A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  Seventeen pairs of eyes—all my survivors, counting Thorwald, who was sitting in on the pretense that he was helping me—watched me as closely as if I were a demonstration in a psych lab, and had just gone mad and eaten the arms off one of the chairs.

  "What do you hear?" I asked, trying to keep the despair out of my voice.

  "The first one is slow. The second one is fast," the pudgy blond woman (Margaret—that was her name) said. I waited for her to say more but it looked like that was all she had to say. "I don't see how you can expect us to know the music is sad or not until we hear the words."

  At least that gave me a different idea. "Let me play you all something—ah, two somethings." First I played and sang the Canso de Fis de Jovent, in Terstad translation; I flattered myself that some of them seemed a little moved. Then I swung suddenly into the bawdy Canso de Fis de Potentz (or the "It Never Came Up Again," as it's called in translation). "They're the same set of notes," I said, when I had finished, to the laughter of Margaret, Thorwald, and a big, brawny fellow named Paul. Most of the rest just looked embarrassed. "Now what can you tell me about that?"

  "The first is sad, and it's slow. The second is fast, and it's funny," Margaret said. "But I don't think that being slow made it sad, or fast made it funny—it's the situation that's one way or the other."

  I sang the first verse of Canso de Fis de Jovent to the "Never Came Up" rhythm.

  After a long hesitation, Thorwald finally said, "Well, it's not as pretty."

  Paul nodded agreement. "Doesn't go together as well."

  "That's it exactly," I said. "The going together—or not going together—is what I'm talking about. And once you know that a song can have a mood that way, then the words don't have to be there, do they?"

  They all nodded dutifully.

  Hesitantly, Valerie, a tall, slender girl who seemed a bit shy, said, "You could probably do the same thing with some of our music. That might be sort of interesting."

  The other students turned and stared at her. I wanted to beat them all senseless and then sit down and just talk to Valerie.

  But before I could open my mouth to enter her defense, she went on. "It's an idea. The principle could be extended."

  Thorwald asked "What would it sound like? I mean, how would you do it with a song that didn't have words to tell you what the feelings are?"

  Valerie gestured toward the wall where my guitar sat on its rack; I nodded, unsure what she was going to do but eager to see somebody, anybody, on this cold world do something spontaneous. She got up and walked slowly toward the instrument; everyone watched her—or at least I know I did. I had suddenly noticed how huge her dark eyes were with her jet-black hair cropped close, and wondered what it would be like to look into them while I took that tiny waist in my hands.

  She picked up the guitar and returned to her stool; ran through the tuning once, nodding with approval, and tried fingering a couple of chords silently. All her attention seemed to fall onto her left hand.

  I was about to warn her that it was a male guitar when I noticed her fingernails were cut short, like a man's. So were a lot of other women's, here, of course, because so many worked on farms or at mechanical jobs, but still it was disappointing to see yet another plainness in her.

  She began to play. At first it was just an arpeggio through the basic four-chord flamenco progression, precise but nothing special. Then her picking became harder, sharper, even staccato, and as it slowed, the melody acquired a mournful bleakness that rang of Nansen as nothing else had. It made me think of hard-faced people facing the cold wind and of the syrup-thick freezing seas gnawing at the bare rock continents. It was quiet and unassuming like Bruce, pitiless like Reverend Carruthers, empty and grand like the peaks of the Optimals, and as suddenly beautiful as the Gap Bow bursting from the fog of the Gouge.

  I was moved, shocked, to find something like that here.

  She finished and the room went up in an uproar. All of them were speaking very fast, several of them in Reason, and I couldn't understand any of it. "Patz, patz, companho!"

  They all turned staring at me, then at each other. There was abruptly no sound at all in the room.

  Now I had to think of something to say.

  I drew a deep breath. The room stank of sweat and anger. "Would any of you, or perhaps all of you one at a time, mind explaining to me what you are all shouting about? I grant that the performance was beautiful and extraordinary—I never heard anything bellazor, more beautiful! M'es vis, we have a true artist, a real trobadora, among us."

