Moon Flights

New World Symphony

It was his first world. On the way out, resting in the half-doze of transfer, he imagined many things. A fire world, all volcanic and rough, showers of sparks against a night sky, clouds of steam and ash, firelit. Or a water world like Pella, with all the endless quivering shades of color, the blues and silvers, purples and strange greens. It might have mountains like Lelare, a purple sky, six moons or none, rings like golden Saturn’s, rainbowed arcs… he saw against the screen of his mind these and other worlds, some seen once in pictures, others created from his mind’s store of images.

All he knew for certain was that no one yet had set foot on it. Only two probes had been there: the robot survey, which had noted it as a possible, and the manned scout, which had given it a 6.7, a marginal rating, out of 10. He didn’t know why the rating was 6.7; he knew he might not have understood it even if they’d told him. It had been approved, and then assigned, and he—just out of the Academy, just past his thesis—he had been given that assignment

He half-heard something in his chamber, felt a pressure on his arm, hands touching his face. He struggled to open his eyes, and heard the quiet voice he had heard so far ago.

“Please, sir, wait a moment. It’s all right; you’re rousing now. Take a deep breath first… good. Another. Move your right hand, please…”

He felt his fingers shift, stiffly at first, then more easily. More than anything else, the reported stiffening had frightened him: his hands were his life. But they’d explained, insisted that it was no more than missing a single week of practice, not the three years of the voyage. He moved his left hand, then tried again with his eyelids. This time they opened, and he had no trouble focussing on the medical attendant. Gray hair, brown eyes, the same quiet face that had put him in his couch back at the station.

He wanted to ask if they had arrived, and felt childish in that desire. The attendant smiled, helped him sit and swing his legs over the edge of the couch. “Your first meal, sir; it’s important that you eat before standing.” He pushed over a sliding table with a tray of food. “Do you recall your name, sir?”

Until he was asked, he hadn’t thought of it. For a moment the concept of his name eluded him. Then he remembered, clearly and completely. “Of course,” he said. “Georges Mantenon. Musician-graduate.”

“Yes, sir.” The attendant fastened a strap around his left arm while he ate with his right. “I must check this, just a moment.”

Mantenon paid no attention to the attendant; he knew the man wouldn’t answer medical questions, and even if he did it would tell him nothing. He had an appetite; the Class Three food tasted the same as always. His hands felt better every moment. He held his left arm still until the medical attendant was through with it, and went on eating.

When he’d finished, the other man showed him to a suite of rooms: bath, workroom, sitting room. Along one wall of the workroom was the keyboard/pedal complex of a Meirinhoff, the same model he’d used for his thesis. He made himself shower and change before climbing into it. He adjusted the seat, the angle of keyboard and pedal banks, the length of cord from the headpiece to output generator. Then he touched the keys, lightly, and felt/heard/saw the Meirinhoff awake.

His fingers danced along the keyboard, touching section controls as well as pitch/resonance indicators. Woodwinds, brass—he felt festive, suddenly aware that he’d been afraid, even during the transfer dreams. He toed a percussion pedal, tipped it off. Wrong blend, wrong tempo. For a long moment he struggled with the pedals, then remembered what was wrong. He’d put on exactly what the attendant laid out, which meant he had on slippers.

Slippers! He scraped them off with his toes, and kicked them out of the way. His toes, surgically freed at the metatarsal, and held for walking by special pads in his shoes (not that he walked much), spread wide. Years of practice had given him amazing reach. He tried again for the percussion he wanted, toed cymbal on delay, pitched the snares down a tone, added the bright dash of the triangle. He played with balance, shifting fingers and toes minutely until the sound in the phones matched that in his head. Then he paused, hands and feet still.

His head dipped, so that the subvoc microphone touched the angle of his larynx. His hands lifted briefly, his toes curled up. Then he reached out, curling his tongue up in his mouth to let the clean sound come free, and put the Meirinhoff on full audio/record. He could feel, through his fingers, his feet, his seat, the wave of sound, the wave he designed, drove, controlled, shaped, and finally, after two glorious minutes of play, subdued. He lay back in his seat, fully relaxed, and tapped the system off audio.

“Sir?” The voice brought him upright, the short cord of the headset dragging at his ears.

“Klarge!” It was the worst oath he knew, and he meant it. No one, no one, not even a full professor, would walk in on someone who had just composed. And for someone who had had no outlet for years—! He pulled off the headset and glared at the person standing in the doorway. Not the medical attendant; that blue uniform meant ship’s crew, and the decorative braid all over the front probably meant some rank. He forced a smile to his face. “Sorry,” he said, achieving an icy tone. “It is not usual to interrupt a composition.”

“I didn’t,” the person pointed out. He realized she was a woman. “You had finished, I believe; I did not speak until you had turned off the audio.”

Mantenon frowned. “Nonetheless—”

“The captain wishes to speak with you,” said the woman. “About projecting all that without warning.”

“Projecting—?” He was confused. “All I did was compose—that’s my job.”

“You had that thing on external audio,” she said, “and you nearly blasted our ears out with it. You’re not supposed to be hooked up to the ship’s speakers without permission.”

“Was I?” He remembered, now he came to think of it, something the attendant had said about the bank of switches near the console. He had been so glad to see the Meirinhoff, he hadn’t paid much attention. He gave a quick glance at the recording timer: two minutes fifteen seconds—quite a long time, actually, if they didn’t know it was coming or how to interrupt it.

“You were.” Her mouth quirked; he realized she was trying not to laugh at him. “Your suite has an override for anything but emergency; that’s so we could hear if anything was wrong.” She nodded at the Meirinhoff. “That was more than we bargained on.”

“I’m sorry. I—it had just been so long, and I didn’t know the hookup was on…” He hadn’t felt so stupid since his second year in the conservatory. He knew his ears were red; he could feel them burning.

“All right. I understand it wasn’t intentional. I’d thought maybe you were going to insist that we listen to every note you played—”

“Klarge, no! Of course not. But the captain—?”

She grinned at him. “I’m the captain, Mr. Mantenon. Captain Plessan. You probably don’t recall meeting me before; you were sedated when they brought you aboard.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything to say, polite or otherwise. “I’m sorry about the speakers—”

“Just remember the switch, please. And when you’ve recovered fully, I’d be glad to see you in the crew lounge.”

“I’m—I’m fine now, really—” He started clambering free of the Meirinhoff, flipping controls off, resetting the recorders, fumbling for his slippers. He’d like to have stayed, listened to his composition, refined it, but everything he’d been told about shipboard etiquette urged him to go at once. He’d already insulted the captain enough as it was.

He had hoped the lounge viewscreens would be on, but blue drapes with the Exploration Service insignia covered them. The captain waved her hand at them. “You were probably hoping to see your world, Mr. Mantenon, but regulations forbid me to allow you a view until your initial briefing is complete. You must then sign your acceptance of the contract, and acknowledge all the warnings. Only then can I allow you to see the world.”

