Songmaster

JOSIF

1

Kya-Kya's arms were too thin. She noticed it again as she touched the keys on her computer terminal; if she ever had to use her arms to lift something quite heavy, they would break. I am not meant to bear burdens, Kya-Kya reminded herself. I don't look like a substantial person, which is why I am forced into such insubstantial work.

It was a rationalization she had tried before and never more than half believed. She had graduated from the Princeton Government Institute with the fourth highest score in the history of the school; and when she tried to find work, instead of being flooded with prestigious job offers, she found herself forced to choose between a computer-pumping job at the Information Center in Tegucigalpa and a city manager's position on some Godforsaken planet she couldn't even find on the starmaps. It's an apprenticeship, her adviser had told her. Do well, and you'll rise quickly. But Kya-Kya sensed that even her adviser didn't really believe it. What could she hope to do well in Tegucigalpa? Her job was in Welfare, the Department of Senior Services, the Office of Pension Payments. And it wasn't an imperial office-it was planetary. Earth, of all places, which might be the capital of the universe but was still a provincial backwater at heart.

If Kya-Kya could once convince herself that she had not been given a better position because of some wrong impression she gave, of weakness or incompetence or un-dependability, she could then believe that, by her proving that she was strong and competent and dependable, her situation might improve. But she knew better. At the Songhouse it had been the Deafs and, not quite so much, the Blinds who had had to take a second- or third-class role in the community. Here on Earth, it was the young, the female, the gifted.

And while youth would take care of itself, there was nothing she particularly wanted to do about being female- changers were even more heavily discriminated against. And her gifts, the very things that could make her the most valuable to government service, made her an object of envy, resentment, even fear.

It was her third week there, and it had finally come to a head today. Her job took, at best, a third of her time- when she slacked. So she began to try (on the assumption that she needed to prove her competence) to find out more about the system, to grasp the overall function of everything, the way all the data systems linked together.

Who programs the computers? she innocently asked Warvel, the head of Pensions.

Warvel looked annoyed-he did not like interruptions. We all do, he said, turning immediately back to his desk, where figures danced across the whole surface, showing him exactly what was going on at every desk in his office.

But who, persisted Kya-Kya, set up the way it works? The first programming?

Warvel looked more than annoyed. He stared at her intently, then said savagely, When I want a research project on the subject, you'll be the person I appoint. But right now your job is taking inflation tables and applying them to classes of pensions for the budget year starting in only six months, and when you're here at my desk, Kyaren, it means that neither you nor I is doing his job!

Kya-Kya waited for a few moments, watching the slightly balding top of his head as he played with the numbers on his desk, querying the computer on questioning procedures. She could not understand the violence of his outburst, as defensive as if she had asked him whether it was true he had been castrated in a playground accident when he was five. When he noticed she was still standing there, he reached over and pointed to a spot on his desk where no figures appeared at all.

See that blank spot? Warvel asked.

Yes.

That's you. That's the work you're doing right now.

And Kya-Kya returned to her desk and her terminal and began punching in the numbers with her slender fingers on the end of slender arms, feeling weaker and slighter than she had ever felt before.

It was not just Warvel, not just the work. From the moment she arrived, it seemed that none of her co-workers was interested in making her acquaintance. Conversations never included her; in-jokes left her completely in the dark; people fell silent when she came near a table in the lunchroom or a fountain in the halls. At first-and still- she tried to- believe that it was because she was young, she was frail, she did not make friends easily. But actually, right from the start, she knew it was because she was an ambitious woman with remarkable scores from the best school on the planet; because she was curious and wanted to learn and wanted to be excellent, which would threaten all of them, make them all look bad.

Petty bureaucrats with infinitesimal minds, she told herself, jabbing at the keys on the computer. Small minds running a small planet, terrified of someone who smacks of potential greatness-or even potential averageness.

They had all watched her. return to her desk from her interview with Warvel. Even the women had looked her up and down in the contemptuous way they had on Earth, as if the act of surveying her body expressed their opinion of her mind and her heart. There wasn't one sympathetic look on anyone's face.

She stopped punching keys and got hold of herself. Think that way, Kyaren, she told herself, and you'll never get anywhere. Must do my best, must try to be good at it, and hope for a change, hope for some opportunity to shine.

Her terminal glowed at her, unwinking, as steady as her ambition, as blinding as her fear, and she could not concentrate on it anymore. And so she punched in her lunch-time, was given clearance-there were enough tables open in the lunchroom-and left her desk to go eat. The eyes followed her again, and after she left, she could hear the buzz of conversation begin. The office was unbearably silent when she was there; when she was gone, everyone was friendly.

It was in the lunchroom that day that she met Josif.

The setting was the good thing about Tegucigalpa. The Information Center was almost invisible from the air-all the roofs were planted with the same jungle growth that was lush on the hills. But in the complex itself, everything was a miracle of green and glass, huge transparent walls on hundreds of buildings rising twenty or forty or eighty meters into the air. The lunchroom was at the edge, on a slope, where it could overlook much of the rest of the complex-even had a view of the village that was all that was left of the ancient city. As Kya-Kya-or Kyaren, as she had taken to calling herself when she first discovered she was going to work on Earth, in an effort to sound more native-took her food from the dispensers and carried it to an empty table, she watched a dazzlingly bright bird float down from the roof of the Income Department and land on a small island in the Chultick River. During its descent, a wild thing living in a perfectly wild habitat, the bird had passed in front of the glass windows where dozens of people worked sucking information out of computers, twisting it around, and spewing it back in. A jungle, with electricity manipulated amid the trees to hold all the knowledge of a world.

It was because she was watching the bird and thinking of the contrasts that Josif was able to set down his tray unnoticed. Of course, Josif was quiet, too-as silent as a statistic, Kyaren would later tell him. But as she watched the bird walking around in a seemingly purposeless dance on the island, she became aware of someone watching her.

She turned, and there was Josif. Deep but open-seeming eyes, delicate features, and a mouth that perpetually smiled as if he knew the joke and would never tell anyone, because it wasn't really funny.

I hear Warvel ate you alive today.

Gossip travels quickly, Kya-Kya thought-but couldn't help being flattered that this total stranger would even care; couldn't help being pleased that someone was actually speaking to her about something besides business.

I've been chewed, Kya-Kya said, but I haven't been swallowed yet.

I've noticed you, Josif said, smiling at her.

I've never noticed you, Kyaren answered, though it was not really true. She had seen him around-he worked in Statistics, Department of Vitals, Office of Death, which was on the floor below hers. She just hadn't cared much. Kya-Kya had been raised in the Songhouse, and the close association of the sexes had somewhat numbed her to the attractions of males. She briefly wondered, Is he good-looking? Is he beautiful? She wasn't sure. Interesting, anyway. The eyes that looked so innocent, the mouth that looked so world-wise.

Yes you have, Josif answered, still smiling. You're an outcast.

So it was that obvious; she resented hearing it in words.

Am I? she asked.

It's something we have in common. We're both outcasts.

It was a line, then, and Kyaren sighed. She had become expert at deflecting lines-bored students had tried many times to spark up a dull evening with attempts at seducing Kya-Kya. Once or twice she had gone along with it. It was never worth the effort.

With that little in common, I doubt we have much of a friendship ahead of us. She turned back to her food.

Friends? We should be enemies, Josif said. We can help each other, as long as we hate each other.

She couldn't help it. She looked up from her lunch. She told herself that it was because she was tired of the lunchroom's attempts at local color-Honduran food was wretched. She pushed the food away from her and leaned back in her chair, waiting for him to go on.

You see, Josif went on, assured of an audience, while you're busy rejecting me, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you're part of the majority around here. I mean, you may not be in, but you sure as hell know who's out.

She couldn't help it. She laughed, and he cocked his head at her.

So much for the frigid-bitch theory, Josif said.

You should see me in bed, Kyaren said, joking, and then was appalled to realize that instead of averting his attempt at seduction she had brought up the topic instead. He avoided any of the obvious repartee, however, and changed the subject.

Your big mistake today was asking Warvel about history. How would he know? He could stand in the middle of a war and not know that anything had happened. For him there aren't any events-only trends. It's statistical myopia, a disease endemic to our trade.

I just wanted to know. How it all works. He blew it up out of proportion, I'm amazed that the word spread so quickly.

Josif smiled at her, reached out and touched her arm. She did not appreciate the intimacy of the gesture, but tolerated it. I'm awfully bored, aren't you? he asked. I mean, bored with the whole business.

She nodded.

I mean, who the hell cares about any of this? It's got to be done, like sewage and teaching children how to read and all that, but no one really enjoys it.

I would, Kyaren said. At least, I would enjoy it at a higher level.

Higher than what?

Higher than punching pension information into a terminal.

Go up fifteen ranks and they're still all asses.

I wouldn't be, Kyaren said, then realized she had sounded too intense. Did she really want to confide her ambitions to this boy?

What are you, immune from asshood? Anybody who presumes to make decisions about the lives of other people is an ass. Josif laughed, only this time he seemed embarrassed, made a gesture as if to draw a mask down his face, and, as if he had actually donned a mask, his face went frivolous and innocent again, with any hint of deep feeling gone. I'm boring you, he said.

How could you bore me? You're the first person to talk to me about anything other than statistics in three weeks.

It's because you reek of competence, you know. A week before you got here, everyone heard about your scores on the Princeton examinations. Pretty impressive. We were all set to hate you.

Now you say we. You are part of the group, aren't you?

Josif shook his head, and his face went serious again. No. But in the opposite direction from you. You they shut out because you're better than they are, they're afraid of you. Me they shut out because I'm beneath contempt.

When he said it, it occurred to Kyaren that he believed that assessment of himself. It also occurred to her that if she let this conversation go on any longer, she would not be able to get rid of this man easily.

Thanks for the company at lunch, she said. Actually, though, you needn't make a habit of It.

He looked surprised. What did I say? Why are you mad?

She smiled coldly. I'm not. Her best you-sure-as-hell-can't-get-in-bed-with-me voice was enough to freeze a tropical river; she imagined the icicles forming on his nose as she turned her back on him, walked away, and instantly regretted it. This was the most human contact she had had in weeks. In years, in fact-he seemed more personally concerned than anyone she had known at Princeton. And she had cut him off without even learning his name.

She did not know he was following her until he caught up with her in the glass corridor that crossed a strip of jungle between the lunchroom and the work buildings. He took her by the arm, firmly enough that she could not easily pull away, but not so firmly that she even wanted to. She didn't slow down, but he matched her pace perfectly.

Are you sure? he asked.

About what? she answered, coldly again.

About not being friends. I need a friend, you know. Even a cold-hearted, suspicious, scared-to-death lady like you. While of course your social life is so full that you'd have to look months ahead in your appointment book to find an evening you could spend with me.

She turned to him, prepared more by reflex than by desire to cut him dead, retrieve her arm, and go back to her office alone. But an inadvertent smile ruined the effect -she said nothing, just tried to stifle the grin, and he mimicked her, struggling comically to force his face into a frown and finally failing. She laughed out loud.

I'm Josif, he said. You're Kyaren, right?

She nodded, trying to get rid of the smile.

Let's pretend you think I'm worth having around. Let's pretend you want to see me tonight. Let's pretend that you give me your room number, and we go walking in the Zone so that you don't have to worry about me trying to get you in bed. Let's pretend you trust me.

She pretended. It wasn't hard. Thirty-two seventeen, she said. Then he let go of her arm and she went back to her office alone, feeling strangely delighted, the humiliation of the morning's reprimand from Warvel forgotten. For the first time since she had first come to Earth, she genuinely liked someone. Not a lot, but enough that spending time with him might even be fun. The idea of having fun appealed to her, though she was not altogether sure what fun felt like.

To her surprise, she had only been at her desk for a few minutes when one of her co-workers, a parrot-beaked woman who did actuarial estimates for the population at large, came over to her and sat on the edge of it.

Kyaren, the woman said.

Yes? Kyaren asked, suspicious and prepared openly for hostility, though inwardly she hoped vaguely that this would actually be a friendly overture-she was in the mood for it, now.

That bastard from Death, Josif.

Yes?

Just a friendly warning. Don't bother with him.

Why not?

Parrot-beak's expression grew darker-she was apparently not used to being questioned when she gave unsolicited advice.

Because he's a whore.

That was so far from her impression of Josif that Kyaren could only look surprised and say, What?

You heard me.

But-he didn't try anything, didn't offer anything.

Not to you the woman said, rolling her eyes impatiently heavenward. You're a woman.

And the woman got up and went to her own desk, leaving Kyaren to punch money into the lives of old people while wondering if it was true, insisting that it made no difference, and knowing that the thought of Josif as a homosexual prostitute completely destroyed her delight at the quarter-hour she had spent with him,

She was tempted not to answer his voice at the door. I'm not here, she thought. Not to you.

But when he spoke a second time, she couldn't resist getting up from her bed and opening the door. Just to see him and confirm for herself whether it was true or not.

Hi, Josif said, grinning.

She did not smile back. One question. True or false. Are you a homosexual whore?

His face went ugly, and he didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, quietly, You see? You don't have to be one of the in-group to get the dirt on someone else.

He hadn't said no, and her contempt for people who sold themselves became dominant. She started closing the door.

Wait a minute, he said. You didn't answer my question. You asked two questions. She digested that, All right then.

I'm not a whore, he said. And the other just guarantees you're safe from me tonight, doesn't it?

The whole thing was ugly. Today had been fun, but now she could not think of him except in a sexual context. She knew about homosexuality, of course; the mental picture she had of the act between men was an ugly one, and now she could not stop herself from picturing him performing that act. It made him ugly. His slenderness, the delicacy of his face, the innocence in his eyes-they became deceptive, repulsive to her now.

I'm sorry, she said. I just want to be alone. No you don't, he said. I know what I want. No you don't.

Well, if I don't, you certainly don't.

Yes I do. And he pushed the door open carefully, ducked under her arm, and went inside. You can get out, she said.

I can, he agreed amiably, sitting on the edge of her bed, the only large piece of furniture in her room. She pointedly sat in a chair. Kyaren, he said. You liked me today. No I didn't, she said. And because she knew she was lying, she went on: I didn't like you at all. You were pushy and obnoxious and your attention was completely unwelcome.

Come now, we're statisticians, aren't we? he said. Nothing's complete. Let's say I was seventy percent obnoxious and you sixty percent didn't want me around. Well, I'll be here for only ten percent of the night, so there's plenty of margin. Concentrate on liking me. I mean, I overlooked the fact that you're as mean as the imperial fleet. Surely you can overlook the fact that I do perverted things. I won't do any of them to you.

Why are you bothering me like this?

Believe me, I'm not trying to be bothersome.

Why don't you leave me alone?

He looked at her a long time before answering, and then tears came into his eyes and his face went all innocent and vulnerable and he said, quietly, Because I keep hoping I won't always be the only human being in this zoo.

Just think of me, she said, as one of the animals.

I can't.

Why not?

Because you aren't.

The way he looked at her, his eyes swimming with tears, was getting through to her. Is it an act? she wondered. Is this just an incredibly complex line? Then it occurred to her that he was probably not interested in the thing that lines usually led to.

What do you want?

Perversely, he took the question wrong. Deliberately wrong, Kyaren knew, and yet exactly right,

I want, he said, to live forever.

She started to interrupt. No, I mean--

But he refused to be interrupted. He spoke louder, and got up from the bed and walked aimlessly around the limited floorspace of the room. I want to five forever surrounded by the things I love. A million books, and one person. All of humanity in the past, and only a single example of the human race in the present.

Only one person? she asked. Me?

You? he asked in mock startlement. Then, more subdued, he said, Why not? For a while at least. One person at a time.

All of humanity in the past, she said. You like your work in the Office of Death that much?

He laughed. History, Kyaren. I'm a historian. I have degrees from three universities. I've written theses and dissertations. Feces and defecations, he amended. With my specialty, there's not a chance in the world of my getting a job on this planet. Or a really good job anywhere.

He walked up to her, knelt beside her, and put his head in her lap. She wanted to shove him away, but found that she could not bring herself to do it. I love all mankind in the past. I love you in the present. And he smiled so crazily, reaching up a clawed hand to paw ineffectually at her arm, that she could not stop herself from laughing.

He had won. And she knew it. And he stayed, talking.

He talked about his obsession with history, which began in the library in Seattle, Westamerica, a town on the site of a great ancient city. I didn't get along with other children, he said. But I got along great with Napoleon Bonaparte. Oliver Cromwell. Douglas MacArthur. Attila the Hun. The names meant nothing to Kyaren, but they obviously were rich with memories to Josif. Napoleon is always in dense forest to me. I read about him among trees, huge trees covering ground so moist you could almost swim in it. While Cromwell is always in a little boat on Pungent Bay, in the rain. The library made me pay for the new printout of the book-the ink ran on the copy I had. I dreamed of changing the world. Until I got old enough to realize that it takes more than dreams to make any kind of impression on events. And a reader of books is not a mover of men.

