by M. A. Foster
Something far away, on the edge of the west-range, caught his eye; something moving. He looked closer. He couldn’t make it out. He looked away from it, then back. Yes, now he could, but just barely. It was a building, the same color as the dark, andesitic rock of the volcanic mountains to the west, now not yet out of the shadow of the higher mountains eastwards. The moving part which had caught his eye seemed to be smoke, a thin wisp of smoke which dissipated quickly. It was too far to tell what it was. But there was smoke! Somebody did live here, high up on the hard crest of the world Dawn.
Han went back into the shed, hurriedly, and woke Liszendir. As he gathered their things together, she went outside to look at it herself, the dark, smoking building. She came back in, shivering. But she agreed. They set out for it immediately.
The distance was greater than they might have guessed, for neither Han nor Liszendir had learned to guess distances accurately, either on Chalcedon or on Dawn, but there was another element—the drifted snow, which had fallen the night before. It slowed their pace from a walk to a crawl, and for hours they seemingly made no progress at all. But they did close some of the distance, and as they drew closer, they could see the smoke more definitely, and they could also see the shape of the building better. They were not particularly encouraged by what they saw: it was apparently a castle or fortress, of grim black rock. The sun finally cleared the mountains and shone on it from the northeast, illuminating it with a stab of harsh light. They could see it clearly, although it was still miles away: a castle, with pennants or flags visible above the higher parts. Whatever it represented, someone lived there, and they were home.
It took the greater part of the short day for them to reach it through the snowdrifts, but at twilight, with the light fading swiftly, they stood before its gates. The gates were closed. Nor did it appear to either of them that they had been opened for a long time. Another dead end. Small, stunted trees grew in patches of windblown dirt which had collected in the lintels. In exasperation, Han walked up to the gates and pounded on them with the hilt of his sword. Liszendir watched for a moment, then raised her voice, calling out loudly. They expected no answer; to pound on the door and shout was better than nothing. But in a few moments, lights and faces appeared at the top of the walls. The light failed, and all that was left of the daylight was a hesitant, trembling pearly color in the northwest. In a few moments they were directed around to the other side, and there, through a small door in the walls, which would have been near-invisible even in full daylight, they were let in, pack animal and all, and shown to a room for the night.
Inside, it was very much as Han had expected it to be; he had been a reader of medieval romances as a young child. A nobleman’s castle was exactly what it was, but one without the splendor of the ones in ancient tales. It was run-down and dirty, and fading hangings of no distinction, past or present, many frayed and tattered, covered the bleak stone of the inner walls. Shabby watchmen and servants passed on errands of seeming urgency, as shoddily decorated as the walls. It was a cheerless, ugly place, cold and damp.
“I can’t believe ler would live up here to begin with, but if they were crazy enough to, they surely would not live in a pile like this.” Han observed to Liszendir, as they washed in the cold room one of the servants, a human, had set aside for them.
“It is certainly beyond me, but after talking to some of those we met along the way up here, I should not be too surprised at anything we’d see. Brr!” She shivered, goose-pimples popping out all over her skin, which Han was scrubbing at that moment vigorously. Then she continued, “But why a fortress? People build fortresses when they expect attack, but from whom? This would not even be worthy of the notice of the Warriors, either for its strength, or how many could hide in it, for it is too small.” Han could not answer her question.
They were even colder after washing. Han searched the small room, which was filled with shelves and closets along the walls, until he found some rough blankets. Then they lay down together on the small, hard bed, which creaked ominously as they both put their weight on it, and curled closely around each other, primarily for warmth. Soon, the fatigue of the day and the warmth of their bodies began acting on them, and they drifted off, asleep without realizing it.
They were woken sometime later, they did not know how long, by a majordomo with a leer, who announced through the opened door that the lord of Aving Hold would be pleased to have their company at dinner. He spoke with a cynical air which chilled Han to the bone.
Without speaking, they got up, dressed, and began following the major-domo, who had respectfully waited outside. He conducted them through a bewildering array of portals, drafty hallways, junctions, nodes, nexi. Sometimes they passed rooms and halls where there were lights, voices, the sense of the presence of many people. Other times they seemed to go through parts of the castle which had been abandoned; doors stood ajar on darkened rooms whose only inhabitants were piles of trash, stacks of wooden fagots, dust, as glimpsed in the quick light of a sputtering oil lantern borne by the servant. It was to Han an eerie, fey, dangerous place, perhaps the most perilous they had entered yet on their journey. If Liszendir felt any of the same apprehensions, she gave no sign, spoke no word; she was totally absorbed in gathering sensory impressions of the castle. After what seemed to be an interminable walk, they finally arrived at a grand hall, or what would pass for one in this hulk. It was decorated and lighted in a semblance of gaiety, of celebration, but Han mentioned to Liszendir that it was generally as shabby as the rest of the castle, and that he hoped at least the food might be a little better. She smiled weakly back at him and nodded.
