One would think that after all these thousands of years people would have become more sophisticated; one would think that propaganda would fail with them. But it doesn't. You need only find the proper symbol—the Snake, the Scorpion, the Spider, the Flame, the Bat, the Rose—all coded in the deepest subconscious recesses of humankind, all ready to release emotions as predictable to the linguist as the weather. It is an absurd waste of time to bother with argument and discussion and attempts to make people see the logic of things. If you want to reach them, ask the symbolist for advice and go directly to the source.
—from Manual for Politicians,
Government Publication 23.4.X76031, Fourth Revised Edition, p. 37
The sign was unambiguous. It was six inches square, set in a broad frame of crimson plasmic, and in green-and-gold letters on a ground of silver it read:
ANALYN THE SINGER, MIND-PROSTITUTE
It was clear that she either did not fear arrest or was actively seeking it; her place of business was square between a microfiche gallery and a respectable-looking restaurant run by an equally respectable-looking family of androids, the whole complex sitting on a major cross-street of the city. Coyote stood and looked at the sign for a while, long enough to get thoroughly soaked by the mist curling around the streets. His problem was that he was not at all sure what the protocol was for approaching a mind-prostitute during business hours, especially if you weren't a customer. He could walk right in, maybe, tossing off a casual "Morning, Citizen, how's business?" But how did you know if she was busy with a client?
When the door opened, its almost soundless hiss betraying the costliness of its locking mechanism, and Analyn stood before him, he stepped back, startled.
"You're nervous, Citizen," she said. "You have not yet recovered from your illness, perhaps."
"I was expecting someone else to open the door," he said. "Not you."
She raised her eyebrows, now dyed scarlet in the fashion of prostitutes and flecked with tiny winking jewels, and set her hands on her hips. "Who, then?" she asked him. "My daughter is now a ward of the state until she leaves for the Multiversity. I'm alone here."
"No servant?"
"Don't be absurd," she said scornfully. "At my age one does not start taking servants—not when I have been a servant all my life long. I cherish my solitude, Citizen."
They stared at each other, her eyes almost on a level with his, she was so tall, and he fought the urge to strike her to the floor where she stood. She was dressed all in scarlet, in a flicker-dress whose constant shifting fields of transparency showed now a breast, now a thigh, now the pubic cleft, and her feet were bare except for the heavy rings on her toes. This woman, who had severed Drussa Silver's throat with the sword of her barbaric faith, had become the icon of his hatred in these past weeks; and it pleased him to see her, dressed as she was in the worst possible taste, almost a parody of prostitutes. It made her even more suitable for his hatred, which the gentle counsel of the Shavvies who had tended him through the worst of his grief had not even dented. Looking at her, his fists clenched at his sides and his breath caught in his throat so that he couldn't speak.
She broke the silence, finally, saying, "Well, Citizen? If you have come to kill me, be done with it. If you have not, please stop wasting my time."
"I want to talk to you," he said huskily. "I have no intention of doing you harm."
"You lie," she said. "Look at your arms, Citizen Jones, and your hands! You are fighting to keep your hands off my throat."
"My thoughts are as transparent as your dress, apparently," he said. "My apologies ... but I give you my word I won't lay a finger on you. May I see you, Citizen?"
She stepped back from the door and bowed her head in the traditional prostitute's gesture.
"Won't you come in, Citizen?" she said, mock-humble. "My house and my mind are at your disposal."
"I have no interest in your mind," he said contemptuously. "I'd as soon move about in a Galoralon breeding-bog. But I will come in, because I have things to say, and things to ask."
He crossed the threshold of the room, the door sliding shut behind him. Inside, the room was a domed half-sphere, its floor deep in scarlet rugs, its light the soft glow of suspensored star-shaped lamps, the rugs piled with cushions of green and silver and gold and royal blue. The air was filled with the mingled scents of cinnamon and lemon and with the delicate sound of a solar harpsichord. The effect was a luxury almost repulsive in its cloying richness.
"Your rates must be high to afford all this," he noted.
"Oh yes! I am the highest-paid whore on this planet, and if there is one who charges more, it is because I have not yet heard about him or her. It is my firm intention that no one shall earn more for trafficking in filth than myself."
