Old Music and the Slave Women Page 3

  He heard the flyer come down in the morning. That night Rayaye invited him down to dinner. Tualenem and the two ate with them and excused themselves, leaving him and Rayaye with a half bottle of wine at the makeshift table set up in of the least damaged downstairs rooms. It had been a hunting lodge or trophy room, here in this wing of the house that had been the azade, the men's side, where no women would ever have come; female assets, servants, and usewomen did not count as women. The head of a huge packdog snarled above the mantel, its fur singed and dusty and its glass eyes gone Crossbows had been mounted on the facing wall. Their pale shadows were clear on the dark wood. The electric chandelier flickered and dimmed. The generator was uncertain. One of the old bondsmen was always tinkering at it.

  "Going off to his usewoman," Rayaye said, nodding towards the door Tualenem had just closed with assiduous wishes the Minister to have a good night. "Fucking a white. Like fucking turds. Makes my skin crawl. Sticking his cock into a slave cunt. When the war's over there'll be no more of that kind of thing. Halfbreeds are the root of this revolution. Keep the separate. Keep the ruler blood clean. It's the only answer." He spoke as if expecting complete accord, but did not wait receive any sign of it. He poured Esdan's glass full and went on in his resonant politician's voice, kind host, lord of the manor, "Well, Mr. Old Music, I hope you've been having a pleasant stay at Yaramera, and that your health's improved."

  A civil murmur.

  "President Oyo was sorry to hear you'd been unwell and sends his wishes for your full recovery. He's glad to know you're safe from any further mistreatment by the insurgents. You can stay here in safety as long as you like. However, when the time is right, the president and his cabinet are looking forward to having you in Bellen."

  Civil murmur.

  Long habit prevented Esdan from asking questions that would reveal the extent of his ignorance. Rayaye like most politicians loved his own voice, and as he talked Esdan tried to piece together a rough sketch of the current situation. It appeared that the legitimate government had moved from the city to a town, Bellen, northeast of Yaramera, near the eastern coast. Some kind of command had been left in the city. Rayaye's references to it made Esdan wonder if the city was in fact semi-independent of the Oyo government, governed by a faction, perhaps a military faction.

  When the Uprising began, Oyo had at once been given extraordinary powers; but the Legitimate Army of Voe Deo, their stunning defeats in the west, had been restive under his command, wanting more autonomy in the field. The civilian government had demanded retaliation, attack, and victory. The army wanted to contain the insurrection. Rega-General Aydan had established the Divide in the city and tried to establish and hold a border between the new Free State and the Legitimate Provinces. Veots who had gone over to the Uprising with their asset troops had similarly urged a border truce the Liberation Command. The army sought armistice, the warriors sought peace. But "So long as there is one slave I am free," cried Nekam-Anna, Leader of the Free State, and President Oyo thundered, "The nation will not be divided! We

  defend legitimate property with the last drop of blood in our veins!" The Rega-General had suddenly been replaced by a commander in chief. Very soon after that the Embassy was sealed, its access to information cut.

  Esdan could only guess what had happened in the half year since. Rayaye talked of "our victories in the south" as if the Legitimate Army had been on the attack, pushing back into the Free State across the Devan River, south of the city. If so, they had regained territory, why had the government pulled out of the city and dug in down at Bellen? Rayaye's talk of victories might be translated to mean that the Army of the Liberation had been trying to cross the river in the south and the Legitimates had been successful in holding them off. If they were willing to call that a victory, had they finally given up the dream of reversing the revolution, retaking the whole country, and decided to cut their losses? "A divided nation is not an option," Rayaye said, squashing that hope. "You understand that, I think."

  Rayaye poured out the last of the wine. "But peace is our goal. Our very strong and urgent goal. Our unhappy country has suffered enough."

  Definite assent.

  "I know you to be a man of peace, Mr. Old Music. We know the Ekumen fosters harmony among and within its member states. Peace is what we all desire with all our hearts."

  Assent, plus faint indication of inquiry.

  "As you know, the Government of Voe Deo has always had the power to end the insurrection. The means to end it quickly and completely."

  No response but alert attention.

  "And I think you know that it is only our respect for the policies of the Ekumen, of which my nation is a member, that prevented us from using that means."

