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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29614-h.zip b/29614-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cfa5a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/29614-h.zip diff --git a/29614-h/29614-h.htm b/29614-h/29614-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d3ce6a --- /dev/null +++ b/29614-h/29614-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1328 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Game of Rat and Dragon, by Cordwainer Smith + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; background-color: #FFFFFF; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +.tr {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 2em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} + +.f1 {font-size:xx-large; font-weight:bolder; } + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-right: 0em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft1 { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-right: 0em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} +.figleft2 { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-right: 0.25em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: +0em; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Game of Rat and Dragon, by Cordwainer Smith + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Game of Rat and Dragon + +Author: Cordwainer Smith + +Illustrator: Hunter + +Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29614] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON *** + + + + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p> + +<p class="center">This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<h1> +The Game of<br /> +Rat and Dragon</h1> +<p> </p> +<h2>By CORDWAINER SMITH</h2> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Only partners could fight this deadliest of<br /> +wars—and the one way to dissolve the<br /> +partnership was to be personally dissolved!</i></p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>Illustrated by HUNTER</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="600" height="501" alt="" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="600" height="476" alt="" /> +</div> + + + + +<h2>THE TABLE</h2> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="27" height="30" /></div> +<p>inlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious +as he closed the door behind himself. It didn't make much sense to +wear a uniform and look like a soldier if people didn't appreciate +what you did.</p> + +<p>He sat down in his chair, laid his head back in the headrest and +pulled the helmet down over his forehead.</p> + +<p>As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the +outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully.</p> + +<p>"Meow." That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife.</p> + +<p>What did she think he was—a fool, a loafer, a uniformed nonentity? +Didn't she know that for every half hour of pinlighting, he got a +minimum of two months' recuperation in the hospital?</p> + +<p>By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of space around him, +sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid, full +of nothing. Out in that nothingness, he could sense the hollow aching +horror of space itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his +mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust.</p> + +<p>As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of +the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system +was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with +familiar ticking and with reassuring noises. The odd little moons of +Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity +was itself an assurance that all was well. Far above the plane of the +ecliptic, he could feel half a ton of dust more or less drifting +outside the lanes of human travel.</p> + +<p>Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to +tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in +effluvium as tangible as blood.</p> + +<p>Nothing ever moved in on the Solar System. He could wear the pin-set +forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a +man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the Sun throbbing and +burning against his living mind.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="39" height="30" /></div> + +<p>oodley came in.</p> + +<p>"Same old ticking world," said Underhill. "Nothing to report. No +wonder they didn't develop the pin-set until they began to planoform. +Down here with the hot Sun around us, it feels so good and so quiet. +You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and +compact. It's sort of like sitting around home."</p> + +<p>Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy.</p> + +<p>Undeterred, Underhill went on, "It must have been pretty good to have +been an Ancient Man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war. +They didn't have to planoform. They didn't have to go out to earn +their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the Rats or +play the Game. They couldn't have invented pinlighting because they +didn't have any need of it, did they, Woodley?"</p> + +<p>Woodley grunted, "Uh-huh." Woodley was twenty-six years old and due to +retire in one more year. He already had a farm picked out. He had +gotten through ten years of hard work pinlighting with the best of +them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job, +meeting the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and +thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose.</p> + +<p>Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the Partners. +None of the Partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented +him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the Partners on +occasion, but since none of the Partners ever thought a complaint in +articulate form, the other pinlighters and the Chiefs of the +Instrumentality left him alone.</p> + +<p>Underhill was still full of the wonder of their job. Happily he +babbled on, "What does happen to us when we planoform? Do you think +it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul +pulled out?"</p> + +<p>"Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it," said Woodley. +"After all these years, nobody knows whether we have souls or not."</p> + +<p>"But I saw one once. I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came +apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as +if it were bleeding and it went out of him—and you know what they did +to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where +you and I never go—way up at the top part where the others are, where +the others always have to go if they are alive after the Rats of the +Up-and-Out have gotten them."</p> + +<p>Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something +called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him +look very dashing and adventurous.</p> + +<p>"Look here, youngster. You don't have to worry about that stuff. +Pinlighting is getting better all the time. The Partners are getting +better. I've seen them pinlight two Rats forty-six million miles apart +in one and a half milliseconds. As long as people had to try to work +the pin-sets themselves, there was always the chance that with a +minimum of four hundred milliseconds for the human mind to set a +pinlight, we wouldn't light the Rats up fast enough to protect our +planoforming ships. The Partners have changed all that. Once they get +going, they're faster than Rats. And they always will be. I know it's +not easy, letting a Partner share your mind—"</p> + +<p>"It's not easy for them, either," said Underhill.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about them. They're not human. Let them take care of +themselves. I've seen more pinlighters go crazy from monkeying around +with Partners than I have ever seen caught by the Rats. How many do +you actually know of them that got grabbed by Rats?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_u.jpg" alt="U" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>nderhill looked down at his fingers, which shone green and purple in +the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pin-set, and counted ships. +The thumb for the <i>Andromeda</i>, lost with crew and passengers, the +index finger and the middle finger for <i>Release Ships</i> 43 and 56, +found with their pin-sets burned out and every man, woman, and child +on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger, and the +thumb of the other hand were the first three battleships to be lost to +the Rats—lost as people realized that there was something out there +<i>underneath space itself</i> which was alive, capricious and malevolent.