Neveryóna: Or, the Tale of Signs and Cities

by Samuel R. Delany

  ‘Those men over there, they wait for the Liberator to liberate them—into jobs indistinguishable from the jobs here. I watch them all and find myself smiling.

  ‘There are ladders all about them that they step over and brush against and push aside. But without the training and—yes—the vision needed to climb them, I suspect they cannot even see them, much less see where they branch, or where one must hurry or halt as one mounts.

  ‘As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve had my anxious moments. The anxiety arrives along with a kind of alternative dream, the vision of a world arranged very differently, without any such ladders at all, where no privileges such as mine exist, nor such hardship as theirs: rather it is a dream of an equitable division of goods and services into which all would be born, within which all would be raised, and the paths from one point to the other would be set out by like and dislike, temperament and desire, rather than inscribed on a mystified map whose blotted and improperly marked directions are all plotted between poverty and power, wealth and weakness.

  ‘The anxiety comes with it, however, when I hear report of some new political upstart, such as—yes—our latest Liberator, who declares his own muzzy dream of equality, freedom, and joy. I have watched governments come and go, some led by liberators, some by despots, and I realize that the workers on this side of the fence and the out-of-work on that side—as well as the Liberator they oppose and support—share, all of them, one common reconnaissance: they think the enemy is Nevèrÿon, and that Nevèrÿon is the system of privileges and powers such as mine that supports it, or the privileges and powers such as the Child Empress’s (whose reign is, after all, benign and bureaucratic) which rule it. As long as they do not realize that the true enemy is what holds those privileges—and the ladders of power to them—in place, that at once anchors them on all sides, keeps the rungs clear, yet assures their bottoms will remain invisible from anywhere other than their tops, then my position in the system is, if not secure, at least always accessible should I, personally, become dislodged.’

  ‘Then what is this…their enemy?’ Pryn asked. ‘I mean the true one?’

  ‘You really ask me that, girl?’ Madame Keyne laughed sharply. ‘You actually want me to name it—now? here?’ The gesture with which Madame Keyne accompanied the laugh caused the gold coin, which by then was merely lying in her open hand, to fly up into the sun. It soared, it spun—and landed on the hard ground, rolling along the embankment, where it finally swerved and fell in.

  ‘Look there, my man!’ Madame Keyne called down to one of the laborers. ‘Bring that back like a good fellow.’

  Wiping his forehead, the man blinked up. Looking about, he saw the coin, planted his shovel, and went to get it, then vaulted up to crouch on the embankment’s edge. ‘You dropped this, Madame Keyne?’ The rough hand, with its horny fingers and scarred knuckles (one nail blackened from a recent mishap), held out the gold. ‘There you are.’

  ‘And this,’ Madame Keyne said as she accepted the gold in her own dark fingers, ‘is for you.’ She handed him the iron coin that had remained with her. ‘For your trouble. Tell me your name. You’re a good worker, I can see that.’

  The barbarian—this particular worker was a barbarian—squinted up at his employer, sun and surprise deepening the wrinkles about his ugly eyes. Suddenly he let a muffled guffaw. Pryn heard in it the nervous overtones of a man used to laughing openly. ‘Well, Madame Keyne, Kudyuk will work for you any day! Kudyuk, that’s me!’ His accent was as light as Jade’s, as if he’d been in the city a long while. ‘Yes, I’ll certainly work for you!’ His fist closed on the small iron. Bobbing his bearded head and without ever really standing erect, he dropped back over the embankment and went for his shovel. ‘Yes, Madame Keyne,’ he called up, ‘I certainly will!’

  Madame Keyne laughed with him, and walked on.

  Coming with her, Pryn only wondered—as Kudyuk seized up his shovel with his free hand—where he would put his coin; he was one of the workers who had already given up all clothing in his pursuit of labor.

