Complete: The Original Short Fiction by Cordwainer Smith

Author:Cordwainer Smith [Smith, Cordwainer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2017-06-18T21:00:00+00:00

A tree was near him, with a thermostatically controlled cover which domed it in whenever the winds were too strong or too dry, and an underground sprinkler which kept it alive when surface moisture was not sufficient. It was one of the old MacArthur extravagances which his McBan ancestor had inherited and had added to the Station of Doom. It was a modified Earth oak, very big, a full thirteen meters high. Rod was proud of it though he did not like it much, but he had relatives who were obsessed by it and would make a three-hour ride just to sit in the shade—dim and diffuse as it was—of a genuine tree from Earth.

When he looked at the tree, a violent noise assailed him.

Mad frantic laughter—Laughter beyond all jokes—Laughter sick, wild, drunk, dizzy!

He started to be angry and was then puzzled. Who could be laughing at him already? As a matter of nearer fact, who could be trespassing on his land? Anyhow, what was there to laugh about?

(All Norstrilians knew that humor was “pleasurable corrigible malfunction.” It was in the Book of Rhetoric which their Appointed Relatives had to get them through if they were even to qualify for the tests of the Garden of Death since there were no schools, no classes, no teachers, no libraries except for private ones. There were just the seven liberal arts, the. six practical sciences, and the five collections of police and defense studies. Specialists were trained offworld, but they were trained only from among the survivors of the Garden, and nobody could get as far as the Garden unless the sponsors, who staked their lives along with that of the student—so far as the question of aptness was concerned—guaranteed that the entrant knew the eighteen kinds of Nostrilian Knowledge. The Book of Rhetoric came second, right after the Book of Sheep and Numbers, so that all Norstrilians knew why they laughed and what there was to laugh about.)

But this laughter! Aagh, who could it be?

A sick man? Impossible. Hostile hallucinations brought on by the Hon. Sec. in his own onseckish way with unusual telepathic powers? Scarcely.

Rod began to laugh himself as he realized what the sound must be.

It was something rare and beautiful, a kookaburra bird, the same kind of bird which had laughed in Original Australia on Old Old Earth. A very few had reached this new planet. They had not multiplied well, even though the Norstrilians respected them and loved them and wished them well.

Good luck came with their wild birdish laughter. A man could feel he had a fine day ahead. Lucky in love, thumb in an enemy’s eye, new ale in the fridge or a ruddy good chance on the market.

Laugh, bird, laugh! thought Rod.

Perhaps the bird understood him. The laughter increased and reached maniac, hilarious proportions. The bird sounded as though it was watching the most comical bird-comedy which any bird-audience had ever been invited to, as though the bird-jokes were side-splitting convulsive gut popping, unbelievable, racy, daring and overwhelming.

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