Singer from the Sea (41 page)

“Where does the river come from? Where does it go?”

“The presettlement geology report says it starts up in those mountains south of us. The area was probably covered by polar ice at that time. Now the river is completely underground, and it must be completely enclosed or we wouldn’t get this flow. Our well was deliberately stopped up before we arrived, just to be disobliging. Now we’re working on a seal for the well so we can get all the water we need without having a river through the door.”

“How did they stop it up?”

“With considerable labor and tons of rubble. One of the men took a water sample out to the ship and they ran it through the analyzer. It’s perfectly clean.”

She considered this. “Aufors, if there’s all that water available, why don’t they have agriculture? If they put water on this desert, it should bloom, shouldn’t it?”

He hugged her. “From what we’ve seen so far, we’ll probably find that it’s either forbidden by their religion or beneath their dignity. One or the other.”

The doctor knocked, put his head around the door, then came in to apply his little monitor to her swelling belly and another to her head. He read the results and recommended a bath and a good sleep immediately.

The tub had been set up in a stone-floored room below, which Genevieve managed to get to without encountering Rongor, the Prince, or her father. The quiet room reminded her of the bathroom at Fentwig’s House, and she lay a long time in the tepid water, luxuriating in the feeling of weightlessness. That, night she slept in a real bed, one wide enough to turn over in, one wide enough for Aufors to slip in beside her, and when morning came, she began finding her way about the place.

The building was in the form of an E with the open side jammed against the city wall to make two unequal courtyards joined by a passageway. From the desert, they had entered the larger courtyard where stairs ascended
along the inside of the city wall to the surrounding balconies. At the top of the stairs a narrow slit through the city wall gave a view of the airship and the sun-blasted lands around it. No window looked out upon the city street; the only access to the city was a heavy door at the end of a hallway from the small courtyard, through the top of the E.

The house was large. Genevieve counted over twenty rooms on the ground floors alone. From the smaller courtyard, stairs descended into the kitchens, one level underground, where it was discernably cooler. Off the kitchens were several stone-walled cellars that had perforated pipes running along the walls. Sometime during their first night these seepers came alive with water, and morning found the rooms moist and cool. From these rooms, air ducts extended upward through the walls of the house, opening through grilles along the floors of the upper rooms. Opposite the grilles, holes in the ceilings opened into hollow T-shaped pots suspended with a wire from U-shaped brackets and resting in smooth saucers. Wind-fins rotated the pots, turning them into the constant breeze, and as the wind went through the top of the T, hot air from the house was drawn out as well, allowing cooler air to flow in from below. In a few hours the ground floor was quite comfortable and even the upper floor was more bearable.

Genevieve found two men working in the moist cellars, filling pots with soil into which they set dormant plants that had been brought on the ship.

“Who thought of that?” asked Genevieve, wonderingly.

“Ah … your father,” said Aufors. “Or, he made me think of it. He remarked to me one evening that you had enjoyed the gardens of Wantresse. The plants will not take long to leaf out. When they begin to do so, we’ll move them up into the courtyard.”

She put on a smile and thanked her father, at which he showed obvious discomfort. As he recalled his remark to Aufors, one that equated women’s weakness with their fondness for flowers, it was not one she would have thanked him for.

Genevieve and Aufors had been given the rooms at the end of the balcony upstairs. “You won’t be wakened by
people tramping by in the night,” said Aufors. “Those of us on night duty will use the other courtyard, to keep the noise down.”

“Night duty?” Genevieve faltered. “What night duty?”

“Your father considers this a military operation,” he smiled. “The Prince and the Invigilator evidently agree with him. The guards will work three four-hour shifts a day so at least one of them will be alert all the time. I have to agree that it’s best in situations like this to keep an eye open always.”

The other upper rooms over the larger courtyard were occupied by the Marshal and various of the other personnel, while Delganor’s suite occupied most of the space below, along with rooms for general use and several apartments tucked away in cooler, sky-lighted areas behind the better-lit rooms. The smaller courtyard was occupied by the household servants and support staff, including the communications man who maintained the link to the ship and slept next to his equipment.

