Free Neveryona by Samuel R. Delany Page B

parents accordingly set the child to study with one of the eastern music masters who had recently located here, as soon as she was old enough. The prophecy seems to be fulfilling itself, and her talent has awakened. Already she has composed several sacred litanies, and several times, now, her mother, presuming upon that old acquaintance with the mistresses for whom she once did washing, has taken the girl to wealthy homes in the suburbs to play. Several times, now, the girl has been requested to entertain at gatherings of the lords in Neveryóna, for which she and her family have been handsomely compensated. Only last week, in fact, she was playing some of her compositions for the discerning and glamorous lunching about a flowered and be-statued pool, when an elderly baronine, moved deeply by the young woman’s song, suggested, so rumor has it, that if the artist would compose something in praise of the Child Empress, an audience might be arranged at the High Court itself. Yes, that is the very girl we are observing now, her pitcher on her thumb, hesitating between sophisticated cider and common beer.
    ‘Certainly, by now, you have your own notions about which direction she will finally turn. Will contagion or sympathy govern her choice? How many of the factors I have outlined will go into the final overbalancing we call decision? All, I suspect – if only because she
is
a particularly sensitive person. (Some say her voice and fingers were fashioned by our gods for some celestial craft-fair competition!) In her own songs she has praised both the delicacy of the one drink
and
the heartiness of the other.
    ‘Come, let’s leave her to choose, appreciative of the complexities that play now so silently on her spirit. Only be certain that whichever way she turns, it will be to assuage thirsts far more intricate than those the tongue alone can know. Now take your place in line with me, to drink the water from this gushing, public stone. The underground steam that feeds the fountain here, before brick and pavement encircled it, closed over its tributary, and civilized it, is what first made this a trading spot back when all around was merely a brambly field, with the wide, rocky brook of the Khora running by it to the sea. But remember, as you touch your lips to the water breaking and flashing on your palms, your own movements here will sign, as much as anyone else’s in the market – to the proper reader – aspirations, ideals, and nostalgias that pervade an empire.
    ‘Have you drunk your fill?
    ‘Good.
    ‘Let’s wander on.
    ‘Do you see those yellow and blue birds twittering in their reed cages – loosely woven baskets is what they really are. The mottled objects piled on the counter across from them are the eggs of the same caged creatures, collected in the wild and pickled in vinegar till their shells soften and their insides congeal as though steeped in boiling water. Right above and to the left, on the shelves at the stall’s back, are still the same birds, this time carved in wood or molded of clay, but painted far more gaudily than the colors their live models ever wear, even when they flash in the sun-dapplings between frond and vine in the southern jungle. Note that short, grave man with the shaved head who stops to make a purchase, now at one counter, now at the next. The white collar-cover he wears hides the same iron I carry on my neck. Owned by a wealthy family visiting the city, he is making purchaseshis master and mistress decided on during a trip here yesterday afternoon. That someone could want all three – live bird, pickled egg, and carved bird – seems to sign a voraciousness in our attitude toward that odd construct of civilization, nature, a voraciousness abroad wherever the conceiving engine that builds villages, towns, and cities is at work, almost as if the central process of civilization itself were to take a “natural” object and possess its every aspect: the thing itself, its material