by Chris Walley
“Vero, greetings. No problem. You wouldn’t be wearing that shirt in Ynysmant today. Or this week for that matter.”
“I’ve heard your weather’s been poor. Aftarena is very nice. I traveled around a lot after I left you, just looking around. And I’ve ended up here. I like it—it’s my sort of climate.”
Merral noticed that his Farholmen dialect was now almost perfect.
“I’m glad for you. What we have at the moment would make you miserable. You have to be born here to put up with it. And congratulations on your Farholmen, Vero. It took me a bit to realize that you were speaking it. You sound like a native.”
“Not quite.”
“It’s fine. Anyway, I was calling to ask you about something we talked about. The world where there was the collective disorder and some thought it was evil, but it was just biology after all—where was it?”
Vero twitched his nose and scratched his tightly curled hair. “Ah, that’s just an interpretation. Sentinels have debated ever since it happened—which was in 12985, maybe ’86. And it was on Vellant. But isn’t it rather an unusual topic for a forester?” His face had acquired a look of curiosity.
Merral wondered how much he should tell. “Yes,” he replied carefully. “The thing is, I have a Forward Colony where things are getting a bit odd. It could simply be the bad weather. But I thought your case might provide a lead in.”
Vero’s brown eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak. Then he shook his head as if trying to dislodge a thought. “Look, I’ll send you the best reviews I can find.”
“Thanks. Anyway, how is the visit going?”
“Interesting. I’m enjoying it.”
“So you haven’t found anything anomalous yet.”
Vero blinked. “Well . . . just maybe.”
“Can you tell me?”
The brown face on the screen stared at him.
“Er, yes. In fact, I was thinking of calling you about it anyway. It’s an odd thing. I’ve been uncertain how to proceed on it. Can I ask you some questions first, questions that may seem irrelevant?”
“Go ahead.”
Vero shifted in his chair and then leaned toward the screen. “The Technology Protocols—you would rate them as important?”
A strange question indeed. “More than important—vital. The Technology Protocols make us masters of technology rather than the other way about. It is generally believed that the Assembly would have self-destructed without them.”
Vero nodded slightly. “Now, can you remember how the Preamble goes?”
“Testing my memory eh? Well, the final A.D. 2130 version has, ‘The Assembly of Worlds believes that, in his providence, God has provided technology so that, in some measure, the effects of the Fall may be lessened in this life. However, the Assembly also believes that, precisely because of our fallenness, technology can be abused to the detriment of an individual and his or her God-given personality. The Assembly therefore solemnly covenants that the only technology that will be accepted is that which can be shown will not lead to the loss or damage of individuality or personality.’ How was that?”
Vero nodded again. “Flawless. Now, Protocol Six?”
“Six? Oh that one. The shortest. ‘The rights of an individual to be protected from direct or indirect technological abuse are not extinguished by death.’ ”
There was a further nod. “And, Merral, you understand that to mean—what?”
“Well, I have to think back to college. It’s mainly that there is to be no rewriting of history. Because it’s banned, it’s hard to think of an example. Yes, I know, to alter a visual file to make your partner in a Team-Ball game look like a famous player of the past. I must admit I’ve never understood why it was in the Protocols. It’s never seemed a big thing to me.”
“You are fortunate. Sentinels have to spend time studying the times before the Great Intervention, and I can tell you there were many serious instances of this problem. But that’s the end of my questions.”
Vero paused, flexed his long fingers, and sighed quietly. When he spoke it was in a hushed and solemn tone. “I ask you these things, Merral, about Protocol Six, because there is some evidence that it may have been breached.”
It took some time for the significance of the last word to sink in. Does he mean here on Farholme? “Not here? Surely not? . . . I mean, breach of the Protocols is—” Merral ran out of words as the import of the statement sank in.
Vero leaned back in his chair and Merral was aware of the palm trees behind him. “Was serious the word you were looking for?” he suggested quietly.
“I suppose so. I was actually trying to find a more major word.”
“You would be right to do so.” The face on the other side of the world was grim.
“You’d better tell me about it.”
Vero rubbed his flattened nose between his hands and then stared at the screen.
“Sorry, Merral. You won’t like this. A voice has told me that there is a problem. Do you know whose?”
Merral, now feeling too perplexed to even try to answer, just shook his head.
“It was the voice of Miranda Cline.” Vero paused to let the name sink in and then repeated it, as if listening to it himself. “Miranda Cline. Although dead these three thousand years, she still speaks.”
“The Miranda Cline? The alto? The one my Uncle Barrand used on his Nativity piece?”
Vero nodded, unhappiness imprinted on his expression. “The same, Merral, the very same. In fact, the problem is precisely the audio file you gave me—the one of Rechereg’s Choral Variations on an Old Carol. The one with Miranda Cline as alto.”
Merral gasped. If it was barely believable that anyone could breach the Protocols, how much more unbelievable was it that such a breach was linked to his uncle? It made no sense at all. But then, nothing at Herrandown did anymore.
