CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (13 page)

One of those who had been silent spoke. “There is something in what she says.”

White Ring was silent a moment. “It would be best not to fight,” she said. “I would not lose more of us. Bring out the histories.”

“Bring out the histories,” I agreed.

She scratched at the unyielding metal ground with her foot, never taking her eyes off me. Then she barked a short order to her daughter, who repeated White Ring’s word into the speaking tube.

The ladder well was behind me. I did not look as I heard the singer climbing into the room, or move as he squeezed past into the center of the circle in front of White Ring. I never moved my eyes from her, and let the others shift to let him by.

He was shorter even than most males, and his feathers were a dull brown, specked with black. He was an unprepossessing thing until he opened his mouth, as I well knew. He was my son.

He lowered his head in front of White Ring. “You choose first,” she said to me. I should have been daunted—if I chose first, hers would be the last word. But I was not.

“I choose
Strong Claw’s Voyage,
” I said.

We are all susceptible to the power of song. The songs you’ve known since hatching, in the mouth of a great singer, will quicken your pulse and stop your breath. As my son called out the opening lines to the history I had chosen, all in the room were compelled by his voice to listen. Feathers ruffled and then settled, and all were still and there was no sound but his song.

There is no need to give the details here. The story is told, in its essentials, in the picture on the wall of the sky-boat, and in any event I might have chosen anything from the histories I wished, so long as White Ring would feel safe making the obvious choice when her turn came.

No, the song, and its argument, is already clear to you.

Instead, I will tell you about my son.

* * *

When I was younger, and looking for a mate, I had resolved to have only the strongest, wiliest male I could find. I wanted large, strong daughters. I wanted children who would distinguish themselves on a hunt. I turned down suitors who were stupid, or weak, or too short. Some I killed. I would have killed the little brown-feathered thing that approached me last, but he opened his mouth and sang.

His voice! I lost all reason.

When the first clutch of eggs hatched, I had five daughters and six sons. Three of the daughters seemed strong enough. Three of the males were small and weak, and I thought they might die. But one of those, as I bent near to it, tiny, naked-looking thing, let out one barely audible peep.

I ate the four weaklings and fed them to him. His health was all my care in the coming months, and he grew strong.

He was undersized, but he was clever. I taught him what I could, and when the day came, that comes for all male children, the day to leave his mother and sisters behind forever, I instructed him to seek out the singers guild.

For most mothers, when that day comes it is as though they never had male children. The boys go off to other territories, and if they’re seen again the sight raises no sentiment in the breast of the formerly doting mother. Your daughters are yours for life; your sons cease to exist when they leave the nest. But I took what steps I could to ensure that my son would be mine, no less than my daughters, even after he had gone to the singers guild.

I didn’t know then that I would be on the sky-boat, or that a giant rock would hurtle out of the heavens and destroy the Earth. And even had I known, I could not have predicted that the lowlander singer would die during the launch, leaving my boy the only historian on the ship. But I knew that a singer’s voice has a power entirely different from claws and teeth. White Ring had said she knew my ambition of old, but she did not realize its true extent.

* * *

The song ended. Strong Claw, victorious through all dangers, never turning back though she knew not what the end of her voyage would be, stood at last on the shore of the land she had discovered. Every listener sighed to hear it. It is an old song, and a pleasing one, with a clear lesson—the strong and resolute prevail.

It was no more than I had already said. And as I had hoped—expected!—White Ring answered with
The Endangered
Camp
.

It is a story older even than Strong Claw’s. It begins when a party of hunters goes out looking for iguanadon. (I myself have never seen an iguanadon, but they thunder through the oldest stories in vast herds.) They leave behind them in the woods their camp, a nursery. “Mounds of earth and leaves,” the singer sang, “the infants waiting their time to come forth, and the guardians of the nests watchful.”

An idyllic scene! But while the hunters are gone, the camp is attacked. The beast’s tearing claws and rending teeth kill one guardian, and the others circle the nests as well as they can, and cry out together,
Let the hunting party return!

Close around me, the listeners were rapt and their eyes wide, and they barely breathed, such was the power of the singer’s voice.

The hunting party did return, of course. They heard the cries of the guardians, and ran with desperate speed back to the camp. Three guardians were killed, and four hunters, but they drove off the beast, saved the eggs, saved the pack. So the history tells us.

Now, this is the strange thing about history. When we are in doubt as to what course to take, or there is some debate, we examine the histories, we say, “So our ancestors did then, and so we should do now.” And we think of the past as a solid, unbreakable rock that will always have the same form. But by accident or design, the rock is shaped. A singer drops a line here, a verse there, knowing or unknowing. And if you change the past, you change the future.

Stop with the beast defeated, and the eggs safe, and the salutary moral is clear. The lowlander singers I had heard had always stopped there. But it’s not the end of the story. The four dead hunters had been among the most experienced, many of the others were injured, and food was scarce that year anyway. The seven dead from the attack fed the pack for a while, but after that they plundered the nests to survive, and no children were born that year.

I did not think White Ring would expect the singer to continue, even if she knew of the ending. The ill-omen of it would be too strong. Any singer would know what she meant by requesting it, and know, if he knew the end, to leave it off. But oh, my clever boy! He sang the rest of the song.

