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We were all of us children when we went, and we were children when we died.
We didn't know it then, of course. We thought we were fully-grown, great brave ones who had drunk the eyes of opal plants and done the scander run across the plains.
Punctilious Verge, who came in my draav with me and Unfortunate Insight, had even a canal of their own. They had won the rights through making the most beautiful pattern-song out of their weaker pod-others, and set their cold servants to dig it out like a tongue of whispering metal licking its way through the red earth and the deep crimson walkerweed.
Draavs buzzed up and down the canal now, blunt and slick as needles under skin, bearing fat thought-berries and frail whispering cattle, and the pale heat-flowers bred up by the old folk under glass.
I remember Punctilious sitting watching the cold servants at work, taking a thin drink the colour of three-day skin. They sat under the great curved heaters set up by long-ago pod-elders, long buddings ago, their skin drawn and shivery despite all that, for the cold. It was always cold, in those days. They felt for me with their thoughts and for a moment I twitched back, for the pattern-song was very beautiful and unkind, and the pod-others were still singing, faintly, and glistening beneath the lovely sky of home. Punctilious Verge had turned some of them almost inside-out, and although I had been the strongest of my own pod, and was prized for my cleverness and my way with casting a draav by the grand talkers, still I was afraid.
Punctilious might become grand, too, given time, able to turn a thousand minds with a twitch, and set podfuls unpeeling themselves, and singing as they worked. It gave me a green feeling inside, like dead meat.
I looked across to the heaving, singing pod-others, and felt small and weak under Punctilious' regard, like an old one left to die in the ancient empty cities out upon the icy plains.
But their touch on my mind was as gentle as a caress.
"Congratulations," I sent. "It is a very beautiful song. The world will more unravel when it ends."
It was a formal greeting, but Punctilious took it seriously. "The world is already unravelling," they sniffed, casting their gaze up towards the arcing, spitting heaters. "One song won't do anything about that, however beautiful." They clicked their beak. "Still," they added. "Thank you."
I dipped my touchers. "So gloomy, for someone who can send a song from here to Inservaal with total ease. I envy you, you know."
I did. Ready access to a canal, and the draavs to travel it, would have made spreading the good word a great deal easier.
Punctilious sighed, and thoughtfully inshot another burst of dark blood into the smooth skin by their mouth. They waved the plunger towards me, but I turned it aside. Unlike Punctilious, I had no taste for twice-distilled bloods.
"They've given the go-ahead, you know," they sent suddenly. "It's happening."
I blinked stupidly. "What's happening?"
They lifted a toucher, and I felt their mind ripple out past me, towards the singers.The song changed.
From LONDON'S glowing highways, the singers sang, from SURREY'S soft green plains, from WOKING's winding byways, they called us and we came!
It was a devotional work. It was a devotional work I myself had had some small part in composing, in that it was my research, my humble efforts within my listening-chamber, that had established some of the more exotic names.
Punctilious was not known for their devotion, though, and after a moment of astonishment I felt myself grow stiff and shiny all over with rage. I believed they were mocking me.
"I beg your pardon," I sent stiffly. "I see I was wrong to come. I do not see that it is necessary for my earnest beliefs to be made a laughing-stock."
The singers went on. From many a dusty side-street, from many a country lane, they called us to deliver, their land from error's chain!
"Oh, don't take on so, there's a good chap." Punctilious sent a little dip and bow of his mind towards me, like a pod-child caught stealing blood out of an elder's prize cattle. "I mean this is happening. Bead-Three. The draav-voyage out. Spreading the good word, and all that. Error's chain is about to be burst asunder, or what have you." Punctilious gestured, vaguely, towards the empty sky. "We're draaving out. To Bead-Three, and who knows, perhaps beyond. The grand talkers gave it the go-ahead last fore-sun."
I stared at them. "To Bead-Three," I asked. "Really?"
What though the gentle warm breeze, gusts o'er the dreaming isle -
"Though every prospect pleases", Punctilious picked up the song, warbling horribly, "and only MAN is vile - yes, my dear old thing. Rejoice, and give thanks, and all that. We're off to spread the light of life to those benighted blighters you listen out for in that great cold ear of yours every night."
