Orfeo

by Richard Powers

  He stops to stare at his hands, and the search ends. You know what our problem was? When you want Perfect, even Magnificent seems shabby.

  This is the case, Els says.

  The old dancer swats the air. Never mind. New project. You’ve gotten us off to a fantastic start. Killer Theater. I’ve been dreaming about somebody doing this for a long time.

  Els hides his bafflement in a coughing jag. It’s the Phase One wildcard drug babbling. Or maybe it’s the last thrashing of a mind that never committed to anything so trivial as sense. Els lays the clippings down on the student desk and studies this alien man, his one friend.

  Richard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Come on, Bonner shouts. Who gets this kind of audience? Millions of people are following your act. You can’t afford to refund that many tickets, Maestro.

  He puts his arm around Els’s shoulders and leads him out into the hall. The pair of them wander back down the corridor toward civilization, leaving the door to Number 18 hanging open. There’s nothing in the room to steal except a stack of project ideas, and nobody to steal them except for three dozen human guinea pigs.

  You may find this worth . . . worth seeing, Richard says. The drug is called Consolidol. The disease is called shit. God knows what anybody else is called. They all have interchangeable little names, the fuckers. Lots of women named Leslie.

  From down the hall comes a man as large as both of them, with a Marine buzz cut and a goiter like a grapefruit. He waves from a distance. Drawing near, he shouts, You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?

  Els is lost. Richard answers, Some man or other must present Wall: and let him have some . . .

  The giant draws close enough to muss Richard’s hair. Richard, incredibly, abides the attack. The giant waves at Els and mouths, Hi, hi!

  Richard starts again: and let him have some plaster . . . some . . .

  Or some loam, the giant supplies, his goiter shaking with pleasure.

  . . . or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall . . .

  Bruno, the giant says, sticking out his hand.

  Els takes it and suffers the massive crushing. Paul, he says.

  You visiting?

  . . . or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall . . .

  Yes, Peter says. Just leaving, in fact.

  And let him hold his fingers thus. The giant holds up his fingers in a sideways chink of V in front of his shining eye.

  Shut the fuck up, Richard barks. Right. And let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.

  If that may be, the giant says, then all is well. Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts.

  He waves, and ambles on past, down the hall.

  Richard turns to Els and asks, So what dose do you think he’s getting? Twenty thingies? Five? Or salt water? Those are your three choices.

  Els shrugs. If we’re betting, I’d say twenty.

  Oh, we’re betting, all right. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And I’d bet the same as you. So tell me. What dose you think I’m getting?

  I don’t know, Els says.

  The fuck you don’t. I’ve spent forty years reading that damn play. Four hours a day, this last month. More hours than all these other jokers combined. It’s about fairies, you know.

  He stops to turn his pockets inside out. He births up a handful of forest-green jelly beans and studies them like they’re pebbles from the moon. He pops a few and staggers down the hall again.

  The worst of it? Memorizing Dream was my idea.

  You . . . Els stops, thinking better. Then plunges in anyway. You directed it, in graduate school. Set in an old folks’ home.

  I didn’t! Richard exclaims. Did I?

  He walks oddly, listing toward port. They pass the small weight room, and a trio of old, broad women call to him. In a moment, they’re out in the hall, headbands and jerseys soaking, taking turns pressing their sweat to Bonner’s body. The shortest of them purrs and says, What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

  The fuck is this? Bonner snarls. Summer of Love? What are you supposed to be—the three whosits?

  Isn’t he adorable? the short one asks Peter.

  The oldest of the Graces frowns at Els and taps her temple. I know you from somewhere.

  The middle one takes her wrist. No, you don’t, Jean.

  Did you grow up in Glencoe? Did you go to New Trier? You look so familiar.

  Els grins and shakes his head.

  Let’s go, Jean, the middle one says. Come on, babe.

  Were you in the Peace Corps, by any chance?

  Richard ambles away, singing, Good night, ladies. Els tags along in his wake.

