The Enigma Score (22 page)

‘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 eavesdropping 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.

‘Poor (predestined to sorrow, condemned, doomed) creatures,’ caroled a young giligee, solo voice. ‘If the Mad One has done this thing, the next time it will kill. The Mad One always talks once, then kills the next time. The Loudsinger(s) will undoubtedly die.’ The giligee voice soared, and Bondri closed his eyes in appreciation of that voice, even as he shivered at the words.

‘True,’ quavered the old priest, taking a comforting bite of fruit. ‘If any Loudsingers go trying to sing to the Enigma again, undoubtedly the Enigma will kill them all.’

10

In his hovel on the outskirts of Splash One, Brother-minor Jeshel, whip-hand of the Society of Crystallites, Worshippers of the Holy Ones, Gods Incarnate on Jubal, finished beating his handmaid and looked around for someone else who might need admonishment. Brother Jeshel was almost certain the Gods Incarnate had spoken to him in a dream. He seemed to remember something of the kind happening, and had his handmaid not interrupted him, he would have remembered it clearly enough to tell The Three and maybe be allowed to testify to a vision in temple.

Sister Sophron lay on the floor, half naked and weeping.

‘Get up,’ he snarled. ‘And don’t wake me up like that again.’

‘A messenger came,’ she sobbed. ‘From her. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘The messenger could wait. Cover yourself. You’re disgusting like that.’

Since Sister Sophron had not removed her gown, the accusation was unjust. Nonetheless, she pulled the rent fabric to cover her back and shoulders and tried to tie it in front, noting in passing that several of the ties were pulled off. Brother-minor Jeshel had wakened in a rage.

‘What does he want?’

‘The messenger?’

‘Who else are we talking about, slut! Of course, the messenger.’

‘He says he’s from her, the wife.’

‘Ah. Tell him I’ll talk to him in a bit. Get yourself dressed. You’ll need to get yourself into town, to your job.’

Shuffling and holding the gown together at her waist, Sister Sophron left the room. She did not meet the messenger’s eyes when she repeated Jeshel’s remarks, nor did she look back to see how they were received. At the moment she could think only of getting to the privy before she threw up. It wasn’t right of Jeshel to beat her when she was like this. She had thought it would be better on Jubal, but it was no better, not at all. Brother-minor Jeshel was no different from comrade-insurgent Jeshel. He used slightly different words, that was all. Back on Serendipity Jeshel had said ‘Revolt’ and ‘The Cause’ and ‘The-rotten-management, with all its bootlickers.’ Now he said ‘Presences’ and ‘Evangelism’ and ‘The-rotten-BDL with all its flunkeys’ – Tripsingers and Explorers included – but it still came down to yelling and burnings and killing people from behind. It still came down to Sophron earning their living while Jeshel conspired. It still came down to blood and bombs and being beaten on when you were pregnant. Vomiting copiously, Sister Sophron cursed Brother-minor Jeshel and wished for the moment she had never told him what that Explorer knight had said when Sophron had been cutting her hair.

Behind her in the filthy hall, Rheme Gentry made a face to himself and went on humming quietly. He was very weary, having returned from Northwest only very late last evening, but he would not sit down. There was nothing clean enough to sit on. Eventually Jeshel would show up, dirty and uncombed, probably bug infested as well, though that would be difficult on this planet. There were no human parasites. Perhaps Jeshel had evaded quarantine in order to have some shipped in. Rheme had not yet met Brother-minor Jeshel, but he had heard about him: a lower level functionary in the Crystallite hierarchy, but one reputedly responsible for a good deal of general terrorism and disruption. After sending Tasmin Ferrence to find, and one hoped to assist, Don Furz, the four conspirators, Vowe and Vox, Middleton, and Gentry, had discussed various Crystallites as a possible source of information, and Brother Jeshel had been their unanimous choice. Rheme, it was decided, should put on a modest disguise and a false name to interrogate the man. Rheme amused himself by thinking what his uncle would say to all this. The director of CHAIN wouldn’t be delighted at the risk, that much was sure.

He set that uncomfortable thought aside and considered various names for the group that was getting itself together here on Jubal. They might name it the Quarter-nine Conspiracy. Or perhaps the Card Game Connivance. The most accurate title could be Four Against the Tide. Although according to Thyle Vowe it would be vastly more than four when the Tripsingers learned what was going on – those who didn’t already suspect.

Besides, it was wrong to think of it as a conspiracy. A counterconspiracy, rather. A counterintelligence group. This allowed for some additional names. The Jubal Operation. He rather liked that one.

‘What’a you want?’ The voice was unaccommodating. Gentry turned to see the Crystallite standing behind him, as lank haired, stubble faced, and smelly as had been described.

‘My name is Basty Pardo,’ Gentry advised him. ‘The Governor’s lady is interested in how her little project is coming along.’ His name had been Basty Pardo once, and he was certain that the Governor’s lady was interested in a good many things. Rheme avoided lies whenever possible.

Brother Jeshel grunted. Gentry was a type he hated instinctively. He was clean and fit looking, with good teeth. Such men couldn’t be up to any good, so far as Brother Jeshel was concerned, but he couldn’t insult the man. Not now. Not yet. He chose divagation.

‘I’m interested in how my own little project is coming along! Some troopers took some of my people the other day. Out toward the Great Ones we was watchin’ over. Heretics came right by the Great Ones, and when we chastised ’em, the troopers came. She told us she’d keep the troopers off us.’

Rheme put on his voice of cold command. ‘If you’re talking about your attack on the Tripsinger and his acolytes who came through the Mad Gap, it was stupid of your people to interfere. The Governor can keep the troops off your neck so long as you don’t assault people, Jeshel, but once you start throwing things, the troopers will move. Nobody can stop them.’

Jeshel glared at him in astonishment. The pretty boy could talk hard at any rate. ‘The Governor can command ’em.’

‘Not when it’s a case of public order. They have standing orders for situations like that. The Governor can keep the troopers from rounding you up – at least for a while – but he can’t give you immunity. You know that.’ It all had a fine authoritative sound, and Rheme wondered briefly if he was saying anything at all true or relevant to the situation. In most situations, sounding authoritative was good enough.