There has been a problem

“You’ve seen Belladonna?”  Dr. Rosendieb leaned forward in his chair, steepling his hands in front of his lips.  His eyes were wide and he looked slightly maddened.  “Our Lady of…?”

“Seen her, spoken to her, and regretted it every time,” said Phlebitis.  “She’s marginally better company than Madame Sosotris, but most of the time you wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“But Belladonna isn’t real,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “All of the best authors – Crackell, Swithburn, Malakine – agree on this.  She’s not real, she’s an archetype.  There’s an element of the sea god in her, a shadow of Poseidon on her soul maybe, but she’s just a figment of the imagination of sailors starved or dehydrated at sea.  A salt-dream, if you will.”

Phlebitis crossed his legs, resting one ankle on the other knee.  It wasn’t a comfortable position, but no position in this plastic chair bolted to the floor was comfortable.  He looked Dr. Rosendieb in the eye, wishing that the man would blink occasionally, and then wondering where his first mate was.  The Doctor had ordered him brought here twenty minutes ago.

“She’s not a dream of any kind,” he said.  “She’s not exactly real, I’ll give you that.  She manifests herself through other people, but you have no doubt when you’re in her presence.  She’s unmistakeable.  And anyway, you’re here asking me about Paysmort which most people think is a fiction, listening to me tell you about the Unreal City which parents tell their children to scare them before bedtime, and you’re complaining that Belladonna isn’t real?”

Dr. Rosendieb lowered his hands and had the grace to look a little discomforted.  His eyes stopped bulging so much, and he blinked much to Phlebitis’s relief.  Then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, taking several seconds over it.  When he opened them and saw Phlebitis watching him, he shrugged.

“They felt gritty,” he said.  “Dry, somehow.  Yes, ok, I get that you’re telling me ten fantastic things before breakfast, but there are other sources that corroborate the Unreal City, the Lilies from the Dead Land and other things you’ve said.  Everyone says that Belladonna isn’t real.”

“Except the man who’s actually been to all those places,” said Phlebitis.  “That should count for something.”

“Maybe….”  It was clear that Dr. Rosendieb wasn’t about to give in easily.

“Where’s my first mate?”  Phlebitis decided that he’d waited long enough.  “I’ve told you quite a lot now, and I was promised the return of my first mate.”

“I don’t know.”  Dr. Rosendieb pushed a button on an intercom on his desk, a squat little box that could be locked inside the desk when he was interviewing dangerous patients.  The box squawked, and he spoke briefly to someone called Matthieu.  The box squawked in response, but Phlebitis couldn’t make out enough of the words to understand what was being said.  He avoided looking around the room, which seemed intended to make any madman’s condition worse, and to make any sane person think that they were actually mad.

“There seems to be a problem,” said Rosendieb, turning the intercom off.  “Would you like to come with me?”

“No,” said Phlebitis, “but I’d like staying here by myself less.  Where are we going?”

“To see your first mate,” said Rosendieb.  “It seems that he’s refusing to leave his room.”

The corridors of the Tiergarten were empty.  They were tiled with clean white tiles, and the walls were painted a bilious shade of green that was somehow both monotonous and calming.  After his initial repulsion for a corridor and a half Phlebitis found himself quite pleased to each new uniform corridor, and found himself getting annoyed when a door appeared in the middle of a wall, disrupting the clear, blank expanse of wall.  When they actually stopped in front of a door he felt irrationally angry for several seconds, and then he realised that Rosendieb was watching him.

“What is that?” he said, gesturing with both hands, trying to indicate everything that they’d just walked through.

“Institutional psychology,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “It’s a subtle neurological effect that tries to get the patient to co-operate in their captivity.  If it’s bothering you, put your fingers in your ears.  There’s a very high-pitched tone transmitted through all of the corridors that increases suggestibility in listeners.  You get it at a lot of rallies, too.

Your first mate is in here.  Matthieu thinks that he might be better suited to staying here.”

Dr. Rosendieb unlocked a small viewing panel in the door, which hinged downwards.  Phlebitis stepped forwards and looked into a small cell with a jungle mural painted on all the walls that he could see.  The bed was a flat slab of metal attached by one long side to the wall.  There was a pillow and a blanket, and under the bed was a clay pot that he suspected was a chamber pot.  A pair of shoes had been stuffed under the pillow.  The room appeared empty.

Phlebitis stepped back and gestured to the viewport.  “I don’t see anyone in there,” he said.

“What?”  Dr. Rosendieb looked confused, and peered in.  “I’m sure he is AAARGGH!” he said, his words suddenly transforming into a scream.  He staggered back from the door, white-faced and one hand patting his chest.  Phlebitis saw a pair of wild eyes staring out of the hatch and then they moved backwards to reveal more of a face.  He waved once, and mimed putting his fingers in his ears.

“Are you alright, Doctor?” he asked.  Dr. Rosendieb shook his head first, then bent over slightly, putting his hands on his knees, and sucked in a huge breath.  As it came out again, he managed,

“Just.  That was a bit of a shock.”

