Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Ibbety zibbety—” Bill kept chanting it in an absent-minded monotone, and Rutherford got up to close the door. It didn’t quite stop. He could still hear just enough of the rhythmic noises to start his mind moving in a similar rhythm. Ibbety zibbety—the hell with it.

  After a while Rutherford discovered that his lips were moving silently, and he shoved the papers back on his desk, muttering darkly. He was tired, that was it. And correcting exams required concentration. He was glad when the bell rang.

  It was Jerry O’Brien, his honor student. Jerry was a tail, thin, dark boy with a passion for the same low-down music that attracted Rutherford. Now he came in grinning.

  “Hi, prof,” he greeted the older man. “I’m in. Just got my papers today.”

  “Swell. Sit down and tell me.”

  There wasn’t much to tell, but it lasted quite a while. Bill hung around, listening avidly. Rutherford swung to glare at his son.

  “Lay off that ibbety-zibbety stuff, will you?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. I didn’t know I was—”

  “For days he’s been at it,” Rutherford said glumly. “I can hear it in my sleep.”

  “Shouldn’t bother a semanticist.”

  “Papers. Suppose I’d been doing important precision work. I mean really important. A string of words like that gets inside your head and you can’t get it out.”

  “Especially if you’re under any strain, or if you’re concentrating a lot. Distracts your attention, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesnt bother me,” Bill said.

  Rutherford grunted. “Wait’ll you’re older and really have to concentrate, with a mind like a fine-edged tool. Precision’s important. Look what the Nazis have done with it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Integration,” Rutherford said absently. “Training for complete concentration. The Germans spent years building a machine—well, they make a fetish out of wire-edged alertness. Look at the stimulant drugs they give their raiding pilots. They’ve ruthlessly cut out all distractions that might interfere with uber alles.”

  Jerry O’Brien lit a pipe. “They are hard to distract. German morale’s a funny thing. They’re convinced they’re supermen, and that there’s no weakness in them. I suppose, psychologically speaking, it’d be a nice trick to convince them of personal weakness.”

  “Sure. How? Semantics?”

  “I dunno how. Probably it can’t be done, except by blitzes. Even then, bombs aren’t really an argument. Blowing a man to bits won’t necessarily convince his comrades that he’s a weakling. Nope, it’d be necessary to make Achilles notice he had a heel.”

  “Ibbety zibbety,” Bill muttered.

  “Like that,” O’Brien said. “Get some crazy tune going around a guy’s skull, and he’ll find it difficult to concentrate. I know I do, sometimes, whenever I go for a thing like the Hut-Sut song.” Rutherford said suddenly, “Remember the dancing manias of the middle ages?”

  “Form of hysteria, wasn’t it? People lined up in queues and jitterbugged till they dropped.”

  “Rhythmic nervous exaltation. It’s never been satisfactorily explained. Life is based on rhythm—the whole universe is—but I won’t go cosmic on you. Keep it low-down, to the Basin Street level. Why do people go nuts about some kinds of music? Why did the ‘Marseillaise’ start a revolution?”

  “Well, why?”

  “Lord knows.” Rutherford shrugged. “But certain strings of phrases, not necessarily musical, which possess rhythm, rhyme, or alliteration, do stick with you. You simply can’t get ’em out of your mind. And—” He stopped.

  O’Brien looked at him. “What?”

  “Imperfect semantics,” Rutherford said slowly. “I wonder. Look, Jerry. Eventually we forget things like the Hut-Sut. We can thrust ’em out of our minds. But suppose you got a string of phrases you couldn’t forget? The perverse factor would keep you from erasing it mentally—the very effort to do so would cancel itself. Hm-m-m. Suppose you’re carefully warned not to mention Bill Fields’ nose. You keep repeating that to yourself ‘Don’t mention the nose.’ The words, eventually, fail to make sense. If you met Fields, you’d probably say, quite unconsciously, ‘Hello, Mr. Nose.’ See?”

  “I think so. Like the story that if you meet a piebald horse, you’ll fall heir to a fortune if you don’t think about the horse’s tail till you’re past.”

