We the Underpeople by Cordwainer Smith, selected by Hank Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

we," said Crawlie from her chair, "would all of us die within an hour or two at the longest. Would that matter to you, Ma'am and Elaine?"

    "And," added Charley-is-my-darling, "they would disconnect the Lady Panc Ashash, so that even the recording of that dear dead lady would be gone at last, and there would be no mercy at all left upon this world."

    "What is 'mercy'?" asked Elaine.

    "It's obvious you never heard of it," said Crawlie.

    The old mouse-hag Baby-baby came close to Elaine. She looked up at her and whispered through yellow teeth, "Don't let them frighten you, girl. Death doesn't matter all that much, not even to you true humans with your four hundred years or to us animals with the slaughterhouse around the corner. Death is a when, not a what. It's the same for all of us. 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."

    "I still don't know mercy, " said Elaine, "but I thought I knew what love was, and I don't expect to find my lover in a dirty old corridor full of underpeople."

    "I don't mean that kind of love," laughed Baby-baby, brushing aside Mabel's attempted interruption with a wave of her hand-paw. The old mouse face was on fire with sheer expressiveness. Elaine could suddenly imagine what Baby-baby had looked like to a mouse-underman when she was young and sleek and gray. Enthusiasm flushed the old features with youth as Baby-baby went on, "I don't mean love for a lover, girl. I mean love for yourself. Love for life. Love for all things living. Love even for me. Your love for me. Can you imagine that?"

    Elaine swam through fatigue but she tried to answer the question. She looked in the dim light at the wrinkled old mouse-hag with her filthy clothes and her little red eyes. The fleeting image of the beautiful young mouse-woman had faded away; there was only this cheap, useless old thing, with her inhuman demands and her senseless pleading. People never loved underpeople. They used them, like chairs or doorhandles. Since when did a doorhandle demand the Charter of Ancient Rights?

    "No," said Elaine calmly and evenly, "I can't imagine ever loving you."

    "I knew it," said Crawlie from her chair. There was triumph in the voice.

    Charley-is-my-darling shook his head as if to clear his sight. "Don't you even know who controls Fomalhaut III?"

    "The Instrumentality," said Elaine. "But do we have to go on talking? Let me go or kill me or something. This doesn't make sense. I was tired when I got here, and I'm a million years tireder now."

    Mabel said, "Take her along."

    "All right," said Charley-is-my-darling. "Is the Hunter there?"

    The child D'joan spoke. She had stood at the back of the group. "He came in the other way when she came in the front."

    Elaine said to Charley-is-my-darling, "You lied to me. You said there was only one way."

    "I did not lie," said he. "There is only one way for you or me or for the friends of the Lady Panc Ashash. The way you came. The other way is death."

    "What do you mean?"

    "I mean," he said, "that it leads straight into the slaughterhouses of the men you do not know. The Lords of the Instrumentality who are here on Fomalhaut III. There is the Lord Femtiosex, who is just and without pity. There is the Lord Limaono, who thinks that underpeople are a potential danger and should not have been started in the first place. There is the 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. And there is the Lady Arabella Underwood, whose justice no man can understand. Nor underpeople either," he added with a chuckle.

    "Who is she? I mean, where did she get the funny name? It doesn't have a number in it. It's as bad as your names. Or my own," said Elaine.

    "She's from Old North Australia, the stroon world, on loan to the