The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  Suddenly, a beacon of light from a flying belt hit her, and a man in leather dropped down only a few feet from her. "Hello," Vera said. "Having any luck tonight?"

  "Not until now," the man said. Vera thought he looked somehow familiar, but couldn't place him. He was wearing a flying belt and standard Marnie hunting apparel--black leather jacket and pants, high leather boots--but he was not wearing a Marnie's helmet with its official hunting medallion. The man was short by current standards, only about five feet eleven inches. His face was long, unshaved, and rattish, with sharp nose and pale-but- mottled skin. His black hair was greasy and unkempt.

  "Have we hunted together?" Vera asked.

  The man laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

  "Why are you looking at me that way?" Vera said. "And when it comes right down to it, where's your medallion? I'm a judge. If I report you, you could have your license pulled for not wearing it."

  "If you're a judge," the man said, "then I'm the First Lady. Now, are you going to jaw all night, or shall we get down to it?"

  "What?"

  "Take 'em off," he said. "Do you expect me to do all the work?"

  "Are you crazy? Are you under the impression that I'm a Touchable?"

  "That's what the scanner says, Your Ladyship."

  "You're insane," Vera said. "You'd better read it again."

  "Anything to please you, Your Ladyship."

  The man scanned Vera again, and waited for the Federation computers to reply. "See?" he told Vera, showing her the reading on his wrist. "Now, take off your clothes, before I get nasty. You sure manage to dress up nice--I have to give you that."

  "There's been some terrible mistake," Vera said. "The computers have made an error!"

  "Computers don't make errors, Your Ladyship. That's the first thing they teach you in school. You look like you went to school, so you must know that. Goddess, you're beautiful!"

  The man went up to Vera and began taking off her outer coat.

  "Stop it!" Vera said. "I'll scream!"

  "You do and I'll belt you one," the man said. "Do you think I want everyone and his brother muscling in on my catch?"

  "Help!" Vera shouted. "Isn't there anyone who--"

  The man backhanded Vera hard across the face, knocking her to the ground.

  He didn't bother undressing her more than he had to--opening her coat, unfastening her skirt, pulling down her panties.

  "Don't," Vera said. "Please don't!"

  The man unzipped his fly and released his erect penis. Then he took some grease off his hair and spread it on his organ.

  He forced his way in.

  It didn't take very long. He came in about a minute.

  "I'll report you," she said. "You've just raped a judge. I'll report you!"

  "Sure you will. Hey, that's a nice piece of jewelry. You don't mind if I take it, do you?"

  He dropped it in his pocket.

  Suddenly, he noticed that the reading his wristscanner was getting from Vera had changed. "What the rape?" he said. "You were telling the truth!"

  "I'll report you!" Vera said. "I may even declare you Touchable myself!"

  "You're a little late on that," the man said. "So I think you'll understand why I'm not about to leave any witnesses."

  "No, you--"

  The man pulled Vera to her feet. He waited just a moment, to allow her to appreciate the full impact of what he was about to do. Then, exactly as they'd shown on Red Hunt every week for the past twenty years, he smashed Vera's nose into her head, propelling a bone splinter up into the brain.

  She was, in the only important respect, dead--her brain swelled irreparably against her braincase--when she was found on the street, fifteen minutes later, and an ambulance called for her. But since the paramedic team from Golden-Sky General Hospital found an organ-donor card in her wallet, Vera Collier Delaney was placed into controlled hypothermia as soon as they reached the hospital.

  Her body was still intact, waiting at 4 degrees Celsius, when Stanton Darris learned of her death.

  VIII.

  2970Å

  Chapter 36

  "SHE'S AWAKE AGAIN."

  "May we see her now?" Joan asked.

  "Goodness," the nurse, a young woman said, "there are so many of you! I'm afraid it might be too much all at once. Why doesn't just one of you go in first, and if it's not too much of a strain, then the rest can come in by pairs?"