  “Exactly.” Rutherford looked pleased. “Get a perfect semantic formula and you can’t forget it. And the perfect formula would have everything. It’d have rhythm, and just enough sense to start you wondering what it meant. It wouldn’t necessarily mean anything, but—”

  “Could such a formula be invented?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Combine language with mathematics and psychology, and something could be worked out. Could be, such a thing was accidentally written in the middle ages. What price the dance manias?”

  “I don’t think I’d like it.” O’Brien grimaced. “Too much like hypnosis.”

  “If it is, it’s self-hypnosis, and unconscious. That’s the beauty of it. Just for the hell of it—draw up a chair.” Rutherford reached for a pencil.

  “Hey, pop,” Bill said, “why not write it in German?”

  Rutherford and O’Brien looked at each other, startled. Slowly a gleam of diabolic understanding grew in their eyes.

  “German?” Rutherford murmured. “You majored in it, didn’t you, Jerry?”

  “Yeah. And you’re no slouch at it, either. Yeah—we could write it in German, couldn’t we? The Nazis must be getting plenty sick of the Horst Wessel song.”

  “Just for the . . . uh . . . fun of it,” Rutherford said, “let’s try. Rhythm first. Catchy rhythm, with a break to avoid monotony. We don’t need a tune.” He scribbled for a bit. “It’s quite impossible, of course, and even if we did it, Washington probably wouldn’t be interested.”

  “My uncle’s a senator,” O’Brien said blandly.

  LEFT!

  LEFT!

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in STARVing condition with NOTHing but gingerbread LEFT LEFT

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children—

  “Well, I might know something about it,” said Senator O’Brien.

  The officer stared at the envelope he had just opened. “So? A few weeks ago you gave me this, not to be opened till you gave the word Now what?”

  “You’ve read it.”

  “I’ve read it! So you’ve been annoying the Nazi prisoners in that Adirondack hotel. You’ve got ’em dizzy repeating some German song I can’t make head nor tail out of.”

  “Naturally. You don’t know German. Neither do I. But it seems to have worked on the Nazis.”

  “My private report says they’re dancing and singing a lot of the time.”

  “Not dancing, exactly. Unconscious rhythmic reflexes. And they keep repeating the . . . er . . . semantic formula.”

  “Got a translation?”

  “Sure, but it’s meaningless in English. In German it has the necessary rhythm. I’ve already explained—”

  “I know, senator, I know. But the War Department has no time for vague theories.”

  “I request simply that the formula be transmitted frequently on broadcasts to Germany. It may be hard on the announcers, but they’ll get over it. So will the Nazis, but by that time their morale will be shot. Get the Allied radios to cooperate—”

  “Do you really believe in this?”

  The senator gulped. “As a matter of fact, no. But my nephew almost convinced me. He helped Professor Rutherford work out the formula.”

  “Argued you into it?”

  “Not exactly. But he keeps going around muttering in German. So does Rutherford. Anyway—this can do no harm. And I’m backing it to the limit.”

  “But—” The officer peered at the formula in German. “What possible harm can it do for people to repeat a song? How can it help us—”

  LEFT!

  LEFT!

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in />
  STARVing condition with NOTHing but gingerbread LEFT

  LEFT—

  “Aber,” said Harben, “aber, aber, aber!”

  “But me no buts,” reported his superior officer, Eggerth. “The village must be searched completely. The High Command is quartering troops here tomorrow, on their way to the eastern front, and we must make sure there are no weapons hidden anywhere.”

  “Aber we search the village regularly.”

  “Then search it again,” Eggerth ordered. “You know how those damned Poles are. Turn your back for a minute and they’ve snatched a gun out of thin air. We want no bad reports going back to the Fixhrer. Now get out; I must finish my report, and it must be accurate.” He thumbed through a sheaf of notes. “How many cows, how many sheep, the harvest possibilities—ach! Go away and let me concentrate. Search carefully.”

  “Heil,” Harben said glumly, and turned. On the way out his feet found a familiar rhythm. He started to mutter something.

