When the People Fell

by Cordwainer Smith

  She was now a ship only eleven meters long and shaped roughly like an ancient dirigible. Finsternis was a perfect cube, fifty meters to the side, packed with machinery which could blank out a sun and contain its planets until they froze to icy, perpetual death. Samm was a man, but he was a man of flexible steel, two hundred meters high. He was designed to walk on any kind of planet, with any kind of inhabitant, with any kind of chemistry or any kind of gravity. He was designed to bring antagonists, whomever they might be, the message of the power of man. The power of man . . . followed by terror, followed if necessary by death. If Samm failed, Finsternis had the further power of blocking out the sun, Linschoten XV. If either or both failed, Folly had the job of adjusting them so that they could win. If they had no chance of winning, she then had the task of destroying Finsternis and Samm, and then herself.

  Their instructions were clear:

  "You will not, you will not under any circumstances return. You will not under any conditions turn back toward Earth. You are too dangerous to come anywhere near Earth, ever again. You may live if you wish. If you can. But you must not—repeat not—come back. You have your duty. You asked for it. Now you have it. Do not come back. Your forms fit your duty. You will do your duty."

  Folly had become a tiny ship, crammed with miniaturized equipment.

  Finsternis had become a cube blacker than darkness itself.

  Samm had become a man, but a man different from any which had ever been seen on Earth. He had a metal body, copied from the human form down to the last detail. That way the enemies, whoever they might be, would be given a terrible glimpse of the human shape, the human voice. Two hundred meters high he stood, strong and solid enough to fly through space with nothing but the jets on his belt.

  The Instrumentality had designed all three of them. Designed them well.

  Designed them to meet the crazy menace out beyond the stars, a menace which gave no clue to its technology or origin, but which responded to the signal "man" with the counter-signal, "gabble cackle! eat, eat! man, man! good to eat! cackle gabble! eat, eat!"

  That was enough.

  The Instrumentality took steps. And the three of them—the ship, the cube, and the metal giant—sped between the stars to conquer, to terrorize, or to destroy the menace which lived on the third planet of Linschoten XV. Or, if needful, to put out that particular sun.

  Folly, who had become a ship, was the most volatile of the three.

  She had been a beautiful woman once.

  II

  "You were a beautiful woman once," Samm had said, some years before. "How did you end up becoming a ship?"

  "I killed myself," said Folly. "That's why I took this name—Folly. I had a long life ahead of me, but I killed myself and they brought me back at the last minute. When I found out I was still alive, I volunteered for something adventurous, dangerous. They gave me this. Well, I asked for it, didn't I?"

  "You asked for it," said Samm gravely. Out in the middle of nothing, surrounded by a tremendous lot of nowhere, courtesy was still the lubricant which governed human relationships. The two of them observed courtesy and kindness toward one another. Sometimes they threw in a bit of humor, too.

  Finsternis did not take part in their talk or their companionship. He did not even verbalize his answers. He merely let them know his sense of the situation and this time, as in all other times, his response was—"Negative. No operation needed. Communication nonfunctional. Not needed here. Silence, please. I kill suns. That is all I do. My part is my business. All mine." This was communicated in a single terrible thought, so that Folly and Samm stopped trying to bring Finsternis into the conversations which they started up, every subjective century or so, and continued for years at a time.

  Finsternis merely moved along with them, several kilometers away, but well within their range of awareness. But as far as company was concerned, Finsternis might as well not have been there at all.

  Samm went on with the conversation, the conversation which they had had so many hundreds of times since the planoform ship had discharged them "near" Linschoten XV and left them to make the rest of their way alone. (If the menace were really a menace, and if it were intelligent, the Instrumentality had no intention of letting an actual planoform ship fall within the powers of a strange form of life which might well be hypnotic in its combat capacities. Hence the ship, the cube, and the giant were launched into normal space at high velocity, equipped with jets to correct their courses, and left to make their own way to the danger.)

