The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  Vera shuddered.

  Wendell said quietly, "I wish there had been somebody to say that ten years ago."

  They started seating. Soon family and guests had filled the two hundred couches, with family circle in the outermost row. When Jaeger announced the composition and lowered the day glowing once more, a rainbow appeared in the dome.

  At each stage in the development of an art form, there is an individual who defines its possibilities and discovers its limits. Aristotle's Poetics formalized drama. Leonardo da Vinci's studies of light and of human anatomy made possible more accurate representation in painting. Niccolo Paganini's Twenty- four Caprices for Violin defined the limits of that instrument. Wolfgang Jaeger's Rainbow Vistata (Vistata No. 11 in Seventh) set the practical limits of lasegraphy.

  Lasegraphy, like other performing arts, derives its power from the sexual principle. Like drama, music, and dance, lasegraphy teases. The lasegrapher seeks to communicate with others by creating a visual tension in them corresponding to their own experience of life, the release of such tension being pleasurable. The means by which tension is created, then released, defines the lasegraphic periods.

  Also like other performing arts, lasegraphy gives its audience the "athletic" tension that the performer may royally screw up.

  In its infancy, lasegraphy was the offspring of music and dance, relying on its two parents for its forms and patterns. Indeed, the imagery was not properly lasegraphy but choreography designed to accompany music, a practice later found only in roga. Tension and release was fleeting at best. Except for some fundamental uses of "exciting" colors versus "soothing" ones, hues usually served no function other than differentiating one image from the next or, in the case of gossamerlike interference lumia, providing a pleasant but boring interlude of swirling colors.

  Over the form's first quarter-century, in its Nascent period, lasegraphers had begun experimenting with creating tension by the juxtaposition of two-dimensional shapes with three-dimensional forms. Now the first uses of color-created tension were found, which involved advancing cool-colored imagery, which the eye naturally expected to recede, and retreating warm-colored imagery, which the eye expected to advance.

  In the Chaldean period, lasegraphers learned that when motion was formalized in paths the audience could expect--most characteristically, clockwise orbits around the dome's perimeter, with completion of the circle then blocked by contrary movements -- tension could be raised further. In the Symbolist period which followed, lasegraphers produced tension by the dramatic conflict of putting mythopoetic images into "battles" against each other. Combined with rhythms borrowed from music and patterns common in dance, the art now had enough of its own identity to be performed without the crutch of accompanying music.

  But it was in revolt against the excesses of Symbolism that Impressionism arose. The Impressionists declared that the art form that had more control of its use of pure color than any previous form had yet to make full use of color itself to create an emotional bond between a lasegrapher and the audience.

  This above all is what Jaeger did in The Rainbow Vistata.

  Rainbows and spectral sequences, even spectral keys, were common in earlier compositions, though without much regard for the direction--violet to red or red to violet--in which sequence departed from its key. But to compose the seven movements in descending keys of The Rainbow Vistata, Jaeger had to acknowledge the ancient truth that a spectral sequence and a musical scale were in fact, both of a kind--that comparisons were not just metaphorical. In researching human color response, Jaeger learned that subconscious tension was greater at the red than at the violet, which told him what end of the scale was up. Furthermore, though music was capable of using multi- octave harmonics, while the spectrum of visible light takes up just about one octave, Jaeger realized that tension was created by delay in the completion of a spectral sequence--violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red...violet--in the same way that tension in music was created by climbing the scale from do to ti then withholding the final do. Lasegraphy did not require a higher octave, as music did, to find unity: the color circle provided unity enough.

  With the long-sought relationship between musical notes and colors finally established, much of musical form--tonic, dominant, subdominant--could now be adapted to lasegraphy; and most important, it was now possible for lasegraphy to compose the equivalent of melody--coloratura--with predictable results.

  In variation after variation, The Rainbow Vistata made use of these discoveries.

  The Rainbow Vistata was the composition which established as standard that scales should ascend from violet to red--the extropic scales, Jaeger called them--rather than from red to violet--those Jaeger tagged the entropic. It was the first composition to rely more on coloratura for its effect than merely on pattern and rhythm. It was the first composition written entirely to lasegraphical form.

  Seventy-three years after Jaeger had composed it, performers still regarded The Rainbow Vistata as the most difficult virtuoso piece that art form had ever known. In fact, they competed widely to compose ever-more-difficult cadenzas for the final movement. It was this composition, therefore, with which Wolfgang Jaeger warmed up every morning. He knew that the day he could no longer play it would be the day he would end his concert career. His one hope was that he would see the coronation of his artistic heir--someone who could compose and perform a cadenza that he couldn't perform himself--before that day arrived. As yet, however, Jaeger had found no one who showed such ability.

  So, as he had done countless times before, he performed The Rainbow Vistata.