Once inside, they were seated before ornate place settings at a large octagonal table. There was a fire in the fireplace to one side, candles and lamps all around, and to the other side, what appeared to be a platform, as if for musicians, or entertainers, a stage. Some of the servants were busy there at this very moment, arranging chairs, moving other articles, cleaning and dusting, all with great haste and urgency. They were soon interrupted, to their general annoyance, by the arrival of a troupe of musicians, who carried instruments the likes of which were completely foreign to Han. The instruments were all of the stringed-instrument family, handmade in fine style, but their bows were complex mechanical devices, which used battery power, apparently, to drive belts of bowstrings or little pluckers. The musicians settled themselves into an order of seating known to them, activated their electric bows, and commenced playing, without introduction or hesitation. There was no conductor. They all seemed to play together without effort. The motors concealed in the handles of the bows made a very fine whirring noise, which, oddly enough, seemed to fit into the music very well, particularly when certain of them varied its speed for a particular passage.
Something jarred Han’s perceptions about the musicians. They all seemed to be humans, well enough, he could see that from the configuration of the hands, if by nothing else, yet they themselves bore a striking resemblance to one another, almost as if they were members of a family. He watched them closely. No. Not a family, something else. He had seen shows put on by families of entertainers before. Family members had features which differed a certain amount, but their expressions were similar. These resembled one another rather more closely, but the effect of likeness was distorted, broken up, by a great variance in expressions and mannerisms among the individual members. This latter impression was very strong, so that they did not appear to be a family group at all.
But however much the performers looked like one another, their instruments varied greatly, almost impossibly, in an astonishing array of shapes and materials, woods and metals and hides and other unrecognizable materials, and they produced an even more astonishing variety of sounds, seemingly every possible vibration, harmony, squeak, overtone, resonance, microtone, slide, drone and gasp. There were no drums; the rhythm seemed to be implied, rather than directly stated. Liszendir listened intently to the music, and after a moment, pronounced it to be
of ler origin in musical structure, but highly mannered and in her opinion, far gone into artistic decadence.
Han laughed to himself and said to her, “You have been many things to me since Boomtown, but I hardly suspected you were an art critic, too.”
She looked at him incredulously for a moment, then laughed herself. “Of course you wouldn’t know. But I am, indeed. You see, for us it is the reverse of your human way of doing things. We have a word in Singlespeech which means a person who does nothing but make art of one medium or another. This word is also a slang or popular word for what you would probably call a freeloader, if my Common is correct. We regard art as the province of all, and the profession of none. And as for myself, a special curriculum of art was included in my training as an integral part. Performance and criticism, both. I am trained in many media, senses and limbs. You know that there is an art for each sense. So then: I know symbols and visual methodology, music, poetry, as well as dance, mime, and other forms which have no parallel with humans. My degree of accomplishment varies somewhat, for we all are not equally competent in all ways of expressing ourselves, which is a truism with which you are doubtless familiar. I do three things: ler poetry, in which I am known in a minor way on Kenten; in painting, which I do well enough, but am not known, and do not wish to be, being one of the leaf-painters . . .”
“Do you mean painting on leaves?”
“No. Pictures of leaves and branches. It is an ancient discipline of concentration and form. And the other is music. I play an instrument which makes sound with a reed and you control the pitch with fingerholes and pads. You would say woodwind, although the tsonh has no exact parallel to anything you would know. It is double-reed, like the bassoon, only higher in pitch, like a female voice, alto. Yes. An alto bassoon. It is about so big ...” And she made a gesture with her hands. “I have been in some public concerts, although none of them have brought me fame as the world’s greatest tsonh-player. Still, I was neither booed nor hissed. Sometimes I play alone, sometimes with backgrounds, and with groups which play all together and then apart.”
Han sat back in his chair, dumbfounded. He tried to imagine Liszendir playing her instrument, the soft, full mouth, which kissed so well, intent, drawn, tightly gripping a double reed, concentration on her face. He gave up. It could not be visualized.
She watched his face, carefully reading expressions. An impish, fey look flashed across her face. “Aha! You think I work hard at it, that I make wrinkles in my face. Not so. I like to play very much, it is very relaxing, transporting, I do not live in this world then. It feels good, it is not work. But I have to admit to you that however much I like it, the tsonh, I do not play it so well as I write poetry, or so is the opinion of those on Kenten who have seen me do both. So, for art, I shall be a poet, I suppose. But I do know music, too. That is why I say what I do about these.”
She would have said more, and Han would have let her. It was completely incongruous, that they should have had the escapes and adventures they had had, and be sitting in the hall of some unknown character, with the future, even as close as the next minute, being completely blank, blurred, unknown, and be calmly discussing music; amazing. But that added spice to it. But they were interrupted, not by an addition of something, but by a deletion. The music had stopped. The silence was dead and empty after the rich texture of sound that had filled the background of their perceptions. It was broken now only by the whirring of a few electric bows, as apparently some of the musicians had forgotten to deactivate them when they stopped playing. The others glared at the clumsy offenders, obviously novices, and the tardy musicians silenced their bows. The whisper of hair on little pulley wheels stopped.
The cynical majordomo they had met before marched into the room with an odd attitude which suggested equal measures of insubordination and abasement, coming to a halt at the head of the table, where he announced in a stentorian, grating voice. “The Lord of Aving Hold and his honored guests!” Then he departed. Han stood up, as did Liszendir.
