Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Cade learned as well as taught. In five days, it seemed to him, from the cheerful conversation of the little man he learned more about the world outside the Order than he had learned in the past thirteen years. He knew it was none of his affair to listen as Fledwick told of the life in shops and factories or the uses of restaurants, theaters, entertainment, radio and dives. He consoled himself with occasional self-reminders that he didn’t ask—he just listened. And there was a good half that he didn’t understand because of linguistic difficulty. Fledwick had a twinned vocabulary. Half of it was respectable and the other half was a lively argot, richly anatomical, whose roots were in a shady world Cade never knew. Here and there a word was inescapably clear because of context.

  Less articulate himself, Cade still tried to interpret to the ex-Teacher the meaning that the Order and its life had for him, a Gunner. But he found that although Fledwick sincerely admired the Order, he did so for all the wrong reasons. He seemed incapable of understanding the interior life—the rich complexity of ritual, the appropriateness of each formal thought, the way each Armsman molded his life to Klin. Cade sadly suspected that the ex-Teacher saw the Gunner Supreme as a sort of glorified Klin Service Deskman. He could not seem to realize that by being himself the Gunner Supreme made the interior life of the Order tangible, that he was the personification of fitness and decorum. But Cade decided he could forgive Fled wick a lot after he snared a plump turkey without a single gobble an hour before sundown.

  The third afternoon Cade spent a full hour over his map trying to avoid an inevitable decision. That night he insisted on a march of five kilometers by starlight alone. They woke at dawn, and Fledwick gasped at what he saw to the south.

  “Is it—he asked hoarsely.

  “It’s the Caves of Washington. Skirting them fairly closely—three kilometers or so—is the only way we can avoid a huge detour around thickly-populated areas. I was afraid you’d balk if you saw them first by daylight.” Cade did not add that he had feared he would have balked himself. He cheerily asked: “Did you ever think you’d spend a night this close to the Caves?”

  “No,” Fledwick shuddered.

  They breakfasted on stolen—or requisitioned—fruit while Cade, less calm than he appeared, studied the battered skyline to the south. It was a horrible thing: a rambling mound of gray stone, with black gapings in it like eyes and mouths. Toward the peak there was a thing like the vertebrae of a man’s backbone outlined against the morning sky. It was as though some great, square shaft had toppled and shattered where it struck. It was a horrible thing, and Arle, the Gunner Supreme, lived in a mighty Cave that was not a Cave. In the shadow of Washington, not even the negative was reassuring. Washington was a horror. It made him think of obscenities like firing from a flier. Or the women at Mistress Cannon’s.

  Cade found himself unable to swallow the fruit pulp. “Let’s march,” he growled at Fledwick, and the little man scrambled to his feet fast. They skirted the Caves with a generous margin and Fledwick kept up a running stream of nervous chatter—about places like Mistress Cannon’s, it happened.

  For once, in his nervousness, Cade asked a direct question. Had Fledwick ever heard of a woman wearing the garter who spoke unlike a Commoner and had such-and-such eyes, hair and manner? The, ex-Teacher badly misunderstood. He assured Cade that after this mess was cleared up, any time the Gunner was in Aberdeen he could fix him up with the nicest little piece who ever wore the garter and he would personally guarantee that Cade would never notice if she spoke like a Commoner or a star-borne—

  Cade thundered at him and there was total silence until they reached the shining Potomac.

  Fledwick couldn’t swim. Cade made him water wings by tying his trouser cuffs, whipping them through the air until they ballooned and drawing the belt tight. He had to push the half-naked little crook into the river and toss the wings to him before he’d believe that the elementary field expedient, trusted by Armsmen for ten thousand years, would work. Cade towed him across and they dried out on the south bank as the Gunner oriented his map.

  “That’s it,” he said, pointing to the East. And he felt covered with dirt for having given a thought to the Commoner girl while he was this close to the Gunner Supreme.

