The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  In fact, Joan's time at The Sure Thing was an attempt to work through an artistic problem that had plagued her since she'd begun lessons with Jaeger.

  It was not that she wasn't learning a tremendous amount studying with the Maestro. But there was an unforeseen cost to her artistic development. Jaeger had a powerful voice--both literally, in his criticisms of her compositions, and figuratively in his influence.

  At first, everything she'd tried to compose was "no good." Then, everything she'd composed had come out looking like Jaeger. An attempt to eradicate his vision and find her own again had resulted in almost two years of not being able to compose at all. Finally, she had begun composing again, but everything she'd turned out was either so lightweight as to be little more than a lasegraphic pun--such short pieces as Contract Bridge--or so repressively formal as to be Chaldean, such as Syncopations in Fifth. It was only playing roga, allowing music to set the dances, that Joan felt free of Jaeger's overpowering genius and was able to breathe her own images again.

  But it wasn't her night to play roga. After blowing out the candles on the birthday cake Mrs. Rubinstein had baked for her, it was her night to watch it. Astrid Rubinstein had managed to get two pairs of impossible-to-get passes to see Roland Church record a holovision program at Garmire Cathedral.

  More accurately, Astrid's boyfriend, Moshe McCoy, had got them. He was a graduate student at Dryer, born and raised in St. Clive, who explained at dinner that he'd gotten the studio passes from Church's bass fortissimo player, Hill Bromley, a friend of McCoy's father.

  Joan's date, another Dryer student named Edouard Casals, was more interested in McCoy's oxymoronic name, and hesitantly inquired about it on the way up El Capitan. "Don't worry about it," McCoy said. "Everybody asks, sooner or later. But there's no great mystery. My mother is Jewish and my father is Mere Christian."

  "Where does that leave you?" Casals asked.

  "Hard to say. I've been both baptized and bar mitzvah-ed. I qualify as both Christian and Jewish, depending on whose rule book you subscribe to."

  "My mother says that you're Jewish," Astrid said, "because your mother is. That makes you kosher to date, as far as she's concerned."

  "And since my father's family practices infant baptism, I qualify there also. See?"

  "But isn't there a conflict of interest?" Joan asked.

  "No more than there was for Jesus," McCoy said. "He was both bar-mitzvah-ed and baptized, too."

  "I think you've just proved my point," Joan said.

  "Did I? The conflict wasn't in the way He viewed Himself, but in the way other people viewed Him. Besides, the conflict between my parents is nothing compared with the differences between my paternal great-great grandparents before the Church unified. My great-great grandfather was green and my great-great grandmother was orange."

  "What?" Casals asked.

  "Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant."

  "You've still lost me," said Casals.

  "There was a civil war going on in Belfast at that time," McCoy explained. "When my great-great grandparents got married, it was a lot like West Sidereal Story."

  "But if the inhabitants didn't get along together," Casals asked, "then why didn't half of them build another cylinder?"

  McCoy looked disgusted. "This was back on Earth, before they emigrated."

  "Oh." Casals looked sheepish.

  "Wake up and smell the mocha," Astrid said. "Everyone knows that Irishland is back on Earth."

  Joan exchanged glances with Moshe, but neither felt it necessary to correct her.

  They arrived at Garmire an hour before the scheduled rolling time of twenty o'clock, and after being piloted to their pallets in the studio audience by a production-company seraph--who made sure they strapped in before flying off--they watched several dozen technicians setting up the Avocado Pit in aerial maneuvers that looked, more than anything else, like a Brushfire War dogfight.

  When some of them cleared away, McCoy pointed to a large, muscular man with hair as red as Joan's, dressed only in black trunks and vest, who was running his hands along a cylindrical pipe about the length and diameter of a fence post. As his hands ran up and down the pipe, so ran the musical scales he was warming up with, at a pinch not much above that of a shuttle blasting off from Earth, and at a volume--comparing the amount of air involved--not much quieter. Joan felt a low rumble in the pit of her stomach as he played. "That's the bass fortissimist who gave us the passes," McCoy told them. "That's Hill Bromley."

