Cold as Ice

by Charles Sheffield

  And Jon had found even less opportunity to hear live music performances. In six years with PacAnt 14, he had been able to go to only half a dozen concerts. Not one of them had been given in anything of the scale of the Grand Concert Hall of Ganymede.

  In fact, Jon was not sure that any hall on Earth, prewar or postwar, could compete with what he was seeing now.

  He stared around at the stragglers of the audience settling into their seats and decided that low gravity provided most of the disconcerting effect. In a field only one-seventh of Earth's, walls could soar to ridiculous heights, while the fluted cross-members in the distant ceiling were to an Earthling's eye of an unnatural delicacy and fragility. The whole chamber had been excavated from Ganymede's interior on a lavish scale; it was three or four hundred feet high and more than that across. The seats were well-separated but built in layered banks so that some of the audience were down beneath Jon's feet. He could see them through the thin web of glassy fibers that supported the tier where he, Tristan Morgan, and Nell Cotter were sitting. It was like occupying a precarious seat in open space, except that any fall here would be slow, controllable, and unlikely to do serious damage.

  One thing at least was common to Earth concerts. With the music scheduled to begin in seconds, there was a last bustle in the audience and a final rash of throat-clearing. Jon glanced again at the program. The concert would begin conventionally enough, with a Bach keyboard work, the Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor. It would follow with Schubert's posthumous Sonata in B-flat, and conclude with The Galileian Suite. Wilsa Sheer was living dangerously, inviting comparison of her new composition with two of the great keyboard works of history.

  There was no curtain, but the designers of the hall had done something very clever with lights and mirrors. At one moment, the stage seemed bare. The next moment, Wilsa Sheer was sitting at the open piano, her profile to the audience.

  She began at once, after only the briefest glance and smile toward her listeners. Jon caught a flash of white teeth in a dark-brown face. Then Wilsa Sheer was bending over the keyboard. The music started, and he immersed himself in it.

  She played the Bach with more independence of fingering than he had ever heard before; it was as though each digit formed a separate instrument. Yet every articulate voice fitted the others with musicality and balance. And as the Fantasia and Fugue came to its close, she did something very strange. She went at once, without any break to permit audience applause, into the opening chords of the Schubert. The two works, only a semitone apart in key signature but far apart in almost every other way, should not have fitted. But they did. Polyphonic perfection was succeeded by a dream of melody and daring harmonic progressions, as naturally and inevitably as the change of Earth's seasons.

  At the end of the long allegro finale of the Schubert, Jon came out of his daze and looked about.

  Did the audience know what it was hearing? There was applause, but it was not overwhelming. He suspected that many there, like the audience at most première performances, had come only for the new work—and not to hear it, but only to be seen to be present at an event.

  He glanced to his right. His condemnation might apply to most, but not to his neighbor. Tristan Morgan was applauding wildly. He nodded at Jon.

  "Great, eh? Isn't she wonderful!"

  "Absolutely fabulous." But was Tristan talking about Wilsa Sheer, or her performance? "She's the best I've ever heard."

  Morgan grinned at Jon. "Then just you wait. You ain't heard nothin' yet."

  On stage, another mysterious transformation was taking place. Wilsa Sheer did not seem to have moved, but the piano had vanished from before her. Its place was taken by a two-keyboard synthesizer, which slowly rose higher above the stage. Soon the audience could see Wilsa Sheer's legs, clad in tight-fitting blue trousers. The synthesizer and performer continued to rise. Finally a third keyboard was revealed, at the level of the performer's feet.

  And Jon, along with the rest of the audience, saw Wilsa Sheer's bare brown feet for the first time. He gasped. Her toes ran the whole length of her feet, right to the ankle. Jon watched in fascination as she flexed and spread them wide apart, spanning eleven or twelve inches from toe-tip to toe-tip on each foot.

  He turned again to Tristan Morgan. "She's been modified. I didn't know that."

