“Greetings to you, Trader Tertujak,” the first man boomed out derisively, a bearded giant with a knotty scar across his forehead. “And please forgive us for disturbing you so late in the evening.”
He vaulted into the interior of the wagon, followed by three accomplices. The scornful grin disappeared from his face as though it had been too much trouble. He directed no more than a passing glance at the prisoner, then pointed at the hair-carpet trader.
“Search him!” he commanded.
The men fell over the trader, tore open his clothes, and fumbled through them until nearly everything hung from him in tatters, but they didn’t find what they were looking for.
“Nothing.”
The ringleader stepped up to the merchant and gave him a vicious look. “Where’s the key to the hair-carpet wagon?”
Tertujak swallowed. “I don’t have it.”
“Don’t tell me any fairy tales, you sack of fat.”
“One of my men has it.”
The bearded man laughed out loud in disbelief. “One of your men?”
“Yes. A soldier I trust completely. I ordered him to flee if we should be attacked.”
“Damn!” Enraged, the leader punched him in the face so hard, his head flew sideways. The blow split Tertujak’s lower lip, but the trader made no sound.
The other men became nervous. “What’ll we do now?”
“We’ll take the entire wagon with us,” suggested one of them, a stocky man whose right arm was crusted with blood that didn’t seem to be his own. “Somehow we’ll get it open—”
“Crap!” the bearded one shouted at him. “Why do you think the wagon is armored? That won’t work. We need the key.”
The robbers looked at one another. From outside, the sound of occasional fighting could still be heard.
“At daybreak we could search the whole area,” suggested another. “A man without a mount can’t get far.”
“How do you know he doesn’t have a mount?” the stocky one asked.
“We would have noticed—”
“Shut up!” the leader ordered with a surly wave of his hand and turned again to the hair-carpet trader, whose lip was dripping blood. “I don’t believe you,” he said in a dangerously quiet tone. “I don’t believe that a trader would let the key to his hair-carpet wagon leave his body.” He looked at Tertujak with suspicion. “Open your mouth.”
The trader didn’t react.
“I ordered you to open your mouth!” the bearded one shouted at him.
“Why?” Tertujak asked.
“Because I think you’re trying to trick us.” With sudden, brutal force, he grabbed the trader’s chin and forced his mouth open.
“I see a couple of fresh cuts in your throat,” he announced, and gave the trader a sympathetic look. “I don’t believe in your soldier. Do you know what I believe? I believe you swallowed the key!”
The trader’s eyes grew unnaturally large. He was incapable of speech, and his eyes were his only confession.
“Well?” the robber rasped. “Am I right?”
Tertujak gave a strangled gasp. “Yes,” he managed to say.
Every glimmer of human mercy suddenly disappeared from the eyes of the bearded one as he reached behind him and pulled a knife with a long, sharp blade from his belt.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
IX
Flute Fingers
THE NARROW STREET was still sleeping. A light early-morning fog hung suspended between the squat gables and was mixed with cold smoke from hearths in which the fires had gone out in the night. When the first sunrays flicked across the roof ridges of the crooked little houses, everything seemed bathed in an inappropriately dreamy and delicately misty light. Like little piles of dirt, beggars lay in some dark corners, sleeping on the bare ground, ragged blankets twisted up over their heads. A few small rodents crawled dully through the garbage, feeling sated enough to circle mercifully around the sleepers, and a few of them were brave enough to sniff their way to the narrow gutter, where the water moved sluggishly along the middle of the alleyway.
They leapt aside in fright and shot back into their holes as though drawn by strings when a cloaked figure approached with rapid steps; wheezing, stumbling, and flitting from shadow to shadow, the figure finally hurried toward the house of Flutemaster Opur. Then came the sound of two dull blows with the doorknocker.
Upstairs in the house, the old man awoke instantly from a restless sleep, stared up at the ceiling, and wondered if the sound he had just heard had been dream or reality. There was another knock. Well, then—reality. He threw back the blanket and slid into his slippers, reached for his worn housecoat and put it on before he shuffled to the window to open it. He looked down onto the street, which lay there empty and forlorn, stinking of rancid fat, just like every other morning.
From the shadow below the house, a boy stepped out timidly, looked up at Opur, and pulled back the wrap with which he had covered even his head. Master Opur saw blond locks framing a face he had never expected to see again in his life.
“You?!”
“Help me, Master,” the skinny boy whispered. “I ran away.”
The sudden joy that had filled the old man’s heart gave way to painful disappointment. For a fraction of a second he had thought everything would be as it had been in the past.
“Wait,” he said. “I’ll come down.”
The boy, what had he done? Opur shook his head sadly as he hurried down the steps. He had plunged himself into misfortune—that’s what he had done. Nothing good would come of this. Opur knew that, but something inside him wanted to believe the opposite.
He slid back the heavy bolt on the door. There stood the boy, trembling and looking at him with terror in his eyes—the big, blue eyes that had once looked so trusting and enraptured. His face was marked by fear and privation.
