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

by Cordwainer Smith

  “Yes, I could see that she had a great deal of respect from many kinds of people. If she was in favor of a rebellion, I am sure she must have been correct. Carlotta was always a most upright person. And now I must tell you about the plan that Oda proposes.” She proceeded to do so.

  “It might work,” the Bear said. “True Men have been very careful about observing the tambu of the Fighting Trees. In fact, I may even have an improvement on Oda’s idea.” He began to get excited and dropped his spectacles. Joachim picked them up.

  “Bear,” he said, “you always do that when you’re excited.”

  “I think it means I have a good idea,” the Bear said. “Look, why don’t we use the manshonyaggers?”

  The others looked at him in bewilderment and Laird said slowly, “I think I may see what you’re getting at. The manshonyaggers, although there are not many of them left, respond only to German and—”

  “And the leaders of the Jwindz are Chinesian, too proud to have learned another language,” the Bear broke in, smiling.

  “Yes. So if we establish headquarters in the Fighting Trees and let it be known that the new Vomact is there—”

  “And surround the grove with manshonyaggers—”

  They were breaking in upon each other as the idea began to take shape. The excitement grew.

  “I think it will work,” Laird said.

  “I think so too,” Joachim reassured him. “I will get together the Band of Cousins and after you’re established in the Fighting Trees, we’ll make a raid on the drug center and bring the tranquilizers to the grove, where we can destroy them.”

  “The Band of Cousins?” Juli asked.

  “Carlotta’s and my descendants who have not joined the Instrumentality of the Jwindz,” Laird told her.

  “Why would any of them have joined?”

  Laird shrugged. “Greed, power, all kinds of very human motives. Even an illusion of physical immortality. We tried to give our children ideals but the corruption of power is very great. You must know that.”

  Remembering a howling, hateful face with a black mustache above the mouth, a face from her own time and place, Juli nodded.

  Herkie and the Bear, Charls and Oda, Bil and Kae accompanied Juli into the grove of Fighting Trees. At first Bil and Kae were reluctant. It was only after Oda’s confession of having eaten a pod that they agreed to go, and then Bil’s reaction was that of a typical father.

  “How could you take such a chance?” he asked Oda.

  Her eyes were bright and her tail wagged furiously. “I just had to,” she said.

  He glanced at Herkie. “Now if she had done it…”

  Herkie drew herself up to her full height. “I think that the relationship of curiosity and cats has, perhaps, been a little exaggerated,” she said. “Actually, we’re generally rather careful.”

  “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful,” Bil said hastily, and Herkie saw his tail droop.

  “It’s a common misconception,” she said kindly, and Bil’s tail straightened.

  When they reached the center of the grove, they spread a picnic and gathered around. Juli was hungry. In the City she had been offered synthetic food, no doubt healthful and full of vitamins but not satisfying to the appetite of an Ancient Prussian girl. The animal-derived persons had brought real food and Juli ate happily.

  The Bear, in particular, noticed her enjoyment. “You see,” he said, “that’s how they did it.”

  “Did what?” asked Juli, her mouth full of bread.

  “How they drugged the majority of True Men. True Men were so accustomed to living on synthetic foodstuffs that when the Jwindz introduced tranquilizers into the synthetics. True Men never knew the difference. I hope that if the Band of Cousins succeeds in capturing the drug supply, the withdrawal symptoms for the True Men will not be too severe.”

  Bil looked up. “That’s something we should consider,” he said. “If there are severe withdrawal symptoms, a number of the True Men may be tempted to join the Jwindz in an attempt to recover the drugs.”

  The Bear nodded. “That’s what I was thinking,” he said.

  It was several days before Laird, Joachim, and the Band of Cousins joined them. By this time Juli had become almost accustomed to the daylight darkness under the thick leaves and branches of the Fighting Trees, and the soft-glowing illumination at night.

  Laird greeted her affectionately. “I have missed you,” he said simply. “Already I have grown very attached to you.”

  Juli blushed and changed the subject, “Did you—or, rather, the Band of Cousins—succeed?”

  “Oh, yes. There was very little difficulty. The officials of the Jwindz had grown quite careless since they have had the minds of most True Men under their control for generations. It was only a matter of Joachim’s pretending to be tranquilized, and he had free access to the drug room. Over a period of days he managed to transfer the entire supply to the Cousins and to substitute placebos. I wonder when that will be discovered.”

  “As soon as the first withdrawal symptoms occur, I should think,” Joachim ventured.

  Something that had been nagging at the back of Juli’s mind surfaced. “You have your grandson here, and the Band of Cousins. But where are your and Carlotta’s own children? Obviously you had some.”

  His face saddened. “Of course. But since they were half-Ancient, they could not only not be rejuvenated, but the combination of the chemistry made it such that their lives could not even be prolonged. They all died in their seventies and eighties. It was a great sadness to Carlotta and me. You too, my dear, if we have children, must be prepared for that. By the time of the next generation, however, the Ancient blood is sufficiently diluted that rejuvenation may take place. Joachim is a hundred and fifty years old.”

