As the door of Katharine's dwelling swung shut behind her, another door was opening in the small Annex behind the House of the Old. The Receiver of Memory, to whose living area the door belonged, raised his eyes from the book he had been studying and smiled softly at the tall, elegant woman who entered. "Welcome, Marilee," he said.
The Chief Elder returned his greeting courteously but mechanically, her eyes straying to the rows of books that lined the walls of the room. She had called upon the Receiver several times during her nine and a half years as leader of the Community, but never had she felt as ill at ease in his quiet sanctum as she did today. There was something intimidating, suddenly, about all those mysterious volumes; it made her think how large and old the world was, and how much there was about it that she was not permitted to know.
The Receiver's soft voice broke into her thoughts. "What did the Speaker tell you?" he asked.
The Chief Elder blinked, and recollected herself. "Very little," she said. "He had never heard the words of the reminder before, and doesn't know where they came from. All he knows is that, at 13:47 this afternoon, he was compelled to activate the speaker and proclaim them to the Community."
"Proclaim?" said the Receiver.
The Chief Elder nodded. "That was the word he used," she said. "I suppose he meant 'announce', but one can't insist on precision of language at such a moment."
"No," said the Receiver thoughtfully. "Perhaps not. But was that really all he said? Did he, for instance, say anything about how it felt to be… compelled?"
"How it felt?" the Chief Elder repeated.
"Yes," said the Receiver. "Was he frightened? Confused? Ashamed, perhaps?"
The Chief Elder shook her head. "He didn't tell us that," she said. "I suppose he must have been frightened; wouldn't anyone be? But we didn't ask him. We…" She hesitated.
"Yes?" said the Receiver.
"The truth is, we didn't ask him very much at all," said the Chief Elder. "To do so seemed unkind, almost rude. It was quite clear that what had happened wasn't his fault, and none of us were anxious to make him more uncomfortable about it than he already was."
"Did he seem uncomfortable?" said the Receiver.
"Well… no," the Chief Elder admitted. "He was quite composed, in fact. But he must have been uncomfortable, mustn't he? To have something like that happen to you, and to be unable to explain it, must surely be as discomfiting as anything can be."
"Must it?" said the Receiver gravely.
The Chief Elder didn't know how to respond to that, and, after a moment's pause, the Receiver continued. "Suppose that you, Marilee, were lost somewhere far from the Community. And suppose that, just as you were becoming very distressed and lonely, an enormous hand were to reach down out of the sky, pick you up from where you were, and put you down again right in front of the Auditorium. How would you feel then?"
This seemed to the Chief Elder to be sheer nonsense, but she had sat on the Committee too long to doubt the Receiver's wisdom. After a few moments' effort, she succeeded in imagining the situation that the Receiver had described; after a few moments more, she was ready to answer him.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "that I would feel confused by what had happened, but very happy that it had happened." She laughed. "And grateful to the person whose hand it was, also."
The Receiver smiled. "Yes, you would be grateful," he said. "Even if you didn't know who the person was, or how he could have done what he did, you would still be grateful to him, and not afraid or uncomfortable. Because you would be sure, at least, that he was good."
The Chief Elder nodded slowly. "Yes, that's true," she said. "But, with all due respect, Receiver…" She stopped, uncertain of how to say what she wanted without seeming hopelessly impudent.
"Yes?" said the Receiver.
"Well… I haven't been placed in front of the Auditorium by an enormous hand." As the Chief Elder spoke, a grin crept across her face unbidden; the idea, when put thus baldly, seemed so absurd that it was all she could do to keep from laughing in the Receiver's face.
The Receiver didn't seem offended. "No," he agreed. "You haven't, and I don't suppose you ever will be. It would be a very strange thing to have happen, wouldn't it?"
"Very strange, indeed," said the Chief Elder, still smiling at the thought.
"Almost as strange, perhaps," said the Receiver, "as having your mind suddenly filled with an announcement about daffodils."
There was a moment's pause, then – "Yes," said the Chief Elder. "Almost as strange as that."
"And if the one thing can be good, despite being strange," said the Receiver, "maybe the other can be, as well."
The Chief Elder was no longer smiling. "No, Receiver," she said. "I don't think it can. The idea of the hand was good because the hand brought rescue. Nobody was rescued by today's reminder. Quite the opposite, in fact: people were disturbed, unsettled – the life of the Community was disrupted to no purpose. And what the Committee and I want to know," she said firmly, "is how to keep such a thing from happening again."
The Receiver didn't answer her immediately. His strangely pale eyes had gone vacant, as though he were gazing at something far away. It was an expression the Chief Elder had seen before, each time she had consulted him; it meant that he was drawing on his store of ancient wisdom, and plumbing the world's past for the guidance that the present situation required. She therefore put aside the slight annoyance she had felt with his enigmatic remarks, and waited with patient expectancy for his pronouncement.
