Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  He had no reason to suppose that there was sense to it at all. Always before things had had meaning: each ritual gesture, each emphasis of wording, each studied maneuver in battle had had a meaning and a place in the fitting world of Klin. Instead it now seemed that it was just a world of random forces clashing because of this man’s lust or that man’s pride. How could he demand more of her than the world offered?

  In the morning he was hungry and it was not unreasonable to go to the galley for food. She was distant and polite and for the better part of a week she remained so. Then he tried once more to question her.

  He asked again about History and she bit her lip and told him she never should have spoken as she did and never would have told what she had except to save their lives. “You would do best to forget you ever heard the word.”

  “Can I forget that I have fired from a flier? he asked gravely and she looked away.

  About the cargo she would not speak at all, and his bitterness grew daily at the galling thought that he was expected to be a pawn in some game and be content with the role—he who had led companies and would surely have risen to the rank of Superior.

  There were four days left to the voyage when he decided to force the cargo. He could have done it openly; she was powerless to prevent him. But he insured his privacy by noisily rattling the handle of the door to the cabin at midnight by the chronometer. She must have been sleeping lightly.

  In less time than it would have taken him to actually open the door he heard the dogs on the other side thud to. He rattled again, noisily, and then went off, grumbling as loudly as was reasonable. He smiled grimly, wondering when she would find the courage to come out—and more grimly still when he recalled that all the flier’s food was on the other side of the dogged-down door. Well, he had fasted for three days before. And now he would find out who was playing with his life.

  The metal sheathing on the free-floating crates yielded easily to the lowest aperture of a gun. The contents of the crate nearest the break-through point were also metallic, but were undamaged by the blast of the gun. Guns were in the crate—at least a thousand of them. Guns of the Order, or replicas, full-charged and without numbers. He was not really surprised.

  Methodically Cade opened the three other crates—all the same. And the lockers? The locks were radionic and not simple, but he solved them, each quicker than the last, and sampled the contents.

  At the end he went back to the control room making no effort to cover up his work.

  Ten thousand guns of the Order, bound for Mars. He knew now for whom the Lady Jocelyn worked.

  He slept, and in the morning tried the cabin door. It was still dogged down, and he called on the ship’s interphone.

  “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

  “First, to apologize for disturbing your sleep.”

  “Very well.”

  “And something to eat.”

  “I can’t see how to get it to you,” she said indifferently.

  “You can’t afford to starve me. I still have to land the ship, you know.”

  “I have no intention of starving you.” There was a hint of humor in her voice. “I was thinking it might be a good idea to weaken you a little.”

  “I’ve weakened already,” he said. “I did some hard work last night, and I need food.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I’ll show you when you come out.” He didn’t have to wait long. There was a scant ten minutes of silence, before she called back:

  “If I bring you some food, will you give me your word not to make a fool of yourself?”

  “Certainly,” he said cheerfully, “if you feel there is any value in the word of a lapsed Armsman. By what shall I swear?”

  Silence.

  Then, almost timidly: “By yourself.”

  And it was thoughtfully he answered: “By myself, I swear that I will do nothing to distress you.”

  “All right. Five minutes,” she said, and cut off.

  It was a long five minutes.

  Cade waited. He heard the dogs thud back and the door open. Silence then, and he made himself sit still waiting. Ludicrously, a valved bottle of mash floated through the open door from the cargo room. It must have drifted from her hand when she saw the ripped open cargo. Cade watched the bottle bump to a gentle stop, and rebound from the bulkhead to drift within his reach. He was hungry, he wanted the food but let it slowly pass him. Jocelyn floated in a moment later, pale but self-possessed.

  “All right,” she said, “now you know. Don’t ask me to explain, because I won’t. I can’t. Not if you tried to get it out of me by torture. I have some loyalties I do not violate.”

  “I have not,” he said briefly. “What was left of them you violated for me. And I’m not going to ask you to explain. You keep forgetting that I’ve talked to others besides you these last few weeks. The Power Master, for instance. And a miserable little Marsman who came to Cannon’s to forget his loneliness. And—” He thought of the Mars-born Gunner, Harrow, who had died for a terrible sin. “And others,” he finished shortly.

  Cade picked the bottle of mash from the air and tasted it.

  “All right,” she said and dropped all pretense of indifference. “Just what is it that you imagine you understand?” He let the bottle go; the mash was cold and he was no longer hungry.

  “To start with, I know what loyalty you hold.”

  He waited, but she said nothing. “I won’t pretend to understand why a star-borne Lady should serve as spy for the Star of Mars, but—” He paused with satisfaction. Her face was impassive but one sharp breath indrawn had given her away. “Do you deny it?”

  “No. No, I don’t deny it.”

  “Then perhaps you will want to explain it?”

  She was thoughtful and she spoke reluctantly: “No. I can’t. What else do you know?”

  “Why should I tell you?” He was bargaining forthrightly now. “Why should I answer your questions?”

  “Because I know more than you do. Because there are some things it’s dangerous to know. If you’ve found them out—besides,” she added, “I can’t possibly tell you more until I find out just how much you do know.”