Vero was speaking quietly and apologetically, almost as if he was confessing something himself. “See, Merral, I got round to listening to that recording again recently. I liked it, especially Miranda Cline. I’d never heard her sing as well. And one evening here, with nothing much to do, I called up the background to it from the files in the Library and found that there was an interview with Rechereg himself. There he mentioned that the alto part was very hard and very high. And as I heard that, something clicked: something that I should have known. Because I knew about Miranda Cline. While she was unparalleled in the lower and midrange, she kept out of the topmost ranges. She was the classic, low second alto. Yet in the file you gave me she sings right up to top G and holds it firmly without breakup for two seconds.”
There was silence between them. Outside his room, Merral could hear his father and mother talking softly as they went up to bed. Their world seemed a long way away.
Merral heard himself speaking slowly. “So you are saying that there is no way that her natural voice could have reached that high. But perhaps it was someone else?”
Vero nodded. “Excellent, Merral. That is quite the line I am taking. The file says it is Miranda Cline and it sounds like her. But there could be a mistake. There are a thousand re-created voices.”
Merral closed his eyes. “No, he said he was thinking of using her. And when he transmitted it to me the covering note said that he had used Miranda Cline after all.” A faint voice seemed to cry out within him that he was condemning his uncle.
Vero stirred. “Well, it could still be a mistake. An error of the machinery. I’m going to have the file checked.” He stared at his fingers, as if seeing them for the first time. “I suppose it is just possible that there was some sort of coding error. I’d prefer any alternative to what I’m afraid I think is the case.”
“Which is,” Merral stated dully, scarcely able to phrase the words, “that Barrand altered her voice in complete defiance of the Sixth Protocol.”
Vero looked away, as if unable to face him, but signified his agreement by the tiniest nod of his head. “You see,” he said slowly, after a m
oment, “re-createds are at the limits of what we allow. They willingly give their vocal skills to be copied so that their voices can be reused later. But there is a commitment that we do not abuse that gift. Some re-created voices come with specific restrictions of the donors. Falancia Wollan, for instance, felt that her voice was unsuited to dramatic works like opera. But this is something else.” His face became somber.
“Vero, what are you going to do?”
Vero turned slowly back to face the diary. “I shall transmit the file to my office on Ancient Earth. They have the ability there to take the waveforms to pieces. To definitely say whether it was hers and whether or not it was altered. I will do it in the next few days. I needed to talk to you first.”
“If it is an alteration?”
Vero shook his head. “Merral, I have no idea. There are no precedents on file. We can hope that it is some sort of psychological problem and treatable.” He looked profoundly miserable and after a moment went on slowly. “It all seems so . . . well, disproportionate. A few seconds worth of a single note on a file from a singer who is long dead. I’m sorry, Merral.”
As Vero fell silent, Merral felt caught between his own unhappiness and that of his friend. But the issue was plain and he felt it right that he restate it. “It is not a light thing, Vero. And you as a sentinel know it, even if we use re-created voices more here than you do. To be one is an honor, to give your voice for things like the Forward Colonies and the ships. Voices are special. That’s why no machine, no diary even, is ever given a human voice, although we could easily do it. The sovereign Lord made Miranda Cline unable to reach those top notes. To have altered her voice so it did—if that’s what happened—is a lie, a twisting of truth.”
Vero nodded his head gently and seemed to stare for long moments into infinity. “You know, they always say to sentinels at graduation, ‘Always pray that you spend your entire life without being needed.’ I always thought it funny.” Then his focus shifted back to Merral. “But what do you think? Tell me that your uncle’s hardware is set wrong, that he’s deaf . . . that in the transfer one note got changed by some distortion of the electromagnetic field—anything. Tell me, Merral. Tell me!”
“I need to think Vero. Wait a minute. Please.”
With his mind reeling, Merral tapped off the video and sound and sat back in his chair. This was too much. He had been worried before Nativity at the possibility that his uncle had lied, he had been made uneasy by this morning’s news, and now this. Three things. His options were very limited indeed.
He reached for the diary and the image of Vero in a pale shirt with the brilliant sunlight behind him returned.
“Right. Vero, let me be open with you. I think something is wrong up at Herrandown. I have some other evidence—”
Vero raised a finger. “A question—which you may, of course, refuse to answer. The Forward Colony with the collective instability you mentioned?”
“The same.”
Vero shook his head slowly. “Oh dear. Oh dear.”
After several moments, Vero spoke again. “On the positive side, Merral, it’s fairly isolated. And, at least it’s localized. So far. But what to do?”
“Well, I’m going up there tomorrow for the day. I think, though, your fears are probably right. I think it highly probable that he has willfully modified the voice parameters.”
Vero rubbed his face. “I do not know what to advise. This is surprising. I assumed that there was nothing here. But now. . . . No, we need more information. I will wait to hear from you before I do anything. Look, Merral, can you meet me in Isterrane two days from now? No, wait—that will be the Lord’s Day. The day after, then?”
Merral hesitated, then spoke. “Yes, if you like. If you think that it’s that important?”
“My friend, my reading of the data is that we have either a psychological crisis infecting one individual and probably others—which is what I hope it is—or—” He shook his head.
“Or what?”
