Microcosmic God

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Richter was a party man. Richter had reached the ripe old age of twenty-two and had six devoted and bloody years of party work behind him. At sixteen he had reported his uncle and aunt to the Nazis because they had made some derogatory remarks about the leader. Richter was in an ideal spot to spy on them since they were supporting him. He made it his business to investigate the family of his childhood sweetheart, found that the girl was one-eighth Jewish, held the fact over her head until he was tired of her, and then had her sent to a camp equipped with sundry abrasions and a condition associated with so much bitterness that not even mother love would override it. He was a charter member of the Jugend; he had worn his brown shirt with pride and plain clothes with poisonous efficiency. He had clung to the Landwehr as long as he could, on the theory that his loyal talents were of more use to the party in spying on his associates than in pulling a more honest trigger. He was in the army now, but he had been sent to the prison to check up on its administration; a fact that he made no bones about. He was tall and broad, with rotten teeth and eyes set too close together, and I do believe he bleached his hair.

  But he was a private. He used his low rank on German and British officers alike, begging to be disciplined for his insubordinate conduct so that he could send in a lying report to Berlin. He was sly—he clung impeccably to the letter of his Soldier’s Manual. But the spirit of it—that was his toy. The Jerries loathed him as only soldiers can loathe political theorists. The English—well, at least they had the freedom of being his admitted enemy.

  I ran afoul of him the very day I first got out of bed. I was sitting in the garden, smoking my pipe, a pair of crutches on one side of me and an R.A.F. flight commander on the other. We were talking quite casually about something he had read when we realized that Richter had pussyfooted up behind us. McCarthy, the flier, went right on talking. “—and that’s something I’ve noticed in all his books,” he said. “I have to agree with him. There is nothing on earth quite as revolting as a criminal doing as he pleases under the holy name of patriotism. A man who would do that would report his relatives to the authorities. More—he would eavesdrop on his superiors. Richter,” he said without turning, “Captain LaFarge’s pipe has gone out. Light it for him like a good chap.”

  Richter came around where we could see him. He was speechless with rage. Indirection and irony were completely foreign to his malignant mind; they baffled and hurt him.

  “I haf not a match,” he said stiffly.

  “Very well,” said McCarthy. “Carry on, then,” and he waved the German away. McCarthy gazed after him. He was English—Northumberland—and a brilliant man. He had been a corporation lawyer before the war, and was the kind of soldier that Goebbels tries to teach Germany to disbelieve in. “That creature,” said McCarthy softly, “is going to figure prominently in a murder very soon. He’d better see to it that he’s the party of the first part.”

  I laughed loud enough to annoy Richter, for he must know that we were talking about him. “Is he always like that?”

  “That, or worse,” said McCarthy. He spat. “I don’t know if there’ll be an exchange so I can get out of here, but if I do, I have a pretty little problem posed for myself. I’m certain that I could find this place from the air. There’s an air field not three hundred yards from here—military objective. Knowing that, would I bomb the whole layout on the off-chance of killing all the English here, if I knew I’d get Richter in the process?”

  “Hardly,” I said. “You can’t dislike a man so thoroughly that you’d slaughter a hundred of your own to get to him.”

  “Can’t I, though?” He rose. He was a steady sort, and it surprised me to see that his hands were trembling. “You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.” He glared at the gate through which the Nazi had disappeared, wiped his palms on his trousers. “Well, I’m going to wash up. Dinner in ten minutes, you know.”

  “I’ll be along,” I said. He went into the building, and I sat there watching a flight of Me’s coming in from the west, watched them circle to get the wind and drop down until the high garden wall concealed them from me. I remember thinking that perhaps McCarthy was letting the prison get the better of him.

  Richter came back, with his usual arrogant marching stride. He halted in front of me—I could almost hear a master sergeant yelling, “Halt! One—two!” as he did it—and extended a box of matches.

  “Oh. Thank you, Richter.”

