Norstrilia

COUNSELS, COUNCILS, CONSOLES AND CONSULS

“You don’t believe all the malarkey, do you?”

“What’s ‘malarkey’?”

“Isn’t that a beautiful word? It’s ancient. A robot dug it up. It means rubbish, hooey, nonsense, gibberish, phlutt, idle talk or hallucinations — in other words, just what you’ve been saying.”

“You mean about a boy buying the planet Earth?”

“Sure. He couldn’t do it, not even with Norstrilian money. There are too many regulations. It was just an economic adjustment.”

“What’s an ‘economic adjustment?’ ”

“That’s another ancient word I found. It’s almost as good as malarkey. It does have some meaning, though, it means that the masters rearrange things by changing the volume of the flow or the title to property. The Instrumentality wanted to shake down the Earth government and get some more free credits to play around with, so between them they invented an imaginary character named Rod McBan. Then, they had him buy the Earth. Then he goes away. It doesn’t make sense. No normal boy would have done that. They say he had one million women. What do you think a normal boy would do if somebody gave him one million women?”

“You’re not proving anything. Anyhow, I saw Rod McBan myself, two years ago.”

“That’s the other one, not the one who is supposed to have bought Earth. That’s just a rich immigrant who lives down near Meeya Meefla. I could tell you some things about him, too.”

“But why shouldn’t somebody buy Earth if he corners the Norstrilian stroon market?”

“Who ever cornered it in the first place? I tell you, Rod McBan is just an invention. Have you ever seen a picturebox of him?”

“No.”

“Did you ever know anybody who met him?”

“I heard that the Lord Jestocost was mixed up in it, and that expensive girlygirl What’s-her-name — you know — the redhead — C’mell.”

“That’s what you heard. Malarkey, pure genuine ancient malarkey. There was no such boy, ever. It’s all propaganda.”

“You’re always that way. Grumbling. Doubting. I’m glad I’m not you.”

“Pal, that’s real, real reciprocal. ‘Better dead than gullible,’ that’s my motto.”

The Stop-captain, talking to a passenger, female:

“I’m glad to see, ma’am, that you didn’t buy any of those Earth fashions. Back home, the air would take them off you in half minute.”

“I’m old-fashioned,” she smiled. Then a thought crossed her mind, and she added a question: “You’re in the space business, Sir and Stop-captain. Did you ever hear the story of Rod McBan? I think it’s thrilling.”

“You mean, the boy who bought Earth?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Is it true?”

“Completely true,” he said, “except for one little detail. This ‘Rod McBan’ wasn’t named that at all. He wasn’t a Norstrilian. He was a hominid from some other world, and he was buying the Earth with pirate money. They wanted to get his credits away from him, but he may have been a Wet Stinker from Amazonas Triste or he may have been one of those little tiny men, about the size of a walnut, from the Solid Planet. That’s why he bought Earth and left it so suddenly. You see, Ma’am and Dame, no Old North Australian ever thinks about anything except his money. They even have one of the ancient forms of government still left on that planet, and they would never let one of their own boys buy Earth. They’d all sit around and talk him into putting it in a savings account, instead. They’re clannish people. That’s why I don’t think it was a Norstrilian at all.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re spoiling a lovely story for me, Mister and Stop-captain.”

“Don’t call me ‘mister,’ ma’am. That’s a Norstrilian title. I’m just a plain ‘Sir.’”

They both stared at the little imaginary waterfall, on the wall.

Before the Stop-captain went back to his work, he added, “For my money, it must have been one of those little tiny men from the Solid Planet. Only a fool like that would buy the dower rights to a million women. We’re both grown up, Ma’am. I ask you, what would an itty-bitty man from the Solid Planet do with one Earth woman, let along a million of them?”

She giggled and blushed as the Stop-captain stamped triumphantly away, having gotten in his last masculine word.

“Father, give me hope.”

The E’telekeli was gentle. “I can give you almost anything from this world, but you are talking about the world of the sign of the Fish, which none of us controls. You had better go back into the everyday life of our cavern and not spend so much time on your devotional exercises, if they make you unhappy.”

She stared at him. “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just that I know that the robot, the rat and the Copt all agreed that the Promised One would come here to Earth.” A desperate note entered her voice. “Father, could it have been Rod McBan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could he have been the Promised One, without my knowing it? Could he have come and gone just to test my faith?”

The bird-giant rarely laughed; he had never laughed at his own daughter before. But this was too absurd: he laughed at her, but a wise part of his mind told him that the laughter, though cruel now, would be good for her later on.

“Rod? A promised speaker of the truth? Oh, no. Ho — ho — ho. Rod McBan is one of the nicest human beings I ever met. A good young man, almost like a bird. But he’s no messenger from eternity.”

The daughter bowed and turned away.

She had already composed a tragedy about herself, the mistaken one, who had met “the prince of the word,” whom the worlds awaited, and had failed to know him because her faith was too weak. The strain of waiting for something that might happen now or a million years from now was too much. It was easier to accept failure and self-reproach than to endure the timeless torment of undated hope.

She had a little nook in the wall where she spent many of her eating hours. She took but a little stringed instrument which her father had made for her. It emitted ancient, weeping sounds, and she sang her own little song to it, the song of E’lamelanie who was trying to give up waiting for Rod McBan.

She looked out into the room.

A little girl, wearing nothing but panties, stared at her with fixed eyes. E’lamelanie looked back at the child. It had no expression; it just stared at her. She wondered if it might be one of the turtle-children whom her father had rescued several years earlier.

She looked away from the child and sang her song anyhow:

When she finished, the turtle-child was still watching. Almost angrily, E’lamelanie put away her little violin.

I know a lot even if I don’t feel like talking about it and I know that the most wonderful real man in all the planets came right down here into this big room and talked to these people because he is the man that the long silly girl is singing about because she does not have him but why should she anyhow and I am really the one who is going to get him because I am a turtle child and I will be right here waiting when all these people are dead and pushed down into the dissolution vats and someday he will come back to Earth and I will be all grown up and I will be a turtle woman, more beautiful than any human woman ever was, and he is going to marry me and take me off to his planet and I will always be happy with him because I will not argue all the time, the way that bird-people and cat-people and dog-people do, so that when Rod McBan is my husband and I push dinner out of the wall for him, if he tries to argue with me I will just be shy and sweet and I won’t say anything, nothing at all, to him for one hundred years and for two hundred years, and nobody could get mad at a beautiful turtle woman who never talked back…

The herald called,

“His audacity, the Chief of Thieves, is pleased to report to the Council of Thieves!”

An old man stood, very ceremoniously, “You bring us wealth, Sir and Chief, we trust — from the gullible — from the weak — from the heartless among mankind?”

The Chief of Thieves proclaimed,

“It is the matter of Rod McBan.”

A visible stir went through the Council.

The Chief of Thieves went on, with equal formality: “We never did intercept him in space, though we monitored every vehicle which came out of the sticky, sparky space around Norstrilia. Naturally, we did not send anyone down to meet Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons, may the mild-men find them! whatever those ‘kittons’ may be. There was a coffin with a woman in it and a small box with a head. Never mind. He got past us. But when he got to Earth, we caught four of him.”

“Four?” gasped one old Councillor.

“Yes,” said the Chief of Thieves. “Four Rod Mc-Bans. 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 Mc-Bans. 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 sneakthieves. 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 peacably 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 Mc-Ban? 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 time and sang them back to him:

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

In one form or another, all Old North Australians knew that time. 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 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 little 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 who 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?”