Old Music and the Slave Women Read online

  To adolescent Esdan it was still a problem. His cousin Noy, Suhan's sister, who had become the Water Chief of Arkanan, told him it was not a problem but a mystery. "You see how Suhan is our guide?" she said. "Look at it. He led parents here to live. So my sister and I were born here. So you come to stay with us here. So you've learned to live in the pueblo. You'll never be just a city man. Because Suhan guided you here. Guided us all. Into the mountains."

  "He didn't really guide us," the fourteen-year-old argued.

  "Yes, he did. We followed his weakness. His incompleteness. Failure's open. Look at water, Esi. It finds the weak places in the rock, the openings, the hollows, the absences. Following water we come where we belong." Then she had off to arbitrate a dispute over the usage rights to an irrigation system outside town, for the east side of the mountains was dry country, and the people of Arkanan were contentious, though hospitable, and the Water Chief stayed busy.

  But Suhan's condition had been irreparable, his weakness inaccessible even to the wondrous medical skills of Hain. baby was dying of a disease that could be cured by a mere series of injections. It was wrong to accept his illness, his death. was wrong to let him be cheated out of his life by circumstance, bad luck, an unjust society, a fatalistic religion. A religion fostered and encouraged the terrible passivity of the slaves, that told these women to do nothing, to let the child waste away and die.

  He should interfere, he should do something, what could be done?

  "How long has he lived?"

  "As long as his life."

  There was nothing they could do. Nowhere to go. No one to turn to. A cure for avo existed, in some places, for some children. Not in this place, not for this child. Neither anger nor hope served any purpose. Nor grief. It was not the time for grief yet. Rekam was here with them, and they would delight in him as long as he was here. As long as his life. He is my great gift. You do hold my joy.

  This was a strange place to come to learn the quality of joy. Water is my guide, he thought. His hands still felt what it been like to hold the child, the light weight, the brief warmth.

  He was out on the terrace late the next morning, waiting for Kamsa and the baby to come out as they usually did, but older veot came instead. "Mr. Old Music, I must ask you to stay indoors for a time," he said.

  "Zadyo, I'm not going to run away," Esdan said, sticking out his swathed lump of a foot.

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  He stumped crossly indoors after the veot and was locked into a downstairs room, a windowless storage space behind the kitchens. They had fixed it up with a cot, a table and chair, a pisspot, and a battery lamp for when the generator failed, it did for a while most days. "Are you expecting an attack, then?" he said when he saw these preparations, but the veot replied only by locking the door. Esdan sat on the cot and meditated, as he had learned to do in Arkanan Pueblo. He cleared distress and anger from his mind by going through the long repetitions: health and good work, courage, patience, peace, himself, health and good work, courage, patience, peace for the zadyo ... for Kamsa, for baby Rekam, for Rayaye, for for Taulenem, for the oga, for Nemeo who had put him in the crouchcage, for Alatual who had put him in the crouchcage, Gana who had bound his foot and blessed him, for people he knew in the Embassy, in the city, health and good work, courage, patience, peace... . That went well, but the meditation itself was a failure. He could not stop thinking. So he thought. He thought about what he could do. He found nothing. He was weak as water, helpless as the baby. He imagined himself speaking on a holonet with a script saying that the Ekumen reluctantly approved the limited use of biological weapons in order to end the civil war. He imagined himself on the holonet dropping the script and saying that the Ekumen would never approve the use of biological weapons for any reason. Both imaginings were fantasies. Rayaye's schemes were fantasies. Seeing that his hostage was useless, Rayaye would have him shot. How long has he lived? As long as sixty-two years. A much fairer share of time than Rekam was getting. His mind went on past thinking.

  "How close is the Liberation Army, zadyo?" he asked. He expected no answer. He went out onto the terrace. It was afternoon. Kamsa was there, sitting with the baby at her breast. Her nipple was in his mouth, but he was not sucking. She covered her breast. Her face as she did so looked sad for the first time.

