Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “I heard your father say that the Lord Paramount envisions some duty for you at court. Have you any idea what that might be?”

  Her hands twisted and she shook her head. “No, I don’t. And when he mentioned querying what the Lord Paramount might have in mind, I begged him to let the matter alone until we know better what we’re doing here. Della thought it wisest, also. You know, I sometimes think Della knows more that’s going on than I do.”

  He chuckled. “She probably does. Certain subjects seem to be taboo among the courtiers, either that or they’re talking in a code I don’t understand, but the servants speak as they like, especially when they are in their own quarters where no one bothers them, or even notices them. In the army, it’s the same with the enlisted men. Most officers don’t listen to their talk. I do, because I was one of them, and knowledge picked up in the lat—ah, parade ground is better than ignorance fostered in the drawing room. If Della trusts you, perhaps she will tell you what she hears.”

  They fell silent for a moment, each much occupied in looking at the other. In the space between them, the air wavered before Genevieve’s eyes, like rippled water, then cleared to display a city, squat and earth-colored against a bloody sky. A huge voice sang in the silence, but she could not understand the words. She looked down at her hands, and they were red with blood. Blackness swept around her.

  He reached out to her, too late, for she had slumped to the floor all at once, limply and without a sound.

  “All right, Jenny, what is this?” he growled, falling to his knees beside her, putting one arm beneath her Shoulder* to lift her.

  She opened her eyes and stared wonderingly into his face as he held her close, her head lying against his shoulder.

  “Tell me,” he urged, his voice shaking. “You’ve done this twice. Once at the dinner, then again today. Are you not well? What is this?” He shook her, as he might shake a child, gently, almost pleadingly.

  “I saw …” she murmured, only half aware of his presence. “I saw a city made of earth, with earthen walls. I heard a voice sing loudly, like a great trumpet blowing. My hands had blood on them …”

  He picked her up and placed her in a large chair away from the window, keeping his arm around her, thrilling to the touch of her as he had when they had danced together, having the same trouble hiding it now as then. “And the other night?”

  She shook her head wonderingly. “I was watching a shipwreck. There were people struggling in the water …”

  He breathed deeply and stepped away. “And are these the first such visions? No, I can see it in your face. They are not. There have been others?”

  “Yes, Aufors.” She lowered her face, as though shamed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he cried. “You should have told me. You might have needed … needed someone.”

  “I had someone. Mrs. Blessingham, at school. She always … tended to things. Once she found out my visions really …”

  “Really what?”

  “… really happened.”

  “You’re a seeress?” He doubted seeresses, but he did not doubt this woman. So. She was a seeress?

  “Shhh, Aufors. Father will hear you.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “Of course not. He’d be furious. He doesn’t even like to talk about such things. Mother … Mother knew. She was like me. According to the Duchess, Alicia, so was her mother and her daughter. We’re related, she says. Several generations back.”

  “Tell me what you’ve seen that came true?” he demanded, sounding impatient, even to himself, but so eager to help her that he needed to know immediately, without delay!

  She sighed. “Oh, Aufors, many different things. Little things, mostly. A cat hiding her kittens in the hen house. A neighbor losing a chicken coop in a spring flood. Once I saw the roof blowing off the kitchen at school, and that same winter it did. Mostly they’re just feelings of things that will go awry, choices that are mistaken …”

  “And your own future?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything about my own future, at least, nothing that I know of.”

  “Except you will be on the deck of a ship …”

  “No. I think that already happened. Long ago. And the one just now, if I’m in it. I guess I am in it, for I saw my own hands. That’s the only one that includes myself.”

  He sat down, pulling his chair close to hers. “It would be dangerous for you to get yourself involved in the court, Jenny. Somehow we’ve got to keep you out of that!”

  “We can’t.” She smiled, rather wearily. “I thought there might be some way I could stay away, but there isn’t. Father needs me here—this first dinner party made that very obvious, Aufors. He’d have been in a dreadful mess without me. Besides, the Lord Paramount asked me to be here.”

  “You need someone, surely.” He rose, striding to and fro, agitatedly. “The Duchess of Merdune, perhaps she could be …”

  “You’re thinking she might help me? Well, perhaps. She said she would call on me, and since we really are kinswomen, she may actually do so.”

  “Your father asked me to take an apartment here, in the house. So far, for various reasons, I’ve delayed, but I could be here tomorrow if it would help you …”

  “If it would help me?” she asked. “Of course it would help me, but you shouldn’t do it for that reason.”

  “Genevieve …” he cried, the word breaking from him uncontrollably, all his feelings in his face. “For what other reason would I?”

  He reached for her hand, ready to go on, but she gasped, as though breathing hurt her. Her eyes filled as she held up her hand, palm out, forbidding him.

  “It would help me, provided you understand … we must stop this familiarity of ours. I know I asked you to call me Genevieve or even Jenny, but I’m afraid it’s likely to be … misunderstood. Father has already … misunderstood it. From now on, you must be Colonel Leys to me, and I must be My Lady to you, and you must not say whatever you just started to say. It is not fair to you, I know, and it is no more fair to me.”