  ‘Do you see?’ Madame Keyne raised the hand, in which she again held the gold, to shield her eyes. The confidence in her tone was both exciting and confusing. ‘You see how money that goes out comes back to me? And, you must admit, it costs very little. So now you have the whole system of enterprise, profit, and wages laid out for your inspection, girl. No wonder the Empress and the Liberator both decry slavery, when this is such a far more efficient system. You know where most of the iron for these little moneys comes from, don’t you? It’s melted down from the old, no-longer-used collars once worn by—’

  ‘But Madame,’ protested Pryn, who was both a logical and excitable young woman, ‘you lost money in that transaction! Money went out—and you had to pay to get it back!’

  Madame Keyne glanced up at the gold. ‘Little mountain waif—’ she seemed intensely amused—‘if you think I lost in that transaction, then you do not know what the enemy is, nor, I doubt, will you ever. But if you can see the real gain on my part, then—perhaps!—you have seen your enemy and may yet again recognize her glittering features.’ She turned the large coin so that sun slid across the likeness of the Empress till the blind-white flare made Pryn look away.

  At the same moment a breeze blew some sand grains in Pryn’s face, so that she stopped to rub her eyes. When Pryn looked up. Madame Keyne was walking ahead, now laying her hand on the shoulder of another slops carrier, now nodding to another barrow-pusher. ‘Ergi! Ergi!’ she called as Pryn came up. ‘Ergi, I want to talk to you!’

  Down in an excavation, the foreman finished setting some sweating men to a new mound of rock and dirt, then came across the pebbles and dust, by now as wet himself as any of his workers.

  ‘Earlier today, Ergi, out on Black Avenue,’ Madame Keyne called down, ‘I saw a woman try to deliver some very interesting bricks to a slug-a-bed not yet up to receive his shipment. These bricks were yellow—not your usual red. I want you to find out everything you can about them: their manufacture, functionality, durability, cost, maintenance—everything that contours their value, in any and every direction. See if they’d be good for paving. Then report back to me…’

  The cart trundled along the tree-shaded avenue by the stone walls of the Sallese estates. It was past the hottest part of the day. Pryn sat beside the older woman, feeling an astonishing exuberance. Commerce and construction? These seemed the centers of life—far more central, certainly, than protest and liberation. On the rumbling cart Pryn could almost let herself think that these, indeed, were what she had taken off on her dragon to find.

  Madame Keyne had been pleased and elated since she’d left the New Market. The streets were less crowded, and the drive back easier. By the time they’d reached the suburbs, both had fallen into a pleased silence. Pryn’s, however, contained within it all the excitement of her encounter with project and enterprise. Madame Keyne’s, as she guided the cart along, seemed—to Pryn at any rate—more pensive. In the moments when her own excitement lulled, Pryn wondered if the prospect of returning to her own embattled garden had quieted the older woman.

  Suddenly Madame Keyne announced: ‘I know what he thinks is his enemy. What I must learn, though, is whom he thinks to be his allies!’

  Pryn looked at her questioningly.

  For answer, Madame Keyne nodded toward the broad way the cart was just rolling past. At the end of the shaggy pines was the stone wall with its heavy gate, its leather-helmeted guards, and, behind it, the cracked and indifferently patrolled roof. As they passed, Pryn could see a rider had just come clattering up, who now bawled out, so they could hear even at this distance: ‘Go inside and tell your master, the Liberator, Gorgik, that the Iron Hawk has come to join his ranks!’

  The rider cantered off toward the city. Pryn had not been able to tell from the voice, raucous and high-pitched as it was, if it were a man’s or a woman’s.

  Pryn asked, ‘What do you mean, his allies?’

  Madame Keyne f
licked the reins. ‘I want to know: when he runs out of slaves to liberate, will he choose the men on my side or on the far side of the fence as his next cause? Whatever his political program, the Liberator’s is an image in our city both sincere and seductive. Whichever side he chooses, he may well succeed.’

  Ahead, Pryn could see Madame Keyne’s gate. ‘Do you want me to get the answer?’

