Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “They’d discovered the wheel! Look at this wagon, Josef!” A fit of triumphant laughing burst from Peter. “Josef,” he gasped, “do you realize that we have made the most sensational discovery in history? Ants once had a culture as rich and brilliant as ours. Music! Painting! Literature! Think of it!”

  “And lived in houses—aboveground, with plenty of room, and lots of air and sunshine,” said Josef raptly. “And they had fire and cooked. What could this be but a stove?”

  “Millions of years before the first man—before the first gorilla, chimp, or orangutan, or even the first monkey, Josef—the ants had everything, everything.” Peter stared ecstatically into the distance, shrinking in his imagination down to the size of a finger joint and living a full, rich life in a stately pleasure dome all his own.

  It was high noon when Peter and Josef had completed a cursory examination of the rocks in box number one. In all, they found fifty-three of the houses, each different—some large, some small, varying from domes to cubes, each one a work of individuality and imagination. The houses seemed to have been spaced far apart, and rarely were they occupied by more than a male and a female and young.

  Josef grinned foolishly, incredulously. “Peter, are we drunk or crazy?” He sat in silence, smoking a cigarette and periodically shaking his head. “Do you realize it’s lunchtime? It seems as though we’ve been here about ten minutes. Hungry?”

  Peter shook his head impatiently, and began digging through the second box—fossils from the next layer up, eager to solve the puzzle of how the magnificent ant civilization had declined to the dismal, instinctive ant way of life of the present.

  “Here’s a piece of luck, Josef—ten ants so close together I can cover them with my thumb.” Peter picked up rock after rock, and, wherever he found one ant, he found at least a half dozen close by. “They’re starting to get gregarious.”

  “Any physical changes?”

  Peter frowned through his magnifying glass. “Same species, all right. No, now, wait—there is a difference, the pincers are more developed, considerably more developed. They’re starting to look like modern workers and soldiers.” He handed a rock to Josef.

  “Mmmm, no books here,” said Josef. “You find any?”

  Peter shook his head, and found that he was deeply distressed by the lack of books, searching for them passionately. “They’ve still got houses, but now they’re jammed with people.” He cleared his throat. “I mean ants.” Suddenly a cry of joy escaped him. “Josef! Here’s one without the big pincers, just like the ones in the lower level!” He turned the specimen this way and that in the sunlight. “By himself, Josef. In his house, with his family and books and everything! Some of the ants are differentiating into workers and soldiers—some aren’t!”

  Josef had been reexamining some of the gatherings of the ants with pincers. “The gregarious ones may not have been interested in books,” he announced. “But everywhere that you find them, you find pictures.” He frowned perplexedly. “There’s a bizarre twist, Peter; the picture lovers evolving away from the book lovers.”

  “The crowd lovers away from the privacy lovers,” said Peter thoughtfully. “Those with big pincers away from those without.” To rest his eyes, he let his gaze wander to the tool-shed and a weathered poster from which the eyes of Stalin twinkled. Again he let his gaze roam, this time into the distance—to the teeming mouth of the nearest mine shaft, where a portrait of Stalin beamed paternally on all as they shambled in and out; to a cluster of tar-paper barracks below, where a portrait of Stalin stared shrewdly, protected from the weather by glass, at the abominable sanitary facilities.

  “Josef,” Peter began uncertainly, “I’ll bet tomorrow’s tobacco ration that those works of art the pincered ants like so well are political posters.”

  “If so, our wonderful ants are bound for an even higher civilization,” said Josef enigmatically. He shook rock dust from his clothing. “Shall we see what is in box number three?”

  Peter found himself looking at the third box with fear and loathing. “You look, Josef,” he said at last.

  Josef shrugged. “All right.” He studied the rocks in silence for several minutes. “Well, as you might expect, the pincers are even more pronounced, and—”

  “And the gatherings are bigger and more crowded, and there are no books, and the posters are as numerous as the ants!” Peter blurted suddenly.

  “You’re quite right,” said Josef.

  “And the wonderful ants without pincers are gone, aren’t they, Josef?” said Peter huskily.

