We the Underpeople

by Cordwainer Smith

  "Tostig Amaral, from the planet of Amazonas Triste. He has to stay wet all the time. He is just a licensed trader, not an honored guest of the Instrumentality. He was assigned a girlygirl and now he thinks she belongs to him."

  "Send the girlygirl to him. What is she, mouse-derived?"

  "No, a c'girl. Her name is C'mell and she has been requisitioned by the Lord Jestocost."

  "I know all about that," said the chief, wishing that he really did. "She's now assigned to that Old North Australian who has bought most of this planet, Earth."

  "But this hominid wants her, just the same!" The subchief was urgent.

  "He can't have her, not if a Lord of the Instrumentality commands her services."

  "He is threatening to fight. He says he will kill people."

  "Hmm. Is he in a room?"

  "Yes, Sir and Chief."

  "With standard outlets?"

  "I'll look, Sir." The subchief twisted a knob and an electronic design appeared on the left-hand screen in front of him. "Yes, sir, that's it."

  "Let's have a look at him."

  "He got permission, sir, to run the fire sprinkler system all the time. It seems he comes from a rain-world."

  "Try, anyhow."

  "Yes, sir." The subchief whistled a call to the board. The picture dissolved, whirled, and resolved itself into the image of a dark room. There seemed to be a bundle of wet rags in one corner, out of which a well-shaped human hand protruded.

  "Nasty type," said the chief, "and probably poisonous. Knock him out for exactly one hour. We'll be getting orders meanwhile."

  On an Earth-Level Street Under Earthport

  Two girls talking.

  ". . . and I will tell you the biggest secret in the whole world, if you will never, never tell anyone."

  "I'll bet it's not much of a secret. You don't have to tell me."

  "I'll never tell you then. Never."

  "Suit yourself."

  "Really, if you even suspected it, you would be mad with curiosity."

  "If you want to tell me, you can tell me."

  "But it's a secret. "

  "All right, I'll never tell anybody."

  "That man from the stars. He's going to marry me."

  "You? That's ridiculous."

  "Why is it so ridiculous? He's bought my dower rights already."

  "I know it's ridiculous. There's something wrong."

  "I don't see why you should think he doesn't like me if he has already bought my dower rights."

  "Fool! I know it's ridiculous, because he has bought mine."

  "Yours?"

  "Yes."

  "Both of us?"

  "What for?"

  "Search me."

  "Maybe he is going to put us both in the same harem. Wouldn't that be romantic?"

  "They don't have harems in Old North Australia. All they do is live like prudish old farmers and raise stroon and murder anybody at all that even gets near them."

  "That sounds bad."

  "Let's go to the police."

  "You know, he's hurt our feelings. Maybe we can make him pay extra for buying our dower rights if he doesn't mean to use them."

  In Front of a Café

  A man, drunk:

  "I will get drunk every night and I will have musicians to play me to sleep and I will have all the money I need and it won't be that play money out of a barrel but it will be real money registered in the computer and I will make everybody do what I say and I know he will do it for me because my mother was named MacArthur in her genetic code before everybody got numbers and you have no call to laugh at me because his name really is MacArthur McBan the eleventh and I am probably the closest friend and relative he has on Earth . . ."

  Tostig Amaral

  Rod McBan left the Department Store of Hearts' Desires simply, humbly; he carried a package of books, wrapped in dustproofing paper, and he looked like any other first-class cat-man messenger. The human beings in the market were still making their uproar, their smells of food, spices, and odd objects, but he walked so calmly and so straightforwardly through their scattered groups that even the robot police, weapons on the buzz, paid no attention to him.

  When he had come across the Thieves' Market going the other way with C'mell and A'gentur, he had been ill at ease. As a Mister and Owner from Old North Australia, he had been compelled to keep his external dignity, but he had not felt ease within his heart. These people were strange, his destination had been unfamiliar, and the problems of wealth and survival lay heavy upon him.

  Now, it was all different. Cat-man he might still be on the outside, but on the inside he once again felt his proper pride of home and planet.

  And more.

  He felt calm, down to the very tips of his nerve endings.

  The hiering-spieking device should have alerted him, excited him: it did not. As he walked through the market, he noticed that very few of the Earth people were communicating with one another telepathically. They preferred to babble in their loud airborne language, of which they had not one but many kinds, with the Old Common Tongue serving as a referent to those who had been endowed with different kinds of ancient language by the processes of the Rediscovery of Man. He even heard Ancient Inglish, the Queen's Own Language, sounding remarkably close to his own spoken language of Norstrilian. These things caused neither stimulation nor excitement, not even pity. He had his own problems, but they were no longer the problems of wealth or of survival. Somehow he had confidence that a hidden, friendly power in the universe would take care of him, if he took care of others. He wanted to get Eleanor out of trouble, to disembarrass the Hon. Sec., to see Lavinia, to reassure Doris, to say a good goodbye to C'mell, to get back to his sheep, to protect his computer, and to keep the Lord Redlady away from his bad habit of killing other people lawfully on too slight an occasion for manslaughter.