All the floors were tiled, as were the lower parts of the walls. There were both solid panels and lattices to pull across the openings to provide privacy. The only thing truly disgusting about the place, Genevieve thought, were the toilets cut into the city walls, tight little tiled closets with a hole in the floor over which one squatted. Several times each day, silent, rag-clad malghaste came from somewhere in the bowels of the place to pour buckets of water down these channels to clear them. The waste ran, so said Aufors, through a cloaca to a subterranean reservoir outside the city which was washed out by a diversion from the subsurface river. The system had been built long ago, when the oasis was still here, when the people may have been quite different in their manners and perceptions.

“If so much is known about all this,” Genevieve murmured to him, “if this place was surveyed long before settlers came, then why is it all so mysterious? Galul either existed then, or it didn’t. Even if the archives don’t mention anything seen by ships, surely they have access to the presettlement reports.”

“Presettlement maps,” Aufors replied, keeping his voice low, “show only an ice-field at the southern end of
Mahahm. Whatever exists there now, it’s come there since the Inundation.”

The ship and its crew remained where they were for the time being and the first few days were spent in shifting additional supplies, mostly foodstuffs, from the cargo nacelle to the house. Once the ambassadorial group had settled in and considered itself secure, the Captain planned to return across the straits to the nearest island, half a day’s flight away, where a camp could be established for the men while they awaited a summons from Delganor or the Marshal.

Two of the guards had been with the Prince on former trips to Mahahm-qum; they spoke the local dialect and were able to slip out anonymously to fetch what foodstuffs were available in the market, some local, some imported, some—milk and cheese and meat—from the sheep that grazed the piles of seaweed along the shores. Everything else they would need, they had brought with them.

They had been in residence only three days when, rather late in the evening, the man on guard heard a knock at the small gate that opened into the city streets. He opened the spy hole, conferred with the person outside, then came to report to the Prince, who was in the large courtyard with the Marshal, Genevieve, and Aufors.

“One of the foreigners who live here in the city, sir,” he said. “A Danian. His name is Thusle.”

“Upstairs,” whispered Aufors to Genevieve. “Don’t let him see you.”

“Oh, Aufors,” she whispered in return, “can’t I stay? I haven’t seen anyone new …”

He shook his head. “The presence of a woman is private information. We can vouch for our staff, but we can’t vouch for some garrulous old cuss who blathers on about this female he just met. Besides, the Prince and the Invigilator …”

She grimaced. “You’re right. I’ll just listen from upstairs.”

Aufors frowned, casting a quick look around. Delganor had already gone to greet the guest. The Marshal and the Invigilator were in one of the lengthy and private conversations they seemed to be having a good many of lately.

He murmured, “Keep out of sight.”

She went to her own quarters and pulled the grilles across the arches that opened into her room. Sitting just inside, she listened avidly while the old man was greeted, given wine and a dish of olives.

“Well, so you arrived safely,” he said. “I was afraid you would not. There has been some talk in the marketplace. Some talk of Mahahmbi rebellion against the expectations of the Lord Paramount.”

“He is Lord Paramount of Mahahm as well as of the rest of Haven,” said the Invigilator in his cold, forbidding voice.

“He is Lord Paramount in absentia,” the old man murmured. “Who here has ever seen the Lord Paramount? No, they welcome visitors who come on ordinary business. Your Highness knows, for Your Highness has been here before. Perhaps welcome is too strong a word, but you catch my meaning. It’s this effort to increase the P’naki they don’t like. If this visit was an ordinary visit, there’d have been no trouble at all. It’s this other thing that has them upset.”

The Prince spoke, drawling. “This will not disrupt our normal relationship, one hopes.”

“It may not, Your Highness. But … it will help if the demands regarding the P’naki are moderated. Everything I hear indicates that the Mahahmbi are correct when they say there is no more to be had. Their religion forbids any modification of their rites, the P’naki is a religious matter, and religious matters are impervious to argument.”

“Even if some modification could result in a large royalty paid to Mahahm?” asked the Marshal.