  Church's other backup musicians began warming up--his antithesist, percussionist, keyboarder, and two tenor fortissimists. At ten after twenty, they began rolling and Roland Church jetted in.

  By some accounts, roga was the oldest form of lasegraphy, harking back to the days of planetarium shows and krypton-gas lasers, in the very infancy of the medium. But during the long rise to ascendency of classical lasegraphy performed in silence, music was an unwelcome guest in the laserium, looked upon much as an ecdysiast would be at a wedding. She would not be shown the door because she wasn't inherently entertaining; it was just that people would tend to lose track of the bride.

  Along about the time Wolfgang Jaeger was finishing up The Rainbow Vistata, a young man named Thomas Sofer smuggled music back into the laserium through a side door when he premiered his lasegraphical accompaniment to Alexander Scriabin's 1911 symphonic composition Prometheus, which Scriabin had originally written to be performed with a color organ. Unlike the 1911 premiere, this one was a critical and popular success. Scriabin's music and Sofer's lasegraphy became the background to several holodramas...and several dozen HV commercials.

  Over then next few decades, lasegraphers found there was extra money to be picked up composing lasegraphical accompaniments to other musical works, and the generation after the Colonial War found a home among the bohs at mocha houses, and at private parties, to perform the improvisational lasegraphy that had come to be called "roga."

  Nobody was quite certain where the name came from. But it was thought that the term derived from "rogue" lasegraphy, combined with characteristic phrases that were loosely based on the ragas of Hindu music.

  Roland Church, a thirty-two-year-old native Bantu from Uhuru with an unpronounceable Swahilian cognomen, had emigrated with his family to St. Clive while he was still a small child. He had adopted his nom-de-lasegraphie at fifteen, when he'd begun performing roga. His first backup musicians were three of his five brothers, who began playing with him when he was ten; he had later added his oldest sister and a blond girlfriend, Estelle, who became his first wife. By the time Roland Church was twenty, he had a second wife--consecutively, not additively--a new backup band (which retained only Estelle, his keyboarder), a long-term recording contract with LCAA, and two palladium albums. His career had not faltered in the twelve years since.

  Joan, of course, had seen Church perform on holovision and - without telling Jaeger--had been buying his albums for years. But she knew there was a big difference between a live performance and one that could be stopped, redubbed, overdubbed, and edited. She even knew a case Jaeger had told her about in which some difficult passages in another lasegrapher's recording of one of Jaeger's vistatas had been cut in from Jaeger's own recording.

  So Joan was doubly impressed when the hour-long program, from the moment Church jetted in, was recorded straight through, with no retakes, and that Church's performance was fully up to those found on his albums.

  He was, she had to admit, quite good. While roga did not have the complexity, logic, subtlety, or pastoral beauty of classical lasegraphy, roga surpassed clasical in sheer speed and energy - not unrelated, Joan suspected, to the "coca" in the mocha houses where roga grew up. Neither was there any of the standoffishness in the audience that characterized so many classical performances; the audience clapped in rhythm to the imagery, whistled their approval of a dialectical display of pyrotechnics, and brought the performance to a complete halt at the end of one of Church's silent riffs.

&nbs
p; She knew the exhilaration a performer felt at such moments. She'd felt it herself during recitals she'd given while at Dryer...and on weekends at The Sure Thing.

  At the end of the program, McCoy led them back to the greenroom to thank their host.

  They swam downstage with little problem--McCoy's name was on the guest list--but the list was long, the corridors were chaotic, and it required some care to make sure that one's foot did not end up in someone else's eye, or vice versa. Once inside the jam-packed greenroom, McCoy spotted his father's friend and introduced Bromley to his friends from Dryer. Then McCoy accidentally on purpose mentioned to Bromley that it was Joan's birthday.

  "A birthday girl, eh?" Bromley said. The bass fortissimist reached up and grabbed a booted foot, pulling Roland Church down to eye level. He gestured at Joan. "A birthday girl," he told his boss.

  "Hey, everybody!" Church shouted. "A birthday girl!"

  "My God," Joan said, "I'm not the first one!"

