The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  ‘I thought it was a transposition program.’

  ‘No reason you should have known it was a translator. But the translation is there, in the box. An actual conversation between a person and a Presence. A conversation that makes a kind of sense, too, which is remarkable considering that it’s a first of its kind. That’s what we were giving Lim Terree. That’s why he went to such lengths to get the score from you, Ferrence. He knew what we had.’

  ‘God!’ Shocked silence once more.

  ‘So, you see,’ she said, ‘we have to do something. And all I can think of is what I said before. Spread the word as widely as possible, assuming we could even get access to the com-net, and then hide out until the fallout is over.’

  ‘That wouldn’t work,’ said Jamieson.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter that you know the Presences are sentient. You have no witness. The information you’ve got could have been faked. So long as the CHASE Commission is rigged to give a report of nonsentience, BDL can depend on the military to enforce that ruling, no matter what the truth is. The troopers don’t care. Even if you told people and some of them believed you, it wouldn’t do any good. BDL would stifle them.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Clarin.

  Jamieson gave her a challenging look.

  ‘No, really Reb. You haven’t taken it all in yet. Listen to what the woman said! She talked to the Enigma. It talked back. If we can actually understand the words of the Presences, there are some very great voices here on Jubal that simply can’t be stifled!’

  9

  Bird-cloud, Silver-seam, Sun-bright, Star of the Mountain, Blue Glory Child of the Twelfth Generation, listening in the quiet of the evening….

  To: Bondri Gesel the Wide-eared, Messenger of the Presences.

  Bondri singing, along with his troupe in four part harmony, to the outer Silver-seam, the skin, as it were, of the great Presence: ‘Peace, calm of wind, flow of water, gentleness of tree-frond turning, joy of sunlight, contentment of moonlight and star.’

  Which did not serve. Silver-seam, Bird-cloud, Star of the Mountain, and so forth returned the song in a series of aching anharmonics: ‘Discontinuity. Distant: shore thundering. Close, whispering of change. Proliferation of Loudsingers. Disturbance of one’s edges and bits. Fingers itch. Noises in air and earth. Discomfort in the roots. Confusion. Query to Bondri: establish causation?

  Bondri the Wide-eared, who had traveled fifty days with his troupe to carry a message to the inner Silver-seam, now paused, his song-sack in limp folds, shaken to the center of his being.

  Prime Priest Favel, bent and trembling on his poor old legs, whispered, ‘Has this ever happened before?’

  Bondri flapped his ears in negation, signaling quiet to the troupe. ‘No Great One has ever asked such questions before. No Great One has really seemed aware of us before, aged one. What shall I sing?’

  ‘Equivocate,’ suggested the Prime Priest. ‘Say nothing much at some length. Tell Silver-seam you will seek reasons.’

  Bondri sang in canon form, which allowed the troupe to follow his lead. After going on at some length, Bondri concluded: ‘Causation currently unknown. Who knows what passes among the Loudsingers? Who can smell the sunlight? Who can taste the wind? Thy messengers will ascertain.’

  He had uttered no word of the inner message he had come so far to deliver, even though it was a brief one: ‘Red Bird to the top of Silver Mountain.’ Most of the inner messages the viggies carried were no more lengthy than this particular one, which had come from the Great Blue Tooth, Horizon Loomer, Mighty Hand, the Presence humankind called the East Jammer. Prime Priest Favel, who had learned human speech in captivity among the Loudsingers in his youth, was fond of naming the Great Ones with human titles, using human words that he said were thought-provoking in their very imprecision. There had seemed to be no point in attempting to deliver the message that East Jammer had sent. Inner Silver-seam would not even have heard it so long as its skin was quivering like this or while this strange questioning was happening – though the latter seemed stilled, at least for the moment.

  ‘Should I try to quiet it for the message?’ Bondri hummed to the priest.

  He received a gesture in reply, why not.

  Bondri swelled his throat into a great, ruby balloon and sang again to the skin, sang of calm, signaling the troupe to begin an antiphon on the theme of evening, one composed by Bondri’s own ancestor in a season of incessant and troubling storm. It was one of the most efficacious of the surface songs. The troupe composed itself for best projection and howled harmoniously, throats swelled into sonorous rotundity, putting all their energy into it at length and to little effect. The very air quivered with annoyance. Bird-cloud, Silver-seam, Sun-bright, Star of the Mountain, and all – known among humankind as the North Watcher – was not tranquil and would not become so.

