Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  An old, old face, brown and wrinkled and ugly, was peering at him by the flickering light.

  “Come up, Commoner,” he said. “I wish to look at you.”

  “No, sir,” the wrinkled face squeaked in the voice of a woman. “No, sir, I cannot, sir, to my shame. My daughter, the lazy slut, put me and my dear brother down here when the armed men were about to come, for she said she and her great fat husband couldn’t be bothered with us. I cannot come up, sir, because my legs won’t go, to my shame.”

  “Then send up your brother, Commoner.”

  “No, sir,” the hag squeaked. “My dear brother cannot come up, to my shame. My lazy slut of a daughter and. her great fat husband did not leave the right food for him—he suffers from the wasting sickness and he must have the livers of animals every day—and so he died. Are you an armed man, sir?”

  “I am a Gunner of the Order of Armsmen, Commoner. Did you say you had food down there?” Cade suddenly realized he was ravenous.

  “I did, sir, but not the right kind for my dear brother. I have the bottled foods and the foods in boxes and sweet cakes; will you come down, armed man, sir?”

  Cade prudently swung the great cherry-wood chest wide open and descended the stairs. The woman lighted his way to a corner with the candle; he expected to find a table or larder, but the light to his disgust flickered on the wasted body of a tall man propped against the cellar wall.

  “That’s no concern of mine, Commoner,” he said. “Where is the food? I’ll take it and eat it upstairs.”

  “Armed man, sir, I must unlock three locks on this chest”—she gestured with the candle—“to get you that and my hands are old and slow, sir. Let me pour you a bit for your thirst first, sir. You are truly an armed man, sir?”

  He ignored her babble as she poured him cider from a jug. “So that on your hip is a gun, sir? Is it true, sir, that you only have to point it at a person and he is shriveled and black at once?”

  Cade nodded, suppressing his irritation with effort. She was old and foolish—but she was feeding him.

  “And is it true, sir,” she asked eagerly, “that a shriveled and black Commoner cannot be told from a shriveled and black armed man?”

  That, it was impossible to let pass. He struck her mouth, wishing furiously that she would get the food and be done with it. And truly enough she did begin to fumble with the clanking old locks in the dark, but kept up her muttering: “I see it is true. I see it is true. That is what happens when something is true, I call my daughter a lazy slut and she strikes me on the mouth.

  I call her husband a greedy hog and he strikes me on the mouth. That is what happens—”

  Rage is a peril, he told himself furiously. Rage is. a peril. He gulped down the cider and repressed an impulse to throw the mug at the old fool’s head or smash it on the old fool’s floor while she fumbled endlessly with the clanking locks. He bent over to put it precisely on the floor, and toppled like a felled oak.

  At once he knew what had happened and was appalled by the stupidity of it. He, a Gunner, was dying, poisoned by a babbling idiot of a Commoner. Cade dragged feebly at his gun, and found the squeaking old woman had taken it first. Better to die that way, he thought in agony, though still a shameful horror. He hoped desperately as he felt consciousness slipping away that it would never become known. Some things were better forgotten.

  The old woman was standing in front of him, making a sign, a detestable sign he half-remembered, like a parody of something you were dedicated to. And she skipped nimbly up and down the stairs with shrill, batlike laughter. “I tricked you!” she squealed. “I tricked them all! I tricked my slut of a daughter and her greedy fat husband. I didn’t want to go with them!” She stopped at last, grunting with animal effort as she tugged the body of her brother, an inch or less at a time, to the foot of the stairs. Cade’s gun was in the waistband of her skirt.

  As the last light glimmered out, he thought he saw the deep-etched leather lines of her face close to his. “I wanted an armed man, sir, that’s what I wanted,” she cackled, “and I have one now!” Dried old lips parted over the blackened stumps of her teeth as she grinned in senile delight.

  III.

