15

“Well, here they are,” Brangwen said unnecessarily as he set the two cages on the floor next to the feeding door. He was puffing from exertion and completely stressed out by those fools down at the animal shelter. What difference did it make to them what he did with the animals, he wondered irritably, when it meant two fewer animal mouths for the city to feed?

Both Darcy and Mr. Eddington came forward curiously while Michael shrugged off the green jacket he’d worn to the shelter. He wasn’t a total idiot; they’d never have given him the cat and the dog had they seen his lab coat. As it was, he’d lied through his teeth on the adoption forms. Yes, there’s someone home to walk and feed them; no, I won’t have the cat declawed.

“What did you get?” Damon asked eagerly.

Michael thought the man was looking worse with each passing hour. Gone was the unique, deep-thinking gaze that had impressed Michael so much; in its place on Eddington’s face was a mask of gaunt desperation. “A cat and a dog,” Michael said testily. “That’s what we all agreed on.”

“I know that,” Eddington said sharply. “What kind?”

Darcy bent and undid the catches on the smaller carrier, then flipped open the lid. Wide yellow eyes surrounded by a ruff of thick orange fur stared mistrustfully up at her, and the feline meowed harshly as she lifted it from the box. Darcy ignored the noise and scratched the cat’s head. “Tabby,” she said simply. “In other words, your basic alley cat.”

The look Damon directed at the cat was clearly disappointed. “What about the dog?”

Michael shrugged. “Who knows? A street mutt, maybe a little larger than most. Enough scars to see he’s been around awhile and probably knows how to fight. Take a look.” He flipped the latch on the dog’s case and opened the door, then reached inside and found the leash still attached to the dog’s collar. After a few seconds of steady tugging, the dog came out. Not particularly friendly, it kept its ears flat against its skull as it eyed the room and its occupants with suspicion; it didn’t bother to acknowledge the cat in Darcy’s arms. The dog’s tail stayed tucked protectively between its legs.

“Crap,” Damon said in disgust. “The thing probably doesn’t weigh forty pounds.”

“Forty-two,” Michael said pointedly. “And he’s the biggest one they had. When I told them I was interested in something bigger, they told me anything larger than forty-five pounds is euthanized if it’s not picked up by the owner within two days. They’re so seldom adopted that they don’t even bother offering them to the public.” Michael watched as Eddington extended his hand toward the dog experimentally and the dog gave a low growl and backed up a couple of steps until it hit the end of the leash. “At least he’s not fawning over us,” he offered.

“He might as well be,” Eddington grunted. “He’s too small to do much else.”

“There’s always the newspaper,” Darcy suggested. “We could check out the ads, see if we could come up with something better.”

Michael looked doubtful. “I think those are almost always puppies. Most people who get rid of full-grown dogs are picky about where they go. You know, the ‘free to good home’ syndrome.”

“Well, this is what we’ve got, so let’s just try them and see what happens,” Eddington cut in. “Maybe they’ll do the trick.” He turned his back and headed for his recording console and Michael shot a glance at Darcy. Her shrug and curt nod said it all.

I doubt it.

* * *

“Okay, I’m ready.” For the first time since he’d barged into the apiary this morning ranting like a madman, Eddington looked almost like his old self again—alert, eager, his eyes sharp and focused as his gaze tracked Mozart in his cage. “You can put them in anytime.”

“Here we go,” Michael said. He inclined his head and Darcy gave a final, companionable rub on the cat’s head. The thing had been purring for the last ten minutes, and although Darcy’s face was as cool and expressionless as it always was, Michael was certain she felt like a traitor to the animal.

But work came first, and she leaned over and pushed the tabby into the smaller, one-way feeding channel that led to Mozart’s cage. “So long, furball.”

Without letting himself think about it, Michael did the same with the dog, avoiding a bite when he shoved on the dog’s rump only because the interlocking entry valves automatically closed and prevented the dog from coming back at him. “He’s in.”

“There you go, Mozart,” Darcy said softly as she knelt close to the window and peered into the alien’s cage. “A couple of visitors for you.”

