Songmaster (16 page)

“You have power,” Ansset said aloud.

“Do I?” asked Mikal, looking at him intently.

“Everyone knows that.”

“And do you?” Mikal asked.

“A kind of power,” Ansset said, but there had been something in Mikal’s question. Something else, a sort of plea, and Ansset searched in his memory of this new strange voice, to hear what the question was really asking. “A kind of power, but you see the end of it. It makes you afraid.”

Mikal said nothing now. Just looked carefully at Ansset’s face. Ansset was afraid for a moment. Surely this was not what Esste had urged him to do.
You
must make friends, she had said, because you understand so much more. Do I? Ansset wondered now. I understand some things, but this man has hidden places. This man is dangerous, too; he is not just my protector.

“You have to say something now,” Ansset said, outwardly calm. “I can’t know you if I don’t hear your voice.”

Mikal smiled, but his eyes were wary, and so was his voice. “Then perhaps I would be wise to be silent.”

It was enough of Mikal’s voice, and held enough of the emperor’s emotion that Ansset could reach a little further. “I don’t think it’s the loss of your power that you fear,” Ansset said. “I think—I think—” And then words failed him, because he did not understand what he saw and heard in Mikal, not in a way he could express in words. So he sang. With some words, here and there, but the rest melodies and rhythms that spoke of Mikal’s love of power. You don’t love power like a hungry man loves food, the song seemed to say. You love power like a father loves his son. Ansset sang of power that was created, not found; created and increased until it filled the universe. And then Ansset sang of the room where Mikal lived, filled it to the wooden walls with his voice, and let the sound reverberate in the wood, let it dance and become lively and, though it distorted his tone, come back to add depth to the song.

And as he sang the songs he had just learned from Mikal, Ansset became more daring, and sang the hope of friendship, the offer of trust. He sang the love song.

And when he had finished, Mikal regarded him with his careful eyes. For a moment Ansset wondered if the song had had any effect. Then Mikal reached out a hand, and it trembled, and the trembling was not from age. Reached out a hand, and Ansset also held out a hand, and laid it in the old man’s palm. Mikal’s hand was large and strong, and Ansset felt that he could be swallowed up, seized and gathered into Mikal’s fist and never be found. Yet when Mikal closed his thumb over Ansset’s hand, the touch was gentle, the grip firm yet kind, and Mikal’s voice was heavy with emotion when he said, “You are. What I had hoped for.”

Ansset leaned forward. “Please don’t be too satisfied yet,” he said. “Your songs are hard to sing, and I haven’t learned them all yet.”

“
My
songs? I have no songs.”

“Yes you have. I sang them to you.”

Mikal looked disturbed. “Where did you get the idea that they were—”

“I heard them in your voice.”

The idea surprised Mikal, took him off guard. “But there was so much beauty in what you sang—”

“Sometimes,” Ansset answered.

“Yes. And so much—what, I don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps you found such songs in me.” He looked doubtful. He sounded disappointed. “Is this a trick you play? Is this all?”

“A trick?”

“To hear what’s going on in your patron’s voice and sing it back to him? No wonder I liked the song. But don’t you have any songs of yourself?”

Now it was Ansset’s turn to be surprised. “But what am I?”

“A good question,” Mikal said. “A beautiful nine-year-old boy. Is that what they were waiting for? A body that would make a polygamist regret ever having loved women, a face that mothers and fathers would follow for miles, coveting for their children. Did I want a catamite? I think not. Did I want a mirror? Perhaps when I met the Songmaster so many years ago he was not so wise as I thought. Or perhaps I’ve changed since then.”

“I’m sorry I disappointed you.” Ansset let his real fear show in his voice. Again, it was what Esste had told him: Hide nothing from your patron. It had been easy, after the ordeal in the High Room, to open his heart to Esste. But here, now, with this strange man who had not liked the song even though it had moved him deeply—it took real effort to keep the walls down. Ansset felt as vulnerable as when the soldier had fondled him, and as ignorant of what it was he feared. Yet he showed the fear, because that was what Esste had told him to do, and he knew she would not be wrong.

