Don returned to the fire, rather wild-eyed, like some feral, dirty-faced creature bent over a primordial altar, her face haggard in the leaping light. ‘You won’t believe it,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Try us,’ suggested Jamieson.
‘I talked to the Enigma,’ she said. ‘And it talked back.’
Dead, disbelieving silence.
‘You’re joking!’ Jamieson said, choking.
‘I told you you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Talked? In words?’
‘In words. Real words. And the Enigma talked back. In words.’
Silence again. Silence that stretched into moments, each staring at the other, uncertain, unable to believe….
At last Tasmin’s voice. ‘That was a translator in the box!’
‘A new one,’ she answered softly. ‘Very powerful. My friend got it for me. I took the label off.’
‘I thought it was a transposition program.’
‘No reason you should have known it was a translator. But the translation is there, in the box. An actual conversation between a person and a Presence. A conversation that makes a kind of sense, too, which is remarkable considering that it’s a first of its kind. That’s what we were giving Lim Terree. That’s why he went to such lengths to get the score from you, Ferrence. He knew what we had.’
‘God!’ Shocked silence once more.
‘So, you see,’ she said, ‘we have to do something. And all I can think of is what I said before. Spread the word as widely as possible, assuming we could even get access to the com-net, and then hide out until the fallout is over.’
‘That wouldn’t work,’ said Jamieson.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It doesn’t matter that you know the Presences are sentient. You have no witness. The information you’ve got could have been faked. So long as the CHASE Commission is rigged to give a report of nonsentience, BDL can depend on the military to enforce that ruling, no matter what the truth is. The troopers don’t care. Even if you told people and some of them believed you, it wouldn’t do any good. BDL would stifle them.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Clarin.
Jamieson gave her a challenging look.
‘No, really Reb. You haven’t taken it all in yet. Listen to what the woman said! She talked to the Enigma. It talked back. If we can actually understand the words of the Presences, there are some very great voices here on Jubal that simply can’t be stifled!’
9
Bird-cloud, Silver-seam, Sun-bright, Star of the Mountain, Blue Glory Child of the Twelfth Generation, listening in the quiet of the evening….
To: Bondri Gesel the Wide-eared, Messenger of the Presences.
Bondri singing, along with his troupe in four part harmony, to the outer Silver-seam, the skin, as it were, of the great Presence: ‘Peace, calm of wind, flow of water, gentleness of tree-frond turning, joy of sunlight, contentment of moonlight and star.’
Which did not serve. Silver-seam, Bird-cloud, Star of the Mountain, and so forth returned the song in a series of aching anharmonics: ‘Discontinuity. Distant: shore thundering. Close, whispering of change. Proliferation of Loudsingers. Disturbance of one’s edges and bits. Fingers itch. Noises in air and earth. Discomfort in the roots. Confusion. Query to Bondri: establish causation?
Bondri the Wide-eared, who had traveled fifty days with his troupe to carry a message to the inner Silver-seam, now paused, his song-sack in limp folds, shaken to the center of his being.
Prime Priest Favel, bent and trembling on his poor old legs, whispered, ‘Has this ever happened before?’
Bondri flapped his ears in negation, signaling quiet to the troupe. ‘No Great One has ever asked such questions before. No Great One has really seemed aware of us before, aged one. What shall I sing?’
‘Equivocate,’ suggested the Prime Priest. ‘Say nothing much at some length. Tell Silver-seam you will seek reasons.’
Bondri sang in canon form, which allowed the troupe to follow his lead. After going on at some length, Bondri concluded: ‘Causation currently unknown. Who knows what passes among the Loudsingers? Who can smell the sunlight? Who can taste the wind? Thy messengers will ascertain.’
He had uttered no word of the inner message he had come so far to deliver, even though it was a brief one: ‘Red Bird to the top of Silver Mountain.’ Most of the inner messages the viggies carried were no more lengthy than this particular one, which had come from the Great Blue Tooth, Horizon Loomer, Mighty Hand, the Presence humankind called the East Jammer. Prime Priest Favel, who had learned human speech in captivity among the Loudsingers in his youth, was fond of naming the Great Ones with human titles, using human words that he said were thought-provoking in their very imprecision. There had seemed to be no point in attempting to deliver the message that East Jammer had sent. Inner Silver-seam would not even have heard it so long as its skin was quivering like this or while this strange questioning was happening – though the latter seemed stilled, at least for the moment.
‘Should I try to quiet it for the message?’ Bondri hummed to the priest.
He received a gesture in reply, why not.
Bondri swelled his throat into a great, ruby balloon and sang again to the skin, sang of calm, signaling the troupe to begin an antiphon on the theme of evening, one composed by Bondri’s own ancestor in a season of incessant and troubling storm. It was one of the most efficacious of the surface songs. The troupe composed itself for best projection and howled harmoniously, throats swelled into sonorous rotundity, putting all their energy into it at length and to little effect. The very air quivered with annoyance. Bird-cloud, Silver-seam, Sun-bright, Star of the Mountain, and all – known among humankind as the North Watcher – was not tranquil and would not become so.
‘Cacophony, dissonance, melodic lines falling apart,’ whispered a part leader to Bondri. ‘Great Bird-cloud is annoyed with his messengers.’ High Priest Favel stood to one side, bent and waiting, making no comment, though Bondri threw him a nervous glance.
There was no help for it. Bondri stood forward and chirped a staccato phrase. Tumble down threatens here-about, dangerous for viggy-folk, go and stay away, away
