Although Alys had temporarily eaten her fill, the three adults stopped at what resembled a one-person hot dog cart Mark had seen in multiple U.S. cities. Here, though, the single food item was more like a burrito stuffed with a mild-tasting white meat and vegetables of some kind. It required both hands to eat it. Because one of them had to hold onto Alys when she tired and Mark was the biggest, the duty fell to him.
After struggling with two tasks that needed a total of three hands, father and daughter worked out a protocol in which she helped hold the burrito to Mark’s mouth, and he pretended to be a predator snapping at food and growling at her. Although a productive strategy, it elicited stares and murmurs from passersby.
Signs that the harbor tour was ending were Alys dozing in Mark’s arms, scattered raindrops falling, and a darkening sky over the ocean that threatened a storm.
“I think we need to get Alys to a bed and all of us inside,” said Mark.
“That’s fine,” said Maghen. “I’ve seen enough for today, but I’d like to come back for a couple of pieces of clothing to take with us.”
Mark opened his mouth to ask what pieces of clothing when something caught his attention. He walked another dozen steps before stopping. He had the same odd feeling he’d had in the Landylbury pub when his subconscious had picked out the word Amerika from the din of dozens of conversations in a crowded room.
Maghen and Gulgit continued several steps before realizing Mark wasn’t with them.
“What is it, Mark?” asked Maghen.
He flexed a hand, fingers upward to indicate he was listening. Maghen came back to his side, her quizzical expression shared by Gulgit, who waited where he’d stopped.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, more to himself than to his wife. “Here, hold Alys and stay with Gulgit. I’m going to walk back a ways. I shouldn’t be long.”
He wove his way among the throng about sixty yards without noticing anything. He had been nearer to the water than the buildings, so when he stopped to return to Maghen, he walked closer to the buildings. Halfway back, a teenage girl was taking fruit from baskets and stacking them on the tables of a seller’s stand. She was humming. Humming a tune. Humming a familiar tune. He stood listening for several minutes. It was repetitive. He counted the different notes. Twenty-four. At each note, she would place a fruit on the carefully constructed display.
Mark’s heart pounded, and he felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead despite the slight chill from the sea air. He edged closer to the stand. He could make out words, not that he understood the Sulakoan lyrics. It was a song with two sections. The tune of one section sounded vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t pinpoint how. Each time the section was repeated, the words were different, as if they composed verses in a song. It was during the second section that his heart seemed to beat harder. The words repeated each time, like a chorus separating verses.
When the chorus came again, he suddenly found himself humming. The next time he silently mouthed words. The third time he spoke words but so quietly that even someone standing next to him couldn’t have heard them—but he could hear through the resonance of his head’s bone and tissue.
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Mark. Happy birthday to you.”
Momentary dizziness gave way to a giddy impulse to shout, as his doubts and suppressed hopes coalesced into certainty. His hearing the word America in Landylbury could have been a chance similarity in pronunciation of a place on Anyar, and his compulsion to get to Caedellium might be chasing a phantom. The same argument could be made that there were only so many possible melodies of twenty-four notes. If he listened hard enough and wanted to find something recognizable badly enough, eventually he would hear a melody he thought he knew. But that possibility dissipated when he finally recognized the first section of the tune the girl was humming and singing: “Let It Be” by the Beatles.
The incongruous juxtaposition of the original lyrics grated at first, but when he focused on the melody, he could see it working. Yet that wasn’t the point. Although a chance similarity of the melody was always possible, there was no way the pairing of the melodies of “Happy Birthday” and “Let It Be” was coincidental. Someone from Earth or at least with secondhand knowledge of English language songs had put the two melodies together. An intriguing possibility was that it was meant to be a message, like a flashing light or a siren demanding, “Hey! Stop! Look and listen! I’m from Earth! Is anyone else out there like me!?”
Someone grabbed Mark’s arm. He turned to find Maghen, still holding Alys, a concerned look on his wife’s face.
“What is it, Mark? I began to worry when you were gone so long. Gulgit and I have been trying to find you.”
He licked his lips, put a hand on her shoulder, and whispered in her ear.
“Listen to the song the girl at the fruit stand is singing to herself.”
Maghen looked at the girl, ten feet away, and turned her head so her left ear pointed to the girl. After the tune began to repeat, she looked back to Mark, an eyebrow raised to question what she was supposed to be hearing.
“It’s music from America. Where I came from. There’s no mistake.”
Her eyes widened. “Does that mean Amerika is on Ganolar? Maybe we can get there, instead of going all the way to Caedellium.”
“No, it must still be a long way away, but somehow music from Amerika has gotten to Sulako.”
“Then you have to ask her where she heard the song.”
“But what about Haldakit’s warning about talking to women?”
Maghen shook her head. “This is a market area, and I’ve seen women talking to men customers. Since the girl is the only person at this stall right now, it’s a reasonable assumption talking to her is acceptable in this setting.”
Mark walked up to the girl. She stopped stacking fruit and rattled off words.
Probably asking me if I want to buy something, he assumed.
He tried Suvalu. No luck. She said something in Sulakoan, then shook her head.
