Norstrilia

by Cordwainer Smith

  “Fish, then,” said Rod. “A fish dinner, please.”

  He wondered why C’mell, with his life in the balance, would go off to another visitor. Even as he thought this, he detected the mean jealousy behind it, and he confessed to himself that he had no idea of the terms, conditions, or hours of work required in the girlygirl business.

  He sat dully on the bench, waiting for his food.

  The uproar of HATE HALL was still in his mind, the pathos of his parents, those dying dissolving manikins, was bright within his heart, and his body throbbed with the fatigue of the ordeal. Idly he asked the bear-cashier, “How long has it been since I was here?”

  The bear-cashier looked at the clock on the wall. “About fourteen hours, worthy cat.”

  “How long is that in real time?” Rod was trying to compare Norstrilian hours with Earth hours. He thought that Earth hours were one-seventh shorter, but he was not sure.

  The bear-man was completely baffled. “If you mean galactic navigation time, dear guest, we never use that down here anyhow. Are there any other kinds of time?”

  Rod realized his mistake and tried to correct it. “It doesn’t matter. I am thirsty. What is lawful for underpeople to drink? I am tired and thirsty, both, but I have no desire to become the least bit drunk.”

  “Since you are a c’man,” said the bear-cashier, “I recommend strong black coffee mixed with sweet whipped cream.”

  “I have no money,” said Rod.

  “The famous cat-madame, C’mell your consort, has guaranteed payment for anything at all that you order.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  The bear-man called a robot over and gave him the orders.

  Rod stared at the wall, wondering what he was going to do with this Earth he had bought. He wasn’t thinking very hard, just musing idly. A voice cut directly into his mind. He realized that the bear-man was spieking to him and that he could hier it.

  “You are not an underman, Sir and Master.”

  “What?” spieked Rod.

  “You hiered me,” said the telepathic voice. “I am not going to repeat it. If you come in the sign of the Fish, may blessings be upon you.”

  “I don’t know that sign,” said Rod.

  “Then,” spieked the bear-man, “no matter who you are, may you eat and drink in peace because you are a friend of C’mell and you are under the protection of the One Who Lives in Downdeep.”

  “I don’t know,” spieked Rod. “I just don’t know, but I thank you for your welcome, friend.”

  “I do not give such welcomes lightly,” said the bear-man, “and ordinarily I would be ready to run away from anything as strange and dangerous and unexplained as yourself, but you bring with you the quality of peace, which made me think that you might travel in the fellowship of the sign of the Fish. I have heard that in that sign, people and underpeople remember the blessed Joan and mingle in complete comradeship.”

  “No,” said Rod, “no. I travel alone.”

  His food and drink came. He consumed them quietly. The bear-cashier had given him a table and bench far from the serving tables and away from the other underpeople who dropped in, interrupting their tasks, eating in a hurry so that they could get back in a hurry. He saw one wolf-man, wearing the insignia of Auxiliary Police, who came to the wall, forced his identity-card into a slot, opened his mouth, bolted down five large chunks of red, raw meat, and left the commissary, all in less than one and one-half minutes. Rod was amazed but not impressed. He had too much on his mind.

  At the desk he confirmed the address which C’mell had left, offered the bear-man a handshake, and went along to Upshaft Four. He still looked like a c’man and he carried his package alertly and humbly, as he had seen other underpeople behave in the presence of real persons.

  * * *

  He almost met death on the way. Upshaft Four was one-directional and was plainly marked, “People Only.” Rod did not like the looks of it, as long as he moved in a cat-man body, but he did not think that C’mell would give him directions wrongly or lightly. (Later, he found that she had forgotten the phrase, “Special business under the protection of Jestocost, a chief of the Instrumentality,” if he were to be challenged; but he did not know the phrase.)

  An arrogant human man, wearing a billowing red cloak, looked at him sharply as he took a belt, hooked it and stepped into the shaft. When Rod stepped free, he and the man were on a level.