Two figures emerged from behind a curtain and strolled up to the table, smiling and very obviously pleased with themselves. They were both ler, where the servants had all been human, and Han and Liszendir knew them both. The short, bald one was Hath’ingar. The taller one was the very same elder ler who had told Han in Boomtown that his name was “alphabet.” He wore a black overrobe trimmed with silver, and underneath a simple shirt laced up at the neck, tightly. But when they spoke, it was Hath’ingar who spoke first, while the other waited, respectfully. He was, whatever he was here, as “Lord of Aving Hold,” subordinate to Hath’ingar, completely. It was a very bad development, and all they could do for the present was to look at one another in astonishment, just as they had been doing since they recognized the identity of their hosts.
8
“The direction of the aim of evolution is toward the production, or creation, of autonomous creatures who will be able to alter their structure to fit the environment, and pass that structure on, by conscious choice: Homometamorphosis. ‘People,’ as we define them, human and ler, are as yet intermediary in this matter of relationship with the environment. We are not even wise enough to visualize how such a creature might make such a decision, or what it would seem like in our evaluation of decisions.”
—Al Tvanskorosi Ktav, The Doomsday Book, Pendermnav Tlanh
“WELL MET,WELL met again, and the third time pays for all!” Hath’ingar exclaimed with great cordiality. “Be seated, eat, indulge and enjoy yourselves! Aving’s cooks are the best on this side of Dawn, or so travelers and other rogues tell me. Well? Go on, fall to it! There is no trap and no trick.” He sat himself down and began to eat, with great gusto and an air of appreciation and satisfaction. The tall one, Aving, signaled to the musicians to play, and they began, immediately commencing a relaxed air.
Han and Liszendir sat down, stupefied. Han looked at the ler girl. She sat still, as if paralyzed, staring at the pair across the table. He leaned toward her and said, “Eat, Liszen. We have endured enough of that clabber he calls food concentrate on the ship, and because of him we have both starved, more than once. So take it.” She looked down at her plate as if it were some strange implement about which she knew nothing, could know nothing. Then she blinked, and began to eat.
“Excellent, excellent advice. After all, why face the future hungry, whatever it may become? We all need well-padded bellies against the cold and circumstances, and besides, we have much to say to one another, and what better time than over a friendly meal?” Hath’ingar was completely at ease, the very image of a perfect, jovial host.
Liszendir looked up, sharply, eyes flashing. “I cannot imagine what we could ever have to say to each other.”
“No?” His amazement seemed sincere, a genuine expression of puzzlement. “Ah, but there is much indeed. Indeed and indeed! But I have been remiss in my duties as host. Let me introduce my friend here. Aving. And my real name, which you may use, no titles, please, is Hatha.” Han caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, from Liszendir, at the mention of the stranger’s real name, Aving. Something about a name, about words, about Singlespeech, which was the universal language of Dawn, which was phonetically completely regular, even as used by the Warriors or the humans on Dawn. Aving! Of course! No word or name in Singlespeech ended in two consonants, even “ng.” It was a trait they had noticed in the speech of the family they had known in the gorge, and in the people of Leilas. Now he had it, and he could see Liszendir had it, too. But what was the reason? In a language which allowed no exceptions, the one exception they had seen flared like a beacon, but its brightness obscured the reason behind it. But Hatha-Hath’ingar was continuing. He had not noticed. “. . . Aving is here to keep an eye on things in this district, this area around and about Leilas. The castle deters the locals from prying into affairs which are beyond their scope, and which will not only remain so, but withdraw to increasing distances. When you arrived, here of all places, Aving remembered, and
so notified me. I came from the home countries of the Warriors, flying your ship, if you please, and may I say that it is as fine and responsive as a passionate adolescent girl. Why you would come here is beyond me, but now that you are here . . .”
Han tried to betray no confidences at the remark about adolescent girls, but some movement, some grimace, gave him away. Of course. The remark had been designed to do just that.
“Ah, yes. So I see. Yes, I am aware of the interesting liaison you two have formed along the way, have been for some time. How do I know? By reading body language. Han, yours shouts to one who is an adept in such reading, but I hardly need to turn to shouts, when even Liszendir, with her training, which appears to be extensive, cannot silence her own. And it tells me far more, and in greater detail, even though it is muted.” Han turned to look at her. He knew the gestures, the ways people acted to one another, but he was no reader of the language of gesture, except in a very primitive way. And what did Liszendir really feel?
She answered Hatha, calmly, coldly, “So much I admit, which is my problem alone, and which I shall solve under the law in the proper season for such things.”
“Poof and pah. We are not concerned in the least degree with the strictures of the fours. We have overthrown such bucolic botchery, and have substituted in its place a truly noble concept—one which recognizes the true evolutionary status and duties of our people. So, Liszendir, do you wish toys for the body? Then take them. It is your right. And when you are finished, then cast them out in the trash, or if you feel charitable, give them to the poor in used condition. I care not. I am elder phase, and do not envy or resent your simple gratifications, when I have a greater one, the itch for power.”