Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “I told you—a Cave that is not a Cave. But you chose to believe in your beasts and horrors and other Commoner’s tales. Keep moving.” His brusqueness covered a churning confusion in his mind. If the Cave was simply a disused part of a building, why weren’t they being followed by the sentries?

  They rounded an angle in the corridor—an angle of Fives—and saw at the end of the new corridor, far ahead, a dim rectangle of light, shining like the light around a closed door.

  X.

  Fledwick redeemed himself.

  There was no radionic lock in existence, Cade was certain, that he could not open. But this door was locked in a manner the Gunner had never seen before, with an ancient mechanical device no longer in use anywhere—except among Commoners.

  The ex-Teacher seemed perfectly familiar with it. He removed from inside his surprising belt a bit of metal that he twisted in an opening in the lock.

  Cade stepped forward first, as was his due. The door opened easily an inch or two and then, before the Gunner could adjust his eyes to the light, there was a voice.

  “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  Cade almost laughed aloud. He had been ready for a challenge, the blast of a gun, conquest or defeat or even emptiness. He had been ready for almost anything except a startled question in a feminine voice. He pushed the door open and Fledwick followed him into the room.

  Only two things were certain about her: she was star-borne, a Lady of the Court; and she was just as surprised as he.

  She stood erect beside a couch on which, he guessed, she had been resting when the door opened. Her eyes were wide with surprise still, and her garb showed her rank. Only the star-borne would or could wear an elaborate coif piled high in soft coils tinted to a perfect match with her subtle blue-green eyes, and scattered with seemingly random drifts of golden dust.

  The headdress marked her rank and her clothes confirmed it. She wore the privileged sheer of the nobility, not fashioned obscenely into common pajamas, as he had seen it once, but a fluid draping of cobweb-stuff whose color echoed just a trace of hair and eyes as seafoam carries the faintest, vestige of the ocean hue. The same golden specks that dusted her hair were looped in fairy patterns through fabric of the gown, and here and there where the designer’s scheme was to attract the eye of the beholder, the flowing robe was caught and held by artful incrustations of the dust, concealing nothing from the casual gaze but what it made most tempting to see.

  Cade stood speechless. He had seen Ladies of the Court in such attire before, though not so close or informally. But the vision itself was responsible for only part of his consternation. It was her presence in the private dwelling of the Gunner Supreme that struck him dumb.

  The woman raised a delicately-fashioned tube of gold to her lips and sucked on it. In a small bowl at the other end a coal seemed to glow and when she dropped her hand again a cloud of pale blue smoke came from her lips and drifted lazily across the room to where Cade stood. Its heavy fragrance dizzied him.

  “Well?” demanded the woman.

  The Gunner formally began: “We come in Klin’s service—” and could think of nothing more to say. Something was terribly wrong. Was it possible that he had mistaken the ritual description of the place? Had the slow afternoon of planning and the violence of the night gone for nothing? It seemed, from the furnishings and the woman, to be the palace of a foreign Star. And what could he tell the Lady of such a one?

  Fledwick leaped into the breach. Words began to pour from him with practiced ease: “Oh, star-borne Lady, if you have mercy to match even the smallest part of your beauty, hear me before you condemn us out of hand! We are your lowly servants! We throw ourselves at your feet—”

  “Silence, fool!” the Gunner growled. “Lady! This Commoner speaks only for himself. I am the servant of no woman but of my Emperor and my Star. Tell me who is the master of this house?”

  She scanned him coldly, her eyes lingering on the discrepancies of his gear. “It is enough for you to know that I am its mistress,” she said. “I see you wear stolen garments as you speak of loyalty.”

  There was no possibility at all that she would believe him, but Cade was suddenly and unspeakably weary of subterfuge. “I am no usurper,” he said quietly. “I am Gunner Cade of the Order of Armsmen; my Star is the Star of France. They say I died in battle for my Star at Sarralbe, but I did not. I came here for audience with my father in the Order, Gunner Supreme Arle; if you are the mistress here I must have come wrongly. Whatever place this is, I demand assistance in the name of the Order. You will earn the thanks of the Supreme himself if—”

  She was laughing a low, throaty chuckle of honest mirth. “So,” she said at last, her voice catching to the tag ends of her laughter, “you are Gunner Cade. Then you”—she turned to the little thief—”‘must be the unbooked Klin Teacher. And to think that you two sorry creatures are the . . . the dangerous homicidal maniacs the continent is searching for! How’d you find your way in here? Where did you get those uniforms?” She was a Lady with Commoners; unthinkable that they would not obey if her voice had the proper whip-crack in it.

