Songmaster (31 page)

To his surprise, he felt relieved. The music fell off him like a burden welcomely shed. It would be some time before he realized that not singing was an even heavier burden, and one far harder to be rid of.

Songmaster Onn returned alone to the Songhouse. No one was eager to spread bad news; no one rushed ahead of him to report that, incredibly, his mission had failed.

And so Esste, waiting patiently in the High Room, was the first to hear that Ansset would not come home.

“I was not allowed to come to Earth. The other passengers were unloaded by shuttle, and I never set foot on the planet.”

“The message,” Esste said. “Was it sent in Ansset’s own language?”

“It was a personal apology from Riktors Mikal,” Onn said, and he recited it: “ ‘I regret having to inform you that Ansset, formerly a Songbird, refuses to return to Tew. His contract has expired, and since he is neither chattel nor a child, I cannot legally compel him. I hope you will understand that for his protection no one from the Songhouse will be allowed to land on Earth while he is here. He is busy; he is happy; do not be concerned for him.’ ”

Esste and Onn looked at each other in silence, but the silence between them sang.

“He is a liar,” Esste finally said.

“This much is true: Ansset does not sing.”

“What
does
he do?”

Onn looked and sounded pained as he said it. “He is manager of Earth.”

Esste sucked in air quickly. She sat in silence, her eyes focused on nothing. Onn’s voice had been as kind as possible, his song gentle to her. But there was no gentleness in the message. Riktors might have forced Ansset to stay—that was believable. But how could Ansset have been forced to take a position of such responsibility?

“He is so young,” Esste sang.

“He was never young,” Onn answered, a descant.

“I was cruel to him.”

“You gave him nothing but kindness.”

“When Riktors begged me to let them stay together, I should have refused.”

“All the Songmasters agreed that he should stay.”

And then a cry that was not a song, that came deeper from within Esste than all her music.

“Ansset, my son! What have I done to you, Ansset, my son, my son!”

Onn did not stay to watch Esste lose Control. What she did alone in the High Room was her own affair. He descended the long flight of steps, his body heavy with his own regret. He had had time to get used to the idea of Ansset not returning. Esste had not.

Esste could not, he feared. Not a week had passed since Ansset had left that Esste had not sung of him, either mentioning him by name or singing a melody that those who knew her recognized—a song of Ansset’s, a fragment of voice that could only have been produced by the child’s throat, or by Esste’s, since she knew all his songs so well. His homecoming had been watched for as no other singer’s return. There was no celebration planned, except in the hearts of those who meant to greet him. But there the songs had been waiting, ready to burst the air with rejoicing for the greatest Songbird of them all. The place was ready for Ansset. It was meant that he would begin to teach at once. It was meant that his voice would sing all the hours of the day, would lead the song in the courtyards, would be heard in the evening from the tower. It was meant that, someday, he would be Songmaster, perhaps in the High Room.

Onn had had time to get used to the failure of all these intentions. Yet as he walked slowly down the stairs he heard his footsteps ringing hollowly against the stone, for he still wore his traveling shoes. The wrong wanderer has returned, he thought. In his mind he heard Ansset’s last song, years before, in the great hall. The memory of it was thin. It sounded like wind in the tower, and made him feel cold.

Ansset had only been in Babylon a week when he got lost.

He had been in the palace too long. It didn’t occur to him that he didn’t know his way around. And in fact he had learned almost immediately every corner of the manager’s building, which he was sharing for two weeks with the outgoing manager, who was trying to acquaint him with his staff and the current problems and work. It was tedious, but Ansset thrived on tedium these days. It kept his mind off himself. It was much more comfortable to immerse himself in the work of government.

He had no training for it, formally. But informally, he had the best training in the world. Hours and hours spent listening to Mikal and Riktors pour their hearts out, discreetly, about the decisions that faced them. He had been the dumping ground for the problems of an empire; it was not strange to him to face the problems of a world.

Yet there were times when they left him alone. There were limits to what anyone could absorb, and though Ansset knew he had no reason to be ashamed of the way he had been learning, he was keenly aware of the fact that they all thought him to be a child. He was small, and his voice had not changed, thanks to the Songhouse drugs. And so they were solicitous, oversolicitous, he thought. “I can do more,” he said one day when they quit before sunset.

“That’s enough for a day,” the minister of education said. “They told me not to go past four and it’s nearly five. You’ve done very well.” Then the minister had realized that he was sounding patronizing, tried to correct himself, then gave it up and left.

Alone, Ansset went to the window and looked out. Other rooms had balconies, but this one faced west, and he saw the sun setting over the buildings to the west. Yet below, where the stilts of the building left undisturbed ground, thick grass grew, and Ansset saw a bird rise from the grass; saw a large mammal lumbering under the buildings, heading, he assumed, toward the river to the east.

And he wanted to go outside.

No one went outside, of course, not in this weather. Months from now, when the Ufrates rose and the plain was water from horizon to horizon, then there would be boating parties dodging hippopotamuses and singing from building to building, while work went on in the buildings rooted in bedrock, like herons ignoring the current because their feet had a firm grasp in the mud.

