We the Underpeople

by Cordwainer Smith

  "Come along," said the subchief to his robot, disregarding Rod altogether.

  Rod plucked at his sleeve.

  The subchief turned back.

  Very humbly Rod said, "Sir and Master, which way, Hostel of Singing Birds, Room Nine?"

  "Mother of poodles!" cried the subchief. "I'm on a murder case and this dumb cat asks me for directions." He was a decent young man and he thought for a minute. "This way—" said he, pointing up the Upshaft—"it's twenty more meters and then the third street over. But that's 'people only.' It's about a kilometer over to the steps for animals." He stood, frowning, and then swung on one of his robots: "Wush', you see this cat!"

  "Yes, master, a cat-man, very handsome."

  "So you think he's handsome, too. He already thinks so, so that makes it unanimous. He may be handsome, but he's dumb. Wush', take this cat-man to the address he tells you. Use the Upshaft by my authority. Don't put a belt on him, just hug him."

  Rod was immeasurably grateful that he had slipped his shaftbelt off and left it negligently on the rack just before the robot arrived.

  The robot seized him around the waist with what was literally a grip of iron. They did not wait for the slow upward magnetic drive of the shaft to lift them. The robot had some kind of a jet in his backpack and lifted Rod with sickening speed to the next level. He pushed Rod into the corridor and followed him.

  "Where do you go?" said the robot, very plainly.

  Rod, concentrating on feeling stupid just in case someone might still be trying to hier his mind, said slowly and stumblingly,

  "Hostel of the Singing Birds, Room Nine."

  The robot stopped still, as though he were communicating telepathically, but Rod's mind, though alert, could catch not the faintest whisper of telepathic communication. "Hot buttered sheep!" thought Rod. "He's using radio to check the address with his headquarters right from here!"

  Wush' appeared to be doing just that. He came to in a moment. They emerged under the sky, filled with Earth's own moon, the loveliest thing that Rod had ever seen. He did not dare to stop and enjoy the scenery, but he trotted lithely beside the robot-policeman.

  They came down a road with heavy, scented flowers. The wet warm air of Earth spread the sweetness everywhere.

  On their right there was a courtyard with copies of ancient fountains, a dining space now completely empty of diners, a robot-waiter in the corner, and many individual rooms opening on the plaza. The robot-policeman called to the robot-waiter,

  "Where's number nine?"

  The waiter answered him with a lifting of the hand and an odd twist of the wrist, twice repeated, which the robot-policeman seemed to understand perfectly well.

  "Come along," he said to Rod, leading the way to an outside stairway which reached up to an outside balcony serving the second story of rooms. One of the rooms had a plain number nine on it.

  Rod was about to tell the robot-policeman that he could see the number nine, when Wush', with officious kindness, took the doorknob and flung it open with a gesture of welcome to Rod.

  There was the great cough of a heavy gun and Wush', his head blown almost completely off, clanked metallically to the iron floor of the balcony. Rod instinctively jumped for cover and flattened himself against the wall of the building.

  A handsome man, wearing what seemed to be a black suit, came into the doorway, a heavy-caliber police pistol in his hand.

  "Oh, there you are," said he to Rod, evenly enough. "Come on in."

  Rod felt his legs working, felt himself walking into the room despite the effort of his mind to resist. He stopped pretending to be a dumb cat. He dropped the books on the ground and went back to thinking like his normal Old North Australian self, despite the cat body. It did no good. He kept on walking involuntarily, and entered the room.

  As he passed the man himself, he was conscious of a sticky sweet rotten smell, like nothing he had ever smelled before. He also saw that the man, though fully clothed, was sopping wet.

  He entered the room.

  It was raining inside.

  Somebody had jammed the fire-sprinkler system so that a steady rain fell from the ceiling to the floor.

  C'mell stood in the middle of the room, her glorious red hair a wet stringy mop hanging down her shoulders. There was a look of concentration and alarm on her face.

  "I," said the man, "am Tostig Amaral. This girl said that her husband would come with a policeman. I did not think she was right. But she was right. With a cat-husband there comes a policeman. I shoot the policeman. He is a robot and I can pay the Earth government for as many robots as I like. You are a cat. I can kill you also, and pay the charges on you. But I am a nice man, and I want to make love with your little red cat over there, so I will be generous and pay you something so that you can tell her she is mine and not yours. Do you understand that, cat-man?"

  Rod found himself released from the unexplained muscular bonds which had hampered his freedom.

  "My Lord, my Master from afar," he said, "C'mell is an underperson. It is the law here that if an underperson and a person become involved in love, the underperson dies and the human person gets brainscrubbed. I am sure, my Master, that you would not want to be brainscrubbed by the Earth authorities. Let the girl go. I agree that you can pay for the robot."

  Amaral glided across the room. His face was pale, petulant, human, but Rod saw that the black clothes were not clothes at all.