  “The cloak and helmet that I wear are stolen,” Cade told her flatly. “I got them less than an hour ago from a sentry at your gate. I also stole—”

  “Star-borne, have mercy!” shrieked Fledwick abruptly. “I am frightened. I am only a poor thief, but they are right about him. Call your master! Quickly! Give us in his power, star-borne Lady, before he—Oh, Lady, he has a gun!”

  “Stupid!” she chided him, still smiling. “If he has, he can’t use it. Do you suppose that an Armsman’s gun is such a simple affair that any madman can fire it?” She took a step backward, “I don’t know!” Fledwick shrieked. “I am only a poor thief, but I beg you, star-borne Lady, call your master before he kills us both!”

  Through this Cade passed rapidly into hurt resentment, anger and, finally, comprehension. The woman was watching him and waiting; he would oblige.

  Cade produced his stolen gun from under the cloak with a flourish and aimed it somewhat over Fledwick’s head. “Traitor!” he said loudly. “For this you die!”

  The woman’s nerve broke at last. She hurled herself across the room to a silk-hung wall and stabbed frantically at a rosette.

  “Don’t shoot!” wailed Fledwick, winking. “Please don’t shoot! I’m only a poor thief—”

  While he babbled Cade made a menacing grimace or two and wondered who would turn up. Any Star at all would do. He’d have his gun on him, Fledwick could barricade the place and a message would be sent at last to the Gunner Supreme, with the life of the Star, or whoever was this Lady’s master, as hostage for its delivery.

  The woman took a hand. “Stop this brawling!” she screamed. Fledwick stopped. Her face was white but proud. “Hear me,” she said. “I’ve summoned—help. If there is bloodshed in my chambers your death is certain. It will not be a pleasant one. But I have a powerful protector.” Good; good; thought Cade. The more powerful the better and we’ll get this farce over with.

  “If you surrender now,” the woman went on, fighting for calm, “you will get justice, whatever that maybe in your case.” She stood composedly, waiting for a gun blast or a plea for mercy.

  There was no need to continue playacting. Cade holstered the gun; confident that he could out-draw whatever retainers the master of the place might appear with. Out of admiration for her he swallowed a smile of triumph before he said: “Thank you, Lady. And thank you, Fledwick. You know strategies that I have never been forced to practice.”

  Mopping his brow Fledwick said from the soul: “I suppose you think I wasn’t afraid of that gun?”

  “What nonsense is this—?” the woman began indignantly, but she went no further. The door opened and somebody strode into the room.

  “Moia!” the man called, seeing only the woman against the silk-hung wall. “What is it? You called—”

  He followed her eyes to the two strangers, and they stared back, Fledwick with
curiosity and apprehension and Cade with astonishment and veneration. He had automatically drawn the gun. Just as automatically, when he saw the proud, straight head, the gold band on the swirling cloak, the gun with a great seal on its hilt, he performed the Grand Salute of the Order, which is rendered only to the Gunner Supreme.

  Abased on the floor, Cade heard the sonorous voice ask with concern: “You are unharmed?”

  “Up to now.” The Lady’s shaky reassurance ended with a forced laugh.

  “Good. You may rise, Gunner. Show me your face.”

  “He’s no Gunner!” the woman cried. “He’s the Commoner posing as Cade!”

  Calmly the Supreme said: “Do not fear. He is a Gunner, though the cloak he wears is not his own. Speak, Brother. What brings you here in this unseemly manner?”

  Cade rose and holstered the gun he had proferred in the salute. With downcast eyes he said: “Sir, I am Gunner Cade of France. I come with an urgent message—”

  “I have already received it. A most dramatic message, most dramatically delivered. I was studying it when the Lady Moia’s signal reached me. It was your work?”