  One of the robot police, a little more perceptive than the others, watched this cat-man who walked with preternatural assurance through the crowds of men, but "C'roderick" did nothing but enter the market from one side, thread his way through it, and leave at the other side, still carrying his package; the robot turned away: his dreadful, milky eyes, always ready for disorder and death, scanned the marketplace again and again with fatigue-free vigilance.

  Rod went down the ramp and turned right.

  There was the underpeople commissary with the bear-man cashier. The cashier remembered him.

  "It's been a long day, cat-sir, since I saw you. Would you like another special order of fish?"

  "Where's my girl?" said Rod bluntly.

  "C'mell?" said the bear-cashier. "She waited here a long time but then she went on and she left this message, 'Tell my man C'rod that he should eat before following me, but that when he has eaten he can either follow me by going to Upshaft Four, Ground Level, Hostel of the Singing Birds, Room Nine, where I am taking care of an offworld visitor, or he can send a robot to me and I will come to him.' Don't you think, cat-sir, that I've done well, remembering so complicated a message?" The bear-man flushed a little and the edge went off his pride as he confessed, for the sake of some abstract honesty, "Of course, that address part, I wrote that down. It would be very bad and very confusing if I sent you to the wrong address in people's country. Somebody might burn you down if you came into an unauthorized corridor."

  "Fish, then," said Rod. "A fish dinner, please."

  He wondered why C'mell, with his life in the balance, would go off to another visitor. Even as he thought this, he detected the mean jealousy behind it, and he confessed to himself that he had no idea of the terms, conditions, or hours of work required in the girlygirl business.

  He sat dully on the bench, waiting for his food.

  The uproar of hate hall was still in his mind, the pathos of his parents, those dying dissolving manikins, was bright within his heart, and his body throbbed with the fatigue of the ordeal. Idly he asked the bear-cashier, "How long has it been since I was here?"

  The bear-cashier l
ooked at the clock on the wall. "About fourteen hours, worthy cat."

  "How long is that in real time?" Rod was trying to compare Norstrilian hours with Earth hours. He thought that Earth hours were one-seventh shorter, but he was not sure.

  The bear-man was completely baffled. "If you mean galactic navigation time, dear guest, we never use that down here anyhow. Are there any other kinds of time?"

  Rod realized his mistake and tried to correct it. "It doesn't matter. I am thirsty. What is lawful for underpeople to drink? I am tired and thirsty, both, but I have no desire to become the least bit drunk."

  "Since you are a c'man," said the bear-cashier, "I recommend strong black coffee mixed with sweet whipped cream."

  "I have no money," said Rod.

  "The famous cat-madame, C'mell your consort, has guaranteed payment for anything at all that you order."

  "Go ahead, then."

  The bear-man called a robot over and gave him the orders.

  Rod stared at the wall, wondering what he was going to do with this Earth he had bought. He wasn't thinking very hard, just musing idly. A voice cut directly into his mind. He realized that the bear-man was spieking to him and that he could hier it.

  "You are not an underman, Sir and Master."

  "What?" spieked Rod.

  "You hiered me," said the telepathic voice. "I am not going to repeat it. If you come in the sign of the Fish, may blessings be upon you."

  "I don't know that sign," said Rod.

  "Then," spieked the bear-man, "no matter who you are, may you eat and drink in peace because you are a friend of C'mell and you are under the protection of the One Who Lives in Downdeep."

  "I don't know," spieked Rod. "I just don't know, but I thank you for your welcome, friend."

  "I do not give such welcomes lightly," said the bear-man, "and ordinarily I would be ready to run away from anything as strange and dangerous and unexplained as yourself, but you bring with you the quality of peace, which made me think that you might travel in the fellowship of the sign of the Fish. I have heard that in that sign, people and underpeople remember the blessed Joan and mingle in complete comradeship."

  "No," said Rod, "no. I travel alone."

  His food and drink came. He consumed them quietly. The bear-cashier had given him a table and bench far from the serving tables and away from the other underpeople who dropped in, interrupting their tasks, eating in a hurry so that they could get back in a hurry. He saw one wolf-man, wearing the insignia of Auxiliary Police, who came to the wall, forced his identity-card into a slot, opened his mouth, bolted down five large chunks of red, raw meat, and left the commissary, all in less than one and one-half minutes. Rod was amazed but not impressed. He had too much on his mind.

  At the desk he confirmed the address which C'mell had left, offered the bear-man a handshake, and went along to Upshaft Four. He still looked like a c'man and he carried his package alertly and humbly, as he had seen other underpeople behave in the presence of real persons.