  The "clothes" were mucous membranes, an extension of Amaral's living skin.

  The pale face turned even more pale with rage.

  "You're a bold cat-man to talk like that. My body is bigger than yours, and it is poisonous as well. We have had to live hard in the rain of Amazonas Triste, and we have mental and physical powers which you had better not disturb. If you will not take payment, go away anyhow. The girl is mine. What happens to her is my business. If I violate Earth regulations, I will destroy the c'girl and pay for her. Go away, or you die."

  Rod spoke with deliberate calm and with calculated risk. "Citizen, I play no game. I am not a cat-man but a subject of Her Absent Majesty the Queen, from Old North Australia. I give you warning that it is a man you face, and no mere animal. Let that girl go."

  C'mell struggled as though she were trying to speak, but could not.

  Amaral laughed, "That's a lie, animal, and a bold one! I admire you for trying to save your mate. But she is mine. She is a girlygirl and the Instrumentality gave her to me. She is my pleasure. Go, bold cat! You are a good liar."

  Rod took his last chance. "Scan me if you will."

  He stood his ground.

  Amaral's mind ran over his personality like filthy hands pawing naked flesh. Rod recoiled at the dirtiness and intimacy of being felt by such a person's thoughts, because he could sense the kinds of pleasure and cruelty which Amaral had experienced. He stood firm, calm, sure, just. He was not going to leave C'mell with this—this monster from the stars, man though he might be, of the old true human stock.

  Amaral laughed. "You're a man, all right. A boy. A farmer. And you cannot hier or spiek except for the button in your ear. Get out, child, before I box your ears!"

  Rod spoke: "Amaral, I herewith put you in danger."

  Amaral did not reply with words.

  His peaked sharp face grew paler and the folds of his skin dilated. They quivered, like the edges of wet, torn balloons. The room began to fill with a sickening sweet stench, as though it were a candy shop in which unburied bodies had died weeks before. There was a smell of vanilla, of sugar, of fresh hot cookies, of baked bread, of chocolate boiling in the pot; there was even a whiff of stroon. But as Amaral tensed and shook out his auxiliary skins each smell turned wrong, into a caricature and abomination of itself. The composite was hypnotic. Rod glanced at C'mell. She had turned completely white.

  That decided him.

  The calm which he had found with the Catmaster might be good, but there were moments for calm and other moments for anger.

  Rod delib
erately chose anger.

  He felt fury rising in him as hot and quick and greedy as if it had been love. He felt his heart go faster, his muscles become stronger, his mind clearer. Amaral apparently had total confidence in his own poisonous and hypnotic powers, because he was staring straight forward as his skins swelled and waved in the air like wet leaves under water. The steady drizzle from the sprinkler kept everything penetratingly wet.

  Rod disregarded this. He welcomed fury.

  With his new hiering device, he focused on Amaral's mind, and only on Amaral's.

  Amaral saw the movement of his eyes and whipped a knife into view.

  "Man or cat, you're dying!" said Amaral, himself hot with the excitement of hate and collision.

  Rod then spieked, in his worst scream—

  beast, filth, offal—

  spot, dirt, vileness,

  wet, nasty—

  die, die, die!

  He was sure it was the loudest cry he had ever given. There was no echo, no effect. Amaral stared at him, the evil knife-point flickering in his hand like the flame atop a candle.

  Rod's anger reached a new height.

  He felt pain in his mind when he walked forward, cramps in his muscles as he used them. He felt a real fear of the offworld poison which this man-creature might exude, but the thought of C'mell—cat or no cat—alone with Amaral was enough to give him the rage of a beast and the strength of a machine.

  Only at the very last moment did Amaral realize Rod had broken loose.

  Rod never could tell whether the telepathic scream had really hurt the wet-worlder or not, because he did something very simple.

  He reached with all the speed of a Norstrilian farmer, snatched the knife from Amaral's hand, ripping folds of soft, sticky skin with it, and then slashed the other man from clavicle to clavicle.

  He jumped back in time to avoid the spurt of blood.

  The "wet black suit" collapsed as Amaral died on the floor.

  Rod took the dazed C'mell by the arm and led her out of the room. The air on the balcony was fresh, but the murder-smell of Amazonas Triste was still upon him. He knew that he would hate himself for weeks, just from the memory of that smell.

  There were whole armies of robots and police outside. The body of Wush' had been taken away.

  There was silence as they emerged.

  Then a clear, civilized, commanding voice spoke from the plaza below,

  "Is he dead?"

  Rod nodded.

  "Forgive me for not coming closer. I am the Lord Jestocost. I know you, C'roderick, and I know who you really are. These people are all under my orders. You and the girl can wash in the rooms below. Then you can run a certain errand. Tomorrow, at the second hour, I will see you."

  Robots came close to them—apparently robots with no sense of smell, because the fulsome stench did not bother them in the least. People stepped out of their way as they passed.