Now, however, the plain belonged to the animals.

But there was no door that did not open to Ansset’s hand, no button that did not work when he pushed it. And so he took elevators to the lowest floor, and there wandered until he found the freight elevator. He entered, pushed the only control, and waited as the elevator sank.

The door opened and Ansset stepped out into the grass. It was a hot evening, but a breeze flowed under the buildings. The air smelled very different from the deciduous breezes of Susquehanna, but it was not an unpleasant smell, though it was pungent with animals. The elevator had brought him to the center of the space under the building. The sun was just beginning to become visible between the second building to the west and the ground; Ansset’s shadow seemed to stretch a kilometer into the east.

Better than sight or smell, however, was the sound. Distantly he heard the roaring of some indelicate beast; much closer, the cry of birds, a more savage cry than the twitters of the small birds in Eastamerica. He was so enthralled with the novelty of the sound, and the beauty of it, that he hardly noticed that the elevator behind him was rising until he turned to follow the motion of a bird and realized that there was nothing behind him at all. Not just the elevator, but the entire shaft as well had risen into the building, and was just settling into its place, a metal square high above him on the bottom of the first floor.

Ansset had no idea how to get the elevator to come down again. For a moment he was afraid. Then he thought wryly that they would notice he was missing almost immediately, and come looking for him. Someone always came and asked him if he needed anything every ten minutes or so.

As long as he was away from everyone, as long as he was there with his feet in the grass and his ears attuned to new music, he might as well make the most of it. The buildings extended indefinitely to the east; to the west, only two buildings stood between him and the open plain. So he went west.

He had never seen so much space in his life. True, the plain was dotted with trees, so that if he looked far enough, the trees made a thin green line that kept the world from going on forever until it curved out of sight. But the sky seemed to be enormous, and birds disappeared easily into it, they were so small against the dazzling blue.

Ansset tried to imagine the plain in flood, with the trees rising resolutely above the water, so that boaters could dock in the branches and picnic in the shade. The land was unrelentingly flat—there was no high ground. Ansset wondered what became of the animals. Probably they migrated, he decided, though for a moment he imagined thousands of game wardens gathering them up and flying them to safe ground. A vast evacuation; man protecting nature in a reversal of the ancient roles. But it happened only here, in the huge Origins Imperial Park, which stretched from the Mediterranean and Aegean seas to the valley of the Indus River. Here dead land had been brought to life, and only Babylon, and here and there a tourist center, interrupted the animals’ reclaimed kingdom.

As the sun touched the horizon, the birds became almost frantic in their calls, and many new birds erupted into song. At dusk all the animals would prowl, some in their last activity before night, others in their first activity after a day of sleep.

The song made Ansset feel at peace. He had thought never to feel that way again, and he felt tension he hadn’t known gripped him gradually uncoil and relax. Almost by reflex he opened his mouth to sing. Almost. Because the very length of time between songs called to his attention the novelty of the act. He was instantly aware that this was his First Song. And so as he began to sing, the music was tortured by calculation. What should have been reflex became deliberate, and therefore he faltered, and could not sing. He tried, and of course tones came out. He did not know that much of the awkwardness was simply lack of use, and that much of it was the fact that his voice was now beginning to change. He only knew that something that had been as natural as breathing, as walking, was now totally unnatural. The song sounded hideous in his ears. He shouted, his voice as forlorn as a cormorant cry. The birds near him fell silent, instantly sensing that he did not belong among them.

I don’t belong among you, he said silently. Or among anyone else. My own won’t have me, and here I’m a stranger.

Only Control kept him from weeping, and gradually, as feeling built inside him, he realized that, songless, he could not keep Control. There had to be an outlet somewhere.

And so he cried out, again and again, screams and howls into the sky. It was an animal sound, and it frightened even him as he made the noise. He could have been a wounded beast, from the sound; fortunately, the predators were not easily fooled, and did not come to the cries.

Someone came, however, and not long after he fell silent and the sun disappeared behind the distant trees, someone touched his elbow from behind. He whirled, frightened, not remembering that he was expecting rescue.

She looked familiar, and in a moment he placed her in his mind. She belonged, oddly, both in the Songhouse and in the palace. Only one person had ever stood both places in his life, besides himself.

“Kya-Kya,” he said, and his voice was hoarse.

“I heard your cry,” she said. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said, instantly.

They looked at each other, neither sure what to say. Finally Kya-Kya broke the silence. “Everyone was in a panic. No one knew where you had gone. But I knew. Or thought I knew. Because I come down here, too. Not many of us ever make the descent when it’s the dry season. The animals aren’t very good company. They just wander around looking powerful and free. Human beings aren’t meant to look at power and freedom. Makes us jealous.” She laughed, and so did he. Gracelessly, however. Something was very wrong.

“You work here?” Ansset asked.

