Modern Classics of Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois

  He was watching me more intently, maybe not so trustingly. He said: “Wait here.” He stumped off to the other side of the great tree, and I heard the noise of rocks being carefully moved. His body stayed out of sight, but his hands appeared beyond the trunk at my left and set down a slab of stone the size of my head – dull reddish, and I noticed the glint of an embedded quartz pebble. Not then with any ugly intent, just thinking ahead of his poor limited mind the way anyone might, I guessed that would be the marker-stone of some hidey-hole. A moment later he returned to me, carrying a thing whose like I have never seen elsewhere in the world.

  Not even in Old City of Nuin, where I later lived awhile, and learned writing and reading, and more about Old Time than it’s safe for a man to know.

  I thought when I first saw the golden shining of it in his dirty hands that it must be a horn such as hunters and cavalry soldiers use, or one of the screechy brass things – cornets they’re called – that I’d heard a few times when Rambler gangs passed through Skoar and gave us their gaudy entertainments in the town green. But this was none of those poor noisemakers.

  The large flared end a foot across, the two round coils and straight sections of the pipe between bell and mouthpiece, the three movable pegs (I call them pegs though it doesn’t quite rightly describe them) built with impossible smoothness and perfection into the pipe – all these things, and the heavy firmness of the metal, the unbelievable soft gleaming of it, made this a marvel that no one of our world could build.

  Ancient coins, knives, spoons, kitchenware that won’t rust – such objects of Old-Time magic metal are upturned in plowing now and then, even today. I knew about them. If the thing is simple and has an obvious use, the rule in Moha is finders keepers, if the finder can pay the priest for his trouble in exorcising the bad influence. Mam Robson had a treasure like that, a skillet-thing four inches deep, of shiny gray metal light and very hard that never took a spot of rust. It had been found in plowing by her grandfather, and handed down to her when she married Old Jon. She never used it, but liked to bring it from her bedroom now and then to show the guests, and tell how her mother did use it for cooking and took no harm. Then Old Jon would crash in with the story of how it was found as if he’d been there, clicket-clickety, the Mam watching sidelong and her gloomy horse-face saying he wasn’t a man who’d ever find her such a thing, not him, miracle if he ever got up off his ass except to scratch. Well, and if the Old-Time object is something for which no reasonable man can imagine a use – a good many are said to be like that – naturally the priest will keep it, and bury it where it can work no damage, men suppose.

  Ignorant as I was, I knew before the mue let me take it in my hands that I was looking on a work of ancient days that might be not for any man to touch. It is not gold of course, but as I’ve said, a metal of Old Time that has no name in our day. I’ve seen true gold in Old City; its weight is much greater, the feel of it altogether different. But I still call this a golden horn, because I thought of it so for a long time, and now that I know better the name still seems to me somehow true.

  “Mother’s man’s thing,” the mue said, and at length passed it to me. He was not happy while, dazed and afraid and wondering, I turned it about in my hands. It gathered light from this shady place and made itself a sun. “She bring me. I little, I. I to keep. She said, I to keep, I.” He started once or twice to take it back, the motion uncompleted, and I was too deep in bewilderment to let it go. Then he said: “You blow.” So he knew at least that it was a thing for music.

  I puffed my cheeks and blew, and nothing happened – a breath-noise and a mutter. The mue laughed, really laughed. Expecting it. He took it from me hastily. “Now I blow, I.”

  His miserable mouth almost disappeared in the cup, and he did something with his cheeks, not puffing them at all but tightening them till his flat face altered with carven lines. And I heard it speak.

