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

by Cordwainer Smith

  “I will need strength?” Casher asked.

  The first Jwindz who had met them at the door said, “Indeed you will need strength, if you go to Mortoval. We may be dangerous to the uninitiated. Mortoval is worse than dangerous. It is a trap many times worse than death. But go there if you must.”

  VIII

  Casher O’Neill and D’alma reached Mortoval on a one-wheeled cart, which ran on a high wire past picturesque mountain gorges, soaring over two serrated series of peaks and finally dropping down to another bend in the same river, the illegal and forgotten Thirteenth Nile.

  When the vehicle stopped, they got out. No one had accompanied them. The vehicle, held in place by gyroscopes and compasses, felt itself relieved of their weight and hurried home.

  This time there was no city: just one great arch. D’alma clung close to him. She even took his arm and pulled it over her shoulder as though she needed protection. She whined a little as they walked up a low hill and finally reached the arch. They walked into the arch and a voice not made of sound cried out to them.

  “I am youth and am everything that you have been or ever will be. Know this now before I show you more.”

  Casher was brave, and this time he was cheerfully hopeless, so he said, “I know who I am. Who are you?”

  “I am the force of the Gunung Banga. I am the power of this planet which keeps everyone in this planet and which assures the order which persists among the stars, and promises that the dead shall not walk among the men. And I serve of the fate and the hope of the future. Pass if you think you can.”

  Casher searched with his own mind and he found what he wanted. He found the memory of a young child, T’ruth, who had been almost a thousand years on the planet of Henriada. A child, soft and gentle on the outside, but wise and formidable and terrible beyond belief, in the powers which she had carried, which had been imprinted upon her.

  As he walked through the arch he cast the images of truth here and there. Therefore he was not one person but a multitude. And the machine and the living being which hid behind the machine, the Gunung Banga, obviously could see him and could see D’alma walking through, but the machine was not prepared to recognize whole multitudes of crying throngs.

  “Who are you thousands that you should come here now? Who are you multitudes that you should be two people? I sense all of you. The fighters and the ships and the men of blood, the searchers and the forgetters, there’s even an Old North Australian renunciant here. And the great Go-Captain Tree, and there are even a couple of men of Old Earth. You are all walking through me. How can I cope with you?”

  “Make us, us,” said Casher firmly.

  “Make you, you,” replied the machine. “Make you, you. How can I make you, you, when I do not know who you are, when you flit like ghosts and you confuse my computers? There are too many, I say. There are too many of you. It is ordained that you should pass.”

  “If it is so ordained, then let us pass.” D’alma suddenly stood proud and erect.

  They walked on through.

  She said, “You got us through.” They had indeed passed beyond the arch, and there, beyond the arch, lay a gentle riverside with skiffs pulled up along the beach.

  “This seems to be next,” said Casher O’Neill.

  D’alma nodded. “I’m your dog, master. We go where you think.”

  They climbed into a skiff. Echoes of tumult followed from the arch.

  “Good-bye to troubles,” the echoes said. “Had they been people they would have been stopped. But she was a dog and a servant, who had lived many years in the happiness of the Sign of the Fish. And he was a combat-ready man who had incorporated within himself the memories of adversaries and friends, too tumultuous for any scanner to measure, too complex for any computer to assess.” The echoes resounded across the river.

  There was even a dock on the other side. Casher tied the skiff to the dock and he helped the dog-woman go toward the buildings that they saw beyond some trees.

  IX

  D’alma said, “I have seen pictures of this place; this is the Kermesse Dorgüeil, and here we may lose our way, because this is the place where all the happy things of this world come together, but where the man and the two pieces of wood never filter through. We shall see no one unhappy, no one sick, no one unbalanced; everyone will be enjoying the good things of life; perhaps I will enjoy it, too. May the Sign of the Fish help me that I not become perfect too soon.”

  “You won’t be,” Casher promised.

  At the gate of this city, there was no guard at all. They walked on past a few people who seemed to be promenading outside the town. Within the city they approached what seemed to be a hotel and an inn or a hospital. At any rate it was a place where many people were fed.

  A man came out and said, “Well, this is a strange sight; I never knew that the Colonel Wedder let his officers get this far from home, and as for you, woman, you’re not even a human being. You’re an odd couple and you’re not in love with each other. Can we do anything for you?”

  Casher reached into his pocket and tossed several credit pieces of five denominations in front of the man.

  “Don’t these mean anything?” asked Casher.

  Catching them in his fingers, the man said, “Oh, we can use money! We use it occasionally for important things; we don’t need yours. We live well here, and we have a nice life, not like those two places across the river, which stay away from life. All men who are perfect are nothing but talk—Jwindz they call themselves, the perfect ones—well, we’re not that perfect. We’ve got families and good food and good clothes, and we get the latest news from all the worlds.”

  “News,” said Casher. “I thought that was illegal.”