He was so full of memory, which flooded out of him uncontrollably and yet in marvelously subtle order, that Kyaren also remembered, though she said nothing of it to him. She had been raised amid music, constant songs; but here she found a better song than any she had heard on Tew. His cadences, his melodies and themes and variations were verbal, not musical, but because of that they reached her better, and when at last he finished she felt she had listened to a virtuoso perform. She resisted the temptation to applaud. He would have thought she was being ironic.

Instead she only sighed, and closed her eyes, and remembered her own dreams when she first became Groan and thought of one day singing before thousands of people who would watch her intently and admire and be moved. The dreams had been stripped from her one by one, until nothing was left of them but a scar that bled often but never reopened. She sighed, and Josif misunderstood.

I'm sorry, he said. I thought it would matter to you. And he got up to go.

She stopped him, caught his hand and pulled him away from the door, which was closing again because he had not stepped through it.

Don't go, she said.

I bored you.

She shook her head. No, she said. You didn't bore me. I just don't know why you told me.

He laughed softly. Because you're the first person in a long time who looked like she might be willing to hear and capable of understanding.

Dreams, dreams, dreams, she said. You've never grown up.

Yes I have, he said, and the pain in his voice was painful to hear.

Drink? she asked.

Water, he said.

It's all I have, she answered. So it's a good thing that's what you want.

She came back in with two glasses, and Josif sipped it as reverently as if it had been wine dedicated on some altar. His eyes were grave as he said to her, I cheated.

She raised an eyebrow.

I changed the subject.

When? He had been through many subjects that night. She glanced at her wrist. It had been more than two hours.

Right at the first. I started talking about childhood and dreams and history and my private madnesses. While all you wanted to talk about was perversion.

She shook her head. Don't want to talk about it.

I do.

No. I've enjoyed this. I don't want it wrecked.

He drank the rest of the water quickly.

Kyaren, he said. They make it ugly, and it isn't.

I don't want to know if it's ugly or not.

They call me a whore, and I wasn't.

I believe you. Let's leave it at that.

No, dammit! he said fiercely. What do you think I've been going through the last couple of hours? You think I go to parties and tell people my life story? I'm attaching to you, Kyaren, like a bloodsucker to a shark.

I don't like the analogy.

I'm not a poet. I don't know what kind of pain you've gone through in your life to turn you into what you are, but I like what you are, and I want to be with you for a while, and when I do that I don't just play around at it. I become ubiquitous. You won't be able to get rid of me. I'll be there whenever you turn around. You'll trip on me getting out of bed in the morning and whenever you feel someone tickling your feet at work it'll be me, hiding under your desk. You understand? I plan to stay here.

Why me? Kyaren asked.

Do you think I know? A stuck-up Princeton graduate like you? He hazarded a guess. Maybe because you listened to me all the way through and didn't fall asleep.

I thought of it a couple of times.

I came here as Bant's lover.

I don't want to hear this.

Bant loved me and I loved Bant and he came here and brought me with him because he didn't want to be without me and so he got me a job in Death while he was in charge of Vitals. I didn't want to come here. All I wanted to do was stay near a library and read. For the rest of my life, I think. But Bant came here and I came, and then after a year Bant got bored with me. I get boring sometimes.

Kyaren decided not to try to be humorous.

I got boring, and so he didn't bring me with him when he transferred over to be head of Employment. And he didn't notify me when he moved to better rooms. But he didn't take away my job. He was kind enough to let me keep my job.

And Josif was crying and suddenly Kyaren understood something that nobody had ever bothered to explain to her in all the explanations of homosexuality that she had heard. That when Bant left it was the end of the world for Josif, because when he attached to somebody he didn't know how to let go.

Yet Kyaren was unsure how to react. Josif was, after all, nearly a stranger. Why had he poured out his heart to her tonight? What did he expect her to do? If he thought she was going to respond by baring her soul to him, he was wrong-Kyaren kept all her memories hidden. She didn't want to start talking about her childhood in the Songhouse. What could she say? I was miserable for years because I simply didn't have the ability to measure up to the Songhouse's minimum standards? She didn't want pity because of her childhood inabilities. She wanted respect because of her current competence.

Respect didn't enter into this situation, with the man crying softly, his face pressed into his knees as he sat on the floor leaning against the bed. She could think of only one reason for his emotional outpouring. He obviously didn't want to seduce her; therefore, he could only be trying for friendship. She knew how painful her isolation had been. If his had been half so bad, no wonder he was grasping at the first person who showed any sign of liking him.

For that matter, she wondered, why don't I feel any desire to take hold of his offer of friendship?

Because she didn't quite trust him, she realized. She was instantly ashamed of her suspicions. She knelt and then sat beside him, put an arm over his shoulders, tried to comfort him.

Fifteen minutes later he started undressing her. She looked at him in surprise. I thought-- she said, and he interrupted.

Statistics, he said. Trends. I'm sixty-two percent attracted to men, thirty-one percent attracted to women, and seven percent attracted to sheep. And one hundred percent attracted to you.

She had been right to mistrust him, the cynical, beaten part of her mind said sneeringly. It had all been a line.

But she clung to the line and let it draw her in. Because there was another part of her that hadn't had much play lately: she needed his gentle hands and quiet tears, his lies and his affection. And so she pretended to believe that he really did need her even as she said, I thought it would come to this, eventually. She didn't say that she hadn't thought that when it happened she would be longing for it, that it would not be a question of fun but rather a question of need, that this half-man would be able to do in one night what no one had been able to do in her life- win enough of her trust that she was willing, even for a moment, to let herself want him.

So she comforted him that night, and, strangely enough, she was also comforted, though she had said nothing to him of her loneliness, had told him nothing of her dreams. As she ran her hands over his smooth skin, she remembered the harsh cold stone of the Songhouse and could not think why the one should have reminded her of the other.

2

I will tour the empire next year, Riktors announced at dinner, and the two hundred prefects gathered at the tables cheered and clapped. It struck Ansset, from his place beside Riktors at the table, that the outburst was largely sincere, an unusual event in the palace. Ansset smiled at Riktors. They mean it, he said, for Riktors's ears only. Riktors's eyes crinkled a little, enough of a sign that he had heard, had understood. And then the tumult died and Riktors said, Not only will I tour, and visit at least one world in every prefecture, but also I will bring my Songbird with me, so that all the empire can hear him sing!

And the cheers were even louder, the applause even more sincere. Riktors looked at Ansset and laughed in delight-the boy looked completely surprised, and Riktors loved to surprise him. It wasn't easy to do.

But when the room was quiet again, Ansset said, softly, But I won't be here next year.

Enough people heard him that a whisper began along the head table. Riktors tried to keep his expression bland. He knew immediately what the boy meant. It was something that Riktors had forgotten without forgetting. He knew that Ansset was nearly fifteen years old, that the contract with the Songhouse was nearly up. But he had not let himself think of it, had not let himself plan for a future without Ansset beside him.

Riktors looked at Ansset and patted his hand. We'll talk about it later, Riktors said. But Ansset looked worried. He spoke louder this time.

Riktors, the boy said, I'm nearly fifteen. My contract expires in a month.

Some of the prefects in the audience moaned; most, however, realized that what was being said at the head table was not according to plan. That Ansset was doing what no one dared to do-reminding the emperor of something the emperor did not want to know. They kept their silence.

Contracts can be renewed, Riktors said, trying to sound jovial and hoping to be able to change the subject immediately. He did not know how to react to Ansset's insistence. Why was the boy pushing the matter?

Whatever the reason, he was still determined to push.

Not mine, said Ansset. In two months I get to go home.

And now everyone in the hall was silent. Riktors sat still, but his hands trembled on the edge of the table. For a moment he refused to understand what Ansset was saying; but Riktors did not become emperor by indulging his need to lie to himself. Go home, the boy had said. His choice of words had to be deliberate-in public Ansset had no inadvertent words. Get to go home, not have to go home, he had said. And suddenly the last few years were all undone; Riktors felt them unwinding inside him, unraveling, all the fabric turning into meaningless threads that he could not put together however much he tried.

There were countless days of conversation, the songs Ansset had sung to him, walks along the river. They had romped together like brothers, Riktors forgetting all his dignity, and Ansset forgetting-or so Riktors had believed-all the enmity of the past.

Do you love me? Riktors had once asked, opening Himself as, with any other person, he could not have afforded to open himself. And Ansset had sung to him of love. Riktors had taken this to mean yes.

And all the time Ansset was marking time, watching for his fifteenth birthday, for the expiration of his contract, for home.

I should have known better, Riktors told himself bitterly. I should have realized that the boy was Mikal's, would always be Mikal's, would never be mine. He did not forgive, as I thought he had.

Riktors imagined Ansset returning to the Songhouse on Tew; he pictured him embracing Esste, the hard woman who only looked soft when she looked at the Songbird. Riktors pictured her asking, How was it, living with the killer? And he pictured Ansset weeping; no, never weeping, not Ansset. He would remain calm, merely sing to her of the humiliation of singing for Riktors Ashen, emperor, assassin, and pathetic lover of Ansset's songs. Riktors imagined Ansset and Esste laughing together as they talked of the moment when Riktors, weary of the weight of the empire in his mind, had come to Ansset in the night for the healing of his hands, and had wept before the boy sang a note. A weakling, that's what I've been, in front of a boy who never shows an unwitting emotion; he has seen me unprotected, and instead of loving me he has felt only contempt.

It was just a moment that Riktors sat there silently, but in his mind he progressed from surprise to hurt to humiliation and, at last, to fury. He rose to his feet, and there was no hiding the anger on his face. The prefects were alarmed-it is not wise to witness the embarrassment of powerful men, they all knew, and no one was so powerful as Riktors Mikal.

You are right! Riktors said, loudly. My Songbird has reminded me that in a month his contract expires and he goes, as he says, home. I had thought that this was his home, but now I see that I was mistaken. My Songbird will return to Tew, to his precious Songhouse, for Riktors Mikal keeps his word. But the Songbird, since he obviously holds us in little esteem, will never again see his emperor, and his emperor will never again permit himself to hear his lying songs.

Riktors's face was red and tight with pain when he turned and left the dinner. A few of the prefects made some small effort to touch their food; the rest got up immediately, and soon all were headed out of the ball, wondering whether it would be better to stay around to try to show the emperor that they were still as loyal as ever, or to head quickly for their prefectures, so that he and they could all pretend that they had never come, that the scene with Ansset had never taken place.

As they left, Ansset sat alone at the table, looking at but not seeing the food in front of him. He sat that way, in silence, until the Mayor of the palace (the office of Chamberlain had long since been abolished) came to him and led him away.

Where am I going? Ansset asked softly.

The Mayor said nothing, only took him into the maze of corridors. It did not take Ansset long to recognize the place they were going to. When Riktors Ashen changed his name and moved into the palace, he had stayed away from Mikal's old chambers; instead he had established himself in new rooms near the top of the building, with windows that displayed the lawns and forest all around. Now the Mayor led Ansset through doors that once had been guarded by the tightest security measures in the empire, and at last they stood inside the door of a room where an empty fireplace still had ashes on the hearth; where the furniture remained unmoved, untouched; where the years of Mikal's presence still clung to all the features of the place, to all the memories the room inevitably stirred in Ansset's mind.

There was a thin layer of dust on the floor, as in all the unused rooms of the palace, which were only cleaned annually, if at all. Ansset walked slowly into the room,' the dust rising at each footfall. He walked to the fireplace; the urn that had held Mikal's ashes still waited beside the opening. He turned back to face the Mayor, who finally spoke.

Riktors Imperator, the Mayor said, with the formality of a memorized message, has said to you, Since you were not at home with me, you will stay where you are at home, until the Songhouse sends for you.

Riktors misunderstood me, Ansset said, but the Mayor showed no sign of having heard. He only turned away and left, and when Ansset tried the door, it did not open to his touch.

3

They spent weekend after weekend in Mexico, the largest city in the hemisphere. Josif went to make the rounds of bookstores-the market in old books and rare books was always hot, and Josif had an eye for bargains, books selling for way under value. He also had an eye for what he wanted-histories that were long out of print, fiction written centuries ago about the author's own period, diaries and journals. They say there's nothing original to be said about the history of Earth, that all the facts have been in for years, Josif said fiercely. But that was years ago, and now no one remembers anymore. What it was like to live here then.

When? Kyaren asked him.

Then. As opposed to now.

I'm more interested, she always told him, in tomorrow.

But she wasn't. Today was all that interested her in the first weeks they spent together. Today because it was the best time she had ever had, and she wasn't sure that it would last, or that tomorrow would be half as desirable.

Kyaren went to Mexico for the feel of people. Nowhere in Eastamerica, and certainly nowhere in the Songhouse, were there people like those who crowded the sidewalks of Mexico. No vehicles were allowed except the electric carts that brought in goods to the stores; people, individual people, had to walk everywhere. And there were millions of them. And they all seemed to be outside all the time; even in the rain, they sauntered through the streets with the rain sliding easily off their clothing, relishing the feel of it on their faces. This was a city where Kyaren's hunger could be filled. She knew no one, but loved everyone.

They sweat, Josif said.

You're too immaculate, Kyaren answered crossly.

They sweat and they step on your feet. I see no reason to be in a crowd any more than is unavoidable.

I like the sound of them.

And that's the worst of it. Largest city in the world, and they insist on speaking Mexican, a language that has no reason to exist.

Kyaren only scowled at him. Why not?

They're only five thousand kilometers from Seattle, for heaven's sake. We managed to talk like the rest of the empire. It's just vanity.

It's a beautiful language, you know, she said. I've been learning it, and it opens your mind.

And makes your tongue fall out of your mouth.

Josif had no patience with the eccentricities of his native planet.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed as hell to be from Earth."

The mother globe.

These people aren't real Mexicans. Do you know what Mexicans were? Short and dark! Show me a short dark person out there!

Does it matter if they can trace their pedigrees back to the number one Mexican and her husband? Kyaren demanded. They want to be Mexican. And whenever I come here, I want to be Mexican.

It was a friendly argument that always ended either with them going outside-Kyaren to wander and talk to storekeepers and shoppers, Josif to prowl along the shelves, waiting for a title to make a sudden move so he could pounce-or in bed, where their pursuits more nearly coincided.

It was on a weekend in Mexico that they decided to take over the world.

Why not the universe?

Your ambition is disgusting, Josif said, lying naked on the balcony because he liked the feel of the rain, which was falling heavily.

Well, then, we'll be modest. Where shall we start?

Here.

Not practical. We have no base of operations.

Tegucigalpa, then. We secretly twist all the programs of the computers to follow our every command. Then we cut off everybody's salaries until they surrender.

They laughed; it was a game. But a game they played seriously enough to do research. They would hunt for possible weaknesses, places where the system could be subverted. They also worked to get an overview of the system, to understand how it all fit together. Josif knew his way around the government library in Mexico, and they both spent time punching up readouts on the establishment of Tegucigalpa only three hundred-odd years before.

The thing's relatively new. Half the functions have only been installed in the last ten years. Ten years! And most other planets have been fully computerized for centuries.

You're too down on Earth, Kyaren chided him, poring over minutes of meetings, which were so heavily edited at their level of clearance that it was hard to get anything coherent out of them at all.

But it was not in Mexico that they found the scam. It was at home.

Kyaren had been reading a book on demographics, one that she had only been able to skim at Princeton. It set norms for age distributions on a planet; she found the information fascinating, especially the variations that depended on local employment, climate, and relative wealth. She amused herself by plotting the demographic distribution of ages for Earth, based on the easily obtained statistics on employment and the economy. Then she took a few minutes of break time at work to check her figures.

They were wrong.

From birth to retirement age at 80, her figures were actually quite good. It was from 80 to 100 that things didn't work.

Not enough people were dying at those ages.

In fact, she realized, almost no one was dying, compared to the normal mortality rates. And then, from 100 to 110, they died like flies, so that from 110 on the statistics were normal.

Surely someone would have noticed this before, Kyaren thought. Certainly the Earth would have gained a reputation for unusually low mortality rates. It had to be common knowledge-the food distribution must certainly be affected by it, and pension expenses must be unusually high. Scientists must be trying to discover the reason for the phenomenon.

And yet she had never heard of it at all

In the programming manuals they had looked at in the library in Mexico, Kyaren had found some little-known programs that allowed an operator to check a program rather than use It to find and process data. Kyaren talked to Josif about it that night, which they spent at his place because it was larger and had room for both of them without having to petition for extra furniture, which would have made their arrangement public knowledge.

I've checked my figures again and again, and they're not wrong.

Well, the only way to solve it is go kill some old people, I guess, Josif said, reading a twenty-third-century mystery-in translation, of course.

Josif, it's wrong. Something's wrong. Kyaren, he said, impatient but trying not to sound like it, this is a game we were playing. We really don't have any responsibility for the whole world. Just for dead people and the not-quite-dead. And then just as numbers.

I want to find out if the figures on death are right or not.

Josif closed the book. Kyaren, the figures on death are right. That's my job, isn't it? I do death.

Then check and see if my figures are right,

He checked. Her figures were right.