  Absolutely no response or acknowledgment.

  "You do know that, Mr. Old Music."

  "I assumed you had a natural wish to survive."

  Rayaye shook his head as if bothered by an insect. "Since we joined the Ekumen—and long before we joined it, Mr. Music—we have loyally followed its policies and bowed to its theories. And so we lost Yeowe! And so we lost the West! Four million dead, Mr. Old Music. Four million in the first Uprising. Millions since. Millions. If we had contained it then, fewer would have died. Assets as well as owners."

  "Suicide," Esdan said in a soft mild voice, the way assets spoke.

  "The pacifist sees all weapons as evil, disastrous, suicidal. For all the age-old wisdom of your people, Mr. Old Music, you have not the experiential perspective on matters of war we younger, cruder peoples are forced to have. Believe me, are not suicidal. We want our people, our nation, to survive. We are determined that it shall. The bibo was fully tested, long before we joined the Ekumen. It is controllable, targetable, containable. It is an exact weapon, a precise tool of war. Rumor and fear have wildly exaggerated its capacities and nature. We know how to use it, how to limit its effects. Nothing but response of the Stabiles through your ambassador prevented us from selective deployment in the first summer of the insurrection."

  "I had the impression the high command of the Army of Voe Deo was also opposed to deploying that weapon."

  "Some generals were. Many veots are rigid in their thinking, as you know."

  "That decision has been changed?"

  "President Oyo has authorised deployment of the bibo against forces massing to invade this province from the west."

  Such a cute word, "bibo." Esdan closed his eyes for a moment.

  "The destruction will be appalling," Rayaye said.

  Assent.

  "It is possible," Rayaye said, leaning forward, black eyes in black face, intense as a hunting cat, "that if the insurgents were warned, they might withdraw. Be willing to discuss terms. If they withdraw, we will not attack. If they will talk, we talk. A holocaust can be prevented. They respect the Ekumen. They respect you personally, Mr. Old Music. They trust If you were to speak to them on the net, or if their leaders will agree to a meeting, they will listen to you, not as their enemy, their oppressor, but as the voice of a benevolent, peace-loving neutrality, the voice of wisdom, urging them to save themselves While there is yet time. This is the opportunity I offer you, and the Ekumen. To spare your friends among the rebels, to spare this world untold suffering. To open the way to lasting peace."

  "I am not authorised to speak for the Ekumen. The Ambassador—"

  "Will not. Cannot. Is not free to. You are. You are a free agent, Mr. Old Music. Your position on Werel is unique. sides respect you. Trust you. And your voice carries infinitely more weight among the whites than his. He came only a year before the insurrection. You are, I may say, one of us."

  "I am not one of you. I neither own nor am owned. You must redefine yourselves to include me."

  Rayaye, for a moment, had nothing to say. He was taken aback, and would be angry. Fool, Esdan said to himself, old fool, to take the moral high ground! But he did not know what ground to stand on.

  It was true that his word would carry more weight than the
Ambassador's. Nothing else Rayaye had said made sense. President Oyo wanted the Ekumen's blessing on his use of this weapon and seriously thought Esdan would give it, why he working through Rayaye, and keeping Esdan hidden at Yaramera? Was Rayaye working with Oyo, or was he working for a faction that favored using the bibo, while Oyo still refused?

  The biobomb, the bibo, had been a curse on Voe Deo for decades, centuries. In panic fear of alien invasion after the Ekumen first contacted them almost four hundred years ago, the Werelians had put all their resources into developing space flight and weaponry. The scientists who invented this particular device repudiated it, informing their government that it could not be contained; it would destroy all human and animal life over an enormous area and cause profound and permanent genetic damage worldwide as it spread throughout the water and the atmosphere. The government never used the weapon but was never willing to destroy it, and its existence had kept Werel from membership in the Ekumen as long as the Embargo was in force. Voe Deo insisted it was their guarantee against extraterrestrial invasion and perhaps believed it would prevent revolution. Yet they had not used it when their slave-planet Yeowe rebelled. Then, after the Ekumen no longer observed Embargo, they announced that they had destroyed the stockpiles. Werel joined the Ekumen. Voe Deo invited inspection the weapon sites. The Ambassador politely declined, citing the Ekumenical policy of trust. Now the bibo existed again.

  fact? In Rayaye's mind? Was he desperate? A hoax, an attempt to use the Ekumen to back a bogey threat to scare off an

  invasion: the likeliest scenario, yet it was not quite convincing.

