by Bill Schutt
“So what did she do?” MacCready asked.
“Listen, Mac, I feel bad enough about this. Why not just head over there and see for yourself.”
“All right, Jerry. Thanks for the heads-up.” MacCready placed the phone’s headset on the receiver. Leaving the fossils on the lab bench, he made sure to lock the office door as he exited.
The zoo had not yet opened to the public when MacCready arrived at the large C-shaped building that was the Elephant House. Even before he entered, he could hear Yanni’s saxophone, but it was like no music he’d ever heard: a series of jarring, low-frequency blats that never quite came together into a tune. As Mac opened the outer door, a zookeeper brushed past, shooting him a dirty look as he exited.
MacCready followed the atonal auditory assault and was soon standing behind a set of three-inch-wide bars separating the elephants from the curved walk-through that served as the building’s public space. On the other side of the bars stood Yanni and the ancient elephant he’d seen during the “jazz experiment.”
Taking a deep breath, Yanni blew another series of notes that only the merciful might refer to as music. The elephant responded by caressing the end of the saxophone with the delicate, fingerlike structures at the end of its trunk. When Yanni stopped, the animal paused for a moment, then flattened the tip of its trunk on the sawdust-covered ground.
Yanni smiled at the ancient pachyderm, and Mac could feel a strange vibration running through his body—immediately unnerving him, like another personal message from the dark. He also realized that the scientists had done their experiment wrong. Evidently Yanni had made considerable progress since then, although Mac had no idea just how much.
He cleared his throat.
Simultaneously, Yanni and the elephant turned toward the sound of the intruder. MacCready gave a shy wave, feeling as if he’d interrupted a very private conversation.
“Less than good timing, Mac. I’ll be right there,” Yanni said, sounding annoyed, before exiting through an inner door.
Moments later they stood watching the zoo’s largest inhabitant, as it stood watching them.
Mac nodded toward the animal. “So Jumbo here—”
“Her name is Jewel,” Yanni corrected him.
“I’m guessing Jewel’s preference for music has nothing to do with following a circus band around.”
Yanni shook her head. “Nuttin’.”
“And you think elephants can talk to each other?”
“It’s a bet, Mac. But they’re using the opposite end of the . . . what da ya call it?”
“Spectrum?”
“Yeah, spectrum.”
“That’s why you wanted a baritone sax? Because it produced low-frequency sounds?”
“Bingo!”
“And?”
“Look at her, Mac. Jewel’s a prisoner. And she still misses her sister.”
“But didn’t her sister die in—?”
“Nineteen twenty-one. Her name was Hattie. She got sick and they shot her. Right in front of Jewel.”
“And she . . . Jewel . . . still remembers that?”
Yanni nodded.
MacCready gestured toward a large metal door, behind which a second elephant, Betsy, was trumpeting and rattling its chains. “What about her playmate back there?”
“Jewel says she’s an asshole.”
“Well that’s tough,” Mac replied.
“Very tough, Mac . . . tough to lose someone so close; to watch them die so horribly. So unexpectedly.”
MacCready said nothing, his mind drifting, but Yanni interrupted him. He felt her arm encircle his waist.
“It must have been terrible for Hattie’s friends, too,” she added, sadly.
Major Hendry reached into his desk and withdrew the bottle MacCready knew he kept handy for situations like this. “Well, ain’t that a pip?”
Mac sat quietly.
“She talks to elephants, too?” Hendry said, producing his signature shot glasses, before pouring them each a measure of the dark liquid. “Well then here’s to . . . Jewel and Hattie.”
“And Betsy the asshole,” Mac said. He picked up the glass but didn’t drink, noticing that Hendry didn’t, either. Here it comes, he thought.
“I’m thinkin’ that little talent Yanni’s got might come in handy on this next mission, Mac. And this time you two could be dealing with something bigger than bats.”
Mac put down the glass. “What? Yanni’s not going anywhere.”
“No? Well, maybe you should tell her that yourself,” Hendry said, before rapping on the outer wall of his office. Before Mac could settle into rant mode, the door opened and Yanni entered.
