When the People Fell

by Cordwainer Smith

  Lord Kemal found her sandpaper tongue not unpleasant, but he winced as her fang brushed his leg. At some distance Kuat sat laughing. Madu's face, even in the distance, showed concern, however, which cleared as the Lord waved to her. Lari, confident in the powers of the hero of Styron IV, was gazing dreamily at the distant city.

  Slowly now, Griselda joined the rest of the pride, her attitude apparently one of some embarrassment at having performed such a kittenish prank when she had been entrusted with the welfare of the distinguished visitor.

  In the distance the domes and towers of the city gleamed nacreous in the soft shadowless light of the moons and mirrors. Lord Kemal had his sense of unreality reinforced. The city looked so beautiful and so unreal that he had the feeling it might vanish as they approached. He was to learn that the city and all it stood for were all too real.

  As they neared the city walls, Kemal could see that the stark whiteness of the city from afar was an illusion. The shimmering white walls of the buildings were set with gemstones in intricate patterns, flowers, leaves, and geometric designs all heightening the beauty of the incredible architecture. In all the worlds he had visited Lord Kemal had seen nothing to equal this city; Philip's palace on the Gem Planet was a hovel compared to these buildings.

  Formal gardens with fountains and artificial pools separated the buildings. Shrubbery in an artful plan which gave the appearance of being natural was planted here and there. Suddenly the Space Lord realized another strange aspect of the planet: he had seen no trees.

  Dogs yipped at them from safe distances as they entered the city, but this time Griselda refused to be tempted. Now that she was in the city she had assumed a certain dignity; it was if she wanted to forget her previous dereliction. She headed straight for the palace steps.

  Lord Kemal could feel the muscles of Griselda's haunches tighten as she prepared to hurdle up the steps and through the open door. It would be a tight squeeze for the two of them. Fortunately Kuat reached the steps first and hissed his command to her. Kemal could feel her reluctance. She would much have preferred bounding up the steps, but she obeyed. She lay belly down, back feet crouched, front feet stretched forward; the Lord Kemal dismounted easily but with reluctance, a regret almost as great as Griselda's that the ride was over. He reached over to scratch the cat's ears.

  Madu smiled approvingly. "That's right. When you make friends with your cat, she'll obey you much more readily."

  Kuat grunted. "I have my own way for making them obey if they get too many ideas of their own." For the first time the Space Lord noticed a small barbed whip tucked into Kuat's belt, to which Kuat pointed now.

  "Kuat, you wouldn't," Madu protested. "You never have . . ."

  "You haven't seen me," he said. Then as her face clouded he added as if reassuringly: "Up to now I haven't needed to. But don't think I wouldn't."

  Kemal noticed that Kuat's reassurance was not quite adequate. A gauze of doubt or wonder seemed to obscure the open brightness of Madu's face. Once more the Lord Kemal felt a stab of fear for her and once more dismissed it.

  It was her innocence he feared for. He found that her eyes reminded him of D'irena from the ancient days of his true youth—before he had been made wise in the ways of mankind, before he had been made to know that underpersons and true men could not mix as equals. D'irena with the fawnlike grace, the soft gentle mouth, the innocent eyes of the doe she was derived from. What had happened to her after he left? Did her eyes still hold that candid ingenuousness which he saw mirrored in Madu's eyes? Or had she mated with some gross stag and had some of his grossness transferred itself to her?

  He hoped, remembering her fondly, that she had mated with a fine buck who had given her does as gentle and as graceful as she was in his memory. He shook his head. The fear machines had stirred up all kinds of strange memories and feelings. Absently, he petted the cat.

  Servants came forward to unsaddle the cats. With a renewed start the Space Lord realized that these were true men, not underpersons, doing work, and he remembered Kuat's statement about enjoying the sensuality of animals. There was something else, something he had almost thought of, but he could not quite think . . . it was as if he tried to catch the tail of an elusive animal as it disappeared around the corner.