Your figures are right. Maybe the book's wrong.

It's been the bible of demographics for three centuries. Someone would have noticed by now.

Josif opened the book again. Damned Earth. The people don't even know when to die.

You must have noticed it, Kyaren said. You must have seen that most of your deaths were grouped between a hundred and a hundred and ten.

I've never noticed anything like that. We deal with individuals, not the aggregate. We terminate files, you know? We don't watch trends.

I just want to check some things. You know that program we found on checking entries? The error-finder?

Yeah.

Remember the numbers?

Kyaren, you're not being very good company.

Together they figured out the numbers and codes; Kyaren left for a few minutes and verified them on the local library terminal by hunting up her last library use. The program worked fine; it was quite simple, in fact, which was why they were able to remember it.

The next day, during a break, Kyaren punched in a date-of-entry query on the solitary death in Quong-yung district-she figured a single death would be simpler, would give her a single readout. What should have flashed on her screen was the date of entry, the name of the operator who entered the death information, the vital statistics entered on that date on that person, and the operation number.

Instead, what flashed on was the bright RESTRICTED sign and what sounded was a loud buzzer at Warvel's desk.

Everyone looked up immediately, watched as Warvel got up quickly, looking alarmed. Kyaren knew that on his desk her area was flashing;-sure enough, when he located the culprit he slammed his hand on the desk and charged furiously over to her.

What the bloody hell are you doing, Kyaren! he bawled as he came over.

What should she tell him-that she was playing a game of plotting to take over the world? That she was double-checking the figures because they didn't jibe with her own calculations?

"I don't know, she said, letting herself sound as surprised and flustered as she felt. I was just playing with the thing. Just punching in random numbers and words, I don't know.

Which random numbers and words? he demanded, leaning over her terminal.

I don't remember, she lied. It was just whimsical.

It was just stupid,' he said back to her. There are programs here that if you just randomly and whimsically happened to stumble on them, they'd freeze the whole operation until the stinking police came to find out who's trying to jury the system. You understand? This system is foolproof, but we don't need any extra fools trying to prove it!

She apologized profusely, but as he returned, unmollified, to his desk, she realized that he had seemed not so much angry as afraid. And the others in the room, as Warvel returned to his desk, looked at her sullenly, angrily-and, also, fearfully.

What had she done?

Kyaren, Warvel said as she left the office at the end of the working day. Kyaren, your four-month report is coming up in a few days. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a negative report.

Kyaren was stunned. Why? she asked.

You haven't been working. You've been obviously loafing. It's bad for morale, and it's downright dishonest.

When have I loafed? she asked. A negative report now, on her first job-especially one this easy-could destroy her hope of a government career.

I have complaints from fourteen people. Every single person in this office except you and me, Kyaren. They're tired of watching you playing games. Studying up on ancient history and playing computer games when you should be trying to help old people cope with inflation and the fluctuations of the economy. We aren't here for fun, Kyaren, we're here to help people. Do you understand?

She nodded. That's what I'm trying to do.

I'll give you a negative report, but I won't fire you unless there's any more trouble. You understand? Three years of perfect work and you get the negative report taken off your record. It's something you can live down- if you just stick to business in the future.

She left. At home Josif was appalled.

Fourteen complaints?

That's what he said.

Kyaren, you could have an intimate sexual relationship with a lamp in the middle of the lunchroom and you'd have a hard time getting three complaints!

What do they have against me? she asked.

Josif's face grew somber. Me, he said.

What?

Me. You had problems enough. Adding me to them- do you know how many women have tried to get me into bed? There's something about a known homosexual that's irresistible to a certain kind of woman. They regard him as a challenge. Me as a challenge. And then you come along and suddenly we're spending weekends together. The ones that aren't jealous are probably revolted to think of what perverted things I must be making you do.

It isn't you.

Then what is it?

They're afraid.

Of what?

How should I know?

Josif got up from the bed, went to the door, leaned on it. Kyaren, it's me. We've got to stop. When you leave tonight that's it.

He sounded sincere. She wondered why even the thought of leaving him and not coming back made her feel as if she were falling from someplace very high.

I'm not leaving tonight, she said. I'm leaving in the morning.

No. For your own good.

She laughed incredulously. My own good!

He looked at her from the door, his face very serious.

My own good is to stay right here.

He shook his head.

Do you really mean this? she asked, unbelieving. Just like that, you decide I'm supposed to go because you think it'll be better for me?

Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it, he said.

And they started laughing and he came back to the bed and suddenly they weren't laughing, just holding each other and realizing that this wasn't something they could simply end when it became inconvenient.

Josif, she said.

Mmm? His face was buried in her hair, and he was sucking on a strand of it.

Josif, I frightened them. They're afraid of something.

You're a pretty mean-looking woman.

There's something pretty funny about it. Why should death-entry information be restricted?

They couldn't think of a reason.

And so the next day at lunch Josif had a sheet of paper -something little used in the computer center-and on it were ten names and tea numbers. Can you use this? he asked.

What are they?

Dead people. Today's first entries. They should be in your computer by now, since I punched them all in. That's their identification numbers, and date of entry is a few hours ago. That's basically all the date-of-entry code would have told you anyway. Can you do anything with them?

Kyaren didn't dare bring the paper with her to the office-anything as unusual as paper would attract attention, and that was not what she needed. So she memorized the first three and left the list in the lavatory on the floor below. On her first break she came down, but instead of getting three more names she went to Josif.

Are you sure you copied these down correctly?

Josif looked at the names and numbers, punched them into his terminal, and the vitals showed up. All definitely dead.

On my terminal, she said, they're still very much alive.

Josif got up from his terminal and she followed him to the corridor, where Josif spoke softly.

We should have guessed it immediately. It's a scam, Kyaren. They're paying those pensions to somebody, but not to these people. Because they're dead.

Kyaren leaned against the wall. Do you know how much money that is?

Josif was not impressed. Come on, he said.

Where?

Out of this building, immediately.

He started pulling her along. She came willingly enough, but completely confused. Where are we going?

He wouldn't answer. They did not go to either of their rooms. Instead they headed for the airport, which was on the eastern edge of the complex. This isn't the time for a weekend in Mexico, she said.

Just punch in sick. They stood before the ticket terminal and she did as he said, using her office code. Then he stood to the terminal and punched out two tickets for himself, charging them to his own account.

I can pay for my own, she said.

He didn't answer. He just took the tickets and they boarded the flit headed for Maraketch. It was when they were in flight that he finally began explaining.

It isn't Just your office, Kyaren, he said. It's mine, too. This thing has to involve a lot of people, in Death, in Disbursements, in Pensions, who knows where else. If they caught you on a simple query, they surely have a program to notice that you just queried the names of three people whose deaths were registered today, and that immediately afterward I queried the same names. The computer knows that somebody knows there is a discrepancy. And I don't know how long we'd live if we stayed there.

They wouldn't do anything violent, would they? Kyaren asked.

Josif only kissed her and said, Wherever you grew up, Kyaren, must be paradise.

Where are we going? she asked again.

To report it, of course. Let the police handle it. Let Babylon do it. They have the power to freeze everything and everyone there while they investigate. We don't have any power at all.

What if we're wrong?

Then we go looking for jobs about a billion lights away from here.

They told their story to five different officials before they finally found someone who was willing to take responsibility for a decision. The man was not introduced to them. But he was the first to listen to them without fidgeting, without looking uncomfortable or worried or distrustful

Only three names? he finally asked, when Josif and Kyaren had explained everything.

They nodded. We didn't think it was safe to wait around looking for more.

Absolutely right, the man said. He nodded, as if in imitation of their nods a moment before. Yes, it warrants an investigation. And they watched as he picked up a phone, stroked in a code, and started giving orders in a jargon that they couldn't understand.

His face fascinated Kyaren, though she was not sure why. He looked unremarkable enough-not a large man, not particularly handsome, but not unusually ugly, either. His hair medium length, his eyes medium brown, his expression medium pleasant. Kyaren was aware of a constant change, not so much in his face as in her perception of his face; like an optical illusion, his face kept switching back and forth between absolute trustworthiness and cold menace. No one had told them his title or even his name- he was just the one they passed a knotty problem to, and he didn't seem to mind.

Finally he was through with his call and turned his attention back to Josif and Kyaren. Very good work, he said.

Then he began to talk to them, very quietly, about themselves. He told Kyaren things about Josif that Josif had never mentioned: how Josif had attempted suicide twice after Bant left him; how Josif failed four classes at his university in his last term, yet turned in a dissertation that the faculty had no choice but to vote unanimously to accept; how the faculty thereupon booted him out of the school with the worst possible recommendation letters so that it was impossible for him to get work in his field.

You don't get along well with authority, do you, Josif? the man asked. Josif shook his head.

The man promptly started in on Kyaren, talking about her upbringing in the Songhouse, her failure to meet even the most minimal standards, her flight from that place where she was known to be inferior, her refusal to even mention the Songhouse to anyone else since then. You are determined not to let anyone see you fail, aren't you, Kya-Kya? he asked. Kyaren nodded.

She was acutely conscious of the fact that there was so much that Josif hadn't told her about himself-important things, if she was to understand him. And yet it came more as a relief than as a letdown. Because now he also knew the things she had been deliberately hiding from him; they had no secrets of any importance now.

Was that what the man had been trying to do? Or was he merely being nasty, pointing out to them that their friendship wasn't all they had thought it was? It hardly mattered. She looked at Josif furtively, saw that he also was avoiding her gaze. That would not do. So she stared at him until the very intensity of her gaze forced him to look back at her. And then she smiled. Hi, stranger, she said, and he smiled back.

The man cleared his throat. You two are a little better than the average. You've been artificially, for various stupid reasons, kept in places where you couldn't accomplish all that you are capable of. So I'm giving you an opportunity. Try to use it intelligently.

They would have asked for explanation, but he left mem without another word. It was the Chief of Planetary Security who finally told them what was happening to them. You've been fired from your previous jobs, he said, looking as serene as only a man with a great deal of power can look. And given new ones.

Josif found himself assistant to the minister of education, with special authority over funds for research. Kyaren was made special assistant to the manager of Earth, where she could get her hands into anything on the planet. Not imperial offices, but about as high as novices could hope to get-work that would give them connections for future advances and all the opportunities they would need to show just what kind of work they were capable of doing.

In a stroke, they had been given a chance to make careers for themselves.

Who is he, an angel? God? Josif asked the Chief.

The Chief laughed. Most people put him at the opposite end of things. The Devil. The Angel of Death. But he's nothing like that at all. He's just Ferret. The emperor's ferret, you see. He makes people and he unmakes them, and answers only to the emperor.

They knew how well he could make people. The unmaking they saw when, a few weeks later, they were watching the vids in their apartment. The day in Babylon had been hot and rainy, until at sunset they had stood on their balcony watching the light glisten on waterdrops clinging to a billion blades of grass, with the long shadows of trees interrupting the lush savannah at random yet perfect intervals. An elephant moved lazily through the tall grass. A herd of gazelles bounded north in the distance. Kyaren and Josif felt utterly exhausted from the day's work, utterly at peace from the evening's beauty, a delicious mood of languor. They knew the conviction of the plotters would be cast from Tegucigalpa tonight, and they felt an obligation to watch.

As moments from the trials were presented, with the faces of their former co-workers again and again in the dock, Kyaren began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Not because she had turned them in-but because she had felt no qualms about doing so. Would she have been so eager to denounce them if they had not so openly excluded her? She imagined what it might have been like if she had come into the Office of Pensions more humbly, not preceded by remarkable tests, not clothed in her perpetual reserve. Would they then have befriended her, gradually admitted her to the plot? Would she then have denounced them?

Impossible to know, she realized. For if she had come humbly, she would not have been herself and so who could then predict how she would have acted?

Beside her, Josif gasped. Kyaren looked closely at the vids again. It was just another man in the dock, one she didn't know. Who is it? she asked.

Bant, Josif said, gnawing at his knuckles.

In all their thinking, they hadn't thought of this-that Bant, of course, as head of Vitals, had to be involved. Kyaren had never met him, but felt that she knew him through Josif. Yet what she knew of him was his hilarity, his insistence that lovemaking had to be fun. Kyaren hadn't enjoyed imagining Josif making love with a man, but that much, at least, had been impossible for Josif not to talk about. Apparently Bant's greed for sex was just a facet of his overall greed; his unconcern for Josif's feelings was part of a general unconcern for anyone.

All those charged were convicted. They were alt sentenced to five to thirty years in hard labor, deported, and permanently exiled from Earth, permanently barred from government employment. It was a severe sentence. Apparently it was not severe enough.

The announcer began talking about the need to make an example of these people, lest others decide that a group scam on government funds might be worth the risks. As he talked, the vids showed a man from the back, walking toward the line of prisoners. The prisoners all had guards behind them; their hands were bound. They looked toward the man who approached them, and their faces suddenly looked alarmed. The vids backed off so that the viewers could see why. The man held a blade. Not a laser -a blade, made of metal, a frightening thing in part because it was so ancient and barbaric.

Ferret, Kyaren said, and Josif nodded. The vids didn't show the man's face, but they were quite sure they recognized him.

And then Ferret reached the first of the prisoners, paused before him, then moved to the next, paused. It was not until the fourth prisoner that the hand lashed out; the blade caught the prisoner at the point where the jaw meets the ear, then flashed to the left and emerged at the same point on the other side. For a moment the prisoner looked surprised, just surprised. Then a red line appeared along his throat, and suddenly blood erupted and spurted from the wound, spattering those to either side. The body sagged, the mouth struggling to speak, the eyes pleading for the act to somehow be undone. It was not undone. The guard behind the man held him up, and when the prisoner's head sagged forward, the guard grabbed the hair and pulled the head back, so that the face could be seen. The action also made the wound gape, like the maw of a piranha. And finally the blood stopped pumping and the ferret, his back still to the vids, nodded. The guard let the man drop to the floor.

Apparently the vids had shown this execution in detail because it was the first. As the ferret walked along, snicking the throats of every third, fourth, or fifth prisoner, the vids did not hold close for the dying, as they had with the first; rather the program moved quickly.

Kyaren and Josif did not notice, however. Because from the moment the blade first flashed forward, catching the prisoner in the throat, Josif had been screaming. Kyaren tried to force him to look away from the vids, tried to make him hide his eyes from the man's death, but even as he screamed piteously, Josif refused to take his eyes from the sight of the blood and the agony. And when the prisoner sagged forward, Josif wept loudly, crying, Bant! Bant!

Now they knew how the ferret unmade people. He must, Kyaren thought, he must have known how Josif felt about Bant, chose to kill him knowing that, as if to say, You can denounce the criminal, but you cannot do it without consequences.

Kyaren was sure that his choice of victim had been deliberate, for when he got to the last six people, he slowed down, looking each one of them in the eyes. The prisoners were reacting very differently, some trying to be stoic about their possible death, some trying to plead with him, some near vomiting with fear or disgust. With each person he passed, the next became more sure that he was the victim-the ferret had not skipped more than four people in a row before. And then he came to the last one.

The last one was Warvel, who was utterly certain that he would die--five had already been passed over. And Kyaren, her arms around Josif, who wept softly beside her, found herself inwardly pleased, sickeningly pleased, that Warvel would also die. If Bant, then surely Warvel.

Then the ferret snaked out his hand. But not to kill. For the hand now was empty, and he caught Warvel by the neck, pulled him forward away from the guard. Warvel stumbled, nearly fell, his knees were so weak. But the vids carried the sound of Ferret's voice. Pardon this one. The emperor pardons this one.

And Warvel's bonds were loosed as the announcer's voice began talking about how the emperor was to be remembered always-because when someone cheated or abused the people, the emperor would be the people's champion and carry out their vengeance. But always the emperor's justice is tempered with mercy. Always the emperor remembers that even the worst of criminals is still one of the emperor's people.

Warvel.

Bant.

Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, Kyaren whispered silently, so that even she could hardly hear the thought as her lips moved. Whatever the ferret wanted to teach us, we have learned. We have learned.

And that was why Kyaren and Josif were in Babylon when Ansset was placed there.

4

For the first time in his life, Ansset lost songs.

Up to now, everything that had happened to him had added to his music. Even Mikal's death had taught him new songs, and deepened all the old ones.

He spent only one month as a prisoner, but he spent it songless. Not that he meant to keep his silence. Occasionally, at first, he tried to sing. Even something simple, something he had learned as a child. The sounds came out of his throat well enough, but there was no fulfillment in it. The song always sounded empty to him, and he could not bring himself to go on.

Ansset speculated on death, perhaps because of the constant reminder of the urn that had held Mikal's ashes, perhaps because he felt entombed in the dusty room with its constant reminders of a long-gone past. Or perhaps because the drugs that delayed the Songbird's puberty were now wearing off, and the changes came on more awkwardly because of the artificial delay. Ansset awoke often in the night, troubled by strange and unfulfilling dreams. Small for his age, he began to feel restless, an urge to grapple violently with someone or something, a passion for movement that, in the confines of Mikal's rooms, he could not fulfill.

