The Songhouse takes care of all its children, she thought often, sometimes gratefully, sometimes bitterly. I am taken care of. Taught to work by being given duties in the Songhouse. Taught science and history and languages and I’m damned good at it. Outside, outside they would consider me gifted. But here I’m a Deaf. And the sooner I leave the better.

  She would leave soon. She was fourteen. Only a few months left. At fifteen she would be out, with a comfortable stipend and the doors to a dozen universities open to her. The money would continue until she was twenty-two. Later, if she needed. The Songhouse took care of its children.

  But there were still those few months, and her duties were interesting enough. She worked with security, checking the warning and protective devices that made sure the Songhouse stayed isolated from the rest of Tew. Such devices had not always been needed, in the old days. There had even been a time when the Songmaster in the High Room ruled all the world. But it was still less than a century since the outsiders had tried to storm the Songhouse in a silly dispute over a pirate who wanted the Songhouse’s reputed great wealth. And now the security devices, which took a year to patrol. The duty had taken her around the perimeter, a journey longer than circling the Earth, and all by skooter, so that she was alone in the forests and deserts and seacoasts of the Songhouse lands.

  Today she was checking the monitoring devices in the Songhouse itself. In a way it made her feel superior, to know what none of the children and few of the masters and teachers knew—that the stone was not impenetrable, that, in fact, it was heavily strung with wires and tubes, so that what seemed to be a rambling, primitive stone relic was potentially as modern as anything on Tew. Possession of the wiring diagrams gave her information that would surprise any of the less-informed singers. Yet whenever she dwelt on her pride at having inside knowledge, she forced herself to remember that she was only allowed the knowledge so young because she was completely outside all the discipline and study of the Songhouse. She was a Deaf—she could know secrets because she would never sing and so she didn’t matter.

  That was her frame of mind when she entered the High Room. She knocked brusquely because she was feeling upset. No answer. Good, the old Songmaster, Nniv, wasn’t in. She pushed open the. door. The High Room was freezing, with all the shutters open to the wintry wind. It was insane to leave the place like this—who could work here? Instead of going to the panels where the monitors were hidden, she went to the shutters of the nearest window, leaned out to catch them, and found herself looking down forever, it seemed, to the next roof below her. She hadn’t realized how high she really was. On the east side, of course, the Songhouse was higher, so the stairs up to the High Room were not so terribly long. But she was high, and the height fascinated her. What would it be like to fall? Would she feel it like flying, with the exhilaration of the skooter rushing down a hillside? Or would she really be afraid?

  She stopped herself with one leg over the sill, her arms poised to thrust her out. What am I doing? The shock of realization was almost enough to throw her forward, out the window. She caught herself, gripped the sides of the window, forced herself to slowly pull ha leg back inside, withdraw from the window, and finally kneel, leaning her head against the lip of rock at the base of the window. Why did I do that? What was I doing?

  I was leaving the Songhouse.

  The thought made her shudder. Not that way. I will not leave the Songhouse that way. Leaving the Songhouse will not be the end of my life.

  She did not believe it. And, not believing, she gripped the stone and wanted not to ever let go.

  The room was cold. It made her numb, motionless as she was, and the whine of the wind through the spaces in the roof and the rush of wind through the windows made her afraid in a new way; as if someone were watching her.

  She turned. There was no one. Just the bundles of clothing and books and stone benches and a foot sticking out from under one of the bunches of clothing and the foot was blue and she went ova to it and discovered that this bundle of clothing was the misshapen, inaedibly thin body of Nniv, who was dead, frozen in the wind from the winta outside. His eyes wae open, and he stared at the stone in front of his face. Kya-Kya whimpered, but then reached down and pulled on his lip, as if to wake him. He rolled onto his back, but an arm stuck up in the air, and the legs moved only a little, and she knew he was dead, that the entire time she had been in the room he had been dead.

  The Songmaster in the High Room died only rarely. She had neva known another. It was Nniv who had ultimately decided ha fate. He had declared her Deaf and decided she would leave the Songhouse without songs. She had hated him in her heart, though she had only talked to him a few times, ever since she was eight. But now she only felt repulsed by the corpse, and more than that, disgusted at the way he had died. Was the room always kept this bitterly cold? How had he lived so long! Was this some part of the discipline, that the ruler of the Songhouse lived in such squalor and misay?

