Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Women should not complicate any matter under consideration by offering opinions,” said Mrs. Blessingham. “To be a handsome, poised, amusing, seemingly passive but managerially brilliant woman is your goal.”

  “I did spout at the soirée,” Genevieve admitted shamefacedly to Carlotta. “Father will no doubt be furious.”

  Though Genevieve heard nothing directly from her father on the subject of “spouting,” it was the first thing that came to her mind when she was summoned to Mrs. Blessingham’s sitting room a few days later. On the way there, she wondered if Colonel Leys had told her father, or if someone else had, and if now he was angry with her. If he had heard she had misbehaved, his anger could be taken for granted. She was quite pale when she arrived at Mrs. Blessingham’s office.

  “Heaven, child, you’re pale as milk!”

  “I thought, perhaps … Father … something …”

  “It’s nothing that warrants worry! Your father merely sent a note to say he is bringing an important guest to the next soirée.” The older woman fixed the girl with a doubtful expression. “I would be concerned, of course, if your father intends to betroth you to someone. By the terms of the covenants, you should have another ten years before accepting that responsibility. I have told him as much, but he does not seem to listen.”

  “Father does not really listen to women, Mrs. Blessingham.”

  Mrs. Blessingham, a commoner who had chosen her lifestyle, her work, and her friends, had grown unaccustomed to including herself in the category “women,” and this label made her blink.

  “Well, still we must keep Papa happy, since that is what we do. I asked to see you so we can arrange with Dorothea to do your hair and with Gertrude to select your gown and be sure it is fitted properly. You have grown since last year. Most girls do not grow in height at your age, so we must be sure your stockings and small-linens still fit you well.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, as she always said. Then, however, she went on, betraying her own confusion. “Father has not said anything at all about a betrothal.”

  “I was merely guessing, my dear. He did not say who he was bringing with him, merely that he wished you to make a good appearance. And Genevieve, please. It might be better if you did not spout. You were seen talking at a great rate at the last soirée, and it is never a good idea to go on so volubly. If it was only chatter, it can be excused as mere nervousness or even playfulness, but do avoid speaking about politics. Few women find comments on political matters well received, and those who do tend to be elderly, with years of exposure to the talk of a husband and his colleagues. At the age of fifty or sixty, if a woman is not contentious, she can sometimes offer an opinion without being silenced.”

  “That seems foolish,” Genevieve said, surprising herself. “It seems self-defeating not to let us use our minds.”

  Mrs. Blessingham smiled rather ruefully. “Genevieve, it would be self-defeating among the commons. The poor are like foxes: they need intelligence in order to survive. The rich, however, have power; they don’t need good sense. Also remember that traditional things are sacred, and here on Haven, vapid noblewomen are traditional.”

  Genevieve dropped a curtsey and left, her face flaming.

  “It was Barbara, that cat. She told,” said Carlotta.

  “No,” Genevieve said, trying to be fair. “I think it was one of the guests who heard me talking to the Colonel, and his questions were political, sort of.”

  “I can’t understand why you’re so interested in politics. Where do you even learn about it?”

  “I’m not all that interested,” murmured Genevieve, by now quite aware that any such interests should not be shared with her schoolmates, for they would tell their families, and their families would tell others. Besides, it was true that she wasn’t interested in politics exactly. She just wanted to know how things worked and what roles people played, and what the rules of the game were. The only real way to find such things out was to watch them or read about them.

  To this end, she had haunted the library since soon after coming to Blessingham’s. It reminded her of the library at Langmarsh House: it was quiet, and if she daydreamed over an open book, no one thought she was strange. The librarian was a crickety little man with a funny beard who never bothered to learn their names and called each one of them “young lady.” He had a small office where he sat for hours at a time, reading periodicals, some from off-world, some from the provinces, most of them printed on paper particularly for nontechnological markets. Nothing of the kind was included in the reading material available to students, and Genevieve’s curiosity was piqued, particularly when she saw that the librarían stacked the older periodicals outside his door for the maids to take away.

