When the People Fell

by Cordwainer Smith

  "Do you mean," he said, "that you know the road to—" He hesitated and then plunged into his question, "—the Holy of Unholies, the Thirteenth Nile?"

  "I don't see that it means anything, Casher. Except that you'd better take off those iron shoes; you don't need them yet. You'd better come in here. Come on in."

  He pushed the beaded curtains aside and entered the bungalow. It was a simple frontier official dwelling. There were cots hither and yon, a room to the rear which seemed to be hers; a dining room to the right and there were papers, a viewing machine, cards, and games on the table. The room itself was astonishingly cool.

  She said, "Casher, you've got to relax. And that is the hardest of all things to do. To relax, when you had a mission for many many years."

  "I know it," said he. "I know it. But knowing it and doing it aren't the same things."

  "Now you can do it," said D'alma.

  "Do what?" he snapped.

  "Relax, as we were talking about. All you have to do here is to have some good meals. Just sleep a few times, swim in the river if you want to. I have sent everyone away except myself, and you and I shall have this house. And I am an old woman, not even a human being. You're a man, a true man, who's conquered a thousand worlds. And who has finally triumphed over Wedder. I think we'll get along. And when you're ready for the trip, I'll take you."

  The days did pass as she said they would. With insistent but firm kindness, she made him play games with her: simple, childish games with dice and cards. Once or twice he tried to hypnotize her. To throw the dice his own way. He changed the cards in her hand. He found that she had very little telepathic offensive power, but that her defenses were superb. She smiled at him whenever she caught him playing tricks. And his tricks failed.

  With this kind of atmosphere he really began to relax. She was the woman who had spelled happiness for him on Pontoppidan when he didn't know what happiness was. When he had abandoned the lovely Genevieve to go on with his quest for vengeance.

  Once he said to her, "Is that old horse still alive?"

  "Of course he is," she said. "That horse will probably outlive you and me. He thinks he's on Mizzer by galloping around a patrol capsule. Come on back; it's your turn to play."

  He put down the cards, and slowly the peace, the simplicity, the reassuring, calm sweetness of it all stole over him and he began to perceive the nature of her therapy. It was to do nothing but slow him down. He was to meet himself again.

  It may have been the tenth day, perhaps it was the fourteenth, that he said to her, "When do we go?"

  She said, "I've been waiting for that question and we're ready now. We go."

  "When?"

  "Right now. Put on your shoes. You won't need them very much," she said, "but you might need them where we land. I am taking you part way there."

  Within a few minutes, they went out into the yard. The river in which he had swum lay below. A shed, which he did not remember having noticed before, lay at the far end of the yard. She did something to the door, removing a lock, and the door flung open. And she pulled out a skeletonized ornithopter motor, wings, tails. The body was just a bracket of metal. The source of power was as usual an ultra-miniaturized, nuclear-powered battery. Instead of seats, there were two tiny saddles, like the saddles used in the bicycles of old, old Earth which he had seen in museums.

  "You can fly that?" he asked.

  "Of course I can fly it. It's better than going 200 miles over broken glass. We are leaving civilization now. We are leaving everything that was on any map. We are flying directly to the Thirteenth Nile, as you well knew it should be that."

  "I knew that," he said. "I never expected to reach it so soon. Does this have anything to do with that Sign of the Fish you were talking about?"

  "Everything, Casher. Everything. But everything in its place. Climb in behind me." He sat on top of the ornithopter, and this one ran down the yard on its tall, graceful mechanical legs before the flaps of its wings put it in the air. She was a better pilot than the sergeant had been; she soared more and beat the wings less. She flew over country that he, a native of Mizzer, had never dreamed about.

  They came to a city gaudy in color. He could see large fires burning alongside the river, and brightly painted people with their hands lifted in prayer. He saw temples and strange gods in them. He saw markets with goods, which he never thought to see marketed.

  "Where are we?" he asked.

  D'alma said, "This is the City of Hopeless Hope." She put the ornithopter down and, as they climbed out of the saddles, it lifted itself into the air and flew back, in the direction from whence they had come. "You are staying with me?" asked Casher.

  "Of course I am. I was sent to be with you."

  "What for?"

  "You are important to all the worlds, Casher, not just Mizzer. By the authority of the friends I have, they have sent me here to help you."

  "But what do you get out of it?"

  "I get nothing, Casher. I find my own destruction, perhaps, but I will accept that. Even the loss of my own hope if it only moves you further on in your voyage. Come, let us enter the City of Hopeless Hope."

  VI

  They walked through the strange streets. Almost everyone in the streets seemed to be engaged in the practice of religion. The stench of the burning dead was all round them. Talismans, luck charms, and funeral supplies were in universal abundance.

  Casher said, speaking rather quietly to D'alma, "I never knew there was anything like this on any civilized planet."

  "Obviously," she replied, "there must be many people who believe in worry about death; there are many who do know about this place. Otherwise there would not be the throngs here. These are the people who have the wrong hope and who go to no place at all, who find under this earth and under the stars their final fulfillment. These are the ones who are so sure that they are right that they never will be right. We must pass through them quickly, Casher, lest we, too, start believing."