“Ya see, it’s all been arranged, Mac,” Hendry said.
MacCready, still wearing a shocked expression, turned to the woman. “What’s all this about, Yanni? What about your apartment? What about Jewel?”
“The apartment will keep, Mac,” Hendry answered for her. “Plants watered, et cetera, et cetera.”
“And Jewel?”
“She’ll be with her sister soon,” Yanni said.
“But—”
“I’m going, Mac.”
MacCready’s eyes ticked back and forth between his friends. Chins raised in assurance, they smiled simultaneously.
“And this calls for another toast,” Hendry called out, cheerfully.
“Got that right,” Yanni said, taking the whiskey-filled shot glass the major offered her.
This time, R. J. MacCready raised his glass.
Reality Check
The tale that unfolds in Hell’s Gate, though fictional, is a convergence of several real and little-known events, including the actual design and partial construction of the world’s first manned spacecraft (the antipodal bomber) at the end of World War II. From Eugen Sänger’s Silverbirds the Nazis intended to release nuclear or biological weapons (on the United States and elsewhere) from an altitude that would be completely indefensible by the Allies. Other weaponry, including the Wasserfall surface-to-air missiles and the FA-223 Drache helicopter, were also moving off the drawing boards by the end of the war. While the tragic and delusionally blind rocket scientist Maurice Voorhees is fictional, men like him did (and still do) live, and certain historical figures, including Hanna Reitsch and Dr. Ishii Shiro, are real.
As for Desmodus draculae, these creatures actually existed in Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico, perhaps until as recently as the coming of the European explorers. In fact, famed vampire bat biologist Arthur Greenhall (one of author Bill Schutt’s mentors) believed that the draculae might not have gone extinct at all, and that they or a closely related species could exist even now. We have, however, taken some dramatic and speculative liberties with the taxonomy and biology of our “night demons.” In reality, Desmodus draculae was not formally described until 1988 (by Morgan, Linares, and Ray). Their fossils, like those of most species that lived in the tropics, are few and far between (given the poor rate of fossilization in environments like rainforests). If, however, the skull fragments of D. draculae uncovered by researchers had belonged to juveniles (rather than adults), then their raccoonlike size would be accurate. Nonetheless, most people are surprised to learn how intelligent modern vampire bats have turned out to be. Author Bill Schutt (who maintained two colonies of vampire bats while studying them at Cornell) documented incidents where the sanguivores mimicked the behavior of chicks, coaxing mother hens to let them snuggle under their brood patch—a richly vascularized region, typically used to warm both eggs and chicks. These “chicks,” though, used the opportunity to feed on their adoptive mothers. Another vampire bat species figured out how to coax hens to settle down into a mating position, so that it could mount-and-feed. Physiologically, the saliva of living vampire bat species is a cocktail of chemical anticoagulants (like the clot-busting and aptly named desmokinase). These substances are applied to the single, crater-shaped wounds that vampires inflict with their razor-sharp incisors and canines. Since the victim continues to bleed l
ong after the bats have drunk their fill and departed, the scene of a vampire bat attack is only a step down from the one depicted in the stable scene. In reality, the vampire bat’s prey eventually dies from either blood loss (smaller species like birds) or infection (an open wound in the tropics is a gateway to disease).
We have, however, trespassed on known and suspected aspects of Desmodus draculae biology by equipping our creatures with greater brawn and a biological weapon somewhat akin to the lethal bacterial cocktail used by Komodo dragons and other monitor lizards. As for mammals, there are few “venomous” species (e.g., the platypus has a venomous hind leg spur), though the slow loris (Nycticebus), a cute-looking primate might fit the bill. Reportedly, it licks an exudate from a gland on its arm, which when mixed with saliva, can trigger a toxic reaction after a bite. Real-life vampire bats do not inject hemorrhagic bacteria into their prey—just a chemical cocktail of anticlotting agents. We hope readers will forgive us this trespass because we have been dreaming for years about penning the proverbial “believable” vampire story. Their ability to use their sono-scans to control the behavior of their prey is also (thankfully) a figment of abstract speculation.
