The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  After that was pain as the Loudsinger tried to set his legs, then less pain, and finally only the songbreaking agony of loneliness as he waited to die.

  ‘Why did you not die, Favel?’ Bondri had asked him later.

  ‘I was too sick to die,’ he had replied. ‘My brain-bird could not settle on it.’ And it was true. Despite the ban, despite the taboos, Favel had not died. Perhaps curiosity had kept him alive.

  Favel learned Loudsinger talk. It gave him something to do, and it was not particularly difficult. One word served many purposes. No word was particularly precise. The Loudsingers made no attempt to find truth, each merely asserting his or her own vision of history. ‘I remember it this way,’ one would say in a disagreeable tone. ‘You’re wrong, this is the way it went,’ making Favel writhe at the rude arrogance of such statements.

  The man was named Mark Anderton, and he kept Favel in a cage made of stuff Favel could not bite through. Favel considered the question of taboo and finally allowed himself to chitter words and phrases at him in order to get food.

  ‘Listen to my little frog-monkey,’ Anderton would say. ‘Like a ruckin’ p’rot, in’t it.’

  ‘What’s a p’rot?’ someone always asked.

  ‘Urthian bird. Talks just like people,’ he would say, with a guffaw. ‘I got me a Jubal p’rot.’

  ‘See the pretty viggy,’ they would chant, stuffing bits of meat through the bars at Favel. ‘See the pretty viggy.’

  ‘Pretty viggy,’ Favel would say, without expression, grabbing for the meat, while the Loudsingers broke themselves in half laughing. He was breaking the taboo by not dying, but he was not breaking the taboo when he used words. They did not know he understood what he said.

  ‘Ugliest thing on six worlds,’ one said. ‘Pretty viggy my pet ass.’

  Favel had never considered whether he was pretty or not. It wasn’t something generally considered important. Trees were beautiful, of course. Presences, most of them, were beautiful. Voices were beautiful, some more and some less. But viggies?

  It was a new thought, one that perplexed him. Had he thought Trissa was beautiful? After much thought he admitted to himself that he had. Yes, the sight of her had gladdened his song. She had been beautiful.

  In time Mark Anderton had tired of having a viggy and had sold Favel to another man, who had sold him in turn to Miles Ferrence as a gift for his older son.

  There were two sons – and how weirdly strange it had seemed to Favel to have sons – and a woman and a man in Miles Ferrence’s troupe, and by that time Favel had figured out how it was the Loudsingers got by without giligees. There was something strange about the Ferrence troupe, something wrong. Some days there was such ugliness in the voices that Favel buried his head under his arms, trying not to hear. Favel’s cage was hidden on a high shelf for a time. Then he was given to the younger boy, but the older boy took the cage into the night and set him free.

  ‘I am Lim Ferrence,’ he had told Favel. ‘I am not debauched. I am Lim Ferrence, and I can sing as well as anybody, better than anybody, and I am not debauched, and if I can’t have you, nobody can have you, so you go back where you came from….’

  As soon as he was far enough from the cage to make recapture unlikely, Favel had stood forth and sung his thanks to Lim Ferrence, seeing the blank oval of the boy’s face staring into the darkness, incredulous at this torrent of song. ‘I owe you a debt,’ Favel had sung. ‘I owe you a debt unto the tenth generation…. ’ He had sung it in Loudsinger language, breaking the taboo. A debt of honor took precedence over any taboo, but afterward he had wondered if the young Loudsinger had even understood.

  The debt should have been paid long ago. Why hadn’t that debt been paid?

  Favel mused, hearing the soft sounds of the giligee who was grating the bark, the young ones who were pressing the sap, the gatherer females who were sorting through their pouches of seeds and roots. The sound of a troupe. How long had he wandered before he found a troupe once more, a troupe that would take him in?

  Long, memory told him. ‘Long, lonely,’ he sang, his voice rising over the troupe-song below him, so that the others muted their voices and sang with him, letting him know they knew the truth of what he sang. Long, lonely, and wandering. He had not paid the debt then because he could not. He had not the means.