  "Is he asleep? May I hold him?" Esdan said, sitting by her.

  She shifted the little bundle over to his lap. Her face was still troubled. Esdan thought the child's breathing was more difficult, harder work. But he was awake, and looked up into Esdan's face with his big eyes. Esdan made faces, sticking his lips and blinking. He won a soft little smile.

  "The hands say, that army do come," Kamsa said in her very soft voice.

  "The Liberation?"

  "Enna. Some army."

  "From across the river?"

  "I think."

  "They're assets—freedmen. They're your own people. They won't hurt you." Maybe.

  She was frightened. Her control was perfect, but she was frightened. She had seen the Uprising, here. And the reprisals.

  "Hide out, if you can, if there's bombing or fighting," he said. "Underground. There must be hiding places here."

  She thought and said, "Yes."

  It was peaceful in the gardens of Yaramera. No sound but the wind rustling leaves and the faint buzz of the generator. Even the burned, jagged ruins of the house looked mellowed, ageless. The worst has happened, said the ruins. To them. Maybe not to Kamsa and Heo, Gana and Esdan. But there was no hint of violence in the summer air. The baby smiled its vague smile again, nestling in Esdan's arms. He thought of the stone he had lost in his dream.

  He was locked into the windowless room for the night. He had no way to know what time it was when he was roused noise, brought stark awake by a series of shots and explosions, gunfire or handbombs. There was silence, then a second series of bangs and cracks, fainter. Silence again, stretching on and on. Then he heard a flyer right over the house as if circling, sounds inside the house: a shout, running. He lighted the lamp, struggled into his trousers, hard to pull on over the swathed foot. When he heard the flyer coming back and an explosion, he leapt in panic for the door, knowing nothing but that he had to get out of this deathtrap room. He had always feared fire, dying in fire. The door was solid wood, solidly bolted into its solid frame. He had no hope at all of breaking it down and knew it even in his panic. He shouted once, "Let out of here!" then got control of himself, returned to the cot, and after a minute sat down on the floor between the cot and wall, as sheltered a place as the room afforded, trying to imagine what was going on. A Liberation raid and Rayaye's men shooting back, trying to bring the flyer down, was what he imagined.

  Dead silence. It went on and on.

  His lamp flickered.

  He got up and stood at the door.

  "Let me out!"

  No sound.

  A single shot. Voices again, running feet again, shouting, calling. After another long silence, distant voices, the sound men coming down the corridor outside the room. A man said, "Keep them out there for now," a flat, harsh voice. He hesitated and nerved himself and shouted out, "I'm a prisoner! In here!" A pause.

  It was no voice he had heard. He was good at voices, faces, names, intentions.

  "Esdardon Aya of the Embassy of the Ekumen."

  "Mighty Lord!" the voice said.

  "Get me out of here, will you?"

  There was no reply, but the door was rattled vainly on its massive hinges, was thumped; more voices outside, more thumping and banging. "Ax," somebody said, "Find the key," somebody else said; they went off. Esdan waited. He fought down a repeated impulse to laugh, afraid of hysteria, but it was funny, stupidly funny, all the shouting through the door and seeking keys and axes, a farce in the middle of a battle. What battle?

  He had had it backwards. Liberation men had entered the house and killed Rayaye's men, taking most of them by surprise. They had been waiting for Rayaye's flyer when it came. They m
ust have had contacts among the field hands, informers, guides. Sealed in his room, he had heard only the noisy end of the business. When he was let out, they were dragging out the dead. He saw the horribly maimed body of one of the young men, Alatual or Nemeo, come apart as they dragged it, ropy blood and entrails stretching out along the floor, the legs left behind. The man dragging the corpse was nonplussed and stood there holding the shoulders of the torso. "Well, shit," he said, and Esdan stood gasping, again trying to laugh, not to vomit.

  "Come on," said the men with him, and he came on.