</p> + +<p>Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like like—</p> + +<p>Like nothing much.</p> + +<p>Like the twinge of a mild electric shock.</p> + +<p>Like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time.</p> + +<p>Like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes.</p> + +<p>Yet in that time, a forty-thousand-ton ship lifting free above Earth +disappeared somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a +light-year or fifty light-years off.</p> + +<p>At one moment, he would be sitting in the Fighting Room, the pin-set +ready and the familiar Solar System ticking around inside his head. +For a second or a year (he could never tell how long it really was, +subjectively), the funny little flash went through him and then he was +loose in the Up-and-Out, the terrible open spaces between the stars, +where the stars themselves felt like pimples on his telepathic mind +and the planets were too far away to be sensed or read.</p> + +<p>Somewhere in this outer space, a gruesome death awaited, death and +horror of a kind which Man had never encountered until he reached out +for inter-stellar space itself. Apparently the light of the suns kept +the Dragons away.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_d.jpg" alt="D" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>ragons. That was what people called them. To ordinary people, there +was nothing, nothing except the shiver of planoforming and the hammer +blow of sudden death or the dark spastic note of lunacy descending +into their minds.</p> + +<p>But to the telepaths, they were Dragons.</p> + +<p>In the fraction of a second between the telepaths' awareness of a +hostile something out in the black, hollow nothingness of space and +the impact of a ferocious, ruinous psychic blow against all living +things within the ship, the telepaths had sensed entities something +like the Dragons of ancient human lore, beasts more clever than +beasts, demons more tangible than demons, hungry vortices of aliveness +and hate compounded by unknown means out of the thin tenuous matter +between the stars.</p> + +<p>It took a surviving ship to bring back the news—a ship in which, by +sheer chance, a telepath had a light beam ready, turning it out at the +innocent dust so that, within the panorama of his mind, the Dragon +dissolved into nothing at all and the other passengers, themselves +non-telepathic, went about their way not realizing that their own +immediate deaths had been averted.</p> + +<p>From then on, it was easy—almost.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="27" height="30" /></div> +<p>lanoforming ships always carried telepaths. Telepaths had their +sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were +telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind. The pin-sets in turn +were electronically geared into small dirigible light bombs. Light did +it.</p> + +<p>Light broke up the Dragons, allowed the ships to reform +three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star to +star.</p> + +<p>The odds suddenly moved down from a hundred to one against mankind to +sixty to forty in mankind's favor.</p> + +<p>This was not enough. The telepaths were trained to become +ultrasensitive, trained to become aware of the Dragons in less than a +millisecond.</p> + +<p>But it was found that the Dragons could move a million miles in just +under two milliseconds and that this was not enough for the human mind +to activate the light beams.</p> + +<p>Attempts had been made to sheath the ships in light at all times.</p> + +<p>This defense wore out.</p> + +<p>As mankind learned about the Dragons, so too, apparently, the Dragons +learned about mankind. Somehow they flattened their own bulk and came +in on extremely flat trajectories very quickly.</p> + +<p>Intense light was needed, light of sunlike intensity. This could be +provided only by light bombs. Pinlighting came into existence.</p> + +<p>Pinlighting consisted of the detonation of ultra-vivid miniature +photonuclear bombs, which converted a few ounces of a magnesium +isotope into pure visible radiance.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="600" height="453" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The odds kept coming down in mankind's favor, yet ships were being +lost.</p> + +<p>It became so bad that people didn't even want to find the ships +because the rescuers knew what they would see. It was sad to bring +back to Earth three hundred bodies ready for burial and two hundred or +three hundred lunatics, damaged beyond repair, to be wakened, and fed, +and cleaned, and put to sleep, wakened and fed again until their lives +were ended.</p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>elepaths tried to reach into the minds of the psychotics who had been +damaged by the Dragons, but they found nothing there beyond vivid +spouting columns of fiery terror bursting from the primordial id +itself, the volcanic source of life.</p> + +<p>Then came the Partners.</p> + +<p>Man and Partner could do together what Man could not do alone. Men had +the intellect. Partners had the speed.</p> + +<p>The Partners rode their tiny craft, no larger than footballs, outside +the spaceships. They planoformed with the ships. They rode beside them +in their six-pound craft ready to attack.</p> + +<p>The tiny ships of the Partners were swift. Each carried a dozen +pinlights, bombs no bigger than thimbles.</p> + +<p>The pinlighters threw the Partners—quite literally threw—by means of +mind-to-firing relays direct at the Dragons.</p> + +<p>What seemed to be Dragons to the human mind appeared in the form of +gigantic Rats in the minds of the Partners.</p> + +<p>Out in the pitiless nothingness of space, the Partners' minds +responded to an instinct as old as life. The Partners attacked, +striking with a speed faster than Man's, going from attack to attack +until the Rats or themselves were destroyed. Almost all the time, it +was the Partners who won.</p> + +<p>With the safety of the inter-stellar skip, skip, skip of the ships, +commerce increased immensely, the population of all the colonies went +up, and the demand for trained Partners increased.</p> + +<p>Underhill and Woodley were a part of the third generation of +pinlighters and yet, to them, it seemed as though their craft had +endured forever.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/image_004.jpg" width="600" height="367" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Gearing space into minds by means of the pin-set, adding the Partners +to those minds, keying up the mind for the tension of a fight on which +all depended—this was more than human synapses could stand for long. +Underhill needed his two months' rest after half an hour of fighting. +Woodley needed his retirement after ten years of service. They were +young. They were good. But they had limitations.</p> + +<p>So much depended on the choice of Partners, so much on the sheer luck +of who drew whom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE SHUFFLE</h2> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="25" height="30" /></div> +<p>ather Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They +were the other two pinlighters. The human complement of the Fighting +Room was now complete.</p> + +<p>Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the +peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only +then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic and agree +to let him late in life enter upon the career of pinlighter. He did +well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business.</p> + +<p>Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. +"How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?"</p> + +<p>"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She +was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She +looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in +the rough, sharp dueling of pinlighting.</p> + +<p>Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most +sluggish of the Partners coming away happy from contact with the mind +of the girl named West.</p> + +<p>Usually the Partners didn't care much about the human minds with which +they were paired for the journey. The Partners seemed to take the +attitude that human minds were complex and fouled up beyond belief, +anyhow. No Partner ever questioned the superiority of the human mind, +though very few of the Partners were much impressed by that +superiority.</p> + +<p>The Partners liked people. They were willing to fight with them. They +were even willing to die for them. But when a Partner liked an +individual the way, for example, that Captain Wow or the Lady May +liked Underhill, the liking had nothing to do with intellect. It was a +matter of temperament, of feel.