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THE CHANTER
a short story by
A. C. Ellis
***
(Note: This story won the Reader's Choice Award in 2000.)
Roger’s steps echoed loudly as he entered the throne room, his heels pounding against the clear crystal floor in an ineffectual display of rage and contempt. His hands were balled into fists at his sides.
He hated this room--its largeness and brightness, its immaculate cleanliness. And he resented having to come here. He had ignored Diane's call as long as possible, continuing to work until just before she would have sent her machines to fetch him.
Then he saw her: Diane of Adamas, the Silver Queen, ruler of the crystal city and its race of immortals. She sat straight and tall in saffron robes, her silver body bracketed by the fluted fan of her alabaster throne, points of light dancing in her long black hair. She smothered a yawn with the back of her hand.
Names from the ancient texts blossomed in his mind, names filled with magic, power, and beauty: Venus, Aphrodite, Helen, Cleopatra. A bit of verse he had translated years ago entered his thoughts.
Albeit fairness in the creature shall
often co-exist with excellence,
Yet hath many an angel shape
been tenanted by fiends.
He found it amusing that those words, penned thousands of years ago by a nineteenth century philosopher, could apply so perfectly to Diane. It was as if Martin Tupper had somehow seen the Silver Queen.
His brows came together in a frown. With the passage of time, most people discovered certain truths that allowed them to live in harmony with others, but not Diane. She was more than three thousand years old, yet in many respects still a child. Everything she wanted, she got. Everything went her way.
His pace slowed as he neared the throne. His shoulders slumped and his fists uncurled. He stopped the precise distance from the throne proscribed by protocol, then bowed.
"You took your time," Diane said, her voice cold as ice. "One day I will lose my temper with you, Roger."
Behind his back his hands again knotted into gnarled fists.
"You may approach," she said indifferently. As he drew near, she sniffed the air and her nose wrinkled in disgust. "I smell mildew and dust. You have disconnected the servo-cleaners in your apartment again."
Roger did not reply; Diane had known the instant he had rendered the mechanical cleaners inoperative. But at least not before. Her machines read no mind but her own--not yet.
She glowered down on him from her throne, her gaze brushing his soiled robes. Her silver hand swept the length of his body without touching.
"You've been pawing through your books again," she said. "You're filthy with their dirt, and I can't begin to imagine what your apartment looks like."
"I've been translating," he said, putting as much defiance into his voice as he dared. He looked up to meet Diane's gaze. Her eyes were glacier blue.
"Watch your tone, Roger. You don't want me to misinterpret you." He did not respond, and she continued. "No, of course you don't. But why do you do it? Who do you think you're translating for? The short-spans don't care; they're too busy trying to stay alive. And we immortals don't need your translations. We have the synthedream.”
He knew it would do no good to tell her he was doing it for a future age. She would never understand that the rule of the immortals was coming to an end, running down like a forgotten wind-up toy. She may have noticed there had been no applicants for immortality in the last six and a half centuries, and she couldn't help but observe more than a dozen immortals had opted for death in the past fifty years. But these things probably constituted no more than a vague itch at the back of her mind.
Yet, even if she could realize all this, she would reject it. She would cling to the old ways, knowing only in them could her power remain intact.
And she certainly wouldn't understand that the only way he could repair her precious machines was by studying the ancient manuals and texts.
He said simply, "For myself."
"For yourself?" She leaned a bit forward, her eyes reflecting cold, sadistic light. "If you wish entertainment, you can plug into the synthedream with the rest of us."
Roger laughed, a humorless exhalation through his nose. "There's nothing to your dreams," he said. "No matter who seems to be in control, it is always in reality you directing them. They've become so locked in that they are the same sado-masochistic fantasy played over and over, with no real content."
A frown creased Diane's silver forehead. "I know," she said, "they are getting dull. That's why I called you. I want something new, something different and exciting."
"Another dream."
