The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Corporal Colliver winked at the two Pfc’s who were sunning themselves with him on the guardhouse steps. “Come back Chris’mus, Santa,” he said. “We’re closed for inventory.”

  “No!” Papa Schimmelhorn was annoyed. “I cannot stay so long from vork. Also, I haff here a zecret veapon. Ledt me in.”

  The Corporal shrugged. Orders were orders. Crazy or not, you had to let ’em in. He reached back and pressed the loony-button, to alert the psychos just in case. Then, keys jangling, he walked up to the gate. “A secret weapon, huh?” he said, unlocking it. “Guess you’ll have the war all won and over in a week.”

  “A veek?” Papa Schimmelhorn roared with laughter. “Soldier boy, you vait! It iss ofer in two days! I am a chenius!”

  As he stepped through, Corporal Colliver remembered regulations and asked him sternly if he had any explosives on or about his person.

  “Ho-ho-ho! It iss nodt necessary to haff exblosives to vin a var! Zo all right, you zearch me!”

  The corporal searched him. He searched the box-lunch, which contained one devilled egg, two pressed-ham sandwiches, and an apple. He examined the bassoon, shaking it and peering down it to make sure that it was empty.

  “Okay, Pop,” he said, when he had finished. “You can go on in. But you better leave your flute here.”

  “It iss nodt a fludt,” Papa Schimmelhorn corrected him. “It iss a gnurr-pfeife. And I must take it because it iss my zecret veapon.”

  The Corporal, who had been looking forward to an hour or so of trying to tootle Comin’ Through the Rye, shrugged philosophically. “Barney,” he said to one of the Pfc’s, “take this guy to Section Eight.”

  As the soldier went off with Papa Schimmelhorn in tow, he pressed the loony-button twice more just for luck. “Don’t it beat all,” he remarked to the other Pfc, “the way we gotta act like these nuts was top brass or something?”

  Corporal Colliver, of course, didn’t know that Papa Schimmelhorn had spoken only gospel truth. He didn’t know that Papa Schimmelhorn really was a genius, or that the gnurrs would end the war in two days, or that Papa Schimmelhorn would win it.

  Not then, he didn’t.

  At ten minutes past one, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard was still mercifully unaware of Papa Schimmelhorn’s existence.

  Colonel Pollard was long and lean and leathery. He wore Peal boots, spurs, and one of those plum-colored shirts which had been fashionable at Fort Huachuca in the ’twenties. He did not believe in secret weapons. He didn’t even believe in atomic bombs and tanks, recoilless rifles and attack aviation. He believed in horses.

  The Pentagon had called him back out of retirement to command the Secret Weapons Bureau, and he had been the right man for the job. In the four months of his tenure, only one inventor—a man with singularly sound ideas regarding packsaddles—had been sent on to higher echelons.

  Colonel Pollard was seated at his desk, dictating to his blond WAC secretary from an open copy of Lieutenant-General Wardrop’s Modern Pigsticking. He was accumulating material for a work of his own, to be entitled Sword and Lance in Future Warfare. Now, in the middle of a quotation outlining the virtues of the Bengal spear, he broke off abruptly. “Miss Hooper!” he announced. “A thought has occurred to me!”

  Katie Hooper sniffed. If he had to be formal, why couldn’t he just say sergeant? Other senior officers had always addressed her as my dear or sweetheart, at least when they were alone. Miss Hooper, indeed! She sniffed again, and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Pollard snorted, apparently to clear his mind. “I can state it as a principle,” he began, “that the mania for these so-called scientific weapons is a grave menace to the security of the United States. Flying in the face of the immutable science of war, we are building one unproved weapon after another, counter-weapons against these weapons, counter-counter-weapons, and—and so on. Armed to the teeth with theories and delusions, we soon may stand defenseless, impotent—Did you hear me, Miss Hooper? Impotent—”

  Miss Hooper snickered and said, “Yessir.”

  “—against the onrush of some Attila,” shouted the Colonel, “some modern Genghis Khan, as yet unborn, who will sweep away our tinkering technicians like chaff, and carve his empire with cavalry—yes, cavalry, I say!—with horse and sword!”

  “Yessir,” said his secretary.

