Earthsong

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “You will tell us who you are associated with,” he assured her. “Right now you think you won’t. But you will.”

  “We have ways of making you talk?” She played it straight; she didn’t add the trite accent.

  “We do. Legal ways.”

  “Well, then, for heaven’s sakes, let’s get on with it!” Her eyes crinkled at the corners with tiny laugh lines, and her voice held no hint of the sarcasm he knew had to be behind her words. “Since I don’t seem to be able to meet your standards on my own, let’s get me some help; bring on your thumbscrews, or whatever.”

  Jay was angry with her; it was time to get past this obligatory stuff and get the real interrogation started. He set his teeth and jerked his head at Benny, who fired the closing questions: one, two, three.

  “Who, precisely, did Marthajean Brown betray, Miss St. Andrews?”

  “I won’t tell you that.”

  “What is the ‘cause’ she endangered?”

  “I won’t tell you that.”

  “And why won’t you?”

  “I won’t tell you that.”

  Jay sighed, and stood up. This was silly. It was boring. It was insulting. She was in serious trouble. She was locked up in an effing prizpod. And she sat there beaming at them, the perfect hostess, all charm and gracious living, so terribly sorry to have to refuse them anything, like the Queen of the effing May! Who the hell did she think she was? He’d had all of it he intended to tolerate.

  “Come on, Benny,” he mumbled, and then, “We’ll just step outside and get the thumbscrews, Cleo, and we’ll be right back. We have a couple of forms to fill out.”

  “I understand, officer.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “And I wish you the very best of luck in your endeavors.”

  Outside the prizpod, on the apartment’s small balcony overlooking the street, Benny shuddered and took a great gulp of the air. It was polluted, but at least it was fresh. “I hated that,” he said. “Kind of like being inside … oh, one of those bubbles in seaweed, maybe. You know? The kind kids like to pop? Those slick gray walls … I know they don’t feel slimy, but they look like they would. Everything on the other side all distorted and blurry. And the noise. Think about being shut up in one of those for years at a time.”

  “Easy to avoid,” Jay told him. “Just don’t do any crimes.”

  “She hasn’t done any, and she’s in one.”

  Zlerigau ignored that, and entered into his wrist computer the codes that would summon the interrodoctor and remind him to bring along all the necessary forms.

  “I’m not going to like this, either,” Benny pointed out.

  “I suppose you won’t; you’ve always been a sucker for pretty women, Benny. But it’s got to be done. Hell, you saw her—she was just playing with us. Just having fun, at our expense. We could have gone on doing that silly number for days, without ever getting anywhere useful!”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “Well? Would you prefer thumbscrews?”

  Benny shook his head. Of course he wouldn’t. The mindtrap was painless; the woman would feel absolutely nothing, and would not even remember the experience. Still, he wished there was some way he could stay out here and let the other two men go on with the unsavory process without him. She looked too much like Annalaura. Even dressed as she was, even shorn very nearly bald as she was, she had Annalaura’s heart-shaped face, and the same huge eyes, and the same soft low-pitched voice. When she talked, he could imagine easily that it was his wife’s voice he heard. It was one thing watching a mindtrap fitted to some big hulking thug that had raped a little old lady or murdered some kid; this was going to be different.

  “You know what I’d like to do to the Vice-effing-President?” he asked the world at large.

  “You’re wrong, Benny,” said Zlerigau. “That poor no-neuron just happened to stumble into the middle of some kind of enormous mess—which Cleo Baby is going to tell us about. Sooner or later, it would have come out, and the longer it took the more likely it was to be a real catastrophe. The Veep just speeded things up a little.”

  “Yeah, but if it had been some other set of circumstances we might have been mindtrapping a man instead of … a lady.”

  Jay chuckled. Benedict Mondorro was one of the best. One of the very best. But it was lucky for the population he served that ninety-seven percent of all crime was committed by males.