  Rod tried to look like a humble, modest messenger, but the strange voice grated his ears:

  “Just what do you think you are doing? This is a human shaft.”

  Rod pretended that he did not know it was himself whom the red-cloaked man was addressing. He continued to float quietly upward, his magnet-belt tugging uncomfortably at his waist.

  A pain in the ribs made him turn suddenly, almost losing his balance in the belt.

  “Animal!” cried the man. “Speak up or die.”

  Still holding his package of books, Rod said mildly, “I’m on an errand and I was told to go this way.”

  The man’s senseless hostility gave caliber to his voice: “And who told you?”

  “C’mell,” said Rod absently.

  The man and his companions laughed at that, and for some reason their laughter had no humor in it, just savagery, cruelty, and—way down underneath—something of fear. “Listen to that,” said the man in a red cloak, “one animal says another animal told it to do something.” He whipped out a knife.

  “What are you doing?” cried Rod.

  “Just cutting your belt,” said the man. “There’s nobody at all below us and you will make a nice red blob at the bottom of the shaft, cat-man. That ought to teach you which shaft to use.”

  The man actually reached over and seized Rod’s belt.

  He lifted the knife to slash.

  Rod became frightened and angry. His brain ran red.

  He spat thoughts at them—

  pommy!

  shortie!

  Earthie

  red dirty blue stinking little man,

  die, puke, burst, blaze, die!

  * * *

  It all came out in a single flash, faster than he could control it. The red-cloaked man twisted oddly, as if in spasm. His two companions threshed in their belts. They turned slowly.

  High above them, two women began screaming.

  Further up a man was shouting, both with his voice and with his mind, “Police! Help! Police! Police! Brainbomb! Brainbomb! Help!”

  The effort of his telepathic explosion left Rod feeling disoriented and weak. He shook his head and blinked his eyes. He started to wipe his face, only to hit himself on the jaw with the package of books, which he still carried. This aroused him a little. He looked at the three men. Redcloak was dead, his head at an odd angle. The other two seemed to be dead. One was floating upside down, his rump pointing upmost and the two limp legs swinging out at odd angles; the other was rightside up but had sagged in his belt. All three of them kept moving a steady ten meters a minute, right along with Rod.

  There were strange sounds from above.

  An enormous voice, filling the shaft with its volume, roared down: “Stay where you are! Police. Police. Police.”

  Rod glanced at the bodies floating upward. A corridor came by. He reached for the grip-bar, made it, and swung himself into the horizontal passage. He sat down immediately, not getting away from the Upshaft. He thought sharply with his new hiering. Excited, frantic minds beat all around him, looking for enemies, lunatics, crimes, aliens, anything strange.

  Softly he began spieking to the empty corridor and to himself, “I am a dumb cat. I am the messenger C’rod. I must take the books to the gentleman from the stars. I am a dumb cat. I do not know much.”

  A robot, gleaming with the ornamental body-armor of Old Earth, landed at his cross-corridor, looked at Rod, and called up the shaft.

  “Master, here’s one. A c’man with a package.”

  A young subchief came into view, feet first as he
managed to ride down the shaft instead of going up it. He seized the ceiling of the transverse corridor, gave himself a push and (once free of the shaft’s magnetism) dropped heavily on his feet beside Rod. Rod hiered him thinking, “I’m good at this. I’m a good telepath. I clean things up fast. Look at this dumb cat.”

  Rod went on concentrating. “I’m a dumb cat. I have a package to deliver. I’m a dumb cat.”

  The subchief looked down at him scornfully. Rod felt the other’s mind slide over his own in the rough equivalent of a search. He remained relaxed and tried to feel stupid while the other hiered him. Rod said nothing. The subchief flashed his baton over the package, eyeing the crystal knob at the end.

  “Books,” he snorted.

  Rod nodded.

