After crossing the Sahara without sighting an oasis, the cool shelter of the foyer welcomed us. Cool it might have been, calm it was not. It seemed that every media representative in the Galaxy was here, all clamouring for our attention. It was at that point my translator cut out. Taragis appeared at my elbow and steered us towards a corner of the foyer.
“Won’t do any good,” I said in his ear. “My translator’s cut out again.” He said something. “Overload. Too many languages together. It happened before.”
He said something else and I shrugged. He led us to a cordoned-off corner where the logos of the various companies who were sponsoring this event were prominently displayed. Sir Sacred-Trust-in-God, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners was there already accompanied by two beings I assumed were fellow Board members. I was shocked by his appearance. In the week since I’d seen him last, he’d aged ten years.
He looked at me enquiringly. It wasn't a particularly hostile look.
I tapped the side of my head. “Sorry. My translator’s cut out.”
He nodded.
Taragis was addressing the assembled media people. I could tell from their expressions of amusement that he was talking about my hearing problem. The Chairman stepped up and began to answer questions. That got me worried. I couldn’t hear what he was saying so I wouldn’t know how to respond if I was asked a similar question.
There was a slight pop. “…termined to carry on in the best traditions of the Lottery,” the Chairman was saying.
I smiled and nodded. Taragis glanced at me and I nodded at him.
“Can you hear us now, Crawford,” some wag cried, having caught the interchange.
I leant forward and cupped my ear. “You’ll have to speak up. I’m a bit deaf, you know.”
This brought laughter and a barrage of voices. I reared back with an expression of alarm and waved my hands frantically.
“Sirs. Madams. Please. If you all speak at once this blooming translator’s likely to cut out again.”
“That’s okay. We’ll just make the answers up,” the wag said again.
“You mean you don’t do that already?” I said in mock astonishment. “The media here must be exceedingly honest… or lacking in imagination. It’s a favourite pastime back home.”
“How are you feeling, Crawford,” someone said.
“Fine. Fully recovered, thanks.”
“What happened?”
I didn’t know if the Chairman had answered that already so I stepped back slightly so I could see him from the corner of my eye. I hoped he’d do something, make some sign, if I stepped out of line.
“I don’t rightly know. I was enjoying the party. I started to feel unwell. Sir Hlawch, here, realised something was wrong and got me home. I woke up with a doctor poking me and telling me I had food poisoning.”
“Was it something you ate?”
“Or drank. I believe that’s how you generally acquire food poisoning.”
“Was it intentional?”
“No. I’m not in the habit of going to parties specifically to get unwell. I prefer to go to have a good time.”
“So you don’t believe you were deliberately poisoned?”
“Why would I believe that?”
“Sir Adderhay has been openly hostile toward the Lottery.”
I risked a quick glance at the Chairman. His expression was neutral.
“I’ve been openly hostile to people myself. I was very hostile to the plumber who managed to mix up the hot and cold taps then wanted more money to fix it. In fact I was positively livid. I didn’t want to kill him, though.”
Another quick glance at the Chairman, who nodded fractionally
“So you don’t think Sir Adderhay was responsible?”
“I went to a party. I felt unwell and was diagnosed with food poisoning. That’s all I know. I understand that, as a cosmopolitan city, Bartimarm is full of beings with mutually incompatible metabolisms. At a cosmopolitan party there’s bound to be things that don’t agree with me. I’m not used to being careful about what I eat. I had something that disagreed with me.”
“The Interpellators believe it was deliberate.”
“And?”
“What is your comment on that?”
“I don’t have one. It’s up to the Interpellators what they think.”
Taragis stepped forward. “Sirs and Madams, I suggest we’ve done this topic to death. Sir Sacred-Trust-in-God has told you what he knows, as has Sir MacAdam. Sir MacAdam is a public figure so, naturally, the Interpellators are investigating. We cannot comment on their investigations. Could we move on to something different, please?”
Fortunately, we could. The questions were all fairly neutral, even the ones about the breeding programme. The earlier attacks on my willingness to co-operate with the Commission did not materialise. My obvious show of co-operation seemed to have done the trick. Lorca faced some questions, mostly about her looks which she was not happy about but, to give her her due, she managed to fend them off without losing her temper. Taragis stepped in again and was somewhat acerbic in his comments. The Chairman got a much harder time about the Commission’s internal investigations. Fortunately he was an old hand at this game and, equally fortunately, he was able to legitimately claim he couldn’t comment on an on-going investigation. It was with more than a little relief that Taragis ended the session. I did notice that, after the initial general questions, a number of the off-planet representatives slipped away and it was, again, the more local representatives who had been giving us the hard time.
As I was turning to go, the Chairman called my name. “Sir MacAdam, a moment, if you will. While I cannot say I am happy at your blackmail nor about your attempts to disrupt the working of the Commission, honesty compels me to offer my congratulations on the exemplary way you conduct yourself in public.”