  No one impeded their passage in the streets, although many people paused to see that a soldier, even a medical soldier, in uniform, had the audacity to come there.

  They were even more surprised that an old hospital attendant who seemed to be an off-world dog walked along beside him.

  "We cross the bridge now, Casher, and this bridge is the most terrible thing I've ever seen, whereas now we are going to come to the Jwindz, and the Jwindz oppose you and me and everything you stand for."

  "Who are the Jwindz?" asked Casher.

  "The Jwindz are the perfect ones. They are perfect in this earth. You will see soon enough."

  VII

  As they crossed the bridge, a tall, blithe police official, clad in a neat black uniform, stepped up to them and said, "Go back. People from your city are not welcome here."

  "We are not from that city," said D'alma. "We are travelers."

  "Where are you bound?" asked the police official.

  "We are bound for the source of the Thirteenth Nile."

  "Nobody goes there," said the guard.

  "We are going there," said D'alma.

  "By what authority?"

  Casher reached into his pocket and took out a genuine card. He had remade one, from the memories he had retained in his mind. It was an all-world pass, authorized by the Instrumentality.

  The police official looked at it and his eyes widened.

  "Sir and master, I thought you were merely one of Wedder's men. You must be someone of great importance. I will notify the scholars in the Hall of Learning at the middle of the city. They will want to see you. Wait here. A vehicle will come."

  D'alma and Casher O'Neill did not have long to wait. She said nothing at all in this time. Her air of good humor and competence ebbed perceptibly. She was distressed by the cleanliness and perfection around her, by the silence, by the dignity of the people.

  When the vehicle came, it had a driver, as correct, as smooth, and as courteous as the guard at the bridge. He opened the door and waved t
hem in. They climbed in and they sped noiselessly through the well-groomed streets: houses, each one in immaculate taste; trees, planted the way in which trees should be planted.

  In the center square of the city, they stopped. The driver got out, walked around the vehicle, opened their door.

  He pointed at the archway of the large building and he said, "They are expecting you."

  Casher and D'alma walked up the steps reluctantly. She was reluctant because she had some sense of what this place was, a special dwelling for quiet doom and arrogant finality. He was reluctant because he could feel that in every bone of her body she resented this place. And he resented it, too.

  They were led through the archway and across a patio to a large, elegant conference room.

  Within the room a circular table had already been set in preparation of a meal.

  Ten handsome men rose to greet them.

  The first one said, "You are Casher O'Neill. You are the wanderer. You are the man dedicated to this planet and we appreciate what you have done for us, even though the power of Colonel Wedder never reached here."

  "Thank you," said Casher. "I am surprised to hear that you know of me."

  "That's nothing," said the man. "We know of everyone. And you, woman," said the same man to D'alma, "you know full well that we never entertain women here. And you are the only underperson in this city. A dog at that. But in honor of our guest we shall let you pass. Sit down if you wish. We want to talk to you."

  A meal was served. Little squares of sweet unknown meat, fresh fruits, bits of melon, chased with harmonious drinks which cleared the mind and stimulated it, without intoxicating or drugging.

  The language of their conversations was clear and elevated. All questions were answered swiftly, smoothly, and with positive clarity.

  Finally, Casher was moved to ask, "I do not seem to have heard of you, Jwindz; who are you?"

  "We are the perfect ones," said the oldest Jwindz. "We have all the answers; there is nothing else left to find."

  "How do you get here?" said Casher.

  "We are selected from many worlds."

  "Where are your families?"

  "We don't bring them with us."

  "How do you keep out intruders?"

  "If they are good, they wish to stay. If they are not good, we destroy them."

  Casher—still shocked by his experience of fulfilling all his life's work in the confrontation with Wedder—though his life might be at stake, asked casually, "Have you decided yet whether I am perfect enough to join you? Or am I not perfect and to be destroyed?"

  The heaviest of all the Jwindz, a tall, portly man, with a great bushy shock of black hair, replied ponderously.

  "Sir, you are forcing our decision, but I think that you may be something exceptional. We cannot accept you. There is too much force in you. You may be perfect, but you are more than perfect. We are men, sir, and I do not think that you are any longer a mere man. You are almost a machine. You are yourself dead people. You are the magic of ancient battles coming to strike among us. We are all of us a little afraid of you, and yet we do not know what to do with you. If you were to stay here a while, if you calmed down, we might give you hope. We know perfectly well what that dog-woman of yours calls our city. She calls it the City of the Perfect Ones. We just call it Jwindz Jo, in memory of the ancient Rule of the Jwindz, which somewhere once obtained upon old Earth. And therefore, we think that we will neither kill you nor accept you. We think—do we not, gentlemen?—that we will speed you on your way, as we have sped no other traveler. And that we will send you, then, to a place which few people pass. But you have the strength and if you are going to the source of the Thirteenth Nile, you will need it."

  "I will need strength?" Casher asked.

  The first Jwindz who had met them at the door said, "Indeed you will need strength, if you go to Mortoval. We may be dangerous to the uninitiated. Mortoval is worse than dangerous. It is a trap many times worse than death. But go there if you must."

