Symphony in a Minor Key

Exposition

“—And we have no right to play God!”

H. L. Robbins, head of the musicology section, looked anxiously at the other members of the humanities committee seated around the conference table. Then he sighed with relief. Except for Billingsley, who was grinning at her, the other Section Chiefs seemed unmoved by Brentano’s tirade.

At the head of the table, the chancellor of the Institute for Transcosmic Studies frowned at Brentano. “Thank you for your comments, Dr. Brentano. However, before we discuss whether Dr. Robbins’s proposal should be carried out, we need to establish whether it is even feasible. That’s why I’ve asked our distinguished guests from the science committee, Drs. Everett and Harrison, to come to this meeting.”

She nodded toward the elderly woman seated at her right.

Catherine Everett, Ph.D. glared back. “I gave my opinion in the report I sent to your committee.” Her eyes flashed around the table. “I assume you all read it?”

From the embarrassed looks on the faces of his colleagues, Robbins doubted any of them had been able to figure out what Everett’s report said either. He, for one, had no idea what terms like “dosed temporal loop” and “quantized timelines” meant. And as for the equations—.

The Chancellor said diplomatically, “Perhaps you could summarize your conclusions about the possible dangers of traveling back in time and changing the past.”

“No, no, no!” Everett shouted back. “There’s no danger anything we do on Transcosmic Earth can affect us! Translocating there may seem like simple time travel into the past, with all the possible paradoxes and violations of causality that implies, but it’s actually much more complicated! Anything we change there would simply replace TCE’s current history with one of a nearly infinite number of different ‘shadow histories,’ and make it the real’ one instead. But our history would stay the same!” She launched into a monologue about “temporo-quantum discontinuities” and “branching universes” that Robbins couldn’t begin to follow.

But even if he didn’t understand it, Everett must know what she was talking about. She had originated the theory of “transcosmology” that let them travel to Transcosmic Earth. Apparently, Everett and the other physicists at the Institute disagreed about what TCE was—their own Earth’s past, a “parallel” world, or something else. Whatever it was, you could “translocate” to anywhere on it within a roughly 400 year “temporal window,” stay as long as you liked, then return to “their” Earth an equal amount of time later.

Nobody he talked to seemed to know why you couldn’t travel back farther than the mid-seventeenth century, or more “recent” than 1998. Rumor was the last six decades were “off-limits” because the members of the Executive Committee who oversaw the Institute didn’t want anyone alive today to be embarrassed by anything discovered by observing their younger analogs on TCE—especially themselves. Unlike his colleagues, Robbins didn’t feel those limits hurt his work. In fact, it was because of his expertise in pre-twenty-first century Western music, whose “golden age” fell within those years, that he’d been invited to join the Institute for Transcosmic Studies.

The institute was the result of an international effort to use and regulate translocation. Its purpose was to “go back in time” on TCE and collect information and “cultural artifacts,” like music, that had been lost on their own Earth. Along with a monopoly on its use, the institute was responsible for ensuring translocation wasn’t misused. There was one rule, the “First Law of Contact,” that every member of the Institute had to obey at all cost. Anyone going to TCE was to have as little contact with the people there as possible, or do anything that might change its “past.”

It was this rule that Robbins was proposing to break in a very big way.

“—And that should answer your question!” Everett folded her arms.

The Chancellor looked as confused as the rest of them. “Then I take it you believe we can alter TCE’s past without changing our own?”

Everett’s face turned crimson. “Of course! That’s what I just said! Weren’t you listening?” Cowering like everyone else, Robbins thought it amazing that this short, grandmotherly woman with silver hair pulled back severely into a tight bun could make the lot of them—all experts in their fields, and several nearly her age—feel like grade-schoolers being scolded by a strict teacher.

“Let me put it even more simply. Transcosmic Earth was the timeline that initially produced us. But ever since a temporo-quantum event made our current Universe branch off from TCE, there’s no longer any ‘causal’ relationship between our timeline and TCE’s. Now, TCE is no longer the’ past, but only ‘a’ past—one we can change without affecting the unique past, or the present, of our own branch Universe. To use a crude analogy, just as a newborn baby, once its umbilical cord is cut, exists completely separately from its mother, and continues to exist despite what may happen to her, our Earth and its timeline now exist independent of TCE.

