Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
Fragments spun across the sky, glittering shards of bloody light, edged like knives.
Chunks rained from the top of ’lings, bounding, shattering, ricocheting in hissing trajectories.
Against the sky the twin tines of the Enigma shouted, a howling cataract of threat and danger.
The Translator, set at the top of its volume, roared.
‘You’d think after all this time they could get it right
.’ Donatella’s voice become the voice of a giant.
Then ‘
That was petulant of you
.’ Donatella’s monstrous voice again.
Then ‘
It pisses me off when they don’t know who I am
….’ Donatella’s voice. As it had been Lim’s voice, that other time.
On the height, two figures staggered to their feet, one of them carrying a rifle. A spinning shard took off his head, the shard no redder than the blood that spouted high in a momentary jet. The other figure fell and was swallowed up in a dancing fountain of razor-edged boulders.
Where Tasmin and the others clung, the earth heaved and hit them in the face, falling away beneath them again, shaking, again, again, again.
Then silence.
Vivian, Miles, Donatella, Tasmin, Clarin, Jamieson.
The viggies had gone.
Vivian, Miles, Donatella, Tasmin, Clarin …
‘Where’s Jamieson?’ grated Tasmin. ‘Where is he?’
‘He was right behind me,’ Clarin sobbed. ‘Right behind me.’ She levered herself to her feet, staggering. ‘Back there.’
Back there was only piled crystal.
From behind a tumble of sanguinary glass, glittering with malice, a dusty thing rose to its feet, teeth exposed in a grimace of hate. It put a weapon to its shoulder and snarled at them through the blood on its face. ‘Stand where you are.’
‘I have to find Jamieson,’ said Tasmin stupidly. ‘I’ve got to find him.’
‘I said stand where you are! Or I’ll shoot the lot of you.’
‘Spider Geroan,’ Donatella whispered. ‘Oh, God. Spider Geroan.’
‘Get over here,’ Spider said, gesturing with the weapon at Clarin. ‘Get over here, or I’ll kill the rest of them right now, starting with him!’
As though hypnotized, Clarin moved toward him.
‘Clarin! No!’ Tasmin’s voice.
She twitched.
‘Keep moving, girl, or I’ll take him out. I swear I will.’
She moved on. When she was within reach of him, he grabbed her, turning her to face them, one of his arms around her throat, the other fumbling to place a knife at the side of her face.
‘Now,’ said Spider Geroan. ‘Who did that?’
‘Who … who did what?’ Donatella asked.
‘Who set off that thing!’
‘No one,’ she said. ‘It just blew.’
The knife at Clarin’s face made a tiny motion and she cried put, a thin, black trickle oozing down her cheek.
‘None of that!’ he grated. ‘Somebody did it.’
Tasmin struggled to make his voice calm. The man before him was mad. Perhaps had always been mad. ‘Clarin went up to tell Jamieson and Don that the Enigma doesn’t act rationally,’ he said. ‘Vivian brought us that message. We didn’t know it before….’
‘So you got scared and ran, and that did it,’ Geroan asserted, moving the knife again. Clarin cried out again, a high, toneless shriek.
‘It was already doing it,’ Don said. ‘Couldn’t you feel it? The shaking never really stopped!’
Spider breathed heavily for a moment. First, he wanted to get even with whichever one of them had done it to him. Then he wanted to do this girl. Then … then he’d figure out what next. In the meantime, he moved the knife again, almost reflexively, hearing the answering cry of pain with something approaching pleasure.
Tasmin’s stomach clenched and he bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming.
‘Distract him,’ murmured Don. ‘Think of something.’
‘I have to find Jamieson,’ Tasmin called frantically. ‘Or none of us can get out of here.’
Spider looked up, the knife stopped moving. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Let me find him,’ Tasmin shrieked. ‘He’s like my son.’
In the shadows of the rocks, Bondri Gesel. ‘Like his son? What does that mean? Let me alone.’ This to a giligee who was stanching the blood from a cut on his shoulder. ‘Let me alone and find this Jamieson. He is one of Tasmin Ferrence’s troupe, and the debt is not yet paid.’
‘He could be your son and it wouldn’t matter,’ Spider snarled lifting the hand with the knife to wipe his own eyes. He felt no pain from the cuts on his face and neck, but the blood was a nuisance and made him irritable. ‘He could be your brother or your mother and it wouldn’t matter. You’ve been a bother, Tripsinger. You and the Explorer there. I’ve come to stop the bother.’