There was a long silence in which Merral became strangely aware of the perfect stillness in the room, a stillness so deep that he felt he could hear his heart beat.
Vero’s voice, when it spoke out of the diary, almost surprised him. “Or, I do not like to say. But I cannot rule out that we are seeing the start of something so significant that . . .” He tailed off and then shook his head. It was only after another long pause that he spoke again. “No, I will not speculate. Keep this to yourself, Merral, for the moment.”
“I see. I will abide by that.”
“Oh, and be careful when you go to Herrandown. Look out.”
“Look out for what?” Merral asked.
“I only wish I knew.”
They stared at each other, a tension somehow transmitted around the globe. Finally, Merral forced himself to say the words. “Vero, I need to know. Finish what you said earlier. Or what?”
Finally, as if being dragged out of the depths, the answer came back, syllable by painful syllable.
“Merral, if what I fear is the case, then the rules we have lived by for over eleven thousand years may be on the point of changing.”
7
The weather on the journey north to Herrandown next morning was dull and overcast, although thankfully dry. There was little to see on the road, whose route had, after all, been planned to avoid the more exciting landscapes. Even so, part of the road had been washed away in one place by a rogue stream, and the little Recon vehicle had to make a brief and muddy detour that fortunately added little to the journey time.
As they rolled slowly along a marshy stretch with the pale sunlight trying to penetrate the drifting mists, a particularly protracted silence fell upon them. Merral looked at Isabella, feeling that her slight figure looked incongruous in the large passenger seat of the Recon.
“No regrets about our parents’ decision, Isabella?” he asked, catching her eye, wishing to hear her voice as much as to get an answer.
She paused, stretched her legs out and then smiled softly back at him. “No. Not really. Your tropics job is almost definite, and the more I hear of it the more I think I may be best off in Ynysmant. But also, yes. It would have been desirable, in many ways.” The smile grew slightly wistful. “Of course, I think that maybe things could still work out between us.”
She fell silent again and then she looked back at him. “And you, Forester D’Avanos?”
He thought for a moment. “The same. This is how things are. I could wish otherwise, but what would be the point?”
Ahead of them, a road repair machine sensed their approach, pivoted its body clear of the road on its four hind legs, and turned its head toward them. Merral raised a hand toward the machine and the silver head nodded slowly in acknowledgement.
“Just so,” Isabella said. “What would be the point?”
Just after ten-thirty the Recon rolled up to the top of a rise on the road and Herrandown came into view. Merral paused the vehicle and switched the power off. He stared down at the sleepy little cluster of houses and fields surrounded by trees in their tentative fresh green foliage. What do I expect to see? A dark cloud? A visible shadow? But there was nothing.
He started the power up again and they moved on down quietly to the houses, where he parked near the rotorcraft pad and switched everything off.
The dogs came running out and carefully encircled the machine. Poor old Spotback. I do wonder what happened to him. As he opened the hatch and got out on his side, the dogs edged warily nearer, yapping vigorously at him. Merral stopped, struck by their behavior. It was extraordinary how they seemed much more cautious than in the past. Perhaps, they know better than we do what is going on.
His thoughts were interrupted as he was suddenly compressed in an embrace by his aunt. “Oh, Merral! Thank you for coming. We are so grateful. . . . We don’t know what to think—”
She stiffened suddenly as Isabella appeared round from her side of the machine.
“Aunt,” said Merral, sensing
the awkwardness, “I brought Isabella. She has more experience with young girls.”
A look of incomprehension, or even annoyance, passed over his aunt’s face, only to be replaced swiftly by a smile. “Oh. Yes. I see.” She grabbed Isabella in a firm and hasty hug.
“And thank you for coming too.” Zennia turned to Merral. “Elana is in her room. The other girls and Thomas are at school. Come on in and I’ll get you both a drink. Barrand is on his way down from the ridge. He wasn’t expecting you so soon. He’s making the most of the dry weather.”
Leaving Isabella to look at some recent paintings, Merral went into the kitchen. “Aunt, I want to apologize. I should have warned you that I was bringing Isabella.”
She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t matter. It’s just that—”
He waited for an answer and reluctantly she continued. “I was hoping, I suppose, that we could keep it within the family. If you know what I mean. Elana’s problem. It’s . . . well . . . a sensitive matter.”
“But, Aunt, if she has a problem, then it affects the community. And it may be that the problem isn’t with her.”
“But it particularly affects us. It will not look good.”
Puzzled, Merral replied, “Who cares?”
“We do, Merral, I’m afraid.”
Oh dear. We never used to worry about what others felt about us. What has happened here?
When they had passed on all the news and finished their coffee, Zennia took them up to the room they had moved Elana to. Pleading work, she left them there.
Elana was lying faceup on the bed reading a book projected onto the ceiling above her head. She switched it off abruptly after they entered, half got up, and then slumped back onto the bed. Her face was pale.
“Cousin Merral! I heard you might be coming.”
He kissed her. “I’ve brought Isabella to see you. She heard you weren’t well.”
Elana gave her a mischievous smile. “Some excuse! Hi, Isabella.”