  “You,” said the bright young subchief, “you see bodies?” He spoke in a painfully clear, almost childish version of the Old Common Tongue.

  Rod held up three fingers and then pointed upward.

  “You, cat-man, you feel the brainbomb!”

  Rod, beginning to enjoy the game, threw his head backward and let out a cattish yowl expressing pain. The subchief could not help clapping his hands over his ears. He started to turn away. “I can see what you think of it, cat-fellow. You’re pretty stupid, aren’t you?”

  Still thinking low dull thoughts as evenly as he could, Rod said promptly and modestly, “Me smart cat. Very handsome too.”

  “Come along,” said the subchief to his robot, disregarding Rod altogether.

  Rod plucked at his sleeve.

  The subchief turned back.

  Very humbly Rod said, “Sir and Master, which way, Hostel of Singing Birds, Room Nine?”

  “Mother of poodles!” cried the subchief. “I’m on a murder case and this dumb cat asks me for directions.” He was a decent young man and he thought for a minute. “This way—” said he, pointing up the Upshaft—“it’s twenty more meters and then the third street over. But that’s ‘people only.’ It’s about a kilometer over to the steps for animals.” He stood, frowning, and then swung on one of his robots: “Wush’, you see this cat!”

  “Yes, master, a cat-man, very handsome.”

  “So you think he’s handsome, too. He already thinks so, so that makes it unanimous. He may be handsome, but he’s dumb. Wush’, take this cat-man to the address he tells you. Use the Upshaft by my authority. Don’t put a belt on him, just hug him.”

  Rod was immeasurably grateful that he had slipped his shaftbelt off and left it negligently on the rack just before the robot arrived.

  The robot seized him around the waist with what was literally a grip of iron. They did not wait for the slow upward magnetic drive of the shaft to lift them. The robot had some kind of a jet in his backpack and lifted Rod with sickening speed to the next level. He pushed Rod into the corridor and followed him.

  “Where do you go?” said the robot, very plainly.

  Rod, concentrating on feeling stupid just in case someone might still be trying to hier his mind, said slowly and stumblingly,

  “Hostel of the Singing Birds, Room Nine.”

  The robot stopped still, as though he were communicating telepathically, but Rod’s mind, though alert, could catch not the faintest whisper of telepathic communication. “Hot buttered sheep!” thought Rod. “He’s using radio to check the address with his headquarters right from here!”

  Wush’ appeared to be doing just that. He came to in a moment. They emerged under the sky, filled with Earth’s own moon, the loveliest thing that Rod had ever seen. He did not dare to stop and enjoy the scenery, but he trotted lithely beside the robot-policeman.

  They came down a road with heavy, scented flowers. The wet warm air of Earth spread the sweetness everywhere.

  On their right there was a courtyard with copies of ancient fountains, a dining space now completely empty of diners, a robot-waiter in the corner, and many individual rooms opening on the plaza. The robot-policeman called to the robot-waiter,

  “Where’s number nine?”

  The waiter answered him with a lifting of the hand and an odd twist of the wrist, twice repeated, which the robot-policeman seemed to understand perfectly well.

  “Come along,” he said to Rod, leading the way to an outside stairway which reached up to an outside balcony serving the second story of rooms. One of the rooms had a plain number nine on it.

  Rod was about to tell the robot-policeman that he could see the number nine, when Wush’, with officious kindness, took the doorknob and flung it open with a gesture of welcome to Rod.

  There was the great cough of a heavy gun and Wush’, his head blown almost completely off, clanked metallically to the iron floor of the balcony. Rod instinctively jumped for cover and flattened himself against the wall of the building.

  A handsome man, wearing what seemed to be a black suit, came into the doorway, a heavy-caliber police pistol in his hand.

  “Oh, there you are,” said he to Rod, evenly enough. “Come on in.”

  Rod felt his legs working, felt himself walking into the room despite the effort of his mind to resist. He stopped pretending to be a dumb cat. He dropped the books on the ground and went back to thinking like his normal Old North Australian self, despite the cat body. It did no good. He kept on walking involuntarily, and entered the room.

