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

by Cordwainer Smith

  Not for nothing had Casher O’Neill learned all the arts of battle of a thousand worlds. Not for nothing had he come through space-three. This valley might have been tempting if already he had not ridden the cosmos on his eyes alone.

  He had. He knew the way out. It was merely through. Celalta seemed to come more to life as they reached the top of the ridge. The whole world was suddenly transformed by not more than ten steps. Far behind them, several kilometers, perhaps, there were still visible the last rooftops of the Kermesse Dorgüeil. Behind them lay the bleaching skeletons, in front—

  In front of them was the final source and the mystery, the Quel of the Thirteenth Nile.

  XI

  There was no sign of a house, but there were fruits and melons and grain growing, and there were deep trees at the edges of caves, and there were here and there signs of people that had been there long ago. There were no signs of present occupancy.

  “My lord,” said the once-lady Celalta, “my lord,” she repeated. “I think this is it.”

  “But this is nothing,” said Casher.

  “Exactly. Nothing is victory, nothing is arrival, nowhere is getting there. Don’t you see now why she left us?”

  “She?” asked Casher.

  “Yes, your faithful companion, the dog-woman D’alma.”

  “No, I don’t see it. Why did she leave this to us?”

  Celalta laughed. “We’re Adam and Eve in a way. It’s not up to us to be given a god or to be given a faith. It’s up to us to find the power and this is the quietest and last of the searching places. The others were just phantoms, hazards on our route. The best way to find freedom is not to look for it, just as you obtained your utter revenge on Wedder by doing him a little bit of good. Can’t you see it, Casher? You have won at last the immense victory that makes all battles seem vain. There is food around us; we can even walk back to the Kermesse Dorgüeil, if we want clothing or company or if we want to hear the news. But, most of all, this is the place in which I feel the presence of the First Forbidden One, the Second Forbidden One, and the Third Forbidden One. We don’t need a church for this, though I suppose there are still churches on some planets. What we need is a place to find ourselves and be ourselves and I’m not sure that this chance exists in many other places than this one spot.”

  “You mean,” said Casher, “that everywhere is nowhere?”

  “Not quite that,” said Celalta. “We have some work to do getting this place in shape, feeding ourselves. Do you know how to cook? Well, I can cook better. We can catch a few things to eat; we can shut ourselves in that cave and then”—and then Celalta smiled, her face more beautiful than he ever expected he would find a face to be—“we have each other.”

  Casher stood battle-ready, facing the most beautiful dancer he had ever met. He realized that she had once been a part of the Instrumentality, a governor of worlds, a genuine advisor in the destination of mankind. He did not know what strange motives had caused her to quit authority and to come up to this hard-to-find river, unmarked on maps. He didn’t even know why the man Howard should have paired them so quickly: perhaps there was another force. A force behind that dog-woman which had sent him to his final destination.

  He looked down at Celalta and then he looked up at the sky, and he said, “Day is ending; I will catch a few of those birds if you know how to cook them. We seem to be a sort of Adam and Eve, and I do not know whether this is paradise or hell. But I know that you are in it with me, and that I can think about you because you ask nothing of me.”

  “That is true, my lord. I ask nothing of you. I, too, am looking for both of us, not myself alone. I can make a sacrifice for you, but I look for those things which only we two, acting together, can find in this valley.”

  He nodded in serious agreement.

  “Look,” she said, “that is the Quel itself, there the Thirteenth Nile comes out of the rocks, and here are the woods below. I seem to have heard of it. Well, we’ll have plenty of time. I’ll start the fire, but you go catch two of those chickens. I don’t even think they’re wild birds. I think they are just left over people-chickens that have grown wild since their previous owners left…”

  “Or died,” said Casher.

  “Or died,” repeated Celalta. “Isn’t that a risk anybody has to take? Let us live, my lord, you and me, and let us find the magic, the deliverance which strange fates have thrown in front of you and me. You have liberated Mizzer, is that not enough? Simply by touching Wedder, you have done what otherwise could have been accomplished at the price of battle and great suffering.”

  “Thank you,” said Casher.

  “I was once Instrumentality, my lord, and I know that the Instrumentality likes to do things suddenly and victoriously. When I was there we never accepted defeat, but we never paid anything extra. The shortest route between two points might look like the long way around; it isn’t. It’s merely the cheapest human way of getting there. Has it ever occurred to you, that the Instrumentality might be rewarding you for what you have done for this planet?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” said Casher.

  “You hadn’t thought of it?” She smiled.

  “Well…” said Casher, embarrassed and at a loss for words.

  “I am a very special kind of woman,” said Celalta. “You will be finding that out in the next few weeks. Why else do you think that I would be given to you?”

  He did not go to hunt the chickens, not just then. He reached his arms out to her and, with more trust and less fear than he had felt in many years, he held her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips. This time there was no secret reserve in his mind, no promise that after this he would get on with his journey to Mizzer. He had won, his victory was behind him, and in front of him there lay nothing, but this beautiful and powerful place and…Celalta.

  Three to a Given Star

  I

  “Stick your left arm straight forward, Samm,” said Folly.

  He stretched his arm out.