  They didn’t get back to report to the President that afternoon after all, and the memo that presented Dellwilder with their reasons had made the President’s face go suddenly white and old. It was late in the following day before the report was made, and Jay Zlerigau made it alone, Benny’s security clearance having run out only four hours into the investigation. And Jay arrived at the Oval Office in bad shape; he’d had to call on the agency doctor twice for stimulants to keep him from falling asleep in the marathon of meetings that had followed Cleo St. Andrews’s confession.

  Meetings during which very serious consideration had been given to the contingency plan in which the Vice President is permanently removed from the scene. But a thorough look at the files on the man who would replace a deceased Aron Strabida had revealed numerous problems; in the end, it had been decided that a brief illness would suffice. Strabida was now resting comfortably in a luxury medsuite in Virginia where he could do no harm, sedated but still available at a moment’s notice, with Benny keeping him company; Zlerigau fiercely envied them both.

  “Well, Jay?” The President was abrupt; it was appropriate. “Let’s have it.” And then, as the silence continued, “Well? Are you here to report or not? I accept your reasons for this delay, and I’ve been patient, but enough is enough.”

  “Mr. President,” Jay answered, trying to choose, each time he spoke one, the perfect word, “It’s a cliché—but it’s the only way to put it: I don’t know how to begin. Much less how to go on with it.”

  “I’ll help you,” said the President curtly. “You couldn’t get the woman to cooperate. You applied a mindtrap. You—”

  “We didn’t have to apply it, sir. We only had to show it to her. She wasn’t especially brave; she caved in immediately when she saw it.” It was the only small bit of satisfaction available to him, and he savored it; he would always treasure his memory of the terror in Cleo’s eyes and her abrupt collapse from elegant rhetoric into frantic pleading. He only wished he’d made her plead a little longer; if he’d known what was coming, he would have made it harder on her. A lot harder.

  “All right,” the President conceded. “Fine. Revise it, then. You showed her a mindtrap, she quit resisting you and told you everything she knew, and now you are here to tell me everything she knew. I see no problem about how to begin except your dawdling. Begin at the beginning of what she said; go on to the end. Nothing could be simpler.”

  “Nothing about this report is going to be simple,” Jay said grimly. “I’m damned near unable to say the necessary words—and you’re not going to believe them when I do say them.”

  “Does that change anything? Will it make any of the words you’re about to say to me different words?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then get on with it! What did she say to you that was so important that it brought …” The President stopped; there were names you did not say aloud, even in the Oval Office. “That made those meetings necessary. What, exactly, did she say? In three or four sentences, please. I’m not interested in a display of your rhetorical skills.”

  “All right, Mr. President. I’ll try. But I must warn you—with all due respect, sir—to let me just say them straight through. Interrupting will only confuse me.”

  The President’s fists struck the top of his desk, but he said nothing. He glared at his most senior and trusted agent, and he waited in silence.

  Jay collected his thoughts for a moment, and then he said, “Here we go; one two three four. ONE: Cleo St. Andrews confessed to us that the women of the Lines—all of them, sir!—h
ave for centuries been running a secret conspiracy that stretches throughout the entire solar system. TWO: That a serious federal investigation of the murder of Marthajean Brown—not a woman of the Lines, but related to them through the PICOTA, and a coconspirator—would have put that conspiracy at risk. THREE: That St. Andrews confessed to the murder in an effort to forestall such an investigation. And FOUR: That her confession was an impulsive act, not cleared with any of her colleagues, and a mistake, since she has brought about all by herself the very disaster she was willing to sacrifice her life to prevent.” He paused and took a deep breath. “There you are, Mr. President; four sentences.”

  The silence went on and on; Jay was in no way surprised by that. He had expected it.

  “Nothing that … extravagantly absurd,” declared the President, finally, “could possibly be true.”

  “I’m sorry to have to disagree, sir. The fact is, nothing that extravagantly absurd could possibly be false. Nobody could make up anything that absurd. In spite of every rational consideration, it’s as true as it is true that I sit here before you now.”

  “Perhaps you are a simulacrum, Zlerigau.”

  “And perhaps you are, Mr. President. It’s equally likely.”

