Litany of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page A

that is made plain. What then, is signified by these ten singing birds? Children in class- that is to say yourselves-provide an obvious interpretation, surely. You're called upon to recite for the good sibyls who are your teachers, and your voices are high, like the twitterings of songbirds. To buy something for a song is to buy it cheaply. The meaning, as we see, is: is this multitude of young scholars to be sold cheaply? And the answer is clearly, no. Remember, children, how much Great Pas values, and tells us over and over again that he values, every living creature in the whorl, every color and kind of berry and butterfly-and human beings above all. No, birds are not to be sold for a song; birds are precious to Pas. We don't sacrifice birds and other animals to the immortal gods because they are of no value, do we? That would be insulting to the very gods.
    " 'Are ten birds to be had for a song?' No. No, you children are not to be sold cheaply."
    He had their interest now. Everyone was awake, and many were leaning forward in their seats. "For the second, we must consider the second line as well. Notice that ten singing birds might easily produce, not ten, but tens of thousands of songs." For a moment the picture filled his mind as it had once, perhaps, filled that of the long-dead Chrasmologic author a patio garden with a fountain and many flowers, its top covered with netting-bulbuls, thrushes, larks, and goldfinches, their voices weaving a rich fabric of melody that would stretch unbroken through decades and perhaps through a century, until the netting rotted and the birds flew free at last.
    And even then, might they not return at times? Would they not surely return, darling through rents in the ruined netting to drink at that tinkling fountain and nest in the safety of the patio garden, their long concerto ended yet continued beyond its end, as the orchestra plays when the audience is leaving a theater? Playing on and on for the joy of the music, when the last theater-goer has gone home, when the yawning ushers are snuffing the candles and the guttering footlights, when the actors and actresses have washed away their makeup and changed back into the clothing they ordinarily wear, the plain brown skirts and trousers, drab blouses and tunics and coats worn to the theater, worn to work as so many other drab brown garments, as plain as the bulbuls' brown feathers, were worn to work?
    "But if the birds are sold," Silk continued (actors and actresses, theater and audience, garden, fountain, net, and songbirds all banished from his consciousness), "how are songs to be had? We, who were so rich in songs, are now left poor. It will not help us, as the foreknowing authors point out in the next line, to daub a raven, smearing a black bird with the delicate beauties of the lark or the decent brown of the bulbul. Not enough, even, to gild it like a goldfinch. It is still a raven."
    He drew a deep breath. "Any ignorant man, you see, my children, may find himself in a position of veneration and authority. Suppose, for example, that some uneducated man-let us say an upright and an honorable man, one of you boys in Maytera Marble's class taken from her class and brought up with no further education-were by some chance to be thrust into the office of His Cognizance the Prolocutor. You would eat and sleep in His Cognizance's big palace on the Palatine. You would hold the baculus and wear the jeweled robes, and all the rest of us would kneel for your blessing. But you could not provide us with the wisdom that it would be your duty to supply. You would be a croaking raven daubed with paint, with gaudy colors."
    While he counted silently to three, Silk stared up at the manteion's dusty rafters, giving the image time to sink into the minds of his audience. "I hope that you understand, from what I've said, why your education must continue. And I hope, too, that you also understand that though I took my example from the Chapter, I might just