He choked Clarin against his chest with his knife hand and picked up the rifle once more. There were too many of them to play with. He would save only one. The girl. Clarin. Though he didn’t feel like it, really. Maybe he would, later.
In the shadows of the rocks, Bondri Gesel. ‘That Loudsinger is going to kill them,’ he roared at the top of his song-sack. ‘The debt is coming unstuck again; get rid of that Loudsinger with the weapon.’
Something seized Spider’s knife hand and tore it away from Clarin’s face. Clarin rolled away, and as Spider leaped toward her, he tripped over something and fell down. It was a furry thing, and it didn’t get out of his way. Another furry thing was hanging on the end of the rifle and he couldn’t raise it. Something grabbed him by his legs and sank needle teeth into his thighs. There was no pain, but the thing hung on him, handicapping his movement. Another thing grabbed for the rifle, two more, tearing it away from him. The things clinging to his legs tripped him again. Dozens more of them sat on him. One stared deep into his eyes, brushing his forehead with long, feathery things growing out of its head. He struggled, but there were too many of them.
‘This one is defective,’ said the senior giligee. ‘Bondri Gesel, this Loudsinger is defective. He has no pain feelings at all. Perhaps that is why he acts as he does.’
Bondri regarded the Loudsinger with disfavor. The Prime Song urged good returned for good, and when possible, good returned as an example for others, even when bad had been intended. However, the song also directed that those who kill without good reason must be disposed of in order that others may live in tranquility. Then there was the question of the taboo. There was no good reason to break the taboo for this man. Now he looked down into Spider Geroan’s expressionless eyes and attempted to apply the Song.
‘Can you fix him?’ he sang. ‘Can you fix him so he can feel?’
‘Simple,’ caroled the giligee.
‘Well, then, fix him,’ he said, with a sense of satisfaction that he did not even attempt to understand. ‘And when you have finished, tell the troupe they can eat him.’
By the time the first astonished screams came from Spider Geroan, Tasmin and the others had found Jamieson and carried him far enough away from the Enigma to avoid any further ‘tumble down.’ When they had gone far enough that they could hear no further noise from that direction, they slumped on the flat, motionless earth without moving, watching in dull amazement as a giligee everted her pouch over Clarin’s wounded face and began to mend it.
Jamieson lay nearby, a circle of giligees around him. He was, according to Bondri, somewhat broken, but the giligees thought he could be fixed.
One of those giligees, at Vivian’s suggestion, had shown Tasmin what was in her pouch. ‘It isn’t finished yet,’ she had apologized. ‘But it’s developing nicely. The female Loudsinger says it is your young?’ What was there was very small, but very pink and lively.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Tasmin said over and over. ‘I can’t believe it.’
Bondri could not figure out why he could not believe it. He had seen it. So had everyone else. And they had sung it to him two or three times. Bondri was getting impatient. He had not raised the question of the captive song, but he nudged Vivian from time to time, until at last she cleared her throat.
‘Tasmin. Bondri asks that you free the song you have captive.’
‘It’s the only proof I’ve got,’ Donatella objected.
‘No one’s going to believe just that,’ Clarin said. ‘We’ve got nothing, Don. The Enigma blew. It didn’t talk to you.’
‘It did before,’ she cried.
Bondri inflated his sack. These people did not sing in an orderly fashion. They did not get things straightened out and properly harmonized; they jumped from one thing to another, over and over. ‘Please,’ he boomed. ‘One thing at a time. First, the captive song. Then what other things are of concern.’
‘The record of the viggy music is no good to us,’ said Tasmin. ‘Come on, Don. They’ve saved our lives.’
‘All right,’ she cried. ‘I don’t care. I was probably deluded anyhow.’
Tasmin opened the machine. ‘Would you like us to erase it?’
‘Erase? I would like you to set it free!’
Vivian reached across Tasmin’s hands to press the controls. ‘Let it play out, Tas. Then burn the cube. That’s what they do with their dead. The cube will be dead then, and the song will be free.’
‘So.’ Bondri nodded his approval. ‘We will join the song.’
As it played from the synthesizer, the viggies sang with it. Am-dar-ououm. A song of quiet. When it was done, Tasmin placed the cube in the fire where it expired in a flash of sparks.
‘So.’Bondri sighed.
‘Why did the Enigma blow?’ Tasmin asked Bondri, singing it.
‘Because it is the Mad One, which has two minds. You heard it. On your machine.’