  “Captain Harben!”

  Harben stopped.

  “What the devil are you saying?”

  “Oh—the men have a new marching song. Nonsense, but it’s catchy. It is excellent to march to.”

  “What is it?”

  Harben made a deprecating gesture. “Meaningless. It goes ‘Left, left, left a wife and seventeen children—’ ”

  Eggerth stopped him. “That. I’ve heard it. Unsinn. Hcil.”

  Heiling, Harben went away, his lips moving. Eggerth bent over the report, squinting in the bad light. Ten head of cattle, scarcely worth slaughtering for their meat, but the cows giving little milk . . . Hm-m-m. Grain—the situation was bad there, too. How the Poles managed to eat at all—they’d be glad enough to have gingerbread, Eggerth thought. For that matter, gingerbread was nutritious, wasn’t it? Why were they in starving condition if there was still gingerbread? Maybe there wasn’t much—

  Still, why nothing hut gingerbread? Could it be, perhaps, that the family disliked it so much they ate up everything else first? A singularly shortsighted group. Possibly their ration cards allowed them nothing but gingerbread LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in

  STARVing condition—

  Eggerth caught himself sharply, and his pencil began to move again. The grain—he figured rather more slowly than usual, because his mind kept skipping back to a ridiculous rhythm. Verdammt! He would not—

  Inhabitants of the village, thirty families, or was it forty? Forty, yes. Men, women, children—small families mostly. Still, one could seldom expect to find seventeen children. With that many, a frau could be wealthy through bounties alone. Seventeen children. In starving condition. Why didn’t they eat the gingerbread? Ridiculous. What, in the name of Gott, did it matter whether seventeen nonexistent, completely hypothetical children ate gingerbread, or, for that matter, whether they ate nothing but gingerbread LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children—

  “Hell fire and damnation!” exploded Eggerth, looking furiously at his watch. “I might have finished the report by the time. Seventeen children, pfui!”

  Once more he bent to his work, determined not to think of . . . of—

  But it nibbled at the corners of his mind, like an intrusive mouse. Each time he recognized its presence, he could thrust it away. Unfortunately, Eggerth was repeating to his subconscious, “Don’t think of it. Forget it.”

  “Forget what?” asked the subconscious automatically.

  “Nothing but gingerbread LEFT—”

  “Oh, yeah?” said the subconscious.

  The search party wasn’t working with its accustomed zeal and accuracy. The men’s minds didn’t seem entirely on their business. Harben barked orders, conscious of certain distractions—sweat trickling down inside his uniform, the harsh scratchiness of the cloth, the consciousness of the Poles silently watching and waiting. That was the worse of being in an army of occupation. You always felt that the conquered people were waiting. Well—

  “Search,” Harben commanded. “By pairs. Be thorough.”

  And they were thorough enough. They marched here and there through the village, to a familiar catchy rhythm, and their lips moved. Which, of course, was harmless. The only untoward incident occurred in an attic which two soldiers were searching. Harben wandered in to supervise. He was astonished to see one of his men open a cupboard, stare directly at a rusty rifle barrel, and then shut the door again. Briefly Harben was at a loss. The soldier moved on.

  “Attention!” Harben said. Heels clicked. “Vogel, I saw that.”

  “Sir?” Vogel seemed honestly puzzled, his broad, youthful face blank.

  “We are searching for guns. Or, perhaps, the Poles have bribed you to overlook certain matters—eh?”

  Vogel’s cheeks reddened. “No, sir.”

  Harben opened the cupboard and took out a rusty, antique matchlock. It was obviously useless as a weapon now, but nevertheless it should have been confiscated. Vogel’s jaw dropped.

  “Well?”

  “I . . . didn’t see it, sir.”

  Harben blew out his breath angrily. “I’m not an idiot. I saw you, man! You looked right at that gun. Are you trying to tell me—”

  There was a pause. Vogel said stolidly, “I did not see it, sir.”