"It's a listening-chamber," I sent mechanically. "Not a cold ear."
"It's about to become an item of serious interest to the local gossips, I can tell you that much," sent Punctilious. "That, and all the little tidbits you've picked up along the way."
I could scarcely contain myself. "But my dear chap," I burst out. "This is wonderful news! Bead-Three!"
Punctilious sent a ripple of laughter over my thoughts. "I thought it would be worth seeing your face once it sunk in," they sent fondly. "You've always had a thing about Bead-Three, you know. Ever since you were one of a just-budded pod, and not the biggest, either."
"But still the strongest," I sent back hastily. Despite my happiness, with the song ebbing around us, Punctilious' words sounded, briefly, like a threat.
"But still the strongest." Punctilious leant back, and closed their eyes. "It was after the seventh pod this year had no survivors. Not even a song, not even some little ditty that lasted an hour or so. They just budded much too fast, grew cold, and sucked each other dry."
I shifted uncomfortably. "It happens sometimes," I sent. "God in His wisdom -"
"It happens more and more." Punctilious stretched out their touchers, as if they were reaching for something, then let them fall. "We grow weaker. Our pods wither and grow cold and soft and small. We shall not leave any songs at all behind, if we aren't careful." They chuckled. "That's what this mission is for," they sent. "Something to sing about. And, if we're lucky, a place to bud new pods."
I frowned. "They won't take. Trust me, I should know. Bead-Three is warm, and beautiful, after its own strange fashion, but it has crushing gravity. A corrosive atmosphere. We can extract resources, certainly. Spread the good word. Share sweet communion with the natives there. But it is no place to bud children."
"Tell that to the grand talkers."
I drew myself up. "Perhaps I shall." I might be only a draav caster, who preached on freedays and spent good blood to pay for a listening chamber, of all things, but I knew my duty."Our place there should be to spread song," I sent gravely. "To bud the good word. I know the inhabitants are ready for it. Calling out for it! From WOKING's winding byways!"
"Yes, yes," sent Punctilious hastily. "Well, I am sure you will have your chance, my dear fellow. Although, I must admit, I think you're getting ahead of yourself. These are savages who go unclad, except in the most rudimentary iron. They take no communion. We do not even know if they have true language, outside of those crude sounds that you report. They certainly have no song."
"My observations say otherwise."
Punctilious heaved sideways with impatience. "I know you like your theories, and your tales, but one death-blossom or so across a continent is not a song," they sent crossly. "These creatures are incapable of it. For now, at least. Who knows, Able Endeavour. You may raise them up."
"Don't be silly," I sent back, in my anger forgetting entirely to be afraid. "I won't be going."
But, it turned out, I was.
The grand talkers did not need my advice on Bead-Three. All my hard-won wisdom from my listening-chamber, my urgent missives about conversion and communion, about the capacities of Bead-Three's small inhabitants, vanished into the chambers of the citadel like so many notifications from local councils concerning prize-winning heat-flowers.
The grand talkers, though, were in need of good draav-casters, and I qualified. I did so well drawing up the plans for the great casting, and with helping oversee the making of the vast pit to cast and hold the firing mechanism, that they sent me along without a second thought. It was understood that we would need draavs on Bead-Three, once we had dug out canals for them, and that before that we would need cold servants, and walkers, and safe garments to allow us to move around and operate in a strange world. All these things I was good at making, and the grand talkers understood this, and its value. I didn't even have to sing for my voyage. I still remember the kind touch of their big minds on mine, and the way the heat of casting the firing-mechanism made me almost warm.
"Salvation! oh, Salvation!" I hummed under my breath, watching the cold servants adjust the contours and the tilt of the great mould. The walls of the casting-pit rose up above me so high that the sky above was a dark sliver, filled with tiny bright beads. "Ulla, oh ulla ulla! We raise their hearts in song!" I could already almost taste communion with the natives on Bead-Three. These are some of my sweetest memories, sweet as a pod-child's blood.
