We the Underpeople (64 page)

"Four?" gasped one old Councilor.

"Yes," said the Chief of Thieves. "Four Rod McBans. There was a human one too, but we could tell that one was a decoy. It had originally been a woman and was enjoying itself hugely after having been transformed into a young man. So we got four Rod McBans. All four of them were Earth-robots, very well made."

"You stole them?" said a Councilor.

"Of course," said the Chief of Thieves, grinning like a human wolf. "And the Earth Government made no objection at all. The Earth Government simply sent us a bill for them when we tried to leave—something like one-fourth megacredit 'for the use of custom-designed robots.'"

"That's a low honest trick!" cried the Chairman of the Guild of Thieves. "What did you do?" His eyes stared wide open and his voice dropped. "You didn't turn honest and charge the bill to us, did you? We're already in debt to those honest rogues!"

The Chief of Thieves squirmed a little. "Not quite that bad, your tricky highnesses! I cheated the Earth some, though I fear it may have bordered on honesty, the way I did it."

"What did you do? Tell us quick, man!"

"Since I did not get the real Rod McBan, I took the robots apart and taught them how to be thieves. They stole enough money to pay all the penalties and recoup the expense of the voyage."

"You show a profit?" cried a Councilor.

"Forty minicredits," said the Chief of Thieves. "But the worst is yet to come. You know what Earth does to real thieves."

A shudder went through the room. They all knew about Earth reconditioners which had changed bold thieves into dull honest rogues.

"But, you see, Sirs and Honored Ones," the Chief of Thieves went on, apologetically, "the Earth authorities caught us at that, too. They liked the thief-robots. They made wonderful pickpockets and they kept the people stirred up. The robots also gave everything back. So," said the Chief of Thieves, blushing, "we have a contract to turn two thousand humanoid robots into pickpockets and sneak-thieves. Just to make life on Earth more fun. The robots are out in orbit, right now."

"You mean," shrilled the chairman, "you signed an
honest
contract? You, the Chief of Thieves!"

The Chief really blushed and choked. "What could I do? Besides, they had me. I got good terms, though. Two hundred and twenty credits for processing each robot into a master thief. We can live well on that for a while."

For a long time there was dead silence.

At last one of the oldest Thieves on the Council began to sob: "I'm old. I can't stand it. The horror of it! Us—
us
doing honest work!"

"We're at least teaching the robots how to be thieves," said the Chief of Thieves, starkly.

No one commented on that.

Even the herald had to step aside and blow his nose.

Roderick Henry McBan, the former Eleanor, had become only imperceptibly older with the years. He had sent away his favorite, the little dancer, and he wondered why the Instrumentality, not even the Earth government, had sent him official warning to "stay peaceably in the dwelling of the said stated person, there to await an empowered envoy of this Instrumentality and to comply with orders subsequently to be issued by the envoy hereinbefore indicated."

Roderick Henry McBan remembered the long years of virtue, independence and drudgery on Norstrilia with unconcealed loathing. He liked being a rich, wild young man on Earth ever so much better than being a respectable spinster under the grey skies of Old North Australia. When he dreamed, he was sometimes Eleanor again, and he sometimes had long morbid periods in which he was neither Eleanor nor Rod, but a nameless being cast out from some world or time of irrecoverable enchantments. In these gloomy periods, which were few but very intense, and usually cured by getting drunk and staying drunk for a few days, he found himself wondering who he was. What could he be? Was he Eleanor, the honest workwoman from the Station of Doom? Was he an adoptive cousin of Rod McBan, the man who had bought Old Earth itself? What was this self—this Roderick Henry McBan? He maundered about it so much to one of his girl-friends, a calypso singer, that she set his own words, better arranged, to an ancient tune and sang them back to him:

 
To be me, is it right, is it good?
To go on, when the others have stood—
To the gate, through the door, past the wall,
Between this and the nothing-at-all.
 
It is cold, it is me, in the out.
I am true, I am me, in the lone.
Such silence leaves room for no doubt.
It is brightness unbroken by tone.
 
To be me, it is strange, it is true.
Shall I lie? To be them, to have peace?
Will I know, can I tell, when I'm through?
Do I stop when my troubles must cease?
 
If the wall isn't glass, isn't there,
If it's real but compounded of air,
Am I lost if I go where I go
Where I'm me? I am yes. Am I no?
 
To be me, is it right, is it so?
Can I count on my brain, on my eye?
Will I be you or be her by and bye?
Are they true, all these things that I know?
 
You are mad, in the wall. On the out,
I'm alone and as sane as the grave.
Do I fail, do I lose what I save?
Am I me, if I echo your shout?
 