The Hell’s Gate region of Brazil is real, and is already so strange in its scenery and biology that we saw no reason to exaggerate the vegetation and the landscapes beyond reality (except for the fog and the occasional “living fossil”).
What else in this novel is based on true stories and actual science? Much else, as follows:
Though Eugen Sänger (1905–1964) never brought his antipodal bomber to the level of completion described in this novel, he and his project were real, with research on his Silbervogel (or Silverbird) carried out in a lab in the small village of Trauen-Fassberg. As the war began, Sänger renamed his project Raketenbomber in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent funds from being redirected into the Luftwaffe’s V-1/V-2 program, and to his rival at Peenemünde, Wernher von Braun. After moving to Egypt in 1961, Sänger spent the last three years of his life helping President Gamal Abdel Nasser to develop missiles capable of striking other countries and especially Israel. Some of Sänger’s junior rocket scientists continued to develop his space plane designs in the United States after the war, evolving Sänger’s actual engines into the Bell X-1 rocket-plane (the first vehicle to break the sound barrier, with Chuck Yeager at the controls) and the X-15, which, beginning in 1959, became an actual space plane, piloted by, among others, Neil Armstrong, and reaching an altitude of one hundred miles. The X-1 and the X-15 were both launched from beneath airplanes, although a monorail launch system did make an imaginary appearance (based on Sänger’s World War II designs) as one of the Academy Award–winning special effects in George Pal’s 1951 film, When World’s Collide. The aluminum oxide powder used in this novel for the Silverbirds’ solid boosters was based on actual laboratory derivatives of the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg’s doped resin and aluminum powder skin. Aluminum, in essence, is among the most powerful nonnuclear rocket fuels ever invented, though it happened by accident. More than a half century after the Hindenburg demonstrated so spectacularly how aluminum, oxygen, and hydrogen can work together (water thrown on burning aluminum enhances the reaction by becoming hydrogen and oxygen), a revised version of the accidental formula powered the space shuttle’s two strap-on solid rocket boosters; and it could indeed be said, then, that the post-X-15 generation of space planes flew on Hindenburg skin.
Kimura’s mentor, Shiro Ishii, actually existed. He was Japan’s answer to Germany’s Dr. Mengele, Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death.” The camp known as Unit 731, and the events that took place there under Dr. Ishii, are exactly as described. After surrendering to American forces, Ishii and several of his bioweapons scientists bargained (with the aid of General MacArthur) for immunity from war crimes prosecution. They did so by helping jump-start a U.S. bioweapons program that lasted until the Nixon administration ordered its shutdown. In later life, Dr. Ishii served on the Japanese Olympic Committee and, according to his daughter, built and operated clinics devoted to the treatment and curing of childhood diseases—usually at no charge to their parents. On his deathbed in 1959, he called for a priest and converted to Catholicism, apparently based on the belief that if one repented during the Church’s last rites, all sins would be forgiven.
Flugkapitän Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) did indeed exist and did indeed propose and get an endorsement for what our character Voorhees called a suicide squadron. Reitsch joined as one of the squadron’s first volunteers while Heinrich Himmler (Reichsführer of the dreaded SS) suggested recruiting war-wounded soldiers or condemned criminals to pilot the jet-powered dive-bombs. Though von Braun had been developing increasingly sophisticated guidance systems, Sänger agreed with Reitsch that a human being was the most accurate guidance system that could be acquired, and the only one that had already been mass-produced with unskilled labor. In 1943, Reitsch and engineer Otto Skorzeny demonstrated that they could convert a Vengeance-1 “buzz bomb” (V-1) into a piloted bomb in only five days. The first three test versions were to be landed on sledlike skis, so the craft (and the pilots) could be reused; but of those first three test pilots, only Reitsch survived the landings.
Initially, the plan called for sending Reitsch’s Leonidas Squadron against the gathering British and American invading forces, but ultimately it was decided that jet-bomb attacks should be used to slow down the Russian advance. This would be accomplished by destroying power plants, factories, and supply lines as far north as Moscow. Before being accepted into the Leonidas Squadron, volunteers were required to sign the following statement: “I hereby apply to be enrolled in the suicide group as a pilot of a human glider bomb. I fully understand that employment in this capacity will entail my own death.” German pilots referred to the concept of flying into their target as “Operation Werewolf” and, though the pilots wore parachutes, their battle cry was “Die for the Führer.”