  Morgan nodded casually. "Most Belters are. It's a big asset in really low gravity. But that's not important—it's what Wilsa does with it that's different. You'll see."

  She was turning to face the audience, and spoke to them for the first time. "Ladies and gentlemen. The Galileian Suite: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto."

  Again she began without delay. The music for "Io" was fast, throbbing and energetic, with syncopated concussion in the deep bass and flashes of fire in the treble. The synthesizer had to work overtime in the variety of orchestral colors that it was called on to produce. The way that those sounds could infallibly suggest to a human ear and brain the pulsing, sulfurous Hades of Io was baffling. But it was there, in all its volcanic fury.

  "Europa," by contrast, was cool mystery: four atonal floating themes that lazily interwove and finally resolved to a solid harmonic result. "Ganymede" began as a vigorous, extraverted march, which surrendered in its middle section to the noblest of melodies—an anthem for the capital of the Jovian system, Jon decided, if one was ever needed or wanted—before returning to the march, louder, a third higher, and at doubled tempo. "Callisto," the fourth movement, breathed the feeble sighs of some ancient immortal, a Tithonus undying but consumed by his own vast age. Jon could feel in those slow, painful dissonances the eons-old surface of the cracked and cratered outermost moon. The final pianissimo chords faded into each other, like echoes that would go on forever, softer and softer, never quite dying.

  When Wilsa Sheer lifted her hands from the keyboards, the applause began slowly, and grew hesitantly. Jon shared the confusion. It was a strange and less-than-satisfying end to the new suite. He realized that after the first few moments he had been oblivious to Wilsa Sheer's modified body. He had seen fingers and toes working, in precise coordination, but the music was all that mattered.

  He leaned over to Tristan Morgan and Nell Cotter. "Odd. I'm not sure what to make of it. Nor is the audience."

  "And I'm with them," said Nell. "Is it a masterpiece, or what?"

  "It is," said Morgan. "But not yet. Wait a few minutes longer."

  "But it's over." Except that even as Jon said it, Wilsa Sheer spoke to interrupt the applause. "And as a concert encore: 'Amalthea.' "

  "That's cheating!" whispered Jon. "It's not a Galileian satellite."

  "Shhh!" said Tristan Morgan. "Do you think people don't know that, here in the Jovian system?"

  Jon settled back, wondering what Wilsa Sheer could possibly offer as music for tiny Amalthea, an irregular lump of rock only a couple of hundred kilometers across, scooting around far inside the orbit of Io. He was surprised when the music began with a brief reprise of themes from the four main movements of The Galileian Suite. Was she inviting the audience to think of the last movement of Beethoven's Choral Symphony, which started with a similar recapitulation? If so, it was an extremely risky comparison.

  And then a very familiar tune entered, in five-four time, and added itself slyly to the "Ganymede" march. Suddenly Jon knew exactly what was going on. The new theme was "Mars," from Gustav Hoist's The Planets. And "Amalthea" was going to be a quodlibet—a musical mixture, taking material from anywhere and everywhere and throwing it all together into the creative melting pot.

  The complexity of the music increased. Jon caught other snatches of The Planets, a dazzling fragment of the finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, a hint of the "Venusberg" music from Tannhäuser. The themes melded into a whirligig of sound, a miraculous tangle that seemed impossible to produce and coordinate with twenty, or even thirty, digits. And then everything steadied and settled into a triumphant restatement of the anthem from "Ganymede," moving to an inevitable conclusion
while the other themes spun around it in demonic counterpoint.

  This time the end came decisively. The audience had no doubt of its arrival, or of their enthusiasm.

  As the applause rose in volume, Jon had a sudden insight. Wilsa Sheer had described "Amalthea" as a concert encore, but The Galileian Suite would never be played without it. Her sense of musical form had not led her astray. That "cheating" fifth movement formed the necessary and natural conclusion, and after today, it would be played following "Callisto" without a break.

  But now Jon was absolutely sure that most people did not realize what they had just heard. He was quite sure that he didn't, that he had missed at least half of the musical allusions. Soon Tristan Morgan leaned over and confirmed it.

