by E. C. Tubb
Taffy stared at him. “Hasn’t nobody told you? I mean.…” He looked at the zebra crossing. A lot of people were gawking at it. “I mean, those people killed.”
The Yorkshire superintendent’s gleaming smile vanished. “Killed?” He looked round, quickly, as if afraid he had missed something obvious. “Who’s been killed?” Taffy recited—a mother and twins, some women shoppers, an old limping man.
The superintendent studied the cop for quite a long while. Then he said slowly. “Are you out of your mind? None of my men reported any killed. Now, they would have done, wouldn’t they, if there’d been any?” Vigor in his voice. “You can’t come the old mullarkey with Yorkshire folk, tha knows. Down to earth. Don’t get kidded. Go on, Tatty, show me where they are. Who’s been pullin’ thy leg lad?”
But a Welsh policeman was looking at the crossing for traces of blood. There weren’t any. He was looking for pieces of crushed pushchair the debris from flying shopping baskets. There weren’t any. And no corpses.
The publisher and Dickie came back some time later wth the full and incredible story. Both were curiously subdued, more remarkable in the publisher than in Dickie. They came in and sat down with that air of slumping which tells of mental exhaustion. As if, Butty thought, stunned. Not that he cared. He was feeling like death warmed up. Damned if he was going to hang on till the end of the afternoon. He’d take a MS home and read it in bed. Or not read it unless his head stopped aching.
He waited to tell the publisher of his decision, but the other two had started talking. Talking quietly, factually, deliberately Telling of events on the High Street, reconstructing it, and Butty had to listen and yet he wasn’t interested.
From the doorway he’d thought someone was knocked down. Crowds gathered like harpies when there was a real accident. Though part of his mind was puzzled because of the unusual amount of hysteria that had resulted, which he had felt even from a distance.
But he got a shock from their story when they came to the end. He hadn’t been really listening, so he had to drag their last words out of his mind, repeat them to get them confirmed, before he could begin to think of them and their implications.
“You say a bus deliberately ran clown a lot of people including some babies, yet when the ambulances turned up there were no bodies?” Put like that it made them squirm.
“But we saw then, saw it happen.” Dickie speaking passionately, young eves holding horror, yet incredulous, bewildered. The publisher nodded heavily “It was slaughter,” Dickie shuddered. “On the crossing.”
Butty fought through his cold. There were a lot of loose ends hanging about but for the moment his thick head wouldn’t let him put hem together. All he could say was, “You don’t kill people and then not have bodies.”
Dickie said, his voice quite steady, low and positive, “I saw with my own eyes a bus wheel go right over that pram. I saw the children.…”
He went into the toilet and they heard him being sick. The publisher just sat there. Butty put his hands to his aching head. He didn’t want to think. After a while Dickie came out, drained and exhausted.
The publisher said, with real kindness, “I think you ought to go home, Armstrong.” It was the kindness that comes from comradeship in terrible circumstances. Butty thought, “That means I can’t go early.” Sod Dickie and his queasy stomach. One of them would have to stay. The publisher wouldn’t allow them both away from the office at once.
Dickie, looking shocked, said, “I might be sick again. In the street. I think I’ll stay for a while.”
Dalrymple came in from next door, smelling of the old books he sold. His catarrhal voice honked, “You’d have thought it was Hitler and his V2s again.”
It was some time before they realized that he knew nothing of the events along the road, just the big crowd that had mysteriously gathered. He’d gone back to his shop and busied himself setting up the table that had collapsed “—because of that jinx,” Dalrymple said. All this time he’d been sorting his precious books into alphabetical order again. “Damned fellow!” he ended wrathfully.
In defense of a man who liked books, even if he didn’t buy them, Butty said, “You said he was nowhere near the table when it collapsed. Why blame him?”
Dalrymple was impatient with details. “It was him. I don’t know how he does it. Wherever he goes things happen. Well, in my shop. Every time he comes in, things fall, collapse. Though he’s nowhere near. Call it coincidence if you like, but—” He brooded. A reasonable man reluctant for once to reject the unreasonable.