  Madame Keyne raised an eyebrow. ‘How would you get an answer to that question in this city—’ the brow lowered—‘other than by asking?’

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ Pryn said. Somehow she could no longer repress it. ‘I’ve ridden a dragon! And I—’

  ‘Have you now? So—’ Madame Keyne’s smile took on its familiar ambiguity—‘you, my dragon-riding ambassador, will lay my anxieties at the Liberator’s feet? Under our present Empress, whose reign is clever and calculating, dragons have not been that popular.’

  ‘I can find out for you!’ The cart rolled toward the gate. ‘I can!’

  ‘I believe,’ Madame Keyne said as the studded planks swung in, and, between tugging fingertips, Samo’s face peered around the edge, ‘that you believe you can. And belief is a powerful force in these basic and barbaric times.’ She chuckled as they rolled up the drive. The horse halted under the young fruit trees. Madame Keyne climbed down. Pryn climbed after her.

  As she stepped from the bottom rung of the carriage’s ladder, Pryn saw Ini coming from the house. She stalked over the grass with the gleeful smile of a child about to surprise a returning parent.

  Then Radiant Jade stepped from behind the house’s corner, one hand up as if to lean against it—the same gesture Pryn had noticed at their departure.

  Madame Keyne went forward to pat the horse’s head.

  Hands behind her back, Ini reached the first tree. Pryn had a memory of a young cousin coming up to see what present she’d been brought—

  Then Radiant Jade ran forward!

  She ran with fist-pumping urgency. She ran like a contestant in a year-end festival race. She snatched up her shift in one hand, shouting, ‘No…!’ Steps behind Ini, she flung herself at the cream-haired girl.

  Half a dozen feet from Pryn and Madame Keyne, Ini hardly had time to look back. Jade collided with her. Ini staggered, grunted, and fell under Jade’s assault.

  The two rolled on the grass…

  …and Pryn saw the knife Jade struggled to tear from Ini’s fist. (Pryn remembered Ini’s strength with the rearing horse and caught her breath.) Jade gasped and shouted: ‘No! No—you can’t…We can’t! I’ve changed my mind!…No!…We mustn’t—’

  The knife, Pryn realized, had been drawn behind Ini’s back all through the smiling approach.

  Madame Keyne held the bridle in a shock as impassive as the roan’s calm. Suddenly she flung the horse’s head away—so that the beast stepped twice, three times, taking the cart with her—and strode forward. With one hand she yanked the knife from Ini’s hand. With the other she began to strike about at the struggling pair. ‘Stop it! Stop it, I say! You are animals! Now stop it…!’

  In a kind of oblivious horror, Pryn stepped—nearer, as it turned out, but it could as easily have been away.

  Ini finally rolled from Jade, to sit, brushing grass and dirt from her arms. ‘Oh, all right…!’

  On all fours, with head hanging, Jade gasped with the effort of the fight.

  Madame Keyne held the knife, awkwardly, above her head. Now that Jade and Ini had stopped, her other hand went to her neck, and her own breathing grew more erratic as Jade’s gasps stilled.

  ‘Madame Keyne,’ Pryn exclaimed, ‘they were going to kill you…?’

  ‘My dear—‘ Madame Keyne took another breath in which Pryn could hear the anger—‘they were going to kill you. Ah—!’ She brought the knife down sharply to her side. ‘They weren’t going to kill you—they were only going to try and hurt you! But I said I wouldn’t let that happen! I said I—They were only trying to scare you! That was all they were doing!’ She looked at Jade and Ini. ‘Tell me that was all you were doing! Say it!’

  ‘That’s all we were doing.’ Ini picked a dead leaf from her elbow. ‘Jade just wanted to scare her.’

