Moon Flights

Hand to Hand

Ereza stood in the shadows at the back of the concert hall. She had promised to be silent, to be motionless; interrupting the final rehearsal would, she had been told, cause untold damage. Damage. She had survived the bombing of her barracks; she had survived being buried in the rubble for two days, the amputation of an arm, the loss of friends and all her gear, and they thought interrupting a rehearsal caused damage? Had it not been her twin onstage, she might have said something. But for Arlashi’s sake she would ignore such narrow-minded silliness and do as she was told.

She had seen concerts, of course; she had even attended the first one in which Arlashi soloed. This was somewhat different. From the clear central dome the muted light of a rainy day lay over the rows of seats, dulling the rich colors of the upholstery. The stage, by contrast, looked almost garish under its warm-toned lights. Musicians out of uniform wore all sorts of odd clothes; it looked as if someone had collected rabble from a street fair and handed them instruments. Ereza had expected them to wear the kinds of things Arlashi wore, casual but elegant; here, Arlashi looked almost too formal in purple jersey and gray slacks. Instead of attentive silence before the music, she could hear scuffing feet, coughs and cleared throats, vague mutters. The conductor leaned down, pointing out something to Arlashi in the score; she pointed back; their heads finally moved in unison.

The conductor moved back to his podium and tapped it with his baton. “From measure sixty,” he said. Pages rustled, though most of the musicians seemed to be on the right one. Silence, then a last throat clearing, then silence again. Ereza shifted her weight to the other leg. Her stump ached savagely for a moment, then eased. Arla, she could see, was poised, her eyes on the conductor.

His hand moved; music began. Ereza listened for the bits she knew, from having heard Arla practice them at home. Arla had tried to explain, but it made no sense, not like real things. Music was either pretty or not; it either made her feel like laughing, or crying, or jumping around. You couldn’t say, as with artillery, what would work and what wouldn’t. This wasn’t one she knew without a program. It sounded pretty enough, serene as a spring evening in the garden. Arla’s right arm moved back and forth, the fingers of her left hand shifting up and down. Ereza watched her, relaxing into the sweetness of the music. This was the new cello, one of only four wooden cellos on the planet, made of wood from Scavel, part of the reparations payment imposed after the Third Insurrection. Cravor’s World, rich in military capacity, had far too few trees to waste one on a musical instrument. Ereza couldn’t hear the difference between it and the others Arla had played, but she knew Arla thought it important.

Her reverie shattered as something went drastically wrong with the music. She couldn’t tell what, but Arla’s red face and the conductor’s posture suggested who had caused the problem. Other instruments had straggled to a halt gracelessly, leaving silence for the conductor’s comment.

“Miss Fennaris!” Ereza was glad he wasn’t her commanding officer; she’d heard that tone, and felt a pang of sympathy for Arla. Somehow she’d thought musicians were more lenient than soldiers.

“So sorry,” Arla said. Her voice wavered; Ereza could tell she was fighting back tears. Poor dear; she hadn’t ever learned toughness. Behind her twin, two other musicians leaned together, murmuring. Across the stage, someone standing behind a group of drums leaned forward and fiddled with something on the side of one of them.

“From measure eighty-two,” said the conductor, this time not looking at Arla. Arla had the stubborn, withdrawn expression that Ereza knew well; she wasn’t going to admit anything was wrong, or share what was bothering her. Well, musicians were different, like all artists. It would go into her art, that’s what everyone said.

Ereza had no idea what measure eighty-two was, but she did recognize the honeyed sweetness of the opening phrase. Quickly, it became less sweet, brooding, as summer afternoons could thicken into menacing storms. She felt breathless, and did not know why. Arla’s face gave no clue, her expression almost sullen. Her fingers flickered up and down the neck of the cello and reminded Ereza of the last time she’d played the game Flight-test with her twin, last leave. Before the reopening of hostilities, before some long-buried agent put a bomb in the barracks and cost her her arm. Arla had won, she remembered, those quick fingers as nimble on the controls as on her instrument.