  He waited until I had begun to light my pipe, right-faced, and marched back to the castle. On the way he put out his hand, caught up my crutches, dragged them thirty yards away, and dropped them. I called him, furiously, but he apparently did not hear me.

  I finished lighting my pipe because there was nothing else I could do. I knew he would be somewhere where he could watch me, ready to enjoy it if I called out for help, for I couldn’t move without the crutches. I knew he was praying that I would, rather than call out, crawl in the dirt until I could reach them. So I did neither.

  It was a long wait. Because I was just out of the hospital, there was no place set for me at table, and I was not missed until after nightfall. Obermeier found me. He was the prison adjutant.

  “Captain LaFarge!”

  He floundered through the weeds. “Captain! Why have you not to your room reported?”

  “I’ve been delayed,” I said. “If you’ll be good enough to fetch me my crutches, I’ll go in with you.”

  He peered at me through the gloom, his fat cheeks shining with sweat. It goes hard with these men if there’s a prison break. “Krodges?” He looked up and down the bench.

  “Over there,” I said. He brought them to me.

  “How is this that they are over there the krodges?”

  “I must’ve dropped them. Silly of me, wasn’t it?”

  He looked carefully all around the dark garden and suddenly sat beside me. “Herr Captain,” he whispered, “that Richter—did he—”

  “It was what we call a practical joke,” I said. “Very funny. If one of the British did it, you can’t expect me to tell you his name, can you?” He blinked at me owlishly. “And if it was Richter, I gather that what he wants is a complaint against him for an action to which there were no witnesses. That being what he wants, we’ll do otherwise.” I climbed to my feet; Obermeier was gentleman enough not to try to help me. “Forget it,” I said.

  He walked slowly beside me. Finally he said, “If the British like you all are, Germany and England friends is.”

  “All the British are like me,” I said.

  “This I am not allowed to believe,” he grinned, and went inside.

  I missed osteomyelitis by a hair, and in a couple of months could navigate by myself. I had a lump on one leg and a limp in the other, and one of my ankles was rigid, while the other refused to be. The result was a syncopated shamble in which Richter took the greatest delight. When I was alone in the garden he used to patrol the wall with an automatic rifle, mimicking me. He had mimicry down to a fine art. Not only physical things like my gimpy walk, but Morris’ lisp and poor old Ruffing’s tic doloro and Beauchamp’s voice. Richter spoke a regurgitative sort of English, and I had, at times, to admit that his imitations were as clever as they were crass. He was careful; to the prison authorities he was never guilty of anything tangible. To the prisoners he was a torturer and a tyrant.

  McCarthy asked me about that one day. “You used to be a psychologist,” he said. “What would you call that warp of Richter’s?”

  “ ‘Warp’ is scarcely the right term,” I said. “Richter isn’t a normal man gone haywire. He’s a nicely integrated personality. He’s rational, controlled, quite sane. There’s no excuse for his ingrained criminality. Nothing causes it—it just growed. It’s a little something of his very own.”

  “I’ve heard wonderful things about psychoanalysis,” said McCarthy thoughtfully. “Couldn’t we perhaps—”

  “No,” I said. “Psychoanalysis isn’t the high-speed panacea the novelists would have us b
elieve. A thorough analysis of a fairly normal man takes three years and costs upward of six hundred pounds. It demands a hell of a lot of work, and incidentally, the complete and utterly sincere cooperation of the subject. I can just see Richter giving us that!”

  McCarthy pulled at his lip. He was acting rather strangely, I thought, as if he were on the point of laughing uproariously—or screaming. His features were drawn, and he moved stiffly, which was rather odd for a man who had been doing the most bewildering gymnastics only three minutes ago. He was remarkably fit, and a very able tumbler, and he had a routine he used to go through that he called a round-off-back-handspring-layout-back-somersault with a full twist, which I assure you was as amazing as it sounds. He moved metrically and gracefully, and the spot he appropriated each evening for these gyrations had become marked with his gymnastic spoor—a depression where his leading hand struck on the round-off, two bare patches in the grass where his feet struck, two lighter ones where his hands touched on the handspring, two sets of footprints marking the somersault. McCarthy was very much a creature of habit.