I looked at him for a moment. Part of me felt sorry that I had caused him so much trouble but part of me knew it was his own damn fault.
“Thank you, Sir. I take your remarks in the spirit they were intended.”
He looked at me bleakly then nodded and turned away. He didn’t offer to introduce me to his colleagues.
“Can we go home now?” I asked Taragis.
“Stop whining, boy,” he said with a grin. “The best part of the afternoon is still to come.”
“I know. That’s what’s bothering me.”
Lorca was giving me very strange looks. I slipped an arm round her slender waist as a flunkey appeared to guide us to our box.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Now is not a good time,” I replied with a faint smile.
The concert hall was both like and unlike a theatre on Earth. The basic structure was the same; the musicians were on a stage at one end with the audience facing them in steeply-banked sweeping curves. The stage was curved so that the front of the orchestra and the conductor were in the audience; a sort of theatre in the half round. The stage was roofed with a large, flaring bell. Probably something to do with acoustics, I surmised. The auditorium itself was a series of complex curves and arches with more tiers of seats on upper levels. There wasn't the Grand Circle and Dress Circle I was familiar with. The private boxes were dotted about wherever there was wall space to accommodate them. Surprisingly, I didn’t see the riot of contradictory colours the Geretimalians seemed to prefer. The hall was decorated in various shades of green and blue with lots of intricately carved wood and gold leaf, all done in remarkably good taste I thought. Our box wasn't the best by any means, being high up and at the back but at least we would see the orchestra face-on. I was slightly surprised when Taragis joined us.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said.
“Be my guest,” I replied.
I was glad he was there for I had an immediate problem with my seat which, of course, was adjustable for beings with different physical structures. It was worse than a deck chair and Lorca looked on with detached amusement as Taragis got me comforta
ble.
The press conference had delayed us and I was barely settled when the orchestra came on stage. They weren't dressed in penguin suits but in shades of green and blue. They arranged themselves behind short, curved barriers in groups of three or four. I didn’t see any music. One of them blew a note and the rest religiously copied him, tooting, scraping, plucking of banging until they were satisfied they were in tune. An expectant hush fell on the audience. From the back of the auditorium, a being emerged. He reminded me of those pictures you see of Albert Einstein in old age only Einstein wouldn’t have worn a yellow robe and I don’t think Einstein’s face was green and his features weren’t so hawkish. I don’t think Einstein was quite so tall, either. The applause started muted but swelled to a deafening roar as he reached the front. He stepped onto his raised platform, faced the audience and raised his batons with arms outstretched. The applause reached a crescendo. Abruptly, he brought his arms down and crossed them in front of him. The applause ceased just like that. One moment they were cheering, the next they weren’t. It was uncanny. He waited with his head slightly bowed while we shuffled round and got comfortable. Then he turned to face the orchestra, raised his batons and we were off.
Music can be one of three fundamental types; harmonic, melodic or rhythmic. Of course these get mixed up to some extent but the basis of Western music is harmonic, the basis of Eastern music is melodic and the basis of African music is rhythmic. Western music has a limited number of notes in a scale. It has to as harmony is controlled by the mathematics of sound waves. Dispense with harmony and you can have as many notes in your octave as you like; listen to Arabic singers for an illustration. With rhythm-based music, neither harmony nor melody is important. It’s the rhythmic impact of the instruments or voices that’s important.
Capellan music was melodic. The first piece the orchestra played sounded as if all the musicians began playing whatever they felt like in whatever key took their fancy. After a while, though, I began to see patterns and realised there was a theme that they all kept coming back to. One group of instruments would play it a few times then wander off into variations. In the meantime another group would play the theme then perform their variations, and so on. Amazingly, as each group had their turn to play the tune, the rest of the orchestra would play more quietly. It was as if the musicians were an enthusiastic group of players with very short memories and needed constant reminding of the tune they were supposed to be playing. As my ears became accustomed to the discordant sounds, the swirling, screeching, plangent music resonated round my ears, sweeping me up and carrying me away like a leaf in a torrent. Then, as if by magic, every participant seemed to suddenly learn the tune and they played it all at once. Pleased with themselves they did it again several times at different tempos and volumes then stopped.
“That was good,” I said as cheered enthusiastically.
“It’s one of my favourite pieces,” Taragis said. “I’ve never heard it played so well, though. Clelwo’s a genius.”
“Did he write it?”
“No, but it’s a very difficult piece to conduct.”
“I can believe that.”
“It was good,” Lorca said as we settled back in our seats. “But not my sort of music. This next piece is.”
The second piece couldn’t have been a greater contrast and I recanted my original theory that Capellan music was melodic. It started with some high reedy instruments playing scales using octaves with so many notes they seemed to slide into each other in a continuous stream. The rest of the orchestra joined in, each section playing bits of the scale, either ascending or descending or sometimes both, at seemingly random intervals. There were moments of total silence and moments where the whole orchestra was playing at once. In between, different groups played in combination. The effect was interesting but it sounded to me like the composer was just playing with sound combinations. It didn’t have any passion and left me feeling rather cold. Lorca was enjoying it, though, if the rapt expression on her face was anything to go by.
