Bypass To Otherness Page 14

  “Blast!" Tenning said.

  "What?"

  It was all wrong. He could have adjusted easily to a completely new world A civilization a thousand years hence would have been all new. That would have been acceptable. But by Fish decern 7 only the little things had changed. The little things, and the minds of men.

  A man came out of the hotel and got Into a car that pulled up. He was quite an ordinary man, but Mary's fingers clenched on Tenning’* arm as the vehicle swung out and disappeared along the street.

  “Eh?"

  “That was Andy," she said.

  He didn't get it for a moment

  Then he thought *So tt wasn't Andy who died. It was Mary. Or, rather, she stopped living. She stuck to the telephones when Andy started to get used to the psych-phones.’

  She was s casualty, too.

  "Let’s go back to the beer-garden," Tenning said.

  “Gladly. Come on.”

  It didn't take long. But there was somebody waiting at their table, the heavy-browed man Tenning had encountered on the steps of the Star building. He had e purple welt on His jaw.

  Tenning’s insides coalesced coldly. He poised, hesitating, and then glanced around quickly.

  “I'm all alone." the man said. “Look, don’t start anything. I forgot to give you this." He slapped a leathered folder on the table.

  'You’re not taking me back.” Tenning said. Unconsciously he had gone Into a crouch, Mary behind trim, instinct flooding his bloodstream with violence.

  “No. You left a week or so too soon, but it doesn't matter. Good luck." The man smiled, got up, and went out. leaving Tanning helplessly shaken.

  Mary opened the folder.

  “A friend of yours?"

  “N-no."

  "He must be. To leave you this?"

  "What is H?" Tonnmg still looked after the heavy-browed man.

  "Token-currency," die said. "And plenty of it You can buy me a drink now."

  He snatched the folder.

  “Money? That's what—heck! I can fight them now! I can splash the truth all over the country! See if I don't—"

  Shan purred on the lap of the red-haired man.

  "Tenning is the only one who’s escaped so far, Jerry, tho man said, gently tickling the cat’s jaw. "And that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn't been reconverting. Doesn't matter, anyhow, of course. He was duo for a discharge tn a week or so. You might look over his records some day wben you have time. Tanning's an interesting nonentity of the more troublesome sort"

  “There's a lot I'm still vague about." the other man said- "My background’s geopolitical- I'm not a physicist. The doppelgangers—

  “That's a matter for the technicians. You're specially qualified for administrative work, with psychological angles. Right now you're getting a bird’s-eye view of the whole works —a sort of apprenticeship.

  "The doppelgangers, though—well, the . double concept’s interesting. Not terribly important. but Interesting. When the Double first goes out, the psychic cord between the two is very strong. That's why we have to keep the Original in custody—among other reasons.

  “After a certain period the Double seems to acquire enough personality of his own to go on alone, and the Original’s released. He's harmless by then, anyhow."

  "He wouldn't have been, at first?"

  “Oh, no. Not Tanning's type. He’s one of the dangerous group. Not creative, but influential. You see, the creators and the technicians were with us from the start They saw this was the only possible safe solution.

  “But the Tennings. the fellows with a little talent and a lot of aggressiveness—imagine what damage he might have dona in nineteen forty-five, yawping his emotional reactions over the air. undisciplined, immature emotions. veering in all direction*.

  "It’s normal, of course—everybody was veering in nineteen forty-five. That waa what we bad to put a stop to, before chaos set in. Tenning was one of the unfortunate in-betweens, guys with too much influence to run around nee, and too little intelligence to oorae in constructively with us.

  “We couldn't reason with his kind. We couldn't even tell him the truth. Tenning Duplicate has done a lot of good—under control. All our key men have. We need guys like Tenning to steer people in the right direction-”

  “Under control,'’ Jerry said.

  The red-haired men laughed. "We’re not the bosses. Don’t start out with that idea even la the back of your mind, forty. People with dictator impulses are reoonditioned— fast. Here's the answer—we could never be bosses in this set-up. even if we wanted to be. The change is taking place too slowly.

  “That was our whole concept, oi course, and the very slowness of the thing is the chock and balance system that works on us. The minute any of us got dictatorship impulses, we'd have to change the social set-up.

  "And the people won’t accept quick change. They've had enough of that There'd be chaos, and one lone dictator wouldn't stand a chance. He’d have too many opponents. All were working for—and don’t you forget it, Jerry—is to focus the veering. That's job enough for any organization right now."

  “What about Tenning? Now that he's free he’s harmless?"