“What Dr. Robbins proposes will prove what I’ve been telling my denser colleagues and the executive committee for years. We won’t change our own remembered’ history, we won’t blink’ ourselves out of existence by changing TCE’s history!”

The Chancellor nodded politely. “Thank you, Dr. Everett.” She turned to the white-haired man seated on her left. “Dr. Harrison?”

Cecil L. Harrison, M.D. began, “Dr. Ertmann, the physician on my staff with the most experience in field work on TCE, made a series of nocturnal visits to the subject’s apartment starting two years before he died and collected blood samples while he was sleeping. Postmortem tissue samples and ascitic fluid were also obtained hours after he died. Our analysis of the specimens confirmed the opinion of his own physicians that he died of liver failure. However, they erroneously believed it was due to alcohol abuse or syphilis. Using tests not available in the nineteenth century, Dr. Ertmann and I found it was actually caused by chronic active hepatitis, from an infection with the hepatitis B virus he contracted no more than fifteen months before he died.

“Thus, to prevent his death, we only need to give him an injection of an appropriate medicine at least a month before he was infected. Nanoscrubbers block entry of viral DNA into cells, and have a success rate of nearly 100 percent. However, scrubbers stay in the blood and other bodily fluids, and anyone else exposed to them after he was injected could also become immunized. Since it was emphasized to me that only the subject himself should be affected by what we do, I suggest immunoboosted hepatitis B vaccine be used instead. Its average success rate is still 95 percent, and it wouldn’t affect anyone besides him.”

Harrison coughed. “Bear in mind, however, that at the time he died he had other medical problems which, even if we prevent him from dying of hepatitis, will still eventually kill him. I estimate he’ll live about five, and certainly no more than ten extra years.”

“Thank you, Dr. Harrison,” the Chancellor continued. “Our guests tell us there’s no technical reason why Dr. Robbins’s proposal can’t be done. Now we must consider whether we should do it. Drs. Robbins and Brentano have already expressed their positions. Are there any other comments?”

Now, Robbins thought, was the moment of truth. Brentano was adamantly against it. But right now it was dangerous, politically speaking, for anyone to side with her. She and the philosophy and theology section she headed had been in disgrace with the executive committee since their report on what really happened at Lourdes in 1858 had leaked to the public. The Vatican had shrugged it off, saying no official articles of faith were involved, just a popular tradition. But the crowds protesting outside the Institute compound, and whoever had sent the bomb threats, disagreed. The formal complaint sent by the French government, presumably on behalf of their tourism industry, hadn’t helped either.

Lytton and Shimura should be on his side. If his proposal was approved and set a successful precedent, they had similar proposals of their own to submit.

Billingsley, as always, was an enigma.

Shimura said, “Dr. Lytton and I strongly support Dr. Robbins’s proposal.”

The Chancellor nodded at Billingsley. The latter, easily the youngest person at the table, adjusted his bow tie and horn rimmed glasses, and ran a hand through short greasy hair. “I’m ambivalent. If Howie’s plan works, I can think of projects I’d like to do, too. Like go to Earth-Two and tell the Big Bopper and his pals to not get on that plane.”

The big what? Robbins thought.

“But Toni”—he nodded at Brentano—“is afraid we’re not smart enough to know what will happen if we change Earth-Two’s past, and that we might screw things up. Based on the kind of literature I know best, I have to agree with her that violating the Prime Directive wouldn’t be a good idea. We shouldn’t risk turning the people there, or maybe even us, into lizards.”

Into what? Robbins found Billingsley’s sophomoric obsession with “popular culture” of the last century very irritating. While the other humanities sections were recovering things of real cultural value on TCE, the sociology section Billingsley headed wasted its time scanning old “films” and recording episodes of twentieth-century radio and television programs that were probably better left lost. Billingsley defended the “scholarly” nature of these projects, saying, “The best way to understand a society is to see what its people enjoy, what they consider entertainment.” But, Robbins suspected, the real reason the powers-that-be tolerated it was that those samples of pre-Digital Revolution “entertainment” were wildly popular on the public Nets—and the Institute collected a royalty each time one was downloaded. Besides, how much scholarship could you expect from someone whose doctoral thesis was entitled, “The Role of the Tropicana Club as a Microcosm of Early 1950s American Society in ‘I Love Lucy’ ”?