  "You ought to see the 'Amalthea' score. I have, and I'm still trying to fathom it. The themes aren't just stated, the way you hear them. They also appear inverted, and mirrored, and in half-time and double-time, in ways that you'd never know unless you saw them on paper."

  Wilsa Sheer had stood up and was moving forward to acknowledge the applause. Jon Perry had his first good look at her. Her music might be titanic, but she was a tiny, full-figured woman, brown-skinned and smiling. Her relief that the suite had been well-received showed on her face, still flushed with exertion. She must know that it was wonderful, that it would be played a century from now—but how many masterpieces had been booed on their first performance?

  Jon stared at her again. He found himself leaning across to Tristan Morgan, while the volume of the applause soared ever higher. "Is there any chance of going backstage to meet Wilsa Sheer?" He was astonished by the words. He hadn't been intending to say that. "I'd love to congratulate her," he went on. "In person."

  * * *

  Nell Cotter trailed after the other two, feeling totally left out. She liked music very well, and she listened to as much of it as she could find time for. But it wasn't as big a deal to her as it obviously was with Jon Perry and Tristan Morgan. And in any case, half of Nell's mind during the concert had still been on Hilda Brandt.

  Had Nell sold the research director on the idea that she ought to accompany Jon to Europa, as she had accompanied him all the way to the Jovian system? Nell did not know. Brandt remained quite unreadable. And Glyn Sefaris would have no sympathy if Nell came all this way and then couldn't find the trick to get herself to Europa. Sefaris expected reporters to do whatever they had to do to cover an assignment.

  With those thoughts running in her head, Nell hadn't been overwhelmed by The Galileian Suite in the way that Jon obviously had been. But Tristan Morgan seemed to find Jon's request to meet the composer the most natural thing in the world. "We can certainly give it a shot," he said. "I have friends who ought to let us backstage, and I want to congratulate Wilsa myself. Let's wait a few minutes, though, until things quiet down."

  From Tristan's tone, what he felt for Wilsa Sheer was far more than admiration. Now he was leading the way along a corridor to the right of the concert hall. The audience was dispersing, but it was in no hurry. Tristan was going against the traffic, and it was ten more minutes before he was nodding to a woman in a formal gown, standing at the entrance to the cluster of rooms behind the stage.

  "Is Wilsa in her room?"

  The woman shook her head. "Hasn't even got there yet. She's still walking around, trying to settle the adrenalin." She glanced at Jon and Nell. "Go on in, Tristan, if all of you are together. I don't think she'll mind."

  Nell was last again as they started down another corridor, where she paused to take a video clip of the backstage area. She was well behind Jon and Tristan when they came up to Wilsa Sheer, leaning alone against a broad white column. Nell heard the introduction and Jon's muttered comment about how wonderful the new suite sounded, even on first hearing. But she could not see his face, or the faces of the other two, until she came at last to stand by their side.

  She moved next to Tristan Morgan. And stood baffled.

  Jon Perry had walked forward until he towered over Wilsa Sheer. They were facing each other squarely, no more than a foot apart. Wilsa had to tilt her head far back to stare into his eyes. Neither said a word, but some current of feeling was flowing between the couple, strong enough to isolate them from Nell and Tristan.

  Nell opened her mouth to speak. And closed it in shock. For the two faces wore an identical expression: an expression that Nell Cotter, worldly-wise traveler and seasoned reporter par excellence, had never seen before in her whole life.

  9

  Bat Games

  Like Jon Perry, Nell Cotter, Tristan Morgan, and four thousand Ganymede concert-goers, Rustum Battachariya had also attended the system première of The Galileian Suite. But no one would ever have located Bat in the audience. The idea of sitting in a concert hall, surrounded by other people, appalled him.

  Not, of course, that he was agoraphobic or upset by crowds. Certainly not. He merely preferred his own company to that of anyone else's. Like any rational being.