  Until he met the troupe of Bondri Nettl, which took him in and learned his memories as though he had been a young trade daughter. Because he had a retentive memory and knew the language of the Loudsingers, he became a priest, then a Prime Priest. Now there were several troupes who knew bits of the Loudsinger language and viggies of many troupes who knew the memories of Favel, who knew the long loneliness of Loudsinger captivity – though they would never know the truth of it, for Favel did not know that truth himself. Sometimes Favel wished he could sing to Lim Ferrence and Miles and the younger son, Tasmin, and the strange woman, Thalia. Perhaps they would have seen enough of what really happened to make a truthful telling.

  Bondri Nettl was gone now. Bondri Gesel was his heir. And though he had searched for the troupe of Nonfri Fermil, their paths had not crossed in all the years. There had never been another like Trissa, with the frilled ear edges and song that stopped his heart.

  There was a flutter in his mind as he thought of this. A little flutter, as though something were trapped there. He understood, all at once, without any preliminary suspicions, why it was the troupe had stopped and why it was he had been given this comfortable couch on which to rest.

  Below, where the members of the troupe nibbled and drank, the giligee heard a silence where the Prime Priest had lain. She looked up to meet his eyes.

  ‘Tell Bondri Gesel the Prime Priest believes it is time to depart,’ Favel said, trying with all his mind to remember everything, absolutely everything he had ever done.

  Bondri heard. In this sparsely grown location, it would not be a fully ceremonial departure, but neither would it lack care. Bondri was not one to scamp the niceties, nor would he allow slackness in his troupe.

  Within moments some of the young ones were leaping off to gather fronds for the Couch of Departure, and even before they came leaping back, waving the fronds above them, the old priest had sighed, sagged, and bent his head into the posture of submission. When the fronds had been laid out, he staggered toward them, disdaining the assistance members of the troupe tried to give him.

  ‘I hope that giligee of yours is halfway skillful,’ he hummed to Bondri as he laid himself down. ‘Making no bloody mess of it.’

  ‘Very skillful, old one. It did my own giligee not long ago. It was very clean. You, yourself drank from her cup.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be glad of that. I’ve seen some botched ones in my time.’

  ‘No fear, Prime Priest. The giligee of Bondri Gesel will do you honor.’

  ‘May I find both honor and sustenance in your troupe, Bondri Gesel.’

  ‘I am gratified, old one.’

  The giligee was hovering at the edge of things, a bit nervously, but it came forward quickly enough when Bondri gestured, and the troupe began the Last Chants as though rehearsed. Well, in a way they were. They had done them several times not long since.

  Bondri knelt for the Final Directives.

  ‘Remember the Loudsinger language I’ve taught the troupe, Bondri. My spirit tells me you will have need of it. I lay this upon you.’

  ‘I will remember, your perceptiveness. I will remember the language as I will remember your name, rehearsing both in the dawn hours.’

  ‘I owe a debt,’ the priest continued in a whisper. ‘A debt to the person or troupe of the Loudsinger, Lim Ferrence, who released me from bondage. I lay that debt upon you, Bondri Gesel.’

  ‘The debt is assured and guaranteed,’ the troupe sang, voices soaring and throat sacks booming. ‘Taking precedence over all other things. Assured unto the tenth generation.’

  ‘None of that tenth generation stuff,’ the Prime Priest went on, a trifle agitated. ‘I have al
ready let it go too long. I want it paid out soon, Bondri. It will be on my conscience otherwise. It might prevent my development.’

  ‘I will fulfill immediately,’ Bondri sang, the rest of the troupe following his lead. So sung, it was more than an oath. It became a sacred undertaking, overriding all taboos. And ‘immediately’ meant before they did anything else at all.