“And how long will that be?”

“Not long. Only a few hours, I expect.” A chime rang out, mellow, with overtones he recognized at once. Several others came into the lounge, and the captain introduced them. Senior crew: officers, the Security team, medical, heads of departments. These would see to his needs, as well as the ship’s needs, in the coming months. He tried to pay attention to them, and then to the final briefing the captain gave, but all he could think of was the new world, the unknown world, that hung in space outside the ship. He signed the papers quickly, glancing through them only enough to be sure that the Musician’s Union had put its authorization on each page. What would that world be like? Would he be able to express its unique beauty in music, as his contract specified, or would he fail?

At last the formalities were over. The other crewmembers left, and the captain touched controls that eased the curtains back over the viewscreens and switched video to the lounge.

His first thought was simply NO. No, I don’t like this world. No, I can’t do this world. No, someone’s made a mistake, and it’s impossible, and it wouldn’t take a musician to express this world in sound. A large crunching noise would do the job. His trained mind showed him the score for the crunching noise, for both Meirinhoff and live orchestra, and elaborated a bit. He ignored it and stared at the captain. “That?” he asked.

“That,” she said. “It’s going to be a mining world.”

That was obvious. Whatever it was good for, anything that disgusting shade of orange streaked with fungus-blue wasn’t a pleasure world, or an agriculture world. That left mining. He forced himself to look at the screens again. Orange, shading from almost sulfur yellow to an unhealthy orange-brown. The blue couldn’t be water, not that shade… he thought of bread mold again. Something vaguely greenish blue, and a sort of purplish patch toward the bottom… if that was the bottom.

“Does it have any moons or anything?” he asked.

“All that information is in the cube I gave you, but yes, it has three of them. Let me change the mags, here, and you’ll see…” She punched a few buttons and the planet seemed to recede. Now he saw two moons, one small and pale yellow, the other one glistening white. “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “Please don’t use the ship speakers for your composition without letting me know, and if you need anything just ask.” And without another word she turned and left him.

Monster, he thought, and wasn’t sure if he meant the planet or the captain. Ugly bastard—that was the planet. Someone must have made a mistake. He’d been told—he’d been assured—that Psych service had made assignments based on his personality profile and the planet’s characteristics. The planet was supposed to represent something central to his creativity, and draw on the main vectors of his genius. Or something like that; he couldn’t quite remember the exact words. But if he hated it from the beginning, something was wrong. He’d expected to have to court a reaction, the way he’d had to do with so many projects: the Karnery vase, the square of blue wool carpet, the single fan-shaped shell. Each of those had become an acceptable composition only after days of living with each object, experiencing it and its space, and the delicate shifts his mind made in response.

But he saw nothing delicate in that planet. And nothing delicate in his response. It hung gross and ugly in the sky, an abomination, like a rotting gourd; he imagined he could smell it. He could not—he would not—commit that atrocity to music.

In spite of himself, a melodic line crawled across his brain, trailing harmonies and notations for woodwinds. He felt his fingers flex, felt himself yearning for the Meirinhoff. No. It was ridiculous. Anything he might compose in this disgust would be itself disgusting. His study was beauty; his business was beauty. He glanced at the viewscreen again. The white moon had waned to a nail paring; the yellow one was hardly more than half-full. He wondered how fast they moved, how fast the ship moved. How could they be in orbit around the planet, and yet outside its moons’ orbits? He wished he’d paid more attention to his briefings on astro-science. He remembered the cube in his hand, and sighed. Maybe that would tell him more, would explain how this world could possibly be considered a match for him.

But after the cube, he was just as confused. It gave information: diameter, mass, characteristics of the star the planet circled, characteristics of atmosphere (unbreathable), native life forms (none noted by surveys), chemical analysis, and so on and so on. Nothing else; nothing that gave him any idea why the psychs would pick that planet for him.

Restless, he moved over to the Meirinhoff. He couldn’t tell the captain no, not after signing the contract. He had to compose something. He checked to make sure he was not hooked into the speaker system and climbed back into his instrument. At least he could refine that crunch of dismay… it might make an accent in something else, sometime.

With his eyes closed, he stroked the keys, the buttons, the pedals, bringing first one section then another into prominence, extrapolating from what he heard in the earphones to the whole sound, once freed. The crunch, once he had it to his satisfaction, became the sound a large gourd makes landing on stone… he remembered that from his boyhood. And after, the liquid splatter, the sound of seeds striking… in his mind a seed flew up, hung, whirling in the air like a tiny satellite, a pale yellow moon, waxing and waning as his mind held the image. He noted that on subvoc, recorded that section again.

The melody that had first come to him, the one he’d suppressed, came again, demanding this time its accompaniment of woodwinds. He called up bassoon, then the Sulesean variant, even deeper of pitch, and hardly playable by a human. Above it, the oboe and teroe. He needed another, split the oboe part quickly and transposed pedals to woodwinds, his toes and fingers racing while the thought lasted. He wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the planet, but he liked it. He paused, then, and called the recordings back into the earphones.

The crunch: massive, final, definitive. A long pause… he counted measures this time, amazed at the length of it before the splattering sounds, the flute and cello that defined the seed/satellite. He stopped the playback, and thought a moment, lips pursed. It was a conceit, that seed, and maybe too easy… but for now, he’d leave it in. He sent the replay on. The melody was all right—in fact, it was good—but it had no relation to the preceding music. He’d have to move it somewhere, but he’d save it. He marked the section for relabelling, and lay back, breathing a little heavily and wondering what time it was.

The clock, when he noticed it on the opposite wall, revealed that he’d spent over three hours in the Meirinhoff. No wonder he was tired and hungry. He felt a little smug about it, how hard he’d worked on his first day out of transfer, as he levered himself out of the instrument and headed for the shower.

In the next days, he found himself working just as hard. An hour or so in the lounge alone, watching the planet in the viewscreen, changing magnification from time to time. Disgust waned to distaste, and then to indifference. It was not responsible, after all, for how it looked to him. The planet could not know his struggles to appreciate it, to turn its mineral wealth, its ugly lifeless surface, into a work of art.

And when he could look at it no longer, when he found himself picking up what little reading material the ship’s crew left lying about, he returned to his instrument, to the Meirinhoff, and fastened himself into that embrace of mingled struggle and pleasure. His mind wandered to the Academy, to the lectures on esthetic theory, on music law, all those things he’d found so dull at the time. He called up and reread the section in General Statutes about colonization and exploitation of new worlds, until he could recite it word for word, and the rhythm worked itself into his composition.