  Fledwick only grunted doubtfully. But when ten minutes of brisk walking brought them to a clearer view of the pile he stopped and said flatly: “It’s more Caves.”

  “Oh, you fool!” snapped Cade. “A mighty Cave that is no Cave, are the words. And you used to be a Klin Teacher! It obviously means that it looks like a Cave but isn’t to be feared like one.”

  “Obvious to you, perhaps,” Fledwick retorted. “But then so many things are perfectly clear to you.”

  “This is not one of them,” the Gunner answered stiffly. “I intend to walk around it at a reasonable distance. Are you coming or aren’t you?” Fledwick sat down obstinately and Cade started off to circumnavigate the gloomy, dome-shaped mound that should be the residence of Arle. It looked like Caves, right enough, on this side—he heard Fledwick pattering after him and declined to notice the little man when he caught up.

  They marched around the crumbling dome about three hundred meters from its rim—and it began to assume a shape on its western front that exactly justified the traditional description. The Cave that was no Cave was a gigantic building from one side and a moldering ruin from the other.

  “Fives,” murmured Cade abstractedly studying it.

  “Eh?” asked Fledwick, and the Gunner forgave him for the sake of someone to tell his puzzling discovery to.

  “Fives—five floors, five sides, a regular pentagon if it were not half cave, and I think five rings of construction of which we see only the outermost.”

  “Drop!” snapped Fledwick, and Cade dropped. “Guards,” muttered the ex-Teacher. “Armsmen? Watchmen?”

  Cade studied the insignificantly small figures against the huge facade.

  “Armsmen,” he said, heavy-hearted. “We must assume they have received the order to kill us. We will have to wait until night to slip in and bring this before the Gunner Supreme himself. I would trust no one below him.”

  IX.

  They settled themselves in good cover on a grassy mound half a kilometer from the Building of Fives. Fledwick turned face-down and dozed off. The five days had taken a lot out of the city-bred crook, Cade thought, but he’d been a good companion through it all—clever and quick, though no Armsman, useless only when his sharp mind raced ahead of his courage and petrified him with expected terrors.

  For Cade there was no sleep. With his eyes trained steadily on the Building of Fives one part of his mind accumulated and stored the information he needed—the pattern of patrol, the number of guards, time between meetings at sentry posts, the structure of the building and the flesh and bones of the terrain around it. And all the while he pondered the deeper problem he had to solve.

  Their chances of getting in were good. Without pride—pride is a peril—Cade knew he was among the best of the Emperor’s Armsmen, but the necessary feat savored of the impossible. It was too much to expect that he, practically alone, could outwit or overcome a company of sentries. If he failed to pass them and so did not come into the presence of Arle, the Supreme, there had to be a way of getting him the word whether Cade lived or died.

  He ripped off a square of his ragged shirt for writing paper—and there was a flexible little knife Fledwick had casually extracted from his belt and lent him to eat with. A tiny puncture in the middle of each fingertip of his left hand. Then carefully, painfully, one finger at a time, he squeezed the drops of blood out until the friction pads were smeared with red. He pressed each finger to a once-white diamond in the patterned fabric of the shirt.

  With a few more drops on the knife point he could write, one letter to a diamond:

  C A D E D I D

  N O T D I E

  A T

  S A R R A L B E .

  C A I R O

  M Y S T E R Y

 
; B A L T I M O R E

  That was enough. They could identify the prints, and perhaps even the blood. They could go to the house of the hag who had poisoned him, raid the Mystery with its underground corridors, check on the Watch House’s “impostor,” piece together the story—a thing he might not live to do.

  Cade wiped the blade and his fingers to leave no signs that would puzzle or frighten Fledwick. The ragged cloth from his shirt he knotted about a small stone and dropped in his pocket.

  With the last light of the sun the guard was changed at the House of Fives. Cade breathed easier when he saw that the night guard was no heavier than the day. It was a guard of honor, nothing more. All around the side that was not ruinous paced single sentries on lonely fifty-meter posts, meeting under arc lights, turning to march through the dark until they met at the light marking the other end of the patrol. It was understandable. The staring cave mouths were fearsome enough to need little guarding.

