Judith Merril - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

The robots swiftly gathered together the herd. Using wheelbarrows, they brought the hundreds of mindless people to the landing area.

Mercer heard a voice he knew. It was the Lady Johanna Gnade. “Set me high,” she commanded.

Her form rose until she seemed one-fourth the size of Alvarez. Her voice took on more volume.

“Wake them all,” she commanded.

Robots moved among them, spraying them with a gas which was both sickening and sweet. Mercer felt his mind go clear. The super-condamine still operated in his nerves and veins, but his cortical area was free of it. He thought clearly.

“I bring you,” cried the compassionate feminine voice of the gigantic Lady Johanna, “the judgment of the Instrumentality on the planet Shayol.

“Item: the surgical supplies will be maintained and the dromozoa will not be molested. Portions of human bodies will be left here to grow, and the grafts will be collected by robots. Neither man nor homunculus will live here again. “

“Item: the underman B’dikkat, of cattle extraction, will be rewarded by an immediate return to Earth. He will be paid twice his expected thousand years of earnings.”

The voice of B’dikkat, without amplification, was almost as loud as hers through the amplifier. He shouted his protest, “Lady, Lady!”

She looked down at him, his enormous body reaching to ankle height on her swirling gown, and said in a very informal tone, “What do you want?”

“Let me finish my work first,” he cried, so that all could hear. “Let me finish taking care of these people.”

The specimens who had minds all listened attentively. The brainless ones were trying to dig themselves back into the soft earth of Shayol, using their powerful claws for the purpose. Whenever one began to disappear, a robot seized him by a limb and pulled him out again.

“Item: cephalectomies will be performed on all persons with irrecoverable minds. Their bodies will be left here. Their heads will be taken away and killed as pleasantly as we can manage, probably by an overdosage of super-condamine.”

“The last big jolt,” murmured Commander Suzdal, who stood near Mercer. “That’s fair enough.”

“Item: the children have been found to be the last heirs of the Empire. An over-zealous official sent them here to prevent their committing treason when they grew up. The doctor obeyed orders without questioning them. Both the official and the doctor have been cured and their memories of this have been erased, so that they need have no shame or grief for what they have done.”

“It’s unfair,” cried the half-man. “They should be punished as we were!”

The Lady Johanna Gnade looked down at him. “Punishment is ended. We will give you anything you wish, but not the pain of another. I shall continue.

“Item: since none of you wish to resume the lives which you led previously, we are moving you to another planet nearby. It is similar to Shayol, but much more beautiful. There are no dromozoa.”

At this an uproar seized the herd. They shouted, wept, cursed, appealed. They all wanted the needle, and if they had to stay on Shayol to get it, they would stay.

“Item,” said the gigantic image of the lady, overriding their babble with her great but feminine voice, “you will not have super-condamine on the new planet, since without dromozoa it would kill you. But there will be caps. Remember the caps. We will try to cure you and to make people of you again. But if you give up, we will not force you. Caps are very powerful; with medical help you can live under them many years.”

A hush fell on the group. In their various ways, they were trying to compare the electrical caps which had stimulated their pleasure-lobes with the drug which had drowned them a thousand times in pleasure. Their murmur sounded like assent.

“Do you have any questions?” said the Lady Johanna.

“When do we get the caps?” said several. They were human enough that they laughed at their own impatience.

“Soon,” said she reassuringly, “very soon.”

“Very soon,” echoed B’dikkat, reassuring his charges even though he was no longer in control.

“Question,” cried the Lady Da.

“My Lady…?” said the Lady Johanna, giving the ex-empress her due courtesy.

“Will we be permitted marriage?”

The Lady Johanna looked astonished. “I don’t know.” She smiled. “I don’t know any reason why not—”

“I claim this man Mercer,” said the Lady Da. “When the drugs were deepest, and the pain was greatest, he was the one who always tried to think. May I have him?”

Mercer thought the procedure arbitrary but he was so happy that he said nothing. The Lady Johanna scrutinized him and then she nodded. She lifted her arms in a gesture of blessing and farewell.

The robots began to gather the pink herd into two groups. One group was to whisper in a ship over to a new world, new problems and new lives. The other group, no matter how much its members tried to scuttle into the dirt, was gathered for the last honor which humanity could pay their manhood.

B’dikkat, leaving everyone else, jogged with his bottle across the plain to give the mountain-man Alvarez an especially large gift of delight.

The “space story” (the one science caught up with) was originally concerned with the techniques of space travel— with our ability to manufacture and control what we now call “the hardware” of space flight. The “planet story” has traditionally been rollicking-romance-adventure (prototypically. Burroughs’ “Princess of Mars.”) Both of these varieties dealt primarily with man’s effect on the environments of space. A third type, and indeed the earliest one, has been the philosophic novel, in which the space (or, most usually. Moon, setting) was essentially a stage for a passion play; in these there was no real interaction; the voyageur was primarily an observer.

Now, more and more, writers confronted by the imminence of space travel, are considering the effects of the trip into the unknown on mankind. One hears the old phrase, the “conquest of space,” less frequently now. That there will be immediate and perhaps profound effects on us, physiologically and culturally, is dear; equally obvious, but much less clearcut, are the potential effects on our psychology, philosophy, religion, and mystique.

My first visit to New Caledonia was in the summer of 2199. At that time an exploration party under the leadership of Gilbert Troon was cautiously pushing its way up the less radioactive parts of Italy, investigating the prospects of reclamation. My firm felt that there might be a popular book in it, and assigned me to put the proposition to Gilbert. When I arrived, however, it was to find that he had been delayed, and was now expected a week later. I was not at all displeased. A few days of comfortable laziness on a Pacific island, all paid for and counting as work, is the kind of perquisite I like.

New Caledonia is a fascinating spot, and well worth the trouble of getting a landing permit— if you can get one. It has more of the past — and more of the future, too, for that matter — than any other place, and somehow it manages to keep them almost separate.

At one time the island, and the group, were, in spite of the name, a French colony. But in 2044, with the eclipse of Europe in the Great Northern War, it found itself, like other ex-colonies dotted all about the world, suddenly thrown upon its own resources. While most mainland colonies hurried to make treaties with their nearest powerful neighbors, many islands such as New Caledonia had little to offer and not much to fear, and so let things drift.