Norstrilia - Illustrated

by Cordwainer Smith

  “Sh-h,” said C’mell to D’igo. To Rod she said, “Speak now. Establish your rights.”

  “Centputer,” said Rod, “take this name down. Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan the hundred and fifty-first from Old North Australia. Got it?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Do I own you, Centputer?”

  “Repeat, Repeat.”

  “Centputer, have I bought you?”

  “Apparently impossible, but this-machine will check. No, you have not bought this-machine.”

  “Can you tell where I am, Centputer.”

  “Restricted workroom of the Instrumentality.”

  “Do I own Earthport?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Do I own this room too?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “I am in it.”

  “Re-state the instruction. This-machine cannot make your statement operational.”

  “I have taken this room from the Instrumentality and I will return it to the Lords of the Instrumentality when I see fit.”

  “That is not possible. The room belongs to the Instrumentality.”

  “And I,” said Rod, “override the Instrumentality. Tell them to keep out till I am through.”

  “The instruction is impossible. This-machine has records that you own Earthport, and that the Instrumentality sold you all of it, including the room you are in. Therefore the room is yours. This-machine also has a basic programmed command that the Instrumentality cannot be overridden. This-machine must appeal to higher authority. The robot police will be warned away from your person until this-machine has been re-coded or reaffirmed by higher authority.” Click went the speaker, and the Central Computer itself broke the connection.

  “You’re in for it,” said C’mell. Her green eyes, which could look fierce at times, scanned him with soft indulgence: Rod could see that she was very proud of him, and he was not altogether sure of the reason. Her warning was ominous, but her expression betrayed no fear, only a newfound confidence that he would see them through.

  A’gentur spoke from the floor to D’igo: “Do you have any cocoanut, raisins, shelled nuts, or pineapple, dog-man?”

  “Forgive him, colleague D’igo, if he’s rude, but he’s very tired and very hungry.”

  “It’s all right,” said D’igo. “I have none of those things, though I have some excellent raw liver and an assortment of bones in my coldbox. My master, a Lord, has left a pot of cocoa which I could warm up for you, animal. Would you like that?”

  “Anything, anything,” said A’gentur cheerfully.

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” declared D’igo with a species of desperate composure as he put the cocoa on to warm it up. “My secret room is attacked, the famous C’mell herself pays me a visit, a cat-man gives orders to the Central Computer, and I have to feed an animal in my workshop. It’s not often that this sort of thing happens, is it, Madam C’mell?”

  “We came in here,” said C’mell gracefully and quickly, “because this friend of mine insisted on hearing your music.”

  “You like it,” smiled D’igo. “I like it myself. It’s secret music and I’m not sure that it will ever be cleared for use. My master, the Lord Ingintau, wanted me to find the last song ever sung in New York.”

  “That was a city, wasn’t it?”

  “The biggest city on this continent. When New York was destroyed, there were various primitive electronic stations transmitting, some sending pictures and others relaying just words and music. The search-robots out in space have been recording all the salvageable messages from in that period of the First Doom, and I think that I have narrowed the choice down to three songs. You heard Ignoraba Yo—that was Inglish and Spanish mixed, in the style called bop. I’m not sure of the next one, because I have most of the melody, but for the words, only the refrain has come through. I got my helper, a dog-girl, to sing the part while I played the piano, and I spooled it just last week. Would you like to hear it?”

  “That’s what I burst in for,” said Rod cheerfully.

  The musician D’igo rested his hand against a blank part of the wall and said, “Forty-seven, please.”

  The room was immediately filled with the wild catchy music of the “piano,” expertly played. The particularly musical melody was quick, startling, amusing and witty in its use of a tune. By Norstrilian standards, that song would be condemned as lascivious, thought Rod—but then, that wasn’t Old North Australia. It was what Ancient Earth sang as Earth died the first of a hundred deaths.

