Goat Song

before the world was stabilized. You should not wake dead symbols, Harper. They walk through men’s dreams.”

“Is that bad?”

“Yes. The dreams become nightmares. Remember: Mankind, every man who ever lived, was insane before SUM brought order, reason, and peace.”

“Well, then,” I say, “I will cease and desist if I may have my own dead wakened for me.”

She stiffens. The tablet goes out. I withdraw my arm and the Ring is stored away by Her servant. So again She is faceless, beneath flickering stars, here at the bottom of this shadowed valley. Her voice falls cold as the air: “No one can be brought back to life before Resurrection Time is ripe.”

I do not say, “What about You?” for that would be vicious. What did She think, how did She weep, when SUM chose Her of all the young on earth? What does She endure in Her centuries? I dare not imagine.

Instead, I smite my harp and sing, quietly this time:

“Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! Would that I did too.”

The Dark Queen cries, “What are you doing? Are you really insane?” I go straight to the last stanza.

“Her cabin’d ample Spirit
It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of Death.”

I know why my songs strike so hard: because they bear dreads and passions that no one is used to—that most of us hardly know could exist—in SUM’s ordered universe. But I had not the courage to hope She would be as torn by them as I see. Has She not lived with more darkness and terror than the ancients themselves could conceive? She calls, “Who has died?”

“She had many names, Lady of Ours,” I say. “None was beautiful enough. I can tell You her number, though.”

“Your daughter? I … sometimes I am asked if a dead child cannot be brought back. Not often, anymore, when they go so soon to the creche. But sometimes. I tell the mother she may have a new one; but if ever We started re-creating dead infants, at what age level could We stop?”

“No, this was my woman.”

“Impossible!” Her tone seeks to be not unkindly but is, instead, well-nigh frantic. “You will have no trouble finding others. You are handsome, and your psyche is, is, is extraordinary. It burns like Lucifer.”

“Do You remember the name Lucifer, Lady of Ours?” I pounce. “Then You are old indeed. So old that You must also remember how a man might desire only one woman, but her above the whole world and heaven.”

She tries to defend Herself with a jeer: “Was that mutual, Harper? I know more of mankind than you do, and surely I am the last chaste woman in existence.”

“Now that she is gone, Lady, yes, perhaps You are. But we—Do you know how she died? We had gone to a wildeountry area. A man saw her, alone, while I was off hunting gem rocks to make her a necklace. He approached her. She refused him. He threatened force. She fled. This was desert land, viper land, and she was barefoot. One of them bit her. I did not find her till hours hater. By then the poison and the unshaded sun—She died quite soon after she told me what had happened and that she loved me. I could not get her body to chemosurgery in time for normal revival procedures. I had to let them cremate her and take her soul away to SUM.”

“What right have you to demand her back, when no one else can be given their own?”

“The right that I love her, and she loves me. We are more necessary to each other than sun or moon. I do not think You could find another two people of whom this is so, Lady. Amid is not everyone entitled to claim what is necessary to his life? How else can society be kept whole?”

“You are being fantastic,” She says thinly. “Let me go.”

“No, Lady, I am speaking sober truth. But poor plain words won’t serve me. I sing to You because then maybe You will understand.” And I strike my harp anew; but it is more to her than Her that I sing.

“If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee:
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou couldst mortal be:

“It never through my mind had past
The time would e’er be o’er,
And I on thee should look my last,
And though shouldst smile no more!”

“I cannot—” She falters. “I do not know—any such feelings—so strong—existed any longer.”

“Now You do, Lady of Ours. And is that not an important datum for SUM?”

“Yes. If true.” Abruptly She leans toward me. I see Her shudder in the murk, under the flapping cloak, and hear Her jaws clatter with cold. “I cannot linger here. But ride with Me. Sing to Me. I think I can bear it.”

So much have I scarcely expected. But my destiny is upon me. I mount into the chariot. The canopy slides shut and we proceed.

The main cabin encloses us. Behind its rear door must be facilities for Her living on earth; this is a big vehicle. But here is little except curved panels. They are true wood of different comely grains: so She also needs periodic escape from our machine existence, does She? Furnishing is scant and austere. The only sound is our passage, muffled to a murmur for us; and, because their photomultipliers are not activated, the scaniners show nothing outside but night. We huddle close to a glower, hands extended toward its fieriness. Our shoulders brush, our bare arms, Her skin is soft and Her hair falls loose over the thrown-back cowl, smelling of the summer which is dead. What, is She still human?

After a timeless time, She says, not yet hooking at me: “The thing you sang, there on the highroad as I came near—I do not remember it. Not even from the years before I became what I am.”

“It is older than SUM,” I answer, “and its truth will outlive It.”

“Truth?” I see Her tense Herself. “Sing Me the rest.”

My fingers are no longer too numb to call forth chords.

“—Unto the Death gois all Estatis,
Princis, Prelattis, and Potestatis,
Saith rich and poor of all degree:
—Timor mortis conturbat me.”

“He takis the knichtis in to the field