The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

THE LAST SECRET WEAPON OF THE THIRD REICH Josef Nesvadba

“Nobody has yet been able to prove,” I ended on a flourish of oratory, “that man is not the slave of heredity, that in all he thinks he does not depend on his forebears, and that there is any other hope of changing him than by crossbreeding like horses or rabbits. There’s no need to give me that scornful smile,” I said to the doctor sitting by my side. “You believe that environment is the strongest influence on people, because you are living in a new society. But you can’t prove it by experiment, because you can’t play with people like you can with dogs or guinea pigs.”

We were in the night train; the heating was not working and so we were trying to keep warm by getting heated about our theories. There was a blonde of about seventeen sitting facing me; I could not see her eyes, but I hoped she was listening. It was for her that I was making such eloquent speeches; the doctor seemed rather a dangerous rival.

“I’m smiling because I have just remembered an experiment on people that might apply here,” he answered quietly. “I heard it about a year ago, from our pharmacist Hutzvalek, who had a peculiar experience toward the end of the last war.”

It was shortly before the siege of Berlin, when Patton was directing his offensive in the west, and when every day the German railways were losing engine after engine to the boiler-busters. Loyal Nazis had only one hope— the secret weapon Goebbels had promised them. V one and V two were ancient history in London by then, but the Allied offensive still went forward. Nobody with any sense thought the talk about secret weapons was anything but bluff. Hutzvalek thought so too; he worked in the chemist’s shop near the Michle gasworks, and made a lot of money on the side, manufacturing complexion creams at home from stolen lanolin. He was getting along fine, and he loved his wife; they had not been married long, because her parents would not agree and only gave in because marriage would save her from having to go and work in Germany. They had no cause to think well of Hutzvalek; he was reputed to be far too fond of gaiety, women and home-made wine; in those days they drank wine made from bread. After his marriage, though, he settled down properly, employed his father and mother-in-law in his complexion-cream business, and waited contentedly for the war to end. Until one morning in February when the Gestapo came for him.

They handcuffed him to the door, socked his father-in-law on the jaw, kicked his wife, who was begging them on her knees to let him go. They knocked his mother-in-law down, tossed the newborn baby out of her cradle and woke up the two-year-old boy.

They took five books out of the bookcase and ripped the featherbed open. Yet it was not the Gestapo after all.

They got out of the Mercedes beyond the city, took off their leather coats and led Hutzvalek deep into the woods, following secret paths. Nobody said a word to him and he thought he was going to be executed. He tried to explain how he had come by all that lanolin, to soften their hearts, but nobody answered, although his German was quite good, really.

Deep in the woods was a hunting lodge where a foreigner was expecting them, dressed in a tweed jacket such as nobody wore in the Protectorate. He offered Hutzvalek Chesterfield cigarettes and Golden Milk chocolate.

“Aren’t you the Gestapo?” Hutzvalek was flabbergasted and looked round the room. They were alone.

“No, we’re not the Gestapo,” the foreigner spoke fluent Czech. “And you’ve not been arrested, either. You’re mobilized from now on.”

“What’s the idea? Whatever for? The war’s going to end in a week or two. Moscow announced in the news last night . . .” The foreigner frowned.

“I am Colonel Borovetz,” he said, and assumed that put him in a better position to judge the state of the war. “The war is going to end—unless the Germans succeed in using their last secret weapon. . . .” He got up and began to walk uneasily back and forth. He slowly unlocked the handcuffs Hutzvalek still had on his wrists.

“What sort of a weapon have they got?” asked the pharmacist, and wondered why Borovetz should need to mobilize just him. Was the secret weapon something to do with drugs?

“That’s just what we’ve got to find out,” the colonel shouted at him. “We have been informed that the last measures to be taken by the supreme command of the SS are called ‘Heil Herod’, but we don’t know anything more than that. We do not even know what it is to be used on. All we know is that the most successful murderous types from the front and the rear are being called in and housed in a deserted factory near Bohosudov. The place is so well guarded that we have so far failed to find out the first thing about it, although we have lost a number of our men in the attempt. It has therefore been decided that we must manage to get someone inside to take part in the whole campaign. . . .”

