A garbage processing station; a whoreshop; an armored car loading that hour’s receipts from a gambling establishment; a dentist who specialized in fixing the teeth of those who had to smile and didn’t want to take more than an few minutes off work; a rehearsal for a slat show; and a thousand loaders bringing in food and taking out garbage.

  And a morgue.

  “You’re not allowed in here,” said the embalmer, but Ansset only smiled and said, “Yes we are,” and sang unshakeable confidence. The embalmer shrugged and went on with his work. And soon he began talking as he went. “I clean ’em,” he said. The bodies came in on a conveyor. He rolled them off onto a table, where he slit the abdomen and removed the guts. “Rich folks, poor folks, winners, losers, players, workers, they dies a hundred a night in this city, and here we cleans ’em pretty so they’ll keep. All the guts is the same. All the stinks is the same. Naked as babies.” The guts went into a bag. He filled the cavity with a stiff plastic wool and sewed up the skin with a hooked needle. It took only ten minutes for one body. “Another one does the eyes, and another one does visible wounds. I’m a specialist.”

  Esste wanted to leave. Pulled on Ansset’s arm, but Ansset wouldn’t go. He watched four bodies come by. The fourth one was the old woman from the park. The embalmer had just about run out of chat. He cut open the huge stomach. The stench was worse. “I hate the fat ones,” said the embalmer. “Always having to hold the fat out of the way. Slows me down. Gets me behind.” He had to reach over mounds of flesh to reach the bowels, and he swore when he broke them. “Fat ones makes me clumsy.”

  The woman’s face was set in a grimace that might have been a grin. Her throat had been slit.

  “Who killed her?” asked Ansset, his face and voice showing no emotion beyond curiosity.

  “Anyone. How should I know?

  Just a deader. Could have been killed for anything. But she’s a poor one, all right. I know the smell. Eats eels. If the killers hadn’t got her the cancer would’ve. See?” He pulled up the stomach, which was distended and putrified by a huge tumor. “So fat she didn’t know she had it. Would have finished her off soon enough.”

  It took the embalmer several tries and stronger thread before he could tie the abdomen back together again. In the meantime another body passed on the conveyor. “Damn,” he said. “There’ll be complaints tonight, that’s for sure. Another missed quota. I hate the fat ones.”

  “Let’s go now,” said Esste, deliberately letting her Control slip enough that he would be surprised into moving. He let her lead him to the indoor street.

  “Enough,” Esste said. “Let’s go.”

  “She was wrong,” Ansset answered.

  “Who?”

  “The woman. She was wrong. They wouldn’t let her alone.”

  “Ansset.”

  “This has been a good trip,” Ansset said. “I’ve learned a lot.”

  “Have you?”

  “Pleasure is like making bread. A lot of hot, nasty work in, the kitchen for a few swallows at the table.”

  “Very good.” She tried to lead him away.

  “No Esste. You can ban me at the Songhouse, but you can’t ban me here.” And he broke away from her and ran to the backstage entrance of a theater. Esste followed, but she was not young, and though she had made an effort to stay in shape a woman of her age could not hope to overtake a child determined to escape. She was lucky to stay close enough to see where he went.

  An orchestra was playing to a full hall, and a woman on the stage was dancing nude. An equally naked man waited in the wings. Ansset stood behind one of the illusions, rigid as he sang. His voice was clear and loud, and the woman heard it and stopped dancing, and soon the members of the orchestra began hearing it and stopped playing. Ansset stepped through the illusion and walked out onto the stage, still singing.

  Ansset sang to them what they had been feeling, what the orchestra had been pathetically incompetent to satisfy. He sang lust to them, though he had never experienced it, and they grew passionate and uncontrollable, audience and orchestra and the naked woman and man. Esste grieved inwardly as she watched it. He will give them everything they want.

