Aurora in Four Voices

by Catherine Asaro

  "About girls," he had said.

  "What about them?" his father asked.

  "You know."

  His father sat back on his heels. "Treat her right and she’ll treat you right."

  "Can’t talk."

  "Then listen."

  "Don’t know what ‘treat her right’ means."

  "The way you want to be treated."

  Jato thought of having a girl treat him the way he wanted to be treated. "What if we get into trouble?"

  His father scowled. "Don’t."

  He had figured that his father, who became his father only a few tendays after he married Jato’s pregnant mother, would have had a more informative answer than that. "What if it happens anyway?"

  "You see that it doesn’t." He pointed his trowel at Jato. "You go planting crops, boy, you better be ready to take responsibility if they grow." Lowering his arm, he looked across the field to where Jato’s mother was curing tubes by the water shack, her long hair brushing her arms, Jato’s five younger siblings helping her or playing in the dust. "Choose a place you value." His voice softened. "A place you can love."

  Jato watched him closely. "Did you?"

  He turned back, his face gentle now. "That I did."

  That was the extent of his father’s advice on women, sex and love, but it had held up well over the years. On Nightingale, however, he barely ever had the chance to talk to a woman, let alone go walking with one. So being with Soz felt odd.

  Eventually the path became a boulevard. They ended up at a plaza in front of Symphony Hall, near the tiled pool. A lamp came on, bathing the pool in rosy light, and a fountain shot out of the water in a rounded arch. A gold lamp switched on, followed by a fountain with two arches, then a green lamp and three arches, and so on, each fountain adding smaller refinements to the overall effect. Altogether, they combined to create a huge blurred square. Sparkles of water flew around Jato and Soz and mist blew in their faces.

  "It’s lovely," Soz said.

  Jato watched her, charmed by the way the rainbow-tinged mist haloed her head, giving her pretty face an ethereal aspect. She looked like a watercolor painting in luminous colors. "It’s called the FourierFount," he said.

  She smiled. "You mean like a Fourier series?"

  "That’s right." He restrained himself from blurting out how much he liked her smile. "The water arches can’t combine like true wave harmonics, but the overall effect works pretty well."

  "It’s unique." She glanced down at his hands. "Jato, look. Your bird."

  He held up the statue and saw what she meant. Light from the fountain was reflecting off the glitter so that it surrounded the statue with a nimbus of rainbows.

  She held out her hands. "May I?" He handed it to her, and she turned it this way and that, watching the shimmer of light on its facets. "What did you mean, that it makes music?"

  "The angle of each facet defines a note." He wondered if he even had the words to explain. Before composing the fugue, he had tried to learn music theory, but in the end he just settled for what sounded right. He played no instruments, nor could he make notes in his mind without hearing them first. He needed a computer to play his creation. The Dreamers steadfastly ignored his requests for web training, so he muddled through on his own, eventually learning enough to use one particular console in the library.

  "Could I hear the music?" Soz asked.

  Her request touched off an unexpected spark of panic. What if she scorned what she heard, the musical self-portrait he had so painstakingly crafted? "I can’t play it," he said. "It needs four spherical-harmonic harps."

  "We can have a web console do it."

  He almost said no. But he owed her for the dream and playing the fugue would pay his debt. Going on a walk through Nightingale didn’t count; dream debt required a work of art created by the debtor.

  Still he hesitated. "It’s a long way to the console I use."

  She motioned at Symphony Hall. "That building must have public consoles."

  He could imagine what she would think of a grown man who could barely log into the web of a city where he had lived for years. He paused for a long time before he finally said, "Can’t use them."

  "It has no console room?"

  "It has one."

  "Can’t you link to your personal console from here?"

  His shoulders were so tense, he felt his sweater pulled tight across them. "No personal console."

  She blinked. "You don’t have a personal console?"

  "No."

  "Where do you work?"

  "Library."

  "We can probably link into the library system from here." She watched his face as if trying to decipher his mood. "I can set it up for you."

  So. He had run out of excuses. After another of their awkward pauses, he said, "All right."

  He took her to an alcove in Symphony Hall. Blue light filled the room and blue rugs carpeted the floor. The sculpted white shapes of the public consoles made a pleasing design around the perimeter of the room.

  Soz sat on a cushioned stool in front of the nearest console. "Open guest account."

  When a wash of blue appeared the screen, Jato almost laughed. Only Dreamers would color-coordinate a room’s decor with its web console.

  "Welcome to Nightingale," the console said. "What can I do for you?"

  "Library access," she said. "Establish a root directory here, standard branch structure and holographics, maximum allowed memory, full paths to available public nodes, and all allowed anonymous transferral options."

  "Specify preferred nodes," the console said.

  "One to produce a music simulation, given a representation of the score and a mapping algorithm."

  A new voice spoke in mellow tones. "Treble here. Please position score and define algorithm."

  Soz glanced at Jato. "You can take it from here."

  He just looked at her. It had sounded like she was speaking another language. He hadn’t even known the computers she spoke to existed. "Take it where?"

  She stood up and moved aside. "Tell Treble how to access your files."

  "I don’t have an account."

  "Everyone has an account."

  He had to make a conscious effort to keep from gritting his teeth. "I guess I’m no one."

  Soz winced. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way." She started to say more, then stopped. Glancing around the alcove, she said, "This room must be easy to monitor."

  "Probably." Did she think the Dreamers were watching them? "The drones keep track of me."

  She nodded. Any questions or comments she had intended to make about his lack of computer accounts remained unsaid. Instead she indicated a horizontal screen on the console. "If you put the statue there and give Treble the mapping for the fugue, it will make a hologram of the bird, digitize it, transform the map, and apply the transform to the digitized data."