“Who is it going to be?” asked Hutzvalek, who thought the whole idea of espionage in the very last days of the war a ridiculous one. “Who is going to manage to get inside?”

Borovetz placed a photograph in front of him: “One of the first who was brought in to take part in the tests of the secret weapon was Sturmbannführer Yeschke. . . .” The pharmacist racked his brains to think where he had seen this fellow in the black uniform. Then the colonel laid a pocket mirror by the side of the photograph and Hutzvalek sprang back. It was his own face looking up at him.

“That’s just not possible,” he gasped.

“The two of you are as like as two peas. We shall get rid of him and have you taken to the secret laboratory. In a fortnight you will report back. We know that none of those working on the project stay there for more than a fortnight. You will ring me at this number, or else you can leave a description of the weapon in the hiding place under the Hus monument. . . .”

“I’m a pharmacist,” Hutzvalek protested. “I’ve only done a couple of weeks’ military training, that was before Munich—and I don’t know the first thing about the SS equipment. I’ll give myself away before I’ve said two words.”

“You are the only man who resembles any of these cutthroats, and we’ve searched right through the records of all the Allied armies. The future of humanity depends on your mission, in your hands lies our victory over Hitler, Brother,” the colonel spoke like a Czech legionary, and looked sadly at the red mark left by the iron handcuffs on Hutzvalek’s wrists. Up till then the pharmacist had assumed that they would defeat Hitler without him. He shook his head. “You will be paid a hundred thousand Swiss francs for your report,” the colonel went on. Hutzvalek did some quick mental arithmetic. That would be enough to buy a little chemist’s shop. In Switzerland. Was it worth risking his life for? Borovetz got impatiently to his feet. He opened a drawer and pulled out a short American army repeater fitted with a silencer. So it was a question of life or death anyway. The pharmacist nodded quickly.

“If I die, my children are to get the money, Brother. . . He did not feel afraid, yet. It felt more like taking out life insurance, or selling his own face.

That was the only thing that interested the guards outside the Bohosudov factory; they just checked the documents with the face. Sitting frowning by the side of the driver was the exact likeness of Sturmbannführer Yeschke, unshaven and bad-tempered after a sleepless night’s journey back from the front. They took him past a lot of barbed wire inside the gate and through an empty workshop to the next guard. Here they asked for the password, but memory was Hutzvalek’s strong point, and they took him on to the entrance to the underground. Here he was taken over by a tall, not so young blonde in uniform, whose name appeared to be Leni.

“Can you start right away?” she asked. Hutzvalek-Yeschke nodded. The sooner he got it over the better. All of it. Whatever it was. In an underground cell that looked more like a hotel room he flopped down on a soft bed, wiped the sweat from his brow, loosened the Iron Cross that was strangling him and gazed round at the walls. He expected to see drawings of the secret weapon there, but instead he found Germanic beauties, naked and fair-haired, displayed to his gaze in the most alluring positions. What had these nudes got to do with the last secret weapon of the third Reich? He could not see it at all. Soon the door opened and Leni came in, wearing a dressing-gown. She was certainly quicker at getting out of her uniform than Hutzvalek was. Putting a bottle of brandy down on the table, she flung herself upon him. At first he tried to fight her off, then he realized that it was not a wrestling match.

“Is this sort of thing allowed?” he asked doubtfully later on, as they lay side by side on the soft featherbed in the corner.

“What d’you mean, allowed?” she did not understand.

“Well, I mean, here, where we are manufacturing the secret weapon . . .” She started to laugh, but not for long. She got off the bed and then he realized that she was not Leni; as she raised her arm in the Aryan salute he saw the hair under her arm was ginger. She picked up her dressing gown and the bottle of brandy from the table and marched off as briskly as a soldier on parade.

That was the last straw. For a week they’d been chasing him around the training ground, making him cram his head with Yeschke’s deeds of heroism and the faces of Yeschke’s many relations; seven whole days from morning till night the pharmacist had had to learn off by heart the orders of the SS—and all that in order to find out not the secret weapon, but the sexual capacities of some slut of a wardress?