“Come in,” the old flutemaster said, and still didn’t know whether he should be happy or afraid. But then, when the boy stepped into the narrow, dark entryway and stooped under the low ceiling, he took his arm without another thought.
“Master Opur, you must hide me,” the boy whispered, shaking with fear. “They’re after me. They’re hunting me.”
“I’ll help you, Piwano,” Opur muttered, and listened to the echo of this name in his mind, a name he had not spoken since the Guild had drafted the boy for service with the Imperial Shipsmen: of all people, they had drafted this boy—his best student and the most gifted triflutist in living memory.
“I want to play the triflute again, Master. Will you teach me?” The boy’s lower jaw quivered. He was at the end of his strength.
Opur patted him gently and, he hoped, reassuringly on the back. “Of course, my boy. But first you have to sleep. Come.”
He removed the large picture that hid the door to the cellar steps and set it aside. Piwano followed him down into the cellar, where the floor was packed clay and the walls were only roughly bricked. One of the old, dusty racks of shelves could be rotated on unseen hinges and gave access to a second, hidden, cellar room with a bedstead, an oil lamp, and a few supplies. This was not the first time in his life that the venerable flutemaster had hidden a fugitive.
It took only a few minutes for the boy to fall asleep. He slept with his mouth open, and sometimes his breathing faltered, only to restart with gasps. With jerky motions, one of his hands clenched at some unseen resistance, finally relaxing again only after a long spasm.
Opur finally nodded his head with a sigh. He carefully lifted the oil lamp and placed it in a safer location. Then he left the sleeper alone, closed the secret door, and went upstairs. For a moment, he considered getting a little more sleep himself but then decided against it.
Instead, he made himself breakfast in the first light of day and ate it silently; he completed a few household chores and went up to his lesson room, to pore over the old music notations.
On this da
y, his first student arrived shortly before midday.
“I’m sorry about the tuition money,” she immediately began to babble on, almost before he could open the door. “I know it’s due today, and I remembered it already last week and I’ve thought about it the whole time. Well, what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t forget it.”
“Yes, okay.” Opur nodded with displeasure.
“It’s just that I have to wait for my brother; he should arrive in the city any day now—actually, he should have already been here long ago. You see, he travels with the trader Tertujak, you may know, and he always gives me the money I need when he comes back from a trip. And Tertujak’s arrival was expected by now; you can ask anybody—”
“Okay, fine,” the flutemaster interrupted her impatiently, and waved her ahead to climb up the stairs to the lesson room. “Then you can pay next time. Let’s get started.”
Opur sensed his own inner agitation. He had to find his equilibrium, as best he could. They sat down on two pillows facing one another, and after the woman had unpacked her triflute and her music sheets, Opur had her close her eyes and listen to her own breathing.
The flutemaster did the same. He felt his agitation fall away. Inner composure was important. Without inner composure, playing an instrument as difficult as the triflute was hopeless.
As was his habit, Opur first reached for his own flute and played a short piece. After that, he allowed his student to open her eyes again.
“When will I be able to play something like that, Master?” she asked quietly.
“That was the Pau-Lo-No,” Opur explained calmly, “the simplest of the classic pieces. It will be the first classic piece that you will someday play. But, like all the traditional flute pieces, it is polyphonic—in other words, you must first master monophonic technique. Let me hear how your drills are coming along.”
She held the triflute to her lips and blew. After Opur’s playing, it sounded like dreadful discord. And, as he had done so often, the venerable master had to muster all his self-control to keep a pained grimace from his face.
“No, no, the first drill again. Above all, you have to play the note cleanly.…”
The triflute was composed of three individual flutes, each with eight holes that could be covered with the fingertips. For this reason, the flutes were bent into a peculiar S-shape, so that they would fit the hands of the player and the varying lengths of the fingers. Each flute was made of a different material: one of wood, one of bone, and one of metal. Each of the three flutes gave a different timbre to the notes, and all of them together produced the inimitable sound for which the triflute had always been famous.
“You have to remember to keep your small finger relaxed … relaxed and limber. It has to be stretched out, because the construction of the flute and the placement of the holes require that, but that can’t restrict its movement.”
Long, agile fingers with prominent finger joints were an important prerequisite for a triflute player. A long little finger was a particular advantage. The technique was not like that for a normal flute, where each hole is simply covered or uncovered. That was only for beginners, in order to become familiar with the basics of flute technique and the musical theory. An advanced flutist, however, played harmony. By skillful bending and angling of the individual fingers, he produced a different note on each flute; for example, he could raise the middle knuckle of several fingers in such a way as to keep the holes on the outer two flutes covered, while the finger holes of the middle flute were open.
“Good. Now try the ninth drill. It contains a short two-part passage. Here. At this point, you raise your two lowest fingers, so that holes of the two outside flutes are free while you cover the holes of the middle flute with the corresponding knuckles. Try it.”
He was impatient today, in spite of all his composure. She really was trying hard, and when she controlled her excitement, she achieved some very acceptable passages.
“Stop, stop. This symbol means that you should block two of the flutes with your tongue, blowing only into one of them—until right here. Again now, and pay attention to the difference.”
