Dark Symphony, page 3
He punched out the number of the floor he wanted and stepped into the tube.
There was a playing of dissonance and consonance in his bones. Sound swirled through him, crashed over him like a wind, lifting him up the shaft. Abruptly, he ceased to rise and was floating before the exit onto the top floor. He pushed against the walls like a man in a gravityless environment, turning into a standing position, and shoved into the corridor, a little of his terror draining out of him as the elevator whined to a stop behind.
He moved down the corridor to the first door and stopped. He held the knife before him, ready to gut anyone who discovered his presence. He was looking for the nursery, but he did not know what door it lay behind. Palming the door activator, he tensed as the portal slid open.
Over a hundred naked women floated in a gleaming metal bowl at least a hundred and fifty feet across and twenty stories deep. They were held up by coursing, almost visible sound that gurgled from rim to rim and mouth to bottom of the incredible structure. They drifted, now with legs widespread, now drawn together in maidenly modesty, now with arms dangling loosely, faces split with axe wound grins of absolute pleasure as the duple, triple, quadruple, and sextuple-metered con-certos laced their wombs.
They were all pregnant, for this was the Inundation Chamber. Here, after the genetic engineers had done their work, had helped to fashion the fetuses, the women were brought to subject the advance” stages of their unborn children to the hypnotic Inundation music. The music carried subliminals in primitive picture concept quantums that “brainwashed” the unborn children, smoothed the rough edges of the genetic engineers' work by indoctrinating the fetus with a love and respect of music and authority.
Against his will, Loper looked away from the bird women, suppressing his desire to leap into the bowl, mount them in flight, fornicate as together they plunged to the bottom of the bowl and swooped upward again, crescendoing to a climax with the pounding swirl of sound. He should not be thinking such things, he knew. He hated Musicians and their Ladies. Still, it is not uncommon to find a relationship between lust and hate, and he struggled with a lust so bred. Stepping into the hallway, he closed the door to the Inundation Chamber, knowing what his dreams would always be from this day forward.
Farther down the hall, he pushed open another door and found the nursery. Walking hurriedly to the cradles of the babies born that day, he began checking names. Not just any child would do. It had to be a newborn babe, fresh from mother's belly that very day, and it had to be the child of a relatively important Musician, at least a Class II. Finally he came to a tag that caught his attention: GUILLAUME DUFAY GRIEG.
Could it possibly be the blood, in any way, of Johann Stamitz Grieg, Grand Meistro of Vivaldi, this city-state? He snatched it up. Even if it were only a nephew, its parents should be, with any luck, at least Class IIs.
The baby slept. It seemed so small and silly in his hands. He wondered what they would call it for a nick-name. Guil? He fought down a moment of tenderness. Tenderness could not be permitted at this stage of the game. Carefully, he slipped into the corridor and found the elevator. Walking into its surging strings, he fell down the well of noise, clutching the babe to his hair-matted chest.
When he stepped into the hallway on the ground floor, however, there were three Musicians walking toward the elevator. . . .
CHAPTER TWO
The processional, Pomp and Circumstance, gorged the hall. Slowly and in perfect time with the music, the eight boys of Guil's class marched haughtily into the vast chamber of the Grand Hall, their full velvetlike shimmer-cloth capes glowing with contained purple flashes as they fell behind their shoulders like wings. Purple was the color of a boy, of the uninitiated. When the Coming of Age Day rituals were completed, and if they were then lucky and resourceful enough to still be alive, they would never again wear that color, but would trade it for the reds and oranges, yellows and whites of adulthood.