 
I have gone to a season of time . . .
Out of thought, out of life, out of rhyme.
If I come to be you, do I lose
The chance to be me if I choose?

Rod/Eleanor had moments of desperation, and sometimes wondered if the Earth authorities or the Instrumentality would take him/her away for reconditioning.

The warning today was formal, fierce, serene in its implacable self-assurance.

Against his/her better judgment, Roderick Henry McBan poured out a stiff drink and waited for the inevitable.

Destiny came as three men, all of them strangers, but one wearing the uniform of an Old North Australia consul. When they got close, she recognized the consul as Lord William Not-from-here, with whose daughter Ruth he/she had disported on these very sands many years before.

The greetings were wearisomely long, but Rod/Eleanor had learned, both on Old North Australia and here on Manhome Earth, never to discount ceremony as the salvager of difficult or painful occasions. It was the Lord William Not-from-here who spoke.

"Hear now, Lord Roderick Eleanor, the message of a plenum of the Instrumentality, lawfully and formally assembled, to wit—

"That you, the Lord Roderick Eleanor, be known to be and be indeed a Chief of the Instrumentality until the day of your death—

"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 in being and becoming the Lord Roderick Eleanor, you shall be man or woman, young or old, as the Instrumentality may order—

"That you take power to serve, that you serve to take power, that you come with us, that you look not 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."

Roderick/Eleanor had not a word to say.

Newly appointed Lords of the Instrumentality rarely had anything to say. It was the custom of the Instrumentality to take new appointees by surprise, after minute examination of their records for intelligence, will, vitality, and again, vitality.

The Lord William was smiling as he held out his hand and speaking in offworldly honest Norstrilian talk:

"Welcome, cousin from the grey rich clouds. Not many of our people have ever been chosen. Let me welcome you."

Roderick/Eleanor took his hand. There was still nothing to say.

"I turned off the human voice hours ago, Lavinia. Turned it off. We always get a sharper reading with the numbers. It doesn't have a clue on our boys. I've been across this console a hundred times. Come along, old girl. It's no use predicting the future. The future is already here. Our boys will be out of the van, one way or the other, by the time we walk over the hill and down to them." He spoke with his voice, as a little sign of tenderness between them.

Lavinia asked nervously, "Shouldn't we take an ornithopter and fly?"

"No, girl," said Rod tenderly. "What would our neighbors and kinsmen think if they saw the parents flying in like wild offworlders or a pair of crimson pommies who can't keep a steady head when there's a bit of blow-up? After all, our big girl Casheba made it two years ago, and her eyes weren't so good."

"She's a howler, that one," said Lavinia warmly. "She could fight off a space pirate even better than you could before you could spiek."

They walked slowly up the hill.

When they crossed the top of the hill, they got the ominous melody coming right at them.

 
Out in the Garden of Death, our young
Have tasted the valiant taste of fear.
With muscular arm and reckless tongue,
They have won, and lost, and escaped us here.
 

In one form or another, all Old North Australians knew that tune. It was what the old people hummed when the young ones had to go into the vans to be selected out for survival or non-survival.

They saw the judges come out of the van. The Hon. Sec. Houghton Syme was there, his face bland and his cares erased by the special dreamlives which Rod's medicine had brought from the secret underground of Earth. The Lord Redlady was there. And Doctor Wentworth.

Lavinia started to run downhill toward the people, but Rod grabbed her arm and said with rough affection,

"Steady on, old girl. McBans never run—from nothing, and to nothing!"

She gulped but she joined pace with him.

People began looking up at them as they approached.

Nothing was to be told from the expressions.

It was the Lord Redlady, unconventional to the end, who broke the sign to them.

He held up one finger.

Only one.

Immediately thereafter Rod and Lavinia saw their twins. Ted, the fairer one, sat on a chair while Old Bill tried to give him a drink. Ted wouldn't take it. He looked across the land as though he could not believe what he saw. Rich, the darker twin, stood all alone.

All alone, and laughing.

Laughing.

Rod McBan and his missus walked across the land of Doom to be civil to their neighbors. This was indeed what inexorable custom commanded. She squeezed his hand a little tighter; he held her arm a little more firmly.

After a long time they had done their formal courtesies. Rod pulled Ted to his feet. "Hullo, boy. You made it. You know what you are?"

Mechanically the boy recited, "Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan to the hundred-and-fifty-second, Sir and Father!"

Then the boy broke, for just a moment. He pointed at Rich, who was still laughing, off by himself, and then plunged for his father's hug:

"Oh, dad! Why me? Why
me
?"