Free We the Underpeople by Cordwainer Smith, selected by Hank Davis

split the corridor.

    Everyone looked around to see where it came from.

    It was almost like the shriek of a fighting bird, but the sound came from among them.

    Elaine saw it first.

    Crawlie had a knife and just as the cry ended, she flung herself on Joan.

    Child and woman fell on the floor, their dresses a tangle. The large hand rose up twice with the knife, and the second time it came up red.

    From the hot shocking burn in her side, Elaine knew that she must herself have taken one of the stabs. She could not tell whether Joan was still living.

    The undermen pulled Crawlie off the child.

    Crawlie was white with rage. "Words, words, words. She'll kill us all with her words."

    A large, fat man, with the muzzle of a bear on the front of an otherwise human-looking head and body, stepped around the man who held Crawlie. He gave her one tremendous slap. She dropped to the floor unconscious. The knife, stained with blood, fell on the old worn carpet. (Elaine thought automatically: restorative for her later; check neck vertebrae; no problem of bleeding.)

    For the first time in her life, Elaine functioned as a wholly efficient witch. She helped the people pull the clothing from little Joan. The tiny body, with the heavy purple-dark blood pumping out from just below the rib-cage, looked hurt and fragile. Elaine reached in her left handbag. She had a surgical radar pen. She held it to her eye and looked through the flesh, up and down the wound. The peritoneum was punctured, the liver cut, the upper folds of the large intestine were perforated in two places. When she saw this, she knew what to do. She brushed the bystanders aside and got to work.

    First she glued the cuts from the inside out, starting with the damage to the liver. Each touch of the organic adhesive was preceded by a tiny spray of re-coding powder, designed to reinforce the capacity of the injured organ to restore itself. The probing, pressing, squeezing took eleven minutes. Before it was finished, Joan had awakened, and was murmuring:

    "Am I dying?"

    "Not at all," said Elaine, "unless these human medicines poison your dog blood."

    "Who did it?"

    "Crawlie?"

    "Why?" said the child. "Why? Is she hurt too? Where is she?"

    "Not as hurt as she is going to be," said the goat-man, Charley-is-my-darling. "If she lives, we'll fix her up and try her and put her to death."

    "No, you won't," said Joan. "You're going to love her. You must."

    The goat-man looked bewildered.

    He turned in his perplexity to Elaine. "Better have a look at Crawlie," said he. "Maybe Orson killed her with that slap. He's a bear, you know."

    "So I saw," said Elaine, drily. What did the man think that thing looked like, a hummingbird?

    She walked over to the body of Crawlie. As soon as she touched the shoulders, she knew that she was in for trouble. The outer appearances were human, but the musculature beneath was not. She suspected that the laboratories had left Crawlie terribly strong, keeping the buffalo strength and obstinacy for some remote industrial reason of their own. She took out a brainlink, a close-range telepathic hookup which worked only briefly and slightly, to see if the mind still functioned. As she reached for Crawlie's head to attach it, the unconscious girl sprang suddenly to life, jumped to her feet, and said:

    "No, you don't! You don't peep me, you dirty human!"

    "Crawlie, stand still."

    "Don't boss me, you monster!"

    "Crawlie, that's a bad thing to say." It was eerie to hear such a commanding voice coming from the throat and mouth of a small child. Small she might have been, but Joan commanded the scene.

    "I don't care what I say. You all hate me."

    "That's not true, Crawlie."

    "You're a dog and now you're a person. You're born a traitor. Dogs have always sided with people. You hated me even before you went into that room and changed into something else. Now you are going to kill us all."

    "We may die, Crawlie, but I won't do it."

    "Well, you hate me, anyhow.