"I don't think so. You're right, the synthedream is locked on one pattern. Unless you can branch out its channels, give it more potential...."
"That would mean a complete overhaul of its programs. I doubt I can do anything with it." He didn't tell her the synthedream's only limitations were imposed by the limited mind controlling it. He didn't dare.
"I was afraid of that." Diane sat back on her throne. "No, this new experience must be taken from reality. It should be something I can't control so easily. There should be a threat of danger--but only a threat--and options for action. And there should be--"
She stopped, thought a moment. Then she said, "Help me, Roger. It's an old word, an ancient concept. I can't quite remember what it is or how to vocalize it. It encompasses everything I've been talking about, but with a restlessness, a feeling of things not too easy."
"Challenge?" Roger offered.
"Yes, that's it! There should be challenge!"
Roger lowered himself to the floor. He sat cross-legged on the bright crystal step beneath Diane's throne.
Again ice hardened her voice. "You may sit, Roger," she said. After a while, in a softer tone, she asked, "Any ideas?"
"Collect half a dozen short-spans and--"
She shook her head. "My computers can find nothing new in that area. Besides, it no longer amuses me; there is no... challenge."
So, she had become bored with even that. She used to enjoy watching the short-spans kick and scream in agony while her machines put them slowly to death, feeding their raw terror into the synthedream's memory circuits. Occasionally, she had even taken an active part in the torture. But there were only so many ways for a short-span to die, and over the millennia of her existence she had explored them all.
"I can think of nothing," Roger said.
"Give it more thought. I command you to come up with something entertaining." Again she yawned. "And remember, there must be challenge."
Without a word, Roger got to his feet and backed away from the throne, again assuming a submissive stance.
"You are dismissed," Diane said.
#
When Roger returned to his quarters, he found the mechanical rats again at work; his carefully concealed bypass circuit had been ferreted out and removed. Twenty crystal servo-cleaners, about the size and shape of his fist, scurried through his rooms, indiscriminately devouring dust and the old glue that held his books together.
He lifted a paperweight from his desk--a gold ingot given to him centuries ago by an archeologist friend--and threw it at the nearest rat. The impact sent the mechanical creature skidding several feet. It stopped against a stack of twentieth century history texts and mindlessly began to eat their bindings.
Roger cursed loudly. Short of replacing the bypass circuit, he could not stop the servo-cleaners; they were indestructible. And there was little point in replacing the circuit; it would take several hours of close work, and as soon as he left his rooms Diane's machines would again eliminate it.
He got undressed and stretched out on his gravbed, staring up at the ceiling. He thought again about Diane. She alone occupied the throne of power, her every thought detected by the electronics hidden in the base of her throne and transformed into action by her machines. Her whims were law: a casual wave of her hand signaled instant death or granted everlasting life. And her machines performed their tasks without remorse. They were incapable of feeling remorse, as was Diane herself.
She had been the first, made immortal before the process was fully perfected. Hers was the only silver skin, and she became a symbol of the immortality movement in the early years, when such a symbol was necessary. But that time was long past. Without the throne, without her machines, her power could not exist. She was nothing more than a three thousand year old spoiled child, but a child possessing unbelievable power.
The irony was not lost on Roger. He had spent his entire life searching for beauty in literature, music, sculpture, and painting. Diane was the most beautiful woman who had ever lived. Yet, he hated her.
He would devise his queen's entertainment, but it would be something to serve his purpose as well. He still could not think of what it might be; his mind was too filled with hate and rage, making rational thought impossible.
#
The idea came in the middle of the night, in a dream. He got up and got dressed, then went to the computer terminal on the far side of the room and began programming. He stopped only to relieve himself and to search for an occasional fragment of information in one of the myriad books scattered about his rooms. To prevent the program's discovery, he wrote it entirely as addenda to hundreds of repair programs inhabiting the computer's memory, then linked them with the code name Ahasuerus.
