Norstrilia

by Cordwainer Smith

  “That’s what you say!” cried Bill. “Let him go to his house. We can load up on little bombs and hold up against anybody who could get through the Norstrilian defenses. What are we paying these mucking taxes for, if it’s not for the likes of you to make sure we’re safe? Shut up, man, and let’s take the boy home. Come along, Hopper.”

  The Lord Redlady leaped to the middle of his own floor. He was no prancing Earthman putting on a show. He was the old Instrumentality itself, surviving with raw weapons and raw brains. In his hand he held a something which none of them could see clearly.

  “Murder,” he said, “will be done this moment if anybody moves. I will commit it. I will, people. Move, and try me. And if I do commit murder, I will arrest myself, hold a trial, and acquit myself. I have strange powers, people. Don’t make me use them. Don’t even make me show them.” The shimmering thing in his hand disappeared. “Mister and Doctor Wentworth, you are under my command, by loan. Other people, you are my guests. Be warned. Don’t touch that boy. This is Earth territory, this cabin we’re in.” He stood a little to one side and looked at them brightly out of his strange Earth eyes.

  Hopper deliberately spat on the floor. “I suppose I would be a puddle of mucking glue if I helped old Bill?”

  “Something like it,” said the Lord Redlady. “Want to try?” The things that were hard to see were now in each of his hands. His eyes darted between Bill and Hopper.

  “Shut up, Hopper. We’ll take Rod if he tells us to go. But if he doesn’t—it crudding well doesn’t matter. Eh, Mister and Owner McBan?”

  Rod looked around for his grandfather, dead long ago: then he knew they were looking at him instead. Torn between sleepiness and anxiety, he answered,

  “I don’t want to go now, fellows. Thank you for standing by. Go on, Mister Secretary, with the foe money and the sad money.”

  The weapons disappeared from the Lord Redlady’s hands.

  “I don’t like Earth weapons,” said Hopper, speaking very loudly and plainly to no one at all, “and I don’t like Earth people. They’re dirty. There’s nothing in them that’s good honest crook.”

  “Have a drink, lads,” said the Lord Redlady with a democratic heartiness which was so false that the workwoman Eleanor, silent all the evening, let out one wild caw of a laugh, like a kookaburra beginning to whoop in a tree. He looked at her sharply, picked up his serving jug, and nodded to the Financial Secretary, John Fisher, that he should resume speaking.

  Fisher was flustered. He obviously did not like this Earth practice of quick threats and weapons indoors, but the Lord Redlady—disgraced and remote from Old Earth as he was—was nevertheless the accredited diplomat of the Instrumentality, and even Old North Australia did not push the Instrumentality too far. There were things supposed about worlds which had done so.

  Soberly and huffily he went on,

  “There’s not much to it. If the money is discounted thirty-three and one third percent per trip and if it takes fifty-five trips to get to Old Earth, it takes a heap of money to pay up in orbit right here before you have a minicredit on Earth. Sometimes the odds are better. Your Commonwealth government waits for months and years to get a really favorable rate of exchange and of course we send our freight by armed sailships, which don’t go below the surface of space at all. They just take hundreds or thousands of years to get there, while our cruisers dart in and out around them, just to make sure that nobody robs them in transit. There are things about Norstrilian robots which none of you know, and which not even the Instrumentality knows—” He darted a quick look at the Lord Redlady, who said nothing to this, and went on, “Which makes it well worth while not to muck around with one of our perishing ships. We don’t get robbed much. And we have other things that are even worse than Mother Hitton and her littul kittons. But the money and the stroon which finally reaches Old Earth itself is FOE money, F, O, E. F is for free, O is for on, E is for Earth. F, O, E—free on Earth. That’s the best kind of money there is, right on Old Earth itself. And Earth has the final exchange computer. Or had it.”

  “Had it?” said the Lord Redlady.

  “It broke down last night. Rod broke it. Overload.”

  “Impossible!” cried Redlady. “I’ll check.”

