Norstrilia

by Cordwainer Smith

  The sounds and smells of underpeople were subtly different from those of people; some of the machines of Earth were bigger and older than anything which he had previously imagined; and above all, the circulation of water in immense volumes, millions upon millions of gallons, for the multiple purposes of Earthport—sanitation, cooling, drinking, industrial purposes—made him feel that he was not among a few buildings, which he would have called a city in Old North Australia, but that he himself had become a blood-cell thrusting through the circulatory system of some enormous composite animal, the nature of which he imperfectly understood. This city was alive with a sticky, wet, complicated aliveness which he had hitherto not even imagined to be possible. Movement characterized it. He suspected that the movement went on by night and day, that there was no real cessation to it, that the great pumps thrust water through feeder pipes and drains whether people were awake or not, that the brains of this organization could be no one place, but had to comprise many sub-brains, each committed and responsible for its particular tasks. No wonder underpeople were needed! It would be boredom and pain, even with perfected automation, to have enough human supervisors to reconnect the various systems if they had breakdowns inside themselves or at their interconnections. Old North Australia had vitality, but it was the vitality of open fields, few people, immense wealth, and perpetual military danger; this was the vitality of the cesspool, of the compost heap, but the rotting, blooming, growing components were not waste material but human beings and near-human beings. No wonder that his forefathers had fled the cities as they had been. They must have been solid plague to free men. And even Old Original Australia, somewhere here on Earth, had lost its openness and freedom in order to become the single giant city-complex of Aojou Nanbien. It must, Rod thought with horror, have been a thousand times the size of this city of Earthport. (He was wrong, because it was one hundred fifty thousand times the size of Earthport before it died. Earthport had only about two hundred thousand permanent residents when Rod visited it, with an additional number walking in from the nearer suburbs, the outer suburbs still being ruined and abandoned, but Australia—under the name of Aojou Nanbien—had reached a population of thirty billion before it died, and before the Wild Ones and the Menschenjäger had set to work killing off the survivors.)

  Rod was bewildered, but C’mell was not.

  She had put A’gentur down, over his whined monkey-like protest. He trotted unwillingly beside them.

  With the impudent knowledgeability of a true city girl, she had led them to a cross-walk from which a continuous whistling roar came forth. By writing, by picture, and by loudspeaker, the warning system repeated: KEEP OFF. FREIGHT ONLY. DANGER. KEEP OFF. She had snatched up A’gentur-E’ikasus, grabbed Rod by the arm, and jumped with them onto a series of rapidly moving airborne platforms. Rod, startled by the suddenness with which they had found the trackway, shouted to ask what it was:

  “Freight? What’s that?”

  “Things. Boxes. Foods. This is the Central Trackway. No sense in walking six kilometers when we can get this. Be ready to jump off with me when I give you the sign!”

  “It feels dangerous,” he said.

  “It isn’t,” said she, “not if you’re a cat.”

  With this somewhat equivocal reassurance, she let them ride. A’gentur could not care less. He cuddled his head against her shoulder, wrapped his long, gibbon-like arms around her upper arm, and went soundly to sleep.

  C’mell nodded at Rod.

  “Soon now!” she called, judging their distance by landmarks which he found meaningless. The landing points had flat, concrete-lined areas where the individual flat cars, rushing along on their river of air, could be shunted suddenly to the side for loading or unloading. Each of these loading areas had a number, but Rod had not even noticed at what point they had gotten on. The smells of the underground city changed so much as they moved from one district to another that he was more interested in odors than in the numbers on the platforms.

  She pinched his upper arm very sharply as a sign that he should get ready.

  They jumped.

  He staggered across the platform until he caught himself up against a large vertical crate marked Algonquin Paper Works—Credit Slips, Miniature—2mm. C’mell landed as gracefully as if she had been acting a rehearsed piece of acrobatics. The little monkey on her shoulder stared with wide bright eyes.

