by Lou Anders
At first Clara had not known she was there. She had gone on playing, and then risen to go to her lunch with Hannes. Frederica, through Clara's senses, savored the richness of the ravioli, delighted in the brush of silk and fine lawn against Clara's skin, reveled in the maleness of Hannes's scent, the tinge of cigar smoke and bay rum. The two of them had strolled in the garden, and then had decided to walk down through the little town's steep streets. They moved out through the gate, and into the lane, but as they turned toward the other eleven houses of Castagno, Frederica felt that sudden vertigo, the wrenching sensation of being upside down or sideways or—
She couldn't let it happen. If Clara moved beyond the locus, she would be cast out, and if she did not withdraw, she would be snapped back to the clinic, that cold white bed strung with wires and dials.
Energized by fury, she had gripped Clara's mind with her own, her greater intellect as sharp as cat's claws over the other woman's unsuspecting consciousness. She had been aware, dimly, of the spasm of anguish that had shot through Clara Schumann. More immediately, she knew that Clara had stopped dead in her tracks, clutching her temples, crying out as if something had struck her.
Hannes, solicitous as always, had scooped her up in his strong arms and carried her back inside Casa Agosto and up the stairs to the bedroom. He laid her upon the bed, and lay down beside her to comfort her in what he took to be a sudden migraine. Frederica, drunken with power, with opportunity, clung to him, first as if in pain, and then with increasing passion. They made love in the hot Italian afternoon, as the birds sang in the olive trees, and Frederica, even at the moment of ecstasy, her first glorious understanding of physical passion, never loosened her hold on Clara's mind.
It had become habit now, something as automatic as playing two-handed scales. At first Clara had cried out for release, for freedom, but over the intervening months, her struggles had grown weaker and weaker, until at last they faded away altogether. In all that time, she had never once left the garden of Casa Agosto. Occasionally, Hannes was compelled to go back to Vienna for some engagement or other, but Clara cancelled every commitment she had, and stayed in Castagno. When Hannes quizzed her, she pled the need to rest, the need for solitude. She wrote to her children, assuring them she was recuperating from a mild but persistent illness, and that she would return in due course. She wrote to her agents and assured them she could not possibly concertize until she was well again. She spent her days in reading, playing, strolling in the little garden. She spent her nights in passion. Frederica came, almost, to believe that she was Clara Schumann. Even her playing had improved, amplified by Clara's gifts, and by the sensual atmosphere of Casa Agosto.
And then Kristian Nordberg appeared.
She stumbled a little in the allegretto, recovered herself. She turned the page, and saw that it was there, above the final staff, that marking that meant “soft, sweet,” but also meant something else. Something Kristian wanted to understand.
Abruptly, she lifted her hands from the keys.
Had Kristian had the use of his voice at the moment Clara Schumann stopped playing, he would have cried out. She had been at the very point of showing him, of solving the problem of his researchǃ It was as if she knew just what he wanted to hear, as if she deliberately stopped short of the p dolce marking so he would not learn what the Master meant by itǃ As if—
Kristian's mind rocked with the implication. He moved back, away from the pair at the piano, and stared at their backs. Surely she could not be—surely it was not possible—
But she turned at that moment, her great dark eyes wide, her full lips curving. And he knew. He couldn't understand how, not yet, but he knew. Frederica Daniels was in Clara Schumann. She had, bizarrely, possessed her.
The immorality of it, the unfairness, the complete and utter selfishness of such a thing rendered him, for the moment, incapable of thought. He stared at her, and she stared back, and he understood that she perceived him perfectly. She knew he was there, and she had no intention of giving him what he wanted.
Brahms turned to her, murmuring a query. Clara—Frederica—responded with a slight shake of her head, a gentle touch of her hand to her brow. Moments later, the Master was solicitously helping the traitoress up the stairs to rest. Kristian hovered where he was, powerless to intervene.
