The Enigma Score Read Free Page A

believed implicitly in the language theory. Even now there were a few outspoken holdouts like Chad Jaconi, the Master Librarian, who believed that the sounds of the librettos were really words, and said so. Jaconi had spent the last forty years making a dictionary of tripsong phonemes, buying new translators from out-system, trying to establish that the Password scores were, indeed, a language. Every time old Jaconi thought he’d proved something, however, someone came along with a new libretto that contradicted it. There were still Explorer-singers out there with recorders and synthesizers and computers, crouched just outside the range of various Presences, trying endless combinations to see what seemed to work, coming up with new stuff even after all these years. Tasmin had actually heard the original cube made a hundred years ago by Ben Erickson, the first Explorer to get past the Far Watchlings to inland Deepsoil, an amazing and utterly mysterious, if not mystical, achievement. How could anyone possibly have arrived at the particular combination of phonemes and orchestral effect by trial and error! It seemed impossible.
    ‘It had to be clairvoyance,’ Tasmin mused, not for the first time. ‘A crystal ball and a fine voice.’
    Erickson had sung his way past the Presences for almost fifty years before becoming one more singer to fall to the Enigma. During those years he had made an immortal name for himself and founded both the Order of Tripsingers and the Order of Explorers. Not bad accomplishments for one man. Tasmin would have been content to do one-quarter as well.
    ‘Tassy?’ A sad little whisper from the stairway. ‘I woke up and you weren’t there.’
    ‘Just getting a little air, love.’ He went to her at the top of the stairs and gathered her into his arms. She nestled there, reaching up to stroke his face, whispering secret words into his ears, making his heart thunder and his arms tighten around her as though he would never let her go. As he picked her up to carry her downstairs, she turned to look out at the line of Presences, jagged against the stars.
    ‘You were looking at those things. I hate them, Tasmin. I do.’
    It was the first time she had ever said she hated the Presences, and his sudden burst of compassionate understanding amazed him. They made love again, tenderly, and afterward he cuddled her until she went back to sleep, still murmuring about the concert.
    ‘He really is your brother? He’ll really give us tickets?’
    ‘I’m sure he will.’
    In the morning, Tasmin wondered whether Lim might indeed make some seats available as Tasmin had promised. To be on the safe side, he bought a pair, finding himself both astonished and angry at a price so high as to be almost indecent.
    The streets of Splash One were swarming with lunch-seekers and construction workers, military types, and bands of belligerent Crystallites, to say nothing of the chains of bewildered pilgrims, each intent on his or her own needs, and none of them making way for anyone else. Gretl Mechas fought her way grimly through the crowds, wondering what in the name of good sense had made her decide to come down to Splash One and make the payment on her loan in person. She could have sent a credit chit down from the priory in Northwest City by messenger, by comfax, by passenger bus – why had she decided to do it herself?
    ‘Fear,’ a remembered voice intoned in answer. ‘Debt is a terrible thing, Gretl. Never get into debt.’ It was her father’s voice, preserved in memory for Gretl’s lifetime.
    ‘Easy for you to say,’ she snarled. Easy for anyone to say. Hard to accomplish, however, when your only sister sent an emergency message from Heron’s World telling you that she’d lost an arm in an accident and couldn’t pay for her own regeneration. In advance, of course. No one did regeneration anymore unless they were paid in advance. And equally, of course, if you needed regeneration, no one would lend you any