  After several days of anticipatory guilt, she filched one from the pile and carried it off to her room. There, for the first time, she read of other worlds as described by the people on them. She read of planets that had been settled with high hopes, only to fail, while others, settled in like fashion, succeeded. Here was Dephesia, fertile and flourishing; there was Chamis, no less fertile, but perishing nonetheless. Here was Barlet’s World, healthy amid its forests and seas. There was Ares, on which a mysterious thing had happened, on which a mysterious plague was even now infecting the population. Genevieve found this information totally fascinating.

  Thereafter, Genevieve “borrowed” periodicals whenever she could do so unobserved, reading and rereading them in the privacy of her own room before returning them to the discard pile, thankful for the private room that let her read without being questioned. All the girls twelve or older had private rooms, for being alone was something girls had to adjust to. When one became mistress of an estate, one would need to occupy long stretches of solitude without being lonely. Otherwise, one might actually engage in improper behavior, start fraternizing with the maids, chatting with the butler, or flirting with good-looking stable boys, which was not the thing. Not at all.

  “No matter how lonely you get, do not get into the habit of chit-chat with the servants.” So said Mrs. Blessingham.

  And whom might one chit-chat with? One’s friends from school, who could be invited to come visit for a fortnight or a season. One’s parents or siblings, if any. One’s children if one had any and if they and oneself lived to a conversational age. Everyone seemed agreed that women should talk as little as possible, in order not to offend.

  Or, Genevieve thought as she stood in her open window staring out at moonlit trees, one might simply have a tower room, above it all, where talking was unnecessary. When she imagined her future, Genevieve equipped it with a tower room, one even higher than this, above the clouds, where the night music would sound clearly and she could sing at the top of her lungs without being heard. This dream was slightly confusing, for if she wanted to be separated from humanity’s troubles, why did she read the librarian’s periodicals? It was puzzling.

  THREE

  The Planet Haven

  DURING THE HUMAN DISPERSION FROM OLD EARTH, A SURprising number of habitable worlds were discovered more or less by accident. Haven was a typical example. Te Ma-tawaka Whetu, the largest ship in the Ark Fleet from Old Earth, blew a modulator while transiting a worm hole and was expelled through an unexpected nexus. The ship emerged too near Haven to avoid discovering the planet rather more violently than the crew would have preferred. Te Matawaka Whetu, which had been headed toward another planet in quite another direction, was pulled into a rapidly decaying planetary orbit that ended with the ship crashing into the worldwide ocean where it soon broke up and eventually sank, though not before the crew escape pod was launched along with the Mayday beacon array.

  The site of impact was between two landmasses—the only two landmasses—near an arc-shaped isthmus where the escape pod came to rest with all its emergency supplies intact. Some of the wreckage washed up on the smaller continent to the south, as well as upon a number of islands.

  Even under the press of disaster, the experienced c
aptain had included in the Mayday signal the fact that the planet was habitable but uninhabited. This guaranteed the rescue of the survivors, for any habitable world was worth at least one rescue mission. When the rescuers arrived they found the crew safe and well, through they could find no significant remnant of the ship, which was listed as having sunk together with all cargo and the cargo handlers. The planet was subsequently registered for settlement—along with several others that the rescue ship located in the immediate area—and when it was officially surveyed by the Office of Planetary Settlement it was Usted as having two continents connected by the mountainous isthmus, plus some thousands of islands.

  The land area was too small to tempt most investors, though nearby planets discovered by the rescue mission were settíed rather soon: Dephesia by a farming society; Chamis by a group of terraformers; Barlet’s World by a group of militant greens; forested Ares by veterans of the final lebensraum wars among Earth, Luna, Mars, and the Jovian moons that had left all of them uninhabited and uninhabitable. Eventually the exorbitant claim fee for Haven was paid by a small consortium of wealthy men who wished to retire from Urbana-eight, a planetoid which they had much profited from gutting, to something more natural and charming. The group did not care that Haven’s land area was small. They preferred it that way, as it would be more exclusive. Easier, so they said, to keep out the riff-raff.

