Lords are recruited secretly and with extreme caution. For years, potential candidates are unaware that they are being observed, and the invitation to join the Instrumentality usually comes as a surprise.
The Instrumentality is thus able to assimilate potential rebels in an obvious application of the famous ecclesiastical principle Promoveatur ut amoveatur (“let him be promoted so he be removed”). For instance, Lord Sto Odin knows that the Instrumentality soon must decide either to promote Santuna or destroy her, for her power has grown too great.
Admittance to the Instrumentality is an initiation: “Considering [...] that you have earned this status by survival capacity, and that the strange and difficult lives which you have already led with no thought of suicide have earned you a place in our terrible and dutiful ranks [...] that you take power to serve, that you serve to take power, that you come with us, that you not look backward, that you remember to forget, that you forget old remembering, that within the Instrumentality you are not a person, but a part of a person [...] that you be made welcome to the oldest servant of mankind, the Instrumentality itself.”12
The rituals of the Instrumentality are somewhat Masonic in nature. The author’s résumé reflects his membership in the Masonic order, probably one that practiced Scottish rites, given that Linebarger was a practicing Christian. The same source also tells us that he was a member of the American Legion, a fact that does not inhibit him from poking fun at this conservative institution in his manual. In any event, Burns recalls that Paul “was a very difficult man in that sense in any way to pin down. He saw no reason why he should become a part of anything, any kind of organization.”13
The disciplinary code of the Instrumentality is draconian. When a Lord does not fulfill his responsibilities, he is punished with death, sometimes “unfavorably” (a kind of civil death), others with demotion to lowly citizen status. For the administration of justice Lords “have mitered heads” like bishops.14 In extreme situations, a Lord can sentence another Lord to death. If it is subsequently proven that he has committed an injustice, he is also condemned to die and his name is execrated. If he has acted properly he still must die, though tribute is paid to him.
The Lords and Ladies are almost constantly travelling between the different worlds. Like all humans before the Rediscovery, they have a guaranteed life span of four hundred years. In exceptional cases they are allowed to live longer, an example being Lady Johanna Gnade, who is nearly six hundred years old15, or Lord Crudelta, who in recognition of having travelled to Space-Three is authorized to live well past a thousand. This explains how Crudelta participates in the war against Ramsong (c. 13,000), appears in the episode in “Drunkboat” (c. 15,000) and is still Jestocost’s contemporary (c. 16,000).
Some Lords and Ladies enjoy prolonged lives for different reasons. When it is clear that they have an incurable weakness, they are offered an “honorable disgrace” before becoming corrupted: they can live for more than a thousand years but on the condition of being degraded. “The Instrumentality had learned, long ago, that the best way to protect its members from temptation was to tempt them itself [...] keeping its own potential defector.”16
The Instrumentality is an ambivalent institution. While it is needed for preserving peace among the worlds, it is also cruel and blindly conservative.
A thousand years before the reform undertaken on the initiative of Lord Sto Odin, the Instrumentality had reached the nadir of its decadence. The Lords that directed it in the times of the Golden Spaceships are described in extremely harsh terms: “The Lords of the Instrumentality were the corrupt rulers of a corrupt world, but they had learned to make corruption serve their civil and military ends.” They were “the power of corrupt, wise, weary Old Earth [who] could maintain so ancient a sovereignty —sovereignty which had long since lapsed into titular paramountcy among the communities of mankind.” “The Lords of the Instrumentality played being chivalrous and did love money, but when life and death were at stake, they no longer cared much about money, or credit or even about honor. They fought like the animals of Earth’s ancient past —they fought to kill.”17
The cosmic expansion of humankind to more than two hundred planets began on Old Earth, which is known as Mother Earth or Manhome. This seems to be typical of an imperial metropolis -at any rate, of a decadent empire with neither economic nor military power and one almost totally devoid of its former political and diplomatic prestige.