  “All right.” He had nothing to lose—and he wanted to talk about it. “I’ll tell you what I know and what I think:

  “First, I have known for some time that the Star of Mars is petitioning the Emperor for the assignment of Mars-born Armsmen to his Court. Till now, of course, they have always been dispersed among the Earth Stars. But a month or more ago, requests were being made for the return of seasoned Mars-born Gunners, and for the retention of native Novices on Mars when they reached the rank of Armiger.

  “Second, I know the Power Master is determined that this petition shall not be granted. I think I know why—” She leaned forward just a little, eager for what he might say next.

  He went on, deliberately shifting his ground.

  “Mars wants its Armsmen at home, and the Power Master will not allow it. The reason is so obvious it would never occur to anyone outside the little clique of schemers and tricksters and—History students in which you live! It’s Mars iron, nothing more.” She sat back again and seemed almost bored; this was nothing new to her. Then he was on the right track.

  “All of Earth’s machinery needs Mars iron. If the Star of Mars had an Order of his own, composed entirely of Marsmen, with their peculiar devotion to their homes and families—I’ve talked with them, and I know how they feel—then he would hold more real power than the Emper—than the Power Master himself.”

  He laughed out loud, remembering the waking formula that had prepared him for the day each morning for six thousand days of his life.

  “It is fitting that Armsmen serve the Emperor through the Power Master and our particular Stars. While this is so, all will he well to the end of time,” he quoted aloud. “I said that many times each day for many years,” he told her.

  “I think the Star of Mars knows his request wi
ll never be granted, and I think he is now preparing to train an outlaw Order of his own to serve the same purpose.”

  A fleeting smile crossed her lips; in spite of everything, Cade realized, she still thought of him as a Gunner, with a Gunner’s attitudes. She could not possibly have realized how much she was revealing with that small smile of satisfaction.

  He had half-guessed before, but he was certain now, that the training of outlaw Armsmen had already begun. It took three years of novitiate drill before a Brother was given a practice gun in the Order proper. How many of them were there? How many half-trained, wholehearted Marsmen waiting right now for the guns he was bringing on this ship?

  For the first time in ten thousand years, guns would be fired that had never been touched by the Gunner Supreme. Then he remembered: not in ten thousand years. In History—whatever that was.

  “What purpose?” she asked.

  Cade snapped to attention. He had let his thoughts carry him away, and had been silent too long.

  “Oh—a private armed force of his own. A force powerful enough to make a stand against the Earth-born Armsmen. It wouldn’t have to equal the combined strength of all Earth forces—nothing near that. He must know the Power Master will never let Earth Stars combine to that extent. These guns—the guns you would have had me carry unawares if you could—will make him strong enough to become Power Master—or Emperor in your uncle’s place.”

  He stopped talking and waited. She said nothing.

  “Well,” he asked impatiently. “Can you deny it? Any of it?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “None of it. Except one thing. I am—you must understand, Cade—I have worked for him and I shall again, but I owe no loyalty to the Star of Mars. I am no paid spy.” She said the words with such unmistakable contempt that for the moment Cade found them hard to disbelieve.

  “For whom, then?” he demanded.

  “I am no paid spy,” she repeated, and the denial lost all meaning because she would not answer his question. “Nevertheless,” she said steadily, “much of what you have said is true. There are still things you do not know. Things I don’t dare tell you. They are dangerous even for me to know, and far more so for you. Others are involved—

  She stopped abruptly, obviously sorry she had said so much.

  “The Great Conspiracy!” Cade sneered. “Every Star a Power Master! Add chaos and confusion to cruelty and unreason!”

  “No,” she said breathlessly. “No!

  Cade, I cannot tell you more.”

  “You’ve said enough,” he answered quietly. “Unless you want to tell me why you chose to work against the Cairo group in favor of another conspiracy like it?”

  “No!” she said passionately. “Not conspiracy—healing!” Words and dreams bottled up too long began to flow; her face passed from earnest pleading to the raptness of a visionary.

  “Healing the life of Man! Saving it from the dead grip of the Power Master and the frozen Klin Philosophy „ How can I make you understand? I’ve told you about History, but it’s nothing more than a word to you. You haven’t studied—

  “You don’t know what ‘science’ means, do you? Of course not; the word is half forbidden and half forgotten because science means change and change means a threat to the Klin statis and the Power Master.

  “Mankind is dying, Cade, because men are chained to their machines and forbidden to make new ones. Don’t you see that one by one the machines will wear out and—”

  “No,” he said warily. “I don’t see. The Brothers of the Order build machines. When old ones are gone, new ones are always ready. Klin Teachers study and build machines.”

  “But no new ones,” she said, “Science means new things, Cade; searching for the truth with no roads closed, no directions forbidden. Cade, there was a time—I know from History—when men powered their machines with the metal uranium. It’s gone now. Thorium was used next, and now it’s gone, too. And now the iron. Earth’s iron is gone. When the Mars iron is gone, too, what next? There should be ten million men working day and night to find a new power source, but there are none.