  As many wealthy world-buyers did, they recruited craftsmen, farmers, and skilled workers of all kinds who were willing to immigrate in return for employment and land. Young, healthy candidates for wifehood were also recruited, and the world, named Haven, was thus furnished with useful citizens and several social classes even prior to occupation.

  Haven, the world, was profoundly wet. Haven, the larger continent, was a great basalt pillar jutting above the worldwide ocean like a titanic tub, its walls feathered with sea birds whose ancestors had escaped from the sinking Ark ship, its rim raised above the reach of the wildest storms. The western half of the continent cupped to hold a huge freshwater puddle filling what was left of the ancient caldera. This lake, soon named Havenpool, was deep and fertile and full of fish, the extensive swamps and mires along its eastern edge serving as a nursery for all kinds of water creatures, native and introduced.

  Havenpool was ringed about with mountain ranges. A man on the northwesternmost of the Seawall Mountains could stare northeastward across the Great Fall, where Havenpool fell into the sea, to the heights of the Northern Knot and, if he turned clockwise, he would see mountains on every horizon, all of them formed by that ancient mother-of-all-volcanoes that had become the continent itself.

  Haven’s provinces were Upland, northernmost, atop the high cliffs; south of that was High Haven, the Royal holding that included the seat of the Lord Paramount at Ha-venor, Dania like a fat “J” hung below High Haven, with Langmarsh to the west along the shore of Havenpool, and Merdune to the east. Sealand stretched along the west shore of Havenpool to the cliffs above the world-ocean; Barfezi ran along the south of the continent, with the province of Frangía sticking out below like a rude tongue. Merdune was on the eastern side of Haven, where the land sloped downward from the Eastrange Mountains to the very edge of the sea, as though an enormous tooth-grooved bite had been taken out of the continent. Merdune boasted the only real seashore on Haven, one that stretched the length of shimmering Merdune Lagoon, a saltwater bay almost as large as Havenpool.

  Very early after settlement, a dispute had arisen between a particular nobleman and the Covenant Tribunal, the ultimate religious authority of Haven. Though many considered this a minor matter, a question of interpretation, the nobleman had subsequently marched with all his followers down the land bridge to the smaller landmass, which he named Mahahm. As the polar ice continued melting, a process that had been going on at least since the planet was discovered, the isthmus became a widely separated string of rocky islands, the Stone Trail, and regular contact between the two landmasses was lost. Though the Lord Paramount at Havenor was still titled “Ruler of Mahahm,” the Mahahmbi were known to refer to him less cordially.

  The thousands of islands scattered singly and in clusters all around the globe were entirely unexplored by the Ha-venites. The seas were dangerous and there was little reason to go seeking out relatively small specks of dry land, many of which had been covered by the sea since colonization. According to the surveyors, the Inundation should have finished long ago, but seemingly there was still ice to melt, as the rising shorelines of the Stone Trail and the Merdune Lagoon well certified.

  All native animals were amphibious. There were no native birds, though the so-called siren-lizard soared and sang, filling a bird’s ecological niche. The only purely land-dwelling creatures—as well as real birds—were exotics brought in by the settlers, everything from cattle to lap dogs to butterflies and peacocks.