This is what the dead feel, Ansset thought. This is what they go through, shut up in their tombs or caught, embarrassingly, in public without their bodies. Ghosts may long to simply touch something, but bodiless they cannot; they may wish for heat, for cold, for even the delicious-ness of pain, but it Is all denied them.

He counted days. With the poker from the fire he notched each morning in the ashes in the hearth, in spite of the fact that the ashes were of Mikal's body-or perhaps because of it. And, at last, the day came when his contract was expired and he could finally go home.

How could Riktors have misinterpreted him so? In all his years with Mikal, Ansset had never had to lie to him; and in his time with Riktors, there had also been a kind of honesty, though silences fell between them on certain matters. They had not been like father and son, as he and Mikal had been. They were more like brothers, though there was some confusion as to which of them was the elder brother, which the rambunctious younger one who had to be comforted, checked, counseled, and consoled. And now, simply by being honest, Ansset had touched a place in Riktors that no one could have guessed was there-the man could be vindictive without calculation, cruel even to the helpless.

Ansset had thought he knew Riktors-as he thought he knew practically everyone. As other people trusted their sight, Ansset trusted his hearing. No one could lie to him or hide from him, not if they were speaking. But Riktors Ashen had hidden from him, at least in part, and Ansset was now as unsure as a sighted man who suddenly discovered that the wolves were all invisible, and walked beside him ravening in the night.

On the day Ansset turned fifteen, he waited expectantly for the door to open, for the Mayor or, better yet, someone from the Songhouse to come in, to take his hand and bring him out.

The Mayor did indeed come in. Near evening he came and wordlessly handed a paper to Ansset. It was in Riktors's handwriting.

I regret to inform you that the Songhouse has sent as word that you are not to return to them. Your service of two emperors, they said, has polluted you and you may not go back. The message was signed by Esste. It is unfortunate that this message should have come when you are no longer welcome here. We are currently holding meetings to decide what we can possibly do with you, since neither we nor the Songhouse can find any further justification for maintaining you. This undoubtedly comes as a blow to you. I'm sure you can guess how sorry I am.

Riktors Mikal, Imperator

If Ansset's long silence in Mikal's rooms had ended with a return to the Songhouse, it might have helped him grow, as the silence and the suffering in the High Room with Esste helped him grow. But as he read the letter, the songs drained out of him.

Not that he believed the letter at first. At first he thought it was a terrible, terrible joke, a last vindictive act by Riktors to make Ansset regret wanting to leave Earth and return to the Songhouse. But as the hours passed, he began to wonder. He had heard nothing from the Songhouse in his years on Earth. That was normal, he knew-but it was also distancing him from his memories there. The stone walls had faded into the background, and the gardens of Susquehanna were more real to him. Riktors was more real to him than Esste, though his feelings for Esste were more tender. But with that distance he began to think: perhaps Esste had merely been manipulating him. Perhaps their ordeal in the High Room had been a strategem and nothing more-her complete victory over him, and not a shared experience at all. Perhaps he had been sent to Earth as a sacrifice; perhaps the skeptics were right, and the Songhouse had given in to Mikal's pressure and sent him a Songbird knowing he was unworthy, knowing that it would destroy the Songbird they sent and they could never bring him home.

Maybe that was why, when Mikal died, the Songhouse did the unthinkable and let him stay with Riktors Ashen.

It fit, and the more Ansset thought about it, the better it fit, until by the time he was able to sleep he had despaired. He still harbored a hope that tomorrow the Song-house people would come in and tell him it was a cruel joke by Riktors, and they had come to claim him; but the hope was slimmer, and he realized that now, instead of being one of the few people on Earth who could regard himself as independent of the emperor, almost his equal, he was utterly dependent on Riktors, and not at all sure that Riktors would feel any obligation to be kind.

That night his Control failed him, and he awoke from a dream weeping out loud. He tried to contain himself, but could not. He had no way of knowing that it was the onset of puberty that was weakening, temporarily, his knowledge of himself. He thought that it was proof that the Songhouse was right-he was polluted, weakened. Unworthy to return and live among the singers.

If he had been restless before, now he was frantic. The rooms were smaller than they had ever been before, and the softness of the floor was unbearable. He wanted to strike it and find it hard; instead it yielded to hurt. The dust, which his constant walking had pushed to the edges and corners of the room, began to irritate him, and he sneezed frequently. He constantly caught himself on the edge of tears, told himself it was the dust, but knew it was the terror of abandonment. All his life that he could remember he had been surrounded by security, at first the security of the Songhouse, and later the security of an emperor's love. Now, suddenly, both of them were gone, and a long-forgotten abandonment began to intrude into his dreams again. Someone was stealing him away. Someone was taking him from his family. Someone was vanishing his family in the distance and he would never see them again and he woke up in darkness full of terror, afraid to move in his bed, because if he so much as lifted an arm they would cease to forbear; they would take him and he would never be found again, would live perpetually in a small cell in a rocking boat, would always be surrounded by the leering faces of men who saw only his nakedness and never his soul.

And then, after a week of this, his long silence ended. The Mayor came for him.

Riktors wants to see you, the Mayor said, and because he was not delivering a memorized message his voice was his own, and it was sympathetic and warm, and Ansset trembled as he walked to him and took his offered hand and let himself be led from Mikal's rooms to Riktors's magnificent apartments.

The emperor waited for him standing at a window, looking out over the forest where the leaves were starting to go red and yellow. There was a wind blowing outside, but of course it did not touch them. The Mayor brought Ansset inside and left him alone with Riktors, who showed no sign of knowing the boy had come.

Boy? Ansset was, for the first time, aware that he was growing, that he had grown. Riktors did not tower over him as he had when he took him away from the Song-house. Ansset still did not come to his shoulder, but he knew that someday he would, and felt a growing equality with Riktors-not an equality of independence, for that feeling was gone, but an equality of manhood. My hands are large, Ansset thought.

My hands could tear his heart out.

He pushed the thought into the back of his mind. He did not understand his lust for violent action; he had had his fill of it, he thought, when he was a child.

Riktors turned to face him, and Ansset saw that his eyes were red from weeping.

I'm sorry, Riktors said. And he wept again.

The grief was sincere, unbearably sincere. By habit Ansset went to the man. But habit had weakened-where before he would have embraced Riktors and sung to him, he only came near, did not touch him, and certainly did not sing. He had no song for Riktors now.

If I could undo it, I would, Riktors said. But you pushed me harder than I can endure it. No one but you could have made me so angry, could have hurt me so deeply.

Truth rang in Riktors's voice, and with a sinking of his heart Ansset realized that Riktors had not defrauded him. He was telling no lies.

Won't you sing to me? Riktors pleaded.

Ansset wanted to say yes. But he could not. He hunted inside himself for a song, but he couldn't find one. Instead of songs, tears pressed forward in his mind; his face twisted, and he shook his head, making no sound.

Riktors looked at him bitterly, then turned away. I thought not. I knew you could never forgive me.

Ansset shook his head and tried to make a sound, tried to say, I forgive you. But he found no sound inside himself right now. Found nothing but fear and the agony of being forsaken.

Riktors waited for Ansset to speak, to deny, to forgive; when it became clear the silence would last forever if it were up to Ansset to break it, Riktors walked. Around the room, touching windows and walls. Finally he came to rest on his bed, which, when it was clear he was not going to lie down, cooperated by flowing up and around his back a little, providing support.

Well, then, I won't punish you further by keeping you with me here in the palace. You aren't going back to Tew. I can't just pension you off; I owe you better treatment than that. So I've decided to give you work.

Ansset was incurious.

Don't you care? Well, I do, Riktors said to Ansset's silence. The manager of Earth is due for a promotion. I'll give you his job. You'll report directly to the imperial capital, no prefects between us. The Mayor wanted to give you something smaller, some office where you wouldn't have so much responsibility. Riktors laughed. But you aren't trained for any lesser office, are you? At least you know protocol. And the staff is very good. They'll carry you until you learn your way. If you need help, I'll see to it you get it.

Riktors studied Ansset's face for any sign of emotion, though he knew better. Ansset wanted to show him something, show him what he was looking for. But it took all Ansset's concentration to maintain Control, to keep from breaking the glass and leaping from the palace to get outside, to keep from weeping until he cried his throat out. So Ansset said and showed nothing.

But I don't want to see you, Riktors said. - Ansset knew it was a lie.

"No, that's a lie. I must see you, I can't live without seeing you. I found that out clearly enough, Ansset. You showed me how much I need you. But I don't want to need you, not you, not now. And so I can't want to see you, and so I won't see you. Not until you're ready to forgive me. Not until you can come back and sing to me again.

I can't sing to anyone, Ansset wanted to say.

So I'll have them give you some sort of training- there isn't any school for planet managers, you know. The best they can do, meetings with the current manager. And then they'll take you to Babylon. It's a beautiful place, they tell me. I've never seen it. Once you get to Babylon, we'll never meet again. His voice was painful, and it tore at Ansset's heart For a moment he wanted to embrace this man who had, after all, been his brother and his friend. He had known Riktors, he thought, and Ansset did not know how not to love someone he so completely understood. But I did not really understand him, Ansset realized. Riktors was hidden from me, and I do not know him.

It was a wall, and Ansset did not breach it

Instead, Riktors tried to. He got up from the bed and came to where Ansset stood, knelt in front of him, embraced him around the waist and wept into his hip, clinging desperately. Ansset, please. Take it back! Say you love me, say that this is your home, sing to me, Ansset! But Ansset held his silence, and the man slid down his body until he lay crumpled at Ansset's feet, and finally the weeping stopped and, without lifting his head, Riktors said, Go. Get out of here. You'll never see me again. Rule the Earth, but you won't rule me any longer. You can leave.

Ansset pulled away from Riktors's slack arm and walked to the door. He touched it; it opened for him. But he had not left when Riktors cried out in agony, Won't you say anything to me?

Ansset turned around, hunting for something to break the silence with. Finally he thought of it.

Thank you, he said.

He meant thank you for caring for me, for still wanting me, for giving me something to do now that I can't sing anymore, now that my home is closed to me.

But Riktors heard it another way. He heard Ansset saying thank you for letting me leave you, thank you for not requiring me to be near you, thank you for letting me live and work in Babylon where I won't be required to sing for you anymore.

And so, to Ansset's surprise, when his voice croaked out the two words, utterly devoid of music, Riktors did not take them kindly. He only looked at Ansset with a look that the boy could only interpret as cold hatred. The look held for a few minutes, an unbearably long time, before Ansset finally could not stand to see Riktors's hatred any longer. He turned away and passed through the door. It closed behind him. When the door closed, Ansset realized that at last he was no longer a Songbird. The work he had now would require no songs.

To his surprise, he felt relieved. The music fell off him like a burden welcomely shed. It would be some time before he realized that not singing was an even heavier burden, and one far harder to be rid of.

5

Songmaster Onn returned alone to the Songhouse. No one was eager to spread bad news; no one rushed ahead of him to report that, incredibly, his mission had failed.

And so Esste, waiting patiently in the High Room, was the first to hear that Ansset would not come home.

I was not allowed to come to Earth. The other passengers were unloaded by shuttle, and I never set foot on the planet,

The message, Esste said. Was it sent in Ansset's own language?

It was a personal apology from Riktors Mikal, Onn said, and he recited it: "I regret having to inform you that Ansset, formerly a Songbird, refuses to return to Tew. His contract has expired, and since he is neither chattel nor a child, I cannot legally compel him. I hope you will understand that for his protection no one from the Songhouse will be allowed to land on Earth while he is here. He is busy; he is happy; do not be concerned for him.'

Esste and Onn looked at each other in silence, but the silence between them sang.

He is a liar, Esste finally said.

This much is true: Ansset does not sing.

What does he do?

Onn looked and sounded pained as he said it. "He is manager of Earth.

Esste sucked in air quickly. She sat in silence, her eyes focused on nothing. Onn's voice had been as kind as possible, his song gentle to her. But there was no gentleness in the message. Riktors might have forced Ansset to stay-that was believable. But how could Ansset have been forced to take a position of such responsibility?

He is so young, Esste sang.

He was never young, Onn answered, a descant.

I was cruel to him.

You gave him nothing but kindness.

When Riktors begged me to let them stay together, I should have refused.

All the Songmasters agreed that he should stay.

And then a cry that was not a song, that came deeper from within Esste than all her music.

Ansset, my son! What Have I done to you, Ansset, my son, my son!

Onn did not stay to watch Esste lose Control. What she did alone in the High Room was her own affair. He descended the long flight of steps, his body heavy with his own regret. He had had time to get used to the idea of Ansset not returning. Esste had not.

Esste could not, he feared. Not a week had passed since Ansset had left that Esste had not sung of him, either mentioning him by name or singing a melody that those who knew her recognized-a song of Ansset's, a fragment of voice that could only have been produced by the child's throat, or by Esste's, since she knew all his songs so well. His homecoming had been watched for as no other singer's return. There was no celebration planned, except in the hearts of those who meant to greet him. But there the songs had been waiting, ready to burst the air with rejoicing for the greatest Songbird of them all. The place was ready for Ansset. It was meant that he would begin to teach at once. It was meant that his voice would sing all the hours of the day, would lead the song in the courtyards, would be heard in the evening from the tower. It was meant that, someday, he would be Songmaster, perhaps in the High Room.

Onn had had time to get used to the failure of all these intentions. Yet as he walked slowly down the stairs he heard his footsteps ringing hollowly against the stone, for he still wore his traveling shoes. The wrong wanderer has returned, he thought. In his mind he heard Ansset's last song, years before, in the great hall. The memory of it was thin. It sounded like wind in the tower, and made him feel cold.

6

Ansset had only been in Babylon a week when he got lost.

He had been in the palace too long. It didn't occur to him that he didn't know his way around. And in fact he had learned almost immediately every corner of the manager's building, which he was sharing for two weeks with the outgoing manager, who was trying to acquaint him with his staff and the current problems and work. It was tedious, but Ansset thrived on tedium these days. It kept his mind off himself. It was much more comfortable to immerse himself in the work of government.

He had no training for it, formally. But informally, he had the best training in the world. Hours and hours spent listening to Mikal and Riktors pour their hearts out, discreetly, about the decisions that faced them. He had been the dumping ground for the problems of an empire; it was not strange to him to face the problems of a world.

Yet there were times when they left him alone. There were limits to what anyone could absorb, and though Ansset knew he had no reason to be ashamed of the way he had been learning, he was keenly aware of the fact that they all thought him to be a child. He was small, and his voice had not changed, thanks to the Songhouse drugs. And so they were solicitous, oversolicitous, he thought. I can do more, he said one day when they quit before sunset.

That's enough for a day, the minister of education said. They told me not to go past four and it's nearly five. You've done very well. Then the minister had realized that he was sounding patronizing, tried to correct himself, then gave it up and left.

Alone, Ansset went to the window and looked out. Other rooms had balconies, but this one faced west, and he saw the sun setting over the buildings to the west. Yet below, where the stilts of the building left undisturbed ground, thick grass grew, and Ansset saw a bird rise from the grass; saw a large mammal lumbering under the buildings, heading, he assumed, toward the river to the east.

And he wanted to go outside.

No one went outside, of course, not in this weather. Months from now, when the Ufrates rose and the plain was water from horizon to horizon, then there would be boating parties dodging hippopotamuses and singing from building to building, while work went on in the buildings rooted in bedrock, like herons ignoring the current because their feet had a firm grasp in the mud.

Now, however, the plain belonged to the animals.

But there was no door that did not open to Ansset's hand, no button that did not work when he pushed it. And so he took elevators to the lowest floor, and there wandered until he found the freight elevator. He entered, pushed the only control, and waited as the elevator sank.

The door opened and Ansset stepped out into the grass. It was a hot evening, but a breeze flowed under the buildings. The air smelled very different from the deciduous breezes of Susquehanna, but it was not an unpleasant smell, though it was pungent with animals. The elevator had brought him to the center of the space under the building. The sun was just beginning to become visible between the second building to the west and the ground; Ansset's shadow seemed to stretch a kilometer into the east.

Better than sight or smell, however, was the sound. Distantly he heard the roaring of some indelicate beast; much closer, the cry of birds, a more savage cry than the twitters of the small birds in Eastamerica. He was so enthralled with the novelty of the sound, and the beauty of it, that he hardly noticed that the elevator behind him was rising until he turned to follow the motion of a bird and realized that there was nothing behind him at all. Not just the elevator, but the entire shaft as well had risen into the building, and was just settling into its place, a metal square high above him on the bottom of the first floor.

Ansset had no idea how to get the elevator to come down again. For a moment he was afraid. Then he thought wryly that they would notice he was missing almost immediately, and come looking for him. Someone always came and asked him if he needed anything every ten minutes or so.