“Even so. Religion is religion, Marshal.” He turned to the Prince. “Your Highness should understand, having been here before.”

Genevieve peeped through the grillework. The old man held out a trembling hand. She did not doubt his sincerity. When offered more wine, the old man rejected it, saying, “I could be whipped for smelling of it, Colonel.” He did accept a cup of tea and a spice-scented pastille, and thereafter departed into the darkness.

“Well,” said the Invigilator. “It will be more difficult than we thought, Your Highness.”

“Difficult, yes,” mused the Prince. “I must think on this.”

What followed next was expected and unexpected, both at once. The baby came, which was expected, and Genevieve experienced childbirth, which she had read of but was still greatly surprised by. The doctor was kindly and skilled, the nursemaid was immediately at hand, all went well, though lengthily, and after a day and a half of effort, Genevieve found herself lying exhaustedly at ease in her bed, a tiny head nestled to her breast.

As soon as they left her alone, she pulled herself erect, placed the child before her and unwrapped him. She had to see. When Aufors came in, she was running her fingers along the baby’s head and neck, and she looked up at him almost guiltily.

He smiled. “Are you seeing if he is all there? All fingers and toes?”

After a moment, she returned his smile. “AH his fingers and toes are there, yes, Aufors.”

He leaned forward to pick up his son, wrapping him warmly in the blanket she had removed and saying doubtfully, “He looks very wrinkled. His litüe neck is actually corrugated.”

She moved, a bit painfully. “I understand that they all look very much like that. Della’s sister had a baby when I was quite small, and I recall that it was very wrinkled, too.”

“Shall we name him, or wait until he fattens a bit?” He grinned at her. “So we can see what he’ll look like. Though, come to think of it, he has your nose.”

She didn’t want to talk about the nose. Naming the baby was a better topic. “What shall we name him?”

“Dovidi,” he said. “It’s a family name. If you don’t mind?”

“Oh, Aufors, I don’t mind. Dovidi he shall be.”

That night she woke to a cacophonous howl from half a dozen towers, close and distant. She rose, going to the
cradle to see if the baby was asleep, which he was, rosy and warm, thumb in mouth. She turned to find Aufors behind her.

“I heard you get up,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Just … I do hate this place.”

“Why in particular?”

“It’s always either too noisy or too quiet,” she murmured. “The sound of those screamers is hideous.”

“Prayer leaders,” he smiled. “They’re a hereditary caste with mutated larynxes and nasal cavities. If they can’t be heard for a mile or more, they aren’t accepted into the guild or whatever it is. They’re very proud and it’s only seven times a day.”

Privately, Genevieve thought she could make a better noise that would carry farther with her thumb in her mouth, as Dovidi’s was. But then, no one knew that except herself. “Where did you find out about them?”

“We’ve received visits from some of the other trade representatives. They’ve told us a few things. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long mission.”

She confessed, “I know I said it wouldn’t bother me, being here, but I was wrong. It does.”

Though he held her and patted her gently, it did nothing to ameliorate her feelings of embarrassment. Having declared she could manage perfectly well, she was ashamed to admit she was not managing at all. It wasn’t that she was alone, precisely, for the men of the staff were around most of the time, here and there, always willing to chat. It wasn’t that she had nothing to do, for she’d brought needlework, a lute, books, and the baby took endless hours. It was simply that she had no woman to talk with, no woman to cozy with, nothing to put her own motherhood in focus with, as though Dovidi in his cradle were a unique event with no parallel in the universe. The lack of comradeship left her vulnerable to any possibility of company.

She awakened late one night, thirsty, and the carafe beside the bed was empty. She slipped out of her room, down the stairs, through the passage to the small courtyard and thence to the kitchen. While there, she heard a woman’s voice, and, puzzled, she followed the sound through
a panel door that stood ajar, a panel she had not seen before, one that led down another level. She had not realized there was a lower level, but she could not argue with her eyes or her nose that between them perceived a musty-smelling, dimly-lit and stone-floored room at the bottom of the stairs. She took a step and almost fell over a huddled body.