  And so Bat had attended the performance in his own way: through piped-in sound and video signals to Bat Cave, with the kitchen close at hand and plenty of nibbles even closer. He had greatly enjoyed Wilsa Sheer's new composition, far more he was sure than the unfortunates in the concert hall, who were obliged to sit on top of each other and breathe each other's air. And if he had sensed during the hectic gallop of "Amalthea" that there was something in it beyond his grasp, and no one was next to him with whom he could compare notes? Well, that offered its own pleasure, like a cunning cipher that would yield to future attack.

  He was in excellent spirits when the concert ended—not for him the crush of people struggling through narrow exits—and he settled down for a session of hard work.

  Alone, as anyone would choose to be alone for work. The only question was whether that tired final word should be applied to what, in Bat's mind at least, was going to be undiluted pleasure.

  The flight recorder of the Pelagic had been found. The expenditures for search and recovery had been blessed, as Bat had known they would be blessed, by Inspector-General Gobel. The only condition was that Yarrow Gobel be informed of the results and permitted to wander periodically through the Great War treasures of Bat Cave.

  And now the flight recorder, addressed to Rustum Battachariya and carefully shipped from the central warehouse in the Belt, sat before him. He had already connected it to his computer system. As he queried the recorder, he reviewed mentally the related items. Every piece of data had to be assigned its own credibility quotient, according to the first Battachariyan rule of data analysis: "There is no such thing as reliable information or data, only different degrees of uncertainty and unreliability."

  The most certain element:

  • The Great War ended on July 25, 2067. Even Bat was forced to admit that this was as close to a certainty as life was going to produce.

  And then, in no particular order of unreliability, since Bat had not yet attached his own probability factors:

  • The Pelagic had been destroyed by a Seeker missile. The weapons signature of a Seeker was unambiguous, like nothing else in the armaments of the Great War.

  • The Seeker missile was used exclusively by the Belt. There were no records of Seeker-missile capture or use by Inner System forces.

  • The Pelagic was a Belt ship. There were no records that it had been captured by Inner System forces.

  • The Pelagic had been destroyed, according to the flight recorder, on July 29, 2067. That was after the official cease-fire. Bat had never heard of a later casualty; but there had been other postwar deaths, simply because some weapons could not be recalled after launch. The Pelagic was unusual only in that it was destroyed four full days after the war's end.

  • According to the flight recorder, the Pelagic's last departure point had been a small and insignificant asteroid known as Mandrake.

  • Mandrake had been devastated during the final days of the Great War. Little remained of the one-time settlement there, and n
one of its data files had survived.

  • The flight recorder showed a manifest of nineteen people on board at the ship's departure from Mandrake, and no cargo other than general supplies.

  • The flight recorder also indicated that the Pelagic had attempted evasive action from the Seeker, but had run out of fuel well before its destruction.

  And, finally, Bat had a handful of statements, or conclusions, that in his mind provided at least some element of mystery:

  • The Pelagic, a Belt ship, had been destroyed by a Seeker missile. This was the point that had originally aroused his interest, and it remained no less of an oddity.

  • The records of the Inner System showed no evidence of any Great War attack on Mandrake. Bat admitted that this was weak proof of anything. A smart Inner System destroyer missile, suitably programmed, could have been the attacker, and itself have been destroyed before its final war activities could be reported.

  • A few hours before the Seeker attack, the flight recorder showed a decrease of onboard personnel from nineteen to ten people. It also indicated the launch of nine survival pods.

  Was that everything? Bat squatted on his mounded chair, spooned his way through the last of a two-liter container of rum-and-butter ice cream, and frowned over his pittance of information. There was one additional will-o'-the-wisp, an item so vague and subjective that it might never yield to formal analysis. It was no more than this: The world lines of the passengers on the Pelagic felt too incomplete. They were mere short segments, blocked off at beginning and end. Bat was unable to learn who the passengers were or what they had been doing before they left Mandrake, and the Seeker had annihilated all knowledge of them past the moment of their death.