Greg Bear - Songs of Earth 1 - Infinity Concerto

by Infinity Concerto (lit)

  The stick began to move. He applied it to the dirt and was pleased with the old, familiar feeling of tapping Death's Radio, the source of poetry. In Orphee, a film he had first seen at age thirteen, Death had come for the modern beat poet Orpheus in the form of a woman in a large black limousine. The limousine's radio played nothing but provocative nonsense phrases. which impressed Orpheus with their purity and poetic essence. Michael sometimes felt he was tuned in to Death's Radio when the poetry came pure and clean.

  Here she comes

  Bottle in hand

  To the mike

  Swaying now

  Gravel voice

  Filmy gown

  She will die

  Her singing

  Will kill her

  We will all

  Listen, her

  Blood and boozy breath

  On our savage ears.

  The wood came to a halt and he tapped it on the final period, the tiny hole in the dirt which concluded the poem. He had written a similar poem a year ago, after seeing Ricky Lee Jones in concert. But that poem had been flowery and melancholy-sweet, like bad Wordsworth, and this version was lean, essential - almost too spare for his tastes. No masterpiece, but a rugger. He frowned.

  Sometimes he had the impression that he wasn't really the author of a poem, that Death's Radio allocated poems by queue number and not personality. But this was a particularly strong sensation. He hadn't written this poem. Somebody, somewhere, had heard his in-speaking and transformed it for him.

  His hand reached out and scrawled Just ask beneath the poem. Ask what?

  Gnomisms. Puzzlements.

  Names are but the robes of fools,

  And words the death of thought.

  Your realm lies not in matter's tools

  But in what song has wrought.

  He dropped the wood. The letters had gathered all the dirt's sparkles into their tiny valleys and banks. They blazed in the hut's gloom. He hadn't written them; it was more as if he had been conversing with someone.

  "Man-child!"

  He left the burning words in the dirt and backed away from the bare space. He pulled open the reed door-cover. Spart stood before his hut. "Yes?"

  "You will not be trained today," she said.

  He stood with the chill draft circulating around him. "So?"

  "You are not a prisoner. Just don't attract Lamia's attention again, and don't say you plan to run away. The Wickmaster has enough chores." Her face briefly pruned up into a grin. "When you are not training, you are free to leave the mound. Without our company." She paused and looked around meaningfully. "After all, where will you go? Not far. Not far."

  "I could cross the Blasted Plain, like when we went to meet Biri," he said. She laughed.

  "I think you are too smart to try that. Not yet."

  That was certainly true enough. "What will you do with Biri today?"

  Spart shook her head and held her finger to her lips. "Not for humans to know." She walked off and he dropped the door cover, then looked back at the words in the dirt, now dark. He reached out with his foot to erase them, but thought better of it and pulled the book from its hiding place under the rafters. It opened in his hands to Keats' long poem, "Lamia," which he had first read a few years before and forgotten. It didn't illuminate his situation, nor did it shed much light on Lamia; it did, however, raise his curiosity as to why she was called that. No part of her was serpentine.

  Except that she was shedding her skin. He closed the book and put it in his new-sewn pocket. Outside, the mound seemed deserted. For a second he had a crazy notion to search for the Crane Women and Biri, observe them secretly - but that was as unlikely as escaping across the Blasted Plain alone.

  He set out for Halftown.

  As he approached the market square he heard a commotion. Three tall Breed males - including the guard who had first met Savarin and Michael on the outskirts of Halftown - stood at the gates to the market, glaring at a small crowd gathered around. The discussion was in Cascar and it sounded heated.

  Eleuth stood to one side, head bowed. Michael walked up to her. "What's going on?"

  "The market is no longer mine to manage," she said. She tried to smile but her lips wouldn't cooperate. "Since Lirg was taken away, I haven't been running it at all well. So the Breed Council claims."

  Michael looked at the guards and the crowds and felt his face redden. "What will you do now?"

  "They'll assign me a new house and find a new manager. I'll move."

  "Can't you fight it?"

  She shook her head as if shocked by the idea. "No! The council's decisions are final."

  "Who's in charge of the council?"

  "Haldan. But he takes direction from Alyons, who oversees everything in the Pact Lands, especially in Halftown."

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  She touched his cheek appreciatively. "No. I will be assigned another job, one better suited to my abilities."

  He felt a surge of guilt as she stroked his cheek.

  "I'm learning more rapidly," she said, her voice distant. "Soon I'll be able to do things a young Sidhe can do."

  "Magic, you mean."

  "Yes. Michael, we could go away today." The look of misery in her face, the desperation, was more than he could stand. "To the river. It looks like it will be warmer. perhaps we could swim."

  Michael grimaced and shook his head. "I'm not sure I'll ever swim again."

  "Oh, the Riverines are seldom a problem in the daytime. Besides, I can see them long before they reach us."