That scratchy fingernail on his bristly chin. A sagacious look out through the doorway. “Wouldn’t put it past him to have caused that there, whatever it was.”
Butty looked at young Dickie at that moment, and saw shock there, as if thoughts almost too great for his mind to assimilate were never the less having to be ingested. Slowly Dickie turned to look at them in turn. Dalrymple went out. He had no time in his life for anything except books. The world’s tragedies would go on, but Dalrymple wouldn’t be concerned. Only when a shelf collapsed or a table fell down, throwing his books into disorder, was he roused to normal human emotion.
The publisher seemed to sense a change in the young editorial assistant, for he said again, “I think you’d better go home. You look knocked up.”
But Dickie didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes were far distant. He said, “I didn’t think of it at the time, but he was there.”
“What?” Butty. But not really interested.
“That chap. The fellow that brings disaster.” Dickie’s eyes met Butty’s, very straight and unflinching. “I saw him. Hanging about. Laughing. Yes, I think he was laughing. Yes, I’m sure of it now.”
Butty picked up his dirty Mac off the floor where it had fallen from the hat stand. Pulled it on, unheeding collar turned in. He was tired, tired, tired. The hell with everything.
“I’m going home,” he said, and went. The publisher roused himself to a minor show of indignation, then slumped back into his dreadful thoughts.
Butty came in next day. That was all he needed, one blissful day dozing in bed. Of course another day, and even the weekend, would have been better, but in spite of his morose temper with the boss, Butty was in fear of his job. Too long away, and one never knew. So he came in, not better but, well, better.
Dickie obviously wanted to talk about the previous day’s events. He carried with him an air of suppressed excitement. But Butty didn’t want to talk. He wanted to get straight with yesterday’s mail, and see what was in today’s.
Fortunately light, this day. Only one MS. First para: “The big ship steadied, the side thrusters blasting momentarily, bringing the bow round on course. Matt’s voice was quiet, narrowed gray eyes on the scanner and the picture it provided of the alien craft a thousand miles away. “We can’t take any risks,” he told them, hanging on to the words of their intrepid commander. “Bring the ray guns to bear.” A pause. His solid jaws set, displaying nothing of the emotion that raced inside him. ‘Fire’!”
Butty said, “Crap for you, Dickie. Just your barrow.” And threw the manuscript across.
The publisher came in shortly after ten. He was in a brisk, no-nonsense mood. “We got behind yesterday,” he said, and his voice accused Butty for going. Dickie, apparently, had manfully stayed on and worked, gallantly holding on to his stomach. So he started in at Butty, wanting to know what had happened to the page proofs of Planet of Doom and The Lost Constellation. Had lettering been done for the covers for July? And that agreement with the Sutton Coldfield author, had it turned up? On and on, a peevish man this morning, without pretence of good humor, grinding down on poor Butty.
About quarter to eleven Frances came in with the morning coffee. She used a biscuit-tin lid for a tray, and as usual it was considerably awash. Frances was the typist next door. She was pregnant, complacent about it, and because she was leaving she had no fear any longer for the publisher and his ill-humors.
She said, “
They’re all down the street.”
The publisher gingerly wiped the bottom of his cup on a piece of blotting paper, then set it down on another piece of paper. They didn’t run to saucers in this publishing house.
“I wish you wouldn’t slop coffee everywhere,” he said, grieved. Then followed up her statement. “Who’s down the street?”
“The fuzz.” Frances wriggled a bit, to settle more comfortably into tights that daily grew tighter. “They’re calling on all the shops, asking questions about yesterday.”
“Yes, yes,” said the boss. It was almost as if he had a hangover, the after-effects of yesterday’s excitement. Not so Dickie, who plainly would have talked if he had been encouraged. Once during the morning, in fact he had asked, “Seen the papers?” but Butty hadn’t and the boss frowned, wanting to keep hard on to Butty for missing some work the previous day.
