Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The driver took three neatly-packaged bundles from the arm-rest of the front seat, closed it and held them expectantly.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Sitting there all day? Open it.”

  Cade stiffened, and then made himself relax. He was among Commoners now and would be treated as one himself. It was a lesson he would have to learn as thoroughly as any back in Novice School. His life depended on these lessons, too. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Cannon’s?”

  “Don’t you know it?”

  Cade opened the door and muttered: “Looks different by daylight.” He followed the driver down the stone steps. The man knocked rhythmically, and the door opened a little. Cade knew the beefy face at once, but Mistress Cannon did not place him.

  Elaborately ignoring the driver, she said hoarsely: “The drinking room doesn’t open until nightfall, stranger. Glad to see you then.”

  The driver said, with interest: “I thought he was a friend of yours. Gaff on the scramble. Some people I know said, he’s a rog.”

  Her faded blue eyes swung slowly from Cade’s face down his multi-striped clothes to the ragged sandals he still wore, and returned as slowly to his face.

  “Seen him before,” she admitted at last, grudgingly.

  “And my . . . my clinks, too,” Cade said quickly. The rest was inspired: “Last time I was here one of your girls took everything you left.”

  The woman placed him at last. “She was no girl of mine,” she insisted defensively.

  The driver had had enough. “That’ll do,” he said. “Fix it up any way you want to between you. I’m behind time now.”

  The door creaked farther open and Cade followed the driver in.

  “You wait here,” the woman said to Cade. She led the driver out of the room. It was the kitchen of the establishment. Cade wandered about touching nothing but examining with intense curiosity the unfamiliar miscellany of supplies and equipment.

  The big food rooms of Chapter Houses where Cade had spent hundreds of hours as a Novice were nothing like this place. The single thing he could identify was a giant infrabroiler in one wall; it was identical with those used in the preparation of the evening meat meal in the Houses. But there the similarity ended. Through the transparent doors of the cooler he saw not an orderly procession of joints and roasts but a wild assortment of poultry, fish, meat, and sea food jammed in helter-skelter. Along the opposite wall were more fruits and vegetables than he had known existed—pulpy luxuries, he thought, for degenerate tastes.

  There was to be recognized, at last, a cooker designed to mix and warm in one operation the nutritious basic mash on which Armsmen mainly subsisted. But here, instead of being a gleaming, giant structure it was a battered old machine perched on a high shelf almost out of reach. Mash wasn’t popular at Cannon’s.

  On other shelves around the room there were hundreds of bright-faced packages that contained unknown ingredients for use in a dozen or more specialized mixers and heaters whose equal Cade had never seen before. Over it all was an air of cheerful disorder, jumbled but purposeful comfort that struck for Cade a haunting note of reminiscence.

  So many things these last few days had stirred old memories: memories of a childhood he had thought was dismissed forever when he took his vows. Already, he realized, he was unfitted for the Order. The ritual and routine that had been as much a part of life as breathing had proved itself dispensable. At times it had even seemed like folly. A corrective Teacher, he thought—and then wondered whether he wanted to be corrected. Of course he wanted to get back into the Order, he assured himself. But the Gunner Supreme—

  He coldly dismissed his personal tangle of loyalties and prerequisites. The first thing he needed was information, and that meant the girl.

  “No girl of mine,” Mistress Cannon had said. And long ago: “If you come back, girlie, I may wrap a bar stool around your neck.” That didn’t matter. He needed a starting point; one well down into the criminal and semicriminal world in which the girl had seemed to move with assurance. You went from one person to the next in that world: from the smugglers to the driver to Mistress Cannon’s. A smile spread over his face. What would he have said not long ago if someone had told him he’d need the good will of a minor crook to gain admission to . . . what did he call it . . . a dive? He, a Gunner among the best?

