Orson Card: Songmaster

The Songhouse takes care of all its children, she thought often, sometimes gratefully, sometimes bitterly. I am taken care of. Taught to work by being given duties in the Songhouse. Taught science and history and languages and I'm damned good at it. Outside, outside they would consider me gifted. But here I'm a Deaf. And the sooner I leave the better.

She would leave soon. She was fourteen. Only a few months left. At fifteen she would be out, with a comfortable stipend and the doors to a dozen universities open to her. The money would continue until she was twenty-two. Later, if she needed. The Songhouse took care of its children.

But there were still those few months, and her duties were interesting enough. She worked with security, checking the warning and protective devices that made sure the Songhouse stayed isolated from the rest of Tew. Such devices had not always been needed, in the old days. There had even been a time when the Songmaster in the High Room ruled all the world. But it was still less than a century since the outsiders had tried to storm the Songhouse in a silly dispute over a pirate who wanted the Songhouse's reputed great wealth. And now the security devices, which took a year to patrol. The duty had taken her around the perimeter, a journey longer than circling the world, and all by skooter, so that she was alone in the forests and deserts and seacoasts of the Songhouse lands.

Today she was checking the monitoring devices in the Songhouse itself. In a way it made her feel superior, to know what none of the children and few of the masters and teachers knew-that the stone was not impenetrable, that, in fact, it was heavily strung with wires and tubes, so that what seemed to be a rambling, primitive stone relic was potentially as modern as anything on Tew. Possession of the wiring diagrams gave her information that would surprise any of the less-informed singers. Yet whenever she dwelt on her pride at having inside knowledge, she forced herself to remember that she was only allowed the knowledge so young because she was completely outside all the discipline and study of the Songhouse. She was a Deaf-she could know secrets because she would never sing and so she didn't matter.

That was her frame of mind when she entered the High Room. She knocked brusquely because she was feeling upset. No answer. Good, the old Songmaster, Nniv, wasn't in. She pushed open the door. The High Room was freezing, with all the shutters open to the wintry wind. It was insane to leave the place like this-who could work here? Instead of going to the panels where the monitors were hidden, she went to the shutters of the nearest window, leaned out to catch them, and found herself looking down forever, it seemed, to the next roof below her. She hadn't realized how high she really was. On the east side, of course, the Songhouse was higher, so the stairs up to the High Room were not so terribly long. But she was high, and the height fascinated her. What would it be like to fall? Would she feel it like flying, with the exhilaration of the skooter rushing down a hillside? Or would she really be afraid?

She stopped herself with one leg over the sill, her arms poised to thrust her out. What am I doing? The shock of realization was almost enough to throw her forward, out the window. She caught herself, gripped the sides of the window, forced herself to slowly pull her leg back inside, withdraw from the window, and finally kneel, leaning her head against the lip of rock at the base of the window. Why did I do that? What was I doing?

I was leaving the Songhouse.

The thought made her shudder. Not that way. I will not leave the Songhouse that way. Leaving the Songhouse will not be the end of my life.

She did not-believe it. And, not believing, she gripped the stone and wanted not to ever let go.

The room was cold. It made her numb, motionless as she was, and the whine of the wind through the spaces in the roof and the rush of wind through the windows made her afraid in a new way. As if someone were watching her.

She turned. There was no one. Just the bundles of clothing and books and stone benches and a foot sticking out from under one of the bunches of clothing and the foot was blue and she went over to it and discovered that this bundle of clothing was the misshapen, incredibly thin body of Nniv, who was dead, frozen in the wind from the winter outside. His eyes were open, and he stared at the stone in front of his face. Kya-Kya whimpered, but then reached down and pulled on his hip, as if to wake him. He rolled onto his back, but an arm stuck up in the air, and the legs moved only a little, and she knew he was dead, that the entire time she had been in the room he had been dead.

The Songmaster in the High Room died only rarely. She had never known another. It was Nniv who had ultimately decided her fate. He had declared her Deaf and decided she would leave the Songhouse without songs. She had hated him in her heart, though she had only talked to him a few times, ever since she was eight. But now she only felt repulsed by the corpse, and more than that, disgusted at the way he had died. Was the room always kept this bitterly cold? How had he lived so long! Was this some part of the discipline, that the ruler of the Songhouse lived in such squalor and misery?

If this emaciated, frozen corpse was the pinnacle of what the Songhouse could produce, Kya-Kya was not impressed. The lips were parted and the tongue lolled forward, blue and ghastly. This tongue, she thought, was once part of a song. Reputed to be the most masterful song in the galaxy, perhaps in the universe. But what had the song been, if not the throat and lips and teeth-and lungs, all now cold; if not the brain, that now was still?

She could not sing because of lips and teeth and throat and lungs and because in her own mind she was not so single-minded that she could be what the Songhouse demanded. But did it matter?

She Hid not feel triumphant that Nniv was dead. She was old enough to know that she, too, would be dead, and if she had a century ahead of her, it only meant time in which she might end up just as accidentally cruel as Nniv had been. Kya-Kya did not pretend to unusual virtue. Just unusual value, which no one but her recognized. And it occurred to her that Nniv's failure to recognize who and what she was (or had he, indeed, recognized it?) did not change her.

She left him, went downstairs to find the Blind in charge of maintenance, an old man named Hrrai who rarely left his office. Nniv is dead, she told him, wondering if her happiness sounded in her voice (but knowing that Hrrai would not be likely to read her very well, being a Blind). Can't let anyone hear that I'm happy, she thought. Because I'm not rejoicing at his death. Only at my life.

Dead? Imperturbable Hrrai only sounded mildly surprised. Well, then, you must go tell his successor.

Hrrai leaned down over his table and began worrying his pen back and forth across a page.

But Hrrai... Kya-Kya said.

But what?

Who is Nniv's successor?

The next Songmaster of the High Room, he said. Of course.

Of course nothing! How should I know who that is? How am I supposed to figure it out if you don't tell me?

Hrrai looked up, more surprised this time than he had been at the news of Nniv's death. Don't you know how this works?

How should I? I'm a Deaf. I never got past Groan.

Well, you needn't act so upset about it. It isn't exactly a secret, you know. Whoever finds the body will know, that's all. Whoever finds that the Songmaster in the High Room is dead will know.

How will I know?

It will be obvious to you. Just go and tell him or her that he or she is supposed to take care of funeral arrangements. It's all that simple. But you really ought to act quickly. The Songhouse shouldn't be long without someone in the High Room.