  "This war must end," Rayaye said.

  "I agree."

  "We will never surrender. You must understand that." Rayaye had dropped his blandishing, reasonable tone. "We will restore the holy order of the world," he said, and now he was fully credible. His eyes, the dark Werelian eyes that had no whites, were fathomless in the dim light. He drank down his wine. "You think we fight for our property. To keep what we own. But I tell you, we fight to defend our Lady. In that fight is no surrender. And no compromise."

  "Your Lady is merciful."

  "The Law is her mercy."

  Esdan was silent.

  "I must go again tomorrow to Bellen," Rayaye said after a while, resuming his masterful, easy tone. "Our plans for moving on the southern front must be fully coordinated. When I come back, I'll need to know if you will give us the help I've asked you for. Our response will depend largely on that. On your voice. It is known that you're here in the East Provinces—known to the insurgents, I mean, as well as our people—though your exact location is of course kept hidden for your own safety. is known that you may be preparing a statement of a change in the Ekumen's attitude toward the conduct of the civil war. change that could save millions of lives and bring a just peace to our land. I hope you'll employ your time here in doing so."

  He is a factionalist, Esdan thought. He's not going to Bellen, or if he is, that's not where Oyo's government is. This is some scheme of his own. Crackbrained. It won't work. He doesn't have the bibo. But he has a gun. And he'll shoot me.

  "Thank you for a pleasant dinner, Minister," he said.

  Next morning he heard the flyer leave at dawn. He limped out into the morning sunshine after breakfast. One of his veot guards watched him from a window and then turned away. In a sheltered nook just under the balustrade of the south terrace, near a planting of great bushes with big, blowsy, sweet-smelling white flowers, he saw Kamsa and her baby and Heo. He made his way to them, dot-and-go-one. The distances at Yaramera, even inside the house, were daunting to a lamed man. When he finally got there, he said, "I am lonely. May I sit with you?"

  The women were afoot, of course, reverencing, though Kamsa's reverence had become pretty sketchy. He sat on a curved bench splotched all over with fallen flowers. They sat back down on the flagstone path with the baby. They had unwrapped the little body to the mild sunshine. It was a very thin baby, Esdan thought. The joints in the bluish-dark arms legs were like the joints in flower stems, translucent knobs. The baby was moving more than he had ever seen it move, stretching its arms and turning its head as if enjoying the feel of the air. The head was large for the neck, again like a flower, too large on too thin a stalk. Kamsa dangled one of the real flowers over the baby. His dark eyes gazed up at it. His eyelids and eyebrows were exquisitely delicate. The sunlight shone through his fingers. He smiled. Esdan caught his breath. The baby's smile at the flower was the beauty of the flower, the beauty of the world.

  "What is his name?"

  "Rekam."

  Grandson of Kamye. Kamye the Lord and slave, huntsman and husbandman, warrior and peacemaker.

  "A beautiful name. How old is he?" In the language they spoke that was, "How long has he lived?" Kamsa's answer was strange. "As long as his life," she said, or so he understood her whisper and her dialect. Maybe it was bad manners or bad luck to ask a child's age.

  Heo sat hunched over, her back to him; he felt that she wanted to cover her ears. She was terrified of him, the alien. had not left much to Heo but fear, he guessed. Was she twenty, twenty-five? She looked forty. Maybe she was seventeen. Usewomen, ill-used, aged fast. Kamsa he guessed to be not much over twenty. She was thin and plain, but there was bloom and juice in her as there was not in Heo.

  "Master did have children?" Kamsa asked, lifting up her baby to her breast with a certain discreet pride, shyly flaunting.

  "No."

  "A yera yera," she murmured, another slave word he had often heard in the urban compounds: 0 pity, pity.