Michael saw Damon tense at his console, then jab the Record button as Mozart caught sight of the animals and stalked toward them. The older man’s breath caught in his throat, and he had a fleeting moment of empathy for the composer. What would the alien sound like when he screamed? Would it be as beautiful as Damon believed? A sound trickled through the speakers, but it was devastatingly disappointing: nothing more than one of Mozart’s dark hisses, a sound that reminded Michael, and no doubt Damon and Darcy, of a noise he’d heard only from filmdiscs… the drawn-out sizzling of red-hot iron dipped in water. The cat squalled suddenly, followed immediately by an admirably savage snarl from the dog that made Michael’s eyes widen: whatever the canine had learned from life on the streets, it had become quite adept at making itself sound larger than it was.

But for Mozart… hardly a challenge. A blur of bluish-black motion and it was done, as difficult to Mozart as stepping on an ant was to a man, like the hand of God descending and wiping out someone or something’s existence with barely a warning. Four seconds of silence, and Damon’s shoulders slumped as he pressed the End Record button. “It’s not enough,” he said dejectedly. “These animals were… they were nothing. Nothing. Can you hear him now? He’s laughing at us, for God’s sake. Cats, dogs—to him these are only contemptible amusements.” His hands came up and he rubbed jerkily at his face, then looked at his palms oddly. Michael wondered briefly if Eddington was hallucinating. “We need to get something bigger. Sheep, cows, bulls, for God’s sake. If we don’t give him something he finds competitive, this is all he’ll ever give us. Hissing—nothing more.”

Neither bioengineer said anything but Darcy’s eyes were narrow as she glanced Michael’s way. It wasn’t difficult for Michael to remember their unspoken exchange earlier today.

I doubt it.

* * *

The cow turned out to be about as worthless as the sheep did, and privately Michael thought the apiary was starting to smell like a barnyard as well as occasionally sound like one. He had been vaguely worried that people on the streets would notice the crates on the loading docks outside and wonder why a concert hall would be unloading animals, but no one ever did; once inside and emptied, the containers stunk of animal sweat and manure, and the group was stuck with them for days until workmen were found who were security-cleared to come into the apiary to haul them away. Michael had seen Darcy, whose demeanor was usually so cool and unaffected, sniffing the arm of her jacket with a repulsed look on her face as she realized that the smell of the animals was seeping into all their clothes. The alien had made short work of the cow, which had done nothing but freeze in place and low mournfully as Mozart disemboweled it. The sheep had been quicker and had at least given Mozart something to chase, but its end was swift and produced only a few pathetic, panicked bleats on Damon’s recording.

* * *

The three of them endured each other’s monotonous company for four endless days before the crate from India finally arrived. The creature inside it packed a lot more force and raw strength than anything they’d pitted against the Homeworld life-form so far. As revolted as he was by the continued killings and by the sight of Mozart’s messy but methodical feasting afterward, the expectant atmosphere was contagious and Michael couldn’t help being excited about the struggle to come—though not nearly as electrified as Eddington was. When the crate finally arrived, Eddington had become so much of a basket case that he could barely communicate with Michael and Darcy; his words tumbled over each other and he left sentences dangling and directions incomplete. It was a good thing the two bioengineers had worked enough with Eddington to know the details of each attempted recording session.

“Get ready to let him loose,” Eddington said. His voice was shrill. “One, two, three—now!” He slammed a hand onto the Record button and watched, eyes bulging, gaze fixed on the view into the cage, ears attuned to every pinpoint of sound the earphones would feed into his head.

The workmen had carefully prepositioned the crate at the entrance to Mozart’s cage and made the hook-ups, and now Darcy hit the lever that simultaneously lifted the front of the shipping container and slid open the largest of the entries into the alien’s enclosure. Inside, Mozart advanced almost carelessly, lulled by the docile animals pitted against him before now, expecting another easy kill and subsequent meal.