  Led by Kuat and trailed by Madu and Lari, the Lord Kemal threaded his way through a maze of rooms and corridors. Each seemed more amazing than the last. The only time the Space Lord had seen anything similar had been on videotapes—a reconstruction of old Manhome as it had been before Radiation III. The walls were hung with tapestries and paintings based on reproductions of those from Earth; couches, statues, rugs of color and warmth brought here by Xanadu's founder, the original Kahn. Yes, Xanadu was a return to pleasure of the senses, to luxury and beauty, to the unnecessary.

  Kemal felt himself beginning to relax in this atmosphere of enchantment, but the spell was broken when, upon reaching the main salon, Kuat unceremoniously flung himself into the nearest couch. As he stretched full length, he vaguely waved a hand to the rest of the party.

  "Sit down, sit down," he said. Candles flickered and glowed; low tables and couches stood about invitingly.

  For the first time since the introduction on the Space Lord's arrival Lari spoke spontaneously. "We welcome you to our home," he said, "and hope that we can do all possible to make your visit enjoyable."

  Kemal realized that he had paid little attention to the youth because he had been so absorbed in new impressions, and (he had to admit it to himself) the girl Madu had fascinated him. Lari, in his own way, was as physically perfect as Madu. Tall, slender, lightly muscled, a golden boy. And, like Madu, he had a curious air of openness, of vulnerability. It seemed strange to the Lord Kemal that these two should grow up so innocent under the guardianship of a man as coarse and boorish as Kuat seemed.

  Kuat interrupted his reverie. "Come! The dju-di!"

  Madu immediately moved toward a table on which rested a copper-colored tray with silvery highlights. On the tray sat a dual-spouted pitcher of the same material and eight small matching goblets. A lid covered the top of the pitcher. As Madu picked up the pitcher, Kuat gave one of the grunts which the Space Lord was finding increasingly distasteful.

  "Just be sure you put your thumb over the right hole."

  Her answering tone was indulgent but as nearly scornful as Kemal could imagine her being. "I've been doing this since childhood. Is it likely I'd forget now?"

  In after years it seemed to Kemal bin Permaiswari that this night was one of the important turns that his life took in its convoluted passage through time. He seemed removed from events as they occurred; he seemed a spectator, watching the actions, not only of the others but of himself, as if he had no control over them, as if in a dream . . .

  Madu knelt gracefully and placed a thumb over one of the two holes at the top of the pitcher. Candlelight played over the light silvery dusting of powder which covered the entire area of her bare skin. As she poured the reddish liquid into four of the little goblets, Kemal noticed that even the nails of her small hands were painted silver.

  Kuat raised his goblet. The first toast by the rules of politeness should have been to the guest of honor, or at the very least to the Instrumentality, but Kuat went by his own rules.

  "To pleasure," he said, and drank the contents with one gulp.

  While the rest of the party slowly sipped their drinks, Kuat roused himself to pour another cupful. He had swallowed the second cupful before the others had finished their first.

  The Lord Kemal savored the taste of the dju-di. Unlike anything he had ever tasted before, neither sweet nor sour, it was more like the juice of pomegranate than any other flavor he had tasted, and yet it was unique.

  As he sipped he felt a pleasant tingling sensation pervade his body. By the time he had finished the cup he had decided that dju-di was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Instead of muddling his wits like alcohol or conferring nothing but sensual pleasure like the ele
ctrode, dju-di seemed to heighten all his senses, his awareness. All colors were brighter, background music of which he had been only dimly aware was suddenly piercingly lovely, the texture of the brocaded couch was a thing of joy, perfumes of flowers he had never known overwhelmed him. His scarred mind rejected Styron IV and all its implications. He felt a glow of comradeship, momentarily even toward Kuat, and suddenly felt he had come against a Daimoni wall.

  Then he knew. His inability to sense or to read the other minds on this planet did not lie within himself or any defect incurred through the fear machines but was directly connected to Kuat, to some nonauthorized barrier which Kuat had erected. The barrier was imperfect, however. Kuat had not been able merely to keep his own thoughts from being read; he had had to set up a universal barrier. This was obvious from the fact that Kuat showed no indication that he could sense the Space Lord.