  "Hey, Estelle," Church said, "It's your turn. Lead off!"

  And Church's keyboarder, his former wife, began singing Happy Birthday, soon joined by everybody in the greenroom and on out to the corridor.

  When they got to, "How old are you now?" Church took pity on Joan and told them all to knock it off; everyone laughed and applauded, and the chaos resumed.

  "And what can I get for the birthday girl?" Roland Church asked Joan.

  "You wouldn't happen to have a hole for me to crawl into, would you?" she asked.

  "Your wish is my command," Roland Church said.

  The "hole" that Church commandeered for Joan was a cannabistro a little down El Capitan called The Last Ditch. The entourage was kept down to Church and his current wife--and antithesist - Claire; Hill Bromley and Estelle--but they weren't really "with" each other, Estelle explained--the Birthday Girl; and her three friends from Dryer.

  After they ordered--Church insisted on ordering the evening's second birthday cake for Joan--Estelle explained that her boss and former husband had never had a birthday party until she'd given him one when they were married, and since then Church never let a birthday go by uncelebrated.

  "He does this sort of thing to everybody," Claire Church went on. "On my last birthday, he got the entire audience singing to me in the middle of a performance."

  After a plate of breaded mushrooms was set down, interrupting the birthday talk for a few seconds, Joan managed to get a word in to Church. "I think we have a teacher in common," she said. "Jack Malcolm."

  "In common indeed--my comman, Jack," Church said. "Jack Malcolm is one massive friar, a massive friar. But if you're one of Jack's students, what are you doing so far from home?"

  "I'm at Dryer now," Joan said, "studying with Jaeger."

  "Now, there's a really massive friar," Church said, "the Wolf Hunter. For him to be teaching you, you must be pretty massive yourself."

  "Well, someday."

  "Don't let her fool you," Astrid said. "There isn't anybody at Dryer who can even come close to her."

  "Astrid," Joan objected.

  "Well, it's true! Isn't it, Moshe?"

  "She plays rings around me," Moshe admitted.

  "Hey, no glow, that's just fine," Church said.

  "I'm just starting to study roga," Joan said. "Seriously, I mean; I've been buying your albums for years. I've been playing weekends over at The Sure Thing."

  "My old alma mater," Church said. "I played there years ago, when I was just getting tight. Maybe sometime when I'm back here I can catch your set."

  "Jesus," Casals said.

  "Oh, I couldn't, not yet," Joan said. "I haven't been doing roga long enough to be really tight. Besides," she continued, "I'm going back to Earth in a few weeks."

  "What?" Astrid said. "You didn't tell me--"

  "I just decided this afternoon," said Joan.

  "Well, look, princess," Church said. "My friar Hill, here, owns a mocha house back in Los Angeles, where I work out new material before we take it on the road. If you're ever out that way, give us a call there, and maybe come in and play for us."

  "That's very generous," Joan said. "Thank you."

  "Consider it a favor I owe to our friar in Rainborough," Church said. "He told me to pass it on."

  On the tram back down El Capitan, after splitting off from the others, Astrid started grilling Joan. "Have you told the Maestro yet that you're going back?"

  "Tomorrow," Joan said.

  "He's not going to like it. He wants you in the St. Clive Competition next April."

  "It'll have to hold for a year. I've got business on Earth I can't put off. Besides, I don't have anything ready to enter."

  "What about your first vistata?"

  Joan shook her head. "Too many bad memories associated with it to use it in competition."

  "Well, what about Contract Bridge?"

  "Come on, Astrid. It's a joke, not a composition."

  "It's precious," said Astrid. "I like it."

  "Thanks, but you don't get the King of St. Clive to hand you a medal by being precious."

  "What about Clockwork?"

  "Too stiff," Joan said. "Let's face it, I'm a Molly Monochrome. I had one good idea for a vistata and that was it. I might as well stick to other people's compositions--or to roga."

  "Seventeen," Astrid said, "and already flamed out."

  "I don't know," Joan said. "But I don't think my teacher has to worry about my coming up with a new rainbow cadenza before he retires."

