* * * *
I busied myself with proofreading galleys that day and most of the next. Resolutely, I kept myself from thinking about what might be happening to my captive editor. I truly didn’t intend to kill the man, just to show him that his limited world of pavements and skyscrapers was not reality but the most artificial sort of fantasy.
I had a phone call from my agent, who had been questioned closely about the “abduction” of Thister. Lon had not been suspected, but he was beginning to have second thoughts.
“He’ll be back in New York the day after tomorrow, none the worse except for a lot of mosquito bites,” I told him. “I’ll pick him up tomorrow evening, take him to New Orleans, and put him on a plane. I’ll call and let you know when he’s on his way.”
I drove back down to the river camp just before dark and set out in the pirogue. I must admit that I was curious about the state in which I would find my victim. Would he be fit to travel?
I could see the glare of his fire through the twilight, long before I reached the ridge. He must’ve collected every bit of deadfall he could find to keep it going so briskly.
When I pulled the pirogue up on the muddy bank, I could see his dark shape between me and the fire.
I had to stop and quit laughing before going on. He looked like something between a scarecrow and a clown. His hair, worn longish, stood straight up, filled with pine straw and twigs. His natty suit had evidently been laid aside, for he was clad in shorts and undershirt, both smeared with equal parts of soot and mud.
He didn’t hear me coming, so I cleared my throat so as to keep from startling him. Wasted effort! He all but jumped out of his muddy shorts.
“How did it go?” I asked as I hunkered down beside the fire to keep the mosquitoes off. “Learn anything?”
His eyes were so wide the whites showed all the way around the irises. His face had obviously been washed in the river, but he forgot to check for algae in the pool he found, for he had a sort of green moustache across his upper lip.
“You will go to prison for this, Cranville!” he grunted. “I will personally see to it. Now get me out of here.”
“Well, if that’s going to be your attitude, I’ll just go right back home and leave you here. Nobody knows where you are, and nobody but Alphonse and I ever come here. He’s way down the Atchafalaya for the summer and won’t come back until the tourists are all gone. Think you can survive for six weeks or so?” I rose as if to go back to the pirogue.
He grabbed my arm and began to shiver. “No! No, you take me back and I’ll...I’ll never mention conflict again to anybody, for any reason.”
I believed him. I still do, though he spent a while in a convalescent home when he got back to New York, recuperating from his ordeal and the malaria he picked up, probably from drinking river water. I warned him, but he was one of those who thought he knew everything.
He bought the next story I sent him, which also had “no conflict.” I suspect he couldn’t bring himself to learn if I had any more mean tricks up my sleeve. He obviously didn’t want to find out what else I was capable of doing.
THE END
Dear Mr. Thister,
When I received your last rejection slip, it gave me the idea for this odd little tale. I hope, if nothing else, you get a laugh out of it.
Sincerely,
John Cranville
*
Dear Mr. Cranville:
This is a most interesting and unusual story. In fact, it makes me vaguely uneasy. No one would actually consider doing anything like this. Or would he? I think I will accept your tale as a change of pace for Adventure Story Magazine. If the enclosed contract is acceptable, please sign it and return it to me for countersigning.
By the way, who is your present agent? I want to avoid him, if possible.
Cautiously,
William Thister
Editor
NIGHT SONG
This one was great fun—I saw it in my head like a movie.
The conveyance rattled and thumped, swaying sickeningly as it pounded around the bends of the serpentine road. Gilels swallowed bile and tried to ignore the sharp corner of the basket poking into his thigh. He stared out the badly glazed window of the coach at the stream beside the road, winking like pewter in the last light of the day.
Though his stomach was in a state of uneasy truce with the greasy meal taken at the last stop, he was more worried about the condition of the musical instrument on top of the coach. He had supervised the tying down, and his strongest tugs could not dislodge it. Yet this had been a horribly long day of joggling. If he arrived at Senrival without that instrument...his chilled skin goose-pimpled at the thought.
They swayed around a sharp curve, sending him hard against the fat woman with the basket. All of the half-dozen riders in the coach were flung sideways to left, then to right.
When Gilels righted himself, he saw that they had turned away from the streamside, and he realized that the last of the twilight was gone. Now the coach sped in a puddle of light from its lanthorns along a narrow track walled by midnight forest.
He laid his head back against the hard cushion. Since the abrupt turn, the road seemed better, as seemed proper as they approached the principal city of Sextus. Even in such a backward country, on such a primitive world, that made sense. Now he was able to hold his head still, instead of having it bumped against the worn horsehide by the ruts in the road.
That gave him time to worry again about the grampion, upon which the success of his mission depended. He doubted strongly the effectiveness of “a capella” singing upon the disposition of a murderous daemon. And the Magister Cantorum would, he felt, accept no excuses for his failure (should he survive), no matter how ill-equipped he might be when he faced the potential devastator of the city of Senrival.
Once more the coach rounded a bend, and for the last time Gilels found himself uncomfortably intimate with his fat neighbor. Then the trees fell away, and a wide prospect of twinkling lights opened out on either hand. The Musiciam stared, entranced, at this city built, against all logic of his kind, beneath the open sky.
