The Rediscovery of Man - The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith - Illustrated

by Cordwainer Smith

  Again Herkie patted her hand. “Of course it is.”

  Juli lay back and looked at the ceiling. I must be in some other world. No, Herkie thought at her, but you’ve been gone a long time.

  The Bear came into the room, “Feeling better?” he asked.

  Juli merely nodded.

  “In the morning we will decide what to do,” he said. “I have some connections with the True Men, and I think that we had best take you to the Vomact.”

  Juli sat up as if hit by a bolt of lightning. “What do you mean, ‘the Vomacht’? That is my name, vom Acht!”

  “I thought it might be,” the Bear said. Herkie, peering at her from the bedside, nodded wisely.

  “I was sure of it,” she said. Then, “I think you need some good hot soup and a rest. In the morning it will all straighten itself out.”

  The tiredness of years seemed to settle in Juli’s bones. I do need to rest, she thought. I need to get things sorted out in my mind. So suddenly that she did not even have a chance to be startled by it, she was asleep.

  Herkie and the Bear studied her face. “There’s a remarkable resemblance,” the Bear said. Herkie nodded in agreement. “It’s the time differential I’m worried about. Do you think that will be important?”

  “I don’t know,” Herkie replied. “Since I’m not human, I don’t know what bothers people.” She straightened and stretched to her full length. “I know!” she said. “I do know! She must have been sent here to help us with the rebellion!”

  “No,” the Bear said. “She has been too long in Time for her arrival to have been intentional. It is true that she may help us, she may very well help us, but I think that her arrival at this particular time and place is fortuitous rather than planned.”

  “Sometimes I think I understand a particular human mind,” Herkie said, “but I’m sure you’re correct. I can hardly wait for them to meet each other!”

  “Yes,” he said, “although I’m afraid that it’s going to be rather traumatic. In more than one way.”

  When Juli awoke after her deep sleep, she found a thoughtful Herkie awaiting her.

  Juli stretched and her mind, still uncontrolled, asked: Are you really a cat?

  Yes. Herkie thought back at her. But you are going to have to discipline that thought process of yours. Everyone can read your thoughts.

  I’m sorry, Juli spieked, but I’m just not used to all this telepathy.

  “I know.” Herkie had switched to German.

  “I still don’t understand how you know German,” Juli said.

  “It’s rather a long story. I learned it from the Bear. I think, perhaps, you had better ask him how he learned it.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m beginning to remember what happened before I fell asleep. The Bear mentioned my name, my family name, vom Acht.”

  Herkie switched the subject. “We’ve made you some clothes. We tried to copy the style of those you had on, but they were coming to pieces so badly that we are not sure we got the new ones right.”

  She looked so anxious to please that Juli reassured her immediately. If they fit, I’m sure they’ll be just fine.

  Oh, they fit, Herkie spieked. We measured you. Now, after your bath and meal, you will dress and the Bear and I will take you to the City. Underpersons like me are not ordinarily allowed in the City, but this time I think that an exception will be made.

  There was something sweet and wise in the face with the clouded blue eyes. Juli felt that Herkie was her friend. I am, Herkie spieked, and Juli was once more made aware that she must learn to control her thoughts, or at least the broadcasting of them.

  You’ll learn, Herkie spieked. It just takes some practice.

  They approached the City on foot, the Bear leading the way, Juli behind him, and Herkie bringing up the rear. They encountered two manshonyaggers along the road but the Bear spoke true Doych to them from some distance and they turned silently and slunk away.

  Juli was fascinated. “What are they?” she asked.

  “Their real name is ‘Menschenjäger’ and they were invented to kill people whose ideas did not accord with those of the Sixth German Reich. But there are very few of them still functional, and so many of us have learned Doych since…since…”

  “Yes?”

  “Since an event you’ll find out about in the City. Now let’s get on with it.”

  They neared the City wall and Juli became conscious of a buzzing sound, and of a powerful force that excluded them. Her hair stood on end and she felt a tingling sensation of mild electrical shock. Obviously there was a force field around the City.