  “Perfectly harmless. Melhorn gave him token-money enough to cover the transition period, and hell adjust like everyone else— if he can."

  "Pretty hard on him. isn’t It, tossed out into a strange world?" •

  “It’s not that strange. He'll learn. That is, he'll learn now if he ever would have. I'm not so sure- Some just don't adjust. It takes a certain flexibility and self-confidence to be able to make changes as your environment changes.

  “People like Tenning— I don't know. It’s a funny thing, Jerry, there's a whole new class sinking to the bottom of the social setup now. People who can't or won't adapt to the new things. It happens after every major social upheaval, of course, but this Ume we re getting a new group of misfits.

  “In the long run. a much higher percentage benefits, of course. It's too bad about the maladjusted group, but there isn't much wo can do. I don't know about Tenning. Well keep an eye on him, help if we can.

  “But these men with half a talent and a taste for public adulation have got a bad week spot to begin with. I hope he makes out all right.I hope he does."

  * * * * *

  "I don’t get it, Dave." Mary said. “Whom do vou want to fight?"

  He gripped the leatheroid folder savagely.

  "The big boys, the ones who built tbe psych-phones and started this screwy system of Fish decern seventh. All this—inis stuff. You ought to know."

  “But what do you want?" she asked. "What do you think you’re fighting for?”

  He looked at her. And, in the Warm dimess of the air, the wave of the future stirred as an alien quickening that he sensed very dimly, and hated!

  "I'll fight," he promised. “I'll—stop all this."

  Ho swung around and went out The waiter paused at Mary* table.

  "Highball." she said.

  He sent a questioning glance after Toontng. "One?"

  "Just one."

  "He isn't coming back?"

  She didn't answer for a moment as she listened to the off-beat rhythm of tbe music that had gone so beyond her.

  "Not tonight," she said. "But hell be back. There’s nothing out there for him. Not any more. Sum; hell be back some day."

  NOTHING BUT GINGERBREAD LEFT

  The only way to make people believe this story is to write it in German. And there's no point in doing that, for the German-speaking world is already starting to worry about gingerbread left.

  I speak figuratively. It's safer. Very likely Rutherford, whose interests are equally divided between semantics and Basin Street, could create an English equivalent of gingerbread left, God forbid. As it is, the song, with its reductio ad absurdum of rhythm and sense, is meaningless in translation. Try translating Jabberwocky into German. So what?

  The song, as Rutherford wrote it in German, had nothing to do with gingerbre
ad, but, since the original is obviously unavailable, I'm substituting the closest thing to it that exists in English. It's lacking in that certain compelling perfection on which Rutherford worked for months, but it'll give you an idea.

  We'll start, I suppose, with the night Rutherford threw a shoe at his son. He had reason. Phil Rutherford was in charge of semantics at the University, and he was battling a hangover and trying to correct papers at the same time. Physical disabilities had kept him out of the army, and he was brooding over that, wondering if he should gulp some more Sherman units of thiamin, and hating his students. The papers they had handed in were no good. For the most part, they smelled. Rutherford had an almost illicit love for words, and it distressed him to see them kicked around thus. As Humpty Dumpty had said, the question was which was to be the master. Usually it wasn't the students. Jerry O'Brien had a good paper, though, and Rutherford went over it carefully, pencil in hand. The radio in the living room didn't bother him; the door was closed, anyhow. But, abruptly, the radio stopped.

  "Hi," said Rutherford's thirteen-year-old son, poking his untidy head across the threshold. There was an ink smudge on the end of the youth's nose.

  "Hi, pop. Finished my homework. Can I go to the show?"

  "It's too late," Rutherford said, glancing at his wrist watch. "Sorry. But you've an early class tomorrow."

  "Nom d'un plume," Bill murmured. He was discovering French.

  "Out. I've got work to do. Go listen to the radio."

  "They make with corn tonight. Oh, well-" Bill retreated, leaving the door ajar. From the other room came confused, muffled sounds. Rutherford returned to his work

  He became aware, presently, that Bill was repeating a monotonous, rhythmic string of phrases. Automatically Rutherford caught himself listening, straining to catch the words. When he did, they were meaningless-the familiar catch phrases of kids.

  "Ibbety zibbety zibbety zam-"

  It occurred to Rutherford that he had been hearing this for some time, the mystic doggerel formula for choosing sides-"and out goes you!" One of those things that stick in your mind rather irritatingly.

  "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 tall, 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 doesn't bother me," Bill said.

  Rutherford grunted. 'Wait'll you're older and really have to concen trate, 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 ilber 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. "1 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 some
thing 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 L 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!"