The many colored land, p.44
The Many-Colored Land, page 44
part #1 of Saga of Pliocene Exile Series
***
Peopeo Moxmox Burke slumped against the roof parapet of House Velteyn, letting fatigue and reaction sweep over him. Gert and Hansi and a few other Lowlives beat the bushes of the roof garden and searched the ornate penthouse for hidden Tanu. But they found only the discarded baggage the fugitives had left behind—spilled pouches of jewelry, heavy embroidered cloaks and fantastic headgear, broken flagons of perfume, a single ruby-glass gauntlet.
"No sign of 'em, Chief," Hansi said. "Ganz ausgeflogen. They've flown the coop."
"Get back downstairs, then," Burke ordered. "See that all the rooms are checked out—and the dungeons, too. If you see Uwe or Black Denny, send them to me. We'll have to coordinate the looting."
"Check, Chief." The men clattered away down the broad marble stairway. Burke raised one leg of his buckskin trousers and kneaded the puckered flesh around the healing scar. With the anesthetic of battle fury worn off, it hurt like hell; and there was a long cut on his bare back and about forty-seven bruises and abrasions that were also making themselves known. But he was in pretty good shape, for all that. The rest of the Lowlife army should be so lucky.
One of the fleeing evacuees had left behind a basket with wine and breadrolls. Sighing, the Chief began to eat and drink. In the streets below, Firvulag were gathering their wounded and their dead and forming long processions on their way to the Rhine watergates. Bobbing lanterns out on the river marked the position of small boats that had already begun the withdrawal in anticipation of the dawn. Here and there among the burning ruins stubborn human loyalists continued a futile resistance. Madame Guderian had warned Burke that the humans living in Finiah might prove less than grateful for their liberation. She had been right, as usual. There were interesting times ahead, damn it.
Sighing once again, he finished the wine, gave his stiffening muscles a stretch, then took up a discarded Tanu shawl to wipe off his warpaint.
***
Moe Marshak shuffled a few steps forward in line.
"Quit crowding, big boy," snarled the lovely dark-skinned woman from the pleasure dome. The other two inmates had not worn gray torcs and were long gone, led away to the sailing lighters that shuttled back and forth between Finiah and the Vosges shore. The promise of amnesty was being kept by the Lowlives. But if you were a human torc wearer, there was a catch.
Marshak knew all about the activity of the drumhead tribunal, of course. He was in telepathic communion with all of the grays within his range who had not deliberately shut him out—as the black woman had. The Tanu, givers of delight and power, were gone. As they had wafted away to the east, they had reached out in poignant farewell, caressing and commiserating and sending a final warm surge flooding the neural networks of those who had been faithful, so that the gray-torc prisoners had an illusion of celebration in place of grief and despair. Even now, at the end, they could comfort one another. The kinship remained. None of them was alone—except by choice.
The black woman stood before the judges, her eyes bright. When the question came, she almost screamed her reply: "Yes! Yes, by God! Do it! Give me back my self again!"
Lowlife guards led her through a door to the right of the tribunal. The rest of the grays, mourning the sister's defection but respecting her choice, reached out one last time. She defied them all, placed her head on the block. The great mallet smote the iron chisel and there was overpowering pain. And silence.
Now Marshak's turn came. As a man dreaming, he told the Lowlife judges his name, his former occupation in the Milieu, the date of his passage through the time-portal. The oldest of the judges pronounced the formula.
"Moe Marshak, as a wearer of the gray torc, you have been held in bondage by an exotic race and compelled to abet the enslavement of humanity. Your Tanu overlords have been defeated by the Alliance of Freeliving Humans and Firvulag. As a prisoner of war, you are entitled to amnesty, provided that you agree to the removal of the torc. If you do not agree, you will be executed. Please make your choice."
He chose.
Every nerve in his body seemed to ignite. Kindred minds sang as they gave consolation. Steadfast, he reaffirmed the unity and a great rejoicing flare obliterated all other sensation: the sight of the holloweyed judges, the pressure of hands that gripped and dragged him away, the penetration of his heart by the long blade, and the final cold embrace of the River Rhine.
***
Richard stood in the dim little log chapel in Hidden Springs village where they had laid Martha out, seeing her in a swimming reddish haze even though Amerie had tried to reassure him that his right eye was virtually undamaged.
He wasn't angry. Disappointed, that was all, because Marty had promised to wait. Hadn't they planned it all together? Hadn't they loved each other? It wasn't like her to let him down after all they'd been through together.
Well, he would work something out.
Wincing a little from the bandaged burns, he gathered her into his arms. So light, so white. All gowned in white. He almost fell as he pushed the door open. No depth perception with only one eye. "Doesn't matter," he told her. "I can wear a patch like a real pirate. Just you hang on."
