Acknowledgments
/ would
like to thank these people: Thomas Deitz for taking my scrawk and transforming
them into handsome maps and illustrations; Jean Karl for her editorial advice;
Wendy Nesheim for throwing a lifeline when I took my floundering dip in the
genetic pool; Bryan Webb for everything else.
I would
also like to offer my appreciation to this silicon life-form: Algernon Apple HI
for his masterful typing and editing and especially for his startling and
serendipitous revision.
SHARON
WEBB
Music,
Artisan of Ahbr. AM. The highest degree. One who has knowledge of all the
disciplines of the Composition. After study of all sectors of the Composition
(itius. below), and an arduous internship, the candidate must complete an
F.tude of Synthesis after which the degree is conferred and the recipient is
appointed to a Conductus. As Conduc-tus, the artisan assumes command of city or
national government and mediates all disputes between subordinate officials.
MUSIC,
Composition of The unifying field in the affairs of Humankind. In the
Composition, Music encompasses the four quartals of Canon Law, Mathematics,
Esthetics, and Medicine, and their connecting disciplines, the conjuncts of
Ethics, Science, Communication, and Spirit.
Diagram
of the Composition
Music,
Field Practitioner of Abbr. FP. A
technician
trained in a quartal or conjunct. One who practices under the supervision of a
monodist or quartalist.
MUSIC,
Monodist of Abbr, MM. One holding a degree with a specialty in one of the four
con-juncts. A monodist studies at the conjunct and its two adjacent quartals.
EX: A MM/SPT studies at the conjunct of Spirit and draws from the .quarta! of
Medicine knowledge of physical derangements which affect spiritual health and
from the quartal of Esthetics appreciation of the beauty of the human spirit.
The
Trigon of Monody, Spirit
The
Shield of Quartal, Medicine
Polytext
of Aulos Introduction to the Composition, 2d rev. ed., Baryton, Anche, AU
MUSIC,
Quartalist of Abbr. QM. One holding a degree with a specialty in one of the
four quartals. A quartaiist studies a quartal and its two adjacent conjuncts.
EX: A QM/MED studies the quartal of Medicine and its two conjuncts, thus
moderating treatment of the body with laws drawn from the conjunct of Ethics
and consideration of psyche from the conjunct of Spirit.
PORTO
PLAGAL
'
iiifefr/Aa
Prologue
The
creatures stood at the far reaches of time without knowing that they did this.
They stood at the jar reaches of time and felt the universe shudder like a live
thing at the approach of another.
Impingement...
The
breach in space-time was minute. The rift sealed instantly. The captured wave
of energy from the alien universe was no more than a ripple growing from an
infinitesimal point.
The
creatures turned anxious, slanting eyes toward the instruments of their
starship and saw the wave echoed there.
The
wave was a stormtide.
Cataclysm...
A
tag-end of the universe turned in upon itself. Flesh pulsed into energy. A
billion thoughts spilled free to swirl like flotsam on an alien tide rushing
backward in time.
Chapter
1
The Ram
sang in the night of space. As she circled the blue-green world beneath her
hull, she sang of another place and another time.
She
spoke to the stars and the lonely reaches between them, telling of her origins
in metaphors of light, mapping her genesis with whispered infrasound and
ancient cadences.
And as
the starship sang, she listened as she had for ten thousand years for the
answer that had never come. Instruments catching the subtle rhythm of the stars
probed and analyzed, storing data within the Ram's vast memory. Yet there were
minute changes that the ship could not detect. Not until the fabric of space
and time began to warp.
Within
the shell of the Ram the lights on the wide control console flashed a warning.
The man
spoke to the heart of the ship. Again the warning. His eyes met the woman's
next to him. "He'll have to be called."
She
looked away. "I don't like to."
"What
choice do we have now?"
"I
don't like to." She turned from him and a thousand tiny crystals on her
cap danced around her ears with the motion. "He's on retreat," she
added needlessly.
The man
raised an eyebrow. "I know that."
She had
no choice, not really, but still she hesitated. Foolishly, she told herself,
yet a part of her
I
2 RAM SONG
stood
in awe of the man they called Kurt Prime. She looked back at the console. The
man was bending over his instruments now, his brows beetling. The yellow and
amber warning lights reflected sharply from his cap and she narrowed her eyes.
"The
effect is increasing," he said. "You can see that yourself."
She
nodded slowly. "We'll do it then." He straightened. "We should
go now." Again the hesitation. She looked up as if she could see through
the ceiling, as if she could see the lake many kilometers above her reflecting
like blue sky on the village beneath. "We'll have to bring the interface.
He'll need it."
The
immortal, Kurt Kraus, walked alone through the ancient subtropical forest
ringing Sky Lake. Brushing a thick, dark lock of hair from his eyes, he looked
up at the tangle of branches silhouetted in the brilliant light of midday.
He had
begun to see the woods with new eyes now—not a static grouping of leaves and
bark, but instead a slow-moving war dance, a frozen battle for supremacy. There
a giant mahogany fought with another for the light from a bogus sun. On a
slight rise above him a young gumbo limbo, springing from the rotting remains
of its parent tree, methodically starved its spindly siblings. But even as it
prospered, the gumbo limbo carried the instrument of its own death: the dark
green leaves and clinging aerial roots of a strangler fig showed in the young
tree's crown—another cycle beginning.
He
moved to the shore of the shallow lake where five brown ducks broke formation
and waggled their tails at his approach. Across the wind-rimed water ancient
liveoaks marked the edge of the Ram's mortal colony. Once it had been called
New Renascence. Now it was simply Renascence—or The Choice.
At the
juncture of far shore and woods stood a small group of young men and women in
their mid-teens. Children really, he thought Poignant young
RAM
SONG 3
new
lives. He watched as one by one they stepped forward. It was time again for the
choice—the Final Decision. He had seen it come a dozen times during his
retreat. Though he could not hear their voices, though he had heard no voice
except his own in the five years of his isolation, he knew what it was they
said.
That
one, the girl with slim brown legs straight beneath her short garment and eyes
raised to meet the interrogator—she would choose to deny immortality. But the
next? Not that girl. Her head was thrown back a trifle too high, her chin
thrust out too far. Kurt imagined that he could see the flash of defiance in
her eyes, though the distance was too great. That one would choose with a
bright smile on her face. She would choose immortality, he thought, and later,
in the privacy of her tiny cabin, she would weep at her loss.
Each
time he viewed the ancient ceremony of Renascence the memories replayed, and
again he wondered how he might have answered. The question he had never been
asked spoke in his mind: How do you choose, Kurt Kraus? And what if he had
denied his immortality? What if, instead, he had chosen his music, his creativity?—a
blaze of being gone in a flash of time, a tiny sun gone nova, then dark? A
firefly? He tried to peer into the dark well of distant memories and wondered
if the spark of what he might have been could still be seen after ten thousand
years.
He looked
across the shallows once again. The ring now. They placed it on the finger of
the first girl as if she were a bride. He could see her looking at it, and a
bit of the wonder crept into his heart. A simple ring of ancient design, the
golden lazy eight of infinity, broken, vanishing into black, and then the
words: "For Art."
Cycles.
It was
strange about memories, he thought. Strange how something could stay in his
mind in tiny protein coils for millennia while other things could
4 RAM SONG
vanish
without a trace. No, not without a trace. Vague thoughts glided in and out of
his mind— incomplete hints that lay just beyond his grasp. They seemed to be
dreamlike echoes of things he almost knew, things he should know. But just why
he should know them, he could not say.
At the
beginning of his retreat these shadowy, fragmented thoughts tormented his
dreams, and he would waken in the dark to feel the cold sweat gathering on his
body.
Coming
to consciousness like a man anesthetized, he tried to validate himself with the
memories that would not come. He had to remember. Had to. He tossed on his
narrow pallet and struggled for a hold on the cloudy shards of his mind. Then,
as surrogate winds blew over his sweaty body and chilled him, he wrapped
himself in a robe and listened to the faint sounds of lake and woods until at
last he could sleep again.
Now,
although the fragments still lodged in his brain, they seemed less important,
less threatening.
The
midday winds were beginning, riffling over the silver blue lake, tossing the
leaves of the trees, sending tiny seeds and pollen on currents of air to renew
the forest and the fields. The wind was cool on his face and pleasant. As it
rose, it sang in the leaves and brought with it another sound. Voices. Closer
than they had come in the five years of his isolation.
He
could see them in the distance: five of them cresting a low hill. They moved
purposefully, and when they saw him, they lapsed into silence.
He felt
a wrenching pang of regret. They had come for him. But it was too soon. Too
soon.
One of
them, a woman, stepped out of the group toward him. He stared at her. She
seemed familiar, but he could not call her name.
She
held a small bundle in her hands, but made no move to open it or offer it. She
seemed apologetic, and it was obvious to him that she desperately
RAM
SONG 5
wished
she were somewhere else. "I'm sorry, Kurt Prime," she said at last.
"There's trouble"
He
tried to gather his thoughts. "Trouble?"
"With
the Ram. Communications with star drive are garbled. Our instruments are
showing an echo effect, but nothing registers on sensory."
He
stared at her. "Where are we?"
"Off
Aulos, the second planet of Cuivre. The mortal colony from Renascence,"
she prompted. "Most were musicians."
When he
said nothing, she went on. "There's something else. We've lost contact
with one of our skimmers. We're sending a homing beam, but we can't read the
skimmer's position." She hesitated, then said, "Alani was on
board."
"Alani?"
His little girl? Alarm tracked through him. "Does Liss know?" She had
to be told.
A
puzzled look came into the woman's eyes. "Who?"
"Liss.
Her mother.... My wife."
Her
eyes widened, then dropped, and she refused to meet his gaze again. Instead,
she thrust the little bundle toward him.
It opened
in his hands. He stared down at the iridescent helmet. Its crystal tendrils
spilling through his fingers glittered as they moved in the wind. He looked at
the little group, first at one, then another, finally the woman. At her faint
nod, he lifted the cap and put it on.
It was
soft and light. Its tens of thousands of tiny crystals, woven intricately
together, covered his hair completely; its faceted tendrils hung to his
shoulders. He felt the helmet mold to the contours of his head, and as it did,
he knew that it was his alone. He sensed rather than felt it interface with the
circuits hidden beneath his hair at the base of his skull; and as he did, the
flood came and he staggered against its intensity.
Alani.
Not a little girl. Not a little girl for ten thousand years now. And Liss? Gone
for a thousand,
6 RAM SONG
left
by her own choice on a watery world
half a galaxy away. No more than frozen memories.
He
looked evenly at the woman whose name he knew was Kiersta. He was Kurt Prime
now, and in his mind he carried the glittering memories of the Ram's
ten-thousand-year voyage. He nodded sharply. "I will come at once."
Chapter
2
A crowd
of vacationers pushed aboard the skimboat and jostled one another as they
headed up the curving ramps of her tower. The ship sat high in the water, and
the view from her lofty observation deck was magnificent. Shoreward, the
southern coastal city of Punta D'Arco sprawled at the point of the low
peninsula like a scattered tumble of children's blocks. To either side of the
city, vast stretches of the tall musical reeds, the Anche, that gave the major
country of Aulos its name, tossed in the afternoon wind, but their song and the
high-pitched cree of a wheeling flock of blue-backed harks was lost in the
distance and the hubbub of the crowd.
The
vacationers' bright, loose clothing reflected their festive attitude. They were
about to leave the quartals of civilization for the mezzo and adventure.
A young
couple, obviously newly duet, strolled hand-in-hand toward the railing. In a
burst of exuberance, the man hoisted the girl to his shoulder, where she
steadied herself with one hand around his neck. "There it is. I can see
it."
"No,
you can't," he said. "That's just an offshore
RAM
SONG 7
island.
The mezzo lies that way." He squinted at the brilliant reflections from
the choppy gulf and flung and arm toward the horizon.
The
peninsula pointed like an arrow toward the Plagal, the strip of land that
formed the mezzo between the north polar country of Anche and the torrid, almost
uninhabitable continent that lay beyond. The girl gave a shiver of excitement.
"Is it really as wild as they say?"
The
young man affected a look somewhere between sophistication and boredom, but it
was lost to the girl who stared eagerly toward the mezzo. "It's safe
enough," he said, "as long as you're with me. Safe enough in the city
at any rate, but you wouldn't want to leave Porto Vielle." He gave her a
mischievous look. "The Tatters might get you."
With a
vibrant hum, the skimboat came to life. The girl gave a breathy little shriek
and clutched the young mans neck as the ship rose on its cushion of air. A
moment later it began to accelerate.
They
skimmed across the gulf like a great white pebble skipping across a pond until
at last the pale cliffs of the Plagal came into view.
Spilling
from the skimboat like bright flowers, the vacationers scattered through Porto
Vielle. Some, succumbing to the insistent call of vendor's gongs fashioned of
scraps and flotsam, shoppped for trinkets at the native tam-tams that lined the
whitewashed streets and drove what they took to be hard bargains. Others
strolled along the bluffs overlooking the blue-green waters of the harbor and
watched the kitesingers perform for small coins and the occasional hoped-for
quarter note.
By
early evening the lowering sun, Cuivre, set the sea on fire, and the tourists
gathered in twos and fours in the open-air plenos by the gulf to dine on fresh
fruits and the specialty of the Plagal, sea harp broiled in its nest of
feathery nettles. When the moon Presto began to show a crescent low in the sky
and the first sign of Allegro gleamed over the hori-
8 RAM SONG
zon,
the visitors smiled and nodded to one another. There would be two moons for
Festival tonight.
Porto
Vielle perched on the flat plane of the broken and Fissured Plagal Plateau. It
was a city divided by its terrain, its three sections connected only by the
sculpted lace of suspension bridges. Far below them, the river Largo and its
tributary the Larghetto crept through twisting beds toward the
gulf-
Beyond
the city and its seasonal fringe of bright tents and banners, the Largo ran
swifter as it fell from the foothills. Here open woodlands touched its banks,
and far above the river silent waterfalls tumbled in clouds of mist.
A boy
of about eighteen sat leaning against a giant boulder overgrown with blue-gray
moss. Staring with serious dark eyes at the leaping water, he held a primitive
reedflute to his lips and played a song as liquid as the river at his feet, but
he played without thought. His mind was still in Porto Vielle.
It had
taken him nearly half a day to come here from the city. At first he had walked,
but his steps quickened to a lope and then a run as if Hexen pursued him.
Finally he collapsed, his ragged breath searing in and out of his lungs. After
that, he paced himself with long, lean-legged strides until he reached the
foothills.
The
river ran clean and cool here. He stripped off his clothes and scrubbed away
the city's dirt, watching as the cloud of brown swirled away from his body and
ran downstream, knowing that he would meet it again when he returned to his
family and the crowded tents of the Tattersfield.
As he
played his flute, he stared absently at the river. A shoal of stretchscales
broke the surface, bodies gleaming silver in the sun, but he saw only his
mother. He saw her eyes, pale gray and strained in her gaunt face; he saw her
thin hands clutch at her swollen, knotted belly. Her pains had begun before
RAM
SONG
9
dawn.
While his sister kept the smaller girls, Shawm ran for the midwoman of the
stave.
Grudgingly,
the old woman consented to come, but not before she had her breakfast. He
waited while she blew the coals of her stove to a glow and cooked her meal. She
ate it slowly, squatting on her haunches in front of her tent. But still she
wasn't done. With growing impatience he watched as she licked each drop of fat
from her fingers with greedy darts of her tongue. At last, when Cuivre blazed
over the horizon, she rose and followed him to his mother.
Crimping
her lips in a pinch of a smile, she unfolded her pouch and, kneeling at his
panting mother's side, drew out her instruments. They were made of metal
touched here and there with rust or streaks of dried blood, he could not tell
which.
She drew
out a vicious curving probe and set to work.
Shawm
stared down in an agony of fear at the gush of fluid stained with blood. At his
mother's strangled cry, he pulled at the midwoman's arm. "Stop. You're
hurring her."
The
midwoman spat at him. "Get out."
"No."
But his
mother blinked and pressed his hand. "Go, Shawm."
He
stood then, hesitating, staring at his mother. When she nodded faintly, he
turned and strode out of the tent.
Outside,
his sister Clarin sat with the two little ones in the shade of the family jig,
her back pressed against the shaft of the two-wheeled cart. She looked up at
him with anxious eyes. He started to speak, then shrugged and turned away with
a catch of his breath. It seemed to him that if he stayed, the city would
smother him with its press of people and its dirt.
He
turned toward the distant mountains where he had been born and began to walk.
Soon he was running.
10
RAM
SONG
Cuivre
was low in the sky now. It was time to go back to Porto Vielle.
Kneeling,
he gathered the small bundle of gray-brown mimeset tubers that he had dug from
the riverbank. The scentsinger would pay well for them, and they needed the
money. He thought of a new child in the crowded tent and scowled. Another belly
that would need filling. The twisting stab of resentment grew. Maybe it would
die. Maybe it would be dead. The intensity of the hope washed over him, and he
felt both defensive and ashamed.
It was
.time to go back to the city, yet he hesitated, drawn in the other direction.
Only a day's walk more and he could be in the high mountains. He could be home
again to stay. He wouldn't leave again, he told himself. He'd never again
follow his people to towns and cities scattered over the Plagal; he was sick of
wandering. But what was the use? It was time to go back to Porto Vielle.
Not
moving, he knelt in the crumbly soil at the river's edge. A tiny jailor
carrying its mate on its back crept along the ground near Shawm's knee. He
stared at the insects. The male had trapped the female in a curving mass of
upturned legs that had grown together now. She thrust stalklike eyes through
the trap. He could see her swollen egg sac. For the rest of her life she would
produce young, shedding them like dust through the bars of her cell. His
fingers itched to free her, to tear apart the flimsy, chitinous prison, but he
knew if he did she would die. "Maybe you'd be better off," he said
aloud.
The
answering voice was as shocking as a splash of icy mountain water—a girl's
voice speaking a barrage of gibberish.
Startled,
Shawm scrambled to his feet, but there was no one there. Nothing but woods and
water and a tiny cloud of golden darts hovering over a bank of sweetset.
Another
string of phrases. This time he caught a meaning from one of them:
"Calling. Calling."
He whirled
around; he saw no one.
RAM
SONG
11
"Answer,
please," the voice insisted.
Feeling
foolish and a little uneasy he said, "Who's there?"
There
was a pause. Then the girl's voice came back, accented, but intelligible.
"Good thanks. I was afraid you wouldn't." Then, "Say something
else so I can connect your dialect."
He
stared in what he took to be the direction of the voice. "Where are
you?"
"Oh
... sorry. There."
Suddenly
Shawm was looking into the blue-green eyes of the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen. She was sitting in the shade of a bitterbole by the riverbank,
sitting gracefully on what seemed to be nothing at all. Bewildered, he said,
"Where did you come from?"
Her
eyes met his. "The Ram." Her eyes were as deep and blue as the gulf. "I
wanted to see your world again, so I look out a skimmer." Her lips quirked
in a rueful smile. "Now I seem to be lost. I'll have to triangulate a
distress."
Completely
confused, he stared at the girl and tried to place her accent. It was as
lilting as his, but the intonation was reedy as a tourist's from Anche and her
carriage was proud. An upperstave, he was sure, yet her pale hair was nearly
covered with a shimmering cap and he had never seen clothes like that before.
Puzzled, he watched as her hand shot out, fingers moving in a tapping motion.
Suddenly she vanished.
Before
he could blink, she reappeared, teetering in the edge of his vision. Horribly
startled, he reached out to steady her, but instead of touching flesh his
fingers raked through thin air.
Her
eyes widened slightly. "Oh. I guess you didn't know. I'm imaging.
See?" The solid planes of the girl faded to mist and shadows. The ghostly
curving lines of the river showed through her body. He took a slow gulp of air
to quiet the pounding of his heart. Just another gadget of the upperstave, he
told himself, or an illusion. He sniffed tentatively at
12
RAM
SONG
the
air, testing for the telltale scent of guilefly, finding nothing but fresh
clumpweed and the.sharp odor of the mimeset tubers.
The image
grew solid again. "I've frightened you, I suppose."
Shawm's
chin went up at the insult. "I didn't mean to. Some people can hold image
when they go into synchor, but I don't do this often enough to be good at
it."
The
quick rush of adrenalin put an edge to his voice, "What are you talking
about?"
"I
told you. I'm lost. I can't find the Ram. My instruments are telling me the
ship is hopping all over its orbit. I can't get anything but echo
patterns." She glanced down quickly, then gave a little gasp. "And
there's another!"
She
caught her lower lip between her teeth and narrowed her eyes in concern.
"Well, if I can't find them, they'll just have to find me." She
looked up at Shawm. "I'll have to stay in synchor until they do."
"Stay where?"
She
sighed faintly. "I've confused you again. Sorry. Synchronous orbit. If
they're going to find me, I have to make it easier. Otherwise they'll tractor
dust"
As a
blank look trailed across his face, she looked at him sharply. "You do
know about the Ram, don't you?"
Puzzled,
Shawm stared at her. Then he nearly laughed when he realized that she meant the
silver egg, the fabulous silver egg that had brought them to Aulos. Folklore. A
fable. It was said that the upperstave actually believed in it, but then they
believed in all sorts of foolishness, and a good thing too. If they didn't, his
people would go hungry during Festival. Then it occurred to him that she must
think he was stupid. "I'm not ignorant. I know all the stories."
"Good.
It's been so long, I was afraid you people might have forgotten us." In
answer to his questioning look, she added, "It's happened before, but only
with the mortal colonies, of course. The people of
RAM
SONG
1,3
Escher
thought we were gods. Some of them wanted to build a shrine in our honor."
She laughed ruefully. "Doom that project. They finally decided we were a
hideous menace from space..." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial
whisper; her brows rose in mock horror, "...awful aliens with the power to
cloud minds. You can believe we were lucky to get away."
He met
her smile with set lips.
"You
don't believe me, do you?"
His
eyes darkened, "You think I'm a fool, a buffo."
She
seemed surprised, "No. 1 don't." A look he could not read came into
her face. "What must you think?" she said. "What must you think
of me?"
A
smooth answer sprang to mind. Instantly he compressed his lips as if to hold it
in. She expected flattery, he thought. Deference. They all did. They wanted to
be humored like small children. Easy enough to do; he had learned the trick of
it when he was very young. He looked at the woman before him—the image of the
woman, he reminded himself. At that moment she was very beautiful and very easy
to hate. "I think you're playing with your clever toys." He spoke deliberately,
meaning to insult her. "I think you're a child."
To his
amazement, she laughed.
He felt
himself stiffen.
"I'm
sorry. It's just that it's been a very long time since anyone thought
that." Her smile swept away. "Of course you couldn't believe me. You
need proof. Let me show you." Hands moved quickly, her fingers tapped out
a strange pattern. Then she was holding something toward him.
He
hesitated, not knowing whether to take it or to show his independence. Yet he
could not help but stare as a swirling golden speck hovered in the air between
her outstretched hands. Intrigued, he took a step closer. As he did, he felt—or
heard—a faint pulsing.
Suddenly
the dancing, golden speck flared into a giant, boiling sun.
Gasping,
he fell back. The image of it burned into his eyes, blinding him. Then he heard
it. He felt
14
RAM
SONG
its
song as a throbbing deep inside his body. In a spasm of fear he flung himself
away, but still it grew until each bone and sinew pulsed with the turbulence of
the yellow sun. The ground under his feet convulsed. He swam in flowing fire
arid felt his body explode in tongues of flame.
Then,
quite strangely, he was not afraid.
At the
center of himself he felt the star's vast-ness, its clean white fire, its
churning power. He breathed, and his breath was a flare burning into blackness,
his heart a pulsing inferno, his blood great streaming flames. He stood at the
center of himself for an eternity, then suddenly, abruptly, he was cast out in
a spiraling pinwheel of fire.
He spun
in an uncontrolled, headlong flight into cold blackness. !ri vain he turned his
face toward the warmth of the sun, but it whirled away until it was nothing
more than a distant blazing globe.
Eons
passed, and he felt himself cool and darken. Darken.
Eons
passed....
Then
the tiny light of a single thought pierced the darkness. There was something he
needed to do... Something nagging at his mind....
"Move.
Quickly."
Something....
"Get
out of the beam. Jump!"
Chapter
3
The
dark-haired immortal bent over his console, brow furrowing, smoothing,
furrowing again as he
RAM
SONG
15
rechecked
his equations. Kurt Kraus stared at him and thought, how young he is—too young
even to need a cap. He was surprised at the thought; he had never really
thought of the gulf that separated him from so many of the people now. And this
man? He was still in his first specialty, but he knew his work well. For thirty
years he had been the Ram's chief Technologist of Communication, star drive;
for thirty years he had done his job without a flaw. Now he raised troubled
eyes toward Kurt and shook his head.
"Still
no response?" Kurt asked.
"No,
Kurt Prime," said the Comtech, quickly adding, "Nothing that means
anything. I'm getting tronic debris from star drive now, and not much else. Let
me show you." He touched a featureless segment of the console, and the
flat plane dissolved to a stage. "Plot Starpoz," he commanded.
Instantly
the stage darkened and a tiny three-dimensional sun, the star Cuivre, glowed
against a star field. Near the point of light that represented the Ram, a bank
of numbers formed in a cluster. "See that?"
Kurt
nodded.
"According
to Star Drive, that's our position. Perfectly accurate. The only trouble is,
the information's 28 ramins, point 08299 seconds slow."
"You
mean that's where we were, not where we are?" said the woman Kiersta.
He
nodded.
Kurt
narrowed his eyes at the display. "Is the aberration consistent?"
"No.
It fluctuates. Look." He touched the companel that communicated directly
with the heart of the ship's star drive. "Plot retrorbs 2 RamZ to
StarPoz."
Together
they stared at the stage. Instead of the ordered increments of their last two
orbits, the point of light blazed into an erratic streak that curved back onto
itself.
"Smear,"
said the Comtech. "And it's increasing."
Kurt
stood silent for a moment, staring at the stage as if he could see beyond it
into the churning
16
RAM
SONG
heart
of the Rain's drive. "Is there compensation?" he asked slowly.
The
Comtech's hesitation was just for a moment. Then he said, "Yes."
Kurt
closed his eyes. The image of the blue-white smear still danced before his
retinas. For a moment he imagined he could see the Ram's drive engaging and
disengaging its warps at lightning speed in a desperate attempt to compensate
for its erratic data. "Then you've shut down the drive," he said
irrelevantly. He knew, of course, that they had. Anything less and the Ram and
its passengers would be pulled and compressed to strings of jellied pulp.
The
Comtech nodded, then with a quick check of his figures, said, "With warp
out, we're down to .00069 Light capability."
"I
need Jacoby," Kurt said to Kiersta, "and Poetson."
"Poetson?.
From Renascence?" she began.
When he
nodded, Kiersta opened her mouth as if to say something. Instead, she turned
and spoke to an undertech. A moment later she stepped up to Kurt, "We've
sent your call. Jacoby is close by. He's on his way."
Kurt
caught the warm musk scent of her and felt an old sensation return. The
suppressants he had taken during his retreat were beginning to wear off. Not
now; he thought, looking at her. Not now, but soon. He straightened and said
briskly, "Tell me the rest?"
"This
way," she said.
He
followed her to the bend in the horseshoe-shaped console where a small group of
people clustered near Station 4. As he approached, they fell back, and he
stepped up to the panel.
The
Probetech turned quickly toward Kurt and nodded in deference. The crystals on
his cap glittered with the reflection of the amber and yellow warning lights of
the display. "We're in the edge of some sort of field, Kurt Prime,"
he said, running name and title together so that they sounded like one word.
"We're getting an echo effect. I've never seen anything like this
before."
RAM
SONG
17
"Can
you give me visual?"
In
answer, the man touched the panel of number sequences, A thin gray cloudy area
sprang on the stage. "I'll enhance with lOCyan."
The
cloud deepened to shades of blue. As Kurt watched, the mist swelled, receded,
swelled again. Cyan pulsed into touches of gray-bleached blue streaked with
indigo and flowed out again. A curling plume of cobalt melted into a swirl of
ice-blue smoke.
"Interesting,"
came a voice just behind Kurt. It belonged to his oldest friend, Jacoby.
Turning,
Kurt clasped the man's shoulder warmly and said in greeting, "More's
passed."
"More
will." Jacoby caught Kurt's hand in his. "They tell me you need a
Jack of Trades." Then he grinned. "Into the breach with Omni
John."
A smile
traced Kurt's lips. Jacoby had sampled so many occupations, had followed with
unending curiosity so many specialized disciplines, that he had long ago ceased
to be a specialist in anything. And the very lack of specialization had turned
him into something of more value: a generalist, a man with the ability to see
the forest from a very dense thicket of trees.
"What
have you heard about this?" Kurt indicated the banks of instruments.
*'A
little here, a little more there. You know what they say: nega-news travels at
Light Nine." His eyes searched Kurt's "I heard Alani was missing. Any
word?"
Kurt
shook his head. "Nothing yet. We've sent out a scanner."
Jacoby
turned to the Probetech. "Give us a walker." When the man handed him
a hand-sized console controller, he snapped it to his belt and said to Kurt,
"Let's talk." With a quick nod, he indicated the door.
"They
told me you'd asked for Poetson," said Jacoby as they turned the corner
and stejpped onto the hemichute.
18
RAM
SONG
Kurt
nodded, then looked up sharply. There was something in Jacoby's voice....
"Poetson's
dead. Almost three years ago now."
Kurt
touched the railing, broad fingers with neatly clipped nails grazing the smooth
gray surface underneath. Outwardly he gave no sign, yet the sinews of his hand
tensed, relaxed, tensed again. Another-one. Another mortal gone from a life
that seemed as brief as the blinking of an eye. Kurt thought of the old man:
Poetson. One of the most brilliant physicists ever to come out of Renascence.
The man1 who had brought a new design to the Ram's star drive over forty years
ago, one that used the very fabric of space for its ends.
Every
man's death diminishes me, he thought, blinking at the words he had stored in
some forgotten niche millennia ago. Even now he was not free of the quick stab
of guilt that had come each time. He had never been able to forget that he was
the one who had given death back to the world, that he was the one who had
brought its dark seed to the stars.
The
path of the hemichute veered, and it slid to a stop. When they stepped out,
Jacoby swung onto a waiting floater. Kurt followed and the floater's gate
clanged shut, enclosing them in a round cage studded with handholds. At the
floater's soft but insistent demand, they clipped on the safety harness it
presented. "Where are we going?" asked Kurt.
"Out
to catch a squirrel," said Jacoby. "Ooberong, She's out here every
day about now."
Zeni
Ooberong: Poetson's protege. She was rumored to be up each day and hard at work
while most of the Ram still slept, and her workday never ended until long after
everyone else's. So this is what she does in between, thought Kurt, an hour or
two of flight instead of a meal.
Quickly
gaining momentum, the floater slid silently along its tunnel. Then, with a
final burst of speed, it shot through the terminus and with a sighing rush of
air extended four long dragonfly wings.
As they
broke through and sped toward the
RAM
SONG
19
center
of the Ram, Kurt squinted against the sudden dazzle of the ship's sun.
Kilometers away, the Ram's inner layer curved around them like a gigantic blue
glass bowl furred with the dark green of its forests. In what passed for
overhead, sky-lake reflected back the blue-roofed city below it.
"They
used to think that bumblebees couldn't fly either." Jacoby patted the
floater's frame in admiration. The motion threw him off balance in the rapidly
decreasing gravity, and he steadied himself by gripping the nearest handhold.
"SLOWING,"
warned the floater. Then reversing, it slowed again until finally it hovered
like a giant, ungainly insect slowly swaying in opposition to its minute
correcting jets.
To
starboard a red bud blossomed, then shattered, as a dozen young Renascence
squirrelers ended their aeriallet and glided apart in twos and threes. To port,
a group of young children tumbled with awkward delight to the amusement of the
more experienced, who gave the cluster of orange-finned learners a wide berth.
Jacoby
touched the band on his wrist with two quick taps. Responding to his call, a
figure in deep red banked and with a long, lazy circle turned toward them.
Her
hands and feet were spread, stretching the webbing of her suit into a thin
magenta membrane. The stabilizing fin along her back arched in bright blue
spines. She took the air in such swimming curves that it seemed to Kurt she was
more fish than flying squirrel—an exotic tropical circling in a giant bowl of
blue-green glass.
A final
curving arc, a slow bank as if she were reluctant to end her flight, and Zeni
Ooberong reached out and expertly caught the tether Jacoby threw to her.
Clinging to it with one hand, with the other she reached up and touched her
left shoulder. The blue spines collapsed and the stabilizing fin molded itself
to her back. As she swung through the open gate, the floater swayed and hissed
in compensation.
20
RAM
SONG
Without
speaking, she stared at them, and Kurt thought that he could see the curiosity
of a child in her frank gray-eyed gaze. It had been five years since they had
spoken. With regret he saw that she was getting old now—regret overlaid with
faint surprise, because somehow she had seemed different, somehow he had
believed the youth that glowed from her eyes would always serve her. Close to
sixty, he guessed, and beginning to gray in silvery waves that softened the
firm line of her jaw.
With a
tug at her waistcord, she drew the flight suit up between her legs and in at
her waist until it resembled a pair of harem pants topped with a loose cape.
The thin material served to reveal her compact and still quite shapely body.
When she caught Kurt's stare, she said with a quick smile, "Not very
fashionable, I suppose. But it's better than tripping over the folds."
He
caught her hand in greeting. Trapped in his, her hand seemed no larger than a
child's, and fragile, as if it might break in his grip.
As if
reading his mind, she said, "I suppose you think it's time I clipped my
wings, but I'm not feeble yet." Her keen eyes caught his. "Someday
I'll tell you why I fly. Now I want to know why you called me, Kurt
Prime."
"We
need your help."
She
listened, nodding quickly at times, narrowing her eyes at others. Then
interrupting abruptly, she said, "Let me see this cloud."
Jacoby
touched the little console controller, and swirling vapor filled the stage.
With
her head cocked and a fingertip resting on her teeth, she stared at it without
speaking. Finally, she said, "Give me the walker." With a few quick
stabs, she enhanced the display. Frowning, she enhanced again, then quickly
called a series of equations.
The
stage changed. Kurt stared at it. Now instead of an amorphous cloud, it showed
a collection of rapidly undulating shapes that looked like squat cylinders
pinched in the middle with fat, curling rope.
RAM
SONG
21
"Do
you know what these are?" she demanded.
Before
Kurt could answer, Jacoby said, "Twistors? There?"
She
nodded. "The fabric of space." Then to Kurt, "The Poetson star
drive defines and accentuates a gravity field. When the twisters react to it,
we have a warping of space. All the Ram has to do is follow the path they make
at sublight speeds. Just like thread following a needle." She nodded
toward the stage. "The cloud is matter—created by twistors. Each twistor
can create a subatomic particle. Two twistor combinations produce electrons,
three can create protons and neutrons, die building blocks of atomic nuclei.
Higher combinations, and you see the creation of every known particle."
"Then
the cloud was caused by the star drive?"
"By
the original effect, I think," she said. "The smear. When the drive
began to compensate by toggling warp, the cloud formed."
"Then
the cloud has to be expected," said Kurt. "It happens every time the
Ram goes into warp."
"Every
time, certainly," she said, "but this?" She stared at the stage
for a moment longer. Then she switched it off. "Twistors travel at the
speed of light. The cloud should have dissipated instantly." She stared at
Kurt, then at Jacoby. "This twistor field is in stasis, in some sort of
tension. There's no force in the universe that can cause this effect."
Chapter
4
Dorian
Rynn's cool gray eyes widened at the probationer's words. He blinked slowly,
partly in astonishment, partly for effect, and said in the clipped tones of the
upperstave, "What did you say?"
22
RAM
SONG
Picardy
Medfield stared down at her patient, a small boy of four sitting apprehensively
at the edge of the shabby examination table. Dirt and tears streaked his face,
but not enough to hide the flush of fever that touched his cheeks. Both his
knees were hot and red, swollen with arthritis. She brushed a stray cur! from
the boy's forehead and smiled at him before she raised her dark eyes to meet
Dorian's. "I said, I don't think incision is indicated." Her fingers
gently touched the boy's knees. "There's no sign of suppera-tion."
Dorian
blinked again and curled his lips in a pinch of a smile. Self-satisfied little
fielder, he thought. It had never occurred to him that a lowerstave Plagal
field practitioner would dispute his diagnosis. She wasn't even fledged yet,
just a probationer, and no more than nineteen if she was that. He straightened
and looked down at her from his full height. Her head barely came to his
shoulder.
She
stared back evenly. "I've seen a lot of cases like this. He can be treated
with sharps—subsonic two." Picardy reached over her shoulder and, by practiced
touch, extracted the silver sharp she needed from the quiver on her back.
At the
sight of the long, thin needle, the little boy gave out a wail.
"Sh—sh,"
she said gently. "This one won't hurt. It sings." Twirling the sharp
between her palms, she set it to humming, and then touched the blunt end to her
temple. She cocked her head. "Yes. I can hear it now," she told him.
"Would you like to try?"
The boy
stopped crying !ong enough to stare suspiciously at the sharp for a moment.
Then he nodded slowly and held out a grubby hand.
She
placed it in his palm. "It tickles."
He
looked down at the vibrating thing he held and then in imitation placed the nub
on his forehead. His eyes widened as the bones of his skull carried its song
into his head. He listened gravely for a moment, then handed it back to
Picardy, who twirled it between her palms again.
RAM
SONG
23
Dorian
looked down at the girl. The motion she made rounded the muscles in her small
arms. His eyes traced the swelling curve of her upper arm as it disappeared
under a short cap of sleeve bearing the red and gray clef of her trade—the
ancient treble clef with the backward S-curve ending in a serpent's head. She
was shaped like a dancer, he thought. Pretty in a common sort of way, but the
Plagal slur in her voice marked her as a hopeless lowerstave. And then there
was the undisciplined way she let her hair curl in short dark twirls all over
her head. It was disconcerting. He wanted to reach out and smooth it down.
Instead, he raised a palm and slicked down his own pale hair and, with a little
laugh that verged on condescension, said, "You didn't understand me, of
course. According to all the authorities, incision is the only cure for Gii's
Syndrome."
"So
it is..." then with a pause, "...for Gli's Syndrome."
Leaning
closer to her shoulder, Dorian reached across and grasped the child's bare
thigh in a movement designed to show off his bright blue sleeve, a reminder to
her that he wore the artisan quartals and the fifth year stripe of the
Polytext. "But then," he said, "your view is quite
limited."
"Yes,
it is," she said pointedly, "so if you would just move your arm
..."
He drew
back. "I mean, your outlook on medicine is limited to the Plagal."
"Not
entirely. I studied for ten measures in Anche," she said. "But look
at the marks on his neck. This boy has been bitten by scoreflies. I know you
don't have them in your country, but they're common enough here."
For the
first time, he noticed the puffy little spots on the boy's throat. Plagal
Fever.
"But
we can call the quartalist." Picardy reached for the battered red button
below a thin scanner panel.
Startled,
Dorian gave out a quick, "No." He had forgotten they were being
scanned. And Picardy was
24
RAM
SONG
a
probationer; it wasn't just a random scan—it was constant. There was a record
of everything they had done and said, and he had forgotten it! A hot flush
began to creep up his neck. He could imagine in frightful detail the scorn of
the quartalist, the curl of his lip and the hardness of his eye when he
reviewed the records.
Dorian
managed a smile that was astonishingly assymmetrical, "Of course, uh, I
was just testing you." He cleared his throat, "Uh...Plagal Fever is
often compared to Gli's Syndrome. Why, just the other day I was reading about
it and, uh..." His voice trailed away when he realized that in spite of
the throat-clearing it sounded strange. Pinching his lips together and blinking
once again, Dorian backed off two steps and watched as Picardy deftly inserted
the tip of the sharp at sound-point eleven.
She was
impossible, really. Even fledged fielders back in Anche showed more respect, he
thought darkly, choosing to ignore the fact that most of the respect had been
directed toward the professors and not the Polytext students who trailed after
them.
"There,"
she said to the child. "Just one last thing, and then you can go
home." She pulled another sharp from the quiver. This one was a sonic,
transparent with a cylindrical base. She turned a dial on the cylinder, and the
sharp began to hum: a low sustained note that stopped as abruptly as it began.
Satisfied that it was sterile now, she flipped a small container from her
treatment belt and inserted it into the cartridge. Fluid ran through the sharp,
turning it to pale blue. A drop glistened at its tip.
"Now,
poco," she said taking the child's arm in her hand, pressing with her
thumb to raise the vein, "this is going to hurt. But only a little. Only
for a moment. Will you be brave?"
Catching
his lower lip between his teeth, the little boy stiffened his arm and stared at
her with big, dark eyes. Before he could react further, she quickly
RAM
SONG
25
inserted
the tip of the sharp and the blue fluid began to glide down its shaft. A moment
more and she was done.
Giving
the boy a quick kiss, she called him brave and opened the door to his anxious
mother, who scooped him in her arms and took him away with promises to bring
him back in a quarter measure to be seen again.
When
the door whisked shut, Picardy leaned against it. "A dozen still waiting
and another just coming in." She sighed. "We might have a very late
supper."
Dorian
glanced at the time. With relief, he saw that his period was up. "You'll
have to manage without me until tomorrow," he said quickly. "I have
other quartals to do, you know," he added for the benefit of the scanner.
She
picked up the transparent sharp and, touching its lever, ejected the thin inner
sheaf. "Of course."
He
watched as she plunged the needle into a long cylinder and drew in a fresh
sheaf. There was something about the way she looked, the .curve of her neck
with the dark curls spilling over smooth, olive skin. Again he wanted to reach
out and smooth her hair.
She
leaned over and absently massaged her calf as she often did to prevent the
cramps that came from standing too long in one position.
Dorian
stared as the curving muscle of her calf swelled with the pressure of her
fingers. Like a dancer, he thought again. He moved toward the door and then,
remembering ail the work he left her with, said defensively, "After all, I
have to balance my etude."
When
Picardy looked up at him, she kept her lips solemn, but she couldn't hide the
laugh that danced into her dark eyes. "I'll try very hard to manage
without you."
Dorian
walked past the cluster of waiting patients and, with a quick, final glance at
them, opened the door in relief.
26
RAM
SONG
Most of
his medical knowledge was theory. So was his training in the other quartals and
the conjuncts—until now. His etude had thrust him into a grubby reality that he
had never known back in Anche. There, sheltered by the homogeneous atmosphere
of the Polytext, he had moved through the streets of his native Baryton
confident of his position. There he had worn his student artisan quartals with
pride, and he never forgot that they set him apart from the others. Only an
artisan could know all its parts. Only an artisan could synthesize.
He had
done as well at the quartals as the other students in his concord: better than
some in Medicine, less well in Canon—the density of the body of Aulosian law
confused him at times. As for the other two quartals, he had shone in Esthetics
and dimmed in Mathematics, but where the two overlapped at the conjunct of
Communication, he felt comfortable enough.