  Favel went on with one or two other little bequests, nothing difficult, subsiding at last into shut-eyed silence. Bondri took Favel’s head between his hands and gestured with his ears. The giligee came forward to kneel with its teeth to the back of the Prime Priest’s neck. Bondri inflated his throat sack to its fullest. At one signal, the troupe burst into full voice, drowning out the weak cries the old priest made as he departed. When the giligee had the brain-bird lying licked clean and naked on the fronds, the troupe witnessed its transfer into the giligee’s pouch, then all assisted in cleaning Favel’s delicate skull. It made an ancestor cup of remarkable delicacy and graceful shape. The eye holes were handles of delightful elegance. Bondri drank from it first, singing of certain memories he shared with Favel, then each of the troupe did likewise. As they sang the memories, the priest’s apprentices made fire – a very laborious process used only for a departure – and all took part in the ceremonial burning of Favel’s remains. There wasn’t enough fuel where they were to guarantee that no bones remained, but the wound flies and gyre-birds could be depended upon to do the rest. When everything was done as well as it could be done, carefully not looking behind them in order that there be no improper memories, the troupe began to run away south.

  They had an immediate debt to pay, and the site of fulfillment would begin at the place the Loudsingers called Deepsoil Five.

  Aphrodite Sells, astride a mule named Lilyflower, cursed the mule, the trail, the company, and the direction in which they were going.

  ‘Shut it,’ urged Myrony Clospocket. ‘Another fuckin’ squeak out of you, Affy, and I swear I’ll slit your throat.’ He fingered the knife at his waist, sounding very much as she remembered him from years before, like something elemental with mindless violence breeding just beneath his skin.

  ‘You don’t like it any better than I do,’ she complained. ‘We should have done a quick sunder, My.’

  ‘We should have done it a week ago, a month ago, before Justin got after us. I’ve decided he’s up to something nasty. We’ll be fuckin’ lucky if we get off Jubal at all.’

  ‘Justin just said he needed us to take care of this one thing. He said we were the only ones he could trust, us and the Spider.’ She sounded doubtful, even to herself. When Justin had given them their orders, he had not been his usual flattering self. ‘It has to be important, My. He never would’ve risked a flier to get us in there otherwise.’

  ‘Risk, hell! He blew up half a dozen fuckin’ Presences and then sent the flier in over where they’d been. You can pray to God nobody finds out what he did before the CHASE Commission makes its fuckin’ report.’

  ‘If Justin did it, he did it so’s he wouldn’t get caught. And it must be important.’

  ‘That’s what he said, and I paid chits for it at the time. That’s Justin. He can make shit sound like syrup. He can hold a fuckin’ mule-fruit out in front of you and swear it’s roast bantigon until your mouth waters. Oh, yeah, I paid chits for the idea then. That was before I’d been out in this fuckin’ country on this fuckin’ mule for five days.’

  ‘It can’t be that new to you. You said you were on the Jut for the massacre.’

  ‘Shut it, I told you. You want those fuckin’ Tripsingers to hear you talking about the Jut?’

  ‘They’re ahead of us by half a mile, My. You are in a state.’

  ‘Spider Geroan isn’t ahead of us. He’s behind us, and I swear to God that man’s got ears can hear a viggy fart a mile away.’ Myrony Clospocket shifted on the mule, substituting one aching set of muscles for another. ‘Besides, when Chanty and me was on the Jut, it was only for two days, and we got picked up by a quiet-boat and sung through the Jammers real fast when the killing was over. It was Colonel Lang that got it done. Same colonel who’s back in Splash One right now while we’re out here killin’ ourselves.’

  ‘I should’ve gone with Chanty,’ she mumbled, wiping sweat from under her ears and across her forehead. ‘At least the way he’s going down there in the south is a standard route.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go with Chanty,’ he snarled, mimicking viciously. ‘Oh, no, little Affy didn’t want to get mixed up with kidnapping babies and killing women.’

  ‘I don’t like killing,’ she said with some dignity. ‘I never have. You and Chantiforth Bins know that very well, Myrony. I never did a job with you where there was any killing, and I haven’t done any on this one. Besides, I think it shits to go grabbing babies. Why’s this woman and her kid important anyhow?’

  ‘Justin thinks she may be important to that Tripsinger from Deepsoil Five, that’s all. Important enough, maybe he’ll trade for her.’