Guil swallowed hard as they walked, finding his throat more and more constricted the deeper they went into the arena. He had never imagined the Great Hall to be like this! The floor swept away from him in a slight upward curve that would have been unnoticeable in any lesser chamber. It was, he judged, a thousand yards long. Far, far away, the judges were only dots in the tiny crimson chairs that topped the hundred foot vaulting facade of the Bench, which was a blacker black than any he had ever seen. The floor between here and there was a brilliant copper, laced with freeform shots of cream and black that shimmered and intertwined, curling through the almost transparent background of the stone. He turned his eyes on the floor nearby, careful to keep his head properly erect so as not to break the symmetry of the formation, and saw that the stone was transparent. Only lightly copper tinted, it dropped for at least a hundred feet, and only this great depth gave it that heavy coppery hue it seemed to possess at a casual glance—just as a cupful of water is clear but an oceanful is blue.
He looked to the tiers of spectators next—fully five thousand on a side, stretching up and up to the nearly limitless reaches of the walls that thrust upward in a slight outward curve and blended with the ceiling and the shimmering green beams. Each spectator had a comfortable, padded lounge chair on a swivel base to make his job of watching that much easier. Before each chair was a small television screen so that the spectator might see the action close up when it strayed to distant parts of the arena during heated moments of battle.
“My heart is literally in my throat,” Rosie said next to him, his voice strained and based on a tremor.
“I'll help you stuff it down once I've swallowed my own,” Guil said, still marveling at the tiers, at the immense spaces, at the lovely transparent floor.
A wave of cheering moved through the stands as the boys progressed, but they dared not look up any farther than they could manage by straining their eyes around in their sockets. Heads must remain front, for the ritual of entrance called for them to face only the judges who would soon decide their fates.
It was an unbearably long walk considering the tension that was already building in each of the boys and which would have their hearts thumping by the time they had reached their destination, but it did, at least, give Guil time to think. Suddenly, his ability with the guitar seemed as nothing. The Grand Hall stretched to all sides, and the grandeur made him question himself, made him feel small and insignificant—and doomed to failure. What if he were an inferior product of the genetic engineers and the Inundation Chamber, worse— in his way—than even Rosie? Would he die today during the tests, or when he had to face the Pillar of Ultimate Sound—or in the disposal furnaces where the rejects were carted, shoved through an iron grate door and burned? Maybe Frederic would be right: maybe he would receive the biggest surprise. Maybe he would die . . . He forced himself out of this useless funk just as the procession reached the foot of the Bench and spread out in a semicircle before the judges.
The orchestra performed the invocation using ancient instruments of brass and steel and wood rather than the modern synthetic instruments. The judges sat solemn and dignified, their white robes shielding all of their bodies but their heads, the orange ring of the judicial branch encircling their necks. The boys genuflected to the sound-portrait of Vladislovitch, the First Musician, the Finder of the Way of Sound.
Starting on the right of the semicircle, each boy recited a line of the Coming of Age Day Litany in turn.
“Vladislovitch, Father of the World, Musician Supreme,” the first boy intoned.
“Vladislovitch, Finder and User of the Eight Rules of Sound, Opener of the Way . . .”
“Vladislovitch, Meistro and Patron of All Towers . . .”
“Vladislovitch who played his cadenza before the very gods of old and brought them tumbling down,” Guil said breathlessly.
“Bless us, bless us, bless us,” the next boy chanted.
The litany spun on to conclusion. The crowd said, “Ah-ah-ah-men.” The tests were ready to begin. .
. .
They were taken to an isolation chamber to await their individual tests so that none might see what awaited them and thus prepare for it—or collapse from fear of it. Although each boy knew a bit of what would happen (for the father of each had, surely, recounted the nature of previous Coming of Age Day rituals), he could not know all, for the exact pattern of the tests was changed every four months, changed for every Coming of Age Day ritual. One by one, the others left to face their futures. There were only Guil and Rosie left when the attendent in light green robes and a yellow scarf came to the door and said,
“Grieg. You're now.”
“Wait!” Rosie cried as Guil reached the door, following the attendent.
“What?”
“Good luck, Guil.”
“Thanks, Rosie. I'll be waiting to shout for you when it's your turn.”
