“So,” Brangwen said around his last mouthful of food, “now that you have it all, what’s next?”
Damon toyed with his own food for a few seconds before answering, pushing the remnants of whatever it was—something chow mein—idly around on its plastic plate. This was the first meal the bioengineer had shared with Damon since the fourth man, the one who’d claimed to work at MedTech, had been killed by Mozart somewhere in the tunnels. Tonight Brangwen was dressed to go out; his normal white lab coat had been swapped for a white sports jacket over a mauve shirt above tan slacks. The bioengineer had been especially careful about food spills, and cinched smartly around his neck was a white leather tie that Damon thought looked absurd. “The easy part,” the composer finally answered. “Plugging the alien cries into the framework I’ve already developed, melding the two in the right places.”
As usual, Vance had rushed through the evening’s meal and was now back at her self-appointed post in front of Mozart’s cage. It had become almost normal to see the alien on the other side of the glass wall; no matter where Vance chose to sit along its length, Mozart invariably found her and settled on the other side. Damon looked over at her, then picked absently at a few crumbs on the tabletop. “But… I don’t ‘have it all,’ as you put it.” In a way, he wished he did, wished the project was over and the Symphony of Hate completed. He was getting tired of the apiary, with its quietly filtered air and constant hum of small ventilation ducts, miles of steel-protected wiring and hydraulic-driven equipment. Every time he tried to catch a nap, he saw blinking console lights and heard the drone of laser and dot matrix printers in his head, like some stupid commercial ditty stuck in his brain.
Brangwen’s eyes widened and he brushed off the table fastidiously, then leaned forward. “You don’t? You mean—”
Damon spread his hands. “I mean I need something more. One more piece.” Brangwen looked utterly puzzled. Jesus, Damon thought in disgust, it was useless, like handing a violin to an airhammer operator. How could he make this man understand, who listened to anything as long as someone stopped long enough to slap a brightly colored label on it that said it was music? “I’d go in there and face Mozart myself if I thought I would get the sound I’m looking for,” Damon said grimly.
“My God, Mr. Eddington. What more can it do?” Brangwen stared first at him, then looked over at the creature squatting restlessly by the window across from Vance. “How much louder can it scream?”
If nothing else that the other man had said to him in past conversations illustrated his ignorance of Damon’s dreams, this final question did. When he answered, Damon had to speak through clenched teeth. “It’s not the volume, Brangwen. Can’t you understand that, man? Christ, we can turn it up as loud as we want. It’s the quality that’s significant, that makes the music understood by those who hear it.” Without realizing it, Damon’s hand slipped inside the pocket of his pants and around his stash of three vials of jelly; as always, the substance picked up body heat and magnified it, gave back more than it received. He prided himself on his ability to keep the vials in his pocket without downing all of them at once. That was the kind of rigid self-control that set him above and apart from spineless addicts like Ken Petrillo who would’ve swallowed the contents of all three within a few minutes. “For God’s sake, don’t you get it?” He couldn’t keep the frustrated tone out of his voice. “What matters is the thought behind the scream and what caused the scream, what made the music. Those are the things that are conveyed to the listener through the sound. Pain—physical, emotional, or…” His fingers tightened longingly around one of the hot vials of jelly and for an instant Damon had a flash memory of the scene that had played in his head when he’d downed his first dose. “Or spiritual,” he finished.
“Well,” Brangwen said brightly, “I don’t think you’re going to find what you’re looking for tonight.” He stood, then leaned over the table again. Despite the night-on-the-town outfit, Brangwen’s face suddenly looked tired. “Look, Mr. Eddington, everybody says that if an artist or a musician goes too far into their work, they lose touch with the rest of the world and it affects their progress. I’ve heard that writers read outside of their genre to keep their viewpoints from getting stale and to bring more creativity into their stuff. Why not get your mind off Mozart and the Symphony of Hate for a few hours? I’ve got passes to the Helltones’ concert upstairs. It’s so far removed from your stuff that it’ll clean out your head and make you look at this project like it was brand-new. What do you say—care to join me?”
For a second Damon’s mouth dropped open. “No thanks, Brangwen. I hate that trash. I’d sooner have my eardrums punctured than listen to it, and I promise there’s nothing in that show that will in any way improve my creativity or influence my music.” Damon shot him a sideways glance. “But thanks for your concern.”
Brangwen gave him a sheepish smile, as if realizing he might have gone too far. “I hate it, too,” he said confidentially. “But I think it’s important to be familiar with all aspects of contemporary music. If you limit yourself to certain kinds, how will you know what else is out there? And what will you compare it to?” He shrugged. “If you never listen to their music, how will you know what you missed? For that matter, how will you know you hate it? At least this way you know what the critics are hearing, too.”
“You’re assuming that crap is music,” Damon said sarcastically. He knew Brangwen was probably lying— no one listened to music they truly hated—and his mouth twisted. “Forgive me if I don’t think it qualifies.”
“Yeah, well.” Brangwen shrugged again, then looked across the apiary to where Vance knelt in front of Mozart’s cage. “Darcy, how about you?” he called. “Care to take a breather from the job and join an old man for an evening? I’ll even spring for a drink afterward.”