  “Man,” said the hoarse voice, “don’t smile like that! I’m not as young as I used to be and my shape’s run to fat.” Mistress Cannon stood in the doorway, grinning. “And he blushes, too!” she chortled. “Big as a house, built like an Armsman, with a smile that stands your hair on end, and he can blush! Well, we have girls that like ’em that way. Me, I like ’em loaded.” There was an abrupt change in her manner. “Lazar says you’re on the scramble. What’re you carrying?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but didn’t have a chance.

  “Big fellow, there’s plenty rogs before you who spent a day or a month upstairs and no questions asked or answered. No safer place in Eastcoast until . . . trouble . . . blows over. But I can’t do it cheap. Lazar brought you in and I like your face myself or I wouldn’t do it for all the clink in Aberdeen. You know how protection costs any place and here you get it with a nice room, three meals and all the—”

  The woman liked to talk, Cade thought weakly, and let her go on. What she was saying amounted to good luck. He could stay here—and the driver had assumed that this was just what he’d wanted.

  The woman stopped for breath, wheezing a little, and Cade seized the chance: “You don’t have to worry about money. I’m . . . I’m loaded. I can pay whatever you ask.” In all the colorful flow of words, that much had been clear.

  “What with?”

  He pulled out the first thing his fingers touched in an outer pocket. It was a tiny, glittering piece of jeweled uselessness, five tiny bells hung on a thin wire loop. It tinkled distantly with almost inaudible music as he put in on a table. The woman’s eyes were glued on the golden bauble.

  “Practically valueless,” she said composedly when she looked up. “Too hard to get rid of.”

  “I didn’t know,” Cade said apologetically, reaching for it. “Maybe something else—”

  “All right!” she exploded, shaken again by heaves of flabby laughter. “Outbluffed on the first try You have the other one, of course?” Cade, searching his pockets for a mate to the bauble realized vaguely that he was supposed to have done something clever. He turned out on the table all he had and poked through the mass.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “It doesn’t seem to be here.”

  The woman looked up dazedly from the array. “You’re sorry,” she echoed. “It doesn’t seem to be here.” She looked at him again, searchingly and for a long minute. “What made you come here?” she asked quietly.

  “First place I thought of,” he said. Something was wrong. What Commoner notion of fitness and unfitness had he violated now?

  “Or the only place,” she said, musingly. “And don’t tell me it was liquor you were out on that other night. Maybe the tart you were with couldn’t tell the difference, but I’ve been around for a lot of years. I know drunk when I see it and I know dope, too. A youngster like you . . . well, now I know you’re good for your room. But wandering around loaded with gawdies you don’t half know the value of . . . didn’t anybody ever tell you not to jab up until the job was through? And that means selling it after the pick, too.”

  Cade could make nothing of it. “If you have a room for me,” he said patiently, “you’ll be well paid. That’s all I’m asking from you.”

  For some reason, she was angry. “Then that’s all you’ll get! Come on!” She jerked open a door and led the way up dark stairs. To herself she was grumbling: “You can’t make a man talk if he doesn’t want to, not even to somebody who wants to help. Think they’d have more sense!”

  At the stair head she produced a ring of keys like the one Fledwick had used. She opened a door with one and handed it to Cade.

  �
�That’s the only one there is,” she said. “You’re safe up here. If you get hungry or if you get off your perch and want some fun, there’s the drinking room.”

  He closed the door on her and studied his quarters. The room was not light or clean. The shelves in the storage wall were stuck. It didn’t matter; there was nothing to store. The bed was an ancient foldable such as he had seen only in Commoners’ houses entered during action.

  It was hard to remember: he was in a Commoner’s house now, and living as one. He tried the key, locking himself in. He dumped his treasure trove on the cot, fingering the pieces thoughtfully. He hadn’t made much of her talk, but her face had shown she was immensely excited over the . . . the gawdies. Or did that just mean boxes? Why had she been excited? They could be exchanged for money, or food. Money could be exchanged for clothes, food, shelter, entertainment. Fledwick had been that way too about money, if he had understood correctly. The little man had habitually run great risk of imprisonment and shame for its sake. And the men on the raft—they had tried to cheat him out of extra gawdies. It all meant that he had something Commoners wanted badly, and a lot of it.