“We need Haldakit to translate,” said Mark. “Let’s go back to the house and see if he’s there.”
They spotted Gulgit standing on a crate, looking for them. Mark waved and explained his urgency to find Haldakit and return with him. The Rustalian shrugged his lack of understanding at Mark’s level of excitement, but he acquiesced. They quickly walked back to Zardoz’s house, only to find their guide absent.
Mark paced the courtyard for two hours before Haldakit returned. Gulgit explained to their guide that he was needed for translation, and they returned to the harbor.
The docks bustled as before, the brief rain having ended and the storm at sea not yet hitting land. Mark cursed when they arrived at the fruit stand, and, instead of the girl, an older woman was selling fruit to customers. Haldakit inquired about the girl. At first, the woman looked at them askance and was reticent to give any information. Only after Haldakit handed her a silver coin and explained that Mark wanted to know where the song came from that the girl was singing did the woman say the girl would be working the following morning.
The rest of the day and evening dragged for Mark. As much as he tried to pay attention to Maghen and Alys, he couldn’t keep his mind off the girl at the harbor and the implications of hearing Earth music on a Sulakoan dock.
The three men waited at the empty fruit stand the next morning when the older woman, a man, and the same girl arrived together with small carts loaded with fruits. Mark stood impatiently, as Haldakit talked with the three people longer than Mark thought they could possibly need to answer simple questions. He found out the reasons when Gulgit relayed what the guide had learned.
“They say the song is commonly known. The girl didn’t know where it came from, but the man said it probably originates from . . . well, I don’t know what you’d call it. Haldakit wasn’t clear. Sounds like a combination pub and performance site. Whatever it is, the place is famous and apparently unique in Iskadon. It
’s become well known the last two years because of so much new music being performed there. The man said he’s been there several times, and the girl probably learned the song after hearing him sing it.”
“Where is this place?”
“On the other side of the main part of Iskadon, near where more important classes of people live.”
“I need to go there to see if I can find any information about how this music got to Sulako.”
“What? You know we need to stay as unnoticed as possible. Near the harbor, no one pays attention to strangers, but if we go into the section of Iskadon where the pub—or whatever it’s called—is, we risk drawing attention.”
“I know, but this is something I have to do. Sorry, there’ll be no talking me out of it. If I want to find out any information about my home, this may be the best chance I’ll ever have.”
Gulgit sighed. “This is not a good idea. Is the slight chance you’ll find out anything useful worth the risk to all of us, including your family?”
“Trust me, Gulgit, it’s not something I propose lightly. It’s just something I have to do.”
“Zardoz isn’t going to be happy if he hears about this. I’ll talk with Haldakit to see if he’ll avoid telling his relative we’re wandering around other parts of the city.”
“Haldakit agreed,” Mark later told Maghen. “He can’t do it tonight, so we’ll go tomorrow morning. I had to give him the rest of the silver coins I’d exchanged for. He said taking me anyplace other than the harbor area was more than he originally agreed to. I admit he’s right. I’ve come to trust him as much as I can anyone I can’t speak to in the same language.”
“I have to believe this is that important to you, Mark. I’m just nervous about all three of you being gone and Alys and me here by ourselves.”
“Yusup and Tazeeb will be here. Neither one will let anything happen to you, and I don’t foresee a problem with Zardoz. He may not want us here, but my understanding is that once he granted us hospitality, even if grudgingly, it’s a matter of honor.
“And yes, seeing if I can find out about this song is important to me. Uncertainty was the problem back in Frangel when I thought I’d heard the name of my nation. However, there’s no doubt that this song is from my home. Also, the fact that it’s a combination of two different songs makes me think there’s a person who deliberately put the two tunes into a single song as a signal to anyone else from our homeland. It’s even possible that person is here in Iskadon, and I can meet them.”
He could see his wife was still troubled.
“I know neither of us wants to be separated here, but is there something else troubling you? Something about my homeland?”
“It’s just . . . oh, I don’t know . . . I suppose it occurred to me you must still want to find a way home, despite your saying you never expect to return there. That was before we had to flee Frangel and began trying to find refuge in Caedellium. Have you started to think our eventual destination might be Amerika, instead of Caedellium?”
“Nothing has changed. I’ll never see home again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. Not in every way, but wherever you grow up remains with you your whole life. I feel I have to investigate this. Maybe I’ll find out how I came to Frangel. Maybe I’ll find another person from Amerika. I don’t know what I’ll find out, but I can’t leave Iskadon without trying.”
Ever since he’d regained consciousness on the beach, he’d stuck to the simple story of a far-away home whose exact location he didn’t know. He said that he lacked details on how he’d gotten to Frangel. Most people accepted the story as within the realm of possibilities in the world they knew. None of the pins, springs, or weaving machines were innovations that needed more explanation of their origin than simply being a significant development of existing technology.
He’d wondered whether he’d ever tell Maghen or anyone else anything more. He didn’t see the need because it might risk getting reactions he couldn’t anticipate. However, that might change if he found another person from Earth. He didn’t know what they might have already revealed or might reveal after meeting Mark. What would he do if the other person said something to Maghen? Would he claim the other was lying or delusional? That might work if he were insistent. After all, wasn’t his explanation more plausible than aliens, spaceships, and another planet with technology likely to be attributed to magic or demons?