  “Today,” the Colonel thundered, “we have no cavalry! A million mounted moujiks could—”

  But the world was not destined to find out just what a million mounted moujiks could or could not do. The door burst open. From the outer office, there came a short, sharp squeal. A plump young officer catapulted across the room, braked to a halt before the Colonel’s desk, saluted wildly.

  “Oooh!” gasped Katie Hooper, staring with vast blue eyes.

  The Colonel’s face turned suddenly to stone.

  And the young officer caught his breath long enough to cry, “My God, it—it’s happened, sir!”

  Lieutenant Hanson was no combat soldier; he was a scientist. He had made no appointment. He had entered without knocking, in a most unmilitary manner. And—and—

  “MISTER!” roared Colonel Pollard. “WHERE ARE YOUR TROUSERS?”

  For Lieutenant Hanson obviously was wearing none. Nor was he wearing socks or shoes. And the tattered tails of his shirt barely concealed his shredded shorts.

  “SPEAK UP, DAMMIT!”

  Vacantly, the Lieutenant glanced at his lower limbs and back again. He began to tremble. “They—they ate them!” he blurted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Lord knows how he does it! He’s about eighty, and he’s a—a foreman in a cuckoo-clock factory! But it’s the perfect weapon! And it works, it works, it works!” He laughed hysterically. “The gnurrs come from the voodvork out!” he sang, clapping his hands. “The voodvork out, the—”

  Here Colonel Pollard rose from his chair, vaulted his desk, and tried to calm Lieutenant Hanson by shaking him vigorously. “Disgraceful!” he shouted in his ear. “Turn your back!” he ordered the blushing Katie Hooper. “NONSENSE!” he bellowed when the Lieutenant tried to chatter something about gnurrs.

  And, “Vot iss nonzense, soldier boy?” enquired Papa Schimmelhorn from the doorway.

  Colonel Pollard let go of the Lieutenant. He flushed a deep red cordovan. For the first time in his military career, words failed him.

  The Lieutenant pointed unsteadily at Colonel Pollard. “Gnurrs iss nonzense!” he giggled. “He says so!”

  “Ha!” Papa Schimmelhorn glared. “I show you, soldier boy!”

  The Colonel erupted. “Soldier boy? SOLDIER BOY? Stand at attention when I speak to you! ATTENTION, DAMN YOU!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn, of course, paid no attention whatsoever. He raised his secret weapon to his lips, and, the first bars of Come to the Church in the Wildwood moaned around the room.

  “Mister Hanson!” raged the Colonel. “Arrest that man! Take that thing away from him! I’ll prefer charges! I’ll—”

  At this point, the gnurrs came from the voodvork out.

  It isn’t easy to describe a gnurr. Can you imagine a mouse-colored, mouse-sized critter shaped like a wild boar, but sort of shimmery? With thumbs fore and aft, and a pink, naked tail, and yellow eyes several sizes too large? And with three sets of sharp teeth in its face? You can? Well, that’s about it—except that nobody has ever seen a gnurr. They don’t come that way. When the gnurrs come from the voodvork out, they come all over—like lemmings, only more so—millions and millions and millions of them.

  And they come eating.

  The gnurrs came from the voodvork out just as Papa Schimmelhorn reached “… the church in the vale.” They covered half the floor, and ate up half the carpet, before he finished, “No scene is so dear to my childhood.” Then they advanced on Colonel Pollard.

  Mount
ing his desk, the Colonel started slashing around with his riding crop. Katie Hooper climbed a filing case, hoisted her skirt, and screamed. Lieutenant Hanson, secure in his nether nakedness, held his ground and guffawed insubordinately.

  Papa Schimmelhorn stopped tootling to shout, “Don’dt vorry, soldier boy!” He started in again, playing something quite unrecognizable—something that didn’t sound like a tune at all.

  Instantly, the gnurrs halted. They looked over their shoulders apprehensively. They swallowed the remains of the Colonel’s chair cushion, shimmered brightly, made a queasy sort of creaking sound, and turning tail, vanished into the wainscoting.

  Papa Schimmelhorn stared at the Colonel’s boots, which were surprisingly intact, and muttered, “Hmm-m, zo!” He leered appreciatively at Katie Hooper, who promptly dropped her skirt. He thumped himself on the chest, and announced, “They are vunderful, my gnurrs!” to the world at large.