  O, how I love thee! the short Grace calls after them from down the hall. How I dote on thee!

  Richard waves without turning, over his shoulder.

  Jean shouts at Els from down the hall, Are you a musician or something?

  They meet more subjects in the central lounge. The talk is all variations on their one shared theme: Is the stuff working? They’re bound together in a fierce pharmaceutical camaraderie. The whole facility feels like one of those sci-fi stories set on an interstellar craft, with generations of travelers who are born, live, and die in transit, creeping across the galaxy in search of a new star system. Everyone greets Richard like a long-lost friend, and Richard greets them all in return as if he’s just discovered, too late in life, that friendship may be a comfort to a man. The disease has gentled him.

  They duck out together on the back deck. Richard paces. You see how it goes here. We work out. Take tests. Play games. Every twitch monitored. Memorize whatchama . . . Shakespeare. We’re doing a little run-through next week.

  He shakes his head, dismisses his bottomless despair with a flick of his fingers.

  And we wander around trying to guess who’s getting what dose. Watching for a sign that we’re not hosed for eternity. The damned and the saved. Every day it gets a little more obvious. I know what they’re giving me, anyway. And there’s no placido effect, I can tell you.

  Placebo, Els says.

  Placebo, Richard drawls. The natural Texas accent he spent a lifetime suppressing. My father wanted me to lead a normal life. He just couldn’t pronounce the word normal. He thrusts his hands into the pockets of his sagging jeans and nods, nods again—Placebo, placebo—turning in tight circles on the redwood deck, a philosopher at last, a Peripatetic, spiraling into enduring dusk.

  Give it time, Els says.

  Got no time.

  But if the drug is working for these other . . . if nobody’s getting sick . . .

  On my bad days? I hope someone strokes out, so no one gets what I can’t have.

  But once the test is over . . .

  Phase Two, Richard says. Then Phase Three, and Phase Four. Final approval by the FBI—the whatnot.

  Els can’t think of the agency’s name, either.

  Then they have to set up factories for making the stuff, big time. I’ll be drooling on myself years before it comes to market.

  He grabs Els by the wrist, pulls him under the halogen deck light. Hell of a finale, isn’t it? Yours is better. We need to work on yours.

  He drops Els’s hand and signals him to wait. He ducks back inside the facility and is gone for a long time. Els can’t say how long. His metronome is shot by stress and three days of driving. At last Richard comes back, carrying a telescope as if it were a large Torah. He pats the instrument. My alibi.

  A tripod dangles under his arm; Els grabs it as it slips.

  They hate when we leave without signing out, Bonner says. They think we’re going to wander off and forget where we live. Can you imagine?

  He stumbles down the deck stairs, arms full of optics, gleeful again, getting away with something. Call it art.

  Come on. Star party. Once you hear the music of the spheres, the stuff you earthlings make is a bore.

  Bonner leads
the expedition across the back parking lot, down half a block, into a parkway a tiny bit darker than the surroundings. There’s a ring around the moon tonight—cold and huge and blue, a halo against the gauzy black. Els can’t stop staring at it, monstrous and beautiful. Richard wrestles the telescope up onto the spread tripod, to a running commentary.

  I’m going fast, Peter. Like a sugar cube in water. I write myself notes in a little notebook. To remind me of things. Then I can’t figure out the note.

  Els stands by helpless, understanding the man at last.

  That’s why you had to come now, Bonner says. While there’s still time to do this.

  Els asks, Do what?

  Richard hoists the scope and secures the mount clamps. He swings the sighting scope into place, inspects the objective, and bends down to peer into the eyepiece. The long day wanes, he recites, singsong. The slow moon climbs. He hunches next to the tube, his eye to the cosmic keyhole, and peers into the universe. He might be waiting for a bus that comes around to this part of the galaxy once every epoch. Come, my friend, it’s not too late to seek a newer world.

  Now and then, Richard tweaks the right ascension control knob. He almost looks like he knows what he’s doing. A massive sigh escapes him, as wide and filmy as the night sky. He straightens and steps back. Have a look.

