Asimov's SF, September 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Words were so inadequate.

  “And different,” I said. “And technically, it shouldn't be. Technically, it's wrong.”

  “Wrong,” he repeated.

  My breath caught. Had I insulted him? I hadn't meant to.

  “Each time you play,” I said, “the songs are different. Are you making a statement by refusing to play the correct version of the song? Is it a rebellion?”

  “The correct version of the song.” He kept repeating my phrases as if we weren't speaking the same language, as if he had to hear the words in his own voice before he understood them. “What do you mean, the correct version of the song?”

  “The composer's version,” I said. “Surely, someone wrote it down or recorded it, showing how it should be played.”

  He blinked at me. “Don't you improvise on Djape?”

  “Improvise?” It was my turn to parrot him. I shook my head. “Humans live under constraints on Djape. Our lives are prescribed. We are not to deviate from any standard procedure. So, I suppose the answer is no, we do not improvise.”

  His eyes twinkled, as if my response amused him. “I meant musically,” he said. “I was wondering if anyone taught you improvisation. But after what you just said, I doubt it.”

  “Improvisation is a musical term?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You're making fun of me now,” I said. “Music can't be improvised. It is all about precision and accuracy.”

  He rested an arm over the front of his guitar. “What would you have to be accurate about?”

  “Following the composer's wishes,” I said. “Making certain each note is hit precisely and held for the exact moment specified in the score.”

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “That's why I am asking you about your styles. Do the composers of your songs have more than one preferred text? Or are you making some kind of protest with your music? Is this an aspect of the blues that is accepted like half-flatted notes?”

  “This—you mean improvisation?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Playing each song in a different manner than you played it the time before.”

  “We improvise,” he said. “We let the music move us and we do what we feel when we feel it.”

  I couldn't wrap my brain around the concept. I was shaking my head as we spoke.

  “Look,” he said, “music follows rules. You were talking about them a minute ago. Haven't you taken theory?”

  “I have sung,” I said. “I haven't studied. There are theories to music?”

  “Hundreds of them, just among humans alone, depending on the culture. We work out of a European Western tradition, based in ancient Earth texts. Blues evolved about a thousand years after the first known instances of repeated Western music. I would think you would be familiar with it. You're part of that tradition.”

  “I am?” I asked.

  “Castrati,” he said, “were extremely popular in opera—you know opera, right?”

  I shook my head.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought they were having you sing opera on Djape.”

  “No,” I said. “We sing music specially written for and approved by the Pane.”

  “Man,” he said, then grinned. “See? Even I have something to learn about music.”

  “You were saying something about opera and the musical tradition,” I said.

  “I was talking about castrati,” he said. “They were really popular in the two hundred years before anyone ever thought of the blues. The castrati sang women's parts in Italian opera, but that probably doesn't mean anything to you since you don't know what opera is.”

  He shook his head in clear astonishment.

  “Damn, I always thought you were following the operatic tradition. I thought you guys were singing the women's parts.”

  “Women do not sing for the Pane,” I said. “It is forbidden. They are allowed to sing for humans in saloons, but only in the all-human areas.”

  “Weird,” he said. “Fascinating, but weird.”

  Some of the other musicians had come back onto the stage.

  “Look,” he said. “I can't teach you anything about music or music theory or music history in a twenty-minute break. But we can continue the discussion at the conservatory tomorrow. I teach a three pm class in American folk songs, spirituals, and the blues. You could sit in if you want.”

  “I would like that,” I said.

  He extended his hand. I had seen this before on the Outpost. It was a sign of greeting and trust. I took his hand in mine. His skin was rough, as if it were made of a different substance than mine. His fingertips actually scraped my skin.

  “I'm Jackson Scopes,” he said. “Come find me tomorrow.”

  “I will,” I said after I introduced myself. “And thank you.”

  I went back to my seat, thinking I wouldn't be able to concentrate on the music. But the rotund man—Jackson—started to play an eight-note combination on his electric guitar. Trumpets soared over it, added sixteenth notes and a glissando that sent shivers down my back. Then the percussionist joined in, and the woman started to sing.

  I was lost, unease forgotten. The music swept me away, and I spent the rest of the evening in my chair, tapping my toes and reminding myself to breathe.

  * * * *

  The conservatory had its own ring. It was a smaller ring that encircled a section of the large higher education ring. Apparently, the conservatory had once been part of the higher education ring, like the two colleges and the university, but the conservatory had become so famous and attracted so many students that it needed additional space.

  I hired a driver to take me to the conservatory, and I was glad that I did. As his two-person taxi glided through the corridors of the Outpost, he showed me the higher education ring, the conservatory, and the connectors on a glowing map that mostly covered one window. He was trying to give me instruction so that in the future, I could find the area myself, but all he managed to do was confuse me.