  “Three years!” he said disappointedly. “Isn’t there something faster than that?”

  “A well-placed blow on the side of the jaw,” I said.

  McCarthy tossed his head in irritation. “You know he never does his filthy work in close quarters,” he said.

  “What’s he done now?”

  In answer he extended the hand he had been holding behind his back. It dripped dark blood. A slender steel spike had entered his palm and was sticking up out of the back of his hand. I took his wrist gently. “Good Lord! What is it?”

  “An icepick,” he said. “I never saw the damned thing. That’s what I get for working out on the same spot of ground every evening. Anyone could tell to a fraction of an inch where my hand would come down. The pick was buried point up right where I was due to hit. It went through my hand and broke off. I was already into the handspring when I felt it, and I imagine I tore it up a little when my hands came down the second time.”

  I set up a yell for Obermeier and swiftly yanked the pick out of his hand. “Let it bleed free,” I said, “The dirty—”

  The adjutant took him inside and had him bandaged up. I sat there foaming and wondering why a man with a pick through his hand would come to me and start up a casual conversation about psychoanalysis. Perhaps he was just cold-blooded. More likely he had to say something to somebody before he dropped dead with rage. McCarthy was a peculiar bird.

  Down at the end of the garden I could see Richter patrolling the top of the wall. He turned toward me, grinned, pulled out a white handkerchief, elaborately bandaged his hand with it, grinned again, and resumed his patrol.

  I began to think seriously about whether or not there was something faster than psychoanalysis, that you could use on a man who kept out of range of a well-placed blow on the side of the jaw.

  You wouldn’t think that a creature like Richter could be in any way sensitive, but he was, to an extraordinary degree. Not to any of the humanities, not to music, but to—well, let me tell you how I first noticed it.

  He was standing in the corner of the garden wall, leaning casually on his rifle, but so poised that he could club it and kill any prisoner who made a move toward him. He was enjoying himself thoroughly, singing a rasping paraphrase on a popular wartime song—something about “The little old church where England stood.” There was no escaping his voice, no ignoring his ingeniously improvised lyrics. We tried loud talking, but it petered out. There was no going inside, out of earshot, for the polite but inflexible prison routine demanded our presence in the garden.

  But for once in his life Richter was caught napping. Obermeier came out of the castle and was halfway across the garden before the private saw him.

  “Richter!” barked the adjutant. Richter stopped singing, paled visibly, and dropped his rifle. They stood staring fixedly at each other, arms hanging loosely, legs apart. In German, Obermeier said, “Richter! You are on guard duty, no?”

  Richter didn’t move.

  “When has the army allowed a guard on duty to indulge in light opera?” Obermeier was furious, but his native caution was in high gear. He meticulously avoided any reference to the song, or to Richter’s obvious reasons for singing it, knowing that if he did, the party would be informed that he was turning pro-British. He had caught Richter in a petty departure from regulations, and for that alone he was reprimanding him. What astonished me was that Richter did not snap into attention. He mouthed silently when Obermeier spoke, glared unmoving when he ceased.

  “Attention!” blasted Obermeier. “What ails you, man?”

  Richter’s face worked, but he didn’t move. Obermeier flushed angrily, opened his mouth to speak, closed it and scratched his neck instead. Then he turned on his heel and started back up the path. And then that astonishing thing happened. Richter started up after him. He was ten yards behind, but he walked step for step with the adjutant. I heard one of the imperials say, “Look at th’ blighter! He’s aping his own officer now!”

  The gravel path took a right-angle turn up near the building. As he reached it, Obermeier called, “Teubner! Rausch!” I assumed he was calling a couple of guards to take care of Richter. And then he turned the corner.

