Orson Card - Songmaster

I hope the boy heals fast. And then busy again, meeting with the self-styled king of Quebec, a title only barely tolerated by the emperor because the kings of Quebec were properly subservient and remarkably hated by their people. No danger of rebellion, and therefore not a problem needing to be corrected.

Over the next several days, however, Ansset and Josif were thrown together more and more. Ansset thought at first that the meetings were accidental. Then he realized that he himself was setting them up, deliberately going to places where he knew Josif would be. He and Josif had had little contact over the months-while Ansset knew from his voice that Josif didn't dislike him, Josif still avoided him, rarely staying in a conversation very long, leaving Ansset always alone with Kyaren. Josif's shyness needed no explanation to Ansset. He respected it. But now his closest confidante and friend, Kyaren, was gone, and he needed to talk to someone. So he didn't stop himself from meeting with Josif. In fact, he began to make it more obvious. He invited him to meals, asked him along on walking tours, talked to him at night. Ansset couldn't understand why Josif always seemed reluctant to accept, yet never refused an invitation. And gradually, over the days, through Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Stratford, Baile Atha Cliath, with rain always making the air deliciously cool and comfortably dim, Josif lost his reticence, and Ansset began to understand why Kyaren was so devoted to him.

Ansset also began to notice that Josif was sexually attracted to him. Hundreds of men and women had been before. Ansset was used to it, had had to put up with it through all his years in the palace. Josif was different, though. His desire seemed not so much lust as affection, part of his friendship. It intrigued Ansset, where years before such things had repelled him. He was curious. He had grown seventeen centimeters since his appointment to Babylon, and his voice was deepening all the time. There were other changes, and he found himself with longings he did not know how to satisfy, with questions he did not dare to ask only because he already knew the spoken answer, and the other answer he was afraid of.

At the Songhouse little was said of the drugs that singers and Songbirds were given. Just that they put off puberty, and that there were side effects. There were also whispers that it was worse for men than for women, but how it was worse, or even how it was bad, was never said. The drugs gave them five more years as children, five more years with the beautiful voices of childhood.

Well, Ansset had lost his songs and so didn't need his voice, except for the coarse singing involved in making every national leader completely devoted to him, easy tricks that he was ashamed of even as he used them. His five extra years of childhood were over, and he wanted to know what happened next.

After the meeting with the Welsh chief, who affected coarse manners but whose Gaelic was beautiful to Ansset, the planet manager and the assistant minister of colonization went to Caernarvon Castle together. It had been domed thousands of years before, the last castle of Britain to survive with some of the original stones in place. They walked together on the walls, overlooking the dense green of the grass and the trees and the blue of the water that spread between the castle and the island of Angelsea. The only sign of modern life was the flesket and the guards beside it, and the trail where the grass grew lower because of the vehicles that passed over it. There were others in the castle, of course-it was maintained as a luxury hotel, and they would spend the night there. Security guards were going through the place on a final check. But where Ansset and Josif stood, there was no one. Birds skimmed back and forth over the sea.

What is this place? Ansset asked. Why is it kept like this?

A castle was like a battleship, Josif answered. All the men would come in here when their enemies attacked, and the walls kept them out.

This was before lasers, then.

And before bombs and artillery. Just bows and arrows, spears. And a few more choice things. They used to pour boiling oil over the walls to kill the men trying to climb them.

Ansset looked down, hiding his revulsion easily, curious to see how far the drop was to the ground. It seems dangerous enough just to stand up here."

They lived in violent times.

Ansset thought of his own violent times. We all do, he said.

Not like then. If you had a sword, you had power. You ruled over everyone weaker than you. They were always at war. Always trying to kill each other. Fighting over land.

Mikal ended wars, Ansset said.

Josif laughed. Yes, by winning all of them. It's probably the only way ever to have peace. Other ways have been tried. They never worked. Josif's hand rubbed along the rough stone.

I lived in a place like this once," Ansset said.

The Songhouse? I didn't think that was a castle."

No one poured down boiling oil if that's what you mean. And it wouldn't have stopped a determined army for more than, say, half an hour. But it's stone, like this.

Ansset sat down, took the shoes off his feet, and let his bare soles touch the stone.

I feel like I've come home. And he ran lightly along the stone into one of the turrets, where he climbed a winding staircase to the top. Josif followed him. Ansset stood at the edge, the highest point of the castle, feeling giddy. It reminded him of the High Room, only here it would never be cold and the wind would never blow, because of the almost transparent dome that protected the rock. He began to get a sense of the age of the thing. The Song-house was a thousand years old. And men had lived on Tew for two thousand years before the Songhouse had been built. And when Tew was first settled, three thousand years ago, this castle had already been sixteen thousand years old, had already spent ten thousand of those years under the dome.

We are so old, Ansset said.

Josif nodded. We've forgotten nothing in all that time. And learned nothing.

Ansset smiled. Maybe we have.

"Some of us.

You're so dour.

Maybe, Josif said. We don't build things like this anymore. We're far too sophisticated. We just put a fleet in orbit around the planet, so that instead of a fortress sitting like this on the edge of the sea, the fortresses cast their shadows over every centimeter of the soil. It was a frightening time then, Ansset, but there were advantages.

I understand they defecated and kept it.

They didn't have converters.

In piles. And put it in the fields so the crops would grow better.

That's China. Oh.

It was better then in one way. There were places a person could hide.

Josif sounded so wistful that Ansset became concerned. Hide?

Countries that were still undiscovered. Just crossing the water to Eire would have been enough. A man could have hidden from his enemies.

Do you, Ansset asked, have enemies?

Josif laughed bitterly. Only me. I'm the only one.

And more than ever since he had been imprisoned in Mikal's rooms in the palace, Ansset longed for his songs. But he had no song, could not sing comfort for whatever fears haunted Josif. He knew that, in part, Josif was afraid of him; he wanted to sing the love song, to tell the man that Ansset would never do him any harm, that in the last few months, and especially in the last few days, Ansset had come to love him as he also loved Kyaren, the two of them, in different ways, filling part of the huge gap left inside Ansset with the loss of his songs.

But he could not sing it, and he could not say it, and so Ansset reached out and stroked Josif gently on the shoulder and down the arm.

To his surprise, Josif immediately pulled away from him, turned and ran down the stairs. Ansset followed almost immediately, and almost ran into Josif where he had stopped, at the door leading onto the walkways atop the walls. Josif turned to face Ansset, his face twisted and strange.