  The rainbow lighted up the dome, displaying the seven colors of the extropic scale in sequence, then spun off into discrete lines which began pulsating in the red-tonic, primal birth pains of the first movement, in Seventh. Second movement, in Sixth: the charging orange spheres bringing a rousing message of hope and good cheer. Third movement: the dazzling conterpoints in yellow lightning, brilliant and logical. The fourth "Jolly Green Giant" movement, jovial, sweeping, and grand. The spiritual, awe-inspiring waltz in the key of blue, the fifth movement segueing directly into the sorrowful, lilting indigo movement. Finally, the gentle lumias of the sensual violet movement, the impossibly fast rainbow cadenza, leading inevitably to the rebirth of the extropic rainbow, a coloratura that drew all who watched it into its compelling vortex.

  The dome was pitch-black again. Wolfgang Jaeger, bathed in sweat, raised the glowing to take his bow.

  He accepted the applause, then announced an encore. "For the Lady who confronts the Tiger," he said. "Delaney's Fugue in Blue.

  There was a rumble of confusion--with several gasps in the back row--as the glowing went down again.

  A blue figure-8 began a dance in the sky.

  It was a happy little dance. The blue figure-8 warbled and squiggled its way across the dome and around the edge. It turned somersaults and cartwheels. It metamorphosed into different shapes and sprang back again. It shrank down to a pinpoint--

  And Vera Collier Delaney screamed in the dark.

  There is one lesson that lasegraphers have burned into their souls before their teachers will allow them anywhere near an audience: if you hear a scream, get the lights on fast. This rates in the lasegraphic catechism even higher than the theatrical doctrine "The show must go on." It may be a fire; it may be only that someone has seen a mouse. It may be an assassination; it may be that a woman has felt an unexpected hand on her knee. The most common cause is simply that someone has panicked from the darkness. But the performer is not to consider this probability, not to evaluate the content of any scream. Whatever the cause--real or imagined--it can spread into a deadly stampede to the exits in seconds.

  Wolfgang Jaeger had the day glowing up to general visibility, without blinding glare, in split seconds. Yet he was not so fast that there was not time for Vera, who was in the couch nearest the exit, to be halfway outside when the lighting came up.

  Jaeger took command immedia
tely. "There is no danger. Everyone please remain seated for the moment. Mrs. Darris"

  Flanked by Stanton and Wendell, Eleanor went forward to the Tiger Pit, accompanied also by an uneasy rumble among her guests. "It's Vera," Eleanor told him softly. "I'd better go after her."

  "Perhaps it would be best to continue the concert," Stanton suggested.

  "If you would, Maestro," Eleanor said, "but for Goddess' sake, play something else!"

  Jaeger looked deeply troubled. "I don't understand. I thought she would be pleased by my interpretation--"

  "Maestro," Wendell said, sotto voce, "there's an old expression among us andromen: never surprise anybody by sticking your finger up his ass."

  "Surprise?" Jaeger asked. "But there was no surprise. I asked Vera for permission to play one of her scores before the concert. She told me to play whatever I liked."

  "Oh, no!" Eleanor turned as white as her uniform when she realized what she had done. "Maestro--" She barely got the words out. "You asked me."

  Eleanor left the dome to find Vera while Stanton and Wendell returned to their couches. "By special request, another encore," Jaeger announced as he lowered the glowing again. "Kaelin's Gossamer Albatross."

  Vera was not difficult to track down at all; Eleanor found her in the kitchen leaning against the irradiation sealer. She had obviously been crying, but seemed to be past the worst of it, which Eleanor took as a good sign. "Are you all right?" she asked her daughter, putting an arm around her shoulder.

  Vera shook her head.

  "Will you be all right soon?"

  Vera shrugged.

  They didn't say anything for a little while, then Vera said suddenly, "It was mine. He had no right!"

  "He thought you had given him permission."

  "How could he think that?"

  Eleanor stroked Vera's hair. "Because he asked me by mistake."

  Vera slipped out from under her mother's arm. "You gave him permission to play Fugue in Blue?"

  "He said something ambiguous about playing 'some scores of yours,'" Eleanor said. "The way he said it, I thought he just meant some pieces we had lying around in the Tiger Pit. I had no idea he meant--"

  "You had no idea, you had no idea," Vera started. "Do you have any idea what you've done to me?"

  "Vera, I'm so sorry--"

  "Three years, Mother. Three years in a service dicteriat as a daily sacrifice to the gods of war. Three years of 'I'm gonna ram it in you now' and 'Suck me faster' and of having every square inch of my body groped eight times a day by any male past puberty who had his taxes paid up. But I knew that even though I'd never have the courage to compose another one, there was one part of me--the only real part of me--that no one could touch. Just so long as nobody had ever seen it--"

  "Vera, I didn't mean for this--"

  "Oh, yes, you did," Vera said. "You've never allowed me to have anything that was all my own."

  Eleanor started. "That's not true," she said slowly. "I have always encouraged you to develop your own interests--"

  "--and become a dilettante just like you. You've never succeeded at anything you've started, and I'm exactly like you. How could I?"

  "You are not exactly like me. You are a separate person with your own identity, your own soul--"

  "Mother, if you were so cloneraping set on your daughter being different from you, then why did you have me in a way that made sure that when I looked in a mirror I'd see your face?"

  "It wasn't what I expected," Eleanor said softly.

  "What? I could barely hear you."