At first the director wouldn't believe him. He explained, again and again, that she had stopped short of playing the p dolce section twice, that there was no doubt in his mind it was deliberate, that she had looked directly at him, out of Clara's eyes. “She saw me,” he said. “She knew I was there.”
“But she couldn't—there is no way for one person to—”
Kristian made an irritated noise. “Of course she couldǃ” he snapped, frustration making him impatient. “She inserted herself, don't you see?”
The director shook his head. It was the technician who said, softly, “The codification makes it possible. We made it easy for her.”
Kristian nodded to him. “Of course. The question is, what do we do about it?”
“If we pull the plug, she'll die.”
“Her body will die,” Kristian said. “Who knows what will happen to her consciousness? She's perfectly comfortable in someone else's body.”
“Perhaps we have to leave her there, then,” the director said glumly. “If she dies, her father will dismantle the whole program. He has the connections to do it.”
“We can't leave herǃ” Kristian protested. “She's taken over someone else's lifeǃ” Someone beautiful and fragile, he thought, though he didn't say so. Someone who had suffered enough already.
“This isn't supposed to be possible,” the director said. “Changing the past…”
“We don't know if she's changed anything,” Kristian said. “There's no record of Clara Schumann joining Brahms in Castagno that summer of 1861, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.”
“I just don't know what to do.”
“Well, I do,” Kristian said, standing, moving back to the hospital bed to look down on Frederica Daniels's still form. “I'm going back again.”
She saw him the moment he returned. It was an odd sensation, a seeing not with the eyes, but with her consciousness. She knew that was true, and yet the impression of perceiving Kristian through the usual conduit of retina, ganglia, and optic nerves was unshakeable. He simply was there, all at once, and his physical image—projected, she imagined, by his own consciousness—was clear and consistent.
He knew. She could see that he knew.
She smiled at him, and lifted her head in the way she knew set off her creamy neck, the roundness of her chin. She touched her abundant hair, and let her fingers trail down her cheek.
Kristian's eyes hardened at her teasing. He gazed at her, his mouth set, his shoulders stiff with anger. She didn't care. There was nothing he could do. She was in complete control, and had even begun to suspect Clara was gone, vanished, vanquished.
She had been about to take up the sonata once again, but now she set it aside. Hannes had gone out for a walk, and would be back soon. She rose, turning her back on the presence of Kristian Nordberg, and went out to the kitchen to order a pot of tea. As the cook set the kettle to boil, she gazed dreamily out the window. The olive blossoms had begun to drift to the ground, and the fruit was beginning to set. The pastel houses, tumbling across the little hillside in their charming fashion, glowed gently in the afternoon sunshine. Frederica savored every sensual detail. Surely, there was no more beautiful place in the world than this, not even in Vienna.
She smiled to herself at the stir in her loins, and leaned forward to watch Hannes climb back up the steep street.
It was surprisingly, disturbingly easy, Kristian found. All the study of processes, all the diagrams and formulas and programming language came to his aid. Brahms stepped in through the arched doorway, and Kristian—smoothly, without hesitating —inserted his own consciousness into the Master's. It was like beginning a new piece of music, but one so si
milar to others that the fingerings came naturally, that he could anticipate the harmonic structure, the tempo and dynamic changes. It was, oddly, like putting his hand into a glove, like slipping his feet into comfortable boots. He was inside the other's mind and body, so thoroughly integrated that he trembled with the Master's shock at his presence.
But compunction was a feeling he couldn't afford, not at this moment. He tried to transmit a sense of calm, of reassurance. It was difficult. He had to concentrate on the sensation of walking, of turning, of speaking. He said Clara's name, and she turned to him, embraced him, pressed her lips to his. He tried to respond naturally. If she guessed…if she knew what he had done…it would never work.
He didn't dare speak to her in his modern-day German. After the briefest hesitation, he decided to chance Italian. “Si fa una piccola passeggiata, carissima?” he whispered into her cloud of hair.
