Tepper,Sheri - After Long Silence Read online

  She was standing slightly above him on the porch, a tall girl with a calm and perceptive manner. Without the Tripsinger's robe she looked thinner, more graceful, and he remembered the feel of her body against his when he had hugged her. One always hugged students at times of peril, but he realized with a flush that she was the first female student he had ever precepted. "So you were scared?" he asked softly. "Really scared?"

  "Really scared." She laughed a little, embarrassed at the admission.

  "So was I. I often am. After a while you … you look forward to it. When you're really scared, the whole world seems to … brighten."

  She considered this, doubtfully. "That's hard to imagine."

  "Trust me. It happens. Either it happens, or you get into some other line of work."

  She flushed, thanked him again, and went down the hall to her room. In his own room, Tasmin lay awake, conscious of the towering escarpments all around the town, gathered Presences so quiet that one could hear choruses of viggies singing off in the hills. Echoes of that surge of emotion hitting him that morning were with him still, a welling apprehension, half pleasurable, half terrifying. It had seldom come so strongly. It had seldom lasted so long. He lay there, his body tasting it, listening to the viggies singing until almost midnight.

  He had his first-trippers up and traveling as soon as there was enough light. They stared at the Black Tower long enough to be impressed with the sheer impossibility of the thing while Tasmin, Jamieson close behind him, read silently from the prayers for the dead. The remains of Miles Ferrence lay somewhere in that welter of crystal trash at the bottom of the tower. After Miles Ferrence had died, Tasmin had gone back to the original explorer's notes and done a new Black Tower score, dedicated to the memory of his father. He had really done it to please his mother, and so far no one using it had died. Today he got them through by singing it himself, with Jamieson doing backup.

  After the Black Tower, the Far Watchlings seemed minor league stuff, good practice, but with nothing very interesting about them. James asked to be excused. The sense of awe and mystery that Tasmin had been reveling in departed as they came through the last of the Watchlings and saw Deepsoil Five awaiting them at the bottom of the long slope. Back to reality again. Tasmin heaved a deep breath. He would be home in time for supper.

  "How did your boysies do?" Celcy said, patting his face and reaching up to be kissed. "Were they in frightfully good voice?"

  "All but one, yes." He didn't really want to talk about James. Or, for some reason, Clarin.

  "Oh, poor poopsie, did he get popped off?"

  "Celcy, that's not funny. And it's in damn poor taste." He snapped at her, regretting it instantly.

  Her good spirits were undampened, however. "I'm sorry, Tasmin. Really. I just wasn't thinking. Of course, he didn't get popped off with you there. That's what you're there for, isn't it? To keep the boysies safe and sound."

  "Among other things."

  "I missed you. I missed you a lot." She opened his robe and came inside it, against him, pummeling his ribs with her fists. "Did you hear me, did you?"

  "I heard you." He laughed, suddenly joyous. "I heard you, Celcy."

  "So. Do something about it."

  His weariness left him. The aftertrip letdown was postponed. She was as giddy and playful as a happy child, eager to please him, and the evening passed in a tangle of lovemaking and feasting.

  "I have been cooking dinner all day," she announced at one point, pouring him a third glass of wine. "All day long, without surcease!"

  He rubbed his stomach ruefully. If he hadn't married Celcy for quite other reasons, he might have married her for her cooking. "You're very good to me."

  "That's because," she said, running her hands under his shin. "Because."

  There was an interlude.

  And then, sleepily, "Tassy, sweetie, he called."

  "Who?" He could not for the moment imagine whom she might be talking about, and then it came to him with a blow of almost physical force. "Lim? He's here?" He had to be on Deepsoil Five or he couldn't have called.

  "He's up at the power station. They're camping there for a day or two to get some equipment fixed, he said. Then they'll come on into town. He talked to me for the longest time, and he's the sweetest man! Tassie, you never told me how wonderful he really is. He wanted to know all about you and me and how we met and everything."

  There was a cold, hard lump at the base of Tasmin's throat. He tried to swallow it away, but it wouldn't go.

  "What else did he want?"

  "To give us tickets to the show, of course. To have dinner with us after."