  If this emaciated, frozen corpse was the pinnacle of what the Songhouse could produce, Kya-Kya was not impressed. The lips were parted and the tongue lolled forward, blue and ghastly. This tongue, she thought, was once part of a song. Reputed to be the most mastaful song in the galaxy, pahaps in the universe. But what had the song been, if not the throat and lips and teeth and lungs, all now cold; if not the brain, that now was still?

  She could not sing because of lips and teeth and throat and lungs and because in her own mind she was not so single-minded that she could be what the Songhouse demanded. But did it matter?

  She did not feel triumphant that Nniv was dead. She was old enough to know that she, too, would be dead, and if she had a century ahead of her it only meant time in which she might end up just as accidentally cruel as Nniv had been. Kya-Kya did not pretend to unusual virtue. Just unusual value, which no one but her recognized. And it occurred to her that Nniv’s failure to recognize who and what she was (or had he, indeed recognized it?) did not change her.

  She left him, went downstairs to find the Blind in charge of maintenance, an old man named Hrrai who rarely left his office. “Nniv is dead,” she told him wondering if her happiness sounded in her voice (but knowing that Hrrai would not be likely to read her very well, being a Blind). Can’t let anyone hear that I’m happy, she thought. Because I’m not rejoicing at his death. Only at my life.

  “Dead?” Imperturbable Hrrai only sounded mildly surprised. “Well, then, you must go tell his successor.”

  Hrrai leaned down over his table and began worrying his pen back and forth across a page.

  “But Hrrai,” Kya-Kya said.

  “But what?”

  “Who is Nniv’s successor?”

  “The next Songmaster of the High Room,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Of course nothing! How should I know who that is? How am I supposed to figure it out if you don’t tell me?” Hrrai looked up, more surprised this time than he had been at the news of Nniv’s death. “Don’t you know how this works?”

  “How should I? I’m a Deaf. I never got past Groan!”

  “Well, you needn’t act so upset about it. It isn’t exactly a secret, you know. Whoever finds the body will know, that’s all. Whoever finds that the Songmaster in the High Room is dead will know.”

  “How will I know?”

  “It will be obvious to you. Just go and tell him or her that he or she is supposed to take care of funeral arrangements. It’s all that simple. But you really ought to act quickly. The Songhouse shouldn’t be long without someone in the High Room.”

  He turned back to his work with a finality that told Kya-Kya she must leave, must be about her business, certainly must not bother him anymore. She left. And wandered the halls. She had thought to be quit of the Songhouse in a matter of months, the least important person ever to have been there, and suddenly she was supposed to choose the leader of the place. What kind of crazy system is this? she thought. And what the hell kind of rotten luck for me, of all people!

  But it was not rotten luck, and as she wandered through the stone corridors, all of them chilly with the winter outside, she realized that no one ever came to the High Room unbidden except maintenance people, and all the maintenance people were Deaf’s or Blinds, those who had not made it into the highest reaches of the singing folk. They could not sing, they could not teach—and so it was left to one of them to stumble across the body and, being impartial, not a member of the eligible group, choose fairly the person who obviously should be the Songmaster in the High Room.

  Who?

  She went to the Common Rooms and saw the teachers moving among the Classes and knew that she could not suddenly elevate a teacher above his rank—it was tempting to be whimsical, to take vengeance on the Songhouse by naming an incompetent to head it, but it would be cruel to the incompetent so called, and she couldn’t destroy someone that way. She knew enough to know that it was just as cruel to lift someone above where he ought to be as it was to force them to stay below their true station. I won’t cause misery.

  But the Songmasters, the logical group to choose from—she knew none of them, except by reputation. Onn, a gifted teacher and singer, but always assigned as a consultant to everybody because he couldn’t live with the necessity of keeping a fixed schedule, meeting with obnoxious people, and making, of all things, decisions. Much better to give advice. No, Onn was not the one anyone would expect, though he was by far the nicest. And Chuffyun was too old, far too old. He would not be long behind Nniv.