By the end of the lesson, she was very happy to have mastered the drill to some extent, and Opur was relieved to have survived it. He managed to say good-bye without additional long-winded conversation.
Then he hurried immediately down to the cellar to check on Piwano.
The boy sat with his back against the wall and was hungrily devouring everything edible he had found in his hiding place. It seemed that he had not been awake for long, but he looked much better than he had early this morning. When Opur opened the secret door, he smiled happily.
“Tell me everything,” the old man suggested. “Start from the beginning.”
Piwano put down his bread and told him. About the harsh training he had to endure; about the rough, boorish environment in which he had to live on board the Imperial spaceships. About inhospitable, foreign worlds, about bone-numbing work, about illnesses, and about hateful attacks by the other shipsmen.
“They chased me away when I played, so I hid in the engine rooms just to play,” he recounted with a quivering voice. “Then they smashed my flute, and when I tried to make another one, they smashed it, too.”
A band of steel seemed to draw around Opur’s chest as he listened to the boy’s story.
“You’ve put yourself in great danger, Piwano,” he said earnestly. “You’ve run away from the Emperor’s service. That carries a death penalty.”
“Master, I can’t be a shipsman!” Piwano shouted. “I can’t live that way. If that’s the only way I can live, I would rather die. It’s not because I don’t want to serve the Emperor; of course, I love the Emperor, but…” He paused.
“But you love the flute even more, don’t you?”
Piwano nodded. “Yes.”
Opur sat in silent thought. He wasn’t sure what he should do. He was old; he wasn’t afraid for himself, no matter what happened. He was only afraid for the boy.
Desertion was a serious matter: that much he knew about the laws of the Imperial Shipsmen. Even if Piwano turned himself in voluntarily, he would have to expect serious punishment, probably a long sentence at hard labor on an undeveloped planet. And for a fragile, sensitive boy like Piwano, that would be the same as a death sentence.
“Master, may I have a flute again?” Piwano asked.
Opur looked at him. That glow of absolute, unmitigated devotion to something bigger than himself still shimmered in the boy’s eyes—that glow the old flutemaster had discovered in the eyes of an eight-year-old.
“Come,” he said.
They went upstairs to the lesson room. Piwano looked around, eyes sparkling at finding himself again in the room where he had spent so many years of his childhood; it seemed that an invisible force was filling him with new life.
Opur went to the windows that opened onto the street to be certain that no guild soldiers were in sight. Then he motioned the boy over to him.
“Piwano, I am willing to hide you, even for years, if necessary,” he declared earnestly. “But you must never leave the house, even if nothing outside seems suspicious—never. The Guild has disguised spies, and you never can tell who is in their pay. And as much as possible, you should stay away from the windows. You can play the flute in your hideaway, at least during the day when it can’t be heard on the street. Agreed?”
Piwano nodded.
“But in case you should ever need to get away, I’ll tell you about an escape route known only to a few.” Opur pointed to a building diagonally across from the flutemaster’s house; it was set somewhat back from the street and wedged between the displays of a basketmaker and the bar of a dark, greasy soup-kitchen. “That’s a laundry. That’s where you run in. From the front, it’s obvious that there’s a large drying yard behind the building where linens are nearly always hanging out to dry. You can’t be seen between the sheets. A pursuer will immediately think of the numerous exits from the dry
ing yard that lead to other alleys. But you must turn immediately left and you’ll come into the soup-kitchen from the rear. A trapdoor in the floor leads to the cellar, and down there is a set of shelves—similar to the one here—that you can swing aside. Behind it, a hallway runs for a long distance and finally opens into the underground water system of the Upper Town. So, even if they discovered your entry point, there are literally thousands of possible exits for you.”
Piwano nodded again. Opur had seen the boy memorize whole pieces of music with just one look; so he felt sure that he had understood everything and would never forget it.
He walked over to the cabinet where he kept his written music, books, and instruments. After brief consideration, he removed a small case, opened it, and took out a triflute, which he presented to Piwano.
“This is a very, very old flute, which I have saved for a long time … for a special moment,” he explained. “And I think this is that moment.”
Piwano held it reverently in his hands, turned it over, and looked at it carefully. “There’s something different about it,” he said.
“Instead of the flute of bone, it has one of glass.” Opur closed the empty case and put it aside. “The glass has become milky with age. You will have to get used to it a bit, because a glass flute has a sharper tone than a bone flute.”
Carefully, Piwano raised the triflute to his lips and wrapped his fingers around the three interwoven flutes. He played a few chords. They sounded harsh and dissonant. The old man smiled.
“You’ll master it.”
* * *
Ten days later the Imperial spaceship took off. The whole time, the silver colossus had been visible in the distance on the shabby, old spaceport grounds. But this morning, the air over the city vibrated with the whine of the rocket engines. Opur and Piwano watched together from the window, as the spacecraft’s shiny metal hull rose above the houses, awkwardly at first, then climbing—faster and faster, higher and higher—until it had shrunk to a tiny point that disappeared far above them in the sky. The silence that then descended was like a feeling of salvation.
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