  "Did he ask about Mother?" It was the wrong thing to have asked. Her mood changed abruptly.

  "Yes. He asked if she and your father were still living at the same place, and I told him your father died, but she was still there. It's funny he wouldn't know that, Tassy, about your father. I imagine he'll call her, too."

  Tasmin doubted it very much. When Lim had left Deepsoil Five, he had gone without a word. It wasn't until almost four years later that they had found out he was alive and well on the Deepsoil Coast, doing nightclub concerts of trip songs, moving young women to passionate abandon, making money with both hands. After Tasmin's father died, his mother could have used some of that money, but Lim had never offered, not even after Tasmin wrote …

  Funny. In the letter, he had told Lim that Mother was in need, but he had not said his father was dead. He had supposed Lim knew. And yet, how would he have known?

  "What else did you tell him?"

  "Oh, just that we wanted tickets. I said lots and lots, so we could bring all our friends … "

  Your friends, he thought. Your boyfriends and their wives. Celcy had lots of boyfriends, most of them married. Just friends, nothing to get jealous or upset over. Just boyfriends. No girlfriends, though. All women were rivals, no matter how young or old. Poor Celcy. Dear Celcy.

  "You said dinner?"

  "After the show, he said. He wants to talk to you."

  Jaconi caught him at lunch, very full of his newest theory. "I'm convinced I've found a repetitive sequence, Tas! A similarity that crops up in over ten percent of all successful Petitions and Justifications."

  "Don't be pedantic, Jacky. Call them PJs like everyone else does."

  The older man flushed, ran his fingers through his gray beard as though he were combing mice out of it. "Habit. Trying to stay dignified in front of the students. Hell, you were my student."

  "I remember. And you were a good teacher, too. You should have stayed with it instead of taking the library job."

  "Well, it gives me time to—you know. I know you call it my hobbyhorse, Tas, but it isn't just that. Really. Some days I think I'm that close." He held up a pinched thumb and finger, almost meeting. "That close. I know we're actually talking to the things! It almost seems I can understand what the words are … "

  "Until someone comes along with a new PJ?"

  "No, that's been the trouble up until now. I've been assuming all the … PJs should have a common element, right? But what if Erick-son was right? What if it is really language." Jaconi's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, and he looked around to be sure no one was listening. "I mean, we don't always say the same things under similar circumstances. Suppose I step on your toe. I could say, 'Gee, I'm sorry,' or 'Excuse me,' or That was clumsy of me,' or 'Oh, shit,' or any one of a dozen other things, all equally appropriate."

  "That's true." Tasmin was interested, despite himself.

  "Always before, I was looking for identical elements. All those translators I bought, I was always looking for words or phrases or effects that were the same and had the same effect. But if we don't always say the same thing to convey the same emotion, then maybe the Presences don't either and what I should be looking for is clusters. Right?"

  "It sounds logical."

  "Well, so that's what I'm looking for now. I may even have found some. There are similar elements in about ten
percent of all PJs."

  "What do you mean, similar?"

  "Tone progressions of vowel sounds, mostly. With similar orchestrals. Horns and drums. There's percussion in ninety-five percent of the clusters and horns in over eighty percent, and the other twenty have organ effects that are rather like horn sounds."

  Jaconi's description had set off a chain of recollection in Tasmin's mind, and he reached for it, rubbing his forehead. "Jacky, I brought you the new Enigma score a week or so ago."

  "You poor guy. I looked it over after you left it and it was a bitch."

  "Well, yeah, it was complex, but not that bad, really. The Explorer's notes were excellent; I've never seen better. It did have a long sequence at the first of the PJs, though lots of vowel progressions in thirds and fifths and percussion and horns."

  "Who came up with it?"

  "Some explorer who normally works way up in the northwest. Don Furz? Does it ring a bell?"

  "Furz's Rogue Tower Variations. Furz's Creeping Desert Suite. Furz's Canon for Fanglings." He pronounced it "Farzh."

  "Oh, Farzh. I should have realized."

  "When's it scheduled for trial?"

  "It isn't. The Master General wanted it on file, that's all."