  “We get anything. You would be surprised at what we have here. It’s a very civilized place. Come on in; this is the hotel of the Singing Swans and you can live here as long as you wish. When I say that, I mean it. Our treasure has unusual resources, and I can see that you are unusual people. You are not a medical technician, despite that uniform, and your follower is not a mere dog-underperson or you wouldn’t have gotten this far.”

  They entered a promenade two stories high; little shops lined each side of the corridor with the treasures of all the worlds on exhibit. The prices were marked explaining them, but there was no one in the stalls.

  The smell of good food came from a cool dining room in the inn.

  “Come into my office and have a drink. My name is Howard.”

  “That’s an old Earth name,” said Casher.

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” asked Howard. “I came here from old Earth. I looked for the best of all places, and it took me a long time to find it. This is it—the Kermesse Dorgüeil. We have nothing here but simple and clean pleasures; we have only those vices which help and support. We accomplish the possible; we reject the impossible. We live life, not death. Our talk is about things and not about ideas. We have nothing but scorn for that city behind you, the City of the Perfect Ones. And we have nothing but pity for the holier than holies far back where they claim to have Hopeless Hope, and practice nothing but evil religion. I passed through those places too, although I had to go around the City of the Perfect Ones. I know what they are and I’ve come all the way from Earth, and if I have come all the way from old old Earth I should know what this is. You should take my word for it.”

  “I’ve been on Earth myself,” said Casher, rather dryly. “It’s not that unusual.”

  The man stopped with surprise.

  “My name,” said Casher, “is Casher O’Neill.”

  The man halted and then gave him a deep bow.

  “If you are Casher O’Neill, you have changed this world; you have come back, my lord and master. Welcome. We are no longer your host. This is your city. What do you wish of us?”

  “To look a while, to rest a while, to ask directions for the voyage.”

  “Directions? Why should anyone want directions away from here? People come here and ask directio
ns from a thousand places to get to Kermesse Dorgüeil.”

  “Let’s not argue this now,” said Casher. “Show us the rooms, let us clean ourselves up. Two separate rooms.”

  Howard walked upstairs. With an intricate twist of his hand he unlocked two rooms.

  “At your service,” he said. “Call me with your voice; I can hear you anywhere in the building.”

  Casher called once for sleeping gear, toothbrushes, shaving equipment. He insisted that they send the shampooer, a woman of apparent Earth origin, in to attend to D’alma; and D’alma actually knocked at his door and begged that he not shower her with these attentions.

  He said. “You with your deep kindness have helped me so far. I am helping you very little.”

  They ate a light repast together in the garden just below their two rooms, and then they went to their rooms and slept.

  It was only on the morning of the second day that they went with Howard into the city to see what could be found.

  Everywhere the city was strong with happiness. The population could not have been very large, twenty or thirty thousand persons at most.

  At one point, Casher stopped; he could smell the scorch of ozone in the air. He knew the atmosphere itself had been burned and that meant only one thing, spaceships coming in or going out.

  He asked, “Where is the spaceport for Earth?”

  Howard looked at him quickly and keenly. “If you were not the lord Casher O’Neill, I’d never tell you. We have a small spaceport there. That is the way that we avoid our traffic with most of Mizzer. Do you need it, sir?”

  “Not now,” said Casher. “I just wondered where it was.” They came to a woman who danced as she sang to the accompaniment of two men with wild archaic guitars. Her feet did not have the laughter of ordinary dance, but they had the positiveness, the compulsion of a meaning. Howard looked at her appreciatively; he even ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.

  “She is not yet spoken for,” said Howard. “And yet she is a very unusual thing. A resigned ex-lady of the Instrumentality.”

  “I find that unusual, indeed. What is her name?”

  “Celalta,” said Howard. “Celalta, the other one. She has been in many worlds, perhaps as many worlds as you have, sir. She’s faced dangers like the ones you’ve faced. And oh, my lord and master, forgive me for saying it, but when I look at her dancing, and I see you looking at her, I can see a little bit into the future; and I can see you both dead together, the winds slowly blowing the flesh off your bones. And your bones anonymous and white, lying two valleys over from this very place.”

  “That’s an odd enough prophecy,” said Casher. “Especially from someone who seems not to be poetic. What is that?”

  “I seem to see you in the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene. There’s a road out of here that goes there and some people, not many, go there, and when they go there, they die. I don’t know why,” said Howard. “Don’t ask me.”

  D’alma whispered, “That is the road to the Shrine of Shrines. That’s the place to the Quel itself. Find out where it starts.”

  “Where does that road start?” asked Casher.

  “Oh, you’ll find out; there’s nothing you won’t find out. Sorry, my lord and master. The road starts just beyond that bright orange roof.” He pointed at a roof and then turned back.

  Without saying anything more, he clapped his hands at the dancer and she gave him a scornful look. Howard clapped his hands again; she stopped dancing and walked over.

  “And what is it you want now, Howard?”