Suddenly the impending storm broke; the orchestra was off at full speed and volume, Arla’s cello nearly drowned in a tumult of sound. Ereza watched, wondering why it didn’t sound pretty anymore. Surely you could make something stormy that was also good to listen to. Besides, she wanted to hear Arla, not all these other people. Arla was leaning into her bowing; Ereza knew what that would mean at home. But the cello couldn’t dominate this group, not by sheer volume. The chaos grew and grew, very much like a summer storm, and exploded in a series of crashes; the man with the drums was banging away on them.

The music changed again, leaving chaos behind. Arla, she noted, had a moment to rest, and wiped her sweaty face. She had a softer expression now and gazed at the other string players, across from her. Ereza wondered what she thought at times like this. Was she thinking ahead to her own next move? Listening to the music itself? What?

Brasses blared, a wall of sound that seemed to sweep the lighter strings off the stage. Ereza liked horns as a rule, but these seemed pushy and arrogant, not merely jubilant. She saw Arla’s arm move, and the cello answered the horns like a reproving voice. The brasses stuttered and fell silent while the cello sang on. Now Arla’s face matched the music, serenity and grace. Other sections returned, but the cello this time rose over them, collecting them into a seamless web of harmony.

When the conductor cut off the final chord, Ereza realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out with a whoof. She would be able to tell Arla how much it meant to listen to her and mean it. She was no musical expert, and knew it, but she could see why her sister was considered an important cultural resource. Not for the first time, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that it had been her own less-talented right arm she’d lost to trauma. When her new prosthesis came in, she’d be able to retrain for combat; even without it, there were many things she could do in the military. But the thought of Arla without an arm was obscene.

The rehearsal continued to a length that bored Ereza and numbed her ears. She could hear no difference between the first and fifth repetition of something, even though the conductor, furious with first the woodwinds and then the violas, threw a tantrum about it and explained in detail what he wanted. Arla caused no more trouble—in fact, the conductor threw her a joke once, at which half the cello section burst out laughing. Ereza didn’t catch it. At the end, he dismissed the orchestra and told Arla to stay. She nodded, and carried her cello over to its case; the conductor made notes on his papers and shuffled through them. While the others straggled offstage, she wiped the cello with a cloth and put the bow neatly into its slot, then closed the case and latched it.

Ereza wondered if she should leave now, but she had no idea where Arla would go next, and she wanted to talk to her. She waited, watching the conductor’s back, the other musicians, Arla’s care with her instrument. Finally all the others had gone, and the conductor turned to Arla.

“Miss Fennaris, I know this is a difficult time for you—” In just such a tone had Ereza’s first flight officer reamed her out for failing to check one of the electronic subsystems in her ship. Her own difficult time had been a messy love affair; she wondered why Arla wasn’t past that. Arla wisely said nothing. “You are the soloist, and that’s quite a responsibility under the circumstances—” Arla nodded while Ereza wondered again what circumstances. “We have to know you will be able to perform; this is not a trivial performance.”

“I will,” Arla said. She had been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes to the conductor’s face—and past them, to Ereza, standing in the shadows. She turned white, as if she’d lost all her blood, and staggered.

“What—?” The conductor swung around then and saw that single figure in the gloom at the back of the hall. “Who’s there? Come down here, damn you!”

Ereza shrugged to herself as she came toward the lighted stage. She did not quite limp, though the knee still argued about downward slopes. She watched her footing, with glances to Arla who now stood panting like someone who had run a race. What ailed the child—did she think her sister was a ghost? Surely they’d told her things were coming along. The conductor, glaring and huffing, she ignored. She’d had permission, from the mousy little person at the front door, and she had not made one sound during rehearsal.

“Who told you you could barge in here—!” the conductor began. Ereza gave him her best smile, as she saw recognition hit. She and Arla weren’t identical, but the family resemblance was strong enough.