For a moment, agoraphobia gripped him. In his own world and those others his kind inhabited, habitations were inevitably dug deep beneath mountains or under ploughlands.
Safe, of course, and easy to warm and cool—yet the glittering display before him almost persuaded him that other ways might have their own positive points.
Pitch torches and oil lamps stood in standards or hung from poles along the street into which they plunged, the hooves of the horses ringing and clattering on cobblestones. Yet to his amazement, from time to time he saw a high-tech trondbim blazing blue-white brilliance upon the façades of buildings decorated with carvings in stone, carvings in wood, even carvings hammered into metal.
He realized, after a few rods, that most of those carvings represented Diophors, the resident daemon and periodical downfall of Senrival. He found that he still did not believe in such a creature. His rigidly logical training denied its possibility. If something did, indeed, destroy Senrival on a regular basis, it was a natural creature of nasty habits, rather than a daemon from the days of superstition.
They went through arcades lined with small shops. Even so late, throngs of shoppers surrounded them. They curved into a wide central plaza at last, and drew up before a stone doorway whose heavy doors opened onto the paved space.
Gilels sighed. Whatever came next, this hellish journey was over. Wherever he was sent from Sextus, he would travel via a proper Transmission. The art of travel, he found, had been lost by his kind, for they had lived with instantaneous movement from place to place for centuries.
The driver opened the door and let down the step. Gilels waited for his fellow sufferers to get their stiff legs and awkward bundles out of the way before he groaned and began to struggle out. Immediately, he looked up
toward the spot where he had seen the grampion tied.
Mercifully, it was still there. The driver, at his elbow, asked, “Songmaster Gilels?”
The musician nodded. “Get down the grampion,” he said. “It must go with me at once. The luggage can follow, but I must have that when I attend the Master Despot. Was word left here for me?”
“Indeed, Songmaster. The innkeeper met me with the message, when I got down from the box. When you are ready, follow that young man, and he will lead you to your quarters. You will be informed when to meet with the Master Despot.” The message was rattled off so precisely that Gilels knew it was word-perfect. When a people were illiterate, their memories had to be amazingly accurate, and literacy was not a thing that the world of Sextus had cultivated.
The young man waiting for him seemed impatient, as Gilels supervised the lowering of the grampion. Once the case was in hand, the youth set off, and the Songmaster had to hurry to keep up with him, while a boy with a barrow brought his bags. He had no time to examine the instrument, and he prayed that it was still playable after its rough journey.
The case bumped his shoulder and his knee, as he hastened through a garden so cunningly arranged that even now, in winter, the hardy greenery made it still graceful and pleasant. Beyond was an elaborate doorway, where the youth turned to speak to him.
The face was young and filled with scorn, but before the clean-cut lips could open, Gilels found himself saying in amazement, “You are no young man! You are a girl!”
At that the lips opened, indeed. “Girl! A woman! Shereva Messenger! Woman’s garb is unhandy for one who carries messages up and down the ways of the city. I am one of a trained guild, used for centuries to convey word from place to place. How like one of your arrogant kind to think less well of me because of my sex!”
“Less well of you? No, indeed. I was just surprised, for the innkeeper said you were a man. On the worlds my people inhabit, women and men work together without prejudice.”
Her dark-rimmed blue eyes widened. “Truly? Without laughing at women who must work for their bread?” But then she remembered her duty and backed away, frowning.
“But there is no time for chatter. You have come, I was told, to save Senrival from her daemon. Such a promise seems to me the cruelest of lies, for tomorrow’s dawn will see the city filled with corpses, as has happened every double hand-span of years since our kind has lived here.”
Her expression was bitter, as she said, “My father died on the night of the daemon, but he sent my mother and sister and brother and me into the forest for safety. Most of those you see in the streets have done the same, offering themselves as tribute, but saving those who will carry on their families.”
Gilels felt a twinge of pity. “Why do you stay? You must have been very young twenty years ago, when it happened last. Why do you not save yourself?”
Her head went up proudly. “I am a messenger. My sister and her young are safe, and my brother’s family is with them. We two go to Diophors tonight, as our family’s gift to our city. But I will carry out my duties to the last, and you are my duty for this night. Come after me to your quarters. When you are ready, I will lead you to the Master Despot.”
They went up a curving stair, and she opened an ornate door. “I will wait in the courtyard,” she said. “Do not delay. There is little time.”
There was warm water for washing, for which Gilels was grateful. The shell-shaped tub beneath the large urn, heated by a charcoal brazier and fitted with a spigot, was already full. Once he had removed the grime of travel, he put on his best wing-sleeved coat and his silken tights.
Only then did he set up the grampion, fitting its pegs and keys into place. He tried the open notes, then the mutes, his fingers tentative.
Its tone was clear and true, which was wonderful after such an arduous trip. Though Gilels still did not understand why he could not have been Transported directly into Senrival, his irritation subsided as he ran a double scale. Yes, the instrument would do, and no “a capella” attempt would have to be made.
