“The Master of the Aviary” is our second story choice from Welcome to the Greenhouse, a Gene Wolfean story of the far future that takes place after environmental catastrophe. It involves political intrigues and a scholar who thinks he’s done with that sort of thing. We think it has a fine last line.
Every Sunday, Mellow Julian went to the city market to search for birds. Commonly a crowd of his adoring students made his modest outing into a public spectacle.
The timeless questions of youth tortured the cultured young men of the town. “What is a gentleman’s proper relationship to his civic duty, and how can he weasel out of it?” Or: “Who is more miserable, the young man whose girl has died, or the young man whose girl will never love him?”
Although Julian had been rude to men in power, he was never rude to his students. He saw each of these young men as something like a book: a hazardous, long-term, difficult project that might never find a proper ending. Julian understood their bumbling need to intrude on his private life. A philosopher didn’t have one.
On this particular market Sunday, Julian was being much pestered by Bili, a pale, delicate, round-headed eccentric whose wealthy father owned a glass smelter. The bolder academy students were repelled by Bili’s mannerisms, so they hadn’t come along. Mellow Julian tolerated Bili’s youthful awkwardness. Julian had once been youthful and awkward himself.
Under their maze of parasols, cranes, aqueducts, and archery towers, the finer merchants of Selder sold their fabrics, scissors, fine glass baubles, medications, oils, and herbal liquors. The stony city square held a further maze of humble little shacks, the temporary stalls of the barkers. The barkers were howling about vegetables.
“Asparagus! Red lettuce! Celery! Baby bok choy!” Each shouted name had the tang of romance. Selder’s greenhouses close-packed the slope of the mountain like so many shining warts. It was for these rare and precious vegetables that foreigners braved the windy mountain passes and the burning plains.
Mellow Julian bought watercress and spinach, because their bright-green spiritual vibrations clarified his liver.
“Maestro, why do you always buy the cheapest, ugliest food in this city?” Bili piped up. “Spinach is awful.”
“It’s all that I know how to cook,” Julian quipped.
“Maestro, why don’t you marry? Then your wife could cook.”
“That’s a rather intrusive question,” Julian pointed out. “Nevertheless, I will enlighten you. I don’t care to indulge in any marriage ritual. I will never indulge in any bureaucratic ritual in this city, ever again.”
“Why don’t you just hire a cook?” persisted Bili.
“I’d have to give him all his orders! I might as well simply cook for myself.”
“I know that I’m not very bright,” said Bili humbly. “But a profound thinker like you, a man of such exemplary virtue … Everybody knows you’re the finest scribe in our city. Which is to say, the whole world! Yet you live alone in that little house, fussing with your diet and putting on plays in your backyard.”
“I know people talk about me,” shrugged Julian. “People chatter and cackle like chickens.”
Bili said nothing for a while. He knew he had revealed a sore spot.
Mellow Julian examined the sprawling straw mat of a foreign vendor. All the women of Selder adored seashells, because seashells were delicate, pretty, and exotic. Mellow Julian shared that interest, so he had a close look at the wares.
The shell vendor was a scarred, bristle-bearded sea pirate. His so-called rare seashells were painted plaster fakes.
Julian put away his magnifying lens. He nodded shortly and retreated. “Since you were born almost yesterday, Bili,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, “I would urge you to have a good look at that wild, hard-bitten character. This marketplace has never lacked for crooks, but this brute may be a spy.”
Bili pointed. “There’s even worse to be seen there, maestro.”
Huddled under a torn cotton tarp were five dirty refugees: black-haired, yellow-skinned people in travel-torn rags. One of the refugees was not starving. He was the owner or boss of the other four, who visibly were.
“They shouldn’t let wretches like those through the gates,” said Bili. “My father says they carry disease.”
“Every mortal being carries some disease,” Julian allowed. He edged nearer to the unwholesome scene. The exhausted refugees couldn’t even glance up from the cobblestones. “Well,” said Julian, “no need to flee these wild invaders. My guess would be that somebody invaded them.”
“They’re some ‘curious specimens,’ as you always put it, maestro.”
“Indeed, they most certainly are.”
“They must have come from very far away.”
“You are staring at them, Bili, but you are not observing them,” said Julian. “This man is in the ruins of a uniform, and he has a military bearing. This younger brute must be his son. This boy and girl are a brother and sister. And this older woman, whom he has dragged along from the wreck of their fortunes … Look at her hands. Those hands still have the marks of rings.”
The ruined soldier rose in his tattered boots and stuck out his callused mitt. “Money, water, food, house! Shelter! Fish! Vegetable!”
“I understand you,” Julian told him, in a fluent Old Proper English. “I’m touched that you’ve taken the trouble to learn so many nouns. So. What is your name, sir? My friends call me Mellow Julian Nebraska.”
“You give me money for her,” the soldier demanded, pointing. “You take her away, I buy shelter, water, food, fish, vegetable!”
“I have some money,” offered Bili.
“Don’t get hasty, Bili.”
“But I think I understand what this foreigner is saying!” said Bili. “Listen! I want to try out my Old Proper English on him. I buy this woman. You take my money. You eat your fish and vegetables.” Bili pointed at the boy and girl. “You feed these children. You wash your clothes. You comb your hair.” He glanced at Julian. “That’s the right English word, isn’t it? Comb?”
“It is,” Julian allowed.
“You wash yourself in the public bath,” Bili persisted. “You stink lesser!” He turned to Julian triumphantly. “Just look at him! Look at his eyes! He really does understand me! My lessons in the Academy of Selder … That dead language is practical! I can’t wait to tell my dad!”
“You should no longer call this city ‘Selder,’ Bili. The true name of your city is ‘Shelter.’ ‘The Resilient, Survivable, Sustainable Shelter,’ to list all her antique titles. If your ancestors could see you speaking like this—in their own streets, in their own language—they’d say you were a civilized man.”
“Thank you, maestro,” said Bili, with a blush to his pale, beardless cheeks. “From you, that means everything.”
“We must never forget that we descend from a great people. They made their mistakes—we all do—but someday, we’ll surpass them.”