  But then he changed his song. Still without words, he began telling them of the sweating cooks in the kitchen, of the loaders, of the dentist, of the shabbiness behind the buildings. He made them understand the ache of weariness, the pain of serving the ungrateful. And at last he sang of the old woman, sang her laugh, sang her loneliness and her trust, and sang her death, the cold embalming on a shining table. It was agony, and the audience wept and screamed and fled the hall, those who could control themselves enough to stand.

  Ansset’s voice penetrated to the walls, but did not echo.

  When the hall was empty, Esste walked onto the stage. Ansset looked at her with eyes as empty as the hall.

  “You eat it,” said Esste, “and you vomit it back fouler than before.”

  “I sang what was in me.”

  “In you? None of this ever got in you. It came to the walls and you threw it back.”

  Ansset’s gaze did not swerve. “I knew you would not know it when I sang from myself.”

  “It was you that did not know,” Esste said. “We’re going home.”

  “I was to have a month.”

  “You don’t need a month here. Nothing here will change you.”

  “Am I an eel?”

  “Are you a stone?”

  “I’m a child.”

  “It’s time you remembered that.” He offered no resistance. She led him to the hotel, where they gathered their things and left Bog before morning. It all failed, Esste thought. I had thought that the mixture of humanity here would open him. But all he found was what he already had. Inhumanity. An impregnable wall. And proof that he can do to people whatever he wants.

  He had read the audience of strangers too well. It was something that had never happened at the Songhouse before. Ansset was not just a brilliant singer. He could hear the songs in people’s hearts without their having to sing; could hear them, could strengthen them, could sing them back with a vengeance. He had been forced into the mold of the Songhouse, but he was not made of such malleable stuff as the others. The mold could not fit.

  What will break? Esste wondered. What will break first?

  She did not for a moment believe it would be the Songhouse. Ansset, for all his seeming strength, was far more fragile than that. If he goes to Mikal like this, Esste realized, he will do the opposite of all my plans for him. Mikal is strong, perhaps strong enough to resist Ansset’s perversion of his gift. But the others: Ansset would destroy them. Without meaning to, of course. They would come to drink again and again at his well, not knowing it was themselves they drank until they were dry.

  He slept in the bus. Esste put her arms around him, held him, and sang the love song to him over and over in his sleep.

  13

  “I haven’t time for this,” Esste said, allowing her voice to sound irritated.

  “Neither have I,” Kya-Kya answered defiantly.

  “The schools on Tew are excellent. Your stipend is more than adequate.”

  “I have been accepted at the Princeton Government Institute.”

  “It will cost ten times as much to support you on Earth. Not to mention the cost of getting you there. And the inconvenience of having to give it to you in a lump sum.”

  “You earn ten times that amount from a single year’s payment on a Songbird.”

  True enough. Esste sighed inwardly. Too much today. I was not ready to face this girl. What Ansset has not taken from me, exhaustion has. “Why Earth?” she asked, knowing that Kya-Kya would recognize the question as the last gasp of resistance.

  “Earth, because in my field I’m a Songbird. I know that’s hard for you to admit, that someone can actually do something excellent that isn’t singing, but—”

  “You can go. We will pay.”

  The tone of voice was dismissal. The very abruptness and unconcern of it made her victory feel almost like a letdown. Kya-Kya waited for a few moments, then went to the door. Stopped. Turned around and asked, “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Have the bursar see me.”

  Esste turned back to the papers on her table. Kya-Kya took advantage of her inattention to look around the High Room. I chose you for this place, Kya-Kya thought, trying to feel superior. It didn’t work. It was as Hrrai had said—she made the obvious choice. Anyone who knew the Songhouse would have named Esste to the office.

  The room was cold, but at least all the shutters were closed. There were drafts, but no wind. Apparently Esste did not intend to die soon. Kya-Kya looked at the window where she had almost fallen out. With the shutters closed it was just another window, or part of the wall. The room was not kilometers above the ground; it was as low as any other building; the Songhouse was just a building; she did not care whether she never saw it again, felt no lingering fondness for its stone, refused to dream of it, did not even demean herself by disparaging it to her friends at the university.

