GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘The New Order needs its masters and they have to be Aryan: blonde-haired and blue-eyed and strong – and absolutely obedient. Such are found in the Jungvolk – the boys of ten to fourteen – and they are formed in the Hitler Youth, given the Blood and Honor dagger, retrained to worship the Führer and the Nation, and then join my SS. Once there, they are mine. I do with them what I will. They no longer belong to Hitler, but to me – and they worship me slavishly.’

  Himmler dreamed it and did it: he gave birth to his acolytes. The mild chicken farmer blinked his modest eyes and saw a world of godmen. The SS was Himmler’s church, his bed and his altar; it was an Order run on Jesuit principles and disciplined with an iron fist. All its members were racially pure. They were bound together by sacred oaths. They were stripped of their history, given numbers instead of names, indoctrinated with the myths of the Volk and emerged as disciples. No questions would be asked. No order would be ignored. Their blind obedience would let them wade through hell without shame or revulsion.

  I believed in this approach. Without discipline there is dissension. Himmler’s ultimate aims struck me as religious, but his methods were sound. We cannot progress with freedom. Free men are a curse. Such men resist change because it leaves them exposed as superfluous. Himmler understood that much. He feared individuals. He felt that individuals were a threat to his grand masterplan. And what was his plan? He wanted gods, not normal men. He believed in obedience, in controlled breeding and vivisection; believed in biological mutation and its product, the Superman. Such a dream is not uncommon. Modern science still pursues it. Out there, in the world beyond the ice, primitive surgeons hack bone for it. As for myself, I accepted it: men were meat to be used. I believed in biological mutation and used all that was offered.

  ‘The New Order will be purified. The subhumans will be slaves. All dissenters will be stripped of their resistance until they, too, obey. Failing that, they will be removed by gas, gun or noose – and even then, we will ensure that they contribute to the good of the Order. Gouge the gold from their teeth. Use their skin for lampshades. We will turn their bones to ashes and dust in the great crematoria. It is necessary to do so. We must affirm that we are serious. We must let them know that discipline is all, and that their ash can be useful. The New Order will be strict. Its one goal will be progress. It will be dedicated to experiment and research, to the advancement of knowledge. Most laboratories have limitations; this won’t be so in the New Order. The subhumans, who are useful as slaves, will also serve us as specimens.’

  Not all aeronautics. That went on at Kummersdorft West. In the hangars of Kummersdorft West my other dream took wing. I worked with Schriever and Belluzzo. Perhaps Miethe and Habermohl. I remember the names, not the faces, and I feel no affection. Nonetheless, I worked with them. My restless genius drove me. The vicissitudes of the war did not touch me as my project expanded. How many nights did I go sleepless? I think back on that with pride. I was in my early sixties at the time, but I drove them relentlessly. The first disk took shape slowly. There were many set-backs. I traveled north and south, east and west, stealing men and ideas. Factories hidden in the Schwarzwald. The RLaboratory in Volkenrode. Heated discussions about electrostatic fields and gyroscopic controls. The emerging disk filled the hangar. Schriever’s eyes were filled with greed. The four legs that housed the gas turbine rotors reflected the bright lights. Schriever studied the disk with wonder. This recollection makes me smile. What Schriever gazed upon with such greed and admiration was a primitive toy. The real achievements were in my files. What Schriever saw was nothing. In the hangar in Kummersdorft West I was building a useless thing.

  The deceit was necessary. That was no one I could trust. The Third Reich was filled with frightened, ambitious men who yearned to make an impression. I did not trust Rudolph Schriever. I saw the death in Himmler’s eyes. I remembered my past, the busy hangars in Iowa, all the businessmen and cowardly politicians who had smothered my life’s work. The same thing could happen again. The war would not last forever. Already, in 1941, I saw the Reich’s trickling wounds. Just how long would Himmler last? And how long could he keep his secret? I wanted to utilize his masterplan, but what guarantees had I? The Nazis devoured their own kind. They might well devour Himmler. Either that, or the Reichführer would turn on me, destroying all I had gained. Heinrich Himmler: the Reichführer. His mild eyes did not deceive me. His neat fingernails were polished with blood and his smile hid hysteria. No, I didn’t trust him. There was no one I could trust. And so I gave him just a little, a prototype that would not work. I kept explaining that I needed more time and that the problems were numerous.