  "And what," thought Kemal, "do you have to hide? What is so much against the laws of the Instrumentality that you have had to set up a universal mind barrier?"

  Kuat, relaxed, smiled pleasantly.

  For the first time since Styron IV the Lord Kemal bin Permaiswari felt that he might in truth recover completely. It was the first time he had felt really interested in anything.

  Madu brought him back to his present situation.

  "You like our dju-di?" It was hardly a question.

  Kemal nodded, blissful and still absorbed in the puzzle he had encountered.

  "You may have one more," she said, "but that is all that is good for you. After that, one begins to lose one's senses, and that, after all, is not pleasurable, is it?"

  She poured the second cup for Kemal, for Lari and herself.

  Kuat reached for the pitcher, and she slapped playfully at his hand. "One more and you might pour yourself pisang by accident."

  He laughed. "I am bigger than most men and can drink more than they."

  "At least let me pour it then," she said, and proceeded to do so.

  She turned again to the Space Lord with a playful gaiety which did not ring quite true. "He is one whom we must all indulge; but, really, it is dangerous to have too much. You see how this pitcher is made?"

  She took off the lid to demonstrate the division of the pitcher. "In one half is dju-di; in the other there is pisang, which is identical in taste to dju-di, but it is deadly. One cup kills anyone drinking it within eefunjung." Involuntarily Kemal shuddered. The unit of time she mentioned was so small as to be almost instantaneous.

  "No antidote?"

  "None."

  Lari, who had been sitting quietly, now spoke. "It is the same thing, really. Dju-di is the distilled pisang. They come from a fruit which grows here, only on Xanadu. Galaxy knows how many people must have died eating the fruit or drinking the fermented but undistilled pisang before the secret of dju-di was discovered."

  "Worth every one of them," Kuat laughed. Any remaining warmth engendered by the dju-di which the Space Lord might have felt toward the Governor of Xanadu was dissipated. His curiosity regarding the duality of the pitcher, however, was aroused.

  "But if you know that pisang is poison, why do you keep it in the same container with dju-di? For that matter, why do you keep it in its undistilled state at all?"

  Madu nodded agreement. "I have often asked the same question, and the answers I get make no sense."

  "It's the excitement of danger," Lari said. "Don't you enjoy the dju-di more knowing there's the element of chance you'll get pisang?"

  "That's what I said," Madu repeated. "The answers make no sense."

  At this point Kuat broke in. His speech was slightly slurred, but he spoke intelligently enough. "In the first place, there is tradition. In the old days, under the first Kahn and before Xanadu came under the jurisdiction of the Lords of the Instrumentality, there was a great deal of lawlessness on Xanadu. There were power struggles for leadership. People came here from other planets to plunder our richness. There had to be some simple way of eliminating them before they knew they were being eliminated. The double pitcher is copied, so they say, from a Chinesian one brought by the first Kahn. I don't know about that, but it has become traditional here. You won't find a dju-di holder on Xanadu without its corresponding pisang holder." He nodded wisely, as if he had explained everything, but the Space Lord was not satisfied.

  "All right," he said, "you make the pitchers in the traditional way, but why, by Venus's clouds, must you continue to put pisang in them?"

  Kuat's answer, when it came, was in even more slurred tones than his previous speech; the effects of too much dju-di began to make him sound intoxicated, and the Space Lord made mental note to heed Madu's injunctions not to exceed two cupfuls of the drink. Kuat gave a rather leering smile and wagged a finger admonishingly at Lord Kemal.

  "Strangers mustn't ask too many questions. Might still be enemies around and we're all prepared. Anyway, that's the way we execute criminals on Xanadu." His laugh was uninhibited. "They don't know what they're getting. It's like a lottery. Sometimes I tease them a little. Give them dju-di first, and they start to think they're going to be freed. Then I give them another cup, and they don't suspect a thing. Drink it happily because nothing happened with the first cup. Then when the paralysis hits them—ha! you should see their faces!"

