by Various
The film reel flapped on its spindle, fanning the scent of warm acetate through the office. Gottlieb hit the lights.
“How do you feel when you see this, Klaus?”
“I said we’ve already discussed this.”
“Do you feel differently after the accident yesterday?”
“Why would I?” His fingers worried at frayed gauze.
“I understand that you won the toss. So it would have been you who made the first attempt, if your battery hadn’t failed. That doesn’t evoke any particular feelings?”
“Why? It was Oskar’s mistake.” Klaus said, with halfhearted bravado, “He died from of a weakness of will.”
“But you wouldn’t have made the same mistake.”
“Of course not. I saw the danger immediately.”
“Yet you didn’t warn Oskar.”
“Why would I?” Klaus slammed the door on his way out.
Clearly, he hadn’t seen the danger. He hadn’t internalized the lesson from the previous accident. And that oversight had almost left him buried alive: a claustrophobe’s nightmare. But Klaus would never again take things for granted. He now understood, in a visceral way, the importance of mental discipline.
* * *
…line integral of the electric field is thus proportional to the time derivative of the magnetic flux. Note, however, the sign of the induced electromotive force, which resists changes to the current….
The text devolved into hieroglyphics. Then the hieroglyphs became smudges of ink that meandered across the page like earthworms seeking high ground after a rainstorm. Gottlieb’s eyes had mutinied.
He removed his reading glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and rubbed his eyes. Sunset had come and gone hours ago, so the farm was dark except where a ring of klieg lights had been erected to aid the search for Oskar’s body. Because Gottlieb hadn’t managed to get his desk lamp repaired, he’d been forced to read by candle light.
His eyes burned. It wasn’t a very good candle.
He was steeling himself for another reading attempt when there came a tentative knock at the door. Gottlieb opened it.
Osterhagen stood in the corridor. “Evening, Doctor.”
“Hello?”
“I’ve been feeling the tiniest bit crazy lately. Can you fit me in for a session to fix my brain?”
“Well, it’s late—“
“Relax,” said Osterhagen, raising one hand. “I figured you might need some company.” Glass tinkled when he hefted a paper sack. “Figured you could use some of this, too.”
Gottlieb pushed the door wide and waved the other man inside. “You’re quickly becoming my favorite patient.”
Osterhagen entered. The faint ammonia odor from the lab still clung to him. He smelled like cat piss.
From the bag, he produced a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He inspected one glass in the candlelight, fished out his handkerchief, then gave it a quick rub. Gottlieb pretended not to notice.
Osterhagen splashed liquid amber into each glass, saying, “You’re sure I’m not interrupting? You look…”
Gottlieb said, “No. I was just reading.”
Osterhagen glanced at the book. “Ahhh. Maxwell’s equations.” It came out as though he were greeting an old friend. He flipped through the pages, careful to keep Gottlieb’s place. “That puts me back in my student days.”
“I can’t decipher any of this,” said Gottlieb. “It’s gibberish.” He shoved the book aside.
Osterhagen handed him a glass. “Many people say that what you do is also gibberish.”
Gottlieb sighed. “So I’ve heard.”
Osterhagen raised his glass. “To those who practice gibberish, for the betterment of Germany.”
Gottlieb touched it with his own. Clink.
The tastes of oak, and earth, and fire slid across his tongue. The scotch traced a smooth, slow burn on the way down, like smoldering silk.
“Wow.” He checked the bottle. “How’d you get this?”
“My son sent it. He’s a cargo inspector at the port in Bremen. Good job. It has some nice side benefits.”
Several moments passed while they drank in silence. Gottlieb took a heavy swig, dousing the ice in his gut with liquid fire.
“At least they haven’t outlawed electromagnetism yet.” He pointed a thumb at his chest, splashing his shirt in the process. “I’m guilty of ‘Jew science.’”
“Ouch.” Osterhagen wiped the back of his hand across his lips. “But that shouldn’t matter, if von Westarp has need of you.”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? The good doctor seems to think I’m at fault for yesterday’s accident.”