  I could be a simulacrum, he thought. Certainly he was not the same man who had sat here and talked to the President with such serene self-confidence about Plan A and Plan B a few days ago. He was a man in some kind of shock, he was reasonably sure. The world he knew had been a rug under his feet. Giving him purchase. Letting his feet and his brain know everything was all right. And then that rug had been pulled out from under him.

  “What kind of …” Dellwilder choked on the words, and then got them out, half-strangled, “… secret conspiracy?”

  Zlerigau knew he had no choice. Spit it out, he told himself. Just spit it out and wait for the storm to break over you.

  “Mr. President, those unspeakable Lingoe bitches have found a way to wipe out hunger.” He saw the President’s mouth open; he brought both hands up sharply, cutting off the interruption. “Pretending to be music teachers, Mr. President, they have taught a large percentage of the citizens of this planet—and sizable percentages, we’re not yet sure precisely how large, of the citizens in the colonies—how to live by substituting music for food.” He swallowed hard, and finished, “They call it audiosynthesis, Mr. President.”

  There. He’d said it. He braced himself, and the President didn’t disappoint him.

  Tobias Dellwilder cried out; it was the sound of a man pushed past endurance. “God damn it, Jay!” he shouted. “You would have to be part of a conspiracy yourself—a conspiracy to drive me mad—to stand there in my face and spout such shit! I’ve been walking the floor of this office, waiting for somebody to tell me—to tell me, the President of the United States of Earth!—what the hell was going on. Trying to maintain some kind of appearances. And when you finally get here you tell me a thing like that! Have you gone completely out of your mind?”

  “I know how you feel, sir,” said Jay helplessly. “I don’t blame you a bit. I’ve heard all of this now several times, from several different persons. I know it to be the truth. But let me tell you, sir, I don’t believe it. I’ve seen the figures … I’ve read the reports … I still react to it exactly as you are reacting now. I cannot make myself look at it as anything but the ravings of someone demented. Demented. And not very bright. Nevertheless, Mr. President, nevertheless—it is God’s truth.”

  And he added, softly, “Remember, sir—it was you who told me solemnly that the Lingoe bitches could do magic. That they were witches. Remember? And you were absolutely right.”

  “Jay!”

  The President leaned over the desk, then realized that he couldn’t reach across it and came striding out from behind it to grip Zlerigau by both forearms. “You listen to me!” he shouted, as the agent tried, and failed, to pull away. “There cannot be a conspiracy, a conspiracy that size, to do good!”

  That surprised Zlerigau; it wasn’t on his list. He had been prepared for the reactions everyone else had had. Human beings living and thriving without food? Impossible! An interplanetary conspiracy of women kept secret for centuries? Fairy tales! Come on! Smirk, smirk … snicker, snicker. Dellwilder’s reaction was a new one.

  “I don’t understand you, sir,” he said slowly, disengaging himself as courteously as he could; the man holding him was, after all, the President. He couldn’t just slap his hands away and shove his face in, as he would have done with anybody else. “You’re going to have to help me out with that one.”

  “Jay,” said Tobias Dellwilder, stepping back two paces, his arms falling to his sides, “all of human society, all of human culture, rests on the knowledge we have … oh, we don’t admit it, of course, but we all have it … that human beings are only capable of really buckling down and working together in groups when their goals are evil. They’ll do it for money or power or conquest … they’ll do it to be famous, to get themselves on the threedies and the newspapes … But a conspiracy to feed everybody? No, Jay. That’s not possible. That is a thing that could not happen.”

  Jay realized he had been holding his breath while Dellwilder babbled; he let it go now with a long sigh. Behind the drugs they’d pumped into him he could feel the hooks of the exhaustion that was clinging to him, waiting to be turned loose. And he wasn’t sure exactly how to handle this. Like Benedict Mondorro, he was monumentally unimpressed by the series of men who had held the office of US President over the past several centuries; no really top man would touch the office. On the other hand, it remained one of the most important positions, in symbolic terms, that a man could fill. You didn’t like to think that the President was really stupid. It was a tremendous relief to him when he saw Dellwilder’s face change and realized that the man had suddenly understood.