  “You have a right to be happy!”

  She shook her head, her lips trembling. “I am a daughter of the covenant, Colonel Leys. The covenant allows us our youth, but that is about all it allows us. I was happy, at school. I didn’t realize until I came here how happy I was there. I knew my way, there, and who my friends were. I had my niche and was comfortable in it. I didn’t ask to be brought here, and the people here are strangers … no, not merely strangers but strange! As though … as though they are not made of the same stuff that you are. As though all their words are paint. Do you understand?”

  “Paint?” He frowned. “You mean, painting over, covering up, hiding something.”

  “Yes. Covering up something. Exactly. As though they all know a secret. Or some of them do, and the others pretend to. I don’t know what it is, but it distresses me. Della says I’m merely tired out, and perhaps she’s right, but I cannot … cannot deal with anything complicated just now. Not until I’ve watched this play, and caught onto it, and learned what the plot is, you see? If I don’t know how it’s going, I might get dragged into it. If I were once to be caught in it … oh, maybe I could never go back to being what I am.”

  “What you are?” he whispered, amazed. “You’re as real as the earth itself. What do you think you are?”

  She was shaking, horrified at herself for what she had already said. Well, she had said it. No point in going back. “I told you! I’m a mouse, a watcher from corners. I don’t have anything to do with the plot. I’m happier if I can just stay to myself, watching. Which I must do, until I come to obeying my mother’s dying words. No, don’t ask. Please … please, Colonel …”

  He frowned in concentration, telling himself not to argue with her, not to accuse her of silliness or stupidity, to take her words seriously though everything in him denied what she was saying. He promised that he would move into the house by morning, after which she sent him away bef
ore going upstairs to lie on her bed and cry for all the things she was feeling with no way at all to be rid of them or do anything about them.

  When she had cried herself out, she got up, washed her face, returned to her bed, and took up the book that lay open upon the table, determined to lose herself in thinking about something else. After Alicia had mentioned the book, the strange account of their mutual ancestress, the Lord Paramount’s wife, Queen Stephanie, Genevieve had found it in the library.

  She read:

  This is a story our people tell:

  Long, long ago on another world, our grandmother te kui nui, mother of us all, heard the voice of all worlds singing.

  “E, kui, ‘’ the spirit called. “have a task for you.”

  “Oh, lo, ‘’ cried our grandmother. “Am I not burdened down with tasks? Here are children at my knees, here are sons running wild, here are daughters begging knowledge, here are gardens to be cared for, am I not well laden with burdens?”

  And the voice said, “This is a greater task than all of those, and on this task the lives of your children and gardens will depend, for I set upon you the task of sailing among the stars in the long time to come.”

  And our grandmother did not know what to say for a time, but then she replied, “Oh, great filler of worlds, surely only those who have passed beyond the world may sail between the stars. Are my children not to have the gift of life?”

  And Tangaroa said, “The time will come when te wairua hohonu needs a service of you, and against that time, I would prepare you.

  “You must go to your sons and grandsons and tell them to build great canoes, and you must take all your children and all your belongings, and you must set sail as I shall guide you, to a new land.”

  So our grandmother came to her sons and grandsons, who were many, and told them of the command she had received. And after a time of talk, not all of which was sensible or respectful, so that our grandmother was forced to shout loudly, our people set about building the great canoes. And when the first canoe was built, the people came to grandmother and asked what name it should have.

  And grandmother said, “It shall be named nga Tumau Hohonu, the servants of the deep, and when it comes to land, the people of that canoe shall take that name forever.”

  So it sailed away. And when the second canoe was finished, grandmother said, “It shall be named nga Kai-kaukau Whetu, the star swimmers, and when it comes to land, the people of that canoe shall take that name forever.”

  This is the story my people tell. Others say this did not happen, that it was not until the great ship left the world that our people were visited by the spirit. And others say that the spirit never spoke, it was all accidental, that we just happened to be there, for we and the spirit left the world together. I, Stephanie, sometimes believe one and sometimes another, but I like to think of the ancestral canoes setting out upon the great and trackless sea, nga matawaka hollowed from the trees of the forest, sailing on and on, into the emptiness at the edge of the sky.

  However it happened, I came to be he Kaikaukau Whetu, a star swimmer, and I am still he tumau hohonu, a servant of the deep …

  Genevieve came to herself with a start at the sound of the first dinner bell, reverberating in the great hall below. She laid the book on the bed beside her and sat up, the thoughts and images of the book evoking and blending with stories her mother had told. Stephanie’s story was not unfamiliar, though her mother had used different words to tell it no less enigmatically than Stephanie herself.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Della, coming with an armful of newly laundered petticoats. “Come, Jenny,” she said in an admonitory tone. “No time for daydreams. It’s time you were dressed for dinner.”

  And when Genevieve went down to dinner, Della neatened the bed, putting the book away on the shelf, where it stayed for some time, forgotten.

  Genevieve made appointments with the first and second dressmakers on the list, saving the third for later. From the first, a colorless little woman with a pinched mouth that spat pins and wiry fingers that extruded tape measures, she ordered two gowns, simple ones of classic cut and exemplary fabric. The whole transaction took less than an hour, once the measurements were taken.