And Robbins hated it when Billings ley used terms he didn’t understand. He made a mental note to run a Net search on what “Prime Directive” referred to.

The Chancellor said, “Dr. Velikovsky?”

Robbins tensed. Velikovsky, of the history section, was the pivotal vote.

The latter began, “This is not an easy decision. Even a tiny, critical change in TCE’s past could have great, perhaps very negative repercussions for its later history. I can’t be certain whether saving this particular individual would be such a change. Those extra’ ten years Dr. Harrison referred to were relatively quiet, politically speaking, in his own country—though not elsewhere in Europe. While the subject himself was something of a political revolutionary, it’s difficult to see how he could affect the course of the various revolutions that occurred in Europe in 1830 and 1831. Conversely, if he were to live to 1848 or 1849, when even more critical events occurred—well, that would be even harder to predict. In that case, I would have to vote ‘no’ to Dr. Robbins’s proposal.

“However, since Dr. Harrison is convinced he’ll die no later than the 1830s, at this time I’m inclined to favor Dr. Robbins’s proposal.”

The Chancellor said, “Any other comments?”

Brentano again. “I’d like to remind everyone that the decision we make today might, as Dr. Robbins said, ‘enrich’ both our world and TCE—or it could destroy them. Even if we do have much to gain, is it worth such a terrible risk?”

Robbins said, “Although I appreciate Dr. Brentano’s concerns, as I said before, and as Drs. Everett and Velikovsky have confirmed, the risks seem minimal. And oh, how much we and TCE stand to gain! Genius, whether it is in music or some other field, is a rare and precious thing. Those individuals blessed with such great powers of creativity and original thought are given to the rest of humanity only briefly, but what they do far outlasts their own lifetime. It is tragic when one of them is taken away from us prematurely by an accident of nature, leaving his work undone—the masterpieces he might have created, unfinished, or stillborn. We have the means to correct one of those tragedies. I believe we should do it.”

“Any more comments? No?” The Chancellor continued, “Is there a second for Dr. Robbins’s proposal?”“Seconded!” Lytton and Shimura spoke simultaneously.

“Those in favor of Dr. Robbins’s proposal, raise your hands.”

Robbins’s own arm went up immediately, followed by those of Lytton and Shimura. After some hesitation, Velikovsky’s joined them.

“Opposed?”

Brentano and Billingsley.

“Let the record show that the humanities committee has voted four to two in favor of Dr. Robbins’s proposal.”

For the first time since the meeting started, Robbins relaxed. He’d won! The hardest part—getting the executive, then the science, and now the humanities committee to approve his proposal—was over. The rest should be simple—just go to TCE and do it. Robbins could barely contain his excitement.

Soon he would travel to Vienna in 1825 and save the life of Ludwig van Beethoven.

“Congratulations.”

Robbins sighed. He’d known this was coming.

Antonia had asked to come to his apartment in the staff quarters that evening. “Just to talk,” she’d said. But he knew what she wanted to talk about.

“Thank you,” he replied.

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can talk you out of it?”

“No, there isn’t.”

The muted lights in the apartment cast a lustrous sheen on Antonia’s long brown hair. Though they were both toward the middle of middle-age, unlike his own, her hair was just starting to show a little gray. And as for the rest of her—he knew all too well how heartachingly beautiful she was.

He and Antonia Brentano had been among the first of the humanities staff to come to the Institute. Though different in many ways, they found they both shared a passion for classical music. Acquaintance had turned to friendship, and then they’d discovered something else they shared—loneliness. Neither of them had ever been married, or had any close family. Immersed in his work for so many years, until he met her he hadn’t noticed what was missing from his life.