  “What is it?” she cried out.

  “Just a static charge to keep back the Wild,” the Bear said soothingly. “Don’t worry, I have a damper for it.”

  He held up a small device in his right paw, pushed a button on it, and immediately a corridor opened before them.

  When they reached the City wall, the Bear felt carefully along the upper ridge. At a certain point he paused, then reached for a strange-looking key that hung from a cord around his neck.

  Juli could see no difference between this section of the wall and any other but the Bear inserted his key into a notch he had located and a section of the barrier swung up. The three passed through and silently the wall fell back into position.

  The Bear hurried them along dusty streets. Juli saw a number of people but most of them seemed to her aloof, austere, uncaring. They bore little resemblance to the lusty Prussians she remembered.

  Eventually they arrived at the door of a large building that looked old and imposing. Beside the door there was an inscription. The Bear was hurrying them through the entryway.

  Oh, please, Mr. Bear, may I stop to read it?

  Just plain Bear is all right. And yes, of course you may. It may even help you to understand some of the things that you are going to learn today.

  The inscription was in German, and it was in the form of a poem. It looked as though it had been carved hundreds of years earlier (as indeed it had. Juli could not know that at this time).

  Herkie looked up. “Oh, the first…”

  “Hush,” said the Bear.

  Juli read the poem to herself silently.

  Youth

  Fading, fading, going

  Flowing

  Like life blood from our veins…

  Little remains.

  The glorious face

  Erased,

  Replaced

  By one which mirrors tears,

  The years

  Gone by.

  Oh, Youth,

  Linger yet a while!

  Smile

  Still upon us

  The wretched few

  Who worship

  You…

  “I don’t understand it,” said Juli.

  “You will.” the Bear said. “Unfortunately, you will.”

  An official in a bright green robe trimmed with gold approached.

  “We have not had the honor of your presence for some time,” he said respectfully to the Bear.

  “I’ve been rather busy,” the Bear replied. “But how is she?”

  Juli realized with a start that the conversation was not telepathic but was in German. How do all these people know German? She unthinkingly flung her thought abroad.

  Hush came back the simultaneous warnings from Herkie and the Bear.

  Juli felt thoroughly admonished. “I’m sorry,” she almost whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll ever learn the trick.”

  Herkie was immediately sympathetic. “It is a trick.” she said, “but you’re already better at it than you were when you arrived. You just have to be careful. You can’t fling your thoughts everywhere.”

  “Never mind that now,” the Bear said and he turned to the green-uniformed official. “Is it possible to have an audience? I think it’s important.”

  “You may have to wait a little while,” the official said, “but I’m sure she will always grant audience to you.”

&n
bsp; The Bear looked a little smug at that, Juli noticed.

  They sat down to wait and from time to time Herkie patted Juli’s arm reassuringly.

  It was actually not long before the official reappeared. “She will see you now,” he said.

  He led them through a long corridor to a large room at the end of which was a dais with a chair. “Not quite a throne,” Juli thought to herself. Behind the chair stood a young and handsome male, a True Man. In the chair sat a woman, old, old beyond imagining; her wrinkled hands were claws, but in the haggard, wrinkled face one could still detect some trace of beauty.

  Juli’s sense of bewilderment grew. She knew this person, but she did not. Her sense of orientation, already splintered by the events of the past “day,” almost disintegrated. She grabbed Herkie’s hand as if it were the only familiar element in a world she could not understand.

  The woman spoke. Her voice was old and weak, but she spoke in German.

  “So. Juli, you have come. Laird told me he was bringing you in. I am so happy to see you, and to know that you are all right.”

  Juli’s senses reeled. She knew, she knew, but she could not believe. Too much had changed, too much had happened, in the short time that she had returned to life.

  Gasping, tentatively, she whispered, “Carlotta?”

