Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
Don cried out, a pleading sound of negation. Tasmin thought bleakly of what was in store for Jubal, his mind frantically searching for some way to stop the departure of the viggies.
‘There is still a debt,’ he gasped. ‘A debt owed by Bondri Gesel.’
Bondri drew himself up, fangs exposed. ‘What debt!’
‘When my brother released Prime Priest Favel from captivity, a debt was incurred. Is this not so?’
‘It is so.’
‘And is a song not as important as a Prime Priest?’
Bondri cocked his head. It was not a question he had considered before. A giligee trilled a response, a female took up the refrain, then two males in countermelody. They sang it for some time. Finally Bondri responded. ‘A song is almost as important as a Prime Priest.’
‘Did I not free a song from captivity, Bondri Gesel? Do you not owe me a debt?’
This time the singing went on for the better part of an hour. Tasmin went to the place Jamieson lay, running his hands along the boy’s face and body. ‘Will he live?’ he whispered to the intent giligees.
‘Oh, yes,’ one of them trilled in return. ‘He will live. I think we have him mostly fixed. Tomorrow, maybe, he will walk.’ She sat with her pouch everted, and Tasmin withdrew his gaze from that mass of thin tendrils that had penetrated Jamieson’s body and were busy deep inside, doing incredible things.
He went to sit beside Clarin. The wounds on her face were closed. She lay huddled in a blanket, shivering from time to time. He put his hand under the blanket, on her neck. She jerked away from him.
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, Clarin. All right.’
She began to cry. He gathered her up in his arms.
‘Shhh.’ His heart turned over at the sound of her weeping.
‘No one ever hurt me before. Not purposely.’
‘He was a machine, Clarin. Pretend it was a machine. Not anyone worth hating. He’s dead.’
‘They ate him!’ she turned her head away, retching.
‘It’s a meat-poor planet, Clarin. According to Vivian, they eat very little meat. They eat fresh fish whenever they get to the seashore, or whenever their fisher kin run inland with a catch, and they dry fish to carry with them. They don’t eat carrion or carrion eaters, which eliminates a lot of the other wildlife.’
‘It just … just takes getting used to. What are we going to do now?’
‘As soon as the viggies quit singing, I’ll let you know.’
When they finished singing, it was to announce that freeing the song had indeed brought a debt with it. Neither of the troupe leaders was happy about this. Tasmin wondered how much of the decision had been brought about by viggy curiosity concerning the Loudsingers. Perhaps the troupes had not wanted to return immediately to the taboo.
He said nothing of this. Instead, he drew Clarin up beside him, held her until she quit shaking, and then said, ‘Bondri Gesel, Troupe leader, great singer. I beg a boon from you. I beg that you listen while I try to sing truth to you. Me, and this person with me here.’ He gestured at Clarin. ‘Jamieson sings more truth than I do, but he cannot sing just now. Will you listen while I try?’
Bondri, annoyed, conferred with the troupe. The troupe was a good deal more compliant than he was.
‘What are we singing?’ whispered Clarin, a trace of color coming back into her cheeks.
‘We’re singing the destruction of Jubal,’ Tasmin said. ‘If we don’t get some help here, everything we feared is still going to come to pass.’
In later years the troupes of viggies who moved from the pillars of the Jammers to the towers of the east, resang on festival occasions the First Truth Singing of the Loudsingers. Not that it was a very polished performance, but it rang with a passionate veracity that the viggies much admired. Of course, there were only two who really sang, plus one who gave them some musical support, so the ultimate truth of the song might have been in doubt, were it not for verification by later happenings. Nonetheless, the viggies remembered that night.
Tasmin stood up and sang the story of the PEC, of human exploitation of many planets. He sang of the Prime Song of humans, and of the disobedience that many showed that Song. Beside him, Clarin – the viggies assumed she was his mate, they sang so alike and so well together – sang of greed and pride, things that the viggies understood to some extent. She sang of lying, which they did not understand but were willing to take on faith. Then together they sang of what they had learned, of the lies told about the Presences, of the great destruction that was sure to come.
At this point, the viggies joined the song, query and reply, antiphonally, circling, circling again, as it grew more and more true. ‘If,’ they sang, ‘then what?’ and Tasmin replied. ‘Then if,’ they sang, ‘what then?’ and Clarin told them.