  Cade nudged his partner awake with his bare toes, broken through the ruins of Commoners’ sandals.

  “Is it time?” Fledwick asked.

  The Gunner nodded and explained. In two more hours the first alertness of the guards would have worn off and the lassitude of a ceremonial guard mount would be creeping on—not yet strong enough for them to fight against it. Every commander knew that time of night, the time to take green or lazy troops by surprise and teach them a lesson in alertness those who lived would never forget.

  They would use their two hours until then to make the approach to the building. Fledwick chewed on a stolen turnip and finally asked: “And then? When we’re there?”

  Cade pointed to one particular arc light. Behind it, to the right, gaped the black emptiness of a cave mouth, barely distinguishable from shadows the arc lights cast of jagged rock on smoother rock. As they watched two Gunners came in view, approaching with metrical precision from opposite sides to meet exactly under the light, saluted gun to brow and wheeled and marched off like synchronized puppets.

  “Watch him,” Cade pointed. “The one with the red stripe.” Together they watched while the Gunner disappeared again into the blackness and waited until he emerged again, thirty meters beyond, in the brightness of the next sentry post. Here the arc lights showed not gaping ruins but the smooth surface of the building proper. Somewhere in between, invisible, was the junction of ruins and building.

  “He’s our man,” said Cade simply.

  “A friend of yours, sir?” asked Fledwick, over-politely.

  “He’s a Marsman,” said Cade, ignoring the flippancy. “The Marsman has not been born who can meet an Earth Gunner in combat and win. Their training is lax and their devotion is lacking. We will take him in the dark, halfway between posts, silently. If we work swiftly and all goes well, I will have time to take his cloak, boots and helmet and make his next round to the sentry post. If there is no time for that, I am afraid we will have to use the . . . gas gun . . . to stun the approaching sentry. Then,” he concluded with a shrug, “we have the full pacing time to make our entrance.”

  Fledwick spat out a fibrous bit of turnip and stared across the field at the sputtering lights. At last he looked up at the Gunner.

  “The full pacing time? Almost a whole minute?”

  “Fifty-three seconds. Even you can move that fast,” Cade said scornfully.

  “You noticed there were bars on the gates—sir?”

  Cade was losing his temper. “I noticed,” he growled. “I’m not a fool of a Commoner.”

  “No, sir. I’m very much aware of that. Would you tell a fool of a Commoner how we’ll get through the barred gates in fifty-three seconds?”

  “Serve you right if I didn’t. But I can’t expect you to show the courage of a Brother. We won’t enter the barred gates at all. We’ll go through the unbarred cave. It’s got to lead into the building. And we’re starting now.”

  He began to work his way down the hillock, ignoring frantic whispers from behind. At last rustling grass and heavy breathing told him that Fledwick was following. He smiled. The noise, he suspected, was to worry him and make him angry. But he knew that when silent sneaking was needed, Fledwick would deliver.

  Ten meters down he paused. “You may stay behind if you like,” he whispered. “I shall not think ill of you.”

  He waited in the dark and grinned at a sound between a curse and a sob, followed by more of the rustling and heavy breathing.

  “Quiet!” he whispered sternly, and they began the passage.

  The full two hours later they crept up to the very edge of the patrol posts and separated. Cade, crouching, thrilled to the awareness of all his muscles tensing for the spring. It was almost disappointingly easy when the split-second came and the Marsman fell silently, perhaps forever, on the concrete path. The neck blow was never certain—either way. Cade had tried not to hit too hard. To kill a Brother in combat was fit and glorious, but never had he heard of any precedent for what he did.

  He stripped the silent figure with desperate haste and threw the garments onto himself. Cloak and the Order wraps the Realm; Helmet and, cape protects the Emperor: Boots march where the Emperor wills.