“I’m Ereza Fennaris, Arla’s sister. I asked out front, and they said she was in rehearsal, but if I didn’t interrupt—”

“You just did.” He was still angry but adjusting to what he already knew. Wounded veteran, another daughter of a powerful family, his soloist’s twin sister… there were limits to what he could do. To her, at least; she hoped he wouldn’t use this as an excuse to bully Arla.

She smiled up at her sister. “Hello again, Arlashi! You didn’t come to see me, so I came to see you.”

“Is she why—did you see her back there when you—?” The conductor had turned away from Ereza to her sister.

“No.” Arla drew a long breath. “I did not see her until she came nearer. I haven’t seen her since—”

“Sacred Name of God! Artists!” The conductor threw his baton to the floor and glared from one to the other. “A concert tomorrow night, and you had to come now!” That for Ereza. “Your own sister wounded, and you haven’t seen her?” That for Arla. He picked up his baton and pointed it at her. “You thought it would go away, maybe? You thought you could put it directly into the music, poof, without seeing her?”

“I thought—if I could get through the concert—”

“Well, you can’t. You showed us that, by God.” He whirled and pointed his finger at Ereza. “You—get up here! I can’t be talking in two directions.”

Ereza stifled an impulse to giggle. He acted as if he had real authority; she could just see him trying that tone on a platoon commander and finding out that he didn’t. She picked her way to a set of small steps up from the floor of the hall and made her way across the stage, past the empty chairs. Arla stared at her, still breathing too fast. She would faint if she kept that up, silly twit.

“What a mess!” the conductor was saying. “And what an ugly thing that is—is that the best our technology can do for you?” He was staring at her temporary prosthesis, with its metal rods and clips.

“Tactful, aren’t you?” She wasn’t exactly angry, not yet, but she was moving into a mood where anger would be easy. He would have to realize that while he could bully Arlashi, he couldn’t bully her. If being blown apart, buried for days, and reassembled with bits missing hadn’t crushed her, no mere musician could.

“This is not about tact,” the conductor said. “Not that I’d expect you to be aware of that…. Arriving on the eve of this concert to upset my soloist, for instance, is hardly an expression of great tact.”

Ereza resisted an urge to argue. “This is a temporary prosthesis,” she said, holding it up. “Right now, as you can imagine, they’re short-staffed; it’s going to take longer than it would have once to get the permanent one. However, it gives me some practice in using one.”

“I should imagine.” He glared at her. “Now sit down and be quiet. I have something to say to your sister.”

“If you’re planning to scold her, don’t bother. She’s about to faint—”

“I am not,” Arla said. She had gone from pale to a dull red that clashed with her purple tunic.

“You have no rights here,” said the conductor to Ereza. “You’re just upsetting her—and I’ll have to see her later. But for now—” He made a movement with his hands, tossing her the problem, and walked offstage. From that distance, he got the last word in. “Miss Fennaris—the cellist Miss Fennaris—see me in my office this afternoon at fourteen-twenty.”

“You want lights?” asked a distant voice from somewhere overhead.

“No,” said Arla, still not looking at Ereza. “Cut ’em.” The brilliant stage lighting disappeared; Arla’s dark clothes melted into the gloom onstage, leaving her face—older, sadder—to float above it. “Damn you, Ereza—why did you have to come now?”

Ereza couldn’t think of anything to say. That was not what she’d imagined Arla saying. Anger and disappointment struggled; what finally came out was, “Why didn’t you come to see me? I kept expecting you…. Was it just this concert?” She could—almost—understand that preparing for a major appearance might keep her too busy to visit the hospital.