Dorian
stepped into the street and drew a quick breath. The image of one of the
waiting patients stayed with him, a poco no older than three. The face of the
child hung in his mind: her pale blind eyes ran with purulence; her face was
thin and pinched around the lips.
He
shuddered.
The
patients made him nervous, all of them. They refused to stay in neat
categories. They presented with a jumble of complaints mixed with ignorance and
dirt—always dirt. He had never seen dirt on a Baryton patient. In Baryton the
sick were organized into precise modalities: livers this measure, lungs the
next. He had fallen into the rhythm of it easily; he had done well. But here...
A frown
slid over Dorian's face. It was frustrating to have to work with the sick of
Porto Vielle. And what was the point? It was a skill he'd never have to use
once he became a Conductus.
As if
in answer, he remembered the words of his advisor: "You are raw—all of
you. Unfinished. You
RAM
SONG
27
think
you know so much, but in truth you know nothing at all. You are about to begin
your etude, and yet you question the wisdom of it. A waste of . time, you
think. And yet I ask you, How can you expect to mediate a dispute between two
officials when you have no practical experience in their fields?
"As
you enter this last phase of your training, remember this: Your internship was
not designed for your amusement. Your work in all the disciplines will not be
with the Augments or even the quartalists in charge; you will work with
lowerstave field practitioners—in Canon Law and Medicine, in Ethics and
Science—and you will learn from them. Not the least of what you will learn is
humility. Only when you have learned that lesson, an,d learned it well, can you
call yourself Conductus."
Sighing,
Dorian tried to imagine his dour advisor afflicted with humility. He sniffed at
the ludicrous idea.
Just
then his internship seemed intolerable. He'd been in Porto Vielle for only a
quarter measure and it seemed like a year. Four measures to go at Medfield 18
and then his etude turned to Canon and Mathematics. He tried to take comfort in
that, until the uneasy thought came that his poorest work had been in Canon.
The
prospect of the next fifteen measures was dismal: Practicum in the quartals,
then Synthesis. Only the specter of failure kept him from throwing it all away.
The burden of the upperstave, he thought. A catch phrase, but wasn't it true?
Didn't the integrity of the government depend on his kind? The lowerstaves were
like children. Imagine a government run by quarrelsome, greedy children. It
would be so unstable, so corrupt, that society would crumble to bits.
Sighing
again, he contemplated the weight of his burden. It won't be forever, he told
himself. It only seemed that way. This time next year he would get his
appointment. Just an assistantship at first, but
28
RAM
SONG
some
day his own Conductus. Not in Baryton— nobody's first Conductus fell there—but
maybe nearby. Or maybe one of the small towns along the north shore where a
real winter came. Deep in thought, he imagined himself at his first official
meeting. In his mind's eye the man who was the Augment of Canon became his grim
advisor from the Polytext, but now the tables were turned. The stern old man
meekly outlined his problem—one that lay at the conjunct of Ethics and concerned
a disagreement with the Augment of Medicine, a small woman who looked strangely
like Picardy. The answer was clear to Dorian, of course. His was the broader
view, after all.
He was
half-delivered of his brilliant imaginary Synthesis when the angry bleat of a
rumbling mosso frightened him half out of his wits. He leaped aside as the open
vehicle deviated from its programmed route and swerved to avoid him, causing
its load of tourists to lurch against one another.
He
caught his breath and glared. He would never get used to Porto Vielle, or any
part of,the Plagal for that matter. With a pang, he realized that he was
homesick. Just then he wanted to see the familiar, ordered streets of Baryton
more than he had ever wanted anything.
He
blinked and drew a long breath. At least the rest of the day was his, with no
tiresome field practitioner of Esthetics to worry about. Esthetics he practiced
on his own.
This
section of Porto Vielle's Tema District lay near the juncture of the other two
districts. At first he turned north. In the distance he could see the
Pontilargo. The great bridge swayed gently, its cables straining with the
seasonal press of people and vehicles. Beyond it lay the Brio, the section the
tourists seldom left. Far beyond the bridge he could see Brio Bay sparkling in
the afternoon Tight, its blue-green waters dotted with white skimboats.
He
began to walk toward the Pontilargo. Then he stopped. It was the first day of
Festival, and there was something he wanted to see. Turning, he retraced
RAM
SONG
29
his
steps and headed south toward the smaller bridge that led to the Senza
District.
Near
the Pontisenza, the pale, square buildings thinned and gave way to the Am Steg.
The open market flamed with yellow and orange awnings. Vendors squatted underneath
and peddled their goods from the relative cool of the shade.
At
Dorian's elbow an old man hawking leathery strands of dried seaskips began his
syncopated jazcant, a throaty monotone accented with thrusts of thumb and knee
against tuned stretchskins. Just beyond, a seller of sweets took up the cry
with a rhythm of his own, punctuated with a high-pitched warbling. Thinking
that the cants could be useful in his etude, Dorian pulled the tassied string
of his packbelt and started a tiny recorder. Then, as his nose was assaulted
with the odor of something both fried and offensive, he moved quickly on.
The
dusty heat and a sudden thirst drove him toward an old woman selling twists of
chilled tash. She held a three-quarter-filled cone toward him. "Fresh.
Cold" Then an obsequious bob of her head, a shrewd glance veiled with
half-closed lids. "Only a semi for the Artisan."
Flattered
by his promotion, Dorian fished out a handfu! of coins, half Plagal money, half
Anche. He found Plagal coinage confusing, another example of the chaos of Porto
Vielle, he thought. Nothing sensible like the note system of Anche. Giving the
woman the triangular semi she'd asked, he took the drink and wondered vaguely
if he'd been cheated.
The
first few swallows gave him the lift tie wanted. He tossed a small coin to a
dull-eyed poco tardo and then expansively followed it with another. The little
beggar stuck the coins in a little pouch and extended his dirty palm again, its
single crease showing white against the filth.
Just
ahead stretched the Pontisenza. He took the pedestrian way and stepped onto the
swaying bridge. Halfway across he stopped. Far below, the Larghetto, caught in
its stone canyon, rolled toward its rendez-
30
RAM
SONG
vous
with the Largo. Along the sheer sides of the cliff narrow steps cut out of rock
zigzagged down to the river's narrow shore, where a group of women on the Senza
side spread brilliant strips of rinsed skeinlyn to dry in the sun.
They
must be Tatters, he thought. The skeinlyn strips looked like narrow ribbons
from this height: ribbons of rich purple and crimson interlaced with golds and
greens.
They
would wear the costume tonight—the bariolage of the Tatterdancers. He had never
seen the Hexentanz, the infamous dance of the witches. In fact, he had never
seen any of the Tatterdances. In spite of himself, he felt a growing
excitement, and he raised his eyes toward the far shore.
In the
distance he could see the edge of Tatters-field, the packed cluster of tents
where the nomadic dancers lived during Festival. Overnight its banners had
grown vivid with seasonal and transient paints. From the center of the
cacaphony of colors rose a tall structure. Shading his eyes, Dorian stared at
what he had come to see.
The
Fiata hung between the scaffolding like a giant crimson kite suspended by
invisible strings. Each scalloped sail was tasseled in fringes of gold-High
above it, horns curving toward the sky, yellow eyes glowing like twin suns,
rose the awesome mythical beast, the Ram.
Tonight
the Fiata would roll across the Pontibrio toward the bay. At full dark, when
the night wind began to blow from the distant mountains to the gulf, he would
hear the Ram's song and Festival would begin.
Dorian
waited at a street stile near the Am Steg. When the approaching mosso sensed
his presence and slowed to a stop, he dropped a coin in the stile and stepped
on. There was a single empty place next to a couple whose small child held a
Tatterdancer doll-on-a-stick. He swung into the seat as the mosso
RAM
SONG
31
clattered
around a corner on its perpetual figure-eight loop. Now they were headed toward
Brio Bay.
At the
pinch of the figure eight the mosso turned onto the Pontilargo's public car
tract and clacked over the swaying bridge. The mosso's top was retracted, and the
breeze from the bay felt fresh against his face.
The
child at his elbow began to whine nonsense syllables in a singsong voice,
punctuated with sharp jabs at his thigh with the toe of her shoe. Dorian gave
her a strained smile. The poco worked a diligent finger into her nose and
stared up at him. Then, abandoning her kicks, she thrust the doll-on-a-stick in
front of his face and giggled as the bright tatters, fluttering with little
snaps of the wind, slapped at his nose.
When
the mosso stopped at a Baguette Street hotel, to Dorian's relief the trio
crowded past him and got off. A block further, the street widened and the
buildings thinned. The Brio bluffs stretched out ahead. Beyond them, the bay
glittered like shards of glass in the late afternoon sun.
Squinting
against the light, he swung off the mosso as it reached the bay end of its
loop. A cluster of open-air plenos shaded straggles of tash-drUiking
vacationers too indolent to join the swimmers On the beach far below them. A
breeze whipped his hair and filled his nose with the smell of the gulf. He
smiled. This was the only part of Porto Vielle that Dorian liked.
He
walked along the bluff toward the old public beach lift that creaked in protest
as it raised and lowered its incessant cageloads of tourists along the face of
the cliff. A kitesinger was working the crowds. As the conveyor raised each
group of sun-scorched, wind-burned bathers, the boy, with a twitch of a string,
sent his hexen-kite swooping.
Dorian
watched in admiration. The kitesinger's timing was perfect. Out of sight of the
tourists, he waited at the top, kite flying above him. When the rising lift hit
a certain pinging note as it scraped an
32
RAM
SONG
outcrop,
the kite swooped low with an angry hum. Another series of twitches changed the
angle, and the wind blew a plaintive sob through the kite reeds— just enough to
rouse curiosity in the rising group of bathers. Then, as their heads rose over
the cliff, he gave a half-twist to his line, and the witch-faced kite rushed
them with a fearsome cackling shriek. They invariably shrieked back and fell
against one another in disarray. Then laughing as the witch fluttered its
straggly gray hair and alternately crooned and cackled, they began to reach for
small change. With one hand the kitesinger scooped up the coins as the lift
started down again. A minute more and his kite was soaring and ready for the
next load.
Dorian
recorded the song of the hexen-kite and then stepped onto the lift. It creaked
downward along the face of the cliff and deposited him on the sand. The beach,
wide now at low tide, stretched pale curves toward the bay. As Cuivre sank
lower in the sky, the water began to take on the pinkish tones of evening. His
steps quickened then. If he wanted to record the petit anche, he had to get to
them before the wina changed.
Farther
down the beach a solitary blueveer glided slowly overhead and scanned the surf
for silver helmets. The powdery white sand began to show streaks of ocre,
curving lines of dark gold river mud sculpted by the tide. As he rounded an
inward-curving cliff, he could see the fan of the Largo's delta stretching into
the bay. The sand was brownish now, and sticky underfoot. He stopped and tried
to hear the song of the distant reeds.
At
first, the soft lowing of the reeds was scarcely louder than the whisper of the
surf. The petit anche grew in the brackish, ankle-deep mud that was exposed at
low tide. The reeds he sought were different from the anche of his country.
These were smaller, and reddish in the backlight of the sinking sun. Dorian
flipped on his recorder. As he drew closer, he realized that the song of the
reeds varied with each puff of breeze. As the wind skittered through
RAM
SONG
33
the
swaying rushes, he heard them sob. Like a child, he thought. Like a sick child,
he amended, seizing the opportunity to meld Medicine with Esthetics—a nice
touch for his etude. Very nice. But, what else? He thought of the canon of the
surf—the inexorable law of the tides and the currents—but immediately rejected
it as a cliche.
A new
sound, a low-pitched hum, blew across the mud flats from a patch of reeds that
stood alone, separated from the rest by a narrow rivulet. Dorian's splashing
advance startled a tall brown limberdip, which fled on awkward reed-legs to the
safety of another islet. The humming seemed louder now. But it wasn't louder,
he thought. Not really. The sound was the same, but now he could feel it. It
started as a low thrumming deep in his chest, a slow vibration that pounded
like a second heart. Curious and a little wary, he took two steps more.
The
ground began to boil beneath his feet....
Hot...
red hot...
He
plunged into a sea of molten lava. Liquid fire swirled over him. In an agony of
fear he felt his flesh erupt, his blood hiss into bubbling gas, his bones
dissolve and flow in streams of mercury. He heard a scream and knew it was his
own.
Chapter
5
"Get
out of the beam!"
Without
thought, Shawm leaped. A moment more and he found himself sprawled in a patch
of clumpweed.
34
RAM
SONG
"Are
you all right?" There was a sharp edge to Alani's voice.
Disoriented,
he blinked at the image of the girl and looked around as if the woods and the
river were an alien landscape.
"Are
you all right?" she demanded again.
He
tried to speak, but it seemed impossible over the drumming of his heart and the
rasping hiss of blood in his ears. Fingers outstretched, he touched the ground
tentatively, as if it might give way beneath him, as if it were no more than a
thin crust, a single layer of tiny boulders held together by nothing at all.
Carefully scooping away a bit of soil, he looked down expecting to see a hole
into nowhere.
Surprised,
he found it quite solid, quite convincing to his touch, but in his mind he saw
it for what it was—illusion. With eyes widening, he looked up at Alani.
She was
staring at him strangely. "Shawm?"
She was
an illusion too—nothing more than a clever, insubstantial image—yet she looked
real, as real as the ground. He reached out and, with a nod, saw his hand move
through her body. Nothing was real.
Something
was... The blood rush in his ears hummed with another sound. He turned toward
it. He could see nothing, but that was only illusion again—a trick. The
magnetic humming tugged at his mind. Scrambling to his feet, he moved toward it.
"Stop!"
He
paused.
"Don't.
Please!"
Shawm
shook his head as if to clear it. He narrowed his eyes at the girl. She was
trying to trick him.
"No."
He
shook his head again. Suddenly he was struck with a dizziness so overwhelming,
so disorienting, that he fell to the ground in a heap. His stomach clenched
into a cold fist that sent its chill rippling through his body. "Sick ...
going to be sick.
RAM
SONG
35
Clutching
at the ground, his nails raked furrows in the soft soil.
The
sharp, sweet odor of crushed weeds stung his nose and he was violently ill.
Through his shuddering nausea his brain registered only two things: A voice
saying over and over, "I'm so sorry," and a faint, insistent sound
that hummed and tugged at his soul.
"You're
sure you're all right now?" Shawm stared up at Alani and nodded weakly,
"I think so." He turned his face toward the river-bank. The beam was
invisible, but he could hear it humming faintly over the rush of the river as
it leaped from stone to stone. He shook his head. It was more than hearing; it
was something calling like a lost part of himself. "What is it?" he
asked her. "What's in there?"
"The
Earth Song," she said. "The Ram is broadcasting it—but something's
wrong. I shouldn't have done it. 1 shouldn't have tried to connect while my
instruments were reading e<:ho patterns." Distress furrowed her brow.
"I was so worried... I never saw anyone react to it the way you did. I
kept calling, but you didn't seem to hear me. And the look on your face—"
Frowning quickly, she caught her breath. "I tried to shut it off, but I
couldn't. It's still broadcasting along my triangulation signal."
"The Earth Song?"
"From
the world we left a very long time ago." Alani looked away for a moment as
if she were lost in thought, then she said, "I've never seen Earth, but I
always felt as if I knew it. I suppose that's because of the infrasound. It
works below conscious level." "I don't know what you're talking
about." "I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense, am I?" The answer
was written on his face. She tried again, little lines furrowing her wide brow,
smoothing, furrowing again as she talked; Shawm frowning too as he tried to
imagine an unimaginably distant world locked in a piece of music.
36
RAM
SONG
Infrasound:
too low for the ear to register, too subtle for the senses—yet somehow his
whole body had responded to it, and his soul.
They
had all come from a star called the sun, she said, and he knew the star; he had
felt it, seen it, been a part of it. They had come from a planet called Earth,
and he knew it too, for he had felt the movement of deep rock and the shift of
tide, the thrust of mountains and growing things.
They
had all come from the sun, each molecule of them, and he could feel it now in
his own body as he looked at hers, slim, with long, smooth curves—a girl's
body. Immortal.
"I've
always loved the Earth Song," she said, finishing. "I wanted you to
know it too, so I patched it through the Ram's signal. But something went
wrong." The trace of a rueful smile flitted across her lips, "...as
if I needed anything else to go wrong today."
Standing
very still at the -center of himself, buffeted by a turmoil that felt like
storm winds, Shawm stared at her. Though she kept on talking, her words ceased
to reach him. He wanted to deny what she had said.He wanted to call it a
lie—the Ram, this woman, allof it. It's not so, he told himself. It couldn't be
so. No one could live forever. It was a myth; it had to be. But the Earth Song,
echoing in his head, resonating in every sinew and bone of him, spoke with a
stolen part of his soul: It was true. It was all true.
"...
my real father wrote the Earth Song," she was saying. "I never knew
him, but I feel as if I did. It gives me a sense of myself—of who I
am...."
And it
pleased her. It obviously pleased her. She found it very pleasant to know who
she was, what she was, he thought with a growing rage. She was going to live
forever. Wasn't that nice? Wasn't it fun to be rich and play with little toys
and gadgets and talk about a childhood ten thousand years ago?
"Do
you know who I am?" he demanded with a vehemence he could not control.
"I'm a Tatterdancer. I won't be going to the stars. I can only go as far
as I can pull a cart. They don't let us own animals to pull
RAM
SONG
37
our
jigs. That's because we're thieves, and thieves might steal draft
animals." He thrust out his jaw and glared at her with mingled pain and
anger. "But we travel a lot—just like you do. That's because they don't
let us own land, so we have to keep moving."
He
began to tear at the dried fan of a large oilnut growing by the river,
wrenching and tugging at it as if he fought a human adversary. When the large
frond came loose, he clutched it like a shield and stared at the image of the
silent, stunned girl. "I don't have a father, either." And snatching
up his little bundle of mimeset tubers, he threw the frond into the river and
jumped after it.
Scrambling
onto his improvised raft, he caught the current toward Porto Vielle. As it
moved him swiftly downstream, he heard her calling, "Stop... please...
stop...." until white-foamed rapids drowned out her voice and the spray of
the river mingled with his tears of rage and shame.
The
rapids gave way to a rippling current as the Largo broadened and deepened on
its way to the bay. A warm breeze began to dry the clothes plastered to Shawm's
body. The river was slowing now, and soon he would have to paddle.
He had
drowned the surface of his rage in the river's rapids. What was left now was a
deeper turbulence that sucked coldly at his soul. He thought of the things he
had said to the girl—stupid, revealing things that he had never said to anyone
before. He tried to focus on the words. If he could think only of the words, he
wouldn't have to think about what was swirling just beneath them.
Rolling
over on his back, he stared up at the sky. The underside of a thick cloud grew
pink with sunset. "God's blush," his mother always said. Her God was
a human God, able to laugh and cry or rage and frown like any of his children.
"Why else do we? We're in his image."
He had
never thought about it much. He had never bothered to examine the beliefs he
had been
38
RAM
SONG
brought
up with. They were simply there, like a comfortable old garment. If he had
thought about them at all, it was to consider them gentle myths that lent a
pattern to his life. Now he saw them for what they were: sharp-edged truths
glittering in a tangled web of dance and story and tradition—and the web was a
lie.
He
could hear its gray whispers in his head: Chosen. Chosen by God. Chosen to
wander the world with His message of paradise. And the message was death.
Shawm
pressed his fingers to his eyes until brilliant needles of light stabbed at his
brain. He had thought it was a myth... a way to explain the unexplainable: The
Ram—the great silver egg. They escaped it just in time, said the silken
whispers of the web, for it held the growing beast, the curved-horned devil
that tried to lure them with its song.
For a
time, they thought they were safe, but the beast's influence was great and it
sent seductive witches to entice the people with the poison of eternity. But
eternity was bondage, and the chosen knew this. So they stole the poison from
the beast—the hated process that made life interminable—and gave back paradise to
the world. For this, they were cast out from society. For this, they were
reduced to rags and tatters and made to wander without home or property. And
yet they had never ceased their vigilance—they never could—for at night when
the moons cast shadows of ink, hexen danced and the song of the beast could be
heard in the wind.
Not a
myth, he thought in despair. Not a myth. The poison was real: not poison at
all, but a gift of life. And his people had stolen it, destroyed it, destroyed
the chance of it. forever.
The
thought crept into his mind that the woman of the Ram was an illusion. For a
moment, he imagined that he could see her as a witch, luring him, laughing at
his discomfort, hiding the horror of what she really was behind a mask of
eternal youth. But he knew in his heart that what she told him was
RAM
SONG
39
true.
He had heard the voice of the beast, and the Ram's song had spoken to his soul.
"We
all have to die," whispered a final echo of belief. "It is God's
will."
Do we?
he thought grimly. And what about the people of the Ram? Do they? Does God?
After all, came the mocking thought, we're in his image....
As the
thick cloud overhead grew pinker with the dying rays of the sun, he felt an
emotion erupt that he couldn't control. "Damn you," he said aloud
with a vehemence that sickened him. "Damn you."
The
knowledge was a cold stone inside him. He had cursed his God—and there was no
one to hear. No one at all.
The
gentle current of the Largo rocked him. Exhausted, he lay on his back and
stared up at the sky, and in his mind he heard the Ram's Song. He felt its call
in every cell of his body and somehow he knew he always would.
Chapter
6
"Let's
have the current status on Aulos," said Kurt Kraus, frowning slightly as
he looked at the stage in the contact room.
"Beginning,
Kurt Prime." The robot system clicked on, and its stage cleared and
darkened. A blue-green planet swam in space beneath a silver egg-shaped Ram. A
spawn of tear-drop colony ships rained down on the planet. "Descent of the
mortals," intoned the system in its mellifluous. Entertainment Mode.
40
RAM
SONG
Jacoby
stared in disbelief as the system continued in a burst of eerie, ancient music:
"...
Having made their vows to mortality, an intrepid band of Renascence musicians
choose the unknown as they leave the Ram forever to establish the artist colony
of Aulos—"
"Intrepid
band!" Jacoby snorted. "Who set up this thing?" Ignoring the
remote, he stalked across the room and, with a quick stab at the inner workings
of the robot, reset the system to Briefing Mode.
The
lights rose along with the robot's voice, which assumed a businesslike tone:
"Auios, second planet of the G2, Cuivre: Ready. Do you want astronomical
data?"
A
system scanner noted Kurt's negative hand signal. "What information,
please?" asked the robot.
"Current
data, all areas."
"Current
data is incomplete. Band interrupt prevents a read."
"Fill,
then."
"Current
data is incomplete," complained the robot. "Repeating: Band interrupt
prevents a read."
Muttering
increasingly inventive epithets under his breath, Jacoby plucked loose the
midsection of the robot and inserted a hand. A moment later, the chastened
mechanism burped once and said, "Override attempt successful. Reading to
band interrupt..." A moment later it said, "Current status, planet
Aulos: Human colony. 7.45 million inhabitants plus-or-minus error of 200,000,
86.6 percent on the north polar continent of Anche; 12.2 percent on the island,
Plagal; remaining 1.2 percent distributed along northern border of the desert
continent, Rock—"
Kurt
interrupted the flow of statistics, "Hostility status."
"Impossible
to determine to more than 43.0287 percent accuracy. Destruction of Ram Beacon
believed to be from extensive planetquake in the first century of the colony, prevented
usual communication for last 1829 Ramyears. Read to present band interrupt
indicates rudimentary nuclear in delimited
RAM
SONG
41
area,
Anche, possibly experimental. Limited laser, status unknown, possibly
non-weapon. No Particle. No C- or T-wave weaponry. Rudimentary rocketry. No
artificial satellites."
"That
translates to a forty-three percent chance that the twistor field hasn't got
anything to do with Aulos," said Jacoby.
"Or
a fifty-seven percent chance that we're wrong," said Kurt. It seemed
completely improbable that the Aulosians could be the cause of the star drive
disruption, but the memory of the isolated Escher colony was strong. And even
though they had taken the Mouat-Gari process with them, none of the original
Aulos Colony were immortal; no one was alive there with firsthand memories of
the Ram. Couple that with no communication with the ship for centuries, and the
situation was totally unstable. The people of this planet were Aulosians
now—completely—with no ties at all to the Ram.
"Based
on this data, it's impossible for the effect to be caused by Aulosians,"
said Jacoby.
"Based
on my data, nothing in the universe can cause the twistor effect," said
Zeni Ooberong from across the room. "Obviously," she added wryly,
"one of us is wrong."
"Read
alert status," Kurt said to the robot.
"No
alert noted."
"Do
they know we're up here?" asked Ooberong.
"No
airwave recognition noted," said the system.
"The
Ram's shields are up," said Kurt. Even a suspicious mind would have to
reject the idea that Aulosian technology could penetrate them.
"What
about the skimmer?" asked Ooberong. "Isn't there a skimmer
lost?"
"It's
shielded, too," said Jacoby.
"But
its distress signal," she persisted. "Isn't it likely that it
triangulated a distress?"
They
stared at each other for a moment. Then Kurt spoke rapidly to the robot:
"Correlate twistor effect with missing skimmer. Realtime."
"Correlating,"
said the machine. Its stage darkened
42
RAM
SONG
and the
image of a tiny skimmer appeared. Next to it, the stage split to show a
depiction of the Ram. Suddenly the skimmer disappeared. Less than a minute
later, a pulsing graphic cloud enhanced with lOCyan engulfed the Ram.
Jacoby's
eyes moved toward Kurt, then back to the stage. His eyebrow rose in a question.
"Coincidence?"
"Maybe,"
said Kurt uneasily.
Chapter
7
The
flaming orange of the setting sun had muted to purples streaked with grays by
the time Picardy helped her last patient up from the examination table.
The old
man wheezed with every breath. He rose slowly, steadying himself with one hand
on the table, the other gripping Picardy's shoulder. His shoes were split to
accommodate the swelling of his feet. The pale flesh bulged, blunting his
ankles into doughy lines.
In the
waiting room, the man's daughter took his arm and questioned Picardy with a
look.
"It's
bad again. He needs to see the quartalist."
"The
hospital, then," said the woman.
Picardy
nodded. "I'll tell them you're coming."
The
woman leaned toward her and said in a low voice, "Will he get
better?"
Picardy
nodded and said, "Yes," but she left unspoken, "... for a time,
for a little while." The parasite that invaded his heart had been
destroyed
RAM
SONG
43
long
ago, but not before its work was done. Now the spongy walls of his heart were
failing again.
After
they had gone, Picardy notified the hospital. Then wearily rubbing the calf of
her leg with one hand, she tapped out her field number with the other. When
communications answered she said, "I'm closing Eighteen now,"
"You've
been working late again," observed the comfielder.
"When
have I left early?" She sighed, then added, "Going on portable."
"Right."
She heard a faint tone as he switched to her offtime frequency. Then he said,
"Hope I don't have to call you."
"Strange
how we think along the same lines."
He
laughed, said "Good Festival," and clicked off.
She
snapped the portable communicator onto her treatment belt and hoped for a quiet
night, or failing that, at least a grave malfunction of the portable. Vain hope,
she thought; it never malfunctioned. Its voice had regularly penetrated her
meals, her baths, her dreams, but at least it would be quiet tomorrow. Tomorrow
was her off day, and she was going to spend it sleeping: the first half curled
in her bed, then a late breakfast and a long nap on the beach. And after
that—delicious thought—home to bed.
She
switched on the old sonic and began to run its sterilizing sweep over the
examination table. The wand vibrated in her hand and burbled
self-destruc-tively. The sonic was obsolete and subject to incipient failure
like everything else in Field 18—except for the portable communicator, she
thought ruefully. Only her sharps and belt were as good as they should be, and
they were hers, issued to her by the Field Conservatory when she entered at
fifteen.
Her
training had begun long before that though. Picardy was barely nine when she
began to help her parents run the Medpost in Canto Maxixe. She stacked
supplies, folded and sterilized dressings, and with a
44
RAM SONG
consuming
curiosity observed the treatment of the sick. By the time she was twelve, she
was a valuable assistant with a sharp bent for diagnosis. By then her calling
was obvious, and when she was accepted to the Field Conservatory as one of the
youngest students, she decided to train her litde sister Kithera as replacement
assistant. But Kith had ideas of her own. The pretty little girl's only
interest in the Medpost was a fascination with the sharps, and once Picardy
found her playing tunes with them, completely absorbed in the sounds they made
and oblivious to the hole the cautery beam was burning in the wall as it hummed
its enchanting deep bass note.
It was
obvious that Kith's talents didn't lie in medicine. And just as obvious that
her own fell outside of teaching, Picardy thought with a quick grin. But her
smile was touched with a sharp wistfulness, and just then, she wanted very much
to see Kith and give her a hug. In spite of her efforts to control it, once in
a while she still felt a rush of homesickness for her family and the pretty
little Plagal village where she was born, but not often now—there just wasn't
time.
The
sonic's complaining hum was so loud that the boy was at her elbow before she
knew he had come in.
Startled,
she took a quick step backwards and instantly scolded herself for not locking
the door. A quick look at the boy's face made her feel ashamed of the thought.
He was probably younger than she was, but the strained lines around his mouth
and eyes made him look very old just then. She snapped off the sonic, and it
shuddered to a stop. "What is it?"
He
gasped for breath as if he had run a long way. "Come quick... my
mother."
"What's
wrong?"
"The
baby. The baby came and—She's worse." He tugged at her arm. "Please.
Come."
Picardy
reached automatically for the portable
RAM
SONG
45
obstetric
pack and slung it over her shoulder. "What's your name?"
"Shawm."
"Have
I seen your mother?"
He
shook his head. "Please. Come quick."
"Where?"
"Tattersfield."
She
stared, hesitating only a moment before she followed him out the door.
Picardy
was glad to have an escort through this part of Porto Vielle. Her area of Tema
district was fairly safe. Even the Am Steg was—in daylight. But when the
shadows of evening began to creep, the boundaries between Tema and the Senza
district blurred, and it wasn't wise for a girl to walk alone in the market
near the bridge.
Without
speaking they moved swiftly through the Am Steg, Shawm striding just ahead with
frequent glances back as if to make sure she still followed. In the shadowy
press of stalls and people, jazcant wailed over the thrum of drum and gong, and
the smell of cooking mingled with human musk.
Even
with Shawm near and the last pale glow of twilight still in the sky, when the
market thinned and the dark lines of the Pontisenza stretched ahead, Picardy's
hand unconsciously went for her sharps and the reassuring feel of the cautery's
nub at her shoulder. She had reached for it more than once on dark, lonely
streets, and though she had never been forced to use its beam for self-defense,
she felt safer knowing it was there if she needed it.
The
bridge's pedestrian way was splashed with yellow puddles of light that served
to make the shadows deeper. Far below, the black Larghetto lapped against its
charcoal banks. Ahead, in the calm that fell before the nighdy change of the
wind, the darkened sails of the Fiata sagged in its tall scaffold and the vague
outline of giant, curving Ram's horns brought Picardy disturbing memories of
early childhood dreams.
46
RAM
SONG
To
banish the thoughts, she made herself think of the boy's mother. They were
Tatterdancers. That meant inadequate care, if any. She'd probably been
delivered by one of the stave's midwomen. Picardy began to review all the
possible post partum emergencies. Surely not infection—not yet, not if the baby
had just come. Hemorrhage then. She had seen the horror show of ignorant
midwomen before—young girls crazy with toxic fevers after abortions, women
bleeding from birth lacerations, and once the appalling sight of a woman's
uterus turned inside out after someone had stupidly tried to dislodge the
afterbirth by pulling on the cord.
Beyond
the bridge crouched the darkened, crumbling buildings of Senza District's
oldest section. At the edge of her vision, something moved. Then a purring
voice: "Codetta? Ten semis for the codetta." She caught the quick
scent of the drug, as they moved quickly, by. Guilefly, but with a subtle edge
to its odor that told her it was probably laced with shak. If she was right,
the unwitting buyer might get more than his money's worth. Instead of the
little death, he'd be buying the big one, the final one: coda.
"This
way," said Shawm.
She had
to approach a run to keep up as Shawm's strides quickened. At a break in the
buildings, Tattersfield stretched ahead. Threading quickly through a confusing
maze of tents and flickering campfires, Picardy was acutely aware of the
curious stares that traced her steps. Outsiders were rare here—and not too
welcome, she thought uneasily.
As they
approached Shawm's tent, a dark-eyed girl of not more than twelve or thirteen
opened the flap and looked out anxiously.
"How
is she, Clarin?"
The
girl shook her head. "Hurry."
Shawm
brushed past her, and Picardy followed.
A woman
lay in a splash of yellow lamplight. Against the stretched wall crouched two
wide-eyed little girls, one holding an infant wrapped in a scrap of crimson
cloth.
RAM
SONG
47
The
sturdy drabskein tent was large, but poorly ventilated, and the air was hot and
close. Catching her breath, Picardy knelt by the sparsely stuffed mattress. The
woman was barely conscious. As she fought for breath, her fingers plucked
aimlessly at the rough gray cloth that covered her. Each quick, sucking breath
thrust her thin shoulders upward; then, sagging briefly, they struggled up
again as if they operated a bellows. With dismay Picardy saw the bluish
discoloration that traced her lips and spread over her nose. "Help me lift
her."
Shawm
knelt quickly on the other side, and together they raised his mother's head and
shoulders. "We need something to prop her with."
Clarin
ran to the far wall and rolled her own thin mattress into a pillow and slipped
it behind her mother's shoulders.
"That's
to help her breathe." Picardy stared anxiously at the woman. The blue
receded a little. Not enough, she thought. Not enough. She reached for her
treatment belt, snapped off a cylinder, and held it to the woman's face. When
she pressed a tiny lever, a mask sprang out with a hiss and molded itself firmly
to her nose and mouth. With a sinking v feeling, Picardy knew that the oxygen
wouldn't help much; there was a look in the woman's eyes that Picardy had seen
in other faces.
She
flung back the cover. A poo! of blood soaked slowly into the mattress.
"Press here," she said to Shawm, "like this. Then rub." Her
hands traced a circular movement on the woman's belly. After a moment, she felt
the uterus firm slighdy.
Awkwardly,
he imitated her.
Picardy's
hand flew to her shoulder quiver. By touch she drew out a thin sharp and held
it to the woman's chest. A quick turn of the dial and the sharp began to
transmit rattling lung sounds. Squeezing her eyes shut, Picardy listened
intently, then shook her head. Pulmonary edema.
Picardy
was afraid she knew what was wrong. - Quickly keying her communicator for help,
she
48
RAM
SONG
drummed
her fingers against it anxiously until the quartalist on call answered. In a
low voice she told him what she had found. Holding the comset close to her ear,
she listened intently and then stole a quick, grave look a"t the woman.
She had seen only one case like this when she was a student in Anche, and there
was so little they could do. Finally she clicked off and looked up at Shawm and
his sister. "It's amniotic fluid embolus."
They
looked at her without comprehension.
Picardy
hesitated and then drew out another sharp. When it came on with a high-pitched
hum, she inserted its tip at sound-point five. "The waters around the baby
got into her bloodstream. It's gone to her lungs." Filthy fluid, she
thought, filled with cheesy vernix from the baby. It probably carried hair and
meconium too—deadly little emboli that clogged the tiny pulmonary vessels.
She
pulled away the sharp and quickly felt the woman's uterus. It was firm under
her hand, contracted by the massage and the powerful action of the sharp.
"You can let go now," she said to Shawm. "The bleeding's
stopped."
"She'll
be all right then." It was a statement, not a question.
Picardy
drew a subsonic from the quiver. She found sound-point twenty-one and inserted
the tip, knowing that it was too late for it now, knowing that she was only
buying time to answer him. Finally she raised her eyes to his, "It's very
bad, Shawm."
"How
bad?"
She
looked down at the sharp, feeling its tingle as it vibrated in her hand. She
stared at the sharp and said in a low voice, "They almost never
recover."
She
heard the sharp intake of his breath, followed by a little gasp from Clarin.
Shawm caught her arm. She looked up and saw how pale he was.
His
lips pressed tightly together for a moment. "It's that woman's fault. The
midwoman."
And was
it? Was it her ignorant manipulations that caused it? Picardy stared at the
sharp as if it
RAM
SONG
49
totally
absorbed her, but she was thinking, what if it was the midwoman? Would telling
them help? Or would it only make them feel guilty. Besides, no one really knew.
"Sometimes these things happen," she said, knowing how trivial the
words sounded, saying them anyway because they were all she had.
Shawm
couldn't speak for a moment; when he did, his voice was husky, "There's no
hope? At all?"
She
shook her head.
Clarin
stepped out of the shadows. Her face was pale, her dark eyes huge and shadowed
in the flickering lamplight. She looked down at her mother, whose breathing
grew increasingly agonal; she caressed her hair. Then she turned and touched
Shawm's shoulder with a hand that was hesitant, almost tentative, "We have
to prepare her. We have to speak for her."
He
jerked his face away as if she had slapped it.
HX T 1*
No.
Shawm's
only movement then was the slow clenching of his fists; they closed tightly,
more tightly yet, until his knuckles were white as the bone beneath. A look of
such anguish came over his face that Picardy felt a pain in her chest as if his
clenching fingers closed around her heart.
He
stood like this for a long time, not speaking, not moving. Finally, he gave a
short nod, turned, and walked like an automaton out of the tent.
Clarin
followed him with her eyes. Then, turning, she spoke briefly to her little
sisters in a voice so low that Picardy could not hear what she said. The
children, eyes wider than ever, huddled against the wall, the oldest clutching
the baby to her chest.
Suddenly
Shawm strode back into the tent. He carried a dark pouch. Silent, he handed it
to Clarin. Her eyes met her brother's. Without a word, she took the pouch and
opened it.
Not
knowing what to do, Picardy sat back on her heels and watched as Clarin
unrolled the dark wrappings. The pouch stretched into a long, heavy length of
webbed cloth with handles at each end. Inside lay a tight roll of purple cloth,
a shallow clay basin that
50
RAM
SONG
held
three bottles, and a small nagarah. The nagarah was unlike any Picardy had ever
seen; the little drum was two joined ovals, the smaller nearly touching the
larger, the stretched soundskins silver in the lamplight. Setting the bottles
in a row, Clarin opened the largest. With both hands, she held it up to the
lamplight and gave a soft keening cry that repeated once, then twice, then
again with a variance of rhythm. Startled, Picardy suddenly realized that what
she was hearing must be the coronach—the ritua! deathcant of the Tatterdancers.
She had never heard it before; she wished she were not hearing it now. It made her
feel furtive, as if she had crept in, uninvited, to spy on their pain.
As the
clear fluid trickled into the basin, Clarin began a low melodic chant.
"/"
bring you water from swift mountain streams." She opened a tiny bottle.
"/
bring you scents of cool winds and growing, living things."
As
Clarin sang and slowly poured the dark essence into the bowl, Picardy caught
the scent of deep woods like those she had known at home and thought of her
little sister who was so much like this girl.
Blinking
a quick, bright tear away, Clarin reached for the last little bottle. It held a
bit of powder. When she shook it over the basin, it glittered silver in the
light.
"I
bring you guile for sweet dreams." Moving the basin and the little nagarah
aside, Clarin unrolled the length of purple cloth. It was as long as the black
webbing of the pouch and three times as wide. She spread the cloth over the
webbing. In the center lay four small cloths of gold, crimson, purple, and
green.
The
girl took away the gray spread that covered
her
mother and gently pulled off the blood-stained
garment
she wore. Shawm stood by, silent, his eyes
bleak.
From the shadows came the baby's fretful cry.
Clarin
took the thin red cloth in her hand and
RAM
SONG
51
dipped
it in the basin. She held it to her mother's face and then stopped to stare in
distress at the oxygen mask. She looked questioningly at Picardy.
The
mask moved erratically with the woman's ragged breath. She was profoundly
unconscious now; her skin was cold and clammy. Picardy raised her eyes toward
the girl. Why not, she was thinking. The oxygen was no use to her anymore.
Picardy reached out and stripped away the mask. It came free with a little
hiss, and she shut it off.
Clarin
began to bathe her mother's face, and in a high, sweet voice sang:
"You
are touched with the blood of martyrs."
She
laid aside the crimson cloth and moistened the gold one in the basin. With
long, gentle strokes she washed her mother's limbs.
"Touched
with the light of belief."
Then
the green cloth, darkly shining with water, moved across the woman's body.
"Touched
with the growing truth."
When
she finished, Clarin looked up at Shawm. He stared away for a moment then
awkwardly knelt and cradled his mother's head and shoulder. The two tried to
lift the woman onto the length of purple, but the girl was not strong enough.
She raised pleading eyes to Picardy and whispered, "Help us, please."
Feeling
like an intruder, Picardy quickly helped lift the woman, and the three moved
her to a new bed of purple cloth.
Shawm
silently rolled the empty, stained mattress and carried it outside. When he
came back, his lips were white and his eyes and nose were touched with red.
Clarin
wrapped the deep purple cloth around her mother, drawing it around her face and
hair.
"Now
evening clothes you, and the night is near."
The
interval between the woman's breaths grew until, once, all three were sure it
was over, but then another shuddering gasp escaped her.
52
RAM
SONG
Clarin
took the little drum and held it toward her mother's face:
"/
give you the two moons to light the darkness."
Then
she handed the negarah with its silver drumskins to Shawm and took the last
small length of purple cloth in her hand. Kneeling, she wrapped the cloth
around her own shoulders. With a quick, anguished look at her mother, Clarin
caught her breath. When she found her voice again, it was a fragile quaver that
sounded very young and very alone.
"1
speak for my mother who has no voice."
She
looked up at Shawm and gave a faint nod.
At the
slight, almost imperceptible tapping of his fingers, the little tuned drums
vibrated with a faraway sound that slowly swelled into a throbbing distant
thunder.
With
hands trembling on her knees, with eyes lifted upward, Clarin began the final
halting words in a voice that wavered like a slim reed tossed by storm winds.
"Creator
of all... reach out to me,
for I
am mortal and I hear
the
growing cadence of the coda,..."
And
Shawm's hands moved with the quickening drumbeat until his mother breathed no
more.
Chapter
8
Zeni
Ooberong set down the walker, aligning it precisely with the edge of the table
as if for emphasis. "You can think of the universe as an invisible
RAM
SONG
53
fabric—a
sort of net—held together with twistor energy. The net is expanding at the
speed of light."
"And
it can't stop," offered Jacoby, "but something's holding it
back."
Ooberong
narrowed her eyes in thought, absently locking her gaze on the sector map that
served as a wall. For a long moment she focused on the glowing starpoints
scattered on deep black, as if she could see beyond them to the edge of the
universe. "It isn't stasis, of course," she said abruptly. "It's
more of a dynamic equilibrium."
"And
the cause?" asked Kurt.
Her
lips quirked in a wry smile, "If we knew that, we'd know a lot, wouldn't
we?"