Finally, he was finished. His chronometer informed him he had been at it for nearly forty-eight hours. He undressed, showered, and went to bed.
He slept more than twelve hours.
#
Again he stood before Diane in the throne room. Somehow, it did not seem quite as bright as it had before. Or was that simply his imagination? Was he anticipating?
"The Chanter?" the Silver Queen asked, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.
Roger nodded. "The only natural immortal ever documented. He appears in many of the ancient books. Surely you have heard of him."
"I can't remember. Tell me more about him."
Roger took a deep breath, then began: "In the old texts he was credited with visiting all the major cities of an area once known as Europe, and there are many more recent references to him as well. He is said to shun populated areas, living off the land and killing his food with his bare hands."
"Yes," Diane said, "I think I remember hearing something about this Chanter. But long ago, very long ago. It's all just a myth, isn't it?"
"Legend would be a more precise term. Of course, many unexplainable occurrences have been attributed to the Chanter--one of the mechanisms of legend--and it's difficult to tell which portions of the legend are fact and which fabrication. But my research shows he did exist as recently as two hundred years ago. In fact, he may still be alive."
"Didn't he possess some control over life and death? I remember hearing something to that effect."
"Only death," Roger said. "It has been said that he can bring death by chanting your life--but only if you don't bring him something new."
"Then I will bring him gifts--gadgets and trinkets he could never have dreamed of. I'll have my machines start on them right away.
"No," Roger said, shaking his head. "The Chanter is not interested in the material world. He weighs thought, and ways of thinking."
"This Chanter interests me. I command you to find him."
Roger bowed to his queen. "I will try," he said.
"No, don't try. Do it!"
As Roger left the throne room the corners of his mouth turned up in a crooked smile.
#
He sat before the computer terminal in his rooms and again thought about the Chanter. Everything he had told Diane was true. The Chanter did exist. Roger found references to him in the old literature, under the names Joseph Cartaphilus and Ahasuerus. Several times he was referred to as The Wandering Jew. Now, however, he was merely the Chanter.
And now the Chanter's past and potential future were stored in the computer's memory, still only random additions to hundreds of repair programs. It was what he had not told her that was the key to his plan.
His palms were sweating as he stretched his hands out over the terminal's keyboard--an ancient and obsolete interface, but one he had become quite fond of. He waited a moment, uncertain. What he was about to do would bring an end to the world as he knew it. Did he have the right to take such action?
He heard a noise on the far side of the room and turned. A servo-cleaner was eating into a late twentieth century art book, one of his most valuable finds.
Cursing, he brought his hands down on the keyboard and his fingers flashed over the keys, calling up bits of program and linking them together. Then he tied the main computer into the synthedream and another circuit of his own design, and typed out his command: OVERRIDE AND RELEASE, CODE AHASUERUS. BEGIN NON-SCAN ADDENDUM TO REPAIR PROGRAM 2498/2....
#
A solitary figure sits half way up the hill--large, with long blond hair, dressed in a simple garment of animal skins. His tanned face shows youth; his dark eyes display millennia.
Fifteen feet behind his left shoulder stands a crude wooden shack from which he had emerged an hour before. The sun warms his broad back and shoulders, slowly baking out the cold night's stiffness. Beside his right knee grows a bush of wild roses, red blossoms just beginning to open to the new day.
He stretches, tightening bands of muscle across his chest and in his arms, then relaxing them, and looks out across the plain. A village rests in its own shadows half a mile from the hill, a patchwork of gray and soft pastels. Beyond, nearly on the horizon, a spire of sparkling crystal stands poised, as if about to lance into the sky. The land between the village and the spire is a swaying sea of yellow grain.
Soon the man on the hill sees white smoke curling into the early morning sky from half a dozen chimneys in the village. He notices movement below among the houses; the small settlement is awakening, its inhabitants beginning their daily chores.
Time passes.
