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

by Cordwainer Smith

  “How can she?” exclaimed Casher. “Your whole world of Henriada is bankrupt!”

  “Her part isn’t.”

  “Stop mystifying me,” said Casher. “Tell me who she is and what this is all about.”

  “Put your head in the net,” said Gosigo. “I’m not making puzzles because I want to do so. I have been commanded not to talk.”

  “Because you are a forgetty?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Don’t talk to me that way. Remember, I am not an animal or an underperson. I may be your servant for a few hours, but I am a man. You’ll find out, soon enough. Hold tight!”

  The groundcar came to a panic stop, the spiked teeth eating into the resilient firm neo-asphaltum of the road. At the instant they stopped, the outside corkscrews began chewing their way into the ground. First Casher felt as though his eyes were popping out, because of the suddenness of the deceleration; now he felt like holding the arms of his seat as the tornado reached directly for their car, plucking at it again and again. The enormous outside screws held and he could feel the car straining to meet the gigantic suction of the storm.

  “Don’t worry.” shouted Gosigo over the noise of the storm. “I always pin us down a little bit more by firing the quick-rockets straight up. These cars don’t often go off the road.”

  Casher tried to relax.

  The funnel of the tornado, which seemed almost like a living being, plucked after them once or twice more and then was gone.

  This time, Casher had seen no sign of the air-whales which rode the storms. He had seen nothing but rain and wind and desolation.

  The tornado was gone in a moment. Ghostlike shapes trailed after it in enormous prancing leaps.

  “Wind-men,” said Gosigo, glancing at them incuriously. “Wild people who have learned to live on Henriada. They aren’t much more than animals. We are close to the territory of the lady. They would not dare attack us here.”

  Casher O’Neill was too stunned to query the man or to challenge him.

  Once more the car picked itself up and coursed along the smooth, narrow, winding neo-asphaltum road, almost as though the machine itself were glad to function and to function well.

  VI

  Casher could never quite remember when they went from the howling wildness of Henriada into the stillness and beauty of the domains of Mister Murray Madigan. He could recall the feeling but not the facts.

  The town of Ambiloxi eluded him completely. It was so normal a town, so old-fashioned a little town that he could not think of it very much. Old people sat on the wooden boardwalk taking their afternoon look at the strangers who passed through. Horses were tethered in a row along the main street, between the parked machines. It looked like a peaceful picture from the ancient ages.

  Of tornadoes there was no sign, nor of the hurt and ruin which showed around the house of Rankin Meiklejohn. There were few underpeople or robots about, unless they were so cleverly contrived as to look almost exactly like real people. How can you remember something which is pleasant and non-memorable? Even the buildings did not show signs of being fortified against the frightful storms which had brought the prosperous planet of Henriada to a condition of abandonment and ruin.

  Gosigo, who had a remarkable talent for stating the obvious, said tonelessly, “The weather machines are working here. There is no need for special precaution.”

  But he did not stop in the town for rest, refreshments, conversation, or fuel. He went through deftly and quietly, the gigantic armored groundcar looking out of place among the peaceful and defenseless vehicles. He went as though he had been on the same route many times before, and knew the routine well.

  Once beyond Ambiloxi he speeded up, though at a moderate pace, compared to the frantic elusive action he had taken against storms in the earlier part of the trip. The landscape was earthlike…wet…and most of the ground was covered with vegetation.

  Old radar countermissile towers stood along the road. Casher could not imagine their possible use, even though he was sure, from the looks of them, that they were long obsolete.

  “What’s the countermissile radar for?” he asked, speaking comfortably now that his head was out of the head net.

  Gosigo turned around and gave him a tortured glance in which pain and bewilderment were mixed. “Countermissile radar? Countermissile radar? I don’t know that word, though it seems as though I should…”

  “Radar is what you were using to see with, back in the storm, when the ceiling and visibility were zero.”

