Everyone seems so preoccupied with meaningless things that they fail to see what is happening around them: “The remarkable thing was not the way that people sprang forth out of the horror of being born —not the way they impotently flashed downward into irrevocable death. No. The odd and important thing was the way that they pretended this tremendous spiritual drama was not going on all around them —the way that they looked at each other while mysteries and miracles occurred pell-mell all over the place —the way that they looked at each other’s hats and dresses, or applauded one anothers’s wit, or flirted or fell in love with one another, while the blinding machinery of the universe operated in plain sight before their unseeing eyes. Perhaps they dared not to look. Perhaps dreams were the fugitive sidewise glimpses which people dared not take at the terrific truth of being alive.”5
The same reflection appears in the book You Will Never Be The Same: “It doesn’t matter who people are, when they lived, or what they are doing —the important thing is the explosion of wonder which goes on and on and is stopped only by death.”
As a price for the material happiness it guarantees to everyone, the Instrumentality keeps the mystery of life and death to itself. The underpeople, who are still mortal, were aware of these profundities long before the authorities set the Rediscovery of Man into motion.
D’joan, saint and prophetess of the underpeople, proclaims: “Dying is simple, though we tend to hide it away. The how of dying is a minor scientific matter; the when of dying is a problem to each of us [...] the why of it is still as shocking to us as it was to pre-atomic man…”6
When Elaine discovers this, she undergoes a kind of conversion. An underperson acolyte of D’joan reassures her: “Death is a when, not a what. It’s the same for all of us [people and underpeople] Don’t be scared. Go straight ahead and you may find mercy and love. They’re much richer than death, if you can only find them. Once you do find them, death won’t be very important.”[…] “This indeed was the new weapon, love and the good death.”
The first victory of this Gandhi-like non-violence is the mutiny of the robot police that are sent to crush the rebellion. While the robots do not know what love is, when they attempt to understand the situation (“Do you love me? You mean I’m alive? I exist?”), their circuitry explodes. Before putting down their weapons and acting disobediently (something a machine is incapable of), the robots commit suicide.
This is not the tepid sentimental love of self-help books but rather the fiery passion of mystics: “I bring you life-with. It’s more than love. Love’s a hard, sad, dirty word, a cold world, an old word. It says too much and it promises too little. I bring you something much bigger than love [...] Don’t do anything. Don’t grab, don’t clench, don’t possess. Just be. That’s the weapon. There’s not a flame or a gun or a poison that can stop it.”7
The forgotten faith
Even before the Instrumentality established its utopia, religion had been relegated to the past. In a still proximate future, the people that help Colonel Desmond Harkening return from Space-Three are “from the most religious part of Russia” and call themselves Post Soviet Orthodox Quakers.8
The Scanner Martel, alive during the First Space Age, can still remember the “God of the Ancients.”9 Helen America, at the helm of a photonic sailing ship, carries 27,200 “religious fanatics” aboard. The Instrumentality wants to get rid of them because “they are more useless than criminals.” But Helen also invokes God: “Not for me, God, I am running away from a life that I do not want. But for this ship’s souls and for the poor foolish people that I am taking who are brave enough to want to worship their own way and need the light of another star, I ask you, God, help me now.”10
Throughout the centuries when the Instrumentality prohibits religion and information, the name of God is no longer used. Oaths are taken in the name of Space or the Galaxy11, and Tasco Magnon is only able to swear in the name of “the forgotten God.”12 Believers still exist, but they are small sects made up of superstitious inoffensive people.13
Religious terminology has vanished from the current lexicon. “What is religion?”14 “What is a priest?”15 “What is a miracle?”16 When someone asks, “What is hell?” they answer him: “Hell is a planet near Khufu VII.” But then someone else interrupts: “Let’s leave the literature till another time.”17
When the game of the Rediscovery begins, “Virginia” asks “Paul”: “What is God? They gave us the words to speak, but I do not know what they mean.” “(God) is an old word. I heard it from a robot.”18
The Instrumentality tolerates religious practice in some places on the condition that it remain local, so as to insure that “fanaticisms did not once more flare up between the stars, once again bringing wild hope and great death to all the mankinds.”19 The “contraband of religions” is one of the most viciously persecuted crimes.
Nevertheless, the underpeople preserve an oral tradition that commemorates the martyrdom of D’joan and have accumulated the fragments of a text (The Scrap of the Book), which appears to be the Bible.20
The underpeople, the “poor” in a millennium without poverty, have captured the essential message of the Gospels: the hope of salvation and faith as a weapon of freedom. It is the Old Strong Religion whose core is Christianity, though by this time other beliefs have been incorporated into it.
