They asked questions. Seemingly random questions. About his training at the Songhouse, his upbringing before he got to Tew, and dozens of questions that Ansset could not begin to understand, let alone answer.
How do you feel about the four freedoms?
Did they teach you in the Songhouse about the Discipline of Frey?
What about the heroes of Seawatch? The League of Cities of the Sea?
And, finally: Didn't they teach you anything at the Songhouse?
They taught me, Ansset said, how to sing.
The questioners looked at each other. The Captain of the guard finally shrugged. Hell, he's a nine-year-old kid.
How many nine-year-old kids know anything about history? How many of them have any political views?
It's the Songhouse I'm worried about, said a man whose voice sang death to Ansset.
Maybe, just maybe, said the Captain, and his voice was oiled with sarcasm, the Songhouse is as apolitical as they claim.
Nobody's apolitical.
They gave Mikal a Songbird, the Captain pointed out. It was a very unpopular thing to do, in the empire at large. I heard that some pompous ass on Prowk is returning his singer to them as a protest.
The Chamberlain raised a finger. They did not give Mikal a Songbird. They charged a great deal.
Which they didn't need, said the man whose voice sang death. They have more money than any other institution in the empire except the empire itself. So the question remains-why did they send this boy to Mikal? I don't trust them. It's a plot.
A quiet man with large, heavy eyes left the edges of the room and touched the Chamberlain on the shoulder. Mikal is waiting, he said softly, but his message seemed to settle gloom on everyone.
I had begun to hope the Songhouse would actually delay long enough that--
That what? asked the Captain of the guard, belligerently daring the Chamberlain to speak treason.
That we wouldn't have to put up with all this fuss.
The man whose voice sang death came over to Ansset, who sat with a blank face, watching him. He looked Ansset coldly in the eyes. I suppose, he finally said, you might just be what you seem to be.
What do I seem to be? Ansset asked innocently.
The man paused before answering.
Beautiful, he finally said, and there were tremolos of regret in his voice. He turned away, turned away and left the room through the door Ansset had entered by. Everyone seemed to be relieved. Well, that's that, said the Chamberlain, and the Captain of the guard visibly relaxed.
I'm supposed to command every starship in the fleet, and I spend an hour trying to get inside a child's head. He laughed.
Who was that man who left? asked Ansset.
The Chamberlain glanced at the Captain before answering. He's called Ferret. He's an outside expert.
Outside of what?
The palace, answered the Captain.
Why were you all so glad to have him leave?
Enough questions, said the large-eyed man, his voice gentle and trustworthy. Mikal is ready for you.
So Ansset followed him to a door, which led to a small room where guards passed wands over their bodies and took samples of blood, then to another door which led to a small waiting room. And at last an old, gritty voice came over a speaker and said, Now.
A door slid upward in what looked like a section of wall, and they passed from the false stone to a room of real wood. Ansset did not yet know that this, of all things, was a mark of Mikal's wealth and power. On Tew, forests were everywhere and wood was easy to get. On Earth, there was a law, punishable by death, against poaching wood from the forests, a law which had been made perhaps twenty thousand years before, when the forests had almost died. Only the poorest exempt peasants in Siberia could cut wood-and Mikal. Mikal could have wood. Mikal could have anything he wanted.
Even a Songbird.
There was a fire (burning wood!) in a fireplace at one end of the room. By it, on the floor, lay Mikal. He was old, but his body was lithe. His face was sagging but his arms were firm, bare to the shoulder with no hint of the loss of muscle.
The eyes were deep, and they regarded Ansset steadily. The servant led Ansset partway into the room, and then left.
Ansset, said the emperor.
Ansset lowered his head in a gesture of respect.
Mikal rose from his lying position to sit on the floor. There was furniture in the room, but it was far back at the walls, and the floor was bare by the fire. Come, Mikal said.
Ansset walked toward him, stopped and stood still when he was only a meter or so away. The fire was warm. But, Ansset noticed, the room was otherwise cool. Mikal had said only two words, and Ansset did not know his songs, not from that little bit. Yet there had been kindness, and a feeling of awe. Awe, from the emperor of mankind toward a boy.
Would you like to sit? Mikal asked.
Ansset sat. The floor, which had felt rigid to his feet, softened when his weight was distributed over a larger area, and the floor was comfortable. Too comfortable- Ansset was not used to softness.
Have you been treated well?
For a moment Ansset did not answer. He was listening to Mikal's songs, and did not realize that a question had been asked, not until he had begun to understand a little of the reason a Songbird had been sent to a man who had killed so many millions of human beings.
Are you afraid to answer? Mikal asked. I assure you, if you've been mistreated in any way--
I don't know, Ansset said. I don't know what passes for good treatment here.
Mikal was amused, but showed it only warily. Ansset admired his control. Not Control, of course, but something akin to it, something that made him hard to hear. What passes for good treatment in the Songhouse?
No one ever searched me in the Songhouse, Ansset said. No one ever held my penis as if he wanted to own it,
Mikal did not answer for a moment, though the pause was the only sign of emotion Mikal let himself show. Who was it? Mikal asked calmly.
