Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea

by Singer From The Sea(Lit)

  One thing Aufors's men knew about him was that he kept his word. Enkors nodded thoughtfully. "Well, Colonel, if you truly want to know. How old are you now?"

  "Thirty."

  "And who was Lord Paramount when you were born?"

  "Marwell, just as he is now."

  "Well now, I'm forty-some odd, and when I was born Marwell was Lord Paramount. And my father, when he was born Marwell was Lord Paramount. And when his father was born, likewise."

  Aufors considered this, poking the fire with a stick to make the coals flare. "Well, so the Lord Paramount has a long life. He has off-world doctors, you know. They are no doubt well paid to see to it he lives long."

  "Long." Enkors smiled into the flames. "Yes. But my father was fifty when I was born, and his father was sixty when he was born-we Enkors tend to marry late-and any way you add that up, it comes to a hundred fifty years."

  "Still," mused Aufors after a lengthy pause, "we have commoner centenarians on Haven, more than a few, and they don't even have off-world doctors."

  "True," said the Captain, picking up a stick of his own to join in the fire poking. "But y'see, I thought it peculiar, so I went to the Staneburgh registry-that's the name of my village, Staneburgh-where all the births are entered, and I looked up the birth of my pa to count the years, and then his pa, and then, for no particular reason, two more generations back. Every one of them was born as it says right there in black and white, in the reign of His Majesty, Marwell."

  "And how far does that take it back?" murmured Aufors, his eyebrows raised in wonder.

  "That takes it back well over two hundred years. And I couldn't look further, for the books before that have been sent to the archives at Havenor, and the book I was looking in was supposed to have been sent, too, according to the clerk, sent long ago, only Staneburgh's a noplace town in County Southleas-a noplace county, itself-and nobody thought to see to it. Now, o'course, nobody will do it for fear of being blamed for not doing it sooner!"

  "Two hundred years is long," Aufors agreed, though grudgingly. "Very long."

  The Captain nodded, a slow teetering of his head upon his neck, as though to test whether it was still attached. "You're right that it's long. And the Lord Paramount isn't the only one, as I hear tell it."

  "Who else?"

  "Well, there's most all the Dukes of the provinces-which explains why the Duke of Barfezi wiffle-waffled to you-and there's certain ones at court, mostly the ones living around Havenor, all men, and there's this heir, Yugh Delganor, son of the Lord Paramount's brother, and he goes way back, longer than even the Dukes. He's had two or three wives already, and the Lord Paramount's had more than that. Whatever this is, this lengthening, seeming it doesn't work on women, or the Lord Paramount won't share it with his wives, not one.

  "So, there's sayings and stories and a few jokes of a dirty nature-told in whispers as you'd imagine-but the one thing everyone says is that the ones that live long, they're all men, they're all nobles, and they all go through the women, one after another."

  This last remark of Enkors had stuck in Aufors's gizzard, and subsequent to this conversation he had noticed passing allusions and sidelong references he would have missed before. Many people seemed to agree that the Lord Paramount was very, very old. There were quiet comments made at village markets, such as, "You call this chicken young? Why, it's old as the Lord Paramount!" and "If this mutton is lamb, the Lord Paramount is only a hunnert." No one who mentioned the Lord Paramount's long life seemed to have any idea how long it actually was. "Oh, he's nigh a hunnert an some," was as close as Aufors came to getting an estimate when he asked, casually, "How old is he, anyhow?" It seemed that only Enkors had taken the trouble to count up the years, and he had succeeded only because the books of record had not been sent to the archives from Staneburgh. Aufors had subsequently looked up the place. It amounted to one valley and several adjacent ridges enclosing half a dozen farms, one provisioner's shop, and a grist mill.

  Since Aufors began his association with Genevieve with the idea she was to be betrothed, and since Yugh Delganor was somehow involved, Aufors jumped to a reasonable but abhorrent conclusion. Being audacious, which so far had not served him ill, he decided to learn whether an equerry to a duke could gain access to the Havenor archives, as this is where not only the Staneburgh registers but also all other registers had supposedly ended up.

  He went to the palace offices and was directed down several flights of stairs to a maze of tunnels which, so he was told, housed the archives. There, he accosted one of the clerical staff, a dusty and bustling creature with a halo of elf locks, a pale, lined face, and a wild expression.

  "Why, why, what's here for you, Colonel? What's here in the dust, the rust, the musty fust?"

  Aufors chose to ignore this oddity and put on his most boyish and sincere expression. "I'm currently serving as equerry to Lord Dustin, Duke of Langmarsh, and though I do well enough with Langmarshian matters, being a native born and bred, I find I'm not well educated in the history and nobility of the other provinces."

  "You're no more ignorant than most, dumb as a post," said the madman.

  Aufors smiled beneficently. "Maybe so, but I'm a man who likes to know all he can about the job he's doing, so I thought there might be something in the archives that would let me sound less of an idiot. These people at court, they're quick to find you out, I notice, when you don't know what or who you're talking about, and they don't let you forget it if you step wrong!"