  Els does. The field of view is black.

  Once you hear the music of the spheres, Bonner says, as if the idea has just occurred to him, the stuff you earthlings make is a bore.

  What am I looking at? There’s nothing there.

  Look harder.

  Els does. There’s still nothing there. There’s nothing there for a long time. Then there is.

  From behind him, in the dark parkway, Richard says, So tell me what you have.

  Els pulls his face from the eyepiece. Seconds pass. What do you mean?

  What’s the piece?

  What piece? Els says.

  Richard smirks at the evasion and won’t be taken in. You’re saying you were doing real genetic engineering? Trying to create a new form of life?

  No, Els says.

  So out with it. What do you have for me?

  Too many miles have passed since home for Els to be sure.

  I didn’t get very far.

  That’s where your collaborator comes in.

  I was trying to put music files into living cells.

  A pause, a last flare-up of telepathy, and Richard laughs like a hyena.

  What’s wrong with eight-tracks? So what does it sound like?

  Richard. There is no piece. This was all proof of concept. They raided me before I could learn how.

  Bonner scowls, puzzled by how a smart man can have such trouble with the obvious. There is. There is a piece.

  No.

  You’re not listening.

  Bonner gazes through the scope again. Els stands nearby. He tunes in to the night, the cars and air conditioners. He listens, a little quieter, a little harder. Sounds everywhere, but still no piece. There’ll be no piece forever.

  Then there is.

  Oh, he says. Oh. You’re saying . . . You mean . . .

  But Bonner, like music, doesn’t mean things. He is things. Things that can never be unmade.

  The two of them start in again, like they’d only paused the old project for a moment, long enough for it to ripen. Bonner has been tinkering with an idea since first hearing of Els’s flight. Els has been working on the thing since childhood, his chance encounter with Jupiter. They talk, Els to Bonner, Bonner to the stars, through his lensed tube. They hum to each other, and the piece takes shape. Richard dials the pitch and yaw and roll of the scope in tiny increments, checking the eyepiece after each minor adjustment.

  This is your baby, he tells his friend. Make it live.

  The piece turns lethal. Music to panic a whole country. A thing of silence and nothingness. Required listening. Els feels the madness of it, and the brisk Phoenix night, the lights from the clinic, the traffic whipping back and forth on the nearby boulevard all say: Hear, and be afraid forever.

  Use that Web thing—Tweety Bird. Tell the whole world, in short little bursts.

  Bonner points across the way, to the glow of the clinic. We can use the machines in the lobby. Say that it’s all out there, spreading. Everywhere. Released into the wild. An epidemic of invisible music.

  Els laughs, but it’s not a laugh. They’ll kill me, you know. The minute I . . . The idea rushes away from him, like the five recombining lines of the Jupiter.

  You got a problem with that? You weren’t doing anything else, were you?

  Els presses his skull with both hands. Fatigue and the fugitive life catch up with him, because this all suddenly sounds suicidal and very, very doable.

  Tell me, Bonner says. What was it that you wanted from, from . . . He cranks his right hand, spooling up all the music Els ever tried to write.

  There’s a place Els has been to, a few times in this life. A place free from the dream of security, where the soul beats to everything with a rhythm. And every one of his few visits there has reminded him: We’re entitled to nothing, and soon to inherit. We’re free to be lost, free to shine, free to cut loose, free to drown. But part of a harmony beyond the ear, and able, for a moment, to move.

  I wanted awe.

  Richard claps his hands. Done. Living music, swimming around in the water supply.

  Surprise, Els says. Suspense.

  Oh, they’ll be hanging on every measure.

  Refreshment. A sense of the infinite.

  Fear, you mean.

  And change, Els thinks. Eternal mutation. For a beat, he forgets the piece isn’t real.

  He comes clean. Beauty.

  Richard’s eyes crinkle at the mention of the guilty secret. His lips twist up. Fine. What’s more beautiful than music you can’t hear?