  After a preliminary la-la-la la-a-a-la a woman’s voice came on and sang the catchy refrain three times in a row in perfectly accented Ancient Inglish, just as Rod had heard it spoken by the talking books in his family’s storeroom of hidden treasures:

  Only God can make a tree,

  But you can make a girl like me!

  “It’s amusing, but there’s not much to it,” said Rod. “What’s the third one?”

  “That’s a period piece, antedating the fall of New York. I think it may have had something to do with a collective entertainment which they called a square dance or a country dance. I can’t imagine why. Or it may have been something translated from another language and another culture into the usage of the Murkins.”

  “They’re the ones who had New York?” asked Rod.

  “The same,” said D’igo.

  “The same ones who built those spectacular surface roads that people see every time they look down on Earth from nearby space?”

  “That’s right,” smiled D’igo. “They were a wild, gifted, wanton people. Do you want to hear the third song? I’ll play that and sing it for you myself. I just finished arranging it myself.”

  He sat at the piano, played a few bars, and then sang:

  Ring a bell

  and clap! clap!

  Sing pell mell

  and tap! tap!

  The wishing well

  will miss, miss.

  Hug and tell

  and kiss, kiss.

  Rod sighed, “I still like the one I heard outside your door.”

  D’igo smiled his full-faced, clean-shaven smile. Rod wondered that a dog could be made into so perfect a copy of a man. Except for his indoor pallor, D’igo looked as well-shaped and as well-spoken as any man that Rod had ever seen.

  “What you heard out there,” said D’igo, “was a spool of my own voice. Would you like to hear my assistant sing it? She is a very talented girl. She can sing either contralto or soprano.”

  “Soprano,” said A’gentur promptly and unexpectedly. D’igo stared at him with astonishment and reproach, but since the others did not object, he said,

  “Soprano it is, then,” and he muttered under his breath, “For a talking animal, you’ve got a fantastic education.”

  D’igo called to the wall, “Thirty-one, third version,” and then said to his guests, “Do sit down…”

  Ignoraba Yo began to pour from the speakers with its full, hypnotic volume, carried by a woman’s splendid voice.

  Confrontation and a Half Challenge

  This is the climax of Hansgeorg Wagner’s musical drama. The four of them sat listening to the music: A’gentur on the floor, drifting off to sleep again; the two cat-people, C’mell red-haired and Rod yellow-haired, staring at nothing and giving their full attention to the music; the host, D’igo, sitting with a half-smile on his face and watching his guests. Wagner combines the thrill of illegal ancient music with some deft composition of his own.

  His woodwinds represent the soft rustling in the corridor.

  A quick light flurry of drums indicates the new arrivals:

  A tall, pitiless intelligent woman with a vividly dramatic black and white dress of the most conservative cut imaginable, accompanied by two high-ranking robot soldiers, both of them with their bodies washed in silver and gold, their swimming eyes taking in all corners of the room at once, their heavy wirepoints already buzzing with potential death.

  “I,”
said she, “am the Lady Johanna Gnade. You are D’igo, the musical historian. I have heard your work—”

  Rod stood up and interrupted her. Though she was tall, he was several centimeters taller. “I,” said he, in a perfectly composed copy of her own manner, “am Rod McBan, the owner of this room. You can sit down, Ma’am and Lady, if you wish. Your robots can sit down too, if they enjoy it.”

  For a memorable moment the two confronted one another: the tall, black-haired woman and the tall, yellow-haired youth in cat disguise. This was no meeting of individuals—it was a confrontation of systems, the trained power of the Instrumentality against the disciplined in-bred force of the Old North Australians.

  The woman yielded, a little.

  “You’re a quick young man. Your name is Rod McBan and you have bought Earth. Why did you do it?”

  “Do sit down,” said Rod firmly and hospitably. “It’s a long story and I would not want to tire a lady—”

  Johanna Gnade snapped, “Don’t worry about my being a lady. I’m one of the Lords of the Instrumentality. And make your story short.”

  “Please sit, Ma’am and Lady. And make your robots comfortable.” There was a little more command than courtesy in his voice, but there was nothing at which she could take open offense.