  A delicate maneuver. A great cunning was required. The disk had to fool the other engineers while still lacking in something. I used obsolete technologies. I gave the engineers their head. Gas turbines and liquid-fuel rockets were the fruits of their labors. Such toys kept them happy. Schriever’s eyes shone with triumph. Young and lean, he showed his drawings to Himmler while I went my own way. Their flying disk had been surpassed. The real achievement was in my files. I gave a little and took a great deal and listened always to Himmler.

  ‘We have our underground factories. We have our chosen location. We have our masters, the SS, and our slaves and your own crystal genius. But that isn’t enough. We need more than normal men. What we need is a biological mutation that will lead to true greatness. We must learn to control the workers. Not with whips and not with guns. What we need is automatic control of their bodies and minds. The human brain must be examined. The body’s secrets must be explored. We must try to steal their will and their strength and leave them just what they need. The democracies cannot do this. Regressive morals would forbid it. But here, at the dawn of the new era, there is nothing to hinder us. We must use the Ahnenerbe. We must use the Lebensborn. We must study racial characteristics and breed only the purest. This will solve the first problem. In this way we will find the Superman. Nevertheless, that leaves the problem of the workers, and we must solve that also. Control of mind and body. We must find a whole new method. I think of medical and psychological experiments of the most extreme kind. The camps are yours to command. The schweine there are useless meat. The New Order needs a wealth of mindless muscle and your genius must find it.’

  The concentration camps were the laboratories. The prisoners were the guinea pigs. The whole mystery of human life was explored as it writhed on the tables… What are the limits of human pain? How long before the lungs collapse? Will scorched flesh, if left unattended, renew itself or turn gangrenous? Inject this woman with jaundice. Inject that child with typhoid. Shoot this creature with poison bullets, graft a bone, transfer a limb, remove testicles and ovaries and intestines, but don’t use anesthetics. Was it the surgery that led to death? Was it death through shock or pain? Put that frozen man between those two whores and then check his responses. More work. (It rarely stopped.) The Ahnenerbe needs human heads. The Institute for Research into Heredity needs anthropological measurements. Take these filthy Jews and Poles. Strip them naked and measure them. If suitable, put them into the gas chambers and then chop off their heads. Ship the heads off in canisters. Use extreme care when packing. Peel the skin from the bones of the corpse, dissolve the bones, use the healthy flesh. This strip decomposed already. A good piece of material there. These tattoos would make a nice lampshade in Frau Koch’s bedroom… But such was Nazi frivolity. My true research never stopped. The concentration camps, with their abatoirs and crematoria, were extraordinary laboratories.

  ‘Do you understand at last? The New Order is very real. It will be broken into colonies, each separate, each with its work, all divided into masters and slaves, existing just for the future. What’s a colony in our wilderness? It’s just another Nordhausen. You ship the subhumans in to build your underground complex, you control them with your dogs and the Death’s Head SS, and then you move in your scientists and technicians and administrators, and you bind them all together with fear of the a
ll-seeing masters. And once there, where can they go? There is no way in or out. They will live underground, seduced by power, cowed by fear, the masters bound by their oaths, by their religious convictions, the subhumans by torture and death and the lack of all exits. Yes, American, it is possible. We are halfway there already. You must work, you must complete your great disk, before we settle the matter.’

  So I listened to Himmler. So his droning words encouraged me. Not for long did I think he would survive, but his ideas were valuable. I used him and his facilities. We filled the trains with nameless thousands. The slaves were shipped to the harbor of Keil and then they just disappeared.