  ‘Most unlikely,’ she drawled, putting on her pulpit voice. ‘Most unlikely for any man to put himself in peril to save some woman, particularly some woman isn’t even his wife or anything. ‘ She wiped sweat again and glared at the handkerchief, grimed with the sticky dust of the trail. ‘Besides, I thought you and Geroan were going to take care of the Tripsinger and the Explorer. When and if we catch up to them, that is.’

  ‘If is right. According to Justin, they had them located. Located, hell. By the time we got dropped off, they were god knows how far ahead of us. All we were supposed to do was buzz in, splash ’em from a distance with these new rifles and get ourselves back to Splash One, ready for the sunder. Oh, yeah, Justin had it all plotted.’

  ‘You didn’t say splash them to me, My. You said take care of …’

  ‘What the fuckin’ hell did you think we meant, Affy? Invite ’em to a tea party? Convert ’em into bein’ good little Crystallites?’

  She was silent for a time, finally asking with at least an appearance of meekness. ‘Well, when we catch up to them and you dispose of the Tripsinger, then nobody needs the woman and kid, do they!’

  ‘Insurance,’ he growled, almost beneath his breath, hearing the crunch of hooves narrowing the distance between themselves and Spider Geroan. ‘The woman and the kid are just insurance, Affy, and mind your fuckin’ tongue.’

  Inside one of the massive walls of the BDL building, a lean and dusty figure lifted a soil-filled bucket high above her head and felt the weight leave her hands as it was hauled away.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ came a whisper from above. ‘Come on up, Gretl.’ There was the sound of water running. The dirt dug out of the mud brick wall was being disposed of, washed into the sewers of Splash One.

  Gretl Mechas started to object, then sagged against the wall of the vertical shaft, unable to muster the strength to move. She could not have continued, even if he had been willing. The makeshift mallet and chisel fell from her hands.

  ‘Gretl?’

  ‘Coming,’ she said at last, setting her foot on the first of the laboriously inserted pegs that formed a spiral ladder in the chimneylike shaft. When she came to the top, Michael, the doctor, reached for her hand and pulled her out, like a cork out of a bottle. They stood in what had been Gretl’s cell when she had been alive. Now that she was dead – for the second time – it was presumably empty, at least temporarily. Michael placed a mud-covered bit of planking conveniently near the opening, then moved the cot back almost to cover it.

  ‘How much farther do we have to go down?’ she sighed.

  He ran the length of hauling rope between his hands, measuring off the yards. ‘Another twenty feet, maybe. That should bring us into the cellars.’ He dropped the bucket and coils of rope into the shaft. ‘I can get us down another foot or so tonight, after I’m sure he’s asleep.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s got a tunnel?’ She asked the question for the twentieth time and he gave her the answer he had given
each time before.

  ‘According to the guards I overheard, yes. It was put in when the building was constructed. It runs out to the east, through the farmland. There’s a door out there. According to the men, it’s so well hidden from the outside, it isn’t even locked.’

  ‘We should be able to move faster now that I’m dead,’ she said tonelessly, wiping the dust from her eyes. ‘I won’t have to listen for that damned door every minute, wondering if he’s coming down the hall.’

  The doctor nodded, fetching a damp cloth from the attached convenience so she could wash the dust from her face. ‘There’s no one else alive in this corridor, Gretl. Unless he brings someone new in here, I think you’re safe. And from what the ladies say, he’s preoccupied with other things right now.’

  ‘Ladies,’ she snorted weakly.

  ‘They hate him just as much as you do. They just had a lower breaking point, that’s all.’ He stroked her hair. ‘You did your part very well. You looked as though you were dying.’

  ‘You were right. He didn’t want me any more when he couldn’t get any response. It was hard not to show anything, Michael. Oh, God, but I do hate him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve meant to ask, how did you make him believe I was dead?’

  ‘The same way he made everyone out there believe Gretl Mechas was dead before. There’s no shortage of bodies. There are two or three rooms down the corridor that have bodies in them. I just bagged one of those and gave it to the guards. They weren’t likely to look. They saw what they expected to see, just as your friends did when they saw your clothes on that other poor soul, whoever it was.’ Michael’s voice shook with despair. ‘The place is full of death. I know it. God, I hoped for so long, but I saw it in his eyes this last time.’