  As he passed the man himself, he was conscious of a sticky sweet rotten smell, like nothing he had ever smelled before. He also saw that the man, though fully clothed, was sopping wet.

  He entered the room.

  It was raining inside.

  Somebody had jammed the fire-sprinkler system so that a steady rain fell from the ceiling to the floor.

  C’mell stood in the middle of the room, her glorious red hair a wet stringy mop hanging down her shoulders. There was a look of concentration and alarm on her face.

  “I,” said the man, “am Tostig Amaral. This girl said that her husband would come with a policeman. I did not think she was right. But she was right. With a cat-husband there comes a policeman. I shoot the policeman. He is a robot and I can pay the Earth government for as many robots as I like. You are a cat. I can kill you also, and pay the charges on you. But I am a nice man, and I want to make love with your little red cat over there, so I will be generous and pay you something so that you can tell her she is mine and not yours. Do you understand that, cat-man?”

  Rod found himself released from the unexplained muscular bonds which had hampered his freedom.

  “My Lord, my Master from afar,” he said, “C’mell is an underperson. It is the law here that if an underperson and a person become involved in love, the underperson dies and the human person gets brainscrubbed. I am sure, my Master, that you would not want to be brainscrubbed by the Earth authorities. Let the girl go. I agree that you can pay for the robot.”

  Amaral glided across the room. His face was pale, petulant, human, but Rod saw that the black clothes were not clothes at all.

  The “clothes” were mucous membranes, an extension of Amaral’s living skin.

  The pale face turned even more pale with rage.

  “You’re a bold cat-man to talk like that. My body is bigger than yours, and it is poisonous as well. We have had to live hard in the rain of Amazonas Triste, and we have mental and physical powers which you had better not disturb. If you will not take payment, go away anyhow. The girl is mine. What happens to her is my business. If I violate Earth regulations, I will destroy the c’girl and pay for her. Go away, or you die.”

  Rod spoke with deliberate calm and with calculated risk. “Citizen, I play no game. I am not a cat-man but a subject of Her Absent Majesty the Queen, from Old North Australia. I give you warning that it is a man you face, and no mere animal. Let that girl go.”

  C’mell struggled as though she were trying to speak, but could not.

  Amaral laughed, “That’s a lie, animal, and a bold one! I admire you for trying to save your mate. But she is mine. She is a girlygirl and the Instrumentality gave her to me.
She is my pleasure. Go, bold cat! You are a good liar.”

  Rod took his last chance. “Scan me if you will.”

  He stood his ground.

  Amaral’s mind ran over his personality like filthy hands pawing naked flesh. Rod recoiled at the dirtiness and intimacy of being felt by such a person’s thoughts, because he could sense the kinds of pleasure and cruelty which Amaral had experienced. He stood firm, calm, sure, just. He was not going to leave C’mell with this—this monster from the stars, man though he might be, of the old true human stock.

  Amaral laughed. “You’re a man, all right. A boy. A farmer. And you cannot hier or spiek except for the button in your ear. Get out, child, before I box your ears!”

  Rod spoke: “Amaral, I herewith put you in danger.”

  Amaral did not reply with words.

  His peaked sharp face grew paler and the folds of his skin dilated. They quivered, like the edges of wet, torn balloons. The room began to fill with a sickening sweet stench, as though it were a candy shop in which unburied bodies had died weeks before. There was a smell of vanilla, of sugar, of fresh hot cookies, of baked bread, of chocolate boiling in the pot; there was even a whiff of stroon. But as Amaral tensed and shook out his auxiliary skins each smell turned wrong, into a caricature and abomination of itself. The composite was hypnotic. Rod glanced at C’mell. She had turned completely white.

  That decided him.

  The calm which he had found with the Catmaster might be good, but there were moments for calm and other moments for anger.