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
from
the 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
of
our 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 â
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..."
"Su
mmarize 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."
Schlacht
leaned 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."