Archform Beauty

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Reflecting upon that once more, I took the 26 Italian Songs and Arias from the music stand to put it back on the shelf after Michelle had left. She was my only student on Wednesdays. I had six private students through the university. Besides Michelle, I had one on Mondays, and two each on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those six were in addition to the section of music appreciation I taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  After shelving the music, I took my jacket off the hook behind the door, getting ready to leave for home and a quick lunch. I certainly couldn't afford to eat at a uniquery, not on my income, and I ate at the student center far too much anyway. After lunch, I'd have to head out to OldTech for a rezad session with Mahmed. There was a single rap on the door. "Luara?" I recognized Jorje's voice and sent a link pulse to the door, which opened to admit him.

  His dark eyes radiated concern as he hurried in. "You were leaving? This will only take a moment, but you should know.”

  "Know what?"

  "I just got the preliminary Arts College budget…” "Music got cut again,” I suggested. "Another twenty percent. The trustees have approved a cut in the in-person credit hour requirements, and raised the allowable link and self-taught hours. The dean wants to cut the service program. We're carrying three sections of appreciation. He says the numbers only support two. We have to consolidate into two larger classes. That's more cost-effective. We also. need to offer courses that are more relevant.”

  Jorje and I were both the vocal and music service program, but I was the adjunct, and he was on a multi-year firm contract.

  "Larger classes will show that we're keeping in-person classes cost-effective?" I hated the whole idea of cost-effectiveness in education, but teachers had been attacked for not being cost-effective from since the time of Socrates, if not before. "I know how you feel,” he temporized. "Do you?" I could feel my voice rising. He didn't have a clue to how I felt. That was for the best. Jorje was a nice man, but like the word "nice" itself, he was somewhere between totally self-serving and sweetly ineffectual. That was probably why the dean kept him around. "Is there any chance… ?"

  He shook his head. "I can offer you the new class on rez-prep. It's three credits. You've got the degrees and experience. I know you don't like it, but it's all there is.”

  "I'll take it.” What other choice did I have? "But I'm also going to see the dean.”

  "I can understand that.” He nodded. "I did want to tell you before you heard it elsewhere.”

  "I've heard it.”

  "Well… that was all.” He bobbed his head, then turned.

  Still holding my jacket, I watched him leave. Automatically, I put it on and then gathered the music I wanted to look over that night.

  Another cut in the arts, all in the name of economy. As I stepped through the door, letting it close behind me, I wondered why I was even at the university. My brother Raymon thought I was crazy. So had my ex-husband Michael.

  Before he'd totally given up on me and on artistry, Michael had been very vocal about it. "The tests show it, Luara. You could be a top NorAm administrator, or a manager in any one of a dozen fields. You could be filch. You're wasting your time at the university. There's no money in old-style music. No money and no future.”

  I certainly wasn't looking at much of a future. But how could I give up the beauty of making music—or teaching? Without the university contacts, I wouldn't be getting the gigs that I was. Or even the rezad work.

  Raymon understood my love for music, in a way. He shared our father's views. Both had suggested, if I wanted to make music a career, that I go into rezpop. Rezpop wasn't music. Entertainment, high-paying entertainment, but not music.

  I walked slowly past the choral room—and Jorje's rehearsal—and then out of the Fine Arts building. Along the lower garden corridor, shielded by nanoscreens, and in the spring sunlight, the year-around yellow roses offered a fragrance that was almost overpowering. Ahead was the university screen gate, and beyond it, the maglev station that served the south end of the university.

  Before I left the protections of the university, I ran a self-check. My internal nanites said I was fine. Then I touched the heavy silvery bracelet on my right wrist. The nanoshield was on standby. I'd never needed it, but my father had given it to me three years earlier after a student had been frozen and stripped at UBoulder.

  It had been triggered only once. That had been a year ago, when a student high on soop had mistaken me for his girl and tried to hug me from behind. The screen had thrown him almost into the maglev car I'd been about to board. He'd just picked himself up, like all the soopers, and grinned.

