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

by Cordwainer Smith

  “I’m not a horse,” thought Casher O’Neill, “but I am alive.”

  “Don’t complicate things,” thought the horse at him, though Casher realized it was his own mind and not the horse’s which supplied the words.

  “Do you want to die?”

  “To no-horse? Yes, if this room, forever, is the end of things.”

  “What would you like better?” thought Genevieve, and her thoughts were like a cascade of newly-minted silver coins falling into all their minds: brilliant, clean, bright, innocent.

  The answer was quick: “Dirt beneath my hooves, and wet air again, and a man on my back.”

  The dog-woman interrupted: “Dear horse, you know me?”

  “You’re a dog,” thought the horse. “Goo-oo-oo-ood dog!”

  “Right,” thought the happy old slattern, “and I can tell these people how to take care of you. Sleep now, and when you waken you will be on the way to happiness.”

  She thought the command sleep so powerfully at the old horse that Casher O’Neill and Genevieve both started to fall unconscious and had to be caught by the hospital attendants.

  As they re-gathered their wits, she was finishing her commands to the surgeon. “—and put about 40% supplementary oxygen into the air. He’ll have to have a real person to ride him, but some of your orbiting sentries would rather ride a horse up there than do nothing. You can’t repair the heart. Don’t try it. Hypnosis will take care of the sand of Mizzer. Just load his mind with one or two of the drama-cubes packed full of desert adventure. Now, don’t you worry about me. I’m not going to give you any more suggestions. People-man, you!” She laughed. “You can forgive us dogs anything, except for being right. It makes you feel inferior for a few minutes. Never mind. I’m going back downstairs to my dishes. I love them, I really do. Good-bye, you pretty thing,” she said to Genevieve. “And good-bye, wanderer! Good luck to you,” she said to Casher O’Neill. “You will remain miserable as long as you seek justice, but when you give up, righteousness will come to you and you will be happy. Don’t worry. You’re young and it won’t hurt you to suffer a few more years. Youth is an extremely curable disease, isn’t it?”

  She gave them a full curtsy, like one Lady of the Instrumentality saying good-bye to another. Her wrinkled old face was lit up with smiles, in which happiness was mixed with a tiniest bit of playful mockery.

  “Don’t mind me, boss,” she said to the surgeon. “Dishes, here I come.” She swept out of the room.

  “See what I mean?” said the surgeon. “She’s so horribly happy! How can anyone run a hospital if a dishwasher gets all over the place, making people happy? We’d be out of jobs. Her ideas were good, though.”

  They were. They worked. Down to the last letter of the dog-woman’s instructions.

  There was argument from the council. Casher O’Neill went along to see them in session.

  One councillor, Bashnack, was particularly vociferous in objecting to any action concerning the horse. “Sire,” he cried, “sire! We don’t even know the name of the animal! I must protest this action, when we don’t know—”

  “That we don’t,” assented Philip Vincent. “But what does a name have to do with it?”

  “The horse has no identity, not even the identity of an animal. It is just a pile of meat left over from the estate of Perinö. We should kill the horse and eat the meat ourselves. Or, if we do not want to eat the meat, then we should sell it off-planet. There are plenty of peoples around here who would pay a pretty price for genuine Earth meat. Pay no attention to me, sire! You are the Hereditary Dictator and I am nothing. I have no power, no property, nothing. I am at your mercy. All I can tell you is to follow your own best interests. I have only a voice. You cannot reproach me for using my voice when I am trying to help you, sire, can you? That’s all I am doing, helping you. If you spend any credits at all on this animal you will be doing wrong, wrong, wrong. We are not a rich planet. We have to pay for expensive defenses just in order to stay alive. We cannot even afford to pay for air that our children can go out and play. And you want to spend money on a horse which cannot even talk! I tell you, sire, this council is going to vote against you, just to protect your own interests and the interests of the Honorable Genevieve as Eventual Title-holder of all Pontoppidan. You are not going to get away with this, sire! We are helpless before your power, but we will insist on advising you—”

  “Hear! Hear!” cried several of the councillors, not the least dismayed by the slight frown of the Hereditary Dictator.