He went lurching toward the place where the flyer stood, covered by camouflage netting, one landing strut broken and one wing partly crushed by his prang-in. But a gravo-mag ship didn't need wings to fly. It was still in good enough shape to take both of them where they wanted to go.
Amerie spotted him just as he was lifting Martha inside. She came running, her nun's veil and robes billowing. "Richard! Stop!"
Oh, no you don't, he thought. I did what I promised. Now it's you guys who owe me.
With the flyer tilted, it was tricky to maneuver Martha. He made her comfortable and tossed the Spear out, powerpack and all. Maybe some wisehead would figure out how to recharge it some day. Then Madame Guderian could get another flyer and go zap all the rest of the Tanu cities and make Pliocene Earth safe for good old humanity.
"Just don't call me to drive the bus," he muttered. "I've got other plans."
"Richard!" the nun shouted again.
He waved to her from the flight deck port and sat down in the charred seat. Close hatch. Light up. Juice to the external web. Camouflage netting burning away. Oh-oh. Environmental system in the amber. Shorted by the lightning, maybe. Well ... it would last long enough.
The soothing hum filled his brain as he brought the ship up level. He glanced back at Marty to be sure that she was still safe. Her form wavered, seemed to go red. But in a moment it was all right, and he told her, "I'll take us up nice and slow. We've got all the time in the world."
***
Amerie watched the broken-winged bird rise vertically into the golden morning sky, following the first component of the sign she traced. The mist was gone now and it was going to be a beautiful day. Over in the east the smoke cloud was thickening, but upper-level winds carried it in the opposite direction.
The aircraft ascended until it was a mere speck. Amerie blinked, and the speck became invisible against the bright vault of the heavens.
***
THE END OF PART THREE
Volume II of The Saga of Pliocene Exile,
entitled THE GOLDEN TORC, tells of the
adventures of the other four members of
Group Green in the Tanu capital city, and
of their reunion with the northerners in an
attempt to accomplish the final phases of
Madame Guderian's plan to liberate
Pliocene humanity.
Appendixes
Some Notes on "The Tanu Song"
The Tanu Song
Map of Northwestern Europe
During the Pliocene Epoch
Some Notes on "The Tanu Song"
THE ENGLISH WORDS to The Tanu Song, appearing on [>] of this volume, are freely adapted from Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland, a compendium of Celtic myth translated and "arranged" by Lady Augusta Gregory (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904). She tells some of the adventures of a race of heroic faeries or gods, the People of Dana or Men of Dea, who were said to have come to Ireland "from the north" in times implied to be late pre-Christian or early Christian. Her tales are part of the greater body of Celtic mythology originally engendered on continental Europe at a much earlier date.
One section of Lady Gregory's book tells the adventures of the god Manannan the Proud, who was said to have established other members of his race in Ireland, after which he himself disappeared—only to pop up again from time to time, playing tricks and making sweet music. Chapter 10 of Gods and Fighting Men tells how Manannan sent a faerie woman to summon one Bran, son of Febal, to his current abode in the Land of Women, also called Emhain (Aven) of Many-Colored Hospitality. The woman sings the following song to Bran:
I bring a branch of the apple-tree from Emhain, from the far island around which are the shining horses of the Son of Lir [Manannan], A delight of the eyes is the plain where the hosts hold their games; curragh racing against chariot in the White Silver Plain to the south. There are feet of white bronze under it, shining through life and time; a comely level land through the length of the world's age, and many blossoms falling on it.
There is an old tree there with blossoms, and birds calling from among them; every color is shining there, delight is common, and music, in the Gentle-Voiced Plain, in the Silver Cloud Plain to the south.
Keening is not used, or treachery, in the tilled familiar land; there is nothing hard or rough, but sweet music striking on the ear.
To be without grief, without sorrow, without death, without any sickness, without weakness; that is the sign of Emhain; it is not common wonder that is.
There is nothing to liken its mists to; the sea washes the wave against the land; brightness falls from its hair.
There are riches, there are treasures of every color in the Gentle Land, the Bountiful Land. Sweet music to be listening to; the best of wine to drink.
Golden chariots in the Plain of the Sea, rising up to the sun with the tide; silver chariots and bronze chariots on the Plain of Sports.
Gold-yellow horses on the strand, and crimson horses, and others with wool on their backs, blue like the color of the sky.
It is a day of lasting weather, silver is dropping on the land; a pure white cliff on the edge of the sea, getting its warmth from the sun.
The host race over the Plain of Sports; it is beautiful and not weak their game is; death or the ebbing of the tide will not come to them in the Many-Colored Land.
There will come at sunrise a fair man, lighting up the level lands; he rides upon the plain that is beaten by the waves, he stirs the sea till it is like blood.
An army will come over the clear sea, rowing to the stone that is in sight, that a hundred sounds of music come from.
It sings a song to the army; it is not sad through the length of time; it increases music with hundreds singing together; they do not look for death or the ebb-tide...