  “Calm down,” said Josef. “You’re losing your head over something that happened a thousand thousand years ago—or more.” He tugged thoughtfully at his earlobe. “As a matter of fact, the pincerless ants do seem extinct.” He raised his eyebrows. “As far as I know, it’s without precedent in paleontology. Perhaps those without pincers were susceptible to some sort of disease that those with pincers were immune to. At any rate, they certainly disappeared in a hurry. Natural selection at its ruggedest—survival of the fittest.”

  “Survival of the somethingest,” said Peter balefully.

  “No! Wait, Peter. We’re both wrong. Here is one of the old type ants. And another and another! It looks like they were beginning to congregate, too. They’re all packed together in one house, like matchsticks in a box.”

  Peter took the rock fragment from him, unwilling to believe what Josef said. The rock had been split by Borgorov’s diggers so as to give a clean cross section through the ant-packed house. He chipped away at the rock enclosing the other side of the house. The rock shell fell away. “Oh,” he said softly, “I see.” His chippings had revealed the doorway of the little building, and guarding it were seven ants with pincers like scythes. “A camp,” he said, “a reeducation camp.”

  Josef blanched at the word, as any good Russian might, but regained his composure after several hard swallows. “What is that starlike object over there?” he said, steering away from the unpleasant subject.

  Peter chiseled the chip in which the object was embedded free from the rest of the rock, and held it out for Josef to contemplate. It was a sort of rosette. In the center was a pincer-less ant, and the petals looked like warriors and workers with their weapons buried and locked in the flesh of the lone survivor of the ancient race. “There’s your quick evolution, Josef.” He watched his brother’s face intently, yearning for a sign that his brother was sharing his hectic thoughts, his sudden insight into their own lives.

  “A great curiosity,” said Josef evenly.

  Peter looked about himself quickly. Borgorov was struggling up the path from far below. “It’s no curiosity, and you know it, Josef,” said Peter. “What happened to those ants is happening to us.”

  “Hush!” said Josef desperately.

  “We’re the ones without pincers, Josef. We’re done. We aren’t made to work and fight in huge hordes, to live by instinct and nothing more, perpetuating a dark, damp anthill without the wits even to wonder why!”

  They both fell into red-faced silence as Borgorov navigated the last hundred yards. “Come now,” said Borgorov, rounding the corner of the toolshed, “our samples couldn’t have been as disappointing as all that.”

  “It’s just that we’re tired,” said Josef, giving his ingratiating grin. “The fossils are so sensational we’re stunned.”

  Peter gently laid the chip with the murdered ant and its attackers embedded in it on the last pile. “We have the most significant samples from each layer arranged in these piles,” he said, pointing to the row of rock mounds. He was curious to see what Borgorov’s reaction might be. Over Josef’s objections, he explained about two kinds of ants evolving within the species, showed him the houses and books and pictures in the lower levels, the crowded gatherings in the upper ones. Then, without offering the slightest interpretation, he gave Borgorov his magnifying glass, and stepped back.

  Borgorov strolled up and down the row several times, picking up samples and c
lucking his tongue. “It couldn’t be more graphic, could it?” he said at last.

  Peter and Josef shook their heads.

  “Obviously,” said Borgorov, “what happened was this.” He picked up the chip that showed the bas-relief of the pincerless ant’s death struggle with countless warriors. “There were these lawless ants, such as the one in the center, capitalists who attacked and exploited the workers—ruthlessly killing, as we can see here, scores at a time.” He set down the melancholy exhibit, and picked up the house into which the pincerless ants were crammed. “And here we have a conspiratorial meeting of the lawless ants, plotting against the workers. Fortunately”—and he pointed to the soldier ants outside the door—“their plot was overheard by vigilant workers.

  “So,” he continued brightly, holding up samples from the next layer, a meeting of the pincered ants and the home of a solitary ant, “the workers held democratic indignation meetings, and drove their oppressors out of their community. The capitalists, overthrown, but with their lives spared by the merciful common people, were soft and spoiled, unable to survive without the masses to slave for them. They could only dillydally with the arts. Hence, put on their own mettle, they soon became extinct.” He folded his arms with an air of finality and satisfaction.