Mikal’s face set hard. “Of course you didn’t disappoint me. I told you. That song was what I hoped for. But I want to hear a song of yourself. Surely you have songs of your own.”

“I have,” Ansset answered.

“Will you sing them to me?”

“I will,” said Ansset.

And so he sang, beginning timidly because he had never sung these songs except to people who already loved him, people who were also creatures of the Songhouse and so needed no explanation. But Mikal knew nothing of the Songhouse, and so Ansset groped backward with his melody, trying to find a way to tell Mikal who he was, and finally realizing that he could not, that all he could tell him was the meaning of the Songhouse, was the feel of the cold stone under his fingers, was the kindness of Rruk when he had wept in fear and uncertainty and she had sung confidence to him, though she herself was only a child.

I am a child, said Ansset’s song, as weak as a leaf in the wind, and yet, along with a thousand other leaves I have roots that go deep into rock, the cold, living rocks of the Songhouse. I am a child, and my fathers are a thousand other children, and my mother is a woman who broke me open and brought me out and warmed me in the cold storm where I was suddenly naked and suddenly not alone. I am a gift, fashioned by my own hands to be given to you by others, and I don’t know if I am acceptable.

And as he sang, he found himself inexorably heading toward the one song he would never have thought to sing. The song of the days in the High Room. The song of his birth. I can’t, he thought as the melodies swept into his throat and out of his teeth. I can’t bear it, he cried to himself as the emotions came, not in tears, but in passionate tones that came from the most tender places in him. I can’t bear to stop, he thought as he sang of Esste’s love for him and his terror at leaving her so soon after having learned to lean on her.

And in his song, too, he heard something that surprised him. He heard, through all the emotion of his memories, a thread of dissonance, a thread that spoke of hidden darkness in him. He searched for that note and lost it. And gradually the search for the strangeness in his own song took him out of the song, and brought him to himself again. He sang, and the fire died, and his song at last died, too.

And it was then that he realized that Mikal lay curled around him, his arm embracing Ansset, the other arm covering his face, where he wept, where he sobbed silently. With the song over, the sparks were the only music in the room as the last fusses of flame kept trying to revive the fire.

Oh, what have I done? Ansset cried to himself as he watched the emperor of mankind, Mikal the Terrible, weeping into his hand.

“Oh, Ansset,” said Mikal, “what have you done?”

And then, after a moment, Mikal stopped crying and rolled over onto his back and said, “Oh, God, it’s too kind, it’s too cruel. I’m a hundred and twenty-one years old and death lurks in the walls and floor, waiting to catch me unawares. Why couldn’t you have come to me when I was forty?”

Ansset did not know if an answer was expected. “I wasn’t born then,” he finally said, and Mikal laughed.

“That’s right. You weren’t born yet. Nine years old. What do they do to you in the Songhouse, Ansset? What terrible squeezing they must do, to wring such songs out of you.”

“Did you like my song this time?”

“Like?” Mikal asked, wondering if the boy was joking. “Like?” And he laughed a long time, and laid his head on Ansset’s lap. The two of them slept there that night, and from then on there were no more searches, no more questions. Ansset was free to come to Mikal, because there was no time when Mikal did not long to have him there.

“You’re in luck,” their guide told them, and Kya-Kya sighed. She had been hoping that they would be lucky enough to get out of Susquehanna after only the normal five-hour tour. But she was sure that was not what the guide had in mind. “The emperor,” said the guide, “has asked to meet with you. This is a very great honor. But, as the Chamberlain told me just a few moments ago, you students from the Princeton Government Institute are the future administrators of this great empire. It is only just that Mikal should meet with his future aides and helpers.”