Next morning he was awakened by another of them. He had to tell her all about his deeds of heroism at Voronezh. She wanted to see his scars and he got so scared that he started kissing her just to put an end to her inquisitiveness. This one was a flaxen blonde and a bit fatter.

“The Führer is certainly looking on us now ... it will be the Führer’s child. Siegfried Hitler . . .” she said piously, and tripped out as if in a trance. Hutzvalek began to fear he would not last a fortnight at this pace, and nipped her bottle of brandy off her as she left. All day he drank alone in his cell with the naked beauties on the walls, until in the evening he threw the empty bottle at one of them and broke it.

“Are you homesick for your handgrenades?” asked the third woman, who did not even bother to come in a dressing gown. “You can keep your hand in here, in the factory; we often practice on the prisoners with live grenades. . . .” and she placed herself on the bed with the matter-of-fact calm and lack of allure of a patient getting ready for gynecological examination. Hutzvalek started hitting her and she thanked him delightedly.

They kept him occupied like this for a week.

“I want to see the secret weapon,” he said every day. “I was sent for in order to test the secret weapon. My comrades are sacrificing their lives at the front and I am wasting my time here with you. What did you bring me here for?” They just laughed at him, and he could not get out. There was a guard stationed in the corridor day and night, and he did not even know where the passage led. For seven days they did not let him out for a breath of fresh air.

On the eighth evening a man appeared for the first time. He brought no brandy, either. It was Dr. Müller, or at ‘east that was how he introduced himself; his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses and the lower half of his face was covered with a white mask as though he had just come from an operation.

“Thank you. You have been most successful. I shall inform the Führer personally. . . .”

“What about?” Hutzvalek could not make head or tail of the business.

“Within a week you will have a detachment of the most dependable fighters, men you can depend on in every detail. We shall bring our last secret weapon into play. .. .” Müller laughed so much that his mask puffed out. “You will receive a high military decoration.”

“What ever for? Why? What is our last secret weapon?” and the pharmacist took good care to say “our.” In a few words Müller explained everything. The research workers had discovered a way to speed up the maturing of the human foetus. An adult man could be produced seven days after conception.

“Don’t you see the enormous possibilities of the thing? A year ago this discovery could have turned the war in our favor. We could have sacrificed all the living to the front and brought to maturity those who were still in their mother’s womb. Now at least we can be sure of winning the peace. There is little time and little material left; we have to economize with our discovery. I have arranged for the most reliable bitches—I mean loyal German women—to be sent here from the Lebensborn division, which as you know has been providing the Führer with babies since the beginning of the war. They are coupled with the best of our warriors from the front and the home front. Each of you will get your own detachment of soldiers after your own heart; they won’t be young whippersnappers from the Hitlerjugend who turn tail at the first shot or let any softsoap parson talk them round. They will be like you in every respect, because they have just been born into the world. They will be capable of everything, like you. ‘Heil Herod’ can begin. Nobody will try to put it off now. Our last secret weapon has proved its worth.”

He shook Hutzvalek by the hand, barked out a Heil! and disappeared.

He went away in the company of Leni, the only woman he had not been forced to sleep with while he was there. They drove in a darkened car for about four hours and at last stopped in front of a big white building. Leni took him inside.

“This is where they will be waiting,” she pointed. “The mothers will put them here, they will be given an injection, and then the dead bodies will be burnt over there. We shall deal immediately with any attempt to resist. An epidemic will be started in the city, to support the assumption that we want to inoculate all the children. An entire generation will be lost to them. Then if there’s another spot of trouble in fifteen years’ time they will have no men to mobilize. . . .” She smiled dreamily. “When the campaign is completed, we shall blow the whole place sky high.” As she spoke she pointed to a lever near the door. It looked like the main switch on an electric light meter. ...

“We’ll wipe out all the brats in the place,” she said as they went out again. Hutzvalek was still in a daze. Looking round, he saw the outline of the Castle on the horizon. So the place was Prague. He was to kill his own children.

