Return to Nevèrÿon: The Complete Series

by Samuel R. Delany

  ‘And if my barracks had once, in fact, stood on the other side of the guard house, then finally I had a sense of the physical place I’d been—indeed, in a place I’d never been before because back then it had been all grown up with trees.

  ‘I kept glancing at the youngster: did this slack-lipped young man, who sat with his knees wide, pulling at a piece of bark with dirty, work-thickened fingers, really look so much like Namyuk? (He was closer to Vrach’s age. Still … ) I thought to ask Mirmid and Har’Ortrin—or Iryg, if it came to that—whether they knew what had happened to Namyuk. Had he escaped the fire to be sold? Had he been burned to death? Perhaps one of them knew where we slaves had been carted off to be buried? But as I’d halted before the incipient city of the present, I hesitated now before the accomplished city of the past.

  ‘I asked nothing about either.

  ‘Feyev frowned at me: I was staring at him again. No, this wouldn’t do. I began to ask them questions about their lives, who they were, where they’d come from, what they did at the mines these days. Slowly, very slowly, all five of us, guard and slaves and Minister of State, began to relax with one another.

  ‘While I listened, I tried to remember the questions the tall lord had asked of Vrach and Namyuk and me. And do you know, those were the questions that, when I asked them now, drew from them the warmest answers, even from dull Feyev, even from sullen Iryg. I tried to remember which of that tall lord’s tales about his own life had struck me most vividly: and I tried to find like things from my own recent time (tales of the opulence and affluence of court; certainly nothing more of my memories of my time in the mines!) to entertain them. And do you know: those were the tales that made Feyev stop fiddling with his bark to look at me and grin, that made Mirmid and Har’Ortrin chuckle and shake their heads, that even made Iryg nod with dogged interest. As we talked more and more easily, I began to wonder. Though I’d never thought much about it, I’d just assumed the conversation with the tall lord that night thirty years ago had been the first he’d ever had with slaves such as Namyuk and I. But now I remembered how quickly all three nobles had gone to Vrach once he was down. Perhaps the tall lord had had several such encounters. Perhaps he’d known what to ask to put us at our ease. Perhaps he’d known the tales that would most entertain us. Perhaps he’d known, from other such talks with others, what questions would intimidate and discommode us, what topics would baffle and defeat us—and so had avoided them. (After all, I’d had many such conversations with many such myself. That talk with him was not the only one that had taught me what to say here.) Perhaps, with the best intentions, he’d only been playing us, as a game master deploys his pieces on the board to call up the most pleasing pattern, as I found myself, with just as good intentions, playing them.

  ‘My intentions were good, you understand. I only wanted them to be at ease—and they were! I only wanted them to avoid misunderstanding me, to hold off upset, and stay away from what was beyond them—and they had!

  ‘Still, for a moment, the suspicion that what I’d once thought so spontaneous might, as it had occurred on this meadow thirty years ago, have been wholly calculated struck me as an ugly—and palpable—probability. In many ways they were very limited people; and I knew their limits very well.

  ‘How could the tall lord not have known ours?

  ‘The three slaves had begun to talk of their coming freedom, where they would go, what they would do. Har’Ortrin had free family in the south, who she was sure would take her in. But while she told me about that good man, her uncle, and her many cousins there, silently I reviewed a report (that had taken five days of council meetings to present!) on the situation of newly freed slaves returning to families for help: a synopsis of that torrent of catastrophic evidence? The majority of such families would have nothing to do with the returned, unwanted, bewildered, new and often angry freemen—though Har’Ortrin clasped her hands at the prospect, now and again unable to speak for joy, hope, and anticipation.

