What Doctor Gottlieb Saw by Ian Tregillis Page B

in other words, a typical day at the farm.
    Rudolf dipped, wobbled, then landed with a soggy thud. “Concentrate,” said the technician filming the session. “What is wrong with you today?”
    Farther away, Oskar, Klaus, and a trio of technicians had gathered around a standalone brick wall in a distant corner of the training field. Gottlieb stopped, and refocused the optics. Klaus was Gretel’s brother.
    A mottled yellow bandage still covered the stumps of the fingers Klaus had lost in a recent training accident. Like Gretel, Rudolf, and the others, he and Oskar each had an assortment of wires trailing from their skulls. Klaus kept his hair shorn close to the scalp. Oskar’s hair had grown back as a mass of thick blond curls, though it had been straight on the day he was sold to von Westarp. These two young men were unusual in that they’d manifested identical abilities. But like the rest of the subjects, they were still coming to terms with their abilities. Neither had yet attempted full-body dematerialization.
    Oskar spoke to a technician. The tech flicked his thumb, and something glittered briefly in the golden sunset. The tech caught the coin and slapped it to his wrist. It wasn’t difficult to read his lips: heads. Oskar cursed. Klaus had won the toss.
    Cameras had been positioned to cover both sides of the wall. The cameramen gave the all-clear. Klaus plugged his wires into the battery at his waist. An unsteady shimmer enveloped his body as he called upon his Willenskräfte. But it lasted only a fraction of a second. Orange sparks fountained from the battery, followed by a plume of green-black smoke. Klaus flinched, disconnected his wires, and hurled the defective battery to the ground. Oskar laughed; the honor of the breakthrough would be his after all. But the cameras were running, so the technicians barked something at him, and Oskar became serious again.
    Oskar saluted the camera. Faced the wall. Took a deep breath. Connected his battery. Shimmered.
    And immediately sank into the earth.
    Klaus fell to all fours, retching; cameramen screamed for help; technicians demanded shovels. But Gottlieb knew it was too late. Oskar would live only as long as he could hold that one lungful of air. And if he were still falling, he was already deep beneath the farm.
    Gottlieb scanned the forest again. Prim satisfaction had settled across Gretel’s face. He realized, with nauseating certainty, that she had anticipated the catastrophe. And it pleased her.
    He remembered a term recently introduced to the scientific literature of psychoanalysis.
    Gretel caught him watching her. She winked.
    The term was sociopath .
    *   *   *
    Rudolf was scheduled for the session after Gretel, but Gottlieb canceled it, and reshuffled his other appointments.
    One day. He had one day to prove his value.
    Sunlight flashed on shovel blades in the forest, where soldiers dug shallow graves. The technicians behind the test for Klaus and Oskar had—in their haste to earn favor through a major breakthrough—overlooked basic physics. Insubstantiality did not confer immunity to gravity. Worse yet, without Oskar’s corpse, von Westarp couldn’t recoup the loss by studying physiological effects of the Willenskräfte. The technicians’ execution had surprised nobody.
    Moist earth sucked at Gottlieb’s boots. He passed the new generator hut. A low mechanical whine, followed by much banging and cursing, emanated from inside. The ozone smell lingered here, though it was overlaid with the hydrocarbon cloy of diesel fuel.
    The air in the battery lab carried the eye-watering stink of ammonia. A technician looked up from what appeared to be a circuitry test stand. He wore a jeweler’s loupe over one eye. “Yes?”
    â€œI’d like to speak with somebody about Klaus’s battery,” said Gottlieb. “The test yesterday?”
    The other man set the loupe to rest on his