The Colossus (7 page)

Berlin, Germany
January 1938

Lars asks me over and over again if I have found a way to leave Germany. And I snap, as I seem to do a lot these days. With a resounding no. Martha I managed to send to Geneva. No one was going to take the risk of helping me leave Germany. Not now. I am too visible, even well known in Nazi circles.

Peter Schultz came to the lab today. Tall, lanky, egotistical Peter. Head of operations, son of current chairman Leopold Schultz. Lars leapt to his feet. The idiot. Peter sat at the edge of my desk and asked if I had an answer for him. He was being so tedious. So grown-up.

Peter had been a mere teenager when I first met his father at a conference. Leopold had convinced me to work for him instead of Bayer. Peter started spending a great deal of time with me at my lab, asking questions, assisting me whenever he wasn’t at school. We had become friends, despite the fact that I was more than a decade older.

I waved Lars back to his chair and told him not to be so intimidated by Peter. He is non-lethal, like the crowd control gases you’re concocting for the Nazis, I said. My first joke in weeks. Schultz let out a booming laugh.

Just to torture Peter Schultz, I asked Lars to recapitulate our work on the Indus pills.

Here are the details of our experiment so far in layman’s terms.

Three years ago, we first got the pills and started preliminary tests from which we were able to determine its vegetable content.

We commenced animal testing with monkeys. We had two groups of monkeys. All were offered normal nutrition. One set, the test group, was given the pill. The other set, the control group, was not. The monkeys on the pill ate less and less over time. Tests showed decreased thyroid activity in these monkeys.

Note 1:
Something in the pill lowered the monkeys’ thyroid levels, giving them lower metabolic rates. A few studies have shown that lowered metabolic rates indicate higher life expectancy.

We also found a protein element in the pill. However, incubation of the pill didn’t result in any development of microbes. We concluded that the protein element was probably vegetable or animal protein.

A big mistake.

One month into testing, the test group—the monkeys on the pill—developed fevers. The ones in the control group showed no symptoms. We ran blood cultures of the affected monkeys’ blood and found a fully formed bacterium, of the sporohalobacter genus. This bacterium was similar in composition to the protein element that we had found earlier in the pills.

Now for a fantastic find. The protein element in the pill was an endospore—which is a dormant bacterium that can survive for even millions of years in dormancy. Mummies, fossils, etc., can harbor endospores that can revert to their active state when conditions are perfect for them.

Note 2:
This endospore probably used components in the monkey’s cells to convert to its active state.

Conclusion 1 and 2:
Since the fevers disappeared, we concluded that the bacteria had caused the fevers in the test group monkeys.

The bacterium is likely the reason for the decreased thyroid activity and metabolic rate reduction.

Now for the odd bit. The control group, the monkeys who had not had the pills, got the fevers, too, but two months after testing began. And as Lars likes to point out—so did we. We thought we caught it from the test monkeys. However, the control group had been isolated, so why did they develop the fevers? And also, why after all that time?

Conclusion 3:
The bacterium is possibly contagious and takes about two months to synthesize in a mammal and release toxic enzymes, which causes the fevers.

Interestingly, six to ten months after testing began, the control group of monkeys started to show elevated blood pressure. In humans, high BP is a primary condition, but when an animal shows it, there is almost always another underlying reason for it. In the monkeys, routine blood tests continued to be normal. We were unable to identify the reason for the rise in BP. The question was, why was the test group not showing elevated BP? After all, the control group had not even taken the pill.

Conclusion 4:
Since the control group had not ingested the pill, the increased BP was most likely random and unrelated to the pill.

We spent a year running the same tests on a second group of monkeys. It was a repetition of the first time.

Conclusion 5:
Since our findings have been observed twice, we decided that the elevated blood pressure had something to do with the pill, most likely with the bacteria in it. But we have no idea how or why.

Note 3: What is puzzling are unrelated symptoms exhibited by the control group. Some monkeys developed high cholesterol, others showed slight increases in blood sugar levels.

There is a link between all of this, but we haven’t been able to find it.

Schultz of course was hopping mad by the time Lars was done with the recap. He hates it when I tell him things he already knows. He has heard us talk about the Indus pills and our inconclusive results dozens of times. And yet he wants to start human trials.

I told Lars this for the first time today. Lars was shocked and stated the obvious. The pills were nowhere near human consumption. I looked at Schultz.

Schultz stood up and put his enormous hands on my shoulders. They felt like dead weights. He had never touched me before. The Nazis are excited at the prospect of a drug that can extend lives, he said. His hands gripped my arms. They want to include our pill in their medical experiments, he said. To his credit, he said those awful words with a degree of contrition.

