On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted

by Helena Puumala

  *****

  Santha was the Guest of Honour at that evening’s Circle. The Circle had swelled; many of the Base inhabitants had hauled out blankets, folding them into makeshift cushions, and had positioned themselves behind the twenty or so usual participants. Roxanna, as an established member, and the shortest person around, was in the innermost circle. Sari, who often did the rhyele-playing for The Circle, had ceded her instrument to Santha, who was sitting on a low stool in the middle, strumming it. Santha was not a professional quality rhyelist, that much was obvious from her hesitant strumming, but she was not shy, or embarrassed by her lack of perfection.

  “Ric called this a Tarangay drinking song,” she said with a low laugh as she began the first song, strumming the simple melody. “He said that he spent a bit of time jamming with the Troupe after the show; they were quite happy to come across a local music enthusiast and very willing to teach him a few tunes. One of the fellows was from a musical world called Tarangay, a world of oceans and islands—and a lot of bars which always employed musicians to play and sing for the patrons.”

  “It sounds like a place that I’d enjoy visiting,” Roxanna murmured to Cathe who was sitting next to her.

  “You and me both,” Cathe responded in a low voice. “And not just for the music. The oceans and the islands sound wonderful.”

  “Hush,” the person next to her muttered, and they fell into silence as Santha began to sing, tentatively at first, but more confidently as she got into the song.

  She sang the chorus first, teaching the words to her listeners, telling them that after each verse she wanted her audience to join in singing the chorus.

  “That’s how Ric said that the entertainers did it at the show in Rivertown,” she said, laughing gaily when The Circle had sung the chorus with her for the first time.

  “That’s how my friend, Katie, used to do it with the kids on the slave ship,” Roxanna whispered to Cathe. “I guess that she knew what she was doing.”

  Santha had them singing enthusiastically very soon, first only the chorus of the rollicking sea shanty. Roxanna could join into the singing quickly; thanks to her node she had no trouble picking up on the words after the first go-around. When Santha suggested that her listeners join in singing the verses too, she was among the first to sing every word—and she had the wording perfect. She sang them at Cathe to help her to pick them up, too, although that took more time, in spite of the woman’s clear willingness to learn. Within a half-hour Santha had taught the song to the whole (enlarged) Circle, and had the crowd singing with her, enjoying themselves.

  “Hey, I need something to keep my throat from getting dry,” she finally shouted. “Is there any of that fine beer around for a thirsty musician?”

  Laughing, one of the men at the back headed towards the dining area.

  “I think that there’s always a mug of ale for an entertainer,” he shouted as he went off. “Just wait for it, Santha. I don’t want you going anywhere; I heard that you had two songs to teach us!”

  After Santha had gulped down half a mug of beer, she picked up Sari’s rhyele again.

  “This song is a little bit more complex; Ric simplified it for me enough that I could manage it,” she laughed. “Even after a small drink of ale!”

  As she started strumming, Roxanna found herself tensing up. She knew this song! She leaned towards the rhyele-player as she waited for her to begin singing, wondering what she was going to hear. She knew what she ought to hear, but this was Vultaire; these people would not sing the song in English, having no nodes to help them with the translation. Then Santha sang the words for the chorus, and Roxanna was shocked at how closely the Vultairian version resembled the original:

  “This is our mudball, our dear mudball / Our dear world, our home / Ours to care for, and to love and to cherish / And ours to roam. / I promise I’ll try to look after our world....”

  Roxanna scrambled up from the floor, and began to thread her way to the back.

  “Are you okay?” Cathe hissed at her, looking concerned.

  “Have to use the facilities,” she mumbled in reply, and people behind her made room for her to scramble by them, even while they were intent on the song.

  Once she was out of The Circle, Roxanna half ran to the large communal washroom with its toilet cubicles. She slipped into one of those to sit and stare at nothing while her heart pounded inside her chest.