  Gosigo turned back to his driving, narrowly missing a tree. “That? That’s just artificial vision. Why did you use the word ‘countermissile radar’? There isn’t any of that stuff here except what we have on our machine, though the mistress may be watching us if her set is on.”

  “Those towers,” said Casher. “They look like countermissile towers from the ancient times.”

  “Towers. There aren’t any towers here,” snapped Gosigo.

  “Look,” cried Casher. “Here are two more of them.”

  “No man made those. They aren’t buildings. It’s just air coral. Some of the coral which people brought from earth mutated and got so it could live in the air. People used to plant it for windbreaks, before they decided to give up Henriada and move out. They didn’t do much good, but they are pretty to look at.”

  They rode along a few minutes without asking questions. Tail trees had Spanish moss trailing over them. They were close to a sea. Small marshes appeared to the right and left of the road; here, where the endless tornadoes were kept out, everything had a park-like effect. The domains of the estate of Beauregard were unlike anything else on Henriada—an area of peaceful wildness in a world which was rushing otherwise toward uninhabitability and ruin. Even Gosigo seemed more relaxed, more cheerful as he steered the groundcar along the pleasant elevated road.

  Gosigo sighed, leaned forward, managed the controls, and brought the car to a stop.

  He turned around calmly and looked full-face at Casher O’Neill.

  “You have your knife?”

  Casher automatically felt for it. It was there, safe enough in his booth sheath. He simply nodded.

  “You have your orders.”

  “You mean, killing the girl?”

  “Yes,” said Gosigo, “killing the girl.”

  “I remember that. You didn’t have to stop the car to tell me that.”

  “I’m telling you now,” said Gosigo, his wise Hindu face showing neither humor nor outrage. “Do it.”

  “You mean, kill her? Right at first sight?”

  “Do it,” said Gosigo. “You have your orders.”

  “I’m the judge of that,” said Casher. “It will be on my conscience. Are you watching me for the Administrator?”

  “That drunken fool?” said Gosigo. “I don’t care about him, except that I am a forgetty and I belong to him. We’re in her territory now. You are going to do whatever she wants. You have orders to kill her. All right. Kill her.”

  “You mean—she wants to be murdered?”

  “Of course not!” said Gosigo, with the irritation of an adult who has to explain too many things to an inquisitive child.

  “Then how can I kill her without finding out what this is all about?”

  “She knows. She knows herself. She knows her master. She knows this planet. She knows me and she knows something about you. Go ahead and kill her, since those are your orders. If she wants to die, that’s not for you or me to decide. It’s her business. If she does not want to die, you will not succeed.”

  “I’d like to see the person,” said Casher, “who could stop me in a sudden knife attack. Have you told her that I am coming?”

  “I’ve told her nothing, but she knows we are coming and she is pretty sure what you have been sent for. Don’t think about it. Just do what you are told. Jump for her with the knife. She will take care of the matter.”

  “But—” cried Casher.

  “Stop asking questions,” sai
d Gosigo. “Just follow orders and remember that she will take care of you. Even you.” He started up the groundcar.

  Within less than a kilometer they had crossed a low ridge of land and there before them lay Beauregard—the mansion at the edge of the waters, its white pillars shining, its pergolas glistening in the bright air, its yards and palmettos tidy.

  Casher was a brave man, but he felt the palms of his hands go wet when he realized that in a minute or two he would have to commit a murder.

  VII

  The groundcar swung up the drive. It stopped. Without a word, Gosigo activated the door. The air smelled calm, sea-wet, salt and yet coolly fresh.

  Casher jumped out and ran to the door.

  He was surprised to feel that his legs trembled as he ran.

  He had killed before, real men in real quarrels. Why should a mere animal matter to him?

  The door stopped him.

  Without thinking, he tried to wrench it open.

  The knob did not yield and there was no automatic control in sight. This was indeed a very antique sort of house. He struck the door with his hands. The thuds sounded around him. He could not tell whether they resounded in the house. No sound or echo came from beyond the door.