The inhabitants of Ttiollé view the Instrumentality as a foreign power, one they both fear and respect: “Few of them had even seen Manhome, but they had all heard a bit of history and most of them had a passing anxiety when they thought of the ancient government still wielding political power across the depths of space. They did not like the old Instrumentality of Earth, but they respected and feared it. The waves reminded them of the pretty side of Earth; they did not want to remember the not-so-pretty.18 With the exception of Jestocost, Lords and Ladies are hieratic characters for the most part cruel and insensitive. “Lord Wait was not cruel but he had never stood out for being tender of spirit.”19 Lord Femtiosex “is just and merciless”, while Lady Arabella Underwood “possesses a justice that no one can comprehend”.20
The Instrumentality prefers to do things “suddenly and victoriously”,21 and it survives “with raw weapons and raw brains.”22 It displays its inherent cruelty in condemning D’joan to the stake or when the Lords refuse to cure an insane girl because they want to use her as a secret weapon.23 After learning what they have done with the demented SAMM, Crudelta observes: “The Instrumentality Lords are cruel sometimes.” To which Casher responds: “sometimes they have to be.”24
More than a government, the Instrumentality is a secret society that, according to Genevieve, “has something in common with Communism and religion.”25 Its codes of obedience are reminiscent of military orders (Knights Templars, Hospitaller Orders, Teutonics) and, more recently, the samurais of H. G. Wells (A Modern Utopia, 1905) that were inspired by the Knights Templars.
In any event, Smith does not defend the Instrumentality, an enlightened despotism that seeks to make people happy by keeping them ignorant. In the words of a Lord: “Ordinary people don’t have much reason to do anything. They work at the jobs which we think up for them, to keep them happy while the robots and the underpeople do the real work. They walk. They make love. But they are never unhappy.” Nevertheless, “the soft sweet music of the Earth Government and the Instrumentality [is] bland as honey and sickening in the end.”26
The Instrumentality is an efficient and monotonous technocracy. While neither social inequalities nor economic privileges exist, the enslavement of the underpeople is considered acceptable. Often Lords debate whether creating the underpeople, to whom it promised human dignity but never granted it, was a mistake. Still, the existence of the underpeople is undeniable and the injustice of which they are victims poisons the “happiness” of men and women.
At its utopian height, the Instrumentality guarantees prolonged and safe lives for everyone, while prohibiting initiative and participation. As a result of this, crises such as Sun-boy’s rebellion or the martyrdom of D’joan arise. For centuries the Lords and Ladies debated the meaning of these events, until finally arriving at a radical reform: the Rediscovery of Man.
Among those who design and implement the project are Lady Alice More (previously Santuna, Sun-boy’s companion) and a very special figure, Lord Jestocost. Surprisingly, they receive the support of the conservative Crudelta, who judges the reform as politically expedient for the Instrumentality.
Alice More and Jestocost propose returning death, pain and even a certain amount of injustice to human life in order to partially emancipate humans from protection and grant them a degree of freedom.
Jestocost is the seventh Lord of his family to bear this name, which suggests that the Instrumentality has become a hereditary aristocracy. H
e is a descendant of Lady Goroke, “who does not know how to pray, but who tries to ponder the mystery of life and who has shown kindnesses to underpeople, as long as the kindnesses were lawful ones.”