“No. Not… exactly.” Arla looked past her. “It was—I couldn’t practice without thinking about it. Your hand. My hand. If I’d seen you, I couldn’t have gone on making music. I should have—after I beat you at Flight-test I should have enlisted. If I’d been there—”

“You’d have been asleep, like the rest of us. It wasn’t slow reflexes that did it, Arlashi, it was a bomb. While we slept. Surely they told you that.” But Arla’s face had that stubborn expression again. Ereza tried again. “Look—what you’re feeling—I do understand that. When I woke up and found Reia’d been killed, and Aristide, I hated myself for living. You wish I hadn’t been hurt, and because you’re not a soldier—”

“Don’t start that!” Arla shifted, and a music stand went over with a clatter. “Dammit!” She crouched and gathered the music in shaking hands, then stabbed the stand upright. “If I get this out of order, Kiel will—”

Ereza felt a trickle of anger. “It’s only sheets of paper—surely this Kiel can put it back in order. It’s not like… what do you mean ‘Don’t start that’?”

“That you’re not a soldier rigmarole. I know perfectly well I’m not, and you are. Everyone in the family is, except me, and I know how you all feel about it.”

“Nonsense.” They had had this out before; Ereza thought she’d finally got through, but apparently Arla still worried. Typical of the civilian mind, she thought, to fret about what couldn’t be helped. “No one blames you; we’re proud of you. Do you think we need another soldier? We’ve told you—”

“Yes. You’ve told me.” Ereza waited, but Arla said nothing more, just stood there, staring at the lighter gloom over the midhall, where the skylight was.

“Well, then. You don’t want to be a soldier; you never did. And no need, with a talent like yours. It’s what we fight for, anyway—”

“Don’t say that!”

“Why not? It’s true. Gods be praised, Arlashi, we’re not like the Metiz, quarrelling for the pure fun of it, happy to dwell in a wasteland if only it’s a battlefield. Or the Gennar Republic, which cares only for profit. Our people have always valued culture: music, art, literature. It’s to make a society in which culture can flourish—where people like you can flourish—that we go to war at all.”

“So it’s my fault.” That in a quiet voice. “You would lay the blame for this war—for that bomb—on me?”

“Of course not, ninny! How could it be your fault, when a Gavalan terrorist planted that bomb?” Musicians, Ereza thought, were incapable of understanding issues. If poor Arla had thought the bombing was her fault, no wonder she came apart—and how useless someone so fragile would be in combat, for all her hand-eye coordination and dexterity. “You aren’t to blame for the misbegotten fool who did it, or the pigheaded political leadership that sent him.”

“But you said—”

“Arlashi, listen. Your new cello—you know where the wood came from?”

“Yes.” That sounded sullen, even angry. “Reparations from Scavel; the Military Court granted the Music Council first choice for instruments.”

“That’s what I mean. We go to war to protect our people—physical and economic protection. Do you think a poor, helpless society could afford wood for instruments? A concert hall to play in? The stability in which the arts flourish?” Arla stirred, but Ereza went on quickly before she could interrupt. “I didn’t intend to lose a hand—no one does—but I would have done it gladly to give you your music—”

“I didn’t ask you for that! You didn’t have to lose anything to give me music. I could give myself music!”

“Not that cello,” Ereza said, fighting to keep a reasonable tone. She could just imagine Arla out in the stony waste, trying to string dry grass across twigs and make music. Surely even musicians realized how much they needed the whole social structure, which depended on the military’s capacity to protect both the physical planet and its trade networks. “Besides—war has to be something more than killing, more than death against death. We aren’t barbarians. It has to be for something.”

“It doesn’t have to be for me.”

“Yes, you. I can’t do it. You could fight—” She didn’t believe that, but saying it might get Arla’s full attention. “Anyone can fight, who has courage, and you have that. But I can’t make music. If I had spent the hours at practice you have, I still couldn’t make your music. If I die, there are others as skilled as I am who could fight our wars. But if you die, there will be no music. In all the generations since Landing, our family has given one soldier after another. You—you’re something different—”

“But I didn’t ask for it.”

Ereza shrugged, annoyed. “No one asks for their talent, or lack of it.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Arla struggled visibly, then shrugged. “Look—we can’t talk here; it’s like acting, being on this stage. Come to my rehearsal room.”

“Now? But I thought we’d go somewhere for lunch. I have to leave soon.”