“It is essential that each new world be incorporated into the species ethic and emotional milieu…” Actually it didn’t make much sense. If it hadn’t been for whoever wrote that, though, most musicians wouldn’t have a job. The decision to send musicians and artists to each newly discovered, rated world, before anyone actually landed on it, and to include artists and musicians on each exploration landing team had provided thousands of places for those with talent. Out of that effort had come some superb music and art—Keller’s “Morning on Moondog,” and the ballet Gia’s Web by Annette Polacek—and plenty of popular stuff. Miners, colonists, explorers—they all seemed to want music and art created for “their” world, whatever it was. Mantenon had heard the facile and shallow waltzes Tully Conover wrote for an obscure cluster of mining worlds: everyone knew “Mineral Waltz,” “Left by Lead,” and the others. And in art, the thousands of undistinguished visuals of space views: ringed planets hanging over moons of every color and shape, twinned planets circling one another… but it sold, and supported the system, and that was what counted.

Georges Mantenon had hoped—had believed—he could do better. If nothing as great as Gia’s Web, he could compose at least as well as Metzger, whose Symphony Purple was presented in the Academy as an example of what they were to do. Mantenon had been honored with a recording slot for two of his student compositions. One of them had even been optioned by an off-planet recording company. The Academy would get the royalties, if any, of course. Students weren’t allowed to earn money from their music. Still, he had been aware that his teachers considered him especially gifted. But with a miserable, disgusting orange ball streaked with blue fungus—how could he do anything particularly worthy? The square of blue carpet had been easy compared to this.

He tried one arrangement after another of the melody and variations he’d already composed, shifting parts from one instrument to another, changing keys, moving the melody itself from an entrance to a climax to a conclusion. Nothing worked. Outside, in the screens, he saw the same ugly world; if his early disgust softened into indifference, it never warmed into anything better. He could not, however calmly he looked, see anything beautiful about it. The moons were better—slightly—and the third, when it finally appeared around the planet’s limb, was a striking lavender. He liked that, found his mind responding with a graceful flourish of strings. But it was not enough. It fit nowhere with the rest of the composition—if it could be called a composition—and by itself it could not support his contract.

He had hardly noticed, in those early days, that he rarely saw any of the crew, and when he did, they never asked about his work. He would have been shocked if they had asked: he was, after all, a licensed creative artist, whose work was carried out in as much isolation as Security granted any of the Union’s citizens. Yet when he came into the crew lounge, after struggling several hours with his arrangement for the lavender moon, and found it empty as usual, he was restless and dissatisfied. He couldn’t, he thought grumpily, do it all himself. He lay back on the long couch under the viewport and waited. Someone would have to come in eventually, and he’d insist, this time, that they talk to him.

The first to appear was a stocky woman in a plain uniform—no braid at all. She nodded at him, and went to the dispenser for a mug of something that steamed. Then she sat down, facing slightly away from him, inserted a plug in her ear, and thumbed the control of a cubescreen before he could get his mouth shaped to speak to her. He sat there, staring, aware that his mouth was still slightly open, and fumed. She could at least have said hello. He turned away politely, shutting his mouth again, and folded his arms. Next time he’d be quicker.

But the next person to come in ignored him completely, walked straight to the other woman and leaned over her, whispering something he could not hear. It was a man Mantenon had never seen before, with a single strip of blue braid on his collar. The woman turned, flipped off the cubescreen, and removed her earplug. The man sat beside her, and they talked in low voices; Mantenon could hear the hum, but none of the words. After a few minutes, the two of them left, with a casual glance at Mantenon that made him feel like a crumpled food tray someone had left on the floor. He could feel the pulse beating in his throat, anger’s metronome, and a quick snarl of brass and percussion rang in his head. It wasn’t bad, actually… he let himself work up the scoring for it.

When he opened his eyes again, one of the med techs stood beside him, looking worried.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Of course,” said Mantenon, a bit sharper than he meant. “I was just thinking of something.” He sat up straighter. “I’m fine.”

“Have you been overworking?”

He opened his mouth to say no, and then stopped. Maybe he had been.

“Are you feeling paranoid, sir?” asked the med tech.

“Paranoid?”

“Does it seem that everyone is watching you, or talking about you, or refusing to help you?”

“Well…” If his bad mood was a medical problem, maybe they would give him a pill or shot, and he’d be able to compose something better. He nodded, finally, and as he had hoped, the med tech handed him a foil packet.

“Take this, sir, with a cup of something hot—and you really ought to eat your meals with the crew for a day or so.”

Med could override his artist’s privileges, he remembered suddenly—if they thought he was sick, or going crazy, they would tell Security, and he’d be put on full monitor, like everyone else.

He made himself smile. “You may be right,” he said. “I guess I started working, and just forgot about meals and things.”

The med tech was smiling now, and even brought him a hot drink from the dispenser. “Here. You’ll feel better soon. Shall I tell the captain you’ll be eating with crew today?”

He nodded, gulping down the green pill in the packet with a bitter cup of Estrain tea.

He showered and changed for the next meal, unsure which it would be, and walked into the crew mess to find himself confronted with piles of sweet ration squares and fruit mush. He forced himself to smile again. He had hoped for midmeal or latemeal, when the ration squares were flavored like stew of various kinds. Sweets made his head ache. But the med tech, halfway around the ring, waved to him, and Mantenon edged past others to his side.

The yellow ones aren’t sweet,” the med tech said. He handed over a yellow square and a bowl of mush. “You’ll like it better than the brown ones.”

Mantenon found the yellow squares similar to the ones he had had delivered to his suite: those were orange, but the taste was the same, or nearly so. He ate two yellow squares while listening to the others talk. None of it made sense to him. It was all gossip about crewmembers—who was sleeping with whom, or having trouble with a supervisor—or tech talk, full of numbers and strange words. Finally someone across the ring spoke to him, in a tone which seemed to carry humor.

“Well, Mr. Mantenon—how’s your music coming?”

He choked on his bite of ration, swallowed carefully, and folded his hands politely to answer.

“It’s… well, it’s coming. It’s still unsettled.”

“Unsettled?” The questioner, Mantenon now realized, was the same stocky woman he’d seen earlier in the lounge.

“Yes, it—” His hands began to wave as he talked, mimicking their movements on the Meirinhoff. “It’s got some good themes, now, but the overall structure isn’t settled yet.”

“Don’t you plan the structure first?” asked someone else, a tall person with two green braids on his collar. “I would think rational planning would be necessary…”

Mantenon smiled. “Sir, your pardon, but it is not the way creative artists work. We are taught to respond to a stimulus freely, with no preconceptions of what form might be best. When we have all the responses, then we shape those into whatever structure the music itself will bear.”

“But how do you know…?”

“That’s what our training is for.” He dipped a bite of fruit mush, swallowed it, and went on. “Once we have the responses, then our training shows us what structure is best for it.”

The tall man frowned. “I would have thought the stimulus would determine the correct structure… surely anything as large as a planet would call for a serious, major work—”

“Oh no, Kiry!” That was a young woman who hadn’t spoken before. “Don’t you remember Asa’s Dream? It’s just that short, poignant dance, and yet the planet was that big pair of gas giants over in Harker’s Domain. I’ve seen a cube of them: it’s perfect.”