  In fact, just as Hrrai had told her, the choice was obvious. But not one she enjoyed, not at all. Esste, who was cold to everyone except for the little boy she was promoting as a possibility for Mikal’s Songbird. Esste, who had reached down into the Common Rooms and lowered herself to be a teacher when she had been administrator of half the Songhouse, all for the sake of a little boy. No one made such great sacrifices for me, Kya-Kya thought bitterly. But Esste was a great singer, one who could light fires in every heart in the Songhouse—or quench those fires, if she wanted to. And Esste was above the petty jealousies and competitions that were endemic to the Songhouse. Esste was above such things in her attitude—and now she would be above them in station, too.

  Kya-Kya stopped a master (who was quite surprised at having a Deaf interrupt her) and asked where she might find Esste.

  “With Ansset. With the boy.”

  “And where is he?”

  “In his stall.”

  Stall. The boy had been promoted. He couldn’t be more than six yet, and he was already in Stalls and Chambers. It turned Kya-Kya’s mouth down, her stomach dull. But in a moment she brightened again. The boy had been advanced by Esste, that’s all. He would be in the Songhouse all his life, except for a few years as a performer. While she would be free, could see all of Tew—more, could see other planets, could go, perhaps, to Earth where Mikal ruled the universe in indescribable glory!

  A few questions. A few directions. She found Ansset’s stall, identical to all the others except for a number on the door. Inside she could hear singing. It was conversation—she knew when it was songtalk. Esste was inside, then. Kya-Kya knocked.

  “Who?” came the answer—from the boy, not from the Songmaster.

  “Kya-Kya. With a message for Songmaster Esste.”

  The door opened. The boy, who was far smaller than Kya-Kya, let her in. Esste sat on the stool by the window. The room was bleak—bare wooden walls on three sides, a cot, a stool, a table, and the stone wall framing the single window that opened onto the courtyard. Every stall was interchangeable with any other. But Kya-Kya would once have given her soul to have a stall and all that it implied. The boy was six.

  “Your message?”

  Esste was as cold as ever; her robe swirled around her feet as she sat absolutely erect on the stool.

  “Esste, I have come from the High Room.”

  “He wants me?”

  “He is dead.” Esste’s face betrayed nothing. She had Control. “He is dead,” Kya-Kya said again. “And I hope you will take care of the funeral arrangements.”

  Esste sat in silence for a moment before she answered.

  “You found the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have done me no kindness,” Esste said. She rose and left the room.

  What now? Kya-Kya wondered, as she stood near the door of Ansset’s stall. She had not thought beyond informing Esste. She had expected some reaction; expected at least to be told what to do. Instead she stood here in the stall with the boy who was the opposite of her, the epitome of success where she had met nothing but failure.

  He looked at her inquiringly. “What does this mean?”

  “It means,” said Kya-Kya, “that Esste is Songmaster in the High Room.”

  The boy showed no sign of response. Control, thought Kya-Kya. That damnable Control.

  “Doesn’t it mean anything to you?” she demanded.

  “What should it mean?” Ansset asked, and his voice was a web of innocence.

  “It should mean a little gloating, at least, boy,” Kya-Kya answered, with the contempt the hopelessly inferior can freely use when the superior is helpless. “Esste’s been pampering you every step of the way. Leading you up without having to go through the pain everyone goes through. And now she has all the power it takes. You’ll be a Songbird, little boy. You’ll sing for the greatest people in the galaxy. And then you’ll come home, and your Esste will see to it you never have to bother with being a friend or a tutor, you’ll just step right into teaching, or being a master, or perhaps—why not?—a high master right from the start, and before you’re twenty you’ll be a Songmaster. So why don’t you forget your Control and let it show? This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you!” Her voice was bitter and angry, with no hint of music in it, not even the dark music of rage.

  Ansset regarded her placidly, then opened his mouth, not to speak but to sing. At first she decided to leave immediately; soon she was incapable of deciding anything.