  He lay down on the bed and found its pulpy lumps unbearable. The floor was better than the mattress. To find the girl he would have to face the drinking room. Remembering the night he had been there, he remembered the noise, the smells, the drink he had been given, the close air, the foolish women. But the bar was his reason for being there. The girl of the Cairo Mystery had found him there once; there he might find her again. He thought about clothes—he would need some. And boots—slippers, rather. As a Commoner he could not wear boots. And clean clothes. Even a Commoner would not wear the same things all the time, he supposed.

  Mistress Cannon anticipated him. She was waiting in the drinking room below with news.

  “Wish you’d come down a little sooner. I had old man Carlin hanging around, then he said he had to hit. But he’ll be around first thing in the morning. I would’ve sent him up only I figured you were sleeping the jab off.”

  Was he supposed to know who old man Carlin was? He asked.

  “Carlin? He runs the sump shop around here. Sells court clothes on the side. Though why these tramps will pay such crazy prices for them I don’t know. You aren’t from the District, are you?”

  He hesitated, startled by the gun-blast question.

  “That’s what I figured,” she said soberly, lowering her voice. “Listen.” She bent across the table toward him. “You want some good advice, I can give it to you. Even if you don’t want it. You’re on the scramble and you jab—a stinking combination—and you don’t want to get pumped, not by me or any other old bat. Just smile. Don’t try to lie when you’re jabbed up, and don’t get up on a perch like you did with me.”

  He smiled—at the ridiculous advice and her ridiculous assumption.

  “That’s it!” she crowed, delightedly. “You’re no fool! Hey, Jana!”

  A willowy brunette detached herself from a group of girls talking in a corner while they waited for the place to fill. She walked with studied languor toward them; the silvery garter on her thigh pulled the flimsy stuff of her trousers tight against her at each step.

  “Jana, I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Mistress Cannon said. “Nothing’s too good for my friend, Smiley!” She winked at him, a lewd and terrifying wink as massive as a shrug, and bustled off.

  “That’s some send-off you got, Smiley,” said the girl. Her voice was husky and, quite automatically she assumed the same position Mistress Cannon had.

  “Yes,” he said stiffly. “She’s been very good to me.”

  “Say, I remember you!” Jana said abruptly. “You were in here last week. And were you troubled, brother! Were you troubled! What’s the matter, Smiley?”

  He couldn’t help it. The shock of being addressed as brother in this place by this woman showed on him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” she asked wisely. “Listen, I see you’re not drinking—” Cade followed her glance and noticed there was a small glass of vile-smelling stuff on the table. He pushed it away. “And I’ve been arguing with Arlene about it ever since . . . you remember her? The little blonde over there in the corner?” Hope flared wildly, and vanished as he saw the girl she meant. “Anyhow, she says it wasn’t liquor and I say I never saw a man your size, and young like you, out where he sat like you were. Not on liquor. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but—?”

  She let it linger on a questioning note.

  Cade, profiting by his instruction, smiled directly at her, and held the smile until he felt foolish.

  The results were unexpected and dramatic. She whistled, a long, low whistle that made half a dozen heads turn their way inquiringly. And she looked at him with such adoration as he had seen only a few times before, from new Armigers on the Field of Battle.

  “Bro-ther!” she sighed.

  “Excuse me,” said Cade in a strangled voice. He ran from the enemy, leaving her in complete and bewildered possession of the field.

  XIII.

  Cade learned fast at Cannon’s. He had to. His eyes and ears, trained for life-or-death differences in action, picked up words, glances and gestures; his battle-sharpened wits evaluated them. He survived.