“Or the truly sinister first movement of Manoken’s 5th Symphony,” said Mantenon, regaining control of his audience. “That was not even a planet… he wrote that it was inspired by the reflections of light on the inside of his sleepcase.” They all chuckled, some more brightly than others, and Mantenon finished his breakfast. The med tech seemed to be watching him, but he expected that.

That day he incorporated the bits he’d scored in the crew lounge—the “anger movement” as he thought of it—into his main piece. It was the planet’s response to the insult of his initial crunch; for a moment he wondered about himself, imputing emotions to planets, but decided that it was normal for an artist. He wouldn’t tell Med about it. And at latemeal, several crew chose to sit near him, including him casually in their chatter with questions about well-known pieces of music and performers. He felt much better.

Still, when he decided, several days later, that his composition was complete and adequate, he had his doubts. The planet was ugly. Had he really made something beautiful out of it—and if he had, was he rendering (as he was sworn to do) its essential nature? Would someone else, seeing that planet after hearing his music, feel that it fit? Or would that future hearer laugh?

That doubt kept him doodling at the console another few days, making minute changes in the scoring, and then changing them back. He spent one whole working shift rooting through the music references he’d brought along, checking his work as if he were analyzing someone else’s. But that told him only what he already knew: it had a somewhat unconventional structure (but not wildly so), it was playable by any standard orchestra (as defined by the Musicians Union), it could be adapted for student or limited orchestras (for which he would earn a bonus), none of the instruments were required to play near their limits. It would classify as moderately difficult to play, and difficult to conduct, and it contained all the recommended sections for a qualification work (another bonus): changes in tempo, changes from simple to complex harmonics, direct and indirect key changes.

He played it back, into the headphones, with full orchestration, and shook his head. It was what it was, and either it would do, or it wouldn’t. And this time he could not depend on a panel of professors to check his work and screen out anything unworthy. This time, if he judged it wrongly, the whole CUG system would know. He frowned, but finally reached for one of the unused memory cubes and slid it into place. And punched the controls for “Final Record: Seal/No Recall.” It was done.

With the cube in hand, and the backup cubes in his personal lockbin, he made his way to the lounge area once more. The curtains were drawn; the captain sat on one of the couches. He opened his mouth, and realized that she already knew he’d finished. Security must keep a closer watch on musicians than he’d thought. He wondered if they’d listened to his music as well… he’d been told that no one did, without permission of the artist, but Security was everywhere.

The captain smiled. “Well—and so you’ve finished, Mr. Mantenon. And we’ve not heard it yet…”

“Do—do you want to?” He felt himself blushing again, and hated it. Yet he wanted her to hear the music, wanted her to be swept away by it, to see and feel what he had seen and felt about that planet.

“It would be an honor,” she said. He watched the flicker of her eyelid. Was it amusement? Weariness? Or genuine interest? He couldn’t tell. He wavered, but finally his eagerness overcame him, and he handed her the cube.

“Here,” he said. “It runs about twenty-nine, Standard.”

“So much work for this,” she said, with no irony, holding the cube carefully above the slot. “Twenty-nine minutes of music from—how many weeks of work?”

He couldn’t remember, and didn’t care. Now that she held it, he wanted her to go on and play the thing. He had to see her reaction, good or bad, had to know whether he’d truly finished. “Go on,” he said, and then remembered that she was the captain. “If you want to.” She smiled again.

Played on the lounge sound system, it was different, changed by the room’s acoustics and the less agile speakers which were not meant to have the precision of the Meirinhoff’s wave generators. Even so, and even with the volume held down, Mantenon thought it was good. And so, evidently, did the captain; he had been taught to notice the reactions of the audience to both live and replayed performances. Smiles could be faked, but not the minute changes in posture, in breathing, even pulse rate that powerful music evoked. In the final version, his original reaction framed the whole composition, the crunch split, literally, in mid-dissonance, and the interstice filled with the reaction, counterreaction, interplay of themes and melodies. Then the crunch again, cutting off all discussion, and the final splatter of the seeds—the moons. As the cube ended, Mantenon waited tensely for the captain’s reaction.

It came, along with a clatter of applause from the speakers—she had switched the lounge sound system to transmission, and the crew evidently liked it as well as she did.

Mantenon felt his ears burning again, this time with pleasure. They were used to hauling musicians; they must have heard many new pieces… and he… he had pleased them.

The captain handed his cube back to him. “Remarkable, Mr. Mantenon. It always amazes me, the responses you artists and musicians give…”

“Thank you. Is it possible—excuse me, Captain, but I don’t know the procedure—is it possible to transmit this for registry?”

Her expression changed: wariness, tension, something else he couldn’t read, swiftly overlaid by a soothing smile. “Mr. Mantenon, it is registered. You mean you weren’t aware that immediate… transmission… for registry was part of the Musicians Union contract with this vessel?”

“No. I thought… well, I didn’t really think about it.” He was still puzzled. He remembered—he was sure he remembered—that the licensed musician had to personally initiate transmission and registration of a composition. But Music Law had always been his least favorite subject. Maybe it was different the first time out.

“You should have read your contract more carefully.” She leaned back in her seat, considering him. “Whenever you’re employed to do the initial creative survey, you’re on CUG Naval vessels, right?”

“Well… yes.”

“It’s different for landing parties, though not much. But here, all communication with the outside must be controlled by CUG Security, in order to certify your location, among other things. In compensation for this, we offer immediate registration, datemarked local time. You did know there was a bonus for completion within a certain time?”

“Yes, I did. But—does this mean we aren’t going back soon?”

“Not to Central Five, no. Not until the survey’s complete.”

“Survey?” Mantenon stared at her, stunned.

“Yes—you really didn’t read your contract, did you?”

“Well, I—”

“Mr. Mantenon, this was just the first of your assignments. Surely you don’t think CUG would send a ship to each separate planet just for artistic cataloging, do you? There are seven more planets in this system, and twelve in the next, before we start back.”

“I… don’t believe it!” He would have shouted, but shock had taken all his breath. Nineteen more planets? When the first one had taken… he tried to think, and still wasn’t sure… however many weeks it had been. The captain’s smile was thinner. She held out a fac of his contract.

“Look again, Mr. Mantenon.” He took it, and sat, hardly realizing that the captain had settled again in her seat to watch him.

The first paragraph was familiar: his name, his array of numbers for citizenship, licensure, Union membership, the name of the ship (CSN Congarsin, he noted), references to standard calendars and standard clocks. The second paragraph… he slowed, reading it word for word. “…to compose such work as suitably expresses, to the artist, the essential truth of the said celestial body in such manner…” was a standard phrase. There was specification of bonuses for instrumentation, vocal range, difficulty, and time… but where Mantenon expected to find “… on completion of this single work…” he read instead, with growing alarm, “… on completion of the works enumerated in the appendix, the musician shall be transported to his point of origin or to some registered port equidistant from the ship’s then location as shall be acceptable to him, providing that the necessary duties of the CUG vessel involved allow. In lieu of such transportation, the musician agrees to accept…” But he stopped there, and turned quickly to the appendix. There, just as the captain had said, was a complete listing of the “celestial bodies to be surveyed musically.” Eight of eleven planets in the CGSx1764 system, and twelve of fifteen planets in the CGSx1766 system. It even gave an estimated elapsed time for travel and “setup,” whatever that was… cumulative as… Mantenon choked.