As long as he was away from everyone, as long as he was there with his feet in the grass and his ears attuned to new music, he might as welt make the most of it. The buildings extended indefinitely to the east; to the west, only two buildings stood between him and the open plain. So he went west-He had never seen so much space in his life. True, the plain was dotted with trees, so that if he looked far enough, the trees made a thin green line that kept the world from going on forever until it curved out of sight. But the sky seemed to be enormous, and birds disappeared easily into it, they were so small against the dazzling blue. Ansset tried to imagine the plain in flood, with the trees rising resolutely above the water, so that boaters could dock in the branches and picnic in the shade. The land, was unrelentingly, flat-there was no high ground. Ansset wondered what became of the animals. Probably they migrated, he decided, though for a moment he imagined thousands of game wardens gathering them up and flying them to safe ground. A vast evacuation; man protecting nature in a reversal of the ancient roles. But it happened only here, in the huge Origins Imperial Park, which stretched from the Mediterranean and Aegean seas to the valley of the Indus River. Here dead land had been brought to life, and only Babylon, and here and there a tourist center, interrupted the animals' reclaimed kingdom.

As the sun touched the horizon, the birds became almost frantic in their calls, and many new birds erupted into song. At dusk all the animals would prowl, some in their last activity before night, others in their first activity after a day of sleep.

The song made Ansset feel at peace. He had thought never to feel that way again, and he felt tension he hadn't known gripped him gradually uncoil and relax. Almost by reflex he opened his mouth to sing. Almost. Because the very length of time between songs called to his attention the novelty of the act. He was instantly aware that this was his First Song. And so as he began to sing, the music was tortured by calculation. What should have been reflex became deliberate, and therefore he faltered, and could not sing. He tried, and of course tones came out. He did not know that much of the awkwardness was simply lack of use, and that much of it was the fact that his voice was now beginning to change. He only knew that something that had been as natural as breathing, as walking, was now totally unnatural. The song sounded hideous in his ears. He shouted, his voice as forlorn as a cormorant's cry. The birds near him fell silent, instantly sensing that he did not belong among them.

I don't belong among you, he said silently. Or among anyone else. My own won't have me, and here I'm a stranger.

Only Control kept him from weeping, and gradually, as feeling built inside him, he realized that, songless, he could not keep Control There had to be an outlet somewhere.

And so he cried out, again and again, screams and howls into the sky. It was an animal sound, and it frightened even him as he made the noise. He could have been a wounded beast, from the sound; fortunately, the predators were not easily fooled, and did not come to the cries.

Someone came, however, and not long after he fell silent and the sun disappeared behind the distant trees, someone touched his elbow from behind. He whirled, frightened, not remembering that he was expecting rescue.

She looked familiar, and in a moment he placed her in his mind. She belonged, oddly, both in the Songhouse and in the palace. Only one person had ever stood both places in his life, besides himself.

Kya-Kya, he said, and his voice was hoarse.

I heard your cry, she said. Are you hurt?

No, he said, instantly.

They looked at each other, neither sure what to say. Finally Kya-Kya broke the silence. Everyone was in a panic. No one knew where you had gone. But I knew. Or thought I knew. Because I come down here, too. Not many of us ever make the descent when it's the dry season. The animals aren't very good .company. They just wander around looking powerful and free. Human beings aren't meant to look at power and freedom. Makes them jealous. She laughed, and so did he, Gracelessly, however. Something was very wrong.

You work here? Ansset asked.

I'm one of your special assistants. You haven't met me yet. I'm on your agenda for next week. I'm not very important.

He said nothing, and again Kya-Kya waited, unsure what to say. They had spoken before-angrily, on her part, when they conversed both in the Songhouse and in the palace. But she was damned if she'd let that stand in the way of her career. A terrible thing, having this boy made her direct superior, but she could and would make the best of it.

I'll show you how to go back. If you want to go back.

He still said nothing. There was something strange about his face, though she couldn't think what it was. It seemed rigid somehow. Yet that couldn't be it-he had been utterly unflinching when she talked to him in his cell in the Songhouse and he sang comfort to her, an inhuman face, in fact.

Do you want to go back? she asked.

He still didn't answer. Helpless, unsure what to do for this child who had her future in his control-the Song-house comes back to haunt me no matter what I do, she thought, as she had thought a hundred times since learning he would be manager-she waited.

Finally she realized that what was wrong with his face was that it was not rigid. It was only trying to be. The boy was trembling. The most perfectly controlled creature in the Songhouse was shaking, and his voice wavered and sounded awkward as he said, I don't know where I am.

You're just two buildings away from your- And then she realized that he did not mean that.

Help me, he said.

Her feelings toward the boy suddenly wrenched, turned completely another way. She had been prepared to deal with him as a tyrant, as a monster, as a haughty superior. She had not been prepared to deal with him as a child asking for help.

How can I help you? she whispered.

I don't know my way, he said.

You will, in time.

He looked impatient, more frightened; the mask was coming off his face.

I've lost my... I've lost my voice.

She did not understand. Wasn't he speaking to her?

Kya-Kya, he said. I can't sing anymore.

Of all the people on Earth, only Kya-Kya could possibly understand what he meant, and what it meant to him.

Not ever? she asked, incredulous.

He shook his head, and tears came to his eyes.

The boy was helpless. Still beautiful, the face still impossible not to look at, and yet now a real child, which in her mind he had never been before. Lost his voice! Lost the one tiling that had made him a success where Kyaren had been a hopeless failure!

She was instantly ashamed of her excitement. She had never had it. He had lost it. And she forced herself to compare his loss to her losing her intellect, on which she depended for everything. It was not imaginable. Mikal's Songbird, without singing?

Why? she asked.

In answer a tear came uncontrolled from his eye. Ashamed, he wiped it off, and in the gesture won her to his side. Whatever side that was. Someone had done something to Ansset, something worse than his kidnapping, something worse than Mikal's death. She reached out to him, put her arms around him, and then said words that she had not thought ever to recall to her mind, let alone to her lips.

She spoke the love song to him, in a whisper, and he wept in her arms.

I'll help you, she said afterward. All I can, I'll help you. And you'll get your voice back, you'll see.

He only shook his head. Her chest was wet where his head pressed against her.

And then she led him to a stilt and stroked the panel that called the elevator, and as it descended she held him at arm's length from her.

My first help to you is this. To me you can cry. To me you can show anything and say anything you feel. But to no one else, Ansset, You thought you needed Control before, but you really need it now.

He nodded, and almost immediately his face became composed again. The boy hasn't forgotten all his tricks, she thought.

It's easier, he said, when I can let it out somehow. Now that I can't sing it out, he didn't say. But she heard the words all the same, and while he stood alone and walked easily beside her through the buildings, where anyone could see them, in the enclosed bridges that connected the buildings, leading them back to the manager's quarters, he reached to Kya-Kya, and took her hand.

For years she had hated Ansset as the epitome of everyone that had hurt her. It amazed her how easily that hate could dissipate, just because he let himself be vulnerable. Now that she could hurt him, she never would.

The chief of staff was beside himself with joy at Ansset's return; but he spoke to Kya-Kya, not Ansset, as he asked, Where did you find him? Where was he?

Coldly Ansset said to the man, She found me where I chose to be, Calip, and I returned when I chose to come. Deliberately he turned to Kya-Kya and said, Please meet me at eight o'clock in the morning, Kya-Kya. I would like you to be with me through tomorrow's meetings. Calip, I want supper at once.

Calip was surprised. He had been so much in the habit of giving Ansset his schedule and introducing people to him, it didn't occur to him until now that Ansset would have things his own way. After a moment of embarrassed inaction, Calip nodded his head and left the room.

As soon as the man was gone, Ansset looked at Kyaren with raised eyebrows.

That was pretty good," Kyaren said

Mikal was better at it, but I'll learn, Ansset said. Then he smiled at her, and she smiled back. But in his smile she still saw the traces of his fear, a hint of the expression on his face when he had pleaded for help.

And in her voice, as Kyaren said good-bye, he heard friendship. And he was, to his own surprise, certain that she meant it from the heart. Perhaps, he thought to himself, I may survive this after all.

7

It's very important, said the minister with the Latin portfolio. There has been bloodshed. Thirty people killed, that we know of, and ten of those in open combat.

Ansset nodded.

There's another complication, sir. While the Uruguayans and Paraguayans are willing to speak Imperial in this meeting, the Brazilians insist on speaking Portuguese.

Which is absurd, the chief of staff said, because the Portuguese don't even speak it anymore.

Ansset had never understood the purpose of multiple languages. He thought of it as an aberration of history, which had luckily been set to rights years before. And here, on the capital of the empire, was a rather large nation that clung to an anachronism to the point of antagonizing those who had power over them.

Do we have an Interpreter?

The chief of staff nodded. But he's one of them. No one here speaks Portuguese.

Ansset looked over at Kyaren, who smiled. She sat beside him, but deferentially pulled back from the table, appearing to be a secretary but actually ready to slip him a note. She had been studying this problem for weeks for the outgoing manager-she already had in mind several compromise solutions to the border war, depending on how cooperative they were. Since the Brazilians were currently in control of the land, their cooperation was the key to any solution. That Brazilians were famous for being uncooperative. Bring them in, Ansset said.

Two envoys entered from each nation. Protocol in this case demanded that they enter in order of age of the envoys, so that no nation would seem to get precedence. Ansset noticed, however, that each team included one who was very, very old. Odd, the things nations were willing to invest their pride in.

The chief of staff explained carefully the rules of the discussion. No interruptions would be tolerated. Any envoy who interrupted any other envoy would be summarily dismissed and no replacement would be allowed. They would ask Ansset for permission to speak, and would listen politely to all other speakers. Ansset was surprised that such instructions were necessary. In the imperial court it was all taken for granted.

Then everyone waited while the Brazilian interpreter translated the instructions into Portuguese. Ansset watched carefully. It was as he had suspected. The Brazilian envoys did not pay much attention to the translation-they had understood the Imperial perfectly well.

It was the sound of the language that fascinated Ansset. He had never before thought of shaping his mouth in just that way, using his nose to such good effect. It enticed him. As the interpreter spoke, Ansset formed the sounds in his mouth, felt them in his head. More than the individual sounds, he also sensed cadence, feeling, mood. The language was expressive, and without understanding the intensions of the language, he knew he could use it well enough to accomplish his purpose.

As soon as the interpreter was finished, the envoys all lifted their hands slightly off the table, palms facing Ansset-asking for permission to speak. Ansset impulsively turned to the Brazilian ambassador and began to sing. Not the music he had performed so often before. This was speech considered as song, and Portuguese language used for the sheer sound and power of it. If there were any recognizable words in it, it was an accident. But Ansset spoke on and on, delighted that he had not lost the power of imitation, working carefully to make this simple song touch the Brazilians as he wanted to touch them.

The Brazilians, one ancient man who did not seem altogether alert and a younger man with a look of resolute determination, were startled to hear their own language, then puzzled to try to decipher it. Even to them, it sounded like perfect Portuguese. But it was doubletalk, and the younger one looked angry for a moment, thinking he was being mocked.

By then, however, Ansset's tone had got through to them; they felt that despite the nonsense of his words, he was speaking affection and understanding to them. This is a beautiful language, he seemed to be saying, and I understand your pride in it What would have been mockery by anyone else was high praise when spoken by Ansset, and when he at last fell silent, looking intently at them, the Brazilians both arose from the table, walked around it, and approached Ansset.

The guards in the room, at least as puzzled by what had happened as anyone else, fingered their weapons. They relaxed, however, when Calip raised his hand, motioned them to relax. The old Brazilian first, and then the young one, embraced Ansset. It was an incongruous sight, the old man clinging to the beautiful boy, and then the tall younger man bending to touch his rough cheek to Ansset's smooth one.

While they were in the embrace, Ansset murmured, in Imperial, I beg you to speak Imperial so that the others can understand us.

And the man smiled, stepped back from Ansset, and said, The manager Ansset is too kind. No other governor has troubled to understand us or our love of our country. He has asked me to speak Imperial, and for his gracious sake I will.

Kya-Kya, no less surprised than anyone else, could not help but notice the look of consternation on the interpreter's face. She was sure the Brazilians had planned a strategy of using the interpreter as a means of pacing the meeting, controlling it to their own purposes, since whenever anyone spoke, the interpreter would cause a maddening delay. Now that was discarded, and the pretense that the Brazilian envoys spoke no Imperial would have to be abandoned for good.

The meeting proceeded, and gradually the envoys laid out their cases. In the troubled Paraná region, the original inhabitants had spoken Spanish, and now, millennia later, they still did. However, in the last four hundred years, Brazilians had asserted hegemony over the region-successfully, since before Mikal made Earth his capital there was little planetary government, and there were few restraints on national governments. Now the veneer of Portuguese was wearing thin, as the Spanish-speaking majority began to resent the greater and greater pressure on them to give up their language. Complicating matters further, the people in the north spoke the Paraguayan version of Spanish, which was unintelligible to the Uruguayans. There had been a lot of talk about self-determination for years, matched by official Brazilian statements about One Nation, Indivisible. The talk had finally turned into bloodshed, and the Uruguayans and Paraguayans were demanding that the Brazilians hand over the territory. Unfortunately, the territory was a hydroelectric paradise, and the Brazilians did not want to turn over fifty percent of their nonsolar energy to other nations.

And when the envoys had finished presenting their case, Ansset asked them to prepare in writing a one-page summary of what they think a just solution would be that would meet the needs of all the parties to the dispute. Then he dismissed them until after he had a chance to read their proposals.

In private, the minister with the Latin portfolio was effusive. How did you do it? What did you say to them?

Ansset only smiled and said nothing, turning his attention to Kya-Kya, who had scribbled furiously throughout the meeting. The disagreement really isn't insoluble. They don't want opposite things, she said. The Brazilians want to save face, to maintain their borders. They're very tight on this. And they need the energy. But the others are simply asking for preservation of culture. They want the Spanish-speaking citizens to be allowed to dominate in their own country. They don't need and can't really use the hydroelectric energy in the area. The Latin minister nodded, agreeing with her. They began drawing up the proposed compromise even before the envoys' proposals began arriving.

It was evening before the envoys were called back. Kyaren was delighted with the way Ansset looked-as fresh and cheerful as he had in the morning. As if no work had gone on at all, as though the solution to their problems seemed easy. Ansset read his compromise to them, providing them with copies when he was through.

Let us study this, said the younger envoy from Paraguay.

I doubt that there's a need, said Ansset, following Kyaren's advice. This is very little different from your own proposal. Indeed, we were quite pleased with the fairness with which you approached the problem. Ansset began parrying the various objections skillfully. Kyaren and the Latin minister had already gone over with him very carefully which items could be altered and how far. Ansset's voice was reasonableness itself, gentle and friendly and warm, speaking love and appreciation to the envoys. Thank you for being willing to give a little on this point, in the interest of peace. And on this point, you can see why I cannot give in, because it would be intolerable to the others, and justly so. But we can give here, would that help? Ah, I thought it would.

Each envoy was completely convinced that Ansset was their advocate in the discussion, and when it was finished, late at night, the clerks prepared a fair copy of the new agreement and all the envoys and Ansset signed it.

And then, with peace looking quite possible, Ansset carefully looked around the table. He still did not seem tired; Control, Kyaren thought. My friends, Ansset said, I have come to respect you very much today. You have acted quickly and fairly and wisely. Now, I know that some of your governments will look at these compromises and want to change them. I don't want you to have to quarrel with your own governments. And I certainly don't want to see you or other envoys back again with the same dispute. So you may tell your governments as apologetically as you like that if they do not accept this compromise exactly as it is written here, within five days, I will rewrite the agreement to exclude that government entirely from the solution, and if after that there is any further resistance, I will remove the government from power. I mean to have this reasonable document treated as law. Do you understand?

They understood.

But there is no reason to tell them how intransigent I intend to be unless they bring up objections. I trust to your discretion and good judgment, which I have learned to respect today better than I respect my own. And now let's go to bed; I'm sure you're all as tired as I am.

When Ansset arose to leave, the envoys spontaneously applauded him.

The evening was not over yet, however. Ansset, Kyaren, and the Latin minister went from the meetingroom to a small chamber where the outgoing manager waited for them. He had been watching everything by vids all day. And now he was supposed to criticize Ansset's actions and statements, helping him to learn from his mistakes.

But you made no mistakes, the manager said, with a smile that did not, to Kyaren's eyes, look sincere. And so I can leave with an easy heart.

And he left.

He can talk about an easy heart all he likes, Ansset said to Kyaren when the man was gone. But he didn't like me.

She laughed. Can you tell Ansset why?" she asked the Latin minister.

The minister did not laugh. I don't wish to sound disrespectful of the former manager, Ansset, but no one has ever been able to deal reasonably with the Brazilians. This is the first time I've ever seen a conference end without the manager having to threaten to send in troops against them.

Ansset smiled. They're proud people, he said. I liked them.

Then the minister left, and Ansset sat down. The weariness finally showed in his face, and he was trembling. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, he said softly.

It should get easier, Kyaren answered, still surprised to see him showing weakness.

Look, Ansset said. I'm shaking. I never shake.

Because you used to sing, Kyaren did not say. They were both well aware of the reason why Ansset could not maintain perfect Control anymore. She helped him up from the bench where he sat.

