Sturgeon, Theodore - The Skills of Xanadu

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THE SKILLS OF XANADU

by Theodore Sturgeon

______________________________________________________________

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-25-02 [v1.0]

AND THE SUN went nova and humanity fragmented and fled; and such is the self-knowledge of

humankind that it knew it must guard its past as it guarded its being, or it would cease to be

human; and such was its pride in itself that it made of its traditions a ritual and a standard.

The great dream was that wherever humanity settled, fragment by fragment by fragment, however

it lived, it would continue rather than begin again, so that all through the universe and the

years, humans would be humans, speaking as humans, thinking as humans, aspiring and progressing as

humans; and whenever human met human, no matter how different, how distant, he would come in

peace, meet his own kind, speak his own tongue.

Humans, however, being humans--

Bril emerged near the pink star, disliking its light, and found the fourth planet. It hung

waiting for him like an exotic fruit. (And was it ripe, and could he ripen it? And what if it were

poison?) He left his machine in orbit and descended in a bubble. A young savage watched him come

and waited by a waterfall.

"Earth was my mother," said Bril from the bubble. It was the formal greeting of all humankind,

spoken in the Old Tongue.

"And my father," said the savage, in an atrocious accent.

Watchfully, Bril emerged from the bubble, but stood very close by it. He completed his part of

the ritual. "I respect the disparity of our wants, as individuals, and greet you."

"I respect the identity of our needs, as humans, and greet you. I am Wonyne," said the youth,

"son of Tanyne, of the Senate, and Nina. This place is Xanadu, the district, on Xanadu, the fourth

planet."

"I am Bril of Kit Carson, second planet of the Sumner System, and a member of the Sole

Authority," said the newcomer, adding, "and I come in peace."

He waited then, to see if the savage would discard any weapons he might have, according to

historic protocol. Wonyne did not; he apparently had none. He wore only a cobwebby tunic and a

broad belt made of flat, black, brilliantly polished stones and could hardly have concealed so

much as a dart. Bril waited yet another moment, watching the untroubled face of the savage, to see

if Wonyne suspected anything of the arsenal hidden in the sleek black uniform, the gleaming

jackboots, the metal gauntlets.

Wonyne said only, "Then, in peace, welcome." He smiled. "Come with me to Tanyne's house and

mine, and be refreshed."

"You say Tanyne, your father, is a Senator? Is he active now? Could he help me to reach your

center of government?"

The youth paused, his lips moving slightly, as if he were translating the dead language into

another tongue. Then, "Yes. Oh, yes."

Bril flicked his left gauntlet with his right fingertips and the bubble sprang away and up,

where at length it would join the ship until it was needed. Wonyne was not amazed-- probably,

thought Bril, because it was beyond his understanding.

Bril followed the youth up a winding path past a wonderland of flowering plants, most of them

purple, some white, a few scarlet, and all jeweled by the waterfall. The higher reaches of the

path were flanked by thick soft grass, red as they approached, pale pink as they passed.

Bril's narrow black eyes flicked everywhere, saw and recorded everything: the easy-breathing

boy's spring up the slope ahead, and the constant shifts of color in his gossamer garment as the

wind touched it; the high trees, some of which might conceal a man or a weapon; the rock out-

croppings and what oxides they told of; the birds he could see and the birdsongs he heard which

might be something else.

He was a man who missed only the obvious, and there is so little that is obvious.

Yet he was not prepared for the house; he and the boy were halfway across the parklike land

which surrounded it before he recognized it as such.

It seemed to have no margins. It was here high and there only a place between flower beds;

yonder a room became a terrace, and elsewhere a lawn was a carpet because there was a roof over

it. The house was divided into areas rather than rooms, by open grilles and by arrangements of

color. Nowhere was there a wall. There was nothing to hide behind and nothing that could be

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locked. All the land, all the sky, looked into and through the house, and the house was one great

window on the world.