  “I can sense it!” cried Folly. “Now wiggle your fingers!”

  Samm wiggled them.

  Finsternis said nothing, but both of them caught from his mind, riding clear and wise beside them, a “sense of the situation.” His “sense of the situation” could be summed up in the one-word comment, which he did not need to utter:

  “Foolishness!”

  “It is not foolishness, Finsternis,” cried Folly. “Here are the three of us, riding empty space millions of kilometers from nowhere. We were people once, Earth people from Old Earth itself. It is foolish to remember what we used to be? I was a woman once. A beautiful woman. Now I’m this—this thing, bent on a mission of murder and destruction. I used to have hands myself, real hands. Is it wrong for me to enjoy looking at Samm’s hands now and then? To think of the past which all three of us have left behind.”

  Finsternis did not answer; his mind was blank to both of them. There was nothing but space around them, not even much space dust, and the bluish light of Linschoten XV straight ahead. From the third planet of that star they could occasionally hear the cackle and gabble of the man-eaters.

  Once again Folly cried to Finsternis, “Is that so wrong, that I should enjoy looking at a hand? Samm has well-shaped hands. I was a person once, and so were you. Did I ever tell you that I was a beautiful woman once?”

  She had been a beautiful woman once and now she was the control of a small spaceship which fled across emptiness with two grotesque companions.

  She was now a ship only eleven meters long and shaped roughly like an ancient dirigible. Finsternis was a perfect cube, fifty meters to the side, packed with machinery which could blank out a sun and contain its planets until they froze to icy, perpetual death. Samm was a man, but he was a man of flexible steel, two hundred meters high. He was designed to walk on any kind of planet, with any kind of inhabitant, with any kind of chemistry or any kind of gravity. He was designed to bring antagonists, whomever they might be, the message of the power of man
. The power of man…followed by terror, followed if necessary by death. If Samm failed, Finsternis had the further power of blocking out the sun, Linschoten XV. If either or both failed, Folly had the job of adjusting them so that they could win. If they had no chance of winning, she then had the task of destroying Finsternis and Samm, and then herself.

  Their instructions were clear:

  “You will not, you will not under any circumstances return. You will not under any conditions turn back toward Earth. You are too dangerous to come anywhere near Earth, ever again. You may live if you wish. If you can. But you must not—repeat not—come back. You have your duty. You asked for it. Now you have it. Do not come back. Your forms fit your duty. You will do your duty.”

  Folly had become a tiny ship, crammed with miniaturized equipment.

  Finsternis had become a cube blacker than darkness itself.

  Samm had become a man, but a man different from any which had ever been seen on Earth. He had a metal body, copied from the human form down to the last detail. That way the enemies, whoever they might be, would be given a terrible glimpse of the human shape, the human voice. Two hundred meters high he stood, strong and solid enough to fly through space with nothing but the jets on his belt.

  The Instrumentality had designed all three of them. Designed them well.

  Designed them to meet the crazy menace out beyond the stars, a menace which gave no clue to its technology or origin, but which responded to the signal “man” with the counter-signal, “gabble cackle! eat, eat! man, man! good to eat! cackle gabble! eat, eat!”

  That was enough.

  The Instrumentality took steps. And the three of them—the ship, the cube, and the metal giant—sped between the stars to conquer, to terrorize, or to destroy the menace which lived on the third planet of Linschoten XV. Or, if needful, to put out that particular sun.

  Folly, who had become a ship, was the most volatile of the three.

  She had been a beautiful woman once.

  II

  “You were a beautiful woman once,” Samm had said, some years before. “How did you end up becoming a ship?”

  “I killed myself,” said Folly. “That’s why I took this name—Folly. I had a long life ahead of me, but I killed myself and they brought me back at the last minute. When I found out I was still alive, I volunteered for something adventurous, dangerous. They gave me this. Well. I asked for it, didn’t I?”

  “You asked for it,” said Samm gravely. Out in the middle of nothing, surrounded by a tremendous lot of nowhere, courtesy was still the lubricant which governed human relationships. The two of them observed courtesy and kindness toward one another. Sometimes they threw in a bit of humor, too.

  Finsternis did not take part in their talk or their companionship. He did not even verbalize his answers. He merely let them know his sense of the situation and this time, as in all other times, his response was—“Negative. No operation needed. Communication nonfunctional. Not needed here. Silence, please. I kill suns. That is all I do. My part is my business. All mine.” This was communicated in a single terrible thought, so that Folly and Samm stopped trying to bring Finsternis into the conversations which they started up, every subjective century or so, and continued for years at a time.

  Finsternis merely moved along with them, several kilometers away, but well within their range of awareness. But as far as company was concerned, Finsternis might as well not have been there at all.

  Samm went on with the conversation, the conversation which they had had so many hundreds of times since the planoform ship had discharged them “near” Linschoten XV and left them to make the rest of their way alone. (If the menace were really a menace, and if it were intelligent, the Instrumentality had no intention of letting an actual planoform ship fall within the powers of a strange form of life which might well be hypnotic in its combat capacities. Hence the ship, the cube, and the giant were launched into normal space at high velocity, equipped with jets to correct their courses, and left to make their own way to the danger.)

