I can't.
Why not?
Because you aren't.
The way he looked at her, his eyes swimming with tears, was getting through to her. Is it an act? she wondered. Is this just an incredibly complex line? Then it occurred to her that he was probably not interested in the thing that lines usually led to.
What do you want?
Perversely, he took the question wrong. Deliberately wrong, Kyaren knew, and yet exactly right,
I want, he said, to live forever.
She started to interrupt. No, I mean--
But he refused to be interrupted. He spoke louder, and got up from the bed and walked aimlessly around the limited floorspace of the room. I want to five forever surrounded by the things I love. A million books, and one person. All of humanity in the past, and only a single example of the human race in the present.
Only one person? she asked. Me?
You? he asked in mock startlement. Then, more subdued, he said, Why not? For a while at least. One person at a time.
All of humanity in the past, she said. You like your work in the Office of Death that much?
He laughed. History, Kyaren. I'm a historian. I have degrees from three universities. I've written theses and dissertations. Feces and defecations, he amended. With my specialty, there's not a chance in the world of my getting a job on this planet. Or a really good job anywhere.
He walked up to her, knelt beside her, and put his head in her lap. She wanted to shove him away, but found that she could not bring herself to do it. I love all mankind in the past. I love you in the present. And he smiled so crazily, reaching up a clawed hand to paw ineffectually at her arm, that she could not stop herself from laughing.
He had won. And she knew it. And he stayed, talking.
He talked about his obsession with history, which began in the library in Seattle, Westamerica, a town on the site of a great ancient city. I didn't get along with other children, he said. But I got along great with Napoleon Bonaparte. Oliver Cromwell. Douglas MacArthur. Attila the Hun. The names meant nothing to Kyaren, but they obviously were rich with memories to Josif. Napoleon is always in dense forest to me. I read about him among trees, huge trees covering ground so moist you could almost swim in it. While Cromwell is always in a little boat on Pungent Bay, in the rain. The library made me pay for the new printout of the book-the ink ran on the copy I had. I dreamed of changing the world. Until I got old enough to realize that it takes more than dreams to make any kind of impression on events. And a reader of books is not a mover of men.
He was so full of memory, which flooded out of him uncontrollably and yet in marvelously subtle order, that Kyaren also remembered, though she said nothing of it to him. She had been raised amid music, constant songs; but here she found a better song than any she had heard on Tew. His cadences, his melodies and themes and variations were verbal, not musical, but because of that they reached her better, and when at last he finished she felt she had listened to a virtuoso perform. She resisted the temptation to applaud. He would have thought she was being ironic.
Instead she only sighed, and closed her eyes, and remembered her own dreams when she first became Groan and thought of one day singing before thousands of people who would watch her intently and admire and be moved. The dreams had been stripped from her one by one, until nothing was left of them but a scar that bled often but never reopened. She sighed, and Josif misunderstood.
I'm sorry, he said. I thought it would matter to you. And he got up to go.
She stopped him, caught his hand and pulled him away from the door, which was closing again because he had not stepped through it.
Don't go, she said.
I bored you.
She shook her head. No, she said. You didn't bore me. I just don't know why you told me.
He laughed softly. Because you're the first person in a long time who looked like she might be willing to hear and capable of understanding.
Dreams, dreams, dreams, she said. You've never grown up.
Yes I have, he said, and the pain in his voice was painful to hear.
Drink? she asked.
Water, he said.
It's all I have, she answered. So it's a good thing that's what you want.
She came back in with two glasses, and Josif sipped it as reverently as if it had been wine dedicated on some altar. His eyes were grave as he said to her, I cheated.
She raised an eyebrow.
I changed the subject.
When? He had been through many subjects that night. She glanced at her wrist. It had been more than two hours.
Right at the first. I started talking about childhood and dreams and history and my private madnesses. While all you wanted to talk about was perversion.
She shook her head. Don't want to talk about it.