  The clerk gave him a sympathetic look, raised his eyebrows almost into his hairline, fluttered his eyelashes and his hands, all preparatory to glancing over his shoulder and skulking into the shadows between two stacks of books. From this refuge he summoned Aufors with a beckoning finger.

  "My supervisor's another one like that! Don't do this and don't do that! He keeps his brains inside his hat, behind the brim, the hell with him the sprat!"

  "You don't like him?" asked Aufors, wondering whether the man had gone mad on the job or been hired because he was mad enough for the job. There were jobs where madness was an asset. The military was full of them.

  "I ask for my vacation, oh, first he says go then he says no. No leave, go grieve. I hate him." He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and counted audibly from one to twenty-five. Then he opened his eyes and said in a quiet voice, "If you promise not to spill the beans, I'll let you look at the machines."

  "Machines?" said Aufors, blankly. He had expected machines no more than madmen.

  The functionary smiled bleakly. "Off-world archive machines, Colonel."

  "I didn't know we had off-world things..."

  "When Lord Paramount says not, the things in storage, he's forgot! But no forbidden off-world thing is forbidden to a king!"

  "Do you make those rhymes up as you go along, or have you got them all memorized?" asked Aufors.

  "A game," said the functionary, flushing. "Sometimes we... we archivists play it together. Because we're bored."

  "For the moment, could we not play? You mentioned machines?"

  "All kinds," said the man sullenly. "Not only medical stuff, but weapons and heavy-duty lifters. Can't say I disagree with having archive machines. Notes one takes and words one jots, but vellum breaks and paper rots. In machines we save the past for that's the only place they last!"

  "You can't stop doing it, can you? What's your name?"

  The strange one glanced over his shoulder, making a face, obviously thinking of the superior aforementioned. "Jeorfy. Jeorfy Bottoms. As for the versifying, well, it gets to be a habit. It's hard to talk like a human being when one hasn't been treated like one for years! Come along. Since everyone on Haven is supposed to be half-witted, the machines have been simplified. No offense, Colonel, but I could teach a pig how to use them in five minutes."

  The clerk led Aufors down a twisty aisle into a half-hidden cubby equipped with chair, desk, and the same kind of keyboard most literate Havenites were taught in school to use for things like b
ills of sale, deeds to land, contracts or marriage agreements, that is, all matters needing clarity and permanent storage. Aufors's family used such a device for breeding records, and after the clerk had explained the common usages of the mechanisms and led Aufors through the process, Aufors had no trouble imitating a man deeply interested in three-hundred-year-old squabbles between Langmarsh and Dania.

  As soon as the doggerel-body was out of sight and hearing, however, Aufors left the screen busy with its noisy reenactment of the battle for Wellsport while he cleared the screen and entered the words "Yugh Delganor."

  "Heir presumptive to the Lord Paramount, son of the Lord Paramount's slightly younger twin brother, Elwin," the screen informed him, going on with a lengthy list of diplomatic and fact-finding missions which the heir had handled for Marwell. The earliest date given was only forty years in the past. Aufors tapped his front teeth with a fingernail, musing, and then keyed in the names of some of the events Delganor was said to have been involved in. A diplomatic mission to Frangia, another to Mahahm. A survey of the Drowned Range off Merdune. Accounts of these missions were complete with dates; the oldest of them dated back a hundred sixty years and gave the Prince's age as thirty. So, he was almost two hundred years old.

  Aufors, humming under his breath, entered "Marwell," and received, "current Lord Paramount of Haven..." and it went on with a voluminous account of life and accomplishments, without dates. Again, Aufors tried keying in the names of the events themselves. The old Captain had been right. Some of the events were dated well over two hundred years in the past. So. One could not find dates listed under biographies, possibly because someone had purged them, but no one had purged the accounts of historic events.

  He tried the names of the Dukes: Gardagger of Merdune, Tranquish of Dania, Wayheight-Winson of Upland, Vestik-Vanserdel of Barfezi. With a little digging he found events that measured their lives at well over a century. Each of them had traveled for the Lord Paramount, had worked for him and had fought for him. So, he thought, tapping his teeth again, clickety click, the Lord Paramount rewarded his faithful servants with a long life. He tried the Marshal. The Marshal was relatively young: he had only recently turned sixty.

  The versifying clerk came into view at the end of the corridor, moving angrily, as though propelled, arms loaded with books. As he approached, Aufors blanked the screen, called up the genealogy of the Bellser-Bars of Merdune, and by the time the clerk peered over his shoulder, he seemed totally immersed in the Gardagger family tree.

  "Dreadful deadly dull," sneered the clerk, obviously smarting from some very recent encounter. "Almost a total null...."

  "Stop," said Aufors, forbiddingly. "I'm too tired to make sense out of you."

  The clerk heaved a sigh and spoke, venom dripping from every word. "I don't know why we put up with it. Royalty, I mean. It's unfair, the attention we pay them, neglecting worthier men."