  Peril . . . peril . . . rage is a peril, and vanity, and love of ease . . . This death was fraught with perils. Cade groaned in the endless dark, and the still-living flesh shrank with revulsion as the evil vision persisted and his limbs were logs of stone. This end is not fitting! he would have cried bitterly, but his lips had turned to ice, frozen shut, and the struggling spirit inside could not breath a word of protest or command.

  To come to this end, this useless end! He who had lived decorously, who had served fittingly, he a sturdy pillar of the Emperor, Gunner Cade! It was no fitting death.

  And still his heart beat pitilessly, pumping gall and fury through his veins.

  Rage is a peril. Cade turned his eyes inward in meditation, seeking resignation. Armsmen march where the Emperor wills. Peril flees in the face of fitting service.

  Two visions filled his inner eye. He turned from the ancient ugly face of evil to the fair countenance of service and he knew at last that this death was as the Emperor willed. If She appeared, then all was well and would be, for She came only at the last to the Armsmen who marched where the Emperor willed and died in the service of his Star.

  Then this was a fitting end! The perils of rage and vanity had been only a trial. He looked again upon the ugly grinning face and found it had lost all power over him. The pure features of The Lady floated above and behind it and exaltation coursed through him as his heart beat on.

  The heart beat on, and it was fitting but it was not the end. The serene countenance of The Lady bent over him and yet he lived. All Armsmen knew She came only at the last, and only to those who were fitted, yet—

  He lived. He was not dead. The frozen lips moved as he muttered, “Vanity is a peril.” He was alive, and the lined old leather face was only a hag he had seen before; The Lady was a flower-faced Commoner girl, beautiful to look on, but soullessly mortal.

  “Very well,” the crimson lips said clearly, not to him, but across his recumbent body to the hag. “Leave us now. They will be waiting for you in the chamber.”

  “The armed man lives,” the old voice rasped in reply. “I served the armed man well and he still lives. My slut of a daughter would never believe I could do it. She left me behind for dead, she and her greedy—”

  “Leave us now!” The younger woman was dressed in the gaudy rough cloth of a Commoner, but her voice betrayed her habit of command. “Go to the chamber, and go quickly, or they may forget to wait.”

  Cade shuddered as the pincer fingers of the hag creased the flesh of his forearm. “He lives,” she said again, and chuckled, “The armed man lives and his skin is warm.” Her touch was a horror. Not as the touch of woman, for there was nothing womanish about her; she was past the age of peril. But his skin crawled as with vermin at the unclean fingering. He lashed out to strike her arm away, and discovered his hands were bound. The old woman shuffled slowly away toward a door, and while the young one watched her go, he pulled against the bonds, testing his strength.

  Then the hag was gone, and he was alone with the young female: a female Commoner who looked most unfittingly like a vision of glory, and spoke most presumptuously like a man of power.

  The bonds were not too tight. He stopped pulling before she could discover that he might free himself.

  She was watching him, and perversely he refused to look at her. His eyes took in every detail of the featureless room: the unbroken elliptical curve of the ceiling and walls; the curved door, fitting into the shape of the wall, and almost indistinguishable from it; the bed on which he lay; a table beside him where the girl’s long clean fingers played with a vial of colored fluid.

  He watched, while she idly turned the cork in the vial to expose the needle end. He watched while she plucked a swab of cotton from a bowl, and doused it in colorless fluid from the only othe
r object in the room, a small bottle on the table. He kept watching, even when the girl began to speak, his gaze obstinately fastened on her hands, away from the perilous beauty of her face.

  “Cade,” she said urgently, “can you hear me? Can you understand what I tell you?” There was no command in her voice now; it was low-pitched and melodious. It teased his memory, tugged at him till he stiffened with the remembrance. Only once before had a woman called him by his Armsman’s given name. That was the day he entered the Order, before he took his vows. His mother had kissed him, he remembered now, kissed him, and whispered the new name softly, as this girl was saying it. Since that day, his eleventh birthday, no woman had dared to tempt him to peril with a familiar address.