  “And you? And you?” she said.

  He looked at her. “This is very hard on you, isn’t it? I’m over three hundred years old.”

  Juli could not disbelieve but neither could she quite comprehend. Laird was so handsome and youthful; Carlotta had been so old.

  She tried to shake the cobwebs from her mind. “What do we do with the tranquilizers now that we have them?”

  Oda had approached at the latter part of the conversation. Her eyes sparkled and her tail wagged madly. “I have an idea,” she announced.

  “I hope it’s as good as your last one,” Laird said.

  “I hope so too. Look, why don’t we just feed the tranquilizers back to the officials? The Jwindz probably will never notice. Then we won’t have to worry about fighting them. They could just gradually die off or maybe…do you think…we could send them out into space? To another planet?”

  Laird nodded slowly. “You do have good ideas. Yes, to feed the tranquilizers back to them…but how?”

  “We work well together,” the Bear said, indicating Oda. “She has an idea and it triggers another one in my mind.” Carefully he put on his spectacles. “I have here a map of the terrain in this vicinity. Except for the cenote there is no water for many kilometers in any direction. If we dropped the tranquilizers—all of them—into the cenote, and then if one of the Cousins could prepare the synthetic food of the Jwindz’s officials so it was very spicy—I think that the problem would be solved.”

  Laird said, “We do have one of the Cousins who has infiltrated the Jwindz. But what would induce them to drink the water?”

  Charls had joined the group. “I have heard,” he said, “of an ancient spice people used to like which eventually produced thirst. It used to be found in the oceans, before they were filled with grass. But some of it remains on the banks of the sea. I believe that it was called ‘salt.’”

  “Now that you mention it, I’ve heard of that too.” The Bear nodded wisely. “So that is what we need to do. ‘Salt.’ We introduce it into their food, then we entice them to the grove with the knowledge that the new Vomact is here together with the heart of a rebellion. It’s risky but I think it’s the best idea, or combination of ideas, yet.�
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  Laird agreed. “It’s as you say, risky, but it may work, and they’re not likely to execute any of us if it doesn’t. They’ll just tranquilize us. I think that we have a better than even chance of winning. And if True Man is not revitalized, not freed from this bondage of tranquility and apathy, I believe that the entire breed will be extinguished within a few hundred years. They have come to the point that they care about nothing.”

  All worlds know how the plan was carried out. It was exactly as the Bear had foretold. The thirsty officials of the Jwindz, their food highly salted, drank eagerly from the water of the cenote and were quickly tranquilized. They put up no opposition to the members of the rebellion who soon thereafter emerged from the shelter of the Fighting Trees.

  Joachim was sad. “One of my brothers had joined them,” he said.

  Laird laid a comforting arm across his shoulder. “Well, he’s only tranquilized. We may be able to help him as he comes out of it.”

  “Perhaps, but it violates all my principles.”

  “Don’t be too high-minded, Joachim. Principles are fine, but there is such a thing as rehabilitation.”

  And this was the way that the Instrumentality of Mankind was established. In time it would govern many worlds. Juli, by virtue of being the Vomact, became one of the first Ladies of the Instrumentality. Laird, as her husband, was one of the first Lords.

  Juli lived to see some of her descendants among the first great Scanners in Space. She was very proud of them, and she was very old. Laird, of course, was as young as ever. All of her animal-descended friends had long since died. She missed them, although Laird was ever faithful.

  At last, so old that she had difficulty in moving, Juli called Laird to her. She looked up into his handsome face. “My darling, you have made me very happy, just as you did Carlotta. But now I am old and, I think, dying. You are still so young and vital. I wish it were possible for me to undergo the rejuvenation, but since it isn’t possible, I think we should call in Karla.”

  He responded so rapidly that her feelings were somewhat hurt. “Yes, I think that we should call in Karla.”

  He turned away from her momentarily.

  She said, with a hint of tears in her voice, “I know that you will make her happy and love her very much.”

  His silence continued for a moment before he turned back to her.

  She saw suddenly that there were lines in his face, lines she had never seen before.

  “What is happening to you?” she asked.

  “My darling and last love,” he said, “I will be losing you twice. I cannot bear it. I have asked the physician for medicine to counteract the rejuvenation. In an hour I shall be as old as you. We are going together. And somewhere out there we will meet Carlotta and we will hold hands, the three of us, among the stars. Karla will find her own man and her own fate.”

  Together they sat and watched the descent of Karla’s spacecraft.

  Scanners Live in Vain

  Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luĉi’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg were broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, Chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face, and back with the mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.

  “I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch. It’s my worry, isn’t it?”

  When Luĉi answered, he saw only a part of her words as he read her lips: “Darling…you’re my husband…right to love you…dangerous…do it…dangerous…wait…”

  He faced her, but put sound in his voice, letting the blare hurt her again: “I tell you, I am going to cranch.”