Despite Lady Goroke’s good intentions, the tribunal she serves on condemns D’joan to the stake. Deeply affected by this monstrous injustice, Goroke decides, “I am going to have a child, and I’m going back to Manhome to have it. And I’m going to do the genetic coding myself. I’m going to call him Jestocost. That’s one of the Ancient tongues, the Paroskii one, for ‘cruelty’, to remind him where he comes from, and why. And he, or his son, or his son will bring justice back into the world and solve the puzzle of the underpeople.”27
The seventh Jestocost is viewed as an eccentric. He lives surrounded by books and tapestries, possesses an authentic Rembrandt, and drinks wine made by robots with grapes from his vineyard. Jestocost hopes to reform the system; about him it is said that he loves justice more than the Instrumentality. He is “free from ambition” but “possessed by the passions of government as deep and challenging as the emotions of love [...] Jestocost was one of the few true men who believed in the rights of the underpeople [...] He did not think that mankind would ever get around to correcting ancient wrongs unless the underpeople themselves have some of the tools of power —weapons, conspiracy, wealth, and (above all) organization with which to challenge man. He was not afraid of revolt, but he thristed for justice with an obsessive yearning which overrode all other considerations.”28
Speaking with the intransigent Lady Johanna Gnade, who persists in referring to underpeople as “animals”, Jestocost confesses to be “mad for justice”, although he tries to make his position more palatable: “I’m not asking for equal rights. Merely a little more justice for them.”29
This scene gives rise to a typically Cordwainerian conceptual game. Jestocost (“cruelty” in Russian) proves himself to be a man of mercy, while Gnade (“mercy” in German) is a cruel woman, even if she did put an end to the torments of Shayol.
Jestocost is an astute politician. When it is rumored that a conspiracy of the underpeople is brewing and other Lords send a police robot to suppress it, Jestocost acts to the contrary. He organizes a special police corps made up of underpeople, with the hope of coming into contact with their leaders and negotiating.
Through this ploy Jestocost meets the cat-girl C’mell, the primary agent of E’telekeli, the spiritual leader of the conspiracy. Thanks to C’mell, Jestocost contacts the leader of the underpeople and speaks to him in realistic terms: “Your people do not have enough political power even to talk us. I will not commit treason to the true-human race, but I am willing to give your side an advantage. If you bargain better with us, it will make all forms of life safer in the long run.”
Out of love for C’mell and personal conviction, Jestocost collaborates with E’telekeli in a risky operation. He steals the secret plans for a “final solution to the problem of the underpeople” from Instrumentality headquarters, thereby preventing their annihilation.
The extent to which the underpeople have taken the initiative should be noted. By suppressing the privilege of immortality, the Rediscovery also has helped to bring humans and underpeople closer.30
Sent by E’telekeli and protected by Jestocost, C’mell will serve as a guide to Rod MacBan on his voyage to Earth. His love for her will compel the Norstrilian to place his immense fortune in the service of the Holy Insurgency.
Several generations later, Jestocost has gained the respect and affection of the underpeople, who see him as a champion of civil rights. They know that “the Lord Jestocost is no fool.” Aware of what was happening, he had no other choice but to “break almost all the rules of the book.”31 In the streets they shower him with gratitude, making him feel like the “godfather” of them all.32
This humanitarian leader that emerges from within an oppressive power structure and grants rights to the oppressed is perhaps the character the author identifies with most. It is worth recalling that Linebarger had proposed implementing integration methods in New Guinea similar to those used by Jestocost.
Nor is it too much of stretch to see in Jestocost a reflection of John F. Kennedy, Linebarger’s employer at the time.
Chronologically, Jestocost appears in the novel Norstrilia, written in 1960, when Kennedy was at the height of his political rise. When JFK became president, “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”, in which Jestocost coordinates the Rediscovery, was published. “The Ballad of Lost C’mell”, in which Jestocost demonstrates his complete devotion to the cause of the underpeople, appeared the following year.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. The crime is reflected in the fiction, providing us with further evidence that this dimension of Smith’s work was written in political code.
In the second version of his article, John Foyster (1975) revealed a clue that would have been almost impossible to discover if the author himself had not previously confided it to Arthur Burns.
If the first letters of all the paragraphs on a page of “On the Storm Planet”33 are united, they form the acrostic KENNEDY SHOT. Some pages later,34 and in the same manner, we find the acrostic OSWALD SHOT TOO.
No less striking is the context in which the acrostic appears: at the moment when Casher O’Neill is about to kill an innocent person (the girl T’ruth), he reflects on the disgrace that has befallen his homeland.