An old woman dressed in soiled rags, pushing a handcart before her, hobbles past on the dirt road skirting the base of the hill. She pays no attention to the man on the hill. Several minutes elapse before an ox-drawn wagon goes by, its uneven wooden wheels throwing it from side to side as it hugs the far edge of the road. The middle-aged man on the wagon's seat does not look up the hill.
The man on the hill seems to remember that once they did notice him, the people of the village. Once they were his friends, and they welcomed him into their homes. He drank sweet mead with them on long autumn nights and played with their children. Once, he was one of them.
But that time is past, and he is not entirely sure it had ever really happened. He cannot even remember clearly what he did the day before. His thoughts are clouded, his entire past unclear. Too many life-lines flow through his mind, weaving like snakes, intersecting and overlapping. His existence melts into one indistinct blur--a long, undefined smudge across time. He can remember nothing in particular, because there is simply nothing memorable.
Several more villagers pass by the hill, and dust rises from the road to fill the now hot air. The sweet scent of roses mingles with the dust, briefly reminding him of mead and long nights of conversation. But soon the smell becomes heavy, and the memories fade.
The man does not move until the sun has set. Then he merely retires to the shack. He has nowhere else to go.
#
Roger stood and walked to his desk. With a sigh he sank into the padded chair. He took a book from the top of one of the stacks, then opened it and read.
He translated the words of men long dead, wishing he could produce such work. He had tried many times, hundreds of years ago, but his attempts always fell horribly short. He marveled that these men had lived such short lives, yet had attained such tremendous insight and skill. That, he thought, said something about the quality of their lives. Or the lack of quality in his own.
Soon he came to these lines, by a man named La Rochefoucauld:
All the passions make us commit faults
love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
Laughing, Roger slammed the book closed. No, he thought, it's not love that makes me commit this fault, if it is indeed a fault. Necessity drove him to this. If any emotion was involved, it was hate.
#
The old man shakes his wife awake before sunrise, then arises from their sleeping mat and gets dressed in the dark. The packed-earth floor bites like ice through his brogans, and he shivers as he works over green sticks to start a fire on the hearth. Soon, a white twist of smoke drifts up the flue. The one room adobe house slowly warms.
He stands and crosses to the wooden table in the center of the room. Around it are arranged three chairs. Sitting in one, he folds his large hands on the table before him and massages his callused, wind-cracked fingers.
After several minutes he glances into a dark corner of the room. Another sleeping mat rests on the floor there, lost in the deep shifting shadows. The sleeping mat is empty, and soon he looks away.
Three days ago, he thinks as he watches his wife prepare breakfast. His son left three days ago. In twenty-two years the boy had never once spent the night away from home. Now he sleeps in a shack on a hillside beyond the village. He is needed to help with the flock, the old man thinks, but he wastes his days sitting on that hill. He is a disgrace to his mother--and to me.
The old woman serves a coarse corn mush, and the old man wonders what it would taste like if made from the wheat growing beyond the village. It would taste good, he thinks. But he realizes he will never know. The mechanical attendants allow no villager near. That wheat belongs to the crystal city, and to those who dwelt there.
The couple eat in silence, lost in their individual thoughts, only occasionally looking at each other.
After the meal, the old woman wraps a lunch for her husband--cold mutton and a piece of cornbread. The old man puts on his heavy sheepskin coat and leaves the house without a word. It is light now, but the breeze is still cold. He pulls his coat up around his ears as a dog comes running from the sheep pen. The dog romps about his legs, nipping at his heels.
He stoops, scratches the dog behind the ears. Then together they proceed to the fenced enclosure and begin working the sheep, the old man driving the animals from the pen while the dog darts along the flock's perimeter, biting at the sheeps' legs to keep them bunched together.
We will have to go deeper into the hills today, the old man thinks as he drives the sheep toward the road. His animals are thin and undernourished. He turns, gazes out across the cultivated field, wishing he could let his sheep graze there for just one day. But he knows it is out of the question. Even now the robot attendants--huge, gray machines that float as if by magic just above the wheat--approach the road, assuring that no sheep strayed into the field.