  Samm said, as he always did, "You were a beautiful woman, Folly, but you wanted to die. Why?"

  "Why do people ever want to die, Samm? It's the power in us, the vitality which makes us want so much. Life always trembles on the edge of disappointment. If we hadn't been vital and greedy and lustful and yearning, if we hadn't had big thoughts and wanted bigger ones, we would have stayed animals, like all the little things back on Earth. It's strong life that brings us so close to death. We can't stand the beauty of it, the nearness of the things we want, the remoteness of the things that we can have. You and me and Finsternis, now, we're monsters riding out between the stars. And yet we're happier now than we were when we were back among people. I was a beautiful woman, but there were specific things which I wanted. I wanted them myself. I alone. For me. Only for me. When I couldn't have them, I wanted to die. If I had been stupider or happier I might have lived on. But I didn't. I was me—intensely me. So here I am. I don't even know whether I have a body or not, inside this ship. They've got me all hooked up to the sensors and the viewers and the computers. Sometimes I think that I may be a lovely woman still, with a real body hidden somewhere inside this ship, waiting to step out and to be a person again. And you, Samm, don't you want to tell me about yourself? Samm. SAMM. That's no name for an actual person—Superordinated Alien Measuring and Mastery device. What were you before they gave you that big body? At least you still look like a person. You're not a ship, like me."

  "My name doesn't matter, Folly, and if I told it to you, you wouldn't know it. You never knew it."

  "How wouldn't I know?" she cried. "I've never told you my name either, so perhaps we did know each other back on Old Earth when we were still people."

  "I can tell something," said Samm, "from the shape of words, from the ring of thoughts, even when we're not out here in nothing. You were a lady, perhaps high-born. You were truly beautiful. You were really important. And I—I was a technician. A good one. I did my work and I loved my family, and my wife and I were happy with every child which the Lords gave us for adoption. But my wife died first. And after a while my children, my wonderful boy and my two beautiful, intelligent girls—my own children, they couldn't stand me anymore. They didn't like me. Perhaps I talked too much. Perhaps I gave them too much advice. Perhaps I reminded them of their mother, who was dead. I don't know. I won't ever know. They didn't want to see me. Out of manners, they sent me cards on my birthday. Out of sheer formal courtesy, they called on me sometimes. Now and then one of them wanted something. Then they came to me, but it was always just to get something. It took me a long time to figure out, but I hadn't done anything. It wasn't what I had done or hadn't done. They just plain didn't like me. You know the songs and the operas and the stories, Folly, you know them all."

  "Not all of them," thought Folly gently, "not all of them. Just a few thousand."

  "Did you ever see one," cried Samm, his thoughts ringing fiercely against her mind, "did you ever see a single one about a rejected father? They're all about men and women, love and sex, but I can tell you that rejection hurts even when you don't ask anything of your loved ones but their company and their happiness and their simple genuine smiles. When I knew that my children had no use for me, I had no use for me either. The Instrumentality came along with this warning, and I volunteered."

  "But you're all right now, Samm," said Folly gently. "I'm a ship and you are a metal giant, but we're off doing work which is important for all mankind. We'll ha
ve adventures together. Even black and grumbly here," she added, meaning Finsternis, "can't keep us from the excitement of companionship or the hope of danger. We're doing something wonderful and important and exciting. Do you know what I would do if I had my life again, my ordinary life with skin and toenails and hair and things like that?"

  "What?" asked Samm, knowing the answer perfectly well from the hundreds of times they had touched on this point.

  "I'd take baths. Hundreds and hundreds of them, over again. Showers and dips in cold pools and soaks in hot bathtubs and rinses and more showers. And I would do my hair, over and over again, thousands of different ways. And I would put on lipstick, in the most outrageous colors, even if nobody saw me, except for my own self looking in the mirror. Now I can hardly remember what it used to be to be dry or wet. I'm in this ship and I see the ship and I do not really know if I am a person or not any more."

