The Enigma Score (38 page)

The mules began to move forward on their own. Don and Jamieson followed, their mouths open. Jamieson was stunned at what he was hearing. He had sung with Clarin, but it had not been like this.

Clarin’s voice had almost a baritone-contralto range, as softly mellow in the lower ranges as an organ pipe, as pure in the higher ones as a wooden flute. Tasmin’s range was smaller, lower, the quality of his voice richer, more velvety. The two blended as though they were one.

When they reached the end of the initial melody, Clarin raised the key and began a variation.

Tasmin followed her, effortlessly.

Beneath them the Ogre’s Stair was motionless.

They reached the top on a soaring, endless chord that drifted away into the sky, becoming nothing. The Stair was behind them. As they left it, it sang to them, three tones of enormous interrogation.

Tasmin and Clarin rode on, not noticing, not hearing, oblivious to the world around them.

Don did not have her translator working.

‘Good Lord,’ she breathed, looking toward Jamieson, astonished to find him pale and shivering, tears in his eyes.

‘Jamieson,’ she murmured. Clarin and Tasmin were riding on, not looking at one another, silent. ‘Jamieson?’

‘Just once,’ he mumbled to her. ‘Just once. If I could …’

She nodded, understanding. There was nothing she could say. Poor Jamieson. Too much propinquity. She squeezed his shoulder sympathetically. He loved the girl, and she loved Tasmin, and Tasmin loved – what? Celcy? Jubal?

By the time they reached the bottom of the slope, Clarin was herself once more. She had dug a package of sweet stores out of her pocket and now offered them around.

‘The people tracking us know we’re headed south. And since the only thing you did to stir up suspicion was to come up with the Enigma score, they may realize we’re headed that way.’

Don agreed. ‘When they get out of that valley we left, they’ll hit a major east-west shipping route, with virtually no problems on the way.’

‘We’ll simply have to get there first,’ Tasmin said, lifting a mule foot and staring at it as though fascinated. He was still lost in the music, still finding it hard to connect with reality. ‘We’ve lost a little time dealing with the Ogre, but as I read the charts, I think we can make a fairly short traverse of the Blinders, just east of us, and come into one of the main east-west routes ourselves.’

‘The one that comes through Deepsoil Two, Six, Eight, and Nine?’ Jamieson asked in a fairly normal voice. ‘That’s an easy run. I know every Password on that route.’

‘Good for you, Reb. And Nine is just through the Mystic Range from Harmony.’ He thumped the mule and tightened the cinch, then took a candy from Clarin and sat down beside her. ‘We need to move fast. Justin’s got the interior shut off, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he expected the CHASE Commission to arrive momentarily. As soon as he gets their verdict, he’ll send word to the troops, and anything we have to say will come much too late.’

Jamieson nodded. ‘What do you think we have, at best? A few days? A few weeks? That, at most, if we’re going to show them anything while they’re here. We’ve got to collect our evidence and then get back to the Deepsoil Coast at a dead run.’

With the situation thus delineated, unaccountably they all felt better. The situation was fully as bad as they had thought it was and they were all agreed on it, which relieved each of them of having to worry it out individually. Don even managed a quirky smile at the sight of Clarin trying to replace her lost crystal mouse by baiting a new and elusive beast with candy. It evaded capture, and they mounted once more, setting out at a good pace toward the Blinders.

After that, they did not seem to pause, not for days. Sleep came and went in brief periods of exhausted slumber, forgotten all too soon, along with snatched meals and hasty relief stops. Jamieson fought them through the Blinders, finding an amazing strength from somewhere, this time leaving them with mouths open. They left the last of the crystal towers in the evening when the refracted light from the setting sun made it almost impossible to see anything in any direction and found themselves on the open trail to Deepsoil Two with only easy Passwords between themselves and the dirt town. In Two, Tasmin requisitioned four additional mules from the citadel, letting their own animals trail along unburdened for most of the following day as they caught up with and joined a caravan headed east and stayed with it all the way into Deepsoil Six. The caravan rested for eight hours, but Tasmin and company slept only five, rising in the dark to continue on the way, timing their departure to let them come to the first intervening Presences at dawn.

Clarin caught a crystal mouse in the ’lings above Deepsoil Eight.

She had it half tamed by the time they reached Nine, feeding it crumbs and singing repetitive melodies to it, to which the others dreamed as they rode.

