They would have asked for explanation, but he left mem without another word. It was the Chief of Planetary Security who finally told them what was happening to them. You've been fired from your previous jobs, he said, looking as serene as only a man with a great deal of power can look. And given new ones.
Josif found himself assistant to the minister of education, with special authority over funds for research. Kyaren was made special assistant to the manager of Earth, where she could get her hands into anything on the planet. Not imperial offices, but about as high as novices could hope to get-work that would give them connections for future advances and all the opportunities they would need to show just what kind of work they were capable of doing.
In a stroke, they had been given a chance to make careers for themselves.
Who is he, an angel? God? Josif asked the Chief.
The Chief laughed. Most people put him at the opposite end of things. The Devil. The Angel of Death. But he's nothing like that at all. He's just Ferret. The emperor's ferret, you see. He makes people and he unmakes them, and answers only to the emperor.
They knew how well he could make people. The unmaking they saw when, a few weeks later, they were watching the vids in their apartment. The day in Babylon had been hot and rainy, until at sunset they had stood on their balcony watching the light glisten on waterdrops clinging to a billion blades of grass, with the long shadows of trees interrupting the lush savannah at random yet perfect intervals. An elephant moved lazily through the tall grass. A herd of gazelles bounded north in the distance. Kyaren and Josif felt utterly exhausted from the day's work, utterly at peace from the evening's beauty, a delicious mood of languor. They knew the conviction of the plotters would be cast from Tegucigalpa tonight, and they felt an obligation to watch.
As moments from the trials were presented, with the faces of their former co-workers again and again in the dock, Kyaren began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Not because she had turned them in-but because she had felt no qualms about doing so. Would she have been so eager to denounce them if they had not so openly excluded her? She imagined what it might have been like if she had come into the Office of Pensions more humbly, not preceded by remarkable tests, not clothed in her perpetual reserve. Would they then have befriended her, gradually admitted her to the plot? Would she then have denounced them?
Impossible to know, she realized. For if she had come humbly, she would not have been herself and so who could then predict how she would have acted?
Beside her, Josif gasped. Kyaren looked closely at the vids again. It was just another man in the dock, one she didn't know. Who is it? she asked.
Bant, Josif said, gnawing at his knuckles.
In all their thinking, they hadn't thought of this-that Bant, of course, as head of Vitals, had to be involved. Kyaren had never met him, but felt that she knew him through Josif. Yet what she knew of him was his hilarity, his insistence that lovemaking had to be fun. Kyaren hadn't enjoyed imagining Josif making love with a man, but that much, at least, had been impossible for Josif not to talk about. Apparently Bant's greed for sex was just a facet of his overall greed; his unconcern for Josif's feelings was part of a general unconcern for anyone.
All those charged were convicted. They were alt sentenced to five to thirty years in hard labor, deported, and permanently exiled from Earth, permanently barred from government employment. It was a severe sentence. Apparently it was not severe enough.
The announcer began talking about the need to make an example of these people, lest others decide that a group scam on government funds might be worth the risks. As he talked, the vids showed a man from the back, walking toward the line of prisoners. The prisoners all had guards behind them; their hands were bound. They looked toward the man who approached them, and their faces suddenly looked alarmed. The vids backed off so that the viewers could see why. The man held a blade. Not a laser -a blade, made of metal, a frightening thing in part because it was so ancient and barbaric.
Ferret, Kyaren said, and Josif nodded. The vids didn't show the man's face, but they were quite sure they recognized him.
And then Ferret reached the first of the prisoners, paused before him, then moved to the next, paused. It was not until the fourth prisoner that the hand lashed out; the blade caught the prisoner at the point where the jaw meets the ear, then flashed to the left and emerged at the same point on the other side. For a moment the prisoner looked surprised, just surprised. Then a red line appeared along his throat, and suddenly blood erupted and spurted from the wound, spattering those to either side. The body sagged, the mouth struggling to speak, the eyes pleading for the act to somehow be undone. It was not undone. The guard behind the man held him up, and when the prisoner's head sagged forward, the guard grabbed the hair and pulled the head back, so that the face could be seen. The action also made the wound gape, like the maw of a piranha. And finally the blood stopped pumping and the ferret, his back still to the vids, nodded. The guard let the man drop to the floor.