A new revelation is alluded to, the source of which is an event that Smith considered writing about at one time: the story of how three characters (robot, rat and Copt) rediscovered the Old Religion upon returning from Space-Three.21
Smith intended for the story to consist of four episodes set on a planet where Coptic Christianity, the monophysite Christianity that survives in Egypt and Ethiopia, is practiced. A robot, an underperson named R’obert and a devout Copt bring a new revelation to the world after returning from a mysterious journey to a world in which “Christ has a real presence, experienced by all.” Lord Sto Dva (One Hundred Two), and perhaps the successor to Sto Odin (One Hundred One), appears in the story as well.22
There was a time when “only the dead and the unborn”23 knew the Old Religion. But “the secret sign of the Old Strong Religion, the man that is forever dying nailed to two pieces of wood, the mystery behind the civilization of all these stars.”24
While Christianity is never named explicitly, every so often the image of the crucified Christ appears. E’telekeli extends his hands in “the pre-historic gesture of blessing.”25 Only some underpeople recall “the seven logoi and the three nameless Ones”, that is, the seven expressions attributed to Christ during the crucifixion26 and the Trinity.
There is an invocation of the trinity “The First Forgotten One, the Second Forgotten One, the Third Forgotten One.27” “The sign of the fish” also appears. “I have heard that in that sign, people and underpeople remember the blessed Joan and mingle in complete comradeship.”28
The sign of the fish (Chrismon) was the password early Christians used during religious persecutions. The letters of the word “fish” (ichtys in Greek) formed the acrostic “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”.29
In her classic study, Sandra Meisel30 points out that Fomalhaut III (the name of the planet where D’joan is sacrificed) answers to the same symbolism. Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the Piscis Austrinus constellation. In Arabic it means “fish mouth”. The number III, which seems to refer to the third planet, might also allude to the Trinity. The Tunnel of Englok (eng loch, or “wide gate” in German) contains another evangelical reference.31
For Cordwainer Smith, religious experience was a constant of the human soul. “A god … is a person or an idea capable of starting wholly new cultural patterns in motion,” one of Sto Odin’s robots explains.
But Smith also believed (rather orthodoxly) that mysticism, as an ambivalent force, should be combined with a higher ethics in order to avoid becoming perver
ted. “In all the history of man, there was no act which could not be produced by any one of the three bitterest forces in the human spirit ―religious faith, vengeful vainglory, or sheer vice. Here, for the sake of vice, men had found the undiscoverable deep and had put it to wild filthy uses.”32
When the young Nazi fortuitously produces a note on Bodiharma’s flute, a religious seed momentarily takes root in him, “with the complete message of hope, comfort and fulfillment of an order beyond the limits of this life.” But this experience “was confined to the mind of a single brutal adolescent”, amoral and merciless, and ultimately amounts to nothing.33
Something similar happens to Sun-boy, who has a religious experience but lacks ethical maturity. He “was acting out religion before the age of space … he played the rattle of whirling dervishes, the temple bells of the Man on the Two Pieces of Wood, and the other temple bells of that saint who escaped time simply by seeing it and stepping out of it. Buddha, was that his name?”34
With their history of slavery and their ignorance of pride, the underpeople are the depository of the spiritual tradition of humanity, assuming a leading role in its salvation. In evangelical terms, they represent the “stone that the builders threw out.” The underpeople are impoverished of spirit: they aspire neither to perpetuate their subjugation nor occupy their masters’ place. And yet they are willing to redeem the order established by humans.
“Great beliefs always come out of the sewers of the cities, not out of the towers of the ziggurats,” E’telekeli says. He goes on: “[We underpeople] have a great advantage in this, because we know from the very beginning of our lives that we are worthless. And why are we worthless? Because a higher standard and higher truth says that we are ―the conventional law and the unwritten customs of mankind.”35
These words likely reflect more than a biblical vision; in them might also be an echo of the teachings of Lao-Tse: “Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.”36
In the guise of a mere chronicler, Cordwainer Smith distances himself from his characters. Abba-dingo, the oracle of Earthport, speaks for him. Like Lady Panc Ashash, Abba-dingo is an old machine in disuse. Under the pressure of circumstances and unknown causes, he begins to prophesy and changes the course of events.
He alone is able to inform Paul of a fate known only to the author. When Jestocost questions him regarding the meaning of the process unleashed by Rod MacBan, Abba-dingo responds as the author would have: “It is hard to tell. It is hard to know. But something has begun to happen. Something strange, like the first few drops of an immense rainstorm, like the tiny glow of an approaching comet. Change is coming to this world. It is not change which weapons can stop. This change whispers in like a forgotten dream.”37
Here the weapon of change is love. D’joan is martyred for preaching love, yet her death paves the way to victory for her people.
When Casher O’Neill, seeking vengeance, learns that T’ruth can only grant him forgiveness, he exclaims: “That’s no weapon. That’s defeat.”38 Yet when he retuns to Mizzer spiritually renewed by T’ruth, he realizes that the best thing for his people, Wedder and himself is to cleanse the dictator’s mind and humanize a revolution that seems inevitable
E-lamelaine and the pious underpeople await a savior to deliver them from slavery. They believe they have found him in the figure of Rod MacBan. But E’telekeli, their spiritual guide, reminds them, “freedom is not something which is going to be given to us by a wonderful man beyond the stars. Freedom is what you do, my dear, and what I do.”39
D’joan’s sermon paraphrases Saint Paul (I Cor. 13): “Love is for life itself, and we have life. We cannot win by fighting. People outnumber us, outgun us, outrun us, outfight us. But people did not create us. Whatever made people, made us too.”40 The words of E’telekeli also echo the Gospel: Let the truth be yours, my daughter, that you may be whole and happy with the truth. Knowing the truth, my daughter, know freedom and the right to forget.”41
The Gandhian non-violence of the underpeople is also a form of political action, one that attracts violence toward those who practice it and may result in the victims’ use of force themselves: “She did not know it, but therewith unborn futures reeled out of existence, rebellion flamed into coming centuries, people and underpeople died in strange causes.”
