Mack Reynolds - Once Departed

Quentin Jones stared at her, unbelieving, even though at long last he knew.

“Quentin, don’t you see what that means? You too can be all but immortal. You are a man of destiny, like the Führer was a man of destiny. We… Herr Ferencsik and I… can search out such weaknesses as your present body might have. Seek them out, and eliminate them. Is your heart potentially that organ of your body which will first fail? We will find you a strong heart, Quentin. Any weakness we can change.”

He looked into her face, and through it, into her all. Into the deepest recesses of the psyche.

“So,” he said softly. “Professor Ferencsik is with you. And together you are to create your superman.”

“Yes, yes,” she hurried. “He is with me. Here, here in this house.”

“And he believes in this same dream you have?”

“Yes, of course,” her eyes shifted only slightly. “A superman to lead the world to a single government To make all earth one strong State. It was Führer’s dream, and Alfred Rosenberg’s. It is only that Herr Ferencsik is impractical. He doesn’t realize that there must be a master race, we Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. The inferior races will serve us.”

Her grip on his arm tightened urgently. Her face had a fey quality, a wild quality.

Quint said, almost gently, “So, you would make a superman of me?” His face twisted grimly. “As you did Martin Bormann, Grete?”

“Bormann, he is nothing! A clod. True, at first I thought I could make him the new Fuhrer. But there was still much for me to learn, and now, with my new knowledge, and with the help of Herr Professor Ferencsik…”

Quint said, “Grete, this question keeps coming up. Why was it necessary to burn Hitler’s body, there outside the Reich Chancellery, after he had committed suicide?”

Her eyes went strange, shifted strangely, but her voice came, as though reciting. “It was necessary that we burn it so that the Führer’s enemies would never know that the body had been mutilated, that the brain had been removed.”

The cold went through Quentin Jones as never before in all his life. The next words were hard to keep level. “And whose brain would be in this renovated body of mine? My jazzed up new superman body which would last a few hundred years?”

She shook her head, and again her hand tightened urgently on his arm, and her eyes bore into his in complete earnestness. “Quentin, you need not fear. Do not be silly. It would be your own brain. Your personality. A simple operation or two, a simple grafting…”

“To… what… extent… would… you… replace… my… own… brain… with… that… of… your… once… Fuhrer…”

“But just a little bit. The very seat of his genius. The phyche, the ego…”

A new voice from one of the rear doors said wealdy, “She’s mad, of course. Doktor Stahlecker is mad. A genius, perhaps, but mad. She has showed me the portions of the brain she thinks possible to replace in your skull. They are nothing, after all these years, but mush. Organic, meaningless mush. If she is allowed to operate on you, Quentin Jones, you will become as Martin Bormann has become.”

Marylyn Worth—Doktor Grete Stohlecker—was on her feet, glaring at the intruder. She spun back to Quint. “But you can see! Look, I am younger than twenty years ago. Look at my face! My body! Now I am even beautiful, as I was never beautiful before, my Führer! Yes, yes! Now you understand. You will be the new Führer, and I will be your bride. All these years, my Fuhrer, I have kept myself for you.?”

His horror must have reflected in his face.

She looked at him. Shook her head in incomprehension. “But…” she whimpered, “… So long, so very long.” She shook her head.

And then as though by horrible miracle, her face began to break up. The blondness of hair seemed to go dull, as though from gold to corroding brass. The fire went from blueness of eye, and they dimmed to aged grey. Her shoulders slumped forward, in an older woman’s slump of age. Her mouth went slack, her face pinched, and her seventy years and more of life showed through.

Nicolas Ferencsik had leaned back against the wall, resting from whatever ordeal he had been through these past several days.

And through the door through which he had come only a few minutes before, lurched the creature of Doktor Grete Stahlecker’s manufacture.

In first glance it was a man of possibly forty, the body well formed, the face of a certain heavy handsomeness. But second look branded it hulk. A meaningless, nonthinking hulk that walked. Empty of eye. Empty of brain.

Its Zombi-eyes went to its master.

Suddenly she galvanized. She pointed at Quentin Jones, who long since had come to his feet. She shrieked. “Take him. Take him to the laboratory! He doesn’t realize what I offer. I will prove everything!”

The thing’s dull eyes came back to Quint and there was the dim, faintest gleam of pleasure. It lurched forward, the big strong hands coming up from its sides where until now they had dangled, lifeless.

“Run!” Ferencsik blurted, as though with his last strength.

Without thought, Quent Jones went into the Zenkutsu-dachi lunge position. The rear knee straight, the front knee bent so that the knee cap was directly over the arch of the foot. His body weight was evenly distributed between both feet.

The monster’s movements were deceptively fast. It came in, soft gurgling sounds emanating from its throat, its hands forward to grasp.

Quint exhaled, with a piercing Kiai shout of “Zut” and darted forward, without conscious thought going into the tenth Kata. He blocked the lunging creature’s right hand with a hard blow of his own right, grasped the wrist with the thumb pointed upward, and pivoted on his left foot to the right. His back was to the growling, muttering thing. He kept his hold of the right wrist, raised the other’s hand high as he drew the body closer to his back. With his left hand he struck brutally into its groin. He seized the peach, as his Jap instructor had called it, and brought his left arm down, holding the left wrist now, over his right shoulder and across the chest. He pulled down on the thing’s right arm as he pulled up on the groin, and threw it over his shoulder.

Automatically, Quint went into the Hachiji-dachi , spreadout position, but his face went blank when he saw the thing roll out of the punishing karate kata. It was the first time in his several years of practicing the art, that Quentin Jones had ever seriously performed the tenth kata. It should have resulted in at least complete elimination of the opponent; it could have resulted in death.

But the creature was coming to its feet again, still moving in deceptive speed, considering its appearance of clumsiness. There was spittle at the side of its mouth, but it still mewled as though in pleasure.

“Take him! Take him! The laboratory.” Somewhere in the background Doktor Grete Stahlecker was screaming, unheard by either.

It came again, its hands clawing for a grip. Let it get its hands on this shrieking, dancing opponent, and it knew that then all would be over. Then the master would have her wish. Then would come the good feeling, perhaps. Perhaps the master would allow him to do that which brought the good feeling.

Quint, in desperation, decided upon the nineteenth kata, screamed his Kiai yell, and blurred into the motions of chopping the other’s kidneys, stamping his left knee pit, and finally throwing him again clear across the room, crushing a straight chair to splinters in the process.

Quint was breathing deeply now. Nothing living should be able to take this punishment. Nothing living. He assumed the Kiba-dachi straddle position in desperation. If the thing ever got its hands on him properly…