Jacoby
sprang to his feet with the energy of a man distrustful of inactivity and began
to pace. "Twistor space isn't uniform; it gains energy here, loses it
there. We're inside an amoeba of a universe. It can expand in all directions,
but it can't stop. There isn't anything to cause that equilibrium."
"Flying..."
Ooberong said softly.
Both
men looked at her expectantly, but she seemed lost in thought. A minute passed
in silence, then two before she said, "An extension here, a retraction
there. Just a cock of the arm can give a flyer control over the air currents.
Control and balance."
They
looked at her blankly.
"That's
what an amoeba does- It flies in its tiny drop of water, doesn't it? Always
balancing against the currents, always controlling them with its
movement." She looked first at Kurt, then Jacoby. "Don't you
see?"
Ooberong
popped upright, and her chair hummed in protest as it adjusted to her body.
"Turbulence. Sudden turbulence throws it off balance."
"From
what?" asked Jacoby. "There's nothing else in that hypothetical drop
of water."
"Unless
there's another amoeba," said Kurt in a low voice.
She
looked at him sharply. "Not just any amoeba would do, would it?" She
reached for the walker
54
RAM SONG
again
and spoke quickly into it. A moment later, its stage darkened and a series of
three-dimensional plot positions showed in shades of amber. "That's the
Ram's current position according to the ship's instruments," she said.
"If we enter independent data, here's what we find:"
A set
of blue figures superimposed themselves on the stage. "Discrepancy equal
to +8 remains 28.0933 seconds," said the walker.
"According
to the ship's instruments, the Ram thinks it's here," Ooberong pointed
toward the graphed display. "But by our calculations, it won't reach that
orbit point for another eight ramins. We said the ship's instruments were
malfunctioning. Maybe we were wrong."
"You
think our calculations are off?" asked Kurt.
"No,"
said Ooberong, "I think they're right." She looked at him evenly.
"I think we have to consider that the Ram may be right too."
His
eyebrow quirked in a question.
In
answer, she spoke again to the walker. Then she said, "Let's take a look
at how this started." In moments, a three-dimensional band of color
appeared on the stage as the machine began to correlate the two sets of data
from the beginning of the disturbance. "Here's what we expect to
see," she said pointing to an interlocked band of blue and amber.
As they
watched, the edges of the narrow band of color wavered, then widened slightly.
"There," said Ooberong, "it begins." She spoke again to the
little machine.
"Correlating
data to present," said the walker.
They
stared at the stage. The band widened, then narrowed to a thread and began to
change shape. Suddenly it was a bizarre ribbon of blue and amber light, a
shallow, rippling sine-wave that bulged and thinned and bulged again until it
seemed to Kurt like two live things locked in each other's coils. Yin arid
yang, he thought and wondered why he thought it.
RAM
SONG
55
"The
wave... It's deepening," said Jacoby with a questioning glance at
Ooberong.
The
woman was gazing at the stage as if she were hypnotized by it. Finally, she
raised her eyes toward Kurt. "A very special amoeba," she said at
last. "It travels faster than the speed of light."
Kurt
stared at her. His mind was a jumble of thoughts: Another universe? A universe
that was somehow impinging on this one? He tried to frame a dozen questions
that began "How?" a dozen more that asked "Why?"—when
suddenly a flaring red alert light flashed from the walker:
"MALFUNCTION
. . . SHIELD FAILURE . . . MALFUNCTION... SHIELD FAILURE"
Jacoby's eyes
pinned Kurt. "They'll spot us
now.
But
Kurt was quickly calculating their position in his head. Bad, he thought, but
not too bad. From Aulos, the Ram would be no more than a point of light—another
star in the sky.
The
rippling blue and amber ribbon vanished from its stage as an override came on.
This time the walker spoke in the woman Kiersta's voice, a voice stretched taut
with urgency:
"Come
at once, Kurt Prime. To Observation. Come at once."
The
hemichute sped its passengers outward through the onioned layers of the ship,
past Agriculture and its programmed temperate weather, past Earthplace with its
tiny mountains and its small false sea. The pull of the ship's gravity grew
stronger as they neared the Ram's outer skin.
Kiersta
met them as they stepped off the bright blue car. Tension lines traced the
corners of her eyes. "Come with me, please." Kurt swung in beside ;••
her, followed by Jacoby and Zeni Ooberong. At the end of the commonway, a wide
door slid open and shut silently behind them.
56
RAM
SONG
As he
moved through the antechamber, Kurt's eyes gradually accommodated to the
dimness. The faint glow of hidden tights played over rocks and crystals culled
from diverse planetary systems, here reflecting from a blue-green amorphous
mineral, there glimmering through a clear yellow decahedron.
Kiersta
touched the entry panel, and a heavy door glided open. "We don't know what
we're seeing. Sometimes the instruments read it, sometimes they don't."
The
dark of the observation gallery was just ahead. Kurt instinctively reached for
the railing as they rounded the curving passage. The view of open space after
the confines of the inner Ram often led to a short-lived sense of
disorientation. A step more and they were in the transparent bulge of the dark
gallery.
Below
him, Aulos hung in the blackness like a blue-green jewel swathed in white. Her
smaller moon, Presto, lay to starboard, its white, irregular ellipse shadowed
with the gray of hills and crators.
Kiersta's
hand sought the controls, and the bulging observation gallery began to turn
obliquely, gliding like the lens of a giant, blind eye. Finally it hissed to a
stop. "There," she whispered.
Kurt's
eyes followed hers.
It was
disk-shaped and bright. Brighter than the glow from the thousand stars that
spread before him. He stared, squinting at its brilliance. What was it? Kurt
touched his thumbnail with the tip of its neighboring index finger; the
distant, glowing disk seemed no bigger across than that. He felt a welling
excitement, and suddenly the old hope was back, burning into his brain, glowing
with dark fire from his eyes. Was it contact? Finally?
Almost
instantly the reaction came, and fingers of ice gripped his belly. For ten
thousand years the Ram had sent its Earth Song into deep space. For ten
millennia it had listened for an answer that had never come. AH their probes
had returned only silence; all their explorations had found nothing
RAM
SONG
57
more
than lower forms of life. Now something was out there—something unknown and
irrevocable.
He felt
a sense of unreality, a detachment, as if he stood somewhere just behind and
above himself. The irony of his reaction struck him then: They had hoped for
this moment for centuries. Now that it was here, he knew atl their plans and
strategies had been nothing more than intellectual exercises. For better or for
worse, what they had invoked had come and there was to be no turning back.
A sound
came from beside him; a sighing, stretched-out sound as if a last breath formed
it: "Yes..."
Zeni
Ooberong stared at the disk, its light glittering strangely from her eyes.
Again the ragged, sighing, "Yes..." as if a vision had come to her
alone. She didn't move when she spoke again; she didn't raise her eyes from the
sight before her. "An eddy..." she whispered. "A
whirlpool..."
"What?"
he said, distracted by the look on her face. "What?"
She
stared straight ahead- "Our alien amoeba is a clever one. He travels
faster than light. He travels backward in time." Her hand reached out; her
fingertips touched the clear shield between them and the black of space.
"Out there," she said. "It's the Ram."
Chapter
9
Stumbling
with the weight of the dead woman, Picardy helped Shawm and Clarin carry her to
the
58
RAM
SONG
jig
outside the tent. Small muscles tensing with the strain, she raised her burden,
and together they laid the body in its purple shroud on top of the little cart.
Picardy
steadied herself with both hands along the rough edge of the jig. Waves of
fatigue laced with gum threatened to drown her. Had she done everything she
could? She wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed, but she knew
that no matter how tired she was, sleep wouldn't come until her brain replayed
every treatment in minute detail and held it up for scrutiny. Now there was the
new baby to see to.
Firelight
flickering from torch and campfire sent deep shadows to dance on the shroud of
the woman. Her thin body was almost as long as the jig. A man wouldn't fit,
thought Picardy. Did they use extenders of some kind for a man? Or would he
just hang over the edge? And which part? Head? Feet? Both? The dilemma suddenly
struck her as hilariously funny. Part of her wanted desperately to giggle; the
other part recoiled at the inappropriate emotion. She knew it was only a
defense, a way to release tension, yet knowing didn't help to keep it under control.
Then
suddenly she lost all desire to laugh. Shawm had begun to sing. It was a
lilting ripple, only a phrase, a snatch of music, yet to her it was incredibly
beautiful. She raised wondering eyes to Clarin.
The
girl blinked away a quick rush of tears. Then she said, "It's my mother's
call. Her 'I.' We each have one. It's given to us when we're born. Our living
shapes it." Clarin stared at the ground studiously, as if it were an
anchor to her control. "We won't hear it again. Ever." After a ragged
breath or two, she said, "The people are listening now, inside their
tents. They hear my mother's I in Shawm's voice, and they know she's
gone."
It was
true, thought Picardy. A hush had fallen over Tattersfield as the call repeated
again and again in the early night, until now there was only Shawm's clear
voice and the hiss of campfires to break the
RAM
SONG
59
stillness.
Her I, she thought. And suddenly the dead woman wasn't a stranger anymore. The
joyous cry of a young girl rang in the call. She could imagine her running
through the high hills, singing, reveling in the touch of cool wind against her
skin. She was like me, thought Picardy; and in wonder, she felt tears sting
against her eyelids.
Suddenly
the call stopped, and Shawm turned and strode toward the tent. Stooping at its
flap, he pushed it away and stepped inside. Before Picardy could wonder what to
do next, he was back, carrying the baby boy.
He
stood, holding the infant, looking away from it as if he could not bear to see
it. Then, slowly, he brought his eyes back to the baby. He searched its tiny,
red face as if he sought someone else there. And with a long, slow breath, he
cupped its little head in his hand and gently drew a wisp of its dark hair
through his fingers.
Shawm
began to sing again, softly, tentatively. It was a short, sad phrase, a minor
whistled interlude, then the phrase again.
The
baby's I, thought Picardy. Born in sorrow with no mother. Born in the dirt and
grime of a Tattersfield.
And
then the call was over. Turning abruptly, Shawm handed the baby to Picardy and
opened a small door at the side of the jig.
The
infant squirmed in her arms and thrust a tiny fist in its mouth. He'll have to
be fed soon, she thought. Picardy stole a glance at Clarin. She could use her
sharps on the girl if she had to. They would fool her body into producing milk
for him. She looked at the slim young girl and tried to imagine her small
breasts enlarged and hot, springing with milk. Too young, she thought. Not
physically, but Clarin wasn't any older than her sister Kith. Too young to have
to care for a baby.
Shawm
straightened, holding a pouch in his hands. He slammed shut the little cabinet,
turned, and began to walk away.
60
RAM
SONG
"Where
are you going?" asked Picardy.
He
looked at her evenly. "I'm going to dress with the men of the
bariolage."
"What
do you mean?"
"It's
the first night of Festival, isn't it?" His lips thinned, then he said
bitterly, "A time of joy—" He turned away again. "I dance
tonight."
Picardy
looked at him with amazement. "You can't. Not tonight. What about
them?" She nodded toward the two little girls shyly peeking out of the
tent. "They need you."
With
eyes narrowed, he turned on her. "What do you know about need? Would that
feed them? If I stay here, will someone bring us food?"
She
recoiled as if he had slapped her.
He
glared at her and then suddenly thrust his chin away as if to hide the look of
pain that tracked across his face. "I'm sorry," he said in a low
voice. "You tried to help." His eyes met hers just for a moment, then
they dropped to study the inky shadows that crept along the ground. "Too
many things died today," he said at last. He laughed—a short, humorless,
self-deprecating laugh. "I stood in a beam I couldn't see and I heard the
Earth Song. It's driven me a little mad."
Puzzled,
she stared at him, wondering what he meant.
"God
help you if you hear it, too." He gave a short, tight smile as if he had
said something bitterly funny and turned abruptly to stride away.
"But
the baby—" said Picardy.
He
didn't look back. "I'll send someone." And then he was gone in the
twisting maze of tents and
jigs-
A tall
girl of about sixteen raised the flap of the tent and stepped inside. When she
moved haltingly toward the litde clutter of pots and dishes near the center of
the tent, Picardy noticed that her left foot was clubbed. The girl tossed a
coin and a smooth white pebble into the little open pot at the tent's
RAM
SONG
61
center
post. "I've come for the pocos," she said and reached down to take
the baby from Picardy's arms.
"Who
are you?"
The
girl laughed and turned toward Clarin. "This one is the stranger and she
asks 'Who?'"
Clarin
said quickly, "It's all right, Picardy. This is Burla."
The
girl laughed again and scooped up the baby. "Call me Zoppa. You will, you
know."
Picardy
blinked and shook her head.
"Ah,
but you will. Who doesn't call a cripple, Zoppa, huh?"
"Will
your mother have milk enough for him?" asked Clarin with a nod toward the
baby.
Again
the laugh. "Milk enough for him? She has milk enough to fiil the
Largo." Clutching the baby with one hand, Burla reached out another to the
little girls. The smaller caught hold of it. The larger child followed, and
they crowded through the tent flap and were gone.
Strange
girl, thought Picardy. Not one word of regret about Clarin's mother. "Is
she always so cheerful?"
"It's
her way," said Clarin, scanning Picardy's face for signs of disapproval.
"Her way is good enough."
"I
didn't mean that it wasn't," Picardy answered quickly.
"Zoppa
bears her dishonor well," she said defensively.
"Dishonor?"
Clarin
looked up in surprise. "The dishonor of her foot. She can never
dance," she added as if that explained everything.
"It's
very important to you, isn't it? To be a dancer, I mean," said Picardy,
thinking how little she really knew about these people.
Again
the look of surprise, then a matter-of-fact, "It's what I am."
There
didn't seem to be anything left to do or say, yet Picardy didn't want to leave.
She was tired
62
RAM
SONG
enough,
that was sure, and very hungry, but she hesitated. Somehow it seemed wrong to
leave Clarin alone just now.
"I
have to dress," said the girl. "It's time." She was staring down
at the little pot and the single coin and pebble that Burla had tossed there as
if she were hypnotized by their glow in the flickering lamplight.
It
seemed like a dismissal. Not knowing what else to do, Picardy got to her feet.
"Is there someone who can stay with you?"
She
shook her head. "No one can tonight. Everyone is dressing now for
Festival." Clarin looked up then. Her dark eyes were clouded with grief.
"She would have dressed me tonight. She always dressed me the first night
of Festival."
Picardy
reached out and caressed the girl's shoulder. She hesitated for only a moment
before she said, "I can help you."
The
girl caught one hand in the other and stared at the floor. She sat like that
for so long Picardy thought she had not heard her. Then Clarin raised her eyes
and the look in them was both pleading and apologetic. "It's thought to be
an act of love," she said, "to dress a dancer."
Picardy's
fingers brushed through the girl's dark hair. "I'd like to try," she
said softly.
Clarin's
eyes searched hers, then she nodded faintly and slipped through the flap of the
tent. In a few moments she was back. She carried a dark pouch. Kneeling, she
began to draw out its contents. "On the first night of Festival, the
bariolage has to be made up," she said, pulling bright, tightly rolled
bundles of narrow cloth from the pouch.
When
the girl began to lay them in precise patterns, Picardy realized that she had
become part of a ritual. The bundles of cloth were grouped by color and by
width: a circle of gold and green to the left, another of purple and crimson to
the right. The circles filled with bundles of rich color until they formed a
vivid figure eight.
Clarin
reached into the pouch again and pulled
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63
out a
small bundle. It opened to reveal two bags made of purple, a wide roll of
matching cloth, and a tiny undergarment. She looked up at Picardy. "Hold
your hands out, please."
When
Picardy did, Clarin shook her head and turned her palms upward. "Like
this." Each bag hung from a strip of purple ribbon. The girl slipped one
over each palm and transferred them to Picardy's.
They were
surprisingly heavy. Wondering what was inside, Picardy looked at the little
pouches. They were narrow—much longer than they were wide— and held together at
the top by thin circles of metal that looked as though they might spring open
at a touch.
Clarin
undressed, stripping off her clothes quickly, laying them in a pile on the
floor of the tent. She was slim. Her breasts were still hard buds, little cones
with barely the suggestion of sexual maturity. She stepped into the purple
undergarment. It was tiny, barely covering her sex, scarcely reaching the bones
of her hips. Picardy noticed it was covering with matching loops of purple,
Clarin quickly undid the roll of purple cloth. With a single twist in the
middle, it covered her breasts and tied at her back.
Taking
one of the bags from Picardy's hand, Clarin clipped it to a metal loop at her
hip. Then the second. The bags hung snug to her thighs and ended a little
distance above her knees. While Picardy was wondering what they were for, the
girl reached in the figure eight and began to unfurl long strips of brilliant
skeinlyn. Within a few moments, dozens of them hung from her outstretched
fingers.
Perplexed,
Picardy stared at them.
"Thread
them into the loops," Clarin prompted.
She
took a strip from Clarin's hand and pulled it through a loop on the
undergarment. Divided, the strip fluttered in two long ribbons that reached
almost to the girl's ankle.
"Once
more to anchor it."
Picardy
drew the strip through the loop again, forming a soft, flat knot. Then she
began to loop the
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next.
When she had finished, the girl stood in a soft, flowing skirt of ribbons that
hid the pouches completely.
Clarin
began to braid the remaining purple strips. Each twist of the braid captured
the knotted end of a long ribbon. When she was done, Clarin settled the braid
over her shoulders and the loose ribbons cascaded in a brilliant shawl of color
that reached to her hips.
Fingering
one of the ribbons that fluttered from the braid, Clarin said, "They have
to be weighted now." Taking out a little package from the pouch, she
opened it. Dozens of small, polished river pebbles spilled from their
wrappings. "These are mine," she said shyly. "From the stream
near my birthplace. When a baby is born, everyone brings a pebble and a coin.
Soon there's enough for the bariolage." She leaned toward Picardy.
"It's done like this. See?"
She
took a strip of shining gold, and with a twist a little stone disappeard in a
knot a third of the way up from the loose ends of the ribbon.
Picardy
knelt, and catching up the trailing end of a gleaming scarlet strip, tried
awkwardly to tie it around the pebble. At first her knots were clumsy, but then
her fingers learned the rhythm of the task. "There," she said as the
last smooth stone disappeared into its knot of green.
Clarin
threw back her shoulders, and the cascade of strips parted with the motion. She
gave a quick, whirling turn, and the weighted ribbons splayed out. With a
movement so quick that Picardy couldn't follow it, the girl ran her hands
through the strips of her skirt, fluttering them in a billow of color. Another
turn and she faced Picardy again, but this time her hands were full of bright
bells and clappers.
"How—"
Picardy began. Then she sat back on her heels and grinned at the sleight of
hand. Somehow Clarin had whisked them from the twin pouches that now hung
concealed under the strips of skeinlyn. Of course, she thought. The
Tatterdancers were
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pickpockets.
She must have learned the ancient craft when she-was tiny.
In a
bright flutter of skeinlyn, Clarin knelt on one knee and began to bind a
circlet of bells around her ankle, tying them with a bit of purple cloth. The
other ankle came next. Suddenly she rose, twirled again, and spun to a stop on
one knee. She held out her hands toward Picardy, fingertips touching, but this
time a heavy gold ring gleamed on her finger.
Picardy
shook her head in amazement and then took Clarin's hand. The yellow lamplight
glinted on the deep purple stone. "It's beautiful."
"It
was my mother's." Clarin's voice was suddenly very small. She stared at
the stone without speaking again for a long time. Finally she said, "It's
mine, now." She knelt in her flutter of brave colors and stared at the
ring with such a look of anguish that Picardy longed to gather the girl in her
arms, and yet something held her back, something in the girl's eyes that cried
out for privacy.
The
silence passed, and Clarin looked up at Picardy with bright eyes. "She
taught me how to dance as her mother taught her. She would have taught my
sisters. Now they'll have to learn from me." She stood and turned away for
a moment. Then she spoke in a voice so small that Picardy had to lean forward
to catch her words: "Since I began, my mother dressed me on the first night
of Festival. Each time my dance was for her. Tonight it is for you."
Suddenly she buried her face into her hands and began to cry as if her heart
would break.
Not
knowing what else to do, Picardy gathered the girl in her arms and, hugging her
close, smoothed her dark hair and made little shushing noises against her ear,
until finally the convulsive sobs slowed and stopped.
Finally
Clarin's lips wavered in a smile. "I'm better now." The smile
disappeared as Picardy's portable communicator squawked on, startling them
both.
"Listen
all Fields: All-Come. I say again, this is
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an
All-Come. Quartalist in emergency... Brio District ... at the Baguette.
All-Come."
Picardy
felt her heart quicken. She had experienced only one other All-Come—the terrible
Tema school Fire that took the lives of twenty children. She tried to think:
The Brio Baguette. She could retrace her steps to the Pontisenza. But no. From
here the Pontibrio would be quickest. The message started again, and Picardy
shut it off. "Show me how to find the Pontibrio from here."
"This
way." Clarin pushed open the tent flap and pointed to her right.
"Toward the Fiata. Then right again. You'll see it."
The
night breeze had begun. It felt cool on Picardy's skin after the heat of the
tent. Here and there women in full bariolage emerged from tents and, clustering
in groups of three or four, began to move in the same direction.
As she
threaded her way through tent stakes, jigs, and flickering torches, Picardy saw
the girl who called herself Zoppa, the cripple. She was standing just outside a
shabby tent, clinging to the flap as she watched the colorful dancers pass her
by. But now her smile was gone and a terrible look of hunger filled her eyes.
Picardy felt a sudden stab of guilt, as if she had been caught prying in
someone's soul. She moved quickly past.
A low
moaning sound froze her in her tracks. The sound became a wail that sent chills
rippling up and down her spine, nightmare chills from something hidden away in
her mind. With a relief that left her trembling, she suddenly knew what it was.
Just
ahead the tents gave way to a clearing swarming with Tatterdancers. The dark
frame of the giant Fiata was black against a sky lightened to charcoal by the
two moons. As the mountain-born breeze rolled in, the sails of the Fiata
rippled: billowing, emptying, billowing again, then abruptly filling with the
night wind. A thousand reeds imbedded in its sails found voice; a thousand more
answered.
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67
The
people looked up above the low gleam of the torches. Their voices were like
one. "He sings..."
With
the signal, the dozens of young boys who clung to the giant frame lit oiled
wicks, and the Fiata blazed with light and color. Above it, the great Ram
stared with yellow eyes of fire and sang an eerie devil's song that echoed to
the bay.
Drawn
by dozens of men, the Fiata began to move toward the Pontibrio. Spurred by the
urgency of the All-Come, Picardy pushed past the mob of people. Taking a side
way, she moved quickly toward the bridge. Soon she had left the Fiata behind.
The
dark arch of the Pontibrio was just ahead now beyond a narrow cluster of
buildings. As she passed them, she heard a sudden scuffling sound. Uneasy, she
veered away.
Too
late. A hand closed on her upper arm. A harsh breath heavy with the smell of
tash blew against her face. "You like the Tatters, don't you, girl?"
And
then a laugh... another voice: "We'll see what else she likes."
Chapter
10
"I've
set my cap for you," Kurt said to Zeni Ooberong. "Will it hold outside?"
Ooberong
looked sharply to the right as if she could see her thoughts laid out there.
Then her eyes darted back to his. "I don't know."
And how
could she? he thought uneasily. The
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Ram's
communications were disrupted. No one knew if its calling signal had reached
the brilliant disk that hung to starboard. There was nothing left to do but go
out there, he thought, see for themselves. With communications out, Ooberong
would be their sole link to the Ram, and Ooberong was crucial; she was the one
who wouid feed their data to the Ram's brain; she was the one who would find
the answers there.
Would
she? came the anxious thought. He brushed it away. She had to. If she couldn't,
no one could.
Whether
the new compath would function was anybody's guess, but it had to be tried.
Jacoby had quickly volunteered himself as the interface. Just as quickly, Kurt
had refused. It was his responsibility— his alone.
Again
the Ram sent its calling signal. Again it paused and listened. No answer.
Nothing.
Ooberong
reached for the crystal skullcap she wore, fingertips exploring the juncture of
cap and short, graying hair. "I never thought I'd need one of these,"
she said.
"You
don't," said Jacoby. "We're the ones who need you to wear it."
The crystals on his own hung almost to his shoulders. The main function of the
caps was memory storage. The immortals had learned that over centuries a
measurable loss of memory was inevitable without them. The finite human brain,
adapting to its immortality, simply erased excess data when it threatened to
encroach on processing space. With a cap interfaced, the brain could instead
displace data to the crystals for recall when it was needed.
Ooberong's
cap was different from theirs. Her's was a sending device intimately interconnected
with the Ram's memory. The unit was experimental.
Neurosensory
perception wasn't new, of course; various forms of NSP had been used for
centuries, but its uses were limited. NSP was a form of
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69
intercommunication
between technicians interfaced to the same data-core of the ship's memory—and
no one liked it. In effect, NSP made the ego subsidiary to the Ram. Each user
became a peripheral of the ship. Going on NSP meant an acute, often
frightening, sense of de personalization, a feeling of disconnection from a
rapidly-shrinking self. The reaction was often severe, and in extreme cases led
to a form of psychosis—fortunately temporary. Because of this, NSP was used
only in emergency situations that required almost instantaneous reaction from
two or more people.
The
experimental cap functioned differently. It was transparent to the sender, who
was able to manipulate portions of the Ram's vast memory without any loss of
personal identity. The effects on the receiver were an unknown quantity.
Initial trials had been promising, but they had been few and short-lived.
"Are
we ready to try?" asked Ooberong.
Kurt
spread his hands on the table and willed them to relax. An old trick. Control
the hands, and the mind and body follow. "Let's begin," he said,
looking up, Fixing his gaze on the star chart. Its curving walls turned the
sector map into a dark, surrogate window into space. A thousand points of light
glowed from it—points of light that veered in curving streaks of silver on
black when the Ram took warp. Now they were motionless, frozen specks of dust.
At the edge of his vision hung the disk. Like Alice, he thought. They were
going out there, he and Jacoby, through a looking glass of stars toward the
reflection of an impossible ship that somehow wore the guise of their own.
Ooberong
turned away. She had not yet taken the time to change clothes, and as she
leaned over the console, the blue spine of her flightsuit rose slightly with
the motion. She touched a milky panel, and a red light sprang on.
Kurt
stared at the ring she wore. Red lights danced on its gold band and glinted
from its dark stone with the golden figure at its center. He could
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see it
in minute detail—the curving lazy-eight, the sharp break in its pattern of
infinity.
The
ring seemed to tilt. He blinked and in that split second felt himself shrink.
Then he was sliding on the slick, burnished planes of a curving Figure-eight
and there was nothing else, nothing except the wide gold plane slanting through
a thick blackness that pressed against his lungs and drove out his breath.
Scrambling, he tried to stop. Instead, the plane angled again, and he slid
faster. Just ahead, he saw the break. No way to span it... no way.... out of
control... out of control... out of control.... Cold blades of nausea touched
his stomach.
Suddenly
it was over. Ooberong's clear gray eyes pierced his. "What do you think,
Kurt Prime?"
He
caught his breath. "Not too pleasant. And, I'm afraid, not too effective.
I was falling. That's all. I didn't pick up anything from you."
Her
laugh was low and soft. "Didn't you?" He felt a quick flash of
irritation at her tone. "No. I didn't."
Her
steady gaze met his. He found himself staring at her suit—at the lines of the
blue-spined stablizing fin curving along her back, and suddenly he knew that
she had not turned toward him, had not spoken at all. And neither had he...
He felt
violated. Trying to silence his mind, he stared at his hands. An ancient voice
came to him— the voice of an old music teacher to a boy: "Never let
anything harm your hands, Kurt. They're you way to music." His fingers
trembled against the smooth dark-mirrored table. Fixing his eyes on them, he
willed them to be still. He had clipped his nails close, doing it himself. Illogical,
yet to thrust his hands into a machine and feel its grasp as it scrubbed and
manicured had always made him feel unpleasantly vulnerable. Violated.
Control
the hands, he told himself, if he controlled his hands, then his body and mind
would follow.
Chapter
11
Picardy's
heart lodged in her throat and threatened to choke her. The man's fingers dug
into her upper arm. Twisting in his grip, she threw her weight away from him
only to fee! his fingers tighten. Someone else grabbed her right arm.
The
second man's thumblight flared in her eyes. Her pupils contracted to pinheads
in its glare. A thumblight, strapped to a hand that was formless in the dark,
glinted on a thin, flat blade. A knife.. .he had a knife.
The
blade swung in a slow arc toward her throat.
Her
voice when it came was a strangled whisper. "Let me go."
His
low, flat laugh blew the sour smelt of tash into her face. She could see the
man's face now, streaked with black shadows. A net of scars slashed through an
eyebrow over a white, blind eye. The other eye, pale, almost silver in its
paleness, flicked over her body and came to rest on her throat.
Breath
held, she froze as she felt the knifetip prick her skin just below the angle of
her jaw.
"You
like to play with the Tatters, don't you, girl? Do they give you a
thrill?"
Her
pulse pounded against the tip of the knife— pounded, swelled as if her flesh
tried to impale itself on the blade.
He gave
3 low laugh again and with a light, almost caressing touch, drew the blade
across her
71
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throat.
He was playing with her now. She wanted to scream. Instead, she gave out a low
moan that was echoed by the wailing cry of the Fiata.
A sound
of surprise came from the first man as the second's light flickered on her
shoulder insignia. "She's a fielder!" His grip loosened for a moment.
It was
enough. With all her strength, she spun toward him, tearing loose from the
second man as she did, throwing him off balance. Her freed hand darted for her
sharps. The cautery flicked on with an angry hum almost before it was out of
its quiver. A twist of thumb and forefinger set it to maximum penetration. The
cautery snarled in her hand, and a thin, red line of fire struck him in the
left shoulder. Raking down across his chest, it bit his right arm to the bone.
With a howl, he fell back and she was free.
With a
half-spin, Picardy faced the man with the knife. His light moved, tracking her
as he advanced. With a terrible desire for revenge, she aimed the cautery
toward his throat, his face, his only eye. Then as he leaped, she suddenly
swung the cautery down. Hissing, it burned through cloth and flesh.
With
the man's scream in her ears and the smell of singed flesh in her nose, she
fled toward the bridge and the devil cry of the moaning Fiata.
Thick
clusters of townspeople and tourists lined the Pontibrio's pedestrian way as
the giant, wailing Ram, fluttering with crimson sails, flickering with the
light of a hundred torches, began its swaying trip across the bridge.
Running
on legs that felt like stone, Picardy pushed her way through the crowd of
spectators. She ran until a sudden stitch in her side doubled her over with
pain.
She
found herself supported by a tourist wearing a ridiculous hexen wig and three
layers of seaflowers around his neck. He clutched her arms. "Are you all
right?"
Recoiling,
she spun away. Still holding her, he
RAM
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73
followed
in a bizarre clasping dance. "Here... lean on me."
With
the last of her strength, she broke loose and began to run again toward the
Brio.
At the
end of the bridge she saw the canoner. The man was vainly trying to keep the
crowd in some semblance of order as first one wave of people, then another
pressed forward to gain a fist glimpse of the Fiata. Launching herself at him,
she caught at his sleeve. "Two men... I was attacked—"
With a
piercing take-charge whistle to a partner, the canoner flicked on his Witness.
"Keep your eyes on this," he said, indicating the flat lens of the
Witness. A white light came on. "Talk now," he said.
She
took a long, shuddering breath. Then, with a quick glance toward the canoner,
she gave her name at the Witness's prompt. Squinting at the light from its
recording scanner, she told it what happened.
"You're
not hurt then," said the canoner when she was done.
Slowly,
she shook her head.
"Can
you work, fielder? There's trouble at the Baguette."
Picardy
stared at him and blinked. Suddenly comprehension dawned: The All-Come.... The
attack had pushed it completely out of her mind. "I think so," she
said.
"Hurry,"
he said, adding kindly, "Don't worry. This is the Brio. You're safe
now." Then the torches of the towering Fiata blazed in the distance, the
crowd pressed in, and the canoner turned his attention to the mass of people
milling toward the bridge.
Safe
now.... The thought echoed in her head to the rhythm of her heart. Safe now...
safe now.... She shivered and found she could not stop the trembling of her
muscles. The fatigue that adrenalin had banished came back to turn her legs to
putty. Swaying, she reached out and steadied herself against the rough bridge
abutment as the waves of people pressed past. She had to get control now. Had
to. Had to.
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As the
crowd thinned, she broke through and began to move toward the Baguette.
Bariolage
swirling, Shawm moved to the beat of drums punctuated by the keening night-wind
cry of the Fiata behind him. His chest, bare except for the purple braid
streaming with bright tatters, glistened; sweat darkened the waist of his loose
purple trousers.
The
crowd at the end of the Pontibrio pressed against the canoners' boundaries for
a closer look at his whirling solo that ended with a series of leaps and a
midair split. Panting, he dropped into a kneeling bow, head low, almost
touching the ground.
"Pick
of the bitch's litter," said a beefy man in admiration. "I'd say he
gave the slut a tickle on the way out." The obscene description that
followed erupted into coarse laughter.
At the
words, cold rage pumped through Shawm's veins. He held the pose as long as he
could. When he finally raised his face toward the tourist, it bore a strange
smile. He stared at the man. The first trap of the dance, he thought. So be it.
He
sprang to his feet and pointed at the man—a hard, thrusting stab of his index
finger. At the sight, the crowd howled in delight. This was what they had come
for.
The
beefy man took the bait. Swaggering a little, grinning self-consciously at his
companions, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and tossed it.
Shawm
caught it expertly and spun it into the air. The crowd hushed as the coin
flipped end over end. Then he whirled, and the coin was gone— vanished. Palms
out, Shawm turned slowly before the delighted crowd, then faced the man again.
Hidden in a clever pocket, the coin swung against his thigh. He felt its
weight. For a moment it seemed as if the single coin was a leaden weight
anchoring him to the ground.
The
drumbeat changed to a throbbing, insistent rhythm. Slowly, Shawm began to
circle the man. The
RAM
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75
thickly
packed spectators picked up the beat and clapped to the pulse of the drum.
Facing
him, the tourist began to move in an awkward imitation of Shawm's step.
Grinning, the man slapped twice at his thigh—the challenge: The money's here,
boy. Take it if you can.
Shawm
raised his right hand, palm outward, toward the tourist's face. The little bag
strapped to his wrist gave off silver glints. The crowd stared in anticipation
as Shawm circled the man.
Bobbing
close, then ducking away in sudden feints, the tourist kept his eyes on the
bag, but the advantage was Shawm's; the man's circle was tighter, less
maneuverable.
Suddenly
Shawm's wrists struck twice together. Startled, the man threw back his head.
Too late. As the crowd howled its approval, a thin cloud of silver dust blew
into the tourist's face.
The
faint, sharp odor of guilefly stung Shawm's nose. Although the widening cloud
of dust was enough to befuddle several bystanders, he ignored it. Increasing
doses since childhood had made him immune to all but the strongest
concentrations of the drug.
With a
subtle shift in rhythm the drumbeat changed to a driving beat that inflamed the
crowd. Eyes glittering, the tourist stared as Shawm began a slow circling turn.
Suddenly Shawm whirled and the weighted strips of his bariolage flew almost into
the man's eyes. Gauging his distance carefully, Shawm spun again, stopping,
spinning outward, back again, all the while taking a measure of the man's
intoxication.
The
drug gave false confidence to the tourist. Picking up Shawm's rhythm, grinning,
he bobbed and turned as the bright, stone-weighted knots of the bariolage
swirled hypnotically before his eyes.
The
insistent drumbeat quickened with the high-pitched pip of a tuned nagareh. As
it did, the thick braid with its spinning tatters began to swing like a hoop
around Shawm's throat. The rhythm drove the muscles of his hips, his thighs in
closer and closer
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passes
until the tourist, blinking, dizzy now, suddenly stumbled. Shawm's hands
blurred under the brilliant, moving tatters.
The weight
of the man's purse swung in the pocket against Shawm's thigh. Without changing
his rhythm, he estimated its value. The trap was good. Even after the drummers
had their measure, what was left would feed him and his family for the rest of
the Festival. The single coin that the man had thrown so contemptuously hung by
itself in another pocket. The challenge coin. His alone. He had earned it. The
man's casually tossed insult throbbed and festered in his mind, and the coin
burned like cold fire against his flesh.
Now,
the ruse...Haif-stumbling, Shawm reached out. His hands fumbled awkwardly
against the tourist's hip. With a triumphant yell, the man grabbed for Shawm's
hand, then blinked as it slid away. With a quick backward leap, Shawm landed
with perfect balance and shrugged as if to say, "You win."
The
tourist was exuberant. Swaggering, laughing loudly, he patted his thigh in
triumph. Then a puzzled look tracked across his face followed by a how! of
outrage.
Again
the strange smile flickered on Shawm's lips. It was replaced almost at once by
an elaborate look of innocence and an equally elaborate shrug that played to
the delighted crowd. Bowing deeply, he gave a mocking salute to the despoiled
tourist and melted into the ensemble of dancers as the next soloist leaped into
a series of handsprings and the caravan with its eerie, wailing Fiata moved
onward toward the Baguette.
"Help
me. Please won't you help me." The girl clutched at Picardy's arm, but her
shocked eyes were frozen on the young man. He was sprawled on the ground, head
lolling against the lip of a fountain that spewed its spray in jets of red and
orange light at the center of the Baguette. His face was raised toward the
girl, but he did not seem to see her. His
RAM
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77
gaze
was fixed on some unfathomable inner vision that flickered its horror in his
eyes.
A crowd
of people pressed between Picardy and the man and then washed back in a tide as
a dozen canoners in riot gear, ear plugs in place, sonic controllers blaring,
formed a chain. "Back. Stand back."
Picardy
stared, incomprehension in her eyes. She stood at the swell of the Baguette,
where the wide street opened to an ellipse circled by the curving cantilevered
balconies of the Brio's finest hotels. The street was crammed with a thousand
milling people, some crying, some dazed, others swaying in a strange, almost
ritual ecstasy.
"Back.
Stand back."
A woman
screamed in terror. Another, squatting in the black shadows of a stalled mosso,
plucked blindly at the darkness. "I see it. Oh God, I see it."
Raising blank eyes toward the sky, she whispered, "It isn't human."
The
blare of the sonics throbbed in Picardy's brain. She felt suddenly dizzy. With
a howl, and old man pushed her aside and broke through the canoner's chain.
"Back!"
Picardy
stared as the old man leaped. His white hair flamed red with the light from the
fountain. He whirled. His pale eyes glittering with madness caught hers, and in
that instant she felt ice grow in the marrow of her bones. Spinning, he leaped
again, hair streaming red, then yellow, stick fingers clawing at nothing.
He
melted into a writhing knot of people near the fountain. Hands reached for him,
pulling him and the others back, but as quickly as some were extricated, others
took their place.
Fascinated,
Picardy stepped closer. Now she could hear a low humming. The hum grew louder,
as if it modulated of its own accord. And there was something else, something
more—a faint whisper just below understanding, a low crooning sound that she
felt rather than heard. Totally absorbed, she strained
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to make
it out. Somehow she knew that a part of her had been sleeping all her life. And
only now had it begun to stir and to listen, to really listen, for the first
time.
A hand
locked on Picardy's wrist. A harsh, "Back,
girl."
She
stared blankly at the canoner who restrained her. Then, with a start, she
realized that she had pushed through their line. She was only an arm's length
from the knot of people at the fountain. Her eyes sought the canoner's.
"What is it? What's in there?"
The
canoner caught her shoulders and guided her firmly away from the fountain.
"What is it?" she said again. When he didn't respond, she realized
that his hearing was shielded. He couldn't hear her or the blare of his own
sonic; he couldn't hear the faint humming sound that pulled at her mind like a
magnet.
Backing
away, she stared at the people inside the circle. Flickering fountain-light
played on their hair, their faces, their grasping hands. There was nothing else
to be seen, but somehow an invisible barrier separated them from the rest.
A young
girl moved within the circle, turning slowly, staring at the ground beneath her
feet as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.'Circling faster, she
began to spin, yellow hair whipping in the streams of fountain light.
From
outside the circle a cry of anguish came from a woman who fought off
restraining hands and dashed toward her child. Stumbling, the woman fell to her
knees on the rough white paving stones. Confusion flickered in her eyes. Her
hands flew to her ears, pressing, clawing. Then, as slowly as if they moved
underwater, her arms dropped to her side and her upper body began to sway, back
and forth, back and forth, as narrow ribbons of blood trickled from her knees and
streaked the whitewashed stone.
"Fielder,"
came a cry.
RAM
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79
Picardy
tore her eyes from the woman and turned toward the voice.
Helped
by two other men, a quartalist gripped a struggling boy. Each time the man let
go to reach for a sharp, the boy fought with fresh strength. Now, half-free, he
clawed toward the fountain. Red light flickered across his face and flecked his
eyes with demon glints. Tiny drops of sweat beaded his upper lip.
"Fielder!" bellowed the quartalist.
Picardy
darted to his side, "Here." Kneeling quickly by the boy, she reached
automatically for her sharps. Subsonic twelve would calm him.
As if
reading her mind, the quartalist said, "No. Sub five, then four."
Surprise
widened her eyes, but she did as he said. Subsonic five vibrated in her hand.
Its tip found the sound-point at the angle of the boy's jaw. She held it for
the count and then reached for Sonic four.
Why?
she thought as the sharp wailed to life between her fingers. Sub five and four
was the combination for stimulus—a patch to the central nervous system for
patients who hovered near coma.
As the
boy struggled against the three men who held him, she grasped his left hand and
aimed the sharp at the web between his thumb and forefinger. Then she
hesitated, eyes flicking in concern toward the quartalist.
He
pressed down hard, pinning the boy's arm into immobility. "Do it.
Quickly."
Please
don't let me hurt him, she said to herself and thrust the tip of the long
needle home.
As the
sharp touched his skin, its tone changed. Instantly the boy's muscles began to
relax. Amazed, Picardy searched his face. The wild stare faded from his eyes.
He tried to form a question but it seemed too great an effort for him. Slowly
his eyelids crepi shut and he slept.
A dozen
questions tumbled in Picardy's mind: What was happening? And why? And the boy?
How
80
RAM
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could
he sleep? Sub Five and four should have made him wilder.
The
quartalist looked down at the boy, then at Picardy. "We don't know why it
works," he said. "Sedation doesn't help. Sub twelve makes the
agitation worse."
At the
sound of approaching drumbeats, they both looked up. Some distance away they
could see the flaring torches of the Fiata as the caravan turned onto the
Baguette.
"No,"
said Picardy in horror. "They'll come this way... the crowds..."
"We
planned it." Sudden relief eased the fatigue lines on the quartalist's
face. "They'll stop soon. That should siphon off the crowd from this
end."
She
stared first at him, then at the howling cluster of people near the fountain.