They sang of the good guys, Jamieson who lay wounded with the giligees working on him, Thyle Vowe, Grand Master of the Tripsingers, who worshipped the truth – Clarin sang this, much to Tasmin’s surprise – of Tripsingers and Explorers, and those people of peace who tilled the soil and loved Jubal. These people would not be allowed to stay, they would go in any case, but they would not want Jubal destroyed behind them.
And lastly, they sang the names of villains. Spider Geroan, who had been healed of his affliction and then eaten. The Crystallites, who were liars. The troopers who blocked the way east. And finally, Harward Justin, Planetary Manager, who would destroy the Presences, very soon unless something was done.
And finished singing.
There was a long silence, unbroken. None of the members ventured song. At last it was the senior giligee, the one who carried Prime Priest Favel’s brain-bird, who called in a high, clear soprano that soared above them like a gyre-bird.
‘Come, Troupe leader. We must go to the Highmost Darkness, Lord of the Gyre-Birds, Smoke Master, the one the humans call Black Tower, and ask it what to do.’
They came to the Black Tower on the following day. Jamieson was unable to ride. Tasmin had held the boy before him on the saddle, cradling him like a baby while he slept.
The troupes of Bondri and Chowdri had come by their own paths, swifter trails than the one followed by the humans. When Donatella and Clarin arrived, some distance ahead of Tasmin, Jamieson, and the spare mules, they found the troupes already singing.
The humans made camp. None of them had eaten recently, and food, while uninteresting, was a necessity. The smell of heating rations woke even Jamieson.
‘I thought I was dead,’ he said wonderingly. ‘It came down on top of me.’
‘You probably would have been,’ Tasmin whispered, lifting the boy’s head to the cup. ‘Except for the giligees.’
‘Except for the what?’
A long explanation followed, which had not really ended when Bondri Gesel came into their campsite, shaking his head.
‘We sang to the Black Tower,’ he chanted in a weary monotone. ‘It did not want to listen. It is full of annoyance and irritation. It is worse than when we were at the one you call the Watcher. It is not the skin that speaks, nor the deep parts. It is some middle part that is new to us, a part full of questions and anger. Something has happened to make it very angry, Tasmin Ferrence. Presences have been bothered!’
‘Bothered?’ asked Tasmin, uncertain what the viggy meant.
‘To the north. Loudsingers came. They made noises and shattered the fingers of many Presences, passing through the air in the confusion. The Presences were slow to wake, but now they are wakening. On all the world, they are wakening.’
‘The people following us,’ said Don. ‘I wondered how they got onto us so fast. They came in by air!’
Bondri went on. ‘We have sung to the Highmost Darkness. We have told it everything we know. Then we sang everything you sang to us. It wants to sing to you.’
‘Me?’ Tasmin asked.
‘You. And the Explorer and the young female and this one. All of you.’
Jamieson heaved himself into a sitting position. ‘I’m not sure I’m up to singing.’ He was staring at the viggy in complete absorption, turning to Tasmin. ‘Who did you say this was?’
Tasmin introduced them. ‘Bondri, this is Jamieson, my friend. Bondri Gesel, leader of the viggies.’
The young human and the viggy nodded their heads precisely at the same moment and to the same angle. Evidently ceremony knew no species. Tasmin fought down a snort of bleak amusement.
‘Bring him anyhow,’ said the viggy. ‘The Black Tower wants to look at him.’
‘Look?’ faltered Jamieson. ‘They can see?’
‘Not with eyes,’ admitted Bondri. ‘But they see, yes. When they want to.’
‘And you’ve told them all about what’s happening, with BDL and all?’
‘We are not sure Highmost Darkness, Smoke Master, Lord of the Gyre-Birds understands, because we do not understand. That is why it wants to see you.’ And Bondri turned away, stamping his feet a little as he went, head high and throat sack half distended.
‘He’s miffed,’ said Jamieson in awe.
‘He is that,’ agreed Tasmin as he got to his feet and joined the others in a straggling procession toward the Black Tower, the music box with the translator program at the ready.
‘How is it,’ the Tower asked, after laborious introductions had taken place, ‘that you have not proclaimed (sung, announced) our sentience before – if you have known it (contained a concept for) as you say you have known it.’