  The screens brushed over me as I stepped between the stone pillars and onto the hard granite stones comprising the walk that led to the station. There were only two others on the platform, under the arched canopy. Both were students, a couple, and they were engrossed in each other, their voices intense, but so low I couldn't make out a word.

  Less than five minutes later, the eastbound shuttle arrived. The couple hurried through the forward door. I took the rear and slipped inside the shuttle car just before the doors swished shut. I turned back to look out through the armaglass.

  As the maglev pulled away from the platform, a dark-skinned, bearded student panted up onto the platform. He looked blankly at the departing shuttle, then started to shiver all over. His face was flushed. I took another look and swallowed. His face was covered with a bloody sweat. He raised a hand and then pitched forward onto the hard stone pavement. Without real thought, I pulsed a link to the DPS. Student collapsed on the university transit platform, south station. Bloody sweat, and possible seizure. Needs medical attention.

  Your report has been received. A medvan is on the way. Thank you.

  I hated the metallic feel of an autosponder, but I'd made the report. That was all I could do. I couldn't even see the station by the time I'd finished. What had happened to him? Some sort of disease? I'd never seen that sort of a bloody sweat. What could it have been? I would have said it was a seizure, but after thinking it over, it wasn't like any seizure I'd read about. Then, I'd never seen a seizure.

  Finally, I tried to think about the afternoon, wondering exactly what the rezad would be pitching. High-end electrals? Formulator inserts for special menus?

  My stop was the fourth one, on the inner edge of eastside, bordering one of the historical districts that had escaped the devastation of 2131. I liked looking at the mix of architecture as the maglev shuttle neared my station. There were gray-tile-roofed bungalows of a type I'd never seen anywhere but Denv, a geodesic dome comprised of an early composite that shimmered with a light of its own, a small-scale replica of an antebellum plantation house, a centuries' old art deco brick house with half its windows made of glass bricks.

  I got off alone, as I usually did in midday. There was a faint hum as I passed through the platform scanners. I wondered if they needed some maintenance.

  The walk home was pleasant, because I always took the path that bordered Park East. The green of the grass jarred slightly with the bare-limbed elms and the bare flower beds. Only universities and the filch had year-round flowers outside. I'd given up on trying to grow them in the conapt. Somehow, I either watered things too little or too much.

  I reached the lane. Then I had to look at the boringly clean lines of the conapts that formed Eastside Courts. The conapt wasn't what I'd have chosen, if I'd had a choice. I hadn't had one. It had taken every demicred I'd had just for the option, and almost all of my pay as an adjunct instructor of voice went to the monthly fee. I might actually own it in sixteen years and ten months.

  The door waited until I pulsed it to open, and the interior link system reported, Interior is empty. Balcony scanner is inoperative. The scanner on the upstairs balcony off my bedroom had been inoperative for almost a year. Someday, I might actually have enough spare credits to have it repaired or replaced. You have three messages.

  From whom? I pulsed the door closed and surveyed the small front foyer. The
re was dust on the replica antique marble-topped plant stand. Another sign that the nanetic cleaning system needed refurbishing, as if I had creds for that also.

  Mahmed Solyman, Raymon Cornett, and Aleysha Bunarev.

  Mahmed. I ordered. Project.

  The image of the dark-haired and dark-skinned production manager appeared, bowing slightly. "Luara. You're scheduled at fourteen hundred. I'd like you to do two, instead of one this afternoon. Full pay for both, but I'll need you at thirteen-thirty. Let me know.”

  Full pay for two rezads. That was the first good news in weeks, since the invitation to sing at the Clayton soiree, but the soiree wasn't for another week. I wouldn't see the credits until after that Mahmed flashed the creds to my account within hours after we wrapped.