  “There are other ways to destroy civilizations besides—firing from fliers! They’ll have to stop making fliers and ground cars. The cities will become great sewers when the pumps stop turning. Inlanders will get sick with ugly lumps of wild tissue growing from their necks because there won’t be anybody to bring them fish and salt from the oceans. Babies will grow up crooked because there won’t be power for the milking machines of the food factories, or the boats that catch the cod and shark. Animals will overrun their growing food because there won’t be wire for fences or power to charge them. Diseases will rot mankind because there won’t be power for the biobrug factories.” She stopped, worn out with her own intensity, and watched him silently. “Does it mean anything to you?” she asked with a touch of bitterness.

  “I don’t know,” he said bemused. He was thinking of what the Power Master had said to him that day, with Kendall dead on the floor. It made this much sense at least: that here were two honestly opposing forces.

  The Power Master’s view of the world made more sense, from what he had seen of it, than Jocelyn’s, but—if what she said was true a man could have something to fight for again.

  “All that,” she said quietly, “can be cured by science. And there are other things—‘art’ is one. It means exploring this universe and making new universes with language and sound and light. It makes you laugh and weep and wonder; no man alive now knows about the joy of making and giving art, or the joy of receiving it from the maker.

  “You don’t know what ‘freedom’ is—perhaps you’ll leave—soon. I hope—” She hesitated and looked up at him defiantly. “I hope when we reach Mars you will accept service under the Star of Mars. He is the man to follow at this time. But for now, I cannot tell you more”

  “Then I won’t ask,” he said. There was too much to think about already. And he knew all he really needed: he had learned the meaning of at least one new word, and that was “love.”

  XX.

  They had three days more of space—days in which Cade found it less and less hard to remember that the Order was behind him. The old life was finished; there was just one certainty now—a woman. The only possible woman for Cade in the new life, just as the Lady of the Order had been the only possible woman for Cade the Armsman. Until they landed he could share a growing friendship and—something more. What might come later he did not know, except for one thing: if they lived “through the landing on Mars he would find some way to stay at her side. The Star of Mars could be no worse a master than the Star of France. Surely he was a worthier one than the Power Master.

  Knowing this much and no more, Cade used the time he had to win the liking and strengthen the confidence of the Lady Jocelyn. Never had he known himself capable of such fluent conversation or such avid listening.

  Too quickly, Mars filled the heavens and Jocelyn’s gentle friendliness disappeared behind a barrage of preparations and crisp instructions.

  The co-ordinates she designated took them to a craggy basin in the southern hemisphere, less than a hundred kilometers from the capital city of Mars.

  The spot had obviously been chosen to afford a combination of convenience and secrecy. From the air it was one of those blank patches that showed neither red nor green but only featureless gray. No red meant no iron: none of the characteristic family-operated strip mine refinery complexes of Mars. No green meant no water: no farms and farm-families raising vegetables and goat meat for the miners and city-dwellers of the planet. Featureless gray meant unobserved isolation.

  Cade braked the big flier to a stop on level ground as though it were a ground car. He unbuckled himself from the control seat and looked out of a port at a desolate valley surrounded by gnarled old hills as high as any on sandstorm-lashed Mars. Jocelyn at his side surveyed the emptiness impatiently. She was already swathed in bulky synthetic furs.

  Cade found a suit for himself a
nd donned it. He came back to find her pacing the small area of cabin floor.

  “Can your lungs take Mars air?” she demanded.

  He nodded. “I’ve fought in the Alps and the Taurus.” With Brothers crumpling about him, he remembered—brave men, tireless men who happened to lack the body machinery for battle on half-rations of air. “How about you? There’s a respirator in the locker.”

  “I’ve been here before.” She stopped him with a nervous gesture at the air lock.

  Cade set the mechanism in motion and there was an equalizing outrush of air. Momentarily his sight dimmed and he had to cling to an iron for support. The girl, lighter and with bigger lungs, recovered before he did and was through the lock before he could walk certainly. Her eyes swept the horizon anxiously. “Your work on the crates isn’t going to make things easier,” she said. “We’d better start unloading and have the . . . the cargo ready to go.”

  “To go to the Star of Mars?”

  “Yes.”

  He followed her back into the ship and opened the cargo port amidships. While she emptied locker after locker, Cade moved the bulkier crates outside. Fifty meters from the flier the pile of guns grew tall. But at every trip the girl’s impatient scanning of the horizon was repeated.

  “I assume your friends are late?” he asked uneasily.

  “The less you assume, the better,” she said. And then she uttered a gasp of relief. There was a black dot topping a hill and then another—dozens, hundreds at last.

  “The Armsmen of Mars?” He was torn between surprise at their unexpected numbers and contempt for their ragged approach.

  “No, not Armsmen, Cade. The word is ‘patriots.’ You’ve heard it before.” There was an unreadable quality in her voice. Cade could not tell whether she despised these people or admired them. “It means that they love their home land. They are devoted more to Mars and its ruler than to the Emperor.”

  lie couldn’t help it; a shudder went through him at the thought—and a moment later he was smiling at the shudder.