It was the tall one, with the silver stripe. Ansset felt a strange excitement in being able to name the man. What would Mikal do?
The emperor turned to a low table, and pressed a place on it. There was a tall guard, a sergeant, among those who searched the boy.
A moment of silence, and then a soft voice answering- the Captain's voice, Ansset realized, but muted somehow, all harshness sifted out and softened. Was it the machinery? Or did the Captain speak this tenderly to Mikal? Callowick, said the Captain. What did he do?
He found the boy tempting, Mikal said. Break him and get him off planet somewhere. Mikal took his hand from the table.
For a moment Ansset felt a thrill of delight. He did not really understand what the guard had done, this Callowick, except that he had not liked it. But Mikal refused to let it happen again, Mikal would punish those who offended him, Mikal would keep him as safe as he had been in the Songhouse. Safer, for in the Songhouse Ansset had been hurt, and here no one would dare hurt him for Mikal's sake. It was Ansset's first taste of the power of life and death, and it was delicious.
You have power, Ansset said aloud.
Do I? asked Mikal, looking at him intently.
Everyone knows that.
And do you? Mikal asked.
A kind of power, Ansset said, but there had been something in Mikal's question. Something else, a sort of plea, and Ansset searched in His memory of this new, strange voice, to hear what the question was really asking. A kind of power, but you see the end of it. It makes you afraid.
Mikal said nothing now. Just looked carefully at Ansset's face. Ansset was afraid for a moment. Surely this was not what Esste had urged him to do. You must make friends, she had said, because you understand so much more. Do I? Ansset wondered now. I understand some things, but this man has hidden places. This man is dangerous, too; he is not just my protector.
You have to say something now, Ansset said, outwardly calm. I can't know you if I don't hear your voice.
It was enough of Mikal's voice, and held enough of the emperor's emotion that Ansset could reach a little further. I don't think it's the loss of your power that you fear, Ansset said. I think-I think-- And then words failed him, because he did not understand what he saw and heard in Mikal, not in a way he could express in words. So he sang. With some words, here and there, but the rest melodies and rhythms that spoke of Mikal's love of power. You don't love power like a hungry man loves food, the song seemed to say. You love power like a father loves his son. Ansset sang of power that was created, not found; created and increased until it filled the universe. And then Ansset sang of the room where Mikal lived, filled it to the wooden walls with his voice, and let the sound reverberate in the wood, let it dance and become lively and, though it distorted his tone, come back to add depth to the song.
And as he sang the songs he had just learned from Mikal, Ansset became more daring, and sang the hope of friendship, the offer of trust. He sang the love song.
And when he had finished, Mikal regarded him with his careful eyes. For a moment Ansset wondered if the song had had any effect. Then Mikal reached out a hand, and it trembled, and the trembling was not from age. Reached out a hand, and Ansset also held out a hand, and laid it in the old man's palm. Mikal's hand was large and strong, and Ansset felt that he could be swallowed up, seized and gathered into Mikal's fist and never be found. Yet when Mikal closed his thumb over Ansset's hand, the touch was gentle, the grip firm yet kind, and Mikal's voice was heavy with emotion when he said, You are. What I had hoped for.
Ansset leaned forward. Please don't be too satisfied yet, he said. Your songs are hard to sing, and I haven't learned them all yet.
My songs? I have no songs.
Yes you have. I sang them to you.
Mikal looked disturbed. Where did you get the idea that they were--
I heard them in your voice.
The idea surprised Mikal, took him off guard. But there was so much beauty in what you sang--
Sometimes, Ansset answered.
Yes. And so much-what, I don't know. Perhaps. Perhaps you found such songs in me. He looked doubtful. He sounded disappointed. Is this a trick you play? Is this all?
A trick?
To hear what's going on in your patron's voice and sing it back to him? No wonder I liked the song. But don't you have any songs of yourself?
Now it was Ansset's turn to be surprised. But what am I?
A good question, Mikal said. A beautiful nine-year-old boy. Is that what they were waiting for? A body that would make a polygamist regret ever having loved women, a face that mothers and fathers would follow for miles, coveting for their children. Did I want a catamite? I think not. Did I want a mirror? Perhaps when I met the Songmaster so many years ago he was not so wise as I thought. Or perhaps I've changed since then.
I'm sorry I disappointed you. Ansset let his real fear show in his voice. Again, it was what Esste had told him: Hide nothing from your patron. It had been easy, after the ordeal in the High Room, to open his heart to Esste. But here, now, with this strange man who had not liked the song even though it had moved him deeply-it took real effort to keep the walls down. Ansset felt as vulnerable as when the soldier had fondled him, and as ignorant of what it was he feared. Yet he showed the fear, because that was what Esste had told him to do, and he knew she would not be wrong.
Mikal's face set hard. Of course you didn't disappoint me. I told you. That song was what I hoped for. But I want to hear a song of yourself. Surely you have songs of your own.
I have, Ansset answered.
Will you sing them to me?
I will, said Ansset.
