Sheri Tepper - Singer From The Sea

by Singer From The Sea(Lit)

"It means from down here we can read anything that's in the archive machines except what they've locked up since they caught me looking. They find out I can still get into those machines, they'd disconnect us in a minute, or kill us."

  Zebulon made a sharp right turn and headed off in the new direction at top speed. They had come to a section of the cavern where the crates stacked on either side were huge, each one towering three and four men high. Genevieve cocked her head to read the lettering on them as they went past. BIOSTASIS, they read, followed by a code number.

  "What's Biostasis?" she asked.

  Zeb answered. "That's what we told you. Pets. Animals. I think the Lord Paramount wanted to have a zoo, so he bought all kinds of animals, but never set the zoo up. The animals are in stasis. You open the box, the insides go to work, and out it comes, alive. I'll show you."

  He stopped the wagon, and beckoned her to follow him as he wriggled his way into the enormous stack. He stopped before a fogged window and rubbed it clear. "See!"

  She looked in, seeing forms, fur, perhaps the edge of a wing? Maybe. Another window showed an unmistakable antler, huge. There were a dozen cases of that particular code number, all from the same shipper. From one case an eye looked at her, unmistakably.

  "It's looking at me," she murmured to Jeorfy.

  "Can't," he said. "It's asleep."

  She felt the look. The thing might be asleep, and in that case it was dreaming her, but it definitely perceived her, one way or the other!

  She leaned closer, looking deep. She saw an ear, trembling. Perhaps she did not see it tremble, perhaps she only felt it, the fragile tympanum responding to a sound so deep she could not hear it. "Something's talking to it," she said firmly.

  "Nonsense," said Jeorfy, coming to thrust his face in beside hers and peer into the case. "Who could be talking to it?"

  "I don't know," she murmured. Still, she was sure the thing in the crate knew she was here, and knew something was talking to it, and was fully aware, though perhaps only in dream, of what was going on. She backed off to estimate the size of the crate. Very, very large. The size of an elephant, perhaps, one of the old, now-departed animals of Old Earth.

  "Come on," said Jeorfy, uncomfortably. "It's the same with the war machines. The Lord Paramount has a lot of them down here, too, and they're sort of alive. They take up a lot of space."

  "What are war machines for?"

  "They've been here since the year one. Inventory has 'em listed as protection against invasion. Like from off-world."

  "Does my... ah, that is, do the armies know about them?"

  "Nobody knows about them. The weapons they know about are simple by comparison, and cheaper. They're all stored up from here, on the first level under Havenor, where they're easier to get to."

  She cried, "We're not a rich world! Why would anyone invade us? And who buys such things?"

  Jeorfy shrugged. "The Lord Paramount or the Prince would be my guess. Or some oldie duke."

  "What do you mean exactly, when you say 'oldie'?" asked Genevieve.

  "Someone a hundred fifty, two hundred years old," snarled Zeb. "Like the Prince and the Lord Paramount and all the Dukes, living off the rest of us, like a vampire." He made another swift turn and brought the vehicle to a halt at the end of a long line of vehicles, some large, some small.

  She turned, eyes wide. "My... ah father's a Count. He's nowhere near that old."

  "Maybe he's not old enough yet." Jeorfy made a face. "According to the archives, they turn into oldies later."

  "How old do they get?"

  "Oh, two or three hundred. Maybe more."

  Genevieve stood to one side, lost in wonderment, while the men removed the cargo from the carrier and carried it into a nearby room, one much like the previous chamber except that this one had been professionally built with stout masonry walls and a pitched, tiled roof. From the large combined office-cum-parlor a short corridor extended past a kitchen, a toilet, a bathroom, two bedrooms, and a number of empty living spaces, all of them brightly lighted and well sealed against the dust. In one of the empty rooms Jeorfy placed the mattress they had salvaged and put Genevieve's belongings upon it.