  “Yes, sir. I was not sure I could reach your person alive. Sir, I must warn you that there is a conspiracy, perhaps a dangerously powerful one, against—”

  “You will tell me of it shortly. Your . . . the cloak you wear. It seems familiar. Or have you become a Marsman?”

  “It was the property of a Brother in your service, sir. I hope I did not kill him. I knew no other way to come to you.”

  “He is dead. I owe you thanks for that. He guarded an important post and guarded it badly. I shall see to it that a better man replaces him before others less friendly than you find their way to this room.” He turned from Cade and addressed the Lady Moia: “We shall leave you now to rest and recover from this upsetting incident. I promise you the guards will be taught an unforgettable lesson. I will be back when I have heard this Brother’s story.” Their eyes met and Cade saw them smile as no Armsman should smile at a woman, and no woman should smile at an Armsman.”

  “Your story will be better told in my own quarters,” Arle said without self-consciousness to Cade. “The Lady Moia’s apartment is no place for gory tales.” He looked absently about the room until his eyes fell on the open corridor door. “Yes,” he muttered, “we must change that lock. You.” For the first time he seemed to notice Fledwick. “Close the door and bolt it. There will be a new lock tomorrow, my dear,” he added to the Lady Moia. “Meanwhile the bolt will serve. Will you be all right by yourself for a while?” His fingers dipped into a carved gold box on the table and took out a golden smoking pipe, like the one she herself held, and placed it absently between his lips.

  “I am all right now,” she assured him with sudden nervousness. “You need have no concern for me. The lock may be replaced whenever it is convenient. The pipe, sir!” The Gunner Supreme started. “It’s a new plaything of mine,” she said, with self-deprecating humor. “I doubt that you would care for it.”

  Arle took the tube from his lips and studied it as though he had never seen it before. “A strange plaything,” he said disapprovingly. “Come along, Gunner. And you too, I suppose.”

  That was for Fledwick.

  The room he took them to was the first reassuring thing Cade had seen in the place. It was a lesson room like those you could find in any Chapter House. The walls were bare, with standard storage space, there was a table in the center and Order benches all around. Cade sat down on Arle’s permissive signal; Fledwick remained standing.

  “Now,” said the Supreme, “let me hear your story.”

  Cade started. The mad business had gone through his mind so often that it was like a verbatim recitation: doping and capture by a hag in Sarralbe; resurrection in Baltimore; the Cairo Mystery. He had waited so long to tell it and gone through so much for the opportunity that somehow now the whole business was a disappointment. And it seemed there was a final lunatic touch. The Gunner Supreme appeared to be little more interested in hearing the tale than he was in telling it. But he went on, and from time to time Arle asked a question or made a comment: “How many were there? Did they seem to be local people or from overseas? A wicked business, Brother! No recognizable Armsmen, of course?” But his eyes were glazed with boredom.

  Could he lie to the incarnate Order? He stumbled in his story; the question burned in his mind, and then the fire went out. He was lying, to Arle by omission. He was leaving out the girl of the Cairo Mystery, who had twice tried, the second time with success, to save him from hypnosis. He let the Gunner Supreme understand that he had automatically come to his senses on the street and then gone on to his arrest—“with some wearer of the garter who was following me”—for impersonating an Armsman. The rest was straightforward, including the attack on the guard and the long trip through the corridor. He told how Fled wick had forced the lock, and the Supreme examined the ex-Teachers curious key with more interest than he had shown up to that point.

  “Very well,” he said finally, tossing the key to the table. “And then?”

  “Then we entered the . . . the Lady Moia’s apartment.” Cade choked on the words.

  The Lady Moia’s apartment. I am its mistress. The Lady Moia rang—and the Gunner Supreme, the incarnation of the Order of Armsmen, came. And quickly! Cade raised his eyes to the fine, proud old face.

  “You’re troubled, Brother,” said the Supreme. “If it will ease your mind, I should tell you that the Lady Moia is one of the graces of this place. Visiting Stars and their Courts are not exposed to the rigors of an Armsman’s life in Chapter House. It is the Lady Moia’s task to prepare fitting apartments for them and to treat them with the ceremony that I, of course, cannot extend.”

