Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea

by Singer From The Sea(Lit)

  "I'm not sure this is right," Genevieve murmured. "Father told me not to concern myself for my care or safety, that it was his concern. Perhaps if I told him..."

  "Your telling would have precisely the same effect that it has had heretofore," said the Duchess, in a bleak voice. "Aufors, go into the stable, there's a good boy, my dear. For your own safety, I don't want you to hear what's said here."

  When he had gone, Genevieve whispered, "Alicia. Mother told me... she told me my way would be hard. She had the gift. The one Lyndafal and I share. Perhaps I am meant to stay here and..."

  "Do you, yourself, know this is true?"

  "No," she cried. "Not surely!"

  "Then wait until you know it!" She turned to her companion. "This is Garth Sentith, a friend of mine from Merdune. and you are now Imogene Sentith, his daughter. The two of you are riding east tonight, to slip across the border into the Tail of Merdune, and thence down the canyons to the shore. From there you will sail southward across the Lagoon to the town of Weirmills, beside the Potcherwater, where Garth has a perfumery business I have long patronized.

  "Now, Genevieve, here is pen and paper. Write me a brief note telling me that you are running away because Yugh Delganor frightened you half to death at dinner this evening. Write that you must leave before your father makes any compromising promises you might be unable to fulfill. Say you must have time to think on this. No, don't look at me all witless! I must have a reason to speak to your father before he does anything imprudent. I will say I found your note on my door, and this will give me an excuse to let a little reality into his head. I know what I am doing, so write it!"

  Genevieve wrote, scribbling, the Duchess prompting. When the Duchess read it over, the penmanship needed no change to appear frantic and panicky.

  Alicia went to the stable door and summoned Aufors out once more: "You are to return to the Marshal's house, Aufors, where you will pretend you have been all night, deeply asleep. For the time being, you are not to think about Genevieve. Her safety depends on your not knowing where she is. Also, try not to show that you are worried over where she might be, though I realize you may be unable to do that. She, meantime, will be sitting quiet, being helpful and safe, so we all hope, far from here. Now say your farewells, for Genevieve must be well out of High Haven by morning."

  She turned away, the bulky man beside her, and Aufors, with a gasp that had as much pain as ardor in it, drew Genevieve into a close embrace, laid his lips on hers, and held her there while the night spun around them both. Neither of them were conscious of time. The kiss could have lasted either a little moment or forever, and it was only his awareness of her danger that made him thrust her away, holding her tightly by the shoulders.

  "Oh, my love," he murmured huskily. "This may be the best thing I've ever done, helping send you out of harm's way, or the worst, letting you go without me. Here I am, presuming. I don't even know if you return my affection-no, don't look at me like that. Say I didn't know, not until just now."

  She begged, "Can't you come with me? Oh, Aufors, I'm so... at a loss..."

  He drew himself up and said firmly, "I believe the Duchess knows what she's doing. I have known her for some time. I know that she plans from knowledge, whereas you and I have only intuition. When she says I might endanger you, she's right. I've learned on the battlefield that once the decision is made, for good or ill, it must be done with firm conviction. Now go, and let me put on a surprised face for the Marshall"

  Garth came then to take Genevieve's hand and lead her away. She went reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder as Garth took her through the gate and to the alley's end where two horses waited, their hooves muffled. While Aufors watched from the gate, they rode away, almost silently. By dawn, he knew, they would be well on their way to wherever it was they were going, certainly out of Havenor, across the border of High Haven, and well lost in the lands of somewhere else.

  9: The Planet Ares

  The planet Ares, which was not far from Haven in a spaciotemporal sense, had been resold several times before finally being settled, a millennium after its discovery, by a group of men who traced their ancestry to the frontiers of space exploration, a time when infinite space called resolute men into the wilderness to build an honorable society in which men were men, women were women, and everyone knew and accepted the difference. Aresians were more hearty than humorous, more intrepid than intuitive, more stalwart than studious. They eschewed the intellectual in favor of action, including sport of all kinds. They found a particular ecstasy in hunting or in doing things at high speed, preferably accompanied by loud noises and strong smells and with much drinking and jollity of a ribald sort to follow.

  Their belief system was called Hestonism, a homocentric faith with a god who looked and acted like the best among them, fair minded and honorable and masculine in his approach to problems. If asked, any Aresian would have said that God was an honorable competitor, a good shot, and comfortable on the playing field. Sporting metaphors were customary in explaining the relationship between deity and laity, an intermediary clergy being considered both effete and ineffectual.

  The ineffectual was eschewed as un-Aresian. People, no matter of what age or sex, should be doing something. If they were not doing something, the chances were, they were up to no good. Games had been provided by God to keep young people busy, and there was no juvenile predisposition so nefarious that it would not submit to daily sessions of competitive ball-carrying, rock-climbing, or game-shooting.