  ‘Cacophony, dissonance, melodic lines falling apart,’ whispered a part leader to Bondri. ‘Great Bird-cloud is annoyed with his messengers.’ High Priest Favel stood to one side, bent and waiting, making no comment, though Bondri threw him a nervous glance.

  There was no help for it. Bondri stood forward and chirped a staccato phrase. Tumble down threatens here-about, dangerous for viggy-folk, go and stay away, away a time, quick, quick.’ He turned to the old priest. ‘Your perceptiveness must come quickly.’

  This was the sense of Bondri’s message, though these were not the words. The words had other meanings – leader to troupe, experienced singer to novices in the presence of a Prime Priest of the people – and there were implications of the time of day and the season, modifications of language required by the site in which the words were spoken. When one of the Companions of the Gods quoted another, there was no need for the hearer to ask when or to whom the words were spoken or in what weather or circumstance. The words themselves said it all. The word taroo – go – was sung in the early morning. It became tarou at midmorning and tarouu at noon. It was itaroo sung in sunlight and etaroo sung in light mist. Atarouualayum conveyed the going of a mated pair, sans giligee, at midmorning in driving rain, somewhat north of the Shadowed Cliffs … in spring.

  So now, Bondri’s words conveyed a chill autumn evening in the vicinity of the North Watcher during which a familial troupe of viggies – males, females, giligees, and young, all, except the very newest trade daughters, sharing the same thought patterns – had approached the Great One to deliver a message but could not get past the skin to deliver it and were putting themselves in peril if they didn’t move. Bondri felt compelled to reissue the warning to which Prime Priest Favel had not yet harkened.

  ‘Your (autumn chilled but most valued) perceptiveness? The (mighty but not quite trustworthy) Presence in whose (arbitrary and sometimes simply vengeful) decisions we trust grows (dangerously and maliciously) agitated. Best (imperative) we depart.’

  The priest flicked his elbows in agreement, and Bondri made the wing sign in turn to the pouchmate pathfinders of the troupe, who slithered off at once down an almost invisible track along the side of the North Watcher. This was a proven track on which movement was possible without alerting the Great One. The crystalline structure beneath it had no fractures, no vacancies, no dislocations, no planar defects or interstitials – none of those deviations from uniform crystalline structure that in the Presences served the function served by neurons and neurotransmitters in fleshly creatures. Not that the viggies, or as they called themselves, ‘etaromimi,’ knew that. They did know that the track was solid, stolid, and without sensation. In a few hundred yards it would debouch upon a pocket of safe soil where a small grove of trees provided a place to rest. The Prime Priest was very old and needed surcease.

  ‘Is far enough?’ hummed one of the troupe. ‘Silver-seam can make great destruction, very far.’

  Bondri was by no means sure it was far enough, but it was as far as the Prime Priest was likely to get, given the state of his legs. They had been broken in his youth and had ne
ver healed properly. While they were broken, he had been captured by the Loudsingers and held captive long enough to learn their language. Much later one of the young Loudsingers, blessed be his familial patterns of thought forever, had kindly released Favel to his people. That Loudsinger’s name was Lim Ferrence, and his was one of the names of honor whose patterns were recalled by Bondri’s troupe during times of recollection.

  Behind them on the slope, several of the Great One’s fingers blew their tips with a crash and volley of tinkling glass.

  ‘ ’Lings,’ murmured Favel, giving the fingers their human name. ‘ ’Lings.’

  None of the debris came near the viggies, and Bondri sighed in relief. The Great Ones were not always sensible about assigning fault. If a viggy did something to displease them, their skins or fingers might kill quite another viggy in retaliation. It was almost as though the skins did not know the difference between one individual and another. Or did not know there was a difference. They were the same with the Loudsingers. Sometimes the Great Ones would incubate annoyance for a very long time, exercising vengeance long after the original culprit had gone away or died. At least, this is the way it seemed to Bondri, even though the Prime Priest told him otherwise.