Are you going to bed now? Kyaren asked.

Ansset shook his head. I doubt it. I couldn't sleep. Or if I forced myself to, I'd pay for it tomorrow. Break a window and chew the glass, or something. Ansset was obviously ashamed of his new weakness.

Will you come with me, then? Kyaren asked. I haven't had supper, and we could eat together and relax a little. If you don't mind.

Ansset did not mind.

8

Josif woke up more from the smell than the sound. At least the smell was the first thing he was aware of, real food cooking in the kitchen instead of the bland smell of machine food. He looked at the clock. One in the morning. He had gone to bed three hours before, knowing Kyaren would not be home until late. But real food was cooking in the kitchen, and while they had real food often-one of the luxuries they indulged in on their newly expanded salaries-they always ate it together.

He then became aware of the voices. They were not load. Kyaren's voice he knew from the cadences. The other voice he did not know. It sounded like a woman. Inwardly Josif relaxed, got out of bed, put on a robe, and walked sleepily into the front room.

In the kitchen Kyaren was making a salad, while talking to a boy who looked to be about twelve or thirteen. Their backs were to him.

Still, you handled them masterfully, Kyaren was saying.

The boy shrugged. I heard their songs and sang them back. It's easy.

For you, Kyaren said. But then, you were singing.

The boy laughed. To Josif the sound was received not so much by his ears as by his spine, tingling with the music of it. He knew now who the child was-the only person so young whose voice would have that kind of power to it, Ansset. Josif had never met him, had only seen pictures. But he did not want the boy to turn around. Instead he watched him from the back, the way his hair curled gently onto his neck, clinging with sweat from the heat of the kitchen; the way his chest sloped into his waist, which was lithe, and then did not flare at all as the lines of his body went smoothly down narrow hips to strong, well-shaped legs. His movement was graceful as he alternately leaned in to watch Kyaren's hands working and leaned out to look at her face as they talked.

Singing? the boy was asking. If that was singing, then a parrot speaks.

It was singing," Kyaren said. But then, I never had an ear."

The Songhouse, of course. Josif knew from what Ferret had said that Kyaren came from the Songhouse. But they had never talked about it. It was clearly on the list of things that Josif may know, but that Kyaren was not able to discuss. It had not really occurred to Josif, not seriously, anyway, that Kyaren might know Ansset. It was like being from a city on Earth. Even being from Seattle, far from a large town, it always seemed absurd to him when people asked, From Seattle? Why then, do you know my cousin? The name never meant anything to him. But the Songhouse wasn't so much a town as a school, was it? And Kyaren knew this boy. Who also happened to be the planet manager, and therefore the key to their advancement.

It occurred to Josif that Ansset might be helpful to them. But that thought was buried in far stronger thoughts and feelings. For then Ansset turned around and looked at him.

The pictures were poor imitations. Josif was not prepared for the eyes, which found his face as if Ansset had been looking for him for a long time; the lips that were parted just slightly, that hinted of smiles and passion; the ' translucence of the skin, which seemed smooth as marble yet deep and warm as soil in sunlight. Josif had been beautiful as a boy, but this child made him feel ugly by contrast. Josif's hands longed just to touch his cheek-it could not be as perfect as it looked.

Hi, Ansset said.

Kyaren turned around, startled. When she saw it was Josif, she was relieved. Oh, Josif. I thought you were asleep.

I was, Josif said, surprised that he could speak.

How long have you been standing there?

It was Ansset who responded: A few minutes. I heard him come in.

Why didn't you say something?

And again Ansset answered, though the question had been directed to Josif. I knew he was no danger to us. He came from the bedroom. I assume he's Josif, your friend.

Yes, Kyaren said. Her tone sounded tentative. Josif realized that she had never mentioned him to Ansset- she was surprised that Ansset knew about him.

Apparently Ansset caught her hesitation, too. Oh, Kyaren, you didn't think they'd let me be friends with you without a security check, did you? He sounded amused. They're so thorough. I'm sure they know exactly where I am right now, and what we're doing.

Are they listening to us? Kyaren asked, appalled.

They aren't allowed to, Ansset said, but they probably are. If not the locals, then the imperial snoops. No, don't worry about it. They're probably just monitoring heartbeats and the number of people present, that kind of thing. I'm allowed some privacy. I can insist on it, and I will. His voice radiated calm. Both Josif and Kyaren visibly relaxed.

The salad was done, and Kyaren sprinkled hot mushrooms over the top of it.

I didn't expect real food, Ansset said.

"We usually eat out of the machines, Kyaren answered, and they spent a while during the meal talking about the virtues and dangers and expenses and inconveniences of eating real. Of course, in the palace Ansset had never tasted machine food; there are benefits to eating with the emperor.

Josif said little, however, and ate little. He tried to convince himself that it was because he was tired. Actually, however, his eyes were wide open and his attention never flagged. He watched both Kyaren and Ansset, but mostly Ansset, as his hands described graceful patterns in the ah-, as his eyes danced with delight at flavors, at wit, and sometimes at nothing at all, just sheer enjoyment of being where he was, doing what he was doing.

Ansset's every word was love, and Josif s silence answered him.

Don't you think so, Josif? Kyaren asked, and Josif realized that he had not been listening to the conversation.

'Tm sorry, Josif said. I think I dozed off.

With your eyes wide open? Kyaren laughed. She sounded tired.

Ansset looked carefully at Josif. Josif thought that the boy was trying to tell him something; trying to tell him that he knew Josif had lied, that Josif had not been dozing. Why don't you go to bed? Ansset asked. You're tired.

Josif nodded. I will

And I'd better leave, too, Ansset said. It was wonderful. Thank you.

Ansset got up and went toward the door. Kyaren went with him, talking all the way. Josif, however, ignored courtesy and returned to the bedroom. It took no thought at all. He knew what he had to do. Ansset was obviously not just a casual friend, not just a superior officer in government. Kyaren would have him back, again and again. And so Josif started taking his clothing from the shelves and putting it in his duffle.

But he was tired, and soon sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the edges of his half-full duffle and wondering what good it would do. The thought of leaving Kyaren was terrifying. The thought of not leaving her was worse.

I have done this before, he thought. This has all happened before, and what good does it do?

He remembered Pyoter, and then it was impossible for him to get up, to finish packing, to leave. It was Pyoter he had first loved, who had taken Josif as a shy child of unusual beauty and shown him love and loving. Josif then discovered what he had not known about himself. That when he trusted, he held back nothing. That when he loved, he could not love anyone else. He and Pyoter had been everywhere together, done everything together. They had both said we so often that the word I came only with difficulty to their lips. Only a year apart in age, their friendship had been so boyish and exuberant that no one had thought there was anything sexual in it; but Josif also learned that he could not love without lovemaking, that it was a part of it, the center of the yearning. And so he and Pyoter had shared everything and it seemed it would go on forever.

Until Bant. Bant had known at once. Josif never knew what made the difference or why he changed. Just that one day everything had been the same; Bant a friend of sorts, but very distant, Pyoter the beginning and end of the world to him. And then the next day, it had all been changed. Pyoter was a stranger, and Bant, who had finally taken Josif to his bed, had completely replaced him.

It horrified Josif that he could change that quickly, that overnight his attitudes could change. He refused to think it might be just the sex; he reconstructed events and saw the seeds of the change months before, when Bant had first hired him as his secretary and they had begun their friendly banter in the office. Josif now remembered the touches, the smiles, the warmth; he had been changing all along, and only noticed it all at once.

He could not bear to be disloyal to Pyoter. He had tried, for weeks, to keep things the same between them. It was impossible. Pyoter wasn't a fool, and Josif watched him getting more and more hurt as it became clearer and clearer that Josif no longer belonged to him as he had. And finally Pyoter said, Why didn't you just leave at once, instead of tearing me up bit by bit like this?

This time, Josif thought, this time I must leave. Before I destroy Kyaren, Because this boy I cannot resist, and sooner or later the change will come, if he's here often. Sooner or later it will not be Kyaren I come to with my thoughts and my feelings; or, even if the boy never becomes my friend, it will get to a point where I will be so obsessed by him, as I was obsessed by Bant, that I cannot bear to be with Kyaren anymore.

The duffle lay at his feet, half full. Why don't I go? Josif asked himself. Why am I still here? I know what I have to do, I know why, it's the way I am and the only way to stop myself is to stop everything, and yet here I sit and I haven't packed and I'm not leaving and why not?

The answer stood in the door, her face surprised, uncomprehending.

. What are you doing? Kyaren asked.

Packing, Josif answered, but he knew even then that he would not leave. He had never been able to leave Pyoter or Bant willingly; he would not be able to leave Kyaren either. I am not in control of myself, Josif realized. I gave myself to her, and I can't just decide to take myself back.

Why? Kyaren asked, already hurt because she could not comprehend what he was doing.

If I stay, I'll destroy her as I destroyed Pyoter.

We'll still be friends, Josif answered.

What brought this on? Why now, at three o'clock in the morning? What did I do?

Ansset, Josif said.

She misunderstood. How can yon possibly be jealous of him? He's only fifteen! They give them drugs in the Songhouse, he's sterile, puberty is put off for years-he hardly even has a sex, Josif--

I'm not jealous of him, Josif answered.

She stood regarding him for a while, and then realized what he meant.

Still the old sixty-two percent, is it? she asked.

No, he answered, I just see the potential, I want to avoid it.

There is no potential, she said.

You don't understand.

Damn right I don't. You mean that all this time, I've just been filling your bed until you could find a beautiful boy to fill it?

Maybe postponing it would have been better, Josif thought. Postponing is definitely better. I can't do this tonight. Because Ansset is only potential, and Kyaren is real, Kyaren I love now, and I can't bear the hurt and anger in her voice. No, he said softly, fervently. Kyaren, you don't understand. I didn't choose you. I didn't choose Bant. Things like this happen. They just happen, and I don't have any control over it.

You mean that in just one evening you suddenly forget that you love me-

No! he cried out, in agony. No! Kyaren, I just know that it's possible, it's possible and I don't want it to happen, don't you see?

"I don't, she said. If you love me, you love me.

Josif got up, walked to her, knocking over the duffel in the process. Kyaren, I don't want to leave you.

Then don't,

It's because I love you that I want to leave.

If you love me, you'll stay, she said.

He had known it, from the moment she appeared in the door. He couldn't leave her. When the change came, it would come, and then it would be irreversible, and then he would leave because he loved someone else and there was something in him that made it impossible for him to love two people at once. But now the one person was Kyaren, and he could not leave her because she wanted him to stay.

I'll hurt you, he said.

You could not hurt me worse than leaving me now, for no reason.

He wondered if she was right, or if it was easier for no reason than for the reason that there would be in the future. Surely it was. Surely it was easier to bear if you didn't have to know who it was who took your lover's heart from you. But maybe not; she was a woman, and Josif did not understand women. Maybe she was right, and it would be better this way.

Besides, Josif, what makes you think Ansset would ever have you? He didn't have two emperors, you know.

She was right. She was right and he knew it and he went to the duffel and unpacked it and put the clothing away. He never will, Josif said. I was a fool. I'm just tired. And he undressed and got into the bed.

They made love in silence, and several times Kyaren seemed surprised by the force of his passion tonight. She did not realize that in spite of his best efforts he kept seeing the curls clinging to Ansset's neck, the soft cheek that he had not touched except in his mind but that was all the softer because of that. He tried to take Ansset's face out of his mind. And failed.

Kyaren sighed contentedly afterward, and kissed him. She thinks it's all better now, Josif thought bitterly. She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.

And when her breathing became heavy and regular, he leaned up on his arm and looked at her face, which she always turned away from him in sleep. He stroked her cheek softly; her mouth moved, almost like the sucking instinct of a baby.

I warned you, he said softly, so softly that perhaps the words did not even find voice. I warned you.

And he gave up and lay back and tried to steep, sour at heart because he had tried to control his life just once and could not do it after all.

Kyaren was not asleep, however, or she had been wakened by his touch. Josif, she said. I'm going to have your baby.

No, he said softly.

Please, she said. And because he was tired and not disposed to deny her anything, and because he knew that soon enough he would deny her everything, he let himself cool, and they made love again. And sometime in the next week she conceived, and when Josif saw how happy it made her and how concerned for her it made him, he began to think that maybe he had been wrong, that maybe Ansset would mean nothing to him.

For the child's sake, and because he wanted to bind himself to Kyaren even tighter, Josif insisted and they married. Now I will never let go of you in my heart, Josif thought. I will love you forever, he thought.

I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right.

9

The tour was Ansset's idea. Riktors had just returned from his tour of the prefects, and the results had been splendid. Well, why not me? Ansset asked, and the more he talked about it, the better his advisers liked it. There are always differences from region to region on a planet, Ansset said, and most planets develop dialects, some even languages. But Earth has nations. If it makes sense for the emperor to have contact with every prefect, it makes sense for the manager of Earth to have contact with every nation.

To Kyaren he also explained, The statistics and figures you and the others play with all the time, they mean nothing to me. I can't think that way. You tell me what you've concluded and I don't understand why. But when I meet them, when I hear them speak, when I hear the songs of the people and their leaders, I'll be able to understand better.

Better?

Than I do now. And in some ways, better than you understand them, for all that the computers even keep track of the number of old fleskets returned to the pots for scrap.

And so they took the tour, and Ansset brought all his top advisers with him, and allowed them to bring their spouses, those who had contracts. And that was why Josif came along, though he was not an adviser to the manager. And that was why Ansset's term as manager of Earth ended early, along with Kyaren's happiness and Josif's life.

The tour began in the Americas, with visits to Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Titicaca, Panama, Mexico, Westamerica, Eastamerica, and Quebec. In Mexico Josif and Kyaren stayed three extra days, revisiting the places and redoing the things seen and done when they first loved each other. They had their son with them, of course, little Efrim- Josif chose the name because an earlier Josif, thousands of years before, had given his favorite son that name. History, Kyaren had snorted. A ridiculous name. She actually liked it quite a bit.

Efrim was only a year old, but thought of himself as an accomplished athlete. He was unusually well coordinated for his age, but not so adroit as he thought, and he broke his arm in a fall from a ledge in the ruins of the Olympic Stadium.

Efrim is doing fine, Kyaren complained. It's you that's driving me out of my mind, Josif.

I get worried.

You get worried obnoxiously, Kyaren stud. It just takes two weeks' rest, and then he's fine. I'm taking care of him. You're just making him nervous.

I can't stand sitting around doing nothing, Josif said.

And so they decided that Josif should rejoin the manager's tour in Quebec, and they would meet again when Efrim was well, in Europe. Shouldn't you go, and I stay? After all, you're the personal adviser. I'm just a spouse.

He doesn't need me with him. And Efrim doesn't need you with him. Just see the sights and study the history and let Efrim keep busy healing instead of trying to constantly entertain, his father. He had the hiccoughs for half an hour yesterday, you got him laughing so hard.

I'm going, then, if you want to be rid of me.

She kissed him. Get out of here, she said. He got out, sorry in a way to be leaving her, but delighted not to be missing the weeks in old Europe, which, more than any other region, had preserved the ancient nations intact.

Ansset noticed him almost as soon as he returned. Back with us already?

Kyaren's staying with the baby. She kicked me out, I was impossible.

I hope the boy heals fast. And then busy again, meeting with the self-styled king of Quebec, a title only barely tolerated by the emperor because the kings of Quebec were properly subservient and remarkably hated by their people. No danger of rebellion, and therefore not a problem needing to be corrected.

Over the next several days, however, Ansset and Josif were thrown together more and more. Ansset thought at first that the meetings were accidental. Then he realized that he himself was setting them up, deliberately going to places where he knew Josif would be. He and Josif had had little contact over the months-while Ansset knew from his voice that Josif didn't dislike him, Josif still avoided him, rarely staying in a conversation very long, leaving Ansset always alone with Kyaren. Josif's shyness needed no explanation to Ansset. He respected it. But now his closest confidante and friend, Kyaren, was gone, and he needed to talk to someone. So he didn't stop himself from meeting with Josif. In fact, he began to make it more obvious. He invited him to meals, asked him along on walking tours, talked to him at night. Ansset couldn't understand why Josif always seemed reluctant to accept, yet never refused an invitation. And gradually, over the days, through Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Stratford, Baile Atha Cliath, with rain always making the air deliciously cool and comfortably dim, Josif lost his reticence, and Ansset began to understand why Kyaren was so devoted to him.

Ansset also began to notice that Josif was sexually attracted to him. Hundreds of men and women had been before. Ansset was used to it, had had to put up with it through all his years in the palace. Josif was different, though. His desire seemed not so much lust as affection, part of his friendship. It intrigued Ansset, where years before such things had repelled him. He was curious. He had grown seventeen centimeters since his appointment to Babylon, and his voice was deepening all the time. There were other changes, and he found himself with longings he did not know how to satisfy, with questions he did not dare to ask only because he already knew the spoken answer, and the other answer he was afraid of.