  Rod was able to murmur, "C'mell, are you all right?"

  She nodded and she gave him a wan smile. Then she forced herself to speak. "You are brave, Mister McBan. You are even braver than a cat."

  The robots separated the two of them.

  Within moments Rod found little white medical robots taking his clothing off him gently, deftly, and quickly. A hot shower, with a smell of medication to it, was already hissing in the bath-stall. Rod was tired of wetness, tired of all this water everywhere, tired of wet things and complicated people, but he stumbled into the shower with gratitude and hope. He was still alive. He had unknown friends.

  And C'mell. C'mell was safe.

  "Is this," thought Rod, "what people call love?"

  The clean stinging astringency of the shower drove all thoughts from his mind. Two of the little white robots had followed him in. He sat on a hot, wet wooden bench and they scrubbed him with brushes which felt as if they would remove his very skin.

  Bit by bit, the terrible odor faded.

  Birds, Far Underground

  Rod McBan was too weary to protest when the little white robots wrapped him in an enormous towel and led him into what looked like an operating room.

  A large man, with a red-brown spade beard, very uncommon on Earth at this time, said,

  "I am Doctor Vomact, the cousin of the other Doctor Vomact you met on Mars. I know that you are not a cat, Mister and Owner McBan, and it is only my business to check up on you. May I?"

  "C'mell—" began Rod.

  "She is perfectly all right. We have given her a sedative and for the time being she is being treated as though she were a human woman. Jestocost told me to suspend the rules in her case, and I did so, but I think we will both have trouble about the matter from some of our colleagues later on."

  "Trouble?" said Rod. "I'll pay—"

  "No, no, it's not payment. It's just the rule that damaged underpeople should be destroyed and not put in hospitals. Mind you, I treat them myself now and then, if I can do it on the sly. But now let's have a look at you."

  "Why are we talking?" spieked Rod. "Didn't you know that I can hier now?"

  Instead of getting a physical examination, Rod had a wonderful visit with the doctor, in which they drank enormous glasses of a sweet Earth beverage called chai by the ancient Parosski ones. Rod realized that between Redlady, the other Doctor Vomact on Mars, and the Lord Jestocost on Earth, he had been watched and guarded all the way through. He found that this Doctor Vomact was a candidate for a Chiefship of the Instrumentality, and he learned something of the strange tests required for that office. He even found that the doctor knew more than he himself did about his own financial position, and that the actuarial balances of Earth were sagging with the weight of his wealth, since the increase in the price of stroon might lead to shorter lives. The doctor and he ended by discussing the underpeople; he found that the doctor had just as vivid an admiration for C'mell as he himself did. The evening ended when Rod said,

  "I'm young, Doctor and Sir, and I sleep well, but I'm never going to sleep again if you don't get that smell away from me. I can smell it inside my nose."

  The doctor became professional. He said,

  "Open your mouth and breathe right into my face!"

  Rod hesitated and then obeyed.

  "Great crooked stars!" said the doctor. "I can smell it too. There's a little bit in your upper respiratory system, perhaps a little even in your lungs. Do you need your sense of smell for the next few days?"

  Rod said he did not.

  "Fine," said the doctor. "We can numb that section of the brain and do it very gently. There'll be no residual damage. You won't smell anything for eight to ten days, and by that time the smell of Amaral will be gone. Incidentally, you were charged with first-degree murder, tried, and acquitted, on the matter of Tostig Amaral."

  "How could I be?" said Rod. "I wasn't even arrested."

  "The Instrumentality computered it. They had the whole scene on tape, since Amaral's room has been under steady surveillance since yesterday. When he warned you that whether cat or man, you were dying, he finished the case against himself. That was a death threat and your acquittal was for self-defense."

  Rod hesitated and then blurted out the truth, "And the men in the shaft?"

  "The Lord Jestocost and Crudelta and I talked it over. We decided to let the matter drop. It keeps the police lively if they have a few unsolved crimes here and there. Now lie down, so I can kill off that smell."

  Rod lay down. The doctor put his head in a clamp and called in robot assistants. The smell-killing process knocked him out, and when he awakened, it was in a different building. He sat up in bed and saw the sea itself. C'mell was standing at the edge of the water. He sniffed. He smelled no salt, no wet, no water, no Amaral. It was worth the change.

  C'mell came to him. "My dear, my very dear, my Sir and Master but my very dear! You chanced your life for me last night."

  "I'm a cat myself," laughed Rod.

  He leaped from the bed and ran out to the water margin. The immensity of b
lue water was incredible. The white waves were separate, definable miracles, each one of them. He had seen the enclosed lakes of Norstrilia, but none of them did things like this.

  C'mell had the tact to stay silent till he had seen his fill.

  Then she broke the news.

  "You own Earth. You have work to do. Either you stay here and begin studying how to manage your property, or you go somewhere else. Either way something a little bit sad is going to happen. Today."