  He lay still, thrusting aside the memory, refusing to reply.

  “Cade,” she said again, “there’s not much time. They’ll be coming soon. Can you understand me?”

  The hands on the table moved, put down the needle and the swab, and floated toward him. She placed her palms on his cheeks, and turned his face up to look into his eyes. Cade could not remember, even from childhood, the touch of hands like these. They were silken, but smooth—soft, resilient, unbelievably good to feel. They felt, he thought—and blushed as he thought—like the billowing stuff of the Emperor’s ceremonial robe, when it brushed his face as he knelt at devotions on Audience Day.

  This was no Audience Day. The hands of a Commoner were on him and contact with any female was forbidden. The blood receded from his face, and he shook his head violently, releasing himself from the perilous touch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, sir.” Then, incredibly, she laughed. “I’m sorry I failed to address you properly, and profaned your chastity with my touch. Has it occurred to you that you are in trouble? What do you place first? The ritual of your Order, or your loyalty to the Emperor?”

  “Armsmen march where the Emperor wills,” he intoned, “That is their glory. Armsmen are sturdy pillars; without them the Realm cannot stand, but without the Realm the Order cannot—”

  Boots, he thought. Hose. They were gone. He lifted his head a little, and pain stabbed at the back of his neck as he did so, but before he dropped back, he saw it all: garish crimson-patterned pajamas of a Commoner; soft-soled sandals of a city-worker. No boots, no hose, no cloak, no gun!

  “What unfit place is this?” he exploded. “In the name of the Order of which I am a member, I demand that I be released and my gun returned before—”

  “Quiet, you fool!” There was something in the command that stopped him. “You’ll have them all here if you shout. Now listen closely, if there’s still time. You are the captive of a group that plots against the Emperor. I cannot tell you more now, but I am Instructed to inject you with a substance which will—”

  She stopped suddenly, and he, too, heard the steady footsteps coming nearer from—where? A corridor outside?

  Something pressed against his lips, something smooth and slippery.

  “Open your mouth, you idiot! Swallow it, quick! It will—”

  The door opened smoothly from the wall, and the footsteps never lost a beat. They advanced to the center of the room, and stopped precisely, while their maker stared about him with an odd bemusement.

  “I seek my cousin,” he announced to the air.

  “Your cousin is not here,” the girl replied smoothly. “I am his helper and I will take you to him.” Three steps brought her to the rigid figure.

  She touched him lightly on the nape of the neck. “Follow me,” she commanded.

  With no change of expression on his pale face, the man turned and went after her, his uncannily steady footsteps marking time toward the door. But before they reached it, it opened again and another man sailed in. This one was small and wiry, dressed in the gray uniform of the Klin Sendee, tunic belted properly over the creased trousers; domed hat set squarely on his head, boot-wraps neatly wound around his calves. He was breathing hard; he closed the door fast and leaned against it.

  “Here is your cousin,” the girl said coldly. “He will take you in charge now.”

  Cade stopped struggling with the bonds on his wrists and let his eyelids drop as the man in gray looked toward him and asked: “How is he? Any trouble?”

  “He’s no trouble.” The girl’s tone was contemptuous. “He’s just recovering.”

  “Good.” Cade heard the sharp intake of breath, and then the nervous edginess went out of the man’s voice. “I am your cousin,” he said evenly. “You will come with me.”

  “You are my cousin,” answered the toneless voice of the sleepwalker. “I am to report that ray mission is accomplished. I have succeeded in killing—”

  “Come with me now. You will make your report in—”

  “Killing the Deskman In Charge of—”

  “In another room. You will report to me priv—”

  “Of the Third District of Klin Serv—”

  “Privately. In another room.”

  Cade let his eyelids flicker open enough to observe the agitation of the man in gray as the droning report went on unmindful of the efforts at control.

  “Service. Am I to destroy myself now? The mission is successfully accomplished.” It stopped at last.