Stupid but ill-tempered, the wild gaur bull shook its head and snorted, then lowered its head and lumbered all the way into the cage. When its red-rimmed eyes fixed on the alien, it bellowed. The noise was loud and long, and the animal sounded like a massive horn reverberating inside the chamber; the sound rose and fell, punctuated with the huffing of its solid breathing as it leaped sideways, hoofs scraping across the textured plastic of the floor in a move surprisingly quick for an animal of its size and bulk. Still unsuspecting, Mozart went into a half crouch and began to advance as the gaur bull tensed and its massive head dropped as far as it could on its shoulders, stronger, this one clearly a warning. Mozart moved closer, unaffected by the animal’s noise, still apparently assuming this was another of the placid creatures he’d faced over the past week. It was a significant misjudgment, and the alien was unprepared for the bull’s heavy-bodied charge and the long, curving horn that pierced his left side, sliding neatly under the row of armored ribs as the steer’s weight drove him backward. Acid blood sprayed the bull’s face and it went crazy with pain, lurching and almost going down on forelegs that suddenly seemed far too small to support its weight. Its bawls filled the speakers, escalating to a frenzy as Mozart’s screams of pain and fury joined in and the alien began swiping at the bull with razor-edged claws, splitting the animal’s thick hide in a dozen places.

Outside the cage, Michael glanced quickly at Darcy, then at Eddington. The musician was rapt with attention, his fingers sailing over the dials and levers on the recording console. “Listen to him sing,” Eddington managed. He raised one hand, spread the fingers, then folded them into a fist. “It’s wonderful… like catching lightning in your hands!”

A roar of agony poured through the speakers. Michael spun back to the cage’s window and saw that Mozart had his long, sharp fingers wrapped around his opponent’s horns. Suddenly the alien twisted his lower body so that his tail was at right angles to the rest of him and flipped the segmented length of flesh like a whip against the bull’s muscled flank. As the Synsound team watched through the window, transfixed, the gaur bellowed louder and tried to pull away, only to find Mozart’s tail wrapped securely around its brawny shoulders.

In a final, thunderous bout of speaker fuzz, Mozart ripped the bull’s head completely off its torso.

For a few seconds there was silence. The alien flung its trophy aside and backed away, as if waiting to see if the bull would somehow rise to challenge him again. Darcy and Michael stared at the blood spray on the walls inside the cage, looking through a spatter of red that oddly enough resembled… freckles.

Then Eddington sighed and punched a button on the console; the red Light overhead that announced “Recording” immediately flicked off. “Tremendous,” Eddington announced. “But too damned short.” He made a fist again and held it close to his chest, as though he were trying to calm his pounding heart. His grin was dark and full of potential as he contemplated the things to come. “Now we know what he needs, though, what will make him truly sing. He needs something like himself that can hurt him, something that will make him the victim rather than the hunter.”

* * *

Thus far, Darcy had been the person elected to approach Ahiro on an as-needed basis, and she didn’t hesitate now. She had no idea how or what Ahiro was going to do to make Eddington happy, but that was his problem. One need only do the math to figure it out: she and Michael could merely work with what they had. If Ahiro did not supply the raw material, they could not be held responsible for a lack of results.

Darcy was becoming more suspicious about Eddington by the hour, but when she voiced her concerns to Michael, he brushed them off. “Don’t worry about it,” Michael said. “You’re probably right; more than likely, he is addicted to something or other. So what? You know the statistics. Eighty percent of the artist and musician population are users. They take everything from jelly to marijuana, though the green stuff’s nearly impossible to get now. Most of them will die before they see age forty.”

“I don’t want to work with a junkie,” Darcy said stiffly. “I don’t think they can be trusted. They’re not stable.”

“No offense, but when did Damon Eddington ever seem stable to you? Nothing about this project is normal.” Michael shrugged. “Morals have their place, Darcy, but Synsound isn’t a big champion of the majority. Save it for dinner with the folks—”

“I don’t keep in touch with my family.”

“That’s not the point,” her coworker said. There was a sharpness to his voice that suggested she was trying even his easygoing temperament. “This is not Sunday church. If you didn’t know that when you took the job here, you must’ve been living in an ecology pod. Hell, most of the revenues in this corporation probably come from addicts who float through each day carrying discplayers. The headphones are probably implanted right into their damned brains. Besides, how can you complain about working with a user after the four of us all had a hand in the death of that Petrillo guy?”

Darcy finally stopped bringing up the subject, although her suspicions about Eddington were confirmed early one evening when she followed him into Gramercy and watched him slip into an alley off Irving Place just beyond the park. Peering around the corner of the building at the mouth of the alley, she saw him deep in conversation with a motley-looking guy who had a skullcap of hot pink hair, dark glasses, and a ring of oversize pearlescent beads imbedded in the flabby skin around his neck. It didn’t take a PhD to figure it out, and when Damon offered the man a stack of bills and accepted two glass vials in return, things were pretty much settled.

