The Music Master of Babylon by Edgar Pangborn (best ebook reader TXT) 📗

the New Orleans docks, and wrote his First Symphony while he was in jail for that. And he died of stab wounds in a Cairo jail. It all had relevancy. Relevant or not, if the sonata was in your mind, so was the life.

You had to remember also that Andrew Carr was the last of civilization's great composers. No one in the 21st century approached him—they ignored his explorations and carved cherry-stones. He belonged to no school, unless you wanted to imagine a school of music beginning with Bach, taking in perhaps a dozen along the way, and ending with Carr himself. His work was a summary and, in the light of the year 2070, a completion.

Brian was certain he could play the first movement of the sonata acceptably. Technically, it was not revolutionary, but closely loyal to the ancient sonata form. Carr had even written in a conventional double-bar for a repeat of the entire opening statement, something that made late 20th century critics sneer with great satisfaction. It never occurred to them that Carr expected a performer to use his head.

The bright-sorrowful second movement, unfashionably long, with its strange pauses, unforeseen recapitulations, outbursts of savage change—that was where Brian's troubles began. It did not help him to be old, remembering the inner storms of twenty-five years ago and more.

As the single candle fluttered, Brian realized that he had forgotten to lock the door. That troubled him, but he did not rise from the piano chair. He chided himself instead for the foolish neuroses of aloneness—what could it matter?

He shut his eyes. The sonata had long ago been memorized; printed copies were safe somewhere in the library. He played the opening of the first movement, as far as the double-bar; opened his eyes to the friendly black and white of clean keys and played the repetition with new light, new emphasis. Better than usual, he thought.

Now that soaring modulation into A Major that only Carr would have wanted just there in just that sudden way, like the abrupt happening upon shining fields. On toward the climax—I am playing it, I think—through the intricate revelations of development and recapitulation. And the conclusion, lingering, half-humorous, not unlike a Beethoven ending, but with a questioning that was all Andrew Carr.

After that—

"No more tonight," said Brian aloud. "Some night, though.... Not competent right now, my friend. Fear's a many-aspect thing. But The Project...."

He replaced the cover on the Steinway and blew out the candle. He had brought no torch, long use having taught his feet every inch of the short journey. It was quite dark. The never-opened western windows of the auditorium were dirty, most of the dirt on the outside, crusted wind-blow salt.

In this partial darkness, something was wrong.

At first Brian could find no source for the faint light, the dim orange with a hint of motion that had no right to be here. He peered into the gloom of the auditorium, fixed his eyes on the oblong of blacker shadow that was the door he meant to use, but it told him nothing.

The windows, of course. He had almost forgotten there were any. The light, hardly deserving the name, was coming through them. But sunset was surely well past; he had been here a long time, delaying and brooding before he played. Sunset should not flicker.

So there was some kind of fire on the mainland. There had been no thunderstorm. How could fire start, over there where no one ever came?

He stumbled a few times, swearing petulantly, locating the doorway again and groping through it into the Hall of Music. The windows out here were just as dirty; no use trying to see through them. There must have been a time when he had enjoyed looking through them.

He stood shivering in the marble silence, trying to remember.

He could not. Time was a gradual eternal dying. Time was a long growth of dirt and ocean salt, sealing in, covering over forever.

He stumbled for his cave, hurrying now, and lit two candles. He left one by the cold stove and used the other to light his way down the stairs to his raft. Once down there, he blew it out, afraid. The room a candle makes in the darkness is a vulnerable room. With no walls, it closes in a blindness. He pulled the raft by the guide-rope, gently, for fear of noise.

He found his canoe tied as he had left it. He poked his white head slowly beyond the sill, staring west.

Merely a bonfire gleaming, reddening the blackness of the cliff.

Brian knew the spot, a ledge almost at water level. At one end of it was the troublesome path he used in climbing up to the forest. Usable driftwood was often there, the supply renewed by the high tides.

"No," Brian said. "Oh, no...."

Unable to accept, or believe, or not believe, he drew his head in, resting his forehead on the coldness of the sill, waiting for dizziness to pass, reason to return. Then rather calm, he once more leaned out over the sill. The fire still shone and was therefore not a disordered dream of old age, but it was dying to a dull rose of embers.

He wondered a little about time. The Museum clocks and watches had stopped long ago; Brian had ceased to want them. A sliver of moon was hanging over the water to the east. He ought to be able to remember the phases, deduce the approximate time from that. But his mind was too tired or distraught to give him the necessary data. Maybe it was somewhere around midnight.

He climbed on the sill and, with grunting effort, lifted the canoe over it to the motionless water inside. Wasted energy, he decided, as soon as that struggle was over. That fire had been lit before daylight passed; whoever lit it would have seen the canoe, might even have been watching Brian himself come home from his hunting. The canoe's disappearance in the night would only rouse further curiosity. But Brian was too exhausted to lift it back.

Why assume that the maker of the bonfire was necessarily hostile? Might be good company.

Might be....

Brian pulled his raft through the darkness, secured it at the stairway, and groped back to his cave.

He then locked the door. The venison was waiting, the sight and smell of it making him suddenly ravenous. He lit a small fire in the stove, one that he hoped would not be still sending smoke from the ventilator shaft when morning came. He cooked the meat crudely and wolfed it down, all enjoyment gone at the first mouthful.

He was shocked then to discover the dirtiness of his white beard. He hadn't given himself a real bath in—weeks? He searched for scissors and spent an absent-minded while trimming the beard back to shortness. He ought to take some soap—valuable stuff—down to Moses' room and wash.

Clothes, too. People probably still wore them. He had worn none for years, except for sandals and a clout and a carrying satchel for his trips to the mainland. He had enjoyed the freedom at first, and especially the discovery in his rugged fifties that he did not need clothes even for the soft winters, except perhaps a light covering when he slept. Then almost total nakedness had become so natural, it required no thought at all. But the owner of that bonfire—

He checked his rifles. The .22 automatic, an Army model from the 2040s, was the best. The tiny bullets carried a paralytic poison: graze a man's finger and he was painlessly dead in three minutes. Effective range, with telescopic sights, three kilometers; weight, a scant five pounds.