  Still, I thanked him as he let me off in front of the American Wing of the Old Earth Campus on the Conservatory. Jackson's classroom wasn't far from the main doors. It was bigger than I had expected, like a concert hall only with the stage at the bottom of the room, so that everyone looked down on the professor.

  The students sat close to the front, so I remained in the back. Jackson stood in the very center of that lowered stage. Diagrams floated around him. All of them were music notations on a familiar five-line staff.

  As Jackson touched each staff, music surrounded us. The notes on the staff moved as the music moved, showing us the notation that signified what the music was doing.

  We were listening to a five-note melody, played in different lengths and different rhythms. Jackson got rid of the lyrics so that we could concentrate on the sound. The sound made me as uncomfortable as the blues had when I had first heard it.

  Even though the music seemed simple, with its variations on the same five notes, the sound produced was not. The song was something he called a spiritual, a father of the blues.

  While I followed the moving notes, stunned at the variations rhythm could bring to the same piece of music, I didn't understand half of what he told us.

  I didn't mind. I felt exhilarated as the class ended—not because of all I failed to understand, but because of what little I did.

  Music had more depth and history than I had ever expected. What I had learned on Djape was a small, narrow subset, one that had more to do with Pane tastes than human tastes.

  As the class ended, I silently promised myself I would ask Jackson how I could enroll in the conservatory. I wanted to begin all over again, learn music anew.

  The music ended, the notations disappeared, and slowly the students filed out. I remained in my seat. Jackson finished compiling his materials up front, placing the small discs in his pocket, and then climbed the stairs to me.

  “What did you think?” he asked.

  “I a
m stunned at all that I do not know,” I said.

  “And you want to learn, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He nodded. “Getting into the conservatory is hard—and expensive.”

  “Money is not a problem for me,” I said.

  “Finding space in a class, especially since you've already had a career, might be difficult. But I know who you can talk to.”

  He signaled me to get up.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I want to introduce you to the chief administrator of the Old Earth Wing.”

  “I assume from his title there are other wings?”

  Jackson nodded as he led me out of the classroom. “The conservatory specializes in music from a variety of places. Mostly we focus on human forms, but there is a Pane wing, another wing for the Escarbemantes, and a few others. I don't listen to much alien music. I barely listen to human music of the post-colonial era. Mostly I listen to Old Earth forms.”

  As we passed door after door, I heard snatches of music. Some of it grand, with dozens of instruments, and some of it simple. A baritone sang arpeggios in one of the rooms.

  We climbed four stairs to a floor that reminded me of my cabana. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed a truncated view. I could see the vistas of nearby space, but they were eclipsed by a walkway and a bit of the Higher Education Ring.

  Couches covered the floor, with tables alongside. Scores floated by, tempting me to touch them so that I could hear the music they so clearly depicted.

  “You can listen to anything you want,” Jackson said, “so long as you use one of the private earcubes. We don't want you to disturb other passers-by.”

  The cubes sat on a nearby table. They were tiny, about an eighth the size of my smallest fingernail. I looked longingly at them.

  “Later,” he said, “I'll get you permission to use one of the conservatory's music libraries.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You're being quite kind.”

  “Not really,” he said. “You've intrigued me with your questions. I'm fascinated by the way you think.”

  He leaned into a door on the wall opposite the windows and called to someone named Felix.

  A man came out. He was tall, with a narrow nose and wide eyes. His lips narrowed when he saw me.

  “This is the singer I told you about from Djape,” Jackson said. “He was quite well known—”

  “You're early,” Felix said to me as if I had done something wrong.

  My face warmed. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize we had an appointment.”

  Jackson looked at Felix in confusion. Felix was frowning at me.

  “I told your people we'd contact you when we were ready,” Felix said. “We're not ready. We only have two. Normally we don't contact you until there are five or more.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said again. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

  “You're from Djape,” Felix said. “You're here for the sopranos?”

  My breath caught. “Boys?”

  “What else?” he asked. “We should get another shipload in a month or so, and I'm told there are more on that.”

  “More sopranos?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  Jackson was looking back and forth at us as if he didn't know what was going on. I didn't exactly either, but I had an inkling.

  “We don't know if there are sopranos,” Felix said. “But the incoming ship has an orphan wing. There are possibles. I thought you were going to wait until we could screen them.”

  Jackson took a step back from me. “I thought you didn't know anyone here.”

  “I don't,” I said.

  “Then what's this?” Jackson asked.

  “I'm not sure.” I folded my hands in front of my robe and leaned toward Felix. “You think I'm here to take boys back to Djape?”

  “Why else would you come?” Felix said.

  I swallowed. “I came to the Outpost because of your music.”

  “I caught him listening to blues, Felix,” Jackson said. “No true castrato from Pane would contaminate himself with human music.”

  “Then why is he here?” Felix asked.