Aides and helpers, hell, Kya-Kya thought. The old man will die before I graduate, and then we’ll be aiding and helping somebody else—probably the bastard who killed him.

She had work to do. Some of the trips and tours were worthwhile—the four days they spent at the computer center in Tegucigalpa, the week observing the operation of a welfare services outlet in Rouen. But here at Susquehanna they were shown nothing of any importance, just as a matter of form. The city existed to keep Mikal alive and safe—the real government work went on elsewhere. Worse, the palace had been designed by a madman (probably Mikal himself, she thought) and the corridors were a maze that doubled back constantly, that rose and fell through meaningless ramps and stairways. The building seemed to be one vast barrier, and her legs ached from the long walk between one exhibit and another. Several times she could have sworn that they walked up one corridor, lined with doors on the left, and then turned 180 degrees and walked down a parallel corridor with doors on the left that led only to the corridor they had just traveled. Maddening. Wearying.

“And what’s more,” said the guide, “the Chamberlain even hinted that you might get a chance usually granted only to distinguished offworld visitors. You may get to hear Mikal’s Songbird.”

There was a buzz of interest among the students. Of course they had all heard of Mikal’s Songbird, at first the scandalous news that Mikal had forced even the Songhouse to bend to his will, and then the spreading word from those privileged few who had heard the boy sing: that Mikal’s Songbird was the greatest Songbird ever, that no human voice had ever done what he could do.

Kya-Kya felt something entirely different, however. None of her fellow students knew she was from the Songhouse, or even from Tew. She had been discreet to the point of aloofness. And she did not long to see Ansset again, not the boy who had been Esste’s favorite, not the boy who was the opposite of her.

But there was no escape from the group. Kya-Kya was systematically being a model student—creative but compliant. Sometimes it nearly killed her, she thought, but she made sure there would be glowing recommendations from every professor, a perfect record of achievement. It was hard for a woman to get a job in Mikal’s government at all. And the kind of job she wanted usually came to a woman only as the climax of her career, not at the beginning.

So Kya-Kya said nothing, as they filed into the seats that formed a horseshoe whose open end framed Mikal’s throne. Kya-Kya took a seat near one end, so that she would be looking at Mikal’s profile—she preferred to study someone without direct eye contact. Eye contact allowed them to lie.

“You should stand,” said the guide deferentially, and of course they all took the suggestion and stood. A dozen uniformed guards entered the hall and fanned out to positions along the walls. Then the Chamberlain entered and announced in slow, ceremonial tones, “Mikal Imperator has come to you.” And Mikal came in.

The man was old, the face lined and creased and sagging, but his step was bright and quick and his smile seemed to come from a light heart. Kya-Kya of course rejected that first impression, for it was obviously the public relations face that Mikal wore to impress visitors. Yet he seemed to be in undeniably good health.

Mikal came to the throne and sat, and it was then that Kya-Kya realized that Ansset had come into the room with him. Mikal’s presence was so overpowering that even the beautiful Songbird had not been able to distract. Now, however, Mikal took the boy’s hand and gently pulled him forward, sent him a few steps ahead of the throne, where he stood alone and looked at everyone in the small audience.

Kya-Kya did not watch Ansset, however. She watched the other students watching him. They all wondered, of course, if a boy of such great beauty had found his way into Mikal’s bed. Kya-Kya knew better. The Songhouse would never tolerate it. They would never send a Songbird to someone who would try such a thing.

Ansset turned all the way to look at the end of the row of chairs, and his eyes met Kya-Kya’s. If he recognized her, he gave no sign. But Kya-Kya knew enough about Control to know that he could well have recognized her—in fact, probably had.

And then he sang. The song was powerful. It was all the hopes and finest ambitions of the students there, a song of serving mankind and being honored for it. The words were simple, but the melody made all of them want to shout for the excitement of their own futures. All except Kya-Kya, who remembered gatherings in the great hall of the Songhouse. Remembered hearing others sing there, and how she had felt at the first gathering after she had been declared Deaf. There was no hope in the song for her. And in a way her own bitterness at Ansset’s song was a pleasure. He obviously was singing what the students most wanted to hear, trying to touch everyone in the audience. But he would never touch her.