  They returned to the largest chamber. "Our official post," said Jeorfy, gesturing at the wall, which was lined with screens and panels. "Those are the inventory machines."

  Zeb said, "Everything the Lord Paramount ever bought's supposed to be listed there." He sniggered, unpleasantly, as seemed to be his habit as a kind of punctuation to his private thoughts.

  "What are you supposed to be doing here?" she asked curiously, dropping into a chair.

  "It's just ordinary maintenance," Jeorfy answered, with a slightly worried sidelong glance at his companion. "Every little while there's something new that comes down on the elevators, and we're supposed to put it in new stacks, and number the stacks and enter the numbers in the machines. And the machines keep track of how long stuff has been here, and lists off the things that have to be destroyed because they're no good anymore..."

  "Or dangerous," said Zeb.

  "Right, so when the machine tells us something has run out of time, we're supposed to take a suitable lifter and load whatever expired and move it through one of the tunnels to a fire chasm, where we push it over."

  "And what do you get for all that?" she wondered.

  Zeb twisted his mouth into a particularly nasty smile. "Nothing that makes it worthwhile. I tell you, I dream of getting out of here!" He said it angrily, with another of those leering, hungry glances at Genevieve. She looked away.

  Jeorfy caught this and said quickly, "Well there is another good thing they don't know about."

  "And that is?" sneered Zeb.

  "The tunnels. They go everywhere. We could go to Merdune, underground. Hell, we could probably go to Sealand, underground, under Havenpool, the whole way."

  "Except you'd starve," said Zeb. "The vehicles won't go that far without refueling, and the only power source is right here. You'd have to walk, and it'd be a damn long walk."

  "So you can take me underground to a place near Midling Wells?" asked Genevieve.

  "Somewhere near there," said Zeb, turning away to busy himself at the kitchen cabinets.

  "Don't worry, pretty girl," said Jeorfy, with a troubled glance at his companion. "We're not monsters, not sex maniacs, not dreadful anything but dreadful bored, probably."

  Zebulon made no comment, merely continued putting together a meal while Jeorfy asked Genevieve questions about everything under the sun. By the time dinner was ready, he had elicited more than she had intended to tell about her schooling, her reading, and her life in general.

  Genevieve, she cautioned herself. You're tired and you're spouting. You're chatting. You're doing everything wrong! The self-caution came too late. She had already mentioned her feelings of loathing regarding Prince Delganor, an indiscretion that stopped Zebulon's activities momentarily while he stared at her with his leering smile.

  When they were seated around the table, Jeorfy asked. "These off-world publications you read at school? They weren't catalogs?"

  "No, no. They were accounts of current happenings."

  "Did you notice, were any of them from Ares? Or Verben's World? Or Chamis?"

  "There was a story about Chamis," she said, her forehead furrowed. "About the world becoming... depopulated. I mean, it's going downhill. Why?"

  Jeorfy shook his head, puzzled. "I've been looking back over the records that were kept, oh, say three or four hundred years ago. Before Marwell was elevated, it was Lord Paramount Gorbagger. He bought little stuff from about a dozen different worlds. And so did Marwell, but he bought a lot. Then as time went on, Marwell kept right on buying more and more, but from fewer and fewer planets. Now he gets most of his stuff from Ares. Including his bodyguards."

  "Some settlement worlds don't make it," Genevieve acknowledged. "Actually, Haven is one of the older settled worlds that are still going. Ares is one that's having a hard time, like Chamis. Peopl
e can't figure why some worlds make it and some don't. It's as though some worlds lack something people need in order to live, but no one knows what it is."

  "Now that's interesting." Jeorfy frowned. "I'm going to use the machines to look that up. I'm going to order some of those publications, too."

  "You don't have a purchase order," snarled Zeb.

  "I can make one up," said Jeorfy. "You think anybody's keeping track? That's a laugh. I can fake a number and then take the stuff out of the shipment when it arrives."