He becomes aware of his son's presence as he passes the hill. He knows the boy watches him; he feels the other's eyes on him. But the old man does not look up. His face burns with shame as he keeps his own gaze on the dusty road before him.
His son does not call to him.
#
One instant Roger was in the throne room, squatting on a narrow ledge projecting from the base of the throne while Diane sat tall and proud above him. A nano-second later they were on the side of a small hill overlooking a golden carpet of wheat. Adamas, the crystal city, stood on the horizon, sunlight glinting on its soaring spire.
The city seemed so out of place; it did not belong. It clashed with its surroundings, a beautiful yet deadly cancer on the land.
Nearer the hill, the village seemed part of its surroundings. Its random shapes and soft colors were taken from the land.
A large man sat a few feet down hill, his back to them. His shoulder-length blond hair blew softly in the wind. His body was well muscled beneath a simple tunic of animal pelts that would have reached to his knees had he been standing. Beside his right knee grew a bush of wild roses, its blossoms large and blood red.
Roger smelled the roses' heady fragrance from where he crouched. It was almost overpowering, bringing a dizziness that made everything seem dream-like.
The large man appeared to be unaware of their presence, but Roger knew better. Nothing would escape this one. He belongs, Roger thought. Through Roger's programs, he had lived on and by the land so long he had somehow become it.
"Chanter," Diane called, her voice hard, cutting through the heavy, quiet air like a crystal edge. "I will speak with you."
The large man leaned back on one arm, turning his head to gaze up the hill. His face was not handsome, yet it was pleasant in an unexplainably natural sense. Roger was surprised how young it looked--not much older than twenty. But his brown eyes were those of an immortal, possessing the vacant stare of one who has seen everything there is to see--one for whom life no longer offered surprises.
And there was something more. Behind the Chanter's soft brown eyes Roger saw a predator.
"He's perfect!" Roger whispered.
"What?" Diane asked, turning from the Chanter. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," he lied.
Diane was about to challenge him--he saw it in her eyes--but the Chanter saved him. Moving lithely, like a cat, the large man got to his feet and walked to the throne, stopping inches from Diane. He stood mute, his hands hanging limp at his sides.
Roger saw a quiet, natural strength in that stance. The strength of a mountain stream, or a storm at sea. Those large hands had torn life from animals to feed this man. They had killed.
The man dismissed Roger with a glance, and Roger got up from his perch at the base of Diane's throne and stepped back several paces. It was not Roger who had come to confront him. It was the other, the silver-skinned woman.
As the Chanter stared into Diane's eyes, Roger realized he was searching for the faintest flicker of light, the dimmest glow of originality--something he knew the Chanter would not find. Any hint of original thought Diane might have once possessed had been leeched from her mind centuries ago.
Roger's pulse quickened as the Chanter started singing soft and slow, his words nearly inaudible. The sound of bees on a warm summer afternoon, Roger thought.
Both volume and tempo increased gradually, nearly imperceptibly. Slowly, the Chanter took Diane through her childhood, through the preparations that had made her the first candidate for immortality. He wove the story of her changing body and emotions, of her becoming hard and cruel. And through it all Diane sat silent on her throne, unmoving except for the slight rise and fall of her breasts beneath her robes. Her gaze remained locked on the Chanter's eyes, her face displaying not the slightest emotion.
He chanted of the beauty and wealth that had won her the honor and the risk of being the first. Diane's father had been one of the richest men in the world, but by the time the immortality process had been developed, he was already too old.
Yet, he still craved an ultimate victory over death. He thought he might have that victory through his daughter.
The Chanter's voice was clear and strong as it wove through the slight miscalculation in the initial process and the change in Diane's skin from a beautiful unblemished white to an equally beautiful and unblemished sliver. He sang first of her anger, then of her pride in her unique new skin. His chant told how it eventually became an outward sign of her status as the first immortal. He sang of her climb to power and the cruelty of her rule. And finally, he sang of her death on the side of a hill.