  “Dear Christ, Jay!” breathed the President. He had used more curses, taken the Almighty’s name in vain more times, during this one conversation, than Zlerigau had heard him do in all the years he’d known him. “I’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “I’ve got it backwards. Let’s assume, just for one minute, just for the purpose of discussion, that this idea—feeding people with music—isn’t a fantasy. That it’s not like telling kids about the Easter Bunny. Let’s say that, as you appear to be telling me, it’s actually true. In that case, Jay, my God, whoever controls that process has the ultimate power! That’s why they did it—not for good, of course not! They did it for power!”

  Whoever controls that process? How? How do you control it? Jay thought. Aloud, he said, “Almost sir.”

  “Almost? Why almost?”

  “They tell me that finding a way to substitute something for water would be, as you put it, the ultimate power. But this comes very, very close.”

  “Jay, it would mean … Wait. Do we know what it would mean?”

  “No.” Zlerigau coughed, his throat raw from the drugs and from all the useless talking. “No. Nor did those goddamn women. We asked them, ‘Did you have any idea what you were doing? What would happen if you did it?’ And they admitted that they’d had no idea at all. ‘We knew it would change things,’ they said. It would change things! But they went right ahead, ignorant as shit, tampering with the very heart of all human life. Women! Damn them!” There were tears in his eyes, he realized; he didn’t care. “Can you believe it, Dellwilder? The Lingoe men—they didn’t know … they didn’t know anything!”

  “Never mind that,” Dellwilder said. “I can believe that; it doesn’t even surprise me. Are you telling me that the group you’ve been meeting with—the best people alive—are as ignorant as that pack of witches? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. In a way, we know what it means. In broad general terms. The computers are running the specifics right now.” He didn’t tell the President what the women had said about that: “Every time you put a new variable into the model the computer gives you a radically diffe
rent output … and there are literally millions of appropriate variables.” Instead, he said, “We know one thing for sure. We know that if audiosynthesis is as widespread as the women claim, what it means is just plain the end of the world. The end of this world, sir. All of human life from the beginning of time, all of culture, all of economics, everything, has revolved around the need for food. Take that away … you don’t have human life any longer.”

  “What do you have?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. President. I don’t think anybody does … maybe the Lingoe bitches do.”

  The President had been standing all this time; he sat down suddenly, like something deflating.

  Jay knew how his mind must be racing, how the questions would be flooding him, how the implications would be pouring in, each with its own wave of questions. There was nothing he could do to help, except by giving Dellwilder the files he had brought, where the information was set down in a manner that allowed you to move from item to item at your own pace instead of just being buried in it.

  He set the chiplet down beside the other man, saying, “Here are the reports from the meetings, Mr. President, with statistics and rough extrapolations … that kind of thing. It’s all preliminary, of course, but it organizes the chaos a little. There’s also a file on there from the women … something they gave us when we confronted them with Cleo St. Andrews’s confession. And there’s a file that will absolutely amaze you …”

  “More than I’m already amazed … that’s not possible.”

  “It’s a different kind of amazement. It’s the record of the financial transactions these women have carried on all these many hundreds of years.”

  “Jay, it’s only been decades since they were given their adult status back. They can’t have done that much financially.”

  The agent looked at him, and smiled. “Think,” he said. “If you were part of a large group that every week received sums of money to buy food, but you didn’t need any food except just a little for purposes of deception. And every week—for centuries, Mr. President—you put almost all of that money into investments and projects of your own choosing. If you let the invested money sit and draw compound interest. If the projects you chose were the worst and most destructive kinds of social ones … like supplying millions and millions of meals for people in famine areas that you hadn’t yet been able to get to with your training in not needing food. Like blanketing the solar system with supplies of vaccines and medicines, all from an ‘anonymous’ donor, assumed to be male. Like buying up businesses that trade in weapons, Mr. President, and simply shutting them down, letting them sit idle, with phony excuses. Like—” He stopped. “I’m sorry. It’s all on the chiplet, sir. For you to examine at your own convenience.”