I do.
No. I've enjoyed this. I don't want it wrecked.
He drank the rest of the water quickly.
Kyaren, he said. They make it ugly, and it isn't.
I don't want to know if it's ugly or not.
They call me a whore, and I wasn't.
I believe you. Let's leave it at that.
No, dammit! he said fiercely. What do you think I've been going through the last couple of hours? You think I go to parties and tell people my life story? I'm attaching to you, Kyaren, like a bloodsucker to a shark.
I don't like the analogy.
I'm not a poet. I don't know what kind of pain you've gone through in your life to turn you into what you are, but I like what you are, and I want to be with you for a while, and when I do that I don't just play around at it. I become ubiquitous. You won't be able to get rid of me. I'll be there whenever you turn around. You'll trip on me getting out of bed in the morning and whenever you feel someone tickling your feet at work it'll be me, hiding under your desk. You understand? I plan to stay here.
Why me? Kyaren asked.
Do you think I know? A stuck-up Princeton graduate like you? He hazarded a guess. Maybe because you listened to me all the way through and didn't fall asleep.
I thought of it a couple of times.
I came here as Bant's lover.
I don't want to hear this.
Bant loved me and I loved Bant and he came here and brought me with him because he didn't want to be without me and so he got me a job in Death while he was in charge of Vitals. I didn't want to come here. All I wanted to do was stay near a library and read. For the rest of my life, I think. But Bant came here and I came, and then after a year Bant got bored with me. I get boring sometimes.
Kyaren decided not to try to be humorous.
I got boring, and so he didn't bring me with him when he transferred over to be head of Employment. And he didn't notify me when he moved to better rooms. But he didn't take away my job. He was kind enough to let me keep my job.
And Josif was crying and suddenly Kyaren understood something that nobody had ever bothered to explain to her in all the explanations of homosexuality that she had heard. That when Bant left it was the end of the world for Josif, because when he attached to somebody he didn't know how to let go.
Yet Kyaren was unsure how to react. Josif was, after all, nearly a stranger. Why had he poured out his heart to her tonight? What did he expect her to do? If he thought she was going to respond by baring her soul to him, he was wrong-Kyaren kept all her memories hidden. She didn't want to start talking about her childhood in the Songhouse. What could she say? I was miserable for years because I simply didn't have the ability to measure up to the Songhouse's minimum standards? She didn't want pity because of her childhood inabilities. She wanted respect because of her current competence.
Respect didn't enter into this situation, with the man crying softly, his face pressed into his knees as he sat on the floor leaning against the bed. She could think of only one reason for his emotional outpouring. He obviously didn't want to seduce her; therefore, he could only be trying for friendship. She knew how painful her isolation had been. I
f his had been half so bad, no wonder he was grasping at the first person who showed any sign of liking him.
For that matter, she wondered, why don't I feel any desire to take hold of his offer of friendship?
Because she didn't quite trust him, she realized. She was instantly ashamed of her suspicions. She knelt and then sat beside him, put an arm over his shoulders, tried to comfort him.
Fifteen minutes later he started undressing her. She looked at him in surprise. I thought-- she said, and he interrupted.
Statistics, he said. Trends. I'm sixty-two percent attracted to men, thirty-one percent attracted to women, and seven percent attracted to sheep. And one hundred percent attracted to you.
She had been right to mistrust him, the cynical, beaten part of her mind said sneeringly. It had all been a line.
But she clung to the line and let it draw her in. Because there was another part of her that hadn't had much play lately: she needed his gentle hands and quiet tears, his lies and his affection. And so she pretended to believe that he really did need her even as she said, I thought it would come to this, eventually. She didn't say that she hadn't thought that when it happened she would be longing for it, that it would not be a question of fun but rather a question of need, that this half-man would be able to do in one night what no one had been able to do in her life- win enough of her trust that she was willing, even for a moment, to let herself want him.