“I figured it was something like that. You’re not alone, though. I thought he was going to round up all of us engineers after the power surge. Even those of us who aren’t working on the generator. I spent half the morning running all over the farm to replace blown fuses, the other half wondering if I’d get a shallow grave for my trouble.”
Gottlieb raised his glass. “To those of us destined for a bullet in the temple.”
Clink. Gottlieb emptied his glass. Osterhagen refilled it, then his own. More silent drinking.
Osterhagen smacked his lips. “They do it in the forest near the battery lab. The executions, I mean. Sometimes I hear it.” He burped. “My advice? Don’t beg. It only makes them angry.”
“Not as angry as trying to leave the farm.”
That happened once or twice per year. Some staff members couldn’t handle the sight of deeds that should have been—in a properly ordered universe—impossible. Those who tried to leave eventually ended up in the forest. Those who stayed eventually found their way to Gottlieb’s office.
“True,” said Osterhagen. “So what really happened yesterday? You must have a theory by now.”
“No theories. Many suspicions.” Gottlieb lowered his voice. “I think it was Gretel. Can’t prove it, though.”
“Ah. That one.” Osterhagen took a long sip. A long, careful sip.
“What do you know about her?”
Osterhagen shook his head. “Nothing. I know very little about any of the test subjects.”
“But…”
“The men in the battery lab avoid Gretel. More than they avoid the others. They leave it up to me to deal with her.” Gottlieb gestured for him to elaborate. He did, but only just: “She makes them uncomfortable. Me, too.”
They spoke of sons and fathers, electromagnetism and psychotherapy. When he departed, Osterhagen took the lamp but left the bottle.
* * *
Gottlieb woke when the rising sun cleared the forest, high enough to stream through the office window and spear him in the eyes. Sleeping at the desk had made for terrible posture, so now his headache throbbed in time to the carpenters’ hammering. Each blow reverberated in his skull.
As the last vestiges of sleep abandoned him, Gottlieb remembered fragmentary dreams of snowflakes and avalanches, butterflies and hurricanes, corn poppies and ravens.
He’d slept through breakfast, but it mattered little because anxiety had shot his appetite in the temple. The fortifying fire of last night’s drink had become a heap of cold ashes in his stomach and bitter despair on his tongue. Dr. von Westarp would return from Berlin today, but Gottlieb was no closer to staying his own execution. No closer to unraveling Gretel’s actions.
He had to know what had happened to Klaus’s battery.
Rudolf arrived at the office, yawning and rubbing bleary eyes, just as Gottlieb was stepping out. He frowned when he saw Gottlieb locking his office.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “I really need to see you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gottlieb. “I’m quite busy. We’ll have to reschedule.”
“When?”
Gottlieb squeezed past him. Over his shoulder, he called, “Find me this afternoon.”
Look hard, though. I might be buried in the forest.
He had to skirt the training field on his way to the b
attery laboratory. Reinhardt stood in the center of the field, frowning at moist piles of hay until they sprouted violet flames. Gottlieb retraced his path past the generator station (still more cursing and banging). The hammering grew louder as he passed the carpenters at work on the new building.
“Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor.”
Gretel swung out from behind a wall stud. Gottlieb jumped. He hadn’t seen her chatting with the foreman. She leaned in his path, a buttercup tucked behind one ear.
Her eyes, darker than overripe plums, searched his face. She said, “You look troubled.”
His heart thrashed inside his ribcage, seeking escape. She’d frightened him on purpose, to play with him, to keep him off-balance. But Gottlieb didn’t need to wait for the panic to subside before he could craft a suitable response. His professional training took over. He turned the question back on Gretel.
“I’m sad about Oskar. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She jumped down beside him. It fluttered the mud-stained hem of her dress, as well as her hair, and the wires protruding from her skull. He caught a whiff of the flower, and tried not to flinch as she brushed against him.
She clucked her tongue. “Poor Oskar. Such a tragedy.”
“And a senseless one,” he said. “An accident like that might have happened to anybody.”
“Not anybody.” The tone of her voice carried faint disapproval, as though he’d said something dim. More brightly, she said, “Are you looking for a late breakfast? I’ll walk with you.”