For a moment, as he continued where she had expected him to stop, she stood paralyzed. The others blinked in surprise, but his voice transfixed them and they were silent. White Ring drew her head back, and I saw her killing claws twitch. Even so she waited until he had finished.

“You made that up,” accused White Ring’s daughter when he fell silent. White Ring still held her threatening pose, ready to strike. But she dared not touch the singer; there was no other on board.

“You’re very young,” I said, my leg muscles tense with the desire to jump. “It’s fashionable these days to leave that verse off, but anyone of any experience and education knows that’s how the story ends.” I swiveled my snout towards White Ring, and bared my teeth. “Isn’t that so?”

“I have never heard it,” said White Ring, still poised to strike. Her gaze was fixed on the boy, a small, brown-specked shape in the middle of the circle. “You have violated your obligation as a singer. Why? There can have been no collusion. Can you have done such a terrible thing merely from a hatred of lowlanders?”

Even if I had told her he was mine she would not have been able to imagine why such a thing would matter. And besides, he had sung truly. I might have laughed, but I did not; this was a dangerous moment.

“I have heard it,” said a quiet voice. The others turned their heads but I never took my eyes off White Ring. She never took her eyes off my son.

“My great-aunt’s mate was a singer,” the voice continued. I placed it—a sturdy, handsome male, gray and black feathered, still young. He had kept quiet before now, as was proper. “He died when I was still a chick, but I remember he sang it in just that way.” Silence. And then, even more timidly than before, “I was surprised to hear it requested. I wondered if you would signal the singer to leave the ending off. But then I thought,
he won’t sing the ending, no one ever has
except my uncle.
”

White Ring and her daughter would have no qualms about killing the black and gray male. They drew their heads back, hissing.

In that instant, a voice came from the speaking tube. “We have completed our calculations.”

The low ceiling made it impossible to jump. Instead I drew my head back and then struck forward with all the force I could muster, hoping the boy would be quick enough to move out of the way.

The room erupted in screams and shouts. My teeth snapped together where White Ring’s neck had been an instant before. I grabbed her shoulder and as she raked me with her claws I brought my foot up with its deadly killing claw. White Ring grabbed me and sank her teeth into my shoulder, but she was too late. My foot came up, and I drove my claw into her belly, and pulled my leg convulsively back.

Her jaws opened in a scream, and I let go of her and stepped back. The black and gray male was locked with the daughter. No one else was in the room—they must have fled down the ladder well.

“You are dead, White Ring,” I said. Pink entrails sagged out of the bleeding slash in her belly. “I need only keep out of reach for a while.”

“Return to Earth,” she said. “What if we’re all that’s left?”

I wanted to take a step back and lean against the wall, but I wasn’t sure if she still had strength for a last charge, and I didn’t want to show any weakness.

“You have doomed us,” she said, and fell to her knees, and then onto her side, guts squirting out with the force of her fall. Still I did not approach. Until she was reliably dead she was a danger.

Instead I looked over at the black and gray male, who stood now over the daughter’s corpse. His feathers drooped, and he was covered in blood, whose it was impossible to tell. “Are you hurt?” I asked. I hoped he wasn’t. He was handsome, and obviously strong.

“Yes,” he said.

“Go down to the doctor. On your way, inform the engineers of the change in command.” He bowed his head low and limped to the ladder well. My son had climbed up, and made way for him.

I stepped over to the daughter and pushed her with my foot. She was dead. Carefully, tentatively, I did the same for her mother.

Dead.

“Well, my chick,” I said. “There will be new songs, and they will be yours.” I turned to see him standing at the well. He bobbed his head. We had always understood each other.

My shoulder hurt, and my neck, where I had been clawed. I would have to see the doctor soon enough myself, but not this very moment. I turned around to see the image of the smoking, burning Earth. “Earth is dead, or if not it may as well be. Mars will be ours.” If anyone still lived on the Earth, perhaps one day they would venture away from the world and find, on Mars, the evidence of our triumph.

Let cowards retreat. We go forward. We live!

Mary Robinette Kowal

Kahe peeked over the edge of the earthen trench as his tribe’s retreating warriors broke from the bamboo grove onto the lava field. The tribesmen showed every sign of panicked flight in front of the advancing Ouvallese. Spears and shields dropped to the ground as they tucked in their arms and ran.

And the Ouvallese, arrogant with their exotic horses and metal armor, believed what they saw and chased the warriors toward him. The timing on this would be close. Kahe gathered the spell in his mind and double-checked the garrote around his neck. His wife stood behind him, the ends resting lightly in her hands. “Do it.”

Bless her, Mehahui did not hesitate. She hauled back, cutting into his throat with the knotted cord. Kahe tried not to struggle as his breath was cut off. Black dots swirled in his vision, but he could not afford to faint yet.

With each breath he could not take, with each step closer to death, Kahe’s power grew. As the tribe’s warriors reached the trench and leaped down, he scanned the lava field to make certain none were left behind. Vision fading, he unleashed the spell coiled inside him.