Trafficking in filth?
"An odd way for a prostitute to talk," he said, and amusement flickered over her face.
"Be seated, Citizen Jones, and make yourself comfortable. I've hung out the star-light that means I am not at liberty at this time; no one will disturb us."
"Star-light? What, exactly, is a star-light?"
"Like these," she said, pointing to the lamps suspended in the room, "except that it's scarlet. The meaning is 'I am with a customer; do not knock.' "
"These stars float in the back alleys of the city, where your less fortunate sisters live? I should think they'd attract a great deal of dangerous attention."
Analyn smiled. "In the back alleys, as you put it, the star is very small and flat and unobtrusive, and it lies underneath the door knocker. My colleagues are not interested in advertising their presence to the lawrobots."
Coyote thumped a pile of three pillows into submission and sat down on them, his back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, and hoped he wouldn't get sick at his stomach. It smelled like a bakery in here, and he hadn't eaten yet.
"You," he said, answering her, "do not share their concern, so far as I can observe. You are listed in the city directory ... Analyn the Singer, Mind-Prostitute. Under the A's. At the comsets on the corners one asks for Analyn the Singer and is given your address by the central computers."
"Certainly," she chuckled. "Some of my best clients are computer programmers."
"Citizen," he said abruptly, "enough of this."
"One does not address a prostitute as 'Citizen.' "
"All human beings are addressed as 'Citizen,' " he said coldly. "I do so address prostitutes, and will continue to do so."
"An affectation, Citizen. We have given up our rights to be human beings."
Coyote shrugged. "As you like. But you are only posturing, Analyn—you are no better at being a whore than I was at being a Student."
Her features took on a look of elegant studied disdain, and an obscene mind-gesture moved in her eyes; he recognized the look of it although the content escaped him.
"On the contrary," she said, "I am an excellent whore. The men who come here go away talking of exquisite pleasure, and I have seen many powerful males writhing at my feet as helpless as infants, on these very rugs where you now sit. Please do not insult a product you have not sampled, Citizen."
"Whores," said Coyote, biting off his words as if they hurt him, "do not talk of their own degradation. It's that that betrays you for a fake, however skilled you may be. And I don't doubt your skill, you know. You are still a Singer. Even in those clothes, even in this place, you have learned no skill at setting that aside. It's no wonder the men flock to you—a holy whore must prove irresistible."
"Apparently," she answered. "And I lose a great deal of money as this conversation progresses, Citizen! Tell me what you want, and let me get this over with. I have many appointments this day."
"You find my presence so distasteful?"
"I find your presence a torment."
Coyote looked at her. The disdain, the banter, the practiced elegance, were gone. Whatever she meant by the statement she had just made, she was telling him the truth.
"Good enough," he said. "I want to know what you're doing here. I want to know why Analyn the Singer, holy woman of Castle Fra, mother of the Student-to-be Star Fox, now lives as a mind-prostitute at Hailing Street six twentyone. Tell me!"
"You left out one of my titles."
"I don't think so."
"Yes! I am also a murderer, Citizen. Analyn the Singer, Murderer of the Divine. No one else on this planet, no one else in the Three Galaxies, bears that title, except me; it is my personal distinction."
"Analyn—"
"And," she spat, "it is an unusual distinction! Judas, at least, did not drive the nails himself."
She leaned back against the wall across from him, hugging her arms tight about her, and closed her eyes, saying, "And yet another one. I am called Analyn, Savior of the Old Faith. Have you not heard that yet?"
Coyote said nothing, watching her and listening to more than just her words. There was something here he didn't understand. He was having trouble hating her, for one thing; she had ceased to seem a barbaric incarnation of evil and begun to look more and more like a tired and bitter woman of middle years, no longer at the peak of her beauty, wrapped in an aura of power that almost hissed about her but within which she seemed to struggle like something small caught in amber. The dress, with its foolish peek-a-boo mechanism, had stopped being obscene and had become grotesque.
"Just explain to me, Citizen," he said softly. "This role suits you very badly. The role of killer suited you worse. Tell me, in plain words, why you did the one and why you now do the other, and I will go away and leave you alone."