"What is it? What's happening?"
The man
shrugged and shook his head. "We don't know." He nodded toward the
two men-still holding the boy. "Take him inside." With a jerk of his
head, he indicated the entrance to the Nocturne. Following his gaze, Picardy
looked through the wide glass entry of the old hotel. It was a hospital now. A_
half-dozen Fielders moved among hundreds of people heaped like tidefloss on its
smooth stone floor.
"Go
with them," the quartalist said to Picardy. "They need you in
there."
With an
unsteadiness born of fatigue and hunger, Picardy scrambled to her feet. Sudden
nausea struck her and a black curtain slid over her eyes. She felt herself
begin to fall. Then there was nothing but the wash of indistinguishable voices and
the distant sighing wail of the Ram.
Something
was stinging her arm. Picardy brushed at it in irritation.
"Stop
that."
She
opened her eyes and looked up at the face of the quartalist. He held a sharp in
his hand. With a final plunge of its hub, he pulled it away and the
RAM
SONG
8!
stinging
pain in her arm stopped. "Didn't you eat?" he demanded.
She
tried to think. Not since morning—or was it last night? With an effort, she
managed to shake her head.
Exasperation
traced his lips. "You'll have to go home."
Picardy
struggled to sit up. "I'm all right."
"For
now. But not for long. You need to eat."
"I'll
be all right."
His
voice was sharp. "Go home, fielder. I have enough problems. I don't need
another one."
Horribly
embarrassed, Picardy got to her feet. She stared at him mutely, wanting to
offer an excuse, knowing that none would do. She was on duty until morning. It
was her job to be alert, to be ready—and she had failed.
"Go
to bed. But eat first," he added, not unkindly.
She
tried to mumble an apology, but he turned and vanished into the crowd.
As
Picardy moved through the clotted mass of people, the crowds began to thin. By
the time she reached the Pontilargo and began to cross toward Tema district,
the streets were deserted. An empty mosso, following its mindless, perpetual
figure eight, clacked across the mainway just above her, and the great
suspension bridge swayed with its passage.
She was
quite alone now, the moan of the distant Fiata no more than a faint echo. Far
below the pedestrian way, the Largo, engorged with tide, sucked and lapped at
steep stone banks. A smell of salt touched the air. Picardy found herself
glancing fearfully at the night shadows that crawled toward the yellow puddles
of light. More than once she started at a faint sound. Scolding herself for a
coward, she tried to hum, but at the high, tremulous sound of her own voice,
she subsided into shocked silence.
Her
hollow footsteps on the ridged metal of the pedestrian way seemed unbelievably
loud and vulnerable in their singleness. With relief, she reached
82
RAM
SONG
the end
of the bridge and turned onto the narrow street that ted to Field 18 and her
quarters above it. Suddenly a hissing sound came from behind. Fingers of ice
closed over her heart. Then she was whirling toward it, cautery in hand, its
tight blade cutting the darkness. The hissing dropped to a low chitter as a
dark raggwing fluttered toward its web hung from the eaves of a narrow
building. With a pounding heart, she stared at it. The raggwing folded its body
into the oval depression of the pale web. Against its body, the intricate web
formed the pattern of a single silvery eye—a ruse of nature. The harmless
raggwing, somnolent in its web, could fool its predators into thinking they saw
its unpleasant and inedible distant cousin.
Only a
raggwing, she told herself. Clutching the cautery, she stared at the malevolent
pale eye. Like his, she thought with a shiver. She looked at the cautery for a
moment, then back at the silver pattern of the raggwing. She found herself
trembling and it seemed to her that she could feel the point of the man's knife
against her throat again.
A
helpless rage swept through her as she thought of what he had forced her to do.
Her sharps, her tools of healing... She had taken a vow to use them well, and
he had caused her to turn them into weapons.
Picardy
ran her fingers over the cautery, staring at it as if she had never seen it
before. Then, feeling very dose to tears, she sheathed it and began to walk
again.
The
glucose the quartalist injected had given her a measure of strength, but the
sudden flow of adrenalin sapped it. Now she was ravaged by a sick hunger.
The
familiar building that was Field 18 lay just ahead. Skirting her office door
she took the outside stair that led up to her room.
A pale
glow from the two moons glimmered on the stone steps, then abruptly turned to
black as the shadow of the next building sliced off the light.
A bath,
she thought. Food, then a hot bath. Turning, she reached her door and felt for the
lock.
RAM
SONG 83
Suddenly,
with a knowledge as cold as the ice that crept in her bones, she knew she was
not alone.
Chapter
12
As the
little scoutship hovered in the wide bay of the Ram, Jacoby gave Kurt a quick
grin. "I guess we're getting a little long in the cap for this sort of
thing.'
Kurt
gave back a slow grin of his own. And you love it, he thought. You love the
excitement of it. Jacoby—as his cap grew, so did his curiosity. He had never
felt the crushing boredom that led the occasional immortal to suicide, but then
not many had. Most rebounded with a change of cap and view or a structured
retreat. But Jacoby.... Everything was a challenge to him.
Once he
had said to Kurt, "We're not immortal, you know. Not really. An accident,
and"—he snapped his fingers—"we're gone. And then there's the other
death—the long, slow one. I've seen it suck out everything. There's a guy in
bio—practically born this morning. He's young, Kurt—if his cap was any shorter,
he'd be bald—but nothing interests him. Everything is routine. He's letting his
brain die, and he doesn't even care." Jacoby had shuddered then.
"That's what really scares me." He stared at nothing for a long time.
Then, suddenly cheerful again, he grinned. "That's his trouble. He thinks
he's going to live forever. But not me. Something out there will grab me
someday, but I'm going to do it all before it can catch me."
84
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SONG ,
Kurt
looked at the man next to him and sensed his warmth. When long shadows
threatened his soul, Jacoby had always been there with a quick grin or a new
point of view. Often he wondered at the man's resilience, but he benefitted
from it always.
The
scout's drive came to life, and Jacoby quickly scanned his instruments. Before
his eyes had time to focus, his cap, set for navigation, had read the peaks and
hollows of his brain waves and sent a demand to the navpanel. In turn, the
navpanel, activating neurons in the cochlear division of the eighth nerve, sent
its stream of data directly into his brain where it was translated as sound. He
glanced up at Kurt. "We're all right." But Kurt was staring through
the port with eyes as dark as space.
No sign
yet, Kurt thought, but the Ram was between them and the object. The object...
There seemed to be a tacit agreement between them to call k that—not ship, not
she, just the object. It was as if to call it anything else would be to make it
so. His lip curled slightly, scorning the idea. Atavistic foolishness —give the
Devil a name and you call him up. And yet he couldn't quite bring himself to
call it Ram, or false Ram, or even ship. The implications were too much to
think about just now. After all, he told himself, that's all it is, an object.
Anything more was nothing but speculation. He formed the thought with care,
emphasizing it in his mind as deliberately as he would speech, yet a part of
him knew that his careful and objective choice of words came not from the
logical part of his brain, but from somewhere more primitive.
He
wondered if Ooberong knew. She had maintained an absolute and discreet silence
since he and Jacoby left the ship. In a way he was grateful for her tact;
perversely, he resented it. Her silence made it too "easy for him to drop
his guard, to forget that she was there, listening. He was not sure if she
could read beyond crude and direct thoughts. The idea
RAM
SONG
85
that
she might catch the undertones of intensely private portions of himself was an
invasion he did not want to accept.
Kurt
looked at Jacoby. The man had volunteered for the interface with Ooberong. Why
had he been so quick to say no? Why had he felt compelled to take on the
responsibility himself when he knew how personally distasteful it would be?
Feeling his mind creep toward dangerous ground, he banished the thought and
substituted another: The object. They should spot it soon.
The
scout followed the vast, curving body of the Ram so smoothly that it seemed
almost motionless to Kurt. Then abruptly its pitted hull slid away and the
black of space intervened.
"There,"
said Jacoby.
The
distant face of the disk was silver and featureless as a jeweler's blank. It
seemed not to move, but that was no more than illusion. It followed the same
circling path as the Ram, always maintaining its distance, never gaining, never
falling back.
Kurt
felt the vibration as the scout's engines gained power. Just as the little ship
engaged its drive, something moved in his mind.
Ooberong's
voice came into his head without further warning: "Something ahead. A
field of some sort. Point-two ramins from—" Abruptly, it was gone.
Jacoby's
sudden expletive was drowned out by the squawk of the navpanel as its lights
flared to an angry red. "Malfunction."
Jacoby's
eyes were riveted to the panel; Kurt's were not. His brain blared a cacophony
of disjointed thoughts as he stared through the port: Ooberong's broken,
"...smear...object dissipat—...reading point zero two... transmission
fault—" And his own, "My God... My God ..."
Chapter
13
A
sighing breath split the darkness.
Heart
pounding, Picardy whirled toward the sound.
Then
the voice: "You've come back."
"Dorian!"
"I
waited so long. Help me!"
His
hands clutched at her shoulders. She felt the tug of his weight as he fell
against her. Fumbling at the door, she managed to get it open. As light
streamed over them, Picardy's eyes widened in disbelief. He was streaked with
mud. His quartals and the Polytext stripe he was so proud of were covered with
drying sea floss, and his beautiful blue sleeves were bloodstained rags.
"What happened to you?"
His
pale eyes were dark with strain. "I nearly drowned."
"How?
What happened?"
"I
don't know." Dorian looked at her uncertainly, then with a half-turn, he
collapsed onto her bed, soiling its pale blue cover with yellow-brown streaks
of mud. As it took his weight, the whisper gave a welcoming sigh and began to
murmur its sleep sounds of wind and sea. He raised his blood-streaked palms,
staring at them as if he could read an explanation there. Their weight proved
too much, and his hands fell weakly to his chest. "I was trying to record
the petit anche. I heard a sound—something humming
86
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87
across
the mud flats. I was—" His eyes sought hers, then slid away. "It was
frightening."
Picardy
studied his face. Just like the Baguette, -she thought, shivering as she
remembered how she had pushed through the canoners' lines without realizing it.
"What happened then? How did you get hurt?"
He
shook his head slowly as if to clear it. "I couldn't get away from
it."
"From
what?" She pushed up his ragged shirtsleeve. Abrasions crisscrossed his
hands and forearms.
"From—"
His voice stopped, and a strange, almost furtive look came into his eyes.
"I don't know."
Picardy
caught the look. He was lying. She was sure of it.
He
shook his head again. "All of a sudden it was dark. The tide was coming in
and waves were breaking over my head. I must have been swept up the
inlet."
Picardy
filled an old, chipped warmstone bowl with water and pulled out a. soft brush
from her medpack. She examined his scraped palm. "You've been on the rocks
for sure."
Dorian
winced as she plunged his hand into the bowl. "Stings," he said,
pulling away.
She
recaptured his hand and began to scrub. "You'll get infected if I
don't." When the water took on a red-brown tinge, she threw it out and
refilled the bowl, this time adding a small packet of clear green fluid.
"Don't you remember anything else?"
Again
the strange look. He turned away abruptly as if to hide it.
"Dorian?"
When
his eyes reluctantly met hers again, he said in a low voice, "You'll think
I'm crazy."
She
looked at him evenly, "No, I won't."
He
stared down at his hands as if he were unwilling to meet her gaze.
"Something happened— an earthquake—something. 1 don't remember. And then I
was in a place I'd never seen before. It was
88 RAM SONG
nearly
dark. I could hear a stream running, but I couldn't see it. Then a moon came
out—bigger than Allegro. And it was round. Perfectly round."
When he
looked at her at last, his eyes v.'crc vague and his focus was unsure. "I
wasn't here, Picardy. Not on Aulos. I wasn't here. But that wasn't the worst.
Something was with me. Some thing." He shuddered. "It wasn't an
animal—and it wasn't human."
Dozens
of tourists packed the curving balconies of the Nocturne and watched the
canoners vainly try to hold back the crowds at the fountain. At the sound of
distant drums riding the night wind, they tore their fascinated gaze from the
people below and stared expectantly down the dark stretch of the Baguette.
"They're
coming," shouted a boy leaning over the rail. A young man wearing a
saltlace neckpiece swung the long, yellow strands around his neck in imitation
of the Tatterdancers and began to dance with a girl who wore a tumbled wreath
of seaflowers that matched her pale green eyes. Lost in each other's gaze, oblivious
to the press of bodies around them, they moved with jerking thrusts of hips and
thighs to the throb of the drums.
A
woman, intoxicated with tash, pulled off her thin white garment and tossed it
from the balcony. It caught for a moment on a spike of railing and billowed in
the wind like a pale flag until a sudden gust tore it loose and sent it
plunging in a tangled, spiraling fall. She was naked now except for a flutter
of crimson and purple ribbons around her neck. Spurred by the gleeful howls of
the others, she began to weave in a drunken dance.
A thin
man whose glittering eyes never left her body drew out a slim packet. Opening
it with one hand, he blew a faint cloud of silvery dust in her face. She froze,
staring at him, at his fixed, hard eyes, at his lips still pursed in a kiss
that blew the scent of guilefly.
Nostrils
flaring, she sucked deeply, head back,
RAM
SONG
89
small,
high breasts riding the outward thrust of her ribs. Then, gaze locked on his,
she began to stroke her thighs, sensuously kneading the flesh beneath her
fingers.
With a
low laugh, he caught a long red tatter fluttering at her throat and slowly
pulled her toward him.
In the
distance, yellow flames, moving like demon lights in fog, flickered behind the
blind, glass eyes of the Ram. The giant beast's upper lip slid back, exposing
fangs and a blood-red tongue as the night wind brayed and howled through a
thousand reeds.
Suddenly
the drums stopped. At the foot of the Fiata a hundred hands tugged at rigging.
Valves slid shut, and the voice of the great wind organ ceased. "The
Hexentanz," said the people in low voices to one another. "It's
beginning." Then an expectant hush spread through the crowds pressed along
the Baguette. Within a few moments there was no sound except the wind straining
at the huge crimson sails.
While
Clarin stood silent in the group of thirty girls, her heartbeat quickened as
the rush of adrenalin overcame emotional fatigue. A pale girl standing next to
her nervously shifted her weight, and the quick metallic ching of ankle bells
shattered the unnatural quiet. Stricken with embarrassment, the girl sent a
quick, sheepish look toward Clarin.
A giant
stretchskin drum, rolling on wide, wrapped wheels, glided from beneath the
Fiata. Hands pulled at rigging; oiled valves on the Fiata opened, and a single
reed began to sing in a low, throbbing voice that rode the air like velvet.
Sighing, another reed spoke. Hands tugged in synchrony and new voices joined
and drifted toward the bay to mingle with the sound of tide swell tossing white
foam in the glimmer of the moons.
The
sails of the Fiata rippled, and a crimson sheath slid away. Clarin fixed her
eyes on the narrow platform high above her. A Figure dressed in white stepped
out, from nowhere it seemed, into a circle of
90
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light.
Silken streamers, pale as the moons, fluttered from the girl's outstretched
arms. Her name was Jota. She was barely seventeen, still a girl, and they had
practiced together for many measures, yet as Clarin watched, the magic began to
work as it always had. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she looked
again, the girl was transformed—not Jota now, but the Fate. The Hexen.
Haunting,
atonal notes came from the Fiata as reeds opened and closed. Suddenly the Hexen
leaped outward. She hung motionless for a moment, a flying creature, silken
wings filling with the wind. Then she plunged.
The
crowd gasped. She plummeted straight down until the thin wires that held her
reached their limit and stopped her fall within inches of the giant drumskin.
With an
almost imperceptible movement, she shrugged off the thin silver harness that
held her. As her feet touched the drumskin, it began a deep-pitched roll,
counterpointed by the cry of the Fiata.
Tuners
tugged at oiled levers, and the skin began to tighten, sliding upward in pitch
to the increasing rhythm of the Hexen's feet. At Clarin's left, a drummer began
a scraping beat on a winged nagareh strapped to his chest. The wings began to
vibrate, and the thirteen strings on each hummed to life.
Clarin
was taut with nervous energy. She stared expectantly at the young man across
from her as Sheng, the scentsinger, pumped his windtrope. Holding the body of
the instrument with one gnarled hand, Sheng set it spinning. As its phosphors
began to glow with a green as soft as sunlight through seawater, the windtrope
gave a sighing note—her cue. She counted, and on the twelfth, at the puff of
sea essence touched with human musk, she leaped and thirty girls moved with
her.
The
street was alive with fluttering colors. Muscles straining, the tuners
tightened, then loosened the drumskin. Responding to the dance of the Fate,
RAM
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91
it
played an ancient, eerie tune that echoed the cry of the Fiata. The
scentsinger's magic filled the air with the scent of holiday and promise. The
Seduction had begun.
Whirling
suddenly, the Hexen leaped, and two golden bracelets gleamed in her hands. The
assembled dancers froze, then began to move with underwater slowness as they
fixed their eyes on the glittering promise.
The
beat quickened the dancers' feet, and they began to spin. Faster it came.
Faster. Now, thought Clarin. Her hands flew in a blur of tatters, and two
golden bracelets gleamed in her hands.
Each
dancer held bracelets over heads thrown back in triumph. A half-turn, and the
bracelets slid over wrists. A touch, and both joined with a sharp click until
the dancers' hands were bound together in a figure-eight. Running now, head
low, Clann joined the ensemble in a tight knot that rippled and bloomed into a
chain of people bound together with golden links in an infinite circle.
Silence
fell. Then with a single reedy note they began to move again. Gradually the
tempo quickened. The linked circle turned—faster now to the beat of nagareh and
drumskin. Heads back, tatters flying, the dancers spun in a frenzied wheel of
color.
With
shocking suddenness a thousand reeds opened, and the great horned Ram began to
bray.
Laughing,
the Hexen leaped, and a black cloak covered her pure white silken ribbons. Its
hood dropped in place, sliding glazed Ram's eyes over hers, transmuting her
mouth into a hideous grimace.
Betrayed!
The wheel of dancers spun in confusion. The bracelets were not gifts, but
curses. Bondage.
As the
drumbeat pulsed, they spun, bodies straining back, swooning with fatigue, but
there was no breaking free. They were bound to the bracelets forever, condemned
by the Hexen's treachery to circle mindlessly until the end of time.
But
there was a choice—a way to defeat the Hexen. A girl, hair streaming in
disarray, screamed
92
RAM
SONG
once,
then broke free into the center of the ring. Her hands rose in triumph. The
figure-eight was broken. She was free.
Dancing
alone now in the center, she stretched her hands toward the others, calling,
imploring. The clasp of Clarin's bracelet sprang open, and she leaped free of
the circle. Metalic clicks, and a dozen others broke away.
Shrieking
her rage, the defeated Hexen, failing to draw energy from the broken ring,
swayed in confusion. Her power was gone; she was dying.
Retreating,
the Hexen vanished.
Hands
reached out quickly to conceal the girl from the spectators. Doubling her body,
she disappeared into a narrow trapdoor beneath the drumskin, and the drum began
to glide back to its berth below the Fiata.
Sweat
dripped from Clarin's face as she joined the others in a deep bow that held for
a count of three. Then beneath a fire-eyed Ram that howled in the night wind,
the procession began to move again.
Dorian
ate hungrily from Picardy's small store of thick sourbret and wedges of
milkset. Though she felt weak, her Fierce appetite had faded to almost nothing,
and she did no more than pick at her food. Her muscles were beginning to
stiffen.
She
went to the bath and wearily stripped off her clothes. The jet of water hummed
like a sharp. Like the cautery, she thought with a sudden shiver. She turned up
the heat and let the hot water pour full-force over her body.
Hair
damp and curling from her steaming bath, Picardy stepped out and covered
herself in a thick, white muffle. In surprise, she realized that her appetite
had come back. Something to eat, then bed, she thought, and wondered what to do
about Dorian. He hadn't seemed able to go home before, but maybe now that he
had eaten.... There just wasn't room for him here. Not unless he slept on the
comfort by the window.
RAM
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93
She
padded barefoot into the room. There was nothing left of the meal she had
brought except crumbs. And Dorian was asleep.
He lay
on her bed as if it were his own, dirty feet sprawled carelessly over her
neatly folded night clothes on the end of the whisper, hands clutching the
cushions as if to claim them all. When she reached out to rouse him, he moaned
and flung a hand up, palm outward, in a pathetic little gesture of defense.
She
looked down at him and shook her head. What was the use? She could have done
with a different day. Failing that, she could have used a little understanding.
Picardy brushed away a rueful smile. Ask the gods for sympathy, and instead
they give you Dorian.
With a
faint sigh, she turned off the lights and crawled into the comfort by the
window. Curving her body into it, she stretched out as far as its confines
would allow. It was going to be impossible to sleep half-sitting up like this,
she thought, but almost before she was settled an overwhelming drowsiness fell
over her.
The
faint, distant sound of drum and Fiata sent a montage of images through her
mind: The old man hallucinating at the fountain; Clarin, turning before her,
bright tatters slithering through outstretched fingers; the image of the dead
woman's face as soft purple cloth covered it. Then she saw Shawm, lips moving,
saying something—what was it?—something....
Presto's
light dimmed and winked out as the little moon set. Only Allegro was left,
shining through the window in a pale stream. Lazily, Picardy turned her face
toward it. Just as sleep came and her eyes dragged shut, a half-formed thought
traced through her mind: The sky. Something was wrong with the sky.
Chapter
14
Tatters
fluttering in the night wind, Shawm attracted the attention of the pack of
revelers near the bridge. As one of a group in bariolage, he was simply a part
of Festival; alone, he was a curiosity.
It was
very, late, and the crowd near the Pontilargo was too drunk and too beguiled to
be predictable. A girl of about twenty pointed unsteadily at him. Laughing, she
began to dance in an obscene imitation of the Hexentanz. Shawm dodged to avoid
her, but she caught his hand and thrust a bare leg against his. Eyes half-closed,
she pressed her body to his and began to sway.
Without
warning, a burly man grabbed the girl and sent her staggering with a hard slap.
"Bitch!" His violence turned instantly toward Shawm. With a brutal
shove, he threw the boy against the railing. His thick hand clamped Shawm's
throat and pinioned him to the upright. Silence struck the crowd. A moment
later a voice yelled, "The blue dance." Then another. "Till his
eyes pop."
The man
stood no taller than Shawm, but he outweighed him by half. His eyes glittered
dangerously from narrowed lids. "Killer. Tatter scum." His grip
tightened.
Air cut
off, Shawm fought against a rising panic. Calm. He had to stay calm. His pulse
pounded in his ears, nearly drowning out the girl's howls of pain
94
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95
and
rage and the excited bleat of the crowd. He locked eyes with the man; it was
his only chance. Don't show any fear.... Don't show it. Don't show anything....
Nothing....
A black
veil rippled at the edge of his vision. With effort he kept his eyes on the
man, but his sight blurred with the hideous overlay of memory. He had been only
eight when he saw a man throtded—slowly— until his limbs writhed in a grotesque
dance and the man was left for dead. But he didn't die. Not then. Not till
after measures of half-brained idiocy.
Please...
not that.... The ragged veil drew closer and fluttered over his eyes.
Please....
The
man's eyes stared, slid away, came back. "Killer scum." Chin thrust
out, he let his grip loosen, then fall away. "Get out. Get out of here, or
you'll be the dead one."
Don't
run... don't run... they'll kill you ifyou run.... Shawm drew a long shuddering
breath. Then another. With a final look at the man, he turned and forced his
legs to carry him onto the bridge toward Tema District.
He did not
dare look back. Ears straining for the sound of footsteps behind him, he forced
himself to hold his pace. He heard nothing but the hollow echo of his own
footsteps and his gasping struggle for air. Near the end of the bridge, he
broke into a halting run.
The
streets in this part of the Tema were deserted. He dodged down a narrow side
street, not stopping till he was hidden by the shadow of a darkened building.
Leaning against it, he sucked in deep, rasping breaths and tried to quiet the
hammering of his heart.
Shawm's
fingers explored his throat. Bruised,' he told himself. All right.. .just
bruised. The flesh was beginning to swell, causing a hard ache just below the
angle of his jaw where the man's thumb had been.
A
second floor light across the street winked out, turning its window to black.
Allegro's pale light
96
RAM
SONG
glimmered
on the white building and cast shadows from the raised letters on its street
door. Shawm stared at them: Medical Field 18. Why had he come this way? Of all
the ways to go? But as the question rose, he knew the answer: He had chosen the
long way because he didn't want to go home, didn't want to see his mother lying
on the jig, didn't want to think of that now. Yet somewhere below awareness his
thoughts were of nothing else and they had brought him here.
He
should have gotten help sooner. If he had only defied the midwoman and stayed.
Shawm squeezed his eyes shut against the memory. Too late. He had been too
late. He had run first to one Senza med field, then another, only to find them
locked. The third was closing, and the dour fielder who ran it gave him a flat
refusal; on no account would he go to Tattersfield. Finally his frantic loping
run had sent him clattering over the bridge to Tema, to this place.
Killer.
The old epithet. He had heard it all his life. He had tried to ignore it and
the hate that lay behind it. Now he felt the real pain of it. His people... the
only ones who had shown him kindness.... Because of them, because of what he
was, everyone died. And now his mother....
Her
call echoed in his head—his mother's I. Today, for the first time, he had let
its familiar sound well up in his throat. And when it came, when finally it
came in his own voice, he had sensed a movement in his chest and then an
emptiness as if part of his soul had fluttered away with it. Now he would never
hear it again, not in her voice, only its dimming echoes in his mind.
Somehow
that was inconceivable. She couldn't be dead, not really—she was his mother....
Then the wrenching pain inside him twisted again and Shawm felt the tears he
had kept back boil up like acid. Sinking into the black shadows of the lonely
Tema street, he curled his hands into futile fists and cried till he was dry.
* * *
RAM
SONG
97
rir.aHy
spent. Shawm rolled over and stared blankly at the late night sky. Somehow even
the stars seemed wrong tonight. He thought briefly of the immortal girl—what
was her name?—Alani. A grim smile twitched at the corner of his lips. What
would they think if they knew what he knew? What would people do if they knew
their devil Ram was up there, hiding, pretending to be one of the stars? But
thought took too much effort now. Exhausted, he pulled himself up and began to
walk.
Soon he
began to see people, only one or two here and there, then more as the sounds
and smells of the Am Steg came to him. Beyond the market, the dark lines of the
Pontisenza stretched over the river. Not yet. Tired as he was, he could not go
home just yet.
The Am
Steg never closed. Anything could be had there: food, drugs, clothes. And for
customers with the price, women or boys. From beneath a filthy cloak, a
narrow-faced man brought out a yellow tartold and blew into it. Its nasal whine
grew louder, and the tartold extended fire7red devil wings. The wings pulsed
with the sound, flapping wide with the quick rush of air, dropping as the man
took breath. When he had attracted a small crowd with the diversion, he flung
open his cloak and displayed his rows of jewels caught in the lining. With a quick,
appraising glance, the man flared his cloak across Shawm's path. "You
dance good," he said in a crowing voice that rose an octave from first to
last syllable. "Money tonight, eh?" He plucked a green stone from
somewhere below his ribs. "You want to buy? A real chroma, that. Wear a
chroma, all the girls look at you." The stone glittered with false lights
as dirty fingers maneuvered it under Shawm's nose.
Shawm
stepped around him.
"You
fa-la-la?" persisted the vendor. "You crazy, maybe? You let the girls
pass you by?"
Turning,
walking away, Shawm heard the man's scornful, "Tat!" followed by a
sound half hiss, half spit. Just ahead, a dingy tam-tam awning slammed
98
RAM
SONG
shut,
exposing painted eyes with closed lids as its owner prepared to nap. Across the
way, another opened with the hollow throb of pulser and nagareh and the hope of
drumming up a crowd.
Shawm
drew out his challenge coin. In the flare of yellow light from a tash stall it
glinted silver with touches of red. It was enough money to blind him with tash
for two days, he thought. After all, wasn't that what was expected of him?
Didn't they say: "Give a note to a Tat and he's tashed." Setting his
jaw, he closed his fingers over the coin and walked away.
He
wandered aimlessly through the Am Steg for a long time and finally stopped to
watch a metalist at work over a small forge. Gnarled hands worked the redhot
metal, drawing it, deftly hammering it into a round medallion of the type rich
women wore, then plunging the piece into a vat of cold water that sent a cloud
of steam around the old man's head. Fascinated, Shawm drew closer. Ignoring
him, the old man bent over his work, bringing his leathery face close to a
bracelet as he polished it. The buffer moved over the bracelet and brought up a
dark golden sheen. Shawm stared, but not at the glimmer of the bracelet.
Instead, he watched the old man's hands. They wore thick scars from a lifetime
of working half-molten metal. One rose, ridged and silver-white, between his
thumb and forefinger and extended nearly to his wrist as if the thumb had been
soldered onto the rest.
Somehow
Shawm could not take his eyes off the man's hands and the long silvery scar. It
was as if the man wore his life there for everyone to see. A single splash of
boiling metal years ago, a single day, and he carried the scar forever.
"What
can you make with your metals?" he asked at last.
Without
raising his head, the old man answered, "I'm an artist. ! can make
anything."
Shawm
stood for a moment more without speaking. Then, possessed by a compulsion he
did not completely understand, he reached out and touched
RAM
SONG
99
the
long, thin scar with the tip of his finger. "Can you make that?"
The old
man looked up, then down at the scar on his hand, then back to Shawm. "I can
make anything."
Shawm
opened his hand. The challenge coin lay there, shining in the light. "From
this?"
The
metalist touched the raised quartals on the coin with a practiced Finger.
"Yes." His eyes met Shawm's. "What do you want of it? What
use?"
"I
want it here," he said evenly and touched his own cheek.
The old
man's brow rose almost imperceptibly and then knitted in thought. "It will
take prongs to hold it there. You'll have pain."
Shawm
looked down at him, at the long silver mark that scarred his hand, "What
of it?"
Nodding
slowly, the old man took the coin and held it between thumb and forefinger. He
gazed at the play of light over its face for a long moment before he dropped it
with a clink into a thick gray crucible.
As
Shawm stared into the crucible, his thoughts grew as shapeless as the melting
coin. Nothing rose in his mind but immediate things: the heat from the forge;
the rising sweat on the old man's brow; the smell of fluid metal as the
quartals ran from the face of the coin—and the scar—gliding over bone and
sinew, reflecting dead white in the light, then suddenly glinting silver.
Under
the old man's hands the coin grew long and thin and ridged in the middle. Four
pointed, inward-curving prongs, two at each end, sprouted at the back of it.
With a sharp hiss, it plunged into the vat and sputtered angry steam that rose
in curling, mist-white plumes.
When it
cooled enough, the old man touched it with his buffer here and there, raising
highlights. At last he said, "It's ready now." He did not add,
"Are you?" but Shawm nodded as if he had.
"Pay
me first."
100
RAM
SONG
Shawm
reached into a deep pocket. When he opened his hand, it held an array of coins.
The
metalist selected one, then another. "That's enough," he said and put
them into an oiled pouch. He stood then, and Shawm saw that the old man was
unable to straighten his back, as if years of bending over the metal had
softened his spine to a new curve and then tempered it into rigidity.
"Now,
then...." The man pinched Shawm's cheek between two fingers. With a quick
thrust, he plunged the top-most prongs deep into flesh. When he pressed the
metal sharply upward, the bottom two bit in and held. His hands came away
blood-streaked.
A
Fierce pain sprang from near his eye and raced to the corner of his lip.
Throbbing with each pulse, it spread through the left side of his face. Shawm
touched the scar in wonder and felt its hardness under his fingers, its smooth,
curving line indivisible now from the rest of him. There was only so much pain,
he thought. Just so much a person could feel.... Swelling flesh pressed against
silver, etching its pain in tempered metal, drawing from the deeper hurt that
burrowed in his soul.
Turning,
the old man reached for a rag of cloth to wipe away the blood, but when he
turned again, Shawm was moving into the shadows toward the long, dark bridge.
In the
deep blackness before dawn, the crippled girl Zoppa stirred at the cry of a
baby. Lying still and drowsy in the darkness, she heard her mother's soft croon
as she reached for the infant and put him to her breast.
Another
sound then: footsteps and the faint rasp of a jig door opening. Was it Shawm?
Had he come back?
Scrambling
up, she stepped out through the tent flap. Yellow light from a lantern turned
low blurred the shadows. When she saw Shawm bending over the jig, drawing
something from inside, she slid her crippled foot behind her and hid it in the
dark.
RAM
SONG
101
Holding
a digging tool, he straightened and turned toward her.
She
gave a little gasp when she saw his face. Forgetting her foot, she ran toward
him. "You're hurt." Her fingers grazed his cheek. Shocked, Zoppa
stared down at her fingertips, then back at Shawm's face.
The
silver scar gleamed in the yellow light. Wordless, she took an awkward step
backward.
His
hand reached out toward hers and then drew back. Shouldering his digging tool,
he turned and walked away.
Drawing
her crippled foot beneath her, Zoppa stared after him, but there was nothing
there but dark and shadows. A lump grew in her throat until the pain of it
twisted her lips and stung her eyes with tears. "Yours didn't show,"
she whispered. "Yours didn't have to show...."
Chapter
15
It
materialized from nowhere. One moment only the stars and the object's silver
disk filled the scout's port; in the next, a thick white mist swirled just
ahead.
Jacoby
slammed a hand toward the controls. Before he could touch it, the navpanel
reacted. The scout stalled, then abruptly reversed direction.
Kurt's
eyes locked onto the port, "What is it?"
Jacoby's
head tilted sharply as the navpanel spoke to his brain. "It isn't there.
There's nothing there.
102
RAM
SONG
Wait—"
At the raucous squawk of alarms, the scout stalled again then veered to
starboard.
The
little ship careened past the cloud, then maneuvered again. "What the
flogging hell..." Jacoby spun toward the band-port and punched it on.
Instantly the inside of the scout vanished as its circular walls became an
electronic window. The effect was no ship at all; only the glowing navpanel
suspended in the black of space and the two men, eyes fixed on the cloud.
Jacoby's
astonished epithet echoed through the scout as the mist swirled and coalesced
into a giant curving hull. "My God," he said, "there's two of
them. There's two."
The
giant object hung silently overhead. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly,
something on its curving surface began to move.
A seam
split open; a line of black dilated.
"It
is the Ram," whispered Jacoby.
Kurt
stared at the huge bays—impossible bays— leading into the ship. It's not the
Ram, he thought. It couldn't be.
"Ooberong's
'eddy,'" said Jacoby. "...a whirlpool in time." He spun toward
Kurt. "Don't you see? We're following the Ram's orbit in reverse. She was
right there when the bays opened, when we left the ship."
The
scout trembled in response to the navpanel and began to creep toward the
phantom Ram.
Kurt's
voice and the voice in his head spoke simultaneously: "Wait." He
could feel Ooberong there again, moving in a corner of his mind. "I see
it," she said, "I have it now."
Excitement
edged Jacoby's voice. "It's a clone. A way into the past."
For a
brief moment Kurt saw Ooberong's eyes, wide and gray, hanging in space,
superimposed on the giant silver hull above them. Then they were gone. He
searched his mind for a trace of her and found nothing.
RAM
SONG
103
The
bays stretched wide. Inside, a beacon flared red against black. The airlock.
The Ram's lock. Kurt's eyes strained in the darkness. It was familiar and
somehow different all at once. "Illusion," he whispered.
"No,"
said Jacoby. "If that's illusion we almost collided with it."
"The
instruments didn't read it."
"Not
at First. Not till it came through. But it's real all right."
Illusion,
persisted the thought. The instruments too.
"I'm
sending out a tracer." Jacoby's hand sprang toward a hidden seam on the
control panel. A drawer slid open. "We'll image on board."
The
scoutship's voice came on:
RECONNAISANCE
ACTIVATED. DESIGNATE RANGE, PLEASE
The
scout's brain responded to Jacoby's quickly spoken code:
CALIBRATING
Jacoby
leaned over the shallow image lens. Suddenly he recoiled as a fierce white
light blasted his retinas.
Warning
bells chimed.
FAILURE.
FAILURE. PARTICLE DEFLECTION. ONBOARD CIRCUIT OVERLOAD
Jacoby's
expletive split the air. Then he was leaning forward, staring through the
ship's transparency, as if he could will himself toward the false Ram. "We
have to go in there," he said in a low voice. "We have to find
out."
"We
don't know what it is."
"Look
at it. Look at it, Kurt. It's the Ram."
Kurt
stared at him for a long moment. Damn you, Jacoby, he thought. He always knew
how to make native caution seem like cowardice. They had always struck an
equilibrium before—a carefully balanced blend of audacity tempered with
discretion, but now he felt the tug of the man's excitement. It was stupid.
Foolhardy, he told himself, but at the same time he knew that he had never felt
more alive
104
RAM
SONG
than he
did at this moment. "An approach, then," he said at last. "No
more."
The scout
responded instantly.
The
giant bays of the ship yawned just ahead. Like a maw, thought Kurt. The scout's
lights, aimed at the distant bulkheads of the ship, bled away to nothing.
"Steady,"
came Jacoby's low prompt to himself. "Steady."
The
docking beacon flared red, winked out, flared again.
The
little ship slid just inside the gaping bay, hovering there like a firefly in
the night.
Kurt's
belly lurched as he felt Ooberong's presence again, but this time it was faint
and overlaid, unaccountably, with the vibrations of the Earth Song. He sensed
her trying to speak, but he could make out no words, only her eyes, vague and
gray as smoke. Suddenly they focused, and he looked through....
He saw
with something less than eyes, and more. He saw the familiar bulkheads of the
Ram, the beacon's growing flash, the locks. And oozing from each seam and pore
of it came the growing sense of something so alien—so utterly foreign—that as
the thought moved in his mind it sucked the breath from his lungs.
His
hand sprang to the scout's controls. Even as they touched, he knew that the
wide bay doors were sliding shut behind them.
The
scout shot free.
The
bays of the false Ram closed with shocking suddenness.
"You
knew." Jacoby stared as the object shrank in the port of the speeding
scout. "How did you know?"
Kurt
drew in a ragged breath and shook his head.
Suddenly,
Ooberong plunged into his mind like a knife: "Kurt! It's coming. It's
huge...."
"Watch
out!" he yelled.
RAM
SONG
105
The sky
boiled dead-white.
"Out!"
Jacoby yelled, "We're getting out!"
The
scout leaped.
Ooberong's
sharp distress erupted in Kurt's body; her words mimicked the beat of his
heart. "Too late... too late... too late...."
Bodies
tied together with swags of green and cobalt seaflowers stolen from the hotel's
decorations, the young couple clung unsteadily to each other on the balcony of
the Nocturne and swayed in half-time to the music. Below them in the predawn
darkness, straggling tourists splashed with fountainlight danced the mezzo to the
thrusting rhythms of a Porto Vielle ritmo band. Nothing but sunrise would
banish them from the streets. Then they would sleep until the bray of the Fiata
brought another night of Festival.
The
tight line of canoners, grim in their riot gear, still ringed the Baguette's
fountain, but now their numbers were reinforced by stun barriers guaranteed to
keep out any and all who tried to breach them. Yet not even the disturbance had
dimmed the couple's pleasure. Instead, it had been an event, something staged for
their diversion.
Head on
the man's shoulder, fingers twined through a lock of his hair, the girl looked
up dreamily at the sky. Staring for a moment, blinking, she squealed in
delight, "Oh, look. Fireworks."
Beyond
the dark rush of the Largo and the sprawl of Tattersfield, near the place where
plains met woods, a lone figure wielded a digging tool by the dim light of a
lantern.
High in
the west a splitting point of light made two. Shawm looked up as another point
of silver touched the night sky. He caught his breath. One-by-one the stars
were bleeding drops of light in a giant, shining arc across the sky.
Chapter
16
One by
one, the ghost Rams appeared in the sky like a dazzling graphics display on a
giant back stage.
"God!
Look at them." Jacoby stared through the scout's transparency.
"They're going to ring the whole jabbing planet."
Kurt
found himself shaking from the jolt of adrenalin. Obberong's? Or his? He
dragged in a deep breath to ease the tension and searched his mind for a trace
of her. He found none.
"And
which is the real one?" Jacoby curled his lip and stabbed at his
instruments. Leaning over them, again he scanned the growing ribbon of Rams,
each an exact image of the next. Without a homing signal, it was impossible to
tell the real Ram from the false.
The
scout spoke:
RAMCORE
MALFUNCTION
"Still
cut off," said Jacoby, poking panel after panel more in antipathy than
expectation. "I'd give my left bouncer for a mainbranch to the Ram."
He narrowed his eyes at the growing arc. "I can't prove it without a live
main, but I know it just the same. That thing's tracking back over the Ram's
orbit."
"If
you're right," said Kurt, "the question is: for how long?"
Jacoby
frowned. "How long?"
"Just
how long will it track? We're leaving a trail 106
RAM
SONG
107
of
them—one for each degree of arc. Star drive is out; we're committed to this
orbit."
Jacoby
knitted his brow for a second. Then he whistled softly. "It's going to
wrap that planet like a hunking ball of twine."
And
then? thought Kurt. He stared through the port. Aulos hung low to starboard. As
he watched, the bright crescent of day moved over the ocean and crept toward
land. For how long? How long could the light of Cuivre fight through a
smothering network of Rams?
He
raised his eyes toward the growing arc of false stars. First contact, he
thought, and his jaw tightened, swelling a lump of muscle. First contact with a
force that doomed a little world.
Jacoby's
eyes narrowed as he looked at the blue-green planet. "They're going to die
down there. Aren't they? And so are we," He jabbed savagely at his
instruments. "Where's Defense? Where the hell is Defense?"
"You
think that's the answer. Blow it out of the sky? Blast it into mist and
atoms?" Kurt's voice dropped low. "It's growing out of
twisters."
He
tried to imagine it, the enormity of it. Somehow the alien manipulated the very
fabric of space, and in a way that made the Ram's sophisticated twistor drive
look like a baby's toy. A twistor had no mass; it wasn't a particle at all. But
a single twistor could produce a photon or a neutrino; two, an electron. How
many would it take to make a Ram? How many more to make a thousand?
Kurt
stared at the growing arc and knew he hated the thing that caused it. He hated
it because it was unknowable and because it hid its blank face behind a mask of
Rams. He hated it because he could not fight it, could not resist it, could not
run from it.
"Twisters?"
Jacoby stared helplessly at his instruments for a moment. Then he narrowed his
eyes at the arc. "I don't care if it's making Rams out of
108
RAM
SONG
bunking
tomatoes. We're going to do something." He attacked the panel again.
RAMCORE
MALFUNCTION
"If
thy mainbranch offend thee," said Jacoby in his best religion-researcher
tone, "pluck it out." With muttered commands and sundry overrides, he
extracted the offending branch and effected the disconnect. "Now we're
really cut off," he said. "But, what good was it?" Cheerful
again after the frustration of impotent inactivity, he pressed Engage and began
to speak to the scout's limited brain.