Like it or not, there could be no more denying that Eddington was a jelly addict. It didn’t show… much… anywhere in his work, though. Whatever the stuff had done to him when he’d first started using, Damon had finally adapted pretty well. He never zoned out at the mixer console or lost control of his thought processes in the sense that he couldn’t make decisions or operate the equipment. After nearly opening her mouth on two separate occasions, Darcy finally decided that silence was the best policy here; musicians were temperamental creatures, prone to solitude and a free creative license. Eddington wouldn’t take kindly to her trying to bring down an iron fist, and Michael was right: who was she to tell him what to do, anyway? Besides, everyone knew once you tasted royal jelly, you were in it until the end. Like it or not. Ultimately she didn’t care what he smoked or took or injected; he could do what he liked to his own body. She just didn’t feel he could be trusted and was loath to turn her back on him.

Back at the apiary, Eddington began to put in as many hours watching Mozart as Darcy did, and she couldn’t help but marvel at the way he stood at the window and murmured, palms and fingertips pressed hard against the glass as if he could touch Mozart through it, sometimes talking to the alien, more often addressing no one but himself. “I can feel you,” Eddington whispered, “your rage, your hunger. But why can’t I hear your music? Sing for me, so that I can sing for you. Give me more, Mozart, more.” His monotonous words were like a litany, and she was getting pretty tired of hearing them; the sooner Ahiro got back, the better.

* * *

Darcy had almost given up and gone home when Ahiro and two of this companions finally arrived with another animal crate. Ahiro led the way, steering the crate while the others pushed it along on a wheeled platform. On his way to the bathroom at the rear of the apiary’s outer chamber, Damon froze at the sight of the covered container, the expression on his face a mixture of anticipation and misgiving. In his usual fashion, Ahiro did not smile or elaborate. “We have a beast for it to fight,” he said simply. He and his men didn’t wait to be told to slide the container into the loading position at the feeder door.

“What—what is it?” Damon’s eyes were wide and beginning to fill with wild hope.

“It is extremely fast,” Ahiro said. “With fangs and claws and the ability to defend itself.” Without another word he grasped the heavy green canvas draped over the crate and pulled it away.

Darcy gasped and her hand went to her throat as a feral growl rumbled out of the exposed cage; cautiously she moved forward with the others for a better view. Inside the rough cage was a sleek and beautiful black panther with glittering golden eyes; at the sight of the people, the animal’s mouth twisted into a snarl filled with sharp white teeth.

“You must have gotten this from the Bronx Zoo!” Darcy exclaimed. “How on earth did you get it out?”

“We do what is necessary to please Mr. Eddington and to continue the project,” Ahiro said. He didn’t bother to elaborate as his men used poles to reposition the front of the crate until it was pressed against the sealed entrance to Mozart’s cage. When the end piece was pulled free, he jerked his head toward his two companions and they bowed slightly and slipped out of the apiary.

“I hope you weren’t seen,” Michael said in a worried voice.

“Who cares where it came from?” Damon said excitedly. He was giggling like a schoolchild, pacing at the rear of the panther’s cage, his movements making the cat emit a steady warning growl. “Finally we’ve got something that will give Mozart a real fight. This will be wonderful, I know it!” He chuckled, then practically vaulted to his recording console, laughing outright as the panther hissed and swiped a paw between the bars of its cage at the movement. It took less than a half minute for him to rub his hands together gleefully and announce, “I’m ready.”

Everyone in the room seemed to stop breathing as Ahiro tossed the canvas back over the cage so the animal inside wouldn’t claw at him, then leaned forward and pulled the switch that opened the final barrier between it and Mozart’s enclosure. Staying carefully expressionless, Darcy saw Damon smile maniacally as he hit the Record control and his fingers poised expertly over dozens of controls on the recording console. Ahiro’s eyes were narrow and watchful, his merciless gaze riveted on the door to Mozart’s cage as it slid open. Only Michael was frowning, his face pale around his wide eyes, as if he already knew the fate of the exquisite black cat. But… didn’t they all?

When the door began to open, the caged animal dropped instinctively into a crouch and pulled its lips back to show those fabulous pointed teeth. There was nothing reticent or timorous about this cat, and the instant the gap was large enough, the panther sprang. A savage snarl filled the speakers as Mozart back-stepped in surprise, then twisted away reflexively as he sensed the animal hurtling toward him in midair. When the panther struck the alien, it landed on his back and sank the claws of all four paws deep into Mozart’s outer husk.