So she comforted him that night, and, strangely enough, she was also comforted, though she had said nothing to him of her loneliness, had told him nothing of her dreams. As she ran her hands over his smooth skin, she remembered the harsh cold stone of the Songhouse and could not think why the one should have reminded her of the other.
2
I will tour the empire next year, Riktors announced at dinner, and the two hundred prefects gathered at the tables cheered and clapped. It struck Ansset, from his place beside Riktors at the table, that the outburst was largely sincere, an unusual event in the palace. Ansset smiled at Riktors. They mean it, he said, for Riktors's ears only. Riktors's eyes crinkled a little, enough of a sign that he had heard, had understood. And then the tumult died and Riktors said, Not only will I tour, and visit at least one world in every prefecture, but also I will bring my Songbird with me, so that all the empire can hear him sing!
And the cheers were even louder, the applause even more sincere. Riktors looked at Ansset and laughed in delight-the boy looked completely surprised, and Riktors loved to surprise him. It wasn't easy to do.
But when the room was quiet again, Ansset said, softly, But I won't be here next year.
Enough people heard him that a whisper began along the head table. Riktors tried to keep his expression bland. He knew immediately what the boy meant. It was something that Riktors had forgotten without forgetting. He knew that Ansset was nearly fifteen years old, that the contract with the Songhouse was nearly up. But he had not let himself think of it, had not let himself plan for a future without Ansset beside him.
Riktors looked at Ansset and patted his hand. We'll talk about it later, Riktors said. But Ansset looked worried. He spoke louder this time.
Riktors, the boy said, I'm nearly fifteen. My contract expires in a month.
Some of the prefects in the audience moaned; most, however, realized that what was being said at the head table was not according to plan. That Ansset was doing what no one dared to do-reminding the emperor of something the emperor did not want to know. They kept their silence.
Contracts can be renewed, Riktors said, trying to sound jovial and hoping to be able to change the subject immediately. He did not know how to react to Ansset's insistence. Why was the boy pushing the matter?
Whatever the reason, he was still determined to push.
Not mine, said Ansset. In two months I get to go home.
And now everyone in the hall was silent. Riktors sat still, but his hands trembled on the edge of the table. For a moment he refused to understand what Ansset was saying; but Riktors did not become emperor by indulging his need to lie to himself. Go home, the boy had said. His choice of words had to be deliberate-in public Ansset had no inadvertent words. Get to go home, not have to go home, he had said. And suddenly the last few years were all undone; Riktors felt them unwinding inside him, unraveling, all the fabric turning into meaningless threads that he could not put together however much he tried.
There were countless days of conversation, the songs Ansset had sung to him, walks along the river. They had romped together like brothers, Riktors forgetting all his dignity, and Ansset forgetting-or so Riktors had believed-all the enmity of the past.
Do you love me? Riktors had once asked, opening Himself as, with any other person, he could not have afforded to open himself. And Ansset had sung to him of love. Riktors had taken this to mean yes.
And all the time Ansset was marking time, watching for his fifteenth birthday, for the expiration of his contract, for home.
I should have known better, Riktors told himself bitterly. I should have realized that the boy was Mikal's, would always be Mikal's, would never be mine. He did not forgive, as I thought he had.
Riktors imagined Ansset returning to the Songhouse on Tew; he pictured him embracing Esste, the hard woman who only looked soft when she looked at the Songbird. Riktors pictured her asking, How was it, living with the killer? And he pictured Ansset weeping; no, never weeping, not Ansset. He would remain calm, merely sing to her of the humiliation of singing for Riktors Ashen, emperor, assassin, and pathetic lover of Ansset's songs. Riktors imagined Ansset and Esste laughing together as they talked of the moment when Riktors, weary of the weight of the empire in his mind, had come to Ansset in the night for the healing of his hands, and had wept before the boy sang a note. A weakling, that's what I've been, in front of a boy who never shows an unwitting emotion; he has seen me unprotected, and instead of loving me he has felt only contempt.
