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oily cloth. Taking turns, they smelled
the bundle, tasted it, and then marked the fabric with their own scents from
glands inside their wrists. Inside the rag was an instrument with a tube on one
end and what appeared to be a handle on the other. The sides were heavy,
blocky, metallic slabs. The handle was crosshatched and brown: two panels of
material softer than concrete yet harder than books. Never before had they seen
wood. Parts moved on the machine as they passed it back and forth. Ryker
toggled a switch near the base of the handle and a thin container dropped free.
Rickard retrieved and smelled it. Parts inside that component moved also, like
a slim box. His fingers pressed and pulled, exploring. A shiny object fell
free. Ryker snatched it up as though it were a beetle. It was not alive, in a technical sense … it was, however live
ammunition. Squatting, he tried to pull the bullet from its brass case.
    They could smell the powder inside.
    Scraping
a clear nail across the primer—lodged deep and flat and
firm—yielded no result. He popped it inside of his mouth, probing with
his tongue, gently biting down. Unsatisfied, he spit out the cartridge and
pointed the copper-jeweled tip at his eye, studying its diameter and roundness,
then poked the blunt tip into the business end of the Luger. Next, ears
pivoting from flattened crescents in his skull—each like half a tea
saucer—he shook the bullet, listening. Each ear took a turn, flexible,
long muscle fibers rotating Ryker’s auditory flap independently at comical
angles. The brass casing would not allow the bullet to pass fully into the
barrel, so the densely muscled youngster plucked the cartridge out again,
frowning at it in the palm of his thin, curled hand, glancing from the bullet
to the gun and back.
    Rickard
pulled the Luger from Ryker gently, but without approval. Ryker hummed a low
tone, a warning, but let it trail off as he watched. Engaging the safety, his
brother pulled the trigger, then shook his head. He
disengaged the safety, replaced the magazine in the handle with a click, and
slipped a finger back onto the trigger.
    “There.”
With a click The One Who Was Different swung both doors of the cabinet open.
Ryker and Rickard laid their ears flat. Standing like reptilian meerkats, they
peered over the top of the cabinet door blocking their view.
    The shelves were jammed full .
    Squatting,
Rickard quickly wrapped the pistol back into an oily package. Ryker placed the
books and instrument roll back inside the bag then the Luger. Each twin slid
forward off the table, hands held in front of them. Their stomachs slapped the
concrete and each sprung upright again, curious to better see what items the
shelves held. The One Who Was Different opened a third journal. The twins
rested on their heels, listening, their ears and eyes searching the shelves in
wonder. The boy read:

 
    September 6, 1939.
    In
mere days the nation’s greatest minds have been concentrated in one room. I am
one of hundreds. Our cause is noble and necessary. This is the time for
greatness to be recognized. Colleagues who had failed, previously, to recognize
me now nod respectfully as we mill about, waiting for the speeches to commence.
    Dr.
Mengele has taken me on. We recruit, at top speed, a team to maximize our
greatest resource: knowledge.

 
    Evening~
    A
list, those who have not responded to the cause, is in my care. Each dossier thicker than my own by at least an inch. A Swiss physicist of note, a German astronomer, a French inventor,
and dozens more. In the morning we will collect these men. If it were a
matter of verbal duels, surely none would accompany our party forth, as there
have already been conversations with each. The rifles will settle things. I am
thankful not to have been issued one—a long-gun that is. Mengele spoke
shortly with an SS official, a man in his twenties, in passing. In jabbing prose
he convinced the youth, in moments, to relinquish his sidearm to me.