When Ansset finished, the students did stand, did clap and cheer. Ansset bowed shyly, then walked from the place in front of Mikal’s throne and came to stand near the wall. Not two meters from Kya-Kya. She glanced at him when he came. It hurt her to see up close how beautiful he was, how kind and happy his face seemed in repose. He did not seem to look at her, so she looked away.

Mikal began to speak then, the usual things about how important it was for them to study hard and learn how to cope with all the known problems, yet develop themselves so that they had the deep inner resources to cope with the unexpected. And so on, thought Kya-Kya, and on and on and on and on.

“Listen,” said a voice in Kya-Kya’s ear. She whirled and saw only Ansset, still a couple of meters off, still not looking at her. But she had been forced out of her reverie; she heard Mikal.

“You will naturally rise quickly to important positions, with many people under you. Often you’ll become impatient with the sluggish people under you. The petty bureaucrats who seem to love to own every piece of paper that crosses their desks for as long as they possibly can before passing it on. They seem to have tiny minds, no ambitions, no vision of what the government ought to be doing. You’ll long to take a heavy broom and sweep the bastards out. God knows I’ve wanted to often enough.”

The students laughed, not because of what he said, but because they were immensely flattered that Mikal Imperator would speak so casually, so openly to them.

“But don’t do it. Don’t do it unless you absolutely have to. The bureaucrats are our treasures, the most valuable part of the government. You who have great ability, you’ll rise, you’ll change, you’ll get bored, you’ll move from job to job. If you had a different kind of emperor, some of you would get removed from time to time and sent to—Well, I haven’t the kind of imagination to conjure up the sort of places offensive administrators might get sent.” Again a laugh. Kya-Kya was disgusted.

“Listen,” said the voice again, and this time when Kya-Kya turned, Ansset was looking at her.

“I know it’s treason to speak of it, but I doubt that any of you have failed to notice that I’m old. I’ve ruled a long time. I’m past a man’s normal life expectancy. Someday, I have reason to believe, I will die.”

The students sat stiffly, unsure of what this had to do with them, but certain that they wished they were not hearing such things.

“When that happens, someone else will take my place. I don’t come from a particularly long dynasty, and there may be some question as to who is my legitimate heir. There may even be some nastiness over the question. Some of you will be tempted to take sides. And those who choose the wrong side will pay for your mistake. But while all the storms rage, those paper-pushing bureaucrats will go on their stodgy, incompetent way, running the government. Already they have such inertia that I couldn’t possibly change them even if I wanted to. Here and there, a few changes. Here and there an improvement, or a brilliant bureaucrat who deserves and damn well better get a promotion. But most of them will go on doing things in the same infinitely slow way, and that, my young friends, will be the salvation and the preservation of this empire. Rely on the bureaucracy. Depend on the bureaucracy. Keep it, if you can, under control. But never weaken it. It will save mankind when every visionary has failed, when every Utopia has crumbled. Bureaucracy is the one eternal thing mankind has created.”

And then Mikal smiled, and all the students laughed again, because they realized that he knew he was exaggerating. But they also knew that he meant much of what he said, and they understood his vision of the future. That it didn’t matter who was at the helm, as long as the crew knew how to run the ship.

But no one understood him so well as Kya-Kya. There was no time-honored system of succession to the throne, as there had been in the Songhouse, where the choice of the Songmaster of the High Room had been left up to a Deaf and no one had even protested her choice. Instead, the rule of the empire would pass to whoever was strongest and most determined at the time of Mikal’s death. In history, far too many sovereigns had destroyed their empires by trying to promote a favorite or a relative as successor. Mikal had no such intention. He was announcing to the students from the Princeton Government Institute that he was going to leave the succession up to the law of natural selection, while trying to build institutions that would survive the turmoil.