  “I will take the word,” said Philip Vincent himself.

  Several had had their hands raised, asking for the floor. One obstinate man kept his hand up even when the Dictator announced his intention to speak. Philip Vincent took note of him, too:

  “You can talk when I am through, if you want to.”

  He looked calmly around the room, smiled imperceptibly at his niece, gave Casher O’Neill the briefest of nods, and then announced:

  “Gentlemen, it’s not the horse which is on trial. It’s Pontoppidan. It’s we who are trying ourselves. And before whom are we trying ourselves, gentlemen? Each of us is before that most awful of courts, his own conscience.

  “If we kill that horse, gentlemen, we will not be doing the horse a great wrong. He is an old animal, and I do not think that he will mind dying very much, now that he is away from the ordeal of loneliness which he feared more than death. After all, he has already had his great triumph—the climb up the cliff of gems, the jump across the volcanic vent, the rescue by people whom he wanted to find. The horse has done so well that he is really beyond us. We can help him, a little, or we can hurt him, a little; beside the immensity of his accomplishment, we cannot really do very much either way.

  “No, gentlemen, we are not judging the case of the horse. We are judging space. What happens to a man when he moves out into the Big Nothing? Do we leave Old Earth behind? Why did civilization fall? Will it fall again? Is civilization a gun or a blaster or a laser or a rocket? Is it even a planoforming ship or a pinlighter at his work? You know as well as I do, gentlemen, that civilization is not what we can do. If it had been, there would have been no fall of Ancient Man. Even in the Dark Ages they had a few fusion bombs, they could make some small guided missiles, and they even had weapons like the Kaskaskas Effect, which we have never been able to rediscover. The Dark Ages weren’t dark because people lost techniques or science. They were dark because people lost people. It’s a lot of work to be human, and it’s work which must be kept up, or it begins to fade. Gentlemen, the horse judges us.

  “Take the word, gentlemen. ‘Civilization’ is itself a lady’s word. There were female writers in a country called France who made that word popular in the third century before space travel. To be ‘civilized’ meant for people to be tame, to be kind, to be polished. If we kill this horse, we are wild. If we treat the horse gently, we are tame. Gentlemen, I have only one witness and that witness will utter only one word. Then you shall vote and vote freely.”

  There was a murmur around the table at this announcement. Philip Vincent obviously enjoyed the excitement he had created. He let them murmur on for a full minute or two before he slapped the table gently and said, “Gentlemen, the witness. Are you ready?”

  There was a murmur of assent. Bashnack tried to say “It’s still a question of public funds!” but his neighbors shushed him. The table became quiet. All faces turned toward the Hereditary Dictator.

  “Gentlemen, the testimony. Genevieve, is that what you yourself told me to say? Is civilization always a woman’s choice first, and only later a man’s?”

  “Yes,” said Genevieve, with a happy, open smile.

  The meeting broke up amid laughter and applause.

  V

  A month later Casher O’Neill sat in a room in a medium-size planoforming liner. They were out of reach of Pontoppidan. The Hereditary Dictator had not changed his mind and cut him down with green beams. Casher had strange memories, not bad ones for
a young man.

  He remembered Genevieve weeping in the garden.

  “I’m romantic,” she cried, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of his cape. “Legally I’m the owner of this planet, rich, powerful, free. But I can’t leave here. I’m too important. I can’t marry whom I want to marry. I’m too important. My uncle can’t do what he wants to do—he’s Hereditary Dictator and he always must do what the Council decides after weeks of chatter. I can’t love you. You’re a prince and a wanderer, with travels and battles and justice and strange things ahead of you. I can’t go. I’m too important. I’m too sweet! I’m too nice; I hate, hate, hate myself sometimes. Please, Casher, could you take a flier and run away with me into space.”

  “Your uncle’s lasers could cut us to pieces before we got out.”

  He held her hands and looked gently down into her face. At this moment he did not feel the fierce, aggressive, happy glow which an able young man feels in the presence of a beautiful and tender young woman. He felt something much stranger, softer, quieter—an emotion very sweet to the mind and restful to the nerves. It was the simple, clear compassion of one person for another. He took a chance for her sake, because the “dark knowledge” was wonderful but very dangerous in the wrong hands.