</p> + +<p>Underhill knew perfectly well that Captain Wow regarded his, +Underhill's, brains as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's +friendly emotional structure, the cheerfulness and glint of wicked +amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns, +and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the +history books, the ideas, the science—Underhill could sense all that +in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind, as so much +rubbish.</p> + +<p>Miss West looked at Underhill. "I bet you've put stickum on the +stones."</p> + +<p>"I did not!"</p> + +<p>Underhill felt his ears grow red with embarrassment. During his +novitiate, he had tried to cheat in the lottery because he got +particularly fond of a special Partner, a lovely young mother named +Murr. It was so much easier to operate with Murr and she was so +affectionate toward him that he forgot pinlighting was hard work and +that he was not instructed to have a good time with his Partner. They +were both designed and prepared to go into deadly battle together.</p> + +<p>One cheating had been enough. They had found him out and he had been +laughed at for years.</p> + +<p>Father Moontree picked up the imitation-leather cup and shook the +stone dice which assigned them their Partners for the trip. By senior +rights, he took first draw.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="30" height="30" /></div> +<p>e grimaced. He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male +whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans +full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he +burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, +so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his +mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He +had killed sixty-three Dragons, more than any other Partner in the +service, and was quite literally worth his weight in gold.</p> + +<p>The little girl West came next. She drew Captain Wow. When she saw who +it was, she smiled.</p> + +<p>"I <i>like</i> him," she said. "He's such fun to fight with. He feels so +nice and cuddly in my mind."</p> + +<p>"Cuddly, hell," said Woodley. "I've been in his mind, too. It's the +most leering mind in this ship, bar none."</p> + +<p>"Nasty man," said the little girl. She said it declaratively, without +reproach.</p> + +<p>Underhill, looking at her, shivered.</p> + +<p>He didn't see how she could take Captain Wow so calmly. Captain Wow's +mind <i>did</i> leer. When Captain Wow got excited in the middle of a +battle, confused images of Dragons, deadly Rats, luscious beds, the +smell of fish, and the shock of space all scrambled together in his +mind as he and Captain Wow, their consciousnesses linked together +through the pin-set, became a fantastic composite of human being and +Persian cat.</p> + +<p>That's the trouble with working with cats, thought Underhill. It's a +pity that nothing else anywhere will serve as Partner. Cats were all +right once you got in touch with them telepathically. They were smart +enough to meet the needs of the fight, but their motives and desires +were certainly different from those of humans.</p> + +<p>They were companionable enough as long as you thought tangible images +at them, but their minds just closed up and went to sleep when you +recited Shakespeare or Colegrove, or if you tried to tell them what +space was.</p> + +<p>It was sort of funny realizing that the Partners who were so grim and +mature out here in space were the same cute little animals that people +had used as pets for thousands of years back on Earth. He had +embarrassed himself more than once while on the ground saluting +perfectly ordinary non-telepathic cats because he had forgotten for +the moment that they were not Partners.</p> + +<p>He picked up the cup and shook out his stone dice.</p> + +<p>He was lucky—he drew the Lady May.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="28" height="30" /></div> + +<p>he Lady May was the most thoughtful Partner he had ever met. In her, +the finely bred pedigree mind of a Persian cat had reached one of its +highest peaks of development. She was more complex than any human +woman, but the complexity was all one of emotions, memory, hope and +discriminated experience—experience sorted through without benefit of +words.</p> + +<p>When he had first come into contact with her mind, he was astonished at +its clarity. With her he remembered her kittenhood. He remembered every +mating experience she had ever had. He saw in a half-recognizable +gallery all the other pinlighters with whom she had been paired for the +fight. And he saw himself radiant, cheerful and desirable.</p> + +<p>He even thought he caught the edge of a longing—</p> + +<p>A very flattering and yearning thought: <i>What a pity he is not a cat.</i></p> + +<p>Woodley picked up the last stone. He drew what he deserved—a sullen, +scared old tomcat with none of the verve of Captain Wow. Woodley's +Partner was the most animal of all the cats on the ship, a low, +brutish type with a dull mind. Even telepathy had not refined his +character. His ears were half chewed off from the first fights in +which he had engaged.</p> + +<p>He was a serviceable fighter, nothing more.</p> + +<p>Woodley grunted.</p> + +<p>Underhill glanced at him oddly. Didn't Woodley ever do anything but +grunt?</p> + +<p>Father Moontree looked at the other three. "You might as well get your +Partners now. I'll let the Scanner know we're ready to go into the +Up-and-Out."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE DEAL</h2> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_u.jpg" alt="U" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>nderhill spun the combination lock on the Lady May's cage. He woke +her gently and took her into his arms. She humped her back +luxuriously, stretched her claws, started to purr, thought better of +it, and licked him on the wrist instead. He did not have the pin-set +on, so their minds were closed to each other, but in the angle of her +mustache and in the movement of her ears, he caught some sense of +gratification she experienced in finding him as her Partner.</p> + +<p>He talked to her in human speech, even though speech meant nothing to +a cat when the pin-set was not on.</p> + +<p>"It's a damn shame, sending a sweet little thing like you whirling +around in the coldness of nothing to hunt for Rats that are bigger and +deadlier than all of us put together. You didn't ask for this kind of +fight, did you?"</p> + +<p>For answer, she licked his hand, purred, tickled his cheek with her +long fluffy tail, turned around and faced him, golden eyes shining.</p> + +<p>For a moment, they stared at each other, man squatting, cat standing +erect on her hind legs, front claws digging into his knee. Human eyes +and cat eyes looked across an immensity which no words could meet, but +which affection spanned in a single glance.</p> + +<p>"Time to get in," he said.</p> + +<p>She walked docilely into her spheroid carrier. She climbed in. He saw +to it that her miniature pin-set rested firmly and comfortably against +the base of her brain. He made sure that her claws were padded so that +she could not tear herself in the excitement of battle.</p> + +<p>Softly he said to her, "Ready?"</p> + +<p>For answer, she preened her back as much as her harness would permit +and purred softly within the confines of the frame that held her.</p> + +<p>He slapped down the lid and watched the sealant ooze around the seam. +For a few hours, she was welded into her projectile until a workman +with a short cutting arc would remove her after she had done her duty.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="30" height="30" /></div> +<p>e picked up the entire projectile and slipped it into the ejection +tube. He closed the door of the tube, spun the lock, seated himself in +his chair, and put his own pin-set on.</p> + +<p>Once again he flung the switch.</p> + +<p>He sat in a small room, <i>small</i>, <i>small</i>, <i>warm</i>, <i>warm</i>, the bodies +of the other three people moving close around him, the tangible lights +in the ceiling bright and heavy against his closed eyelids.</p> + +<p>As the pin-set warmed, the room fell away. The other people ceased to +be people and became small glowing heaps of fire, embers, dark red +fire, with the consciousness of life burning like old red coals in a +country fireplace.</p> + +<p>As the pin-set warmed a little more, he felt Earth just below him, +felt the ship slipping away, felt the turning Moon as it swung on the +far side of the world, felt the planets and the hot, clear goodness of +the Sun which kept the Dragons so far from mankind's native ground.