  "No volunteers?"

  "That's a bad joke, Jacky. We've been trying the Enigma for about a hundred years and what's the score by now? Enigma, about eighty. Tripsingers, zero. We won't have a volunteer unless we have someone set on suicide."

  Celcy had spent the week prior to the concert creating a new dress. Deepsoil Five was hardly a hotbed of fashion, and she often made her own clothing, copying things she saw in holos from the Coast where the influences of the star ships coming and going from Splash One and Two kept the style changing. Her current effort was brilliant orange, shockingly eye-catching with her black hair and brown skin, particularly inasmuch as it left bits of that skin bare in unlikely places.

  "You're beautiful," Tasmin told her, knowing it was not entirely for him that she'd created the outfit. She took his admiration for her physical self for granted.

  "I am, aren't I?" She twirled before the mirror, trying various bits of jewelry, settling at last on the firestone earrings he had given her for their fifth anniversary after saving for two years to do so. He still felt a little guilty every time he saw her wear them. The money would have helped a lot on what he was saving for his mother's medical treatment, but Celcy had really wanted them, and when she got things she wanted, she was as ecstatic as a birthday child. He loved her like that, loved the way she looked in the gems. They, too, glittered with hot orange flares.

  He stood behind her, assessing them as a couple, he tall, narrow faced and towhaired, like a pale candle, she tiny and glowing like a dark torch. Even in the crowded concert hall after the lights went down, she seemed to burn with an internal light.

  He had told himself he would detest the music, and he tried to hate it, particularly inasmuch as he recognized the Password bits, the words and phrases that had cost lives to get at, here displayed purely for effect, used to evoke thrills. Here, in a Tripsinger citadel town, Lim had sense enough not to bill anything as a tripsong, not to dress as a tripsinger, and to stay away from the very familiar stuff that anyone might be expected to know. Except for those very sensible precautions, he used what he liked, interspersing real Password stuff with lyrics in plain language. Even though Tasmin knew too much of the material, he still felt a pulse and thrill building within him, a heightening of awareness, an internal excitement that had little or nothing to do with the plagiarized material. The music was simply good. He hated to admit it, but it was.

  Beside him, Celcy flushed and glittered as though she had been drinking or making love. When the concert was over, her eyes were wide and drugged looking. "Let's hurry," she said. "I want to meet him."

  Lim had made reservations at the nicest of the local restaurants. None of them could be called luxurious by Deepsoil Coast standards, but the attention they received from other diners made Celcy preen and glow. Lim greeted them as though he had never been away, as though he had seen them yesterday, as though he knew them well, a kind of easy bonhomie that grated on Tasmin even as he admired it.

  Lim had always made it look so easy. Everything he did, badly or well, he had done easily and with flair. Tasmin found a possible explanation in widely dilated eyes, a hectic flush. Lim was obviously on something, obviously keyed up. Perhaps one had to be to do the kind of concert they had just heard. Tasmin looked down at his own hands as they ordered, surprised to find them trembling. He clenched them, forced his body into a semblance of relaxation, and concentrated on being sociable. Celcy would not soon forgive him if he were stiff and unpleasant.

  "Place hasn't changed," Lim was saying. "Same old center. I thought they'd have built a new auditorium by now."

  Tasmin made obvious small talk. "Well, it's the same old problem, Lim. Caravans have a tough enough time bringing essential supplies. It would be hard to get the BDL Administration interested in rebuilding a perfectly adequate structure, even though I'll admit it does lack a certain ambience."

  "You can say that again, brother. The acoustics in that place are dreadful. I'd forgotten."

  "I just can't believe you're from Deepsoil Five," Celcy bubbled. "You don't look all that much like Tasmin, either. Are you really full brothers? Same parents for both of you?"

  There was a fleeting expression of pain behind Lim's eyes, gone in the instant. "Ah, well," Lim laughed. "I got all the looks and Tasmin got all the good sense." His admiring and rather too searching glance made this a compliment to her, which she was quick to appreciate.

  "Oh, no." Celcy sparkled at him. "It takes good sense to be as successful as you've been, Lim."