  For an instant the latent dislike which the Space Lord had conceived for Kuat sprang full grown. But the man's intoxicated, in effect, he thought. And then: But is this the real man speaking?

  "No, no, Kuat, you don't mean that!"

  Realization seemed to return to Kuat. He gave his brother's knee a reassuring pat. "No, no, course don't. Think I'll go to bed. You'll take care of our guest, won't you?"

  He staggered slightly as he stood up but managed to walk fairly steadily from the room.

  Suddenly the barrier was down slightly. He could not read Kuat's mind, but the Space Lord could sense, somewhere on the planet, something evil, strange, unlawful. A coldness seemed to replace the warmth of the dju-di in his veins.

  Across the white dunes the wind was beginning to rise. Far from the city, protected by the ancient crater lake of the sunless sea, the laboratory had a deceptive exterior placidity. Within, the illegal diehr-dead, not yet quite sentient, stirred in their amniotic fluid; outside, trees bearing their deadly fruit seemed to quiver as if in dread anticipation.

  Madu sighed. "I knew he shouldn't have had that last one, but he would do it." She turned toward Lari, oblivious of the Space Lord, and said reassuringly:

  "Of course he didn't mean what he said about teasing the prisoners. He's been so good to us all these years . . . nobody could be so kind to us and cruel in other ways, could he?"

  Once more the Space Lord glanced in Lari's direction. The handsome young face, vital but young, so young, held a look of uneasiness. "No, I suppose not, and still I've heard tales. . . ." He broke off, remembering the presence of the Space Lord. "Of course it's all nonsense," he concluded, but Lord Kemal had the feeling that he was trying as much to reassure himself as to erase the bad impression his brother had made.

  "We will eat now," Madu said brightly, and stood up to go into the dining salon. Again the Space Lord felt as if the subject were being changed.

  II

  In after years the Space Lord remembered. Thoughts raced through his mind. Oh, Xanadu, there is nothing with which to liken you in all the galaxies. The shadowless days and nights, the treeless plains, the sudden rainless blasts of thunder and lightning which somehow add to your charm. Griselda. The only pure animal I ever knew. The great rumbling purr, the soft pink nose with the black spot on one side, the eyes which seemed to look beyond the features of my face into my very being. Oh, Griselda, I hope that somewhere you still bound and leap . . .

  But now: the first few days of the Lord Kemal bin Permaiswari on Xanadu passed quickly as he was introduced to the infinite pleasures of Xanadu.

  On the day following Kemal's arrival a footrace had been scheduled in which Lari was to run. The element of comp
etition which had been brought back to Xanadu was part of a deliberate return to the simpler joys which mankind in its mechanization had forgotten.

  Crowds at the stadium were gay and bright. Most of the young girls wore their hair loose and flowing; the women, old and young alike, wore the typical costume of Xanadu: tiny short skirt and open sleeveless jacket. On most worlds the older women would have looked grotesque or at least ludicrous in this costume, and the younger women would have seemed lewd. But on Xanadu there was a basic innocence and acceptance of the body, and almost without exception the women of Xanadu, irrespective of age, seemed to have retained their lovely lithe figures, and there was no false modesty to call attention to their seminudity.

  Most of the young people, male and female alike, wore the shimmering body powder which the Space Lord had first noted on Madu; some matched the powder to their clothes, others to their hair or eyes. A few wore a colorless luminescent dusting. Of them all, the Space Lord thought Madu the loveliest.

  She radiated excitement, a portion of which communicated itself to Lord Kemal. Kuat seemed unemotional.

  "How can you sit there so calmly?" she asked.

  "The boy'll win, you know. Anyway horse racing is more exciting."

  "For you, maybe. Not for me."

  Lord Kemal was interested. "I have never seen this racing," he said. "What is it? The horses all run together to see which is the fastest?"

  Madu nodded agreement. "They all start at a given signal and run a predetermined path. The one who reaches the goal first is the winner. He," she nodded her head playfully in Kuat's direction, "likes to bet, that is to wager, that his horse will win. That is why he likes horse races better than human races."