“I’m one of your special assistants. You haven’t met me yet. I’m on your agenda for next week. I’m not very important.”

He said nothing, and again Kya-Kya waited, unsure what to say. They had spoken before—angrily, on her part, when they conversed both in the Songhouse and in the palace. But she was damned if she’d let that stand in the way of her career. A terrible thing, having this boy made her direct superior, but she could and would make the best of it.

“I’ll show you how to go back. If you want to go back.”

He still said nothing. There was something strange about his face, though she couldn’t think what it was. It seemed rigid somehow. Yet that couldn’t be it—he had been utterly unflinching when she talked to him in his cell in the Songhouse and he sang comfort to her, an inhuman face, in fact.

“
Do
you want to go back?” she asked.

He still didn’t answer. Helpless, unsure what to do for this child who had her future in his control—the Songhouse comes back to haunt me no matter what I do, she thought, as she had thought a hundred times since learning he would be manager—she waited.

Finally she realized that what was wrong with his face was that it was
not
rigid. It was only trying to be. The boy was trembling. The most perfectly controlled creature in the Songhouse was shaking, and his voice wavered and sounded awkward as he said, “I don’t know where I am.”

“You’re just two buildings away from your—” And then she realized that he did not mean that.

“Help me,” he said.

Her feelings toward the boy suddenly wrenched, turned completely another way. She had been prepared to deal with him as a tyrant, as a monster, as a haughty superior. She had not been prepared to deal with him as a child asking for help.

“How can I help you?” she whispered.

“I don’t know my way,” he said.

“You will, in time.”

He looked impatient, more frightened; the mask was coming off his face.

“I’ve lost my…I’ve lost my voice.”

She did not understand. Wasn’t he speaking to her?

“Kya-Kya,” he said. “I can’t sing anymore.”

Of all the people on Earth, only Kya-Kya could possibly understand what he meant, and what it meant to him.

“Not ever?” she asked, incredulous.

He shook his head, and tears came to his eyes.

The boy was helpless. Still beautiful, the face still impossible not to look at, and yet now a real child, which in her mind he had never been before. Lost his voice! Lost the one thing that had made him a success where Kyaren had been a hopeless failure!

She was instantly ashamed of her excitement. She had never had it. He had lost it. And she forced herself to compare his loss to her losing her intellect, on which she depended for everything. It was not imaginable. Mikal’s Songbird, without singing?

“Why?” she asked.

In answer a tear came uncontrolled from his eye. Ashamed, he wiped it off, and in the gesture won her to his side. Whatever side that was. Someone had done something to Ansset, something worse than his kidnapping, something worse than Mikal’s death. She reached out to him, put her arms around him, and then said words that she had not thought ever to recall to her mind, let alone to her lips.

She spoke the love song to him, in a whisper, and he wept in her arms.

“I’ll help you,” she said afterward. “All I can, I’ll help you. And you’ll get your voice back, you’ll see.”

He only shook his head. Her chest was wet where his head pressed against her.

And then she led him to a stilt and stroked the panel that called the elevator, and as it descended she held him at arm’s length from her.

“My first help to you is this. To me you can cry. To me you can show anything and say anything you feel. But to no one else, Ansset. You thought you needed Control before, but you really need it now.”

He nodded, and almost immediately his face became composed again. The boy hasn’t forgotten all his tricks, she thought.

“It’s easier,” he said, “when I can let it out somehow.” Now that I can’t sing it out, he didn’t say. But she heard the words all the same, and while he stood alone and walked easily beside her through the buildings, where anyone could see them, in the enclosed bridges that connected the buildings, leading them back to the manager’s quarters, he reached to Kya-Kya, and took her hand.

For years she had hated Ansset as the epitome of everyone that had hurt her. It amazed her how easily that hate could dissipate, just because he let himself be vulnerable. Now that she could hurt him, she never would.

The chief of staff was beside himself with joy at Ansset’s return; but he spoke to Kya-Kya, not Ansset, as he asked, “Where did you find him? Where was he?”

Coldly Ansset said to the man, “She found me where I chose to be, Calip, and I returned when I chose to come.” Deliberately he turned to Kya-Kya and said, “Please meet me at eight o’clock in the morning, Kya-Kya. I would like you to be with me through tomorrow’s meetings. Calip, I want supper at once.”

Calip was surprised. He had been so much in the habit of giving Ansset his schedule and introducing people to him, it didn’t occur to him until now that Ansset would have things his own way. After a moment of embarrassed inaction, Calip nodded his head and left the room.

As soon as the man was gone, Ansset looked at Kyaren with raised eyebrows.

“That was pretty good,” Kyaren said.

“Mikal was better at it, but I’ll learn,” Ansset said. Then he smiled at her, and she smiled back. But in his smile she still saw the traces of his fear, a hint of the expression on his face when he had pleaded for help.

And in her voice, as Kyaren said good-bye, he heard friendship. And he was, to his own surprise, certain that she meant it from the heart. Perhaps, he thought to himself, I may survive this after all.