  "Go ahead, dear," Grandma Collier said to Joan.

  "But shouldn't one of you--"

  "There's no one your mother will want to see more," Stanton said.

  Grandpa Collier, Wendell, and Joan's seven brothers all agreed.

  Joan followed the nurse along the guideline in the tube of the Cerebral Wing in City of Joy Hospital, and floated into the C.C.U.

  Eleanor was wrapped in a netting that prevented her from floating around the room, and was wearing a large helmet that would have been much too heavy for her if she had not been in zero gravity. The scars Vera's body had sustained had already been healed.

  Joan looked at her mother, and tears began welling up in her eyes, refusing to break away. She found she couldn't speak.

  Eleanor could. "You've grown up the be gorgeous, Joan."

  "Mom," Joan floated to the netting and, with some difficulty, managed to hug and kiss her mother.

  "There, there," Eleanor said, "why all the tears? It seems like just yesterday that I saw you." Eleanor reached her finger up to Joan's face and brushed away a tear from the corner of one eye.

  Joan could almost not help laughing. "For me it's been almost six years," she said.

  "Really? Anything interesting happen?"

  "I'm not sure you'll believe me when I tell you. Mom, how do you feel?"

  "There's a slight earache that the doctors tell me will take another week to go away. Aside from that, I feel fine."

  "I like your new hat," Joan said.

  "It's the latest model," Eleanor said.

  "Mom, there's something I have to tell you. I'm not sure this is the proper time, though."

  "Joan, if it's about Vera, you don't have to say anything. I already know."

  "You know what?" Joan asked.

  "I know that you gave her the transponder with your brainprint in it, disguised as a brooch."

  Joan opened her mouth, and immediately had to close it to prevent a globule of saliva from breaking away.

  "But how-- Who told you? Who could have told you?"

  "Nobody told me," Eleanor said. "I seemed to figure it out while I was in the half-dreamy theta state just before I woke up. The surgeons tell me that a section of my brain's left hemisphere had suffered from cryonic burning--the perfusant had failed to reach it--so they decided to take that part of Vera's brain's left hemisphere and put it back in; they said they were able to reduce the swelling considerably. I have Vera's memories--most of them dim and distant, but I can remember the last year of her life almost exactly. I remember her arranging to have you drafted. I remember her refusing to allow me to be revived. I remember your giving her the brooch just before your wedding to Burke Filcher, and I remember a conversation Vera had with him by phone a few days later. I remember her finding the Touchable's cloak on her desk with the warning from you. I remember her having you declared Touchable, and I remember the Touchable who raped her and killed me--I mean her. I seem to remember Vera's death far more clearly than I remember my own. I think my last days might have been imprinted most strongly in the section of my brain that was left out--I hardly remember my performance at the pyradome. I remember almost everything, though. The doctors told me about holographic storage of information in the brain."

  "The brain stores information like a hologram?" Joan asked.

  "Yes. The whole is in every part--it's just that it becomes hazy and shallow if it's not connected to the rest of the whole. Now I know what is meant by the old saying 'The macrocosm is in the microcosm.'"

  "Maybe the whole universe is that way, Mom. Possibly
that's why God is called holy. Are you telling me that Vera is still alive?"

  "I don't know how to answer that, Joan. I know that I'm Eleanor, not Vera. But it's as if Vera were standing just behind me, close enough that I can feel her touching me and close enough that I can hear her. But I'm in complete charge."

  Joan hesitated a moment. "Mom...if there's any part of Vera in you, I'm not going to apologize to her for what I did."

  Eleanor nodded slowly. "You don't have to, Joanie. You just held up a mirror as a shield against Vera. She fired the laser bolt, and it was her own fault that it got reflected back to herself."

  "You're not angry with me?"

  Eleanor ran her hand over Joan's cheek. "I'll never be angry with you, Joan."

  "Uh, what about Dad?"

  Eleanor smiled, and for a moment she wore a wicked expression that Joan associated much more strongly with Vera.