At the Songhouse little was said of the drugs that singers and Songbirds were given. Just that they put off puberty, and that there were side effects. There were also whispers that it was worse for men than for women, but how it was worse, or even how it was bad, was never said. The drugs gave them five more years as children, five more years with the beautiful voices of childhood.

Well, Ansset had lost his songs and so didn't need his voice, except for the coarse singing involved in making every national leader completely devoted to him, easy tricks that he was ashamed of even as he used them. His five extra years of childhood were over, and he wanted to know what happened next.

After the meeting with the Welsh chief, who affected coarse manners but whose Gaelic was beautiful to Ansset, the planet manager and the assistant minister of colonization went to Caernarvon Castle together. It had been domed thousands of years before, the last castle of Britain to survive with some of the original stones in place. They walked together on the walls, overlooking the dense green of the grass and the trees and the blue of the water that spread between the castle and the island of Angelsea. The only sign of modern life was the flesket and the guards beside it, and the trail where the grass grew lower because of the vehicles that passed over it. There were others in the castle, of course-it was maintained as a luxury hotel, and they would spend the night there. Security guards were going through the place on a final check. But where Ansset and Josif stood, there was no one. Birds skimmed back and forth over the sea.

What is this place? Ansset asked. Why is it kept like this?

A castle was like a battleship, Josif answered. All the men would come in here when their enemies attacked, and the walls kept them out.

This was before lasers, then.

And before bombs and artillery. Just bows and arrows, spears. And a few more choice things. They used to pour boiling oil over the walls to kill the men trying to climb them.

Ansset looked down, hiding his revulsion easily, curious to see how far the drop was to the ground. It seems dangerous enough just to stand up here."

They lived in violent times.

Ansset thought of his own violent times. We all do, he said.

Not like then. If you had a sword, you had power. You ruled over everyone weaker than you. They were always at war. Always trying to kill each other. Fighting over land.

Mikal ended wars, Ansset said.

Josif laughed. Yes, by winning all of them. It's probably the only way ever to have peace. Other ways have been tried. They never worked. Josif's hand rubbed along the rough stone.

I lived in a place like this once," Ansset said.

The Songhouse? I didn't think that was a castle."

No one poured down boiling oil if that's what you mean. And it wouldn't have stopped a determined army for more than, say, half an hour. But it's stone, like this.

Ansset sat down, took the shoes off his feet, and let his bare soles touch the stone.

I feel like I've come home. And he ran lightly along the stone into one of the turrets, where he climbed a winding staircase to the top. Josif followed him. Ansset stood at the edge, the highest point of the castle, feeling giddy. It reminded him of the High Room, only here it would never be cold and the wind would never blow, because of the almost transparent dome that protected the rock. He began to get a sense of the age of the thing. The Song-house was a thousand years old. And men had lived on Tew for two thousand years before the Songhouse had been built. And when Tew was first settled, three thousand years ago, this castle had already been sixteen thousand years old, had already spent ten thousand of those years under the dome.

We are so old, Ansset said.

Josif nodded. We've forgotten nothing in all that time. And learned nothing.

Ansset smiled. Maybe we have.

"Some of us.

You're so dour.

Maybe, Josif said. We don't build things like this anymore. We're far too sophisticated. We just put a fleet in orbit around the planet, so that instead of a fortress sitting like this on the edge of the sea, the fortresses cast their shadows over every centimeter of the soil. It was a frightening time then, Ansset, but there were advantages.

I understand they defecated and kept it.

They didn't have converters.

In piles. And put it in the fields so the crops would grow better.

That's China. Oh.

It was better then in one way. There were places a person could hide.

Josif sounded so wistful that Ansset became concerned. Hide?

Countries that were still undiscovered. Just crossing the water to Eire would have been enough. A man could have hidden from his enemies.

Do you, Ansset asked, have enemies?

Josif laughed bitterly. Only me. I'm the only one.

And more than ever since he had been imprisoned in Mikal's rooms in the palace, Ansset longed for his songs. But he had no song, could not sing comfort for whatever fears haunted Josif. He knew that, in part, Josif was afraid of him; he wanted to sing the love song, to tell the man that Ansset would never do him any harm, that in the last few months, and especially in the last few days, Ansset had come to love him as he also loved Kyaren, the two of them, in different ways, filling part of the huge gap left inside Ansset with the loss of his songs.

But he could not sing it, and he could not say it, and so Ansset reached out and stroked Josif gently on the shoulder and down the arm.

To his surprise, Josif immediately pulled away from him, turned and ran down the stairs. Ansset followed almost immediately, and almost ran into Josif where he had stopped, at the door leading onto the walkways atop the walls. Josif turned to face Ansset, his face twisted and strange.

What's wrong? Ansset asked.

Kyaren's coming here tomorrow.

I know. I'm looking forward to it, I've missed her.

So have I.

But I'm glad she was gone, Ansset said. Or I would never have come to love you.

Josif walked away then, and Ansset, not understanding, did not follow.

All the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Ansset puzzled it over. He knew Josif loved him, and he knew Josif loved Kyaren-such things couldn't be lied about. Why should there be anything difficult about it? Why should Josif be in such pain?

He went to the room where Josif was supposed to be, and found someone else in it. Where's Josif? he asked, and the security guard who had been assigned those sleeping quarters shrugged. I just sleep where they tell me, sir, he said.

Ansset went straight to Calip, who was responsible for room assignments. Where's Josif?

Calip looked surprised. Don't you know? He said that you had asked him to move to another room. So he'd be closer to the library.

What room?

Calip didn't answer immediately. Instead he fidgeted, then said, Sir, did you know that Josif is a homosexual?

Hardly an exclusive one, Ansset answered. Do you have special rooms assigned for homosexuals?

I wasn't sure if you knew. We thought-we thought he looked so agitated because he had made advances. And you had objected.

When I object to something, I'll tell you. He didn't make advances. He's my friend, I want to know where his room is.

He asked us not to tell you. He wanted to be alone, he said.

Do you work for him or for me?

Sir, Calip said, looking very upset. We thought he was right. Your friendship with him is good, but it's gone far enough.

Am I, or am I not, planet manager? Ansset asked, his voice icy,

Calip was immediately afraid-Ansset's voice could still do that, especially when he was imitating Mikal's most terrifying command voice.

Yes, sir, Calip said. I'm sorry.

Has anyone told you not to take orders from me?

Summoning his courage, Calip said, Sir, it's only proper for me to advise you when I think you're making a mistake.

Do you think I'm a fool? Ansset asked. Do you think I lived in the palace all those years without learning how to take care of myself?

Calip shook his head.

When I ask for something, your only duty, Calip, is to find the quickest way to do it. What room is Josif in?

And Calip told him. But his voice was trembling with anger. You listen to the wrong people too often, sir, Calip said. You should listen to me from time to time.

It occurred to Ansset that Calip might be right. After all, Mikal and Riktors had listened to all their advisers, all the time, before making important decisions. While Ansset had gradually been closing himself off to everyone but Kyaren and, in the last few days, Josif. But in this case Calip's advice was unwelcome and inappropriate. Legally Ansset was an adult. It was none of Calip's business-it was a matter for friends.

He found the room with no trouble, but hesitated before knocking, trying again to understand Josif s motives, his reasons for shutting Ansset out so abruptly. He could think of none. Josif's emotions were not concealed from Ansset-the boy knew perfectly well everything that the man wanted and did not want. Josif wanted Ansset, and did not want to, and Ansset did not know why. It could not be because Kyaren would be jealous-she was not prone to that sort of thing, and if Josif wanted to make love to Ansset, she would not mind. Yet Josif acted as if Ansset's very touch were poisonous, though Ansset knew Josif had been wanting that touch.

He did not understand, had to understand, and so he knocked on the door and it opened.

Josif immediately tried to shut the door again,-but Ansset slipped inside. And when Josif then tried to leave, Ansset shut the door, and stood there, looking Josif in the eyes. Why are you at war with yourself? he asked the man.

I want things, Josif said thickly, that I do not want to want. Please leave me.

But why shouldn't you have what you want? Ansset asked reaching up and touching Josif's cheek.

The struggle was clear on Josif's face. He wanted to hurl Ansset's arm away, but did not. Instead he did what he wanted more. As Ansset's fingers reached along Josif's neck, Josif's own hand moved, glided along Ansset's face, outlined his lips and his eyes.

And then, abruptly, Josif turned away, walked to the bed and threw himself on it.

No! he cried out. I don't love you!

Ansset followed him, sat beside him on the bed, ran his hands along Josif's back. Yes you do, Ansset said. Why do you want to deny it?

I don't. I can't.

It's too late, Josif. You can't lie to me, you know."

Josif rolled back, away from Ansset, and looked up into the boy's face. Is it?

I know what you want, Ansset said, and I'm willing.

And the war in Josif's face and voice ended, and he surrendered, though Ansset still could not figure out why the war had been fought at all, or what fortress had fallen. Josif had won, but Josif had also lost; and yet Josif was getting what he longed for.

Josif's touch was not like the touch of the guard who had lusted for Ansset when he first came to Earth. His eyes were not like the eyes of the pederasts who visited the palace and hardly heard Ansset's song for looking at Ansset's body. Josif's lips on his skin spoke more eloquently than they had ever spoken when only air could receive their touch. And Ansset's questions began to be answered.

And then, suddenly, when his feelings were most intense, Ansset was startled by a sudden pain in his groin. He had not been exerting Control-he made a soft, inadvertent cry. Josif did not notice it, or misunderstood it if he did. But the pain increased and increased, centering in his loins and spreading in waves of fire through his body. Surely this pain was not normal, Ansset thought, terrified. Surely they don't always feel this, every time. I would have heard of this. I would have known it.

And climax came to Ansset, not as ecstasy, but as exquisite pain, more than his Control could contain, more than his voice could express. Silently he writhed on the bed, his face twisting in agony, his mouth open with screams far too painful to become sound.

Josif was horrified. What had he done? Ansset was obviously in terrible pain; he had never seen the boy show pain before. Yet Josif knew that there should be no pain, not with the gentle way that Josif had been teaching.

What is it? he asked.

Ansset could not find any voice at all, just convulsed so violently that he was thrown from the bed.

Ansset! Josif cried out,

Ansset's head struck the wall. Once, again, again. He seemed not to notice. Spittle came from his mouth, and his naked body arched upward, then slammed brutally against the floor. Josif had known Ansset was on the verge of orgasm, but instead of the gift he had meant to give the boy, there had been this. Josif had never desired to cause pain to anyone in his life; when he did, it nearly destroyed him. And he had never seen such pain as Ansset's. Every shudder of the boy's body struck Josif like a blow.

Ansset! he screamed. Ansset, I only meant to love you! Ansset!

With Josif's voice ringing in his ears, Ansset finally struck his head hard enough to bring unconsciousness, the only relief he could find from the pain that had long since ceased to be unbearable, that had come to be infinite and eternal, the only reason for Ansset to exist. The pain was Ansset, and then, as the room went black and the screams went silent, Ansset was finally able to remove himself from the agony.

He awoke with the dim light of morning coming in through a window. The walls were stone, but not thick; he was still in the castle, but in one of the buildings in the courtyard. He became aware of movement in the room. He turned his head. Calip and two doctors stood by him.

What happened? Ansset asked, his voice weaker than he had expected.

The three men immediately became alert. Is he awake? Calip asked one of the doctors.

I'm awake, Ansset said.

Calip rushed to his side. Sir, you've been delirious all night. It took us two hours to find out enough about what had happened to you to know how to relieve the pain.

It might have killed you, one of the doctors said. If your heart had been any weaker, it would have.

What was it? Ansset asked dully.

The Songhouse drugs. Nothing should do what they did to you. But we found a combination that might, and since it was our best chance at saving your life, we tried the contra-treatment, and it worked, after a fashion. It's incredible to me that they would have let you stay here past the age of fifteen without letting us know the treatment formulas.

What caused it? Ansset asked.

You should have listened to me, Calip answered.

Do you think I don't know that by now? Ansset said, impatiently.

The Songhouse drugs make orgasm torture for you. Whoever your lover was, sir, said the doctor, she set you up for a good one.

Will it happen every time?

No, the doctor said, glancing at his colleague and then at Calip. Calip nodded.

Well, then, said the doctor. Your body feeds back on itself. Like birth control, only stronger. It will never happen to you again, because you're permanently impotent, or will be at the slightest sign of pain. Your body isn't willing to go through this again.

He's only seventeen, the other doctor said to Calip.

Will he be all right now? Calip asked them.

He's exhausted, but there's no physical damage except a few bruises. You may have headaches for a few days. The doctor brushed hair out of Ansset's eyes with his hand. Don't worry, sir. There's worse that could have happened to you. You won't miss it.

Ansset managed a wan smile. It didn't bother him too much-he didn't really know what he was missing. But as the doctors left, he remembered Josif's touch, and realized that the way he felt before the pain began-that would never come back again. Still, he wanted Josif by him. Wanted to assure Josif that it hadn't been his fault. He knew Josif well enough to imagine the terrible guilt he was feeling, the certainty that he had caused pain where he had meant to bring Joy. I must talk to Josif.

He's gone, Calip said.

Where?

I don't know, Calip said. He wasn't here this morning, and I haven't bothered putting out a search order. I really don't give a damn where he is. And Calip left the room, and Ansset, wearier than he had thought, slept again.

He awoke again with Kyaren beside him, looking worried.

Kyaren, he said.

They told me, she answered. Ansset, I'm sorry.

I'm not, Ansset said. Josif couldn't have known. And I didn't know. It was the Songhouse. They could have told me.

Kyaren nodded, but her mind was on something else. Calip won't authorize a search for Josif. He keeps saying that he hopes he falls off a cliff. It's raining out there. You don't know, Ansset. Josif tried to commit suicide before. It's been years, but he might do it again.

Ansset was instantly alarmed. He sat up, and was surprised to find that his head did not hurt very badly, and that he was only languid, not incapacitated. Then we have to find him. Call the Chief of Security.

She called him; he came in a matter of moments.

We have to organize a search for Josif, Ansset said.

I find it hard to believe no search has been organized up to now.

The Chief looked at the floor. Not really, he said.

He may be suicidal, Ansset said, letting the outrage pour into his voice.

Calip didn't ask for a search, sir, but I wouldn't have organized one anyway.

Ansset could not believe the insubordination from these men, who in the last two years he had thought were dependable. Then you would have been removed from office, as you are right now.

As you wish, sir. But I wouldn't have organized a search for Josif because I know where he is.

His voice was still uncertain-he may know where Josif is, Ansset thought, but he certainly doesn't know how Josif is.

Who has him? Where is he?

Imperial Security, sir. It was only natural. We didn't know what had happened to you. We suspected an attempt had been made on your life. It was only three hours after we got to you that we found what was wrong. And in the meantime, we had notified the emperor. He left standing orders with me to let him know if anything happened to you.

Imperial Security has Josif, Kyaren said numbly.

Why didn't you tell me?

The Ferret told me not to tell you until you asked."

The Ferret gives orders that you aren't to notify me of something this important?

The Chief looked uncomfortable. The emperor always backs Ferret up in what he says. And you must understand, sir, finding you the way we did, with Josif the way he was--

How was he? Kyaren demanded.

Stark naked, the Chief said blandly. And screaming his lungs out. We thought he'd tried to bugger you with something, sir. We had no idea what was going on. You never know, with homosexuals.

Kyaren slapped the Chief, which he took calmly. You don't deal with them like I do, he said. This sort of thing happens a lot.

What sort of thing, Ansset said, taking Kyaren's hands and holding them. She was trembling. It happens all the time that the Songhouse drugs nearly kill someone?

I mean violence. Homosexuals are like that,

Josif isn't, Ansset said. Josif isn't at all. And therefore your theory isn't worth shit. He made his voice as ugly as possible; he saved vulgarity for times when he needed it, and it pleased him that the Chief winced. Now get us a direct flight to Susquehanna.

There isn't any from Caernarvon."

There is now. And it will take off in fifteen minutes."

It took off in fifteen minutes, and Ansset and Kyaren sat together in an empty commercial jet. There was only one steward-they dismissed him immediately. The security guards, much against standard procedure, were following in another plane. Ansset was still weak, but the tension had helped him keep going during the rush to the port. Now he relaxed, not sleeping but not wholly awake, lost in his thoughts.

After a while, however, he realized that Kyaren might need company more than he needed rest. She stared out the window at the ocean below, motionlessly; but her hands were white from gripping the armrest on the seat, which was rigid to match her tension.

Kyaren, he said. Hell be all right. I can clear this up with Riktors in a short time.

She nodded, but said nothing.

That isn't all, is it?

She shook her head.

Does it bother you that Josif and I were together? I didn't think it would, but he acted as if he thought it might.

No, she said. I don't mind you being together.

But.

But what? she asked.

You were thinking, but. You don't mind, but?

She looked down at her lap, and intertwined her fingers nervously. Ansset, the first time you and he met. Two years ago, when you came home with me for a salad.

Ansset smiled. I remember.

Josif told me. That he thought he was going to fall in love with you.

Did you mind?