“Yes,” agreed Phlebitis.  “Can I have my first mate back now?”

“He won’t… he won’t leave the cell,” said Rosendieb.

“Cell?”  Phlebitis’s voice was perfectly innocent, but conveyed an impression of cold, unbending steel beneath his words.

“Room,” said the doctor.  “Of course I meant room.  Look, he won’t come out.”

“May I try?”

Dr. Rosendieb handed over a bunch of keys, one key singled out, wordlessly, and Phlebitis opened the door.  His first mate, utterly naked, walked out with his fingers in his ears, and waggled his eyebrows at Phlebitis.

“I’m sure we’re free to leave, aren’t we, doctor?” said Phlebitis.

“Goddammit,” was all Rosendieb managed to spit out before they were out of earshot.

Lilies from the dead land

“Tell me about Paysmort,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  He had lead them to the end of the colonnade and then produced a small brass key from a pocket of his waistcoat and opened a barred door in the wall.  Phlebitis peered unenthusiastically inside where it was gloomy and smelled damp.

“No,” he said.

“But you brought it up yourself,” said the doctor.  Seeing that Phlebitis was not about to lead the way, he took it himself.  “Close the gate behind you, it will lock itself.  You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t want to talk about it, you know.”

“Amateur psychology,” said Phlebitis.  The gate clanged at it closed, and he followed Dr. Rosendieb round a corner.  The corridor, hewn seemingly out of rock, got narrower, the ceiling lowered, but a row of white electric lights set in rubber, waterproof housings now illuminated it.  Rosendieb was walking briskly along it, just a little faster than Phlebitis might have expected, and he had to speed up a little to catch up.

“Professional, actually,” said Rosendieb.  “It is my job, after all.”

“Hah!  Yes, I suppose it is, though it still feels like an amateurish attempt.  I brought Paysmort up, Doctor, because their scent gets onto anything inorganic and lingers.  Anything you take from my cargo as payment will carry some of that scent with it for a couple of days at least, and so you’d ask about it anyway.  I’m telling you up front that you won’t get any answers, or any lilies.  They’re as bad as the boiled frogs.”

“I suppose you don’t want to talk about the boiled frogs either?”

“I’ll talk about them as much as you like, I think you don’t want to listen.”

Doctor Rosendieb laughed, a short bark that echoed slightly in the corridor.  “I listen to anything if the price is right,” he said.  “But you said I could have anything from your cargo, and your memories are cargo that all men carry through their lives.”

“I also said that you couldn’t have any of the lilies from the dead land,” said Phlebitis.  “And memories are certainly lilies from a dead land.”

The corridor turned a corner and ended abruptly at another metal gate.  Rosendieb produced another key, that might have been the first again, and paused before he unlocked it.  “How did you discover Paysmort?” he asked.  “There have been plenty of rumours over the years about it, but they’ve all been just that: rumours.  I’ve interviewed your first mate at length, and he says that you just came back to the ship one day with a new map and co-ordinates and that you sailed there with the aid of it.  Where did that map come from?”

“Is this your price?”  Phlebitis shivered as the tunnel was much cooler than the sunshine outside had been and it was starting to affect him.  “Knowledge of how I found out where Paysmort is?  Because it will not include the location of Paysmort or how to get there.”

Rosendieb slipped the key into the lock.  It turned with a brittle click.  “Yes,” he said.  “In my office, tell me, and we will call that payment.”

*

Rosendieb’s office had four walls that were divided each into four sections from floor to ceiling, and each section was painted with a semi-human monster.  Having heard the doctor’s description of the colonnade Phlebitis shuddered, aware that these too were probably painted from life and were how the poor unfortunates in the Tiergarten had ended their lives.  In the exact centre of the office was a steel desk with three drawers, deep enough for the doctor to lay out five tablet computers on and wide enough for him to lie down on comfortably.  There was a single chair on each side, made of a sturdy metal frame and bolted to the floor.  Phlebitis noted, with little surprise, that there were anchor points for chains or manacles on the floor on his side of the desk.

“There are anchor points on my side too,” said Rosendieb sitting down and looking uncomfortable.  “And the table is actually welded to a metal slab buried in the floor, and when patients are in here there’s nothing out on the desk.  But you’re here to tell me about how you found the map.”

“I’m here to rescue my first mate.”

“Of course, of course.  Let me have him brought here while you tell your story.”

“Have you heard of the Unreal City?” asked Phlebitis after the doctor had tapped some instructions in to one of the tablet computers.  Dr. Rosendieb lifted his head and looked at Phlebitis, his expression unreadable.  He nodded.

“Oh good.  Then this is a story of the Unreal City and a City Director,” said Phlebitis.  “And how I came to liberate a map and be told how to read it.”

“The Unreal City actually exists then?  I thought it was… well, a fugue state, a dream-world.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” sighed Phlebitis.

Tiergarten

The colonnade was a long covered walkway supported by wooden pillars that had been carved with grinning, leering, demonic faces.  Many were poking their tongues out and were pop-eyed.  Teeth sprouted from parts of faces that should only have grown hair, eyes were extruded from ears on stalks, and bones were twisted and deformed as though the heads had been through strange and unusual pressures.  Some of the tongues were long, unnaturally so, and one or two stretched from one pillar to the next, forming slender railings that, if you looked closely, were textured as though covered in hair.