  He went to the wall, pulled down a desk. A console, incredibly miniature, gleamed out at them. In less than three seconds it glowed. Redlady spoke into it, his voice as clear and cold as the ice they had all heard about:

  “Priority. Instrumentality. Short of War. Instant. Instant. Redlady calling. Earthport.”

  “Confirmed,” said a Norstrilian voice, “confirmed and charged.”

  “Earthport,” said the console in a whistling whisper which filled the room.

  “Redlady—instrumentality—official—centputer—all—right—

  question—cargo—approved—question—out.”

  “Centputer—all—right—cargo—approved—out,” said the whisper and fell silent.

  The people in the room had seen an immense fortune squandered. Even by Norstrilian standards, the faster-than-light messages were things which a family might not use twice in a thousand years. They looked at Redlady as though he were an evil-worker with strange powers. Earth’s prompt answer to the skinny man made them all remember that though Old North Australia produced the wealth, Earth still distributed much of it, and that the supergovernment of the Instrumentality reached into far places where no Norstrilian would even wish to venture.

  The Lord Redlady spoke mildly, “The central computer seems to be going again, if your government wishes to consult it. The ‘cargo’ is this boy here.”

  “You’ve told Earth about me?” said Rod.

  “Why not? We want to get you there alive.”

  “But message security—?” said the doctor.

  “I have references which no outside mind will know,” said the Lord Redlady. “Finish up, Mister Financial Secretary. Tell the young man what he has on Earth.”

  “Your computer outcomputed the government,” said John Fisher to the hundredth, “and it mortgaged all your lands, all your sheep, all your trading rights, all your family treasures, the right to the MacArthur name, the right to the McBan name, and itself. Then it bought futures. Of course, it didn’t do it. You did, Rod McBan.”

  Startled into full awakeness, Rod found his right hand up at his mouth, so surprised was he. “I did?”

  “Then you bought futures in stroon, but you offered them for sale. You held back the sales, shifting titles and changing prices, so that not even the central computer knew what you were doing. You bought almost all of the eighth year from now, most of the seventh year from now, and some of the sixth. You mortgaged each purchase as you went along, in order to buy more. Then you suddenly tore the market wide open by offering fantastic bargains, trading the six-year rights for seventh-year and eighth-year. Your computer made such lavish use of Instant Messages to Earth that the Commonwealth defense office had people buzzing around in the middle of the night. By the time they figured out what might happen, it had happened. You registered a monopoly of two years’ export, far beyond the predicted amount. The government rushed for a weather recomputation, but while they were doing that you were registering your holdings on Earth and remortgaging them in FOE money. With the FOE money you began to buy up all the imports around Old North Australia, and when the government finally declared an emergency, you had secured final title to one and a half stroon years and to more megacredits, FOE money megacredits, than the Earth computers could handle. You’re the richest man that ever was. Or ever will be. We changed all the rules this morning and I myself signed a new treaty with the Earth authorities, ratified by the Instrumentality. Meanwhile, you’re the richest of the rich men who ever lived on this world and you’re also rich enough to buy all of Old Earth. In fact, you have put in a reservation to buy it, unless the Instrumentality outbids you.”

  “Why should we?” said the Lord Redlady. “Let him have it. We’ll watch what he does with
the Earth after he buys it, and if it is something bad, we will kill him.”

  “You’d kill me, Lord Redlady?” said Rod. “I thought you were saving me?”

  “Both,” said the doctor, standing up. “The Commonwealth government has not tried to take your property away from you, though they have their doubts as to what you will do with Earth if you do buy it. They are not going to let you stay on this planet and endanger it by being the richest kidnap victim who ever lived. Tomorrow they will strip you of your property, unless you want to take a chance on running for it. Earth government is the same way. If you can figure out your own defenses, you can come on in. Of course the police will protect you, but would that be enough? I’m a doctor, and I’m here to ship you out if you want to go.”

  “And I’m an officer of government, and I will arrest you if you do not go,” said John Fisher.

