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Songmaster
Chapter One
There were many ways a child could turn up in the baby market of Doblay-Me. Many
children, of course, were genuine orphans, though now that wars had ended with Mikal's
Peace orphanhood was a social position much less often achieved. Others had been sold by
desperate parents who had to have money -- or who had to have a child out of their way and
hadn't the heart for murder. More were bastards from worlds and nations where religion or
custom forbad birth control. And others slipped in through the cracks.
Ansset was one of these when a seeker from the Songhouse found him. He had been
kidnapped and the kidnappers had panicked, opting for the quick profit from the baby trade
instead of the much riskier business of arranging for ransom and exchange. Who were his
parents? They were probably wealthy, or their child wouldn't have been worth kidnapping.
They were white, because Ansset was extremely fairskinned and blond. But there were
trillions of people answering to that description, and no government agency was quite so
foolish as to assume the responsibility of returning him to his family.
So Ansset, whose age was unknowable but who couldn't be more than three years old,
was one of a batch of a dozen children that the seeker brought back to Tew. All the children
had responded well to a few simple tests -- pitch recognition, melody repetition, and
emotional response. Well enough, in fact, to be considered potential musical prodigies. And
the Songhouse had bought -- no, no, people are not bought in the baby market -- the
Songhouse had adopted them all. Whether they became Songbirds or mere singers, masters or
teachers, or even if they did not work out musically at all, the Songhouse raised them,
provided for them, cared about them for life. In loco parentis, said the law. The Songhouse
was mother, father, nurse, siblings, offspring, and, until the children reached a certain level of
sophistication, God.
"New," sang a hundred young children in the Common Room, as Ansset and his
fellow marketed children were ushered in. Ansset did not stand out from the others. True,
he was terrified -- but so were the rest. And while his nordic skin and hair put him at the
extreme end of the racial spectrum, such things were studiously ignored and no one ridiculed
him for it, any more than they would have ridiculed an albino.
Routinely he was introduced to the other children; routinely all forgot his name as
soon as they heard it; routinely they sang a welcome whose tone and melody were so confused
that it did nothing to allay Ansset's fear; routinely Ansset was assigned to Rruk, a five-year-old
who knew the ropes.
"You can sleep by me tonight," Rruk said, and Ansset dumbly nodded. "I'm older,"
Rruk said. "In maybe a few months or sometime soon anyway I get a stall." This meant
nothing to Ansset. "Anyway, don't piss in your bed because we never get the same one two
nights in a row."
Ansset's three-year-old pride was enough to take umbrage at this. "Don't piss in bed."
But he didn't sound angry -- just afraid.
"Good. Some of 'em are so scared they do."
It was near bedtime; new children were always brought in near bedtime. Ansset asked
no questions. When he saw that other children were undressing, he too undressed. When he
saw that they found nightgowns under their blankets, he too found a nightgown and put it on,
though he was clumsy at it. Rruk tried to help him, but Ansset shrugged off the offer. Rruk
looked momentarily hurt, then sang the love song to him.
I will never hurt you.
I will always help you.
If you are hungry
I'll give you my food.
If you are frightened
I am your friend.
I love you now
And love does not end.
The words and concepts were beyond Ansset, but the tone of voice was not. Rruk's
embrace on his shoulder was even more clear, and Ansset leaned on Rruk, though he still said
nothing and did not cry.
"Toilet?" Rruk asked.
Ansset nodded, and Rruk let him to a large room adjoining the Common, where water
ran swiftly through trenches. It was there that he learned that Rruk was a girl. "Don't stare,"
she said. "Nobody stares without permission." Again, Ansset did not understand the words,
but the tone of voice was clear. He understood the tone of voice instinctively, as he always
had; it was his greatest gift, to know emotions even better than the person feeling them.
"How come you don't talk except when you're mad?" Rruk asked him as they lay
down in adjoining beds (as a hundred other children also lay down).
It was now that Ansset's control broke. He shook his head, then turned away, buried
his face under the blankets, and cried himself to sleep. He did not see the other children
around him who looked at him with distaste. He did not know that Rruk was humming a
tune that meant, "Let be, let alone, let live."
He did know, however, when Rruk patted his back, and he knew that the gesture was
kind; and this was why he never forgot his first night in the Songhouse and why he could
never feel anything but love for Rruk, though he would soon far surpass her rather limited
abilities.