  But the cursed boots wouldn’t fit. He looked up and saw in the distance the opposite sentry approaching, almost in the circle of light. With infinite relief he heard the small hiss of the gas gun and saw the sentry drop, with only one arm in the pool of light beneath the arc. Now Cade no longer needed boots. He buckled on the Marsman’s gunbelt and felt sudden wild optimism come with the familiar weight on his hip. He flipped the message-wrapped stone from the pocket of his Commoner’s shirt under the cloak and dropped it by the felled Marsman. From somewhere Fled wick crept up beside him and together they raced for the yawning black hole in the ragged wall.

  Cade leaped clear of the cave-mouth’s jagged edge and found sure footing on the rubble inside. Fledwick couldn’t make it. Cade hauled him in, shaking violently and gasping for breath. But Fledwick picked himself up and stumbled after Cade into the deepening darkness of the interior.

  They heard voices and tramping boots, and a clear shout: “In here—loose rock—they went inside!”

  There was anger in the voice, but something else too: awe.

  Cade had not let himself think until now of the enormity of this campaign. He had attacked a Brother off the Field of Battle, and perhaps killed him. He had assisted a Commoner, and worse, an unbooked Teacher, into classified ground. If successful, he would invade without request or warning the private dwelling of the Supreme. But somehow overshadowing all this was the realization: You are in a cave, and you are none the worse for it.

  A blast of hot air rolled through the cave, followed by pungent ozone. “They’re shooting into the . . . the cave,” he told Fledwick. “Stay down and nothing will happen.”

  For minutes afterwards the air crackled above them and Cade lay motionless, waiting and hoping to be spared to complete his mission. He thought again of the terrible roster of his crimes, but they had been the only possible answer to crimes worse than he knew could exist. That men should plot against the Emperor—

  The firing stopped. The two or three bends they had rounded were ample protection from the direct effects of the fire, it appeared. Voices echoed down the cave again, and Cade had a mind’s eye picture of Gunners peering in cautiously, but never considering pursuit.

  “. . . Wasting fire. Get torches—”

  “. . . We’ll smoke them out—gone inside—”

  Cade groped along the floor with one hand and then pulled himself cautiously over to Fledwick. “Get up,” he whispered. “We can’t stay here.”

  “I can’t,” a broken voice whimpered too noisily. “You go ahead.”

  Wounded, Cade realized—or hurt when they hit the ground. He scooped up the little man and tossed him over his shoulder. He did not groan, Cade noted with surprise and respect. The Gunner started forward.

  First, get away from the light. They had food in their pockets, a full-charged gun, a
dozen gas-gun pellets and a knife apiece. If they could find a spring for water, a place to put their backs against, they could hold out for a long, long time and perhaps even come out alive.

  They turned a corner of some sort that cut off the last light from the entrance. Cade’s eyes adjusted to the gloom; he could make out a little of the shape and structure of the cave.

  And his eyes confirmed what his feet and groping hands told him. Incredibly, the cave was artificial—a. disused corridor in a decayed old building. Cave and Building were one!

  What was Washington?

  He wished he dared disturb Fledwick, over his shoulder, for the light of his quick, acquisitive intelligence on the finding, but he was taking his injury nobly and shouldn’t be taxed further.

  The cave—he couldn’t think of it as anything else yet—seemed endless; doors were on. either side. Any one of the dust-choked rooms might do for a stand, but there was no need to choose one until the sounds of pursuit were heard.

  On his shoulder the limp bundle wriggled and came alive.

  “You can put me down now.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  Cade lowered the man to the ground and waited while Fledwick found his footing.

  “You mean,” the Gunner demanded with as much outrage as he could pack into a whisper, “you’re not hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.” Fledwick was unashamed. “No, not a scratch.”

  Cade kept a contemptuous silence.

  “Where do we go?” asked Fledwick.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “if we keep on going we’ll find our way to the other part of the building.”

  “The other part—then you meant it! And it is part of the building!” The little man darted from one side of the corridor to the other, feeling the regularity of the walls, clutching a door jamb. “But it was a Cave!”