But when he stepped outside, he was not so sure he would be around to cheer anyone. Of the six boys who had gone before, only three had made it. Fifty-fifty chances. Were the odds always this gruesome? He could think of no time when anyone had mentioned the percentage of those who survived and those who were slaughtered or taken off for cremation, and he was abruptly ill. Some of the boys who had lost had been good musicians, better than Guil. Much better. And what did that mean, he wondered, trembling.
The winners sat on golden chairs on a platform above the arena floor, below and to the right of the judges, ready to watch the misfits—Guil and Rosie. Guil looked for some sign of the three losers, could find none. No bodies meant that all three must have buckled early, must have been carried away right off.
No, not necessarily. A sound creature, after all, did not leave signs of its victims. It engulfed them whole, negated the molecular vibrations that constituted them, and vanished with them, effectively canceling them out of existence.
Quaking, he walked before the towering Bench, bent his neck so he could see the judge called Handel peering at him from the centermost throne. “Guillaume Dufay Grieg?”
I want to run, he thought. I want to get out of here, out of here and far away. “ It is I, your honor,” he said.
“Are you prepared to begin your test?”
No, no, he thought. I'm not prepared. I'm afraid. I'm more afraid than a baby in the dark. “ Yes, your honor,” he said.
“Do you have any particular statements or requests to make at this time?”
Let me out! Let me the hell out of here! This is like the prisoner receiving his last meal, only my terminal privilege will be to speak a few pieces of wit, of wisdom. But he could not say any of that, for there was his father to consider. And, besides, they would not let him go as he wished. They would burn him. “No special requests or statements, your honor.”
“Very well,” Handel said. He coughed, wiped a hand across his mouth. “Let the tests begin!”
The orchestra struck the proper note and swept off into a complicated piece written by the originators of the rituals to stir excitement among the spectators while the preparations were being made.
It was an oddly eerie tune.
An attendant dressed in traditional white shimmer-cloth with a pulsating flash-fabric collar crossed to Guil; the collar threw angelic glare over his face, obscuring his features. All that was visible was his eyes, bright with reflected throbbings of light. He brought Guil three weapons: the sound-sedative whistle, the sonic knife, and the deadly sound rifle.
No longer trying to suppress the tremors that shook him like a dry leaf, Guil strapped the knife to the waistband of his leotard suit, hung the whistle about his neck by the glistening shimmer-metal chain, and cradled the rifle in his arms. With a nod to the judges, he took a hundred paces into the arena, turned back to the hundred foot monolith that was the Bench, braced himself mentally and physically, puffed out the stale air and took in clean, and nodded once again.
The music subsided, was gone.
“You have been chosen Class IV,” Judge Tallis boomed. He was a hawk of a man, wizened, with a beak nose, his two eyes like the eyes of a predatory bird. His hands appeared out of the robe to push back at the sides of his hair, then disappeared into the folds again.
Class IV. The echo of the words throbbed a moment before the soundproofing walls negated their patterns.
Father will be disappointed, Guil thought. But there was nothing to say except: “I accept my station.”
“Have you chosen an identisong?”
A phrase from your identisong was recorded on a small lapel badge and had merely to be activated to allow you the use of all machines used by your station and to give you entrance into all places your class was permitted entrance. Fourth Class identisongs had to be duple-metered. He realized, as he scanned what hundreds of tunes he knew, that he should have had one already in mind. Then he thought of a choice that would please his father with its irony and its connection with Der Erlkonig from the previous evening. “I chose Schubert's Marche Militaire.”
Tallis confirmed the choice.
The orchestra began muted music.
“Let us begin!” Tallis said.
The wall of the Bench shimmered, opaqued in the center, then dissolved in part to form a hole fifty feet across and seventy feet high. For a moment, there was silence that held like smoke in air, as if there would never again be a noise of any sort. Except for the almost inaudible sweetness of the orchestra.