  Aresians were well aware that others were less honorable than themselves. Had this not been the case, they would not have needed a world of their own in which their native superiority could manifest itself. Aresians felt there was no challenge that could not be met by well-toned muscle augmented by superior fire power under the approving eye of a deity who kept His omniscient eye upon the target and His omnipresent hand on the trigger.

  Upon their arrival on Ares, therefore, the Aresians built sensible armories against whatever enemies might emerge in time, and they manufactured machines for the subduing of the natural world. Subjugation of nature was one of the things strong men did, and they gloried in it, digging deep for the ores they needed and cutting down whole forests to feed their furnaces. Whenever they had a few hours free of toil, they vied with one another in games and sports, in hunting or fishing, at tramping and striving against one another in exploits of physical endurance. They bred doggedly, and proud families with litters of robust and vehement children were the norm.

  Relentless sport took an inevitable toll upon the world. Though Ares was largely wooded when it was settled, the animal life was not plentiful, and most of it was extremely specialized and habitat dependent. Human population grew exponentially, though it took a century or two for it to cover all sections of the planet. Once it did, however, the native animal life was soon disposed of, even that preeminent trophy animal, the latigern, a graceful, antlered beast that had once grown to an enormous size that could be dangerous if encountered during mating season by a man without weapons. Since no Aresian was ever without weapons, and since Aresians had arrived at near total destruction of latigern habitat, the animal was driven to the verge of extinction by the turn of the seventh century, Post Settlement. The last few specimens were captured in 702 and put in stasis to be sold to other-world zoos. Such establishments always bid high for the last few specimens of anything. The last latigern were, in fact, purchased by the Lord Paramount of Haven several years later, along with the last few of several other species on the market at the time.

  In 708, Post Settlement, something quite inexplicable occurred. One midnight the people of Ares were wakened by a trembling in the earth. Those who had read of such things thought it might be a crustal-quake, though it did not rise to any climax nor did it dwindle away to nothing, but merely went on shaking, a vast shivering as though, some people said, the world had caught a chill. The tremor was the same in the cities as on the farms, neither stronger nor weaker in
any location, and it persisted for some hours as glassware rattled, dogs howled, and children cried fretfully.

  Along in the small hours of the morning, those citizens who had not been able to get back to sleep (by no means the majority, for Aresians tended toward the phlegmatic) noticed lines of fire rising from the eastern horizon. The first lines were followed by others, near and far, from all visible parts of the planet, beginning at different times but all rising deliberately until they met at the zenith. Though the people could not see it, monitors later revealed that the fiery lines rose in concentric circles from the entire darkside of the planet. As the planet turned to daylight, the easternmost lines detached from the planet and passed upward even as new lines of fire sprouted along the line of falling night.

  When one full revolution had passed, so that the fire had gone upward from all parts of the world, a sharp shock was felt, the ground rebounded as though some enormous personage had tapped it in annoyance. This was followed by a momentary swaying, as though the world were uncertain in its orbit, and then by a deep, sonorous but musical hum from space that for a moment made a strange, haunting melody full of weird harmonics, though this was lost as the sound fell in pitch, lower and lower, becoming also softer and softer until it finally ceased.

  There was, of course, much conjecture about the cause of this strange occurrence. Some thought Ares had been visited by aliens who had used the fiery lines as some kind of scanning device. Expeditions were sent to examine the sites of the upwellings, some of which had been accurately triangulated by observers, but nothing was found to explain what had happened. There was no charring of any surface, no appearance of great heat having touched the ground. Shortly after the occurrence, however, the few remaining forests that had been set aside as parks died, almost overnight, and the few native land and sea animals who had survived in hidden places were found lying quite dead out in the open. All life native to the planet simply stopped.

  It was a strange and unsettling occurrence which confirmed the settlers opinion that the universe was an inimical place, though they, themselves, had not been injured in any way. Since the occurrence seemed to have nothing at all to do with them, the matter was recorded in the archives and in time was largely forgotten.

  Livestock had been imported early on, and vast tracts of fields and pastures had soon replaced the trees. Several sizeable cities had grown up, in the area of most salubrious climate, though the climate had deteriorated greatly after the forests and seas had died. Off-world fish had been imported to restock the seas, and prey animals had been brought in for the hunt, though both failed to flourish, forcing the people to turn to non-blood-sports for their amusements.

  If any planetary population could be said to be contented, the Aresians were the most likely candidates. They were well settled in a world structured much to their liking by their own hard work. Their only problem was that wresting a living from the planet took increasing effort the longer they lived upon it. The planet that had been settled with such dedication was no longer as fruitful as it had been.

  In 747 Post Settlement, a new syndrome emerged to trouble the medical professionals on the planet, though it was subsequently determined that the syndrome might have existed undetected for four or five decades previously. All the victims were persons of middle age or older. A typical case might be a man or woman who arose one morning complaining of feeling "odd," though not odd enough to seek medical care. The person went about the daily routine more slowly than usual, slowing still more as the days passed, often commenting to friends and family that something important had been misplaced and could not be found. This might go on for thirty or forty days, after which the patient simply stopped moving entirely.