  Early-morning light slanted through broken windows. Esdan kept looking around, seeing none of the housepeople. The men took him into the room with the packdog head over the mantel. Six or seven men were gathered around the table there. They wore no uniforms, though some had the yellow knot or ribbon of the Liberation on their cap or sleeve. They were ragged, though, hard. Some were dark, some had beige or clayey or bluish skin, all of them looked edgy and dangerous. One of those with him, a thin, tall man, said in the harsh voice that had said "Mighty Lord" outside the door: "This is him."

  "I'm Esdardon Aya, Old Music, of the Embassy of the Ekumen," he said again, as easily as he could. "I was being held here. Thank you for liberating me."

  Several of them stared at him the way people who had never seen an alien stared, taking in his red-brown skin and deep-set, white-cornered eyes and the subtler differences of skull structure and features. One or two stared more aggressively, as if to test his assertion, show they'd believe he was what he said he was when he proved it. A big, broad-shouldered man, white-skinned and with brownish hair, pure dusty, pure blood of the ancient conquered race, looked at Esdan a long time. "We came to do that," he said.

  He spoke softly, the asset voice. It might take them a generation or more to learn to raise their voices, to speak free.

  "How did you know I was here? The fieldnet?"

  It was what they had called the clandestine system of information passed from voice to ear, field to compound to city back again, long before there was a holonet. The Hame had used the fieldnet and it had been the chief instrument of the Uprising.

  A short, dark man smiled and nodded slightly, then froze his nod as he saw that the others weren't giving out any information.

  "You know who brought me here, then—Rayaye. I don't know who he was acting for. What I can tell you, I will." Relief had made him stupid, he was talking too much, playing hands-around-the-flowerbed while they played tough guy. "I have friends here," he went on in a more neutral voice, looking at each of their faces in turn, direct but civil. "Bondswomen, house people. I hope they're all right."

  "Depends," said a grey-haired, slight man who looked very tired.

  "A woman with a baby, Kamsa. An old woman, Gana."

  A couple of them shook their heads to signify ignorance or indifference. Most made no response at all. He looked around at them again, repressing anger and irritation at this pomposity, this tight-lipped stuff.

  "We need to know what you were doing here," the brown-haired man said.

  "A Liberation Army contact in the city was taking me from the Embassy to Liberation Command, about fifteen days We were intercepted in the Divide by Rayaye's men. They brought me here. I spent some time in a crouchcage," Esdan in the same neutral voice. "My foot was hurt, and I can't walk much. I talked twice with Rayaye. Before I say anything else think you can understand that I need to know who I'm talking to."

  The tall thin man who had released him from the locked room went round the table and conferred briefly with the grey-haired man. The brown-haired one listened, consented. The tall thin one spoke to Esdan in his uncharacteristically flat voice: "We are a special mission of the Advance Army of the World Liberation. I am Marshal Metoy." The others all their names. The big brown-haired man was General Banarkamye, the tired older man was General Tueyo. They said their rank with their name, but didn't use it addressing one another, nor did they call him Mister. Before Liberation, rentspeople had seldom used any titles to one another but those of parentage: father, sister, aunty. Titles were something that went in of an owner's name: Lord, Master, Mister, Boss. Evidently the Liberation had decided to do without them. It pleased him find an army that didn't click its heels and shout Sir! But he wasn't certain what army he'd found.

  "They locked me in there last night. As if they'd had some kind of warning of trouble coming. Usually I had a room upstairs."

  "You may go there now," Metoy said. "Stay indoors."

  "I will. Thank you again," he said to them all. "Please, when you have word of Kamsa and Gana—?" He did not wait be snubbed, but turned and went out.

  One of the younger men went with him. He had named himself Zadyo Tema. The Army of the Liberation was using old veot ranks, then. There were veots among them, Esdan knew, but Tema was not one. He was light-skinned and had city-dusty accent, soft, dry, clipped. Esdan did not try to talk to him. Tema was extremely nervous, spooked by the night's work of killing at close quarters or by something else; there was an almost constant tremor in his shoulders, arms, and hands, and his pale face was set in a painful scowl. He was not in a mood for chitchat with an elderly civilian alien prisoner.