</p> + +<p>Finally, he reached complete awareness.</p> + +<p>He was telepathically alive to a range of millions of miles. He felt +the dust which he had noticed earlier high above the ecliptic. With a +thrill of warmth and tenderness, he felt the consciousness of the Lady +May pouring over into his own. Her consciousness was as gentle and +clear and yet sharp to the taste of his mind as if it were scented +oil. It felt relaxing and reassuring. He could sense her welcome of +him. It was scarcely a thought, just a raw emotion of greeting.</p> + +<p>At last they were one again.</p> + +<p>In a tiny remote corner of his mind, as tiny as the smallest toy he +had ever seen in his childhood, he was still aware of the room and the +ship, and of Father Moontree picking up a telephone and speaking to a +Scanner captain in charge of the ship.</p> + +<p>His telepathic mind caught the idea long before his ears could frame +the words. The actual sound followed the idea the way that thunder on +an ocean beach follows the lightning inward from far out over the +seas.</p> + +<p>"The Fighting Room is ready. Clear to planoform, sir."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE PLAY</h2> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_u.jpg" alt="U" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>nderhill was always a little exasperated the way that Lady May +experienced things before he did.</p> + +<p>He was braced for the quick vinegar thrill of planoforming, but he +caught her report of it before his own nerves could register what +happened.</p> + +<p>Earth had fallen so far away that he groped for several milliseconds +before he found the Sun in the upper rear right-hand corner of his +telepathic mind.</p> + +<p>That was a good jump, he thought. This way we'll get there in four or +five skips.</p> + +<p>A few hundred miles outside the ship, the Lady May thought back at +him, "O warm, O generous, O gigantic man! O brave, O friendly, O +tender and huge Partner! O wonderful with you, with you so good, good, +good, warm, warm, now to fight, now to go, good with you...."</p> + +<p>He knew that she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear +amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images +which his own thinking could record and understand.</p> + +<p>Neither one of them was absorbed in the game of mutual greetings. He +reached out far beyond her range of perception to see if there was +anything near the ship. It was funny how it was possible to do two +things at once. He could scan space with his pin-set mind and yet at +the same time catch a vagrant thought of hers, a lovely, affectionate +thought about a son who had had a golden face and a chest covered with +soft, incredibly downy white fur.</p> + +<p>While he was still searching, he caught the warning from her.</p> + +<p><i>We jump again!</i></p> +<div> +<img class="figright" src="images/image_005_01.jpg" width="305" height="295" alt="" /> +<img class="figright" src="images/image_005_02.jpg" width="567" height="296" alt="" /> +<img class="figright" src="images/image_005_03.jpg" width="305" height="258" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>And so they had. The ship had moved to a second planoform. The stars +were different. The Sun was immeasurably far behind. Even the nearest +stars were barely in contact. This was good Dragon country, this open, +nasty, hollow kind of space. He reached farther, faster, sensing and +looking for danger, ready to fling the Lady May at danger wherever he +found it.</p> + +<p>Terror blazed up in his mind, so sharp, so clear, that it came through +as a physical wrench.</p> + +<p>The little girl named West had found something—something immense, +long, black, sharp, greedy, horrific. She flung Captain Wow at it.</p> + +<p>Underhill tried to keep his own mind clear. "Watch out!" he shouted +telepathically at the others, trying to move the Lady May around.</p> + +<p>At one corner of the battle, he felt the lustful rage of Captain Wow +as the big Persian tomcat detonated lights while he approached the +streak of dust which threatened the ship and the people within.</p> + +<p>The lights scored near-misses.</p> + +<p>The dust flattened itself, changing from the shape of a sting-ray into +the shape of a spear.</p> + +<p>Not three milliseconds had elapsed.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="f1">F</span>ather Moontree was talking human words and was saying in a voice that +moved like cold molasses out of a heavy jar, "C-A-P-T-A-I-N." +Underhill knew that the sentence was going to be "Captain, move fast!"</p> + +<p>The battle would be fought and finished before Father Moontree got +through talking.</p> + +<p>Now, fractions of a millisecond later, the Lady May was directly in +line.</p> + +<p>Here was where the skill and speed of the Partners came in. She could +react faster than he. She could see the threat as an immense Rat +coming direct at her.</p> + +<p>She could fire the light-bombs with a discrimination which he might +miss.</p> + +<p>He was connected with her mind, but he could not follow it.</p> + +<div><img class="figleft" src="images/image_006_01.jpg" width="295" height="295" alt="" /><img class="figleft1" src="images/image_006_02.jpg" width="584" height="296" alt="" /> +<img class="figleft" src="images/image_006_03.jpg" width="295" height="252" alt="" /></div> + +<p>His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien +enemy. It was like no wound on Earth—raw, crazy pain which started +like a burn at his navel. He began to writhe in his chair.</p> + +<p>Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May +struck back at their enemy.</p> + +<p>Five evenly spaced photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred +thousand miles.</p> + +<p>The pain in his mind and body vanished.</p> + +<p>He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through +the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always +disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they +sensed as gigantic space Rats disappeared at the moment of +destruction.</p> + +<p>Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of +them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come +and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge +of planoform.</p> + +<p>Once more the ship went skip.</p> + +<p>He could hear Woodley thinking at him. "You don't have to bother much. +This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while."</p> + +<p>Twice again the twinge, the skip.</p> + +<p>He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia space +board shone below.</p> + +<p>With a weariness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he +threw his mind back into rapport with the pin-set, fixing the Lady +May's projectile gently and neatly in its launching tube.</p> + +<p>She was half dead with fatigue, but he could feel the beat of her +heart, could listen to her panting, and he grasped the grateful edge +of a thanks reaching from her mind to his.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE SCORE</h2> + +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>hey put him in the hospital at Caledonia.</p> + +<p>The doctor was friendly but firm. "You actually got touched by that +Dragon. That's as close a shave as I've ever seen. It's all so quick +that it'll be a long time before we know what happened scientifically, +but I suppose you'd be ready for the insane asylum now if the contact +had lasted several tenths of a millisecond longer. What kind of cat +did you have out in front of you?"</p> + +<p>Underhill felt the words coming out of him slowly. Words were such a +lot of trouble compared with the speed and the joy of thinking, fast +and sharp and clear, mind to mind! But words were all that could reach +ordinary people like this doctor.</p> + +<p>His mouth moved heavily as he articulated words, "Don't call our +Partners cats. The right thing to call them is Partners. They fight +for us in a team. You ought to know we call them Partners, not cats. +How is mine?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said the doctor contritely. "We'll find out for you. +Meanwhile, old man, you take it easy. There's nothing but rest that +can help you. Can you make yourself sleep, or would you like us to +give you some kind of sedative?"</p> + +<p>"I can sleep," said Underhill. "I just want to know about the Lady +May."</p> + +<p>The nurse joined in. She was a little antagonistic. "Don't you want to +know about the other people?"</p> + +<p>"They're okay," said Underhill. "I knew that before I came in here."