  While under care, the typical patient continued quiet and withdrawn, content to sit and stare into the middle distance without being interested in food or drink or conversation, though some of the afflicted still wondered aloud where they might have put whatever it was that was missing. When urged to communicate, a patient might remark that speech took too much energy away from his or her trying to remember something very urgent, and persistent questioning caused agitation.

  Without exception, the afflicted would continue in this vein, whether calm or agitated, until a sudden cry of what seemed to be joy was followed by a fit of laughter and then by an hour or so of unintelligible murmurings which carried a great weight of hopelessness and pain, followed by a lapse into unconsciousness swiftly followed by death.

  There were at first only a handful of such patients, but their numbers grew with each year that passed. It was thought by some that a poisonous asteroid or comet or cloud of cosmic material had impinged upon the planet to cause these effects as well as the weirdness that had occurred on "the Strange Night," as it came to be called.

  Ygdale Furnashson was High Chieftain among the Aresians. He had three sons, and in the manner of the historic quests of his people-and having already sought such advice as was available from scientific and off-planet sources-Ygdale sent his sons out among the settled worlds to question whether any people, anywhere, had any information that would cast light on what had happened to Ares on the fateful night and whether that event had anything to do with the current plague.

  The two older boys found nothing helpful except the fact that a similar disease was decimating the populations on Chamis and had already virtually destroyed Verben's World. Counting Ares, this meant half the settled planets in the area were in trouble. The younger son of the Chieftain found some additional information, though it was not what he had been looking for. He came home to report that he'd heard rumors that on Haven not only was settlement doing very nicely, but men were living to be several hundred years old. Additionally, Haven was rumored to trade the long-life substance, whatever it was, for off-world goods and services. The stuff had been bought and used by a few people on Chamis and Verben's World, all of whom, it was said, were still alive.

  This was enough for Ygdale to work with. Though unaccustomed to protracted thinking, he could do it when necessary. He queried further, learning that the Lord Paramount of Haven had a fondness for shopping, that he much enjoyed brightly colored booklets, copiously illustrated, with elaborate and even fanciful claims and descriptions of the merchandise. Ygdale had such a catalog prepared forthwith, touting the advantages of an Aresian security force. He also arranged bribes to several of the Lord Paramount's servants to be sure that the Ares-Force booklet was always on top of the pile. He reminded his sons that taking an advantage of an opponent's weakness was not at all dishonorable.

  Only ten Aresian years passed between the discovery of the disease and the dispatch of an Aresian mercenary force into the employ of the Lord Paramount of Haven, who paid for the service with a quantity of the substance the Aresians called "long-life stuff." Ygdale used part of the shipment for himself, and passed the rest on to his most trusted supporters. He assured them that this was only step one in Ares's recovery from whatever ailed it, for the mercenary force that was being sent to Haven, though it was fully as reliable, strong, able, observant, and protective as represented in the prospectus, was also made up entirely of disciplined Aresians under the command of Ygdale's elder sons and assigned the duty of finding out where the life stuff came from, how it was procured and manufactured, and how best large quantities of it could be obtained.

  So it was that while the Prince of Haven wined and dined, while Genevieve wept and the Marshal preened himself in Havenor, Ogberd and Lokdren Ygdaleson, elder sons of the Chieftain of Ares, were well established in the palace at Havenor, where they might be found in the mercenaries' quarters, lifting weights, running a treadmill, and engaging in other exercises designed to keep them fit.

  Nearby was a device which erupted, from time to time, with angry words and sounds of temper.

  "Where's that listener planted?" a junior officer asked, adding a weight to his bar.

  "In the office of the Mahahmbi minister of state," Lokdren replied, panting. "Ybon Saelan.
He's the one with the best access to the Shah. If you want to know what's being said, ask Ogberd. He understands the dialect better than I do."

  Ogberd took over Lokdren's abandoned treadmill, leaned on its control panel and drawled, "The minister's aggravated about some religious rite that's coming up."

  "How did you get a listening device planted in the minister's office?" asked one of the newer men.

  Lokdren wiped his face, took a long drink from his water bottle, and replied, "Provincial sales agents go to Mahahm to sell them grain or fiber or whatnot in return for some medicine they get from there."

  "Long-life stuff?"

  "Naw. Something to prevent fevers. The salesmen have to go to the minister's office to get their residency papers, and I bribed one of the salesmen to plant the listener."

  "Why there?"

  "We've looked everyplace we can look here on Haven for the long-life stuff, so we thought it was time to have a look at Mahahm."

  "There's lots of places in the provinces of Haven we haven't been to," offered another junior officer.

  "True," Ogberd muttered. "But it's hard to get out into the provinces unless we can get a duke or a count to hire us, and only a couple of them have, so far. We've been in and out of every noble house here in Havenor, though, as escorts to the Prince, and the stuff isn't stored in any of them." He set the dials on the treadmill and positioned himself.