief. They were going to get treatment for their wounds. Maybe they would even reset his broken fingers so they could heal properly.

  Heinrich then escorted them to a cell with thick steel bars on all sides, even the floor. Luckily there were benches welded to the back wall. Exhausted, Flynn sat heavily.

  A middle-aged man with a round, moonlike face approached, surrounded by younger assistants. Heinrich joined him, and the two conversed in low voices, looking over the prisoners. Flynn suddenly felt like a slab of meat in a butcher’s window.

  “Well, well,” the moon-faced man said loudly in German, smiling and striding forward. “I see you have all safely arrived. I am Dr. Uwe Grosswald, and you are all here to help the glorious German cause.”

  Everyone stared blankly at him. Flynn met the man’s gaze for a second and saw the gleam of madness there.

  “You,” Grosswald said, pointing to the man next to Flynn. “What is your name?”

  “Adolph Schmidt.”

  “Come, Adolph, we must get you cleaned up. How long since you have eaten?”

  “A few hours.”

  “And before that?”

  “Three days.” Adolph struggled to his feet and moved forward. Flynn felt a pang of envy. Aside from what the guards had given them, he hadn’t eaten in four or five days.

  One of Grosswald’s assistants let Adolph out of the cell. Grosswald took the man’s arm and led him to one side.

  Flynn pulled himself to his feet and pressed against the bars to see. The other prisoners joined him.

  The assistants stripped Adolph, scrubbed him down with what smelled like antiseptic, then shaved all the hair on his head. Then they led him to a long metal table at the far side of the room, where Grosswald listened to his heart and began testing his reflexes.

  “Excellent,” Flynn heard the doctor say several times.

  Finally, as Flynn watched, they strapped Adolph to a steel table, took a large bone saw, and neatly severed the man’s head. Blood fountained twenty feet across the room, spattering everything.

  Flynn gaped. Bile rose in his throat, but he managed to choke it down. Around him, he heard vomiting. The others hadn’t been so strong

  Grosswald moved quickly, removing Adolph’s brain with a huge pair of forceps. He handed them to Heinrich, who hustled the brain into a nearby tank of bubbling yellow liquid.

  “Quickly!” Grosswald called, hurrying to another table.

  Flynn couldn’t quite see what was going on there, but the others scrambled, wheeling the brain over. Grosswald worked like a maniac, cursing, screaming orders. He seemed to be transplanting the brain into another body, Flynn thought. It was monstrous.

  Flynn staggered back to the bench. His vision blurred. He felt a pounding like sledgehammers in his head. Monstrous. Monstrous and insane.

 
; Grosswald continued to work late into the night. Every time Flynn looked up, they were hunched over their patient.

  After six hours, the doctor suddenly threw down his instruments and stalked from the operating theater. The transplant must have failed, Flynn realized.

  He looked grimly at the five remaining prisoners. Who would be next?

  * * * *

  Each day for the rest of the week, Flynn watched as another of his companions was selected, dragged kicking and screaming from the cell by soldiers, then subjected to the same process: disinfection, examination by Grosswald, then death by decapitation.

  It was like something out of a B horror movie, Flynn realized, casting the picture in his mind. Peter Lorre would play Grosswald with sadistic glee. Bela Lugosi would be Heinrich—a cringing, subservient Heinrich. And Boris Karloff would play the transplant victim. In the movie, of course, Grosswald’s creature would live.

  The real doctor had no such luck. He went through his first six victims without success. Each time the experiment failed, Grosswald stomped out in a fit of anger. Perhaps, Flynn prayed, the doctor would give up before his seventh try, but he knew deep inside that such hopes were useless. Instead of a firing squad, he would die at the hands of a mad scientist. That’s why the Nazis had given him a reprieve.

  Swallowing, he touched his neck. At least it would be quick, he thought.

  But the Texan inside him wouldn’t say die quite so easily. He had been bred and raised to fight, and the same stubborn streak that wouldn’t let him break under torture wouldn’t let him die now without a struggle. There had to be a way out, he thought.

  He lay back on the bench, staring up through the bars, thinking. He had one advantage over the others: six full days of rest, with plenty to eat and drink. His strength and reflexes were returning. What other skills did he have? Just acting…

  And that, he thought, as the a plan started to form in the back of his mind, might just be enough.

  * * * *

  Flynn woke as the first light of day filtered down through the room high, narrow windows. Already he could see Grosswald’s assistants sterilizing medical equipment in preparation for murdering him.

  He looked down at the scars on his hands and arms. Four months of torture to make him talk, and he hadn’t said a word about his spying mission. Those horrors seemed almost clean compared to the fate which now awaited him.

  Through most of the night, he had been thinking about how Grosswald had murdered his first victim. Adolph had not been restrained through most of the examination; he had not struggled or fought because he did not know what awaited him. If anyone could have tried to make a break for it, Adolph was the one. And all because he didn’t try to escape.

  That, Flynn told himself, had to be the key. He had to make them think he’d given up…that he was cooperating. Then, he would seize the first opportunity for escape which presented itself.

  He knelt before the bench and folded his hands. The role of Father David in Chapel Belles had been his best religious training. He could do pious with the best of them now.

  “Please, God,” he said so Grosswald’s assistant could hear, “If it is Your will for me to die here, I trust it will not be in vain.”

  Then he heard Grosswald’s booming voice calling to his assistants. The mad doctor had arrived.

  Making the sign of the cross, Flynn stood and moved to the cell door with his hands clasped and his head bowed. The meek shall escape, he told himself.

  Grosswald sent the soldiers to get him. When they opened the cell door, he walked out calmly. Turning, he headed for Grosswald’s assistants, who were waiting with brushes and buckets of disinfectant. None of the soldiers touched him. As long as he cooperated, he realized, they saw no reason to interfere.