  Genevieve put down her fork. "How does stuff get ordered and come here for storage? Where is it brought? Who handles it?"

  Jeorfy said, "Stuff gets ordered from the palace. I used to do it myself. Then it gets paid for somehow, before it comes or at the same time as. The smaller stuff is delivered down at Bliggen and sent up here on barges and wagons. That gets sent down the chutes. But Zeb says huge stuff is always landed right here in High Haven. After dark, by some kind of beam or other that sets it right down on the elevators."

  "Hasn't been any huge stuff for decades," mumbled Zeb. "Those big animals was the end of it."

  Genevieve put her hand to her mouth, only half-hiding a yawn. "It's very interesting Mr. Coffin, but I'm so... I'm so tired. I only had about an hour last night, and all that running and hiding and riding..."

  "Surely, surely," said Zebulon. "You go ahead. Jeorfy and me, we need some sleep, too. Been a long day."

  She nodded her thanks, finished the food on her plate, then excused herself. Within moments, she was lying on top of the bed they had brought for her, her bedding pulled over her, soundly asleep.

  Outside, in the other room, Jeorfy asked again, in a worried tone, "We will take her where she's going, won't we?"

  "Oh, you can say that, yes," Zeb answered, not meeting his eyes. "We'll definitely take her where she's going."

  * * *

  On that same high vantage point where Aufors Leys had once stood to contemplate his relationship with the Marshal's daughter, Ogberd Ygdaleson, Captain of the Lord Paramount's Aresian mercenaries, Sometime-General of the Aresian army, leaned upon the railing in off-duty laxity, surreptitiously wiping his eyes. He did not see his brother ascending the steep flights behind him, he did not hear him until Lokdren was within a pace of him.

  "Brother? Og?" Lokdren murmured, unsure of his ground under these unusual circumstances. Ogberd was not an emotional man. His men had never seen a tear in his eye. "What's happened? Have we had news from home?"

  Ogberd took a deep breath, shivered all over like a fly-bit horse, and nodded, wordlessly. He wiped his eyes once more, put his kerchief back into his sleeve, gritted his teeth, and said between them, "Granpa. He's gone into it."

  "Aaaah," said the other, with a grimace. "How far gone?"

  "He's at the wandering stage. Ma says he keeps looking for something. Granma asks him what it is, and he shakes his head. He doesn't know. Something. Something he's lost. She says he keeps listening for something. She asks what he's listening for. He says he used to hear it, he doesn't hear it anymore. They've done everything they can think of. The Chief hired some off-world quacks to take a look at the situation. They came up with pure vacuum. Not an ion. Gorge and vomit! If we'd just been faster!"

  "Come on, Og. We've tried everything anybody's even thought of."

  "Then we should have thought of something else," Ogberd mumbled. Lokdren shook his head. "I've got dust in my ears from the nothing that's come into them, so its hard to know where else we could have done."

  Ogberd sniffed, staring at the horizon. "I told them at home nothing was bein' said. Father was raging. He said we just weren't listenin'."

  "Ah?"

  "So I told him we had been listenin'. I told him the Prince is conspirin' to overthrow the Lord Paramount. I told him the Lord Paramount knows all about it. I told him the Prince murdered the Lord Paramount's son, first in line for the throne. I told him the Lord Paramount did the same to his own brother who was conspirin' to replace him. I told him they treat their women like so many chessmen, move them here, move them there, wed them off to this one or that one. I've listened, I told him, and there's plenty being said, just nothin' about what we need to know."

  Lokdren nodded slowly and came to lean beside the other man, the railing protesting gently at his added weight. "And we've got listeners planted all over Havenor and Mahahm and half the provinces by now, but they don't yield anything either!"

  Ogberd nodded. "I told Father he could always gamble on finding out after instead of beforehand."

  "Last report said the birthrate's down again."

  "Gorge and vomit, man," blurted Ogberd. "You think I've somehow missed that?"