"We're
going SCAN-ALL," he said a few n.o-ments later. "It's not much, but
maybe it'll tell us something."
As the
scout activated its emergency probes, a red light flashed from the overhead:
RAMCORE
DISABLED
Instantly,
its voice changed to a soothing female tone:
WE ARE
NOW ON EMERGENCY STATUS. DO NOT BE FRIGHTENED. ALL WILL BE WELL. SCOUTSHIPS ARE
NOT EQUIPPED FOR LANDING; HOWEVER THIS VESSEL CARRIES A FULL STORE OF EMERGENCY
SUPPLIES...
The
light changed to a soft purple designed to calm panicky passengers.
...LIFE
PROBE SHOWS BODY-MASS/ METABOLISM, TWO PASSENGERS. REMAINING OXYGEN SUFFICIENT
FOR 388 RAMINS. RELAX NOW. ALL WILL BE WELL
"Not
much more than six hours," said Jacoby. As soft music, chosen for its
soporific effect, began to play, he rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"We've got a bunking alien out there playing God and what do we do? We
play bunking cornsugar."
ALL
WILL BE WELL. I AM NOW SCANNING ALL SIGNALS. ALL WILL BE WELL
A few
moments later the scout spoke again:
I HAVE
NOT FOUND A TRACTOR SIGNAL YET, BUT I WILL CONTINUE LOOKING. RELAX. ALL WILL BE
WELL
RAM
SONG
109
The
scout's display darkened:
TRACTOR
NOT FOUND. DISPLAYING ALL OTHER SIGNALS
The
scout showed as a miniature three-dimensional blue "X" in the center.
A tiny arc of Rams bloomed across the little stage. Suddenly, thin gold
Filaments shot from each star and converged on a single point in space.
"Look
at that. What are they aimed at?" Jacoby leaned forward and looked down.
The crystals on his cap swayed with the motion and brushed against the topmost
curve of the little stage. "The probe that went out. Is it that?"
Kurt
shook his head, "No. The probe's here." He indicated a faint spot of
light that radiated a misty aura, the searchprobe's omnidirectional beam.
"Alani. It has to be Alani. But, why?"
Almost
before Kurt's question was spoken, Jacoby reached for Engage and spoke quickly
to the brain of the scout.
AUGMENTING
The
image blinked out, and for a moment the little stage was dark. Then it flared.
This time a shaft of gold gleamed from a single ghostly Ram.
AUGMENTING
TO YOUR RANGE
Kurt
swung back as if he had been slapped. It began beyond hearing. It wrenched its
way into his gut and spread to his heart. And it was so familiar, so poignantly
familiar that it took away his breath.
He
stared at Jacoby. The Earth Song. Dear God, it was sending the Earth Song....
Kurt felt a sudden helplessness grow inside him. Somehow he could accept the
alien's disguise as long as it was metal and artifice. But this? To turn the
very feel of Earth into a trick.,. To play cat and mouse with the core of
him....
Why?
And why Alani? Why turn a lost skimmer into a target? This time it was Kurt who
reached for the scout's Engage.
TRACKING
The
scout leaped to its new coordinates. And on
110
RAM
SONG
its
tiny stage the blue three-dimensional "X" hung in the center of the
false Ram's beam.
"What
the hell are you doing?"
Ignoring
Jacoby, Kurt spoke again to the scout. Before the echo of his words died away,
a slender scanner slid from the overhead. In moments, it had read him.
SENDING
Kurt
stared down at the little stage and saw his own face synthesized in the alien's
beam. He touched Engage again, and over the scout's calling signal said again
and again: "The Ram. Calling skimmer. The Ram. Calling Alani. The
Ram..." While a tiny surrogate-Kurt moved its lips from within a stream of
golden mist.
As the
scout sped toward Alani's skimmer, Kurt looked up. "Still no answer."
But
Jacoby was leaning forward, tensely looking through the transparency to
starboard. "I see her. There."
Kurt
followed his gaze. The skimmer's beacon flashed firefly green in the blackness.
Jacoby
sprang from his seat and pulled a ring on the narrow panel behind them. "I'm
going out there." The lifesuit puffed into his hands, and he began to pull
it on. "Her oxygen... There might be a leak."
Kurt
looked up at Jacoby and nodded sharply. Alani had been missing for over fifteen
hours. The skimmer carried enough oxygen to last one person three times that,
and food and water for as much. But why didn't she answer?
Jacoby
ran a hand over the shoulder mobile as if to reassure himself of its soundness.
Then, hand raised in a quick goodbye, he touched the lock and was gone.
The
sudden hiss of the lock activated the scout's scanners:
LIFE
PROBE SHOWS BODY-MASS/ METABOLISM, ONE PASSENGER. REMAINING OXYGEN
RAM
SONG
111
SUFFICIENT
FOR 758 RAMINS. RELAX NOW. ALL WILL BE WELL
Dazzling
like tiny red suns in the blackness, twin beacons flared from Jacoby's
lifesuit. Then its minute drives came to life, and he streaked toward the
skimmer.
Catching
his breath, Kurt watched. The beacons dwindled to points of light and then grew
again in the reflection of the skimmer's distant hull. Then there was nothing
but the intermittent firefly light of Alani's little ship.
Chapter
17
The
morning sun beat through the window. Picardy muttered in her sleep and threw a
protesting hand over her eyes to ward off the light. Then, stirring, she tried a
luxurious stretch. It stopped short when the back of her head collided with the
top support of the comfort.
With a
groan, she opened her eyes. Confused for a moment, she looked around the room.
Dorian still sprawled on her bed, legs spraddled, arms clutching a pillow to
his chest. Unconscious as a stone, she thought. Had he moved at all?
Her
neck felt stiff. She ran tentative fingers over it and turned her head first
left, then right in a futile attempt to work out the soreness. What else could
she expect after a night in the comfort? It wasn't so aptly named, was it?
The
left corner of Dorian's lips slid open and expelled a hissing puff of air. With
its passage, the
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lips
sealed shut again. Like a steam vent, she thought and giggled at the sudden,
idiotic notion of Dorian, vent blocked, expanding like a child's bubble toy and
drifting away in the wind.
Her
smile faded when she saw his hands. Last night they had looked bad enough, but
now the abrasions wore wide, streaked scabs, and the flesh of his forearms were
red and swollen. What had he seen out there? She tried to imagine Dorian
gripped in the ecstasy that victimized the people at the fountain last night.
And was it over yet? Picardy leaned over the bed and turned the whisper to its daytime
setting. When the voice of the communications practitioner blared through the
whisper's speaker, Dorian grimaced and blinked.
Picardy
gave him a quick glance—half contrite, half defensive. After all, wasn't it
time to get up now? Then, forgetting Dorian, she concentrated on the comprac's
words:
"...
starry arc appeared just before dawn and could be seen throughout the Plagal
and much of Anche.
"Experts
at the Aulos Celestial in Baryton were reluctant to speculate on the cause of
the phenomenon; however, the Monodist in Charge stated that ionized gasses
arising from the Great Coastal Swamp may be responsible.
"Here
in Porto Vielle, people are openly wondering whether there is a connection
between the predawn ring of stars and last night's mysterious Brio beam, which
caused the injury of dozens of Festival goers.
"The
beam is not visible to the unaided eye, yet according to the Office of Canon,
scanning devices can at times detect faint objects inside it. Exactly what the
scanners were able to see, the Canon declined to reveal...."
Beam,
thought Picardy. No one had called it that before.
Dorian
glared at the whisper, rubbed his eyes, and glared again—this time at Picardy.
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"Your
lips will fall off," she said cheerfully.
The
half-somnolent glare deepened.
"That's
what my mother always told me: 'Frown and your lips fall off.' She used to warn
me that hungry lip-gobblers were lying in wait, listening for the sound of
plopping lips."
Dorian
stared at her blankly and then mumbled, "Got a pitch?"
"I
don't think so."
At his
groan, she rummaged through storage shelves and then the food cell in the vain
hope that one might be found to improve his disposition. "They're all
gone."
"I
need a pitch," he complained. "I get headaches without my morning
pitch."
"Sorry.
There's nothing to eat, either. We'll have to get something at the Am
Steg."
He
pulled himself to a sitting position and looked down at his ragged clothes,
"Like this?"
He had
a point; not only were they filthy, but the drying sea floss had ripened in the
night. Wrinkling her nose, she said, "Don't worry. There're several pairs
of fieldovers downstairs. One of them will fit you."
"You
expect me to wear fields?" he said with a snort. An incredulous little
smile curled up one side of his lip.
Picardy's
eyes widened, then quickly narrowed. "I don't care what you wear, or what
you do. But I'm hungry and I'm going to the Steg." Whirling, she stalked
off, muttering all the while under her breath about people who accepted other
people's hospitality and then complained about it—and on her day off, too. She
rummaged through her wardrobe and, pushing aside the little stack of
red-trimmed gray uniforms, selected a bright yellow singleset and pulled it on,
knotting the sash a shade too vigorously.
Without
a word to Dorian, she snatched up a handful of coins and headed for the door.
Dorian
followed her as she clattered down the
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sun-blazed
steps. Ignoring him, she turned left at the street.
"Uh,
wait."
At
Dorian's voice, she slowed, then stopped, but did not look around.
"I
suppose... that, uh, fields would be all right."
Eyes
flashing, she whirled toward him, "Lowerstave clothes? For you? Next thing
and you'll be wanting to sleep in lowerstave beds."
Dorian
blinked and a look of chagrin tracked over his reddening face.
Ashamed
of her outburst, Picardy looked away, then turned and opened the door to
Medical Field 18. After a quick glance to be sure that no patients were lurking
around to follow her, she stepped inside. Her eyes met Dorian's, slid away,
came back. "We'll both feel better when we get something to eat. All
right?"
Nodding,
he meekly followed her to the back where a narrow cabinet opened to a stack of
folded shoe covers, a red sunbreak, and behind that a stack of light gray
fieldovers with a red and gray Field Practitioner clef at each shoulder.
Picardy eyed him for size and went through the stack. "I think this
one—" and held it out to him.
He
stood, holding the fieldovers, staring at her.
"Well,"
she said, "put them on."
Still
he hesitated. Then reddening again, he turned his back to her and slowly began
to strip off his clothes.
Of
course, she thought in surprise. He was embarrassed. It was perfectly amazing
how people from Anche thought their bodies were mysterious and somehow
different from everyone else's. Now he was blushing to the roots of his hair.
Sighing,
Picardy turned toward the waiting room, giving thanks as she went that her
patients, no matter what else was wrong, weren't afflicted with modesty. If
they were, how would she manage to treat them at all?
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As she
opened the door to step out, a faint answering sigh came from Dorian's
direction.
The
morning sun, still low in the hard blue sky, was already hot enough to scorch
toes unwary enough to come in contact with the whitewashed pavement. Across the
way, a portly grocer leaned in the shade of his doorway and thoughtfully
sniffed at his morning pitch. Picardy raised a hand in greeting while Dorian
looked wistfully at the pitchstick the man balanced so carelessly.
Few
people were out so early on a Festival day, but those who were seemed to
converge on the Am Steg. The market gave off morning smells that mingled with
the salt air blowing in from the bay. When the cant of a pitchman rose, Dorian
followed the sound. Pushing past the dingy sideflap of a bomba vendor, he
turned up the next aisle and homed in on the yodeled, "Pe-e-e-AH, pe-AH,
pe-AH, pitch-pitch ... AH pitch-pitch here.,.."
The
wandering pitchman pulled the thin cane from his quiver and held it put to
Dorian. With one motion, he extracted the coin from Dorian's hand and deposited
it into a waistpouch.
Dorian
held the stick in the pitchman's flame until the brown pitch that oozed from
the cane's joint turned a glistening amber. Holding it to his nose, he sniffed
deeply. "Want one?" he asked Picardy.
"Just
a touch." Picardy took the stick between thumb and forefinger, rolling it.
"Smells wonderful." She sniffed once more, then handed it back. She
could already feel the effects of it. Too bad she was so sensitive to pitch.
More than two or three sniffs and she'd be jittery all day. As it was, the
pitch gave an edge to her appetite. "Let's eat."
This
time, it was Picardy who led the way, walking deliberately past vats of frying
flamefins and rows of fleshy savoroot to the intersection of tamtams closest to
the Pontisenza.
The
aubade vendor stretched two lumps of dough and, with shrugging flips of her
hefty arms, wound
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the two
into a long braid. The braid curved into a squat figure eight with one large
loop and a small. Plopping it into a vat of smoking oil, she began to prod the
bobbing pastries with a thin cane clamp while a dirty-faced child at her elbow
hopped on one foot, thumped a tambourine against his thigh, and howled a
sing-song, "Oh-oh... bades-aubades. Au-bades here."
Pocketing
their coins, the woman captured a sizzling braid with her clamp, gave it a
quick shake, and poked it toward Picardy. Taking up a tossaway from the stack,
Picardy grasped the small loop and held the aubade over the crystal jet. A
press of her foot on the worn pedal and the jet began its whirlwind. In
moments, the aubade was studded with sweet brown crystalset.
"I
love these," she said to Dorian.
His
answer was muffled by a mouthful of aubade.
As
there was no place else to sit, they wandered onto the bridge and perched on
the railing. The Larghetto was dotted with harvestmasters heading toward the
bay. On deck, their crews unfurled long rolls of yellowed netting in anticipation
of open water and the sea harp shoals.
On the
other side of the river, beyond the old town, the crimson sails of the Fiata
rose high above Tattersfield.
"Why
do you hate Porto Vielle?" Picardy asked suddenly.
Dorian
was startled by her question. He did not meet her gaze. Instead, he found
himself staring at the curve of her neck where feathery wisps of dark curls
fluttered in the breeze. "Who said I hated it?"
"You
did. Not out loud, but you did all the same."
He
looked away, upriver, where the dark Larghetto turned to silver in the sun. The
dream came back to him then: The rivers pulsing with warm blood-red tides like
arteries through flesh. Almost as if it were alive—the whole Plagal alive. In
the dream, he heard its song—a song beyond hearing, yet it was
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117
real.
Then somehow he had known he was dreaming. He struggled to wake up, knowing
that he had to, because if he did not, if he let himself listen.... He blinked
in surprise. What then? He tried to remember, but nothing more came to him but
the memory of waking—the smothering darkness, his heart pounding in his chest,
and the sticky wetness spreading on his belly and thighs.
He
licked his lips, "It's just different. That's all." He had come to
the Plagal completely unprepared for it. He had spent all his life in Baryton,
and his existence had been as ordered there as the sculptured hedge of the
Capitol's labyrinth or the shaped stones in its symmetrical buildings. The
people were mostly of his stave, homogeneous, compatible, predictable. Only in
Porto Vielle's Brio had he felt anything of home, and now that Festival had
begun, not even there. He thought of the faces of the tourists who filled the
streets. Familiar, yet disturbing, as if what he had believed them to be was a
mask, as if every note of the Fiata had crazed the familiar molds and now they
had begun to crumble away.
Far
below the bridge, the Larghetto lapped against its banks, slowly, irresistibly,
eroding the rock that confined it. Dorian stared down at it as if he were hypnotized.
Only one thought was in his mind then, one unanswerable question. His room was
in the Brio. He knew people there of his own stave: the chief medical
quartalist; his neighbor, a monodist of spirit who had known his father in
Baryton; the assistant to the Conductus of Porto Vielle. Yet, last night he had
crouched, half-drowned, on a deserted stair and waited for a lowerstave girl to
come home. Why? She was no more like him than this baked land was like Baryton.
She was what she would always be: "Set in stave, set in stone,"—a
saying as old as Anche and as incontrovertible. And yet, last night there had
been no choice, nowhere else to go, nothing else to do but wait for her.
When
she finally came, he had had to fight off
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the
terrible urge to cry like a baby. He would not let go, he had told himself. He
would not. He had not cried since he was five years old.
The
memory came back as if through a glass stained with faint yellow. The sun had
been a fat orange ball that day, like the one in his toy box at home. It was
warm and pleasant on his skin.
He
stood in a close, ordered crowd that towered over him—a thousand voices
mingling with a thousand different smells. His mouth was dry, and he tugged at
his father's hand and whined for a drink.
Suddenly
the crowd fell silent, until only his treble voice broke the void.
"Quiet."
It was a whisper that bore the weight of stone. Then his father's big hands
were grasping him, lifting him to wide shoulders so he could see.
The sun
dazzled his eyes and he squinted against it. Row upon row of people stood
facing a platform. Two men were silhouetted there. As his eyes slowly adjusted,
he saw that they wore the scarlet clef of Canon.
He
heard a sound like thunder and turned his face toward the sky, but it blazed
clear with a sun that had burned off the clouds. The thunder roll grew and he
saw that it came from a silver drumhead flashing in the sunlight at each stroke
of the mallet. Suddenly a murmur went through the crowd. "What is
it?" he asked.
"The
Conductus," said his father sharply. "Be quiet."
He
stared at the man who strode to the center of the platform. He was tall, taller
even than his father. The man was holding something in his hands, a bright
shield flanked with two blades that glittered in the sun. "The law."
The thin girl ahead of him stood on her toes to watch. "He holds the
law."
Three
men marched to the platform next, the two flanking a third. Then the two
stepped down and he saw that the man in the middle was bound with thin wires that
held his arms to his sides. Sunlight washed his pale hair; his eyes were dark
blanks.
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119
The
Conductus began to speak. His words held no meaning to Dorian, but the timbre
of the man's voice broke on his ears like a dark wash of music. What happened
next was to remain disconnected in his mind, like glittering shards of broken
glass: The shield, the law, held out in the sun. The two men reaching out,
scarlet clefs of Canon gliding over the thick muscles in their arms. Two swords
drawn from the upheld shield of law, blades flashing fire in the sun.
The
bound man raised his face to the men as they struck. He raised his face to
them, and it seemed to the boy that the dark blank eyes stared into his and
widened in surprise.
He
caught his breath at the quick bright gouts of blood, and when his breath came
back, it came in short coughing sobs that shook his body as he pressed it
against his father.
"Stop
it."
But he
could not. The tears clogged his mouth and his nose in rivers thick as blood.
"I
said stop it."
Something
in his father's voice caused him to catch his breath again in shuddering little
gasps.
"You
think you've seen a horror. You can't imagine the horror when Canon
fails." His father's voice was low, but resolute. "Look at him."
He
shook his head; he burrowed his face against a broad shoulder.
"Look
at him, I said." And then his chin was caught in a broad hand that gently,
but inexorably, turned his face toward what had been a man.
"He
breached the law and now he's dead. Canon was upheld today, but it wasn't
always so. You must learn this, and you must learn this well: it is our
responsibility, each of us, to see the law upheld. We failed it once. Because
we did, each of us will die."
He
shook his head again and stabbed at his eyes with small, knotted fists.
"Listen
to me. God gave us eternal life and we threw it away. Thieves came and took it
from us and
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we let
them. We let them break the law of Canon, and now we all have to pay. Do you
understand?"
His
voice was small and muffled against his father's shoulder. "Did God
say?"
The
dark look in his father's eyes lightened. His fingers stroked the boy's pale
hair, "Perhaps he did, son. Perhaps he did."
The sun
dazzling on the Larghetto caused Dorian to narrow his eyes. He felt a tug on
his arm. "What?"
"I
asked you twice," said Picardy. "What's wrong?"
He
shook his head, "Nothing."
"You
were thinking about last night, weren't you? You were thinking about the
beam."
"Just
remembering something."
Picardy's
eyes missed his. "Funny. I've been trying to remember something too, but
I'm not sure what." Her gaze was fixed as if she looked through him toward
some distant point. A beam.... The thought nagged in her mind. Something about
a beam. Squinting against the bright sunlight, she tried to remember. Then
shrugging, she said, "I guess the wind blew it away." Suddenly her
eyes widened slightly, "Shawm."
She
could almost hear his voice: / stood in a beam I couldn't see and I heard...
"Dorian,
what's the Earth Song?"
He
looked at her blankly. Then suddenly, "Oh. They told us about it in
school. It's supposed to be a piece of music from the old land thousands of
years ago. Something from the Ram."
It was
Picardy's turn to look blank. The Ram? She had heard the story of the great
ship all her life, but she had never given it much thought. "We don't know
that there really was a Ram. It can't be proved."
"Yes,
it can. A few of the records are left. I've seen them."
Her
eyes were skeptical.
"I
have," he said defensively. "There was a quake nearly eighteen
hundred years ago. It leveled Bary-ton. It took out a beacon that was supposed
to
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121
communicate
with the Ram. There wasn't much left afterward. Just a few records. Nothing
else."
"And
the Earth Song?"
He shook
his head, "Gone. But it was mentioned. I couldn't read the records, but I
saw translations. The Earth Song was supposed to be a part of the Ram
somehow."
A part
of it? Picardy frowned and stared across the river. The Fiata's sails fluttered
like a red flag in the wind. She remembered the look on Shawm's face; she
remembered his voice:
/ heard
the Earth Song and it's driven me a little mad.
A beam
that drove people mad, and then this morning a ring of stars that nobody could
explain.... Still staring across the river, Picardy slid down from her perch on
the railing. "Come on."
"Where?"
"To
Tattersfield."
A
startled look crossed his face. "Why?"
"The
Ram," she said. "Maybe it's come back."
Tattersfield
was as confusing in the daytime as it was at night. Picardy stared at the
thicket of tents and jigs and tried to remember which way to turn. Using the
towering Fiata as a guide, she said, "This way, I think." The path
was narrow and strewn with debris. Dorian followed, holding himself stiffly,
meeting suspicious stares with one of his own.
The
sound of singing came from just ahead, and they found themselves in a clearing
where a dozen girls, bodies bent backward, practiced the dance under the stern
gaze of an old woman. The woman turned her dour glare toward Picardy and
Dorian, who stopped in confusion.
The
girls giggied, and Dorian shifted from one foot to the other. Picardy turned
abruptly, and they found themselves in a dead end of tents.
A
narrow-faced child stared at them, but when Picardy spoke to him he disappeared
into a tent and pulled the flap shut. In a few moments a head poked out. An
older boy of about ten eyed them suspiciously.
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"I'm
looking for Shawm. And Clarin," she added.
His
eyes narrowed.
"I'm
3 fielder/' she said. "I was here last night. When the new baby
came."
Surprisingly,
he whistled a short phrase. It seemed familiar to her, but she could not place
it. Then suddenly it came to her: it was a corruption of the phrase Shawm had
sung when he held his new brother. The baby's I. She nodded. "Yes."
The boy
gave a quick jerk of his head toward a jig pressed close to a tent wall, and
then, with a quick jerk of the tent flap, disappeared. When Picardy looked, she
saw a narrow, scuffed path leading toward another cluster of tents.
It took
her a moment to recognize Shawm's tent; it seemed smaller in the bright light
of day, and dingier. The jig that had been just outside was gone.
When
her call went unanswered, Picardy hesitated a moment and then reached for the
tent flap. It was stiff and heavy. She lifted it and poked her head inside.
When her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that no one was there. When she
looked up again, eyes squinting against the glare of the sun, she found herself
staring at the club-footed girl, Zoppa.
The
girl laughed. "You buying a tent? I can get you one cheap."
Picardy
grinned self-consciously. "I'm looking for Shawm," then, "Dorian
and I are. This is Dorian and—" She stopped in confusion. What was the
girl's real name? She couldn't remember. AH she could remember was the awful
name "Zoppa"—cripple. But the girl laughed again and said to Dorian,
"They call me Zoppa. I can dance the one-foot like nobody you ever
saw."
An
uncertain smile flitted across his face and vanished.
Then to
Picardy, "If you can make Shawm out of an empty tent, you have a talent.
But, me? I don't have your gift." She pointed toward the south. "I'd
have to find him over there."
Picardy
squinted against the glare. Beyond the
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123
tents a
dusty plain stretched toward the foothills. She could just make out a small
group of people, tiny in the distance.
Zoppa
cupped her hand around her mouth and began to sing a deep, wordless call. A
pause, then a short higher-pitched phrase. A longer pause, then the call repeated.
No answer came back, but she nodded. "He knows you're coming now."
Picardy
stared at her, not knowing what to do.
The
girl met her eyes with a frank stare of her own. "Go on." Then a rich
laugh. "Do you need a cripple for a guide when you have eyes? Go on. This
zoppa can't walk so far."
A small
face peered around the tent followed by another, and Picardy recognized Shawm's
little sisters. Zoppa waggled her finger at them and said in mock severity,
"Shame, pocos. Shame. You're bad to leave your baby. He'll cry with
loneliness. Go back now and we'll have a game of sand and pebble." The
little faces disappeared behind the tent, and Zoppa followed in a halting gait.
It took
them a while to cross the plain. The little knot of people stood near a jig.
They were nearly on top of the group before Picardy knew what they were doing.
She caught her breath in dismay. The burial. They had intruded on this private
time without realizing it.
A
half-dozen people looked up. Clarin stood at the edge of her mother's grave.
Her eyes widened when she saw Picardy, but she said nothing. Shawm and another
man paused, digging tools in hand. Picardy blinked when the sun glittered on
something on Shawm's face, and she saw that it was a scar made of metal that
stretched from near his eye toward his jaw. Acutely ill-at-ease, Picardy
glanced at Dorian. He was staring at the silver scar as if he had seen
something completely alien and not a little fascinating.
"Self-mutilation," he whispered to himself.
Embarrassed,
Picardy gave Dorian a quick, low "Pss-sss" to silence him.
Without
a word, Shawm returned to his work.
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No one
spoke. There was no sound except the sough of the sea wind and the rasp of dry
sand on metal followed with a plop as another shovel load landed on the grave.
Picardy
fixed her gaze on the ground. Stupid, she thought. How could she have been so
thoughtless— blundering into a burial unasked. Even her clothes must be an
insult to these people. It seemed to her that the bright yellow she wore screamed
its color over the whisper of their faded duncloth. Was it possible that these
were the same people who danced their way through Festival in a whirl of
brilliant colors?
Finally,
it was over. With scarcely a backward look at the grave, a tall man caught the
shafts of the jig. The rest followed the creaking little cart. Clarin hesitated
for a moment, then turned and followed the jig. Now only Shawm was left by the
grave.
Nothing
more? thought Picardy. Not a word said over their mother. Not a song. And then
she realized that she had seen the real funeral last night. The actual burial
was no more than a task. "I'm sorry," she began. "We shouldn't
be here."
Shawm
listened intently while Picardy told him why they had come. A strange look came
into his eyes, and he turned to Dorian, "You heard it too?" Shawm's
eyes were fixed on Dorian's.
Dorian
nodded. His gaze flicked for a moment toward the silver scar that glinted in
the sun. He made himself look away. Don't stare, he thought, but he felt his
eyes drag back to the metal that lanced the boy's cheek. It's not so strange,
he told himself. After all, didn't some of the backstaves press bloodthorns
through their ears? Shawm tilted his head just then, and Dorian saw a fleck of
dried blood clinging to the lower point of the metal. Recent, then. He winced.
Shawm
stared at him in silence for a moment. Then he said, "The song... ?"
And then a question that was not a question: "It's not the world song, is
it?"
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125
The
world song? Dorian's brow knitted in confusion. Then suddenly it struck him,
and his eyes widened. The dream came back to him: The bloodpulse of the
rivers... the night smell of the Plagal—impossibly earth and warm flesh all in
one... and the faint insistent song that lay beneath it almost below
consciousness. He searched Shawm's eyes. Somehow he knew—beyond ~doubt, beyond
understanding—that this offstave boy had felt it, too.
The
world song. Had it sung at home? In the ordered streets of Baryton? He blinked
at the thought, and as he did he sensed the music of Anche, the undercurrents,
the rhythms that were so familiar he had never noticed them at all.
He
stood staring at Shawm for a long time, all the while remembering the humming
beam that had captured him in its unfathomable snare. Finally, he said in a low
voice, "No. It wasn't the world song."
Shawm
looked at Picardy, then Dorian. "I'll take you there. Where I heard
it." He turned abruptly and said over his shoulder, "We'd better go
now. It's a long walk."
Chapter
18
The sun
streamed through the hand-carved clefs in the Canon Office wall and played over
the broad face of Becken the Augment. The man stared down at the transcription
for a moment more, then his fingers tightened over the thin sheets and they
crumpled in his hands.
He
looked up, lips set thinly, black eyes glittering
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with a
light hotter than the early morning Porto Vielle sun. Too far, he thought. This
time Stretto had pushed too far. Yet, even as the thought took form, the
slender knife-edge of fear cut into his belly.
Swallowing,
Becken took a deep breath, then another. His eyes darted from side to side as
if he followed an argument between two combatants. Why had he let it come to
this? How? It had begun two years ago with nothing more than a token—a gift so
negligible that he had scarcely thought of it at all. He was merely helping one
of his own, he had told himself. After all, there was the integrity of the
Canon to think of. And Stretto had seemed so sincere: It was only a lapse... a
single temptation, he said... a regrettable one-time occurrence. If only the
Honorable Augment would give him another chance....
It had
been simple for Becken to destroy the record, to discredit the single witness
who was scarcely competent to begin with. It made him feel almost noble. After
all, no one had been hurt. And hadn't he saved the Canon from scandal? Who
could separate the Office of Canon from the law itself? Who would be served by
smearing the Canon with filth? As for Stretto, he had seemed so humble, so circumspect,
that Becken had been sure he had done the right thing.
He gave
little thought to the other gifts that began to arrive with increasing
frequency. Stretto had seemed so genuinely grateful, so indebted, that it was
natural to accept the little tokens that found their way to his office. It
would have been rude to refuse them.
The
muscle in Becken's jaw tightened, relaxed, tightened again. Fool. Self-deluding
fool. For a year he had taken Stretto's largesse. First small things; later,
cases of the finest Anche wines, clothing suitable for a Conductus, a
blondstone ring that he suspected—and denied to himself—was worth more than he
made in a year.
Then
the "accident."
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127
Becken
cringed as he remembered the tone his own voice had taken. "I am truly
shocked," he had said. "Your conduct is reprehensible... criminal ...
monstrous...." And all the while, Stretto had smiled his despicable smile,
curling his thin lips at one corner, stretching them broadly when he heard Becken
say, "This time you stand alone. I wash my hands of you."
"I
don't think so."
Becken
closed his eyes. His nails cut crescents in his palms as he remembered the
litany of Stretto's carefully compiled evidence: The sound of his own voice
accepting Stretto's bribes: the pictures; the ring—the damning ring—with his
name scrawled below Stretto's on the certificate of transfer.
"And
so you see," said Stretto with no trace of his former obsequiousness,
"we're associates. Partners. Duet, if you like. Wash your hands of me if
you choose, but be aware you wash them in your own dust."
He
should have killed him. He should have killed him while he had the chance. Yet
was there a chance, even then? Stretto had laid his net of evidence carefully,
sequestering it God knew where. It was insurance, guaranteed to give him a
powerful ally in Canon if he needed it. But when the need of it came, it was
not over the many shadowy businesses that Stretto conducted in the Senza. The
Augment could have lived with that. Instead, the accident had insured not only
Becken's silence, but his active complicity.
He
stared down at the crumpled sheets of the transcription. They weren't dealing
with an offstave this time, or a befuddled drug user who scarcely knew whether
it was day or night. This one's testimony would be believed.
Abruptly,
Becken slid open the flat pane! on his desk and touched a plectrum to the
silver strings. In answer, the voice of his errander came back: "What
service?"
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"Get
me Stretto," he said. Again the cold blade of fear slid in his belly.
"Get him here now."
The man
on the Baguette raised his head from his instruments and stared, puzzled, at
the fountain.
There
was nothing there, of course. Nothing but the tight lines of canoners, riot
gear at the ready, who flanked their hastily erected barricades.
The
second assistant to the Monodist of Science blinked and again stared into his
instruments. The tiny analyzer screen showed a different scene indeed: The
lines of the fountain and the arched entrance to the Nocturne beyond faded to
shadows of pale gray on black. The beam was superimposed. Its nebulous outline
danced on his screen like a cloud of goldendarts in mist.
He
stared at the screen. Nothing met his eye now but the empty beam itself. The
man frowned. Nothing there at all.
Screen
fatigue, he said to himself. Small wonder. His eyes had been fixed on that
luminous little oval since before dawn. How like an eye it was. He squinted and
decided that he had seen a reflection. The sunguard was narrow, not wide enough
to shade him or the screen until the sun was higher. By then, Cuivre would have
him broiled and rendered.
Sighing,
he thought fondly of the cool laboratory and vowed never again to leave it. For
at least the fifth time since sunrise, he asked himself why he had been so
quick to volunteer when the call came in from the Office of Canon, yet he knew
the answer. He knew that he would have taken nothing for the moment when he
began to see the images: Mountains at first—strange, impossible mountaintops
covered with what looked like white seamilk, then the clusters of thickboled
green plants and a strange tawny creature prowling among them—a sight straight
from a guile dream.
At
first it was disorienting even though his instruments stood between him and the
real beam. It hung invisibly over the Baguette, but in his lens, the
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129
beam
whirled like a seaspout—a golden, misty seaspout that was somehow able to suck
out the reason from anyone who stepped into its path.
Before
dawn, under the great arc of stars that flamed from nowhere into the sky, the
images had come thick and fast. Then at sunrise they began to fade. For a time
he half believed they had never been there at all, yet he had captured them,
tucked them away into whirling little memory spheres and sent them on to the
Office of Canon, with copies duly dispatched to the squat, cool fortress that
housed the Monody of Science.
He had
seen nothing more until now. Eyes fixed on the little oval, he stared. The
reflection again. He interposed his body between the screen and the sun's
bright fire and leaned toward his instruments. Cupping his hands into tents of
shade, he looked through them and caught his breath.
Through
a golden, whirling shaft of light the face of a man stared back at him. He was
young with deep, dark eyes, and he wore a cap set with tendrils fine as hair
that hung almost to his shoulders and glittered like a million stars. And
though the cap was richer and stranger than anything the second assistant to
the Monodist of Science had ever seen, it was the mouth that he looked at now
with eyes wide with wonder. The mouth had moved, had spoken silently: It said,
"... the Ram..."
A
thrill went through the assistant's body. Involuntarily, he tore his eyes away
from the screen and looked up into the hard blue sky as if he thought to see
the man's face looking down from the magic starship of a child's fable.
Impossible. And yet when he looked through his cupped hands again, the face
stared back from the screen.
Fingers
fumbling with unaccustomed clumsiness, the assistant reached inside the casing
and pressed a switch. A moment later, he held two memory spheres in the palm of
his hand. He gave a whistle to the boy dozing in the overhang of the Nocturne's
balcony. With a start, the boy sat up.
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"Presto,"
cried the assistant. He reached into a pouch, pulled out a carved imperative,
and tossed it to the young courier.
The boy
caught the ornate wand with one hand. For a moment, he stared at it stupidly as
if he had never seen one before. Then, as comprehension dawned, he sprinted
toward the assistant and caught up the two spheres the man held out.
The
assistant watched for a time as the boy darted away on long, thin legs toward
the Office of Canon. Then leaning forward once more, he cupped his hands and
stared into his screen.
While
he waited for Stretto, Becken tried to put his mind to the business of Augment.
A row of memory spheres sat in their shallow tray on his worktop. Selecting
one, he dropped it into the scan. Pulling the scancord to its length, he
released it. The sphere began to whirl in a spiral of silver. Becken drummed
his fingers impatiently while it wound. In a few moments it began to play its
pictures against the concave surface of the scanplate, and for the second time
that morning, he stared at the arc of stars that stretched like glittering
blondstones across the dark sky.
Frowning,
Becken watched as the stars faded with the coming of dawn. There had to be a
connection. It was expecting too much of coincidence to believe that the
Baguette disturbance and the arc were unrelated.
His
fingers strayed toward his plectrum. He could question the Monodist of Science
again. But, no. Let him come to Canon. He would soon enough— grudgingly to be
sure—but he would come.
He had
seen the resentment in the monidist's eyes when he told him the matter was not
in the domain of Science, but was a matter for Canon. For a few moments Becken
was afraid the man would rebel and put the matter before the Conductus. With a
tone of authority that he had carefully cultivated over the years, the Augment
spoke confidently of
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131
precedence:
Law and order—certainly order—were at stake here. While he would request—no,
insist on—the Honorable Monodist's assistance, the concerns of Science were
clearly secondary to Canon.
With
satisfaction, he read the defeat in the mon-odist's eyes. He had won. And with
Canon in control... well, could he help it if the Conductus were to duly note
how expertly the Augment handled the crisis?
The
bank of silver strings vibrated, and the voice of the errander said, "The
Assistant to the Augment is here."
The
door slid open, and Stretto walked into the room.
Again
Becken felt the edge of fear, sharpened by the certain knowledge that Stretto
felt none. He had never felt it. Of that, Becken was certain. Only those
interested in self-preservation were capable of fear. Stretto, like a man
impervious to consequence, felt none, felt no qualms of conscience, no guilt
whatsoever, and it was this that was so frightening. It gave him license. It
gave him the incontrovertible right to do as he pleased, exploit whom he
pleased, without the mitigating twist of ice in his gut and cold sweat on his
palms.
With
fascinated revulsion, he stared at the man. Even the "accident" of a
year ago had failed to curb Stretto's aura of invulnerability. Instead, he wore
the scars with arrogance. He did this now, smiling his thin smile, turning his
knife-cold gaze toward Becken.
Stretto's
single eye fixed his. The eye was malevolent in its blankness. It was a shield
of gray metal that reflected nothing back, an eye that revealed no more than
its blind mate caught in its twisting net of thin silver scars.
Becken
dropped his gaze. When he raised his eyes once more, he stared at a point on
the wall just above and beyond the man. "Last night," he began. Then
feeling the need to clear his throat, he said again, "Last night you made
a serious mistake."
Without
waiting for the acknowledgement he
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knew
would not come, Becken waved a hand toward the array of memory spheres.
"The girl said she wounded you."
Stretto
shrugged, then smiled faintly. "Your concern is touching, but it's not
necessary. A touch of guile, and the pain was gone."
"You
don't deny it, then?"
Again
the shrug, followed by a low laugh.
God
damn the man. Becken's gaze dropped to his polished worktop. The distorted
reflection of his own eyes stared back. He caught one hand in the other; his
thumb worked its way across his palm. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed
it as the string bank chimed and the errander's voice came: "With respect,
an interruption. A courier—"
"Not
now."
"Again,
respect. The courier comes with an imperative."
"All
right, then."
When
the door slid open, a thin boy with a badge of Science on his shoulder stepped
in. He paused for a moment on the threshold, as if awed by a chamber he had
never seen before. Then he stepped toward Becken and, reaching into a pouch,
handed over a memory sphere. "From the Baguette," he said.
Becken
took it, "You can go now."
The boy
shook his head. "Respect for the Augment, but I can't. I'm under
imperative. I go to the Monody next with your directive."
Becken
looked at the boy for a moment, then nodded. He placed the sphere in the scan.
As it began its spin, he stared at it as if he were hypnotized.
At
first, nothing but the now familiar beam of gold dust appeared. Then suddenly a
pair of eyes stared back. Becken caught his breath in surprise. The image of a
man's face was forming in a cloud of stars. Slowly the stars regrouped, and he
saw that they were crystals flowing from a sort of headdress. Becken turned to
the courier. "Did you see this man? At the Baguette?"
RAM
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133
Eyes
widening, the boy stared at the scan. "No." He shook his head.
"Just the canoners and the second assistant. Nobody else."
An
image then, like the others, thought Becken. But this time it was a man and
therefore a focus. A man could be dealt with; a mountain could not.
"It's
speaking," said the boy in astonishment.
Becken
stared as the silent lips moved.
"Ram,"
came Stretto's low voice. "He's saying, 'the Ram.'"
When
the courier left, Stretto fixed a pale gray eye on Becken. The flicker of a
smile played at the corner of his lips.
Becken
caught the look. How cool he was, how very cool, how very much above the law.
He tried to imagine the other Stretto, the one who crawled below Canon law with
as little regard for it as this one. Becken had not quite believed the first
evidence. How could he take seriously what was nothing more than flimsy
evidence at best? Not till later. Till too much later.
Even
now, he had trouble imagining it—not Stretto the "businessman." No,
not that. But the other thing.... And in a man with so little human emotion in
him. Yet why not? he thought. Perhaps it took just such a stimulus to stir any
feeling in him at all.
There
was no hard proof now, he thought, and this time he had to admit to himself
that he was the cause of that. Since the accident he had been hopelessly caught
in Stretto's corruption. The corner of Becken's lip curled in the slightest
motion as he looked at the man. How like an insect's opaque eye his was—a gray
crawling thing's eye. How must it have looked to the girl last night? Was that
part of it, part of the sense of power when he saw that look of revulsion in a
woman's eyes.
Officially,
the victim's body was never found. Becken felt his stomach turn as it always
did when he thought of her face. She had been a small girl—an offstave
Tatterdancer who played her stringtam in
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the
market for small coins or a bit of food, who now and then earned more from the
men who came at night to the Am Steg.
An
accident, of course—and here Stretto's lips had stretched in a parody of a
smile made worse by the thick swelling that crept from below his ruined and
bandaged eye. They had never intended for her to die. It was all meant as an
object lesson. After all, there are things a girl should never dabble in unless
she has a protector.
The
little Tatter still wore the stringtam picks on her fingers—picks brown with
clotting blood and bits of flesh caught in the sharp curves of metal. And
Stretto? A hero. His eye was never lost to a tiny girl whose body swelled in
the depths of the bay. No. Instead, he had lost it in the line of duty while
coming to the rescue of the visiting Conductus of Punta D'Arco, who, of course,
could be forgiven if he was too drunk to remember just who it was who fought
with his attackers, just who it was who held his head while he emptied his
stomach of too much tash and too many drugs. The Conductus of Punta D'Arco was
an important man—important enough to merit a promotion for his rescuer.
Becken
looked up at the Assistant to the Augment and said, "The girl you attacked
last night... did you know she was a Fielder?"
Stretto
shrugged.
"A
fielder, I said. A credible witness. Do you believe that a field practitioner,
a person trained in the skills of observation, couldn't pick you out of a
crowd?"
Again
the slow, mocking smile. "But you've thought of something, haven't
you?"
Becken
turned to a cabinet, pulled out a small package, and slid it toward Stretto.
"I can't do anything more than this. It's up to you to do something
now."
Stretto
opened the wrappings. When a small sphere rolled into his palm, he chuckled
softly.
A taste
of bile rose in the Becken's throat. The
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135
canoner's
Witness, he thought to himself. How innocent it seemed. Nothing more than a
little ball of silver wire. It bore the face, the startled eyes, the voice of
the girl; it carried her name and the place where she lived. A little silver
ball, that's all, he thought through the buzz that filled his head. A little
silver ball... A death note.
Chapter
19
In the
light from Cuivre, the scout hung like a glittering live thing caught in a
widening net of stars. Kurt stared out at the growing points of light. A shell
game, he thought. Find the real Ram. Win a prize.