  “Wh—?” The Colonel showed evidences of profound psychic trauma. “Where did they go?”

  “Vere they came from,” replied Papa Schimmelhorn.

  “Where’s that?”

  “It iss yesterday.”

  “That—that’s absurd!” The Colonel stumbled down and fell into his chair. “They weren’t here yesterday!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn regarded him pityingly. “Of course nodt! They vere nodt here yesterday because yesterday vas then today. They are here yesterday, ven yesterday is yesterday already. It iss different.”

  Colonel Pollard wiped his clammy brow, and cast an appealing glance at Lieutenant Hanson.

  “Perhaps I can explain, sir,” said the Lieutenant, whose nervous system apparently had benefited by the second visit of the gnurrs. “May I make my report?”

  “Yes, yes, certainly.” Colonel Pollard clutched gladly at the straw. “Ah—sit down.”

  Lieutenant Hanson pulled up a chair, and—as Papa Schimmelhorn walked over to flirt with Katie—he began to talk in a low and very serious voice.

  “It’s absolutely incredible,” he said. “All the routine tests show that he’s at best a high grade moron. He quit school when he was eleven, served his apprenticeship, and worked as a clockmaker till he was in his fifties. After that, he was a janitor in the Geneva Institute of Higher Physics until just a few years ago. Then he came to America and got his present job. But it’s the Geneva business that’s important. They’ve been concentrating on extensions of Einstein’s and Minkowski’s work. He must have overheard a lot of it.”

  “But if he is a moron—” The Colonel had heard of Einstein, and knew that he was very deep indeed “—what good would it do him?”

  “That’s just the point, sir! He’s a moron on the conscious level, but subconsciously he’s a genius. Somehow, part of his mind absorbed the stuff, integrated it, and came up with this bassoon thing. It’s got a weird little L-shaped crystal in it, impinging on the reed, and when you blow, the crystal vibrates. We don’t know why it works—but it sure does!”

  “You mean the—uh—the fourth dimension?”

  “Precisely. Though we’ve left yesterday behind, the gnurrs have not. They’re there now. When a day becomes our yesterday, it becomes their today.”

  “But—but how does he get rid of them?”

  “He says he plays the same tune backwards, and reverses the effect. Damn lucky, if you ask me!”

  Papa Schimmelhorn, who had been encouraging Katie Hooper to feel his biceps, turned around. “You vait!” he laughed uproariously. “Soon, vith my gnurr-pfeife I broadcast to the enemy! Ve vin the var!”

  The Colonel shied. “The thing’s untried, unproven! It—er—requires further study—field service—acid test.”

  “We haven’t time, sir. We’d lose the element of surprise!”

  “We will make a regular report through channels,” declared the Colonel. “It’s a damn’ machine, isn’t it? They’re unreliable. Always have been. It would be contrary to the principles of war.”

  And then Lieutenant Hanson had an inspiration. “But, sir,” he argued, “we won’t be fighting with the gnurr-pfeife! The gnurrs will be our real weapon, and they’re not machines—they’re animals! The greatest generals used animals in war! The gnurrs aren’t interested in living creatures, but they’ll devour just about anything else—wool, cotton, leather, even plastics—and their numbers are simply astronomical. If I were you, I’d get through to the Secretary right away!”

  For an instant, the Colonel hesitated—but only for an instant. “Hanson,” he said decisively, “you’ve got a point there—a very sound point!”

  And he reached for the telephone.

  * * * *

  It took less than twenty-four hours to organize Operation Gnurr. The Secretary of Defense, after conferring with the President and the Chiefs of Staff, personally rushed over to direct preliminary tests of Papa Schimmelhorn’s secret weapon. By nightfall, it was known that the gnurrs could:

  a. completely blanket everything within two hundred yards of the gnurr-pfeife in less than twenty seconds;

  b. strip an entire company of infantry, supported by chemical weapons, to the skin in one minute and eighteen seconds;

  c. ingest the contents of five Quartermaster warehouses in just over two minutes; and,

  d. come from the voodvork out when the gnurr-pfeife was played over a carefully shielded shortwave system.

  It had also become apparent that there were only three effective ways to kill a gnurrby—shooting him to death, drenching him with liquid fire, or dropping an atomic bomb on him—and that there were entirely too many gnurrs for any of these methods to be worth a hoot.