Bondri translated this into Loudsinger language. They checked it against the translator. Viggy and machine were more or less in agreement. Bondri was waiting somewhat impatiently for a human response.
Tasmin looked helplessly toward Clarin. They were assembled so near the monstrous monolith that it actually seemed to bend above them. The sounds that came from it came from here, there, everywhere. They had no sense of location. It was not like looking into a human – or a viggy – face. There was no way in which the question could be simply answered. There was no time for equivocation, for polite, diplomatic evasions. These words were the first between two totally different types of sentient creatures. Though they did not have the language of the viggies, which could speak only truth, Tasmin felt desperately that he should try.
Clarin nodded to him, eyes fastened on his. ‘Tell it,’ she said. ‘Tell it the truth. Find the words, somehow, and tell it the truth.’
‘What do you want me to sing?’ whispered Bondri. ‘It is a very important question the god has asked.’
‘I don’t want you to sing,’ Tasmin cried. ‘I want to tell it myself. Me. And Clarin and Jamieson. I want to tell it exactly what we mean to say!’
‘Do the Loudsingers have the words?’
‘No, Bondri. You know we don’t have the words. We have to have a while to get the words.’
‘Then I will tell the Highmost Darkness that the Loudsinger is preparing an answer.’
The troupe sang a short phrase, three times repeated, and a cascade of sound belled from the Tower.
‘It understands the difficulty this question poses,’ said Bondri. The Great One found intriguing alternatives in encoding it linguistically and can extrapolate there would be alternative possibilities in answer. It allows you time.’
Shaking their heads over this, trying to believe they were living a reality rather than a dream, they gathered around Donatella’s synthesizer. Tasmin bent above the keyboard, making quick notations as the translator gave him each key concept. Clarin was beside him. Jamieson heaved himself up, tottering, and Vivian ran to hold him up.
‘Lie down, young man. You’re not fit to be up.’
Jamieson grinned. ‘You think I’m going to let that old man do all the singing, Vivian?’ He staggered a little. ‘I’ll get stronger if I move around.’
He went to peer over Tasmin’s shoulder. Tasmin looked up, shook his head disapprovingly, then turned back to the machine. After a time, Jamieson leaned closer, to help.
Occasionally the translator beeped, clucked, and refused to offer anything at all. When this happened, Tasmin turned to Bondri and asked, ‘How would you say …’ or ‘Is this how you say …?’ Bondri offered him word or correction, and Tasmin returned to his work.
What concepts would the Black Tower have? No organic ones, surely. One could not talk of hearts, of blood, of pain. Did they feel pain? Did they have honor? Did they understand truth? There were honorifics aplenty, so they had some concept of glory and power, but what did even these mean to them? They did understand beauty, so much was clear. There was not a phrase sung by the viggies that was not beautiful, and that could not be accidental. There was not a word or phrase in a successful Password that was not beautiful either, and that should have told them something. Though perhaps it told them only that viggy and human had similar esthetics.
It emerged that the Presence had no concept of its own crystallinity. Its mind existed within the great crystal as the mind of humans existed within its cells. Was the human mind aware of its cellular nature, of its neurons and receptors? Only from the outside did that kind of awareness come. And what were the minds of the Presences after all but vast arrays of dislocations, molecular vacancies, self-reproducing line, and planar defects generating energy along infinitesimal fault lines, molecular neurons rather than biological ones, atoms of chromium instead of dopamine, with vacancies in the infinite grid serving as receptor cells.
And yet they were aware. They knew inside from outside. They spoke from their own universe to a universe outside themselves. It would suffice – as a starting point.
Slowly, lines of musical notation grew beneath Tasmin’s hands. More slowly yet, the words were chosen.
‘I can’t do that,’ sighed Jamieson, indicating a soaring line of vocalization. He was able to stand without help, able to move with only minor discomfort. Or so he told himself, refusing to admit how much of his competence at the moment was mere adrenaline. But he couldn’t sing that…
‘I can,’ said Clarin. Her voice was factual, without expression, and yet her eyes were alive with concentration.
‘Yes, better let Clarin do that. You take the other part. This will be yours, Clarin,’ Tasmin muttered, slashing the notation pen across the staff, notes blooming in its wake. ‘Here’s another one for you, Clarin. The main theme is mine. I’m leaving the embellishments to you two.’