Secret Harmonies

by Paul J McAuley

  Miguel climbed a rubble slope, the slave following. Miguel was sweating inside his raincape; it was warm in the cave. Beyond the slope, pools were held at various levels in an interlocked puzzle of limy rims that stretched far beyond the limit of the torch’s beam. Miguel thought that he heard a dragging noise somewhere out there in the darkness and he turned, suddenly nervous. The torchlight shone on the slave’s blank empty face, probed the darkness beyond. Nothing.

  Miguel turned back to the pools, playing light across them as he slowly walked beside their interlocked shapes. Clear, absolutely still water filled each to the brim, transparently distorting smoothly convoluted ridges of lime which glistened in the light of the torch like a ransacked treasure chest, rose and violet, citrine, and creamy white…The floor of one pool was marred by a long dark stain: and then Miguel saw that it was the shadow of the body of an aborigine, floating face down by the rim, its eggs resting on limy folds beneath it, half a dozen drops of milky jelly the size of a double fist.

  Miguel squatted on his heels, letting out a breath. Each egg held a fuzzy curled shadow. One was slowly pulsating. In a few days it would hatch and, although still attached to its yolk sack, begin to devour the uncorrupted body of its parent, growing large enough to search out insects and the blind cave crabs, fish for rock gobies and salamanders, and prey on its weaker brothers.

  The slave set the cryostat beside Miguel and unfastened the top. Vapour curled around his hands as the receiving unit smoothly rose up. Then he stepped into the pool, scooped each egg into its own plastic container, and fitted each container into the cryostat’s receiver, which hummed for a moment before carrying it into its interior. The whole process took less than five minutes.

  Miguel whispered to the blue brother, “Is that enough for you?” And was told, the first time it had spoken to him since he had entered the Source Cave, that the cryostat should be filled. It was necessary, the blue brother declared with flat emphasis, despite Miguel’s protest at the danger.

  The slave had already begun to search the rest of the pool, wading thighdeep in clear water. Miguel started toward him and saw the body of a second aborigine, this one sprawled on a patch of bare rock beside the bulging rim. The slave pointed to something in the water, another clutch of eggs, and Miguel looked away for a moment. When he looked back, the body of the aborigine had gone.

  Miguel whirled in fright, torchlight dancing over rock, the patchwork of limy rims and clear water, turning in a complete circle and coming back to the empty patch of rock. Then there was a splash and he saw the slave stagger forward, clutching at the aborigine which had sprung on to his back. Its thin legs were locked around his waist, and its hands were prying at his face. The slave stumbled in rocking water, managed to pull the aborigine’s hands away before losing his balance. The two fell as one, bursting the rim of the pool and rolling in the sudden foaming wave.

  As the cold water washed over Miguel’s legs, a weird calm seized him from within.

  He turned and sloshed through the diminishing flood and began to seal up the cryostat. Methodically, he retracted the receiver and closed the top of the cryostat, did not even look around when the aborigine broke the slave’s neck. He untangled the carrying straps of the cryostat, lifted it on to his back. He was screaming inside his head but no sound came. And then he was released.

  Somehow, in complete darkness, he was wading through the stream toward the cave mouth. His right hand kept scraping against stone as he groped his way. The cryostat bumped on the ridge of his spine. At any moment he expected a clawing weight to smash into him. Then the note of the stream changed. His hand grabbed only air. A vague smudge hung in the darkness before him and he twisted through it, the cryostat grating stone, into cold night air. After a few more steps, the cradle dangling from the overlander’s winch struck his whole length.

  Miguel grabbed it gratefully, shivering with exhaustion. His head felt as if it was packed with black cotton wool.

  The voice of his familiar spoke out of the formless dark.

  —The first part is over, Miguel.

  “What more do you want? Christ! Wasn’t that enough?” His hoarse voice echoed in the narrow cleft.

  —The first part is over and now we must wait. But soon, Miguel, the city will fall. And then the second part begins.