“Twenty-four years!”

“With that many planets in each system, Mr. Mantenon, we’ll be traveling almost all the time on in-system drive.”

“But—but that means by the time we finish, I’ll be—” he tried to calculate it, but the captain was faster.

“By the time we return to Central Five, if we do, you’ll be near sixty, Mr. Mantenon… and a very famous composer, if your first work is any indication of your ability.”

“But I thought I’d—I planned to conduct its premier…” He had imagined himself back at the Academy, rehearsing its orchestra on their first run through his own music. If not his first contract composition, then a later one. “It’s not fair!” he burst out. “It’s… they told us that Psych picked our first contracts, to help us, and they gave me that disgusting mess out there, and then this!”

“To help you, or best suited to you?” The captain’s lips quirked, and he stared at her, fascinated. Before he could answer, she went on. “Best suited, I believe, is what you were told… just as you were told to read your contract before signing it.”

“Well, but I—I assumed they’d screened them…”

“And you were eager to go off-world. You requested primary music survey, that’s in your file. You asked for this—”

And with a rush of despair he remembered that he had, indeed, asked for this, in a way he hoped the captain did not know—but he feared she did. He had been too exceptional… he had challenged his professors, the resident composers, he had been entirely too adventurous to be comfortable. When he looked at the captain, she was smiling in a way that made her knowledge clear.

“The Union has a way of handling misfits, Mr. Mantenon, while making use of their talents. Adventure, pioneering, is held in high esteem—because, as a wise reformer on old Earth once said, it keeps the adventurers far away from home.” And with a polite nod, she left him sitting there.

He knew there was nothing he could do. He was a musician, not a rebel; a musician, not a pioneer; a musician, not a fighter. Without the special shoes to counteract the surgery on his feet, he couldn’t even walk down the hall. Besides, he didn’t want to cause trouble: he wanted to compose his music, and have it played, and—he had to admit—he wanted to be known.

And this they had taken away. They would use his music for their own ends, but he would never hear it played. He would never stand before the live orchestra—that anachronism which nonetheless made the best music even more exciting—he would never stand there, alight with the power that baton gave him, and bring his music out of all those bits of wood and metal and leather and bone, all those other minds. By the time he returned—if they ever let him return—he would be long out of practice in conducting, and long past his prime of composing. He would know none of the players anymore: only the youngest would still be active, and they would be dispersed among a hundred worlds. That was the worst, perhaps—that they had exiled him from his fellow musicians.

He came to himself, after a long reverie, sitting with clenched hands in an empty room. Well. He could do nothing, musician that he was, but make music. If he refused, he would be punishing himself as much as he punished the government or the Union. So… Georges Mantenon rose stiffly, and made his way back to his quarters. So he would compose. They thought he was too good to stay near the centers of power? They would find out how good he was. Anger trembled, cymbals lightly clashed, a sullen mutter of drums. Outrage chose a thin wedge honed by woodwinds, sharpened on strings. They would refuse power? He would create power, become power, bind with music what they had forbidden him to hold.

His mind stirred, and he felt as much as heard what music was in him. He had not imagined that kind of power before. Hardly thinking, he slipped into the Meirinhoff’s embrace, thumbed it onto the private circuit only he could hear, and began. He had plenty of time.

When he spoke to the captain again, his voice was smooth, easy. He would not repeat, he said, his earlier mistake of isolation and overwork… he requested permission to mingle with the crew, perhaps even—if it was permitted—play incomplete sequences to those interested. The captain approved, and recommended regular Psych checks, since the mission would last so long. Mantenon bowed, and acquiesced.

He began cautiously, having no experience in deceit. He asked the crew what they’d thought of Opus Four, and what they thought he should call it. He chatted with them about their favorite musicians and music. He told anecdotes of the musicians he’d known. And he composed.

He made a point of having something to play for them every few days… a fragment of melody, a variation on something they already knew. One or two played an instrument as a hobby. Gradually they warmed to him, came to ask his advice, even his help. A would-be poet wanted his verses set to music to celebrate a friend’s nameday. The lio player wondered why no one had written a concerto for lio (someone had, Mantenon told him, but the lio was simply not a good solo instrument for large spaces).

In the weeks between the first planet and the next in that system, Mantenon did nothing but this. He made acquaintances out of strangers, and tried to see who might, in the years to come, be a friend. He knew he was being watched for a reaction, knew they knew he was angry and upset, but—as he told the most clinging of his following with a shrug—what could he do? He had signed the contract, he was only a composer (he made a face at that, consciously seconding the practical person’s opinion of composers), and he had no way to protest.

“I could scream at the captain, I suppose,” he said. “Until she called Med to have me sedated. I could write letters to the Union—but if in fact the Union wants me out here, what good would that do?”

“But doesn’t it make you angry?” the girl asked. He was sure it was a Security plant. He pursed his lips, then shook his head.

“I was angry, yes—and I wish I could go back, and hear my music played. It doesn’t seem fair. But I can’t do anything, and I might as well do what I’m good at. I have a good composing console—that’s a full-bank Meirinhoff they gave me—and plenty of subjects and plenty of time. What else could I do?”

She probed longer, and again from time to time, but finally drifted away, back into the mass of crew, and he decided that Security was satisfied—for a time. By then they were circling the second planet he was to survey.

This one, luckily for his slow-maturing plans, was one of those rare worlds whose basic nature was obvious to everyone. Habitable, beautiful, it was the real reason that the system was being opened; the other worlds—like the marginal mining planet he had begun to call “Grand Crunch”—were merely a bonus. It had three moons, glinting white, pale yellow, and rosy. Its music had to be joyous, celebratory: Mantenon thought first of a waltz, with those three moons, but then changed his mind. Three light beats and a fourth strong, with a shift here to represent that huge fan of shallow sea, its shadings of blue and green visible even from orbit. It wrote itself, and he knew as he wrote it that it would be immensely popular, the sort of thing that the eventual colonial office would pick up and use in advertising.

So lighthearted a work, so dashing a composition, could hardly come from someone sulking and plotting vengeance. Mantenon enjoyed the crew’s delighted response, and noted the captain’s satisfaction and Security’s relaxation. He was being a good boy; they could quit worrying. For a while.

One solid piece of work, one definite hit—he wished he could see his credit balance. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask earlier, and he was afraid that if he asked now, he’d arouse their suspicions again. But—assuming they were registering these as they were supposed to, he would end up as a rich old man.