  And Cannon’s learned about Cade, as much as was necessary. He was Smiley, and Cannon’s etiquette permitted no further prying into his name or rank. He was talked about. Some said he was star-borne, but no one asked. His full pockets and Jana’s wagging tongue gave him the introduction and reputation he needed.

  His build? He was obviously a strong-arm bucko. His rumored golden trinkets? He was obviously a master gaff—a burglar. His occasional lapses of memory and manners? He was obviously addicted to the most powerful narcotics. That too explained his otherwise inexplicable lack of interest in alcohol and women.

  As a bucko and gaff he outranked most other habitués of the place: the ratty little pickpockets, the jumpy gamblers, the thoroughly detestable pimps. As a jabber of unknown drugs he even outranked the friendly, interesting, neatly-dressed confidence men who occasionally passed through. Drugs were a romantic, desperate slap in the face of the world as it was. Mistress Cannon disapproved—there had been a man of hers; she wouldn’t talk about it. But to her hostesses it was the ultimate attraction.

  Nightly Cade sat in the barroom at a corner table near the stairs with an untasted drink before him. Carlin, who dressed Commoner girls and tramps secretly in court gowns, had taken his measure and provided him with blues and greens for as much of his plunder as he had chosen to display. The old man had dickered endlessly over each item, but with Mistress Cannon loudly supervising the transaction, Cade emerged with two full sets of clothes built for him, two weeks of exorbitant “board” paid, and a surplus of clink. In his room, behind one of the stuck storage shelves, he had found a hiding place for his remaining gawdies: one last golden box containing half a dozen smaller trifles.

  With this much security—a place to live, new clothes, good food, clink in his pocket, an enviable reputation and a hidden reserve—he could turn his full attention to his quest for the girl of the Cairo Mystery. He asked few questions, but he listened always for a word that might lead to her. Every night he sat at his table, his chair turned to the door, watching every new arrival, buying drink for anyone who would talk—and that was everyone.

  First there were Mistress Cannon and her girls. Them he could ask openly after he learned that it was not strange to seek renewal of acquaintance with a girl who had struck one’s fancy. But none of them knew her, none remembered seeing her except that night when he had met her there.

  It was a setback, but there was no other place to look except Baltimore—and they’d had no trouble handling him there once. If nothing at Cannon’s led him to the girl he would act without her, and gradually an alternative plan formed. While it was growing, over the course of his two weeks’ stay, he drank in everything he heard from the endless pr
ocession of people willing to talk while Smiley bought.

  There was a Marsman who had jumped ship, and taken to liquor and petty thievery. For two nights Cade listened to him curse the misstep: he babbled monotonously about, his family and their little iron refinery; how there had been a girl back home and how he might have married and had children to grow up with the planet. The Marsman didn’t come back the third night, or ever.

  He wasted one night. This was on a quiet, well-spoken, gray-haired man, himself a former gaff who had retired on his “earnings.” He came for the first time on Smiley’s fourth night in the bar and for almost a week he came again every night. He was a mine of information on criminal ways and means, nicknames, jargon, Watch corruption, organized prostitution, disposal of gaffed goods. On the last night, the wasted night, after chatting and drinking for an hour, he confided without warning that he was in possession of a secret truth unknown to other men. Leaning across the table in excitement he whispered clearly: “Things have not always been as they are now!”

  Cade remembered the rites of the Mystery and leaned forward himself to listen. But the hope was illusory; the gentle old man was a lunatic.

  He’d found a book, he said, while still gaffing years ago. It was called “Sixth Grade Reader.” He thought it was incredibly old, and whispered, almost in Cade’s ear: “More than ten thousand years!”

  Cade leaned back in disgust while the madman rattled on. The book was full of stories, verses, anecdotes, many of them supposed to be based on fact and not fiction. But one thing they had in common: not one of them mentioned the Emperor, Klin, the Order, or the Realm of Man. “Don’t you see what that means? Can’t you see it for yourself? There was a time once when there was no Emperor.”