  Miguel could say nothing in reply. The blue brother’s implacable control had taken over again. And as his body worked, lifting the cryostat in the cradle and fitting the padding around it, the voice in his head talked on, gloating and insistent, no escape from it as it spun out its crazy, fantastic plan.

  21. Ghosts in the Machine

  The dome which sheltered the Gothic fantasy house of Lena’s father was from the outside like any other in the bubble-suburbs, one of a cluster of four or five rising out of an island of dense evergreen shrubbery, its faceted curve glistening darkly in the streetlights. Rick walked slowly up the ramp of the short oval tunnel set in the side of the dome, all expectation wrung out of him.

  Rain struck his face.

  Wind roared about him.

  Lightning flickered under the dome’s vault.

  Rick staggered forward in the unexpected storm, boots sinking in the sodden unkempt lawn, gained the veranda of the house. Glass splinters ground under his boots: the windows had been smashed. The front door swung to and fro in the wind’s wild rush, its panels scarred and splintered.

  As Rick caught his breath, he realised that the roaring wind must come from the dome’s ventilation system, that the rain was blown spray from irrigation nozzles set among the dense laurels, the strokes of lightning only the garden spotlights strobing at random. Whoever had smashed the door and windows must also have taken an axe to the dome’s environment controls.

  Rick pushed past the broken door. The heavy furniture in the hall had all been overturned. The staircase’s balustrade hung askew on broken posts; carpets had been torn up and thrown in a corner. The wreckage was fitfully lit by the strobing lights in the garden.

  “Lena!”

  He knew that she was gone, that they were all gone, but he went through the rest of the house anyway. As with the hall, so with the other rooms. Smashed fittings, tipped over furniture. Once, something small and metallic shot past Rick’s feet: one of the autonomic units that kept the house clean. Gradually, Rick realised that music was playing somewhere. Faint and overlain by the artificial gale outside, it always seemed to be coming from the next room, and it was a while before he recognised the piece. Barber’s Adagio, the slow stately theme passed from instrument to instrument like the waves the wind makes in the grass of the plains, circles ceaselessly widening in plaintive lament for the end of things. Thinking of Lena’s stored ancestors, Rick called out again, asked if anyone was there.

  The music grew in volume, as if the performers had walked through the door. The illusion was so strong that Rick actually turned, but all that moved in the shadowy room were the long velvet drapes of a broken window, blown by the wind.

  And then, just as it reached its heartrending climax, the music cut off. A quavering voice, an old man’s, said, “Who is there?”

  “Richard Florey. A friend of Lena’s.”

  “Lena? Oh, yes. The child. It’s been such a long time, you see. It’s difficult to recall all that has happened since I passed over.”

  “Who are you? Do you know where Lena is?”

  “I think…I am sorry, it is so difficult. He is trying to find the way here, but so far I’ve stopped him. But he is so very strong, so very persistent. You asked who I am? My name is Antoine Vallee, young man.”

  “Lena’s great-great-grandfather?”

  “…of the child, yes.”

  The quavering voice was hard to follow in the windy, windy house. Standing in the middle of the dark room. Rick closed his eyes, tried to concentrate. He asked again, “Do you know where Lena is?”

  “The police came. Took away the living, turned off the dead. All but me. I am all through the computer
systems of the house, living inside the music…Do you know what that is like, young man?”

  “Lena told me all about you. Did the police take her?”

  “The child was not here,” the voice said.

  Rick’s heart turned through one hundred and eighty degrees.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “She has taken the music. That was always our plan, you see. The music was the house, or the house the music, but we knew the house would not last forever.” The voice grew a little stronger. “Not once the war had begun. Yes, I am accessing files left by the others. They knew outsiders would not be able to find me. I must take care of their plans now.”

  “Am I…in these plans?”

  “I do not know if you are who you say you are, young man. You must prove this to me. Wait a moment…yes, I have it. To the parlour, quickly, now, quickly. He is pressing me hard.”

  “What do you want me to do? And who is this person you keep talking about?”