  Samm stayed quiet, knowing what she would say next.

  "Samm, what would you do?" Folly asked.

  "Swim," he said.

  "Then swim, Samm, swim! Swim for me in the space between the stars. You still have a body and I don't, but I can watch you and I can sense you swimming out here in the nothing-at-all."

  Samm began to swim a huge Australian crawl, dipping his face to the edge of the water—as if there were water there. The gestures made no difference in his real motion, since they were all of them in the fast trajectory computed for them from the point where they left the Instrumentality's ship and started out in normal space for the star listed as Linschoten XV.

  This time, something very sudden happened, and it happened strangely.

  From the dark gloomy silence of the cube, Finsternis, there came an articulate cry, called forth in clear human speech:

  Stop it! Stop moving right now. I attack.

  Both Samm and Folly had instruments built into them, so they could read space around them. The instruments, quickly scanned, showed nothing. Yet Folly felt odd, as though something had gone very wrong in her ship-self, which had seemed so metal, so reliable, so inalterable.

  She threw a thought of inquiry at Samm and instead got another command from Finsternis. Don't think.

  III

  Samm floated like a dead man in his gargantuan body.

  Folly drifted like a fruit beside his hand.

  At last there came words from Finsternis:

  "You can think now, if you want to. You can chatter at each other again. I'm through."

  Samm thought at him, and the thought-pattern was troubled and confused. "What happened? I felt as though the immaculate grid of space had been pinched together in a tight fold. I felt you do something, and then there was silence around us again."

  "Talking," said Finsternis, "is not operational and it is not required of me. But there are only three of us here, so I might as well tell you what happened. Can you hear me, Folly?"

  "Yes," she said, weakly.

  "Are we on course," asked Finsternis, "for the third planet of Linschoten XV?"

  Folly paused while checking all her instruments, which were more complicated and refined than those carried by the other two, since she was the maintenance unit. "Yes," said she at last. "We are exactly on course. I don't know what happened, if anything did happen."

  "Something happened, all right," said Finsternis, with the gratified savagery of a person whose quick-and-cruel nature is rewarded only by meeting and overcoming hostility in real life.

  "Was it a space dragon, like they used to meet on the old, old ships?"

  "No, nothing like that," said Finsternis, communicative for once, since this was something operational to talk about. "It doesn't even seem to be in this space at all. Something just rises up among us, like a volcano coming out of solid space. Something violent and wild and alive. Do you two still have eyes?"

  "Seeing devices for the ordinary light band?" asked Samm.

  "Of course we do!" said Finsternis. "I will try to fix it so that you will have a visible input."

  There was a sharp pause from Finsternis.

  The voice came again, with much strain.

  "Do not do anything. Do not try to help me. Just watch. If it wins, destroy me quickly. It might try to capture us and get back to Earth."

  Folly felt like telling Finsternis that this was unnecessary, since the first motion toward return would trigger destruction devices which had been built into each of the three of them, beyond reach, beyond detection, beyond awareness. When the Instrumentality said, "Do not come back," the Instrumentality meant it.

  She said nothing.

  She watched Finsternis instead.

  Something began to happen.

  It was very odd.

  Space itself seemed to rip and leak.

  In the visible band, the intruder looked like a fountain of water being thrown randomly to and fro.

  But the intruder was not water.

  In the visible light-band, it glowed like wild fire rising from a shimmering column of blue ice. Here in space there was nothing to burn, nothing to make light: she knew that Finsternis was translating unresolvable phenomena into light.

  She sensed Samm moving one of his giant fists uncontrollably, in a helpless, childish gesture of protest.

  She herself did nothing but watch, as alertly and passively as she could.

  Nevertheless, she felt wrenched. This was no material phenomenon. It was wild unformed life, intruding out of some other proportion of space, seeking material on which to impose its vitality, its frenzy, its identity. She could see Finsternis as a solid black cube, darker than mere darkness, drifting right into the column. She watched the sides of Finsternis.