"Why do you let Rruk hang around you so much, when she isn't even a Breeze?" asked
a fellow student once, when Ansset was six. Ansset did not answer in words. He answered
with a song that made the questioner break Control, much to his humiliation, and weep
openly. No one else ever challenged Rruk's claim on Ansset. He had no friends, not really,
but his song for Rruk was too powerful to challenge.
* * *
Chapter Two
Ansset held on to two memories of his parents, though he did not know these dream
people were his parents. They were White Lady and Giant Man, when he thought to put
names to them at all. He never spoke of them to anyone, and he only thought of them when
he had dreamed the dreams of them the night before.
The first memory was of the White Lady whimpering, lying on a bed with huge
pillows. She was staring into nothingness, and did not see Ansset as he walked into the room.
His step was unsure. He did not know if she would be angry that he had come in. But her
soft, whipped cries drew him on, for it was a sound he could not resist, and he came and stood
by the bed where she rested her head on her arm. He reached out and patted her arm. Even
in the dream the skin felt hot and fevered. She looked at him, and her eyes were deep in tears.
Ansset reached to the eyes, touched the brow, let his tiny fingers slide down, closing the eyes,
caressing the lid so gently that the White Lady did not recoil. Instead she sighed, and he
caressed all her face as her whimpers softened into gentle humming.
It was then that the dream went awry, ending in odd ways. Always a Giant Man came
in, but what he did was a mystery of rumbling voice, embraces, shouts. Sometimes he also lay
on the bed with White Lady. Sometimes he picked Ansset up and took him on strange
adventures that ended in waking. Sometimes the White Lady kissed him good-bye.
Sometimes she did not notice him once the Giant Man came into the room. But the dreams
always began the same, and the part that never changed was memory.
The other memory was of the moment of kidnapping. Ansset was in a very large place
with a distant roof that was painted with strange animals and distorted people. Loud music
came from a lighted place where everyone was always moving. Then there was a deafening
noise and the place became all light and noise and conversation, and White Lady and Giant
Man walked among the crowd. There was pushing and jostling, and someone stepped
between White Lady and Ansset, breaking their handhold. White Lady turned to the
stranger, but at the same moment Ansset felt a powerful hand grip his. He was pulled away,
bumping harshly through the crowd. Then the hand pulled him up, hurting his arm, and for
a moment, lifted above the heads of the crowd, Ansset saw White Lady and Giant Man for the
last time, both of them pushing through the crowd, their faces fearful, their mouths open to
cry out. But Ansset could never remember hearing them. For a blast of hot air struck him,
and a door closed, and he was outside in a blazing hot night, and then he always, always woke
up, trembling but not crying, because he could hear a voice saying Quiet, Quiet, Quiet in
tones that meant fear and falling and fire and shame.
"You do not cry," said the teacher, a man with a voice that was more comforting than
sunlight.
Ansset shook his head. "Sometimes," he said.
"Before," answered the teacher. "But now you will learn Control. When you cry you
waste your songs. You burn up your songs. You drown your songs."
"Songs?" asked Ansset.
"You are a little put full of songs," said the teacher, "and when you cry, the pot breaks
and all the songs spill out ugly. Control means keeping the songs in the pot, and letting them
out one at a time."
Ansset knew pots. Food came from a pot. He thought of songs as food, then, besides
knowing they were music.
"Do you know any songs?" asked the teacher.
Ansset shook his head.
"Not any? Not any songs at all?"
Ansset looked down.
"Ansset, songs. Not words. Just a song that has no words but you just sing, like this,
Ah---" and the teacher sang a short stretch of melody that spoke to Ansset and said, Trust,
Trust, Trust.
Ansset smiled. He sang the same melody back to the teacher. For a moment the
teacher smiled, then looked started, then reached out with wondering eyes and touched
Ansset's hair. The gesture was kind. And so Ansset sang the love song to the teacher. Not
the words, because he had no memory for words yet. But he sang the melody as Rruk had
sung it to him, and the teacher wept. It was Ansset's first lesson on his first day at the
Songhouse, and the teacher wept. He did not understand until later that his meant that the
teacher had lost Control and would be ashamed for weeks until Ansset's gifts were more fully
appreciated. He only knew that when he sang the love song, he was understood.
Copyright © 1978 Orson Scott Card
Prologue
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