  He took both her beautiful little hands in his, so that she looked up at him and realized that he was not going to kiss her. Something about his stance made her realize that she was being offered a more precious gift than a sky-lit romantic kiss in a garden. Besides, it was just touching helmets.

  He said to her, with passion and kindness in his voice:

  “You remember that dog-woman, the one who works with the dishes in the hospital?”

  “Of course. She was good and bright and happy, and helped us all.”

  “Go work with her, now and then. Ask her nothing. Tell her nothing. Just work with her at her machines. Tell her I said so. Happiness is catching. You might catch it. I think I did myself, a little.”

  “I think I understand you,” said Genevieve softly. “Casher, good-bye and good, good luck to you. My uncle expects us.”

  Together they went back into the palace.

  Another memory was the farewell to Philip Vincent, the Hereditary Dictator of Pontoppidan. The calm, clean-shaven, ruddy, well-fleshed face looked at him with benign regard. Casher O’Neill felt more respect for this man when he realized that ruthlessness is often the price of peace, and vigilance the price of wealth.

  “You’re a clever young man. A very clever young man. You may win back the power of your Uncle Kuraf.”

  “I don’t want that power!” cried Casher O’Neill.

  “I have advice for you,” said the Hereditary Dictator, “and it is good advice or I would not be here to give it. I have learned the political arts well: otherwise I would not be alive. Do not refuse power. Just take it and use it wisely. Do not hide from your wicked uncle’s name. Obliterate it. Take the name yourself and rule so well that, in a few decades, no one will remember your uncle. Just you. You are young. You can’t win now. But it is in your fate to grow and to triumph. I know it. I am good at these things. I have given you your weapon. I am not tricking you. It is packed safely and you may leave with it.”

  Casher O’Neill was breathing softly, believing it all, and trying to think of words to thank the stout, powerful older man when the dictator added, with a little laugh in his voice:

  “Thank you, too, for saving me money. You’ve lived up to your name, Casher.”

  “Saved you money?”

  “The alfalfa. The horse wanted alfalfa.”

  “Oh, that idea!” said Casher O’Neill. “It was obvious. I don’t deserve much credit for that.”

  “I didn’t think of it,” said the Hereditary Dictator, “and my staff didn’t either. We’re not stupid. That shows you are bright. You realized that Perinö must have had a food converter to keep the horse alive in the Hippy Dipsy. All we did was set it to alfalfa and we saved ourselves the cost of a shipload of horse food twice a year. We’re glad to save that credit. We’re well off here, but we don’t like to waste things. You may bow to me now, and leave.”

  Casher O’Neill had done so, with one last glance at the lovely Genevieve, standing fragile and beautiful beside her uncle’s chair.

  His last memory was very recent.

  He had paid two hundred thousand credits for it, right on this liner. He had found the Stop-Captain, bored now that the ship was in flight and the Go-Captain had taken over.

  “Can you get me a telepathic fix on a horse?”

  “What’s a horse?” said the Stop-Captain. “Where is it? Do you want to pay for it?”

  “A horse,” said Casher O’Neill patiently, “is an unmodified earth animal. Not underpeople. A big one, but quite intelligent. This one is in orbit right around Pontoppidan. And I will pay the usual price.”

  “A million Earth credits,” said the Stop-Captain.

  “Ridiculous!” cried Casher O’Neill.

  They settled on two hundred thousand credits for a good fix and ten thousand for the use of the ship’s equipment even if there were failure. It was not a failure. The technician was a snake-man: he was deft, cool, and superb at his job. In only a few minutes he passed the headset to Casher O’Neill, saying politely, “This is it, I think.”

  It was. He had reached right into the horse’s mind.

  The endless sands of Mizzer swam before Casher O’Neill. The long lines of the Twelve Niles converged in the distance. He galloped steadily and powerfully. There were other horses nearby, other riders, other things, but he himself was conscious only of the beat of the hooves against the strong moist sand, the firmness of the appreciative rider upon his back. Dimly, as in a hallucination, Casher O’Neill could also see the little orbital ship in which the old horse cantered in mid-air, with an amused cadet sitting on his back. Up there, with no weight, the old worn-out heart would be good for many, many years. Then he saw the horse’s paradise again. The flash of hooves threatened to overtake him, but he outran them all. There was the expectation of a stable at the end, a rubdown, good succulent green food, and the glimpse of a filly in the morning.