  That hardly reassured him. Why not spend a day with her, though? It wasn't an unpleasant prospect. But his distance from her had grown now that it was obvious she needed someone, needed to lean on him. "I can't help anybody now," he said. She looked down at the ground.

  Finally the guilt - and a basic desire which made him feel worse - drove him to agree. "What about the market?" he asked as they left.

  "It is taken care of now. Come."

  The sun had reappeared, driving away most of the clouds. The afternoon was pleasantly warm. The river flowed broad and slow and was also warm - which would have surprised Michael, had they been on Earth. The water was clear enough to see long silver fish gliding in the depths, just above ghostly reeds. Eleuth lay naked on the bank and Michael lay on his side, facing away from her, his head supported in one hand. "How is the novice Sidhe doing?" Eleuth asked.

  He couldn't read her tone, so he turned away from the river to look at her. "Fine, I guess. I don't know what it takes to be a priest here - a priest of Adonna."

  "It takes compromises, my father said once. He once tried to worship Adonna like a Sidhe, but it wasn't productive. All the Sidhe have compromised. They worship Adonna, Adonna lets them live here."

  "How can worship be coerced?"

  "Some Sidhe are very dedicated to Adonna. They feel a kinship."

  "What kind of kinship?"

  "Adonna is like the Sidhe, Lirg said once. 'We deserve each other, we and our God; we are both incomplete and lost.' What is the God on Earth like?"

  "I'm an atheist," Michael said. "I don't believe there's a God on Earth."

  "Do you believe Adonna exists?"

  That took him aback. He hadn't really questioned the idea.

  This was a fantasy world, however grim, so of course gods could exist here. Earth was real, practical; no gods there. "I've never met him." Michael said.

  "II," Eleuth corrected. "Adonna boasts of no gender. And be glad that you haven't met it. Lirg says - said-" She suddenly fell quiet. "Does it bother you when I talk too much about Lirg?" she asked after some seconds had passed.

  "No. Why should it?"

  "Humans might wish the talk to center on themselves. Not on others. That's what I've heard."

  "I'm not an egotist," Michael said firmly. He looked at her long limbs, so lovely and pale and silky, and reached out to touch her thigh. She moved toward him, but the movement was too automatic, too acquiescing. He flashed on
an image of Spart; what Eleuth would someday become.

  "I'm confused," he said, removing his hand and rolling on his back. Eleuth gently lay her chin on his chest, staring up at him with large eyes gone golden in the low-angled sunlight.

  "Why confused?"

  "Don't know what I should do."

  "Then you are free, perhaps."

  "I don't think so. Not free. Just stupid. I don't know what's right."

  "I am right when I love," Eleuth said. "I must be. There is no other way."

  "But why love me?"

  "Did I say I love you?" she asked. Again he was taken aback. He paused another minute before saying, "Whether you do or not," which was certainly witless enough.

  "Yes," Eleuth said. "I love you." She sat up, the muscles on her back sleek like a seal's, her spine a chain of rounded bumps. The sun almost touched the horizon, orange in the haze of the Blasted Plain. Her skin looked like molten silver mixed with gold, warm and yellow-white. "On Earth, do humans choose those they love?"

  "Sometimes," Michael said, but he thought not. He never had. His crushes had always been involuntary and fierce.

  "A pure Sidhe male does not love," Eleuth said. "He attaches, but it is not the same as love. Male Sidhe are not passionate; neither are most Breeds. Liaisons between Breed males and females are usually short. Lirg was different. He was passionate, devoted to my mother." She sounded regretful. "Sidhe women are passionate, desiring, far more often. They are seldom fulfilled." She turned to face him. "That is why there are Breeds in the first place. Sidhe females and human males - almost never the reverse. Why are you confused?"

  "I told you," he said.

  "Not really. You don't love me? That confuses you?"

  He said nothing, but finally nodded. "I like you. I'm grateful."

  Eleuth smiled. "Does it matter, your not loving me?"

  "It doesn't feel right, making love and not reciprocating everything. Feeling everything."

  "Yet for all time, Sidhe males have not loved their geen. And we have survived. It is the way."

  Her resignation didn't help at all. It twisted the perverse knot a little tighter, however, and the only way he could see to forestall the discussion was to kiss her. Soon they were making love and his confusion intensified everything, made everything worse. and better.

  As dusk settled, they walked back to Halftown, Michael trailing his shirt in one hand. Eleuth held on to his arm, smiling as if at some inner joke.

  Chapter Twenty

  The market courtyard was empty when they returned. Eleuth entered the house and began to stack her belongings in one comer. When she came to a brown rug, rolled and tied with twine, she paused and smiled, then undid the twine. "Do you have to go back right away?" she asked.

  "No," Michael said.