  There is no other voice like that on earth. Have you seen an icicle breaking sunshine to a thousand jewels of colored light, and can you in a waking dream imagine that icicle entering your heart with no common pain but with a transfiguration so that the light lives within you, not to die until your own time of dying? You see, it is foolish – I have learned something of music since my childhood, even a great deal as such things are measured, but words will not give you what I know. I’ve heard the viols they make in Old City that are said to follow a design of Old Time. I’ve heard singers, a few of them with such voices as men imagine for angels. But there’s no other voice like that of the golden horn. And the more I know of music, the less able am I to speak anything of it except in music’s own language. Words! Can you talk of color to a man blind from birth? Could I know anything of the ocean until the day came when I stood on the beach and my own eyes saw the blue and gold, the white of foam, the green depth and the gray of distance, and I heard the sigh and thunder, the joy and the lamentation of wave on sand and wind on wave?

  The one long note the mue first played – soft, loud, soft, low in pitch – shook me with unbelief. As you might be shaken if the curtain of stars and night were swept aside, and you saw – how should I know what you would see? He pressed one of the pegs, and blew another note. Another peg, another note. Two pegs at once, another. All pure, all clear and strong, changing, fading and swelling and dying out. A single note to each breath – he had no thought of combining them, no notion of melody; I think he never even moved one of the pegs while he blew. I understood presently, in spite of my own thick ignorance, that he, poor jo, had no knowledge at all of the thing he held in his hands. How could he?

  Mother’s man’s thing – had his father known more? A miracle of Old Time, found – where? Hidden away – how? Hidden away surely, I thought, for how could a man play this horn where others heard and not be known at once for a possessor of magic, brought before priests and princes to tell of it, and play it, and no doubt lose it to their itching hands? A miracle of Old Time, carried off to be a toy for a mue-child in the wilderness …

  “She said, I to keep, I. Good?”

  “Good. Yes, good.”

  He asked, not happily: “You blow now?”

  “I daren’t.”

  He seemed relieved by that. He chuckled, and padded away behind the tree hugging the horn. I stayed where I was, hot and cold within. I watched the slab of reddish rock till his hands reached out for it. I heard the chink as it was set in place, and I knew the golden horn had to be mine.

  It had to be mine.

  * * *

  He came back smiling and rubbing his lips, no longer concerned about his treasure, while I could think of nothing else. But a mean sort of caution kept me from saying anything more about it. And there was meanness, calculation, in the friendliness I showed him from then on. Almost certain what I meant to do, pushed toward it (so I excused myself) as if by a force outside of me, I acted a part. I grinned, nodded, made noises like his, stared around me as though his dwelling-place were a wonder of the world, while inside me I could think of nothing except how to get at that rock-pile in his absence.

  For one thing I will give myself a small trace of honor. I did not again plan to kill him. The power had burned out of that. The idea was there, yes – was painfully strong at moments when he trustingly turned his back or looked away from me. and I remembered how fast my hand was, how quickly I could run, and how I would be praised and honored, not punished, for destroying him. Maybe I understood, without reasoning it through, that I just don’t have it in me to kill another being for any reason except hunger or self-defense – anyway I never have, and I’ve been tempted to it a few times in my travels since that day. Whatever the reason, I did reject the thought of killing him, not purely from cowardice, so for what it’s worth, that’s my scrap of virtue.

  All the same I’m not going to enjoy writing the next page or two. I could lie about what happened – how would you know the difference? Anybody can lie about himself; we all do it every day, trying like sin to show the world
an image with all the warts rubbed off. Writing this story for you, some-way I don’t want to lie. Merely writing it seems to make the warts your business, so I won’t draw myself as a saint or a hero or a wise man. Better just remember, friends, that a lot of the time I’ve acted almost as bad as you do, and be damned to it.

  We climbed up from the cat-brier fortress into the tulip-tree, and I got clever. I asked: “Where is water?”

  He pointed off into the jungle. “You want drink? I show you, I.”

  “Wash too,” I said, hoping to get him interested in a brand-new idea. You can see how clever it was – if he ever got serious about washing himself, he had a long project ahead of him. “Washing is good,” I said, and touched my arms and face, which happened to be pretty clean. “Dirt comes off in water. Is good, good. Wash.”