  The horse of Pontoppidan felt extremely wise. He had trusted people—people, the source of all kindness, all cruelty, all power among the stars. And the people had been good. The horse felt very much horse again. Casher felt the old body course along the river’s edge like a dream of power, like a completion of service, like an ultimate fulfillment of companionship.

  On the Storm Planet

  I

  “At two seventy-five in the morning,” said the Administrator to Casher O’Neill, “you will kill this girl with a knife. At two seventy-seven, a fast groundcar will pick you up and bring you back here. Then the power cruiser will be yours. Is that a deal?”

  He held out his hand as if he wanted Casher O’Neill to shake it then and there, making some kind of an oath or bargain.

  Casher did not want to slight the man, so he picked up his glass and said, “Let’s drink to the deal, first!”

  The Administrator’s quick, restless, darting eyes looked Casher up and down very suspiciously. The warm sea-wet air blew through the room. The Administrator seemed wary, suspicious, alert, but underneath his slight hostility there was another emotion, of which Casher could perceive just the edge. Fatigue with its roots in bottomless despair: despair set deep in irrecoverable fatigue?

  That other emotion, which Casher could barely discern, was very strange indeed. On all his voyages back and forth through the inhabited worlds, Casher had met many odd types of men and women. He had never seen anything like this Administrator before—brilliant, erratic, boastful. His title was “Mr. Commissioner” and he was an ex-Lord of the Instrumentality on this planet of Henriada, where the population had dropped from six hundred million persons down to some forty thousand. Indeed, local government had disappeared into limbo, and this odd man, with the title of “Administrator,” was the only law and civil authority which the pla
net knew.

  Nevertheless, he had a surplus power cruiser and Casher O’Neill was determined to get that cruiser as a part of his long plot to return to his home planet of Mizzer and to unseat the usurper, Colonel Wedder.

  The Administrator stared sharply, wearily at Casher and then he, too, lifted his glass. The green twilight colored his liquor and made it seem like some strange poison. It was only Earth-byegarr, though a little on the strong side.

  With a sip, only a sip, the older man relaxed a little. “You may be out to trick me, young man. You may think that I am an old fool running an abandoned planet. You may even be thinking that killing this girl is some kind of a crime. It is not a crime at all. I am the Administrator of Henriada and I have ordered that girl killed every year for the last eighty years. She isn’t even a girl, to start with. Just an underperson. Some kind of an animal turned into a domestic servant. I can even appoint you a deputy sheriff. Or chief of detectives. That might be better. I haven’t had a chief of detectives for a hundred years and more. You are my chief of detectives. Go in tomorrow. The house is not hard to find. It’s the biggest and best house left on this planet. Go in tomorrow morning. Ask for her master and be sure that you use the correct title, ‘Mister and Owner Murray Madigan.’ The robots will tell you to keep out. If you persist, she will come to the door. That’s when you will stab her through the heart, right there in the doorway. My groundcar will race up one metric minute later. You jump in and come back here. We’ve been through this before. Why don’t you agree? Don’t you know who I am?”

  “I know perfectly well”—Casher O’Neill smiled—“who you are, Mr. Commissioner and Administrator. You are the honorable Rankin Meiklejohn, once of Earth Two. After all, the Instrumentality itself gave me a permit to land on this planet on private business. They knew who I was, too, and what I wanted. There’s something funny about all this. Why should you give me a power cruiser—the best ship, you yourself say, in your whole fleet—just for killing one modified animal which looks and talks like a girl? Why me? Why the visitor? Why the man from off-world? Why should you care whether this particular underperson is killed or not? If you’ve given the order for her death eighty times in eighty years, why hasn’t it been carried out long ago? Mind you, Mr. Administrator, I’m not saying no. I want that cruiser. I want it very much indeed. But what’s the deal? What’s the trick? Is it the house you want?”