Once I was officially part of the mission, I tried to conceal how pleased I was, for my interest in Bead-Three had about, I was aware, it a touch of crankishness. I was no longer a pod-child, to be entertained by stories of brave discovery across the vast quietness of the high silence, or cruel natives whose animal cunning gave some bold adventurer quite the fright. Even my studies in the listening chamber of which I was so proud were strictly amateur, nothing but the amusements of an afternoon besides the information gleaned by the grand talkers and their knowers in the great time-rounded towers of the citadel.
I was pleased, however, nonetheless.
The natives were cruel, though.
I had some sweet communion with them, yes. I made a little song or two, before I died. I spread the word, I fervently believe.
I still remember their LONDON citadel smoking around me, quieted by our black breath, and the natives we had collected at tender play within the safety of our base. I tasted all of them, and to this day I think that they were just about to truly talk, to send. It needed just the tiniest bit more pain, and I was getting more practiced by the day at keeping them awake.
Brave walkerweed quivered up crimson round their ruined towers, and all the heavy air lay still and close and warm against my skin. A few shy opal plants blinked up from the hot earth. The natives quivered, trusting, in my loving grasp. I know they did.
But it was not enough.
Punctilious died out in their large water, when the natives drove a huge cold servant into them. It was a crude garment, in retrospect, driven by water heated past its boiling point, with many of the natives inside it all at once, like a grand draav. Infesting it, you could say. I would imagine that Punctilious was curious for just one moment too long, and that was that. I need never have been afraid at all, not of poor old Punctilious.
But I was a child then, with a child's fears, although I did not know it.
None of us, not even Punctilious, knew what the grand talkers had in mind. They sang to us, before we left, but this was customary. We thought they were turning our minds to glory, and we let them, tender and trusting as the smallest weak young pod-other. I thought, indeed, that they would help us spread the good word, in this strange new land.
Which, I suppose, they did.
Salvation, oh, Salvation, and all that, as Punctilious might say. That's what we thought they were filling our heads with. Our blood, as well. We let them dip their mouths to our blood-parts without a whimper, confident that we would come away from this communion with our hearts made strong.
They weren't doing that, though. We were never sent for glory. We were sent for song.
A good song can last some years after death, depending on the pain of the dying and the sorrow. A good song can make crops grow faster, can turn a barren land red. We always knew they could cross the species-barrier.
The grand talkers, though, they had another idea. They did think the natives of Bead-Three had songs of their own. They believed they had language, as well. And memory. Records.
They wanted to try a different kind of budding.
They would not have been adverse to us subduing the natives; setting them to work; turning Bead-Three a healthy red. But they believed, correctly, that we could not do it. They knew, I am quite sure, we would not live.
So they sang to us, and told us, as we died, to sing. To sing ourselves into the natives' thoughts, into their minds. Into their warm red blood.
Ulla, they told us. Ulla, ulla, ulla.
Sing that into their ears. Into their blood. Into they way they think, and bud.
It would take years, they knew. Many sun-turns. Before our song would seed, and the natives find that their new children grew like us, and sang, and their green crops grew red.
We all us were required to die for it, of course. In fear and pain, alone in that strange land. And then live on, grown-up and changed, singing a song inaudible to native ears from deep inside their flesh, like warriors waiting in the belly of a draav. This is what the grand talkers are, I later understood. The wise and winning dead, reduced to song and roosting in the flesh of living ones, growing in power as they grow in age. The thought should not have comforted me, perhaps.
What should comfort me, I know, is that I spread the word. I am the word now, almost, in their flesh. From SURREY's soft green plains .... ulla oh ulla ulla, our faith it still remains. And so on. I can hear Punctilious now, shaking their touchers at me. "Isn't this just what you wanted, old chap?"
I suppose Punctilious is out there, still, themselves. Being sung gently, inside some vile vile MAN. "They will come to know the good word in time, this way," they would say. "You really will raise them up, Able Endeavour. And then we'll have been sung out, and we can stop." I imagine them pausing, inshotting another pulse of fine dark blood. "Not quite what I had in mind, I must admit" they would say. "But just your sort of thing, old boy!"
But I wish that I had not had to die for it, you see. I always was so horribly afraid of being song.
We are alone, for now. A song that waits for its raw hosts to grow like us, and sing.