What Doctor Gottlieb Saw by Ian Tregillis Page A

recall.”
    â€œYes. But I prefer flowers.” She took the sprig from behind her ear and gave it a sniff.
    â€œWhat did you do with the mushrooms you found?”
    â€œI threw them away, of course. Wild mushrooms can be very poisonous.”
    â€œThen why pick them?”
    â€œI like the sensation when nature loses its grip.”
    Gottlieb uncapped the fountain pen, jotted another note in her file. He tried to make it look casual. He hoped the tremble in his hand didn’t betray his unease.
    A knock at the door derailed his train of thought. The door swung open. Standartenführer Pabst barged in.
    â€œI’m with a patient now,” said Gottlieb.
    The colonel glanced at Gretel. “Leave us.”
    â€œAs you wish.” She stood. “Good day, Doctor.” Off she went, trailing mud and the scent of lavender.
    Pabst closed the door. He said, “Dr. von Westarp has been summoned to Berlin. Reichsführer Himmler wishes to know how we lost one of our most valuable test subjects.”
    â€œI’m sure the doctor will give a thorough explanation.”
    â€œHimmler isn’t the only person upset about yesterday’s fiasco. The doctor and I had a long talk before he departed. He blames you for Oskar’s death.”
    The words pierced Gottlieb like an icicle to the heart. These days, the doctor’s disapproval was a death sentence.
    â€œI had nothing to do with this,” he whispered.
    â€œYes, you did. Your job is to hone their minds. Not to hold their hands and coddle them with Jew science.” He spat the words like venom.
    â€œPsychoanalysis is—“
    â€œDiscredited. Von Westarp has latitude to run the farm as he sees fit, and thus far, that has been to your benefit. But Oskar died from a failure to concentrate, to visualize, to anticipate. All things you were meant to teach him.” Pabst turned for the door. “The doctor returns tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d advise against trying to leave.”
    Gottlieb sank into his chair, shivering. His gaze passed over the notes he’d made during Gretel’s session.
    â€œStandartenführer, wait.” The colonel paused with his hand on the doorknob. Gottlieb said, “What if I told you Oskar’s death wasn’t an accident?”
    *   *   *
    On the evening that Oskar died, Gretel had spent the afternoon picking mushrooms in the forest. Gottlieb knew this because he’d taken to using his bird-watching binoculars to track her solitary wanderings around the Schutzstaffel facility. He carried a notepad where he recorded—amongst excited notes of Bohemian waxwings and spotted woodpeckers—observations of Gretel’s behavior and speculations about her state of mind.
    Mushrooms were a new interest. Usually she picked wildflowers in the meadow behind the former orphanage, such as the corn poppies that dotted the field where unsuccessful test subjects had been buried.
    The daylong thrum of spring rains had finally subsided, and now a setting sun emerged beneath the gunmetal gray clouds that had hidden the sky for several days. But the sun was too feeble to bake off the damp. The cleansing scent of rain still permeated the farm, along with a tang of ozone wafting from the shed where electricians made final adjustments to the new diesel generator.
    Gretel cocked her head, as if listening to something faint. The corner of her mouth quirked up. She cast her sloe-eyed gaze across the campus of the Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials , the Reich’s Authority for the Advancement of German Potential.
    Gottlieb slewed the binoculars. His magnified view panned across the training field where Hauptsturmführer Buhler buckled a leash on Kammler, the mentally deficient telekinetic. Past workmen erecting a new laboratory before the chemists arrived from IG Farben. Past the man hovering unsteadily a few inches above the earth.
    It was,