  Valerie had been sitting there, my guitar in her lap, staring at the floor, through all the commotion; now she looked up, as if I had startled her. I could see that her skin was worn, even at her young age, by the ultraviolet and the cold winds ... but those eyes, deep and black as space itself, shining at me—deu!

  Paul spoke very quietly. "Mister Leones, I don't see what any of this has to do with Occitan music. Especially I don't see what a performance like that... well, if you think music ought to be some kind of an emotional outburst or, um, something—then that's just completely irrational! What if she plays it like that at the contest? I realize you don't know this, sir, but Valerie is a contender for All Caledony Soloist this year, and that's an obligatory piece. She shouldn't practice it that way—it could destroy her performance."

  Then they all started shouting again, this time even more of it in Reason. And again, when I did get their attention, they all fell into that terrifying instant silence.

  "Well, someone at least gave me some information," I said, thinking as fast as I could, knowing it couldn't be fast enough. "Are there any of you who like Valerie's performance—no, don't start yelling again—" I found myself wishing I had my epee here to keep order. "Let's do it by hand count. How many of you liked it?"

  About a third of the hands in class went up.

  "How many of you didn't?" Another third. "How many of you were yelling about something else entirely, and just happened to be in the room at the time?"

  They all laughed, and the tension seemed to collapse. I looked around at all these slightly embarrassed people, most of them still holding lutes, and was struck by the oddity of almost all of them being my age or younger. I forced my voice to get as soft and as gentle as possible, even though my heart was racing. "M'es vis, it's for Valerie to decide what matters to her—she is the true artist here. How was it to play in that way, Valerie—do you feel damaged?"

  She looked down; the brown of her face deepened, shadowed by her head, and it was disquieting to me to see white scalp through the thin bristle of dark hair on her head. "No, Mister Leones, I don't. In fact, at home, by myself, that's how I usually play that piece, and I was doing that long before you got here. I just didn't have the words to talk about what I was doing."

  Paul seemed stunned. "Valerie—why would you do such a thing?"

  She turned away from him, carried my guitar back to its rack, and set it carefully there before she said, "It just sounds better. I think I'm a better musician than the aintellect is."

  "You never told me you were doing that!" He sounded hurt to the bone.

  "I never talked with anyone about it, except Reverend Saltini of course."

  Paul gasped. "Then they've been picking it up on the monitors—and you've kept doing it?"

  She nodded. "As I said, it's the way it sounds right."

  The uproar before was nothing compared to the uproar now. I had not heard so much anger and insult flying around a room since the night Raimbaut died. Almost all of it was in Reason, so aside from being unintelligible to me, it had that peculiarly irritating rhythm that always sounded like a bad stutter.

  I found I was bellowing "Patz! Patz marves!" as if a brawl or a duel had to be stopped, and I was standing in the center of the room trying to glare 360 degrees at once.

  Then there was that dreadful silence again, and this time they were all hanging their heads and blushing as if they'd just been caught committing some terri
ble crime. "We're really sorry, sir," Prescott Diligence said. A short, red-haired boy, he was the son of a Pastor of something or other—I had seen his mother on the Council of Rationalizers, sitting in the little corner of non-stiffnecks. "These emotions are absolutely uncalled for."

  I looked around the room to see Thorwald and Margaret hanging their heads like beaten dogs, Paul scuffing at the floor, Valerie clearly in tears of shame. For the first time today I was really angry. "I was shouting for quiet so you could all hear each other. Because I'm your teacher and that is my job. But I will not permit any of you to apologize. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Art—pure raw disturbing art—is the only thing people should fight about."

  Out of some neurons that had spent too much time with Raimbaut, I heard his quiet laughter. I myself had fought much more often for enseingnamen or sheer thrill of the fight. I dismissed the thought.