  "How you get to the center of things, Kamsa," he said. She glanced his way and smiled. Her teeth were bad, but it was good smile. He thought the baby was not sucking. It lay peacefully in the crook of her arm. Heo remained tense and jumped whenever he spoke, so he said no more. He looked away from them, past the bushes, out over the wonderful view that arranged itself, whenever you walked or sat, into a perfect balance: the levels of flagstone, of dun grass and blue water, curves of the avenues, the masses and lines of shrubbery, the great old tree, the misty river and its green far bank. Presently the women began talking softly again. He did not listen to what they said. He was aware of their voices, aware of sunlight, aware of peace.

  Old Gana came stumping across the upper terrace towards them, bobbed to him, said to Kamsa and Heo, "Choyo want you. Leave me that baby." Kamsa set the baby down on the warm stone again. She and Heo sprang up and went thin, light women moving with easy haste. The old woman settled down piece by piece and with groans and grimaces onto the path beside Rekam. She immediately covered him up with a fold of his swaddling cloth, frowning and muttering at the foolishness of his mother. Esdan watched her careful movements, her gentleness when she picked the child up, supporting that heavy head and tiny limbs, her tenderness cradling him, rocking her body to rock him.

  She looked up at Esdan. She smiled, her face wrinkling up into a thousand wrinkles. "He is my great gift," she said.

  He whispered, "Your grandson?"

  The backward nod. She kept rocking gently. The baby's eyes were closed, his head lay softly on her thin, dry beast. think now he'll die not long now."

  After a while Esdan said, "Die?"

  The nod. She still smiled. Gently, gently rocking. "He is two years of age, master."

  "I thought he was born this summer," Esdan said in a whisper.

  The old woman said, "He did come to stay a little while with us."

  "What is wrong?"

  "The wasting."

  Esdan had heard the term. He said, "Avo?" the name he knew for it, a systemic viral infection common among Werelian children, frequently epidemic in the asset compounds of the cities.

  She nodded.

  "But it's curable!"

  The old woman said nothing.

  Avo was completely curable. Where there were doctors. Where there was medicine. Avo was curable in the city not country. In the great house not the asset quarters. In peacetime not in wartime. Fo
ol!

  Maybe she knew it was curable, maybe she did not, maybe she did not know what the word meant. She rocked the baby, crooning in a whisper, paying no attention to the fool. But she had heard him, and answered him at last, not looking him, watching the baby's sleeping face.

  "I was born owned," she said, "and my daughters. But he was not. He is the gift. To us. Nobody can own him. The the Lord Kamye of himself. Who could keep that gift?"

  Esdan bowed his head down.

  He had said to the mother, "He will be free." And she had said, "Yes."

  He said at last, "May I hold him?"

  The grandmother stopped rocking and held still a while. "Yes," she said. She raised herself up and very carefully transferred the sleeping baby into Esdan's arms, onto his lap.

  "You do hold my joy," she said. The child weighed nothing—six or seven pounds. It was like holding a warm flower, a tiny animal, a bird. The swaddling cloth trailed down across the stones. Gana gathered it up and laid it softly around the baby, hiding his face. Tense and nervous, jealous, full of pride, she knelt there. Before long she took the baby back against her heart. "There," she said, and her face softened into happiness.

  He woke. Early morning. No need to get up. He should think about what to do, what to say, when Rayaye came back. He could not. He thought about the dream, the stone that talked. He wished he had heard what it said. He thought about pueblo. His father's brother's family had lived in Arkanan Pueblo in the Far South Highlands. In his boyhood, every year the heart of the northern winter, Esi had flown down there for forty days of summer. With his parents at first, later on alone. His uncle and aunt had grown up in Darranda and were not pueblo people. Their children were. They had grown up in Arkanan and belonged to it entirely. The eldest, Suhan, fourteen years older than Esdan, had been born with irreparable and neural defects, and it was for his sake that his parents had settled in a pueblo. There was a place for him there. He became a herdsman. He went up on the mountains with the yama, animals the South Hainish had brought over from 0 a millennium or so ago. He looked after the animals. He came back to live in the pueblo only in winter. Esi saw him seldom, and was glad of it, finding Suhan a fearful figure— big, shambling, foul-smelling, with a loud braying voice, mouthing incomprehensible words. Esi could not understand why Suhan's parents and sisters loved him. He thought they pretended No one could love him.