She giggled, and pulled away to admonish him with one white finger. In her perfect nineteenth-century German, she said, “I will walk with you a moment in the garden, Hannes. But the tea is almost ready.”
He circled her waist with his arm, and turned toward the door, keeping his eyes averted. Surely, he thought, if she were to look into his eyes, she would perceive him there. Her body was pliant beside him as they stepped out into the shade of the olive trees. The grass was soft beneath their feet, the sun warm on their uncovered heads. Clara's skirts brushed Brahms's leg, a feeling almost more intimate than the touch of her lips. Kristian took a deep breath, and was surprised to find that he could smell the fresh air, the trees, the trailing roses that climbed the stone wall. His hand tingled with the warmth of Clara's body, and he realized he was hearing things with physical ears, the clink of the gardener's spade against a stone, the humming of the cook as she moved about the kitchen—Rossini, that was, L'Italiana. He would have to think about this later, about the sharp difference between physical perception and that which was purely mental. But now—now he must concentrate on Frederica.
They completed a circuit of the house, stepping around a little pile of bruised and faded olive blossoms the gardener had raked up. They reached the gate, and Frederica turned back, to go inside.
Kristian seized her arm with his hand—with Brahms's hand—and caught her back.
She turned, eyes suddenly wide. “Hannes?” she breathed.
He opened the gate with his other hand, and pulled her toward it.
“Hannesǃ” she cried.
He tightened his grip, knowing the fragile white skin would be bruised, unable to prevent it. He kept his eyes on the street, on the gate, anywhere but on her face.
“What are you doing? Nein, Liebchen, neinǃ”
She struggled, and Kristian had to take hold of her with both hands, and drag her, stumbling, resisting, out through the gate.
With a tremendous effort, she pulled back. The delicate hand-stitching of her lawn dress tore at the shoulders. She whirled, and tried to go back inside the garden.
Kristian grunted “Goddammit” under his breath. He seized her by the waist, and yanked her roughly backward. He had never, in all his life, behaved so violently.
And now she understood. She turned to him, her pupils wide with shock and fear. “Oh, no,” she moaned.
“Yesǃ” he said firmly. “Let her go, Frederica. Let Clara go.”
“No,” she pleaded, “please, no. You don't understandǃ I—”
He picked her right off her feet, and took two steps out into the lane. The moment he reached the perimeter of the locus he began to feel the blurring of his consciousness. He took another step, wishing there were another way, wishing he could take the time to explore Brahms's mind. Learn about p dolce…
P dolce—the meaning was there, in the Master's mind. If only he could hold on to it….
Another step, and Kristian's head began to spin. The woman in his arms kicked and screamed, but with every step he took, her cries grew fainter, her struggles weaker.
Kristian grew weaker, too. His hands slipped on her body, his grip loosening as the Insertion failed. He stumbled forward, one more shaky step. He had to drag her far enough outside the locus, but his hands were nerveless, and his feet could no longer feel the ground.
His vision faded, and the world turned upside down.
Kristian opened his eyes to the white walls and gleaming steel and chrome of the clinic. He drew a ragged breath and turned his head to look at the other bed, where Frederica lay. The director and the technicians were gathered around her, staring at the monitors. The physician's assistant had his fingers on her wrist, and a technician was hurriedly injecting something into the Y-port of her IV. The monitors were alive with movement, lines and waves dancing across the screens.
“She's back?” Kristian croaked.
The director turned to him. He nodded, but his face was drawn. “She's back. But she's not waking up.”
One of the technicians came to help Kristian untangle himself from the wires and cords, remove the sensor cap, slip off the pressure cuff, and detach the heart monitor. Kristian coughed, and reached for a glass of water. He cleared his throat, and started to stand, but the dizziness of transition overwhelmed him. He sank back again, and the technician put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait,” he told Kristian. “Give it a minute.”