  "And you must think Tasmin's pretty good looking, or you wouldn't have married him."

  They were posing for one another, advance and retreat, like a dance. Celcy was always like this with new men. Not exactly flirtatious, Tasmin sometimes told himself, at least not meaning it that way. She always told him when men made advances, not denying she liked it a little, but not too much, sometimes claiming to resent it even after Tasmin had seen her egging some poor soul on. Well, Lim wouldn't be around that long, and it would give her something to remember, something to talk about endlessly. "He really liked me, didn't he, Tas. He thought I looked beautiful … "

  "Speaking of success," Tasmin said mildly, raising a glass to attract Lim's attention. "Now that you're very much a success, could you offer some help for Mother, Lim? She's not destitute, but I'd like to send her to the coast. The doctors say her vision can be greatly improved there, but it costs more than I can provide alone. And now with Celcy pregnant … "

  She glared at him, and he caught his breath.

  "Sorry, love. Lim is family, after all."

  "I just don't want our private business discussed in public, Tas. If you don't mind."

  "Sorry." Her anger was unreasonable but explainable. As ambivalent as she felt about having a baby, of course, she would be equally ambivalent about being pregnant or having Lim know she was. Tas-min decided to ignore it. "About Mother, Lim? You are going to see her while you're here, aren't you?"

  Lim was evasive, his eyes darting away and then back. "I'd really like to, Tas. Maybe tomorrow. And I'd like to help, too. Perhaps by the end of the season I'll be able to do something. Everyone thinks this kind of work mints gold, but it's highly competitive and most of what I make goes into equipment. If you'll help me out with a little request I have, though, things should break loose for me and I'll be able to put a good-size chunk away for her." He was intent again, leaning forward, one hand extended in an attitude Tasmin recognized all too well. The extended wrist was wrapped in a platinum chronocomp set with seven firestones. Not the yellow orange ones, which were all Tasmin had been able to afford for Celcy, but purple blue gems, which totaled in value about five times Tasmin's annual salary.

  Tasmin felt the familiar wave of fury pour over him. Let it go,
he told himself. For God's sake, let it go.

  "What request?" Celcy, all sparkle-eyed, nudging Tasmin wû' one little elbow, eager. "What request, Lim? What can we do for you?"

  "I understand there's a new Don Furz Enigma score."

  "That's right," Tasmin said, warily.

  "And I understand you have access to it."

  "I made the master copy. So?"

  His face was concentrated, his eyes tight on Tasmin's own. "I need an edge, Tas. Something dramatic. Something to make the Coast fans sit up and scream for more. Everyone knows the Enigma is a killer, and everyone knows Don Furz has come up with some surprising Passwords. I want to build my new show around the Enigma score."

  Tasmin could not answer for a long moment, was simply unable to frame a reply.

  "Oh, that's exciting! Isn't that exciting, Tas? A new Lim Terrée show built about something from Deepsoil Five. I love it!" Celcy sipped at her wine, happier than Tasmin had seen her in weeks.

  And he didn't want to spoil that mood for her. For a very long time he said nothing, trying to find a way around it, unable to do so. "I'm afraid it's out of the question." Tasmin said at last, surprised to find his voice pleasantly calm, though his hands were gripped tightly together to control their quivering. "You were at the citadel for a time, Lim. You know that untested manuscripts are not released. It's forbidden to circulate them."

  "Oh, hell, man, I won't use it as is. It would bore the coasties to shreds. I just need it … need enough of it for authenticity."

  "If it isn't going to be really authentic, you don't need it at all. Make up something."

  "I can't do that and use Furz's name. The legal reps are firm about that. I've got to have something in there he came up with." Lim looked down. Tasmin, in surprise, saw a tremor in his arms, his hands. Nerves? "That's just the lead in, though. There's something else." Lim gulped wine and cast that sideways look again, as though he were afraid someone was listening.

  "I've met someone, Tas. Someone who's put me on to something that could get us into the history books right up there next to Erickson. No joke, Tas. You and Cels can be part of something absolutely world shattering. Something to set Jubal on its ear … "