  Because I could actually sing, I'd managed a side business moonlighting as a backsinger for rez-based net commercials. They didn't have to spend the time correcting my voice, and the manipulations were simpler. I was cost-effective. That left me with very mixed feelings—pride over my competence and dislike of the whole idea of cost-effectiveness. The credits were more than necessary. A few more sessions, and I might actually be able to pay for the deferred maintenance on the cleaning and house defense nanite system. I didn't want to think about the scanner.

  I linked to Mahmed—and got his simmie. This is Mahmed Solyman of Crescent Productions. If you would leave…

  Mahmed, this is Luara. I'll be there just before thirteen-thirty to do two rezads. See you then.

  Raymon had just been calling, in his twice-weekly brotherly fashion. Nothing special. I'd get back to him when I came home after the session at Crescent. Aleysha was my neighbor and wanted to know if I'd seen Solomon, her cat, an animal who did nothing to deserve the name. I hadn't, and left a message that said so.

  Within the kitchen formulator, the magic nanites hummed and hissed, and after several minutes the ancient appliance groaned and finally produced an edible pasta primavera. I was so hungry I ate all of it. I wasn't about to ask the formulator for wine. The last time I'd been tempted and tried that, I'd gotten something that verged on vinegar. Even the best formulators didn't do wine and subtle flavors well.

  Before I knew it, I was walking back to the shuttle station. I glanced up at a sky that was showing more and more clouds to the west over the Rockies. With my luck, it would be pouring by the time I finished the rezad recording sessions.

  The shuttle was mostly empty, again, but it would be crowded by the time I finished at Crescent. Mahmed's small production outfit was in the lower level of one of the older buildings in OldTech. That meant transferring to a South Ridge shuttle. Even so, it was a solid fifteen-minute walk from the OldTech station on the path beside the winding lane barely big enough for a single electral.

  When I got to the building, I had to dig in my linkfile for the passcode. The gate took forever, or so it seemed, before it pulsed, You may enter. You are cleared to the lower level by the left ramp.

  After I passed the gate, I walked slowly, trying to catch my breath, because I'd hurried from the station.

  Mahmed was waiting in the foyer outside the square box they called the studio. "I got your message. I'm glad you could do it.” He handed me a folder. "This one's for Beauville. You've heard of them—upscale mostly hand-finished interior furniture, the stuff you can't just pop out of an industrial formulator.”

  The words—I couldn't call them lyrics—were somewhere between mediocre and not-quite awful, and the melody was reminiscent of early twentieth-century English art song, as if they'd taken something and shifted it, and I couldn't quite pin down what it might have been. That could have been because they didn't really understand the modal basis of some of those songs.

  In the end, after I'd spent some time going through the music, I just walked into the studio and stood on the big "X.” I used a headset for the music feed, because music has to be auditory and not link-channel, and sang the lyrics.

  We followed the usual pattern, which meant that the first run-through was exactly as written. The second was the way I thought it should be, and the third was the way Mahmed interpreted it.

  Mahmed was smiling when I finished the third take. "You can make anything sound good.”

  I wasn't sure about that, but he was thoughtful to say it. "Thank you.” After a moment, I added, "The second set?"

  "The music and words are outside. Do you want a break?"

  "I'd like some water, and some time to look them over.” I took off the headset and brushed back my hair. No matter how I fixed it, it was so fine that some of it kept drifting across my forehead.

  He nodded, and we walked out into the office area. "Are you doing any real singing? Anywhere where I could hear you?"

  "I'll be doing an art song recital at the university in the fall. I'm singing a soiree performance in a week or so.”

  "Filch show? To prove their superiority in taste?"

  "They pay,” I pointed out wryly. "Not too many people want to hear unaugmented vocal music these days.”

  "I'll be there for your recital.” He handed me the second folder.

  He would be. He'd been there for my last. He'd been there for my first, and that was how I'd gotten into doing rezads. He wanted to help me so that I'd be around to sing art song, and I helped him by giving him clean lines to work with, which kept his costs down.