And so he sang, beginning timidly because he had never sung these songs except to people who already loved him, people who were also creatures of the Songhouse and so needed no explanation. But Mikal knew nothing of the Songhouse, and so Ansset groped backward with his melody, trying to find a way to tell Mikal who he was, and finally realizing that he could not, that all he could tell him was the meaning of the Songhouse, was the feel of the cold stone under his fingers, was the kindness of Rruk when he had wept in fear and uncertainty and she had sung confidence to him, though she herself was only a child.
I am a child, said Ansset's song, as weak as a leaf in the wind, and yet, along with a thousand other leaves I have roots that go deep into rock, the cold, living rocks of the Songhouse. I am a child, and my fathers are a thousand other children, and my mother is a woman who broke me open and brought me out and warmed me in the cold storm where I was suddenly naked and suddenly not alone. I am a gift, fashioned by my own hands to be given to you by others, and I don't know it I am acceptable.
And as he sang, he found himself inexorably heading toward the one song he would never have thought to sing. The song of the days in the High Room. The song of his birth. I can't, he thought as the melodies swept into his throat and out of his teeth. I can't bear it, he cried to himself as the emotions came, not in tears, but in passionate tones that came from the most tender places in him. I can't bear to stop, he thought as he sang of Esste's love for him and his terror at leaving her so soon after having learned to lean on her.
And in his song, too, he heard something that surprised him. He heard, through all the emotion of his memories, a thread of dissonance, a thread that spoke of hidden darkness in him. He searched for that note and lost it. And gradually the search for the strangeness in his own song took him out of the song, and brought him to himself again. He sang, and the fire died, and his song at last died, too.
And it was then that he realized that Mikal lay curled around him, his arm embracing Ansset, the other arm covering his face, where he wept, where he sobbed silently. With the song over, the sparks were the only music in the room as the last fusses of flame kept trying to revive the fire.
Oh, what have I done? Ansset cried to himself as he watched the emperor of mankind, Mikal the Terrible, weeping into his hand.
Oh, Ansset, said Mikal, what have you done?
And then, after a moment, Mikal stopped crying and rolled over onto his back and said, Oh, God, it's too kind, it's too cruel. I'm a hundred and twenty-one years old and death lurks in the walls and floor, waiting to catch me unawares. Why couldn't you have come to me when I was forty?
Ansset did not know if an answer was expected. I wasn't born then, he finally said, and Mikal laughed.
That's right. You weren't born yet. Nine years old. What do they do to you in the Songhouse, Ansset? What terrible squeezing they must do, to wring such songs out of you.
Did you like my song this time?
Like? Mikal asked, wondering if the boy was joking. Like? And he laughed a long time, and laid his head on Ansset's lap. The two of them slept there that night, and from then on there were no more searches, no more questions. Ansset was free to come to Mikal, because there was no time when Mikal did not long to have him there.
4
You're in luck, their guide told them, and Kya-Kya sighed. She had been hoping that they would be lucky enough to get out of Susquehanna after only the normal five-hour tour. But she was sure that was not what the guide had in mind. The emperor, said the guide, has asked to meet with you. This is a very great honor. But, as the Chamberlain told me just a few moments ago, you students from the Princeton Government Institute are the future administrators of this great empire. It is only just that Mikal should meet with his future aides and helpers.
Aides and helpers, hell, Kya-Kya thought. The old man will die before I graduate, and then we'll be aiding and helping somebody else-probably the bastard who killed him.
She had work to do. Some of the trips and tours were worthwhile-the four days they spent at the computer center in Tegucigalpa, the week observing the operation of a welfare services outlet in Rouen. But here at Susquehanna they were shown nothing of any importance, just as a matter of form. The ci
ty existed to keep Mikal alive and safe-the real government work went on elsewhere. Worse, the palace had been designed by a madman (probably Mikal himself, she thought) and the corridors were a maze that doubled back constantly, that rose and fell through meaningless ramps and stairways. The building seemed to be one vast barrier, and her legs ached from the long walk between one exhibit and another. Several times she could have sworn that they walked up one corridor, lined with doors on the left, and then turned 180 degrees and walked down a parallel corridor with doors on the left that led only to the corridor they had just traveled. Maddening. Wearying.
And what's more, said the guide, the Chamberlain even hinted that you might get a chance usually granted only to distinguished offworld visitors. You may get to hear Mikal's Songbird.
There was a buzz of interest among the students. Of course they had all heard of Mikal's Songbird, at first the scandalous news that Mikal had forced even the Song-house to bend to his will, and then the spreading word from those privileged few who had heard the boy sing: that Mikal's Songbird was the greatest Songbird ever, that no human voice had ever done what he could do.
Kya-Kya felt something entirely different, however. None of her fellow students knew she was from the Song-house, or even from Tew. She had been discreet to the point of aloofness. And she did not long to see Ansset again, not the boy who had been Esste's favorite, not the boy who was the opposite of her.
But there was no escape from the group. Kya-Kya was systematically being a model student-creative but compliant. Sometimes it nearly killed her, she thought, but she made sure there would be glowing recommendations from every professor, a perfect record of achievement. It was hard for a woman to get a job in government at all. And the kind of job she wanted usually came to a woman only as the climax of her career, not at the beginning.
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