  He gave her a deep bow. “My former lady, my mistress, here is the lord and master of this planet, Casher O’Neill.”

  “I am not really the lord and master,” said Casher O’Neill. “I merely would have been if Wedder had not taken the rule away from my uncle.”

  “Should I care about that?” asked the woman.

  Casher smiled back. “I don’t see why you should.”

  “Do you have anything you want to say to me?”

  “Yes,” said Casher. He reached over and seized her wrist. Her wrist was almost as strong as his.

  “You have danced your last dance, madam, at least for the time. You and I are going to a place that this man knows about, and he says that we are going to die there, and our bones will be blown with the wind.”

  “You give me commands,” she cried.

  “I give you commands,” he said.

  “What is your authority?” she asked scornfully.

  “Me,” he said.

  She looked at him, he looked back at her, still holding her wrist.

  She said, “I have powers. Don’t make me use them.”

  He said, “I have powers, too; nobody can make me use mine.”

  “I’m not afraid of you; go ahead.”

  Fire shot at him as he felt the lunge of her mind toward his, her attack, her flight for freedom, but he kept her wrist and she said nothing.

  But with his mind responding to hers he unfolded the many worlds, the old Earth itself, the gem planet, Olympia of the blind brokers, the storm planet, Henriada, and a thousand other places that most people only knew in stories and dreams. And then, just for a little bit, he showed her who he was, a native of Mizzer who had become a citizen of the Universe. A fighter who had been transformed into a doer. He let her know that in his own mind he carried the powers of T’ruth the turtle-girl, and behind T’ruth herself, he carried the personalities of the Hechizera of Gonfalon. He let her see the ships in the sky turning and twisting as they fought nothing at all, because his mind, or another mind which had become his, had commanded them to.

  And then with the shock of a sudden vision, he projected to her the two pieces of wood, the image of a man in pain. And gently, but with the simple rhetoric of profound faith, he pronounced: “This is the call of the First Forbidden One, and the Second Forbidden One, and the Third Forbidden One. This is the symbol of the Sign of the Fish. For this you are going to leave this town, and you are going with me, and it may be that you and I shall become lovers.”

  Behind him a voice spoke. “And I,” said D’alma, “will stay here.”

  He turned around to her. “D’alma, you’ve come this far; you’ve got to come further.”

  “I can’t, my lord. I read my duty as I see it. If the authorities who sent me want me enough, they will send me back to my dishwasher on Pontoppidan, otherwise they will leave me here. I am temporarily beautiful and I’m rich and I’m happy and I don’t know what to do with myself, but I know I have seen you as far as I can. May the Sign of the Fish be with you.”

  Howard merely stood aside, making no attempt to hinder them or to help them.

  Celalta walked beside Casher like a wild animal which had never been captured before.

  Casher O’Neill never let go of her wrist.

  “Do we need food for this trip?” he asked of Howard.

  “No one knows what you need.”

  “Should we take food?”

  “I don’t see why,” said Howard. “You have water. You can always walk back here if you have disappointments. It’s really not very far.”

  “Will you rescue me?”

  “If you insist on it,” said Howard. “I suppose somewhere people will come out and bring you back, but I don’t think you will insist—because that is the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene, and the people who go in there do not want to come out, and do not want to eat, and they do not want to go forward. We have never seen anyone vanish to the other side, but you might make it.”

  “I am looking,” said Casher, “for something which is more than power between the worlds. I am looking for a sphinx that is bigger than the sphinx on old Earth. For weapons which cut sharper than lasers, for forces that move faster than bullets. I am looking for something which will take the power away from me and put the simple humanity back into me. I am looking for something which will be nothing, but a nothing I can serve and can believe in.”

  “You sound like the ri
ght kind of man,” said Howard, “for that kind of trip. Go in peace, both of you.”

  Celalta said, “I do not really know who you are, my lord, master, but I have danced my last dance. I see what you mean. This is the road that leads away from happiness. This is the path which leaves good clothes and warm shops behind. There are no restaurants where we are going, no hotels, no river anymore. There are neither believers nor unbelievers; but there is something that comes out of the soil which makes people die. But if you think, Casher O’Neill, that you can triumph over it, I will go with you. And if you do not think it, I will die with you.”

  “We are going, Celalta, I didn’t know that it was just going to be the two of us, but we are going and we are going now.”

  X

  It was actually less than two kilometers to get over the ridge away from the trees, away from the moisture-laden air along the river, and into a dry, calm valley which had a clean blessed quietness which Casher had never seen before. Celalta was almost gay.

  “This, this is the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene?”

  “I suppose it is,” said Casher, “but I propose to keep on walking. It isn’t very big.”

  As they walked their bodies became burdensome; they carried not only their own weight but the weight of every month of their lives. The decision seemed good to them that they should lie down in the valley and rest amid the skeletons, rest as the others had rested. Celalta became disoriented. She stumbled, and her eyes became unfocused.