  Her fingers brushed the stone walls as she left.

  Esste looked up at the sound of Kya-Kya’s leaving. Finally gone. She picked up the paper that concerned her far more than the needs of a Deaf who was trying to avenge her failure.

  Songmaster Esste:

  Mikal has called me to Earth to serve in his palace guard. He has also instructed me to bring his Songbird back with me. It is my understanding that the child is nine. I have no choice but to obey. I have arranged my route, however, so that Tew is my last stop. You have twenty-two days from the date of this message. I regret the abruptness of this, but I will carry out my orders.

  Riktors Ashen.

  The letter had been transmitted that morning. Twenty-two days. And the worst of it is, Ansset is ready. Ready. Ready.

  I am not ready.

  Twenty-two days. She pushed a button under the table. “Send Ansset to me.”

  14

  Rruk had just entered Stalls and Chambers, right on schedule. She had no power in her voice, but she was a sweet singer, and pleased everyone who heard her. Still, she was afraid. Stalls and Chambers was a greater step than those between Groan and Bell or Bell and Breeze. Here she was one of the youngest, and in her chamber she was the youngest. Only one thing helped her forget her timidity—this was the seventh chamber. Ansset’s chamber.

  “Will Ansset come?” Rruk asked a boy sitting near her.

  “Not today.”

  Rruk did not show her disappointment; she sang it.

  “I know,” said the boy. “But it hardly matters. He never sang here anyway.”

  Rruk had heard rumors of that, but hadn’t believed them. Not let Ansset sing? But it was true. And she murmured a song of the injustice of Ansset’s banning.

  “Don’t I know it,” said the boy. “I once sang just such a song in chamber. My name’s Ller.”

  “Rruk.”

  “I’ve heard of you. You’re the one who first sang the love song to Ansset.”

  It was a bond—they both had given something, even dared something for Ansset. Chamber began then, and their conversation ceased. Ller was part of a trio that day. He took the high part, and did a thin high drone that changed only rarely. Yet it was still the controlling voice in the trio, the center to which the other two voices always returned. By subordinating his own virtuosity, he had made the song unusually good. Rruk liked him even more, for his own sake now, not just for Ansset’s.

  After chamber, without particularly deciding it, they went to Ansset’s stall. “He was called to the Songmaster in the High Room just before chamber. Perhaps he’ll be back now. Usually Esste comes to him as master, so it may be that she called him up there to lift the ban.”

  “I hope so,” Rruk said.

  They knocked at Ansset’s door. It opened, and Ansset stood there regarding them absently.

  “Ansset,” Ller said, and then fell silent. Any other child they could have asked directly. But Ansset’s long isolation, his unchildlike expression, his apparent lack of interest—they were difficult obstacles to surmount.

  When the silence had lasted far too long, Rruk blurted. “We heard you went to the High Room.”

  “I did,” Ansset said.

  “Is the ban lifted?”

  Ansset again looked at them in silence.

  “Oh,” said Rruk. “I’m sorry.” Her voice told how sorry.

  It was then that Ller noticed that Ansset’s blankets were rolled together.

  “Are you leaving?” Ller asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” Ller insisted.

  Ansset went to the blanket, picked it up, and came back to the door. “The High Room,” he said. Then he walked by them and headed down the corridor.

  “To live there?” Ller asked.

  Ansset did not answer.

  15

  “This was not a job for a seeker,” the seeker said.

  “I know,” Esste answered, and she sang him an apology that pleaded the necessity of the work.

  Mollified, the seeker made his report. “I spent the income from a decade of singers getting into the secret files of the child market. Doblay-me is a simple place to do business. If you have enough money and know whom to give it to, you can accomplish anything.”

  “You found?”