One of the sentences whose beginning forms the acrostic reads: “Years of sad experience had taught him that when a project went completely to pieces, he still had a mission of personal survival.”35
Jestocost’s political interlocutor is E’telekeli. The initial “E” of his name indicates that the leader of the underpeople was derived from an eagle’s egg.
On first reading, the name and image of the man-eagle seem to refer to Edgar Allen Poe. In the final pages of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838),36 a ghostly figure appears, white and winged, that repeats the word “Tekeli-li!”. In homage to Poe, Lovecraft used the same image in his brief novel At the Mountains of Madness, also set in Antarctica.
It could be argued that in Cordwainer Smith, this literary wink is combined with an immediate reference. E’telekeli (according to the text, pronounced I-telly-kelly) bears a certain phonetic resemblance to Martin Luther King. Given Linebarger’s fondness for alliteration, this hypothesis is not implausible.
Still, a third character completes the Kennedy-esque constellation we have seen take shape in the Cordwainerian cosmos: C’mell.
Marilyn Monroe, the sexual icon of the sixties, was, as became notoriously clear at the time, John Kennedy’s lover between 1950 and 1962, and in the final months of her life had an affair with JFK’s brother, Robert.
Linebarger, who worked for the White House and was an intelligence officer, could not have been oblivious to all of this gossip, universally known throughout Hollywood circles.
C’mell, who loves both Jestocost (John Kennedy) and Rod MacBan (Bobby), could be Marilyn. Part of the Holy Insurgency, she is suspicious in the eyes of the Instrumentality. Marilyn was under permanent investigation by the FBI, which believed she had links to Soviet espionage and the Mafia.
Marilyn was a blonde, C’mell a redhead. Marilyn was found dead in August 1962, and C’mell appeared two months later in the story “The Ballad of Lost C’mell”.
There is a scene in which the writer perhaps provides us with a clue, albeit in his typically cryptic fashion. In a passage in Norstrilia, Rod, C’mell and A’gentur drop down a pipe in Earthport supported by magnetic belts to control their fall. While the descent is smooth, air currents get inside their clothes and lift the girlygirl’s skirt. “C’mell floated down beside him. She clenched her skirt between her knees, so that it would not commit immodesties.”
Coming across a sentence likes this, even the most ingenuous reader will not f
ail to be reminded of the famous scene in The Seven Year Itch (1955) when a draft of hot air from a subway grating blows up Marilyn’s skirt. Suggesting it at the time, however, even if cryptically, was a bold gesture.
In the works of this final period, it is no longer plausible that the Instrumentality will become become more human simply through the desire of some progressive leaders. Indeed, Linebarger/Smith grants the underpeople an increasingly central role and even begins to speak of “revolution”.
The Instrumentality is a stagnant institution that has grown corrupt, just like the Chinese mandarinate that Linebarger was familiar with. His extensive political experience gave him the insight that “revolutions wore out, they wore out only when people relaxed in triumph, turning back to the itch of private malice, vainglory, or greed.”37
The inertia of the established order is a leitmotif in the work of Cordwainer Smith. A parallel can be found between the crisis of the Scanners (the subject of his first story) and the debate among the Lords of the Instrumentality that dominates his final stories.
In both cases we are dealing with a corporation that is resistant to change, one that has converted means into ends and duties into privileges. The Scanners reject a technological innovation that makes their profession obsolete, despite the fact that it offers them the possibility of regaining the freedom to live their lives to the fullest. Similarly, while the Instrumentality cannot avoid making concessions to the underpeople and setting the Rediscovery into motion, it digs in its heels when it comes to relinquishing political power.
Norstrilia
While the political power of the Galaxy is consolidated in the Instrumentality, Norstrilia is the epicenter of economic might. While also depicted in a stagnant state, the planet is treated more sympathetically.
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