And she did. Neither spoke. Gretel was, of course, unconcerned by the awkward silence. The clinician in Gottlieb, the small part of him not overwhelmed with the desire to flee, double-checked his diagnosis against her behaviors. The superficial charm fit.
He noticed something odd: she wasn’t barefoot. Yet the day had dawned warm, and clearly she’d been to the meadow.
He said, “I see you’re wearing shoes today.”
Gretel nodded. Frowned. “The workmen spilled a bucket of nails. They haven’t found them all.”
She turned for the mess hall, but he continued toward the battery lab. “Wait.” She gave him the flower. The hairy stem tickled his fingers. “To brighten your office.”
Osterhagen was already hard at work, still dissecting Klaus’s battery. But he shook his head when Gottlieb entered. Not yet, my friend.
He had, however, fixed the lamp.
* * *
Gottlieb’s appetite still hadn’t returned by midday. In lieu of lunch, he spent half an hour composing his final wishes. The nib of his fountain pen dotted the tip of his tongue with the taste of cold, inky steel.
He’d never married, and he owned little. To his mother he left his savings, which had grown in the few years since he’d accepted a stipend from the Reichsbehörde. Medical texts and related items, including some files (those not embargoed by the Schutzstaffel), he bequeathed to his alma mater, the University of Heidelberg.
After sealing the document in an envelope and setting it on his desk, beside the electromagnetics textbook and Gretel’s wildflower, he pulled out the bird-watching binoculars. Bird watching was a good excuse for entering the forest, from which a brave soul might run for it.
But Gottlieb was still gathering the courage to make the attempt when Rudolf returned. The bright flare of irritation quickly burned itself out, to be followed by darker feelings of shame and resignation.
I’m a doctor; I’m here to help them. Very well. Let it be said I performed my duty until the very end.
Gottlieb pulled the relevant file and opened his journal while his patient sprawled in a chair.
Rudolf said, without preamble, “You have to drug me.”
He didn’t cover his mouth when he yawned; his breath wafted across the desk, carrying to Gottlieb the odors of coffee and a sour stomach. The flying man’s eyes were pink through the sclera. The skin beneath his bloodshot eyes had become dark and puffy in the days since they’d last met.
“How long have you had trouble sleeping?”
“It started three nights ago,” said Rudolf. “And I can’t take another. So give me something.”
Oskar had died two days ago. Gottlieb remembered how, just before the accident, Rudolf had been reprimanded for failing to concentrate during his training session.
“What happened three nights ago?”
“That’s when the crazy bitch starting banging on the wall in the middle of the night.” Rudolf yawned again.
Gottlieb sat up. “Crazy bitch” meant Gretel. She and Rudolf shared a wall.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I need something so that I can sleep through her racket tonight. The medics refuse.”
“Dr. von Westarp is very strict about these things.”
“I don’t care. I need sleep.” Rudolf rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Wham, wham, wham! Every night.” He shook his head. “She’s bent, you know. Out of her mind.”
“What is she doing?”
Rudolf noticed the buttercup. He snatched it, twirled it in his fingers.
“Decorating her room,” he said, then crushed the blossom. A snowfall of flower petals dusted the rug.
Gottlieb started to ask, “Decorating? What—“
But he stopped, because he knew what she’d been doing: hanging wildflowers. But for that she would need…What had she said this morning? They haven’t found them all.
“You’re certain she started three nights ago?”
“I’ve hardly slept since then. So yes, I’m certain.”
Gottlieb grabbed the textbook and stood, tipping his chair in his haste. “I must go,” he said.
Rudolf moaned. “What about my sedative?”
But Gottlieb was already running outside. Please, he thought. Just a little more time.
He found the foreman Gretel had been speaking to, and inquired about her visit.
She’d come to return a hammer, said the foreman.
Had she borrowed anything else?
Yes. But while the foreman claimed nothing noteworthy had happened during his interactions with the girl, Gottlieb insisted he recount both conversations in detail. After he did, Gottlieb knew he’d found the loose thread.