Within
the darkened scout, Kurt seemed to hang in space. The glow from the instrument
pane! reflected in his eyes as he looked through the little ship's
transparency. The distress beacon pulsed from Alani's distant skimmer, its
firefly-green light dying on his retinas in ghostly phosphors, then flaring
again.
No word
yet. Gone at least an hour, and no word yet. Breath hushed, he listened for the
familiar voice of Jacoby, for Alani, but he heard nothing more than the faint
hum of the scout's machinery.
Then
something came, something so faint he could barely distinguish it from the
sound of blood rushing in his ears. He strained to hear, staring down at his
instruments, touching them into response. And when nothing came back, it was
then that he began to listen inwardly.
Ooberong.
Ooberong, moving on catpads in his
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mind,
moving so silently, so... haltingly, that he had not known her approach.
Unaccountably,
he felt suddenly weak, as if a debilitating chill had passed over him. It was
gone in a moment, leaving its trace in a cold numbness that touched the left
side of his body and dragged at the corner of his lips. He saw her eyes then.
When he did, he knew that his body had felt a reflection of hers.
"You're
ill." He felt her cringe against his words, and with faint surprise he
realized that she was as private in her way as he was. And now he was the intruder.
"It's
only worry. It's passing." Her voice was no more than a rustle in. his
mind.
"No
one knows you're sick, do they." It was a statement, an accusation, not a
question. He sensed her barriers then—thin, strong walls holding him off. At
what cost to her? He moved away; he felt them ease.
Her
voice came stronger then. "We can't contact it, Kurt. We've tried. We
can't." Then a pause, as if she drew breath. "We have to. It's our
only hope."
"It's
going to strangle Aulos, isn't it?"
In
answer, an inexpressible emotion came to him, a feeling overlaid with the knife
of grief and laced with a foreboding so dark that a sudden coldness grew in the
pit of his stomach. What else? What else?
"It's
unstable, Kurt."
And
then there were no more words. Instead, a montage of images etched his brain:
The arc
of Rams growing into a sine-wave—a shell... a shell of electrons shimmering in
a blazing dance around a blue-green nucleus... a terrible Shiva locked in
writhing embrace with a Shakti of flame....
A single
electron splitting off... a sun... a shell of suns... Cuivre growing red as
blood... an enormous glowing, blood-red blotch of light...
The
strong, thin fabric of space tearing into curling rags ...casting a universe of
stars, of planets, into chaos... a Shiva-dance destroying ... dissolving...
gone... gone... gone....
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137
The
images stopped abruptly. Kurt sat immobile, stunned by their terrible
afterglow. The universe? Gone? AH of it? At first he could not speak. Then the
thought formed: When? How long?
The
tenuous thread between their minds trembled with her effort. "... not
clear... not sure... not long..." Then she was gone.
Dorian
looked up from the fiat rock where he sat by the shallows of the river.
"How much further?" His question was tinged with pique. His heels had
sprouted such fiery blisters that even the upland Largo failed to cool them.
Withdrawing his painful feet from the water, he examined them with a critical
eye.
"You'd
better dunk them again," said Picardy. "If only I had my medpack.,.
But, I'll fix your feet for you when we get back."
Dorian,
not overly anxious to crawl uphill again, plunged his feet back in the water
and stretched out on the shaded rock.
"Don't
get too comfortable," said Shawm dryly, "or we'll never get
there."
At
Dorian's groan, Picardy grinned and said, "He's teasing."
Dorian
glanced up in surprise at the tall boy who balanced easily on the knife-edge of
a jagged rock that stretched to midstream. The sun glinted silver on the scar
that stretched across his brown cheek. Teasing? It would never have occurred to
him that Shawm had humor enough to tease. Yet somehow his mood had lightened
with each stride away from Porto Vielle. He doesn't like it there either, came
the startling thought.
"He
told me it was just over that rise." With a wave of her hand Picardy
pointed toward a copse of greenlace edged with tall slenderboles.
"Besides, we won't have to walk back. We can ride the river home."
With
innocent raised eyebrows and a shrug, Shawm looked back at Dorian, who was sure
he caught another gleam, this one in Shawm's eyes.
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"He's
mean," said Ficardy laughing, "mean as a hairy-bellied tweak."
Sighing,
Dorian leaned back again, plastering his body against the cool stone, feeling
his feet bob pleasantly in the water rushing through the shallows.
Plumes
of white sprayed the cliffs on the far side of the river. Growing in a crevice
of layered rock, a clump of delicate webset hung in a confusion of hair-thin
shoots that reached nearly to the ground. The rock stretched dark
upward-angling strata toward the sky. Inside its charcoal layers an area of
bleached stone pointed like a finger as if to say, "This way."
Dorian
stared at the pale finger frozen in the rock. Sure that he had seen that shape
before, he narrowed his eyes and struggled up on his elbows to take a closer
look. Yes. In Baryton ... "Look there," he said pointing at it.
"It's part of a spine." Excitement tinged his voice. "The spine
of a tri-tail."
"A
fossil?" Picardy followed his gaze.
He
nodded. "I've seen them before. In a museum at home. They were sea
creatures," he said to Shawm. "Huge. They've been extinct for a
million years or more."
Shawm
looked first at the pale finger of bone, then back at Dorian. "A sea
creature," he said solemnly, yet a smile twitched at the corner of his
lips. "Here?"
"Yes,"
said Dorian defensively. "A million years ago these rocks were layers of
mud under the sea."
Shawm
raised an eyebrow.
"It's
true. The seas were deeper then.'When they receded, you could have almost
walked from Porto Vielle to Punta D'Arco across the flats except for a channel.
There wasn't any Brio Bay, then. The cliffs were inland."
"They
taught you this—in your school?"
"Yes.
And a lot more besides."
"Oh,"
said Shawm thoughtfully. "Then they must have taught you that my people
tamed the tri-tails. They rode them, you know. Like this." With a quick
step along the edge of rock, Shawm leaped. He
RAM
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139
landed
astride Dorian, and in a movement too quick to follow, pinned him, helpless, to
the flat stone.
"Of
course," said Shawm with an innocent smile, "my people were much
larger then than they are now. Swelled as they were from all that water."
And as
Dorian stared up in complete confusion at the grinning boy, Picardy's giggle
echoed the chuckle of the stream.
The
scout's display pulsed once. Then it darkened, and Jacoby's face appeared on
its stage. "Finally," he said.
The
face wavered, then flickered out. The pause was punctuated by a sharp clicking
sound followed by a muffled expletive. Abruptly, Jacoby's face was back wearing
an expression of supreme exasperation. "Can you guess what a lancinating
pain in the stainer it was to patch this through?"
"Alani?"
"I'm
here, Kurt." Alani's face appeared next to Jacoby's. "I'm all right
now. You can't imagine how glad I was to see this man." She glanced at
Jacoby with a smile, but her eyes shadowed to cobalt as she looked back at
Kurt. "I've been trying to understand."
She
turned away then, and he imagined her staring through the skimmer's port. Her
voice when it came again was subdued. "It's my fault. I know it is. I just
don't know why."
"Nothing's
your fault. How could it be?"
"The
Earth Song, Kurt. I caught its signal from the Ram and everything got worse. I
couldn't break loose."
He
leaned over the litde stage and listened intendy as she told him what had
happened.
"Those
people. All those people. If you could have seen the way it affected them. I
tried to tell them to stay away, but I made it worse. I couldn't really talk to
any of them, except one."
"None
of this is your fault," he said again, thinking: If she's going to die, if
we're all going to die, then let's do it without guilt.
"Don't
lie to me," she said quietly. "Jacoby told
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me
about the signals." She waved a hand toward the port, toward the net of
false Rams. "The Earth Song from each one of them. And they all were
pointing at me." She dropped her eyes. The thumb of one hand stroked the
palm of the other, pressing, smoothing, as if she tried to erase the lines
written there. "It's the infrasound, Kurt. I know it is."
The
infrasound. The whispered sound of Earth that spoke to the hidden part of him,
the part that had never left it for the stars. He could feel its echoes now, as
if its sound patterned the very bones and sinews of his body.
Ooberong's
images of destruction melded into one, and in his mind he saw a blue sapphire
against black-velvet night. It was a memory he had held for centuries, an image
of Earth as she swelled in the port of a little ship that carried a boy to
L-Five. And with it came the most awful desolation he had ever known.
He knew
then that he could accept his own death and the death of the Ram. He could
accept the winking out of every life he knew and every star, if only that one
bright jewel were left. But with its death, any meaning was stolen, trampled,
trivialized, until there was no meaning left at all.
He
raised his eyes to the two faces on the little stage. They needed to know, he
thought. It was their right. And yet he could not bring himself to tell them
what he knew, just then.
He
caught a look from Jacoby; the look in his
eyes
carried a penetrating curiosity, and perhaps an
accusation.
"Has there been more? From Ooberong?"
How
well he knows me, thought Kurt. "A little,"
he said
aloud.
A
silence hung between them. Finally, Jacoby said quiedy, "I'm going to stay
here with Alani. You might want to join us. Later on."
And
Kurt took his meaning: Jacoby meant that he had taken careful measure of the
oxygen that remained. Kurt was to stay there until his was
RAM
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141
exhausted,
until there was no choice left. Then the three of them would share the rest,
would wait together for what was to come.
Kurt
looked around the little scout and beyond to the shining net of Rams. So this
is where it ends, he thought. So this is how.
Then
knowing he would never leave the scout again, he turned to Jacoby and slowly
nodded.
Chapter
20
The
trailing fingers from a clump of catchweed snared Picardy's clothes and clung
tight as she picked her way between a rock outcrop and the riverbank. Dorian,
nursing his damaged heels, lagged behind.
Shawm
had stopped ahead at the bend of the river. When Picardy caught up to him, his
raised thumb passed across his lips and warned her to be silent.
"Listen," he whispered.
At
first she heard nothing but the river drumming on the rocks and the wind
sighing through a stand of bitterboles. Then she caught the faint humming.
Cocking her head, she looked toward the sound, then back to Shawm.
He
nodded.
She
stepped closer. The hum came no louder, but she could feel it now, quivering in
her bones like a plucked string. A shiver chattered down her spine. Silly, she
told herself sternly. Without realizing that she did, she took another step
toward the sound. She shook her head; it felt light. Suddenly she was quite
dizzy.
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Squinting,
she stared ahead. Strange. It wasn't invisible—not invisible at all, but she
could see right through it. It hovered over a bank of sweetset, washing it with
a dark glow as if the sunlight there had turned to bronze.
She
blinked. The beam moved closer. The shaft of amber light hung motionless before
it glided toward her again.
She
gave a little gasp as the humming in her head deepened to a throb and blazed in
liquid notes of fire....
Alani's
voice rang in Kurt's ear. "Oh, no. Another one." She was staring at
the shallow lens of the skimmer's imager.
Run
spoke quickly to the scout's brain. Responding, it sought the skimmer's signal
and his own imager came to life. REPLICATING
The
scout's imager swam in clouds of milk. Then suddenly it cleared and he saw the
girl.
She
stood in a wooded glen by a river. The sun streamed down on her upturned face.
Her hands were held out, fingers curled, as if she sought to catch the beams of
light.
Alani
reached for a switch and tapped it on. "Back! Go back," Then, in
dismay, "She walked right into it." Her voice rose in pitch.
"Get out of the beam. Get out!"
"Wait."
Run narrowed his eyes. The girl was in a sort of ecstasy, but there was
something more ... something about the look in her eyes, Something crept in the
back of his mind just beyond his grasp.
The
girl sank to her knees. Her eyes darted back and forth as if the shadow show
that prowled her mind had crawled into reality.
Alien,
he thought, as the faint vibrations of the
Earth
Song pulsed in his chest. She was Aulosian.
The
sounds of Earth were completely alien to her—
as
awesome as the shifting net of Rams was to him.
Yet,
the moment the thought came, it rang false.
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143
How
would the Earth Song seem to him, feel to him, if he had never experienced it
before? It was impossible to answer. But the children of the Ram accepted it
without thought. They were born among the stars, yet they had come from the
sun; they were made of the sun. The Earth Song toid them that and every cell
remembered.
The
look in her eyes? What was it? He shook his head as if to dislodge the
reluctant image. What was it that impaled a girl on a beam of infrasound from a
thousand Rams? Why?
The
echo of Ooberong's last words came to him then: "We have to contact it,
Kurt. It's our only hope."
He
blinked in surprise at the sudden thought that came to him. The infrasound. It
had been a pathway once, an empathic bond that found its focus m the brains of
damaged children. It was an ancient bridge between minds, one so old, so long
ago, that he could scarcely remember it now. They had supplanted it with the
ship's brain and with the caps—devices that were so much more reliable, so much
more controllable, that a method that used a piece of music and a single
retarded child seemed laughable, almost pitiable, now. And though the Earth
Song remained, no child like that had been born on the Ram for thousands of
years.
He
stared at the imager. Hands reached out now, pulling the girl away from the
thrall of the beam. Could he find one down there? One retarded child? Just one?
Foolish,
he thought. Hopeless. He stared through the transparency as the widening web of
ghost Rams cast its snare. Like a spider's web, he thought. What was the use?
And yet, flimsy as it was, what other plan did he have? What other course?
Even as
the thought came, he reached for the scout's console, touched on a switch, then
shut it off abruptly. No. He couldn't contact them that way—a voice from
nowhere thundering down like God's. No wonder Alani's had made it worse for
those people. He scanned the console.
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As if
he read his mind, Jacoby's voice came low in his ear. "Kurt. Maybe we can
use infrasound to reach that thing."
He
nodded quickly.
"The
tracer. Try the tracer again. Open the Reconn drawer."
Kurt
stared at the unfamiliar console. "Where?"
"Eyes
front," said Jacoby, "now track right to the red pressure
sensor—that's the square one next to the white—and up ten degrees."
The
Reconn drawer was no more than a faint seam on the console. The door sprang
open at Kurt's touch.
The
scout spoke:
RECONNAISSANCE
ACTIVATED. DESIGNATE RANGE, PLEASE
"Tell
it to circumscribe—eye range, ground level/' Jacoby prompted. "Otherwise
you'll get distortion on one to one."
When
Kurt did, the scout spoke again:
CALIBRATING
A
series of clicks, then an amber light flashed on. Kurt felt a slight tingle in
his scalp as the ship's brain sent minute adjustments to his cap. In a few
moments, the light changed to green.
As it
did, a tiny burst of light sped from the scout and followed the beam to the
planet's surface.
There
was a sharp beep in his ear, and the lens became a dilating window.
With
part of his mind, Kurt knew that his body remained in the scout. Another part
looked out with his eyes through a window into alien woodlands and a river
rushing over worn stones.
"Do
you have it?" came Jacoby's voice, but distant now like an overtone in his
head.
"Yes."
"Damn."
And his single word spoke pages: It spoke of wanting to be there too, of
wanting activity— any activity. It spoke resentment that he was trapped in an
ineffectual skimmer with no tracer, with nothing but limited imaging, with no
way to land, with
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145
no way
any of them could rind their Ram. It spoke with the hollow knowledge that he
had nothing meaningful left to do, nothing but useless waiting, until even that
ran out.
The
dilating window of the lens became a door, and Kurt stepped through.
Shawm
stared at Picardy. She was walking directly into the beam, hands outstretched
as if she reached for something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dorian
give a start and then leap backward until his body was pressed against a ragged
outcrop of rock.
Without
moving, Shawm watched the two. Why had he brought them here? He had been
curious from the start about Dorian. He wore fielder's clothes like a
lowerstave, yet he spoke with a reedy intonation that Shawm associated with the
upper classes. And then there was the school he seemed so proud of, as if the
notions he had picked up there made any sense at all. Anche—it must be a land
of fools.
But why
had he done it? Why had he brought them here? nagged the thought. He came up
with a rationale at once: They were curious. It was what they wanted, wasn't
it?
He knew
it was a lie. It had made him feel powerful—important—to know something they
didn't know, to be able to show them so. He blinked at the thought and pushed
it away.
A
splinter of conscience stabbed when he saw the wide-eyed shock on Picardy's
face. He could sense the pull of the beam, the feel of it in the flat bones of
his chest.
He
could pull her out. He couid pull her out any time he wanted, he told himself.
Suddenly he began to tremble. Could he? Could he really? Could he keep away
from it himself?
He
heard the voice then; the woman who called herself Atani.
His
darting gaze scanned the glen. Where was she? He narrowed his eyes, searching
first the area
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of the
beam, then the riverbank where he had seen her last.
But had
he? Had he seen her at all? Had he really heard her voice just now?
Each
time he had thought about it, it seemed less real, less believable. He had
wanted to tell Clarin, to tell Zoppa. But he could never have brought them
here; he would never have risked it.
At
Picardy's low moan, his teeth began to chatter, and in one crystal moment, he
saw his motive with terrible clarity: He had brought them here as a sacrifice—a
sacrifice to his overwhelming fear that the shifting thing in the woods had
triggered something in his mind he could not control. They were his validation,
his proof that he was not mad. And if they were harmed, they were not his own
kind.
Whimpering,
Picardy sank to her knees. The image flashed in his brain, and he saw her that
way, kneeling beside his mother. Frozen with dismay, he stared. Then he was
leaping, reaching out, pulling her away.
He felt
her struggle against him. Clutching her against his chest, he half-pulled,
half-pushed her from the angry insect-hum of the thing. And all the while he
was saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Driving
her fingernails deep, Picardy struggled against the restraints. They rippled
and knotted under her hands. Surprised, she let go and looked down. Red
crescents welled and spilled over into dribbling streaks of blood. She dabbed
at them and shook her head to rid it of the thousand alien voices that
congregated there.
Gradually,
she saw the restraints as a pair of arms holding her tight, keeping her away
from something. The voices thinned until there was only one, Shawm's, saying
something she couldn't make out. Then at once, another sound: the sharp intake
of breath.
She
looked up, blinking stupidly at the man who appeared in the glen. He was tall,
with eyes like
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147
storm
clouds; his hair was a cascade of stars that glittered darkly in the amber
light of the beam. Then suddenly she couldn't see the beam at all. There was
only the man now, standing motionless, watching her with a steady, searching
look.
Again
the sound of a breath, this time escaping with a thin, drawn-out hiss. Her eyes
darted toward the sound. Dorian, back pressed against a rock outcrop, clutched
the stone that held him, his hands pressing, curling into claws.
The man
spoke. "Don't be afraid."
Shawm's
arms wrapped tighter around her. The pulse in his throat beat against her ear.
"Don't
be afraid."
A
shiver rippled through her body, then another, and she was trembling violently.
Echoes from a thousand voices gibbered in her head. Words detached themselves,
swam together, joined again: "Ram. I come from the Ram."
Ram.
The sound beat in her head, but not the sense of it. Ram. Ra-aam-m-mm.
"There's
no time."
No
time, notime, notime.
Gradually,
the voices dissolved again. Gradually, dribbles of meaning came to her. The
Ram. It was the Ram. Come back. She stared at the man and tried to make sense
of him.
Shawm's
voice came low in her ear, "It's an image. He's not really there."
Then louder, "What do you want?"
The
man's voice blurred again in her mind. She struggled as if she were crawling
out of a nightmare. No wonder, came the detached thought. No wonder sedation
didn't work at the fountain. It would push everybody back down—into this.
Then
Shawm was speaking again. His words buzzed from his throat against his ear and,
buzzing, entered her brain. Sound. Nothing but sound. She felt dizzy. So
dizzy... The sounds merged to a drone, a humming drone that echoed like the
beam....
She
started as a single voice broke loose from
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the
others and lodged in her head. It was thin, but clear; it was Dorian's:
"We'll try. We can try."
Hands
pulled her then—it wasn't clear where. She felt herself sink down, and her eyes
dragged shut. A bobbing motion began that added to her dizziness, and she heard
the rush of water. When a cool spray touched her face, she blinked and squinted
against the dazzle of the red-glazed sun hanging low in the sky.
The
pair of oilnut fronds that held them slapped the water and skipped through the
rapids. Hands closed over her, holding her tightly as the current tossed them
like children's toys. Only the figure of the man just above her hung motionless
against the river's assault.
Squinting
at the improbable sight, Picardy blinked and closed her eyes again.
They
were halfway to Porto Vielle before she came to herself and began to ask
questions.
Cuivre
was setting now. Shawm's face glowed with the light from her dimming rays and
gave back glints of red from the silver scar.
Under
his knees the oilnut raft, bobbing with each thrust of his makeshift oar,
dipped and rose again. The Largo was wider here and lower. As it slid along its
canyon to the sea, one high bank was washed pink with evening; the other wore
the growing shadows of night.
The
last of the day wind brushed Shawm's face
RAM
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149
and
tossed a lock of his hair. He caught a scent of the bay. They were close to
Tattersfield now.
His
rising gaze met the steady image of the man from the Ram and then moved beyond to
the graying sky overhead. He narrowed his eyes and tried to see the net of
stars hiding behind the last light of the sun, but nothing was there except a
cloud touched with purple and edged with gold. A shadow fell across his face as
he turned again to the man who called himself Kurt Kraus.
What
was it like? he thought. What was it like to live forever and play with the
minds of people as if they were toys? He had kept his silence while Dorian, and
later Picardy, had asked their dozens of questions. He had listened until they
lapsed into silence and only the wind and the lap of water moved in his ears.
Shawm
thrust his oar savagely into the dark water. The little raft skimmed downstream
into the narrowing strip of light. He stared at the man. The cap he wore
reflected the setting sun with a thousand lights; his eyes met his with a
steady, dark gaze.
The
thought flowed in like a storm tide, and Shawm set his jaw: How like a god you
think you are. A cheap god with magic tricks and images. A god who plays the
crowds with guile.
He was
a little god who talked of Rams and nets of stars and chaos, yet—and the
thought touched coldly in his mind—he had a power. He had come here on a beam
of illusion so awesome that the God Shawm knew from childhood had shriveled to
nothing in its light.
"Prove
it then," he said aloud. "Prove what you say you are." The dying
light from the sun was cold fire in his eyes. "Give us your
immortality."
Kurt
recoiled at the boy's words as if he had been struck. For a split second he felt
a sudden loss of balance, a disorientation of time and place. It was a
fragmented instant more before he realized that he
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had
momentarily raised his eyes from the scoutship's windowing lens.
He
blinked and stared at the dilating scene. Once again he saw the river and the
three people huddled on the little raft.
The
boy's words echoed in his brain. Had they lost it? Lost the process? How? Why?
He stared at first one, then another. Not immortal? Not one? He scanned their
faces and tried to see a sign, a touch of the stigmata that marked so early the
faces of those doomed to age and die, but nothing was there.
So they
were very young yet. Children. He stared at Shawm. Red lights glittered from
the silver scar and echoed darkly from his eyes. A boy? This one? How could a
mortal boy seem to carry the pain of centuries in his eyes?
But
then the ancient thoughts moved again in his mind, and Kurt remembered....
He was
fifteen years old again—and newly immortal. The world was a wonderful, incomprehensible
place, and it was his. It belonged to him and the children of the world, and it
was his forever.
Abruptly
a floodtide of memories washed over him, and he staggered against the sudden
freshening of an ancient pain: He was fifteen years old and hunted like an
animal by a pack of mortal men not quite sane with rage. He had celebrated a
birthday wrapped in blood and the cries of dying children. In a world of ash
and chaos, he sought the safest refuge....
Once
again, he looked into the face of his dying father, and millennia fell away. He
looked into that face in a frantic search for love and guidance and hope. What
he found was the cold metal of hate. / wanted very much to kill you, Kurt....
His answer to his father had been fluid then. Words. Just words. Centuries laid
upon centuries had crushed them, crystalized them, turned them to immutable
stone: I'm going to live... I'm going to live and watch you die. They rose to
his lips now like silent monoliths as he looked down at the face of a boy on
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151
an
alien river in an alien world. And when he met Shawm's eyes, he saw his own.
No, he
thought. Not again. He could not loose those demons on this little world. They
had lost the process. Should he give it back so they could lose their souls?
But
what did it matter now? What did it matter when time was sliding away to
nothing for all of them?
The
waters of the Largo turned to ink under the graying sky. Night crept silently
after the sinking sun and stained the clouds with purple. Picardy raised her
eyes and gave a faint gasp. Dim points of light began to pierce the growing
night—points of light that snared the clouds in a net that grew brighter and
denser with each passing moment. Her vocie was low, "It's really true,
then." She sought Kurt's eyes as if she expected him to deny it, to say it
was not so.
When
the answer came in his silence, in his look, she fixed her eyes again on the
darkening sky, but her hand crept out toward Shawm and Dorian, toward the
comforting touch of another human.
Rough
stone steps brushed the raft. Shawm dug his oar into a niche of rock. The raft
steadied against the current. With one motion, he rose and stepped off.
"Tattersfield," he said with a thrust of his head toward the dark
stairs that led upward from the water.
"I'll
help you get off," said Dorian reaching out to Picardy.
"No,"
she said, pulling away. Ahead, the lights of the Pontibrio burned yellow
against the graying sky. The streets of the Senza would be dark now—darker than
the bridge.
Dorian
gave her an uncomprehending stare.
"We
can get off further down, near the Pontiiargo." But not here, she thought.
Not here. Not in the dark. Silly, she told herself, you're not alone. There
won't be anyone waiting. Not tonight.
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"The
records," said Kurt. "There isn't much time."
She
tried to remember what he had said to her. She still felt odd since her
encounter with the beam. Drugged almost. But he had been so insistent when he
learned she was a medical fielder. Something about a way to communicate with
the thing that spun its lights around the world. Something about the slow
ones—the poco tardos—and the records she had of all the patients.
"The
records," Kurt said again.
She
gave a quick look toward the shore. Shadowy steps crawled toward night. Anyone
could be up there... waiting.
"The
Pontilargo," said Picardy. "It's closer."
"Do
what you like," Shawm said. "I have to dance." With a quick
outward thrust of his chin he leveled his gaze at the man who stood so
motionless at the head of the little raft. "I have no choice." He
fixed first one, then another with a look Picardy could not read. "Till
dawn," he said, "... or the end of the world." He gave an
elaborate bow. Then he was running up die high stone steps toward Tattersfield
until he was no more than a shadow in the darkness.
The
raft glided downstream past anchored har-vestmasters. Their drying nets, ripe
with the scent of salt and sea harp, hung like giant raggwing webs in the
shadows.
Picardy's
eyes dilated in the creeping darkness as she stared at the motionless figure of
the immortal. Blinking, she wondered at it. He seemed slightly luminous now, as
if the last rays of the vanished sun still shone on him. She saw that his hair
was not hair at all, but instead a million iridescent crystals touched with
pale light. His eyes were dark and brooding; they seemed to span gulfs she
could not fathom.
The
lights of the Pontilargo stretched yellow beads across the river. She looked at
the man, and suddenly she wanted to laugh. It was all a silly dream. She was
going to walk through the streets of Porto
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153
Vielle
.with the image of a man who didn't quite touch the ground, who wore crystals
instead of hair, who looked for a little poco tardo to save the world. Even in
the half-madness of Fesival it was a strain to credulity.
She
wanted to laugh, but the impulse died in her throat when she looked at the net
of stars that filled the sky. Suddenly she felt like prey, like a hapless sea
harp caught for someone's dinner. A dream, she told herself, and blinked. As if
to validate herself she trailed a hand in the dark river. Blood-warm water
lapped against her skin. She raised a finger to her lips and tasted the faint
tang of salt.
The
lights of the Pontilargo ahead were yellow eyes. Ram's eyes, she thought with a
slight shiver. Devil Ram... Ram... None of it was making sense. She still felt
so queer. She shivered again, more violently, when she thought of the strange
amber beam. She had stepped inside to a world as strange as a guiledream, to
music like she had never heard before. To overtones, undertones, of thoughts so
alien they made her shudder.
She was
drowning in it again. Fluid... swirling fluid and the wash of faint voices in
her mind. Then she was spinning violently in a bright whirlpool so alien, so
incomprehensibly foreign, that it flooded her brain and nothing else
existed....
She
felt her mind surface again. The dark lines of the river stretched toward the
bridge; the taste of salt on her tongue was an anchor. The man was saying
something. What?
"—going
to kill the image."
Then
quite suddenly he was not there. Not there at all.
The
raft was dark. And where he had stood, nothing remained but shadows pierced by
an infinitesimal point of light.
Dorian
groped for the stone steps. He swayed awkwardly for a moment, one foot on the
raft, the other on the rough stair that led upward to the Brio,
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shore.
Balancing, he caught at a niche with one hand and reached out toward Picardy
with the other.
She
felt the raft slide away under her foot. With a little leap, she found the
landing and fell against Dorian. The leathery raft bobbed in the bridge lights
for a moment, then glided into the shadows underneath.
The
point of light that was the immortal hung like a tiny lost star for a moment
before it traced their steps upward along the stony river bank.
At the
top, Picardy paused for breath. A knot of people pressed around the tam-tams
and tash stalls at the neck of the bridge. A girl dressed in flutters of white
stood head back, dark hair flowing, and stared at the sky. The man next to her,
touching her, stared, too. Then he looked abruptly down at the cone of tash he
held and downed it in one gulp.
Suddenly
weak with hunger, Picardy moved toward a stall, but Dorian was there first,
buying hot wedges of pastry stuffed with spindigs fresh from the bay and pale,
crisp sea-curls.
"What
is it?" said a boy staring at the sky. "No one knows," answered
a man who held a fistful of coins toward the tashstall. "What is it?"
whispered a woman to the tashman twirling his cones on a flat tray. He shrugged
and, pocketing the man's coins, slid the tray toward him and reached for
another.
"It's
part of it," said a fat woman wearing strips of purple in startling
contrast to her pale flesh. "It's part of Festival, isn't it?" She
clutched at Picardy's arm, and the pierce of anxiety entered her voice.
"Isn't it?"
A low
laugh: "It's planned." The man pressed his body to Picardy's. Guile
glittered in his eyes like a thousand cold stars. "Everything's
planned."
Frantically,
she pushed him away and turned in confusion. Dorian's hand took hers. He pulled
her toward the bridge and thrust the pastry at her. She took it with a murmur
of thanks.
As the
two crossed the great bridge, no one watched. Although the bridge was crowded,
no one
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155
noticed
the tiny point of light that traced the steps of the boy and girl. Every pair
of eyes—some steady, some with the glitter of drugs, some bright with fear—was
fixed on the sky.
The
flare from the grocer's sign across the way sent a shaft of light into
Picardy's clarkened room. A shadow on the floor shuddered and lengthened.
The man
moved silently, gliding from dark to shadow, avoiding the streak of light that
glazed the center of the room with dingy yellow.
He
moved slowly, deliberately, learning the room, learning every crevice, every
turn of it. Now and again his thumbiight flashed. It did now, its gleam hidden
from the street by a cock of his hand. The light slid along the seams of the
door, paused, went out.
He
moved toward her wardrobe and opened it. The light flared on again and darted
over the neat stacks of gray uniforms, over the rainbow of singlesets and
sashes. It came to rest on a pair of shoes, then glided away, stopping at last
on a little pile of filmy cloth. He reached out and the light gleamed on the
dark sheath snugged against his arm and glittered on the hilt of the knife
sequestered there.
The
thin undergarment slithered in his fingers. His hand slid into it. The
thumbiight caught on an edge and lifted it, lighting the pale blue cloth,
outlining the black lines of the fingers inside.
A fold
of the garment moved between his thumb and forefinger, slowly at first,
sensually. Then as the film of blue stretched tight over the flat plane of his
nails, stretched and moved under the brutal thrust of thumb and fingers, the
faint sound of tearing cloth gave way to the leathery whisper of flesh against
flesh.
Chapter
22
The
lock to Medfield 18 clicked, and Picardy pushed open the door. A tiny point of
light blazed on the threshold for a moment, then moved silently inside. Dorian
followed.
The
lights in the examination room were dim. She turned them up. "Take off
your shoes," she said to Dorian. With a quick movement she tossed a
handful of blue-gray crystals in a small tub at the floor and filled it with
water.
Suddenly
she looked up, eyes darting toward the ceiling and the faint scratching sound
that came from it. "Did you hear that?"
"What?"
asked Dorian.
She
scanned the ceiling again, then shrugged. "Nothing, I guess. You can soak
your heels while I check the records." She looked around the room for a
sign of Kurt and said in a voice not quite steady, "I'm not really sure
what you want."
Then
she blinked. Where was he? The spark had disappeared with the brightening of
the lights. "Where?"
When
Kurt's voice sounded in her ear, she jumped. The feeling of unreality flooded
her again. Childhood memories of ghost stories and demons came back with a
rush; stories that always ended with a flapping of hands and a loud, breathy
"oo-oo-ooh" in small ears pricked with delicious anticipation. She
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157
wanted
to laugh. She wanted desperately to laugh, but she did not dare, because to
laugh might loose the ragged edges of hysteria. She took a slow breath.
"Please... can we see you?"
Almost
at once the image of the immortal formed. Kurt spoke again. "I've
frightened you. I'm sorry."
She
forced herself to look into his eyes. Just eyes. That's all. Like anybody
else's. Not so different; not so strange. She felt like the little girl in the
fable—Vesper, riding the nightwind to Magnificat, trying to hide from the
blazing eyes of God. But there was no dark, safe cloak to hide in here. Not in
Medfield 18.
The
ridiculousness of it all struck her, and a smile crept across her lips. Maybe
this wasn't really a dream, but it was best to treat it that way.
The
smile faded and her gaze darted toward the ceiling again, toward the sound that
might have been a puff of wind or a faint sigh. When she dropped her eyes, they
met Dorian's frankly curious stare. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing.
Just hearing things again."
In the
shadows of Picardy's room above Medfield 18, the man lay motionless and stared
down at the little group in the examination room below. Quiet. He had to be
quiet.
Stretto
lay with his face close to the ventilation duct. He had worked the cover loose
with barely a sound, but still she had noticed. He had made no other until his
sharp gasp of surprise when the man appeared from nowhere.
A
thrill of excitement ran through him. The man from the beam. He closed his eyes
for a moment and pictured the scene in Becken's office; The face forming in a
cloud of stars that flowed into a headdress, the lips moving silently, forming
again and again the word "Ram."
One of
the immortals—gone for nearly two thousand years, gone so long that no one was
really sure they had ever existed.
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Why was
he here? Why did he appear to a lowerstave girl in a tiny Medfietd?
Why
this girl?
Stretto
narrowed his single eye and stared through the duct. It made no sense, none at
all. A fielder for the Tema's poor. A girl who wandered through the Am Steg at
night and stole into Tattersfield like a common whore.
Why?
Tattersfield!
The
thought, when it came, was stunning. It stole his breath with its clarity, its
cohesion. Tattersfield. Of course. The thieves—the killers. It was said they
had it still, had the process that gave immortality. He sucked in a slow breath
that was sweet in his lungs. So it was true. And that one, that small girl
standing below so close he could almost touch her—she was the key.
Clever,
he thought. Who would have suspected? A poor girl who could wander freely among
the offstaves... a girl trained in medicine, in the secrets of the body... a
girl who spoke intimately with an image from the Ram.
So it's
you, he said silently, intimately, to Picardy. You have it. She was the one who
carried the knowledge a hundred thousand would kill for. He stared down at her
and a wet glaze spread in his pale eye. How slender her neck was, how easy it
would be to snap, how like the sound of a dry reed bundle breaking it would be.
He smiled to himself. Not yet. Not till he had her secret. And she would give
it to him, that was sure.
He felt
for the little silver ball tucked inside his shirt. He felt its curves through
the cloth and his Fingers caressed it. The Witness. A dry laugh rose in his
throat, a silent paroxysm of a laugh that curled his lips and narrowed his eye
until it was a silver scar in a coiling nest of thickened tissue. Yes. The
Witness.
Becken
had handed him more than he knew.
"The
children," Kurt began, "the ones you call the poco tardos—not all of
them were empaths. Only
RAM
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159
a few.
They all seemed alike, but they weren't. Only the ones with the inherited form
could read the infrasound. The others had an extra chromosome, but these
children didn't."
Picardy
stared at him. "Chromosome? What's that?"
Kurt
looked at the girl in dismay. The fact that they could speak to each other,
understand each other, had made him forget the enormous gulf between them. The
great quake had cut them off from the Ram, from their own kind, for nearly two
thousand years. It had taken them till now to rebuild their technology to a
primitive level. Yet, the girl was trained in medicine. Was it possible she
knew nothing about a human cell?
He
tried to explain, drawing on the crystals of memory, painting a word picture of
the inner workings of a cell and its tiny core of genetic material.
"Oh,"
she said at last, "I see." With a quick laugh, she turned to Dorian,
who soaked his heels in the soothing bath. "He means the dark
bodies."
Kurt
felt a smile of relief creep over his lips. "One of the chromosomes—the
dark bodies—is large."
Picardy
frowned for a moment and then turned abruptly toward a small cabinet. She
opened it and selected a small silver ball from a rack. She dropped it into a
battered old scan and pulled the scancord. After a balky start, the sphere
began to wind with a high-pitched hum.
As Kurt
stared at the scanplate, a code number appeared and then the imprint of a tiny
hand marked by a single crease across its palm. The simian crease, he thought.
The words came to his lips, but not the translation. How could she understand
that this child was marked with a palm similar to the great apes of Earth when
no Aulosian had ever seen such an animal?
"Each
baby has a signature done," she said. "That is, most babies. We try
to do them all, but
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some of
the nomadics won't bring their children in, and we can't do these in the
field."
As Kurt
watched, the projection changed and a series of pictures that he took to be
blood samples came on followed by more code. Then it changed again to a pattern
of wavery X's.
"The
dark bodies," said Picardy. She pointed to a shadowy chromosome much
larger than its mate. "Is that what you mean?"
Kurt
stared as the memory switched in. "Yes," he said. "That's
it."
"Poco
tardos with this pattern are rare. Only three percent of the population carries
the dark bodies that cause it."
"Less
on Anche," said Dorian sloshing his feet out of the basin and padding
wetly toward the projection. "Barely two percent on Anche."
A loud
squawk startled them all. Then Picardy groaned and answered the call box with a
quick, "Eighteen here."
The
voice of the comfielder was pleasant: "You're due on now."
"But
I'm supposed to be off tonight," Picardy protested.
"Quartalist
in charge says you're on. He says he let you off last night. He had to call in Twenty-two
to replace you, so you take over for Twenty-two tonight."
Picardy
stared at the call box with a look of chagrin. "Right," she said with
a slow, rueful smile.
"Have
a good night."
The
comfielder clicked off and Picardy looked first at Kurt, then Dorian. "I
have to go up to change and get my sharps." She headed for the door.
"I'll be back in a few minutes."
The
dying bay breeze caressed Picardy's face as she stepped out of Medfield 18. It
was growing darker, and soon the calm would come before the wind turned.
She
looked up uneasily at the web of stars that snared the sky. They seemed thicker
now, as if some-
RAM
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161
how
they had multiplied in the darkness. She felt a sudden vertigo and dropped her
gaze to the moonwashed steps that led up to her room.
The
lock gave way. Stepping inside, she fumbled for the lights. The bed lay as
rumpled as when Dorian left it; dried mud streaked the pale blue cover. She
sighed faintly at the mess and turned toward the wardrobe.
Strange.
She didn't remember leaving the door open. Unknotting her sash she folded it
twice and tucked it away. Her yellow singleset, loose now, slipped from her
shoulders and slithered to the floor. She stepped out of it and was reaching
down to pick it up when something made her pause.
A
shiver touched the nape of her neck.Hand poised over the singleset, she froze.
Something... something not quite scent, nor yet sound....
Idiot,
she thought. She was nervous as a skitterwind, and about as smart. That's just
fine, she scolded herself. Go a little jitty in the head. Solves everything,
doesn't it?
She
scooped up the singleset and deposited it in the reed basket at her feet.
Again, a shiver crept up her neck. Shrugging it off, she reached for a uniform,
gave it a shake, and stepped in.
Pulling
her sash snug around her waist, she scanned the room. Now where had she put her
sharps? For a moment she did not see them. Then she spotted the end of the
quiver half hidden under the comfort where she had slid it off last night.
Leaning
over, she reached for the quiver and slung it on in one easy motion. She was
reaching for her treatment belt, hoping its portable communicator would be
silent tonight, when the lights went out.
Startled,
she blinked at the sudden darkness.
The
sound came from behind—the quick intake of a breath. She whirled, hand darting
for the cautery. She spun off balance.
Hands
closed around her wrists.
She
pulled one free, clawing at the man, clutching.
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She
grasped only cloth. She felt it give way, heard it tear.
A light
shot in her eyes. Bright white. She gasped and clawed at nothing. Pupils
constricting, heart beating in hard little spurts, she saw the glitter of his
knife and felt its sharp point prick against her throat.
Too
late. The words were a whimper in her mind.
Too
late, too late, too late....
Chapter
23
Not
much time, thought Kurt uneasily, not much time. Where was the girl?
Dorian
stirred uneasily and stared at the clock. "She should have been back a
long time ago."
"We'll
go on without her then. You'lT have to help me find this child." With a
nod Kurt indicated the silver ball still lodged in the scan.
Dorian
looked at it, then slid his eyes away. "Maybe we'd better wait."
"We
can't."
Dorian
hesitated. "It's in code. They're all in code." He dropped his gaze
for a moment as if he were ashamed, then he looked up at Kurt and said,
"I, uh, don't know the system. I can't even read the names."
Before
Kurt could answer, a voice, shocking as it was sudden, rang in his ears. He
recoiled at the sound.
The
scoutship spoke:
REMAINING
OXYGEN SUFFICIENT FOR 88 RAMINS. RELAX NOW. ALL WILL BE WELL
RAM
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163
Blinking,
Kurt stared around the little ship as if he had never seen it before. His
concentration—his involvement—had been total; it was Aulos that was the
reality, the place where he was. It took a moment more before he heard Jacoby's
call and answered.
Jacoby's
voice was sharper than it needed to be. "I've been calling for the last
ten. You wouldn't answer." Then a pause, a lowering of his voice. "I
didn't know what to expect."
Without
waiting for Kurt's answer, he went on, "You've been hours. Any luck? It
hit me that we can't get through to the alien without a transmitter. I'm going
to try to rig the skimmer. Then we can get ground to you and relay via the
beam."
"We're
close," said Kurt in a low voice. "A possibility. The child may be
empathic."
"Anything
more from Ooberong?"
"Nothing,"
he said, but he wondered uneasily if she had tried to reach him and failed to
break through his single-minded concentration on Aulos.
Then
Jacoby was gone, and Kurt turned his eyes toward the dilating lens once more
and moved through....
Dorian
was staring at him with a mingled look of curiosity and dismay. "What?
What did you say?"
"I
was talking to someone else."
Dorian's
eyes widened, and Kurt thought he saw the sparkle of fear in them. "I may
do that from time to time," he said. "Don't be frightened."