Why should I mind? she answered, her voice jumpy with emotion. There's plenty of love, what should I care? I love both you and him, you know, and you love both of us, but he kept talking as if it were something that could only- As if once he loved you, he would have to stop loving me. He said that. He said that if he ever made love to you, it would be.

It would be what?

It would be after he stopped loving me."

It sounded like nonsense to Ansset. But then he realized that, whether he meant to or not, he had so far loved serially. Esste and then Mikal and then Riktors and then Kyaren. But did he love Kyaren less for having loved Josif? Of course not.

Yet now Josif's actions made sense. If he really believed that, then it made a perverse sort of sense for him to have resisted his own desire for Ansset for so long, for him to have avoided becoming friends with Ansset, knowing what it would cost him if it ever became more than friendship.

Where's Efrim? Ansset asked.

I left him in Caernarvon with the wife of the minister of information.

Josif still loves you, Ansset said.

She looked at him and tried to smile in agreement. But her heart wasn't in it. Josif was in the custody of Imperial Security, and it had happened because he had done the thing he had said would mean the end of them. And what about Efrim?

There's always the contract, Kyaren said, and wept. Ansset put his arms around her, held her head against his chest. He was surprised to realize that he was taller than Kyaren now. He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult than had been required of him as a child. There could not be more.

10

Riktors received them in the great hall.

There were no guards. Only the ferret. But Ansset and Kyaren knew that he was guard enough.

The Mayor of the palace brought them in, but at Riktors's nod, he left. Kyaren was keenly aware of the tension in the air. None was visible from Ansset, but Kyaren knew that didn't mean anything. Control still served him when he needed it, usually. And the tension in Riktors was clear. Kyaren had not seen the man close up. He had the imperial presence, the mood about him so that no one dared oppose him. Yet he also seemed afraid. As if Ansset held a weapon that could hurt him, and he was terrified that it would be used.

She knew they had not seen each other in two years. Knew, also, from her conversations with Ansset that they had not parted on friendly terms. Yet they outwardly seemed pleased to see each other, and Kyaren did not think it was all a sham.

I've missed you, Riktors said.

And I you, Ansset answered.

My servants tell me that you've done very well

Better than I had expected, not as well as I had hoped, Ansset said.

Come here, Riktors said.

Ansset walked forward, came within a few meters of the throne, and knelt, touching his head to the floor. Impatiently, Riktors motioned for him to arise and come closer. You don't need to do that kind of thing, not when there's no audience.

But I've come to ask a favor from the throne.

I know you have, Riktors said, and his face darkened. We'll discuss that later. How have you been?

Reasonably good health, surrounded by reasonably helpful people. I've come for Josif. He's innocent of any , crime,

Is he? Riktors asked.

And Kyaren's heart suddenly grew heavy in her chest, and she felt something go out of her. She identified it a moment later as confidence. She had been expecting no resistance-just an error, to be rectified as soon as there was an explanation. What crime had Josif committed? Why was the emperor delaying and arguing?

She knew the answer as she asked the question. Josif had been making love to Mikal's Songbird. Even the emperor had not made love to Mikal's Songbird. Josif had had what the emperor had not even asked for. But had he wanted it? Was that the reason for his anger and delay?

He is innocent, Ansset said slowly, but danger crept into his voice. I want to see him.

Is this Josif all you can think of? asked Riktors. There was a time when you would have sung for me first. When you would have come to me full of songs.

Ansset said nothing.

Two years! cried Riktors, the emotion taking control of his voice, hi two years, you haven't visited, you haven't tried to visit!

I didn't think you'd want me.

Want you, said Riktors, getting some of his dignity back. Ever since I came here, this place was full of your music. And then gone. For two years, silence. And the babble of fools. Sing for me, Ansset,

And Ansset was silent,

Riktors watched him, and Kyaren realized this was the price that Riktors expected to be paid. A song in exchange for Josif's freedom. A cheap price, if only Ansset still had any songs in him. And Riktors didn't know. How could he not have known?

Sing for me, Ansset! Riktors cried.

He can't, Kyaren answered. She glanced at Ansset, but he was standing quietly, regarding Riktors impassively. Control. Just another thing that she had been unable to master in the Songhouse.

What do you mean, he can't? asked Riktors.

I mean that he's lost his songs. He hasn't sung anything, not since he left you. Not since you--

Not since I what? He dared her to go on, dared her to condemn him.

Not since you locked him in Mikal's rooms for a month. She dared.

He can't lose his songs, Riktors said. He was trained since he was three.

He can and he did. Don't you realize? He doesn't learn songs. He learns how to discover them. Inside himself, and bring them out to the surface. Do you think he memorized them all, and chose the right one for the proper occasion? They came from his soul, and you broke him, and now he can't find them anymore. Her anger surprised her. She had listened sympathetically to Ansset. It had never occurred to her how much she had come to hate Riktors for Ansset's sake. Which was odd, for Ansset had never even hinted at hatred for Riktors. Only hurt.

Riktors seemed not to notice the impertinence of her tone. He only looked wonderingly at Ansset. Is it true?

Ansset nodded.

Riktors dropped his head into his hands, which rested on the arms of the throne. What have I done, he said. His hands twisted in his hair.

He really grieves for Ansset's loss, Kyaren thought, and realized that despite all he had done to hurt Ansset, he still loved him. And so, fumblingly, she offered some words to assuage the blow that had just struck him. It wasn't just you, she said. It was the Songhouse, really. What the Songhouse did. Cutting him off here. You don't know what the Songhouse means to-to people like him. She had almost said us. I knew they were bastards there, who didn't care for any of us, but they get chains on you and never let go.

Beside her, Ansset was shaking his head.

It's true, Ansset. It was bad enough for them to strand you here without warning, but when they didn't even prepare you for-what happened, what the drugs would do to you-- She didn't finish. She merely turned to Riktors, who did not seem to be listening, and said, It's the Songhouse that hurt him most.

He did hear. He sat up, and looked much relieved, though there was still tension in him, even for Kyaren to see, who did not know him.

Yes, he said. It's the Songhouse that hurt him most."

Suddenly Ansset stepped forward, toward the throne. He was angry. Kyaren was surprised-she had been the one speaking, and yet he seemed angry at Riktors.

That was a lie, Ansset said.

Riktors only looked at him, startled.

I know your voice, Riktors, know it as well as I know my own, and that was a lie, and not just a small one, Riktors, that was a lie that matters to you right to the core and I want to know why it's a lie!

Riktors did not answer. But after a few moments he looked away from Ansset, glanced toward Ferret, who immediately came forward.

Stay where you are! Ansset commanded, and Ferret, surprised by the ferocity of his voice, obeyed. Ansset spoke again to Riktors. It was not the Songhouse that hurt me most, then?

Riktors shook his head.

Where is the lie, Riktors? I was cut off from the Songhouse, and that has cost me more than any other loss I have ever sustained, even the loss of Mikal, even the loss of your friendship. And you say that it was not the Song-house that hurt me most? Who was it, then? Who was it who cut me off from them?

Again Riktors appealed to Ferret. He's dangerous, Ferret.

Ferret shook his head. When he plans to attack you, I'll know it.

It was obvious to Kyaren that Riktors did not share his confidence. But any pity or understanding she had had for the man was gone now; yet she found it hard to believe that anyone could have been so cruel as Riktors was. It was all a lie, then, she said into the silence. The Songhouse didn't refuse him. The Songhouse wanted him back.

Riktors said nothing.

You were clever, Ansset said to him. In all our conversation, that last day, you never once told me a lie. Not once. And I thought all your tension was because you were sad to see me go.

Riktors spoke at last, his voice husky. I was sad to see you go.

Anywhere. To anyone. I was yours, is that it? I had to love you most, is that it? If I thought of the Songhouse as home, you couldn't bear that, could you? If I loved the Songhouse more than I loved this palace, then you'd take the Songhouse away from me, wouldn't you? Only you had to twist it, so I'd hate them in the process, and not you at all. You couldn't have me hate you.

The words seemed to slam visibly into Riktors, and he gasped at the end of Ansset's speech. Ansset may have no songs, but his voice was still a potent tool, and be was using it to savage Riktors.

I wanted your songs, Riktors said.

You wanted my songs, Ansset answered, bitterly, more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.

And then Kyaren made a connection in her mind, and realized that Riktors was not holding Josif ransom against a song.

Ansset, Kyaren said. Josif.

Ansset remembered, and the mask of Control appeared again on his face. Time enough for hatred when Josif was free.

I want Josif. Now, Ansset said.

No, Riktors said.

Aren't you through? Ansset asked. Do you think you can still save something? Or are you determined that if you can't have my love-and you can't, Riktors, you can't-then no one can. If you ever loved me, Riktors, you will let me have Josif. Now.

You can't, Riktors, you can't.

If you ever loved me, Riktors.

The words struck Riktors hard; his face worked, though whether with anger or grief Kyaren couldn't tell.

Call a guard, Riktors said.

No, Ferret said.

Riktors arose from his throne. Call a guard! he roared, and the ferret left, returning a moment later with two guards.

Take them to the prisoner. To Josif.

The guards looked at each other, then at Ferret, who nodded and whispered something. The guards looked doubtful, but they led the way. Ansset and Kyaren followed.

He won't do anything to us, will he? Kyaren whispered.

Ansset shook his head. Riktors will never hurt me directly, or you, as long as you're with me. And as long as you're with me, no one can take you away. She looked at his face. Control was lagging. She saw the killer there, and was afraid. This should never have happened to Ansset, none of this.

How did they keep the Songhouse people from coming for you? she asked. If they really wanted you back--

The empire controls the spaceports. Besides, if he could lie to me, he could lie to them. But that's past now. Time enough to set things right once we have Josif back.

Kyaren was baffled by the labyrinth of the palace, lost all sense of direction. But they went generally downward. Into the prison, she assumed. But they made a certain turn that Ansset had not been expecting-he was taken by surprise and had to retrace a few steps.

What's wrong? she asked.

He isn't in the prison, he said.

Then where?

Hospital, Ansset answered.

The guards stopped outside a door.

He's fairly drugged up. He isn't pretty right now, but Ferret said to let you see him as he is. I'm sorry.

Then the guard opened the door, and they walked in, and they saw Josif.

At first nothing seemed wrong with him, except the drugs. Josif saw them, but his eyes showed no recognition, and his jaw hung partly open. He sat on a 'narrow bed, leaning against the wall. His legs were loosely apart, and his arms hung slackly beside him. He looked as if he never planned to move.

Then Kyaren looked down, between his legs, just as Ansset saw and turned to try to block her sight. He was too late.

She screamed, shoved past him, and, still screaming, took Josif by the shoulders and pulled him toward her, embraced him in an agony of grief. He slumped against her, and with his head tilted down, he drooled. She still heard herself shouting hysterically; gradually she was able to stop, until finally even her spasmodic sobbing ended and all was silent in the room again. She looked at Ansset. His face was terrible, not because of the emotion on it, but because there was nothing on his face at all.

Carefully she leaned Josif back against the wall His head moved to the right, so that he could not see her, but merely stared at the wall. He did not attempt to move. The drugs had him well in hand.

They plan to fit him with a permanent tube tomorrow, said one of the guards.

Ansset ignored him, and Kyaren tried to. They started to push past him, but the guard raised a gun-It wasn't a laser-it was a tranquilizer. Ferret said that after you saw, you weren't to be allowed back to the great hall.

Ansset didn't pause, simply brought up his foot. The man's hand broke at the wrist; the gun dropped to the floor as the hand went slack and hung perpendicular to the floor. A moment for the pain to register, and the guard reeled out of the way. The other was too slow-Ansset took his face off with both hands, and Kyaren raced to follow the Songbird as he shoved past the screaming guard, who knelt with his hands in front of his face, blood streaming down his arms.

This was not the way they had come, Kyaren was sure. But Ansset seemed sure of where he was going, and it occurred to her that he would want to avoid the ways where guards might be waiting. Also, he avoided any doors, finally coming to the great hall through the main entrance, which stood wide.

Kyaren reached the doors a moment after Ansset passed through them, but already he was halfway across the floor, heading, not for Riktors, but for Ferret. Suddenly Ansset was in the air, and Kyaren was expecting him, in his fury, to destroy the emperor's assassin.

But a moment later Ferret and Ansset were grappling. None of Ansset's movements could penetrate the man's defenses; the ferret was unable to land a blow or a cut on Ansset's body.

Finally, exhausted, they held each other firmly, neither able to move for fear the other would be able to use the movement against him, Ansset's mouth was near the Ferret's ear. He moaned softly, and the moan was his agony of being unable to express what was in him, either with his body or with his voice. He could not kill, he could not sing, and he could not find another way to open what demanded to be opened inside him.

The ferret whispered triumphantly in his ear, You've forgotten nothing.

Riktors spoke from the throne, where he was sitting again, relieved that Ansset's attack was not against him, relieved that neither fighter had been able to win. Who do you think taught you how to kill that way, Ansset?

I killed my teacher, Ansset said.

You were told you were killing your teacher, Riktors answered. It was a lie.

You can't match me, said Ferret.

You were Mikal's servant, sworn to him, Ansset said.

I am the emperor's servant, Ferret answered. Mikal was old.

It was one betrayal, one injury too many. It tore something inside Ansset. The barrier broke, and all the hurt of the years he had thought the Songhouse did not want him, all the grief at Josif's mutilation, all the rage at Riktors's lies, all the vengeance and hatred that had bulk within him, unable to be expressed-it all came out at once.

Ansset sang again.

But it was not a subtle song, as all of his had been. Much of his technique had been lost in the years of songlessness, and there was no attention to filling the room or displaying nuances of melody. It was an instinctive song, one that depended not on the veneer the Songhouse had put on Ansset's ability, but rather on the powers within him that the Songhouse had only gradually discovered, the power to comprehend exactly what was in other people's hearts and minds, reshape it, manipulate it, and change it until they felt what Ansset wanted them to feel.

The song was terrible, even to Kyaren, who was at the edge of the room, and who could not understand it all because it was not sung to her.

But to Riktors, who understood almost all of it, it was the end of the world. It was all his crimes held up to him, and against his will he felt guilt for them, a terrifying guilt like the eyes of God staring down his soul, like the devil's teeth gnawing at his heart; the Furies fluttered passionately at the edge of his vision; he lifted up his voice in a vast scream that would have overshadowed any other sound, but not the sound of Ansset's song.

For it went on.

It went on, filled with the colors of Ansset's love for Riktors, betrayed; Mikal's love for Ansset, destroyed; and the timidity, the gentleness and passion of Ansset's night with Josif, forever out of reach. It was shaded by the darkness of Ansset's pain as the best joy the body can receive was torn from him and replaced by the worst pain the body can endure. And as all those griefs and agonies filled the air, they were intensified by Ansset's long, long months of silence, with his songs stolen from him, his Control partly broken. Now there was no Control. Now there was nothing holding him in.

The Mayor of the palace heard Ansset's song like the death of some forest animal, but it would have been impossible to hear the sound inside. And then he heard Riktors's scream. He shouted for guards; he raced for the great hall; he burst in; he saw:

Ansset, his face tipped upward toward the ceiling, the song still pouring from his throat like a volcano's eruption, seemingly endless, seemingly the death of the world. His arms were spread out, his fingers distended, his legs standing wide, as if the world were shaking and he was barely able to stay upright.

Kyaren, leaning against the door, weeping for the parts of the song that she could understand.

Riktors Mikal, emperor of all mankind, lying on the floor crying out again and again, begging for forgiveness, writhing to try to find a place where the sound wouldn't go. It had found him, almost all the song had touched him, and he was insane, tearing at his clothing, blood coming from his face where his own nails had raked him. Hours before, he had been serene and untouchable; now he had been felled by a song.

But not all the song. There were parts of the song that Riktors Mikal could not understand. Esste had been right about Riktors, when she felt that, like Mikal before him, he was cruel but not without limits. Riktors, like Mikal, had a love for, a sense of responsibility for, mankind. What killing he might do, he did because it was needed, because of the goal he had in mind. And when the goal was achieved, he did not kill. Riktors did not understand all the song because, while he was cruder than Esste had thought he was, he was also, in the end, partly kind.

For there was a part of the song that spoke of death, and loved death; that spoke of killing, and loved killing. There was a part of the song that proclaimed that there must be expiation for the crimes, and the only payment that could be made was death, and that only he who loved death could pay that price.

Only one person in the room understood that part of the song.

The Mayor of the palace looked last at Ferret, who alone was silent. He had torn his stomach open with his own hands; with his own hands he was throwing his bowels onto the floor. Again and again, with gushes of blood, he spilled himself. His face was in ecstasy; he alone in the room had found an outlet adequate for the pressure of the song.

He kept on rhythmically destroying himself until at last he had found his heart; with the last of his strength he tore it from his chest, held it in his hands. Only then did he look down. And he watched his hands as they crushed the organ. It was his benediction. He could die.

And as he fell to the ground, the song ended, and Riktors's screams ended, and the only sound in the hall was the Mayor's heavy breathing and the soft crying of Kyaren at the other end of the hall.