</p> + +<p>He stretched his arms and sighed and grinned at them. He could see +they were relaxing and were beginning to treat him as a person instead +of a patient.</p> + +<p>"I'm all right," he said. "Just let me know when I can go see my +Partner."</p> + +<p>A new thought struck him. He looked wildly at the doctor. "They didn't +send her off with the ship, did they?"</p> + +<p>"I'll find out right away," said the doctor. He gave Underhill a +reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and left the room.</p> + +<p>The nurse took a napkin off a goblet of chilled fruit juice.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft2"><img src="images/image_u.jpg" alt="U" width="28" height="30" /></div> +<p>nderhill tried to smile at her. There seemed to be something wrong +with the girl. He wished she would go away. First she had started to +be friendly and now she was distant again. It's a nuisance being +telepathic, he thought. You keep trying to reach even when you are not +making contact.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she swung around on him.</p> + +<p>"You pinlighters! You and your damn cats!"</p> + +<p>Just as she stamped out, he burst into her mind. He saw himself a +radiant hero, clad in his smooth suede uniform, the pin-set crown +shining like ancient royal jewels around his head. He saw his own +face, handsome and masculine, shining out of her mind. He saw himself +very far away and he saw himself as she hated him.</p> + +<p>She hated him in the secrecy of her own mind. She hated him because he +was—she thought—proud, and strange, and rich, better and more +beautiful than people like her.</p> + +<p>He cut off the sight of her mind and, as he buried his face in the +pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.</p> + +<p>"She <i>is</i> a cat," he thought. "That's all she is—a <i>cat</i>!"</p> + +<p>But that was not how his mind saw her—quick beyond all dreams of +speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless and +undemanding.</p> + +<p>Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?</p> + +<p>—CORDWAINER SMITH</p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/image_007.jpg" width="600" height="373" alt="" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Game of Rat and Dragon, by Cordwainer Smith + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON *** + +***** This file should be named 29614-h.htm or 29614-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/6/1/29614/ + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Game of Rat and Dragon + +Author: Cordwainer Smith + +Illustrator: Hunter + +Release Date: August 5, 2009 [EBook #29614] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON *** + + + + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1955. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that + the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + The Game of + + Rat and Dragon + + + + By CORDWAINER SMITH + + + + _Only partners could fight this deadliest of + wars--and the one way to dissolve the + partnership was to be personally dissolved!_ + + + + Illustrated by HUNTER + + * * * * * + + + + +THE TABLE + +[Illustration] + + +Pinlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious +as he closed the door behind himself. It didn't make much sense to +wear a uniform and look like a soldier if people didn't appreciate +what you did. + +He sat down in his chair, laid his head back in the headrest and +pulled the helmet down over his forehead. + +As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the +outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully. + +"Meow." That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife. + +What did she think he was--a fool, a loafer, a uniformed nonentity? +Didn't she know that for every half hour of pinlighting, he got a +minimum of two months' recuperation in the hospital? + +By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of space around him, +sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid, full +of nothing. Out in that nothingness, he could sense the hollow aching +horror of space itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his +mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust. + +As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of +the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system +was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with +familiar ticking and with reassuring noises. The odd little moons of +Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity +was itself an assurance that all was well. Far above the plane of the +ecliptic, he could feel half a ton of dust more or less drifting +outside the lanes of human travel. + +Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to +tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in +effluvium as tangible as blood. + +Nothing ever moved in on the Solar System. He could wear the pin-set +forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a +man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the Sun throbbing and +burning against his living mind. + + * * * * * + +Woodley came in. + +"Same old ticking world," said Underhill. "Nothing to report. No +wonder they didn't develop the pin-set until they began to planoform. +Down here with the hot Sun around us, it feels so good and so quiet. +You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and +compact. It's sort of like sitting around home." + +Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy. + +Undeterred, Underhill went on, "It must have been pretty good to have +been an Ancient Man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war. +They didn't have to planoform. They didn't have to go out to earn +their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the Rats or +play the Game. They couldn't have invented pinlighting because they +didn't have any need of it, did they, Woodley?" + +Woodley grunted, "Uh-huh." Woodley was twenty-six years old and due to +retire in one more year. He already had a farm picked out. He had +gotten through ten years of hard work pinlighting with the best of +them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job, +meeting the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and +thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose. + +Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the Partners. +None of the Partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented +him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the Partners on +occasion, but since none of the Partners ever thought a complaint in +articulate form, the other pinlighters and the Chiefs of the +Instrumentality left him alone. + +Underhill was still full of the wonder of their job. Happily he +babbled on, "What does happen to us when we planoform? Do you think +it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul +pulled out?" + +"Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it," said Woodley. +"After all these years, nobody knows whether we have souls or not." + +"But I saw one once. I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came +apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as +if it were bleeding and it went out of him--and you know what they did +to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where +you and I never go--way up at the top part where the others are, where +the others always have to go if they are alive after the Rats of the +Up-and-Out have gotten them." + +Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something +called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him +look very dashing and adventurous. + +"Look here, youngster. You don't have to worry about that stuff. +Pinlighting is getting better all the time. The Partners are getting +better. I've seen them pinlight two Rats forty-six million miles apart +in one and a half milliseconds. As long as people had to try to work +the pin-sets themselves, there was always the chance that with a +minimum of four hundred milliseconds for the human mind to set a +pinlight, we wouldn't light the Rats up fast enough to protect our +planoforming ships. The Partners have changed all that. Once they get +going, they're faster than Rats. And they always will be. I know it's +not easy, letting a Partner share your mind--" + +"It's not easy for them, either," said Underhill. + +"Don't worry about them. They're not human. Let them take care of +themselves. I've seen more pinlighters go crazy from monkeying around +with Partners than I have ever seen caught by the Rats. How many do +you actually know of them that got grabbed by Rats?" + + * * * * * + +Underhill looked down at his fingers, which shone green and purple in +the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pin-set, and