Apparently the vids had shown this execution in detail because it was the first. As the ferret walked along, snicking the throats of every third, fourth, or fifth prisoner, the vids did not hold close for the dying, as they had with the first; rather the program moved quickly.
Kyaren and Josif did not notice, however. Because from the moment the blade first flashed forward, catching the prisoner in the throat, Josif had been screaming. Kyaren tried to force him to look away from the vids, tried to make him hide his eyes from the man's death, but even as he screamed piteously, Josif refused to take his eyes from the sight of the blood and the agony. And when the prisoner sagged forward, Josif wept loudly, crying, Bant! Bant!
Now they knew how the ferret unmade people. He must, Kyaren thought, he must have known how Josif felt about Bant, chose to kill him knowing that, as if to say, You can denounce the criminal, but you cannot do it without consequences.
Kyaren was sure that his choice of victim had been deliberate, for when he got to the last six people, he slowed down, looking each one of them in the eyes. The prisoners were reacting very differently, some trying to be stoic about their possible death, some trying to plead with him, some near vomiting with fear or disgust. With each person he passed, the next became more sure that he was the victim-the ferret had not skipped more than four people in a row before. And then he came to the last one.
The last one was Warvel, who was utterly certain that he would die--five had already been passed over. And Kyaren, her arms around Josif, who wept softly beside her, found herself inwardly pleased, sickeningly pleased, that Warvel would also die. If Bant, then surely Warvel.
Then the ferret snaked out his hand. But not to kill. For the hand now was empty, and he caught Warvel by the neck, pulled him forward away from the guard. Warvel stumbled, nearly fell, his knees were so weak. But the vids carried the sound of Ferret's voice. Pardon this one. The emperor pardons this one.
And Warvel's bonds were loosed as the announcer's voice began talking about how the emperor was to be remembered always-because when someone cheated or abused the people, the emperor would be the people's champion and carry out their vengeance. But always the emperor's justice is tempered with mercy. Always the emperor remembers that even the worst of criminals is still one of the emperor's people.
Warvel.
Bant.
Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, Kyaren whispered silently, so that even she could hardly hear the thought as her lips moved. Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, we have learned. We have learned.
And that was why Kyaren and Josif were in Babylon when Ansset was placed there.
4
For the first time in his life, Ansset lost songs.
Up to now, everything that had happened to him had added to his music. Even Mikal's death had taught him new songs, and deepened all the old ones.
He spent only one month as a prisoner, but he spent it songless. Not that he meant to keep his silence. Occasionally, at firs
t, he tried to sing. Even something simple, something he had learned as a child. The sounds came out of his throat well enough, but there was no fulfillment in it. The song always sounded empty to him, and he could not bring himself to go on.
Ansset speculated on death, perhaps because of the constant reminder of the urn that had held Mikal's ashes, perhaps because he felt entombed in the dusty room with its constant reminders of a long-gone past. Or perhaps because the drugs that delayed the Songbird's puberty were now wearing off, and the changes came on more awkwardly because of the artificial delay. Ansset awoke often in the night, troubled by strange and unfulfilling dreams. Small for his age, he began to feel restless, an urge to grapple violently with someone or something, a passion for movement that, in the confines of Mikal's rooms, he could not fulfill.
This is what the dead feel, Ansset thought. This is what they go through, shut up in their tombs or caught, embarrassingly, in public without their bodies. Ghosts may long to simply touch something, but bodiless they cannot; they may wish for heat, for cold, for even the delicious-ness of pain, but it Is all denied them.