  On the earlier part of the trip, since they had left the people and the planoform ship and had been discharged in a fast trajectory toward Linschoten XV, Finsternis' side had seemed like dull metal, slightly burnished, so that Folly had to brush him lightly with radar to get a clear image of him.

  Now his sides had changed.

  They had become as soft and thick as velvet.

  The strange volcano-fountain did not seem to have much in the way of sensing devices. It paid no attention to Samm or to herself. The dark cube attracted it, as a shaft of sunlight might attract a baby or as the rustle of paper might draw the attention of a kitten.

  With a slight twist of its vitality and direction, the whole column of burning, living brightness plunged upon Finsternis, plunged and burned out and went in and was seen no more.

  Finsternis' voice, clear and cheerful, sounded out to both of them.

  "It's gone now."

  "What happened to it?" asked Samm.

  "I ate it," said Finsternis.

  "You what?" cried Folly.

  "I ate it," said Finsternis. He was talking more than he ever had before. "At least, that's the only way I can describe it. This machine they gave me or made me into or whatever they did, it's really rather good. It's powerful. I can feel it absorbing things, taking them in, taking them apart, putting them away. It's something like eating used to be when I was a person. That wild thing attacked me, wrapped me up, devoured me. All I did was to take it in, and now it's gone. I feel sort of full. I suppose my machines are sorting out samples of it to send away to rendezvous points in little rockets. I know that I have sixteen small rockets inside me, and I can feel two of them getting ready to move. Neither one of you could have done what I do. I was built to absorb whole suns if necessary, break them down, freeze them down, change their molecular structure, and shoot their vitality off in one big useless blast on the radio spectrum. You couldn't do anything like that, Samm, even if you do have arms and legs and a head and a voice—if we ever get into an atmosphere for you to use it in. You couldn't do what I have just done, Folly."

  "You're good," said Folly, with emphasis. But she added: "I can repair you."

  Obviously offended, Finsternis withdrew into his silence.

  Samm said to Folly, "How much further to destination?"

  Said Folly promptly,
"Seventy-nine earth years, four months and three days, six hours and two minutes, but you know how little that means out here. It could seem like a single afternoon or it could feel to us like a thousand lifetimes. Time doesn't work very well for us."

  "How did Earth ever find this place, anyhow?" asked Samm.

  "All I know is that it was two very strong telepaths, working together on the planet Mizzer. An ex-dictator named Casher O'Neill and an ex-Lady named Celalta. They were doing a bit of psionic astronomy and suddenly this signal came in strong and clear. You know that telepaths can catch directions very accurately. Even over immense distances. And they can get emotions, too. But they are not very good at actual images or things. Somebody else checked it out for them."

  "M-m-m," said Samm. He had heard all this before. Out of sheer boredom, he went back to swimming vigorously. The body might not really be his, but it made him feel good to exercise it.

  Besides, he knew that Folly watched him with pleasure—great pleasure, and a little bit of envy.

  Casher O'Neill and the Lady Celalta had finished with making love.

  They had lain with their bodies tired and their minds clear, relaxed. They had stretched out on a blanket just above the big gushing spring which was the source of the Ninth Nile. Both telepaths, they could hear a bird-couple quarreling inside a tree, the male bird commanding the female to get out and get to work and the female answering by dropping deeper and deeper into a fretful and irritable sleep.

  The Lady Celalta had whispered a thought to her lover and master, Casher O'Neill.

  "To the stars?"

  "The stars?" thought he with a grumble. They were both strong telepaths. He had been imprinted, in some mysterious way, with the greatest telepath-hypnotist of all time, the Honorable Agatha Madigan. In the Lady Celalta he had a companion worthy of his final talents, a natural telepath who could herself reach not only all of Mizzer but some of the nearer stars. When they teamed up together, as she now proposed, they could plunge into dusty infinities of depth and bring back feelings or images which no Go-Captain had ever found with his ship.