Songmaster (34 page)

Then he gave up and lay back and tried to sleep, sour at heart because he had tried to control his life just once and could not do it after all.

Kyaren was not asleep, however, or she had been wakened by his touch. “Josif,” she said. “I’m going to have your baby.”

“No,” he said softly.

“Please,” she said. And because he was tired and not disposed to deny her anything, and because he knew that soon enough he would deny her everything, he let himself cool, and they made love again. And sometime in the next week she conceived, and when Josif saw how happy it made her and how concerned for her it made him, he began to think that maybe he had been wrong, that maybe Ansset would mean nothing to him.

For the child’s sake, and because he wanted to bind himself to Kyaren even tighter, Josif insisted and they married. Now I will never let go of you in my heart, Josif thought. I will love you forever, he thought.

I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right.

The tour was Ansset’s idea. Riktors had just returned from his tour of the prefects, and the results had been splendid. “Well, why not me?” Ansset asked, and the more he talked about it, the better his advisers liked it. “There are always differences from region to region on a planet,” Ansset said, “and most planets develop dialects, some even languages. But Earth has nations. If it makes sense for the emperor to have contact with every prefect, it makes sense for the manager of Earth to have contact with every nation.”

To Kyaren he also explained. “The statistics and figures you and the others play with all the time, they mean nothing to me. I can’t think that way. You tell me what you’ve concluded and I don’t understand why. But when I meet them, when I hear them speak, when I hear the songs of the people and their leaders, I’ll be able to understand better.”

“Better?”

“Than I do now. And in some ways, better than you understand them, for all that the computers even keep track of the number of old fleskets returned to the pots for scrap.”

So they took the tour, and Ansset brought all his top advisers with him, and allowed them to bring their spouses, those who had contracts. That was why Josif came along, though he was not an adviser to the manager.

The tour began in the Americas, with visits to Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Titicaca, Panama, Mexico, Westamerica, Eastamerica, and Quebec. In Mexico Josif and Kyaren stayed three extra days, revisiting the places and redoing the things seen and done when they first loved each other. They had their son with them, of course, little Efrim—Josif chose the name because an earlier Josif, thousands of years before, had given his favorite son that name. “History,” Kyaren had snorted. “A ridiculous name.” She actually liked it quite a bit.

Efrim was only a year old, but thought of himself as an accomplished athlete. He was unusually well coordinated for his age, but not so adroit as he thought, and he broke his arm in a fall from a ledge in the ruins of the Olympic Stadium.

“Efrim is doing fine,” Kyaren complained. “It’s you that’s driving me out of my mind, Josif.”

“I get worried.”

“You get worried obnoxiously,” Kyaren said. “It just takes two weeks’ rest, and then he’s fine. I’m taking care of him. You’re just making him nervous.”

“I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing,” Josif said.

And so they decided that Josif should rejoin the manager’s tour in Quebec, and they would meet again when Efrim was well, in Europe. “Shouldn’t
you
go, and
I
stay? After all, you’re the personal adviser. I’m just a spouse.”

“He doesn’t need me with him. And Efrim doesn’t need you with him. Just see the sights and study the history and let Efrim keep busy healing instead of trying to constantly entertain his father. He had the hiccoughs for half an hour yesterday, you got him laughing so hard.”

“I’m going, then, if you want to be rid of me.”

She kissed him. “Get out of here,” she said. He got out, sorry in a way to be leaving her, but delighted not to be missing the weeks in old Europe, which, more than any other region, had preserved the ancient nations intact.

Ansset noticed him almost as soon as he returned. “Back with us already?”

“Kyaren’s staying with the baby. She kicked me out. I was impossible.”

“I hope the boy heals fast.” And then busy again, meeting with the self-styled king of Quebec, a title only barely tolerated by the emperor because the kings of Quebec were properly subservient and remarkably hated by their people. No danger of rebellion, and therefore not a problem needing to be corrected.