The next worlds were each many weeks apart. Mantenon wrote an adequate but undistinguished concerto for one of them; a quartet for woodwinds for another; a brass quintet for the crazy wobbling dance of a double world. Week after week of travel; week after week of observing, composing, revising. Even with his music, with the Meirinhoff, it was monotonous; he had been accustomed to the lively interaction of other musicians, people who understood what he was doing, and appreciated it. He had enjoyed afternoons spent lazing in the courtyards or gardens, listening to others struggling in rehearsal halls.

Without the music he knew he would have gone mad. CUG ships used a seven-day week and four-week month; since there was no reason to worry about a planetary year (and no way to stay in phase with any particular planet), months were simply accumulated until mission’s end, when the total was refigured, if desired, into local years. Mantenon felt adrift, at first, in this endless chain of days… he missed the seasonal markers of a planet’s life, the special days of recurrent cycles. Surely by now it was his birthday again. He asked one of the med techs about it during one of his checkups… surely they had to keep track of how old people were?

“Yes, it’s simple really. The computer figures it—ship time, background time, factors for deepsleep. Most people like to choose an interval about as long as their home planet’s year, and flag it as a birthday.”

“But it’s not their real birthday… I mean, if they were back home, would it be the same day?”

“Oh no. That’s too complicated. I mean, the computer could do it, but it’s not really important. The point is to feel that they have their own special day coming up. Look—why don’t you try it? What day of the week do you like your birthday to come on?”

“Well… Taan, I suppose.” The best birthday he’d ever had fell on Taan, the year he was eight, and his acceptance to the Academy was rolled in a silver-wrapped tube at one end of the feast table.

“Taan… right. Look here.” The tech pointed out columns of figures on the computer. “Your true elapsed age is just under thirty.” Mantenon had to force himself to stay silent. Thirty already? He had lost that many years, in just these seven planets? The tech noticed nothing, and went on. “Today’s Liki… what about next Taan? That gives you three days to get ready. Is that enough?”

There was nothing to do to get ready. Mantenon nodded, surprised to feel a little excitement even as he knew how artificial this was. A birthday was a birthday; you couldn’t make one by saying so. But then there were the birthdays he had already lost—that had gone unnoticed. The tech flicked several keys and one number in one column darkened.

“Now that’s marked as your shipday—your special day. The interval will be about what it was on Union Five, because that’s given as your base, and next time you’ll be given notice four weeks in advance. Oh—you get an automatic day off on your shipday… I guess it won’t mean much to you, you don’t have crew duties. But you get special ration tabs, any flavor you like, if it’s on board, and a captain’s pass for messages. You can send a message to anyone—your family, anywhere—and for no charge.”

Mantenon’s shipday party enlivened the long passage between worlds, and he ended the lateshift in someone else’s cabin. He had dreaded that, having to admit that he was a virgin, but, on the whole, things went well.

The last world of that system was a gas giant with all the dazzling display of jewelry such worlds could offer: moons both large and small, rings both light and dark, strange swirling patterns on its surface in brilliant color. Mantenon found himself fascinated by it, and spent hours watching out the ports, more hours watching projections of cubes about this satellite or that. Finally the captain came to see what was wrong.

“Nothing,” he said, smiling. “It’s simply too big to hurry with. Surely you realize that an artist can’t always create instantly?”

“Well, but—”

“I’m starting,” he assured her. “Right away.” And he was, having decided that he was not about to wait the whole long sentence out. They couldn’t be planning to stay in deep space for that long without resupply, with the same crew growing older along with him. They must be planning to get supplies and replacements while he was in deepsleep, while he thought they were using the deepspace drive. And he intended to be free of this contract at the first stop.

He had written a song for the poet: three, in fact. He had taken a folksong one of the lifesystems techs sang at his shipday party, and used it in a fugue. He listened to their tales of home, their gossip, their arguments and their jokes, saying little but absorbing what he needed to know. Gradually the crew was responding to him, to his music; he heard snatches of this work or that being hummed or whistled, rhythmic nuances reflected in tapping fingers or the way they knocked on doors. Everything he wrote carried his deepest convictions, carried them secretly, hidden, buried in the nerve’s response to rhythm, to timbre and pitch and phrase. And gradually the crew had come to depend on his music, gradually they played their cubes of other composers less. But he knew his music could do more. And now it would.

Mantenon sat curled into the Meirinhoff’s embrace, thinking, remembering. He called up his first reaction to his contract, refined it, stored it. Then he began with his childhood. Note by note, phrase by phrase, in the language of keychange, harmonics, the voice of wood and metal and leather and bone, of strings and hollow tubes, vibrations of solids and gases and liquids, he told the story of his life. The skinny boy for whom music was more necessary than food, who had startled his father’s distinguished guest by insisting that a tuning fork was wrong (it was), who had taught himself to read music by listening to Barker’s Scherzo To Saint Joan and following the score (stolen from that same guest of his father’s, the conductor Amanchi). The youth at the Academy, engulfed for the first time in a Meirinhoff, able for the first time to give his imagination a voice.

He stopped, dissatisfied. It wasn’t only his dilemma. He had to make them understand that it was theirs. He couldn’t take the ship; they had to give it to him; they had to want him to go where he wanted to go. Either they would have to understand his need for music, or he would have to offer something they wanted for themselves.

He let himself think of the different homeworlds he’d heard of. The famous worlds, the ones in the stories or songs. Forest worlds, dim under the sheltering leaves. Water worlds. Worlds with skies hardly speckled with stars, and worlds where the night sky was embroidered thick with colored light. And in his mind the music grew, rising in fountains, in massive buttresses, in cliffs and shadowed canyons of trembling air, shaping itself in blocks of sound that reformed the listening mind. Here it was quick, darting, active, prodding at the ears; there it lay in repose, enforcing sleep.

In the second week, the captain came once to complain about the fragments he’d played in the crew lounge.

“It’s unsettling,” she said, herself unsettled.

He nodded toward the outside. “That’s unsettling. Those fountains…”

“Sulfur volcanoes,” she said.

“Well, they look like fountains to me. But clearly dangerous as well as beautiful.”

“No more, though, to the crew. Check with me, first, or with Psych.”

He nodded, hiding his amusement. He knew already that wouldn’t work. And he kept on. The music grew, acquired complex interrelationships with other pieces… the minor concerto, the brass quintet, the simple song. Humans far from home, on a ship between worlds, with a calendar that accumulated months and gave no seasons, what did they want, what did they need? The rhythmic pattern gave it, withheld it again, offered it, tempting the listener, frustrating the ear. Yet… it could satisfy. It wanted to satisfy. Mantenon found himself working until his arms and legs cramped. To hold that power back, to hold those resolving discords in suspension, took all his strength, physical as well as mental.