It was just a moment that Riktors sat there silently, but in his mind he progressed from surprise to hurt to humiliation and, at last, to fury. He rose to his feet, and there was no hiding the anger on his face. The prefects were alarmed-it is not wise to witness the embarrassment of powerful men, they all knew, and no one was so powerful as Riktors Mikal.
You are right! Riktors said, loudly. My Songbird has reminded me that in a month his contract expires and he goes, as he says, home. I had thought that this was his home, but now I see that I was mistaken. My Songbird will return to Tew, to his precious Songhouse, for Riktors Mikal keeps his word. But the Songbird, since he obviously holds us in little esteem, will never again see his emperor, and his emperor will never again permit himself to hear his lying songs.
Riktors's face was red and tight with pain when he turned and left the dinner. A few of the prefects made some small effort to touch their food; the rest got up immediately, and soon all were headed out of the ball, wondering whether it would be better to stay around to try to show the emperor that they were still as loyal as ever, or to head quickly for their prefectures, so that he and they could all pretend that they had never come, that the scene with Ansset had never taken place.
As they left, Ansset sat alone at the table, looking at but not seeing the food in front of him. He sat that way, in silence, until the Mayor of the palace (the office of Chamberlain had long since been abolished) came to him and led him away.
Where am I going? Ansset asked softly.
The Mayor said nothing, only took him into the maze of corridors. It did not take Ansset long to recognize the place they were going to. When Riktors Ashen changed his name and moved into the palace, he had stayed away from Mikal's old chambers; instead he had established himself in new rooms near the top of the building, with windows that displayed the lawns and forest all around. Now the Mayor led Ansset through doors that once had been guarded by the tightest security measures in the empire, and at last they stood inside the door of a room where an empty fireplace still had ashes on the hearth; where the
furniture remained unmoved, untouched; where the years of Mikal's presence still clung to all the features of the place, to all the memories the room inevitably stirred in Ansset's mind.
There was a thin layer of dust on the floor, as in all the unused rooms of the palace, which were only cleaned annually, if at all. Ansset walked slowly into the room,' the dust rising at each footfall. He walked to the fireplace; the urn that had held Mikal's ashes still waited beside the opening. He turned back to face the Mayor, who finally spoke.
Riktors Imperator, the Mayor said, with the formality of a memorized message, has said to you, Since you were not at home with me, you will stay where you are at home, until the Songhouse sends for you.
Riktors misunderstood me, Ansset said, but the Mayor showed no sign of having heard. He only turned away and left, and when Ansset tried the door, it did not open to his touch.
3
They spent weekend after weekend in Mexico, the largest city in the hemisphere. Josif went to make the rounds of bookstores-the market in old books and rare books was always hot, and Josif had an eye for bargains, books selling for way under value. He also had an eye for what he wanted-histories that were long out of print, fiction written centuries ago about the author's own period, diaries and journals. They say there's nothing original to be said about the history of Earth, that all the facts have been in for years, Josif said fiercely. But that was years ago, and now no one remembers anymore. What it was like to live here then.
When? Kyaren asked him.
Then. As opposed to now.
I'm more interested, she always told him, in tomorrow.
But she wasn't. Today was all that interested her in the first weeks they spent together. Today because it was the best time she had ever had, and she wasn't sure that it would last, or that tomorrow would be half as desirable.
Kyaren went to Mexico for the feel of people. Nowhere in Eastamerica, and certainly nowhere in the Songhouse, were there people like those who crowded the sidewalks of Mexico. No vehicles were allowed except the electric carts that brought in goods to the stores; people, individual people, had to walk everywhere. And there were millions of them. And they all seemed to be outside all the time; even in the rain, they sauntered through the streets with the rain sliding easily off their clothing, relishing the feel of it on their faces. This was a city where Kyaren's hunger could be filled. She knew no one, but loved everyone.
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