“Two more ships will dock that might have potential and one that doesn’t,” said Lasbani the next morning. They’d checked with him before heading to the Song of Irlan, the establishment whose name they’d learned from the man at the fruit stand. “One’s another Narthani, and I don’t believe you’ll be interested in that one. Besides . . . going north to Narthon doesn’t get you farther west, and most of the Narthani traffic west has been military from Narthon to whatever mischief they’re up to toward Landolin and the Iraquiniks.
“The most promising ship is Fuomi. There are indications it might be continuing on to Bandapara. However, they won’t dock until one of the Narthani ships leaves port. The authorities in Iskadon don’t like more than one ship from either Narthon or Fuomon in port at any time.
“The third ship is probably headed farther west than we can be sure of for the others. The problem is that it’s Buldorian. This one’s supposed to be a trader, but everyone knows any Buldorian ship is probably also a pirate whenever the opportunity occurs. I couldn’t find out what the Buldorian is carrying, which is unusual. My guess would be a cargo of slaves.
“The Buldorians have a cordial relationship with Sulako. They don’t raid our coasts or pirate our ships, and we provide another slave market, in case they have trouble with one or more of the Landolin kingdoms. Narthani meddling in Landolin has curtailed trading, so we’re seeing more Buldorians than in the past.
“Most people would say to stay away from getting transport on a Buldorian ship. I understand, given their reputation, but it all depends on how badly you want to leave Iskadon heading west.”
“Maybe not that bad,” said Mark. “We’ll check again with you tomorrow.”
“He’s right, Mark,” said Gulgit, as they left the harbor front and headed to the main part of Iskadon and the Song of Irlan. “It wasn’t common, but Buldorians used to raid as far east as Rumpas until the Narthani conquered Rustal. I’ve never dealt with them before, but the stories I’ve heard would make me use a Buldorian ship only as a last resort.”
“You’re probably right,” said Mark. “I’m just anxious to continue, and I know you must be anxious to return to Rustal. I’ve said several times how much I appreciate your help. If the time comes when you think you have to leave, I’ll understand. Now that I have a contact in Lasbani, we should be able to take care of ourselves, as long as Zardoz lets us use the top of his stable, and we mainly keep to the harbor where there are Suvalu speakers.”
“Well . . . let’s see how it goes for the next few days,” said Gulgit.
They walked from the harbor district into crowded streets meandering through two- and three-story buildings. The odors of so many crowds of people, horses, garbage, human waste, and strange foods created a blanket that would have felt suffocating seven years earlier. However, Mark had lived long enough in Kaledon and Brawsea to accept the conditions in the larger Anyar cities and treasure the atmospheric advantages of less urbanized places like Tregallon and the Toodman ranch.
As they walked, Mark made note of landmarks. There was always the chance he might become separated from Gulgit and Haldakit. He needed to be able to make his way back to Maghen and Alys on his own. An open garden area with an ornate building sporting a dome reminded him of a mosque. A burned-out block was being cleared of debris. A street crossed a bridge over a sluggishly moving stream with garbage floating on top. A block was lined with buildings painted yellow ochre. Shops bordered a cobblestone plaza with an inscripted spire in the middle. Several times, Haldakit stopped people to confirm they were headed in the right direction.
As the structures became more substantial, Haldakit said they were passing the main section of Iskadon but would avoid the government buildings. At mid-morning, two miles from the harbor, they came to a three-story building with inlaid tile so reflective of the sunlight that Mark reflexively shaded his eyes.
“This is it,” said Gulgit.
The building front was 200 feet across with a wide double door and no windows on the first floor. In contrast, the largest glass windows Mark had yet seen on Anyar lined both the second and the third floor. Banks of sixty-four 1-foot-square panes were mounted eight wide and high for each window. Some windows were being cleaned from the inside or the outside by young boys hanging from harnesses. The building matched the description given by the fruit seller at the harbor. A large sign hung to one side of the single door. It was in Sulakoan script, which none of the three of them could read, but Mark assumed it was the name of the tavern, music hall, or whatever the establishment was called—Song of Irlan.
With their arrival, Mark realized he hadn’t planned further than getting to where the hybrid song was played.
“Well, let’s go inside.”
As large and heavy as the door appeared, it swung open easily. They entered what resembled a theater foyer with ticket windows and signs with script. Several men walked through the room without looking at them before Haldakit stepped in front of a middle-aged man, forcing him to stop. Several back-and-forth exchanges and a hand pointing to an ornate series of doors led them into a large area divided into two sections. What they entered resembled a large tavern, with bars on two sides and tables covering the rest of the floor, except for an aisle. It led to what seemed to be a performance area with a stage against the far wall and several hundred chairs lined up in rows.
“Like the man told us—looks like a combination of tavern and performance hall,” said Gulgit. “Never seen them combined like this in Rustal, and Haldakit says it’s unusual in Sulako. What do you want to do next, Mark?”
Passages Page 51
