Perhaps I was wrong, Esste thought. Perhaps my intuition was a mistake, and I should have let Ansset perform. For two years he has had no audience but me. If his preferred treatment before kept the other children from being close to him, his ban had made him a pariah. No one knew what his error had been, but after that triumphant song at Nniv's funeral Ansset's voice had gone unheard, and everyone concluded the disgrace must be punishment for something terrible. Some had even sung of it in chamber. One child, Ller, had even had the temerity to protest, to sing angrily that it was unjust to ban Ansset for so long, so unfairly. Yet even Ller avoided Ansset as if the future Songbird's suffering were contagious.

If I was wrong, Esste concluded, the damage has been done. In a year Ansset will go to Mikal, ready or not. Ansset will go as the finest, most exquisite voice we have sent from the Songhouse in living memory. But he will go as an inhuman creature, unable to communicate the normal human feelings with others. A singing machine.

I have a year, Esste thought, I have one year to break down his walls without breaking his heart.

The forest gave way to wooded prairie, the desolate land where wild animals still roamed. Population pressure on Tew had never been great enough to drive many settlers to this plateau where winters were impossibly cold and summers unbearably hot. They were an hour reaching the Rim, a great cliff thousands of kilometers long and nearly a kilometer high. Here, however, the rift had split in two parts, and between them other cliffs took the descent more gradually. The city of Step had grown up at the front of the jumble of rock, where river traffic had to end and transfer to roads. Few of the farmers could afford fleskets. Even when Step ceased to be a major city, it remained important locally.

The bus followed the switchback road carved centuries ago in the rock. It was rough, but the bus never felt it, except when sudden dips forced it to drop a bit in altitude. Ansset still watched the scenery, and now even Esste gazed at the huge expanse of farmland at the base of the descent. What fell as snow on the plateau came as rain below the Rim, and the farmers here fed the world, as they liked to say.

Step itself was boring. All the buildings were old, and decay was the loudest message shouted by the shabby signs and the nearly empty streets. Nevertheless, lessons had to be learned. Esste took Ansset into a dismal restaurant and ordered and paid for a dinner. Even the prices are depressed here, she commented. Ansset ignored her.

The restaurant was no more crowded than the streets. Wherever all the people were, it wasn't here. And the food came quickly. It was not bad, but the flavor had left it somewhere between the farm and the table. Ansset ate some, but not much. Esste ate less. Instead, she looked around at the people. At first she got the impression that they were all old, but because she didn't trust impressions, she counted. Only, six were gray-haired or balding-the other dozen were middle-aged or young. Some were silent, but most conversed. Yet the restaurant felt old, and the conversations sounded tired, and it all made Esste vaguely sad. The songs of the place were gone, if there had ever been songs. Now only moans were appropriate,

And, as soon as Esste thought. that, she realized that Ansset was moaning. The sound was soft but penetrating, almost like the background noise of the kitchen machines that processed the food. Control allowed Esste to refrain from glancing at Ansset. Instead she listened to the song. It was a perfect echo of the mood of the place, a perfect understanding of the, not misery, but weariness of the people. But gradually Ansset built a rising tone into his melody, a strange, surprising element that made it interesting, or at least that made a person hearing it want to be interested in something. Esste knew immediately what 'Ansset was doing. He was breaking the ban. He was performing. And once again the song was not his was what every person in the restaurant, including Esste, wished to hear, wished to be made to feel.

The lilting quality of his song became more pronounced. People who had not been conversing began to talk; conversations already in progress became more animated. People smiled. The ugly young woman at the counter began talking to the waiter. Even joking. No one seemed to notice Ansset's song.

And Ansset faded, softened the song, let it die in mid-note so that it seemed to continue into the silence. Esste was not sure, in fact, when the song was over, even though she was the only person who had been carefully listening to it. Yet the effect of the song lingered. Deliberately Esste waited, watched to see how long the people would remain cheerful. They left the restaurant smiling.

I congratulate you, said Esste, on your superb performance.

Ansset's face did not respond. His voice did. They're harder to change than Songhouse people.

Like trying to move through water, yes? asked Esste.

Or mud. But I can do it.

Not even smugness. Just a recognition of fact. But I know you, boy, Esste thought. You are enjoying yourself immensely. You are having a hilarious time outsmarting me and at the same time proving that you can handle any situation. As long as it's outside of you.

The bus took them through the night back up the Rim, but to the west this time, and it was still dark when they reached Bog. The sky was dark, that is. The lights of the city filled the land to the edge of the sea. It seemed in places that there were no breaks between the lights, as if the city were a carpet of pure light, a fragment of the sun. The clouds above the city glowed brightly. Even the sea seemed to shine.

The streets were so crowded, even in the last hours before dawn, that buses and fleskets and even skooters had to use overhead ramps that wound among the buildings. It was dazzling. It was exciting. The crush of humanity was frantic, desperate, exhilarating, even from the inside of a bus. Ansset slept through It, after waking for a moment when Esste tried to get him to look. Lights, he said, in a tone of voice that said, I'd rather sleep.

Might as well go upstairs and sleep, said the clerk at the hotel. Nothing happens during the day here. Not even business. Can't even get a decent meal except at one of those junky all-day diners.

But after only a few hours of sleep, Ansset insisted that they go out.

I want to see the city now.

It looks better by electric light, Esste told him.

So. So that's why I want to see it.

So? I'd rather rest.

The beds here are too soft, Ansset said, and my back is sore. The food we ate in Step has sent me to the toilet four times, and it looked better than it did on the table. I want to see outside. I want to see it when it isn't dressed up to fool people.

You are eight years old, Esste said silently. You might as well be a crusty old eighty.

They saw Bog by daylight.

Name? asked Ansset.

The city is on the estuary of the River Salway. Most of the land is only a few centimeters above sea level, and it is constantly trying to sink into the sea. She showed him how architecture had adapted to the conditions. Every building had a main entrance opening onto air on every floor. As the building sank, the entrance on the next floor up came into use. There were buildings whose tops were only a few feet above street level-usually, other buildings had already been built atop them.

The lighted signs were off in the daytime, and very few people were on the streets. As dismal as Step, Ansset said.

Except that it comes alive at night.

Does it?

Litter was inches deep on the streets in some places. Sweepers sucked their way through the city, roaring as they chewed up the trash. The few people on the streets looked as if they had had a hard night-or were up after very little sleep. It had been a carnival the night before; today the city was a cemetery.