  “This,” said the monkey A’gentur-E’ikasus firmly and contemptuously, “is where all the people play at working. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and my body sugar is low.” He curled himself tight against C’mell’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

  “He has a point,” said Rod. “Could we eat?”

  C’mell started to nod and then caught herself short—“You’re a cat.”

  He nodded. Then he grinned. “I’m hungry, anyhow. And I need a sandbox.”

  “Sandbox?” she asked, puzzled.

  “An awef,” he said very clearly, using the Old North Australian term.

  “Awef?”

  It was his turn to get embarrassed. He said it in full: “An animal waste evacuation facility.”

  “You mean a johnny,” she cried. She thought a minute and then said, “Fooey.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Each kind of underpeople has to use its own. It’s death if you don’t use one and it’s death if you use the wrong one. The cat one is four stations back on this underground trackway. Or we can walk back on the surface. It would only be a half hour.”

  He said something rude to Earth. She wrinkled her brow.

  “All I said was, ‘Earth is a large healthy sheep.’ That’s not so dirty.” Her good humor returned.

  Before she could ask him another question he held up a firm hand. “I am not going to waste a half hour. You wait here.” He had seen the universal sign for “men’s room” at the upper level of the platform. Before she could stop him he had gone into it. She caught her hand up to her mouth, knowing that the robot police would kill him on sight if they found him in the wrong place. It would be such a ghastly joke if the man who owned the Earth were to die in the wrong toilet.

  As quick as thought she followed him, stopping just outside the door to the men’s room. She dared not go in; she trusted that the place was empty when Rod entered it, because she had heard no boom of a slow, heavy bullet, none of the crisp buzzing of a burner. Robots did not use toilets, so they went in only when they were investigating something. She was prepared to distract any man living if he tried to enter that toilet, by offering him the combination of an immediate seduction or a complimentary and unwanted monkey.

  A’gentur had awakened.

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “I called my father. Anything approaching that door will fall asleep.”

  An ordinary man, rather tired and worried-looking, headed for the men’s room. C’mell was prepared to stop him at any cost, but she remembered what A’gentur-E’ikasus had told her, so she waited. The man reeled as he neared them. He stared at them, saw that they were underpeople, looked on through them as though they were not there. He took two more steps toward the door and suddenly reached out his hands as if he were going blind. He walked into the wall two meters from the door, touched it firmly and blindly with his hands, and crumpled gently to the floor, where he lay snoring.

  “My dad’s good,” said A’gentur-E’ikasus. “He usually leaves real people alone, but when he must get them, he gets them. He even gave that man the distinct memory that he mistakenly took a sleeping pill when he was reaching for a pain-killer. When the human wakes up, he will feel foolish and will tell no one of his experience.”

  Rod came out of the ever-so-dangerous doorway. He grinned at them boyishly and did not notice the crumpled man lying beside the wall. “That was easier than turning back, and nobody noticed me at all. See, I saved you a lot of trouble, C’mell!”

  He was so proud of his foolhardy adventure that she did not have the heart to blame
him. He smiled widely, his cat-whiskers tipping as he did so. For a moment, just a moment, she forgot that he was an important person and a real man to boot: he was a boy, and mighty like a cat, but all boy in his satisfaction, his wanton bravery, his passing happiness with vainglory. For a second or two she loved him. Then she thought of the terrible hours ahead, and of how he would go home, rich and scornful, to his all-people planet. The moment of love passed but she still liked him very much.

  “Come along, young fellow. You can eat. You are going to eat cat food since you are C’roderick, but it’s not so bad.”

  He frowned. “What is it? Do you have fish here? I tasted fish one time. A neighbor bought one. He traded two horses for it. It was delicious.”

  “He wants fish,” she cried to E’ikasus.

  “Give him a whole tuna for himself,” grumbled the monkey. “My blood sugar is still low. I need some pineapple.”