The police came just when the morning picket went trooping by, their lollypops damning war and particularly YOG 45. They were honored with a chief superintendent of police and a detective-sergeant. Old Dalrymple next door had a mess sergeant and ordinary bobby, and they didn’t waste much time with him.
The super was supremely courteous, beautifully tailored and impressive—senior police officers are the smartest dressed men in the country, thought Butty, who was not the smartest-dressed science fiction editor in the country.
The super said, “There was an incident in the High Street yesterday. Can any of you tell me anything about it?”
Dickie began with enthusiasm. Then the publisher joined in after a hesitant start but became almost as voluble as Dickie. As if deciding that the morning would be wasted, anyway, so he might just as well get his share of pleasure from it as anyone else.
And Butty listened and after a while marveled at Dickie and the boss, but said nothing. Once, noticing his silence, the super turned to him and asked, “Weren’t you here, yesterday?”
“Oh, I was here, all right,” said Butty, giving a sniff. Cold almost better but still there, running down his nose. “But I didn’t witness anything.”
Large smile from the super. “Well, you’re the only person on the High Street who didn’t. Never had so many witnesses.” He frowned, as if that was puzzling. And then his brow corrugated tiredly, as if he had been up all night.
“Witnesses?” He ruminated. “They saw a bus drive over a pram containing two kids. Saw them crushed beneath the wheels. Saw others killed. The bus driver laughing his head off as if it was a great joke.”
He looked at them. “You’ve seen the morning’s papers? All those people saw it happen, but no one found any bodies. What happened to them? He looked bewildered. “Too many people tell the same, identical story. They saw it all happen, on the zebra crossing by the Co-op. All right, but we can’t trace any woman with two kids…or anyone missing. And no bodies. Just a lot of people dropping down in faints because of shock. What happened?”
He was a helpless man.
The publisher sat with his eyes downcast. Dickie fídgeted. Then said, “Well, I saw it happen. Or thought I did.”
“So did I.” The publisher. “Saw it with my own eyes.”
Butty said, “You couldn’t have,” and they all swung round on him, though Dickie was nodding and smiling brightly.
The publisher was indignant. “What d’you mean, I couldn’t have? I saw it, I tell you.” His face was a truculent threat.
Butty rubbed his glasses ferociously. He said, “You were in this office here with me when it happened. Dickie shot out and might have seen something—” Even so, his manner conveyed doubt about the possibility. “But you took time to follow. You shut the safe. We went to the door an stood together. I saw nothing, so you couldn’t have seen more than I did. Then you shot off to join the mob. But whatever had happened had happened by then. You couldn’t have—couldn’t have seen what you say you saw.”
The publisher rose slowly. His controlled movement was to convey the utmost in threat to his employee. His voice was soft, which is yet another w of projecting malignancy.
“Are you telling me I’m making up a story? Can you sit there and tell me I’m lying, that I didn’t see what I saw? Are you mad, Butteridge?”
Butty took courage. “Not mad, but you didn’t see what you thought yoi saw.”
And at that Dickie leapt in with his wonderful theory, the superintendent and the detective-sergeant swinging their heads from one speaker to another.
Dickie said, “It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened, even though hundreds of people swore they saw it happen. If you run over people there must be bodies. There weren’t any. So it didn’t happen. It only happened in our minds.”
The superintendent said, tiredly, “That’s what the M.O. said. Mass hallucination followed by mass hysteria.”
The publisher protested. “Oh, come now, that’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? I mean, here’s a street full of people, and all at once everyone sees something and now we’re told it happened only in their minds. I mean—” Butty wished he would stop saying, ‘I mean’, “I mean, well, people don’t all go bonkers at once, not without cause.”
The superintendent agreed with him. “That’s what we’re here to try to find out. What happened to cause all those people to imagine they saw one certain picture at precisely the same moment, a picture—an event—which by the evidence demonstrably did not happen.” He leaned forward, eyes weary. “What did it? What triggered off this hallucination, if it was that? Something did it, because in this world nothing happens without a cause.” A policeman speaking. Find the motive.