  That was when Pryn realized the four of them were, now, surrounded by a peering circle of women and men, all of whom seemed, at first, strangers. But one was the heavy-set cook in her red scarf; and one was blinking Samo; and the three new kitchen girls; and over there, the gardener Clyton—among another five or six Pryn hadn’t even seen yet on the grounds.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done it!’ Radiant Jade gasped. ‘I wouldn’t have…I told her to do it! Yes. To scare her. But you see…I wouldn’t have really let her! You see, I stopped her! I stopped her…’

  ‘Get up!’ Madame Keyne said. ‘Get up, I say!’

  Ini stood, bending to brush grass from her knees.

  Jade began to cry. Her head sank even lower. ‘I have nothing! Don’t you see, Rylla, I have nothing. You have everything! You have money, a fine home, servants, respect! I, I have nothing—I am nothing! Now you would take even the little I have from me and give it—’

  ‘Oh, stop it!’ Madame Keyne declared.

  ‘You are an empress here; you are a woman of high standing in the city—whereas I am totally at the mercy of your every whim and caprice—’

  ‘I—?’ Madame Keyne declared. In her laugh was anger. ‘I, empress? No, my dear. You rule here, despotically and completely! I loved you—and love you still; and I have been tyrannized for it. You order this room decorated thus, object to the decor in that one. And we all know we must comply, or suffer your sulkings and poutings till we are made miserable with them! You come from your room in the morning, and both servants and houseguests fall silent, waiting to see if you are in a mood or a pet over this or that. If you are, any one of us may be snapped at, snubbed, insulted, or—most mercifully—ignored; which allows us, at least, I suppose, to go on with our day. But sometimes I am silly enough to want something more than to be ignored!’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’ Radiant Jade cried. ‘Nothing! I hate myself. I loathe myself. You are right, Rylla. You are right about everything. You are always right! I cannot live with your insufferable rightness—’

  ‘Oh, put it up, Jade!’

  ‘But it is terrible to live with! Yes, I treat you, the servants, everyone, horribly! And you would destroy the one bit of self-esteem I have left by depriving me of my position and giving it to this…this awful girl! She doesn’t belong here! Look at her, she should be in the forests, in the mountains, on the sea—anywhere but here!’ (Pryn frowned at that but was too surprised to question it.) ‘She isn’t worthy of us—of you, Rylla. Oh, why did you bring her here? Why!’

  Madame Keyne took a deep breath, the knife out from her side. ‘You silly, silly woman!’ She ordered Ini: ‘Help her up!’

  ‘I will go,’ Jade declared, still on the ground. ‘I won’t be put out—I couldn’t stand that. But I’ll go of my own accord. You needn’t ask me…’

  ‘I am not making Pryn my new secretary,’ Madame Keyne said. ‘Your position here is secure.’

  Radiant Jade clutched unsteadily at the Ini’s knees as the pale-haired young woman reached down to help.

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ Madame Keyne went on. ‘Oh, you are silly! I am making Pryn my…my ambassador. She is going to go on a mission—’

  Had it not been for the circle of servants, Pryn might have run off then, somewhere, to hide.

  ‘A dangerous mission which she has volunteered for and from which she might not return. And if she does return, then…we shall reward her and send her on her way!’

  ‘You’re sending her away?’ On her knees, Jade lay her head against Ini’s hip; Ini still tried to pull her to her feet. ‘You’re not going to replace me—’

  ‘Pryn was not brought here with her own consent. I could no more keep her here than…’ Madame Keyne took another breath—‘…than you could harm her for no reason.’

  Ra
diant Jade finally got her feet under her. One arm around Ini’s shoulder, her head still hung. Her hair had come partially loose. Pryn, who had always kept her own hair fairly short, was surprised there was so much of it. Jade brushed her hand over her forehead. More hair fell.

  ‘All right!’ Madame Keyne said. ‘I want to go and walk in my garden. I want you three to come with me—where we can talk.’

  ‘All right!’ Radiant Jade took a breath that seemed a kind of imitation of Madame Keyne’s. The phrase, Pryn realized, was to the servants. ‘To your jobs now! There’s no reason to stand around gawking at the misery of your masters! Go on with you, I say!’

  Glancing at each other, the servants broke their ring.