Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia

On Khufu II, the Governor of Night had brought out an ancient book and had said,

“I want that.”

The Daimoni, who had a neat eye for proportions and figures, said, “We have that picture on our world too. It is an Ancient Earth building. It was once called the great temple of Diana of the Ephesians, but it fell even before the age of space began.”

“That’s what I want,” said the Governor of Night.

“Easy enough,” said one of the Daimoni, all of whom looked like princes. “We’ll run it up for you by tomorrow night.”

“Hold on,” said the Governor of Night. “I don’t want the whole thing. Just the front — to decorate my palace. I have a perfectly good palace all right, and my defenses are built right into it.”

“If you let us build you a house,” said one of the Daimoni gently, “you would never need defenses, ever. Just a robot to close the windows against megaton bombs.”

“You’re good architects, gentlemen,” said the Governor of Night, smacking his lips over the model city they had shown him, “but I’ll stick with the defenses I know. So I just want your front. Like that picture. Furthermore, I want it invisible.”

The Daimoni lapsed back into their language, which sounded as though it were of Earth origin, but which has never been deciphered from the few recordings of their visits which have survived.

“All right,” said one of them, “invisible it is. You still want the great temple of Diana at Ephesus on Old Earth?”

“Yes,” said the Governor of Night.

“Why — if you can’t see it?” said the Daimoni.

“That’s the third specification, gentlemen. I want it so that I can see it, and my heirs, but nobody else.”

“If it’s solid but invisible, everybody is going to see it when your fine snow hits it.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said the Governor of Night. “I’ll pay what we were talking about — forty thousand select pieces of Furry Mountain Fur. But you make that palace invisible to everybody except me, and my heirs.”

“We’re architects, not magicians!” said the Daimoni with the longest cloak, who might have been the leader…

“That’s what I want.”

The Daimoni gabbled among themselves, discussing some technical problems. Finally one of them came over to the Governor of Night and said,

“I’m the ship’s surgeon. May I examine you?”

“Why?” said the Governor of Night.

“To see if we can possibly fit the building to you. Otherwise we can’t even guess at the specifications we need.”

“Go ahead,” said the Governor. “Examine me.”

“Here? Now?” said the Daimoni doctor. “Wouldn’t you prefer a quiet place or a private room? Or you can come aboard our ship. That would be very convenient.”

“For you,” said the Governor of Night. “Not for me. Here my men have guns trained on you. You would never get back to your ship alive if you tried to rob me of my Furry Mountain Furs or kidnap me so that you could trade me back for my treasures. You examine me here and now or not at all.”

“You are a rough, tough man, Governor,” said another one of the elegant Daimoni. “Perhaps you had better tell your guards that you are asking us to examine you. Otherwise they might get excited with us and persons might become damaged,” said the Daimoni with a faint condescending smile.

“Go ahead, foreigners,” said the Governor of Night. “My men have been listening to everything through the microphone in my top button.”

He regretted his words two seconds later, but it was already too late. Four Daimoni had picked him up and spun him so deftly that the guards never understood how their Governor lost all his clothes in a trice. One of the Daimoni must have stunned him or hypnotized him; he could not cry out. Indeed, afterwards, he could not even remember much of what they did.

The guards themselves had gasped when they saw the Daimoni pull endless needles out of their boss’ eyeballs without having noticed the needles go in. They had lifted their weapons when the Governor of Night turned a violent fluorescent green in color, only to gasp, writhe, and vomit when the Daimoni poured enormous bottles of medicine into him. In less than half an hour they stood back.

The Governor, naked and blotched, sat on the ground and vomited.

One of the Daimoni said quietly to the guards, “He’s not hurt, but he and his heirs will see part of the ultraviolet band for many generations to come. Put him to bed for the night. He will feel all right by morning. And, by the way, keep everybody away from the front of the palace tonight. We’re putting in the buildings which he asked for. The great temple of Diana of the Ephesians.”

The senior guard officer spoke up, “We can’t take the guards off the palace. That’s our defense headquarters and no one, not even the Governor of the Night, has the right to strip it bare of sentries. The Day People might attack us again.”

The Daimoni spokesman smiled gently: “Make a good note of their names, then, and ask them for their last words. We shall not fight them, officer, but if they are in the way of our work tonight, we shall build them right into the new palace. Their widows and children can admire them as statues tomorrow.”

The guards officer looked down at his chief, who now lay flat on the ground with his head in his hands, coughing out the words, “Leave — me — alone!” The officer looked back at the cool, aloof Daimoni spokesman. He said:

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

The temple of Ephesus was there in the morning.

The columns were the Doric columns of ancient Earth; the frieze was a masterpiece of gods, votaries, and horses; the building was exquisite in its proportions.

The Governor of Night could see it.

His followers could not.

The forty thousand lengths of Furry Mountain fur were paid.

The Daimoni left.

The Governor died, and he had heirs who could see the building too. It was visible only in the ultraviolet and ordinary men beheld it on Khufu II only when the powdery hard snow outlined it in a particularly harsh storm.

But now it belonged to Rod McBan and it was on Old North Australia, not on Khufu II any more. How had that happened?

Who would want to buy an invisible temple, anyhow?

William the Wild would, that’s who. Wild William MacArthur, who delighted, annoyed, disgraced, and amused, whole generations of Norstrilians with his fantastic pranks, his gigantic whims, his world-girdling caprices.

William MacArthur was a grandfather to the twenty-second in a matrilineal line to Rod McBan. He had been a man in his time, a real man. Happy as Larry, drunk with wit when dead sober, sober with charm when dead drunk. He could talk the legs off a sheep when he put his mind on it; he could talk the laws off the Commonwealth. He did. He had.

The Commonwealth had been purchasing all the Daimoni houses it could find, using them as defense outposts. Pretty little Victorian cottages were sent into orbit as far-range forts. Theaters were bought on other worlds and dragged through space to Old North Australia, where they became bomb shelters or veterinary centers for the forever-sick wealth-producing sheep. Nobody could take a Daimoni building apart, once it had been built, so the only thing to do was to cut the building loose from its non-Daimoni foundation, lift it by rockets or planoform, and then warp it through space to the new location. The Norstrilians did not have to worry about landing them; they just dropped them. It didn’t hurt the buildings any. Sometimes simple Daimoni buildings came apart, because the Daimoni had been asked to make them demountable, but when they were solid, they stayed solid.

Wild William heard about the temple. Khufu II was a ruin. The lichen had gotten a plant infection and had died off. The few Khufuans who were left were beggars, asking the Instrumentality for refugee status and emigration. The Commonwealth had bought their little buildings, but even the Commonwealth of Old North Australia did not know what to do with an invisible and surpassingly beautiful Greek temple. Wild William visited it. He soberly inspected it, in complete visibility, by using sniper eyes set into the ultraviolet. He persuaded the government to let him spend half of his immense fortune putting it into a valley just next to the Station of Doom. Then, having enjoyed it a little while, he fell and broke his neck while gloriously drunk and his inconsolable daughter married a handsome and practical McBan.