  I bowed, as I had been taught to do when I was most offended. I rose slowly, and said, “I am a windchime. I performed in the highest halls of Djape, but my voice has failed me. I am a true castrato, as you say, but I am not here to bring others to Djape. I am here to learn.”

  Felix blinked at me as if he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. “Learn what?”

  I folded my hands in front of my robe. “The forbidden music.”

  I said that last in a whisper. It was the first time I had admitted it to myself.

  “You were offering him kids?” Jackson asked. “What the hell is that?”

  Felix gave him a sideways glance. It looked furtive to me. “We have an agreement with the human musical colony on Djape. If we encounter pure boy sopranos, we notify them. The Pane's tastes are so particular that they go through singers as if they were made of crystal. One bad shake and they've shattered.”

  The description was so accurate that I shuddered. It was one of the reasons we were called windchimes. A single crack, tiny and nearly invisible, could ruin a windchime's tone forever.

  “You think it right to send a child into that mess?” Jackson asked.

  “Why not? It's better than hiring them out to freighters at thirteen. That's what happens to most of the kids who come through here.” Felix looked at me. “You lived a luxurious life, right? You have money. You're well off.”

  “I have money,” I said.

  “So you came for what?” Felix asked. “Reconstruction and reeducation?”

  “Reconstruction is possible?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Felix said. “That's what most of the has-beens do when they get here. They get repaired and they go on to live normal lives.”

  “Without their voice,” I said.

  “Usually, they end up with a very musical voice,” Felix said. “It is just a male voice. An adult male voice.”

  “Without the purity,” I said.

  “Humans rarely care about purity of tone,” Felix said. “We outgrew that before we left Earth's solar system.”

  “It's Pane affectation,” Jackson said, as if he were trying to convince me.

  My breath caught. I thought of myself, singing those blue notes all those weeks ago, how odd my voice sounded. Yet how rich.

  Both men were watching me. “You didn't come here for that either, did you?” Felix said.

  I shook my head. “I came to see if I could enroll in the conservatory.”

  “Why?” Felix asked. “You already know Pane music.”

  “Jackson tells me there is an entire musical history I do not know. I would like to learn it.”

  Felix studied me for a moment. “You're not here for the boys?” he asked once again.

  “No,” I said. “Although I would like to meet them.”

  “Why?” Felix sounded wary.

  “I am curious,” I said.

  “I can't believe this,” Jackson said. “You sell children to the Pane?”

  Felix straightened his back. “You know how the Children's Ring works. Don't sound so shocked.”

  “We don't usually sell children to aliens who'll disfigure them,” Jackson said.

  It was as if I was not in the room.

  “We do not sell,” Felix said.

  “Maybe not outright,” Jackson said, “but don't tell me there's no quid pro quo.”

  Felix shifted from foot to foot. “The Pane have generously agreed to fund the education of the other children. It's a small price to pay for the artistic richness we have given them.”

  “Artistic richness?” Jackson asked. “Those kids don't get a choice.”

  “It is what it is,” Felix said. “They don't get a choice about being orphaned, either.”

  I felt dizzy. I had no memories of my life before Djape, although Gibson told me that I had come from another community and my parents we
re dead.

  I am your family now, he had said to me in my earliest memory.

  Only he wasn't family. He hadn't ever been family, only a man hoping to get rich off my talent.

  “Have you always done it this way?” I asked Felix.

  “I inherited the program,” Felix said, with a glare at Jackson. “I wasn't sure I liked it at first either, but I toured the facilities on Djape. Those kids live in luxury.”

  Jackson shook his head. He looked like he was about to speak.

  “How long has this system been in place?” I asked.

  “A century or more,” Felix said. “I can look it up for you.”

  “So I came through here?”

  Both men looked at me as if they suddenly realized that their discussion existed in more than theory.

  “All human musicians get approved at the Outpost,” Felix said.

  “Just like the other merchandise.” Jackson's face was red, but not with embarrassment. With anger.

  “I've heard no complaints,” Felix said.

  “That doesn't make it right,” Jackson said.

  “Ask your friend,” Felix said. “Are you dissatisfied with your life?”

  I did not know how to answer that question. My life was what it was. I couldn't imagine it any other way.

  But then, I had little experience of other lives. What I knew about the universe, I had learned in the small human enclaves on Djape.

  “He's here, isn't he?” Jackson said. “Isn't that proof enough of dissatisfaction?”

  “He's here because he did something to upset the Pane,” Felix said.

  “That's true,” I said.

  Jackson frowned. “Swallowing a note was enough to torpedo an entire career?”

  “The Pane expect perfection,” Felix said as if I weren't there. “That humans can achieve it, even for a short period of time, is nothing short of miraculous.”

  The warmth in my face increased. I didn't want to think about the Pane. But I did want to understand where I had come from.

  “Let me see the boys,” I said.

  “So you are here to take them back,” Felix said.

  “No,” I said. “I had never thought of my life before Djape. I would simply like to see what it had been like.”