  ‘Mirmid explained that he’d once been promised by a former master, who’d valued him highly but had been forced, nevertheless, to sell him, that, should he ever gain his freedom, he should return—whereupon he would be given a bit of land, the materials for a shack, and tools, with which he could work as a free farmer. Well, at least three other council meetings had been devoted directly to the cases and complaints of slaves who, given like promises, had returned to take them up, only to find that the promises could not be fulfilled—in many cases the estates they had worked on bore as little resemblance to what they remembered and were as reduced in circumstances as the mines were to what they had once been, the masters themselves having long since gone—though Mirmid went on in awed respect for the great thane who, though he had once been the owner of a hundred slaves, had made him such a promise!

  ‘And Feyev? Well, he was going to the city. What city? He wasn’t sure. But once there he would get a good-paying job. (What job? Well, that was unclear.) And he would work hard and buy a house and become a rich man with servants and fine clothes and lots and lots of money! He blinked his light gray eyes.

  ‘I listened. I smiled.

  ‘Back in Kolhari, the palpable problem of freed slaves had occupied so many council meetings—many more than the five and three just come to mind. But difficulties these here had not yet even envisioned had been distressingly familiar to me now for years!

  ‘I made what I thought was a practical suggestion. Should any of them have problems with their plans, here were the names of some organizations they might turn to for help, set up by the empress several years back for just such contingencies … But (and this itself was already so familiar to me) I could see little of it was taken in.

  ‘Inwardly, I only hoped they would remember what I’d said when the time came they would need it.

  ‘Outwardly, I smiled at their enthusiasm, at their naïveté, at their joy over their coming release (contenting myself with the private conviction that there would be time later for the practical), but I was sharply aware: the riches, the privileges, the power all three of them saw lying only weeks, days, hours before them, for all my sympathy with the knowledge of what impelled their vision, were no more realistic than the belief that one of them might burrow through the mountain before us or that another might fly up into the air. And I wondered:

  ‘Speaking of the more than wonderful, the near mystical, the glorious freedom we’d been snatched from by slavers and Imperial guards, had Namyuk and I, thirty years ago, sounded anywhere near as naïve, romantic, and simply out of touch as these three talking about their freedom to come? I made another suggestion—again, only of the most hard-headed sort, telling them the names of more plans and programs the council had already instituted to help the newly freed. But even with that, as they talked on, one or the other would glance at me with the tolerant smile of someone who realizes he or she is simply speaking to a man who, if only through the happenstance of history and experience, cannot understand what is really being said. They held nothing back. They didn’t have to. The gap was already too large: Because I was free, I could not understand what their freedom would mean.

  ‘Suddenly I wanted to end the conversation.

  ‘I suggested abruptly that I had to leave them: I needed to walk about a bit, to see where it might be best to have my caravan arrange itself once it arrived. “ … Please understand, but once the wagons come, there’ll be so much to do!” (It was an asinine excuse any lord or lady would have recognized instantly for what it was—acceding to it immediately if only because its idiocy revealed so clearly the distress it hid.) But now it was stolid Iryg who took the part of garrulous Vrach under drugs. The brutish fellow leaned forward on the log to erupt with incidents that had to be told, and nothing would do but that I heard them. They started and ended with the difficulties he’d had disciplining his charges, the nasty temper of that one, the thieflike cunning of this one (Oh, he hated to think of that woman, free to connive and steal, out in decent society!)
, the perverse depravity of another. Not that some of the guards were much better! Even at this place, with six guards for only three slaves …? Why, within the week he’d seen—but perhaps he’d best not mention names. Nor indeed say anything else. A day like today wasn’t the time for it. And certainly I would know what went on in a place like this …? There was no reason for him to start in. But slaves, now. You just couldn’t trust them. Always scheming to get something out of you. Oh, no; not these three here. They were good slaves. Even Feyev—who, with lowered lashes, was picking at his bark again. No, Feyev wasn’t so bad. He was a good sort. Most of the time.

  ‘But he remembered one …

  ‘And he remembered one other …

  ‘And he remembered still one more …

  Iryg had been a guard for twelve years, here and at four other institutions, and he’d known every kind of slave, the good and the bad. And the bad were a low and despicable breed the free folk of Nevèrÿon couldn’t imagine! “But I’m sure you’ve thought of all that, sir. I mean, when you were running around setting them free. After all, you used to be one!”