There came a rap on his door. That peremptory young woman was there, he knew, and he called, “Immediately!” She loaded the awkward instrument onto his back and opened the door. “Now show me the way.”
* * * *
The Master Despot received him in a modest study filled with mnemonic devices. Of all the refinements and conveniences that the Great Association had offered the people of Sextus, only that of literacy had been rejected, without argument or reasoning. At the time of recontact, nobody understood why, but now he had observed the people, the alertness and retentiveness of their minds, and he thought he understood. Literacy eroded memory, that was plain to see.
Now he set the grampion beside a curtained doorway leading out into a garden. He set his right toe forward and swept back the wings of his coat in a graceful salute. The Despot smiled amid his luxuriant beard, only the waggling of the silken strands showing his amiability.
Gilels straightened. “I bring the concern of my people, my guild, and others who inhabit this arm of the galaxy,” he began. “I am sent to deliver your city from the daemon Diophors tonight. Let us pray together that I am able to succeed.”
“There is little time for niceties,” remarked the Despot. “Diophors will appear through a crevice in the floor of the forest, five hundred meters from my garden wall, before the green moon rises past the ilex tree.”
Gilels calculated frantically. Given the rate of rotation of the green moon, plus the fact that it was now already showing above the garden wall—egad! He had only about fifteen minutes to prepare for this strange encounter.
“What place is best for positioning my instrument?” he asked. His voice was unsteady, to his disgust, but Shereva Messenger kindly took no notice of that. She caught one end and motioned for him to lift the other.
“In the garden, so the people can see,” she grunted, lifting.
He would have preferred a more distant site, but he followed her into the garden, where they set the instrument on grass, doubly green in the moonlight. Then he understood why: a wall had been removed from the garden, and beyond it, on a slight rise, were hundreds of people, waiting.
Most were men of middle age, though some women as young as Shereva were among them. Even a few children stood toward the front, staring at him with great curiosity.
Gilels, used to audiences, made a bow. Then he turned to tune the grampion. A delicate trill rippled beneath his fingers. A crescendo followed, with bass notes gonging into the air. He tried a treble tremolo. Everything was excellent.
Now the moon was tangled in the ilex tree, about to pull free of the upper branches. Gilels held his breath. Was he about to see a real daemon? He would not and could not believe that. But there was something there, something so terrible that a city had died many times on the night when the stars reached this precise configuration.
Beyond the wall separating the garden from the wood, a shimmer of scarlet began to glow. It grew in intensity to blinding brilliance, and Gilels closed his eyes extremely tightly. That triggered the signal implanted in his skull by the Magister Cantorum, sending the impulses of his internal sensors across the voids to the Schola Cantorum.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked into five blazing orbs. It had to be a daemon. There were the ugly snout, the coils, the warts and knobbly hands with long discolored nails. They looked just like those in the ancient books he had studied before leaving Andios. But there was no time for staring. He must act, if he and all those watching were to survive.
His hands moved on the grampion, and a melody filled the air with sweetness. The eyes atop the wall dimmed a bit...but not enough. The maw, studded with rotted teeth, was opening. Gilels knew that once that poisoned breath poured forth, everyone in Senrival, including himself, was doomed.
He played more quickly, sending poignant notes into the green-ting
ed air. He joined his own voice with that of the instrument in the song his Magister had chosen as potent for this occasion.
The craggy mouth closed. The eyelids lowered over eyes that had paled to pink. Soothed and charmed by the music, Diophors forgot his hunger, attendant upon awakening from twenty years of sleep, and his five eyes dreamed across the garden. His terrible face lost its ferocity, as the music filled the alien mind of the creature.
Gilels felt the Field forming about him. He moved closer to the wall, away from the grampion, toward Diophors. When the Field had enveloped them both, he willed his monitors to act, and the Transmission began. He sang softly, all the way home to the Schola Cantorum.
* * * *
Without any doubt, Diophors was the most popular exhibit ever donated to the Zoological Gardens. Behind one-way impermaglas shielding, the Daemon, the only surviving member of his species, slept in red-lit visibility for months at a time. At intervals, the computers of the Gardens arranged the subtle shifts and compulsions of artificial gravities, duplicating the twenty-year cycle of Sextus.
Then the daemon woke in his duplicate of the forest den, and artificial protein, animated by mechanical means, seemed to die and to decay, and the creature fed (wondering, it is probable, why he was not hungrier). The spectacle was dramatic, gruesome, and yet harmless, and the tourists, as well as the inhabitants of Andios, loved it.
On a plaque beneath the impermaglas wall, there was this inscription:
DIOPHORS, daemonis horribilis,
DONATED BY THE SCHOLA
CANTORUM THROUGH THE EFFORTS OF
SONGMASTER GILELS
Through the efforts of this dedicated Songmaster, the city of Senrival, on Sextus XXV, was delivered of a regularly occurring disaster, which in the generations since the colonization of that world has claimed nine hundred thousand lives. Sextus, in gratitude, has offered numbers of their Messengers, trained as dependable couriers with impeccable memories, for sensitive communications throughout our Association.
The Second Ardath Mayhar Page 21