  "All of you had nothing more than your own honest reactions to what Valerie has made here. You are entitled to those reactions—they are yours. Nothing and nobody has the right to tell you how you ought to feel."

  I said that straight into Prescott's face; he seemed rather shocked and startled. I fought down the childish urge to stick my tongue out at him.

  "Let me be explicit. For some of you, the overriding fact of Valerie's work is that it has brought a familiar piece of your art into a direct, powerful connection to your feelings— and because you feel it as never before, you are impressed. For others, the intrusion of Valerie's feelings has marred the classic form. That is what you are fighting about, and it's as important as anything can be—you're fighting about who you are, and how you fit into the world you've received. So of course you're fighting all-out; how could you do otherwise?"

  The room was now very quiet. Prescott was obviously in no mood to argue, and sat down. Now that I had recovered my lost temper, I hoped that he was thinking, rather than just hurt. Everyone else seemed, if anything, more embarrassed than before. I managed not to sigh or groan with exasperation, and said, "All right, now, let's get back to the lute. Prescott, you're up; let's hear the 'Wild Robbers of Serras Vertz.' "

  I thought I detected a little passion as he played, and dropped a little praise on it before it became clear that he would only experience that as further humiliation. I let class wind down quickly, and then treated myself to going up to my room and writing a long, long letter to Marcabru, detailing Caledony as the culture that strangled its artists at birth, where people with no feelings punished anyone who dared to have them, and so forth. I sent it before I could think of moderating my tone at all.

  Marcabru had not written to me in ten days. I had no time to go back to Bruce's place for at least another couple of days. I was more alone than I had ever been.

  SEVEN

  Some days after, as Aimeric presented and Bieris and I pointed to things on cue, the Council sat in solemn silence, nodding perfunctorily at the beginning of each subject heading—except Clarity Peterborough, who nodded constantly, with great enthusiasm.

  At the end of the presentation there was a very long pause.

  At last Carruthers rose to his feet, looked around the room, and said, "I think I do speak for all of us when I say that we badly needed to hear your presentation. Mister de Sanha Marsao. The issues here are very serious. I would like to adjourn to another room for discussion. Reverend Peterborough, I think you will want to stay with our guests."

  They all got up and left, leaving Reverend Peterborough and Ambassador Shan trailing after us, embarrassed, not speaking or even looking up, to one of the small lounges.

  There, Peterborough seemed to have an attack of feeling pastoral. "So sorry, there's no window in most of these rooms. Silly—light would be more cheerful—but I suppose they don't want to waste the energy and they don't value cheerfulness. Let's see—I think something warm and comforting is in order." She set the machine to make cocoa for everyone.

  "How do you think we did?" Aimeric asked, holding his voice neutral and level like he usually did just before a really dangerous brawl.

  Peterborough handed out the cups of hot, foamy stuff before answering. "You know, I wish that there had been more outcry. I wish they had tried to shout you down."

  "Dad just sat there. But from what he said afterward, I'm sure he heard every word."

  "Exactly." The Parson sighed and blew on her cocoa, then took a little hesitant sip. "I'm not sure I want to try to guess. The way they excluded me is probably not good. It means there are points of view they won't consider. But on the other hand, I think your father really did listen and really did believe you, and understood what the implications were. That's what we have to hope for."

  Shan growled, "I don't understand one damned thing about this damned culture. If they understood Aimeric, why are you so worried?"

  "Well," Peterborough said, "um—" She left it hanging in the air a bit too long before she said. "Well, maybe it's not such bad news."

  Aimeric jumped in. "The problem is that they picked it all up so fast and accepted it right away. If they had argued we might have had a chance to steer their thinking a little and get them going our way. As it is, anything could happen. They might be all set to hear and embrace the policies I suggest, but then again they might commit to something completely unworkable."

  "You really don't expect a reasonable response," Shan said.