  "Your father and I are going to have a long, long talk," Eleanor said.

  Eleanor's homecoming to her grandparents' house in Tolkien Valley was a grand party with her entire family. She was shocked to find out that the Colliers now allowed liquor in their household, though they still wouldn't touch a drop of it themselves.

  It was the sort of party Eleanor had always tried to avoid on Earth: everyone talked about things that he or she cared about. She found herself involved in a conversation with Wendell when she'd asked him how he felt about being forced to resign as ambassador.

  "It's the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "I was getting a little sick of playing the role of intellectual guerilla in that Grand Guignol back on Earth."

  "Intellectual gorilla?" Delaney asked. "You mean like Hello, Joe?"

  Wendell laughed. "Not the sort of gorilla with hair on his arms, son--though I must admit that most guerillas have been pretty hairy. A guerilla is someone who makes raids into enemy territory, plants explosives, then retreats into the night. That's what I was trying to do in politics. Plant an explosive concept in the enemy camp, then retreat into the night. I'm not sure it did any good, though. The people I was trying to infect seemed to be the least susceptible ones around."

  "What are your plans now?" Joan asked.

  "I'm going to be running the Astran office of Darris Investments. My father had the right idea of where the future was. I sometimes wonder why he ever returned to Earth."

  "Didn't he ever tell you?" Stanton said. "He says a witch cast a spell over him, and he had to marry her."

  "That's Mother's version of it," Wendell said, "not Father's."

  "By the way," Joan told Wendell, "did I mention that I just received a picturegram from Hill Bromley?"

  "Really? I thought he had gone to that mining camp."

  "He did, but that doesn't mean they don't have phones there. You know who he said is the best tenor in his church choir?"

  "Who?"

  "Burke Filcher," Joan said.

  Wendell laughed. "That figures. Though from what you told me, he came pretty close to singing soprano."

  "Can I try it now?" Joan asked

  "Let Zack try it first," Wendell said. "I seem to be getting a stronger signal from him."

  Zachary Armstrong Darris II stood in front of the Direct Emoting Console and concentrated his thoughts on the fire gems inside, using the same technique he'd used playing velletrom. "I'm getting something," Wendell said, "but the emotions are all jumbled together. Just noise."

  "I can't seem to tell them apart," Zack said.

  "May I try it now?" Joan asked again.

  "Might as well," Zack said. "I'm not getting anywhere."

  Joan placed her hands on the console, and began to think.

  "It feels like a scale," Wendell said. "Starting very heavy and depressed, and moving toward joy."

  "That's exactly what I was trying to do," Joan said.

  "Have they decided whether the aliens on Lucifer used them like this?" Zack asked Wendell.

  Wendell shrugged. "They might have, but it's thought they were primarily telepathic relays."

  "I'm going to try a coloratura now," Joan said.

  She began to concentrate on the fire gems, and tried to pick out the sequence of the Resurrection Vistata.

  After a few minutes, Wendell was crying too hard and she had to stop.

  The King and Queen of St. Clive declared the official opening of the St. Clive Lasegraphic Competition on Joan's birthday, April 15, but she wasn't scheduled to play until the next day. Joan floated in the audience in the upper hemisphere of the new Wolfgang Jaeger Sphere, in a cage just a few meters away from the cage that held the King and Queen themselves. In the cage with her were her mother and Jack Malcolm.

  The competition was tough, Joan had to admit. Two compositions in particular were good enough that she worried about them--The Magonia Vistata composed by Gregor Laseroff and Diurne in Seventh by Julia Davidson.

  The next afternoon, Joan floated downstage with her mother and Jack, waiting to go on. "I wouldn't mind so much," Joan said, "if only the sweat would go somewhere."

  Jack smiled. "You'll be fine. Stop worrying about it."

  She smiled back at him. "I wish Wolfgang could have been here to see this," Joan said.

  "He will be," Eleanor said.