  By morning, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard—because he was the only senior officer who had ever seen a gnurr, and because animals were known to be right up his alley—had been made a lieutenant-general and given command of the operation. Lieutenant Hanson, as his aide, had suddenly found himself a major. Corporal Colliver had become a master-sergeant, presumably for being there when the manna fell. And Katie Hooper had had a brief but strenuous date with Papa Schimmelhorn.

  Nobody was satisfied. Katie complained that Papa Schimmelhorn and the gnurrs had the same idea in mind, only his technique was different. Jerry Colliver, who had been dating Katie regularly, griped that the old buzzard with the muscles had sent his Hooper rating down to zero. Major Hanson had awakened to the possibility of somebody besides the enemy tuning in on the Papa Schimmelhorn Hour. Even General Pollard was distressed—“I could overlook everything, Hanson,” he said sourly, “except his calling me ‘soldier boy.’ I won’t stand for it! The science of war cannot tolerate indiscipline. I spoke to him about it, and all he said was, ‘It iss all right, soldier boy. You can call me Papa.’”

  Major Hanson disciplined his face, and said, “Well, why not call him Papa, sir? After all, it’s just such human touches as these that make history.”

  “Ah, yes—History.” The General paused reflectively. “Hmm, perhaps so, perhaps so. They always called Napoleon ‘the little Corporal.’”

  “The thing that really bothers me, General, is how we’re going to get through without our own people listening in. I guess they must’ve worked out something on it, or they wouldn’t have scheduled the—the offensive for five o’clock. That’s only four hours off.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said General Pollard, coming out of his reverie, “a memorandum did come through—Oh, Miss Hooper, bring me that memo from G-I, will you?—Thank you. Here it is. It seems that they have decided to—er—scramble the broadcast.”

  “Scramble it, sir?”

  “Yes, yes. And I’ve issued operational orders accordingly. You see, Intelligence reported several weeks ago that the enemy knows how to unscramble anything we transmit that way. When Mr. Schimmelhorn goes on the air, we will scramble him, but we will not transmit the
code key to our own people. It is assumed that from five to fifteen enemy monitors will hear him. His playing of the tune will constitute Phase One. When it is over, the microphones will be switched off, and he will play it backwards. That will be Phase Two, to dispose of such gnurrs as appear locally.”

  “Seems sound enough.” Major Hanson frowned. “And it’s pretty smart, if everything goes right. But what if it doesn’t? Hadn’t we better have an ace up our sleeve?”

  He frowned again. Then, as the General didn’t seem to have any ideas on the subject, he went about his duties. He made a final inspection of the special sound-proof room in which Papa Schimmelhorn would tootle. He allocated its observation windows—one to the President, the Secretary, and General Pollard; one to the Chiefs of Staff; another to Intelligence liaison; and the last to the functioning staff of Operation Gnurr, himself included. At ten minutes to five, when everything was ready, he was still worrying.

  “Look here,” he whispered to Papa Schimmelhorn, as he escorted him to the fateful door. “What are we going to do if your gnurrs really get loose here? You couldn’t play them back into the voodvork in a month of Sundays!”

  “Don’dt vorry, soldier boy!” Papa Schimmelhorn gave him a resounding slap on the back. “I haff yet vun trick I do nodt tell you!”

  And with that vague assurance, he closed the door behind him.

  “Ready!” called General Pollard tensely, at one minute to five.

  “Ready!” echoed Sergeant Colliver.

  In front of Papa Schimmelhorn, a red light flashed on. The tension mounted. The seconds ticked away. The General’s hand reached for a sabre-hilt that wasn’t there. At five exactly—

  “CHARGE!” the General cried.

  And Papa Schimmelhorn started tootling Come to the Church in the Wildwood.

  The gnurrs, of course, came from the voodvork out.

  The gnurrs came from the voodvork out, and a hungry gleam was in their yellow eyes. They carpeted the floor. They started piling up. They surged against the massive legs of Papa Schimmelhorn, their tiny electric-razor sets of teeth going like all get out. His trousers vanished underneath the flood—his checkered coat, his tie, his collar, the fringes of his beard. And Papa Schimmelhorn, all undismayed, lifted his big bassoon out of gnurrs’ way and tootled on. “Come, come, come, come. Come to the church in the vildvood…”