"I'm
not," he said, too carefully. Then with another glance at the time,
"We'd better check on Picardy. We'd better go up and check."
The
door to Picardy's room was unlocked. Dorian reached for the lights. He looked
around the empty room for a moment before he called to her.
There
was no answer.
At
first the room and its adjacent bath yielded no sign. It was only after a
second careful look that he found the shred of black cloth on the floor. When
he leaned over to pick it up, he saw the little silver
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ball.
It had rolled partway across the room and lodged in the tangle of Picardy's
communication belt.
He
turned it over in his hand. Surprise tracked over his face. He stared at the
sphere a moment more before he said to Kurt, "This doesn't belong to the
Medfield. Look."
The
emblem on the silver ball was scribed in fine red lines: a curving triangle
flanked with two pointed blades. "Canon," said Dorian. "It's a
canoner's Witness."
Dorian
dropped the Witness in the scan and pulled the scanchord. As it wound, the
high-pitched sound whined in counterpoint to his quick breathing.
Just a
little winded, he told himself, and yet he knew it was the uneasy feeling about
Picardy that quickened his breath more than the run back down to the
examination room.
He
thrust his hands into deep pockets and hunched over the scanplate, frowning
impatiently as the old machine hummed its almost interminable whine. At last it
stopped.
The
image flickered and he looked into Picardy's eyes.
He
listened in shocked silence, unable to speak, scarcely able to think. Last
night. It happened last night. Why hadn't she told him?
He
tried to reconstruct what she said, what she did. Not a word. Not one word. In
chagrin he realized that he was the reason. He had been so wrapped in his own
problems, he had never once thought of anything else.
"...
the Senza..." she was saying.
That
was why. She didn't want to get off the raft near Tattersfield because of last
night. Not in. the dark. It was near the bridge where it happened.
She
gave a street name. In vain, he tried to picture where it was. Nothing came to
him but a shadowy maze of abandoned government buildings from the old town.
RAM
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165
Dorian
raised stricken eyes to Kurt, "She heard something upstairs. Maybe it was
him." He waved a hand toward the scan. "It could have been him."
He stared at the strip of black cloth he clutched as if it could speak.
"We've got to find her."
Kurt
stared in dismay, first at the scanplate, then Dorian. Find her! He wanted to
laugh. The universe was about to crumble to nothing and this boy expected him
to look for a missing girl. "There's no time. Not now."
Dorian
narrowed his eyes at Kurt. "There is. There is if you want to know who
that is." He flung an arm toward the silver sphere that held the tiny
handprint. "They're Picardy's records. I told you I can't read them."
A faint
thought moved in Kurt's mind. Ooberong? What? What was it? The image came to
him of Picardy, standing in the little glen by the river, hands outspread, eyes
raised. Something... Something so faint, so dim, he could not say what it was,
or why it mattered. But it did. Somehow it did. The conviction grew that
somehow it was of the utmost importance that he find the girl—and soon.
"All right," he said.
Dorian
tugged at the narrow strip of black cloth as if it were a spring that could
propel him into action, "Shawm. Find Shawm. He knows the Senza." Then
he scooped up the Witness, turned, and headed for the door. "I'm going for
help," he said. "I'm going to the Augment."
An
infinitesimal point of light hung over the river, hovered for a moment, and
began to move. No one noticed as it sped upstream toward the bridge that led to
Tattersefield. Though many stared above the darkened sails of the Fiata toward
a field of stars gone mad, not one among the nervous throng that packed the
Pontibrio noticed.
Pausing
as if it searched for something, the dot of light moved again and vanished
among the glittering reflections of bridge lights skittering toward the shore.
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It
skimmed above the empty sails of the Fiata, causing a young boy who hung in the
rigging to rub absently at his eyes as if a speck of dust lodged there.
Dipping, it hid in the flaring light of a torch and scanned the gathering knots
of people before it darted off to dance in the sparks of a dying campfire.
Where?
How could he find him?
A dozen
people moved by, swirls of bariolage darkly brilliant in the flicker of
firelight.
Where?
They were alike... all alike. Where?
The
thought came bright as the spark of light: The scar...
Far
above the plains of Tattersfield, a man in a small scoutship turned and spoke
to the brain of his ship.
ADJUSTING
Then,
leaning forward once more, he looked through a darkened lens.
He
looked into a world of grays and whites set with angry flaring jewels. The
metal spokes of a jig wheel glittered with feverish red lights. A tent stake
glinted orange. Over a fire of white flame, a cookpot blazed bronzed green.
He
skimmed over a whitewashed landscape peopled with flat gray moving shapes.
Scanning each one, he moved like a will-o-the-wisp over the pallid, dusty land.
A gray
girl clutched a shadowed harp with star-blue strings. Her ash-gray fingers wore
rings of flame. Her ankles rang with glistening umber bells.
The
Fiata's slackened sails hung dead white. A nimbus of yellow ringed the dead
eyes of the Ramshead; glowing purple struck with blue lights flickered from the
great horns.
The
silent hexen drum at the foot of the Fiata glimmered white in a circle of fire.
Ghostly tatters streamed from bone-pale bodies. Ash-hands plucked at
instruments of flame.
The
tiny spark moved in widening circles, searched a hundred faces washed with
gray, paused, then skimmed away again.
RAM
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167
Each
tent of Tattersfield was a mushroom topped with a glittering orange jewel.
Shadow figures moved on tangles of white paths.
There?
But it was only the glimmering shank of a string-tarn caressing a waxen cheek.
And
then he saw it: The scar burned from a face as pale as death. Its lights, now
red as blood, now restless scarlet, shimmered with an inner heat like a tongue
of lava creeping over ash.
The
point of light moved close and spoke.
Startled,
Shawm whirled in the direction of the voice.
Kurt
tried to read the expression in his face, then gave it up. There was no time.
The boy
stood clutching a nagareh, hands touching the sparkling yellow circles of its
metal-banded drumskins, colorless fingers curved over glittering hoops. He
cocked his head as Kurt told him why he had come. He listened in silence, then
raised his eyes to the point of light. "When we were on the river, I asked
you for something," he said. "You didn't give me an answer."
The
process again. Kurt felt suddenly, profoundly weary. No, he thought. No. He
looked at Shawm without seeing him, without wanting to see him. He was grateful
for the distortion of sight that turned the boy into an abstract of white
planes on bone. It was easy not to care whether an abstraction lived forever or
if it died.
He
could not care, he told himself. He could not afford to. What did it matter if
this boy, this planet, took on immortality and all its attendant problems? He
did not really care—as long as it was not his responsibility. He could not,
would not, take this on again. It was too much.
Wasn't
the alien enough? Wasn't it enough to know that he—he alone—was responsible? He
had taken a dead boy's song of Earth and sent it out to the stars. It had made
him feel noble, this quest for
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something
beyond himself, this sure feeling that he would find it,
Magical
thinking. The three year old's dream of power: wish and make it happen. How
very godlike of the three year old.
He had
meddled enough. He had played with life and death and destiny for long enough.
It had taken him ten thousand years to realize that he was a fool, a god of tin
and brass, a three year old. Now the last notes were dying, and the piper's
hand was out.
He
stared at the boy, at shadowy eyes in a pale, still face. I'm sorry, he
thought. I'm sorry for you, but I can't take the responsibility anymore.
As if
he read Kurt's silence, Shawm looked away, then back. "Come with me."
Turning quickly, he strode back toward the pallid mushroom tents of
Tattersfield.
Kurt
followed.
Shawm
touched a flap of tent, and they entered. A sand-pale girl dressed in flutters
of moonlight stood near the glistening center pole of the tent. A shadow girl
with a twisted foot attended her. On the packed-dirt floor three shadow
children huddled, two girls and a baby boy. Shawm's chin went up, "They
call us killers." Catching the hand of the smallest girl, he pulled her up
and thrust her toward the tiny spark of light. "Who has she killed?"
He crouched beside the infant. Scooping him up, he held him out like a
sacrifice. "Who has he killed?"
"I
can't," said Kurt.
"Shawm!
What—" The girl's hand fluttered toward her mouth.
They
didn't know, Kurt thought. They couldn't see him. He spoke rapidly to the
scoutship's brain. Instantly, the point of light flared and became the image of
a man. The lens dilated, and the yellow wash of a lantern gleamed on the
brilliant colors of the girl's bariolage.
She
stared wide-eyed for a moment then fell to her knees.
RAM
SONG
169
"Get
up, Clarin," cried Shawm. "He's not God. He's a man." The look
in his eyes was anguished. "Just a man."
Trembling,
the girl got to her feet. "A trick then?" she said uncertainly.
"A
trick," he said. "A man."
"From
the Ram," said Kurt and told them who he was.
"Picardy."
Clarin gave a helpless little shrug and turned toward Shawm, then Zoppa.
"We've got to help her."
"She
spoke of a man with one eye." Kurt looked first at one, then another.
"Do you know this man?"
Clarin
raised questioning eyes to Zoppa, "Koleda?"
Zoppa
nodded slowly, "Maybe." Then to Kurt, "Koleda was one of ours.
She played the stringtam in the market. The girls there warned her about a man
named Stretto. 'He rules the "scope," they'd say, but she just
laughed." Zoppa's eyes darkened, "She laughed, but then one night a
year ago she disappeared. And that night Stretto became a one-eye."
"She's
dead," said Clarin. "They say he killed her. The guileman saw it. But
who would believe a Tatter?"
"The
guileman?"
"He
deals with Stretto," said Zoppa. "He sells him the guile we don't
need. Then he gives us our share. It isn't much, but it's food."
"Where?
Where does he do this?"
"In
the 'scope," said Zoppa. Then, as the baby began to howl, she scooped him
up with a murmured, "Hush. You'll call the hexen."
"The
Kaleidoscope," said Shawm, "here in the Senza."
"It's
the old Conductus building," said Zoppa with another murmur to the baby.
"It makes one-eye feel powerful, I think."
"Show
me where it is," said Kurt. "I need your help."
A look
he could not read traced its way across Shawm's face. "Like we need
yours?"
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"Do
it, Shawm." Clarin reached out and touched his shoulder. "For
Picardy."
Shawm
stared at her for a moment. "For Picardy then." He reached in the
cookpot and drew out a ladle. Turning it in his hand, he said, "I'll draw
you a map." The ladle handle was scratching a design in the hard-packed
floor when the tent flap moved and a breeze scurried through fluttering the
tatters they wore. "The wind's turned," said Shawm. "It's time
for Festival."
Chapter
24
The
mosso clicked past the Baguette's fountain and its ring of canoners. Just
ahead, Dorian could see the lights of the Composition Complex. As the vehicle
slowed, he stepped forward gingerly. The blisters on his heels had given way to
raw, throbbing sores. Should have bandaged them, he muttered to himself, and
swung off when the mosso came to its abbreviated stop.
The
buff Canon Office was washed in alternating stripes of blood-red lights and
white: the body of law and the spirit. One of the symbolic white lights had
failed and a shadowy strip took its place.
Dorian
stared anxiously at the building. It was late. Was anyone still there? With
relief he saw a yellow glow puncturing the hand-carved clefs at the side of the
building.
The
canoner's clerk looked up. "What service?"
"I
want to see the Augment."
"What
for?"
RAM
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171
"I
want to report a person missing."
"Tell
the Witness." The clerk pushed a lens toward his face and clicked it on.
"Look at the red dot," he said, "and talk clearly."
Dorian
fixed his eyes on the small glowing dot and cleared his throat. When he came to
the part about the canoner's Witness he had found, he paused and stared at the
bored, pouch-lidded clerk. No, he thought. He'd save that for the Augment.
When he
finished, the clerk shut off the Witness and turned back to a task that seemed
to involve the interminable shuffling of stacks of blue sheets with yellow and
white, interspersed with an occasional stab of a finger on a scarred counter.
"Well,"
said Dorian.
"Well
what?"
"I
told you. I want to see the Augment."
"Why
do you think the Augment wants to see you?"
"This
is important."
The
clerk snorted. "Important, is it? Do you live in a cave? At the bottom of
the sea, maybe? We've got a beam that makes people crazy in the streets. We've
got a sky that looks like a speckle-belly. And if we need it, we've got
Festival and a thousand weeping weavers dunked on tash." He gave a short
laugh, "And you're going to make excitement for us—with a girl who stepped
out of the office."
"She
didn't just step out," he began.
"Is
that right?"
Dorian
thrust out his jaw at the man's condescending tone.
"She's
not a child. People come. People go. You said yourself she's not been gone
long." The clerk narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "Chances are she'll
forget the lovers' quarrel and come back to you by tomorrow." He patted
his fingers together and grinned as if he was immensely pleased with himself.
"Duet again, eh, fielder?"
"We
didn't quarrel," Dorian raged. "And I'm not a fielder, either."
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The
clerk shook his head and grinned again. "I want to see the Augment."
With a faint sigh, the clerk shrugged and pointed toward a chamber to his
right.
The
assistant errander shuffled his tray of reports, rolling sphere after sphere
into a pattern that would make sense only to another errander. He looked up at
Dorian and then pointedly at the time. "After hours."
"It's
an emergency."
"I
said 'after hours,' fielder. Come back tomorrow."
Dorian
drew himself up, "I'm not a fielder. I want to see the Augment."
"And
I'm not an errander," said the errander with an aggrieved sniff. "I
do this for entertainment. I love it so much, I don't even stop to eat. As for
the Augment, forget it."
"I
told you, I'm not a Fielder. I'm an Artisan candidate from the Polytext."
A thin
smile quirked at the errander's lips. "An AM? Of course you are." The
smile grew thinner. "And I'm the Augment. What do you want?"
Dorian's
eyes narrowed. "I want to speak to your superior." And when he did,
he was going to suggest that the Office of Canon harbored insufferable
lowerstave fools.
The
errander's glued-on smile slid away. "Now you listen to me, fielder. I've
been here for thirteen hours. Thirteen hours. I'm busy. The Augment's busy.
We're all busy. Come back tomorrow." His hand swatted the table by way of
emphasis, causing the curving rows of spheres to jitter on their tray. Then he
turned his back on Dorian and began to deposit his reports in a series of
cylindrical filers.
Dorian
stared at him for a moment. Then impulsively he headed around the table and
stepped on a pedal near the errander's feet. The accordions gave a faint whoosh
as they slid open. He pushed past the open-mouthed errander and ran into the
passage that led to the inner heart of the building.
RAM
SONG
173
Before
the errander had the presence of mind to hit the alarm, he was halfway up a
curving flight of stairs.
The
man's shouted, "Stop!" came muffled through the rapidly closing
accordions. By the time they slid open again, Dorian was inside the atrium
marked AUGMENT.
Another
errander, this one a thin-faced woman, looked up in surprise. "How did you
get in here?"
The
room was a curving triangle. Six unmarked doors led off from it. "The
Augment? Where is he?"
A quick
dart of her eyes told him. As he strode toward the door, she jumped up.
"What are you doing?"
"He's
sick," came the quick lie. "The Augment's sick. He sent for me."
Shock
tracked over her face, then disbelief, "He's not. I'd know it."
An
alarm chimed from the wall. It rose in pitch, wavered, rose again.
Dorian
darted through the door.
Becken
the Augment looked up in annoyance. Pique turned to surprise when he saw that
the intruder was not the familiar figure of his errander, but a boy. A fielder.
"Who are you?"
"I'm
Dorian. Dorian Rynn. I have to talk to you. It's important."
A frown
flashed across Becken's broad face. It was replaced almost at once by a
carefully neutral expression made second-nature by years of diplomacy.
"It's
about a fielder. She's missing." Dorian glanced nervously over his
shoulder toward the door. "We went looking for her." He pulled out
the canoner's Witness, "We found this."
Becken's
black eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly for a moment. He held out a hand and
examined the little sphere that Dorian placed there. "It might be one of
ours," he said carefully.
"It
is. She reported an attack—by a one-eyed
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man
with a knife. He may have her now. We have to find her."
Becken's
voice took on a soothing tone. "Of course, we do. And we will."
Dorian
hunched forward and lowered his voice, "There's something else."
The
door burst open and two grim-faced canoners strode in, followed by a nervous
errander.
In one
move, the first canoner pinioned Dorian's arms to his sides. "Come along,
fielder."
"I'm
not a fielder," he protested. His feet scrabbled futilely for a purchase
as they dragged him toward the door. "Please. You've got to listen."
"Wait,"
said Becken.
The
canoner who held Dorian stopped short and looked in surprise at the Augment.
"Let
him go. I'll hear him." With a wave of his hand and a quick^'Wait
outside," he dismissed the canoners. The errander stared at him
expectantly for a moment. Then, at his raised eyebrow, she left the room and
closed the door a little too noisily behind her.
"I'm
not a Fielder," Dorian began. "I'm not lowerstave at all....
Becken's
face was a mask. He knew it seemed kindly to the boy, and interested. He wore
the expression partly because of long habit, partly to conceal the emotions
writhing inside him.
Stretto
was a fool. How could he be so incredibly stupid? He raised black, fathomless
eyes to Dorian. This boy had seen the Witness. Who else? "You weren't
alone," he said evenly. "You said *we.'"
Dorian
nodded and began to speak.
Inside,
behind the mask, Becken felt his heart quicken as the boy told him about the
immortal. The beam, he thought. Was it the man from the beam? "Describe
him."
As
Dorian talked, die Augment's mind spun feverishly. The boy wasn't lying then.
He'd seen him
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too.
The immortal—and he was looking for a fielder girl. "Why?" he said
aloud. "Why does he need her?"
The boy
was talking gibberish now—something about an alien, a poco tardo. And something
else: The net of stars that circled Aulos.
So they
were connected, the beam and the arc of stars. They had to be distress signals,
and from a ship he had barely believed existed. A frown flitted across his
face, then smoothed away. Almost at once a hint of a smile moved on his lips.
Even immortals needed help, it seemed. This one from a fielder girl. How badly?
he wondered. How much would he give for her?
Immortality.
Was she worth that to him?
The
thought took away his breath. An exchange— the girl for the process.
Immortality—controlled
by the Augment of Porto Vielle. He almost laughed out loud. Controlled not by a
secondary official of a secpnd-rate city, but by the richest, most powerful man
on the face of Aulos.
But it
was necessary, he told himself. What if it fell into the wrong hands? The
Tatters? Or Stretto? Or some misguided group that believed immortality was for
everyone, even offstaves and misfits. He had no choice. Not really. It was a
chance for Canon to give immortality back to the world.
His
eyes were neutral when he looked at the boy. Careful. He had to be careful.
Find the girl first. But what if he was too late? The sudden image came to him
of the stringtam player: The girl lying so still on the table. The shafts of
colored lights moving over her body, flickering in the glazed, staring eyes.
Becken's
gaze slid restlessly around the room. He had to be quick. He could deal with
Stretto later, but now he had to move before anyone knew.
But
someone did.
He
stared at Dorian for a long moment. Then rising, he said, "Don't you
worry. We'll find her." Sliding a small door on his desk open, he touched
a
Electrum
to silver strings. At the quick, "What service?" e answered,
"The Assistant Augment. I need him."
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The
errander's voice came back a few minutes later. "With respect, no answer.
No one is at home."
Becken
smiled to himself. He hadn't expected an answer; it was a confirmation. There
was only one place Stretto could be.
He
extended a paternal arm around Dorian's shoulder. "We'll find her."
Then, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he said, "Perhaps you'd
better come along. We might need your help."
Dorian
looked up with a grateful sigh and nodded. On the way out of the Augment
chambers he looked steadily at the errander and said, "The lowerstaves
here are incredibly rude, aren't they?"
Becken
gave a faint practiced smile toward the errander and shrugged. Then in a low
voice to Dorian, "You know how they are." He gave the boy's shoulder
a reassuring pat. "Not to be trusted. Not to be trusted at all."
Chapter
25
Like
the rest of the abandoned government buildings of the old town, the Conductus
was buff sandplaster reinforced with underlying metal. And like the rest, its
salt sand, culled from the Brio's beach, had eroded the life from its metal
skeleton.
It was
an inward-turning structure that looked to the street only through narrow,
curving, f-shaped windows set high in its walls. Its two entrances were guarded
by heavy metal-clad doors.
Stripped
of its art and statuary, crumbling from years of neglect, the Conductus was a
magnificent
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177
ruin.
Ornate tile topped with the Shield of Quartal climbed a third of the way up its
inner walls and ambled through the arched alcoves that flanked its domed
atrium. More tile traced the angles where wall met ceiling. Here the downward
pointing blade of the Trigon of Monody stabbed at walls stained with streaks of
corrosion that in the somber light reminded Picardy of blood.
She
struggled once more against the bonds that held her to an alcove pillar. The
strap-bands of reed drew her hands tightly against her back; their thin edges
cut into her wrists, and her fingers felt numb. Swelling, she thought.
The man
with one eye sat at a table in the center of the atrium. Blue-white light,
intensified by the shifting colors surrounding it, streamed down and bled the
color from his skin. She stared at his profile, at the blind eye in its nest of
dead-white scars. Two men stood facing him, now washed blue in the moving
lights, now green. Another man stood some distance away near the heavy doors
that opened to the street.
The man
with one eye had not bothered to speak to her. He had brought her here and had
her tied like an animal. Then he had busied himself with other things, other
people. Now, he turned to look at her, a half-smile twisting his lips.
Picardy
thrust her chin away. She would not look back. She would never look at him no
matter what he did. Instead, she leaned back with her head against the pillar
and her legs tucked under her and stared in despair at the dome.
The
giant kaleidoscope turned slowly. White light blazed from its center; its
surrounds, glistening with jeweled patterns, cast shifting rays of color onto
the pale stone floor. Over the rise and fall of the men's voices she could hear
the rasp of its mechanism and the faint clink of its hidden shards of colored
glass as they slid past one another on their bed of oil. Her
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eyes
dragged past it toward a featureless patch of ceiling a hand's-breadth from its
curving edge. Though the night was warm, she felt a shiver begin.
She
stared at the kaleidoscope again, willing its patterns into her mind instead of
thought. She felt numb now and chilled. The first violent rushes of adrenalin
had drained away her strength. Although her hands still worked against their
bonds, it was as if they were alien things. The chilliness spread. She felt the
cold tremble through her legs.
The
kaleidoscope turned, casting its central white light on the table below,
flooding the atrium with evanescent jewels. She huddled just under the alcove
arch, her face in shadow, the floor near her feet washed in color. Deep purple
glided into green, then red, staining her quiver of sharps where they lay.
He had
tossed them down contemptuously— artfully—near her. Near enough that she could
almost touch them with an extended foot; far enough away that they intensified
her helplessness.
He had
done it on purpose. She was sure of that. Although he had not spoken, he fixed
her with a look as if to say, "There they are. Help yourself." And
there was something else that came into his pale eye when he looked down at the
quiver and at the cautery that had wounded him. When he fixed her again with a
stare, faint smile twitching at the corner of his lips, she was stricken with a
sick terror.
He was
going to kill her. She knew it as surely as she had ever known anything. He was
going to kill her at his leisure, at his own pace. She could feel him savoring
it as he looked at her.
The
kaleidoscope turned, and a patch of yellow danced near her feet. Yellow like
the sun. She tried to draw warmth from its impersonal light. Her hands throbbed
and a growing pressure in her bladder tormented her. She was going to die
without relief from either of these, and it wasn't fair. Not fair. She prayed
again to the God of her childhood, lifting her face toward the shifting colors
as if she hoped to see
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179
Him
there, drawing up her knees until her body curled like a child's in sleep.
She
prayed for release. She prayed for it all to be a dream. She cajoled in
half-formed pleas; she bargained. And finally, there was nothing left but the
faint litany of "Please... oh please... oh please,.,"
She
drew on her own scorn then. Stop it, she told herself. You're not a child. The
image came of her own death: everything she was, everything she knew, streaming
away in puddles as red as the moving light at her feet. Stop it, she said.
The
words of the immortal came to her again. She had heard what he said, had seen
his face when he spoke, and yet she had not completely believed him. He had
talked of the end of everything, and she had denied it, tucking it away in her
mind, going about her business as if tomorrow were on schedule. His words had
had no more meaning than the colored patterns playing over the stones.
She
tried to think of his meaning now, but it eluded her. It was too vast; it was
not personal.
Leaning
back against the pillar, she turned her face toward the kaleidoscope again and
tried to fill her mind with color and the play of pattern on pattern. Red bled
into jet. Glowing green blazed with yellow like the sun. The yellow spread and
changed to a white so dazzling that she blinked, and in that instant a tiny
spark detached itself from the blaze of light and shot toward her.
It
glinted on the pillar over her head. Then it darted behind.
A voice
whispered in her ear.
Picardy
cast startled eyes toward the sound. The immortal? She strained to see, to
hear.
"Don't
speak," he said, "just listen. I'm going for Shawm. For help."
Hurry,
she thought. "Hurry," she could not help whispering, but the dot of
light was gone.
It
glimmered near a window slot, then sped through into the dark streets like a
truant speck of
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moonlight.
Rising, it moved toward Tattersfield to look again for the boy with the scar.
From
the other direction the private mosso came to a stop. The Augment gazed
thoughtfully at the dark Conductus building in the distance. "We'll walk
from here," he said to Dorian. "We'll be meeting my assistant."
The
night was bright. Two moons hung over Aulos, throwing black shadows from the
buildings, fading the net of stars to blurring points of light. As he followed
Becken through the lonely streets, a dozen lurid stories about the Senza popped
into his mind. Dorian's gaze darted nervously toward the inky puddles that
spilled from every structure. Foolish, he told himself. Wasn't he with the
Augment? His heart quickened when he saw a flicker of light from a black
doorway, A moment later a wail split the night. The sobbing low-pitched cry
grew to a shriek that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Becken
gave a low laugh. "The Fiata."
Dorian
felt his heart start again. He echoed Becken's laugh with a shaky one of his
own. "I didn't know we were so close to it." He stared in the
direction of the sound, but he could see only the outline of black rooftops
against the charcoal sky.
He
moved on, but when the night wind shivered down his neck he glanced toward the
rooftops again and gasped. Giant eyes stared down at him. A mouth splayed open;
a scarlet tongue flicked over fangs. Twin curving horns stretched toward the
moons.
This
time Dorian's laugh was steadier. Only the Fiata. Only the face of the Ram
peering over the buildings. He had been foolish long enough. Wasn't he with the
Augment? The highest authority of law in Porto Vielle? What could be safer?
By the
time they reached the wide doors of the Conductus, Dorian felt quite calm.
The
point of light moved in the flicker of torches. Then it paused.
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181
Over
the bray of a thousand reeds, Shawm heard a voice. He stared beyond the sparkle
of light, his eyes darkening as he listened. Then he nodded abruptly.
"I'll have to tell the Master."
Turning,
he began to run and the dot of light followed.
Tatters
flying, he weaved through a group of dancers bending in muscle-warming
exercises. Dodging a maze 6"f rigging, he made his way toward the giant
tuned-drum that lay at the foot of the Fiata.
He
pushed past the old scentsinger, reached up, and swung easily onto the
stretchskin.
The
Fiata Master stood in the center. He was tall and reed-thin. The night wind
rippled through his crimson tatters and whipped the white mane of his hair
beneath a curving ram's horn headdress.
Shawm's
feet sounded on the drumskin.
The
Master turned in surprise and narrowed his eyes at the boy.
Involuntarily,
Shawm dropped his gaze. Then he looked up again, awed by the man and his
authority. In Festival the Master was law; to approach like this was an
offense.
A quick
apology, and then his words came out in a tumble. He told him of Picardy and
his mother; he told him of the man named Stretto who held her— the man who had
killed one of theirs a year ago.
The
Fiata Master listened in silence. "Where?" he said at last.
"The
Kaleidoscope. We can break in—"
"There?"
Then, "Impossible. It's a Conductus."
"There
are hundreds of us. We can do it."
"No.
We can't. Not since the Taking."
The
Taking? What did the ancient theft of the process have to do with this?
"The
doors are fortified. The windows are nothing more than slots in walls thicker
than your body."
Shawm
looked blankly at the Master.
"Don't
you know anything, boy?" he said. "Since the Taking, every Conductus
has been built that way.
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It's a
fortress. They all are. It's meant to keep us out."
No way?
No way at all?
The
Fiata Master stared away for a long moment. When he looked at Shawm again, his
eyes were dark. "If she can get out. If she can get through the doors.
Then we can help her."
With a
wave of a hand, the Fiata Master dismissed Shawm, who turned and with two leaps
left the stretchskin. With another he signaled to the dozen tuners manning
their levers on the periphery of the giant drum.
The
tuners strained as the stretchskin tightened.
The
Master tested the pitch with a quick stamp of his foot. Another signal, and the
reeds of the Fiata closed. At the sudden hush, the group of startled dancers
looked up from their exercises. The boys tending the Plata's flickering lights
left off their chatter abruptly. High in the folds of the billowing crimson
sails, Jota the Hexen looked down.
When
the only sound was the wind snapping billowing sails, the Fiata Master began to
dance. The stretchskin responded to the thrust of his feet, the tuners to his
hands. The giant drum spoke to the people, and they understood.
Chapter
26
The
moonlight playing on the wide doors of the building outlined the ghostly Shield
of Composition emblazoned there. Dorian felt his heart quicken as it always did
when he entered a Conductus. One day,
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183
any of
them could be his. The thought had always made the ordeal of his training
bearable.
Even
though this one was abandoned, it was somehow still sanctified in his mind. The
call to Authority was a high one; the Conductus, highest of all.
Becken
touched the summon bell once, then twice more. Its sound was lost below the
rising wail of the Fiata. Abruptly, there was a silence so sudden, so complete,
that Dorian cast a startled gaze over his shoulder.
Ram's
eyes blazed above the buildings, eerie in the unnatural quiet. A moment later a
drumsong began, modulating into a throbbing rhythm that sent a prickle up the
nape of Dorian's neck. He raised questioning eyes to Becken, but the man was
staring at the doors.
There
was an almost imperceptible movement on the shield as an inner lens turned,
then stopped.
Several
minutes passed, and then as the wail of the Fiata began again, the great doors
began to slide open.
A man
was waiting as they entered the vestibule. A flicker of curiosity touched his
eyes when he looked at them.
The
outer doors slid shut with a clang. Inner ones over a hand's-breadth thick
glided together. The man pressed a lever, then another. A heavy bar rolled into
place.
Ahead,
the atrium was washed in a swirl of color. White light drenched a table and an
empty chair.
A
sudden gasp came from.a darkened alcove. His eyes darted toward it. "Picardyl"
Becken's
hand touched his shoulder; its press was firm. When Dorian whirled to face him,
he saw the group of men.
One of
them stepped forward into the light: a man with one cold eye in a tangled net
of scars.
"The
Assistant to the Augment," said Becken.
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Horror
glazed Dorian's eyes. For an instant he was paralyzed. Then he leaped toward
the doors.
"Take
him."
He was
clawing for the lever when the first man reached him. As the bar began to
slide, a hand clamped his wrist. It twisted, and the stab of pain broke his
grip.
The
force of the next man's body threw him to the floor. Panting, he scrabbled
away. A sudden kick. His breath rushed out; hot agony spread through his ribs.
A knee
pinned him to the floor. A new pain cut into his injured wrist as tight reed
straps bound his hands behind his back.
The men
dragged Dorian to the alcove and tied him to the column next to Picardy.
From
his chair in the center of the atrium, Stretto watched cooly as they did this.
The boy from the Medfield, he thought. It was part of the pattern. There was
always the pattern. He had known this all his life. He had traced its intricate
turnings and knew that he controlled it as surely as a raggwing spun its lair.
At
times he could see all of it at once. He could see it stretching its tendrils
into every mind, see it coiling, growing. When these times came, he felt
himself caught up in its majesty. Sometimes, unexpectedly, he saw it in the
eyes of a vendor or a casual tourist. The secret knowledge then was sweet. They
never knew. They were blind—always too blind to see it.
He
turned to Becken. He could see the pattern now in the man's careful look.
The
Augment slid into a chair on the opposite side of the table. "Can we speak
privately?" He glanced toward the other men.
"Of
course." At a sign from Stretto, the three men moved toward the vestibule.
When
they had gone, Becken leaned forward. "You've been seen with the girl.
I've had reports. It
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185
isn't
safe now." The side of a thumbnail glided across his lower lip as he
glanced toward Picardy. "I'd better take her with me."
"And
the boy?" Stretto felt a flicker of amusement. The boy had surely gone to
Becken. How much had he told him?
"No
one knows he's here."
"You're
suggesting a trade?"
A
startled look came into the Augment's eyes. It was replaced almost at once by a
practiced look that almost hid what lay behind it. "Of course not."
He glanced at the girl again. "I told you—you've been seen with her. She
has to come with me."
"You're
thinking of my safety."
"And
mine." The answer came too quickly, too facilely.
A smile
twitched at the corner of Stretto's mouth. "I see." The shifting
lights of the kaleidoscope played over the Augment, staining his face, his
tightened lips, with purple. So the boy had told him everything. Stretto almost
laughed at the transparency of the man's ruse. There was just one question now:
Who else knew? The answer came to him at once. No one. Becken would keep it to
himself. He could be sure of that.
Stretto's
casual glance searched for weapons. It was only a precaution. It wasn't the
Augment's style to come armed with more than arrogance. He rose and moved
around the table toward Becken.
The
Augment was half out of his chair when Stretto's knife came out.
"The
girl? Was she worth it?" Stretto's laugh was low. "How do you like
the immortality she gave you?"
Becken
stared at the knife. He shook his head and raised his eyes.
A smile
flickered across Stretto's lips. "You can't..." Becken's words were a
whisper. The look in the single, pale eye chilled him. The light shifted; the
knife blade turned to
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blood.
He shook his head again as it darted toward him. He felt it enter, felt its
upward thrust bite deep.
A
startled look came into Becken's eyes. His hands fumbled toward his belly. He
looked down in disbelief at the glistening stain spreading over them.
His
legs gave way, and he sank to the floor. Blinking, he stared up at the face,
the malevolent eye, hanging above him. There was nothing else in the world but
that face haloed in a blaze of color.
Monster.
In
surprise, he knew that Stretto had always been so. He had been so from the
moment of his birth—with no choice but to be what he was.
And in
that instant it came to Becken that he had had a choice.
No. No
choice. Not really.
He
peered at the face above him. He peered quizzically at first, then with a
whimper, as he recognized, the face of his mother staring down with terrible
eyes at a very small boy.
He
tried to speak. He tried to say, "Not bad. Not bad, Mommy," but when
he did, the words drowned in a gurgling red rush and there was no sound but a
final, ebbing sigh.
Dorian's
breath came in a hard gasp that stabbed his injured ribs with fire.
Unbelieving, he stared at the widening pool of blood. Then, dizzy from pain and
the turmoil in his mind, he turned away, sickened.
He had
been betrayed. He had been given over to a murderer, yet he knew that wasn't
the worst. Becken was dead, but it was Canon that had fallen and a part of his
own soul died with it.
And how
was it possible? How was it possible to feel the throb of a dying belief as if
it were flesh? How was it possible to see the core, the center of himself, die
and fall away to dust?
Dorian
turned his face to the wall and stared blankly at the scarred and broken tiles
that marched across it. For a time they hid their pattern from him. When they
gave it up, he saw the faint blaze of their
RAM
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187
design—the
clef qf Canon flanked with the twin swords of Science and Ethics.
It
seemed to him then that he had built his beliefs of sand. He had built them of
sand and called them rock and lived within them, complacent. Now they had
crumbled and left him naked in the ruins.
Picardy
gave a faint little sigh that clutched at his heart. For a moment his eyes met
hers, but the look in them was so poignant, so unbearably private, that Dorian
could not watch. He stared up at the shifting pattern of light, but the image
of her stayed with him. And in that moment, he knew he loved her.
He
loved her, yet again and again he had shown a blind contempt for what she was.
Shame wrenched him, a shame so overwhelming that it left him numb and
unutterably empty.
He
stared blankly at the kaleidoscope and then at the ceiling a hand's breadth
from its rim. Slowly, a rising sound penetrated his consciousness. Through the
high, narrow windows of the Conductus he heard the Fiata and the faint rumble
of its wheels. The sound grew louder. Dorian looked toward it. When he did, he
failed to see the point of light that detached itself from the kaleidoscope and
darted toward him.
Picardy
was saying something in a low voice.
He
turned his face toward her and strained to hear.
A
fierce hope burned in her eyes. "They're coming for us. I know it."
With a
wary eye toward Stretto, he shook his head. They could never break into a
Conductus.
"My
sharps." Her glance darted toward the quiver on the floor near his feet.
"Can you reach them?"
He
stared at them, then at Stretto. The man was back at his table now. The others
had returned. Two of them leaned over the body. Grasping arms and legs, they
carried it toward the wide archway that led to the vestibule. The third
listened to Stretto for a moment, then followed.
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Now
Stretto was alone, his blind side toward the alcove.
Slowly,
Dorian stretched a foot toward the quiver. Too far. He slid forward, straining
at his bonds until the pain in his wrists and his tortured arms was agony.
Panting, he shook his head.
The
three men reentered the atrium. Stretto was waiting. He turned then, moving his
upper body so that his single eye was fixed on Picardy. "I think it's time
we had a talk."
He said
something in a low voice. The three men wheeled and came toward her.
She
shot a desperate glance to Dorian.
With a
slash of a knife, one of the men cut the bonds that held her to the pillar. The
other two dragged her to her feet. She went limp in their grasp. Suddenly she
screamed. Flailing bound hands at one man, she kicked the other and dodged to
her right.
As the
third man seized her, Picardy's foot went out. With a quick backward kick it
struck the quiver of sharps.
The
quiver stopped within a foot of Dorian's hands. He stared for an instant, then
swung his body to the left to conceal it. His eyes darted toward the men. They
hadn't seen.
They
dragged Picardy toward the table.
Dorian's
hands crept blindly toward the quiver. He felt nothing but smooth stone.
As the
sound of the approaching Fiata mounted, a voice spoke low in his ear:
"Left... to the left."
Shock
glittered in his eyes. The immortal!
"Left."
His
fingers grazed the quiver. Straining against his bonds, Dorian panted. Pain
stabbed his wrists. His fingers scrabbled for a purchase and closed over the
quiver's strap. He dragged it close and stared at Stretto.
The man
was saying something to Picardy. The Fiata's wail drowned his voice.
RAM
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189
Dorian
fumbled with the quiver. The cautery, where was it?
He felt
its blunt end. He drew it out, turning it in his hands. Now the tip pointed
toward his bound wrists. Set it low, came the desperate thought. On high it
would blaze right through him.
The
dial turned in his hands. He felt for the switch and threw it. The cautery's
hum was lost in the blare of the Fiata.
Fire
blazed on Dorian's wrist. His gasp stabbed his ribs.
"Lower,"
came the voice.
The tip
of the cautery dropped. Again hot pain, and then he felt himself break loose
from the column. He tugged, but the wrist bonds still held.
The
spark flashed behind him. "Once more."
Cold
sweat beaded. Trembling, he aimed the cautery again.
"Down
... Now."
Fire
struck his wrists, and he was free.
The
cautery's dial twirled to maximum. He stared at the group of men clustered near
the table. Too many. Too many. They all had knives.
"Overhead.
The kaleidoscope."
Dorian's
glance darted upward. The kaleidoscope's giant disk turned slowly just above
the table. "Picardy?" came his urgent whisper.
"I'll
tell her."
Dorian
drew back in the shadows. A quick glance toward Stretto. The blind side. The
other men were watching Picardy.
The tip
of the cautery swung upward toward the center of the white light. As it did,
the point of light sped toward the girl. He saw her blink and her gaze darted
upward for a second.
Now, he
thought. But as his finger touched the switch, it paused, and the cautery's tip
glided to a point in the ceiling less than a hand's breadth from the edge of
the kaleidoscope.
His
finger closed over the switch.
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The
cautery's beam leaped. Red light glowed from a point on the ceiling.
A
moment passed. Two.
A man
shouted.
From
the corner of his eye, Dorian saw movement. It was Stretto; Stretto rising with
a half-turn, head raised, staring at the ceiling.
Then a
leap, and Picardy was running.
The
stone floor echoed a scurrying sound that came from overhead. With a sharp
crack, the ceiling opened.
Dorian
jumped to his feet.
The
giant kaleidoscope seemed to hang in midair. Then it was falling—twirling down
in maddeningly slow motion.
Dorian
ran toward the archway after Picardy, grabbing for her.
She
screamed, and the sound was echoed by the shatter of glass.
Another
scream, and a man clutched at a dagger of red glass that impaled his chest.
Clawing, he spun in a slow, bizarre dance while gouts of blood spiraled onto
the pale stone floor.
Picardy
screamed again as if she could not stop,
"It's
me!" Dorian yelled. Spinning her around, holding her with one hand, he cut
her bonds with a stroke of the cautery.
He
pushed her toward the doors and fumbled with the bar.
The mechanism
creaked. The bar rolled away.
The
thick inner door slid open. Then with a creak, the outer doors began to move.
He
leaped through, then turned.
Frozen,
Picardy stared toward the atrium. He followed her gaze with congealing horror.
From
the shards a figure rose, splattering blood from a dozen wounds. With a scream
of inhuman rage, it plunged after them, consummate madness blazing from its
single eye.
Chapter
27
The
Fiata shrieked a wild cry born of mountain winds. Its torches blazed on the
opening doors of the Conductus. Two figures darted from it.
Dorian
plunged toward the knot of people clustered at the foot of the great drum just
ahead.
Picardy
stopped short. She stared at them and shook her head. A man streaming with
tatters advanced. Another.
Terror
flickered in her eyes, "No. No more!" Then she was leaping, dodging
away. Whirling in blind panic, she ran toward the yawning doors.
"Picardy!"
Dorian leaped toward her, but a dozen hands held him back. Half-fainting with
pain, he struggled. A low door opened at the base of the drum, and he was
thrust inside.
Again
he fought, weaker now.
The
arms that held him were strangely soft and at the same time unyielding.
"Be still. Don't fight me." And in the dimness he looked into the
face of the girl, Zoppa.
The
blood-streaked figure leaped from the Conductus.
In
horror, Picardy wheeled and dodged away.
Shawm
stared in dismay as she headed away from help toward the scaffolding of the
Fia-
ta.
191
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The man
plunged after her. Light flickered on the blood-stained knife at his wrist. He
reached out.
She
leaped, grabbing at handholds. Then she was climbing.
Shawm
gave a piercing whistle—the signal that she was safe. It was echoed at once by
the Fiata Master far ahead, and the procession began to move.
For a
moment Stretto stared at his escaping quarry. Then with a single-minded howl of
rage, he sprang, and scrabbled for a hold. For a moment he hung by one hand.
The other found a purchase, and he swung up onto the scaffolding.
Grabbing
a trailing valve rope, Shawm swung toward him. A dozen others did the same.