  I think he’d known the word once, though obviously it wasn’t one of his favorites. He worked on it, studying my crazy gestures, frowning and mumbling. Then he studied his own skin, what you could see of it through the crust, and all of a sudden the great idea got to him. “Wash!” he said, and chuckled till he drooled, and wiped that away among the other smears. “Wash! I wash all me, be like you!”

  Well … I did have the decency to feel sick. I’m sure he imagined, for a while at least, that I knew how to work some magic with water which would take away his ugliness and make him man-beautiful. I’d never intended that, and now I didn’t see how to change the idea or explain it.

  And he couldn’t wait. He practically pushed me along the grape-vine route, down outside the cat-briers and off through the woods. This time he stayed with me on the ground instead of swinging ahead above me. I think he wanted to keep close, so that he could go on reminding me with grins and mumbles about our wonderful project.

  We walked mostly downhill as I’d expected, and it was bad going until he turned off to follow a deer-trail out of the wild-grape area and into a clearer space, which suited me fine. I wanted distance from his home, lots of it. The trees had become well spaced, no more vines overhead, the ground reasonably clear. In country like this I could run like a bird before the wind. Not too soon, we reached the brook he had in mind, and traveled a comfortable distance further before arriving at a pool big enough for bathing, a quiet and lovely place of filtered sunlight and the muttering of cool water. We both studied the tracks of animals who had come to drink here, and found no record of danger, only deer, fox, wildcat, porcupine, whiteface monkey. I dropped my clothes on the bank and slipped into the water, slow and noiseless the way I like to go, while he watched me, scared and doubtful, not quite believing anyone could really do a thing like that.

  I beckoned to him with grins and simple words, made a show of scrubbing myself to show him how it was done. At last he ventured in, the big baby, an inch at a time. The pool was narrow but long, nowhere deeper than three feet. I’m glad to remember I didn’t try to persuade him to try swimming – with his poor legs he’d probably have drowned. But I showed him he could walk or stand in the water and still have his head well above it. Gradually he caught on, found himself all the way in and began to love it.

  I frolicked around, burning and impatient inside, my head full of just one thing. When I was sure he was really enjoying himself and wanted to go on with the great washing thing, I let him see me look suddenly and anxiously toward the afternoon sun. He understood I was thinking about time and the approach of the evening. I said: “I must go back. You stay here, finish wash. I must go fast. You stay.”

  He understood but didn’t like it. When I’d nipped out on the bank he started to follow, very slow, clumsy, timid in the water. “No,” I said, “you finish wash.” I pointed to the plentiful dirt still on him, made motions of sloshing water on my back. “All dirt bad. Washing good, good. You finish wash. I will come back.”

  “I finish wash, then I be –”

  “Finish wash,” I said, cutting that off – so I’ll never know, and didn’t want to know, whether he really imagined that washing would make him man-beautiful. “I must go now before sun go down.”

  “To smoke-place, big sticks?” He meant Skoar and its stockade.

  “Yes.” And I said again, as plain and friendly (and treacherous) as I could: “I will come back…”

  I don’t know if he watched me out of sight, for I couldn’t look behind me. Presently I was running, as quickly and surely as I had ever done in my life, remembering all the landmarks without thinking of them. Up across the easy ground, that was hard for him, and into the grapevine jungle, pulled accurately and fast as if I were bound to the golden horn by a tightening cord.

  Up the grapevine into the tulip tree, and down inside the brier fortress, finding that red rock at once and lifting it aside. The horn lay there wrapped in gray-green moss that was like a cloth, and with hardly a glance to delay me I shoved it still wrapped into my sack, and was up over the grapevine, and out, and gone. If the mue had followed me at his best speed, and I’m sure he didn’t follow at all, I would still have been gone on my way before ever he came in sight of his home. Yes, I was very clever.

  And now, in no danger from him at all, I was running faster than ever. Like a crazed hunted animal without sense or caution. Wolf or tiger could have taken me then with no trouble – but you need to be strangely alive in order to write words on paper; you notice I’m still living. I couldn’t escape that driving need to run until I had gone all the way around the east side of the mountain, past the ledge that led to my cave, and had caught sight of the Skoar church-spires. Then I collapsed on a fallen log gulping for air.