“They’re carved from life, you know,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  He gestured casually with one black-gloved hand at the pillars.  “Each face was the face of a real person in the Tiergarten in the late seventeen hundreds.”

“Tiergarten?  Zoo?” asked Phlebitis, staring at his feet.  The pillars made him feel queasy, almost sea-sick if it weren’t for the fact that he hadn’t felt sea-sick since he was fourteen, even when Poseidon was angry and the sea was throwing his ship around like a dog worrying a chew-toy.  He was trying hard not to look too closely at them, partly because he thought he might recognise some of them.

“Hah!”  The doctor’s laugh was short and sharp, almost humourless but redeemed at the end by the hint of dryness.  “Hah, yes, I suppose.  It was a name that would be considered unpolitisch these days I suppose.  That’s politically incorrect in the delightful euphemism of English, of course.”

“Really?  I thought that was a type of trumpet.”

“You’re thinking of the euphonium, of course,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “I played it as a child in a marching band.  It was, despite the name, not a particularly pleasant instrument, too heavy for my little arms.  I much preferred the shawm.”

“That sounds lovely,” said Phlebitis, aware that the doctor had stopped walking and hoping that if he continued the doctor would resume suit.  Instead, Dr. Rosendieb caught his elbow and gestured at the pillars.

“The Tiergarten then was the name given to the Asylum,” he said.  “The inmates were… demented I suppose, although it is arguable that they resulted in that state because they were interned in the Tiergarten rather than being put there because they were already in that state.  There have been a small number of high-profile cases in the papers of late, which you must have seen.  Various records have been uncovered that suggest that certain high-ranking families were disposing of unwanted family members there.”

“Well,” said Phlebtits looking with distaste at a pillar.  “You can see how some of them might not have been the relative you wanted to introduce to people.”

“This one,” said Dr. Rosendieb, laying his hand on the forehead of a cephalitic-looking young man with a twisted jaw and flattened nose, “ended up looking like this only after five years in the Tiergarten.  When he was committed there he was sufficiently handsome that fights would start in bars because of other men’s wives looking at him for too long.

“I see,” said Phlebitis.  He shivered somewhat theatrically.  “It’s a little cool under here, doctor.”

“Of course, of course!  Let us continue, at the end there is sunlight.  It is a lovely day.  But tell me, my dear chap, what brings you here?  Why are you interested in the Tiergarten?  It was closed down over eighty years ago.”

“I think my first mate might be in there,” said Phlebitis, his eyes firmly fixed on the ground again.  “And I’d quite like him back.”

“No, you are quite mistaken,” said Dr. Rosendieb, his voice now quieter and more discreet.  “The Tiergarten was closed down and the patients remanded into other, better care.  Your first mate cannot be in there.  Perhaps you misunderstood the name of hospita–“

“The Tiergarten,” said Phlebitis.  “There has been no misunderstanding, just as it was not chance that caused me to seek you out, Doctor.  I had a little help, of course, but not too much.  Not so much that I couldn’t find you, I was warned about that too.”

Doctor Rosendieb stopped again and Phlebitis, cursing to himself, also stopped and looked back at him, trying to ignore the faces on the pillars.  He was sure he could hear insane laughter in the background.

“What are you talking about?”  The doctor’s words could have meant that he thought Phlebitis was gibbering, but his tone made it clear what he meant.

“Madame Sosotris sends her regards,” said Phlebitis.  “She still has her cold.”

“That woman always has a cold,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “I suspect she has the archetype of colds and were we ever to cure her of it then no-one would ever get a cold again.”

“You should try,” said Phlebitis.

“Hah!  Is she still chasing every man she sees, though?”

Phlebitis nodded and shuddered at the same time.

“I may wait a little longer,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “I see then, the clairvoyant has told you where the boundaries are then.  Did she also tell you that no-one leaves the Tiergarten until they die?  Hmm?”

“What she said was that you didn’t let any of them leave before they die,” said Phlebitis slowly.  He realised with horrible slowness that the pillar the doctor was standing closest to contained a carving of his first mate’s face second from the ground.

“That woman is too accurate for her own good,” said Dr. Rosendieb, a moue of distaste crossing his face.  “What are you looking at?”

“The face of the man I’ve come to buy from you,” said Phlebitis.  He pointed.

“Buy?”

Phlebitis nodded.

“That’s the first time anyone’s offered,” said Dr. Rosendieb.  “Perhaps I should listen to you.”

“Yes,” said Phlebitis.  “That would be advantageous to us both I hope.  Allow me to tell you what I will not sell you from my cargo first though.  You may have none of the lilacs from the dead land.”

“Lilacs from Paysmort?”  Dr. Rosendieb staggered, even though he’d been standing still a moment earlier.  “You found lilacs from Paysmort?”

“I found Paysmort,” said Phlebitis.  “And I’d really like to forget it now.”