Over the next several days, however, Ansset and Josif were thrown together more and more. Ansset thought at first that the meetings were accidental. Then he realized that he himself was setting them up, deliberately going to places where he knew Josif would be. He and Josif had had little contact over the months—while Ansset knew from his voice that Josif didn’t dislike him, Josif still avoided him, rarely staying in a conversation very long, leaving Ansset always alone with Kyaren. Josif’s shyness needed no explanation to Ansset. He respected it. But now his closest confidante and friend, Kyaren, was gone, and he needed to talk to someone. So he didn’t stop himself from meeting with Josif. In fact, he began to make it more obvious. He invited him to meals, asked him along on walking tours, talked to him at night. Ansset couldn’t understand why Josif always seemed reluctant to accept, yet never refused an invitation. And gradually, over the days, through Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Stratford, Baile Atha Cliath, with rain always making the air deliciously cool and comfortably dim, Josif lost his reticence, and Ansset began to understand why Kyaren was so devoted to him.

Ansset also began to notice that Josif was sexually attracted to him. Hundreds of men and women had been before. Ansset was used to it, had had to put up with it through all his years in the palace. Josif was different, though. His desire seemed not so much lust as affection, part of his friendship. It intrigued Ansset, where years before such things had repelled him. He was curious. He had grown seventeen centimeters since his appointment to Babylon, and his voice was deepening all the time. There were other changes, and he found himself with longings he did not know how to satisfy, with questions he did not dare to ask only because he already knew the spoken answer, and the other answer he was afraid of.

At the Songhouse little was said of the drugs that singers and Songbirds were given. Just that they put off puberty, and that there were side effects. There were also whispers that it was worse for men than for women, but how it was worse, or even how it was bad, was never said. The drugs gave them five more years as children, five more years with the beautiful voices of childhood.

Well, Ansset had lost his songs and so didn’t need his voice, except for the coarse singing involved in making every national leader completely devoted to him, easy tricks that he was ashamed of even as he used them. His five extra years of childhood were over, and he wanted to know what happened next.

After the meeting with the Welsh chief, who affected coarse manners but whose Gaelic was beautiful to Ansset, the planet manager and the assistant minister of colonization went to Caernarvon Castle together. It had been domed thousands of years before, the last castle of Britain to survive with some of the original stones in place. They walked together on the walls, overlooking the dense green of the grass and the trees and the blue of the water that spread between the castle and the island of Angelsea. The only sign of modern life was the flesket and the guards beside it, and the trail where the grass grew lower because of the vehicles that passed over it. There were others in the castle, of course—it was maintained as a luxury hotel, and they would spend the night there. Security guards were going through the place on a final check. But where Ansset and Josif stood, there was no one. Birds skimmed back and forth over the sea.

“What is this place?” Ansset asked. “Why is it kept like this?”

“A castle was like a battleship,” Josif answered. “All the men would come in here when their enemies attacked, and the walls kept them out.”

“This was before lasers, then.”

“And before bombs and artillery. Just bows and arrows, spears. And a few more choice things. They used to pour boiling oil over the walls to kill men trying to climb them.”

Ansset looked down, hiding his revulsion easily, curious to see how far the drop was to the ground. “It seems dangerous enough just to stand up here.”

“They lived in violent times.”

Ansset thought of his own violent times. “We all do,” he said.

“Not like then. If you had a sword, you had power. You ruled over everyone weaker than you. They were always at war. Always trying to kill each other. Fighting over land.”

“Mikal ended wars,” Ansset said.

Josif laughed. “Yes, by winning all of them. It’s probably the only way ever to have peace. Other ways have been tried. They never worked.” Josif’s hand rubbed along the rough stone.

“I lived in a place like this once,” Ansset said.

“The Songhouse? I didn’t think that was a castle.”

“No one poured down boiling oil, if that’s what you mean. And it wouldn’t have stopped a determined army for more than, say, half an hour. But it’s stone, like this.”

Ansset sat down, took the shoes off his feet, and let his bare soles touch the stone.

“I feel like I’ve come home.” And he ran lightly along the stone into one of the turrets, where he climbed a winding staircase to the top. Josif followed him. Ansset stood at the edge, the highest point of the castle, feeling giddy. It reminded him of the High Room, only here it would never be cold and the wind would never blow, because of the almost transparent dome that protected the rock. He began to get a sense of the age of the thing. The Songhouse was a thousand years old. And men had lived on Tew for two thousand years before the Songhouse had been built. And when Tew was first settled, three thousand years ago, this castle had already been sixteen thousand years old, had already spent ten thousand of those years under the dome.

“We are so old,” Ansset said.

Josif nodded. “We’ve forgotten nothing in all that time. And learned nothing.”

Ansset smiled. “Maybe we have.”