"Well ... " She sighed heavily and opened her eyes. "Are you hungry?" she asked him. "Thirsty?"
He shook his head. "Only for the truth," he said.
"Well, then, I will give you what you want. One answer at a time. I killed Drussa Silver because it was my duty to do so, because I was charged with that obligation by Tayn Kellyr of Castle Fra. I serve as mind-prostitute now because, once again, that is my duty, but I have placed the obligation on myself. This, at least, was not Tayn Kellyr's idea."
"I don't understand," he said.
"You cannot understand," she snapped. "You are not one of my people. You cannot understand what it was like, to be Analyn the Singer, of Castle Fra. Seven hundred years my family had served in fealty to the noble family of that Castle. It was Tayn Kellyr's mother who came when my own mother lay dying in our house next the Castle wall, bringing the death-drugs herself, with her own hands. She would not leave it to a medrobot. It was Tayn Kellyr who came, many and many a time, to attend in some way to me or to my daughter, as she would have done her own children. I was raised in the Old Faith, as were my family generations out of mind before me, and my loyalty to Castle Fra was as my loyalty to my own heart. I ... I could no more question the instructions of Tayn Kellyr—wicked as they seemed to me—than I could cease, of my own free will, to breathe the air. I don't expect you to understand."
"Go on."
"It was Tayn Kellyr who dressed me in the holy robes, Tayn Kellyr who put the sword in my hands. I went grieving, I went bleeding in my own depths, but I could not refuse the lady of Castle Fra. I had my own plan, you see. First, there was my duty to discharge, the sword to lay across the throat of the Silver. Then I would go home and bury that same sword in my heart. If only it had been that easy!"
Coyote shook his head, bewildered.
"That would have been better than this," he said slowly.
"Yes! Far better, immeasurably better! But it turned out not to be quite that simple. I loved Drussa Silver, Citizen Jones; she was my beloved friend. We walked, many and many a night, down by the river where no one would see us, high in the nishia-bella when the mists were thick, for the sake of my reputation and my daughter's. When I had killed her, and my duty to the family was gone, death would have been very welcome."
There was a soft knock at the door. Analyn made a noise of disgust and went to answer it, saying to whoever stood there, "Are you completely ignorant? Were you raised by a computer? Don't you see my light there—can't you see I'm busy?" It's hard to slam a door that slides shut, but she managed it, and then she turned, her back to the door, and faced him.
"You see," she said wearily, "Tayn Kellyr was using me for a purpose of her own, and murder was only the first small step. I was not to be just a courier of death, putting an end to a nuisance that threatened those I owed my loyalty to. That was not it at all."
"What, then?" he demanded.
Her voice tightened, and her fists clenched against her chest.
"It was a clever plan she had, the lady Kellyr," she told him bitterly. "The Silver's death was only the beginning. It was to be Messiah against Messiah, and I was to be the Champion Messiah, don't you see? Drussa representing her faith, in her plain tunic and her braids, barehanded and barefooted on the grass, her blood pouring out into the water—and me, Messiah of the Old Faith, splendrous in my sacred robes and headdress, bearing the avenging jeweled sword! Faith against Faith, and the Old Faith Triumphant—that was her idea! There were to be holy days celebrated in my honor, icons prepared and distributed to the people, she had struck medals of silver with my image upon them ... When I came back to my house, Citizen, she was waiting for me, with a surgical kit. There was to be a light-source implanted, just above the point between my brows, to provide me the traditional halo and offer the last touch of convincing detail for the doubters. I would have glowed like—" She reached out and smashed one of the fragile lamps between her two palms, the vicious shards dropping all about her like a rain of murderous ice.
"—like that lamp," she said simply, and her hands fell to her sides.
Coyote was heartsick, all his hatred gone. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Tzana Kai and his daughter pointing out that this was yet another evidence of his absurd romanticism, but he could not help himself. The woman was pathetic, pitiful—how could he hate her?
"There's just one thing," he said gently.
"Why this?" she asked, and laughed.
Her voice had gone all crisp competence, and the disdain was back. "Easily explained, Citizen," she said briskly. "I am not to be used in that way. What I did voluntarily, out of the duty I owed Castle Fra, that was one thing. But I am no one's puppet, and no one's liar. When Tayn Kellyr betrayed me for her own purposes, she set me free of obligation to her—my only obligation then was to ruin her plans for the evil they were. My death would not have done it."