  “Ansset was kidnapped. His parents are very much alive, would pay almost anything to get him back. And when he was taken, he was old enough to know his parents. To know they didn’t want him to go. Stolen from them at a theater. The kidnapper I talked to is now a petty government official. Taxes or something. I had to hire some known killers in order to scare him into talking to me. Very unpleasant business. I haven’t been able to sing in weeks.”

  “His parents?”

  “Very rich. The mother a very loving woman. The father—his songs are more ambiguous. I’m not a great judge of adults, you know that. I haven’t needed to be. But I had the feeling there were guilts in him that he was afraid of. Perhaps he could have done more to get Ansset back. Or perhaps the guilts are for other things entirely. Completely unrelated. According to the law, now that you and I know this, it’s a capital offense not to give the boy back.”

  Esste looked at him, sang a few notes, and both of them laughed. “I know,” the seeker said. “Once in the Songhouse, you have no parents, you have no family.”

  “The parents don’t suspect?”

  “To them their little boy is Byrwyn. I told them that the psychotic child in our hospital on Murrain had the wrong blood type to be their son.”

  A knock on the door.

  “Who?”

  “Ansset,” came the answer.

  “May I see him?” the seeker said. “You may see him. But don’t speak to him. And when you leave, bar the door from the other side. Tell the Blind that I’ll be taking my meals through the machines. No one is to come up. Messages through the computer.”

  The seeker was puzzled. “Why the isolation?”

  “I am preparing,” Esste said, “Mikal’s Songbird.”

  Then she arose and went to the door and opened it. Ansset came in, holding his blanket roll unconcernedly. He looked at the seeker without curiosity. The seeker looked at him, too, but not so unemotionally. Two years of tracing Ansset’s past had given the boy unusual importance in the seeker’s eyes. But as the seeker watched, and saw the emptiness of Ansset’s face, he let himself show grief, and he sang his mourning to Esste, briefly. She had told him not to speak. But some things could not. Should not go unsaid.

  The seeker left. The bar dropped into place on the other side of the door. Ansset and Esste were alone.

  Ansset stood before Esste for a long time, waiting. But this time Esste had nothing to say. She simply looked at him, her face as blank as his, though because of age some expression was permanently inscribed there and she could not look as empty of personality as he. The wait seemed interminable to Esste. The boy’s patience was greater than most adults’. But it broke, eventually. Still silent, Ansset went to the stone bench beside one of the locked shutters and sat down.

  First victory.

  Esste was able, now, to go to the table and work. Papers came from the computer; she wrote by hand notes to herself; wrote by keys messages into the computer. As she worked Ansset sat silently on the bench until his body grew tired and cold. Then he got up, walked around. He did not try the door or the shutters. It was as if he already grasped the fact that this was going to be a test of wills, a trial of strength between his Control and Esste’s. The door and windows would be no escape. The only escape would be victory.

  Outside it grew dark, and the light from the cracks in the shutters disappeared. There was only the light over the table, which almost no one ever saw in use—the illusion of primitiveness was maintained before everyone possible, and only the staff and the Songmasters knew that the High Room was not really so bare and simple as it seemed. The purpose of it was not really illusion, however. The Songmaster of the High Room was invariably someone who had grown up in the chilly stone halls and Common Rooms and Stalls and Chambers of the Songhouse. Sudden luxury would be no comfort; it would be a distraction. So the High Room seemed bare except when necessity required some modern convenience.

  Ansset sat in the gloom in a comer of the High Room as Esste finally closed the table and laid out her own blankets on the floor. Her movement gave him permission to move. He spread out his own blankets in the far comer, wrapped himself in them, and was asleep before Esste.

  The second day passed in complete silence, as did the third, Esste working most of the day at the computer, Ansset standing or walking or sitting as it pleased him, his Control never letting a sound pass his lips. They ate from the machine in silence, silently went to the toilet in a corner of the room, where their wastes were consumed by an incredibly expensive disturbor in the walls and floor.