  ‘It is the difference between their insides and outsides,’ panted the Prime Priest, making Bondri realize he had been vocalizing. The surfaces of their minds are shallow and quick to irritate. They slap at us as we twitch at a woundfly, unthinking. In the Depths, where the great thoughts move at the roots of the mountains, they are slow to reason and, I believe, largely unconscious of us. I have often thought there is little connection between the two parts of them.’

  ‘Except for the way Silver-seam behaved tonight,’ caroled Bondri. ‘Strangely.’

  ‘Strangely indeed! It seemed well aware of us, did it not? As though some midmind had come awake.’

  It had indeed seemed quite aware of them, a very uncomfortable thought. ‘Blessed be (all Presences, large and small, their fingers and skin-parts) they,’ said Bondri, antennae erect and curved inward over his head, warding away any ill fortune that the priest’s remark might otherwise attract.

  ‘Oh, by all means,’ sighed Favel. ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I assist your (aged and infirm and overly chilled) perceptiveness?’

  ‘If you would be so (gracious in this season) kind, youngster. I get creakier with every moon.’

  ‘We would be honored to carry you.’

  ‘That much is not necessary. A shoulder to lean on would be welcome.’

  The troupe sped down the track, moving as quickly as possible consonant with the requisite care. Dislodging bits of crystal trash often made the Great Ones very angry, particularly if it was done noisily. Pieces had to be picked up gently and set aside, and that took time, but long practice made the troupe both quick and silent.

  By the time dark fell, they had reached the grove of trees.

  ‘Where are we?’ the Prime Priest asked, settling himself into a soft pocket of earth and fluffing his fur to retain body heat. ‘I do not recognize this route.’

  ‘Back side of Silver-seam,’ Bondri reported. ‘Just east of the Tineea Singers, Those-Who-Welcome-Without-Meaning-It, named by the Loudsingers, the False Eagers. An easy transit, your perceptiveness.’

  ‘Perhaps by tomorrow, an easy transit. At the moment, an impossible one. I cannot move farther. Have we food?’

  ‘Wet food and dry. Comfort yourself while we prepare.’

  Preparation took little time. There were edible stalks to peel, grain heads to thresh, a few seed pods to open with a sharpened bone. It was not viggy bone. The bones of the viggies were fragile and light, and in any case the ritual of disposal made viggy bone inaccessible for any useful purpose. On the other hand, the hard strong bones of the Loudsingers and their animals were often found at the roots of the Great Ones and were much sought after. Viggies had been anatomizing human and mule corpses for generations, and there was little they did not know about human anatomy. The giligees, particularly, were interested in this knowledge. Sometimes among the wreckage of Loudsingers, animals, and wagons, there were bits of metal, also. Sharp or toothed edges made from this material were even more treasured. Bondri carried several bits of metal in his vestigial pouch just below his song-sack, gifts from his people, mostly salvaged at the foot of Highmost Darkness, Lord of the Gyre-Birds, Smoke Master, the one the humans called Black Tower.

  The Prime Priest munched on peeled stalks of settler’s brush and made polite conversation, as befit a time of food sharing. ‘One could almost forgive the humans (outlanders, weird strangers who say unmentionable and disgusting things with words that are not true, thereby incurring the taboo) for coming to Our-Land-of-the-Gods,’ he sang. ‘They have brought good food.’

  ‘Some of it,’ admitted Bondri, whose troupe had only recently acquired the habit of raiding human fields and gardens. ‘The little seeds at the top of the long stems are good, even though they are only ripe one time of the year. And the various thick roots and sweet leaves are good, and those juicy bulbs that grow on their trees. The big seeds aren’t good. Brou they call them.’

  ‘I don’t think they use the big seeds for food.’

  ‘I’ve heard that sung,’ Bondri conceded. ‘I’ve heard they mash the big seeds at a place near the sea, mash them, and put them in containers, and send them away in boats. Our fisher-kin-who-run-from-the-sea-bringing-fish say the mashed seeds go off-world.’

  ‘That is true,’ the Prime Priest acknowledged in a minor key. ‘During my captivity, I saw it with my own eyes. The Loudsingers eat brou to make them cheerful.’

  ‘They do not make us cheerful. The big seeds are very dangerous.’