Seeing it, Bril felt a slight shift in his opinion of the natives. His feeling was still one

of contempt, but now he added suspicion. A cardinal dictum on humans as he knew them was: Every

man has something to hide. Seeing a mode of living like this did not make him change his dictum:

he simply increased his watchfulness, asking: How do they hide it?

"Tan! Tan!" the boy was shouting. "I've brought a friend!" A man and a woman strolled toward

them from a garden. The man was huge, but otherwise so like the youth Wonyne that there could be

no question of their relationship. Both had long, narrow, clear gray eyes set very wide apart, and

red--almost orange--hair. The noses were strong and delicate at the same time, their mouths thin-

lipped but wide and good-natured. But the woman-- It was a long time before Bril could let himself

look, let himself believe that there was such a woman. After his first glance, he made of her only

a presence and fed himself small nibbles of belief in his eyes, in the fact that there could be

hair like that, face, voice, body. She was dressed, like her husband and the boy, in the smoky

kaleidoscope which resolved itself, when the wind permitted, into a black-belted tunic.

"He is Bril of Kit Carson in the Sumner System," babbled the boy, "and he's a member of the

Sole Authority and it's the second planet and he knew the greeting and got it right. So did I," he

added, laughing. "This is Tanyne, of the Senate, and my mother Nina."

"You are welcome, Bril of Kit Carson," she said to him; and unbelieving in this way that had

come upon him, he took away his gaze and inclined his head.

"You must come in," said Tanyne cordially, and led the way through an arbor which was not the

separate arch it appeared to be, but an entrance.

The room was wide, wider at one end than the other, though it was hard to determine by how

much. The floor was uneven, graded upward toward one corner, where it was a mossy bank. Scattered

here and there were what the eye said were white and striated gray boulders; the hand would say

they were flesh. Except for a few shelf- and table-like niches on these and in the bank, they were

the only furniture.

Water ran frothing and gurgling through the room, apparently as an open brook; but Bril saw

Nina's bare foot tread on the invisible covering that followed it down to the pool at the other

end. The pool was the one he had seen from outside, indeterminately in and out of the house. A

large tree grew by the pool and leaned its heavy branches toward the bank, and evidently its wide-

flung limbs were webbed and tented between by the same invisible substance which covered the

brook, for they formed the only cover overhead yet, to the ear, felt like a ceiling.

The whole effect was, to Bril, intensely depressing, and he surprised himself with a flash of

homesickness for the tall steel cities of his home planet.

Nina smiled and left them. Bril followed his host's example and sank down on the ground, or

floor, where it became a bank, or wall. Inwardly, Bril rebelled at the lack of decisiveness, of

discipline, of clear-cut limitation inherent in such haphazard design as this. But he was well

trained and quite prepared, at first, to keep his feelings to himself among barbarians.

"Nina will join us in a moment," said Tanyne.

Bril, who had been watching the woman's swift movements across the courtyard through the

transparent wall opposite, controlled a start. "I am unused to your ways and wondered what she was

doing," he said.

"She is preparing a meal for you," explained Tanyne.

"Herself?"

Tanyne and his son gazed wonderingly. "Does that seem unusual to you?"

"I understood the lady was wife to a Senator," said Bril. It seemed adequate as an

explanation, but only to him. He looked from the boy's face to the man's. "Perhaps I understand

something different when I use the term 'Senator.'"

"Perhaps you do. Would you tell us what a Senator is on the planet Kit Carson?"

"He is a member of the Senate, subservient to the Sole Authority, and in turn leader of a free

Nation."

"And his wife?"

"His wife shares his privileges. She might serve a member of the Sole Authority, but hardly

anyone else--certainly not an unidentified stranger."

"Interesting," said Tanyne, while the boy murmured the astonishment he had not expressed at

Bril's bubble, or Bril himself. "Tell me, have you not identified yourself, then?"

"He did, by the waterfall," the youth insisted.

"I gave you no proof," said Bril stiffly. He watched father and son exchange a glance.

"Credentials, written authority." He touched the flat pouch hung on his power belt.

Wonyne asked ingenuously, "Do the credentials say you are not Bril of Kit Carson in the Sumner

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