  Yet I had to be careful. I could not hold back too much. Himmler pressed me for a test flight of the disk, and I had to oblige. It was 1941. I believe it was June. The steel doors of the hangars were pulled open and the sunlight poured in. This much I remember. The disk reflected the sunlight. Schriever climbed into the dome-shaped pilot’s cabin, his eyes afire with excitement. The engineers retreated. They all shielded their eyes. Himmler joined me behind the sandbags, his spectacles perched high on his nose. The disk looked like a metallic mushroom. It also resembled a giant spider. Its four legs housed the gas turbine rotors and ran down obliquely. Himmler rubbed at his nose. Sunlight flashed off his spectacles. There was a roar as the hollow legs spewed fire and filled the air with dense smoke. Yellow flames spat from the tarmac. The roar changed into a numbing sibilance as the disk left the ground. Himmler covered his ears. His body seemed to be shrinking. The disk shuddered and shrieked, lifted gently off the ground, hovered briefly and swayed from side to side and was obscured by the swirling smoke. Himmler turned and stared at me. His mild eyes were like the sun. The disk roared and hovered just above the ground as Himmler reached for my hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Richard licked his forefinger and ran it around the rim of his glass. The cigaret smoke curled about him, stinging his bleary, bloodshot eyes, and the noise in the crowded, lunchtime pub was too much for his ears. He kept his gaze fixed on the glass, on the ice cubes in the Coke, but glanced occasionally, with a twisted, bitter smile, at Jenny’s unfinished lager.

  ‘Just one drink,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Just let me have half a pint of bitter. It won’t affect me a bit.’ Jenny sighed and shook her head, her brown eyes devoid of

  humor, tugging distractedly at a lock of her curly hair and gently biting her lower lip. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘You’re not supposed to drink anything. And once you start, you won’t know how to stop – you never do anymore.’

  ‘A half pint,’ Richard said.

  ‘No. Go to hell.’

  ‘Just give me a sip of yours, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Drink your Coke and shut up.’

  Richard rolled his eyes despairingly, picked his glass up and noticed that it was shaking, held it to his lips with great care, had a sip, put it down again.

  ‘You’re still shaking,’ Jenny said.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Richard replied. ‘I haven’t had a drink for five days. I’m going out of my skull.’

  ‘You’re already out of your skull. You’ve been that way for a year now. I couldn’t take another year like that, so just keep your mouth shut.’

  Richard didn’t reply to that. There was little he could say. He had drowned the past year in a sea of booze, trying to kill off the nightmares. Now he glanced around the pub, the cigaret smoke stinging his eyes, taking in the pinstripe suits, the black shoes and umbrellas, the pretty secretaries with their hair trailing loosely down their spines, their cheeks flushed with gin or Campari, their breasts thrusting invitingly. They all seemed remote to him, superfluous, unreal, their beauty and vigor redundant, diffused behind frosted glass. Then he looked at Jenny: brown eyes in a moon-shaped face. She was wearing her shabby parka and faded blue denims, her white blouse unbuttoned just above her breasts, her skin creamy and smooth. She seemed slightly more real, a bit closer, part of him, and the fact that she was still trying to help him filled him with shame.

  ‘A hypnotist!’ he exclaimed. ‘Jesus Christ! I can’t believe I let you persuade me.’

  ‘He isn’t a crackpot,’ Jenny said. ‘He’s a psychiatrist and neurologist, a Harley Street specialist, and since he can’t possibly make you feel worse than you are, you’ve nothing to lose.’

  ‘A psychiatrist?’

  ‘Don’t look mortified.’

  ‘You actually think I need a psychiatrist? You think I’ve gone crazy?’

  ‘So what would you call it?’

  ‘I’m not crazy,’ Richard said.

  ‘All right,’ Jenny said, ‘you’re not crazy… but you’re not healthy either.’

  ‘Ah,’ Richard said, touching his temple with a finger and turning the finger around like a screwdriver. ‘I’m sick in the head.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘Listen, Richard, you’re not going to see a witch doctor. He won’t beat on his jungle drums.’ Jenny reached into her shoulder-bag, withdrew a packet of cigarets, used her lighter with a jittery, angry movement and threw it back in her bag. ‘What’s bugging you?’ she said. ‘The man’s just a fucking doctor. This is 1975, for God’s sake: it’s routine these days.’