He knew, by this time, that Security had a tap in his Meirinhoff. They monitored every note he brought out, every nuance of every piece. He did what he could: kept the fragments apart, except in his head, and devised a tricky control program, highly counterintuitive, to link them together when he was ready. It disgusted him to think of someone listening as he worked; it went against all he’d been taught—though he now suspected that Security had taps in the Academy as well. If they wanted to, they could make him look ridiculous all over CUG, by sending out the preliminary drafts under his name. But they wouldn’t do that. They wanted his music. So they had to monitor everything. Someone was having to listen to it, all of it; someone whose psych profile Mantenon was determined to subvert.

First he had had to learn more about it. The Central Union boasted hundreds of worlds, each with its own culture… and in many cases, multiple cultures. The same music that would stir a Cympadian would leave a Kovashi unmoved. For mere entertainment, any of the common modes would do well enough, but Mantenon needed to go much deeper than that. He needed one theme, one particular section, that would unlock what he himself believed to be a universal desire.

It was the poet who gave him the clue he needed. At latemeal, he hurried to sit beside Mantenon, and handed over four new poems.

“For Kata,” he said. “She’s agreed to marry me when we—” He stopped short, giving Mantenon a startled look.

“When you get permission, Arki?” asked Mantenon. He thought to himself that the poet had meant to say “… when we get back to port.” He wondered which port they were near, but knew he dared not ask.

“Yes… that is… it has to clear Security, both of us being Navy.”

“Mmm.” Mantenon concentrated on his rations; Arki always talked if someone looked away.

“It’s Crinnan, of course,” Arki muttered. “He’ll approve, I’m sure—I mean, he’s from Kovashi Two, just as we are.”

“You’re from Kovashi?” asked Mantenon, affecting surprise.

“I thought I’d told you. That’s why I write in seren-form: it’s traditional. I suppose that’s why I like your music, too… all those interlocked cycles.”

Mantenon shrugged. “Music is universal,” he said. “We’re taught modes that give pleasure to most.”

“I don’t know…” Arki stuffed in a whole ration square and nearly choked, then got it down. “Thing is, Georges, I’d like to have these set to music… if you have time…”

“I’ve got to finish this composition,” Mantenon said. “Maybe before I go into deepsleep for the outsystem transfer… how about that?” He saw the flicker in Arki’s eye: so they really were close to a port.

“Well…” Arki said, evading his glance. “I really did want it soon…”

“Klarge.” Mantenon said it softly, on an outbreath, which made it milder. “The second movement has problems anyway—maybe it’ll clear if I work on your stuff briefly. But I can’t promise, Arki—the contract has to come first.”

“I understand,” said Arki. “Thanks, and—oh, there’s Kata.” He bounced out of his chair to greet the woman who’d just come in.

Mantenon hugged the double gift to himself. Now he knew the home system of the senior Security officer aboard, and, thanks to the poet, had an excellent excuse for composing highly emotional music designed to affect someone from that system. If Arki was telling the truth: if that whole conversation were not another interlocking scheme of Security. Mantenon glowered at the Meirinhoff’s main keyboard, now dull with his handling. It would be like Security, and like any Kovashi, to build an interlocking scheme. But—he thought of the power hidden in his composition—it was also a Kovashi saying that a knifeblade unties all knots.

As if Arki’s poems were a literal key for a literal lock, he studied them word by word, feeling how each phrase shaped itself to fit into a socket of the reading mind. And note by note, phrase by phrase, he constructed what he hoped would be the corresponding key of music, something that fit the words so well it could not have been meant for anything else, but which acted independently, unlocking another lock, opening a deeper hidden place in the listener’s will. Briefly, he thought of himself as a lover of sorts: like Arki’s penetration of Kata, opening secret passages and discovering (as the Kovashi still called it) the hidden treasures of love, his penetration of Crinnan’s mind searched secret byways and sought a hidden treasure… of freedom. The songs—asked for by crew, and therefore surely less suspect—could be played openly, without Psych review, and he hoped by them to stun Crinnan and the captain into musical lethargy long enough to play the whole song of power that would free him.

It was hard—very hard—to stay steady and calm, with that hope flooding his veins. Against it he held up the grim uncertainty of success, the likely consequence of failure. He could be killed, imprisoned, taken to a mining planet and forced into slavery. He might live long and never hear music again, save in his own ears… and they might twist his mind, he thought bleakly, and ruin even that. Surely others had tried what he was trying. In all the years the artists and musicians had gone out, surely some of them had tried to use their art to free themselves. If Crinnan were chuckling to himself now, listening to his work through a tap, he was doomed.

But he wanted out. He had to keep going. And shortly after that he had finished the work. The knife, a mere three minutes of Arki’s lyrics set to music, lay at hand: the heavy weaponry was loaded, ready to play on his signal. Mantenon called Arki on the intercom.

“Want to hear it?” he asked.

“It’s ready? That’s good, Georges; we don’t have much—I mean, I’ve got a few minutes before the end of shift. Can you send it along?”

“Certainly.” His finger trembled over the button. He could see the music, poised like a literal knife, heavy with his intent. He pushed the button, positioned his hand over the next control, the one that would send the main composition over the main speakers. And thumbed with his other hand the intercom to Security. Crinnan would be listening—had to be listening—and if asked while he was listening…

Crinnan’s voice was abstracted, distant. Mantenon reported that the planetary composition was finished at last. He requested permission to play it, as he had all the others, on the main speakers. Crinnan hesitated. Mantenon visualized the speaker tag in his other ear, could see the flutter of his eyelid as the song slipped through the accumulated tangle of CUG regulations and Security plots, straight for the hidden center of his life, the rhythm woven in it by his homeworld and its peoples. “I suppose…” he said, a little uncertainly. “You’ve always done that, haven’t you?”

Mantenon answered respectfully, soberly. Now the song would be at this phrase; Crinnan should be nearly immobile. He heard in his ear a long indrawn breath, taken just as he’d designed. For a moment the sense of power overwhelmed him, then he heard Crinnan grant his request. More: “Go on—I’d like to hear it,” said Crinnan.

The interval between song and main composition was crucial. Those who heard both must feel the pause as an accent, precisely timed for the composition on either side of the interval. Those who were not in the circuit for the song must have no warning. But for someone whose fingers and toes controlled whole orchestras, this was nothing: Mantenon switched his output to full ship, and pressed the sequence for the linking program.

Even though he’d written it—even though he knew it intimately, as a man might know a wife of thirty years, sick, healthy, dirty, clean, sweet, sour, fat or lean—even so, its power moved him. For twenty bars, thirty, he lay passive in the Meirinhoff, head motionless, toes and fingers twitching slightly, as the music built, with astonishing quickness, a vision of delight. Then he forced himself up. He, alone, should be proof against this: he could give it a formula, dissociate from its emotional power. And he had things to do.