The Chanter's song stopped.
Diane sat as before, her eyes locked on the Chanter's. But now they were fixed in the soft, unfocused gaze of death, their glacial ice melted. She no longer breathed.
Roger turned, looked down the hill. Nearly fifty villagers were gathered in the road below. Wide-eyed and silent, they stared up in his direction.
The Chanter took him by the arm and turned him gently. Roger saw sorrow in the large man's gaze. He held a rose, its blossom large and full, the thorns menacing on its long stem. He placed the rose carefully in Roger's hand, then released him.
His mind numb, his thoughts not quite focused on what he had just experienced, what he had done, Roger started down the hill. The crowd parted to let him pass, and he walked through the deserted village and out across the wheat field, holding the rose carefully, his left hand cupped around its blossom, protecting it from the hot breeze.
#
The old man finds his wife with the other villagers, at the foot of the hill, gazing up at their son. He does not speak to her, nor does she speak to him.
In the brightness of the full moon, he watches his son. The boy sits staring out across the moon-silvered wheat field, toward the ghostly image of the crystal city on the horizon. Behind his left shoulder stands a massive white throne, and on it sits the silver-skinned queen, the one who brings pain and death. Her gaze is fixed on his son's back.
But this is no longer his son--the old man knows that now. He is different somehow, changed.
Finally, when the night air becomes too cold, the young man gets silently to his feet, turns, and walks to the shack on the hill above him. He enters the shack without a word or backward glance and closes the door. The villagers remained standing silently in the moonlight, gazing up the hill at the silver queen.
She does not move, the old man thinks. She does not drive us away or have her machines take us to death in the crystal city. And suddenly, he knows she is dead.
"She is dead," he tells his neighbors. "The silver-skinned queen is dead!"
At first they do not believe him. They dare not. Those from the crystal city cannot die. But slowly, when the silver-skinned woman still does not move, they begin to believe. Voices rise one by one and cries of joy mingle with those of rage in the crisp night air. The crowd charges up the hill.
#
The wind holds a biting chill as the large man steps from the shack. The sun is rising over the hill behind him, but he knows it will offer little warmth today.
He starts down the hill to his familiar resting place, passing a massive white throne. He does not remember it being there yesterday. Dried blood is smeared across it in wide brown streaks, and its base is overgrown with weeds and thistles. He vaguely remembers a silver-skinned woman sitting tall and regal on it. The image lasts only an instant, then fades, and he no longer remembers.
He walks to the rose bush and sits. Its stems are brown and brittle, its leaves the color of dried blood. The dehydrated pedals of its blossoms blow away on the cold wind, and he realizes with a corner of his mind that he will soon leave this place. He does not know where he will go, but he knows he must leave.
He looks beyond the hill. Dark clouds scud out of the north, heavy with the threat of snow. The village is alive with activity--women hanging wash, merchants vending their wares, children chasing dogs between buildings. Sheep graze on the wheat beyond the village, oblivious of the huge, rusting machines dotting the field.
The large man's gaze falls on the crystal spire sitting alone on the horizon, its surface now dull and blackened. Its top is broken off, and large pieces of its once glittering substance are gone, leaving huge holes and gaps in its structure. A thick smudge of black smoke twists from the spire into the sky, blending with the clouds overhead.
Suddenly, he notices a new life-line flowing through his thoughts, one which was not there the day before. Or has it been present for some time? It does not matter; he is just now becoming aware of it.
It is the life line of an immortal, one of those from the crystal city. The name that goes with the new life-line is Diane.
END
Tale of the Tale
This story started as a workshop writing exercise: Combine the titles of any two songs for inspiration. In this case, the songs were Killing Me Softly With His Song and The Fool On The Hill.
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