Damon tensed; for a long moment Vance seemed to consider her coworker’s offer, then she shook her head. “No thanks, Michael. I’m going to stay here and observe Mozart.”
Brangwen’s pudgy face sagged in disappointment, then he recovered and fussily smoothed his tie. “Okay, if that’s what you want. You guys have a peaceful evening.” He chuckled. “I’m sure I won’t—my ears’ll be vibrating for a week. See you later.” With a final cheerful wave, he ducked out of the apiary.
Damon stared after Brangwen for a long time, wondering if the older man knew just how insulted Damon had been to be invited to the Helltones’ concert. For a second it seemed he had, then the bioengineer had brushed it off, but Damon couldn’t. Of all the groups around right now, he found that particular band of mutated androids particularly distasteful. Damon scowled to himself and shook his head. Brangwen and the rest of the insidiously empty-headed people like him who paid good money for those tickets deserved to lose their hearing—they certainly wasted it—and with the concert speakers blasting out that garbage, they just might. What would be going into their ears tonight wasn’t real music anyway.
He turned his attention back to Darcy Vance and watched her without speaking, feeling his pulse jump nervously. Preoccupied with Mozart, she appeared to have forgotten Damon was still in the apiary with her—as usual—and he watched, enthralled, as she slowly held up one hand to the glass directly in front of Mozart and rotated it. Inside his cage, the alien tilted his head thoughtfully as if he were aware of her experiment, his sharp white grimace never wavering. Was it processing her movements? Memorizing them? How? Perhaps the bioengineers and bioscientists and yes, even the warfare units of the armed forces had been wrong in their declaration that the aliens couldn’t see. This creature’s cage was soundproof unless they turned on the two-way speaker, and safety necessitated that the air supply from the rest of the building be completely neutralized before it entered the enclosure. No smells got out—thank God—and no smells got in except through the feeder cage doorway. How, then, did Mozart know— always—the exact location on the glass surface at which he could reach out his claw-tipped fingers to mirror Vance’s? It was eerie how every time she brought her fingertips to the glass, never quite touching the surface, the alien’s were always on the other side.
Keeping carefully silent, Damon drew one of the vials of jelly from his pocket and broke the seal, downing the contents in one gulp. The physical reaction was nearly instantaneous: every one of his senses shifted into overdrive at the same time as his mind spun ahead to that maddening if only speculation. If only I could make the alien scream for the loss of something it values. Of all the sounds that existed in the known universe, that was the if only that Damon needed to finally complete his Symphony of Hate, to fulfill him and his dark musical child.
The second phase of the jelly’s reaction made him relax, instilled him with confidence and a feeling of serenity when he should be anything but. On the other side of the apiary, Vance had rearranged her position to settle Indian style in front of the glass just to the right of the feeder cage; Mozart crouched on the other side, somehow, as always, sensing her presence. A glance at the speaker showed Damon that the red light was glowing; Vance had hit the Toggle button so that Mozart could hear the small world that existed just beyond his glass barrier. Her whispery voice floated across to Damon, the jelly expanding his hearing ability until every word was as clear as if she were speaking to him from a foot away. Soft, slightly lisping, the sound of her voice—
“I’m sorry, Mozart. I haven’t been feeding you lately, have I? I haven’t had to.”
—unaccountably erotic. There it was again, as Damon watched with wide eyes… that human hand to alien hand against the glass, a mankind to alien life-form bond that no one could explain. What was Mozart feeling, right now, as his deadly fingers stroked the quartz glass? Did the huge, carapace-covered creature feel desire? Or were his movements nothing more than an often-repeated “scratch test” of the glass as he continued his search for a weak spot in the walls of his prison?
As the glow of the jelly in his system reached its peak, Damon stood and walked soundlessly to the small group of instruments next to the recording console, his steps slow and precise, measured for efficiency in every way. There weren’t many instruments down here—a few guitars, a double bass, a small keyboard—but they were all cabled to the amplifier on Damon’s sound console. The keyboard, he decided after a quick study of the array, would serve his needs as well as anything else. Keeping his mind purposely focused on what his actions would ultimately achieve rather than the steps necessary for him to get there, Damon quietly disconnected the instrument and drew it free of the tangled web of electronic cables and plugs. As he silently carried it across the apiary and stopped behind Vance, his pulse stuttered crazily when Mozart shifted without warning, as though he could see Damon coming up behind his mentor but could do nothing about it. Did the creature have a sixth sense? Did he know what Damon was about to do? But the alien only rocked back on his haunches and was again still.
Almost panting, Damon squeezed the plastic warily a final time before he raised it over his head. Countless sacrifices had been made throughout the ages in the name of the arts, and just because this was the twenty-second century didn’t mean that all the offerings were over. In a way, Darcy Vance was like Ken Petrillo. The former brilliant guitarist had given himself completely to bring life to one of the creatures that helped to create his life drug and bring unheard melodies into his mind; Vance would soon have the ultimate opportunity to test her own theories and find out if Mozart did, indeed, feel an attachment for her. The keyboard’s case was hard, but not, Damon hoped, hard enough to kill.
He didn’t want her dead.