The first few years after Mikal’s death will be interesting, Kya-Kya decided, and wondered why, when those years were bound to be miserable and full of slaughter, she was so glad to know she would be alive and working in government during them.

Mikal stood, and so everyone stood, and when he had gone they erupted into dozens of different conversations. Kya-Kya was amused at how effectively Mikal had taken everyone in with his warmth and casualness. Had they forgotten that this man had killed billions of people on burned-over worlds, that only brute force and utter callousness had brought him to power? And yet she also had to admire the fact that after a life like the one Mikal had led, he was able to so conceal his viciousness that everyone in the room but her—no, be honest, everyone in the room—now thought of him as grandfatherly. Kind. A gentleman and gentle man. And wise.

Well, give the old bastard that. He was smart enough to stay alive as the number one target in the galaxy. He’d probably die in bed.

“Contempt is so easy,” said Ansset’s voice beside her.

She spun to face him. “I thought you were gone. What did you mean, telling me to listen?” She was surprised that she spoke angrily to him.

“Because you weren’t.” The boy’s voice was gentle, but she heard the undertones of songtalk.

“Don’t try it with me. I can’t be fooled.”

“Only a fool can’t be fooled,” Ansset answered. He had grown, she noticed. “You pretend not to like Mikal. But of all the people here, you’re the one most like him.”

What did he mean? She was infuriated. She was flattered. “Do I look like the killer type?” she asked.

“You’ll get what you want,” Ansset answered. “And you’ll kill to get it, if you have to.”

“Not just songs but psychology, too. How far-reaching your training must have been.”

“I know your songs, Kya-Kya,” Ansset said. “I heard your singing when you came to Esste in my stall that day.”

“I never sang.”

“No, Kya-Kya. You always sang. You just never heard the song.”

Ansset started to turn away. But his air of confidence, of superiority, angered Kya-Kya. “Ansset!” she called, and he stopped and faced her. “They’re using you,” she said. “You think they care about you, but they’re only using you. A tool. A foolish, ignorant tool!” She had not spoken loudly, but when she turned she realized that many of the other students were looking back and forth between her and Ansset. She walked away from the boy and threaded her way through the students, who knew enough not to say anything, but who no doubt wondered how she had gotten into a conversation with Mikal’s Songbird, and no doubt marveled that she had been able to bring herself to be angry at him.

That had been enough to keep the students gossiping for days. But before she reached the door, she heard all the conversations fall silent, and Ansset’s voice rose above the fading chatter to sing a wordless song that she, alone of all the students, knew was a song of hope and friendship and honest good wishes. She closed her mind to the boy’s Songhouse tricks and left the room, where she could wait outside in silence with the guards until the guide came to lead them all away.

The buses, all fleskets from the Institute, took them home to Princeton with only one stop, in the ancient city of Philadelphia, where one of the older men students was kidnapped and found, mutilated terribly, near the Delaware River. He was the fifteenth in a wave of kidnap murders that had terrorized Philadelphia and many other cities in the area. The rest of the students returned in utter gloom to Princeton and resumed their studies. But Kya-Kya did not forget Ansset. Could not forget him. Death was in the air, and while Mikal could not be responsible for the mad killings in Philadelphia, she could not help but believe that he, too, would die mutilated. But the mutilation had been going on for years, and she thought of Ansset, and how he, too, might be twisted and deformed, and for all that she cared nothing for the Songhouse and even less for Mikal’s Songbird, she could not help but hope that somehow the beautiful boy who had remembered her after all these years could emerge unsullied from Susquehanna and go home to the Songhouse clean.

And she fretted, because she was in school and the world was passing on quickly toward great events that she would not be part of unless she hurried or the world waited just a little bit for her. She was twenty years old and brilliant and impatient and frustrated as hell. She cried for the Songhouse one night when she went to bed especially tired.