  Catching her expression, he became rueful and a little tender: “Can’t you understand what it means to me? To get out of this horrible prison in my own head? To be a man again—hearing your voice, smelling smoke? To feel again—to feel my feet on the ground, to feel the air move against my face? Don’t you know what it means?”

  Her wide-eyed worrisome concern thrust him back into pure annoyance. He read only a few of the words as her lips moved: “…love you…your own good…don’t you think I want you to be human?…your own good…too much…he said…they said…”

  When he roared at her, he realized that his voice must be particularly bad. He knew that the sound hurt her no less than did the words: “Do you think I wanted you to marry a Scanner? Didn’t I tell you we’re almost as low as the habermans? We’re dead, I tell you. We’ve got to be dead to do our work. How can anybody go to the Up-and-Out? Can you dream what raw Space is? I warned you. But you married me. All right, you married a man. Please, darling, let me be a man. Let me hear your voice, let me feel the warmth of being alive, of being human. Let me!”

  He saw by her look of stricken assent that he had won the argument. He did not use his voice again. Instead, he pulled his tablet up from where it hung against his chest. He wrote on it, using the pointed fingernail of his right forefinger—the talking nail of a Scanner—in quick cleancut script: Pls, drlng, whrs crnching wire?

  She pulled the long gold-sheathed wire out of the pocket of her apron. She let its field sphere fall to the carpeted floor. Swiftly, dutifully, with the deft obedience of a Scanner’s wife, she wound the Cranching Wire around his head, spirally around his neck and chest. She avoided the instruments set in his chest. She even avoided the radiating scars around the instruments, the stigmata of men who had gone Up and into the Out. Mechanically he lifted a foot as she slipped the wire between his feet. She drew the wire taut. She snapped the small plug into the High-Burden control next to his Heart-Reader. She helped him to sit down, arranging his hands for him, pushing his head back into the cup at the top of the chair. She turned then, full-face toward him, so that he could read her lips easily. Her expression was composed:

  “Ready, darling?”

  She knelt, scooped up the sphere at the other end of the wire, stood erect calmly, her back to him. He scanned her, and saw nothing in her posture but grief which would have escaped the eye of anyone but a Scanner. She spoke: he could see her chest-muscles moving. She realized that she was not facing him, and turned so that he could see her lips:

  “Ready at last?”

  He smiled a yes.

  She turned her back to him again. (Luĉi could never bear to watch him go Under-the-Wire.) She tossed the wire-sphere into the air. It caught in the force-field, and hung there. Suddenly it glowed. That was all. All—except for the sudden red stinking roar of coming back to his senses. Coming back, across the wild threshold of pain—

  I

  When he awakened under the wire, he did not feel as though he had just cranched. Even though it was the second cranching within the week, he felt fit. He lay in the chair. His ears drank in the sound of air touching things in the room. He heard Luĉi breathing in the next room, where she was hanging up the wire to cool. He smelt the thousand-and-one smells that are in anybody’s room: the crisp freshness of the germ-burner, the sour-sweet tang of the humidifier, the odor of the dinner they had just eaten, the smells of clothes, furniture, of people themselves. All these were pure delight. He sang a phrase or two of his favorite song:

  Here’s to the haberman, Up and Out!

  Up—oh!—and Out—oh!—Up and Out!…

  He heard Luĉi chuckle in the next room. He gloated over the sounds of her dress as she swished to the doorway.

  She gave him her crooked little smile. “You sound all right. Are you all right, really?”

  Even with this luxury of senses, he scanned. He took the flash-quick inventory which constituted his professional skill. His eyes swept in the news of the instruments. Nothing showed off scale, beyond the Nerve Compression hanging in
the edge of Danger. But he could not worry about the Nerve-box. That always came through cranching. You couldn’t get under the wire without having it show on the Nerve-box. Some day the box would go to Overload and drop back down to Dead. That was the way a haberman ended. But you couldn’t have everything. People who went to the Up-and-Out had to pay the price for Space.

  Anyhow, he should worry! He was a Scanner. A good one, and he knew it. If he couldn’t scan himself, who could? This cranching wasn’t too dangerous. Dangerous, but not too dangerous.

  Luĉi put out her hand and ruffled his hair as if she had been reading his thoughts, instead of just following them: “But you know you shouldn’t have! You shouldn’t!”

  “But I did!” He grinned at her.

  Her gaiety still forced, she said: “Come on, darling, let’s have a good time. I have almost everything there is in the icebox—all your favorite tastes. And I have two new records just full of smells. I tried them out myself, and even I liked them. And you know me—”

  “Which?”

  “Which what, you old darling?”

  He slipped his hand over her shoulders as he limped out of the room. (He could never go back to feeling the floor beneath his feet, feeling the air against his face, without being bewildered and clumsy. As if cranching was real, and being a haberman was a bad dream. But he was a haberman, and a Scanner. “You know what I meant, Luĉi…the smells, which you have. Which one did you like, on the record?”

  “Well-l-l,” said she, judiciously, “there were some lamb chops that were the strangest things—”