  "What? You mean he will be when I show him the recording, fifteen years from now."

  "I mean that he'll be here today," Eleanor said.

  "Mom, he's in a cryonic capsule in Ad Astra."

  "Do you think I don't know that?" Eleanor said. "But it won't prevent him from being here--he'll zero right in on your thoughts."

  "What do you mean, Eleanor?" Jack asked.

  "Astral travel," she said. "I did quite a bit of it while I was frozen."

  "You're not serious."

  "I remember it quite distinctly. Oh, the doctors told me that it was just dreams I was having while I was being revived. They didn't believe me. That's why I haven't mentioned it before. But I know."

  "Mom, do you think he'll make it back from wherever he is now?"

  "Yes, Joan."

  "You shouldn't make promises like that, Eleanor," Malcolm said. "Wolfgang's brain is very old. There's no guarantee that it will be able to be revived."

  Joan shook her head--which in free fall caused her body to shake the other way. "Wolfgang's brain was as young the day his heart stopped," she said, "as the day he first sat down at a console. If that's all that's preventing him from coming back, he'll make it."

  She loved the lights.

  She began playing a piece she had not written but that had never had a premiere.

  It was a happy little dance. A blue figure-8 warbled and squggled 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, then rebounded into a giant. When it had finished, a red figure-8 repeated the dance the blue one had done, while the blue now weaved in and around the red figure's dance like a dog running around and between its master's feet.

  When the red figure had finished its exposition, a green figure-8 began the dance still again, while the red began its own embellishments. The pattern continued with a violet figure doing the dance, then embellishing; then a yellow; then an indigo; then an orange; then the blue once again, while each of the other figures now weaved into, out of, and around the blue in a sprightly, contrapuntal moving design.

  Applause thundered into the Avocado Pit from all directions, as Joan Darris finished playing Fugue in Blue by Vera Collier Delaney.

  She lowered the glowing again, and began to play. She was a little frightened at first, but sensed a personality she recognized floating behind her. Her mother had been right. Of course Wolfgang would be here.

  It was an exercise in rising spirals. It began with a theme of Chaldean orbits, but this was much too stiff and limiting to be allowed to continue for long--it was interrupted by a merry waltz of blue sparks and red, an echo of a friend's voice.

  It sp
oke of the passage of the seasons, each one with a memory of the past and a promise of the future. It spoke of the marriage of the line and the circle. It spoke of paths to a place higher up and farther in. It promised that those beings who lifted themselves up with the left hand would be pulled up by the right.

  After a cadenza that consisted of the destruction of a spiral, another resurrected anew, it seemed an inevitable outgrowth of what had come before. It began moving slowly, then raced around faster and faster and faster, until she was surrounded by an immense spiral rainbow.

  When The Helix Vistata was over, and Joan had raised the day glowing, she didn't notice the thunderous ovation at first. She didn't see the King of St. Clive unstrapping himself from his pallet, leaving his cage to join her in the Avocado Pit.

  She was still listening to the lights. She knew they had always been telling her something, but now she understood what they were saying.

  And above all, she knew that she had fulfilled a promise she had made to herself. She knew that she had told the colors how to make a rainbow.

  Written in Long Beach, California,

  and San Antonio, Texas.

  Completed December 25, 1981

  Appendix I.

  SOME RAINBOW CADENZAS

  There are three usual reasons for a novel to have an Afterword.

  The first usual reason is that the author is long-dead, which puts the book in the "classic" category, at which point the Teacher's Unions demand a piece of the action, and the publisher appeases them with an Afterword.

  The second usual reason is that a still-living author-- insecure about whether the novel has made its point--tacks on an Author's Afterword to make sure a reader has gotten the message.

  The third usual reason is that even though the author is regrettably still alive--and might possibly still embarrass those academics who have staked their reputations on saying that this author is the reincarnation of Thomas Hardy--the book is being taught in high schools or colleges, and the Afterword is supposed to provide the test questions.