  Kya-Kya had heard many singers before, but no one had sung to her like this. There were words, but she did not hear words. Instead she heard kindness and understanding, and encouragement. In Ansset’s song she was not a failure. She was, in fact, a wise woman who had done a great favor for the Songhouse, who had earned the love of all future generations. She felt proud. She felt that the Songhouse would send her out, not in shame, but as an emissary to the worlds outside. I will tell them of the music, she thought, and because of me the Songhouse will be held in even greater esteem by everyone who knows of it. For I am as much a product of the Songhouse as any singer or Songbird. She was bursting with joy, with pride. She had not been so happy in years. In her life. She embraced the boy and wept for several minutes.

  If this is what Ansset can do, he is worth all the praise he has been given, she thought. Why, the boy is full of love, even for me. Even for me. And she looked up into his eyes and saw—

  Nothing.

  He regarded her as placidly as he had before. Control. He had let out the song, and that was all. There was nothing human about him when he wasn’t singing. He knew what she wanted to hear, he had given it to her, and that was all he needed to do.

  “Do they wind you up?” she said to the blank face.

  “Wind me up?”

  “You may be a singer,” she said angrily, “but you aren’t human!”

  He began to sing again, the tones already soothing, but Kya-Kya leaped to her feet, backed away. “Not again! You can’t trick me again! Sing to the stones and make them cry, but I won’t have you fooling me again!” She fled the room, slamming shut the door on his song, on his empty face. The child was a monster, not real at all, and she hated him.

  She also remembered his song and loved him and longed to return to his stall to hear him sing forever.

  That very day she pleaded with Esste to let her go early. To let her leave before she ever had to hear Ansset sing again. Esste looked confused, asked for explanation. Kya-Kya only insisted again that if she wasn’t allowed to go, she would kill herself.

  “You can go tomorrow, then,” the new Songmaster in the High Room said.

  “Before the funeral?”

  “Why before the funeral?”

  “Because he’ll sing then, won’t he?”

  Esste nodded. “His song will be beautiful.”

  “I know,” Kya-Kya said, and her eyes filled with tears at the memory. “But it won’t be a human being singing it. Good-bye.”

  “We’ll miss you,” Esste said softly, and the words were tender.

  Kya-Kya had been leaving, but she turned to look Esste in the eye. “Oh, you sound so sweet. I can see where Ansset learned it. A machine teaching a machine.”

  “You misunderstand,” said Esste. “It is pain teaching pain. What else do you think the Control is for?”

  But Kya-Kya was gone. She saw neither Esste nor Ansset again before the tram took her and her luggage and her first month’s money away from the Songhouse. “I’m free,” she said softly when she passed the gate leading to Tew and the farms opened before her.

  You’re a liar, you’re a liar, answered the rhythm of the engines.

  7

  A machine teaching a machine. The words left a sour memory that stayed with Esste through all the funeral arrangements. A machine. Well, true enough in a way, and completely untrue in another. The machines were the people who had no Control, whose voice spoke all their secrets and none of their intentions. But I am in control of myself, which no machine can ever be.

  But she also understood what Kya-Kya meant. Indeed, she already knew it, and it frightened her how completely Ansset had learned Control, and how young. She watched him as he sang at Nniv’s funeral. He was not the only singer, but he was the youngest, and the honor was tremendous, almost unprecedented. There was a stir when he stepped up to sing. But when he was through singing, no one had any doubt that the honor was deserved. Only the new ones, the Groans, and a few of the Bells were crying—it would not be right at a Songmaster’s funeral to try to get anyone to break Control. But the song was grief and love and longing together, the respect of all those present, not just for Nniv, who was dead, but for the Songhouse, which he had helped keep alive. Oh, Ansset, you’re a master, thought Esste, but she also noticed things that most did not notice. How his face was impassive before and after he sang; how he stood rigidly, his body focused on making the exact tone. He manipulates us, Esste thought, manipulates us but not half so perfectly as he manipulates himself. She noticed how he sensed every stir, every glance in the audience and fed upon it and gave it back a hundred fold. He is a magnifying mirror, Esste thought. You are a magnifying mirror who takes the love you’ve been given and spews it out stronger than before, but with none of yourself attached to it. You are not whole.