  It still bothered me at times, but working singers in our world—those who don't want their voices twisted and turned by technology, those who want to preserve the inherent beauty of voice and song—we don't have much choice. We probably never have had.

  Music—and its beauty—was continually getting shortchanged. That was one reason why I was going to see the dean, even if it did no good. That was more than likely to be the case.

  Chapter 10

  Kemal

  By Tuesday, I was officially the chairman of KC Constructors, rather than the unofficial chairman. It didn't change anything. I'd been the executive officer for almost ten years.

  There was always something. I needed to talk to Heber Smith about the elections. Dewey was getting to be more and more trouble, and I'd never liked Cannon. Cannon was too sanctimonious. He kept asking questions about CerraCraft. There weren't any problems with CerraCraft, but he thought there were. Dewey was worse. He'd wanted to help his cousins, and he'd gone out of his way to get Cannon to sponsor and pass the guideway divestiture laws. That was right after we'd invested in Brazelton and expanded operations into most of the NorAm Districts. I could do without both Dewey and Cannon.

  Heber was out. He'd call back. I started to review the plans for expanding the club business in Lanta and Porlan, and then into smaller cities. That would help the alkie formulation leases, too. The more diverse sources of direct credits, the better—especially with the Republic deal working out as it had. People were less likely to question where KC and KCF were getting credits if they thought we were pulling in millions from the clubs and alkie business. The new rezrap helped, too, a lot, because it boosted alkie consumption. Too bad a few kids were oversensitive, but there wasn't anything that didn't have side effects for someone. I had to avoid shellfish—unless I wanted a whole raft of nanomods. Marissa had a problem with red wine—the real stuff, not the formulated kind. That was life.

  Mr. McCall is here for his one o'clock. Mr. Kemal. Thank you. Paulina. Have him come in. Evan McCall looked more like an accountant than a solicitor. He had a thin face and deep-set eyes. His right eye twitched. That was something new.

  The door closed, and I could sense the privacy screens. Most people didn't notice, but the screens were automatic in my office. That made matters simpler. I didn't record anything inside the screens, either. That was asking for trouble. Most people in charge of things never understood that. Put what had to be done legally in recorded form, and nothing else.

  I got up from the desk and walked over to the bar in the corner. I poured out an orange juice. It was real, not formulated. Then I offered him the glass. "
You look like you need this.”

  He took the glass. His smile was both wry and nervous. "I could. The DPS is hounding me again. About Nanette's accident.”

  "Sit down.” I took one of the seats at the conference table.

  McCall took the other. He took a long, slow swallow of the juice. "You know that I can't even reset my own desk console and gatekeeper without a prompting program. The DPS keeps badgering me about Nanette's death. I don't understand how it happened.” His voice quivered, just a touch. That was very unlike the controlled solicitor. "They've been asking me about marital problems. About quarrels. They don't believe me.”

  "I believe you.” I knew he hadn't had anything to do with it. It was too bad things had turned out as they had, but it was inevitable with a wife like his. Family is important, but women have to know who makes the decisions.

  "You're the only one.” He shook his head. "I just don't understand why. It had to be an accident. Nanette didn't have any enemies. Not a one.”

  As far as her psychology practice went, he was probably right about that. She should have stayed with psychology, but she'd been about to push him too far. The linkbugs had shown that, and KC didn't need NASR or other regulators looking into KC and the rezrap-alkie link. Later, it wouldn't have made any difference, but she wouldn't have waited. I knew the type. "It's tough when the government doesn't believe you.”

  He took another sip of the juice. He set down the glass and handed me a thin folder. "That's why I'm here. I wanted to let you know that everything is in process on the estate. It's only a formality, but it's all under control. The file explains it all, the timetable, and the process. If I'm not available, Marc Oler knows the basics, but not the details. He doesn't need to know those.”

  "Good.” It had taken years to work it out so that it would be only a formality. What would go through probate was only a few hundred million, all to Mother.