  “And I represent the Instrumentality, which does not declare its policy to anyone, least of all to outsiders. But it is my personal policy,” said the Lord Redlady, holding out his hands and twisting his thumbs in a meaningless, grotesque, but somehow very threatening way, “to see that this boy gets a safe trip to Earth and a fair deal when he comes back here!”

  “You’ll protect him all the way!” cried Lavinia, looking very happy.

  “All the way. As far as I can. As long as I live.”

  “That’s pretty long,” muttered Hopper. “Conceited little pommy cockahoop!”

  “Watch your language, Hopper,” said the Lord Redlady. “Rod?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Your answer?” The Lord Redlady was peremptory.

  “I’m going,” said Rod.

  “What on Earth do you want?” said the Lord Redlady ceremoniously.

  “A genuine Cape triangle.”

  “A what?” cried the Lord Redlady.

  “A Cape triangle. A postage stamp.”

  “What’s postage?” said the Lord Redlady, really puzzled.

  “Payments on messages.”

  “But you do that with thumbprints or eyeprints!”

  “No,” said Rod, “I mean paper ones.”

  “Paper messages?” said the Lord Redlady, looking as though someone had mentioned grass battleships, hairless sheep, solid cast-iron women, or something else equally improbable. “Paper messages?” he repeated, and then he laughed, quite charmingly. “Oh!” he said, with a tone of secret discovery. “You mean antiquities …?”

  “Of course,” said Rod. “Even before Space itself.”

  “Earth has a lot of antiquities, and I am sure you will be welcome to study them or to collect them. That will be perfectly all right. Just don’t do any of the wrong things, or you will be in real trouble.”

  “What are the wrong things?” said Rod.

  “Buying real people, or trying to. Shipping religion from one planet to another. Smuggling underpeople.”

  “What’s religion?” said Rod.

  “Later, later,” said the Lord Redlady. “You’ll learn everything later. Doctor, you take over.”

  Wentworth stood very carefully so that his head did not touch the ceiling. He had to bend his neck a little. “We have two boxes, Rod.”

  When he spoke, the door whirred in its tracks and showed them a small room beyond. There was a large box like a coffin and a very small box, like the kind that women have around the house to keep a single party-going bonnet in.

  “There will be criminals, and wild governments, and conspirators, and adventurers, and just plain good people gone wrong at the thought of your wealth—there will be all these waiting for you to kidnap you or rob or even kill you—”

  “Why kill me?”

  “To impersonate you and try to get your money,” said the doctor. “Now look. This is your big choice. If you take the big box, we can put you in a sailship convoy and you will get there in several hundred or thousand years. But you will get there, ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent. Or we can send the big box on the regular planoforming ships, and somebody will steal you. Or we scun you down and put you in the little box.”

  “That little box?” cried Rod.

  “Scunned. You’ve scunned sheep, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve heard of it. But a man, no. Dehydrate my body, pickle my head, and freeze the whole mucking mess?” cried Rod.

  “That’s it. Too bloody right!” cried the doctor cheerfully. “That’ll give you a real chance of getting there alive.”

  “But who’ll put me together? I’d need my own doctor—” His voice quavered at the unnaturalness of the risk, not at the mere chanciness and danger of it.

  “Here,” said the Lord Redlady, “is your doctor, already trained.”

  “I am at your service,” said the little Earth-animal, the “monkey,” with a small bow to the assembled company. “My name is A’gentur and I have been conditioned as a physician, a surgeon and a barber.”

  The women had gasped. Hopper and Bill stared at the little animal in horror.

  “You’re an underperson!” yelled Hopper. “We’ve never let the crutting things loose on Norstrilia.”

  “I’m not an underperson. I’m an animal. Conditioned to—” The monkey jumped. Hopper’s heavy knife twanged like a musical instrument as it clung to the softer steel of the wall. Hopper’s other hand held a long thin knife, ready to reach Redlady’s heart.

  The left hand of the Lord Redlady flashed straight forward. Something in his hand glowed silently, terribly. There was a hiss in the air.