Leni drove him to Holešovice, and as she opened the door and helped him out of his coat without a trace of ceremony, he remembered that Yeschke’s wife was called Leni. So it was his own wife who was to keep guard over him in the Nazi breeding stables. The flat they entered was not at all homely, but in all the rooms there were stacks of weapons, as if they were expecting a siege. “We’ll have to hurry,” said Leni, cleaning the barrel of a light machinegun as lovingly as other women clean their silver. “The Führer fell yesterday. . .”

Hutzvalek dashed out of the house as he was, without his coat. People jumped out of his way and everything in uniform sprang to attention and saluted. Discipline had lasted longer than victory, it seemed. He had to try the third telephone booth before he got one that worked. He dialled Borovetz’s number and listened anxiously to the thing ringing at the other end. It was his last hope. Now he understood why they needed cutthroats. Now he understood why even the most loyal of Hitlerjugend lads did not want to carry out these orders. He had discovered information nobody had ever guessed at. The phone was ringing in vain. He drove out to the wood where they had taken him that first day. It was a strange sight, a high-rank officer of the SS crashing through the undergrowth. Of course he failed to find the hunting lodge. He was sick with fear. Now he was worried for his own children, who had stayed in Prague; now he was really afraid. His hand trembled as he put his note into the hiding place as arranged. He knew it was too late, it was all in vain, everything he was doing was useless because his news could no longer save anyone. He tried desperately to think whom he could warn, what he could do, but everything seemed so fantastic; he was the prisoner of his own uniform.

The least he could do was to go home. There he found three families from East Prussia; their horses were grazing in front of the house. They had no idea where the Hutzvaleks had got to; most likely to the suburbs somewhere. Their Heils were enthusiastic, though, because they recognized Yeschke, who had murdered all the Jews in Estonia. Yeschke the hero of the Aryan East. He slammed the door in their faces. How could he find his family? What was he to do? He went back to Holešovice; it was almost entirely a German quarter, now; the Czechs had been moved out and they called it Little Berlin. It was no surprise to see a big black limousine in front of the door, with the swastika flying on it. Leni opened the door to him in a dirndl skirt. She hurriedly straightened his uniform; General Kopfenpursch was sitting waiting in the dining room to present the front-line hero Yeschke with the Iron Cross with the diamond bar.

“Dr. Müller managed to complete his experiment at the last moment. I have brought your lads along for you. You can carry out the Führer’s last order now,” he said as he pinned another decoration on Hutzvalek, this time with a diamond bar. And he added softly: “Brother!” It was Borovetz and not Kopfenpursch. He had got the news through in time, then. He thanked Hutzvalek with a warm glance, at least, and took a brusque farewell of his “wife.” Why did he not release Hutzvalek? What was the man to do now? What did he think he was doing? The pharmacist ran out after him and shouted his questions in at the car window, speaking Czech. The car moved off.

“Disappear to Berne. That’s what you wanted to do, isn’t it? There’s a check folded up inside the Iron Cross. . . .” The answer was in German, and the car was gone. Hutzvalek was alone in the street. Then he realized that facing him on the opposite pavement stood four new SS recruits, each as tall and as well-built as the next, and each with his features. They were smiling at him politely and obsequiously, just the way Hutzvalek himself always smiled at his customers. He thought they were horrid.

Later, when the Hutzvalek detachment were earnestly sorting out test tubes in the suburban laboratory, checking up on their weapons and the dynamite charge beneath the building, he shouted at them impatiently:

“There’s no need to pretend with me. I know you’re not the Yeschke detachment, you’re my own lot. And this murderous business is revolting to me, I hate Nazism and I am fighting against it. We’re going over to the other side now!” and he pressed his revolver into Leni Yeschke’s back to prevent her calling for help. His sons were confused and afraid, they looked at each other helplessly. After a while the first in the row came up to him and said as he held his automatic at the ready:

“I don’t know what you are talking about; we don’t feel too happy about this job we’ve got to do, either, to tell the truth. Murdering little kids. But we were promised, they said that was the only way we could get into the special force of heroes that was going to work in Switzerland after the war.”