  I took too big a sip of hot cocoa, and it burned on the way down. Tears formed in my eyes and I had trouble breathing. As I recovered, Peterborough was speaking. "But that's exactly the point. They're so dedicated to logic and reason that common sense hasn't got much to do with it."

  Shan shook his head hard, as if to get an idea out of it. "So all sorts of catastrophe might happen here, but since the locals will have picked the catastrophe for themselves, it won't matter."

  "It will matter to the locals," Bieris said. "They aren't going to follow someone else's policy manual when it has nothing to do with the way they've actually lived all their lives. Whatever they come up with, whether it works or not, is going to be a Caledon solution."

  I was nodding vehemently, surprised at my agreement with her. "Doing it your own way is what the Thousand Cultures are supposed to be founded on. People have to be allowed to find their own ways, even if they're mistakes. Didn't something like this come up in Occitan, anyway?"

  Aimeric nodded. "It did. But there the issue was just one of how crisis aid was going to be distributed. We had to persuade them that nobility needed to have higher income than commoners if our social system was going to function as it was designed to. The difference here is that it's not just distribution of aid. It's what they think should flow where, and how. A lot of archaic economic notions that disappeared centuries ago everywhere else have been written into doctrine. That's why you've got markets that depend on spying on consumers and ordering them around, and this whole notion that cash transactions are the only moral form of social communication. I would guess a good quarter of the real budget goes into making the economy behave as if their dogma were true. Well, there is about to be an economy uncontrolled by all that, and there is no way that the Council will give them money to maintain those fictions."

  "Still, it's part of how they see the world and they have a right—" Bieris began.

  "Horseshit. People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They won't much care about how well it works, just about how right it is ... they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain."

  Bieris sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest and said, "Don't people have the right to make their own mistakes?"

  "In principle, yes. In practice, the people who will suffer are not the ones making the decisions. If we can get them not to make this mistake, that's all to the better. I don't see any reason for them to exercise their right to be stupid by hurting a lot of innocent people."

  Peterborough interrupted. "Well, in a sense, any solution they come up with will 'work' eventually anyway, beca
use in six or seven years everything is supposed to come back on an even keel. And even if the stiffnecks want to pretend nothing has changed since Caledony Free State was chartered, things are different—for one thing, even with the worst imaginable policies, nobody is going to die of starvation or cold."

  There was a knock at the door, so as junior flunky closest, I got up and opened it. Carruthers came in, very quietly.

  "I owe you an apology," he said to Aimeric. "Your numbers verify completely. I understand some of your emotionalism, whether or not I agree that your display of it was warranted." Aimeric, several times, had raised his voice, and once had thumped the table as he made his points. The old man hesitated for a long time before he added, "I was very proud of you." Then, clearing his throat, he said, "We will be debating and praying for however long it takes, so we'll need access to you all next week—if that's not too much trouble?"

  "Nop," Aimeric said. "That's what the Council of Humanity is paying me for. You're welcome to call at any time."

  Carruthers turned quickly away from Aimeric and said, "Reverend Peterborough, let me apologize for your exclusion; it was an error in my judgment. Perhaps you would be good enough not only to join in our deliberations, but to brief Ambassador Shan afterwards?" He didn't wait for a response. "Then I think that's everything." He turned and went through the door; Peterborough followed, turning to give us a bare trace of a shrug and a raised eyebrow as she closed the door.

  The cat ride home was silent, except for the normal whir of the levitated tracks and the faint crashing of the gravel against the underside. I drove, which gave me an excuse to keep my attention on the road and away from whatever Aimeric might be feeling.

  Perhaps two-thirds of the way up to Sodom Gap, Bieris ventured, "Your father said he was proud of you."

  "Didn't mean anything more than that apology he gave Clarity."

  That was the conversation for the trip. At night there was no hope for a Gap Bow, of course, but moonrise was also hidden behind clouds. It was as drab as the Sodom Gap road ever is—which is to say the little we could see was spectacular.