"Why not?"
"She would have won if I'd died. The Old Faith would have managed an ascension to heaven or some such claptrap for me if I'd turned that sword on myself; their technology is ingenious and impressive. I'd have gone floating up out of sight through the trees, accompanied no doubt by showers of roses and flights of doves and the music of the spheres, and served their legend comfortably. But it's very difficult indeed for them to claim me as their Messiah, as the Holy Champion of the Old Faith, when I spend my days as public whore."
She paused and then said, "Citizen Jones, have I made myself clear?"
Coyote was indifferent to the tears in his eyes, but the trembling in his throat would not let him speak. He could only stare at her.
"Waste no pity on me, Citizen," she hissed at him. "I am maintained in luxury here. I have everything that I could want. I repay Drussa, in some small measure, each day that I spend in this place; I have the comfort of knowing that each morning Tayn Kellyr must get up to face the fact of her own failure. They dare not arrest me, they dare not kill me, in the Chapels they tell the people that in my excess of zeal I have gone mad, but who will worship a mad goddess?"
She sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees, rocking herself softly back and forth, laughing, while Coyote watched. All his wits seemed to have deserted him, and later he would be ashamed that he had had not a single word of consolation to offer her. He watched like something carved of wood and listened to the clear notes of the music over their heads.
When at last she looked at him again, her eyes were ice-honed like the music, bitter-clear.
"She would have had to do the same thing, you know," she said.
"Who?"
It was a croak, and he cleared his throat, and tried again. "Who, Citizen?"
"Drussa Silver."
"Drussa? Analyn, they are perhaps right to call you mad."
"No!" She shook her head firmly. "Drussa would have had no other choice—how else could she have weaned the people from their dependence on her? How else could she have overcome her failure?"
"I cannot see where she failed," said Coyote. "You will have to tell me."
"Every religion since the beginning of time has done this." Analyn raised her hands, one level with her shoulders, the other high above her head, as high as she could reach. "Every one of them has had this separation, this split, this division between Leader and led, the Shepherd and the sheep, the Master and the servant, the King and the subject. And every one of them has failed. No true faith can come of such division, she told us; no salvation can come of such ranking. Women have always known that. Transcendence must come of union, not of separation. She had thought she would just go away, you see, once she had taught the people the skills she thought were necessary to their spirits. She meant just to go away and live somewhere alone, so that the dependence of the Shavvies upon her as Divine Being would come to an end and be forgotten. But it wouldn't have worked."
Coyote nodded, agreeing.
"No," he said. "She would only have made herself a legend, and they would have worshiped that."
"And now I've made her a legend," said the woman, mourning. "I've given her a martyr's death, and she will never be free of that. Coyote Jones, will you answer one question for me? I've answered all of yours."
"If I can," he said. "I don't know till you ask me."
"Why did she permit it?"
The question hung in the air, and Coyote spread his hands, helpless. He didn't even know if there was an answer; if it existed, he didn't have it handy.
"I don't know, Analyn," he said. "I have no idea. None."
"Perhaps it was that ... that a miracle—a miracle that would have stopped me—would have made things even worse?"
"Perhaps," Coyote said dubiously. "Who can know?"
Coyote stood up, ready to leave her. He had just one question left.
"Analyn," he asked, "what will happen to the Shavvies now?"
"Oh ... some of them will go on as they always have, I suppose. There have been Shavvies, a few faithful ones, for as long as anyone can remember. Most of them will go back to the Old Faith, now that Drussa is not here to hold them. I understand that Tayn Kellyr has set her daughter Deliven the task of bringing all the strays back into the fold, where their new skills will be very useful, and their tithes will once again maintain the Castles."
"You really think that's what will happen?"
"Don't you?"
There was no comfort he could offer her, and nothing left for him to say. In decency, he left her, but he did not touch the red star glowing outside her door. It was almost hidden by the mists, in any case.
He felt its muted light behind him as he hurried away down Hailing Street, headed for the rocketport, trying not to think of anything at all.