“Some of us.”

“You’re so dour.”

“Maybe,” Josif said. “We don’t build things like this anymore. We’re far too sophisticated. We just put a fleet in orbit around the planet, so that instead of a fortress sitting like this on the edge of the sea, the fortresses cast their shadows over every centimeter of the soil. It was a frightening time then, Ansset, but there were advantages.”

“I understand they defecated and kept it.”

“They didn’t have converters.”

“In piles. And put it in the fields so the crops would grow better.”

“That’s China.”

“Oh.”

“It was better then in one way. There were places a person could hide.”

Josif sounded so wistful that Ansset became concerned. “Hide?”

“Countries that were still undiscovered. Just crossing the water to Eire would have been enough. A man could have hidden from his enemies.”

“Do you,” Ansset asked, “have enemies?”

Josif laughed bitterly. “Only me. I’m the only one.”

And more than ever since he had been imprisoned in Mikal’s room in the palace, Ansset longed for his songs. But he had no song, could not sing comfort for whatever fears haunted Josif. He knew that, in part, Josif was afraid of
him
; he wanted to sing the love song, to tell the man that Ansset would never do him any harm, that in the last few months, and especially in the last few days, Ansset had come to love him as he also loved Kyaren, the two of them, in different ways, filling part of the huge gap left inside Ansset with the loss of his songs.

But he could not sing it, and he could not say it, and so Ansset reached out and stroked Josif gently on the shoulder and down the arm.

To his surprise, Josif immediately pulled away from him, turned and ran down the stairs. Ansset followed almost immediately, and almost ran into Josif where he had stopped, at the door leading onto the walkways atop the walls. Josif turned to face Ansset, his face twisted and strange.

“What’s wrong?” Ansset asked.

“Kyaren’s coming here tomorrow.”

“I know. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve missed her.”

“So have I.”

“But I’m glad she was gone,” Ansset said. “Or I would never have come to love you.”

Josif walked away then, and Ansset, not understanding, did not follow.

All the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Ansset puzzled over it. He knew Josif loved him, and he knew Josif loved Kyaren—such things couldn’t be lied about. Why should there be anything difficult about it? Why should Josif be in such pain?

He went to the room where Josif was supposed to be, and found someone else in it. “Where’s Josif?” he asked, and the security guard who had been assigned those sleeping quarters shrugged. “I just sleep where they tell me, sir,” he said.

Ansset went straight to Calip, who was responsible for room assignments. “Where’s Josif?”

Calip looked surprised. “Don’t you know? He said that you had asked him to move to another room. So he’d be closer to the library.”

“What room?”

Calip didn’t answer immediately. Instead he fidgeted, then said, “Sir, did you know that Josif is a homosexual?”

“Hardly an exclusive one,” Ansset answered. “Do you have special rooms assigned for homosexuals?”

“I wasn’t sure if you knew. We thought—we thought he looked so agitated because he had made advances. And you had objected.”

“When I object to something,
I’ll
tell you. He didn’t make advances. He’s my friend, I want to know where his room is.”

“He asked us not to tell you. He wanted to be alone, he said.”

“Do you work for him or for me?”

“Sir,” Calip said, looking very upset. “We thought he was right. Your friendship with him is good, but it’s gone far enough.”

“Am I, or am I not, planet manager?” Ansset asked, his voice icy.

Calip was immediately afraid—Ansset’s voice could still do that, especially when he was imitating Mikal’s most terrifying command voice.

“Yes, sir,” Calip said. “I’m sorry.”

“Has anyone told you not to take orders from me?”

Summoning his courage, Calip said, “Sir, it’s only proper for me to advise you when I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Ansset asked. “Do you think I lived in the palace all those years without learning how to take care of myself?”

Calip shook his head.

“When I ask for something, your only duty, Calip, is to find the quickest way to do it. What room is Josif in?”

And Calip told him. But his voice was trembling with anger. “You listen to the wrong people too often, sir,” Calip said. “You should listen to me from time to time.”

It occurred to Ansset that Calip might be right. After all, Mikal and Riktors had listened to all their advisers, all the time, before making important decisions. While Ansset had gradually been closing himself off to everyone but Kyaren and, in the last few days, Josif. But in this case Calip’s advice was unwelcome and inappropriate. Legally Ansset was an adult. It was none of Calip’s business—it was a matter for friends.