Meanwhile, the Japanese launched two rocket-powered versions of the flying bomb at the American aircraft carrier Intrepid. Both were dropped from distant, propeller-driven bombers. The pilots were seated behind a half ton of explosives, with rockets at their backs and steel bullet shields behind their heads. Unlike the German “Werewolves,” the Japanese zealots were denied parachutes. Luckily for the Americans, both Japanese rocket-planes were struck by conventional antiaircraft gunfire and detonated far short of their target.
Would-be jet-bomb pilot Hanna Reitsch turned up in Berlin during the last two days of Hitler’s command, weaving a small “Storch” plane through Russian antiaircraft fire and landing on a road near the Brandenburg Gate. Her plan was to fly Hitler out of Germany, but she found him in his bunker, refusing to leave and toying with cyanide capsules—one of which he offered to her. On April 28, 1945, Reitsch left Hitler with his cyanide and his new bride-to-be and flew out of Berlin, once again only narrowly avoiding being shot down by the Red Army. Like von Braun, she decided to head west, surrendering to the Americans. She was held and interrogated for eighteen months. By 1952 she was free to enter World Gliding Championships, where she began setting records that are still held to this day. Like the Japanese bioweapons experts and German rocketeers, Reitsch was also spared postwar prosecution. Near the beginning of the space race, in 1961, she was even invited to a White House sit-down with President Kennedy.
SS Sergeant Schrödinger and the legend that followed his capture and escape (after smiling at an interrogator when punched in a bullet wound), are based on a real person, who put a very real scare (“Do you think Hitler has many more like him?”) through the U.S. Army’s 82nd Engineer Battalion.
In this novel, the fictional Maurice Voorhees makes several design modifications to Sänger’s suborbital space plane—including, finally, extreme measures to reduce the ship’s mass. (In all likelihood, the real Sänger design would not have worked without the Voorhees modifications.) During America’s Apollo program, scientists encountered the same challenges, w
ith extreme mass reduction strategies directed at the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Had the antipodal bomber program progressed to completion, as it does in Hell’s Gate, the problems addressed at Nostromo Base by redesign would likely have resulted in the same simplifications, along with booster-rocket staging. In the case of the Apollo engineers, scraping away every possible gram of mass resulted in a LEM with a hull that was, in places, only as thick as two sheets of newspaper. Under these conditions, far outside the protection of Earth’s magnetic field, had solar storms of the intensity experienced during 2003 erupted, the ship’s hull could have provided barely more radiation shielding than a silk shirt, and the astronauts would have received lethal doses of radiation within an hour. Since the engineering problems addressed at Nostromo Base would have been (and ultimately were) addressed by German rocket scientists during the Apollo program, the solid fuel boosters and other modifications on the original Sänger design have been made in this novel to accommodate reality.
The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket really did occur in January and February of 1944, in the Ukraine. More than 130,000 exhausted German troops were encircled in a pocket near the town of Cherkassy, and as Soviet forces tightened their pincer operation, the Germans, outnumbered and outgunned, resisted. Incredibly, the German relief force (the 24th Panzer Division) was ordered away when Hitler learned that it had been moved without his approval. Weather became a major factor, as German tanks and trucks became mired in thick mud, and only the horse-drawn panje sleds could move supplies. With the Luftwaffe unable to deliver sufficient supplies, the Germans broke out, running a gauntlet through Soviet tanks and artillery. Tens of thousands were slaughtered or captured, but many escaped. For the purposes of our tale, Hanna Reitsch’s Silverbird attack on Soviet lines facilitated their escape. Coincidentally, this battle was also known as “Hell’s Gate.” For the Russians it was hell, and worse, with casualties nearly beyond measure. Had they not drawn more than half of the German forces away from Western Europe, through the battle of February 1944, those same forces could likely have overwhelmed the Allied landing force in France, and the Normandy invasion might have failed.