  In war everybody is a prisoner, the historian Henennemores had written.

  Esdan had thanked his new captors for liberating him, but he knew where, at the moment, he stood. It was still Yaramera.

  But there was some relief in seeing his room again, sitting down in the one-armed chair by the window to look out at early sunlight, the long shadows of trees across the lawns and terraces.

  None of the housepeople came out as usual to go about their work or take a break from it. Nobody came to his room. The morning wore on. He did what exercises of the tanhai he could do with his foot as it was. He sat aware, dozed off, up, tried to sit aware, sat restless, anxious, working over words: A special mission of the Advance Army of World Liberation.

  The Legitimate Government called the enemy army "insurgent forces" or "rebel hordes" on the holonews. It had started out calling itself the Army of the Liberation, nothing about World Liberation; but he had been cut off from any coherent contact with the freedom fighters ever since the Uprising, and cut off from all information of any kind since the Embassy sealed—except for information from other worlds light-years away, of course, there'd been no end of that, the ansible was full of it, but of what was going on two streets away, nothing, not a word. In the Embassy he'd been ignorant, useless, helpless, passive. Exactly as he was here. Since the war began he'd been, as Henennemores had said, a prisoner. Along everybody else on Werel. A prisoner in the cause of liberty.

  He feared that he would come to accept his helplessness, that it would persuade his soul. He must remember what this war was about. But let the liberation come soon, he thought, come set me free!

  In the middle of the afternoon the young zadyo brought him a plate of cold food, obviously scraps of leftovers they'd found in the kitchens, and a bottle of beer. He ate and drank gratefully. But it was clear that they had not released the housepeople. Or had killed them. He would not let his mind stay on that.

  After sunset the zadyo came back and brought him downstairs to the packdog room. The generator was off, of course; nothing had kept it going but old Saka's eternal tinkering. Men carried electric torches, and in the packdog room a couple big oil lamps burned on the table, putting a romantic, golden light on the faces round it, throwing deep shadows behind them.

  "Sit down," said the brown-haired general, Banarkamye—Readbible, his name could be translated. "We have some questions to ask you."

  Silent but civil assent.

  They asked how he had got out of the Embassy, who his contacts with the Liberation had been, where he had been going, why he had tried to go, what happened during the kidnapping, who had brought him here, what they had asked him, what they had wanted from him. Having decided during the afternoon that candor would serve him best, he answered all questions directly and briefly until the
last one.

  "I personally am on your side of this war," he said, "but the Ekumen is necessarily neutral. Since at the moment I'm the only alien on Werel free to speak, whatever I say may be taken, or mistaken, as coming from the Embassy and the Stabiles. That was my value to Rayaye. It may be my value to you. But it's a false value. I can't speak for the Ekumen. I have no authority."

  Esdan nodded.

  "Did they talk about using any special tactics, weapons?" That was Banarkamye, grim, trying not to weight the question.

  "I'd rather answer that question when I'm behind your lines, General, talking to people I know in Liberation Command."

  "You're talking to the World Liberation Army command. Refusal to answer can be taken as evidence of complicity with the enemy." That was Metoy, glib, hard, harsh-voiced.

  "I know that, Marshal."

  They exchanged a glance. Despite his open threat, Metoy was the one Esdan felt inclined to trust. He was solid. The others were nervy, unsteady. He was sure now that they were factionalists. How big their faction was, how much at odds with Liberation Command it was, he could learn only by what they might let slip.

  "Listen, Mr. Old Music," Tueyo said. Old habits die hard. "We know you worked for the Hame. You helped send people to Yeowe. You backed us then." Esdan nodded. "You must back us now. We are speaking to you frankly. We information that the Jits are planning a counterattack. What that means, now, it means that they're going to use the bibo. can't mean anything else. That can't happen. They can't be let do that. They have to be stopped."