Cordwainer Smith by The Best of Cordwainer Smith

Author:The Best of Cordwainer Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-21T21:09:00+00:00

Me, me, me, Because I know—I used to live

On the Eastern Shore.

Men aren’t men, And women aren’t women,

And people aren’t people any more.

There is no Eastern Shore on Fomalhaut III anyhow; the people/underpeople crisis came much later than this. The revolution had failed, but history had reached its new turning-point, the quarrel of the two ladies. They left their minds open out of sheer surprise. Suicidal robots and world-loving dogs were unheard-of. It was bad enough to have illegal underpeople on the prowl, but these new things—ah!

Destroy them all, said the Lady Goroke.

“Why?” thought the Lady Arabella Underwood.

Malfunction, replied Goroke.

“But they’re not machines!”

Then they’re animals—underpeople. Destroy! Destroy!

Then came the answer which has created our own time. It came from the Lady Arabella Underwood, and all Kalma heard it:

Perhaps they are people. They must have a trial.

The dog-girl Joan dropped to her knees. “I have succeeded, I have succeeded, I have succeeded! You can kill me, dear people, but I love, love, love you!”

The Lady Pane Ashash said quietly to Elaine, “I thought I would be dead by now. Really dead, at last. But I am not I have seen the worlds turn, Elaine, and you have seen them turn with me.”

The underpeople had fallen quiet as they heard the high-volume telepathic exchange between the two great ladies.

The real soldiers dropped out of the sky, their ornithopters whistling as they hawked down to the ground. They ran up to the underpeople and began binding them with cord.

One soldier took a single look at the robot body of the Lady Pane Ashash. He touched it with his staff, and the staff turned cherry-red with heat. The robot-body, its heat suddenly drained, fell to the ground in a heap of icy crystals.

Elaine walked between the frigid rubbish and the red-hot staff. She had seen Hunter.

She missed seeing the soldier who came up to Joan, started to bind her and then fell back weeping, babbling, “She loves me! She loves me!”

The Lord Femtiosex, who commanded the inflying soldiers, bound Joan with cord despite her talking.

Grimly he answered her: “Of course you love me. You’re a good dog. You’ll die soon, doggy, but till then, you’ll obey.”

“I’m obeying,” said Joan, “but I’m a dog and a person. Open your mind, man, and you’ll feel it.”

Apparently he did open his mind and felt the ocean of love rip-tiding into him. It shocked him. His arm swung up and back, the edge of the hand striking at Joan’s neck for the ancient kill.

“No, you don’t,” thought the Lady Arabella Underwood. “That child is going to get a proper trial.”

He looked at her and glared, chief doesn’t strike chief, my lady. Let go my arm.

Thought the Lady Arabella at him, openly and in public: “A trial, then.”

In his anger he nodded at her. He would not think or speak to her in the presence of all the other people.

A soldier brought Elaine and Hunter before him.

“Sir and master, these are people, not underpeople. But they have dog-thoughts, cat-thoughts, goat-thoughts and robot-ideas in their heads.

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