“Now. I have to put my precious war-won wood cello away.” Arla led the way to her instrument, then offstage and down a white-painted corridor. Ereza ignored the sarcastic tone of that remark and followed her. Doors opened on either side; from behind some of them music leaked out, frail ghosts of melody.

Arla’s room had two chairs, a desk-mounted computer, and a digital music stand. Arla waved her to one of the chairs; Ereza sat down and looked over at the music stand’s display.

“Why don’t you have this kind onstage? Why that paper you spilled?”

Her attempt to divert Arla’s attention won a wry grin. “Maestro Bogdan won’t allow it. Because the tempo control’s usually operated by foot, he’s convinced the whole orchestra would be tapping its toes. Even if we were, it’d be less intrusive than reaching out and turning pages, but he doesn’t see it that way. Traditionally, even good musicians turn pages, but only bad musicians tap their feet. And we live for tradition—like my cello.” Arla had opened the case again, and then she tapped her cello with one finger. It made a soft tock that sounded almost alive. With a faint sigh she turned away and touched her computer. The music stand display came up, with a line of music and the measure numbers above it. She turned it to give Ereza a better view.

“Do you know what that is?”

Ereza squinted and read aloud. “Artruud’s Opus 27, measure seventy-nine?”

“Do you know what that is?”

Ereza shook her head. “No—should I? I might if you hummed it.”

Arla gave a short, ugly laugh. “I doubt that. We just played it, the whole thing. This—” She pointed at the display, which showed ten measures at a time. “This is where I blew up. Eighty-two to eighty-six.”

“Yes, but I don’t read music.”

“I know.” Arla turned and looked directly at her. “Did you ever think about that? The fact that I can play Flight-test as well as you, that my scores in Tac-Sim—the tests you had me take as a joke—were enough to qualify me for officers’ training if I’d wanted it… but not one of you in the family can read music well enough to pick out a tune on the piano?”

“It’s not our talent. And you, surrounded by a military family—of course you’d pick up something—”

“Is war so easy?” That in a quiet voice, washed clean of emotion. Ereza stared at her, shocked.

“Easy! Of course it’s not easy.” She still did not want to think about her first tour, the near disaster of that patrol on Sardon, when a training mission had gone sour. It was nothing she could discuss with Arla. Her stump throbbed, reminding her of more recent pain. How could Arla ask that question? She started to ask that, but Arla had already spoken.

“But you think I picked it up, casually, with no training?”

“Well… our family… and besides, what you did was only tests, not real combat.”

“Yes. And do you think that if you’d been born into a musical family, you’d have picked up music so casually? Would you be able to play the musical equivalent of Flight-test?”

“I’d have to know more, wouldn’t I?” Ereza wondered where this conversation was going. Clearly Arla was upset about something, something to do with her own wound. It’s my arm that’s missing, she thought. I’m the one who has a right to be upset or not upset. “I’d still have no talent for it, but I would probably know more music when I heard it.”

“Yet I played music in the same house, Eri, four to six hours a day when we were children. You had ears; you could have heard. We slept in the same room; you could have asked questions. You told me if you liked something, or if you were tired of hearing it; you never once asked me a musical question. You heard as much music as many musicians’ children. The truth is that you didn’t care. None of our family cared.”

Ereza knew the shock she felt showed on her face; Arla nodded at her and went on talking. “Dari can tell you how his preschool training team pretended to assault the block fortress, and you listen to him. You listen carefully, you admire his cleverness or point out where he’s left himself open for a counterattack. But me—I could play Hohlander’s first cello concerto backward, and you’d never notice. It’s not important to you—it’s beneath your notice.”

“That’s not true.” Ereza clenched the fingers of her left hand on the arm of the chair. “Of course we care; of course we notice. We know you’re good; that’s why you had the best teachers. It’s just that it’s not our field—we’re not supposed to be experts.”

