The Dark Symphony Read Free Page A

apartments were, he passed by the neon stone gardens which were dull and almost colorless in the bright daylight. Giving way to an unexplainable urge, he walked into the garden, the pavement humming beneath his feet, for it too was a sound configuration. At the end of the garden where a row of crimson stones (dull pink now) lay as a border, he stopped and looked beyond into the ruins that had once been a city of men. It was there, in those ruins, that the Populars lived. The mutants. The condemned.
    He wondered, as he looked at the tumbled buildings, at the puddles of broken glass, the twisted and melted steel girders, why the Musicians had built so close to ruin, so close to the mutants. Word had come, spreading out through the colonized worlds of the galaxy, that Earth had been destroyed in a war, that the mother planet was reverting to savagery. The council of Musician Elders on Vladislovitch, the Musicians own colony world, had decided to send a ship of Musicians back to reestablish Earth. Other colony worlds with vastly different societies had the same idea. The Elders' dreams of owning Earth were shattered, but this city-state had been set up as, at least, a toehold. Maybe one day the dozens of other city-states sprinkled over the globe would leave or collapse. Then the Musicians would have the honor of owning the mother world. So, when there were so many thousands of other sites, why build the city next to the Populars, the mutants who lived in the ruins?
    True, the Populars bothered no one. They had long ago learned that Musicians were too powerful for them. But there seemed no necessity for building a showplace colony next to these twisted men and women.
    Not for the first time, Guil thought that perhaps he did not know much at all about Musician society. Perhaps, actually, he knew next to nothing, for something in the pit of his stomach and the pit of his mind told him that the Populars were somehow tied more closely to the Musicians than the Congress cared to admit.
    While he watched the ruins, a dark and featureless form crossed the top of a rubble pile, glided along a broken wall on swift, long feet, and disappeared into deep shadows where several buildings had collapsed on one another. Featureless, smooth, faceless it had been. Each Popular was different than the other, and some were naturally easier to look upon. But a faceless, obsidian man…
    He shivered and left the neon gardens, heading back into the city, back toward his home…
    Later, they were dining at the low Oriental table in the Chinese Room, sitting on plush pillows of synthe-foam. Tapestries imitating ancient Chinese threadwork hung about the walls, giving the room an exotic and at once close and comfortable feeling. The robot orchestra stood before them, its intangible, swirling color body pulsating with every possible hue and every reasonable shade as the music throbbed full-bodied from it. To himself, Guil sang the words that went with the tune:
    Who rides so late through night and wind?
    It is the father with his child.
    He holds the boy within his arm,
    He clasps him tight, he keeps him warm.
    "
My son, why hide your face in fear
?"
    "See, Father, the Erlking's near.
    The Erlking with crown and wand
…"
    His father spat out an orange seed that went spinning off the plate, across, the table and onto the floor where the pin-point waves of the sonic-sweeper disposed of it instantly. He swallowed the juicy segment. He had been dispensing his advice, some useful, some ridiculous, ever since they had sat down to eat. "Rely on your sound-sedative whistle more than your gun, Guil. That always impresses the judges."
    "The judges are romantic fools," his mother said, arguing as she always argued, pouting her pretty mouth and launching into the start of a disagreement. She knew that his father was the boss, in the end, but she enjoyed seeing how far she could push before having to make up to him.
    "Exactly," his father said, trying to escape bickering