counted ships. +The thumb for the _Andromeda_, lost with crew and passengers, the +index finger and the middle finger for _Release Ships_ 43 and 56, +found with their pin-sets burned out and every man, woman, and child +on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger, and the +thumb of the other hand were the first three battleships to be lost to +the Rats--lost as people realized that there was something out there +_underneath space itself_ which was alive, capricious and malevolent. + +Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like like-- + +Like nothing much. + +Like the twinge of a mild electric shock. + +Like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time. + +Like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes. + +Yet in that time, a forty-thousand-ton ship lifting free above Earth +disappeared somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a +light-year or fifty light-years off. + +At one moment, he would be sitting in the Fighting Room, the pin-set +ready and the familiar Solar System ticking around inside his head. +For a second or a year (he could never tell how long it really was, +subjectively), the funny little flash went through him and then he was +loose in the Up-and-Out, the terrible open spaces between the stars, +where the stars themselves felt like pimples on his telepathic mind +and the planets were too far away to be sensed or read. + +Somewhere in this outer space, a gruesome death awaited, death and +horror of a kind which Man had never encountered until he reached out +for inter-stellar space itself. Apparently the light of the suns kept +the Dragons away. + + * * * * * + +Dragons. That was what people called them. To ordinary people, there +was nothing, nothing except the shiver of planoforming and the hammer +blow of sudden death or the dark spastic note of lunacy descending +into their minds. + +But to the telepaths, they were Dragons. + +In the fraction of a second between the telepaths' awareness of a +hostile something out in the black, hollow nothingness of space and +the impact of a ferocious, ruinous psychic blow against all living +things within the ship, the telepaths had sensed entities something +like the Dragons of ancient human lore, beasts more clever than +beasts, demons more tangible than demons, hungry vortices of aliveness +and hate compounded by unknown means out of the thin tenuous matter +between the stars. + +It took a surviving ship to bring back the news--a ship in which, by +sheer chance, a telepath had a light beam ready, turning it out at the +innocent dust so that, within the panorama of his mind, the Dragon +dissolved into nothing at all and the other passengers, themselves +non-telepathic, went about their way not realizing that their own +immediate deaths had been averted. + +From then on, it was easy--almost. + + * * * * * + +Planoforming ships always carried telepaths. Telepaths had their +sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were +telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind. The pin-sets in turn +were electronically geared into small dirigible light bombs. Light did +it. + +Light broke up the Dragons, allowed the ships to reform +three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star to +star. + +The odds suddenly moved down from a hundred to one against mankind to +sixty to forty in mankind's favor. + +This was not enough. The telepaths were trained to become +ultrasensitive, trained to become aware of the Dragons in less than a +millisecond. + +But it was found that the Dragons could move a million miles in just +under two milliseconds and that this was not enough for the human mind +to activate the light beams. + +Attempts had been made to sheath the ships in light at all times. + +This defense wore out. + +As mankind learned about the Dragons, so too, apparently, the Dragons +learned about mankind. Somehow they flattened their own bulk and came +in on extremely flat trajectories very quickly. + +Intense light was needed, light of sunlike intensity. This could be +provided only by light bombs. Pinlighting came into existence. + +Pinlighting consisted of the detonation of ultra-vivid miniature +photonuclear bombs, which converted a few ounces of a magnesium +isotope into pure visible radiance. + +The odds kept coming down in mankind's favor, yet ships were being +lost. + +It became so bad that people didn't even want to find the ships +because the rescuers knew what they would see. It was sad to bring +back to Earth three hundred bodies ready for burial and two hundred or +three hundred lunatics, damaged beyond repair, to be wakened, and fed, +and cleaned, and put to sleep, wakened and fed again until their lives +were ended. + +[Illustration] + +Telepaths tried to reach into the minds of the psychotics who had been +damaged by the Dragons, but they found nothing there beyond vivid +spouting columns of fiery terror bursting from the primordial id +itself, the volcanic source of life. + +Then came the Partners. + +Man and Partner could do together what Man could not do alone. Men had +the intellect. Partners had the speed. + +The Partners rode their tiny craft, no larger than footballs, outside +the spaceships. They planoformed with the ships. They rode beside them +in their six-pound craft ready to attack. + +The tiny ships of the Partners were swift. Each carried a dozen +pinlights, bombs no bigger than thimbles. + +The pinlighters threw the Partners--quite literally threw--by means of +mind-to-firing relays direct at the Dragons. + +What seemed to be Dragons to the human mind appeared in the form of +gigantic Rats in the minds of the Partners. + +Out in the pitiless nothingness of space, the Partners' minds +responded to an instinct as old as life. The Partners attacked, +striking with a speed faster than Man's, going from attack to attack +until the Rats or themselves were destroyed. Almost all the time, it +was the Partners who won. + +With the safety of the inter-stellar skip, skip, skip of the ships, +commerce increased immensely, the population of all the colonies went +up, and the demand for trained Partners increased. + +Underhill and Woodley were a part of the third generation of +pinlighters and yet, to them, it seemed as though their craft had +endured forever. + +[Illustration] + +Gearing space into minds by means of the pin-set, adding the Partners +to those minds, keying up the mind for the tension of a fight on which +all depended--this was more than human synapses could stand for long. +Underhill needed his two months' rest after half an hour of fighting. +Woodley needed his retirement after ten years of service. They were +young. They were good. But they had limitations. + +So much depended on the choice of Partners, so much on the sheer luck +of who drew whom. + + + + +THE SHUFFLE + + +Father Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They +were the other two pinlighters. The human complement of the Fighting +Room was now complete. + +Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the +peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only +then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic and agree +to let him late in life enter upon the career of pinlighter. He did +well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business. + +Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. +"How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?" + +"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She +was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She +looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in +the rough, sharp dueling of pinlighting. + +Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most +sluggish of the Partners coming away happy from contact with the mind +of the girl named West. + +Usually the Partners didn't care much about the human minds with which +they were paired for the journey. The Partners seemed to take the +attitude that human minds were complex and fouled up beyond belief, +anyhow. No Partner ever questioned the superiority of the human mind, +though very few of the Partners were much impressed by that +superiority. + +The Partners liked people. They were willing to fight with them. They +were even willing to die for them. But when a Partner liked an +individual the way, for example, that Captain Wow or the Lady May +liked Underhill, the liking had nothing to do with intellect. It was a +matter of temperament, of feel. + +Underhill knew perfectly well that Captain Wow regarded his, +Underhill's, brains as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's +friendly emotional structure, the cheerfulness and glint of wicked +amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns, +and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the +history books, the ideas, the science--Underhill could sense all that +in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind, as so much +rubbish. + +Miss West looked at Underhill. "I bet you've put stickum on the +stones." + +"I did not!" + +Underhill felt his ears grow red with embarrassment. During his +novitiate, he had tried to cheat in the lottery because he got +particularly fond of a special Partner, a lovely young mother named +Murr. It was so much easier to operate with Murr and she was so +affectionate toward him that he forgot pinlighting was hard work and +that he was not instructed to have a good time with his Partner. They +were both designed and prepared to go into deadly battle together. + +One cheating had been enough. They had found him out and he had been +laughed at for years. + +Father Moontree picked up the imitation-leather cup and shook the +stone dice which assigned them their Partners for the trip. By senior +rights, he took first draw. + + * * * * * + +He grimaced. He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male +whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans +full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he +burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, +so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his +mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He +had killed sixty-three Dragons, more than any other Partner in the +service, and was quite literally worth his weight in gold. + +The little girl West came next. She drew Captain Wow. When she saw who +it was, she smiled. + +"I _like_ him," she said. "He's such fun to fight with. He feels so +nice and cuddly in my mind." + +"Cuddly, hell," said Woodley. "I've been in his mind, too. It's the +most leering mind in this ship, bar none." + +"Nasty man," said the little girl. She said it declaratively, without +reproach. + +Underhill, looking at her, shivered. + +He didn't see how she could take Captain Wow so calmly. Captain Wow's +mind _did_ leer. When Captain Wow got excited in the middle of a +battle, confused images of Dragons, deadly Rats, luscious beds, the +smell of fish, and the shock of space all scrambled together in his +mind as he and Captain Wow, their consciousnesses linked together +through the pin-set, became a fantastic composite of human being and +Persian cat. + +That's the trouble with working with cats, thought Underhill. It's a +pity that nothing else anywhere will serve as Partner. Cats were all +right once you got in touch with them telepathically. They were smart +enough to meet the needs of the fight, but their motives and desires +were certainly different from those of humans. + +They were companionable enough as long as you thought tangible images +at them, but their minds just closed up and went to sleep when you +recited Shakespeare or Colegrove, or if you tried to tell them what +space was. + +It was sort of funny realizing that the Partners who were so grim and +mature out here in space were the same cute little animals that people +had used as pets for thousands of years back on Earth. He had +embarrassed himself more than once while on the ground saluting +perfectly ordinary non-telepathic cats because he had forgotten for +the moment that they were not Partners. + +He picked up the cup and shook out his stone dice. + +He was lucky--he drew the Lady May. + + * * * * * + +The Lady May was the most thoughtful Partner he had ever met. In her, +the finely bred pedigree mind of a Persian cat had reached one of its +highest peaks of development. She was more complex than any human +woman, but the complexity was all one of emotions, memory, hope and +discriminated experience--experience sorted through without benefit of +words. + +When he had first come into contact with her mind, he was astonished at +its clarity. With her he remembered her kittenhood. He remembered every +mating experience she had ever had. He saw in a half-recognizable +gallery all the other pinlighters with whom she had been paired for the +fight. And he saw himself radiant, cheerful and desirable. + +He even thought he caught the edge of a longing-- + +A very flattering and yearning thought: _What a pity he is not a cat._ + +Woodley picked up the last stone. He drew what he deserved--a sullen, +scared old tomcat with none of the verve of Captain Wow. Woodley's +Partner was the most animal of all the cats on the ship, a low, +brutish type with a dull mind. Even telepathy had not refined his +character. His ears were half chewed off from the first fights in +which he had engaged. + +He was a serviceable fighter, nothing more. + +Woodley grunted. + +Underhill glanced at him oddly. Didn't Woodley ever do anything but +grunt? + +Father Moontree looked at the other three. "You might as well get your +Partners now. I'll let the Scanner know we're ready to go into the +Up-and-Out." + + + + +THE DEAL + + +Underhill spun the combination lock on the Lady May's cage. He woke +her gently and took her into his arms. She humped her back +luxuriously, stretched her claws, started to purr, thought better of +it, and licked him on the wrist instead. He did not have the pin-set +on, so their minds were closed to each other, but in the angle of her +mustache and in the movement of her ears, he caught some sense of +gratification she experienced in finding him as her Partner. + +He talked to her in human speech, even though speech meant nothing to +a cat when the pin-set was not on. + +"It's a damn shame, sending a sweet little thing like you whirling +around in the coldness of nothing to hunt for Rats that are bigger and +deadlier than all of us put together. You didn't ask for this kind of +fight, did you?" + +For answer, she licked his hand, purred, tickled his cheek with her +long fluffy tail, turned around and faced him, golden eyes shining. + +For a moment, they stared at each other, man squatting, cat standing +erect on her hind legs, front claws digging into his knee. Human eyes +and cat eyes looked across an immensity which no words could meet, but +which affection spanned in a single glance. + +"Time to get in," he said. + +She walked docilely into her spheroid carrier. She climbed in. He saw +to it that her miniature pin-set rested firmly and comfortably against +the base of her brain. He made sure that her claws were padded so that +she could not tear herself in the excitement of battle. + +Softly he said to her, "Ready?" + +For answer, she preened her back as much as her harness would permit +and purred softly within the confines of the frame that held her. + +He slapped down the lid and watched the sealant ooze around the seam. +For a few hours, she was welded into her projectile until a workman +with a short cutting arc would remove her after she had done her duty. + + * * * * * + +He picked up the entire projectile and slipped it into the ejection +tube. He closed the door of the tube, spun the lock, seated himself in +his chair, and put his own pin-set on. + +Once again he flung the switch. + +He sat in a small room, _small_, _small_, _warm_, _warm_, the bodies +of the other three people moving close around him, the tangible lights +in the ceiling bright and heavy against his closed eyelids. + +As the pin-set warmed, the room fell away. The other people ceased to +be people and became small glowing heaps of fire, embers, dark red +fire, with the consciousness of life burning like old red coals in a +country fireplace. + +As the pin-set warmed a little more, he felt Earth just below him, +felt the ship slipping away, felt the turning Moon as it swung on the +far side of the world, felt the planets and the hot, clear goodness of +the Sun which kept the Dragons so far from mankind's native ground. + +Finally, he reached complete awareness. + +He was telepathically alive to a range of millions of miles. He felt +the dust which he had noticed earlier high above the ecliptic. With a +thrill of warmth and tenderness, he felt the consciousness of the Lady +May pouring over into his own. Her consciousness was as gentle and +clear and yet sharp to the taste of his mind as if it were scented +oil. It felt relaxing and reassuring. He could sense her welcome of +him. It was scarcely a thought, just a raw emotion of greeting. + +At last they were one again. + +In a tiny remote corner of his mind, as tiny as the smallest toy he +had ever seen in his childhood, he was still aware of the room and the +ship, and of Father Moontree picking up a telephone and speaking to a +Scanner captain in charge of the ship. + +His telepathic mind caught the idea long before his ears could frame +the words. The actual sound followed