“But you are about everything else.” Arla, bracing herself on the desk, looked almost exultant. Ereza could hardly believe what she was hearing. The girl must have had this festering inside for years, to bring it out now, to someone wounded in her defense. “You talk politics as if it were your field—why this war is necessary, why that legislation is stupid. You talk about manufacturing, weapons design, the civilian economy—all that seems to be your area of expertise. If music and art and poetry are so important—if they’re the reason you fight—then why don’t you know anything about them? Why don’t you bother to learn even the basics, the sort of stuff you expect Dari to pick up by the time he’s five or six?”

“But—we can’t do it all,” Ereza said, appalled at the thought of all the children, talented or untalented, forced to sit through lessons in music. Every child had to know something about drill and survival techniques; Cravor’s World, even in peacetime, could be dangerous. But music? You couldn’t save yourself in a sandstorm or grass fire by knowing who wrote which pretty tune, or how to read musical notation. “We found you teachers who did—”

“Whom you treated like idiots,” Arla said. “Remember the time Professor Rizvi came over, and talked to Grandmother after my lesson? No—of course you wouldn’t; you were in survival training right then, climbing up cliffs or something like that. But it was just about the time the second Gavalan rebellion was heating up, and he told Grandmother the sanctions against the colonists just made things worse. She got that tone in her voice—you know what I mean—and silenced him. After that he wouldn’t come to the house; I went into the city for my lessons. She told the story to Father, and they laughed together about the silly, ineffectual musician who wouldn’t stand a chance against real power—with me standing there—and then they said, ‘But you’re a gifted child, Arlashi, and we love it.’”

“They’re right.” Ereza leaned forward. “What would a composer and musician know about war? And it doesn’t take much of a weapon to smash that cello you’re so fond of.” She knew that much, whatever she didn’t know about music. To her surprise, Arla gave a harsh laugh.

“Of course it doesn’t take much weaponry to smash a cello. It doesn’t take a weapon at all. I could trip going down the stairs and fall on it; I could leave it flat on the floor and step on it. You don’t need to be a skilled soldier to destroy beauty: any clumsy fool can manage that.”

“But—”

Arla interrupted her. “That’s my point. You take pride in your skill, in your special, wonderful knowledge. And all you can accomplish with it is what carelessness or stupidity or even the normal path of entropy will do by itself. If you want a cello smashed, you don’t need an army: just turn it over to a preschool class without a teacher present. If you want to ruin a fine garden, you don’t have to march an expensive army through it—just let it alone. If you want someone to die, you don’t have to kill them: just wait! We’ll all die, Ereza. We don’t need your help.”

“It’s not about that!” But Ereza felt a cold chill. If Arla could think that… “It’s not about killing. It’s protecting—”

“You keep saying that, but—did you ever consider asking me? Asking any artist, any writer, any musician? Did you ever consider learning enough of our arts to guess how we might feel?”

Ereza stared at her, puzzled. “But we did protect you. We let you study music from the beginning; we’ve never pushed you into the military. What more do you want, Arlashi?”

“To be myself, to be a musician just because I am, not because you needed someone to prove that you weren’t all killers.”

That was ridiculous. Ereza stared at her twin, wondering if someone had mindwiped her. Would one of the political fringe groups have thought to embarrass the Fennaris family, with its rich military history, by recruiting its one musician? “I don’t understand,” she said, aware of the stiffness in her voice. She would have to tell Grandmother as soon as she got out of here, and find out if anyone else had noticed how strange Arla had become.

Arla leaned forward. “Ereza, you cannot have me as a tame conscience… someone to feel noble about. I am not a simple musician, all full of sweet melody, to soothe your melancholy hours after battle.” She plucked a sequence of notes, pleasant to the ear.

“Not that I mind your being soldiers,” Arla went on, now looking past Ereza’s head into some distance that didn’t belong in that small room. Ereza had seen that look on soldiers; it shocked her on Arla’s face. “It’s not that I’m a pacifist, you see. It’s more complicated than that. I want you to be honest soldiers. If you like war, admit it. If you like killing, admit that. Don’t make me the bearer of your nobility, and steal my own dark initiative. I am a person—a whole person—with my own kind of violence.”