  He began rehearsing the phrase, “I want to see Mister and Owner Madigan…”

  The door did open.

  A little girl stood there.

  He knew her. He had always known her. She was his sweetheart, come back out of his childhood. She was the sister he had never had. She was his own mother, when young. She was at the marvelous age, somewhere between ten and thirteen, where the child—as the phrase goes—“becomes an old child and not a raw grown-up.” She was kind, calm, intelligent, expectant, quiet, inviting, unafraid. She felt like someone he had never left behind: yet, at the same moment, he knew he had never seen her before.

  He heard his voice asking for the Mister and Owner Madigan while he wondered, at the back of his mind, who the girl might be. Madigan’s daughter? Neither Rankin Meiklejohn nor the deputy had said anything about a human family.

  The child looked at him levelly.

  He must have finished braying his question at her.

  “Mister and Owner Madigan,” said the child, “sees no one this day, but you are seeing me.” She looked at him levelly and calmly. There was an odd hint of humor, of fearlessness, in her stance.

  “Who are you?” he blurted out.

  “I am the housekeeper of this house.”

  “You?” he cried, wild alarm beginning in his throat.

  “My name,” she said, “is T’ruth.”

  His knife was in his hand before he knew how it had gotten there. He remembered the advice of the Administrator: plunge, plunge, stab, stab, run!

  She saw the knife but her eyes did not waver from his face.

  He looked at her uncertainly.

  If this was an underperson, it was the most remarkable one he had ever seen. But even Gosigo had told him to do his duty, to stab, to kill the woman named T’ruth. Here she was. He could not do it.

  He spun the knife in the air, caught it by its tip, and held it out to her, handle first.

  “I was sent to kill you,” he said, “but I find I cannot do it. I have lost a cruiser.”

  “Kill me if you wish,” she said, “because I have no fear of you.”

  Her calm words were so far outside his experience that he took the knife in his left hand and lifted his arm as if to stab toward her.

  He dropped his arm.

  “I cannot do it,” he whined. “What have you done to me?”

  “I have done nothing to you. You do not wish to kill a child and I look to you like a child. Besides, I think you love me. If this is so, it must be very uncomfortable for you.”

  Casher heard his knife clatter to the floor as he dropped it. He had never dropped it before.

  “Who are you,” he gasped, “that you should do this to me?”

  “I am me,” she said, her voice as tranquil and happy as that of any girl, provided that the girl was caught at a moment of great happiness and poise. “I am the housekeeper of this house.” She smiled almost impishly and added, “It seems that I must almost be the ruler of this planet as well.” Her voice turned serious. “Man,” she said, “can’t you see it, man? I am an animal, a turtle. I am incapable of disobeying the word of man. When I was little I was trained and I was given orders. I shall carry out those orders as long as I live. When I look at you, I feel strange. You look as though you loved me already, but you do not know what to do. Wait a moment. I must let Gosigo go.”

  The shining knife on the floor of the doorway, she saw; she stepped over it.

  Gosigo had gotten out of the groundcar and was giving her a formal, low bow.

  “Tell me,” she cried, “what have you just seen?” There was friendliness in her call, as though the routine were an old game.

  “I saw Casher O’Neill bound up the steps. You yourself opened the door. He thrust his dagger into your throat and the blood spat out in a big stream, rich and dark and red. You died in the doorway. For some reason Casher O’Neill went on into the house without saying anything to me. I became frightened and I fled.”

  He did not look frightened at all.

  “If I am dead,” she said, “how can I be talking to you?”

  “Don’t ask me.” cried Gosigo. “I am just a forgetty. I always go back to the Honorable Rankin Meiklejohn, each time that you are murdered, and I tell him the truth of what I saw. Then he gives me the medicine and I tell him something else. At that point he will get drunk and gloomy again, the way that he always does.”

  “It’s a pity,” said the child. “I wish I could help him, but I can’t. He won’t come to Beauregard.”