And Guil wondered, looking at the hole in the Bench, just what could be so damned big! Seconds later, he got his answer. From the portal came a yellow dragon with white-white teeth, scales as large as shovel blades and eyes as red as blood with tiny clotted black pupils. Drool collected on the dragon's lips and slipped down its chin in rivulets.
The tension in the orchestra's music increased.
Guil felt the rising urge to flee, but gripped himself with his fear and used it to hold him there. He tried to tell himself that it was only sound, that it was not real. Not real at all. Not in the sense of flesh and blood. It was a man-structured sound configuration, a weaving of molecular vibrations to form a false entity—just like the ten towers and the piano Rosie had played yesterday and, yes, even the cape and leotard suit he wore. Then his father's words of the night before fled through his mind: “They will only be creatures of sound directed by men, brainless on their own. But remember, they can kill you just as surely as if they were real.”
He was very much afraid.
The dragon snorted, blew piercing sound waves from its nostrils instead of the conventional fire of fairy tales and legends. It looked over the galleries, roaring its defiance. And incidentally putting on a show for those who expected horror and pain. It waved its mighty head on the top of its thick, scaled neck, and gnashed its teeth, seemingly pleased with the response of the audience. Then it saw Guil, and though only a sound configuration directed by technicians behind the Bench, it licked its thick, black lips in hunger. . . .
Guil refrained from getting it over with in one quick blast of the sound rifle. It was tempting to level the big weapon and pulverize the dragon, shatter its arrangement of sound patterns and dissipate it. But if he chose the easy way out and did not prove to the judges' satisfaction that he was the master of sound and a competent user of the Eight Rules, then they would most certainly not let him out of the arena alive. Or if they did, it would be only to let the proper attendants take him to the disposal furnaces and ash him. He slipped the sound-sedative whistle between his teeth, bit down on it until his teeth ached, waiting for the dragon to make its move.
But the dragon fancied itself a cat and decided he was a mouse to be played with. It prowled around the end of the arena, watching the galleries as if it did not see him, as if its confrontation would be with the spectators. However, he could tell when its eyes flicked for short moments in his direction, gauging the distance and the chances so the engineers guiding it could know when to leap. It roared at the walls, and the roar echoed briefly before the walls negated it. Guil waited, weary with waiting and wishing the action would start. He shifted from one foot to the other, the gun still clenched in his hand, his free arm across the other, forming a cradle to hold the gun. Seconds passed in an agonizing crawl. Then minutes.
And suddenly the dragon leaped. . . .
Guil jumped in surprise despite himself. Sweat popped out on his face, and his nose watered slightly.
At first, it appeared as if the beast were going to cross the distance between them in that single leap. It hung impossibly in the air, huge, covering dozens of feet with its fall back to the floor. But it did not make the entire distance and crashed ponderously to the stone twenty feet away. Guil backed hurriedly, for he could see that the long neck could just about make up for the remaining distance. As he backed, he blew the whistle until his face reddened and his ears grew hot with rushing blood.
The dragon snorted again, shaking its massive head in wild fury.
Guil continued to blow the whistle.
The sound was almost inaudible.
The dragon's eyes widened for a moment, then grew heavy. Its floppy ears raised like great tents as if straining to pick up each shrill note of the sound-sedative, then withered back like dying flowers.
He blew again, longer this time, holding out until his chest screamed for air and he had to stop and suck violently for breath before continuing.
The beast leaped, crashing short again, unsteady. Its massive legs seemed to vibrate like jelly. It tried to run, wobbled sideways, and fell down clumsily on its rump.
Guil blew and blew.
The dragon shook its head again, ears slapping loudly against the sides of its skull, and struggled to its feet. The process was slow and arduous, but it managed to raise itself again. The engineers fighting to hold the mobility pattern of the configuration must have let out a small cheer at this final rally of their robot. When it was erect once more, it started after the boy, wobbling drunkenly, obviously on its last legs.