“Of course you’re a whole person—everyone is—”

“No. You aren’t. You aren’t because you know nothing about something you claim is important to you.”

“What do you want me to do?” Ereza asked. She felt grumpy. Her stump hurt now, and she wanted to be back with people who didn’t make ridiculous emotional arguments or confuse her.

“Quit thinking of me as sweet little Arlashi, your pet twin, harmless and fragile and impractical. Learn a little music, so you’ll know what discipline really is. Or admit you don’t really care, and quit condescending to me.”

“Of course I care.” She cared that her sister had gone crazy, at least. Then a thought occurred to her. “Tell me—do the other musicians feel as you do?”

Arla cocked her head and gave her an unreadable look. “Come to the concert tomorrow, Eri.”

“I don’t know if I can—” She didn’t know if she wanted to. A long journey into the city, hours crammed into a seat with others, listening to music that didn’t (if she was honest) interest her that much. She’d already heard it, parts of it over and over. “How about tomorrow’s rehearsal?”

“No. The concert. I can get you in. If you want to know how musicians think, and why… then come.”

“Are the others—?”

“I don’t know. Grandmother usually comes to my performances, but the others less often. I wish you would, Eri.”

Ereza sat in the back row of the concert hall, surrounded by people in formal clothes and dress uniforms. Onstage the orchestra waited, in formal black and white, for the soloist and conductor. She saw a stir at the edge of the stage. Arla, in her long swirling dress, with the cello. The conductor—she looked quickly at her program for his name. Mikailos Bogdan.

Applause, which settled quickly as the house lights went down. Now the clear dome showed a dark night sky with a thick wedge of stars, the edge of the Cursai Cluster. The conductor lifted his arms. Ereza watched; the musicians did not stir. His arms came down.

Noise burst from speakers around the hall. As if conducting music, Bogdan’s arms moved, but the noise had nothing to do with his direction. Grinding, squealing, exploding—all the noises that Ereza finally recognized as belonging to an armored ground unit in battle. Rattle and clank of treads, grinding roar of engines, tiny voices yelling, screaming, the heavy thump of artillery and lighter crackling of small arms. Around her the others stirred, looked at one another in amazement, then horror.

Onstage, no one moved. The musicians stared ahead, oblivious to the noise; Ereza, having heard the rehearsal, wondered how they could stand it. And why? Why work so for perfection in rehearsal if they never meant to play? Toward the front, someone stood—someone in uniform—and yelled. Ereza could not hear it over the shattering roar that came from the speakers, then—low-level aircraft strafing, she thought. She remembered that sound. Another two or three people stood up; the first to stand began to push his way out of his row. One of the others was hauled back down by those sitting near him.

The sound changed, this time to the repetitive crump-crump-crump-crump of bombardment. Vague, near-human sounds, too… Ereza shivered, knowing before it came clear what that would be. Screams, moans, sobs… it went on far too long. She wanted to get up and leave, but she had no strength.

Silence, when it finally came, was welcome. Ereza could hear, as her ears regained their balance, the ragged breathing of the audience. Silence continued, the conductor still moving his arms as if the orchestra were responding. Finally, he brought the unnerving performance to a close, turned and bowed to them. A few people clapped, uncertainly; no one else joined them and the sound died away.

“Disgracefully bad taste,” said someone to Ereza’s right. “I don’t know what they think they’re doing.”

“Getting us ready to be ravished by Fennaris, no doubt. Have you heard her before?”

“Only on recordings. I’ve been looking forward to this for decads.”

“She’s worth it. I heard her first in a chamber group two years ago, and—” The conductor beckoned, and Arla stood; the gossipers quieted. Intent curiosity crackled around the hall, silent but alive.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Arla said. She had an untrained voice, but even so it carried to the back of the hall. “You may be wondering what happened to the Goldieri Concerto. We chose to make another statement about music.”