  “But the order was just the reverse,” objected Peter. “The ant civilization was wrecked when some of the ants started growing pincers and going around in mobs. You can’t argue with geology.”

  “Then an inversion has taken place in the limestone layer—some kind of upheaval turned it upside down. Obviously.” Borzorov sounded like sheathed ice. “We have the most conclusive evidence of all—the evidence of logic. The sequence could only have been as I described it. Hence, there was an inversion. Isn’t that so?” he said, looking pointedly at Josef.

  “Exactly, an inversion,” said Josef.

  “Isn’t that so?” Borgorov wheeled to face Peter.

  Peter exhaled explosively, slouched in an attitude of utter resignation. “Obviously, Comrade.” Then he smiled, apologetically. “Obviously, Comrade,” he repeated …

  Epilogue

  “Good Lord, but it’s cold!” said Peter, letting go of his end of the saw and turning his back to the Siberian wind.

  “To work! To work!” shouted a guard, so muffled against the cold as to look like a bundle of laundry with a submachine gun sticking out of it.

  “Oh, it could be worse, much worse,” said Josef, holding the other end of the saw. He rubbed his frosted eyebrows against his sleeve.

  “I’m sorry you’re here, too, Josef,” said Peter sadly. “I’m the one who raised his voice to Borgorov.” He blew on his hands. “I guess that’s why we’re here.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” sighed Josef. “One stops thinking about such things. One stops thinking. It’s the only way. If we didn’t belong here, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Peter fingered a limestone chip in his pocket. Embedded in it was the last of the pincerless ants, ringed by his murderers. It was the only fossil from Borgorov’s hole that remained above the surface of the earth. Borgorov had made the brothers write a report on the ants as he saw them, had had every last fossil shoveled back into the bottomless cavity, and had shipped Josef and Peter to Siberia. It was a thorough piece of work, not likely to be criticized.

  Josef had pushed aside a pile of brush, and was now staring with fascination at the bared patch of earth. An ant emerged furtively from a hole, carrying an egg. It ran around in crazy circles, then scurried back into the darkness of the tiny earth womb. “A marvelous adjustment ants have made, isn’t it, Peter?” said Josef enviously. “The good life—efficient, uncomplicated. Instinct makes all the decisions.” He sneezed. “When I die, I think I’d like to be reincarnated as an ant. A modern ant, not a capitalist ant,” he added quickly.

  “What makes you so sure you aren’t one?” said Peter.

  Josef shrugged off the jibe. “Men could learn a lot from ants, Peter, my boy.”

  “They have, Josef, they have,” said Peter wearily. “More than they know.”

  THE HONOR OF A NEWSBOY

  Charley Howes was the police chief in a Cape Cod village. He was in command of four patrolmen in the summer and one in the winter. It was late winter now. The one patrolman was down with the flu, and Charley didn’t feel too good himself. On top of that, there’d been a murder. Somebody had given Estelle Fulmer, the Jezebel waitress over at the Blue Dolphin, a beating that had killed her.

  They found her in a cranberry bog on Saturday. The medical examiner said she’d been killed Wednesday night.

  Charley Howes guessed he knew who’d done it. He guessed Earl Hedlund had done it. Earl was mean enough, and Earl had reason. Estelle had told Earl to go to hell one night at the Blue Dolphin, told him off the way he’d never been told off before. Nobody had ever told Earl off that way before because everybody knew Earl would kill anybody who did.

  Charley’s wife was bundling up Charley now so he could go up to Earl’s house and question him. “If I’d known there was going to be a murder,” said Charley, “I never would have taken the job of police chief.”

  “Now, you watch out for that big dog,” said his wife, wrapping a muffler around his neck.

  “He’s all bark and no bite,” said Charley.

  “That’s what they said about Earl Hedlund, too,” said his wife.