  "Sorry. Didn't mean you'd missed anything."

  "Nobody means. Damn it. Why in hell is Ares going down the drain-hole and this damn world bobbing along like a cork? Any one of our people would make five of these Havenites! And our women! These women don't even start to measure up. I ask you! I've wracked my brain. You think it's only this stuff we're after? Stuff the people don't even seem to know about? Somehow, after all this time, that's getting to seem less and less likely."

  "It's what everybody at home thinks." Lokdren spoke in a soothing tone. "It's what the Chief thinks. When the Chief thinks beefsteak, better we don't go around talking chicken."

  Ogberd lowered his voice. "Yes, right, but you know, I've been wondering lately. Here's all these women going missing. What if we've got the wrong end of the stick. Like, what if the stuff doesn't come from this world at all? What if the Lord Paramount is trading women off-world for it?"

  Silence. A long brooding silence, until Lokdren said, "Well, then hell, we'll take the women over and find out where they're bein' sold, and we'll do the sellin' ourselves."

  The two men leaned together, bearing a weight of woe. When they left, a person moved from a cleft in the rock where he had stood throughout their meeting. Veswees. He stood looking after the two men, pondering, going over in his mind all that they had said.

  It meant something to him even now. When he could get some time in the library files, he felt it would mean even more.

  * * *

  Genevieve wakened in the dark, too late to struggle, already gagged, already mostly tied. She struggled against bonds being tightened, and went on struggling against being lifted from her bed, carried and dumped unceremoniously onto a cart. She held her breath in hope as her abductor went away, but he returned to place something beside her. When the platform moved into a better light, she saw that it was her baggage, everything she had brought with her when she arrived. The driver was Zebulon, a strangely elated Zebulon, shifting from foot to foot and humming under his breath. When they had gone some way, he began to sing.

  "Take her where she's going, yes, we'll take her to and froing, and I'm the only one who'll know that's not where she planned to go, oh, no, oh, no..." He cackled, a high, manic giggle that went on endlessly, trailing away only to repeat itself once, twice, a dozen times more. When it ended at last, Zebulon wiped his face on his sleeve and muttered,

  "He's not the only rhymer, is he? Not him. Well, we'll just say she ran off. Fell in a chasm. He'll never know. He'll never know. And we'll get... oh, a good price for her. They'll want her. They're looking for her. Hide her away for a while. She's got fat on her. She won't starve in a week, no, not a week. Even a month, maybe. Water, that'd be the problem. We'll, I'll water her now and again, that's what."

  She wrenched her hands, trying to get them apart. They were tied too snugly. Her knees and ankles were flexed and tied. Wherever he was taking her, she had no choice but to go along.

  "Water her now and again," hummed Zebulon. "Now and again."

  13: The Duchess Alicia's Daughter

  Lord Solven, Earl of Ruckward, was in a fury. Even in a man known for irritability, his present rage was extraordinary. It had to do, everyone knew, with the Lady Lyndafal, Countess Ruckward, who had put the new baby on her shoulder, walked down from Ruckward H
ouse to the shore, and gone out sailing with the child as she had often done in all weathers with her older daughter. This time, however, she had disappeared and had quite possibly drowned.

  There were those who had seen her go and thought it foolish of her, just days from childbed as she was. Still, she habitually sailed around the bay, or across to Seapasture, the nearest of the Randor Isles, a lovely parklike place with grassy banks grazed by shaggy, long-horned sweet-breathed cattle. No one wondered at her doing it, for she did it all the time, and since the baby had come, she had taken the baby, too, saying the baby liked it, and it was true the baby stopped crying the moment her basket went in the boat, seeming to rejoice in the rocking motion and the chuckle of the water. So, Lady Lyndafal and the baby went out sailing, and the little white sail went back and forth and back and forth, and then away behind the island, and then out and back behind the island again until nobody watched it anymore and besides, why should they?