But I jerked him away. Schultz tried to sound sincere. If we want to stay alive, we must do as the Nazis ask, he said. He told me Hitler had heard stories of the immortals of Indus Valley. Lowered metabolic rate is the answer to living longer, Hitler and his cronies have decided.

And because we have concluded lowered metabolic rates twice over with our pill, that mustachioed idiot, that failed artist wants a piece of this immortality!

The Indus pill, Schultz informed me, is the main thing—perhaps the only thing—keeping me in my lab and Berliner still in business. That and Lars’s crowd control gases, he said, glowering at poor Lars.

Schultz moved closer, towering over me. I was this close to being put away myself, he said.

Today for the first time, I felt real fear. I staggered toward my table and let my forehead hit its hard, cold surface. Over and over again. And I’m not one to display emotion freely.

Schultz touched my shoulder. Never in over a decade and now twice in one day! He told me about a labor camp for skilled workers based on the ‘Hofjuden’ portion of Sobibor starting at Krippenwald. Skilled Jews who aren’t part of the Hofjuden will be placed there, he said.

Sobibor is a death camp, of course. And Hofjuden. Privileged court Jews of the old times. Even as they kill us, they mock us. They strip us of our dignity.

Schultz then tried diplomacy. The Hofjuden have slightly better living conditions, he said. And at Krippenwald, they want to keep the inmates alive. But what they also want is to spend as little on nutrition as possible. I knew the Nazis were conducting medical experiments at Krippenwald, among other places. Schultz said he had met with some top Nazi officials last week. They would like us to conduct our human trials at Krippenwald labor camp.

The final straw is that he has told the Nazis the pill works. So of course, they are eager to test it. I remember letting out a moan, like the cry of a lamb about to be slaughtered.

Schultz persisted. With this pill, the Nazis will get workers to live on reduced nutrition and live longer. And you get to continue working, he told me.

I have said nothing so far, but I could not hold back any longer. I lashed out at Schultz. How can I do this to my people? I asked him. Aid in experiments with my brethren? I have been blind and arrogant, but I cannot unleash an unknown compound on anyone, let alone my own people who are suffering simply because they are Jewish.

Schultz slammed an enormous fist against the table. In the quiet of the lab, it sounded like a cannon going off. Again, to his credit, Schultz did try to send me away when the Nazi propaganda began years ago. He begged me to leave. A thousand times. But I didn’t listen.

I was a fool.

I could tell that Schultz was upset for me. But he was also excited for the possibilities that lay ahead with the Indus pills. And no matter how hard he tried, his voice betrayed it.

I am trapped. I am at young Schultz’s mercy. I know this now.

Schultz tried to tell me that the inmates at Krippenwald are skilled workers, useful to the Nazis and therefore being kept alive, but in the end, they will die. We cannot help them get out. We
are extending their lives. They can survive on lowered nutrition because of our pill.

Schultz was succeeding in making his point without raising his voice. It was a practiced art. He had often practiced it with me before addressing meetings. And today he was using it on me! Keeping calm, his voice modulated as if he were talking about gardening tips. I tried telling him that I need more time.

All Schultz did was sit down and cross his long legs. All those unexplained symptoms must be because of contaminants, he opined, calmly examining his manicured nails.

It’s true. Lab animals are notorious for having unexplained symptoms. We have to ignore that which is unrelated and work with what we know. The good results triumph over the bad side effects. We say that to clear our conscience, but this time, it’s different.

He asked me to start work on a composition profile for the pill so we can manufacture them. Hitler is going to start a war. He wants enough pills to dispense to every single soldier. If this pill works in their camps, we need to be able to produce them.

I’ve been asked to find out how much we have in stock. We have quite a lot, and a trip to India should be enough to take care of us for a while. I know Schultz will send a team to India to clean out the grave. I wish I could go, but my passport was confiscated years ago.

April 1938

Thousands of pills have arrived from India and will be dispensed as the Nazis choose. Manufacturing will begin in a year’s time, Schultz has informed the Nazis. I have been assigned a team of scientists and a superb new lab. We have commenced work on a composition profile. The active bacteria will be included in the manufactured pills.

All aspects of its contagiousness, the fevers and other unexplained symptoms in the monkeys, are to be kept secret, Schultz has warned—known only to Lars, himself, and me.

December 1939

Germany attacked Poland three months ago.

In a listless bleeding of one miserable day into another, I go on. The Nazis have spared me for now, perhaps because the Indus pill seems to be working. The bacteria is seemingly lengthening the life spans of Krippenwald’s inmates, since with slower metabolisms, they can survive on lowered nutrition. No problematic symptoms have been reported so far.

The Indus health pills have passed the human trials test.