  It had been Murra who had passed on Katie’s message to her and Ingrid. Murra had helped Katie escape the slave ship in the company of the Federation Peace Officer whom the slavers had been keeping comatose under mind-tangler, in the same room that the three young women and preadolescent Murra had shared with a couple of dozen children. Murra had paid for his presumption, although not as heavily as he would have if the lizard-man, the Xeonsaur, who had apparently also been in on the plot, hadn’t broken some kind of a mental restraint to rise up to defend him. There had been a deal between the lizard-man and the Ship Captain: the Xeonsaur had agreed to keep navigating for the slavers only if they left Murra alone. Roxanna shuddered as she sat on the toilet. In his anger Captain Gorsh had come after her and Ingrid, and had used some kind of a machine to draw the contents of her brain out through the nodal contact point; she had wondered if she was losing her mind while it was going on, but that had not happened. Even as her node had spilled everything, it had shielded her mental faculties from damage; thank goodness for that. And all that Gorsh had found out, besides a lot of information that was useless to him, was that Katie and Murra had protected her and Ingrid by keeping them ignorant of the escape plan.

  “She said to remember ‘The Mudball Song’,” Murra had told her and Ingrid when they had awakened the morning that Katie had left. “’When you hear it, I’ll be somewhere near, hopefully with help,’ that’s what she said.”

  And here was Roxanna, having just heard the first words of the chorus to “The Ode to a Mudball”. Sung in Vultairian, by a runner of messages from Bouldertown, who had learned it from another runner, who had learned it from off-worlders in Rivertown. Dare she hope? Had Katie made it off the planet that the slave ship had landed on, and found out somehow that some of the captives had been sold to Vultairians? Was she one of the off-world musicians who were even now in the province which bordered the Underground Base? Or was it all just a coincidence, the song having travelled to Vultaire in some other fashion?

  Roxanna left the cubicle, and rinsed her burning eyes at one of the taps. Then she went back out into the large hall, wondering if she could bear to go and join The Circle festivities again.

  Even as she was trying to decide, Jorun and Cathe approached her, Jorun carrying a pitcher of beer, and Cathe with three mugs hanging from her fingers.

  “How about if we sit in my office for a while,” Jorun said, scrutinizing Roxanna’s face. “I know that you’re not normally a beer drinker, Roxanna, but Cathe thought that the look on your face when you left The Circle called for something a little stronger than herbal tea.”

  The tall Vultairians flanked her protectively during the short walk to the office. Once there, Jorun cleared off the end of the table at which he and Roxanna usually worked, while Cathe hauled another chair there. Then she poured three mugfuls of beer for them while Jorun deftly directed Roxanna to the end of the table while the other two sat across from each other.

  Roxanna reached for the mug in front of her and gulped down a mouthful of the beer.

  “Thanks,” she muttered. “It does hit the spot.”

  “What happened there?” Cathe asked her gently. “I know something did, but I don’t understand what.”

  “That song,” Roxanna said, her voice shaking, “I recognized it. It’s the Mudball Song.”

  “That’s what Santha called it—after you had left,” Jorun said, his eyes alert, darting between Roxanna and Cathe.

  Cathe nodded.

  “She said that according to Ric, the Troupe members had called it one of their all time favourites
. That they could always count on crowd participation when they played that one.”

  “The kids on the slave ship loved it, too,” Roxanna said, her voice unsteady. “Even the children who were from a different world, though the song was from ours. Katie, she was the oldest of us, the only adult, started it. She had done sing-alongs for children as a part of her job—she had run a children’s program at a resort, back home—and she figured that was a good way to keep the kids entertained, because there was nothing for them to play with, no toys or anything. And the kids loved that song; they would ask for it over and over and over.”

  She drew a ragged breath; then let it out again. Cathe and Jorun sat beside her in silence, waiting for her to continue.