  Her sister nodded. “Yes, Juli, it is I. And this is my husband, Laird.” She nodded her head toward the handsome young man behind her. “He brought me in about two hundred years ago, but unfortunately as an Ancient I cannot undergo the rejuvenation process that has been developed since we left the Earth.”

  Juli began to sob. “Oh, Carlotta, it’s all so hard to believe. And you’re so old! You were only two years older than I.”

  “Darling, I’ve had two hundred years of bliss. They couldn’t rejuvenate me but they could at least prolong my life. Now, it is not from purely altruistic purposes that I have had Laird bring you in. Karla is still out there, but since she was only sixteen when she was suspended, we thought that you would be better suited to the task.

  “In fact, we really didn’t do you any favor in bringing you in because now you too will begin to age. But to be forever in suspended animation is not any life either.”

  “Of course not,” Juli said. “And anyway, if I had lived a normal life, I would have aged.”

  Carlotta leaned over to kiss her.

  “At least we’re together at last,” Juli sighed.

  “Darling,” Carlotta said, “it is wonderful to have even this little time together. You see, I’m dying. There comes a point when, with all technology, the scientists cannot keep a body alive. And we need help, help with the rebellion.”

  “The rebellion?”

  “Yes. Against the Jwindz, They were Chinesians, philosophers. Now they are the true rulers of the Earth, and we—so they believe—are merely their Instrumentality, their police force. Their power is not over the body of man but over the soul. That is almost a forgotten word here now. Say ‘mind’ instead. They call themselves the Perfect Ones and have sought to remake man in their own image. But they are remote, removed, bloodless.

  “They have recruited persons of all races, but man has not responded well. Only a handful aspire to the kind of esthetic perfection the Jwindz have as their goal. So the Jwindz have resorted to their knowledge of drugs and opiates to turn True Man into a tranquilized, indifferent people—to make it easy to govern them, to control everything that they do. Unfortunately some of our”—she nodded toward Laird—“descendants have joined them.

  “We need you, Juli. Since I came back from the ancient world, Laird and I have done what we could to free True Men from this form of slavery, because it is slavery. It is a lack of vitality, a lack of meaning to life. We used to have a word for it in the old days. Remember? ‘Zombie.’”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  During the entire conversation between the sisters, Herkie, the Bear, and Laird had remained silent.

  Now Laird spoke. “Until Carlotta came to us, we were drifting along, uncaring, in the power of the Jwindz. We did not know what it was, really, to be a human being. We felt that our only purpose in life was to serve the Jwindz: If they were perfect, what other function could we perform? It was our duty to serve their needs—to maintain and guard the cities, to keep out the Wild, to administer the drugs. Some of the Instrumentality even preyed upon the Unauthorized Men, the Unforgiven, and, as a last resort, the True Men, to supply their laboratories.

  “But now many of us no longer believe in the perfection of the Jwindz—or perhaps we have come to believe in something more than human perfection. We have been serving men. We should have been serving mankind.

  “Now we feel that the time has come to put an end to this tyranny. Carlotta and I have allies among some of our descendants and among some of the Unforgiven and, as you have seen, even among the Unauthorized Men and other animal-derived persons. I think there must still be a connection from the time that human beings had ‘pets’ in the old days.”

  Juli looked about her and realized that Herkie was quietly purring. “Yes,” she said, “I see what you mean.”

  Laird continued, “What we want to do is to set up a real Instrumentality—not a force for the service of the Jwindz, but one for the service of man. We are determined that never again shall man betray his own image. We will establish the Instrumentality of Mankind, one benevolent but not manipulative.”

  Carlotta nodded slowly. Her aged face showed concern. “I will die in a few days and you will marry Laird. You will be the new Vomact. With any luck by the time you are as old as I am, your descendants and some of mine should have freed the Earth from the power of the Jwindz.”

  Juli again felt completely disoriented. “I’m to marry your husband?”

  Again Laird spoke. “I have loved your sister well for more than two hundred years. I shall love you too, because you are so much like her. Do not think that I am being disloyal. She and I have discussed this for some time before I brought you in. If she were not dying, I should continue to be faithful to her. But now we need you.”

