The Ballad of Lost W'ords

Random.

No. Not random. Since I've just remembered it and praised it.

Not random at all.

Ladies and gentlemen: thus start the terrible, unexpected and mighty story of C'mell, as told by Cordwainer Smith. Intelligence agent, literate, Chinese educated and SF writer. Quite an unusual man.

Ladies and gentlemen. They don't write them like that anymore.

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She was a girlygirl and they were true men, the lords of creation, but she pitted her wits against them and she won. It had never happened before, and it is sure never to happen again, but she did win. She was not even of human extraction. She was cat-derived, though human in outward shape, which explains the C in front of her name. Her father's name was C'mackintosh and her name C'mell. She won her tricks against the lawful and assembled Lord of the Instrumentality.

It all happened at Earthport, greatest of buildings, smallest of cities, standing twenty-five kilometers high at the western edge of the Smaller Sea of Earth.

Jestocost had an office outside the fourth valve.