  C’mell did not argue. She stayed underground and led them into a hall which had a picture of dogs, cats, cattle, pigs, bears, and snakes above the door; that indicated the kinds of people who could be served there. E’ikasus scowled at the sign but he rode C’mell’s shoulder in.

  “This gentleman,” said C’mell, speaking pleasantly to an old bear-man who was scratching his belly and smoking a pipe, all at the same time, “has forgotten his credits.”

  “No food,” said the bear-man. “Rules. He can drink water, though.”

  “I’ll pay for him,” said C’mell.

  The bear-man yawned. “Are you sure that he won’t pay you back? If he does, that is private trading and it is punished by death.”

  “I know the rules,” said C’mell. “I’ve never been disciplined yet.”

  The bear looked her over critically. He took his pipe out of his mouth and whistled. “No,” said he, “and I can see that you won’t be. What are you, anyhow? A model?”

  “A girlygirl,” said C’mell.

  The bear-man leapt from his stool with astonishing speed. “Cat-madame!” he cried. “A thousand pardons. You can have anything in the place. You come from the top of Earthport? You know the Lords of the Instrumentality personally? You would like a table roped off with curtains? Or should I just throw everybody else out of here and report to my Man that we have a famous, beautiful slave from the high places?”

  “Nothing that drastic,” said C’mell. “Just food.”

  “Wait a bit,” said A’gentur-E’ikasus. “If you’re offering specials, I’ll have two fresh pineapples, a quarter-kilo of ground fresh coconut, and a tenth of a kilo of live insect grubs.”

  The bear-man hesitated. “I was offering things to the cat-lady, who serves the mighty ones, not to you, monkey. But if the lady desires it, I will send for those things.” He waited for C’mell’s nod, got it, and pushed a button for a low-grade robot to come. He turned to Rod McBan. “And you, cat-gentleman, what would you like?”

  Before Rod could speak, C’mell said, “He wants two sailfish steaks, fried potatoes, Waldorf salad, an order of ice cream, and a large glass of orange juice.”

  The bear-man shuddered visibly. “I’ve been here for years and that is the most horrible lunch I ever ordered for a cat. I think I’ll try it myself.”

  C’mell smiled the smile which had graced a thousand welcomes.

  “I’ll just help myself from the things you have on the counters. I’m not fussy.”

  He started to protest but she cut him short with a graceful but unmistakable wave of the hand. He gave up.

  They sat at a table.

  A’gentur-E’ikasus waited for his combination monkey and bird lunch. Rod saw an old robot, dressed in a prehistoric tuxedo jacket, ask a question of the bear-man, leave one tray at the door, and bring another tray to him. The robot whipped off a freshly starched napkin. There was the most beautiful lunch Rod McBan had ever seen. Even at a state banquet, the Old North Australians did not feed their guests like that. Just as they were finishing, the bear-cashier came to the table and asked,

  “Your name, cat-madame? I will charge these lunches to the government.”

  “C’mell, servant to Teadrinker, subject to the Lord Jestocost, a Chief of the Instrumentality.”

  The bear’s face had been epilated, so that they could see him pale.

  “C’mell,” he whispered. “C’mell! Forgive me, my Lady. I have never seen you before. You have blessed this place. You have blessed my life. You are the friend of all underpeople. Go in peace.”

  C’mell gave him the bow and smile which a reigning empress might give to an active Lord of the Instrumentality. She started to pick up the monkey but he scampered on ahead of her. Rod was puzzled. As the bear-man bowed him out, he asked,

  “C’mell. You are famous?”

  “In a way,” she said. “But only among the Underpeople.” She hurried them both toward a ramp. They reached daylight at last, but even before they came to the surface, Rod’s nose was assaulted by a riot of smells—foods frying, cakes baking, liquor spilling its pungency on the air, perfumes fighting with each other for attention, and, above all, the smell of old things: dusty treasures, old leathers, tapestries, the echo-smells of people who had died a long time ago.