Their farewells were touching, but Mantenon could hardly wait to be free of them. His new world seemed huge and small at once: a slightly darker sky than Central Five’s, a cooler world of stormy oceans and great forested islands. A single continent fringed with forest, its inner uplands crowned with glacial ice, and a broad band of scrubby low growth—for which he had no name, never having seen or studied such things—between. He had seen it on approach, for an hour or so, and then been landed in a windowless shuttle. At the port, green-eyed dark men and women in dark lumpy garments had scurried about, complaining to the shuttle’s crew in a sharp, angular language as they hauled the Meirinhoff across to the blocky shelter of the single port building. He himself shivered in the chill wind, sniffing eagerly the scent of his new prison: strange smells that brought back no memories, mixed with the familiar reek of overheated plastics, fuel, and ship’s clothing. He wondered—not for the first time—if he’d done right. But at least he would have the Meirinhoff. Or the planet would. He didn’t yet know what his status would be, after all the turmoil on the ship. He’d had no chance to play the cube the captain had given him.

“Ser Mantenon?” It was a narrow-faced, dour man whose CUG insignia had tarnished to a dull gray. His accent was atrocious; Mantenon could just follow his words. “It is our pleasure to welcome such an artist as yourself to the colony. If you will follow…”

He followed, down a passage whose walls were faced with rounded dark cobbles. Around a turn, left at a junction, and the walls were hung with brilliant tapestries, all roses, pinks, reds, glowing greens. Into a room where a cluster of people, all in dull colors, waited around a polished table. He was offered a chair: richly upholstered, comfortable. His escort found a chair at the head of the table.

“So you are a rebel, Ser Mantenon?” the man asked.

Mantenon pondered his reply. “I am a musician,” he said. “I want to make music.”

“You suborned an official vessel of the CUG Navy,” the man said. “This is not the act of a musician.”

“How he did so…” interrupted a woman near Mantenon. He looked at her. Her eyes were the same green as the others, her dark hair streaked with silver.

“How he did so is not the issue, Sera. Why he did so matters to me. What he will do in the years ahead matters to me. Will he bring trouble on us?”

“No,” said Mantenon firmly. “I will not. I am not a rebel that way—stirring up trouble. I only want to make music: write music, play music, conduct—”

“Your music makes trouble.” That was a balding man halfway around the table. “Your music made them bring you… it might make us go. If you have that power, you must have plans to use it.”

“To give pleasure,” said Mantenon. Suddenly the room felt stuffy. He’d been so sure anyone living on a planet would understand why he had to get off that ship. “I don’t want to control people with it. I only did it because it was the only way.”

“Hmmm.” Eyes shifted sideways, meeting each other, avoiding his gaze.

“Pleasure,” said the woman who’d spoken. “That’s a good thought, Ser Mantenon. Do you like this world?”

“I hardly know it yet, but it seems… well, it’s better than the ship.”

She chuckled. “I see. And you want to give us pleasure—the colonists?”

“Yes. I want to make music you will enjoy.”

“And not to send us to war with Central Union?”

“Oh, no.” This time, after his answer, he felt an odd combined response: relaxation and amusement both rippled around the table.

“And you are willing to work?”

“At music, certainly. I can teach a number of instruments, music theory, conduct, if there’s an orchestral group with no conductor, as well as compose. But I have had surgical modifications that make some kinds of work impossible.”

“Of course. Well.” She looked sideways; heads nodded fractionally. “Well, then, we are pleased to welcome you. We think you will find a place, though it will not be what you’re used to.”

And from there he was led to a ground vehicle of some kind (he noticed that the shuttle had already been canted into its takeoff position), and was driven along a broad hard-surfaced road toward a block of forest. Within the forest were clearings and buildings. Before he had time to wonder what they all were, he found himself installed in a small apartment, with clean bedding stacked on the end of a metal bunk, and the blank ends of electrical connections hanging out of the walls. His original escort yelled something down the passage, and two men appeared with utility connections: cube player, speakers, intercom.

“We have not installed your machine… your composing machine… because we do not yet know if you will stay here, or prefer to live somewhere else.”

“That’s fine,” said Mantenon absently, watching the men work.

“The group kitchen is on the ground floor, two down,” the man said. “If you think you will wish to cook here, we can install—”

“Oh, no,” said Mantenon. “I don’t know how to cook.” The man’s eyebrows rose, but Mantenon didn’t ask why. He was suddenly very tired, and longed for sleep. The workers left, without a word, and the escort twitched his mouth into a smile.

“You are tired, I’m sure,” he said. “I will leave you to rest, but I will come by before the next meal, if that is all right”

“Thank you.” Mantenon didn’t know whether to wave or not; the man suddenly stepped forward and grasped his hand, then bowed. Then he turned away and went out the door, shutting it behind him.

Mantenon spread a blanket over the bunk and lay down. Something jabbed him in the ribs, something angular. The captain’s message cube. He sighed, grunted, and finally rolled off the bunk to stick the cube in the player.

It was a holvid cube, and the captain’s miniature image appeared between his hands. He stepped back, slouched on the bunk.

“Mr. Mantenon,” she began, then paused. Her hair was backlit by the worklight on her desk, her face the same cool, detached face he’d known for these years of travel. “You are an intelligent man, and so I think you will appreciate an explanation. Part of one. You resented being tricked, as all young artists do. You were smart enough to avoid violence, and obvious rebellion. I suspect you even knew we had experienced attempts to use art against us before. And I know you suspected that I knew what you were doing. If you are as smart as I think you are, you’re wondering now if you’re in prison or free, if you’ve won what you thought you were winning. And the answer is yes, and the answer is no.

“You are not the first to try what you tried. You are not the first to succeed. Most do not. Most are not good enough. Your music, Mr. Mantenon, is worth saving… at the cost of risking your effect on this colony. Although you will never be allowed to leave that planet, for you I think it will be freedom, or enough to keep you alive and well. Students to teach, music to play… you can conduct a live orchestra, when you’ve taught one. You were not ambitious, Mr. Mantenon, and so you will not miss the power you might have held at the Academy. You can curse me, as the representative of the government that tricked you, and go on with your life. But there’s one other thing you should know.” Again she paused, this time turning her head as if to ease a stiff neck.

“You can think of it as plot within plot, as your music wove theme within theme. The government removes the dangerous, those who can wield such power as you, and protects itself… and yet has a way to deal with those who are too powerful for that isolation. But the truth is, Mr. Mantenon, that you did overpower my ship. You are free; we must return, or be listed as outlaws, and if we return, our failure will cost all of us. You hoped we would rebel, and follow you into freedom. You did not know that our ship is our freedom… that I had worked years for this command, and you have destroyed it. You see the government as an enemy—most artists do—but to me it is all that keeps the worlds together, providing things for each other that none can provide alone. Like the Academy, where you may send a student someday. Like my ship, in which we traveled freely. I don’t expect you to believe this, not now. But we were honored to have you aboard, from the first: truly honored. And we were honored by the power of your music. And you destroyed us, and we honor you for that. A worthy enemy; a worthy loss. If you ever believe that, and understand, write us another song, and send that.”

And nothing lay between his hands but empty air. After a long moment he breathed again. In the silence, he heard the beginnings of that song, the first he would write on his new world, the last gift to the old.