  "I thought then when I looked in a mirror, I'd see the face of my daughter, who had reached things I could only dream about. But what I expected isn't important. The point is that I'm not living inside your body, making all the moves. You are."

  Eleanor kissed Vera on the cheek, then turned to leave. "Will you come out to say good night to your guests? And Jaeger?"

  Vera looked daggers at her mother. "Why don't you say it all for me? Nobody will be able to tell the difference anyway."

  Eleanor paused a moment to reply, then thought better of it and went out to the lawn dome alone.

  Vera remained in the kitchen a short while longer before deciding to go up to bed. On her way, she came around the other side of the irradiation sealer and saw a little girl's drawing, in the shape of a spiral rainbow, fastened to the wall.

  Vera ripped the drawing down and threw it into the scintillator.

  II.

  4200Å to 4500Å

  Chapter 6

  Stoned or sober, guests eventually go home, and good or bad, parties eventually end.

  Several family-circle members did stay through brunch the next day, which gave Kate Seymour a chance to teach Joan that little song about going to St. Clive. His Gaylordship Wendell Darris declined his brother's invitation, pleading business in the Federation capital; he left the party that night, no more stoned than usual, and caught the red-eye shuttle from Newer York to Charlotte Amalie.

  Francois Duroux left the party stoned out of his mind, and while his skymobile fetched him back to his mother's house in Montreal that night, he didn't quite make it to Legos, Ltd., the next morning.

  Wolfgang Jaeger, who wasn't properly a guest--even though he had been invited to mingle--departed Earth for Ad Astra the next afternoon, sober as a judge.

  And when they had all left, there was still Vera, who was staying on at Helix Vista, in an extended rest & relaxation, through that fall, when she would begin law school.

  Another party was held at Helix Vista a week later, on April 15, though--befitting its honoree's size--this was a considerably smaller affair. Stanton Darris had assured his daughter that parties for five-year-olds were lots more fun than parties for grown-ups. Whether or not this was true as a general rule. Joan had no basis of comparison to disagree with him. If she noticed at all that of those in attendance at her fifth- birthday party, the only children were her brothers, she did not find anything extraordinary about this. And if the two recent parties needed to be compared at all, it would be only a note that Joan had a considerably lighter-hearted time at her party than Vera had had a week earlier at hers.

  Of course, there were cake and ice cream and party favors. Naturally, there were presents. Kate Seymour returned to give her granddaughter a Shetland pony, which Joan--at Stanton's suggestion--named Lazy Gopher. She hugged and kissed it more than she did her grandmother, and was led around on the pony long enough for Stanton to take some holos. Then Joan allowed her brothers to take their turns, and Nick promptly lost his slightly used cake and ice cream.

  Vera gave her sister a storydisc called The Littlest Corporal. It told the saga of a performing poodle named Tricksy, jointly owned by a little girl and her older sister, that leaves the little girl to accompany her sister when she goes off to the service. The story told the rather odd adventures the poodle had performing tricks for the women in the dicteriat, and it made a lasting impression on Joan, who didn't quite understand why Tricksy had had to leave the little girl in the first place.

  Mr. McIntosh gave Joan a Snow White Talking Mirror. Mark gave her a Slinky. The twins gave her two giant turtles. And the sort of presents that two-year-old-Zack was giving these days would have pleased no one but an orthodox Freudian.

  Most prodigiously, Eleanor and Stanton gave their daughter an LCAA Mark 800B chromatic laser with quarter-size console. Wendell Darris (who was obviously in cahoots) had sent over a holoscreen compatible with that console so that Joan could practice, unsupervised, without using the laser.

  Once it was made clear to Joan that this complicated equipment was of the same sort as that which she had seen her friend Wolf use in the lawn dome, and that she would begin lessons shortly to become a lasegrapher, she was endlessly delighted. She solemnly promised that she wouldn't treat the equipment like a toy, and that she would practice all her lessons faithfully.

  Vera was not endlessly delighted with her sister's lasegraphic gifts, but limited herself to a bri
ef remark to their mother, out of anyone else's hearing, telling Eleanor how foolish it was to begin the entire cycle once more.

  The pony was beyond reach, in the stable, after dark. The storydisc lasted only half an hour, and Joan didn't feel like playing it more than once. Joan quickly bored of arguing with the mirror whether she was in fact more beautiful than Snow White, whose story Mr. McIntosh had told her, but who was a person of no particular importance to her. The twins were monopolizing the turtles. And she didn't yet know how to operate the laser, besides having promised not to play with it like a toy.

  So Joan spent most of the evening of her fifth birthday playing with the Slinky.

  The World Federation's Bureau of Immunity occupied a stately office concourse on Liberty Street, right above vaults--built deep underground on the bedrock of Manhattan Island--that had once belonged to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America. That institution had ceased to exist before the new millennium had rolled around, not to mention the new Concord; its vaults--which were used primarily for storing the wealth of other nations--had survived even the devastation of the Colonial War, a century later. Nowadays these vaults housed the primary records of the Federation; the identity records of all persons known to be alive, dead, or frozen in cryonic suspension on Earth since records were consolidated half a century ago; and all Suicide Immediately After Reading military secrets of the Federation Space Corps.