The emancipation of the underpeople is, after all, a revolution: “a revolution is a way of changing systems and people. This is one.” The Hunter confesses to his judges: “I’ve killed, Ma’am…as always ―with love. This time it was a system.” D’joan is “a revolutionary” that leads “a war of love”,42 while C’mell pursues “revolutionary aims.”43
“As their emblem for political unity”, the underpeople have appropriated a sign that the Lords used for ceremonial purposes. It is a gesture made by bending the ring finger, pinkie and thumb in a way that leaves the two remaining digits extended. This is nothing other than the “V” for “Victory” sign, the gesture made famous by Churchill and that identified anti-colonization movements in the sixties.44 Several generations later, in the century of C’mell, E’telekeli organizes the revolutionary movement. At this point, it is known as the Holy Insurgency, “H. I.” or, its phonetic transcription, Aitch Eye. Interestingly, Linebarger chose the name “insurgency” at a time when “counterinsurgency” strategy was mentioned so often.
The Holy Insurgency is “the secret government of the underpeople.” “We call ourselves the Holy Insurgency because we are rebels. We are a government. We are a power almost as big as the Instrumentality.”45
E’telekeli is not merely a spiritual leader but a politician to boot. He was derived from the egg of an eagle, nothing less than the heraldic bird of the United States.
The aims of the revolution ―now financed by Rod MacBan’s foundation― are ambitious and not limited to redemption. The initiative has passed from people to the underpeople. “We will help each other to change the destiny of the worlds, perhaps even to bring mankind back to humanity.”46
In E’telekeli’s vision, the liberation of the underpeople does not end with their integration into the human world, which they have already accomplished by gaining civil rights. The goal is to save civilization: not the order of the Instrumentality but what allows for a meaningful life.
Despite all the power they wield over nature and the underpeople, humans are neither free nor happy. “They too have grief, fear, birth, old age, love, death, suffering and the tools of their own ruin.”47 The masters also need to be emancipated. The underpeople, whose fate is linked to the destiny of humankind, must redeem them if they wish to redeem themselves.
“We are afraid that Man himself will die and leave us alone in the universe. We need Man, and there is still an immensity of time before we all pour into a common destiny. People have always assumed that the end of things is around the corner, and we have the promise of the second Forbidden One that this will be soon. But it could be hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions. People are scattered, mistes [sic] MacBan, so that no weapon will even kill them all on all planets, but no matter how scattered they are, they still are haunted by themselves. They reach a point of development and they stop.”48
With the future in mind, Rod MacBan poses “that big question”: “You underpeople are taking charge of people. If you’re fixing up their new cultures for them, you’re getting to be masters for men!” C’mell responds dryly, “Yes,” adding “one last dangerous trip. Not for you. Not for me. Not even for mankind. For life, Rod.”49
As we have seen, the religiosity that returns with the underpeople has strong biblical connotations.
Jordan50 does not hesitate to suggest that all of Cordwainer Smith’s work should be read as Christian code. He suggests interpreting the love stories of the Voyage Captains like the allegories of Christ and the Chur
ch that abound in the Anglican tradition. To his mind, “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” refers to the fall, “Under Old Earth” to the flood, and the end of Norstrilia to the coming of the Messiah. Casher O’Neill, moreover, is the prophet Jonah who is swallowed whole and spit back up by a whale. “Scanners Live in Vain” is a parable of the New Alliance in which Christ is “Adam Stone”, the new Adam that rises from the grave (stone).
This religious hermeneutics is suggestive. Though somewhat forced, the assertion that there is support for it in the stories themselves is undeniable.
Yet not everything is so transparent in the work of Cordwainer Smith. Delving deeper into the matter, we soon come across less orthodox themes, for instance those derived from esotericism.
The choice of the symbol of the Fish, a very ancient sign used by Christians and Gnostics, is intriguing. Esotericism links it to the astrological cycle of Pisces (the period dominated by Christianity) and teaches that we are now undergoing the transition to the Age of Aquarius.
Axial precession causes the Earth’s axis to trace out a complete circle every 26,000 years, in such a way that every two millenniums a new constellation appears in the Zodiac. Astrologists believe that the spirituality of an age is dominated by its sign and suggest that, if the cycle does not stop, at some point there will be another Age of Pisces.
Might this idea have occurred to Cordwainer Smith when imagining a return of Christianity in the remote future under the sign of the Fish?
Lord of the Afternoon Page 18