The Best of Henry Kuttner

by Henry Kuttner

  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,” retorted 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 Führer. 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. Heil.”

  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 but 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 this 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 worst 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. Wool-gathering is dangerous business in an occupied village. Resume your search.”

  Harben went out, wondering. 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 coordinated 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 com
e 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 no 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.”

  Witter scowled. “Is something worrying you? Preying on your mind? We cannot afford to have that. If it is your nephew—”

  “No, no. I am not worried about Franz. He’s probably enjoying himself in Paris. I suppose I’m…damn!” Schneidler smashed his fist down on the table. “It is ridiculous. A crazy song!”

  Witter raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “I have always prided myself on my mind. It is a beautifully coherent and logical machine. I could understand its failing through a sensible cause—worry, or even madness. But when I can’t get an absurd nonsense rhyme out of my head—I broke some valuable apparatus today,” Schneidler confessed, compressing his lips. “Another spoiled experiment. When I realized what I’d done, I swept the whole mess off the table. I do not want a vacation; it is important that I finish my work quickly.”

  “It is important that you finish,” Witter said. “I advise you to take that vacation. The Bavarian Alps are pleasant. Fish, hunt, relax completely. Do not think about your work. I would not mind going with you, but—” He shrugged.

  Storm troopers passed along the Konigstrasse. They were repeating words that made Schneidler jerk nervously. Witters hands resumed their rhythm on the table top.

  “I shall take that vacation,” Schneidler said.

  “Good. It will fix you up. Now I must get on with my investigation of that Polish affair, and then a check-up on some Luftwaffe pilots—” The Herr Doktor Schneidler, four hours later, sat alone in a train compartment, already miles out of Berlin. The countryside was green and pleasant outside the windows. Yet, for some reason, Schneidler was not happy.

  He lay back on the cushions, relaxing. Think about nothing. That was it. Let the precision tool of his mind rest for a while. Let his mind wander free. Listen to the somnolent rhythm of the wheels, clickety-clickety—

  CLICK!

  CLICK!

  CLICK a wife and CLICKenteen children in

  STARVing condition with NOTHing but gingerbread

  LEFT—

  Schneidler cursed thickly, jumped up, and yanked the cord. He was going back to Berlin. But not by train. Not in any conveyance that had wheels. Gott, no!

  The Herr Doktor walked back to Berlin. At first he walked briskly. Then his face whitened, and he lagged. But the compelling rhythm continued. He went faster, trying to break step. For a while that worked. Not for long. His mind kept slipping his gears, and each time he’d find himself going LEFT—

  He started to run. His beard streaming, his eyes aglare, the Herr Doktor Schneidler, great brain and all, went rushing madly back to Berlin, but he couldn’t outpace the silent voice that said, faster and faster, LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFTawifeandSEVenteenchildrenin

  STARVingcondition—

  “Why did that raid fail?” Witter asked.

  The Luftwaffe pilot didn’t know. Everything had been planned, as usual, well in advance. Every possible contingency had been allowed for, and the raid certainly shouldn’t have failed. The R. A. F. planes should have been taken by surprise. The Luftwaffe should have dropped their bombs on the targets and retreated across the Channel without difficulty.

  “You had your shots before going up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kurtman, your bombardier, was killed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Inexcusably?”

  There was a pause. Then—“Yes, sir.”

  “He could have shot down that Hurricane that attacked you?”

  “I…yes, sir.”

  “Why did he fail?”

  “He was…singing, sir.”

  Witter leaned back in his chair. “He was singing. And I suppose he got so interested in the song that he forgot to fire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then, why in the name of…of—Why didn’t you dodge that Hurricane?”

  “I was singing, too, sir.”

  The R.A.F. were coming over. The man at the antiaircraft whistled between his teeth and waited. The moonlight would help. He settled himself
in the padded seat and peered into the eyepiece. All was ready. Tonight there were at least some British ships that would go raiding no more.

  It was a minor post in occupied France, and the man wasn’t especially important, except that he was a good marksman. He looked up, watching a little cloud luminous in the sky. He was reminded of a photographic negative. The British planes would be dark, unlike the cloud, until the searchlights caught them. Then—

  Ah, well. Left. Left. Left a wife and seventeen—

  They had sung that at the canteen last night, chanting it in chorus. A catchy piece. When he got back to Berlin—if ever—he must remember the words. How did they go?

  In starving condition—

  His thoughts ran on independently of the automatic rhythm in his brain. Was he dozing? Startled, he shook himself, and then realized that he was still alert. There was no danger. The song kept him awake, rather than inducing slumber. It had a violent, exciting swing that got into a man’s blood with its LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife—

  However, he must remain alert. When the R. A. F. bombers came over, he must do what he had to do. And they were coming now. Distantly he could hear the faint drone of their motors, pulsing monotonously like the song, bombers for Germany, starving condition, with nothing but gingerbread

  LEFT!

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in

  STARVing condition with—

  Remember the bombers, your hand on the trigger, your eye to the eyepiece, with nothing but gingerbread

  LEFT!

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and—

  Bombers are coming, the British are coming, but don’t fire too quickly, just wait till they’re closer, and LEFT

  LEFT

  LEFT a wife and there are their motors, and there go the searchlights, and there they come over, in starving condition with nothing but gingerbread

  LEFT!

  LEFT!

  LEFT a wife and SEVenteen children in—

  They were gone. The bombers had passed over. He hadn’t fired at all. He’d forgotten!

  They’d passed over. Not one was left. Nothing was left. Nothing but gingerbread.