He counted days. With the poker from the fire he notched each morning in the ashes in the hearth, in spite of the fact that the ashes were of Mikal's body-or perhaps because of it. And, at last, the day came when his contract was expired and he could finally go home.
How could Riktors have misinterpreted him so? In all his years with Mikal, Ansset had never had to lie to him; and in his time with Riktors, there had also been a kind of honesty, though silences fell between them on certain matters. They had not been like father and son, as he and Mikal had been. They were more like brothers, though there was some confusion as to which of them was the elder brother, which the rambunctious younger one who had to be comforted, checked, counseled, and consoled. And now, simply by being honest, Ansset had touched a place in Riktors that no one could have guessed was there-the man could be vindictive without calculation, cruel even to the helpless.
Ansset had thought he knew Riktors-as he thought he knew practically everyone. As other people trusted their sight, Ansset trusted his hearing. No one could lie to him or hide from him, not if they were speaking. But Riktors Ashen had hidden from him, at least in part, and Ansset was now as unsure as a sighted man who suddenly discovered that the wolves were all invisible, and walked beside him ravening in the night.
On the day Ansset turned fifteen, he waited expectantly for the door to open, for the Mayor or, better yet, someone from the Songhouse to come in, to take his hand and bring him out.
The Mayor did indeed come in. Near evening he came and wordlessly handed a paper to Ansset. It was in Riktors's handwriting.
I regret to inform you that the Songhouse has sent as word that you are not to return to them. Your service of two emperors, they said, has polluted you and you may not go back. The message was signed by Esste. It is unfortunate that this message should have come when you are no longer welcome here. We are currently holding meetings to decide what we can possibly do with you, since neither we nor the Songhouse can find any further justification for maintaining you. This undoubtedly comes as a blow to you. I'm sure you can guess how sorry I am.
Riktors Mikal, Imperator
If Ansset's long silence in Mikal's rooms had ended with a return to the Songhouse, it might have helped him grow, as the silence and the suffering in the High Room with Esste helped him grow. But as he read the letter, the songs drained out of him.
Not that he believed the letter at first. At first he thought it was a terrible, terrible joke, a last vindictive act by Riktors to make Ansset regret wanting to leave Earth and return to the Songhouse. But as the hours passed, he began to wonder. He had heard nothing from the Songhouse in his years on Earth. That was normal, he knew-but it was also distancing him from his memories there. The stone walls had faded into the background, and the gardens of Susquehanna were more real to him. Riktors was more real to him than Esste, though his feelings for Esste were more tender. But with that distance he began to think: perhaps Esste had merely been manipulating him. Perhaps their ordeal in the High Room had been a strategem and nothing more-her complete victory over him, and not a shared experience at all. Perhaps he had been sent to Earth as a sacrifice; perhaps the skeptics were right, and the Songhouse had given in to Mikal's pressure and sent him a Songbird knowing he was unworthy, knowing that it would destroy the Songbird they sent and they could never bring him home.
Maybe that was why, when Mikal died, the Songhouse did the unthinkable and let him stay with Riktors Ashen.
It fit, and the more Ansset thought about it, the better it fit, until by the time he was able to sleep he had despaired. He still harbored a hope that tomorrow the Song-house people would come in and tell him it was a cruel joke by Riktors, and they had come to claim him; but the hope was slimmer, and he realized that now, instead of being one of the few people on Earth who could regard himself as independent of the emperor, almost his equal, he was utterly dependent on Riktors, and not at all sure that Riktors would feel any obligation to be kind.
That night his Control failed him, and he awoke from a dream weeping out loud. He tried to contain himself, but could not. He had no way of knowing that it was the onset of puberty that was weakening, temporarily, his knowledge of himself. He thought that it was proof that the Songhouse was right-he was polluted, weakened. Unworthy to return and live among the singers.