  C’mell stopped and watched him. “You’re smelling things again? I must say, you have a better nose than any human being I ever met before. How does it smell to you?”

  “Wonderful,” he gasped. “Wonderful. Like all the treasures and temptations of the universe spilled out into one little place.”

  “It’s just the Thieves’ Market of Paris.”

  “There are thieves on Earth? Open ones, like on Viola Siderea?”

  “Oh, no,” she laughed. “They would die in a few days. The Instrumentality would catch them. These are just people, playing. The Rediscovery of Man found some old institutions, and an old market was one of them. They make the robots and underpeople find things for them and then they pretend to be ancient, and make bargains with each other. Or they cook food. Not many real people ever cook food these days. It’s so funny that it tastes good to them. They all pick up money on their way in. They have barrels of it at the gate. In the evening, or when they leave, they usually throw the money in the gutter, even though they should really put it back in the barrel. It’s not money we underpeople could use. We go by numbers and computer cards,” she sighed. “I could certainly use some of that extra money.”

  “And underpeople like you—like us—” said Rod, “what do we do in the market?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “Absolutely nothing. We can walk through if we are not too big and not too small and not too dirty and not too smelly. And even if we are all right, we must walk right through without looking directly at the real people and without touching anything in the market.”

  “Suppose we do?” asked Rod defiantly.

  “The robot police are there, with orders to kill on sight when they observe an infraction. Don’t you realize, C’rod,” she sobbed at him, “that there are millions of us in tanks, way below in Downdeep-downdeep, ready to be born, to be trained, to be sent up here to serve Man? We’re not scarce at all, C’rod, we’re not scarce at all!”

  “Why are we going through the market then?”

  “It’s the only way to the Catmaster’s store. We’ll be tagged. Come along.”

  Where the ramp reached the surface, four bright-eyed robots, their blue enamel bodies shining and their milky eyes glowing, stood at the ready. Their weapons had an ugly buzz to them and were obviously already off the “safety” mark. C’mell talked to them quietly and submissively. When the robot-sergeant led her to a desk, she stared into an instrument like binoculars and blinked when she took her eyes away. She put her palm on a desk. The identification was completed. The robot sergeant handed her three bright disks, like saucers, each with a chain attached. Wordlessly she hung them around her own neck, Rod’s neck, and A’gentur’s. The robots let them pass. They walked in demure single file through the place of beautiful sights and smells. Rod
felt that his eyes were wet with tears of rage. “I’ll buy this place,” he thought to himself, “if it’s the only thing I’ll ever buy.”

  C’mell had stopped walking.

  Rod looked up, very carefully.

  There was the sign: THE DEPARTMENT STORE OF HEARTS’ DESIRES. A door opened. A wise old cat-person’s face looked out, stared at them, snapped, “No underpeople!” and slammed the door. C’mell rang the doorbell a second time. The face reappeared, more puzzled than angry.

  “Business,” she whispered, “of the Aitch Eye.”

  The face nodded and said, “In, then. Quick!”

  THE DEPARTMENT STORE OF HEARTS’ DESIRES

  ONCE inside, Rod realized that the store was as rich as the market. There were no other customers. After the outside sounds of music, laughter, frying, boiling, things falling, dishes clattering, people arguing, and the low undertone of the ever-ready robot weapons buzzing, the quietness of the room was itself a luxury, like old, heavy velvet. The smells were no less variegated than those on the outside, but they were different, more complicated, and many more of them were completely unidentifiable.

  One smell he was sure of: fear, human fear. It had been in this room not long before.

  “Quick,” said the old cat-man. “I’m in trouble if you don’t get out soon. What is your business?”

  “I’m C’mell,” said C’mell.

  He nodded pleasantly, but showed no sign of recognition. “I forget people,” he said.

  “This is A’gentur.” She indicated the monkey.

  The old cat-man did not even look at the animal.

  C’mell persisted, a note of triumph coming into her voice: “You may have heard of him under his real name, E’ikasus.”