"The primordial ooze," the Receiver murmured. "And something huge and smooth…"
This meant nothing to the Chief Elder, but she remained silent. Long ago, when she had been a child, her mother had been continually telling her, "Marilee, don't interrupt your father while he's thinking." (Her father had been a Mathematician; a number of the Community's mechanical devices owed much of their efficiency to his ideas.) She was a grown woman now and the highest authority in the Community – but in the Receiver's Annex, surrounded by his books and waiting on his wisdom, she never failed to feel that same parental stricture that she had known as a Five.
"By what means, though?" said the Receiver. "Is words worth forever, too?" (At least, that was what the Chief Elder heard him say. It surprised her, since she'd never known the Receiver to use incorrect grammar before.)
He meditated for a few moments more, then abruptly raised his head and met the Chief Elder's gaze again. "I advise," he said, "that you assign one of the Elders – Tomas, perhaps – to remain in the Speaker's office with him during his period of work. Then, if he should be seized with such an impulse again, Tomas can observe what happens, and his observations may give us some clues about where this reminder came from."
The Chief Elder didn't trouble to conceal her disappointment. "Is that all?" she said.
"It's all that I can see to do at the moment," said the Receiver. A small smile played about his lips. "Even my wisdom needs something to work with, Marilee."
That, the Chief Elder recognized, was fair enough. "What if the Speaker never is compelled to give another such reminder?" she asked.
"All the better for you, I should say," said the Receiver. "That is what you want to happen, isn't it?"
"Of course," said the Chief Elder, "but Tomas probably won't want to spend the rest of his life watching the Speaker for a loss of control that never comes. How long should we wait before letting him return to his ordinary duties?"
"Ah," said the Receiver. "Now, that is a question." He stroked his beard, and thought for a moment. "I would say that, if there has been no second reminder by the twenty-second of March, there probably never will be. Tell Tomas that he need not keep watching the Speaker after that date."
"The twenty-second of March?" the Chief Elder repeated.
The Receiver nodded. "Whoever or whatever inspired the reminder, I suspect that seasons are important to him," he said. "If he lets the beginning of spring go by without recognizing it in some way, it will be because he has lost interest in us."
"I see," said the Chief Elder. For the briefest of moments, she felt the urge to ask him how he had come to that conclusion, but she suppressed it as quickly as it came. Her job was to apply the Receiver's wisdom, not to seek to understand it.
"I will give Tomas his assignment at daybreak tomorrow, then," she said. "On behalf of the Committee, I thank you, Receiver of Memory."
"I accept your thanks," said the Receiver gravely.
The Chief Elder made a small bow, and left the room.
The Receiver let out a heavy breath, and reopened the book that lay beside him on the desk. It was a very old book, written in a world that was very different from the one the people of the Community knew; yet, in many ways, it was the most eloquent expression ever made of the virtues that the Community sought by its way of life. The author had nothing but praise for well-ordered living, social usefulness, and clarity of thought; he deplored emotional excess and pointless inquiry. Indeed, it would not have been difficult, the Receiver thought, to present this ancient sage as one of the founders of the Community system; perhaps those who had instituted the Communities, so many generations ago, had thought that they were following his insights.
Yet, all the same, his book was part of the Receiver's library; no other copy existed anywhere in the Community. The Community's past leaders had deemed its contents to be disruptive to the present-day life of the people, and had relegated them to the realm of memory. And rightly so, for, however similar its conclusions were to the Community's, its reasons for reaching those conclusions were utterly inadmissible by those who wished to live as the Community's members did. There were things its author knew – things, indeed, he thought essential to knowledge – that would have turned the world of the Community upside down in an instant if word of them were to spread abroad. And, when the Speaker's reminder had been broadcast to the community that afternoon, it had been to one of these things that the Receiver's mind had flown.
He turned the ancient pages, trying to find the passage again. Yes, there it was: And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them, and receive them into his soul to foster its growth, and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but, when reason came, the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.
The Receiver nodded to himself. Such was, indeed, the cause of education in music; he, with his lifetime's experience of hearing beyond, knew it well. And someone else evidently knew it, too, and was using the Speaker to give the Community this most sovereign form of instruction. But who? And how? And, above all, why?
He sighed, and shook his head. It would be the height of arrogance for him, of all people, to pretend that he knew, or could deduce, the answers to these questions. Three months ago, he had deliberately sent Jonas to his death in the wilderness, thinking that he had known how that would affect the Community – and he had been wrong, and his son had died for nothing. After that, how could he claim to understand the workings of his world?
All the same, though, he still had a faint flicker of intelligence left in his old head, and there was one thing about the Speaker's reminder that he was sure of. Wherever it had come from, and whatever had caused it, it was a foreshadowing of something immense – some great and terrible fortune on the horizon, which would call upon all the wisdom he could muster to keep it from destroying the people of the Community. And when it came, he would have to be ready for it.
And, with that thought, the Receiver stood up, shut the book, and went to prepare himself for bed. For no-one can be properly ready for a great and terrible fortune if he neglects his sleep to stare pointlessly at old books.