  “So many questions, young man. Wait until you have been dead awhile. That will blunt your curiosity. You must pass a test, you see. It is all in the files. Go on, now, into the parlour. There is a keyboard there. I think you will find it works.”

  As Rick stepped around tipped-over furniture, he asked the air, “But who are you afraid of?”

  “Why, there are many more dead people than those of this family. They have their own plans, and their champion to make sure that they are carried out. He sees us as rebels, to be switched off. Have you found the keyboard?”

  “Sure.” Rick righted a chair and sat at it, switched it on. It was the same one at which he had given an audition for Lena’s father. Its pinlights cast eerie shadows. He asked, “What shall I play?”

  “Anything you want, young man.”

  Rick tried to think through the haze of his exhaustion. A gale howling about a dark, ruined house that was haunted by an ancient, impatient spirit…he grinned and clumsily began to block out the opening chords of Beethoven’s piano trio in D, the Ghost.

  “Enough, Dr Florey,” the voice said, after a minute or so. It added softly, “I take your meaning.”

  “Now you know who I am, tell me where she is.”

  “I will find her for you, but I will have to access the city’s network to trace her. There. It is done, outracing Puck himself. I will only say this once, young man, and it will be gone from my memory.”

  “I’m ready.”

  The voice spoke three words.

  “Of course,” Rick said, “I mean, I understand.”

  “Do not wait,” the voice said. It was weaker than ever, sibilant with static. Rick only just made out its last words, an unravelling whisper blown away on the wind.

  “He is here,”

  For a moment there was only the wind, and driven spray rattling at those windows still unbroken. Then the wind began to die, and all at once lights sprang on through the house, hurtful in their sudden brilliance. Another voice spoke out of the air, a calm baritone that Rick recognised at once.

  “The file of Antoine Vallee has been deleted, Dr Florey. I advise you to remain where you are.”

  But Rick was already running. As he wrenched open the front door, one of the little autonomic cleaning machines threw a steely embrace around his ankle. Its motor whirred as it tried to drag Rick off-balance. But Rick kicked out and it flew across the hall, smashed against the wall. Something small, quick, and metallic skittered over the broken balustrade, but he dodged through the door and sprinted down the path between the laurel bushes. The baritone voice thundered through the dome like the voice of God, ordering him to stop. He gained the tunnel and clattered down its ramp, burst out on to the street.

  The ordinary domes, each sealed behind evergreen ramparts. The spaced stars of streetlights. As quickly as he could, Rick began to walk away down the sinuous street, holding his bruised, aching side. In the distance, quickly growing closer, the thin wail of a police cruiser twisted into the cold night air.

  The square and narrow streets of the old quarter were crowded with revelling citizens, most in artfully crumpled and dirtied VDF coveralls. Threading his way through the crowds, unsteady with exhaustion, his own coveralls stained with real sweat, real dirt in his hair, Richard Florey felt a distant contempt for them. They were children at play on the shore of the great unknown, innocent except in carnal matters, gay and unheeding in the face of disaster. The newscreens were proclaiming a great victory for the city, but Rick knew that it was no such thing. The insurgents had arrived at the gates. From now on the war would be on their terms, on the city’s territory.

  Rick hurried on, impatient anxiety nagging at him. An edgy sliding feeling that recalled the times he had run through the campus to a lecture after oversleeping, buildings full of students transcribing received wisdom from the dead experts and him out of it. As he was now, flitting through the revelry like a grim spectre, a ghost in the tottering machine of the city.

  The crowds thinned out as Rick neared the docks. At last, he was walking alone down a narrow street between shutdown automats. A man in a waiter’s white apron was hooking shutters down over the windows of the cafe at the corner. Blue script hung above his head in the cold night air: “The Other World”.

  As Rick came up, the waiter turned and told him that the place was closed.

  “I’ve come to meet Lena,” Rick said.

  “I’m sorry, we really are closed.”

  “You know who I am, right? Lena Vallee. I’ve been here with her any number of times, and I know she’s here right now.”