Valves opened with their weight. The Fiata brayed in response and rumbled back
on course toward the Pontibrio.
Shawm
reached toward the handholds, overshot, swung back.
Above, Picardy
stared down, gasped, and climbed again.
A
lantern tender, a boy no more than nine, ran on a crosspiece toward Stretto.
Clinging to the rigging with one hand, he flailed out at the man with the
other.
Stretto's
hand swung brutally, and the boy fell back, dazed, as the Fiata began its
swaying trip across the bridge.
Shawm's
hands closed on the thin grips. Staring upward, he began to climb. Overhead, he
saw Stretto reach up, his hand no more than a body length from Picardy's foot.
Next to
Shawm, a spark blazed, a tiny, dazzling point of light that sped upward toward
the girl until both were lost in a billow of crimson sail.
Helpless,
Kurt stared as Stretto gained ground relentlessly. Picardy's breath came in
ragged gasps as she climbed.
At the
head of the procession, The Master wheeled to watch the Fiata's progress as it
negotiated
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193
the
sweeping turn beyond the bridge. He held up his hands to signal first stop.
Forward
movement ceased, and a dozen male dancers leaped to their positions. Nagarehs
and tarns began to drum. Eyes widening, the Master stared past, them at the two
figures on the scaffolding emerging from behind the central sail. A sudden
movement of raised hands called for silence.
A
thousand reeds clicked shut. The Fiata gave no sound but the rasp of Picardy's
breath and the whip of the wind on the great sails.
The
dancers stared in confusion. Below the Fiata, tuners acted on the early cue.
The giant stretchskin rolled out on muffled wheels.
"Is
it the Hexentanz?" came a faint voice from far below.
"Hexentanz,"
answered another.
Hexen-..
hexen... hexen..., said the dying echoes.
Picardy
looked down, staring blankly at the faceless mass of expectant tourists who
lined the distant street like flotsam. She froze, hands clutching the narrow
holds, body swaying as the Fiata's masts leaned against the wind.
Kurt
caught his breath. Don't stop. Don't stop.
He
wanted to cry out, spur her on. But if he did, he knew she would fall.
Her
gaze darted toward Stretto. Terror glazed her eyes. She clung for a moment
more, then frantically clutching at handholds, climbed again.
In
horror he saw her scramble onto a shaky platform that led nowhere. She dodged
behind a fluttering red sail. Kurt sped after her.
Jota,
the Hexen, stood there, shivering. Wind whipped her white tatters. Bright fear
danced in her eyes. She clutched her trailing harness with one hand; the other
clung to the smooth central shaft of the Fiata. Overhead, the great Ram's mouth
splayed open in a silent howl.
The platform
trembled at Stretto's approach.
Kurt
stared down at the men climbing toward
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them. Too
far. Too far. Shawm was three body lengths behind. The rest
clustered beneath.
Far
below, the great stretchskin drum rolled out silently.
A single
reed sang its throbbing note. Another answered.
Crimson
cloth slithered through a blood-stained hand. Stretto's thin smile twisted his
lips. Yellow light glittered on the knife that sprang into his hand.
Eyes
fixed on Stretto, Picardy crept back. Her heels found the platform's edge.
In
despair Kurt stared below. One chance. Only one chance. His urgent voice spoke
to the brain of the scoutship—and it responded.
A tiny
spark flew into Stretto's eye and blazed into a raging ball of fire.
With a
gasp, Picardy fell. "Catch her," yelled Kurt. "Catch her!"
Shawm wrapped a leg around the shaft and leaned out. Her body grazed his
outstretched arms. He clung for a moment, then she slowly slid out of his grip.
Below
another reached out... and another. With a howl, Stretto spun away. Blinded by
the light, he staggered toward the terrified Hexen.
Her
hand drew back and she flung the harness at him with all of her strength.
It
struck him full in the throat. Clawing at it, he staggered, and spun again.
Below,
caught tight in the arms of a stranger, Picardy stared up blankly.
Stretto
teetered at the edge of the platform for a long moment, body swaying, hands
clutching the tangle of harness wires that circled his neck.
As he
fell, his hands dropped away and flailed at nothing. He plunged straight down
until the thin wires reached their limit.
The
shocked crowd gasped. Then there was no sound but the great tuned drum
throbbing beneath the slow swing of his feet,
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195
pulsing,
beating like a dying heart until even that grew still.
Kurt
stared down at the chain of men helping Picardy to the ground. Safe, he
thought. At once the grim irony of it struck him. For what?
How
much time was left for any of them?
He
searched his mind for a trace of Ooberong. No answer. He called out to her,
softly at first, then urgently. Still nothing.
With
sudden apprehension, he raised his head from the lens.
Beyond
the lights of the scout's panel the black of space was studded with a thousand
'Rams.
"Ooberong!"
he said aloud.
The
scoutship answered:
REMAINING
OXYGEN SUFFICIENT FOR 42 RAMINS. RELAX NOW. ALL WILL BE WELL
Kurt
stared back through the windowing tracer lens. Far below, the knot of people
gathered on the ground. The girl? Where was she?
A faint
pulsing began in his head. In moments it grew to a fierce pain that took away
his breath. Disoriented, he felt himself begin to fall.
The
pain retreated a little, leaving a cold sweat in its path. Somewhere within it
he sensed a pattern.
A faint
image formed in his mind: a shadowy pair of eyes. Ooberong....
The
image shimmered in a mist of pain. Eyes. Gray eyes. Pupils dark as space,
pupils that were not alike, not equal. Stroke. She had had a stroke.
The
knowledge came in a flood, and he knew what she had done: She had never known
illness and she refused to meet it now. She had ignored the pain at first. Then
when it grew, she rose and, telling no one, locked the door and took her place
before her instruments again with single-minded control.
Another
image came—the net of stars deforming, warping into thin corded bands,
vanishing into a well so deep, so vast, that it defied imagination. Kurt knew
he looked into her mind at a simile—a meta-
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phor
for a dissolution that was beyond his understanding. He heard her voice then,
distant in his mind: "Not long... not long...."
"You
can't go on. You're too sick."
"I...
will."
"No."
Nothing.
Then a faint laugh. "We're alike, you and I." A pause. "We both
have to fly." A faint breath of a sigh, and she was gone.
Picardy
huddled in Clarin's arms at the bank of the river. Near exhaustion, Dorian
sprawled full length on the ground near Zoppa.
Clarin
looked up and spoke to her brother, but Shawm seemed not to hear. He stood
facing away from her and stared at the slowly retreating Fiata.
Just
above them, a dot of light sped close, flickered, and grew into the image of
the immortal.
Dorian
stared up at Kurt. "No. Enough."
Kurt
fixed his eyes on the girl. "There's no time left."
Scrambling
to his feet, Dorian cried, "Leave her alone."
Picardy
blinked, then struggled up. "I'm all right."
"The
record you showed me. Whose is it?"
Her
eyes widened as she looked at his; her hands flew out in a little shrug.
"It's mine."
Kurt
stared at Picardy in disbelief.
"It's
mine," she said, bewildered at his look. "From when I was a
baby."
Kurt
blinked in surprise at Picardy's words. "Yours?" he said- "Those
records showed a large chromosome—a large dark body," he amended.
"You said yourself that only two or three percent of your people carry
it."
"I
didn't say that." Picardy was openly puzzled. "You asked to see a
dark body pattern that showed one larger than the rest. I showed you mine. Why
would I say that only a few carry it?"
"I
asked you about retarded children with a large chromosome. You said they were
rare."
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197
"They
are," said Picardy. "Only the people with paired dark bodies have
children like that."
"Paired?"
He looked at her in astonishment. "What do you mean 'paired'? "
Picardy's
face echoed his, "Why, forty-six pairs. Some of their children are
retarded forty-sixers. Others have the same number, but they aren't
affected." Then she said, "Some of their children are normal."
Kurt
looked at her for a long moment before he said, "How many dark bodies do
you think are normal, Picardy?"
Her
hands flew out in a little shrug. "Forty-five, of course."
She
stood before him, hands outstretched. In his mind, he saw her again m the beam
by the river.
Hands...
outstretched hands...
Hands
frozen in sunshine; pale hands washed in the yellow glow of the Pontibrio's
lights. And each palm was crossed with a single, simian crease.
Chapter
28
"Let
me see your hands."
They
glanced at one another, then self-consciously extended their hands toward Kurt.
A solitary
crease bisected every palm.
Carriers?
All of them? He searched a dozen crystalline memories; he got back only scraps
of answers. If they were carriers, why did they have that palm? Except for a
single outsized chromosome, there was nothing about a carrier that looked
abnormal.
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And
then he knew: They were carriers, but not of a defective chromosome. They—each
of them— carried the distillation of millennia of genetic change.
It had
to be, he thought. That's why they reacted to the beam. Kurt turned suddenly to
Dorian. "You aimed the cautery at the ceiling, not the kaleidoscope.
Why?"
"Why,
I—" Dorian blinked. "I'm not sure. It was just the place to aim
at," he finished uncertainly.
"It
was a weak point," Picardy added. "At least, I think it was."
A weak
point. A point where the stresses of metal straining against metal gave off
vibrations pitched so low they could only be sensed subliminally, not heard.
Infrasound.
He
searched each face, one after the other, with a growing sense of amazement. He
had been looking for a retarded child to be his empath. Yet children like that
were no more than a way-station through eons of genetic trial and error.
These
were his empaths, he thought. Empaths, all of them. And they didn't even know.
He looked
at the little group. "You can read the alien's signals. Maybe we can stop
it. Together."
And
then he told them what they were.
The
Fiata echoed faintly from the shore. The tide was coming in, lapping in protest
against the hull of their stolen boat, but the wind was with them. Its breath
bellied the sail of the little sea flyer and sent it skimming toward the dark
mouth of the river.
Kurt's
image rode the bow, an image as frozen in its expression as any icon, as over
and over again the questions turned in his mind:
Why?
Why were they different? And why here on Aulos? They had all sprung from a tiny
gene pool. They had been irradiated by a G-2 star nearly as close as the sun to
Venus, but it had to be more than that. The change had to be a survival trait.
And why
would a sensitivity to infrasound be
RAM
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199
that?
Unless it had always been there in some rudimentary form.
He
thought then of the birds of Earth that oriented their flyways to the subtle
movements of tectonic plates. But birds were never the only migrating animal,
never the only nomads who sought a tiny oasis. He thought of the teeming cities
he had once known and the people who lived there—people acutely, exquisitely
aware of boundaries and territories, people who knew that straying from them
meant war and death.
And
what of the people who carved out homes from the naked rock of asteroids? Were
these the early signs of it? A way of tuning a life to the dimly sensed pulse
of an alien world?
Changed,
he thought, all of them. Human still, yet not. Something more. With a sudden
restless envy, he searched for the trait within himself and found only stasis.
And the
mortals on the Ram? Under his leadership they had bred for millennia with the
illusion of freedom—a freedom tempered by the steady control of genetic
counseling; coerced by "choice" and "good judgment" and the
"common good" into a stasis as binding as his own.
He was
a dinosaur. He was the leader of a ship plunging mindlessly through space with
a cargo of fossils culled from an ancient world.
The
night wind blew the rags of a cloud from the moons. Pale light gleamed on a
silver scar. Shawm was watching him. The look on his face filled Kurt with
sadness. They each had something that the other wanted, and the taste of it was
ash.
Gray
strips of tattered clouds fluttered over the moons. The dark mouth of the river
gaped open to the bay. The wind fought with the rising tide, chopping its surf
to peaks.
The
water boiled with a billion phosphorescent creatures, tiny as insects. Hissing,
the sea ran toward the stands of petit anche and filled old channels.
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The
reed beds were islands now, moaning and twisting in the wind, nearly drowning
the humming of the beam.
Shawm
threw a lever, and the sea flyer's twin anchors shot out. The flyer bobbed
between the lines. They stepped onto a half-drowned island of reeds sobbing in
the wind. Water rushed over their feet and stung their ankles with particles of
swirling sand.
Though
it was quite dark, the image of the immortal standing just above the water
seemed to give off a light of its own.
They
were close to the beam. Kurt could hear its faint humming, its overtones of the
Earth Song. Suddenly, he remembered the gaping bays of the false Ram. Once more
he saw them stream with a dead-white mist. A shiver rippled down his neck.
He
remembered what Jacoby had said: "You knew. How?"
And how
had he known? He searched his memory and found no clues. He tried again, and
this time resurrected the image of Zent Ooberong. Her eyes. He had looked
through her eyes...
Ooberong?
Was it beginning in her too?
And
then he knew that even the mortals of the Ram were changing.They were changing
inexorably and all the genetic regulations put together could do no more than
slow the process. The shadow dance of their genes would go on unti! one day
they would be as altered as the people of Aulos.
Kurt
looked up at the dark Aulosian sky. He
stared
as if he could see into the heart of the Ram
. and
the minds of the people there. The wind whipped
clouds
across the moons, dark clouds that moved like
flying
creatures.
"We
both have to fly," Ooberong had said. He wondered what her meaning was. In
his mind he could see her in her dark red flying suit, slowing, banking,
controlling her flight with subtle movements. Control and balance.
"Control," she had said.
He shut
his eyes for a moment, and when he
RAM
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201
opened
them, he felt strangely off balance. His gaze met Shawm's. Empath, thought
Kurt. He was riding a new wave of humanity, but he wanted the anchor of
immortality. He shook his head. It was wrong. Wrong to meddle with people's
destinies and turn their stable world upside down, wrong to keep them from
becoming what they should be.
Moonlight
glimmered on the silver scar and shadowed the young-old eyes that reminded Kurt
so much of his own.
"You
had a choice," said Shawm. It was an accusation.
A
choice? Kuu looked away, not trusting his eyes to meet the boy's. The question
he had never been asked rang in his head: How do you choose, Kurt Kraus?
What
would he have answered? How would he have chosen?
Then
without quite knowing why, Kurt said, "If we come through this. If we do,
I'll see that Aulos gets the process. You can have your immortality."
In the
face of the fierce glaze of joy that sprang into Shawm's eyes, Kurt turned away
and tried to quell a jumble of uneasy thoughts. He looked up at the sky again,
at the fluttering rags of cloud shrouding the net of stars, while the children
of Aulos stepped into the alien beam.
Hands
clinging together, the little group stood on the dark reed island. Water
swirled halfway to their knees, black water sparkling with tiny luminous
creatures, echoing the star-net overhead.
The
beam transfixed them. Fear and ecstasy glittered in their eyes. Kurt strained
to catch their words.
Picardy
grasped Shawm's hand and flung her head back. Wind whipped her hair.
"Fistula," she cried. "It's a fistula."
Shawm
began to sway in an odd, bobbing rhythm. "It dances."
In
dismay, Kurt tried to giean their meaning. He stared at the upturned faces.
Each one held its own
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vision—personal,
private. Their words made no sense to him at all.
Frustration
knotted the muscles of his jaw. Empaths—all of them—linked to the false Ram's
beam now. They had the answer, but he could not read it. It was there, so
close, yet it was locked in the personal metaphor of each mind.
He
strained again to hear. Fistula; it was that to Picardy. Somehow it wore the
guise of medicine to her. He stared at Shawm, at the rhythmic movements of his
head and upper body. To Shawn it was something else, something that spoke in
the language of dance.
Frantic,
Kurt looked from one to another. Different. Each experience different—and
unreadable.
Ooberong...
He could look through her eyes. She could tell him what it meant. She had to.
He framed a single cry in his brain.
He felt
her touch his mind—distantly—as if she held herself away from him. And with her
touch came the throb of agony.
He saw
the pain mapped in her brain; he saw the source of it: the area of cell death,
and the deadly swelling that was slowly choking off each vital function.
She
held herself away, and he knew it was not only to shield him from her pain, but
to shield herself. She was going to die, and it was a private thing. She wanted
to do it alone without an invasion from another mind.
"Ooberong..."
His cry was a lament.
A
pause. A beat. And then she let him in.
The
pain came with teasing little stabs at first. He felt it gathering, massing in
a storm surge, and then it was on him, boiling in from a dark sea in
yellow-green phosphors, engulfing him in cold flames that flickered from bone
to sinew and back to bone— an electric pain born of Saint Elmo's fire, a cold
pain chilled by the night waters of Aulos.
He
stood in the center of a conflagration of ice. Flames fed on his bones, his
flesh. A dagger of cold
RAM
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203
fire
pierced his eye and entered the socket to burrow beneath his skull. A pale
spark leaped from wrist to fingers and smoldered in the small bones of his
hand. A dozen more leaped over his body, touching, searing.
Pain
crackled in his neck and hissed through the nerves of his arm. Faintly, over
the rush of his blood he heard her voice: "... critical... critical
now..."
He
raised tormented eyes to the sky; he saw the star net through a haze of agony.
The star points pulsed to the rhythm of the pain.
He saw
her eyes, gray, gray as rain. He looked through.
The
image stood on the angry waters, a spectre glowing in the night. It crackled
with luminous energy and the black phosphorescent sea and the sky became one.
Pain
drummed in his head. Through the link he heard Picardy's voice:
"Fistula."
He
stood inside the smooth walls of a giant gray vein. Blood-warm currents washed
over him. Ahead, gray walls pulsed, and the current swept him toward them. On
the wall, a tiny spot grew to a gaping slit...
The
artery's tidal wave crashed through the breach. It surged against the current.
He was caught in a whirlpool. Helpless. Swirling.
He
heard Shawm's voice—and the whirlpool was a swirling devil dance of red and
purple tatters, green and gold....
Kurt
spun in confusion. Each image was too personal, too alien to his experience to
make sense. "What?"
Ooberong's
gray eyes anchored him. Ooberong, link to his own culture and understanding.
The whirling tatters spun into two opposing dancers, spinning, dissolving into
two undulating shapes, two amoebas, two dark universes—opposing, thrusting,
touching.
The
fistula opened.
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A
whirlpool of tatters...a whirlpool of dark genes mating... a whirlpool of
energy swirling in a vortex of time.
Crimson
and purple tatters twirled, green and gold.
He
heard Dorian speak; he saw a cone. Golden liquid tash swirled inside it. The
cone began to move. Ooberong's eyes again. The cone became a top. A child's top
spinning. Kurt knew it. It was red and its yellow stripe was worn from a small
boy's Fingers; it was his. She had found it in the recesses of his mind, and it
was his.
He saw
the point of a flashing knife, the tip of a cone of tash, the vortex of a red
top with a worn yellow stripe.
The top
skimmed backward in time, bored its way backward in time. Suddenly it paused,
skipped forward, back, forward again, and he saw that its tip traced an
infinity of points—an infinity of nows.
Earth's
song swelled. Kurt saw her sapphire
blue, her white on velvet black. Abruptly, blue-green Aulos swirled into the
sky. The two planets hung in blackness, then merged into one. Why, why, why,
why...
The top
hesitated. He heard Earth's song again; he saw the blue-green world of Aulos.
He heard Earth's song, and it was magnified by a thousand empaths, fed back by
a thousand empaths. Paradox.
Why,
why, why, why...
The top
spun, teetered, slowed. The top bulged; twistor space warped. Here, here.., not
here
And
from its tip, its infinitesimal tip—its now—a point of light grew into an
emerging Ram. Another emerged... mist and milk. Another. And he saw that there
was only one of them—one Ram—created new each time. One Ram, both ghost and
real. How?
The top
teetered, expanded, bulged, turned inside out. The top was an hour-glass
running out.
Chapter
29
The
throbbing in Kurt's head gave way to a cold numbness that dragged at the corner
of his lips and crept heavily into his arm, his leg. Latent images swam thickly
in his brain.
The
alien universe was a dark and mirrored twin to his own—a part of some
unimaginably greater whole. It had been separate. It had been as separate as
the passive flow of blood in the body's veins was separate from the warm rush
of blood through its arteries: adjacent, intricately linked, but separate.
Then
the touch had come: the minute fistula between two universes, the surge of an
alien tide spurting into the quiet stream of this one.
Turbulence.
Whirlpool. And the whirlpool was time, running backward against the current,
dancing on tachyon waves that were faster than light.
He
heard Ooberong's voice. "Paradox."
Earth,
he thought. It was looking for Earth.
Like
the tiny swell of a tidal wave in open water, the alien tide had run backward
through time— under time—harmlessly, until it came to the shallows of paradox.
It had sensed a song that began ten thousand years ago, and more, and it had
answered. Following the curving path of a billion future Rams backward in time,
it listened, searching for one small world that circled a tiny sun. Instead, it
had found 'Aulos. It had found a world caught in the overtones and undertones
of the Ram's song: Earth's song
205
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reflected
by a thousand bewildered empaths who sensed not only Earth, but a frightening
alien intelligence.
The
alien was on a cyclic path, a boomerang in space-time, searching for Earth, for
a terminus. When it found it, the boomerang would curve back on itself, back to
a future time so distant it was beyond imagining. Instead, it had encountered a
paradox, a place that seemed to be Earth, but was not Earth. It had surfaced in
Kurt's time; and somehow it had used his actual ship as a template for its
ghostly twins; using the swirling twistors of space it had made them real by
the creation of matter.
"Paradox,"
she said again. He felt her desperate effort to concentrate against the growing
numbness, and he knew that she was dying now. She was beginning to die, and he
felt the weight of it in his body and the cold reflection of it in his soul.
"Bottleneck,"
said Ooberong. "Break out. Break away."
She
sent an image to him then: clouds of squat, transparent cylinders pinched in
the middle with fat, curling rope—fields of undulating twistors locked in a
static dance—the star drive fields of a thousand alien Rams.
The
clouds began to bulge, warp, turn inside out.
"The
ships are linked," she said, "like a single organism."
The
molten center of a star blazed in his mind: Star drive. She meant the star
drive.
A
shudder... a paroxysm... a ship dying in convulsive agony... twisting, plunging
into a sea of time.
Then
the clouds of twistors abruptly vanished, and Kurt knew what he had to do.
Shawm
thrust back his head and gasped like a beached sea creature. He shook his head
and tried to sort the montage of images that thronged in his brain. He stared
at the sky and felt the pull of the beam again, the invisible, searching pull
of alien stars. His lungs emptied, his throat closed.
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207
Stop
it! Please... stop it...
Dizzy
and sick, he sucked at the night air again. The scent of the dark bay water
filled his nostrils.
Don't
think of it. Don't think of it now.
The
immortal was gone. Only a faint glowing trace of him was left glimmering on
Shawm's retinas, then fading to night. He stared at the thick-starred sky.
Gone.
Would
he keep his promise? If he could? Would he? But he knew the answer: If tomorrow
came, it would bring back immortality to the world.
The
first Fierce thrill of it was gone now, stripped away in the beam. He looked
across at Picardy. She was clinging to Clarin, and both of them were watching
the sky.
He
looked from one to the other. He knew them all now. He knew things about them
that he never could have guessed, never would have bothered to guess. He saw
the quick sidelong look Dorian gave to Picardy. He loves her, he thought. She's
pretending not to know. And he knows that; but he can't speak yet, not yet. Not
until he believes he's earned the right.
He knew
them. He knew that Dorian refused to look at the sky, refused to think about
the alien. Instead, he had anchored his belief in a tomorrow that would have to
come.
As if
in answer, Dorian's eyes met Shawm's. "He made you a promise. But you may
be too old. Too old for the process. They taught us about it. It doesn't work
for everybody."
Shawm
had never considered immortality as more than an abstract. He considered it
now. He thought of a world of immortals; he put himself in that world and grew
older in it, while .everyone around him stayed the same. It doesn't matter, he
thought. He looked at his sister. It would work for Clarin, for the little
ones. And he was responsible. It was an offering, an expiation to a world of
mortals, and he was responsible. "It doesn't matter," he said.
"It doesn't really matter."
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RAM
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"It's
going to matter to all of us. It's going to change things, change the way we
look at things." Dorian raised troubled eyes to Shawm. "We aren't
ever going to be able to be complacent again about what we believed." Then
with a quick glance toward the star net piercing the clouds: "Or even be
sure what we believe in."
Picardy
gave Shawm a half-smile, tentative, trembling, and then looked again toward the
sky. He saw an image of the tri-tail fossil, locked in stone. She's afraid, he
thought. She's afraid that tomorrow won't come; and she's afraid that it will.
She sees herself growing old too, in a world that wouldn't need her or her
singing needles anymore.
Shawm's
eyes met Zoppa's. Hers paused, dropped, moved away in confusion.
Cripples,
both of us, he thought, wanting to reach out to each other, but not wanting to
admit it, not able to admit it even in the face of destruction. He knew each of
them with an intimacy he had never thought possible. And if he knew them, then
they knew him. The thought came as a shock. The idea that his privacy had been
invaded as easily as theirs took away his breath.
What
had they learned? What did they know? His hand sprang to his cheek, to the
silver scar; his fingers traced it. Immortality. He'saw his mother lying dead;
he saw the futility of it. Killer.
But he
wasn't. He was giving it back. Giving back the stolen goods to the world.
Killer,
Suddenly
he saw himself naked, every innermost feeling lying bare. Noble, How very noble
he had felt. Gaming immortality not for himself, but for the world, for his
sisters, his baby brother. But that wasn't the reason, that had never been the
reason. He had only wanted to see respect in the eyes of strangers when they
looked at him. He had only wanted to see the old prejudices fade away. He had
believed they would, like magic.
RAM
SONG
209
Fool.
Because he had reached a moment's equality in a transient beam, he believed it
could happen. But it wasn't going to. It wasn't ever going to. If tomorrow
came, it was going to bring the same looks, the same feelings it, always had.
The
thought stung deep: He was a Tatter and the world would always see him so. No
matter what went on inside his head, inside his heart, he would always see the
stranger's casual contempt.
And why
not? came the harsh thought. Hadn't he had those thoughts himself? Hadn't they
been bred into him, bone and flesh? He thought of Zoppa— Zoppa using humor as a
shield for her soul. If only she could see that she was someone special.
Wouldn't she believe it? Wouldn't the world believe it, too?
And
then he saw what he had never seen before: If he could allow himself to be
himself—if he could know inside that he was someone—then maybe, maybe....
The
scar was hard beneath his fingers, and warm as flesh. He had thrust it there
blindly, without thought, and it was a symbol that he could not read till now.
He had seen it only as a pain that he eould not bear to hold inside any longer,
and it was that, but it was something more: It was the surfacing of the wound
that festered in his soul, and the beginning of its release.
He
touched the scar again, and when he did, it was with a faint trace of wonder.
He had mindlessly placed it there without once realizing that a scar, even one
of metal, meant a healing.
In the
windswept dark, Shawm reached for Zoppa's hand. It felt cold in his, and small.
His voice when it came was low and tentative. "We could help each
other."
"If
there's time." Her fingers closed over his, clutching, gripping, as if
they caught a lifeline. "If there's time," she whispered, "we
can try."
They
stood in the rushing water, hands clinging, eyes fixed on the sky as dark
clouds raced across the stars to the sound of distant thunder.
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RAM
SONG
Kurt
felt Ooberong steal away. The pain and the cold numbness left with her, and he
felt strength flow back into his body.
He
raised his eyes from the lens. The scout was an island, a speck in a black sea
spangled with luminous ghosts. The distant lights of Alani's skimmer flashed,
died, flashed again. A lighthouse, he thought, a beacon that steered him away
from the shore.
He
touched his cap, setting it for navigation. The skimmer was slow. He would have
a head start. Jacoby would know that and not try to follow.
The
scout SDokei
REMAINING
OXYGEN SUFFICIENT FOR 15 RAMINS. RELAX NOW. ALL WILL—
The
warning voice fell silent at his touch. He spoke quickly to the navpanel.
Responding, the little ship chose a path and leaped.
He was
heading on a random path toward a rendezvous with the ghost of a starship, and
he knew it did not matter which of the ghosts he chose.
Moments
later, as he knew it would, Jacoby's voice came on.
Kurt
stared at the image of the man. Friend, he thought. Anchor. Friend. He wanted
to reach out and touch this man one last time, grasp his hand, feel the steady
warmth of him. He wanted to speak, to tell him what he had meant to him.
Instead, he said: "I made a promise. Help me keep it. They've lost the
process down there. I want you to see that they get it back."
Jacoby's
eyes searched his. He did not speak for a long moment; then he nodded.
"You're going alone.'
Kurt
heard a faint gasp. Then Alani's face appeared. "No, Kurt."
"It's
all right." Wanting to say more, he looked at the two of them. And all he
could say was, "It's all right."
His
hand rose in a fleeting little gesture, and
RAM
SONG
211
then he
shut off the connection between them, staring as their faces faded into phantom
mists and phosphors. He reached out then, fingers stretching toward them,
touching nothing. "Friend," he whispered. "Goodbye."
He sat
staring at the darkened lens while the scout surged through the blackness
toward distant lights that grew into a fleet of silver ships, until at last
only a single starship filled the port of the tiny scout.
Distant
lightning shot the bay with silver. Low thunder rumbled over the drowned island
of reeds. Clarin trembled in Picardy's arms.
They
had not moved. They could not move. They stood in the swirling black water and
stared up at the sky.
"Cold?"
Picardy whispered.
A
slight nod.
She
held the girl closer and found that she was trembling too. So much. She had
learned so much, yet she didn't understand at all. Why? Why was it happening?
She wanted her safe little world back; she wanted yesterday.
Like
Dorian, she thought. He had locked himself into the old ways of Anche. He had
kept his emotions tuned to Anche and found a war inside himself that he
couldn't control.
A
raindrop stung her face and began to course down her cheek. She wanted it back.
She wanted it all back the way it was. But now, no matter what happened, it was
over. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to take it all away. It wasn't fair to
make her know what a short time was left. Maybe just minutes. Maybe longer. But
only a short time, only a short time either way.
She
stood in the swirling tide and clung to Clarin while the rain fell faster to
the rhythm of the surf.
Chapter
30
The
giant bays of the alien Ram slid open in the silence of the night. The scout
hovered for a moment like an insect at the throat of a pale flower. Then at a
touch of his hand, it entered.
The
firefly lights of the scout flickered over smooth, featureless walls. Although
Kurt did not look, did not hear, somehow he knew that the bays were sliding
shut behind him. Not looking back, he guided the scout toward a central port
until he felt the tractor take control.
The
scout slid into its berth. Instruments glowed, and a silent display flashed on
its ready light. Kurt stepped out, and the conveyor under his feet began to
move. He glided toward the door, which led to the heart of the alien ship.
He had
invited it when the Ram was born, he thought. He had enticed the alien with a
siren song ten thousand years old. Now it had come, and he had to meet it. He
had to fly....
Blinking,
Kurt considered the thought. For a moment, he could see Ooberong again, arms
extended, flying, controlling every movement. Controlling...
Control...
The illusion of control. The thought, when it came, was shattering. Control. It
had been his way of dealing with a universe that he had perceived as hostile
since he was a child. And until this moment, he had never known that he was
driven by the need for it.
212
RAM
SONG
213
It
seemed impossible to comprehend. How could he live within himself for millennia
and never suspect that this was in him? How could he sound a mind for ten
thousand years and find only the scattering layers of deception?
Was he
so different from the men he had called enemy? They had tried to create their
own brand of order out of chaos. So had he. And that was why he had governed
the Ram for ten thousand years. He had never let go, because to let go would be
to admit he was powerless in the face of a random, impersonal force that wore
the mask of destiny.
The
conveyor moved in silence. He grasped the railing, his hand quite still except
for the almost imperceptible movement of tendon gliding over bone.
A part
of him had always known that the time would come when the illusion would
crumble. The greater part had denied it. The greater part had fashioned him
into a little god in the microcosm of the Ram. A puny god, he thought. Safe in
a closed little room, snug in the bed he had made, shutters closed against the
storm.
The
conveyor moved and reached its end. The waiting door slid open.
He
stepped into a featureless corridor, white, deserted. As the door closed shut
behind him, he felt the overwhelming loneliness, the emptiness of the Ram. It
was an emptiness so complete it sucked out the marrow of his soul and he was
left with nothing but a shell. He cried out with the loss. And then with
mounting rage he railed at the silent ship: "Show me your face."
There
was no answer. Nothing. Nothing.
"Let
me see. Damn you. Let me see!"
Nothing.
He
cried out then to Ooberong, wanting her there, wanting her pain there too
because it was better than the emptiness.
Somewhere
in the distant hollow of his mind he felt her tremble. Slowly, with great
effort, she crept toward him; and as she did, he felt the numbness
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RAM
SONG
creep
into his body. With it came an overwhelming fatigue, gray as winter, gray as
the pain-glazed eyes that met his.
He
heard her voice, faint as a whisper. "Minutes... no time, no time."
He looked through her eyes....
Through
her eyes he saw the Ram as a ghost of white mist, and he knew that he was
seeing, from moment to moment, its continuous creation. The mist seeped through
every seam and pore of the passage. Ahead, it curled its plumes around the
startling blue of the hemichute and the car faded, wavered.
Fighting
against fatigue and the anchoring drag of bone and muscle, Kurt reached out. He
grasped a rail that faded to nothing in his hand and shimmered back again. He
forced his body onto a flickering car and touched a dimming panel.
He felt
a surge, and he was riding an illusion toward Ram Control.
His
left arm hung uselessly at his side. His left leg was a cold weight, dragging
behind him, slowing him. He reached out with his good right arm and grasped for
support.
The
room was empty. No one. No one.
The
horseshoe console of Ram Control shimmered in white haze. He blinked. It wasn't
a horseshoe, not a horseshoe at all, only a curving line edged in blackness. He
blinked through the narrowing window of his vision. Blind, he thought. Half
blind, like she was now. Slowly, he forced his head to move. Another portion of
the console slid out of blackness: Star drive.
Amber
lights flickered in mist.
Half-falling,
he caught himself, steadied himself. His hand crept forward.
"Status," he said and his voice echoed in the emptiness.
The
companel spoke:
SMEAR.
STAR DRIVE DEACTIVATED.
His
voice was a whisper, "Ready star drive."
Lights
flashed in an angry, blinking code.
RAM
SONG
215
SMEAR
INCREASING WITH COMPENSATION. STAR DRIVE DEACTIVATED.
"Override."
Red
lights flared. Alarms blatted.
WARNING!
COMPENSATION CRITICAL. WARNING! ACTIVATION WILL DESTROY THIS SHIP, DESTROY ALL
PERSONNEL, THIS SHIP
"Priority
override."
A thin
shaft of light shot into his eyes.
RETINALS
ACKNOWLEDGED, KURT PRIME. ACTIVATING STAGE 3.
STATUS:
MANUAL CONTROL. READY
He
tried to focus; the override lever wavered. So far away... He had to do it,
redirect it, set the alien free.
Cold
drifted through his body. Rags of black fluttered over his eyes. He caught his
breath. Ooberong!
Blackness.
Black—and the distant, slowing flutter of a dying heart. His hand crept over
the console, touching, feeling for the lever. Ooberong...
Slowing.
Slowing.
"Come
with me," he cried, and his voice was anguished. So far, so far.
"Come with me."
"I
can't...." A whisper. An echo. Dying, fading to nothing.
"...can't...can't...can't...." And she was gone.
She had
to do it alone, he thought. She had to die alone as if it were too intensely
personal a thing to share.
And so
now would he. He would do it alone, in the final shuddering agonies of the
ship, in the final desperate hope that his death had meaning.
His
hand closed over the lever. In a thousand linked and phantom ships, a thousand
hands closed, pulled back, released.
In the
offshore dark, Picardy stared up at the sky. Dark clouds scudded before the
wind and the last of the storm. "Look!"
A
thousand stars shivered in the night. A thou-
216
RAM
SONG
sand
starships trembled, vanished. Then there was only one pale distant Ram dimming
in the light of the moons.
Tomorrow
was coming, she thought, and a shiver ran through her. No turning back now.
She
looked at Clarin. She was young enough, she thought. Maybe the only one of them
young enough to be immortal. Clarin was going to have all the tomorrows. All
that was left for her was now.
And
then she knew that was all she had ever had, all any of them had ever had: a
now, a succession of single moments. And it was enough.
She
tried to imagine Clarin in a million years, still the same, not changing. She
saw her leading a group through a museum filled with dry and dusty bones:
"To the left, a tri-tail."
And the
group nodded and smiled its approval. "To the right a Picardy. Picardies
were tool users. Note the long, needlelike object clutched in its
Fingers."
Picardy
laughed, and suddenly the others laughed, too. Then they were hugging,
laughing, crying all at once, while a phosphorescent tide boiled around their
knees and night winds swept the tattered clouds from a rain-washed sky.
Kurt
felt the pull of the Ram in every bone, every fiber, every cell.
He
raised blind eyes; he cried out. "Show me your face."
He
sensed the great ship's star drive. He saw it as a golden plane, dipping under
time, burrowing through blackness, plunging toward a point so distant that it
had no meaning.
A
billion twistors followed... a billion more....
More...
more...
The Ram
surged, and curiously, vision flooded back: circumscribed, flat, devoid of
color.
"Show
me your face," he cried again and again. "Show me your face."-
And
then he realized that it had none.
RAM
SONG
217
It was
alien and utterly unknowable. It was an indifferent force plunging forward in
its own time, backward in his. And in despair, he knew he would never know it,
never understand it, never fathom its quest. He was riding its current with no
more comprehension than a piece of flotsam riding the sea.
"No,"
he cried. "No." It couldn't be. It had communicated. He had known it,
been sure of it. It was following the Earth's song. It had to be.
He
listened, straining for overtones, undertones of meaning. When none came, he
began to walk.
He
walked aimlessly. Tall and straight, he walked, and the crystals he wore
trailed and fluttered with the movement. He found himself on a colorless
hemichute staring out onto a pale, empty world. Ahead, the forest of the Ram
was silver and strangely translucent.
He
stepped out onto the shore of a white, shimmering lake. Circling it, he walked
over low hills until he came to the place of his retreat. Cycles, he thought.
When the alien came, it was here they had found him, told him. It was here he
would remain, he thought in desolation. Because it wasn't a cycle. Not at all.
It was an entropy stretching out so far that it seemed like eternity before the
final ebbing and dissolution.
He
raised his hands to his head. The cap was almost weightless. He took it off,
and its crystals flowed through his fingers like light. He laid it down; he had
no need of it now.
He sat
on the ground and leaned his back against the bole of a tall mahogany as pale
as stars. On the rise above him a young gumbo limbo drew its sustenance from
its fallen parent tree. Struggling toward a false silver sun, it carried
destruction with it. The broad pallid leaves of a strangler fig showed in its
crown, its knotted roots coiling like garrotes around the smooth blanched bark.
Cycles,
he thought, and the thought was bitter. Bitter and pale as alkaline sand. He
could see it, see the thought in his mind, pulsing, moving like a cloud
218
RAM
SONG
of
white flies—a cloud of colorless cylinders, pinched in the middle with fat
curving ropes of glass. Twistors....
Staring,
he saw the pale cloud move. He saw it soar and bank; he saw it fly toward the
center of the ship and join the others there. Staring, he thought he heard its
voice: the faint tinkle of moving glass, the murmur of crystal rustlings, the
distant echo of windblown sand.
Echoes.
Distant,
alien echoes of a billion thoughts, a billion shining thoughts.
He
looked around and saw them everywhere, heard them everywhere. He looked and
suddenly he knew them, knew what they were, and where they came from: They were
the alien. They were the thing that had communicated. And they weren't from
another universe at all. The whirlpool in time was only the vehicle—the tide
they rode.
They
were the questing, curious thoughts of a people from the edge of time,
descendants of a human race so changed he had taken them for alien.
They
were the people of the Ram.
He
tried to comprehend it. A Ram so far in the future that its people had changed
into something different, something more—the product of an evolution that was
only beginning in his time. And it was then—in their time—that, the fistula
between the universes had opened.
They
must have known it was coming. He tried to imagine them huddled in that future
Ram, waiting for the cataclysm that changed them from flesh to energy in a
moment.
They
were pure energy now, caught in a rushing whirlpool.
And so,
he thought in wonder, so was he.
With
eyes that were not really eyes, he saw them. They were riding a current beyond
understanding, and as they rode, they shaped it.
He
laughed out loud at the wonder of it. And his laugh, his wonder, swirled in a
cloud of crystal
RAM
SONG
219
movement.
They were riding a tidal wave of time back to their own beginnings.
Cycles.
He
looked at the gumbo limbo again, and suddenly he was in it, of it. He was
locked in mortal combat, and there was nothing else in the universe but a
silent battle against the deadly coils of a strangler fig.
He
emerged at last, fatigued, shaken. And it was only then that he saw that the
fig, the gumbo limbo, had sprung from a million thoughts—a billion twistors
generating infinitesimal particles that, joining, formed that frozen battle.
Mist. White mist. Continuous creation of matter from thought alone.
Immortals.
All of them. Rushing back to an old shore, rushing back to the origins of
Earth.
True
immortals. Energy, not flesh. He saw them riding an endless tide, ebbing,
flowing forever, and he knew that somehow they had always existed, just as time
had always existed. It was only his sensing of it that was linear. He could see
it now, nested, linked— boxes from a magic show, flow empty, now full. Building
blocks. Twister thought.
They're
like gods, he thought. And the alien tide they rode—did it have a name? A
meaning? Was it the guiding force that made them possible?
He
could sense their thoughts now, sense that his were linked to theirs, and he wondered
if it always had been so. He thought of a tide washing the shore of a little
planet. He thought of it touching human lives with wisps of a future that would
seem to them to be the touch of inspiration.
Thoughts.
Making the stuff of the universe. How many did it take to dream Olympus? How
many more did it take to dream a world?
He
stared at the gumbo limbo again and remembered the struggle with the strangler
fig. Nothing else had been real then but the life of that single tree, and he
knew that if he had stayed there, made that choice, with its death there would
be an ending.
How do
you choose, Kurt Kraus?
220
RAM
SONG
He
stared at the tree and he thought, could it be possible? Could it be possible
to try again? To have a choice?
The
image of an infant came to him then. A new and mortal infant, not yet born...
created whole.
The
child's eyes opened, and he saw that they could be his own.
He
thought of a curving golden figure eight with a break along its path.
How do
you choose, Kurt Kraus?
Do you
choose to deny your immortality f Do you choose your art?
He
knelt on the silver soil of Earth below a silver tree. He reached out and felt
the presence of a multitude; he held their thoughts in his hand.
He
looked down at the ring that now lay in his palm: a simple ring of antique
design. And on its face a line of gold traced a lazy eight on a field of black,
a backward curving line with a single break.
"I
choose to deny," he whispered. And when he slipped it on, he thought he
heard the distant echoing of music.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
A
native of Tampa, Florida, Sharon Webb now makes her home in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of North Georgia. The Earth Song Triad, which includes the novels
EARTHCHILD, EARTH SONG, and RAM SONG, had as its genesis the novelette
"Variation on a Theme from Beethoven" (chosen as the lead story for
Donald Wollheim's 1981 World's Best SF). Sharon Webb is also the author of THE
ADVENTURES OF TERRA TARKINGTON.