  The men who purchased Haven desired a world of privilege, culture, and peace. Technology had facilitated the total urbanization of Old Earth, an event which had only briefly preceded its strange demise as a viable world, and technology, the settlers felt, should be eschewed in the interest of tranquility. In tranquil societies, nothing changes very much or moves very fast, if at all, and the buyers yearned for this leisurely pace. They deified tradition. They forbade invention. They adopted an hereditary monarchy and, for the nobility, a state religion: pseudo-Judaeo-Muslim-Christian-monotheism with accretions. The wealthiest man among the settlers became the first Lord Paramount, his colleagues became the lesser lords, the dukes of the seven provinces. Their children became the earls and viscounts of the counties within those provinces, and their children became the barons of the estates within those counties. Each county—some forty of them—was allowed an assembly of citizens, variously constituted, who elected or selected a minister to the provincial council, and the provincial councils elected representatives to the Lord Paramount’s Council of Ministers, a group charged with oversight of interprovincial matters such as the maintenance of roads and bridges or the location and support of schools and medical services for the million or so citizens of Haven.

  Preservation of the belief system which supported the tranquil, unchanging culture of Haven was the particular duty of the scrutators, who reported to the Invigilator, an officer of the Tribunal, the body that assured the continuation of the traditions of Haven. Thus, as Haven had started, it continued: a peaceful, changeless, easy kind of a place, where sound basic education, excellent sanitation, advanced medical care, and adequate diets contributed to long life spans for most of a populace ruled by, so everyone among the ruling class agreed, a conservative but well-intentioned aristocracy.

  FOUR

  Mahahm

  SOUTH OF HAVEN, ON THE MINOR CONTINENT OF MAHAHM, Shah Arghad rose early on the third morning of the Time-of-Renewal, a thrice-yearly holy time during which aspirants for elevation were examined for their faith. The first two days of the examination had been conducted by trusted associates in the annex. Though the Shah seldom left the comfort of the palace, his presence at the second stage of the examination was obligatory. No candidate brought by an aspirant might go to the place of reward without being individually selected and blessed by the Shah. No sacred substance might be dispensed to the aspirants except from the Shah’s own hand, making the sole source of all such rewards abundantly clear.

  Ybon Saelan, the Shah’s most trusted minister, was waiting in the anteroom, already clad in the robe of blessings.

  “May your life be extended beneath the everlasting sun,” murmured the minister, presenting the sacred goblet.

  Upon the clear water floated a slight haze of fragrant dust, and the Shah drank the ritual draught quickly.

  “May we all be so livened,” murmured the Shah, as he returned the goblet.

  His serving men helped him into the royal cloak trimmed with the feathers of hunting birds. They pulled the insulated hood over his head. His horse was waiting in the portico, heat dissipating straps of harpta-hide dangling from its
belly-band, its skull protected by a foam helmet much like the one beneath the Shah’s hood. Though it was cool now, in a few hours the desert would be a furnace.

  “Are the aspirants assembled?” the Shah asked.

  “They await Your Effulgence,” murmured the minister.

  The Shah mounted his horse, one of only half a dozen on Mahahm, a symbol of royal authority no less than the golden dome of the palace, the prostrations of his servitors, the length of his reign, all by the will of the Great Sun whose son was the Shah himself. The gates were swung open and he rode at a slow walk into the outer courtyard where the two files of black-robed aspirants were mustered.

  Their faces were stern and still, as befitted aspirants. Each pair bowed low as Ybon Saelan pronounced their names and the Shah passed between them. There were fifteen men in each file, and as he reached each pair the Shah inclined his head, intoning, “As the Fire of Heaven wills.”

  The outer gate swung open as he led the aspirants into the street, where the procession was arranging itself around seven giant harpta lizards, the last one bearing basket panniers, the other six walking between lines of white-veiled candidates. Each candidate was to be accompanied by one of the aspirants from the courtyard or, if the aspirant was infirm, that aspirant’s delegate. In the half dozen cases where this applied, the aspirants were already placing the hands of their delegates—often a son or younger brother—upon the head of the candidates while reciting the ritual transfer of responsibility to the younger men. When all was orderly, the minister led the black-clad participants in reciting the oath of the ritual masters, the solemn words confirming that each understood his duties.

  “How many stops?” the Shah murmured to his minister.