  VIII

  Casher O'Neill and D'alma reached Mortoval on a one-wheeled cart, which ran on a high wire past picturesque mountain gorges, soaring over two serrated series of peaks and finally dropping down to another bend in the same river, the illegal and forgotten Thirteenth Nile.

  When the vehicle stopped, they got out. No one had accompanied them. The vehicle, held in place by gyroscopes and compasses, felt itself relieved of their weight and hurried home.

  This time there was no city: just one great arch. D'alma clung close to him. She even took his arm and pulled it over her shoulder as though she needed protection. She whined a little as they walked up a low hill and finally reached the arch. They walked into the arch and a voice not made of sound cried out to them.

  "I am youth and am everything that you have been or ever will be. Know this now before I show you more."

  Casher was brave, and this time he was cheerfully hopeless, so he said, "I know who I am. Who are you?"

  "I am the force of the Gunung Banga. I am the power of this planet which keeps everyone in this planet and which assures the order which persists among the stars, and promises that the dead shall not walk among the men. And I serve of the fate and the hope of the future. Pass if you think you can."

  Casher searched with his own mind and he found what he wanted. He found the memory of a young child, T'ruth, who had been almost a thousand years on the planet of Henriada. A child, soft and gentle on the outside, but wise and formidable and terrible beyond belief, in the powers which she had carried, which had been imprinted upon her.

  As he walked through the arch he cast the images of truth here and there. Therefore he was not one person but a multitude. And the machine and the living being which hid behind the machine, the Gunung Banga, obviously could see him and could see D'alma walking through, but the machine was not prepared to recognize whole multitudes of crying throngs.

  "Who are you thousands that you should come here now? Who are you multitudes that you should be two people? I sense all of you. The fighters and the ships and the men of blood, the searchers and the forgetters, there's even an Old North Australian renunciant here. And the great Go-Captain Tree, and there are even a couple of men of Old Earth. You are all walking through me. How can I cope with you?"

  "Make us, us," said Casher firmly.

  "Make you, you," replied the machine. "Make you, you. How can I make you, you, when I do not know who you are, when you flit like ghosts and you confuse my computers? There are too many, I say. There are too many of you. It is ordained that you should pass."

  "If it is so ordained, then let us pass." D'alma suddenly stood proud and erect.

  They walked on through.

  She said, "You got us through." They had indeed passed beyond the arch, and there, beyond the arch, lay a gentle riverside with skiffs pulled up along the beach.

  "This seems to be next," said Casher O'Neill.

  D'alma nodded. "I'm your dog, master. We go where you think."

  They climbed into a skiff. Echoes of tumult followed from the arch.

  "Good-bye to troubles," the echoes said. "Had they been people they would have been stopped. But she was a dog and a servant, who had lived many years in the happiness of the Sign of the Fish. And he was a combat-ready man who had incorporated within himself the memories of adversaries and friends, too tumultuous for any scanner to measure, too complex for any computer to assess." The echoes resounded across the river.

  There was even a dock on the other side. Casher tied the skiff to the dock and he helped the dog-woman go toward the buildings that they saw beyond some trees.

  IX

  D'Alma said, "I have seen pictures of this place; this is the Kermesse Dorg¸eil, and here we may lose our way, because this is the place where all the happy things of this world come together, but where the man and the two pieces of wood never filter through. We shall see no one unhappy, no one sick, no one unbalanced; everyone will be enjoying the good things of life; perhap
s I will enjoy it, too. May the Sign of the Fish help me that I not become perfect too soon."

  "You won't be," Casher promised.

  At the gate of this city, there was no guard at all. They walked on past a few people who seemed to be promenading outside the town. Within the city they approached what seemed to be a hotel and an inn or a hospital. At any rate it was a place where many people were fed.

  A man came out and said, "Well, this is a strange sight; I never knew that the Colonel Wedder let his officers get this far from home, and as for you, woman, you're not even a human being. You're an odd couple and you're not in love with each other. Can we do anything for you?"

  Casher reached into his pocket and tossed several credit pieces of five denominations in front of the man.

  "Don't these mean anything?" asked Casher.

  Catching them in his fingers, the man said, "Oh, we can use money! We use it occasionally for important things; we don't need yours. We live well here, and we have a nice life, not like those two places across the river, which stay away from life. All men who are perfect are nothing but talk—Jwindz they call themselves, the perfect ones—well, we're not that perfect. We've got families and good food and good clothes, and we get the latest news from all the worlds."

  "News," said Casher. "I thought that was illegal."

  "We get anything. You would be surprised at what we have here. It's a very civilized place. Come on in; this is the hotel of the Singing Swans and you can live here as long as you wish. When I say that, I mean it. Our treasure has unusual resources, and I can see that you are unusual people. You are not a medical technician, despite that uniform, and your follower is not a mere dog-underperson or you wouldn't have gotten this far."

  They entered a promenade two stories high; little shops lined each side of the corridor with the treasures of all the worlds on exhibit. The prices were marked explaining them, but there was no one in the stalls.

  The smell of good food came from a cool dining room in the inn.