  The dog they were talking about was Satan. Satan was a crossbreed between a Great Dane and an Irish wolfhound. He was as big as a small horse. Satan didn’t belong to Earl Hedlund, but he spent most of his time in Earl’s woods, scaring people off the property. Earl fed him off and on, getting a cheap watchdog that way. And the dog and Earl liked each other fine besides. They both liked to make a lot of noise and act like man-eaters.

  When Charley drove the patrol car up the long hill to Earl’s house, way off in the woods, he expected to find Earl home. It was Saturday afternoon, but Charley would have expected to find Earl home any day of the week. Earl didn’t work for a living. He’d inherited just enough money so he didn’t have to work—if he was good and stingy, and kept a sharp eye on the stock market. The busiest Earl ever got was when the newspaper came. He’d turn to the financial page and make graphs of what all the stocks were doing.

  When Charley got up to the house, he could hear Satan barking from a long way off. And Earl wasn’t around, either. The house was locked up tight, and the newspapers had piled up on the front porch.

  The newspapers were under a brick, so they couldn’t blow away. Charley counted the papers. There were four. Friday’s was the top one. Saturday’s hadn’t come yet. It began to look as though Earl hadn’t killed Estelle after all, much as he would have liked to. It looked as though Earl hadn’t been around to do the job.

  Charley looked at the dates on the untouched papers, and he discovered something interesting. The Wednesday paper was missing.

  The noise of the dog was coming closer now, coming closer fast. Charley figured the dog had got wind of him. Charley had to keep a grip on himself to keep from being scared. Charley had the same feeling about Satan everybody else in the village had. The dog was crazy. Satan hadn’t bitten anybody yet—but if he ever did, he’d bite to kill.

  Then Charley saw what Satan was barking at. Satan was cantering alongside of a boy on a bicycle, showing teeth like butcher knives. He was swinging his head from side to side, barking, and slashing air with those awful teeth.

  The boy looked straight ahead, pretending the dog wasn’t there. He was the bravest human being Charley had ever seen. The hero was Mark Crosby, the ten-year-old newsboy.

  “Mark—” said Charley. The dog came after Charley now, did his best to turn Charley’s thinning hair white with those butcher-knife teeth. If the boy hadn’t set such high standards for bravery, Charley might have made a dive for the safety of the patrol car. “You seen anything of Mr. Hedlund, Mark?” said Charley.

  “Nosir,” said Mark, giving Charley’s uniform the respec
t it deserved. He put the Saturday paper on top of the pile on the doorstep, put it under the brick. “He’s been gone all week, sir.”

  Satan finally got bored with these two unscarable human beings. He lay down on the porch with a tremendous thump, and snarled lazily from time to time.

  “Where’d he go? You know?” said Charley.

  “Nosir,” said Mark. “He didn’t say he was going—didn’t stop his paper.”

  “Did you deliver a paper Wednesday?” said Charley.

  Mark was offended that his friend the policeman should ask. “Of course,” he said. “It’s the rule. If the papers pile up and nobody’s said to stop, you keep on delivering for six days.” He nodded. “It’s the rule, Mr. Howes.”

  The serious way Mark talked about the rule reminded Charley what a marvelous age ten was. And Charley thought it was a pity that everybody couldn’t stay ten for the rest of their lives. If everybody were ten, Charley thought, maybe rules and common decency and horse sense would have a Chinaman’s chance.

  “You—you sure you didn’t maybe miss Wednesday, Mark?” said Charley. “Nobody’d blame you—sleet coming down, the papers piling up, the long hill to climb, the big dog to get past.”

  Mark held up his right hand. “My word of honor,” he said, “a paper was delivered here Wednesday.”

  That was good enough for Charley. That certainly settled it once and for all.

  Just about the time that was settled, up the road came Earl Hedlund’s old coupe. Earl got out grinning, and Satan whimpered and got up and licked Earl’s hand. Earl was the village bully of thirty-five years ago—gone to fat and baldness. His grin was still the bully-boy’s grin, daring anybody not to love him. He’d never been able to bluff Charley, and he hated Charley for that.

  His grin got wider when Charley, as a precaution, reached into his car and took out the ignition key. “You see a cop do that on television, Charley?” said Earl.

  “Matter of fact, I did,” said Charley. It was true.