“To hell with Switzerland! To hell with my life—what I care about are my real children; they won’t just be caricatures of me, they’ll have the chance to do things better than I did, they’ll be able to learn from my mistakes. What I care about are the lives of all the others.” And that was the moment, it seems, when he realized that he had completely changed from the moment he knew what “Heil Herod” was all about. He was not the old Hutzvalek any more, the conscientious SS pharmacist he could see before him in four replicas, threatening him from the barrels of four automatics. The fourth Hutzvalek, by the window, had even turned the light machinegun on him. He realized he would have to destroy his own Hutzvalek, he would have to kill that conscientious counter-jumper who was threatening the whole city and the whole of a generation. He was not capable of changing as other people were, after some experience, some profound emotion, the advice or example of others. He had to shoot at himself, protect himself against himself, smash his own skulls, as though he were a fairy-tale dragon, until at last, wounded in several places, he reached the lever that looked like the main switch on an electric meter. At one turn of the lever he buried the whole Heil Herod business. Three days later the rising broke out in Prague. The doctor fell silent and watched us for a while.

“Rather incredible, the whole story,” I said sceptically. “Sounds like a madman’s dream.”

“It was in the madhouse that I met Hutzvalek, last year,” the narrator smiled again. “Or rather, in a home for nervous cases. He had been there several times before. When Prague was liberated, he was found under the debris of a ruined building in one of the suburbs. He was unconscious for weeks. He had the remains of a German uniform on, true enough, but everybody in the Revolutionary Guard had something of the sort. It was assumed that he had escaped from the Gestapo prison in Pankrac during the fighting that May, and been wounded. He did not talk much about his experiences himself and agreed that it sounded incredible. The fits of unconsciousness kept on coming back; he was operated several times, brain operations, and then for a time a specific infection was treated at a sanatorium in the Tatras. It was fifteen years after the war before he really got back to normal life. That was when his nervous troubles really started. His son, young Hutzvalek, worked in a nationalized chemist’s shop and had been arrested on a charge of stealing from the shop; his daughter ran away when she was sixteen, crossed the frontier illegally, and sent no good news home of herself, either. She was not in Berne, it was true. In the weeks that followed, the pharmacist began attacking passersby whenever he thought they wore their scarves suspiciously high across their faces, or whenever they seemed to be hiding behind dark glasses.

“ ‘You are Dr. Müller!’ he would shout, and call a policeman. The policeman usually brought him straight round to us. He even attacked a former factory owner that way, a man who lived in Hanspaulka and was in fact called Müller; he started a fight with the local Youth Club leader in Hodkovičky, whose name was luckily Vytiska; and he almost blinded a history teacher who had to wear dark glasses because he suffered from conjunctivitis, I can’t remember the man’s name now.

“ ‘What do you do it for?’ I asked him. ‘Why do you think your Dr. Müller is in hiding in our midst? How could he go on with his experiments?’

“ ‘Just look round you,’ he replied. ‘Look at my family, the family I sacrificed myself for. They are just like I used to be, the boy and the girl, as if nothing had happened, as if those millions of dead hadn’t fallen in between their youth and mine. He took away from them our common experience. They did not change as I wanted them to. I fought myself in vain. I sacrificed myself for nothing.’ He went on talking for a while and then started laughing in embarrassment. We sent him home after a few days, and that was the last I heard of him.”

“From what has been said it is clear,” said the doctor, “that an experiment on human beings really was performed, one which could solve your problem. In the case we have described, the pharmacist really did change as a result of his own experience; he became a new and different person, as it were, ready to shoot at the likeness of himself as he was; he even wanted to change all those round him. That could be taken as proof of our theory.”

“What do you think?” I could not contain myself any longer and asked the blonde girl opposite outright. “What do you believe in?”

She started. “I beg your pardon?” Then she yawned, and I realized she had been fast asleep all the time. She pulled a small transistor radio out of her bag and lit a cigarette. She was a real beauty of a girl. The first bars of music. Jazz. But she did not answer my question.