  ‘“And I was one of the worst, too, my man!” Then I wished I’d remained silent. But my comment didn’t seem to affect him. He was still going on. His point was, if he could be said to have had one, that my coming was probably a great and glorious thing, because once slavery was officially done with, he would no longer have to be responsible for the kind of scum—oh, not these, here, no, certainly not these—but the kind that, in the past, he’d been lumbered with.

  ‘I nodded where I felt I had to. Once or twice I smiled.

  ‘The others did not nod or smile. Feyev looked dull and bored. Har’Ortrin and Mirmid looked old and quiet. They must have felt hugely uncomfortable—unless they were so inured to Iryg’s complaint, repeated so often to one or another, that none of it registered.

  It went on till Feyev turned to blink across the field, then pointed with uncharacteristic interest: “Hey, look—!”

  ‘Having pulled off the north-south highway, the first of my caravan wagons breasted the ridge.’

  7

  ‘THE NEXT THREE HOURS, Udrog, were servants and soldiers, tents and tarpaulins, secretaries and stewards, hurry and harassment. More carts and wagons arrived, with delegates and visitors from a dozen towns. The population of the village I’d decided not to enter came out, entire, to gawk at us—just as the chief cook began a ten-minute tantrum: Where were the other six helpers? And just look at the sky! If we were to eat, the provision tent must be taken down from where it was now and set up over there—so that the few wretches she had would not be running back and forth in the rain that was sure to come. Did we think they were all slaves? This was insufferable! And she would not tolerate it! Really, it sounds reasonable enough now—and seemed wholly preposterous then: she tore off her apron and stalked from the encampment, only to come back half an hour later, sullen, silent, and busy.

  ‘I was rushing from one problem to another, when old Mirmid stepped in front of me—I nearly bumped him; but he grabbed my shoulder. Please, was there any work he and the others might do to help?

  ‘I kept my balance. No. No, that wasn’t necessary.

  ‘But they wanted to work, Mirmid insisted. After all, this confusion was for them, wasn’t it? It seemed only right they lend a hand.

  ‘They could help most, I explained, by keeping out of the way as much as possible; but if they’d just stay near enough so that once the ceremony itself began, and we needed them to—

  ‘“Oh, go on, sir!” Iryg stood with a hand on his hip and one foot on a log. “Make ’em work!”

  ‘I wonder if he thought that made things easier.

  ‘“They’re state property another few hours yet.” He put his foot down and came over. “And put me to work with ’em! When there’s all this stuff to do—” he gestured around at the frenetic caravan: the pavilion was being raised behind him and wagons were being reparked to his left (and the provision tent was being moved)—“there’s no excuse for anyone standing around idle.”

  ‘Har’Ortrin hung behind Iryg’s shoulder, all pleased and expectant. Even Feyev, at the other end of his log, leaned forward on his knees, beating a fist into his palm, the look in his gray eyes clearly that of a young man who’d have been happier hauling something.

  ‘Just then a steward came up to ask me about the platform that was being erected across the way, half of which had not arrived, and also about six musicians who had—above the dozen expected. (When I checked, I discovered they’d been supposed to be the cook’s helpers. But in Kolhari there’d been a slip of the stylus.) I turned Mirmid, Har’Ortrin, Feyev, and Iryg over to another steward, who took them off and gave them something to do. Soon I was surrounded by people I knew; and people whom people I knew wanted me to know.

  ‘I said I was glad I came early?

  ‘The field looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. If I’d arrived expecting the familiar and had gone through my disorientation in such confusion, I’d have been far unhappier with the tenor of the day than I was.

  ‘The ceremony itself?