  “Him?” Gosigo laughed. “Oh, no, not him! Never! He just sends other people to kill you.”

  “And he’s never satisfied,” said the child sadly, “no matter how many times he kills me!”

  “Never,” said Gosigo cheerfully, climbing back into the groundcar. “Bye now.”

  “Wait a moment,” she called. “Wouldn’t you like something to eat or drink before you drive back? There’s a bad clutch of storms on the road.”

  “Not me,” said Gosigo. “He might punish me and make me a forgetty all over again. Say, maybe that’s already happened. Maybe I’m a forgetty who’s been put through it several times, not just once.” Hope surged into his voice. “T’ruth! T’ruth! Can you tell me?”

  “Suppose I did tell you,” said she. “What would happen?”

  His face became sad. “I’d have a convulsion and forget what I told you. Well, good-bye anyhow. I’ll take a chance on the storms. If you ever see that Casher O’Neill again,” called Gosigo, looking right through Casher O’Neill, “tell him I liked him but that we’ll never meet again.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said the girl gently. She watched as the heavy brown man climbed nimbly into the car. The top crammed shut with no sound. The wheels turned and in a moment the car had disappeared behind the palmettoes in the drive.

  While she had talked to Gosigo in her clear warm high girlish voice, Casher had watched her. He could see the thin shape of her shoulders under the light blue shift that she wore. There was the suggestion of a pair of panties under the dress, so light was the material. Her hips had not begun to fill. When he glanced at her in one-quarter profile, he could see that her cheek was smooth, her hair well-combed, her little breasts just beginning to bud on her chest. Who was this child who acted like an empress?

  She turned back to him and gave him a warm, apologetic smile.

  “Gosigo and I always talk over the story together. Then he goes back and Meiklejohn does not believe it and spends unhappy months planning my murder all over again. I suppose, since I am just an animal, that I should not call it a ‘murder’ when somebody tries to kill me, but I resist, of course. I do not care about me, but I have orders, strong orders, to keep my master and his house safe from harm.”

 
; “How old are you?” asked Casher. He added, “—if you can tell the truth.”

  “I can tell nothing but the truth. I am conditioned. I am nine hundred and six Earth-years old.”

  “Nine hundred?” he cried. “But you look like a child…”

  “I am a child,” said the girl, “and not a child. I am an Earth turtle, changed into human form by the convenience of man. My life expectancy was increased three hundred times when I was modified. They tell me that my normal life span should have been three hundred years. Now it is ninety thousand years, and sometimes I am afraid. You will be dead of happy old age, Casher O’Neill, while I am still opening the drapes in this house to let the sunlight in. But let’s not stand in the door and talk. Come on in and get some refreshments. You’re not going anywhere, you know.”

  Casher followed her into the house but he put his worry into words. “You mean I am your prisoner.”

  “Not my prisoner, Casher. Yours. How could you cross that ground which you traveled in the groundcar? You could get to the ends of my estate all right, but then the storms would pick you up and whirl you away to a death which nobody would even see.”

  She turned into a big old room, bright with light-colored wooden furniture.

  Casher stood there, awkwardly. He had returned his knife to its boot-sheath when they left the vestibule. Now he felt very odd, sitting with his victim on a sun-porch.

  T’ruth was untroubled. She rang a brass bell which stood on an old-fashioned round table. Feminine footsteps clattered in the hall. A female servant entered the room, dressed in a black dress with a white apron. Casher had seen such servants in the old drama cubes, but he had never expected to meet one in the flesh.

  “We’ll have high tea,” said T’ruth. “Which do you prefer, tea or coffee, Casher? Or I have beer and wines. Even two bottles of whiskey brought all the way from Earth.”

  “Coffee would be fine for me,” said Casher.

  “And you know what I want, Eunice,” said T’ruth to the servant.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the maid, disappearing.

  Casher leaned forward.

  “That servant—is she human?”