Jamieson sang them through the Startles, above Harmony to the west, and they planned to sleep that night in the caravansery. There was no citadel in Harmony, but the caravansery manager put himself out to be as useful as possible, fetching food and towels and assorted oddments to a running commentary.

‘Nice to have a group of ’Singers here again,’ he said, his chins and bellies wobbling in emphasis. ‘Hat a bunch earlier you wuttn’t believe.’

‘Tripsinger trouble?’ Tasmin asked, disbelievingly. ‘I haven’t heard that we’ve got any troublemakers, currently.’

‘Naah, the Tripmaster was all right, him and his assistant. Wagon men was all right, too. The cook even helpt me fix a meal for the lot of ’em. No, it was those others with ’em.’

‘Passengers?’

The fat man shook his head, first chins then bellies swaying like waves generated from a common source somewhere around the ears. ‘Don’t think so, no. Four men with mules o’ their own, come along after the caravan lookin’ for some woman and baby. Tripmaster sait the woman left ’en back outsite o’ Twelve. Crazy, if she went that way. Lots longer that way. Have to go through Thirteen and Fourteen on yer way up to Six, then come the way you come from there. Take almost twice’t as long.’

‘You didn’t happen to hear who it was they were looking for, did you?’ asked Tasmin, dry-mouthed.

‘Woman’s name was Terree. Same’s that Soilcoast singer got himself kilt on the Enigma …’

‘These men didn’t happen to say who they were, did they?’ Donatella asked.

‘Oh, no neet to tell me the name o’ the one of ’em. Bins, he was. Chantiforth Bins. My wife buys ever cube those tamnt Crystals put out. True believer, she is, just so long as she won’t have to get up off her lollyfalooz to do nothin’ abou tit. Ever time I come in the room, it’s that cube rantin’ and ravin’ like some bantigon with a buttache. I’ve seen him till I’m sick of him. Heart him, too, and he toesn’t make any more sense up clost than on the cube. I knew he was lyin’ the minute he startit talkin’.’

‘But he didn’t find the woman.’

‘Nah. She was long gone. Way I think, that Tripmaster he hit her somewheres.’

‘Hit her!’

‘Right. Like hit her in the trees or hit her in a hole in the ground so’s those fella’s cuttn’t hurt her none. Her’n the baby.’

‘The answer to all our problems,’ said Jamieson, sotto voce, leaning heavily on Clarin. ‘Hit ’em in a hole in the grount.’

‘I’ll hit you in a hole in the grount if you’re not careful,’ murmured Clarin, smiling at him.

‘Where’s the Tripmaster now?’ Tasmin asked, trying to glare at them and succeeding only in looking weary.

‘Gone on t’Five. ’Forn he went, he ast me to get ’long there and help her out. Whispert it, kind of. The Tripmaster that was.’

‘When was this?’ Tasmin said, dangerously patient.

‘Was yesterday since. Trouble was, I can’t go til these ones go away.’

‘Did the Tripmaster say where they came up to the wagon train? Bins and his bunch?’

‘Oh, yes. Come up on it down at the turn off where one roat comes up here t’Harmony and one goes east to nothin’ much. I think that’s right. Course, you might ask ’em. They’re all of ’em asleep in there.’ And he pointed to one of the dormitory rooms, halfway down the long hall. ‘They lookt for her but din’t fint her. Sait they’re goin’ on t’Teepsoil Five, first thin’ tomorrow.’

‘Armed?’ asked Jamieson.

The caravansery manager shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. No arms I saw.’

‘I guess we don’t sleep?’ Donatella asked, only half a question.

‘I guess you’re right,’ said Tasmin. ‘Do you have any Bormil tea?’ he asked the caravansery manager. ‘Or Tsamp? Something that will keep us awake for a while?’

‘Now, what kint o’ caravansery wuttn’t have Tsamp,’ the manager nodded. ‘Sure I got Tsamp. You want it powdert or cookt in somethin’?’

They settled on Tsamp in broth, drinking enough of it that their nerves were screamingly alert when they left Harmony, headed south.

When the sun came up, they found themselves at the fork of the trail, a long ridge leading away to the east, groves of trees speckling the shallow soil between the westward trail and the Presences, and not a sign of Vivian or the baby. They called and searched for an hour, then spent some time hailing with the machines, and then, in a mood of fatalistic exhaustion, turned east and rode for the Enigma.

