The woman's face was set in a grimace that might have been a grin. Her throat had been slit.

Who killed her? asked Ansset, his face and voice showing no emotion beyond curiosity.

Anyone. How should I know? Just a deader. Could have been killed for anything. But she's a poor one, all right. I know the smell. Eats eels. If the killers hadn't got her, the cancer would've. See? He pulled up the stomach, which was distended and putrified by a huge tumor. So fat she didn't know she had it. Would have finished her off soon enough.

It took the embalmer several tries and stronger thread before he could tie the abdomen back together again. In the meantime another body -passed on the conveyor. Damn, he said. There'll be complaints tonight, that's for sure. Another missed quota. I hate the fat ones.

Let's go now, said Esste, deliberately letting her Control slip enough that he would be surprised into moving. He let her lead him to the indoor street.

Enough, Esste said. Let's go.

She was wrong, Ansset answered.

Who?

The woman. She was wrong. They wouldn't let her alone.

Ansset.

This has been a good trip, Ansset said. I've learned a lot.

Have you?

Pleasure is like making bread. A lot of hot, nasty work in the kitchen for a few swallows at the table.

Very good. She tried to lead him away.

No, Esste. You can ban me at the Songhouse, but you can't ban me here, And he broke away from her and ran to the backstage entrance of a theatre. Esste followed, but she was not young, and though she had made an effort to stay in shape, a woman of her age could not hope to overtake a child determined to escape. She was lucky to stay close enough to see where he went.

An orchestra was playing to a full hall, and a woman on the stage was dancing nude. An equally naked man waited in the wings. Ansset stood behind one of the illusions, rigid as he sang. His voice was clear and loud, and the woman heard it and stopped dancing, and soon the members of the orchestra began hearing it and stopped playing. Ansset stepped through the illusion and walked out onto the stage, still singing.

Ansset sang to them what they had been feeling, what the orchestra had been pathetically incompetent to satisfy. He sang lust to them, though he had never experienced it, and they grew passionate and uncontrollable, audience and orchestra and the naked woman and man. Esste grieved inwardly as she watched it. He will give them everything they want.

But then he changed his song. Still without words, he began telling them of the sweating cooks in the kitchen, of the loaders, of the dentist, of the shabbiness behind the buildings. He made them understand the ache of weariness, the pain of serving the ungrateful. And at last he sang of the old woman, sang her laugh, sang her loneliness and her trust, and sang her death, the cold embalming on a shining table. It was agony, and the audience wept and screamed and fled the hall, those who could control themselves enough to stand.

Ansset's voice penetrated to the walls, but did not echo.

When the hall was empty, Esste walked out onto the stage. Ansset looked at her with eyes as empty as the hall.

You eat it, said Esste, and you vomit it back fouler than before.

I sang what was in me.

In you? None of this ever got in you. It came to the walls and you threw it back.

Ansset's gaze did not swerve. I knew you would not know it when I sang from myself.

It was you that did not know, Esste said. We're going home.

I was to have a month.

You don't need a month here. Nothing here will change you.

Am I an eel?

Are you a stone?"

I'm a child.

It's time you remembered that.

He offered no resistance. She led him to the hotel, where they gathered their things and left Bog before morning. It all failed, Esste thought. I had thought that the mixture of humanity here would open him. But all he found was what he already had. Inhumanity. An impregnable wall. And proof that he can do to people whatever he wants.

He had read the audience of strangers too well. It was something that had never happened at the Songhouse before. Ansset was not just a brilliant singer. He could hear the songs in people's hearts without their having to sing; could hear them, could strengthen them, could sing them back with a vengeance. He had been forced into the mold of the Songhouse, but he was not made of such malleable stuff as the others. The mold could not fit.

What will break? Esste wondered. What will break first?

She did not for a moment believe it would be the Songhouse. Ansset, for all his seeming strength, was far more fragile than that. If he goes to Mikal like this, Esste realized, he will do the opposite of all my plans for him. Mikal is strong, perhaps strong enough to resist Ansset's perversion of his gift. But the others: Ansset would destroy them. Without meaning to, of course. They would come to drink again and again at his well, not knowing it was themselves they drank until they were dry.

He slept in the bus. Esste put her arms around him, held him, and sang the love song to him over and over in his sleep.

13

I haven't time for this, Esste said, allowing her voice to sound irritated.

Neither have I, Kya-Kya answered defiantly.

The schools on Tew are excellent. Your stipend is more than adequate.

I have been accepted at the Princeton Government Institute.

It will cost ten times as much to support you on Earth. Not to mention the cost of getting you there. And the inconvenience of having to give it to you in a lump sum.

You earn ten times that amount from a single year's payment on a Songbird.

True enough. Esste sighed inwardly. Too much today. I was not ready to face this girl. What Ansset has not taken from me, exhaustion has. Why Earth? she asked, knowing that Kya-Kya would recognize the question as the last gasp of resistance.

Earth, because in my field I'm a Songbird. I know that's hard for you to admit, that someone can actually do something excellent that isn't singing, but--

You can go. We will pay.

The tone of voice was dismissal. The very abruptness and unconcern of it made her victory feel almost like a letdown. Kya-Kya waited for a few moments, then went to the door. Stopped. Turned around and asked, When?

Tomorrow. Have the bursar see me.

Esste turned back to the papers on her table. Kya-Kya took advantage of her inattention to look around the High Room. I chose you for this place, Kya-Kya thought, trying to feel superior. It didn't work. It was as Hrrai had said-she made the obvious choice. Anyone who knew the Songhouse would have named Esste to the office.

The room was cold, but at least all the shutters were closed. There were drafts, but no wind. Apparently Esste did not intend to die soon. Kya-Kya looked at the window where she had almost fallen out. With the shutters closed, it was just another window, or part of the wall. The room was not kilometers above the ground; it was as low as any other building; the Songhouse was just a building; she did not care whether she never saw it again, felt no lingering fondness for its stone, refused to dream of it, did not even demean herself by disparaging it to her friends at the university.

Her fingers brushed the stone walls as she left.

Esste looked up at the sound of Kya-Kya's leaving. Finally gone. She picked up the paper that concerned her far more than the needs of a Deaf who was trying to avenge her failure.

Songmaster Esste:

Mikal has called me to Earth to serve in his palace guard. He has also instructed me to bring his Songbird back with me. It is my understanding that the child is nine. I have no choice but to obey. I have arranged my route, however, so that Tew is my last stop. You have twenty-two days from the date of this message. I regret the abruptness of this, but I will carry out my orders. Riktors Ashen.