  To be sure. It was so sensible. But the smile he had seen was unexplained, and it was unexplained why the Lady Moia, hostess and social aide, could summon the personification of the Order by a push on a concealed button.

  His mind a dazed whirl, Cade said hoarsely: “I thank you, sir. There is no more to tell. You know the rest.” Then, at a nervous cough from Fledwick, he hastened to emphasize his virtual promise to the little man of a pardon on grounds of service to the Realm.

  “Quite right,” said the Supreme, and Fled wick relaxed with a sigh.

  Three Gunners entered on a summons from Arle. He told them: “This is the former Klin Teacher, Fledwick. You recall that there is an order out to kill him on sight as a homicidal maniac. I find that the order was a gross error. He is a worthy member of the Realm who appears to have committed some trifling indiscretions. Bring me materials for writing him a pardon on grounds of Service.”

  Cade stole a look at the unbooked Teacher and felt inexplicable shame as Fledwick avoided his eyes. He could not forget the Lady Moia’s apartment himself; how could Fledwick? He wished he could take the little man aside to tell him earnestly that it was still all right, that the Supreme’s outward forms didn’t count; that his inner life must be in complete harmony with Klin, that the relationship between the Supreme and the Lady Moia wasn’t—what it obviously was.

  Cade sat silently as the Supreme wrote the pardon and signed it in the flowing script that had been on all his own assignments. One of the Gunners dripped a blob of clear thermoplastic on the signature and Arle rapped it smartly with the hilt of his gun. The Seal.

  The seal Cade had sometimes in a secret excess of sentimental zeal ritually pressed to his chest, mouth and brow because it had been touched by the gun of the Supreme! He felt himself flushing scarlet, and turned his eyes away. Abruptly he rose, without a permissive sign, and went to Fledwick. “You’re out of it,” he said. “I’ve kept my promise. You weren’t a bad companion.”

  The little man managed to look directly at him. “It’s good of you to say so. And it’s been worth it. How I wish I could have taken a picture of your face when I got us those chickens!” It was insolence, but Cade didn’t mind. And Fledwick said gently, with that puzzling look Cade had got used to
but didn’t understand: “I’m sorry.”

  That was all. The Supreme handed him the pardon and waited impatiently through the little man’s lavish protestations of gratitude. “My Gunners here,” he said, “will take you in a ground car to Aberdeen. I think you’ll have no trouble with them for an escort. There you should present your pardon to the Watch House and that absurd order will be withdrawn. Doubtless you wish to leave at once.

  “And you, Gunner,” Arle continued. “It’s long since you’ve been in a sleeping loft. He summoned a Novice and ordered: “Take this Brother to the night guard’s sleeping loft. He will need a complete uniform in the morning.”

  Cade performed the abject Grand Salute before he left, and the Gunner Supreme acknowledged it with an absent-minded nod.

  XI.

  The empty sleeping loft at least was real and fitting. Cade took a sleepbag from the wall, undressed, belted on his gun and inflated the bag. For weeks he had been thinking that this was the night he would sleep well. Now he knew it would not be so. What had he said to Fledwick? “You’re out of it.” A puzzling thing for him to say. Cade paced to the window. Five floors below was a courtyard formed by the outer ring of the Building of Fives, the next ring and two connecting spokes. All the many windows on the court were dark, but a thin sliver of new moon showed white concrete down below. It seemed to be an isolated wing. Cade stared down into the moonlit courtyard as though he could hypnotize himself into numbness.

  All right, he told himself angrily. Think about it. Think about the look they exchanged. The bare pretense of interest on the Supreme’s face. The absent-minded habitual air with which he picked up the smoking tube. What do you-know about it? What do you know except that you’re a Gunner, and how to be one?

  Maybe that’s the way a Gunner Supreme is supposed to be. Maybe they tell you that for your own good, because you’re too much of a fool to understand that it’s got to be this way because—because of good reasons. Maybe there’s a time when they do tell you in secret and show you how it all fits in the Klin Philosophy, like everything else. Maybe the whole thing, from the poisoned cider on down to this sleeping loft was a great secret test of your conduct. What do you know about it?