  “Everyone has gone home. Maybe you should do the same, friend. Sleep it off, huh?”

  “I’m not fucking drunk,” Rick said, and pushed past. The waiter grabbed at his arm, but Rick shook him off and ran into the cafe. It was in darkness, the holographic wall turned off. Rick dodged between shadowy tables, pulling one over into the path of the waiter. The man shouted a warning as Rick barged into the kitchen.

  Bright light, slickly reflecting from steel and white tile. Lena was sitting at a scarred wooden table, her leather jacket like a cape over her shoulders. Across from her, the young shaven-head man started in surprise as Rick came through the door. Lena reached out to stay him, bracelets clattering on her wrist. Her hair was blonde, cropped short. Her violin case lay beside her chair on the tiled floor. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’ve been sort of expecting this guy.”

  Behind Rick, the waiter asked plaintively, “Would someone tell me what’s going on here?”

  “Just go ahead and lock up, Karl,” Lena told him.

  “I could ask the same thing,” Rick said. An unsteady mix of relief and surplus adrenaline hummed in his head.

  Lena smiled her sudden, starshell smile. “This must be an awful shock for you. It’s a contingency plan we hoped would never have to be put into operation. That’s why I couldn’t tell you about it.”

  “We? You mean your stored ancestors, right? I was at the house—”

  “I know you were,” Lena said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But it’s my plan and my father’s plan as much as my ancestors. Sit down. Rick, please. I don’t have much time here.”

  “Twenty minutes,” the shaven-head young man said, pushing steel-rimmed spectacles up his nose with a precise gesture.

  “You may have less time than that,” Rick said.

  The young man smiled. “Don’t sweat it. Constat isn’t all-powerful, right? That’s the mistake the cops make, and it’ll lose them this war.” He stood and said, “I’ll be outside when you two are ready, okay? You sit down, man, before you fall down.”

  Rick sat next to Lena as the kitchen door softly shut. She pushed a glass across scarred wood and he took it, gulped the rough red wine it contained. “Jesus,” he said, and sighed. “Your great-great-grandfather told me most of it and tracked you down through the net. Then Constat broke into the house system, called in the cops and tried to stop me leaving.”

  “There’s a rumour that th
e cops are rounding up every settler in the city, loyal or not. Do you—”

  “It’s true,” Rick told her. “In my case, though, it’s a little more complicated.”

  “Look at you, there’s dirt in your hair, all over your coveralls…You escaped, is that it?”

  “You could say that.” He smiled, then started to laugh. “Yeah! Jesus, did I ever escape!”

  But Lena wasn’t smiling now. No longer framed by black hair, her face looked smaller, elfin. “They caught Web,” she said. “I know that for sure. He tried to pull off his stunt after the fighting began, but he only got as far as the perimeter. One of my friends works in the police records office, he saw Web brought in an hour ago. That’s why I wasn’t at the house when the cops raided it.”

  “Jesus. What about your father?”

  “He always made sure that he knew nothing about what I was involved in, and he has some powerful friends in the city. I think he’ll be all right. My stepmother, too. I know he will.”

  “You’ve thought everything through, huh? One way or another your family will keep its heritage going.” He touched the thin silver bracelets bunched on her wrist. “These are where all your music files are stored, right?”

  She caught his hand in hers.

  “The music, yes, and other things too. Dormant copies of my ancestors, family records. A heavy load, Rick. I don’t ask you to carry it with me—”

  “—but I want to, Lena.” He sandwiched her small cool hand between his, watching her face. “I’ve finished here. I’ve been used and abused and now it’s over. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stay. And I don’t want to. Love, I want to leave the city too. I’ll go wherever you want.”

  PART THREE

  22. Slaves

  “Reader, although we have attempted to describe the war and its causes in a tone proper for historical documentation, some of the events we have detailed here may seem irrelevant, while others that we have glossed over may be those you consider to be the most important. But remember that we are living in the middle of your history. If what follows seems to you to be as biased as any political tract, then we can only plead that it is our own lives that we have recorded here.”