  Where Hopper had been, a cloud of oily thick smoke, stinking of burning meat, coiled slowly toward the ventilators. Hopper’s clothing and personal belongings, including one false tooth, lay on the chair in which he had been sitting. They were undamaged. His drink stood on the floor beside the chair, forever to remain unfinished.

  The doctor’s eyes gleamed as he stared strangely at Redlady.

  “Noted and reported to the Old North Australian Navy.”

  “I’ll report it too,” said the Lord Redlady, “… as the use of weapons on diplomatic grounds.”

  “Never mind,” said John Fisher to the hundredth, not angry at all, but just pale and looking a little ill. Violence did not frighten him, but decision did. “Let’s get on with it. Which box, big or little, boy?”

  The workwoman Eleanor stood up. She had said nothing but now she dominated the scene. “Take him in there, girls,” she said, “and wash him like you would for the Garden of Death. I’ll wash myself in there. You see,” she added, “I’ve always wanted to see the blue skies on Earth, and wanted to swim in a house that ran around on the big big waters. I’ll take your big box, Rod, and if I get through alive, you will owe me some treats on Earth. You take the little box, Roddy, take the little box. And that little tiny doctor with the fur on him. Rod, I trust him.”

  Rod stood up.

  Everybody was looking at him and at Eleanor.

  “You agree?” said the Lord Redlady.

  He nodded.

  “You agree to be scunned and put in the little box for instant shipment to Earth?”

  He nodded again.

  “You will pay all the extra expenses?”

  He nodded again.

  The doctor said,

  “You authorize me to cut you up and reduce you down, in the hope that you may be reconstituted on Earth?”

  Rod nodded to him, too.

  “Shaking your head isn’t enough,” said the doctor. “You have to agree for the record.”

  “I agree,” said Rod quietly.

  Aunt Doris and Lavinia came forward to lead him into the dressing room and shower room. Just as they reached for his arms, the doctor patted Rod on the back with a quick strange motion. Rod jumped a little.

  “Deep hypnotic,” said the doctor. “You can manage his body all right, but the next words he utters will be said, luck willing, on Old Earth itself.”

  The women were wide-eyed, but they led Rod forward to be cleaned for the operations and the voyage.

  The
doctor turned to the Lord Redlady and to John Fisher, the Financial Secretary.

  “A good night’s work,” he said. “Pity about that man, though.”

  Bill sat still, frozen with grief in his chair, staring at Hopper’s empty clothing in the chair next to him.

  The console tinkled, “Twelve hours, Greenwich mean time. No adverse weather reports from the channel coast or from Meeya Meefla or Earthport building. All’s well!”

  The Lord Redlady served drinks to the Misters. He did not even offer one to Bill. It would have been no use, at this point.

  From beyond the door, where they were cleaning the body, clothes and hair of the deeply hypnotized Rod, Lavinia and Aunt Doris unconsciously reverted to the ceremony of the Garden of Death and lifted their voices in a sort of plainsong chant:

  Out in the Garden of Death, our young

  Have tasted the valiant taste of fear.

  With muscular arm and reckless tongue,

  They have won, and lost, and escaped us here.

  The three men listened for a few moments, attentively. From the other washroom there came the sounds of the workwoman Eleanor, washing herself, alone and unattended, for a long voyage and a possible death.

  The Lord Redlady heaved a sigh. “Have a drink, Bill. Hopper brought it on himself.”

  Bill refused to speak to them but he held forth his glass.

  The Lord Redlady filled that and the others. He turned to John Fisher to the hundredth and said:

  “You’re shipping him?”

  “Who?”

  “The boy.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Better not,” said the Lord Redlady.

  “You mean—danger?”

  “That’s only half the word for it,” said the Lord Redlady. “You can’t possibly plan to offload him at Earthport. Put him into a good medical station. There’s an old one, still good, on Mars, if they haven’t closed it down. I know Earth. Half the people of Earth will be waiting to greet him and the other half will be waiting to rob him.”