If he had been restless before, now he was frantic. The rooms were smaller than they had ever been before, and the softness of the floor was unbearable. He wanted to strike it and find it hard; instead it yielded to hurt. The dust, which his constant walking had pushed to the edges and corners of the room, began to irritate him, and he sneezed frequently. He constantly caught himself on the edge of tears, told himself it was the dust, but knew it was the terror of abandonment. All his life that he could remember he had been surrounded by security, at first the security of the Songhouse, and later the security of an emperor's love. Now, suddenly, both of them were gone, and a long-forgotten abandonment began to intrude into his dreams again. Someone was stealing him away. Someone was taking him from his family. Someone was vanishing his family in the distance and he would never see them again and he woke up in darkness full of terror, afraid to move in his bed, because if he so much as lifted an arm they would cease to forbear; they would take him and he would never be found again, would live perpetually in a small cell in a rocking boat, would always be surrounded by the leering faces of men who saw only his nakedness and never his soul.
And then, after a week of this, his long silence ended. The Mayor came for him.
Riktors wants to see you, the Mayor said, and because he was not delivering a memorized message his voice was his own, and it was sympathetic and warm, and Ansset trembled as he walked to him and took his offered hand and let himself be led from Mikal's rooms to Riktors's magnificent apartments.
The emperor waited for him standing at a window, looking out over the forest where the leaves were starting to go red and yellow. There was a wind blowing outside, but of course it did not touch them. The Mayor brought Ansset inside and left him alone with Riktors, who showed no sign of knowing the boy had come.
Boy? Ansset was, for the first time, aware that he was growing, that he had grown. Riktors did not tower over him as he had when he took him away from the Song-house. Ansset still did not come to his shoulder, but he knew that someday he would, and felt a growing equality with Riktors-not an equality of independence, for that feeling was gone, but an equality of manhood. My hands are large, Ansset thought.
My hands could tear his heart out.
He pushed the thought into the back of his mind. He did not understand his lust for violent action; he had had his fill of it, he thought, when he was a child.
Riktors turned to face him, and Ansset saw that his eyes were red from weeping.
I'm sorry, Riktors said. And he wept again.
The grief was sincere, unbearably
sincere. By habit Ansset went to the man. But habit had weakened-where before he would have embraced Riktors and sung to him, he only came near, did not touch him, and certainly did not sing. He had no song for Riktors now.
If I could undo it, I would, Riktors said. But you pushed me harder than I can endure it. No one but you could have made me so angry, could have hurt me so deeply.
Truth rang in Riktors's voice, and with a sinking of his heart Ansset realized that Riktors had not defrauded him. He was telling no lies.
Won't you sing to me? Riktors pleaded.
Ansset wanted to say yes. But he could not. He hunted inside himself for a song, but he couldn't find one. Instead of songs, tears pressed forward in his mind; his face twisted, and he shook his head, making no sound.
Riktors looked at him bitterly, then turned away. I thought not. I knew you could never forgive me.
Ansset shook his head and tried to make a sound, tried to say, I forgive you. But he found no sound inside himself right now. Found nothing but fear and the agony of being forsaken.
Riktors waited for Ansset to speak, to deny, to forgive; when it became clear the silence would last forever if it were up to Ansset to break it, Riktors walked. Around the room, touching windows and walls. Finally he came to rest on his bed, which, when it was clear he was not going to lie down, cooperated by flowing up and around his back a little, providing support.
Well, then, I won't punish you further by keeping you with me here in the palace. You aren't going back to Tew. I can't just pension you off; I owe you better treatment than that. So I've decided to give you work.
Ansset was incurious.
Don't you care? Well, I do, Riktors said to Ansset's silence. The manager of Earth is due for a promotion. I'll give you his job. You'll report directly to the imperial capital, no prefects between us. The Mayor wanted to give you something smaller, some office where you wouldn't have so much responsibility. Riktors laughed. But you aren't trained for any lesser office, are you? At least you know protocol. And the staff is very good. They'll carry you until you learn your way. If you need help, I'll see to it you get it.
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