  Carlotta concurred. “It is true. He has made me very happy, and he will make you happy too, through all the years of your life. Juli, I could not have had you brought in had I not had some plan for your future. You could never be happy with one of those drugged, tranquilized True Men. Trust me in this, please. It is the only thing to do.”

  Tears formed in Juli’s eyes. “To have found you at last and then to lose you after such a short time…”

  Herkie patted her hand and Juli looked up to see sympathetic tears in her clouded blue eyes.

  It was three days later that Carlotta died. She died with a smile on her face and Laird and Juli each holding one of her hands. She spoke at the last and pressed their hands. “I’ll see you later. Out among the stars.”

  Juli wept uncontrollably.

  They postponed the wedding ceremony for seven days of mourning. For once the City gates were opened and the static fields of electricity cut off because even the Jwindz could not control the feelings of the animal-derived persons, the Unauthorized Men, even some of the True Men, toward this woman who had come to them from an ancient world.

  The Bear was particularly mournful. “I was the one who found her, you know, after you brought her in,” he said to Laird.

  “I remember.”

  So that’s what the Bear meant when he said ‘another one,’ Bil said.

  Charls and Oda, Bil and Kae were among the mourners. Juli saw them and thought, My dear little puppy-dog people, but this time the thought was loving and not contemptuous.

  Oda’s tail wagged. I’ve thought of something, she spieked at Juli. Can you meet me down by the cenote in two days’ time?

  Yes, thought Juli, proud of herself at being sure, for the first time, that her thought had gone only to the person for whom it was meant. She knew that she had been successful when she glanced at Laird’s face and saw that he had not read her thought.


  When she met Oda at the cenote, Juli did not know what was expected of her—nor what she herself expected.

  You must be very careful in directing your thoughts, Oda spieked. We never know when some of the Jwindz are overhead.

  I think I’m learning, Juli spieked. Oda nodded.

  What my idea was, it was to make use of the Fighting Trees. The True Men are still afraid of the sickness. But, you see, I know that the sickness is gone. I got so tired of brushing past the trees and always worrying about it that I decided to test it out, and I ate a pod from one of the Fighting Trees—and nothing happened. I’ve never been afraid of them since. So if we met there, we rebels, in a grove of the Fighting Trees, the officials of the Jwindz would never find us. They’d be afraid to hunt for us there.

  Juli’s face lightened. That’s a very good idea. May I consult with Laird?

  Certainly. He has always been one of us. And your sister was too.

  Juli was sad again. I feel so alone.

  No. You have Laird, and you have us, and the Bear, and his housekeeper. And in time there will be others. Now we must part.

  Juli returned from her meeting with Oda at the cenote to find Laird deep in conference with the Bear and a young man who bore a singular resemblance to Laird—and to the youthful Carlotta that Juli remembered.

  Laird smiled at her. “This is your great-nephew,” he said, “my grandson.”

  Juli’s perspective of time and age received another jolt. Laird appeared to be no older than his grandson. How do I fit in to this? she wondered, and accidentally broadcast the thought.

  “I know that all of this must be difficult for you to comprehend,” Laird said, taking her hand. “Carlotta had some difficulty in adjusting too. But try, please try, my dear, because we need you so desperately and I, I particularly, have already become dependent on you. I could not face Carlotta’s loss without you.”

  Juli felt a vague sense of embarrassment. “What is my”—she could not say it—“what is his name?”

  “I beg your pardon. He is named Joachim for your uncle.”

  Joachim smiled and then gave her a brief hug. “You see,” he said, “the reason we need your help with the rebellion is the cult that was built up around your sister, my grandmother. When she returned to earth as an Ancient One, there was a kind of cult set up about her. That is why she was ‘The Vomact’ and why you must also be. It is a rallying point for those of us who oppose the power of the Jwindz. Grandmother Carlotta had a minikingdom here, and even the Jwindz could not keep people from coming to pay her court. You must have realized that at the mourning session for her.”