In retrospect, it was natural that they’d drifted into a brief but intense love affair—and just as natural it should end. They’d soon realized they were both too dedicated to their work to have enough time and energy left for each other. Afterwards, they’d still maintained a cordial, platonic friendship. But now they might lose even that.

They sat on the couch together silently for a while, listening to the music. A large bust of Beethoven frowned at them from atop the Steinway that filled a good part of the living room. Pictures of Robbins’s other favorite composers hung on the walls. The one of J. S. Bach seemed to be smiling in approval at the piece Robbins had selected—the master’s “Concerto in F-sharp minor, for three violins and string orchestra.” Absorbed in the first movement’s intricate counterpoint, it took him a few seconds to realize Antonia was speaking.

“Why, Howard? Why do you have to do this?”

“It’s just like I said at the meeting. I want to allow a genius whose life was cut tragically short to create new works for the benefit of all humanity.”

“Oh, cut the melodrama! If you’re really serious, you have the worse case of hubris I’ve ever seen. Is it an ego thing with you—a way to bask in Beethoven’s reflected glory by being the instrument for his ‘resurrection’? If that isn’t ‘playing God,’ I don’t know what is!”

“But I really mean it! There’s nothing selfish in this!”

The expression on Antonia’s face told him what she thought of that.

“Listen,” he began, “over the last four years my staff and I have traveled to TCE and recovered thousands of scores by the great composers that were lost for one reason or another centuries ago. We knew about some of them from surviving fragments or the incipits—the first few measures of the main theme—in catalogs of their works that the composer or a nearcontemporary compiled.”

“Like, the Kochel catalog for Mozart’s works?”

“Exactly. Since we knew about when those ‘lost’ works were composed, we’ve been able to go back and retrieve them. When we did that, however, we also found many new’ works that nobody knew anything about!”

The concerto had entered its heartrendingly lyrical slow movement, a Largo in A major. “The piece by Bach we re listening to now is one of them—unknown, forgotten for over three centuries until I went to Cothen in 1722 and scanned a copy of the score. By going to TCE we’ve managed to nearly double the amount of his music we had before the Institute was formed!”

“I don’t understand. How did all that music get lost?”

“Several reasons. After Beethoven’s time, we already had nearly all of the music the ‘major’ composers wrote. Unless they destroyed what they considered ‘inferior’ works, like Chopin. Or, if they were very careless with the manuscripts.” Robbins smiled to himself. After rummaging through Schubert’s closet at various times during the mid-1820s, he’d finally found the completed third and fourth movements of the composer’s B minor symphony—the one that used to be known as the “Unfinished.”

“Before Beethoven’s time, however, very little of a composer’s music was published. Mosdy, the scores of their works existed only in a small number of hand written copies, all of which could easily be lost by accident or neglect. Plus, the major composers before Beethoven were very prolific. Bach himself wrote nearly 2,000 works. They wrote so much music it was hard even for them to preserve or keep track of everything they wrote!

“But now my staff and I have become victims of our own success. We’ve managed to recover just about everything those composers wrote. At the rate we re going, soon we may not need to go to TCE anymore.”

“So that’s it!” The anger was back in Antonia’s eyes. “This proposal is just your way to justify staying at the Institute!”

The concerto began its fiery third movement, back in the tonic minor.

“No, that’s not it at all! Till now, all we’ve been doing is acting like scavengers. We’ve been retrieving these lost works for ourselves, we now have them—but the ‘First Law of Contact’ forbids us to give them back to the people of TCE! What I’m going to do will benefit both us and them!

“Lytton understands. Think of all the poets and writers who died ‘before their time’! Like Percy Shelley—drowned at age twenty-nine in a stupid boating accident. Or John Keats, who died at age twenty-six from tuberculosis, something that Harrison could prevent easily. Edward says the first thing he’d do is give Charles Dickens a few more years of life, so he can finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The point is, if any of them lived longer on TCE, anything new they created would become part of both our cultural heritage—and theirs!

“And Shimura—his list has van Gogh, and—.”