the idea the way that thunder on +an ocean beach follows the lightning inward from far out over the +seas. + +"The Fighting Room is ready. Clear to planoform, sir." + + + + +THE PLAY + + +Underhill was always a little exasperated the way that Lady May +experienced things before he did. + +He was braced for the quick vinegar thrill of planoforming, but he +caught her report of it before his own nerves could register what +happened. + +Earth had fallen so far away that he groped for several milliseconds +before he found the Sun in the upper rear right-hand corner of his +telepathic mind. + +That was a good jump, he thought. This way we'll get there in four or +five skips. + +A few hundred miles outside the ship, the Lady May thought back at +him, "O warm, O generous, O gigantic man! O brave, O friendly, O +tender and huge Partner! O wonderful with you, with you so good, good, +good, warm, warm, now to fight, now to go, good with you...." + +He knew that she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear +amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images +which his own thinking could record and understand. + +Neither one of them was absorbed in the game of mutual greetings. He +reached out far beyond her range of perception to see if there was +anything near the ship. It was funny how it was possible to do two +things at once. He could scan space with his pin-set mind and yet at +the same time catch a vagrant thought of hers, a lovely, affectionate +thought about a son who had had a golden face and a chest covered with +soft, incredibly downy white fur. + +While he was still searching, he caught the warning from her. + +_We jump again!_ + +And so they had. The ship had moved to a second planoform. The stars +were different. The Sun was immeasurably far behind. Even the nearest +stars were barely in contact. This was good Dragon country, this open, +nasty, hollow kind of space. He reached farther, faster, sensing and +looking for danger, ready to fling the Lady May at danger wherever he +found it. + +Terror blazed up in his mind, so sharp, so clear, that it came through +as a physical wrench. + +The little girl named West had found something--something immense, +long, black, sharp, greedy, horrific. She flung Captain Wow at it. + +Underhill tried to keep his own mind clear. "Watch out!" he shouted +telepathically at the others, trying to move the Lady May around. + +At one corner of the battle, he felt the lustful rage of Captain Wow +as the big Persian tomcat detonated lights while he approached the +streak of dust which threatened the ship and the people within. + +The lights scored near-misses. + +The dust flattened itself, changing from the shape of a sting-ray into +the shape of a spear. + +Not three milliseconds had elapsed. + + * * * * * + +Father Moontree was talking human words and was saying in a voice that +moved like cold molasses out of a heavy jar, "C-A-P-T-A-I-N." +Underhill knew that the sentence was going to be "Captain, move fast!" + +The battle would be fought and finished before Father Moontree got +through talking. + +Now, fractions of a millisecond later, the Lady May was directly in +line. + +Here was where the skill and speed of the Partners came in. She could +react faster than he. She could see the threat as an immense Rat +coming direct at her. + +She could fire the light-bombs with a discrimination which he might +miss. + +He was connected with her mind, but he could not follow it. + +His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien +enemy. It was like no wound on Earth--raw, crazy pain which started +like a burn at his navel. He began to writhe in his chair. + +Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May +struck back at their enemy. + +Five evenly spaced photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred +thousand miles. + +The pain in his mind and body vanished. + +[Illustration] + +He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through +the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always +disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they +sensed as gigantic space Rats disappeared at the moment of +destruction. + +Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of +them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come +and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge +of planoform. + +Once more the ship went skip. + +He could hear Woodley thinking at him. "You don't have to bother much. +This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while." + +Twice again the twinge, the skip. + +He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia space +board shone below. + +[Illustration] + +With a weariness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he +threw his mind back into rapport with the pin-set, fixing the Lady +May's projectile gently and neatly in its launching tube. + +She was half dead with fatigue, but he could feel the beat of her +heart, could listen to her panting, and he grasped the grateful edge +of a thanks reaching from her mind to his. + + + + +THE SCORE + + +They put him in the hospital at Caledonia. + +The doctor was friendly but firm. "You actually got touched by that +Dragon. That's as close a shave as I've ever seen. It's all so quick +that it'll be a long time before we know what happened scientifically, +but I suppose you'd be ready for the insane asylum now if the contact +had lasted several tenths of a millisecond longer. What kind of cat +did you have out in front of you?" + +Underhill felt the words coming out of him slowly. Words were such a +lot of trouble compared with the speed and the joy of thinking, fast +and sharp and clear, mind to mind! But words were all that could reach +ordinary people like this doctor. + +His mouth moved heavily as he articulated words, "Don't call our +Partners cats. The right thing to call them is Partners. They fight +for us in a team. You ought to know we call them Partners, not cats. +How is mine?" + +"I don't know," said the doctor contritely. "We'll find out for you. +Meanwhile, old man, you take it easy. There's nothing but rest that +can help you. Can you make yourself sleep, or would you like us to +give you some kind of sedative?" + +"I can sleep," said Underhill. "I just want to know about the Lady +May." + +The nurse joined in. She was a little antagonistic. "Don't you want to +know about the other people?" + +"They're okay," said Underhill. "I knew that before I came in here." + +He stretched his arms and sighed and grinned at them. He could see +they were relaxing and were beginning to treat him as a person instead +of a patient. + +"I'm all right," he said. "Just let me know when I can go see my +Partner." + +A new thought struck him. He looked wildly at the doctor. "They didn't +send her off with the ship, did they?" + +"I'll find out right away," said the doctor. He gave Underhill a +reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and left the room. + +The nurse took a napkin off a goblet of chilled fruit juice. + + * * * * * + +Underhill tried to smile at her. There seemed to be something wrong +with the girl. He wished she would go away. First she had started to +be friendly and now she was distant again. It's a nuisance being +telepathic, he thought. You keep trying to reach even when you are not +making contact. + +Suddenly she swung around on him. + +"You pinlighters! You and your damn cats!" + +Just as she stamped out, he burst into her mind. He saw himself a +radiant hero, clad in his smooth suede uniform, the pin-set crown +shining like ancient royal jewels around his head. He saw his own +face, handsome and masculine, shining out of her mind. He saw himself +very far away and he saw himself as she hated him. + +She hated him in the secrecy of her own mind. She hated him because he +was--she thought--proud, and strange, and rich, better and more +beautiful than people like her. + +He cut off the sight of her mind and, as he buried his face in the +pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May. + +"She _is_ a cat," he thought. "That's all she is--a _cat_!" + +But that was not how his mind saw her--quick beyond all dreams of +speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless and +undemanding. + +Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her? + +--CORDWAINER SMITH + +[Illustration] + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Game of Rat and Dragon, by Cordwainer Smith + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON *** + +***** This file should be named 29614.txt or 29614.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/6/1/29614/ + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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