The enraged scream Mozart gave as the panther’s teeth slashed at the back of its plated head sounded like a combination of overloaded boiler steam and maddened elephant.

The alien whirled crazily as it tried to throw the cat off, tail thrashing in the air until its barbed end scraped the panther’s flank and parted skin and fur.

The cat’s yowls joined Mozart’s shrieks of pain and it released its hold and leaped sideways before Mozart could grab at it; without hesitating it charged again, this time slashing through the alien’s tough carapace and ripping at the dark, knobby flesh of the life-form’s midsection with gleaming incisors nearly two inches long.

Outside the cage, Darcy gasped and stepped up to the glass. “The panther’s going to kill him!” She had to shout to be heard over the pounding noise coming through the speaker setup, and Eddington had no inclination to lower the volume. Rather, he seemed to be riding the waves of sound, swaying on the vibrations hammering through the apiary.

Ahiro answered from somewhere behind her, but she didn’t want to take her gaze from the battle taking place inside the alien’s enclosure to see exactly where he stood. “Not a chance.” She sensed his amusement and decided he was patronizing her; his disdain made her want to slap him. Setting her jaw, she started to turn to scowl at him. “But what if it does?” she demanded. “Then we—”

“Look,” Ahiro commanded.

She spun and cringed openly, feeling sudden sympathy for the cat as she registered the sight. Ahiro was right, of course; the panther had the spirit but never, in reality, a genuine chance. Separated by the wall of unbreakable glass, Mozart was a mere four feet away and Darcy had a detailed view of the front grip that Mozart had managed to gain on his adversary. Scratching and biting viciously to the end, the cat was flipped on its back and eviscerated while it was still struggling within the spiked hold of the alien. Its final scream of torment mixed with a sound from Mozart that was very much like a call of triumph.

* * *

‘This is beautiful, exquisite!” He was talking out loud, but it didn’t matter; none of the others could hear him over the screeching of the panther and the shrieks of Mozart. “Listen to it—fierce, orgasmic, consuming.” There is so much I can blend it with, he thought deliriously, Henze, Corigliano, Shostakovich, Honegger, Hovhaness, Nancarrow, all those twentieth-century apostles of rage and soul-grinding sorrow. How easy it would be to close his eyes and listen forever to Mozart as he envisioned the magnificent compositions to come—

The music stopped.

No!” Damon leaped to his feet so quickly that his chair fell backward and landed with a crash on the floor that made the rest of the room’s occupants jump. “Where did the music go—it must continue!” His hands twisted into claws and he wanted to dig them into his own face in disappointment. “Damn it—that was too easy!” His fingers closed into a fist as his eyes squeezed shut and his head tilted back. Tears of rage burned small, wet trails down his cheeks and his chest heaved. It wasn’t enough… I need more.”

Mr. Eddington,” Ahiro said quietly, “perhaps I can provide you with another animal, something larger?”

Damon sank to his knees in front of Mozart’s cage; inside, the alien was already beginning the process of stripping the panther’s flesh, feeding a voracious appetite that seemed never to be satisfied. “Another animal?” Damon whispered. “What animal? Look at him, Ahiro. A few minutes ago he was injured, cut in a dozen places by the panther. Now he looks fine and eats the same animal that wounded him.” Damon let his head fall forward in defeat, resting his overheated forehead against the cold glass. Perhaps this was what Synsound and Keene had aimed for all along— to humiliate him, force him to surrender to the company’s idea of “music” and use his fine composition skills for their profit. If so, he’d never felt so close to giving in. “It’s no use—I’ll never succeed in this project. Hell, Ahiro, no animal is vicious enough to keep Mozart busy long enough to give me what I want—what I need.”

As Vance and Brangwen quietly began the routine of assembling and analyzing the data recorded on their equipment during this last battle, he and Ahiro watched Mozart for a long time. Finally, Ahiro took a pair of tight black gloves from his pockets and tugged them on, then spoke in a voice that was soft and distant, and vaguely ominous.

“I believe there is one such animal, Mr. Eddington,” he said. “Give me time… to capture it.”