  Karom Veswees, a sinewy and pliant male with beautiful bones and hands, was a different breed of lizard. “I’d like to do you all in beads,” he said, observing her from several angles, including crouching on the floor to look up at her. “Or maybe feathers! What a marvelous face. You’re quite divine, Lady Genevieve.”

  She was more amused than annoyed. “Sit down,” she said, pointing to a chair. “Do not flitter about. This is serious business.”

  Simpering only slightly, he sat in the chair, hands folded, being the good child. Despite herself, she smiled.

  “You see,” he crowed, “what a face!”

  Genevieve summoned her most businesslike voice, “I am told you dress the Lady Charmante. She was wearing something filmy the other evening, red, with lines of amber and gold in it?”

  The simpering look vanished and was replaced with a grimness about the lips.

  “Silk batik, from the aboriginal commune on Strayne V, off-planet needless to say, obtained by the Prince for his ‘consort.’ I’m sorry, Your Ladyship, but if you want something like that, you’re out of luck. Unless your father is far wealthier and more dishonest than he is reputed to be.”

  She frowned at him, then rang for a footman and ordered tea before coming to sit beside him. “You’ll stay to tea, won’t you, Mr. Veswees? I think you have knowledge I need, and I will buy many dresses from you if you will tell it to me.”

  He cocked his head. “You’re just in from the country, aren’t you? You’re not up on things.”

  “Completely at sea.” She smiled, deciding suddenly to allow this most improper person into her confidence. “I don’t understand this off-planet business. I know our ancestors, in their wisdom, decided that a nonindustrialized life which made small demands on power and raw materials would be more sustainable over the ages. I know the Lord Paramount and his counselors, in their wisdom, have decided that we must make what we need, except for things like medical personnel and a few other essentials. Until a moment ago, I did not know that the list of such things included luxuries like imported silk.”

  “Well, that particular import wouldn’t be publicized, would it?” he said, giving her a searching look.

  “There’s something that’s been bothering me for a number of years, Mr. Veswees …”

  “Karom. Call me Karom. Everyone does.”

  “All the more reason I should call you Mr. Veswees.” She smiled sweetly. “We learned in school that Haven is what might be called a poor planet, partly in fact, partly by choice. We learned in school that interstellar transport is hideously expensive. We learned in school that the Lord Paramount has a list of things we must obtain from elsewhere—” She interrupted this catalogue when the footman entered. He bore a tea service that must have been poised nearby, ready if she should ask.

  Veswees nodded, looking up with a smile at the footman who placed the tea service on the table between them. “Everything you say you have been taught about Haven is quite true,” he said.

  She went on, “What no one has ever told me, however, is what coin, what medium of exchange we here on Haven use to purchase these off-planet things.”

  The footman knocked over an empty cup, making a clatter. “Your pardon, lady,” he said, righting it with a slightly trembling hand.

  The noise had drawn Genevieve’s attention away from Veswees’s face, and she missed the glance he shared with the footman, rapt attention mixed at once with apprehension and elation. When she looked up, he was as he had been, pleasantly interested, nothing more.

  He said in an innocent tone, “I have wondered about it, too. Perhaps we have artists or singers or people with other talents whose services can be sold,” he murmured.

  “Wouldn’t we have heard of this? If someone were that tal
ented, wouldn’t that person have a local reputation? Wouldn’t we have known of him, or her?”

  The footman bowed himself away. Veswees waited until the door had closed behind him. “Perhaps the talents are … private ones, Your Ladyship.”

  She considered him over the rim of her cup. The sexual innuendo had been explicit. She could neither have missed it nor misinterpreted it. “Do you think so?” she asked, as casually as she could.

  He sipped, turned the cup on the saucer, played with the spoon. “Don’t you think our medium of trade must be something like that? This world of ours is poor, as you say. There were no prehistoric forests to store oil and coal for our use, but we have large rivers to provide hydroelectric power. We have a few mines to supply metal, a few forests that give us wood for burning in our stoves. Our population is kept at a level that can be sustained by these rivers, these mines, and these forests. Nonetheless, we must import certain needed minerals for food additives and for our agriculture. We have no gems of note. We have no rare foods or seasonings or wines. We have no rare ores or biologicals that are in demand—or at least none that are mentioned in the marketplace.” He sipped again. “And then, too, you must have noticed how few … pretty young women we have at court.”

  She thought back to the recent dinner party. There had been no young woman but herself. The others had all been well past middle age, though they would not have thanked her for so judging them. “I do not consider Havenor to be the most healthful environment, Mr. Veswees. It is chilly here, I am told, even in summer. Young women are of an age to have babies, and perhaps they prefer to stay in the provinces with their children.”

  “Perhaps. Certainly motherhood proves difficult for many of our noblewomen.”

  She frowned. “Why so?”

  He shrugged. “It seems to be a pattern among some of my favorite clients, young women who came here for a time, who returned home to have their children and who never returned. All too often I have heard that they succumbed, usually to batfly fever …”