  Els looks up at the clear desert sky, speckled with light, even above this suburban sprawl. They’ll crush me like a bug.

  Richard steps toward his friend and lays one hand on his shoulder. His eyes soften into something like sympathy. The words he wants evade him. But the look says: They’ll crush you anyway, even if you never make a peep.

  He waves back toward the scope. Have a look.

  Els puts his eye to a burst of stars. They cluster, a blue star nursery, spraying out new worlds. He feels like he did two years ago, when he first looked at a glowing stain of cells under the 1,000x objective and realized that life happens elsewhere, on scales that have nothing to do with him.

  He calls out. Behind him, Richard chuckles. Once you hear the music of the spheres, the stuff you earthlings make is a bore.

  The stars come toward him in a stippled rush. He pulls his head away. Richard is staring at the clinic half a block off—at the experiment that offered him hope and served up saline. He says, How much can they hurt you, anyway?

  Els doesn’t answer. Words are for people who know things.

  Richard squints into the distance. You have to do this. The largest audience for an experimental piece in history.

  You always wanted me dead, Els says. Didn’t you?

  Bonner is elsewhere. Eye of man hath not seen, he says. He stops, muddled. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen . . .

  The words dissolve. There’s an agonizing gap, which Els is powerless to fill. It strikes him, the one small compensation to where Bonner is going. Every look, every listen, will be like the first.

  Something, something, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

  Richard points: Flashing lights. A van and three cars, one of them unmarked, slink into the circular front drive of the clinic. Men in riot gear issue from the vehicles and fan out. A dozen of them rush the main entrance. Challenges ring out in English and Spanish. The clerk at the reception desk has at last remembered the face on last night’s news.

  Bonner surveys the piece of theater as if it’s something he once choreographed. By the look on his face, the blocking is all wrong
.

  He turns to Els. You ready for this?

  Whatever this is, the answer is no. Richard beckons and Els follows. They head around to the far side of the clinic buildings, to the long-term parking lot, leaving the telescope and mount in the middle of the empty field.

  The building screens them from the officers a few dozen yards away. Shadows of shock troops dart down the windows of the men’s wing while two old men stumble toward a rented Accord. Bonner bends down near the right rear tire, like he’s hiding behind the vehicle or praying. He reaches up inside the wheel and withdraws a key.

  This way, I can always find it. If I can find the car.

  He hands the key to Els. Els can’t take it. His arms are numb. Freedom has come for him, impossible, huge, cold, blue, and he’ll drown, way out in the middle of it, out of sight of all land.

  Take it, man. It’s just a rental. What’s a little grand theft auto, once they have you for terrorism? You’re doing the world a favor. They should have taken my license away four months ago.

  Richard closes Els’s fist around the key. One last recital, his eyes say. You can do this. Make it something even this distracted world will hear. It will only hurt for a moment.

  Els presses the fob and slips into the driver’s-side door. Panic slams him, but he surfs through it. He pats his pocket; the smartphone is still there. Giddy with fear, he starts to laugh. He rolls down the window. Bonner looms above the door.

  If only one of us had a vagina, Els says, half of life’s problems would be solved.

  Richard recoils. What a very curious thing to say.

  Els backs the Accord out of its slot, points it toward the curving parkway, a stone’s throw behind the assembled police cars. He turns to wave to Richard. But Bonner is already walking, back turned, hunched, hands in pockets, headlong into the drama, ready to direct it, if they’ll let him. Creation’s Rule Number One. Zag when they think you’ll zig.

  Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged.

  On the shoulder of an old state highway in Barstow, California, Peter Els, terrorist, stops to examine the railing. Looking is pointless. The scribbles on the guardrail that he’s looking for are long gone. Even the railing itself must have been replaced, maybe more than once. God knows how many hundreds of miles of highway rails must run through Greater Barstow. The scribbles exist nowhere except in the music that remembers them. Still, he stops to look. He has never stopped to read a guardrail before.