  He almost met death on the way. Upshaft Four was one-directional and was plainly marked, "People Only." Rod did not like the looks of it, as long as he moved in a cat-man body, but he did not think that C'mell would give him directions wrongly or lightly. (Later, he found that she had forgotten the phrase, "Special business under the protection of Jestocost, a chief of the Instrumentality," if he were to be challenged; but he did not know the phrase.)

  An arrogant human man, wearing a billowing red cloak, looked at him sharply as he took a belt, hooked it and stepped into the shaft. When Rod stepped free, he and the man were on a level.

  Rod tried to look like a humble, modest messenger, but the strange voice grated his ears:

  "Just what do you think you are doing? This is a human shaft."

  Rod pretended that he did not know it was himself whom the red-cloaked man was addressing. He continued to float quietly upward, his magnet-belt tugging uncomfortably at his waist.

  A pain in the ribs made him turn suddenly, almost losing his balance in the belt.

  "Animal!" cried the man. "Speak up or die."

  Still holding his package of books, Rod said mildly, "I'm on an errand and I was told to go this way."

  The man's senseless hostility gave caliber to his voice: "And who told you?"

  "C'mell," said Rod absently.

  The man and his companions laughed at that, and for some reason their laughter had no humor in it, just savagery, cruelty, and—way down underneath—something of fear. "Listen to that," said the man in a red cloak, "one animal says another animal told it to do something." He whipped out a knife.

  "What are you doing?" cried Rod.

  "Just cutting your belt," said the man. "There's nobody at all below us and you will make a nice red blob at the bottom of the shaft, cat-man. That ought to teach you which shaft to use."

  The man actually reached over and seized Rod's belt.

  He lifted the knife to slash.

  Rod became frightened and angry. His brain ran red.

  He spat thoughts at them—

  pommy!

  shortie!

  Earthie

  red dirty blue stinking little man,

  die, puke, burst, blaze, die!

  It all came out in a single flash, faster than he could control it. The red-cloaked man twisted oddly, as if in spasm. His two companions threshed in their belts. They turned slowly.

  High above them, two women began screaming.

  Further up a man was shouting, both with his voice and with his mind, "Police! Help! Police! Police! Brainbomb! Brainbomb! Help!"

  The effort of his telepathic explosion left Rod feeling disoriented and weak. He shook his head and blinked his eyes. He started to wipe his face, only to hit himself on the jaw with the package of books, which he still carried. This aroused him a little. He looked at the three men. Redcloak was dead, his head at an odd angle. The other two seemed to be dead. One was floating upside down, his rump pointing upmost and the two limp legs swinging out at odd angles; the other was rightside up but had sagged in his belt. All three of them kept moving a steady ten meters a minute, right along with Rod.

  There were strange sounds from above.

  An enormous voice, filling the shaft with its volume, roared down: "Stay where you are! Police. Police. Police."

  Rod glanced at the bodies floating upward. A corridor came by. He reached for the grip-bar, made it, and swung himself into the horizontal passage. He sat down immediately, not getting away from the Upshaft. He thought sharply with his new hiering. Excited, frantic minds beat all around him, looking for enemies, lunatics, crimes, aliens, anything strange.

  Softly he began spieking to the empty corridor and to himself, "I am a dumb cat. I am the messenger C'rod. I must take the books to the gentleman from the stars. I am a dumb cat. I do not know much."

  A robot, gleaming with the ornamental body-armor of Old Earth, landed at his cross-corridor, looked at Rod, and called up the shaft.

  "Master, here's one. A c'man with a package."

  A young subchief came into view, feet first as he managed to ride down the shaft instead of going up it. He seized the ceiling of the transverse corridor, gave himself a push and (once free of the shaft's magnetism) dropped heavily on his feet beside Rod. Rod hiered him thinking, "I'm good at this. I'm a good telepath. I clean things up fast. Look at this dumb cat."

  Rod went on concentrating. "I'm a dumb cat. I have a package to deliver. I'm a dumb cat."

  The subchief looked down at him scornfully. Rod felt the other's mind slide over his own in the rough equivalent of a search. He remained relaxed and tried to feel stupid while the other hiered him. Rod said nothing. The subchief flashed his baton over the package, eyeing the crystal knob at the end.

  "Books," he snorted.

  Rod nodded.

  "You," said the bright young subchief, "you see bodies?" He spoke in a painfully clear, almost childish version of the Old Common Tongue.

  Rod held up thre
e fingers and then pointed upward.

  "You, cat-man, you feel the brainbomb!"

  Rod, beginning to enjoy the game, threw his head backward and let out a cattish yowl expressing pain. The subchief could not help clapping his hands over his ears. He started to turn away. "I can see what you think of it, cat-fellow. You're pretty stupid, aren't you?"

  Still thinking low dull thoughts as evenly as he could, Rod said promptly and modestly, "Me smart cat. Very handsome too."