  “And then Katie escaped, in the company of this man that the slavers had drugged, and kept in our quarters. We found out later that he was some kind of a galactic law enforcement officer, a Federation Peace Officer, the slavers called him, who had fallen into their hands, and they were furious that Katie had managed to spring him, heaven only knows how—Ingrid and I certainly didn’t, because, for our own safety, she had kept us out of the loop. Murra, the alien boy who had helped her escape, told us, before he was dragged in for questioning, that Katie had told us all ‘to remember the Mudball Song’, that the song would be her signature. If ever we heard it, it would mean that she would be somewhere near, trying to find us, and to bring help.”

  “And you just heard the Mudball Song,” Jorun finished for her.

  “Yeah.” Roxanna found that she had to brush tears from her eyes before swallowing another mouthful of beer. “Only it’s been so long since I last saw her; it must be well over a year, by Vultairian reckoning, as well as by that of my home world. Ingrid and I thought that maybe she had died trying to escape, or to get help, or something; that still might be true, for all I know.”

  “You mean that the song may have a life of its own, have been passed from singer to singer across half the Federation by now?” Jorun queried.

  “That’s possible,” he added at Roxanna’s nod, “but don’t buy trouble until it has come to you. We don’t know that; for all you know, your Katie might be one of the musicians who are touring Ithcar right now.”

  “Santha said that they were coming here before continuing on to the Capital City,” Roxanna said, her node supplying her with the information.

  “Yeah, and when I talked to her alone for a short while, before it was time for The Circle, she told me that Hector Carmaks had stressed in his message that I was to talk to the off-worlders. That they had something to say that I would find important and interesting.”

  “Do you think,” Cathe broached carefully, “that if this friend of yours finds you—or you find her—that you’ll get to go back home again?”

  Roxanna sighed, and shook her head.

  “No. To tell you the truth, I think that my home world is out of reach for good. With this translation node in my neck—” she touched the little lump under her left ear, “—I don’t think that there’s any way that I could fit back into the society that I come from. At least you Vultairians know that there is a universe full of inhabited planets out there, even if only some of the Exalted ever get to see any of it. On my world, people had only begun to understand that we were not the only sentient life in the galaxy. If I went back there today, I’d just sound like a raving lunatic every time I opened my mouth. I miss my mother, and I wish there was some way to let her know that I still exist, and am making out, if not well, at least adequately. I hated leaving Ingrid in the brothel, but I knew that there was no way that she would desert the green girls—she’s like that, and I admire that about her, but I’m not like she is. I’d love to see Katie again, and Murra, and the other children who were with us; they had all become my friends.”

  She stopped, and sipped her beer.

  “I’m rambling, right?” she then asked with a wry grin. “Not making much sense, am I?”

  “Oh, I think you’re making a lot of sense,” Jorun protested. “The way I see it, you were snatched out of your life, without anyone asking whether you wanted to go or not, and taken away from your world with a group of other people who became your friends during the time on the slave ship. Then you were dumped out again and sold, to our lovely brothel-operators. Understandably, you took the opportunity to get away from the bordello, but the trouble is that you haven’t truly escaped. You’re stuck here on this Base—like a number of the other people are—afraid to show yourself outside of it, because the Exalted will recognize you and drag you back to the brothel, kicking and screaming, if they catch even a glimpse of you. It’s not an easy way to live even for those of us for whom Vultaire is home. As for you—well, I worry about you at times. I think you’re managing admirably, considering the circumstances, and if there was any way that I could send you off to look for your fortune among the stars, I’d do it in a second.”

  “But who would do all the calculations and translations for you then?” Roxanna asked, managing a ghost of a smile.

  “Oh, they’d get done the same way they got done before we gained your talents,” Jorun replied, grinning. “Or they just wouldn’t get done. No matter.”

  “Perhaps the off-world musicians could help you,” Cathe suggested. “Maybe they could hide you ‘in plain sight’ like they hid the Klenser boy, and take you with them.”

  Roxanna shook her head.