  The skin of my belly hurt horribly. I twitched my shirt aside and found red-burning skin and the puncture mark. Why, somewhere, during my mad running after I had stolen the horn, I must have blundered through an orb-spider’s web, the thing had bitten me, and I hadn’t even known it until now.

  It wouldn’t kill me. I’d had a bite from one of them before, on the arm. Needles were doing a jerking jig all over me, and my guts ached. I wouldn’t sleep much, I knew. Tomorrow it would become an infernal itch for a while, and then stop hurting.

  I wondered, as if someone had spoken aloud to stab me with the thought, whether I’d ever sleep well again.

  I took out the horn with wobbling hands, unwrapping it from the moss. Oh, the clear splendor, and the shining! Forest daylight flowed into it and was itself a silent music. And the horn was mine. Wasn’t it?

  I raised it to my lips, trembling but compelled. It amazed me – still does – how naturally the body of the horn rests against my body, and my right hand moves without guidance of thought over those three pegs. Did the faraway makers of the horn leave in it some Old-Time magic that even now tells the holder of the horn what he must do? – oh, foolishness; they simply remembered the shape and the needs of a human body, the way the maker of a simple knife-hilt will remember the natural shape of a human hand. But still, still – that kind of thinking and remembering, planning for necessity but also dreaming your way into the impossible until it changes and becomes true and real in your hand, isn’t that a kind of magic? And so, many of us are magicians but have never noticed it; anyway I give you the thought if you’ll have it.

  I did not dare blow into the horn; then I did so in spite of myself, not puffing or straining but breathing gently and, by accident I think, firming my lips and cheeks in what happened to be the right way. It spoke to me.

  It was mine.

  Only one note, and soft, so light was the breath I dared to use. But it was clear and perfect, the sunlight and the shining transformed to sound, and I knew then there was music hidden here that not the mue, maybe not anyone since the days of Old Time, had ever dreamed of until it came into my hands. And, sick and scared and miserable though I was, I knew it was for me to bring forth that music, or die.

  Then I shook with common fright, for what if even that small sound of the horn could travel by some magic around the mountain where the true owner –

  But I was the true owner. It was mine.<
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  I returned it to the sack and stumbled on down the mountain toward the city. The spider-bite was making me dizzy and slow, a bit feverish. Once I had to stop and heave, all blackness surging around me – any hunting beast could have had me for nothing. That cleared, and I went on. Near the edge of the forest, a hundred yards or so from the stockade, I holed up in a thicket, enough sense left in me to know I must wait for dark and the stockade guards’ supper-time.

  That was a bad hour. I crouched hugging the horn against my middle where the spider-bite jabbed me with fire-lances. I vomited again once or twice. I couldn’t stand it to think of the mue, his friendliness, his human ways, for that would start me wondering what sort of thing I was.

  There are tales of brain-mues. The most frightful kind of all, for they grow up in the natural human shape, and no one knows they are devil-begotten until, perhaps when they are full-grown, they go through a change that is called madness, behaving like wild beasts, or sometimes forgetting who or where they are, seeing and believing all manner of outrageous things until their infernal origin becomes known to everyone and they must be given over to the priests. What if I –

  I could not examine nor tolerate the thought then. It stayed, at the fringes of my mind, a black wolf waiting.

  Yes, a bad hour. Maybe it was also the hour when I started changing into a man.

  * * *

  The spider-bite was still a blazing misery under my shirt when it grew dark enough for me to move. All I remember about the agony of climbing the stockade is that when I reached the top of it I had to scrounge back out of sight and wait for a patrolling guard to walk on, and then waste my strength cussing his lights and gizzard when he met another guard and they spent ten minutes beating their gums. But that ended, I was in the city, the heavy burden in my sack unharmed, and I sneaked along easily enough to the Bull and Iron, keeping close in the shadow of the buildings.