“All right, all right! I don’t disagree with you about the possible benefits, just the risks.” She glanced at the brooding plaster figure on the piano. “But why Beethoven? Why not someone who died younger—like Mozart? He’d probably live even longer and write more music than Ludwig.”

“But that might backfire! If Beethoven lived too much longer, his career would overlap those of Chopin, Schumann, and other composers active in the late 1830s and ’40s. If he was alive and writing constantly greater masterpieces himself then, they might feel discouraged, unequal to the task of reaching his standard of excellence, and not write much themselves! Although we’d still have them, TCE could be deprived of their greatest works. The same thing could happen if we saved Mozart, only worse—because Beethoven himself would be one of the composers who might be ‘discouraged’!

“But remember, Harrison said Beethoven won’t live much longer even if I do temporarily save’ him. So, both we and TCE should get the best of both worlds—a few more works by one of the greatest composers of all time, and no bad effects on his contemporaries. Plus, we’ll prove we can do something good for the people of TCE, too.”

“But that’s the real question, isn’t it? How do we know we’ll do something good for them?” Antonia took a piece of paper from her purse. “Billingsley asked me to give you this. He says you haven’t answered his messages, and he’s been too busy making trips to TCE to catch you in person.” She smiled grimly. “He said he wants to salvage as much pop-culture’ as he can from the twentieth century before you ‘screw things up and wipe it out.’ ”

How typical, Robbins thought. He took the note and stuck it in his pocket.

The Bach concerto sounded its final cadence. In the silence that followed, Antonia sighed. “It’s getting late, and I have to leave.”

Robbins walked her to the door. In the open doorway she said, “I don’t care at all for what you’re going to do. Even if the chance of something bad happening is small, it’s still too much.” She hesitated. “But I do care about you. Whatever happens, take care of yourself.”

She gave him a brief hug, brushed her lips chastely across his cheek, and was gone.

The scent of her perfume lingered in the empty room. Sitting down at the piano, he played “Für Elise,” mentally changing the title to “Für Antonia.” “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked the bust of Beethoven. The latter scowled back at him.

Then he remembered Billingsley’s note. It read, “Dear Howie, Please read these stories. They might make you change your mind about changing history on Earth-Two.”

There was a list of ten titles and authors. Well, why not?

“Computer?”

“Yes?” a warm contralto voice answered from the walls.

Robbins looked at the first title on the list. “Access story, ‘A Sound of Thunder.’ ”

“Category, science fiction?”

Robbins frowned. “I suppose so.”

“Author, Bradbury, Ray?”

He checked the note. “Yes.”

“Would you like it read to you, or a printout?”

“Printout.”

Robbins watched as sheets of paper spat out of a slot in the nearby wall into the wire basket attached beneath it. When the printout stopped, he read the first few pages—then threw the papers down in disgust. Hunting dinosaurs—how ridiculous!

He should have known better. Once he’d asked Billingsley why he always used the term “Earth-Two” instead of the standard “Transcosmic Earth.” The latter had replied very seriously that it referred to a series of “graphic novels” written in the last half of the twentieth century. He’d given Robbins a list of titles and authors then, too.

Intrigued in spite of himself (What was so “graphic” about them? And what did those strange titles like Flash of Two Worlds refer to?), he’d asked for printouts from the Net then, too. His surprise at receiving pages of small, crudely colored and lettered pictures turned to anger when, at his query, the computer said those so-called “graphic novels” were more commonly referred to as “comic books.” It was so—typical of Billingsley, quoting from simple-minded stories written for children!

Robbins read more titles on the note. Timescape. By His Bootstraps. The Men Who Murdered Mohammed. Appointment in Berlin. Then he crumpled it and tossed it on the floor. Probably more of the same. Not worth wasting his time over.

Fingers poised over the keyboard, he hesitated. Right now he didn’t feel in a heaven-storming, Beethovean mood. Something lighter—like Chopin. Playing through several of the master’s etudes from Opus 25, some of his tension drained away. As the last fluttering strains of the delicate etude no. 9 in G-flat major, the one nicknamed “The Butterfly,” laded away in the quiet room, he addressed the bust on the piano again. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

Beethoven scowled at him even more disapprovingly.