Kristian sat and stared across the room at Frederica Daniels. She was back, and yet she wasn't. She lay still except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. Not even her eyelids moved.
“Will she be all right?” he asked quietly.
“We don't know.” The technician shook his head. “There's no reason she shouldn't. Her codification is intact. Her screens came alive at the same moment you woke up.”
Kristian watched Frederica for a long time, and wondered.
Discover magazine's reporter came to interview Kristian the day after he defended his dissertation. It took Kristian some time to tell his story. He tried to explain what Insertion felt like, though he warned the reporter that it was hard to put into words. He described what Brahms looked like, what Casa Agosto looked like, what Castagno of 1861 looked like. He spoke guardedly, having promised the director, of finding the “lost” girl and bringing her back. He left out Frederica's possession of Clara Schumann, and his own of Johannes Brahms.
“But if you brought her back—then why won't she wake up?”
“I don't know. None of us understands it.”
“Then how do you know you did bring her back? Perhaps her consciousness is still in the nineteenth century.”
Kristian only shrugged. He did know, because in 1862, Clara Schumann had resumed concertizing after a six-month hiatus. But he couldn't explain that without revealing what had really happened.
“Tell me why you did this, Dr. Nordberg. Why risk Insertion, especially after what happened to Miss Daniels?”
“I wanted an answer to an old question of performance practice. Brahms sometimes wrote p dolce on his scores, but he never explained exactly what it meant. It was essential to my dissertation.”
He didn't say that Frederica had wanted the same thing, but that now it appeared she would never write her dissertation. Only he and the director knew that Frederica had done her damnedest to keep Kristian from writing his.
The reporter smiled. “Ah. You must have learned what you needed to know.”
Kristian leaned back in his chair, in his comfortable office in the music department, where he had just been offered the Llewellyn Chair for Musicology. “I did,” he said. “Indeed I did. I learned it from the Master himself.”
Ken MacLeod has been a force in British hard SF and space opera since he burst on the scene in 1995 with The Star Fraction. A recipient of several awards, and a nominee for many more, his work is always smart in tone, broad in scope, deep in theme. I have wanted to work with Ken for some time, but the timing hasn't been right before now. I love the tale that follows and the truth that resonates in its subtle message.
T he Second Coming was something of
a washout, if you remember. It lit up early-warning radar like a Christmas tree, of course, and the Israeli Air Force gave the heavenly host a respectable F-16 fighter escort to the ground, but that was when they were still treating it as a UFO incident. As soon as their sandals touched the dust, Jesus and the handful of bewildered Copts who'd been caught up to meet him in the air looked about for the armies of the Beast and the kings of the earth. The only soldiers they could see were a few terrified guards on a nearby archaeological dig. The armies of the Lord hurled themselves at the IDF and were promptly slaughtered. Their miraculous healings and resurrections created something of a sensation, but after that it was detention and Shin Bet interrogation for the lot of them. The skirmish was caught on video by activists from the International Solidarity Movement, who happened to be driving past the ancient battlefield on their way to Jenin when the trouble started. Jesus was released a couple of months after the Megiddo debacle, but most of the Rapture contingent had Egyptian ID, and the diplomacy was as slow as you'd expect.
Jesus returned to his old stomping ground in the vicinity of Galilee. He hung around a lot with Israeli Arabs, and sometimes crossed to the West Bank. Reports trickled out of a healing here, a near-riot there, an open-air speech somewhere else. At first the IDF and the PA cops gave him a rough time, but there wasn't much they could pin on him. It's been said he avoided politics, but a closer reading of his talks suggests a subtle strategy of working on his listeners’ minds, chipping away at assumptions, and leaving them to work out the political implications for themselves. The theological aspects of his teaching were hard to square with those previously attributed to him. Critics were quick to point out the discrepancies, and to ridicule his failure to fulfill the more apocalyptic aspects of the prophecies.