I spent the time studying the instruments. You can make a musical note in one of four ways; blowing, scraping, hitting or plucking. Whatever, the purpose of a musical instrument is to make the air vibrate at a controlled pitch. Capellans employed all four methods. From their appearance, they clearly had things that operated like violins, ie strings were scraped to make them vibrate, and they also had tuned percussion. There was a group of musicians on one side enthusiastically banging away. From the sounds they were making they also had reeded instruments and purely blown instruments. Some of them had keys or valves or sliders but how they managed to make the variety of noises they did, I couldn’t fathom. The piece ended and I applauded with every appearance of enthusiasm.
Sir Clelwo stepped down from his dais, mopped his face with a towel and had a drink. The musicians took the opportunity to do the same while the audience shifted to ease sore buttocks and cramped muscles and indulge in the inevitable bout of coughing and throat clearing. Suitably refreshed the maestro clambered back on to his dais. The air of expectancy in the auditorium was palpable. They were about to hear history being made. Sir Clelwo raised his batons again and the orchestra played the introductory notes of Clelwo’s Fourth Symphony.
In style it was more like the first piece than the second. Like Beethoven, Sir Clelwo had an ear for a good tune and he gave the audience time to appreciate it before demonstrating what the Galaxy’s greatest living composer could do with it. I admit I was disappointed at first. I was expecting Beethoven or Wagner or Stravinsky and I didn’t get it. So I stopped listening and suddenly found I was appreciating it. It was still very alien and very discordant to my ears but I began to realise that the notes themselves weren't important; it was what the composer was saying with them that mattered. And Clelwo truly was a genius. He took us on an emotional journey that started calmly but soon descended into despair and confusion. Then, just when it seemed things were a bleak as they could be, a new theme was introduced, hesitantly at first but with growing confidence and a new sense of hope. For a while the two sides struggled but, gradually, the tide of despair and confusion was pushed back and we emerged from the darkness into the light. Now a good composer would have taken us on to finish on a paean of joy but Clelwo was better than good. As the music swelled to its triumphal conclusion, underneath the swelling sense of elation, the forces of darkness could still be heard, reminding us that misery and, I suppose, evil is always present and constant vigilance is required to keep it at bay.
The final notes died away. There was a moment of total silence as we absorbed the stunning vision the composer had presented us with then as one, we were on our feet stamping and cheering as loud as we could. Sir Clelwo stood, his arms outstretched. His beaming face was bathed in sweat and he was breathing heavily. His yellow robe had large dark damp patches. We cheered and cheered and cheered. He turned and gestured to the orchestra. They came out from behind their barriers and also stood with their arms outstretched. They, too, looked like they’d just run a marathon which, I suppose, they had; an emotional one, at least. It seemed as if the applause would never end but, eventually, it started to falter. Sir Clelwo stepped from his dais and made his way up the auditorium. The orchestra joined in the applause which swelled again until the doors swung shut behind the great man then died away.
“Whew,” Taragis said with feeling. “I’m very glad I was here.”
“Not, perhaps, quite up to Beethoven at his best,” I said slyly.
The other two turned to stare at me. They looked as if they were considering doing me serious physical damage. I held out a pacifying hand.
“Only joking. Even this ignorant and barbaric Earthman can see why he’s the greatest living composer.”
“Just as well,” Lorca said. “A primitive Earth composer could never compare with the best in the Galaxy.”
I bridled but held my tongue. At least I now knew why she didn’t like me but that raised the question of what she was doing
here. Perhaps I’d find out later.
“There’s a small reception for invited guests if you’d like to attend,” Taragis said.
“Are we invited?” I said.
“Of course, you’re a VIP.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
He gave me an odd look and led the way to where the reception was being held. It seemed fairly informal. Groups of well-heeled people stood around, drinks in hand. A yellow-coated waiter scanned our cards and took our orders. Of course I didn’t recognise any of the famous faces but Taragis and Lorca indicated a writer, a trivee star, an athlete, three businessmen who patronised the arts, two politicians and the Interpellator Supreme. Crimson Sebstiennesen was not there but I did recognise Sir Sacred-Trust-in-God who was talking to the writer and a number of others. He spotted me and nodded. After a moment he excused himself and walked over.
“Did you enjoy the concert, Sir MacAdam?” he asked. His tone indicated he was asking out of politeness only.
“Surprisingly, I did. Sir Clelwo’s symphony was very moving and extremely subtle.”
“Oh?” he seemed surprised.
It appeared he wanted me to continue so I said, “I particularly liked the ending where he reminds us that, in the midst of joy, tragedy is just a heartbeat away.”
“You heard that in his music?”
“Indeed. Wasn't that his intention?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. Excuse me, there’s someone I must talk to.”
He walked rapidly away.
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