  “I’ve never had an underperson make me sit down before,” she grumbled, taking a hassock and sitting bolt upright on it. “Lieutenant, captain, both of you, go in the hall. As a matter of fact, cut all outside connections with this room, but record the scene yourselves, so that I will have my own record of it.”

  The two robots turned off their wirepoints. They walked deftly around the room, touching the walls lightly here and there. The better-ornamented one said,

  “Clear and secure, my Lady.”

  She did not thank them. She just nodded at the broken door. They walked out into the dark corridor.

  The Lady Johanna Gnade looked at C’mell. “And you are C’mell. I’ve seen you before. As a matter of fact, I have seen you several times, almost always when there was trouble. Are you one of our confidential agents? You always come out innocent, no matter what happens.”

  “No, Ma’am. I’m just a girlygirl. I work at Earthport, welcoming offworld visitors and keeping them happy.”

  “I’m not sure I trust that word ‘just,’” said the Lady Johanna Gnade. “Who put you on the job this time?”

  “The Lord Jestocost,” said C’mell, a little worried.

  “Jestocost?” repeated the Lady Johanna Gnade. “If that’s the case, it’s really none of my business. Don’t break into things any more, Mister McBan, without asking the Lord Jestocost to arrange it first. Old Earth is no citizen-commonwealth like Old North Australia. Often we kill first and ask later. I’d like to hear your side of the story before I leave, now that I’m here. How old are you?”

  “Chronologically, I am about sixty-five years old. But I have gone back through a sixteen-year cycle four times, so that biologically I am sixteen.”

  “Are you a man?”

  “Certainly. This cat stuff is just a disguise.”

  “No, I mean are you a grown man, according to the horrible customs of your home planet?”

  “Citizen. Citizen, we call it. Yes, I passed the Garden of Death.”

  “Why did you buy Earth?”

  “To escape, Ma’am and Lady.”

  “Escape what? I thought that Norstrilia protected every single one of her people, once they passed that awful survival test.”

  “Usually, yes. It just happened that I had only one enemy, and he was Onseck of the whole Commonwealth administration.”

  “Onseck? We don’t have that word.”

  “Honorary Secretary. The man who runs the routine admin. for Her Absent Majesty the Queen.”

  “I’ve heard of that custom of yours. Why did he hate you?”

  “We were both defectives, a long time ago. I was—am—telepathically deaf and dumb. Mostly. Can’t spiek or hier, have to rely on the old spoken words, like outlanders or barbarians. He was a short-lifer, who could not take stroon, the drug which—”

  “I know all about stroon,” said she, “the immortality drug. As a matter of fact, my veins are full of it right now. I am near my six hundredth birthday.”

  “Congratulations, Ma’am and Lady.”

  “Never mind. What happened?”

  “When I knew he was after me, I went to my family’s computer. It’s all mechanical, not a single animal brain or animal relay in it.”

  “I didn’t know there was one left.”

  “I myself repaired it,” said Rod.

  In this part of Hansgeorg Wagner’s musical drama about Rod, the music wears a little thin because he lets Rod and the Lady Johanna Gnade speak in normal voices, using his music only as an accompaniment. Now and then he lets the spotlight drift across the calm face and strong torso of D’igo the musicologist; when that happens, he brings in a fugue or two from Ignoraba Yo. Otherwise the music for this part of the show is rather dull.

  “If you weren’t so rich,” said the Lady Johanna Gnade, “I’d like to buy that machine of yours for our Earthport museum.”

  “It’s not for sale, Ma’am and Lady, not at any price.”

  “I can imagine that. What did it do?”

  “It outcomputed the Commonwealth and I became the richest man in the universe.”

  “So you ran away again. First you ran because you were persecuted. Then you ran because you were rich. When did you get here?”

  “Today.”

  “Where have you been between the time you left Norstrilia and today?”

  “Mars, Ma’am and Lady.”