From this felicitous fragment (which unfortunately continues with the rather dull adventures of Bran and his comrades in Emhain, where they ultimately meet disaster), and from the first three paragraphs of Lady Gregory's first chapter, which list the names and attributes of the principal Celtic gods, I derived a fragile skeleton for The Many-Colored Land and The Golden Torc, its culminating sequel. The actual plot of the saga, needless to say, has no basis in folklore; but students of mythology will recognize elements borrowed not only from the Celts but also from the fairy tales of nearly a dozen other European nations. The exotic people are all given names derived from those of the heroic faeries, with attributes that may or may not match the originals; the archetypal human characters Aiken Drum, Felice Landry, and Mercy Lamballe are also out of Celtica, via Jung and Joseph Campbell, among others. Folkloric bits purveyed by the character Bryan Grenfell are all authentic; especially noteworthy is the almost universal theme of the anima-menace—the faerie woman who snatches mortal men and wreaks her passionate will on them until they are drained husks. She shows up in tales from the Balearics to Russia.
The musical setting for The Tanu Song, which follows, is my own simplified adaptation of that mysterious melody, "Londonderry Air," which is purportedly of faerie authorship. This version, arranged for four human voices (SATB with divisi), varies somewhat from that which the exotics would sing. Their voices possessed richer overtones than those of humanity; and they were fond of dissonances and "violations" of human harmonic theory that sound weird, to say the least, when essayed by a human chorus. Only a few of these musical oddities have been included in the arrangement.
Among the Tanu, The Song was sung as a solo or in double chorus. On the rare occasions when Tanu and Firvulag sang together, such as the Grand Combat featured in The Golden Torc, the full grandeur of the exotic music was made manifest. The Little People used different words in their own dialect; and more important, they used different phrasing and at least four separate contrapuntal melody lines, which twined and writhed through the fabric of the basic Tanu harmonies in a richly complex polychoral effect. I must leave to more skilled hands the transcription of The Firvulag Song proper, as well as its musical marriage with the version sung by the Tanu.
The traditional "Londonderry Air" has perhaps the most eccentric history of any Irish melody. It does not fit any known Irish meter, and its history, as detailed by Anne G. Gilchrist in English Folk Dance and Song Society Journal (December 1932, [>]), is a cloudy one. The air was first published in 1855 by George Petrie in Ancient Music of Ireland, noted "name unknown" and having no words. After the song appeared in Petrie's collection, its striking beauty led many ar-rangers to try to fit words to it. The best-known and most adequate version is "Danny Boy" (1913), with lyrics by Frederick E. Weatherly. Most public-domain songbooks use turgid lyrics composed by Katharine Tynan Hinkson (b. 1861) beginning: "Would God I were the tender apple blossom / That floats and falls from off the twisted bough, / To lie and faint within your silken bosom, / Within your silken bosom, as that does now." An equally unsingable version with slightly more dignity is "Emer's Farewell to Cucullain" (1882), with words by Alfred Percival Graves in a setting by C. Villiers Stanford. This begins: "O might a maid confess her secret longing / To one who dearly loves but may not speak! / Alas! I had not hidden to thy wronging / A bleeding heart beneath a smiling cheek."
The original melody in Petrie's collection came from a Miss Jane Ross of Limavady in the Northern Irish country of Londonderry. The lady arranged it for the piano herself and simply commented to Dr. Petrie that it was "very old." Unfortunately, later researchers were unable to find any trace of its origins, nor were there any Gaelic words to it. The fact that its meter was "wrong" for Irish folksong made it even more suspect, and some denied that it was a traditional melody at all.
Gilchrist tracked down relatives of Miss Ross and established that she was indeed a serious student of folksong, dedicated and honest. She collected some melodies herself, and others came from her brother, who fished in neighboring County Donegal. Both regions are known for preserving ancient bits of Irish culture.
It would seem, then, that we can discount the possibility of Miss Ross's palming off one of her own compositions as a traditional air. The problem of the atypical meter is ingeniously attacked by Gilchrist, who suggests that Miss Ross might have erroneously transcribed the tune in common (4/4) time rather than in the 3/4 or 6/8 rhythm of the majority of old Gaelic songs. If the rhythm is thus changed, and certain prolonged notes shortened, one does indeed get a typical Irish ditty of rather appalling banality. Gilchrist claims to see affinities between the transmogrification and two other songs, "The Colleen Rue" and "An Beanuasal Og."
If Miss Ross did err, we can only bless her for the inadvertent modification that brought musical immortality to what would have otherwise been a forgettable jig. If, on the other hand, she did record the air faithfully, then its provenance is a mystery still. We can only fall back upon the whimsical opinion that ascribes the haunting song to faerie folk—whoever they might have been.
The Tanu Song
Julian May, The Many-Colored Land