The conductor bowed to her, and signaled the orchestra. Each musician held an instrument at arm’s length; at the flick of his baton they all dropped to the floor, the light rattling cases of violins, the softer boom of violas, the clatter and thud and tinkle of woodwinds, brasses, percussion. A tiny round drum rolled along the floor until it ran into someone’s leg and fell over with a final loud tap. Louder than that was the indrawn breath of the audience.

“I’m Arla,” she said, standing alone, facing a crowd whose confusion was slowly turning to hostility. Ereza felt her skin tingling. “Most of you know me as Arla Fennaris, but tonight I’m changing my name. I want you to know why.”

She turned and picked up her cello, which she had left leaning against her chair. No, Ereza thought, don’t do it. Not that one. Please.

“You think of me as a cellist,” Arla said, and plucked three notes with one hand. “A cellist is a musician, and a musician—I have this from my own sister, a wounded veteran, as many of you know—a musician is to most of you an impractical child. A fool.” She ran her hand down the strings, and the sound echoed in Ereza’s bones. She shivered, and so did the people sitting next to her. “She tells me, my sister, that the reason we’re at war right now—the reason she lost her arm—is that I am a mere musician, and need protection. I can’t protect myself; I send others out to die, to keep me and my music alive.” Another sweeping move across the strings, and a sound that went through Ereza like a jagged blade. All she could think was No, no, don’t… no… but she recognized the look on Arla’s face, the tone of her voice. Here was someone committed beyond reason to whatever she was doing.

But Arla had turned, and found her chair again. She was sitting as she would for any performance, the cello nestled in the hollow of her skirt, the bow in her right hand. “It is easy to make noise,” Arla said. With a move Ereza did not understand, she made an ugly noise explode from the cello. “It takes skill to make music.” Arla played a short phrase as sweet as spring sunshine. “It is easy to destroy—” She held the cello up, as if to throw it, and again Ereza heard the indrawn breath as the audience waited. Then she put it down. “It takes skill to make—in this case, millennia of instrument designers, and Barrahesh, here on Cravor’s World, with a passion for the re-creation of classic instruments. I have no right to destroy his work—but it would be easy.” She tapped the cello’s side, and the resonant sound expressed fragility. “As with my cello, with everything. It is easy to kill; it takes skill to nurture life.” Again she played a short phrase, this one a familiar child’s song about planting flower seeds in the desert.

“My sister,” Arla said, and her eyes found Ereza’s, and locked onto them. “My sister is a soldier, a brave soldier, who was wounded… she would say protecting me. Protection I never asked for, and did not need. Her arm the price of this one—” She held up her right arm. “It is difficult to make music when you are using your sister’s arm. An arm taught to make war, not music. An arm that does not respect music.”

She lowered her arm. “I can make music only with my own arm, because it’s my arm that learned it. And to play with my arm means throwing away my sister’s sacrifice. Denying it. Repudiating it.” No, Ereza thought at her again. Don’t do this. I will understand; I will change. Please. But she knew it was too late, as it had been too late to change things when she woke after surgery and found her own arm gone. “If my sister wants music, she must learn to make it. If you want music, you must learn to make it. We will teach you; we will play with you—but we will not play for you. Good evening.”

Again the conductor signaled; the musicians picked up their instruments from the floor, stood, and walked out. For a moment, the shuffling of their feet onstage was the only sound as shock held the audience motionless. Ereza felt the same confusion, the same hurt, the same realization that they would get no music. Then the catcalls began, the hissing, the programs balled up angrily and thrown; some hit the stage and a few hit the musicians. But none of them hurried, none of them looked back. Arla and the conductor waited, side by side, as the orchestra cleared the stage. Ereza sat frozen, unable to move even as people pushed past her, clambered over her legs. She wanted to go and talk to Arla; she knew it would do no good. She did not speak Arla’s language. She never had. Now she knew what Arla meant: she had never respected her sister before. Now she did. Too late, too late, cried her mind, struggling to remember something, anything, of the music.