  Samm said, as he always did, “You were a beautiful woman, Folly, but you wanted to die. Why?”

  “Why do people ever want to die, Samm? It’s the power in us, the vitality which makes us want so much. Life always trembles on the edge of disappointment. If we hadn’t been vital and greedy and lustful and yearning, if we hadn’t had big thoughts and wanted bigger ones, we would have stayed animals, like all the little things back on Earth. It’s strong life that brings us so close to death. We can’t stand the beauty of it, the nearness of the things we want, the remoteness of the things that we can have. You and me and Finsternis, now, we’re monsters riding out between the stars. And yet we’re happier now than we were when we were back among people. I was a beautiful woman, but there were specific things which I wanted. I wanted them myself. I alone. For me. Only for me. When I couldn’t have them, I wanted to die. If I had been stupider or happier I might have lived on. But I didn’t. I was me—intensely me. So here I am. I don’t even know whether I have a body or not, inside this ship. They’ve got me all hooked up to the sensors and the viewers and the computers. Sometimes I think that I may be a lovely woman still, with a real body hidden somewhere inside this ship, waiting to step out and to be a person again. And you, Samm, don’t you want to tell me about yourself? Samm. SAMM. That’s no name for an actual person—Superordinated Alien Measuring and Mastery device. What were you before they gave you that big body? At least you still look like a person. You’re not a ship, like me.”

  “My name doesn’t matter, Folly, and if I told it to you, you wouldn’t know it. You never knew it.”

  “How wouldn’t I know?” she cried. “I’ve never told you my name either, so perhaps we did know each other back on Old Earth when we were still people.”

  “I can tell something,” said Samm, “from the shape of words, from the ring of thoughts, even when we’re not out here in nothing. You were a lady, perhaps high-born. You were truly beautiful. You were really important. And I—I was a technician. A good one. I did my work and I loved my family, and my wife and I were happy with every child which the Lords gave us for adoption. But my wife died first. And after a while my children, my wonderful boy and my two beautiful, intelligent girls—my own children, they couldn’t stand me anymore. They didn’t like me. Perhaps I talked too much. Perhaps I gave them too much advice. Perhaps I reminded them of their mother, who was dead. I don’t know. I won’t ever know. They didn’t want to see me. Out of manners, they sent me cards on my birthday. Out of sheer formal courtesy, they called on me sometimes. Now and then one of them wanted something. Then they came to me, but it was always just to get something. It took me a long time to figure out, but I hadn’t done anything. It wasn’t what I had done or hadn’t done. They just plain didn’t like me. You know the songs and the operas and the stories, Folly, you know them all.”

  “Not all of them,” thought Folly gently, “not all of them. Just a few thousand.”

  “Did you ever see one,” cried Samm, his thoughts ringing fiercely against her mind, “did you ever see a single one about a rejected father? They’re all about men and women, love and sex, but I can tell you that rejection hurts even when you don’t ask anything of your loved ones but their company and their happiness and their simple genuine smiles. When I knew that my children had no use for me, I had no use for me either. The Instrumentality came along with this warning, and I volunteered.”

  “But you’re all right now, Samm,” said Folly gently. “I’m a ship and you are a metal giant, but we’re off doing work which is important for all mankind. We’ll have adventures together. Even black and grumbly here,” she added, meaning Finsternis, “can’t keep us from the excitement of companionship or the hope of danger. We’re doing something wonderful and important and exciting. Do you know what I would do if I had my life again, my ordinary life with skin and toenails and hair and things like that?”

  “What?” asked Samm, knowing the answer perfe
ctly well from the hundreds of times they had touched on this point.

  “I’d take baths. Hundreds and hundreds of them, over again. Showers and dips in cold pools and soaks in hot bathtubs and rinses and more showers. And I would do my hair, over and over again, thousands of different ways. And I would put on lipstick, in the most outrageous colors, even if nobody saw me, except for my own self looking in the mirror. Now I can hardly remember what it used to be to be dry or wet. I’m in this ship and I see the ship and I do not really know if I am a person or not any more.”

  Samm stayed quiet, knowing what she would say next.

  “Samm, what would you do?” Folly asked.

  “Swim,” he said.

  “Then swim, Samm, swim! Swim for me in the space between the stars. You still have a body and I don’t, but I can watch you and I can sense you swimming out here in the nothing-at-all.”

  Samm began to swim a huge Australian crawl, dipping his face to the edge of the water—as if there were water there. The gestures made no difference in his real motion, since they were all of them in the fast trajectory computed for them from the point where they left the Instrumentality’s ship and started out in normal space for the star listed as Linschoten XV.

  This time, something very sudden happened, and it happened strangely.

  From the dark gloomy silence of the cube, Finsternis, there came an articulate cry, called forth in clear human speech:

  Stop it! Stop moving right now. I attack.

  Both Samm and Folly had instruments built into them, so they could read space around them. The instruments, quickly scanned, showed nothing. Yet Folly felt odd, as though something had gone very wrong in her ship-self, which had seemed so metal, so reliable, so inalterable.

  She threw a thought of inquiry at Samm and instead got another command from Finsternis. Don’t think.