Free Songmaster by Orson Scott Card

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