  "Then perhaps I can show you some of what I've learned." She lay the brown rug on the floor, smoothing out all the wrinkles, going from corner to corner on her hands and knees. "They'll leave me here for tonight, but tomorrow I must be gone. Lirg would be pleased with how far I've come; if I practice one more night here, it's almost like having him present." She kneeled on the rug and motioned for him to sit at one comer. "Lirg says the reason Breeds have a harder time with magic is because they're more like humans. They have more than one person inside them. but no soul."

  Michael opened his mouth to express doubts about that, but decided he wasn't the one to judge.

  "I'm not sure what he means. meant by that. But I feel the truth in it. Whenever I do magic, and I'm one person, it works. Sometimes my thoughts just split up, and many people talk in my head, and the magic fades. For a Sidhe, there is only one voice in the head, one discipline. So it's easier for a Sidhe to concentrate."

  "Maybe that's what he meant - just concentration."

  "No, it's deeper than that. Lirg said." She sighed and sat up on her knees. "A Sidhe would be very upset to talk about his parents all the tune. Breeds like to think they're Sidhe. but I'm mostly human. Anyway, when you bring it all down to one person willing one thing, magic just flows. The next hardest thing is controlling it. Now little magic is easy to control. For a split second you tie up the Realm with your head and there it is, what you want done is done. The Realm flows for you. It's almost automatic, like walking. But big magic. that's very complicated. Shall I explain more?"

  Michael nodded. His mouth was a little dry. Eleuth lay on the rug, staring at him steadily with her large dark eyes, her straight hair falling down around her shoulders and curling over one breast.

  "The Sidhe part of a Breed knows instinctively that any world is just a song of addings and takings away. To do grand magic, you must be completely in tune with the world - adding when the world adds, taking away when the world takes away. Then it becomes possible to turn the song around, and make the world be in tune with you, for a few moments, at least. A world is just one long, difficult song. The difference between the Realm and your home, that's just the difference between one song and another." She closed her eyes and chanted. "Toh kelih ondulya, med not ondulya trasn spaan not kod."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means something like, 'All is waves, with nothing waving across no distance at all.'"

  Michael gave a low whistle and shook his head. "And you feel all that?"

  "When it works," she said. "Now sit farther back, on the edge of the blanket. I won't be able to talk to you for a while, because I can't listen to you in-speak. Understand?"

  "Yes." Maybe.

  She stood in the middle of the blanket and held out her arms, then swung them to point at opposite comers, as if doing slow exercises. Michael looked at the corner on his left and saw a curl of darkness, as tiny as a thumbnail, seem to screw the rug to the floor. The rug tensed under his knees as if alive.

  She held her arms down at her side and closed her eyes, lifting her chin. Her fingers straightened.

  For the merest instant, four glowing pillars rose from each corner and passed through the roof as if it weren't there, into a greater darkness high above. She held out her hand, fingers clenched into a fist, and spun once. Her eyes flashed just as he blinked and in the moment his lids were closed, the room seemed bright enough to be seen clearly through the skin.

  She knelt in front of him, held out her fist and uncurled it. A beetle lay in the middle of her palm, like a scarab but deep metallic green, with velvety green wing cases. It moved slowly, turning as if confused.

  "That's very nice," Michael said, not sure whether to be impressed or not.

  "It was a cold night, with clouds and the sky filled with light," she said."It was a kind of road, hard and black, with white lines and golden dots and grass imprisoned in rock on each side, and trees in the grass." She pointed to the beetle. "This was. there. So I brought it back."

  Michael blinked. "I-"

  "I brought it for you from your home," Eleuth said. "You live in a very strange place."

  The beetle crawled a half inch across her palm, then stopped and rolled over. Its legs kicked feebly and it was still. Eleuth looked down on it with concern and touched it gently with one finger. Drops of water glistened on the finger, as if.

  As if it had searched through wet grass.

  "Is it dead?" Michael asked.

  Tears brimmed in Eleuth's eyes. "I think so. I have so much to learn."

  It was dark and very cold when he returned to the mound. The windows of the Crane Women's hut glowed brightly. Spart waited for him between the huts, standing on one leg. She crooked a finger at him, lowered her leg, and strode to his hut. He followed. She gestured for him to pull back the cover and he complied. She snapped her fingers and the letters of the poem in the dirt glowed. "Where did that come from?

  "I'm a poet," he said, resenting her intrusion. "I write poetry. There's no paper here, so I write it in the dirt."

  "Yes, but where does it come from?"

  "How should I know? It's poetry."

  "Do you know how old this poem is?" she asked, pointing to t
he last few lines. "In its Cascar version?"

  Michael shook his head. "I just wrote it."

  "It is dangerous to write such things. Your play with the Breed girl is making you a very interesting student." She walked away, her long limbs carrying her like a two-legged spider.