Pursuit by Robert L. Fish

the colonel’s poorly set arm. “Is it your arm?”
    â€œIt was never my arm, it was my shoulder,” the colonel said shortly. “But that’s not it.”
    â€œThen what help—”
    â€œYou might help me survive.” Von Schraeder looked at the doctor across the width of the car. “It is not certain yet that I will need your help, but I don’t believe in leaving things to chance.”
    â€œSurvive? I don’t understand—”
    â€œWhat don’t you understand? The meaning of survival?” Von Schraeder tented his fingers and stared at them. He looked quite professorial. “Survival, my dear Franz, is living longer—or continuing longer—than another person or thing. In my case survival is living longer than I would if I didn’t take the necessary steps to stay that way. To me it’s rather important.” Having made that understatement, he glanced at the doctor from the corners of his eyes. “If, after our experience at Maidanek we haven’t learned that, we’ve learned nothing.”
    â€œWhat has Maidanek got to do with it—?”
    â€œMy dear Franz, have you ever looked through the peephole into the gas pens when the crystals are dropped?” The doctor stared at him dumbly and shook his head. Von Schraeder shrugged. “A pity. You would know what I was talking about. You would have seen the prisoners fighting like animals, trying to get to the door, even though they know it is useless. Some of them have heard stories—there were a few escapes from Auschwitz and stories got around—but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe them. And when they go into the showers and there really is water coming from the shower heads, they are relieved. But when they get into the pens and the door is locked behind them, and then the crystals start coming down like blue snowflakes, then they finally know. They know , do you understand?” Von Schraeder was leaning toward the doctor now, more intent than he had planned to be. “They climb all over each other, scratching, punching, pulling, screaming, begging, crying, shitting and pissing all over each other and sliding in it trying to reach that door that means nothing. Why?” He leaned back, relaxing a bit. “Trying to survive, my friend. Trying to survive.”
    The doctor was staring at him, his eyes wide. He had never seen the usually imperturbable colonel like this, nor had he ever imagined to see him like this. Von Schraeder went on in a calmer tone.
    â€œIf you haven’t looked through the peephole, at least you must have seen the Sonderkommandos with their gas masks and their high boots opening the doors afterward and hosing down the corpses to wash the shit and piss and vomit off them before they lift them with their hooks into the carts and roll them off to the ovens. They hook their own wives, their own children; they shovel their relatives and their dearest friends onto the grates and turn up the fires. Why? To survive, my friend. To survive!”
    The doctor seemed dazed by the conversation.
    â€œBut how can arranging for my transfer possibly help you survive?”
    â€œIt’s the first step,” von Schraeder said calmly. His past emotion seemed to have evaporated completely. “I had a professor once when I was in the Technical Institute, a professor in mechanical engineering; as I recall, his name was Werner. If you gave him the correct answer to a problem but omitted any step in the solution, he would fail you. ‘From one step to the next!’ he would scream. ‘First things first, then second things second, all in order, all in order, until the answer comes! No jumps! No skips!’ I thought at the time that he was crazy, a hysterical old man, but he was absolutely right. It’s the secret of engineering; basically it’s the secret of all science. No skips, no jumps. I have a feeling it’s also the