Tasmin had seen it before, from the north side, from between the twin needles, between the two insolent daggers of bloody ice. He had looked down onto the little flat that lay between those daggers like a stained handkerchief between two gory swords, and he had seen that handkerchief fold away around Celcy, around Lim, wrapping away those arrogant enough to test the Enigma.

Now he saw the same place from below.

A polished ramp of crystal wound upward toward that same little flat. All the shards and shattered fragments had been cleared away. It gleamed like cut glass, like ruby or dark garnet with paler edges, as though its blood had coagulated in some places and had run with water in others, dark clots and pale tints intermingled where something bled into the sea of that great crystal, bled forever and was forever washed away.

Within the bloody traceries glinted the web of fracture, the delicate tracery of dislocation, of tilted planes and vacant edges, shivering with dawn light.

‘Where did you go before, Don?’ Tasmin asked. ‘When you talked to it?’

‘Up there,’ Donatella answered. ‘It was a dim, gray day, with fog in the air. Not like today. I … I don’t recall being afraid then.’

‘Are you now?’

‘Lord, yes, aren’t you? That thing is glaring at us.’

‘I expected to be afraid. But then I’ve only been here once, and my experience was a different one from yours.’

‘What do we do?’ Clarin asked. ‘Now you can tell us, Donatella. What was your clue? What did Erickson give you that took you up there?’

Donatella turned and adjusted her music box, finding a particular setting and playing it so softly they barely heard it, a haunting melody, rising and falling in quiet repetition, as though water ran upon stone, eating it away. ‘An-dar-ououm, an-dar-ououm.’ It was the Enigma score, and yet it was neither synthesizer nor human voice.

‘Viggies?’ asked Jamieson. ‘Is that viggies?’

‘I’ll cut in the translator,’ she said. ‘Now listen.’

The same melody, translated. ‘Let the edges sleep. Let one half sleep,’ sang the translator, ‘let it sleep in peace, let it rest, let it rest, let water run deep, let the edges grow, let the way come clear, soft, soft, let the fingers sleep, let one half sleep.’

She cut off the machine. ‘There’s more. Not a lot more words, but a lot more music, and very repetitive. That’s what Erickson suggested – that I record a group of viggies near a Presence without a Password. Well, I got lucky, I hid. I heard them singing off in the night, and I recorded that first thing.

‘However, the translator could only give me a few words. I doubt if any translator, up until now, could have done even that. It told me it needed more, lots more. So, I hid in a hole in that cliff up there for over a week, recording viggy songs and chatter and describing what they were doing until the translator had enough that it could start to give it to me clearly. We got words for water and fingers and sleep right away, but it took some time to get the rest. The viggy language is more complex than you can imagine. Once I had the translation, I learned their words, then came here and sang the thing. That’s what I used. I sang that to the Enigma, all of it, for about an hour. I don’t have much voice, but it didn’t take much. You heard it. Simple.’

‘And you were recording whatever sounds the Presence made?’

‘Of course. At first, only noise. Whatever different kinds of noise there are. Like back in the valley, like most places, just a garble, a kind of whistling, chuckling, squeaking, snoring noise. But as I sang, it quieted down. I’d already figured out what questions I wanted to ask.
Do you have a name for yourself you would like me to use
? I thought that would get us off on the right foot. So, as soon as everything was quiet, I sang that. Loudly.’

‘And the answer was, as I recall from when you played it for us,
Messengers know to whom they come
. Right?’ asked Jamieson.

‘Right. Not exactly responsive, but it did make sense. So, I thought I’d give it some information at that point. I sang,
I am not one of the usual messengers.’

Clarin said, ‘And the reply to that was
None of them are.’

‘That’s right. Up until that point, everything had been very peaceful. Then I started to go on to my next question. The minute I started, it shook. Just a little, and only on one side, but I thought – well, I thought, hell, I had enough. I’m no linguist, no philologist, no specialist in alien communication. Suppose I slashed it off, all unwitting. So I went back to the first song, the peaceful water one, and I sang that while I backed off.’

‘So your intention is to repeat that sequence?’ Clarin asked again, staring upward. ‘With us as witnesses.’

‘Why didn’t we try it on some other Presence, something closer to where we were?’ Jamieson wanted to know, also staring upward. There was something ominous about the bloody glare coming from the Enigma, something threatening about the darting, dancing light.