The Watchers knew they were there.
‘Presumably you’ve decided how you want to assign this?’ Tasmin usually let his first trippers decide who sang what, so long as everyone took equal responsibility. ‘All right, move it along. Perform or retreat, one or the other. The Presences are getting irritated.’ Tasmin controlled his impatience. They could have moved a little faster, but at least they weren’t paralyzed. He had escorted more than one group that went into a total funk at the first sight of a Presence, and at least one during which a neophyte, paralyzed with fear, had flung himself at a Presence.
‘Clarin will sing it, sir, if you don’t mind. James and I will do the orchestral effects.’ Refnic was a little pale but composed. Clarin seemed almost hypnotized, her dark brows drawn together in a concentrated frown, deep hollows in her cheeks as she sucked them in, moistening her tongue.
‘Get on with it then.’
The mules hitched to the trip wagon were trained to pull at a steady pace, no matter what was going on. Refnic climbed into the wagon and settled at the console while James crouched over the drums. Clarin urged her animal forward, reins clipped to the saddle hook, arms out.
‘Tanta tara.’ The first horn sounds from the wagon, synthesized but not recorded. Somehow the Presences always knew the difference. Recorded Passwords caused almost instant retaliation. The drum entered, a slow beat, emphatic yet respectful. Duma duma duma. Then the strings.
‘Arndaff duh-roomavah,’ Clarin sang in her astonishingly deep voice, bright and true as a bell. ‘Arndaff, duh-roomavah.’ With the first notes, her face had relaxed and was now given over to the music in blind concentration.
The squeaking buzz beneath their feet dwindled gradually to silence. The mules moved forward, slowly, easily on their quiet shoes, the muffled sound of their feet almost inaudible.
Flawlessly, the string sounds built to a crescendo. The drum again, horns, now a bell, softly, and Clarin’s voice again. ‘Sindir, sindir, sindir dassalam awoh.’
The mules kept up their steady pace, Clarin riding with Tasmin close behind, then the wagon on its soft-tired wheels, and the two riderless animals following. The synthesizer made only those sounds it was required to make. Muffled wheels and hooves were acceptable to the Presences, though any engine sound, no matter how quiet, was not. No mechanical land or aircraft of any kind could move about on Jubal except over deepsoil where the crystalline Presences were cushioned by fifty meters or more of soft earth from the noise going on above them. Since such pockets of soil were usually separated from other similar areas by mighty cliffs of ranked Presences, there was no effective mechanical transportation on the planet except along coastal areas and over the seas.
‘Dassalom awoh,’ Clarin sang as they moved around the curve to the left. ‘Bondars delumin sindarlo.’ Few women could manage the vocals for the Passwords needed around Deepsoil Five, though Tasmin had heard there were a lot of female Tripsingers in the Northwest. He gave her a smile of encouragement and gestured her to continue, even though they were in safe territory. If there had been a caravan with them, the Tripsingers and trip wagon would have pulled aside at this point and gone on with the Petition and Justification variations until every vehicle had passed. Tasmin felt she might as well get the practice.
Clarin began the first variation. If anything at all had been learned about the Presences, it was that they became bored rather easily. The same phrases repeated more than a few times were likely to bring a violent reaction.
At the end of the second variation, Tasmin signaled for the concluding statement, the Expression of Gratitude. Clarin sang it. Then there was silence. They pulled away from the Watchers, no one speaking.
A thunderous crack split the silence behind them, a shattering crash echoed from the far cliffs in retreating volleys of echoes. Tasmin swung around in his saddle, horrified, thinking perhaps the wagon had not come clear, but it was a good ten meters beyond the place where the smoking fragments of crystal lay scattered. Behind them, one of the Watchlings had violently shed its top in their general direction.
‘Joke,’ muttered Jamieson. ‘Ha, ha.’
Clarin was white-faced and shivering. ‘Why?’ she begged, eyes frightened. ‘Why? I didn’t miss a note!’
‘Shhh.’ Tasmin, overwhelmed with wonder, could not speak for a moment. He took her arm to feel her shaking under his hand, every muscle rigid. He drew her against him, pulled the others close with his eyes and beckoning hands, whispered to her, and in doing so spoke to them all. ‘Clarin, I’ve never heard the Watcher score sung better. It wasn’t you. What you have to remember is that the Presences – they, well, they’re unpredictable. They do strange things.’ He stroked the back of the girl’s head, like a baby’s with the short hair.
‘Joke,’ murmured Jamieson again. ‘It was laughing at us.’
‘Jamieson, we can do without that anthropomorphic motif!’ Tasmin grated, keeping his voice level and quiet with difficulty. He didn’t