  ‘Arum,’ the Prime Priest nodded, his throat sack swelling and collapsing in sadness. ‘I lost all of one pouch to them. The pouch boss went down into the Loudsinger fields. She was at that age where they taste everything, and her pouchmates followed her. One taste and fff. Hopeless. Nothing could be done.’ He sat silently, mourning. When a mated pair and the giligee could produce a pouchful only every six or seven years, the loss of an entire set of pouchmates was difficult to bear. Next time the chosen giligee would go well back into the country to incubate, well away from deepsoil. And the giligee would stay there until his daughters were of reasonable age, beyond that curious, mouthing stage when everything went between the back teeth. It was difficult to live away from deepsoil, but one or more of the older children could go with the giligee, as helper. There was always etaromimi-bush, called by the Loudsingers settler’s brush, if there was nothing else.

  ‘Your perceptiveness?’

  ‘Yes, Bondri.’

  ‘You haven’t told me where you wish to go.’

  ‘The gods are distressed. You see it for yourself, Bondri, First Singer, Troupe Leader. Just as the North Watcher – Silver-seam and so forth – just as it quivers and blows its fingers, so do other of the Great Ones. High-most Darkness, Lord of the Gyre-Birds, Smoke Master, the one the humans call Black Tower has been particularly disturbed. And now this questioning? This complaint of tumult! Who can it be who makes this tumult? Who are the sensible creatures? There are only three possibilities. The gods themselves. Or the Loudsingers. Or us. Only we three are sensible creatures to make causes of things. Can there be any other answer?’

  Bondri admitted there could be no other.

  The Priest chewed thoughtfully, rubbing at his legs with his bony fingers. ‘I go toward a place of meeting. Prime Priests will be there from south and north. We will talk of this. It is very disturbing. One does not know what truth is.’

  Bondri shuffled his feet back and forth in the dust. ‘Is it possible, perceptiveness, that it is the gods themselves?’

  The Prime Priest waved his ears in negation. ‘Nothing is certain. It could be that this confusion emanates from the Mad One. Song has come that the Mad One spoke to a Loudsinger.’

  There was a sharply indrawn breath from the viggies, who had been eaves
dropping politely, trilling an occasional phrase antiphonally to indicate attention. A Presence had broken the ban! Spoken to a Loudsinger! Done what every viggy was forbidden to do!

  ‘How? If the Loudsinger had not the words of calm for the skin and the words of greeting for the inner one?’

  ‘There is rumor,’ Favel sang, ‘that the Loudsinger, a female Loudsinger, had the words.’

  ‘How did she come by them?’ The entire troupe held its breath, waiting for the answer to this.

  The old viggy sighed. ‘Do not ask what you already know must be true. If she had them, she had them from us. Are we not etaromimi, Goers Between the Gods? Have the trees suddenly taken up singing?’

  The old priest had used the humorous mode, which called for appreciative laughter, though with the intonation requiring slight shame, and this evoked an embarrassed cadenza from the troupe. Now he waved his ears at them, a cautionary gesture. ‘We had best giggle (melodically) now. Later may be only occasions for (disharmonic) sorrow.’

  ‘There was that time,’ Bondri intoned, the words conveying a time some fifty years before, in the spring of the year, when one troupe had been surprised by a (foreign, weird, off-world) creature. ‘He had a (noise creator, song stealer, abomination) machine.’

  ‘Do any now live who remember that time?’ crooned the troupe in unison and with deep reverence.

  ‘None,’ hymned the priest, closing the litany of recollection. ‘Only the holy words remember.’ The words were quite enough, of course. Though individual viggies died, words were immortal. Words and melodies and the lovely mathematics of harmony, these were the eternal things, the things of the gods. So long as they were remembered accurately – and the Prime Priests had the job of remembering them all – everything could be reconstructed as it had happened at the time. The surprise. The fleeing. The creeping back to see what the strange creature was doing. The horror as they heard the stolen song, captive in the machine, the attempt to rescue the song – to no avail. Several had died in the effort, but the song was still captive. Captive, no doubt, until this very day. And now, perhaps that same (grieved for, sorrowed over) song had been used against its will to speak to the Mad One, the Presence Without Innerness, the Killer Without Cause, called by the Loudsingers, the Enigma.