‘On the machine?’
‘On your machine. Which speaks in Loudsinger language with the voice of that one.’ He pointed to Donatella.
Tasmin clutched his head. ‘It uses your voice, Don?’
‘It uses whoever’s voice is using it. When Lim had it, it used his.’
‘Then that bellowing from the translator, it wasn’t you?’
‘It was the Mad One,’ sang Bondri.
‘It was angry that you did not address it by name. You, female Loudsinger,’ he pointed to Don, ‘had asked it before what its name is, but you did not remember….’
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.
Chowdri was annoyed. These people didn’t understand anything! ‘Bondri and I will sing it to you,’ he chanted. ‘Now listen!
‘You came to the Enigma before. Months ago. You used a stolen song to quiet the skin of the Enigma, is that not so? That is so. Then you asked it a question. You asked it what name it had for itself.’
Donatella nodded. Tasmin brought himself out of his self-absorption and listened. Even Clarin half sat up, making the giligee beside her snort in disapproval.
‘The Enigma replied,’ sang Chowdri. ‘We heard it do so. It sang, “Messengers know to whom they come.” ’
‘Was that a reply?’ chanted Tasmin.
‘It was the name the Enigma called itself.
Messengers know to whom they come
. Perhaps the Enigma thinks it is a messenger to all the Presences, and so it says this mad thing.
‘Then the female told it something. “I am not one of the usual messengers,” and the Enigma replied, “None of them are.” There are no usual messengers to the Enigma. Messengers do not come to the Enigma. Thinking of this made the Enigma angry, and you, you female Loudsinger, wisely you went away very quickly. Is this not a true song?’
‘It is a true song,’ sang Donatella in a tone of resignation. ‘That’s what happened.’
‘This time,’ sang Bondri, ‘you came again and quieted the skin. It is a sunny day, much light flows into the Enigma making it hot. The Enigma is awake and irritable. It expected you to address it by name. It had told you its name. You did not address it by name. You merely went on with skin quieting, even though the Enigma was awake. It became irritated….’
‘You mean that’s what happened with Lim? He did the same thing?’ Tasmin’s jaw dropped. ‘It wasn’t because he stopped following the score?’
‘When the Presence wakes, you must call it by name,’ sang Chowdri and Bondri together, the troupe behind them in full chorus. ‘Every child knows that!’
Silence, while they thought about it. It was Clarin who asked the question at last. ‘Then all we had to do was call it what it told us its name was?
Messengers know to whom they come?’
‘Perhaps,’ sang Chowdri, solo voice. ‘Except that the Mad One is mad.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It changes what it calls itself. Sometimes every hour, every day. Sometimes not so often. And sometimes it will not tell anyone what its name is.’
‘So,’ said Don. ‘It got angry, and it blew.’
‘It snapped its fingers at you,’ sang Chowdri. ‘And we had only finished cleaning up from last time.’
‘It shouted,’ Tasmin said. ‘It shouted out that after all this time, we ought to be able to get it right.’
‘One half of it sang that,’ agreed Bondri.
‘Then it was the other half that said, ”That was petulant of you.” ’
‘True. The other half is less irritable. It remonstrates with the first half. But it was the first half of the Enigma that said, “I become annoyed when these creatures do not know who I am.” The Enigma said these same things to Lim Terree. The Mad One sometimes says the same things over and over. We believe the Mad One is mad because it has two halves that are partly separate and partly the same.’
‘It was there all the time,’ Tasmin said. ‘I heard those words, but I thought it was Lim who said them.’
‘You could have asked us,’ said Bondri irrationally. The other Great Ones are not mad, most of them. Some are silly, but most of them are not mad. Except that they are very irritated just now, and it must be because of the things the Loudsingers are doing!’
‘But you’ve never spoken to us before,’ Clarin sang. ‘Why?’
‘Because you do not sing the truth,’ Bondri chanted, the troupe joining him to make this manifest. ‘To sing to those who do not sing the truth, this is taboo.’
‘But you broke this taboo!’
‘Because of the debt we owed for Prime Priest Favel, for your brother who released him from captivity in the long ago. A debt of honor takes precedence over taboo.’ He stood up, gathering his troupe around him. ‘Now we go, and the taboo is once again as it should be. I have paid the debt of Prime Priest Favel. Vivian and the child are saved. You, Tasmin Ferrence, are saved. Your almost child is also saved, or will be when it is finished. I have returned good for good.’