  “Ah? You are growing absent-minded. You would not take bribes, Vogel; I know you’re a good party man. But when you do anything, you must keep your wits about you. Woolgathering is dangerous business in an occupied village. Resume your search.”

  Harben went out, wandering. The men definitely seemed slightly distracted by something. What the devil could be preying on their minds so that Vogel, for example, could look right at a gun and not see it? Nerves? Ridiculous. Nordics were noted for self-control. Look at the way the men moved—their co-ordinated rhythm that bespoke perfect military training. Only through discipline could anything valuable be attained. The body and the mind were, in fact, machines, and should be controlled. There a squad went down the street, marching left, left, left a wife and—

  That absurd song. Harben wondered where it had come from. It had grown like a rumor. Troops stationed in the village had passed it on, but where they had learned it Heaven knew. Harben grinned. When he got leave, he’d remember to tell the lads in Unter den Linden about that ridiculous song—it was just absurd enough to stick in your mind. Left. Left.

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in

  STARVing condition—

  After a while the men reported back; they hadn’t found anything. The antique flintlock wasn’t worth bothering about, though, as a matter of routine, it must be reported and the Polish owner questioned. Harben marched the men back to their quarters and went to Eggerth’s billet. Eggerth, however, was still busy, which was unusual, for he was usually a fast worker. He glowered at Harben.

  “Wait. I cannot be interrupted now.” And he returned to his scribbling. The floor was already littered with crumpled papers.

  Harben found an old copy of Jugend that he hadn’t read, and settled himself in a corner. An article on youth training was interesting. Harben turned a page, and then realized that he’d lost the thread. He went back.

  He read a paragraph, said, “Eh?” and skipped back again. The words were there; they entered his mind; they made sense—of course. He was concentrating. He wasn’t allowing that damned marching song to interfere, with its gingerbread LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children—

  Harben never did finish that article.

  Witter of the Gestapo sipped cognac and looked across the table at Herr Doktor Schneidler. Outside the cafe, sunlight beat down strongly on the Konigstrasse.

  “The Russians—” Schneidler said.

  “Never mind the Russians,” Witter broke in hastily, “I am still puzzled by that Polish affair. Guns—machine guns—hidden in that village, after it had been searched time and again. It is ridiculous. There were n
o raids over that locality recently; there was no way for the Poles to have got those guns in the last few weeks.”

  “Then they must have had them hidden for more than a few weeks.”

  “Hidden? We search carefully, Herr Doktor. I am going to interview that man Eggerth again. And Harben. Their records are good, but—” Witter fingered his mustache nervously. “No. We can take nothing for granted. You are a clever man; what do you make of it?”

  “That the village was not well searched.”

  “Yet it was. Eggerth and Harben maintain that, and their men support them. It’s ridiculous to suppose that bulky machine guns could have been passed over like little automatics that can be hidden under a board. So. When the troops marched into that village, the Poles killed forty-seven German soldiers by machine gunning them from the rooftops.” Witter’s fingers beat on the table top in a jerky rhythm.

  Tap.

  Tap.

  Tap-ta-tap-ta—

  “Eh?” Witter said. “I didn’t catch—”

  “Nothing. Merely that you will, of course, investigate carefully. You have a regular routine for such investigations, eh? Well, then—it is simply a matter of scientific logic, as in my own work.”

  “How is that progressing?” Witter asked, going off at a tangent.

  “Soon. Soon.”

  “I have heard that before. For some weeks, in fact. Have you run into a snag? Do you need help?”

  “Ach, no,” Schneidler snapped, with sudden irritation. “I want no damn fool assistants. This is precision work, Witter. It calls for split-second accuracy. I have been specially trained in thermodynamics, and I know just when a button should be pressed, or an adjustment made. The heat-radiation of disintegrating bodies—” Presently Schneidler stopped, confused. “Perhaps, though, I need a rest. I’m fagged out. My mind’s stale. I concentrate, and suddenly I find I have botched an important experiment. Yesterday I had to add exactly six drops of a . . . a fluid to a mixture I’d prepared, and before I knew it the hypo was empty, and I’d spoiled the whole thing.”