Dickie spoke, young voice very confident, very clear. “There are two recorded cases in history of mass hallucination like this.” They all turned on Dickie. Butty thought the remarkable thing was that Dickie should quite willingly, openly, admit that what he said he saw yesterday was a figment of his imagination. Not everyone could do that. The publisher, for instance.
Dickie said, “Some time in the 1890s there was an incident in a canton in Eastern Switzerland. A tiny village, with a big wooden hotel. It set on fire. One moment there was no fire, the next it was an inferno. The whole village saw it and were shocked by the suddenness of events.”
Butty nodded, but no one noticed. Dickie was reminding him.
“An entire village bore witness to that fire, and to the people who leapt to their death from the blazing upper rooms. I remember, they even saw a mother throw her child down to be caught, but it was missed and died. The whole village saw that tragedy. Yet next day the hotel was there. When they woke up, the hotel was there and so were all the guests. Nobody hurt.”
“And the other similar event?” Was the superintendent really interested in young Dickie and his stories? Dickie was enthralled to recite them. Butty took off his glasses and screwed up his eyes. Beginning of a headache again. Yes, he should have stayed away another day and blow the boss.
“That was later,” Dickie, reveling in their attentions. “Just before World War I. It was on the Rhine. September, I think it was, the time of the wine festival. A lot of the villagers had gone on a steamer up the Rhine as part of the celebrations. They came back in the evening, and the rest of the village was down at the landing stage to serenade their return with a band. All told the same story.
“The steamer was only a few hundred yards from the bank, when there was an explosion—”
“And also a fire.” Butty spoke.
Dickie looked a mite disappointed. “Oh, you know the story?”
Butty nodded. “It’s been told often enough. It seems to get more precise and detailed the longer in time it is from the event. But do go on, this is your story.”
Slightly subdued, Dickie continued. “Horrified villagers saw people running about the decks on fire. They saw people jumping into the water, drowning before their eyes, before they could run for rowing boats to save then. There was another violent explosion and almost at once the ship sank, taking down with it over a hundred men, women and chil
dren. They saw it, close on two hundred villagers, including the German band. It was a night of horror for them.
“Yet next morning when they stirred, there was the steamer tied to the landing stage, not in the least harmed. And no one was missing from the village.”
The superintendent looked at the detective-sergeant, then he rose and absent-mindedly brushed the editorial dust from his well-pressed trousers.
“Yes, yes,” he said. Then again, “Yes.” He drew on a great breath and said, “Well, thank you, gentlemen. Very interesting, I must say.”
Why did you say it? thought Butty. You know your time is being wasted, why don’t you come out with it?
“We must go and interview others,” said the super, but his tone said he didn’t think it would do much good. He said, using that now slightly old-fashioned term, “Good day, gentlemen,” and they went.
Dickie was a bit hurt, his rampaging enthusiasm snubbed. When they were through the door his indignation burst out. “That’s the trouble, they’ve no imagination, so they can’t see. They can’t explain yesterday’s mass hallucination, but they haven’t time to listen.”
Butty said, gently, “The einflubgeist?” making it up because he couldn’t remember exactly.
Dickie said, “The ein— Oh, you mean that fellow.” He shot a grateful glance at Butty. This was an encouragement for him to go on with his story.
Dickie said, “I’d forgotten what he was called—”
“Einflubgeist.” Fortunately Butty was able to remember his invented title. And wickedly. “It means, freely translated, ‘influencing ghost or spirit’.” Though to himself he was amused, realizing it meant nothing of the sort, but Dickie wouldn’t know.
The publisher had to come in then. “What’s this ein thing?”
“You’ve heard of a poltergeist? Malignant spirit? Well, something like that.” Dickie, imprecise but near enough to satisfy a publisher.
“German,” added Butty, delicately holding on to his humor because he was beginning to see the truth. “They go in a lot for those sort of wicked spirits, those Teutons. Thick with them in Bavaria.”