The sticking point was, still, Klaus’s battery. Gretel had come nowhere near it, yet she’d somehow sabotaged it during the few moments between when her brother departed the battery lab and arrived at the test site. He’d gone straight from one to the other.
And, thus, past the new generator.
The susurration of tires on crushed gravel announced the arrival of an automobile. A black Mercedes emerged from the forest, rolling along the lane to the farmhouse. Dr. von Westarp had returned from Berlin.
Gottlieb sprinted for the generator hut. He barged into the middle of an argument. Sweaty, red-faced men shouted across the hulking innards of a disassembled dynamo. The room stank of hot oil, diesel fuel, and fear.
Somebody said to him, “Who the hell are you?”
“I know what happened to the generator,” said Gottlieb. He brandished a nail he’d borrowed from the foreman. “You’re looking for one of these.”
“Since when do we take advice from the medical staff?”
“The doctor has returned from Berlin. He’ll demand a report on your progress fixing this generator. If you follow my advice, he might not have you executed.”
It took half an hour of difficult labor, but in the end they found it. Gottlieb laughed. The engineers looked at him as though he were part sage, part madman.
He wiped his eyes, then sought Osterhagen.
* * *
A blood-red sunset streamed through bay windows overlooking the grounds. Von Westarp paced before his blackboard. The board contained a palimpsest scrawl of the doctor’s notes, and a large drawing that was part anatomical cutaway, part circuit diagram. His footsteps kicked up eddies of chalk dust. He hadn’t yet changed from his SS-Oberführer uniform to his preferred lab coat.
Standartenführer Pabst had escorted Gottlieb
to the doctor’s study. Von Westarp spent twenty minutes describing the humiliation of reporting to Reichsführer Himmler the loss of seventeen years’ work. For ten more minutes, he explained how the accident revealed systematic failures in the operation of the Reichsbehörde. Gottlieb’s sweaty palms threatened to soak through the paper sack on his lap.
Von Westarp said, “How do you explain yourself?”
“Oskar’s death was unavoidable. Gretel wanted it to happen.”
“She knew?” Von Westarp trembled. The beet color had begun to drain from his face as the tirade came to an end, but now it returned. “She foresaw but didn’t warn us?”
The soggy bag crackled on Gottlieb’s lap. “You misunderstand me, doctor. She’s not merely clairvoyant. She uses her prescience to manipulate fate.” Gottlieb looked from von Westarp, to Pabst, then back again. “Gretel is broken, was born broken, in ways I can’t easily explain. And now, with her power…We have no frame of reference for what that girl has become.”
“You’re shifting the blame to save yourself.”
Gottlieb reached into the sack. “Do you know how a diesel generator works? I didn’t until recently,” he said. “It’s essentially a gasoline engine that spins magnets past a coil of wire. A good generator maintains a steady flow of electricity regardless of demand. There are electrical and mechanical safeguards to ensure this. But the most important of these is the governor. It keeps things spinning at a steady rate.” From the sack he withdrew a bent nail. “Unless something gets lodged inside.”
Von Westarp turned the nail in his hand. The dying sunlight illuminated faint scoring from a pair of vise-grip pliers. The engineers had struggled to remove it.
Pabst asked, “Why did she sabotage our infrastructure?”
“She didn’t. Not directly. She’s too subtle for that.” Three days ago, Gottlieb explained, Gretel had accosted the foreman overseeing work on the new lab. She’d asked for a spare hammer and nails. He offered her the bucket. She took a few nails, thanked him, and went on her way. But the foreman, busy and distracted, didn’t return the nail bucket to its proper spot. It wasn’t long before somebody kicked it over. They gathered the spilled nails.
“But they missed one,” said Gottlieb, pointing at the twisted metal. He took another item from the paper sack. Pabst wrinkled his nose at the scents of leather and foot odor. “This boot belongs to one of the engineers. See this gap between the rubber and the leather? It’s where the nail lodged when he stepped on it. Not deep enough to pierce his foot. But it did hitch a ride to the generator hut.”