  "From what I've read," Aufors replied, somewhat startled by this display of ill feeling, "every society has some way of allocating power. Some places do it by age, some by money, some by war, some by class, like us. All systems have their faults, but everyone has roughly as much life as everyone else, and that's as fair as can be, so far as I know."

  "Well!" The clerk turned pale as ash. "If that were true it would all be very nice, but when power means two or three hundred years of life while others get cut off short... I'd call that unfair."

  Aufors swung around, staring. "Now that's interesting," he commented, as though it were news.

  The clerk paled, shuddered. "My sense of preservation's broken," he muttered, wiping his forehead. "Believe me, I should not have spoken."

  Aufors grinned at him. "Don't worry. I shan't repeat it. You may depend upon my word... if you'll set aside both your sense of self-preservation and your versifying for a moment more."

  The clerk barked a laugh, brief and cut off sharply, his eyes focusing on Aufors for the first time, sharp, vital, full of intelligence. "I can't tell you any more. I don't know anything real. Some of the Lord Paramount's colleagues are very old, and the Lord Paramount himself ages slow as a tree. He evidently decides who's to get the gift of long life, whatever that gift may be."

  "You don't know what it is?"

  "It's a well-kept secret, Colonel. We all assume-we being the dusty grovelers here in the bowels, we burrowers in the racks, we delvers in the stacks-we assume it's from off-world, like the rest of the things forbidden to the rest of us. And we assume it's expensive, for the ones who get it are favorite and few."

  "It seems unthinkably criminal to me, to buy such a thing for oneself and keep it from one's people," said Aufors.

  The archivist bit his lip and whispered, "You've heard that old proverb, Colonel. Thirst makes any wine drinkable...'"

  " 'And greed makes any crime thinkable,'" Aufors concluded the couplet. He himself could not, at the moment, think of any reward high enough for such dishonorable behavior, but he set that aside for the moment. "I wonder what determines who the favorites are?"

  The clerk patted the console Aufors was seated at. "Well, you want to ask, let this do the task. It's very strange that I know how, but never thought of it till now."

  "How, then?"

  "Give the machine some names or common factors, it'll come up with a list for you. And, Colonel! Delete what you're doing before you leave. I'm not supposed to let anyone in here."

  He drifted away, and Aufors entered, list all persons currently alive in Haven who are more than one hundred twenty years old.

  The list came spitting at him, longer than he had thought it would be. All the names were male. He stared at it for a moment, then asked, Who was the first person to gain this age on Haven?

  "Marwell, Lord Paramount, reached his one hundred-twentieth birthday in the year 1070 After Settlement."

  Which meant he'd been born in 950 A.S. Which, since the current date was 1190, meant he was now almost a quarter of a millennium old, sixty years older than the Prince.

  Were there any persons, now dead, who lived longer than one hundred twenty years?

  "There were such persons, most recently Lord Wayheight-Winson, Duke of Highlands, who died at age two hundred three."

  He should have been able to figure that one out. The Duke's funeral processions had filled Havenor's streets just a short time ago. How did he die?

  "Senile paralysis," said the machine. "Listed as natural causes in the record."

  What was the cause of death of the others?

  "Also senile paralysis."

  Aufors stared at his fingers on the keyboard. What did all of this have to do with the covenants? He started to key in the question, but was stopped by voices shouting among the stacks: Jeorfy and someone else. Instead, he keyed quickly:

  Print all this information. Then clear all reference to this transaction.

  "Printing," said the machine, "Clearing." When it had finished, it switched itself off. Aufors, keeping one eye on the aisle, ran his eyes down the list, noting the men he knew or had heard of. The list and the other information had been printed on fold-tight. When Aufors let go of it, it snapped itself into a flat bundle that would fit easily in a pocket.

  He left quietly, taking care not to be seen by whomever the shouter had been.

  "What did you find? What's on your mind?" whispered the clerk from the near end of a side aisle as Aufors passed down the corridor toward the door.

  "Nothing much," he replied softly, taking care to sound bored. "Mostly the Lord Paramount's relatives."

  "What we'd expect," said the clerk. "If you come again, be sure you talk to me, Jeorfy. Jeorfy Bottoms. Nobody else. And please, don't tell anyone where you got the information or I'll end up... well, worse off."

  Aufors made a solemn promise, expressed his thanks, and went out into the air.

  The palace walls at Havenor ran around the edge of a leveled hill, but at one point outside the walls an original stone outcropping had been left untouched to continue upward in
a narrow pillar. Some former architect had topped it with an observation deck and furnished it with a stair for those inclined to look at the view or the stars or simply to be alone with their thoughts. Aufors had climbed to this aerie several times in the past and did so again today, finding himself the only sightseer. He leaned across the railing into the brisk wind that was blowing from the southeast.

  Dark clouds massed low on the horizon. If he were farther south, he would see the limitless range of the ocean, wandered by billowy petticoats of cloud, brushed by blue brooms of storm, as though the Mother of Worlds swept the seas. Whenever Aufors felt overcome by beauty or joy, he thought of the Mother of Worlds, Queen of the Skies, a deity peculiar to the rural areas of Wantresse.