  ‘Of course it began an hour late, while, overhead, clouds thickened. During some lull when everything remained to be done and, because of circumstances, nothing could be, I wondered if, when I called the three slaves to me to unlock their collars before the crowd, I should hurl the iron from the platform against the pavilion hangings as the tall lord had once done. (Didn’t I owe him some little sign for all this?) But when one speech and another was actually ending and I turned to see the master of protocol herding Mirmid, Har’Ortrin, and Feyev onto the stage—I smiled at them, but, by then, as they came forward, they looked only stunned—as I inserted the key in the lock under Mirmid’s sparse, tight-curled beard, the first drops pelted my shoulders, my arms, my face; and the old man closed his eyes and bared his yellow teeth while his runneled cheeks grew wet.

  ‘Everyone had to crowd into the pavilion, where, somehow, we completed the ceremony.

  ‘The downpour went on twenty minutes, then slowed to a steady spattering. Between tufts of wet grasses, puddles and silvery ribbons across the field were raddled, pocked, and peppered. Though I heard a few complaints about the banquet service, by my judgment the cook did a spectacular job. Later I went to tell her so in her sweltering tent; she sweated, beamed, and nodded, rubbing her dark cheeks with her palms and thumbing perspiration from her eyes.

  ‘Because of the rain, most people left early. It stopped, with another rumble of thunder, just about the time another canopied visitors’ cart pulled off for the highway.

  ‘An evening celebration had been planned. But there were not many people left to celebrate. Everyone, I think, felt it was just as well. The cart road that had split the unified field of my memory was itself two lines of mud, split by the wet rocks and weeds between—and as familiar to me by now as any line across my palm, so that it was hard to remember why, hours before, it had seemed so egregious. As I’ve said, it was like any number of other public functions.

  ‘But as I stood there pondering it, I could not help thinking that for all its halts and hitches, it had had its moments of impressive, even moving, display, filled with silent meaning—like all empty signs.

  ‘The sky was deep gray. Repeated thunder said the rain might start again—probably to fall through the night. (We were due to leave for Kolhari in the morning.) A small tent had been set up for me. Tired by the day’s formalities, I’d just started back to rest when I saw Feyev walking ahead of me. He was making for my quarters, carrying something; but it was in front of him, so I couldn’t see. He glanced left and right a lot more than someone like him usually does. He didn’t look back, or he’d have seen me. At my tent, he stopped. (I stopped too.) Feyev lifted the flap. (Only minutes before, a servant had come to tell me she’d lit a lamp and left it for me, burning on a table.) He peered into the light, then stepped inside.

  ‘What, I wondered, did he think he would find!
I tried to recall what few objects, belts and their buckles, chains of office, parchments, rules, or writing implements he might, in fact, walk off with. (Had I been so silly as to leave coins in the casket beside the bed?) Walking up, I lifted the flap.

  ‘He stood in the lamp glow, turned a little from me. He had just pulled free his leather clout and tossed it now to the rug. It had been bound tight by its thong, which left a line low on his naked flank. A semicircle of it in each hand, he held an iron collar … which he raised now to his neck. With both hands he began to push it closed—

  ‘Till he saw me. And started.

  ‘I started, too. “What are you—” I blurted: “Why are you …?”

  ‘Feyev turned to me, his openmouthed gaze, his gray-eyed stare absorbing his surprise. He closed the collar, leaving at his neck awkwardly his heavy hands. “I came here—” he … did not blurt back; rather he moved one and another thick finger on the metal—“ … for you. I mean, if you wanted me to …” He frowned, perhaps because of my own frown. “I mean, I thought … they say you—you like …”

  ‘“What are you talking about?”

  ‘Feyev looked around, finally shrugged, let go the metal with one hand, and dropped his fingers to his leg to scratch himself.

  ‘“Go on, tell me,” I said. “Why are you here?”

  ‘Embarrassment—or just uncertainty—made him glance up again. “You know … I mean, everybody knows. About you. And the collar.” He said: “It used to be your sign.”

  ‘“Yes, Feyev. That’s right. But,” I said, “what is it you’ve come here to do?”

  ‘He blinked. “Some of the others … they said I—”

  ‘“They’?” I asked. “Not Mirmid …? Not Har’Ortrin …?”