  Chapter 17

  "I'VE BEEN WAITING for the other shoe to drop since you started roga," Wolfgang Jaeger said to Joan. "Well, don't stand there looking like a criminal. Sit down."

  Jaeger's condominium, like one of his vistatas, was an exercise in unity. His architect and decorator, after long discussions with their client, had decided that since the Maestro would be using their creation to compose color sequences of his own, their thoughts should not impinge on the Maestro's in his own home. The entire penthouse--walls, carpets, furniture, and all but one object d'art--was done completely in black-and- white. The exceptional object d'art was the sculpture of Iris, the Rainbow Goddess, who watched over the entranceway.

  The apartment's one structural oddity was a half-size Tiger Pit in the center of the living room with a dome raised into the ceiling. On the other side of the Tiger Pit from the entranceway were two catercornered chairs. Jaeger gestured to Joan to take the white. He sat in the black.

  "It doesn't have anything to do with roga," Joan said.

  "I know," said Jaeger. "But roga is a symptom of why you're leaving."

  Joan shook her head. "I've talked to lawyers back on Earth about my mother," she said. "While I can't try to win custody of her body until my next birthday--when I'd be drafted into the Federation Peace Corps--the Federations's Copyright Law--the next-of-kin clause--grants me the right to impregnate myself with one of my mother's cells. I'll deposit the surrogate with the vivarium, and authorize a cerebral abortion, in the sixth month. I'm hoping that by presenting my father and Vera with a fait accompli, without leaving them the excuse that they're responsible for a cerebral abortion, they'll have to give authorization for the transplant of my mother's brain into the already-brainless surrogate, once it's fully grown."

  "Have you talked it over with them?"

  "No. Vera especially might try to stop me if she knew. Since back on Earth I'm a minor, she might succeed."

  "But why do this now, at the very beginning of your career?"

  "I can't do it later," Joan said. "I have no intention of waiting almost twenty years until I'm past the draft age before returning to Earth--my mother might be declared legally dead by then and her brain destroyed--or resisting the draft openly and being declared Touchable. Aside from the horror of it, as a Touchable, I wouldn't have the right to sue for custody of my mother. But I don't intend to be drafted, either. Nobody anywhere has any claim on three years of my life, and I'd willingly press the button on a microwave oven to cook anyone who says
they do. My only chance of saving my mother without sacrificing my career is to deposit my mother's surrogate before I'm eighteen, and to resume my residency out here so I can legally inform the Federation that I've declared for extraterrestriality before they can issue a draft notice."

  "Do you intend to continue lasegraphy while you're pregnant?"

  "Are you joking?" Joan said. "Just because I have to try saving my mother's life doesn't mean I'm giving up my own."

  "You're taking a great risk," Jaeger said. "You know there are only two more years in which you'll be eligible to compete for the St. Clive Medal before you're past the age limit."

  "I'm not risking all that much, right now," Joan said. "You know I haven't been able to compose anything up to competition level."

  "That's what I meant when I said that roga is a symptom."

  Joan nodded, suddenly alert. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

  "I didn't know you did."

  "I didn't want you to know." She pulled out a joynette.

  Jaeger lifted a lighter out of his chair and lit it for her.

  Joan took a toke and exhaled. "Wolf, I need the time away from you. I've been trying so hard to have my compositions avoid looking like imitation Jaeger that I haven't had any energy left to have them come out looking like original me."

  "That's not your problem," Jaeger said.

  "If it's not my prolem, then whose is it?"

  Jaeger laughed. "You didn't understand me. What I meant was that you solved the problem of imitating me years ago. All my students go through that phase. The bad ones never get out of it, and I send them packing. If imitation were all you were capable of, you wouldn't be here now. You've learned what it is I do in my compositions--the logic and the discipline--but you've used me, as I intended, as a point of departure. I know my characteristic phrasings. I see them all the time in the work of other lasegraphers; not only my students, mind you--I'm talking of lasegraphers who have been around almost as long as I have been. But my personality is not to be found in the work of Joan Darris. The trouble is, neither is yours. Do you know why?"