  “Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid. I know what I can do when it comes to recognizing faces that I’ve seen, and the Exalted have the same advantage. I don’t know why it worked for the Klenser, except that maybe sometimes the Exalted don’t communicate that well with each other, but I’m sure the word is out that a short, little black girl ran away from a brothel in the Capital City, and every young woman who looks even remotely like me is carefully scrutinized by one of the Malaudins.”

  “I agree,” Jorun concurred. “I’m sure Exalted who are familiar with your appearance have already taken a long look at every short, dark woman in Port City. According to scuttlebutt, the Warrions do, at times, cooperate with the Laggos Family who run the Capital City.”

  “Still, we’ll have to tell these off-worlders about you. They may have some ideas for helping with your dilemma,” Cathe insisted.

  “It’s certainly something to keep in mind,” Roxanna agreed. “Though it’ll be awfully disappointing if I find that I don’t even like these people, if they turn out to be idiots who picked up ‘The Mudball Song’ in some bar on Tarangay.”

  “Something like Keros,” Cathe said, keeping an innocent face.

  Roxanna grinned. “Something like Keros,” she repeated, then continued: “Aw come on, let’s try not to shit on Keros. He’s just a fool who wants Jorun here to think well of him.”

  “Who, unfortunately, has the most annoying manner of courting my approval,” Jorun added with a chuckle. “However, the closer I keep him to me, the less trouble he makes, so I try to endure him.”

  “Ah, that explains it. I figured that you had a reason for letting him be your Aide,” Roxanna said. “You seem to always have good reasons for doing what you do.”

  “Thanks for that, Roxanna.” Jorun patted her hand. “It’s good to hear that you have faith in my good sense.”

  “We all do,” Cathe added loyally. “All of us here at the Base, and quite a good portion of the Underground Movement outside of it. That’s why you get to do all the work of running the show.”

  “Well, as long as the rest of you fetch and carry when I require it,” were Jorun’s final words on the subject.

  *****

  The following days slipped by in a minor uproar. Santha left to run back to Bouldertown early the next morning; Roxanna was one of the few people to see her eat a hurried breakfast before heading out. Many of the younger Base inhabitants were sleeping in after entertaining themselves with games and cards late into the night, and partaking of more beer than was good for them, so there were sleeping bodies on pallets all around the hall, ev
en after the day had officially begun.

  Jorun arrived at his office about a half-hour after Roxanna had already dug into her latest task; he was carrying a mug of herbal tea, and one of the meat-and-bread rolls that were the usual morning meal of the sedentary among the Base workers.

  “I’d tell the Brewery Boys to put their beer under lock and key,” he said to Roxanna with a twinkle in his eye, “except that Keros apparently gambled and imbibed late into the night, and now we probably won’t have to put up with him until, if we’re lucky, tomorrow.”

  “Unless he decides to crawl in here at about mid-afternoon, hung over and more annoying than ever,” Roxanna objected, grinning.

  “In which case I’ve got the moral high ground, and can send him off to do some menial physical labour, like helping to split firewood,” Jorun answered with a wicked laugh. “Although the outdoor work crews might not appreciate the help.”

  “So is that the hardest part of your job,” Roxanna asked curiously, “trying to keep everyone reasonably happy, and getting along?”

  “That’s the impossible part of my job,” Jorun countered, sighing. “We Vultairians aren’t much good at getting along with one another. Hector reminds me of that every time I talk to him, and complain that I’m about ready to throw in the towel. He’s always telling me that I’m performing miracles among the dissidents, keeping them from fighting among themselves even as much as I manage to do so. Lots of the Exalted are fanning the fires, he says, out to make my job as difficult as they can. But the Oligarchs also fight among themselves, so the Vultairian fractiousness sometimes works in our favour. According to Hector, about all the Four Hundred Families can agree on these days, is the necessity of keeping the rest of the population ignorant and under control.

  “And then he points out that he and the small group of Families that he is allied with, don’t even agree with that! They think the whole planet would be better off if we returned to the ancient democratic practices which gave all people of every class some small say in how this world is run.”