  And not a moment too soon. Cade’s hands, now free, were safely at rest again when the man in gray turned back to look at him.

  “Seems to be all right still,” he said stiffly, surveying Cade. Deliberately, Cade let his eyelids flutter. “He’s coming out of it though. I’d better get this fellow out of the way.”

  “Perhaps you’d better.” The girl’s voice now expressed infinite disgust. “Is he one of yours?”

  “No, I’m just taking his report. Larter put him under.”

  “Larter’s new,” she admitted, and fell silent.

  “Well—” There was a moment’s embarrassed silence, and Cade let his eyes open all the way, to find the man standing, hesitant, in the doorway. “Maybe I better stay around. He’s a gunman, you know. He might—”

  “I said I can handle him,” she replied. “Suppose you take care of your man before he gets . . . watch out!”

  The sleepwalker’s eyes were large and brilliant, fascinated by the needle on the table. He saw Cade, stretched out on the bed, and sudden animation flooded his face.

  “Don’t let them do it to you!” he screamed. “Don’t let them touch you. They’ll make you like me.”

  While the other man stood ashenfaced and horrified, the girl acted so swiftly that Cade might almost have admired her, if she had been anything but a female Commoner. She was across the small room, and back again with the needle in her hand even as the man screamed his warning to Cade. Before the Commoner could lift his arm to brush it aside, she drove the needle home, and the plunger after it.

  “S-s-s-s-s-t!”

  The man in gray was ready when she hissed at him.

  “You will come with me,” he intoned. “You will come with me now. You will come with me.”

  Cade had seen hypnotists at work before, but never with the aid of a drug so swift as this. He felt the capsule the girl had given him getting warm and moist between his lips. Horror seized him, but he waited as-he knew he must till the door was closed behind those inhumanly even footsteps.

  He knew how fast the girl could move; he had seen her in action. Gunners are sturdy pillars. It is fitting that we serve. His timing was perfection itself as he spat the dangerous pill from his mouth and leaped from the bed. She had hardly time to turn from the door before his fist caught her a round blow on the side of the head, and she crumpled silently to the floor.

  IV.

  He had to get out of here.

  He had to get back to the Chapter House. He looked at the girl, lying face down on the floor, and was uncomfortably aware of the feel of the rough Commoner clothes against his own skin, and then acutely conscious of a blank feeling on his right hip, where his gun should be.

  The Klin Philosophy in a Gunner is like the charg
e in his gun.

  He remembered, and shuddered as he remembered, the awful blandness with which she had admitted plotting against the Emperor. It is fitting that the Emperor rules. While this is so, all will be well till the end of time.

  Cade took his eyes from the crumpled figure of the girl, and examined the strangely featureless room once more. There was nothing new to be seen. He approached the inconspicuous door. Beyond it, there was a way out. This place of horrors, whatever and wherever it was, would have to be burned from the face of the earth, and the sooner he escaped the sooner it would happen. Without pride but with solid thankfulness he was glad that he, a full Gunner, was here instead of a Novice or an Armiger.

  Beyond the door was an empty corridor whose only purpose seemed to be the connection of the featureless room with other rooms fifty meters away. He was suddenly sure that he was underground. There were six doors at the end of the fifty-meter corridor, and he heard voices when he listened at five of them. Calmly he opened the sixth and walked into an empty room about ten by twenty meters, well-lit, equipped with simple benches and a little elevated platform at one end. Along one wall were three curtained booths whose purpose he could not fathom. But he dived into one with desperate speed at the sound of approaching voices.

  The booth was in two sections separated by a thin curtain. In the rear section, against the wall, you could look out and not be looked in on. It was an arrangement apparently as insane as the gray, egg-shaped room, but it was a perfect observation post. Through the gauzy inside curtain and the half-drawn, heavier outside curtain, he saw half a dozen Commoners enter the place, chatting in low voices. Their clothes were of the usual cut but a uniform drab brown instead of the ordinary gaudy parti-color.