Besides this anthology, it has appeared in quite a number of books, (including in translation, which is fitting since Linebarger was a skilled linguist) and it is available online.
The underperson (B'dikkat the bull-man) is depicted (along with many other characters) with his tank of super-condamine on the cover of The Best of Cordwainer Smith. The mindless prisoners are decapitated, leaving their bodies to be handled by the dromozoa while their heads are destroyed. They will free the still sentient prisoners and to cure their suffering with a substitute for the super-condamine, namely an electronic "cap" which actives the pleasure center. The Instrumentality voids their permission to allow the Empire to exist and to maintain Shayol.
Apparently, the Imperium has become so bureaucratic and corrupt that it condemned them to prevent them committing treason when they matured. The children are the heirs to the throne. Lady Da knows how to contact the Lords of the Instrumentality, in order to intervene. Children have been sent to Shayol, alive, though with their brains removed. B'dikkat shows the couple a sight that horrifies him. The bull-man B'dikkat administers the prisoners a drug called super-condamine to alleviate the pain of their punishment and from their surgeries. Most grow extra organs, which the Empire harvests for medical purposes. He is condemned by the Empire to the planet Shayol, in which he lives in a penal colony whose inhabitants must undergo grotesque physical mutations caused by tiny symbiotes called dromozoans. The protagonist, Mercer, who lives within the Empire, has been convicted of "a crime that has no name".
The name "Shayol" is an alternative transliteration of the Biblical Hebrew Sheol, (שְׁאוֹל) which refers a place of punishments for villainous dead. (It's my father's all-time favorite science fiction story.) "Cordwainer Smith" was the pen name of the diplomat, professor, and psychological warfare expert Paul Linebarger. This is "A Planet Named Shayol" by Cordwainer Smith.
0 kommentar(er)