  Calmly he stripped, folding and stacking his torn, dirty old clothes to one side, and then he stood silently and let the indignities happen. He pressed his eyes shut and bit his lips when the scrubbing grew too rough and abraded his skin.

  Then, reeking of disinfectant, he let them shave his head. Finally, clean and sanitary, ready to be butchered, he walked to the examination table. Grosswald waited there, rubbing his hands together with almost sadistic glee.

  As he prepared to lever himself up onto the examination table, the doctor said in German, “What is your name?”

  “Flynn O’Conner.”

  “I want to know…why don’t you fight, like the other prisoners did?”

  “What is the point?” Flynn replied. “I could not win. In the end, you will have your way.”

  Grosswald nodded slowly. “Very astute. Your accent…you are English?”

  “American.”

  “You seem familiar to me.”

  “I’ve appeared in fifteen movies. Perhaps you have seen some.” Could Grosswald be a fan? Could he win his release that way?

  “Ah, yes, the cinema, that must be it.” He motioned Flynn up. “On the table, please.”

  So much for that idea, Flynn thought. He turned to pull himself up onto the examination table—and then in one quick motion snatched a scalpel from a nearby tray. Like a tiger, he sprang on Grosswald, pressing the razorlike blade against the doctor’s pudgy neck, pushing just hard enough to draw a bead of blood.

  “Back!” Flynn roared to the soldiers and Grosswald’s startled assistants. “Back, or I’ll slit his throat!”

  “Do as he says!” Grosswald called in a strangled voice.

  Everyone began to back up. The soldiers leveled their guns at him. He saw murder in their eyes. Somehow, he no longer cared.

  Keeping Grosswald’s body between himself and the soldiers, Flynn began to back toward the door. Reaching behind him, he opened it, and the freezing wind that struck him like a whip brought a shudder to his naked body. He’d worry about pneumonia later, he thought.

  Still holding Grosswald, he edged out and looked desperately around the courtyard. A light snow was falling; if he could make it outside the castle in a truck or car, he might be able to lose his pursuers, he thought.

  A few vehicles were parked on the other side of the courtyard. Still grasping Grosswald, he edged backwards toward them. Grosswald began to wheeze, but Flynn paid no mind. Of more concern were the soldiers pouring out of the laboratory, rifles raised. The moment he let go of his hostage, he thought, they’d open fire.

  He reached the first car, scraped snow from the passenger side window with his elbow, and peered inside. It had keys in the ignition, he saw with a mental cry of triumph. This was it—his ticket out of here.

  Grosswald began to sag. He’d fainted, Flynn realized. He hesitated. He couldn’t manage that much dead weight, not with his current half-starved condition. And he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably from the cold—it had to be twenty degrees out here.

  Finally he opened the door, shoved Grosswald away, and dove inside. As he did, something sharp stabbed his right calf. He screamed in pain.

  Pulling himself inside the truck’s cab, he slammed the door shut. Rifles began to pop. The glass next to his head splintered. There was a hypodermic needle stuck in his calf, he saw with despair. Grosswald had stabbed him with it, injecting him with something. Suddenly his leg went numb.

  No time to think about it now, though. He stomped on the clutch with his left foot and gunned the ignition. The numbness was spreading. He could barely feel anything below his waist now. Suddenly he felt light headed. If he didn’t do something fast, he’d never make it.

  He managed to put the car in reverse and began backing up. But when he tried to turn the wheel, he found he couldn’t move his arms. He was paralyzed.

  “No—“ he whispered, the horror of it all catching up. He’d failed.

  The car struck one of the castle walls and stopped, wheels spinning helplessly in the snow.

  Grosswald opened the driver’s side door, reached in, and calmly turned off the ignition. The motor growled to a stop.

  Flynn found he still held the scalpel. With every last bit of his
strength, he raised his hand to stab the doctor.

  Grosswald calmly caught his arm and removed the instrument. Then he began to smile. And then he began to laugh like this was the greatest joke he’d ever seen.

  “Marvelous,” he cried, dabbing at the tiny wound on his neck with a white handkerchief. “Just what we need, a man who’s willing to fight to live. Marvelous!”

  Flynn moaned. Then everything went black.

  * * * *

  Flynn struggled up through dreams of suffocation. He felt drugged, some part of him realized, and that meant he still lived. Grosswald must have put him back in his cell to recover…only a reprieve, but while he lived, he had hope. Next time he would escape.

  He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the ceiling. He was on one of Grosswald’s medical tables, he guessed. He tried to roll over, but couldn’t move. Strapped down? Still drugged? He had no way of knowing.

  His vision was strange; everything looked black and white. Probably an effect of the drug, he decided, the same way everything sounded tinny and muted, as though coming through a lousy speaker system. He struggled to sit up.

  Grosswald suddenly appeared in his field of vision, leaning over him. The doctor smiled like a kindly uncle offering a child candy.

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Flynn tried to speak, but only a strange buzzing sound emerged. He raised one hand—and abruptly saw it wasn’t human anymore. It was black and metal. Armor? It had to be.

  “Stand up,” Grosswald said.

  He tried to grab the doctor, but fell to the side and landed on the floor in a clattering heap. He could see the rest of his body now—legs, stomach, torso, arms, hands, all shiny black metal with red highlights.

  Slowly he raised his head and caught sight of his reflection in the side of a steel cart. He was encased in metal. His eyes glowed red, tiny dots like burning embers.

  “Stand up!” Grosswald cried. “On your feet!”

  Slowly Flynn obeyed. Why would Grosswald put him in a suit of armor? It made no sense. Not after what had happened to the others…

  Then the full horror of it hit him. He realized what must have happened. Grosswald put his brain in this suit—it wasn’t armor, but a machine. Suddenly it all made a sick sort of sense.