"Orson Scott Card - Songmaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

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air, and the legs moved only a little, and she knew he was dead, that the entire time she had been in the room he had been dead.
The Songmaster in the High Room died only rarely. She had never known another. It was Nniv who had ultimately decided her fate. He had declared her Deaf and decided she would leave the Songhouse without songs. She had hated him in her heart, though she had only talked to him a few times, ever since she was eight. But now she only felt repulsed by the corpse, and more than that, disgusted at the way he had died. Was the room always kept this bitterly cold? How had he lived so long! Was this some part of the discipline, that the ruler of the Songhouse lived in such squalor and misery?
If this emaciated, frozen corpse was the pinnacle of what the Songhouse could produce, Kya-Kya was not impressed. The lips were parted and the tongue lolled forward, blue and ghastly. This tongue, she thought, was once part of a song. Reputed to be the most masterful song in the galaxy, perhaps in the universe. But what had the song been, if not the throat and lips and teeth-and lungs, all now cold; if not the brain, that now was still?
She could not sing because of lips and teeth and throat and lungs and because in her own mind she was not so single-minded that she could be what the Songhouse demanded. But did it matter?
She Hid not feel triumphant that Nniv was dead. She was old enough to know that she, too, would be dead, and if she had a century ahead of her, it only meant time in which she might end up just as accidently cruel as Nniv had been. Kya-Kya did not pretend to unusual virtue. Just unusual value, which no one but her recognized. And it occurred to her that Nniv's failure to recognize who and what she was (or had he, indeed, recognized it?) did not change her.
She left him, went downstairs to find the Blind in charge of maintenance, an old man named Hrrai who rarely left his office. "Nniv is dead," she told him, wondering if her happiness sounded in her voice (but knowingMiat
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Hrrai would not be likely to read her very well, being a Blind). Can't let anyone hear that I'm happy, she thought. Because I'm not rejoicing at his death. Only at my life.
"Dead?" Imperturbable Hrrai only sounded mildly surprised. "Well, then, you must go tell his successor."
Hrrai leaned down over his table and began worrying his pen back and forth across a page.
"But Hrrai..." Kya-Kya said.
"But what?"
"Who is Nniv's successor?"
"The next Songmaster of the High Room," he said. "Of course."
"Of course nothing! How should I know who that is? How am I supposed to figure it out if you don't tell me?"
Hrrai looked up, more surprised this time than he had been at the news of Nniv's death. "Don't you know how this works?"
"How should I? I'm a Deaf. I never got past Groan."
"Well, you needn't act so upset about it. It isn't exactly a secret, you know. Whoever finds the body will know, that's all. Whoever finds that the Songmaster in the High Room is dead will know."
"How will I know?"
"It will be obvious to you. Just go and tell him or her that he or she is supposed to take care of funeral arrangements. It's all that simple. But you really ought to act quickly. The Songhouse shouldn't be long without someone hi the High Room."
He turned back to his work with a finality that told Kya-Kya she must leave, must be about her business, certainly must not bother him anymore. She left. And wandered the halls. She had thought to be quit of the Song-house in a matter of months, the least important person ever to have been there, and suddenly she was supposed to choose the leader of the place. What kind of crazy system is this? she thought. And what the hell kind of rotten luck for me, of all people!
But it was not rotten luck, and as she wandered through the stone corridors, all of them chilly with the winter
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outside, she realized that no one ever came to the High Room unbidden except maintenance people, and all the maintenance people were Deafs or Blinds, those who had not made it into the highest reaches of the singing folk. They could not sing, they could not teachЧand so it was left to one of them to stumble across the body and, being impartial, not a member of the eligible group, choose fairly the person who obviously should be the Songmaster in the High Room.
Who?
She went to the Common Rooms and saw die teachers moving among the classes and knew that she could not suddenly elevate a teacher above his rank; it was tempting to be whimsical, to take vengeance on the Songhouse by naming an incompetent to head it, but it would be cruel to the incompetent so called, and she couldn't destroy someone that way. She knew.enough to know that it was just as cruel to lift someone above where he ought to be as it was to force him to stay below his true station. I won't cause misery.
But the Songmasters, the logical group to choose fromЧ she knew none of them, except by reputation. Onn, a gifted teacher and singer, but always assigned as a consultant to everybody because he couldn't live with the necessity of keeping a fixed schedule, meeting with obnoxious people, and making, of all things, decisions. Much better to give advice. No, Onn was not the one anyone would expect, though he was by far the nicest. And Chuffyun was too old, far too old. He would not be long behind Nniv.
In fact, just as Hrrai had told her, the choice was obvious. But not one she enjoyed, not at all Esste, who was cold to everyone except for the little boy she was promoting as a possibility for Mikal's Songbird. Esste, who had reached down into the Common Rooms and lowered herself to be a teacher when she had been administrator of half the Songhouse, all for the sake of a little boy. No one made such great sacrifices for me, Kya-Kya thought bitterly. But Esste was a great singer, one who could flght
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fires in every heart in the SonghouseЧor quench those fires, if she wanted to. And Esste was above the petty jealousies and competitions that were endemic to the Songhouse. Esste was above such things in her attitudeЧ and now she would be above them in station, too.
Kya-Kya stopped a master (who was quite surprised at having a Deaf interrupt her) and asked where she might find Esste.
"With Ansset, With the boy."
"And where is he?"
"In his stall."
Stall. The boy had been promoted. He couldn't be more than six yet, and he was already in Stalls and Chambers. It turned Kya-Kya's mouth down, her stomach dull. But in a moment she brightened again. The boy had been advanced by Esste, that's all. He would be in the Song-house all his life, except for a few years as a performer. While she would be free, could see all of TewЧmore, could see other planets, could go, perhaps, to Earth itself where Mikal ruled the universe in indescribable glory!
A few questions. A few directions. She found Ansset's stall, identical to all the others except for a number on the door. Inside she could hear singing. It was conversationЧ she knew when it was songtalk. Esste was inside, then. Kya-Kya knocked.
"Who?" came the answerЧfrom the boy, not from the Songmaster.
"Kya-Kya. With a message for Songmaster Esste."
The door opened. The boy, who was far smaller than Kya-Kya, let her in. Esste sat on the stool by the window. The room was bleakЧbare wooden walls on three sides, a cot, a stool, a table, and the stone wall framing the single window that opened onto the courtyard. Every stall was interchangeable with any other. But Kya-Kya would once have given her soul to have a stall and all that it implied. The boy was six.
"Your message?"
Esste was as cold as ever; her robe swirled around her feet as she sat absolutely erect on the stool.
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"Esste, I have come from the High Room."
"He wants me?"
"He is dead." Esste's face betrayed nothing. She had Control. "He is dead," Kya-Kya said again. "And I hope you will take care of the funeral arrangements."
Esste sat in silence for a moment before she answered.
"You found the body?"
"Yes."