  Richard flushed and looked away and studied the glasses above the bar, hurt and embarrassed by her statement, but accepting the truth in it. The past year had been a horror, a gradual sinking into madness, the days viewed through the prism of booze, the nights strung out on nightmares. The police interview hadn’t helped, had in fact made it worse, their disbelief filling him with shame and deepening confusion. Now the wheel had turned full circle. He was himself loath to accept it. More and more he was resisting the idea that the incident had actually occurred.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t really think you’re crazy. I just happen to believe you’re mentally ill and you have to be cured. You used to drink like a normal person. I mean, you had the odd wild night. But you never needed to drink like you need to these days – and you need it too much. You just can’t go on like this. It won’t do you any good. You’ve already given up art school, you’re living off unemployment benefits, and you haven’t seen your family or friends in close to a year. What kind of life’s that? You’re only nineteen, for God’s sake! You’ve been seeing your normal doctor for mysterious rashes and headaches, and you’re washing the pills down with red wine… You’ve got to sort yourself out, pal.’

  Richard sipped his iced Coke, ran his fingers around the glass, looked up and shrugged his shoulders in defeat, his smile tight and pained.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘No bloody question about it.’

  ‘I haven’t seen too much of you either.’

  ‘Don’t blame that on me.’

  Richard glanced around the pub and saw the beer glinting golden, the flushed faces of the men and women lined along the bar counter. Their conversation was noisy, a meaningless lunchtime repartee, and he felt a sudden sweeping isolation, as if no longer part of them. Had the incident occurred at all? Had he imagined the whole damned thing? The instant he considered this, he felt a fear that made his heart start pounding. Returning his gaze to Jenny, he saw her stubbing her cigaret out. She smiled when she glanced at him, her brown eyes as large as spoons, and again he felt that secret, gnawing shame that had now become part of him.

  ‘I’m getting better,’ he lied.

  ‘Don’t talk shit,’ Jenny said.

  ‘No, really,’ he insisted, ‘I’m getting better. I don’t think I need this.’

  ‘Richard, he’s only a psychiatrist.’

  ‘I don’t care. I feel stupid.’

  ‘Damn it, he often deals with crazy people… You’ll probably seem halfway normal.’

  ‘It’s all bullshit,’ Richard said.

  ‘What’s bullshit?’

  ‘Hypnotism.’

  ‘You
ever tried it?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Then what the hell do you know?’

  Richard shrugged and glanced around him, seeing the upper-class brigade, the men with pinstripe suits and umbrellas, the women like fashion models. What was he doing here? He didn’t want to be here. He felt a slowly uncoiling desperation that threatened to choke him.

  ‘What good will it do me?’

  ‘You won’t know until you try.’

  Jenny pushed her chair back and stood up with a determined movement, brushing her auburn hair from her forehead and avoiding his gaze. Richard sighed and raised his hands, an indecisive, weak gesture, but Jenny, ignoring him, turned away and walked out of the pub. Cursing quietly, he followed her out and found her standing on the pavement, exhaling cigaret smoke, her lips pouting attractively, her parka falling below her thighs, around the faded blue denims. She flounced off along the street, shaking her head in an angry gesture, turning the corner at Baker Street station as if no longer caring. Cursing softly again, Richard hurried after her, pushing his way through the crowds. He caught up with her as she passed the Planetarium and Madame Tussaud’s.

  ‘Okay!’ he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I apologize. Okay?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she responded. ‘I don’t want your fucking apology. I just want you to visit that psychiatrist. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘Okay, Jenny, you win.’

  She stopped at York Gardens, the wind blowing her hair, her face pale and her lips a tight line, the brown eyes large and luminous. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

  They crossed Marylebone Road, passing a wall of stalled traffic, then walked silently along the opposite pavement, neither touching the other. Richard stayed a little behind, feeling nervous and confused, taking note of the gray streets, the stately rows of Georgian buildings, his throat dry and crying out for a drink, for the soothing oblivion. He needed that oblivion. He didn’t want to go back. What had happened was in the past and should remain there, buried deep and forgotten. He didn’t want to relive it, didn’t think he could stand it, and yet walking behind Jenny, following her into Harley Street, he knew that she was right, that he had to face up to the problem; that he had to tear the veil from the mystery that kept him in chains.