  “Do you have to keep using that double title on me?”

  “Yes, Ma’am and Lady. It’s our custom. We don’t change our customs much.”

  The Lady Johanna Gnade burst into a friendly laugh—her first since their encounter. “All right. What’s yours?”

  “What’s my what?”

  “Your double title. You have one, don’t you?”

  It was Rod’s turn to look uncomfortable. “It’s ‘Mister and Owner,’ Ma’am and Lady, but you don’t have to use it all the time. After all, this is Earth.”

  “But you own it.”

  “All right, you win, Ma’am.”

  “How are your parents, Mister and Owner McBan?”

  His face clouded over. “Dead.”

  “How?”

  “Their ship went milky while planoforming through space-two.”

  “Do you love anyone?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, my servant Eleanor.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Somewhere in this tower, Ma’am.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Pretending to be me, Ma’am, while I pretend to be a cat-man. They changed her into a young man when they scunned me down and then made me look like an underperson.”

  “Scunned? You were scunned? Frozen, dehydrated, cut up, boxed. You? Who did it?”

  “That monkey-doctor there,” said Rod, gesturing at A’gentur on the floor.

  The Lady Johanna Gnade called directly to A’gentur, “You, there, monkey, wake up! He talks, doesn’t he?”

  A’gentur let one eye quiver open for a quick glance at the Lady Johanna Gnade. Within seconds he was snoring in deep sleep.

  The Lady Johanna Gnade stared at A’gentur. She brushed the air with the right hand to keep the others silent. She even made a motion over A’gentur with both hands. The monkey did not stir or waken.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like this one bit. That being looks like an animal, but I can’t tell whether it is an underperson or a human being. It went to sleep at me. I just threw the whole telepathic force of the Instrumentality at it and it stayed asleep. That’s never happened to me before.”

  C’mell said, very softly, “He was sent out to Norstrilia at the request of the Lord Redlady.”

  “Redlady? Redlady?” said the Lady Johanna Gnade. “He�
�s still working?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said Rod.

  “Redlady at one end and Jestocost at the other! You couldn’t find two more weirdos—more personalities, I mean—in the whole Instrumentality to match that pair. You’re in good hands, young man. And what do you want out of all this?”

  “A look at Earth, a bit of adventure, my life, and most of my fortune, Ma’am and Lady.”

  She almost looked as though she would lose her dignity and whistle in astonishment. “You’re not asking much, are you? Not much by half!”

  “I’ll win,” said Rod. “I’ll win all right. The Norstrilian way.”

  “What’s that?”

  He turned serious. “Never plan too far ahead. Go from one immediate situation to the other. Never make a decision if you can put the decision on somebody else and still win for yourself. And most of all—”

  “Most of all?” asked the Lady Johanna Gnade softly.

  “Most of all, never get caught winning. Just win, but don’t let it show.”

  “You’re all right,” she laughed, standing up. “You don’t need my protection. And you aren’t going to get my punishment. I’d hate to tackle you, young as you are. With those companions you have, you’re practically an army. That girl of yours, C’mell—”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said C’mell.

  “She never gets caught. At anything.” The Lady smiled. She went on: “And that thing on the floor, that so-called monkey. I can’t make it talk. I can’t even tell what it is. You’re in good company, young man. I’ll speak to the Lord Jestocost sometime. Do you shake hands?”

  Rod politely held out his right hand.

  She stopped him with a wave. “I was being friendly. Is handshaking a custom on Norstrilia, Mister and Owner McBan—a custom even between men and women?”

  “Indeed it is, Ma’am and Lady.”

  They shook hands cordially.

  “Don’t take too much of Earth home with you when you leave,” she called to him as she entered the dark corridor, summoned her robots and dropped down the shaft.

  D’igo said, “Come back if you wish, Mister and Owner McBan. Call on me to come out any time, Madam C’mell. Goodbye, monkey.”

  “Thanks,” said A’gentur, wide-awake. “Let’s go eat.”