  And ten yards behind him, Richter called, “Teubner! Rausch!” in exactly the same tone of voice, exactly as loud, and exactly at the same time as Obermeier. So perfectly synchronized were the two voices that the effect was like having two radios playing the same program in the same room. Most of us heard it, for we were between the two of them; but I am certain that Obermeier did not, for his own voice drowned out that of Richter. It was something considerably more than mimicry. It was uncanny. But even more so was that when Obermeier took the turn in the path, Richter also made a right turn. It took him off the walk, through a bed of tulips, and briskly into a heavy marble bench. His kneecap struck it with a sickening crack, and over it he went. He did not put out his arms as he fell, and he brought up with his head against the concrete edge of a lily pool. And there he lay, cold as a cake of ice, blood slowly trickling over the yellow cement. The crash of his fall made Obermeier turn his head; he took one look, trotted to the castle and disappeared inside. A few minutes later Rausch and Teubner came out on the run, gathered him up and carried him inside.

  McCarthy ranged up beside me as I stood smiling, staring at the patch of Richter’s blood. “What the devil do you make of that?”

  “Richter overplayed it,” I said noncommittally.

  He looked at me shrewdly. McCarthy was very fast on the uptake. “You have an idea, haven’t you, LaFarge? You know what happened just now?”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “it does remind me of something. I’ve seen French-Canadian loggers in Quebec act that way. Jumpers, they call them. I’ve heard of it happening to members of certain Siberian tribes. In Malaya they call it latah. But damn if I ever heard of an Aryan being like that. I don’t know why he shouldn’t, though, come to think of it. No one knows much about it.”

  “But what on earth is it?” asked McCarthy impatiently.

  “Oh, it’s a peculiar kind of hypnotism. For some reason, certain persons are subject to attacks of what you might call ‘abject imitativeness.’ Their minds slip into rapport with that of another individual, and they have to imitate him. Sometimes they don’t realize what they’re doing, more often they do and can’t help it.”

  “That’s the most extraord’ry thing I ever heard,” said McCarthy. “What starts it?”

  “Depends on the individual. Generally a jumper’ll start imitating someone when his attention is suddenly and forcibly attracted to another person. Richter’s was, you know. He was shocked and surprised when Obermeier bellowed at him. Did you notice that he was entranced all the while that Obermeier faced him, and as soon as Obermeier turned he began to move in perfect synchronization with him? Some jumpers get the condition so badly that they slip into a state of latah for no reason at all.”r />
  “How long does it last?”

  “Seconds or weeks. I remember reading about a Malayan who followed his high priest around that way for two solid months. The priest decided that the man was possessed, and that he himself was haunted. But he couldn’t get anyone to kill the fellow, because the tribal laws prohibited laying hands on a priest, and the tribe regarded the two of them as one and the same person. So the priest walked up a river bank, made a sharp turn and started across a cane bridge. The man in latah made the right turn at the same time, but there wasn’t any bridge. He cured his latah all right. The poor beggar drowned.”

  McCarthy grunted and got out his pipe. “Drowned, did he?” he said around the stem. “Hm-m-m. I find that most interesting.”

  Thinking it over, I did, too.

  What account Richter gave to the adjutant for his peculiar actions, I’ll never know. He was on sick leave for three days, and in the guardhouse for four, and he was much sobered when he resumed his duties. The prisoners and the guard left each other tensely alone, but we knew that it was only a matter of time before he would start his peculiar brand of torture again. He did, and he started on me.

  My legs were still shaky, and I was making my way over to my favorite bench one afternoon when I became conscious of a faint creaking. For a nasty moment I thought it was me, for with every step I took I heard a creak; a long one for my right leg, a short one for my left. I stopped; so did the noise. I took two more steps. C-r-r-r—ik! Puzzled, I looked around me, and saw Richter standing just inside the old summerhouse, airily looking at all the world but me. He had one hand on the doorknob, and it was that door that needed the oiling, not my leg. I ground my teeth and said nothing; and all the way over to the bench he kept up the crude stunt. I made myself so busy packing my pipe that I jumped when I realized McCarthy had seated himself beside me.