  Jato wished he were somewhere else. This was worse than the business with the door at the Inn. At least then he had been revealing his ignorance to an inanimate object. "I’ve no idea what you just said."

  Incredibly, she flushed, as if she were the one making an idiot out of herself rather than him. "Jato, I’m terrible at this. Ask me to calculate engine efficiency, plot a course, plan strategy-I’m a whiz, like you with your art. Put me in front of a handsome man and I’m as clumsy with words as a pole in a pot."

  He stared at her. A whiz… like you with your art. She thought he was a "whiz." A handsome whiz, at that.

  Jato smiled. "You’re fine." He motioned at the console. "So I put the statue there?"

  Her face relaxed. "That’s right. Then tell Treble how to figure out the notes."

  He set down the bird, and two laser beams played over it, making the glitter sparkle. When they stopped, he said, "Treble?"

  "Attending," the console answered.

  "The angle a facet makes with the base of the bird specifies a note. It varies linearly: facets parallel to the base are three octaves below middle
C and those perpendicular are three octaves above." He touched the statue, his fingertips on its wings. "Each plane parallel to the base defines a chord and each facet touching the plane is a note in that chord. To play the fugue, start at the bottom and move to the top."

  "Is height a discrete or continuous variable?"

  "Continuous." Only a computer could do it. Human musicians would have to take planes at discrete heights. If the intervals between the planes were small enough, the human version approached the computer version. But the fugue only truly became what he intended when the distance between planes was so small that for all practical purposes it went to zero.

  "Facets with one ridge are played by a spherical-harmonic baritone harp," he said. "Two ridges is tenor, three alto, and four soprano. Loudness is linear with glitter thickness, from pianissimo to fortissimo. Tempo is linear with the frequency of the light corresponding to the glitter color." He tapped a beat on the console. "Red." He increased the tempo. "Violet."

  "Data entered," Treble said. "Any other specifications?"

  "No." Then, realizing he would have to see Soz’s reaction to the music, Jato said, "Yes. Lower the room lights to fifteen percent."

  The lights dimmed, leaving them in dusky blue shadows. It was too dark to see Soz’s face clearly.

  A deep note sounded, the rumbling of a baritone harp. After several measures of baritone playing alone, tenor joined in with the same melody, mellow and smooth. Alto came next and soprano last, as sweet as the dawn.

  Treble shaped the music far more tenderly than the generic program he used in the library. Yes, that was it, the minor key there, that progression, that arpeggio. Treble had it right. At the bird’s arching neck, soprano soared into a shimmering coloratura. Notes flowed over them, radiant and painful, too bright to endure for long. The other harps came in like an undertow, pulling soprano beneath their deeper melodies. At the head of the bird, soprano burst free again, a fountain of sound.

  Yes. Treble had it. Treble knew.

  Gradually the music slowed, sliding over the outstretched wings above the bird. Finally only baritone rumbled in the glimmering wake of soprano’s fading glory. The last notes vibrated in the alcove and died.

  Jato stood frozen, afraid to move lest it rouse Soz to reveal her reaction. Yet the silence was also unbearable. What did she think? That was him in that music, the vulnerable part, without barriers or protections.

  Her head was turned toward the console, so he saw only her profile. A glimmer showed on her cheek. Something was sliding down her face.

  He touched the tear. "Why are you crying?"

  "It’s so beautiful." She looked up at him. "So utterly sad and utterly beautiful."

  Beautiful. She thought his music was beautiful. He tried to answer, make a joke or something, but nothing came out. So he drew her into his arms and laid his cheek on top her head.

  She didn’t pull away. Instead she put her arms around his waist and held him. The fresh scent of her newly washed hair wafted around him. Softly she said, "What place do you like best in Nightingale?"

  "The Promenade."

  "Will you take me there?"

  He swallowed. "Yes."

  Part III: The Giant’s Rib

  Bathed in starlight, the west edge of the plateau dropped into the jagged immensity of the Giant’s Skeleton Mountains. Its crevices cut deep into the planet’s crust, the tormented remains of a planetoid impact that had brutalized Ansatz in a long-vanished eon. Spires jutted up like skeletal fingers on walls between the chasms.

  Natural bridge formations tried to span the kilometers-deep fissures, but most spans were incomplete, their broken ends hanging in the air.

  The plateau itself claimed one of the few unbroken bridges. The Promenade. It rose up from the plateau’s southern corner, spanned its length, and ended high in the northern cliffs. Two kilometers long and averaging only two meters wide, the bridge curved out from the plateau over a great chasm. Spires on the chasm walls supported it with columns of rock.

  The Dreamers had tooled the Promenade’s upper side into a path, giving it meter-high retaining walls on both sides. They laid down a courtyard at its southern base, with undulating lines enameled into the geometric design of gilded tiles.

  As Jato and Soz crossed the courtyard, wind grabbed his jacket and tossed her curls around her face. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her over the blustering wind, so he leaned down. "Say again?"

  Her breath tickled his ear. "It’s exhilarating."

  "It’s even stronger on the Promenade."

  "Beat you there!" She took off and sprinted up the bridge, leaning forward against its steep cant. Laughing, he tried to catch her, but she ran like a rocket.

  They raced the entire kilometer to the apex. At the top, Soz threw out her arms and spun around, her hair whipping about her head. She spoke and the wind kidnapped her words. When Jato shook his head and pointed to his ears, she shouted, "How far to the bottom?" Then she leaned over the wall, staring into the void below.

  "Three kilometers!" He pulled her back to safety turning her around, his bird pressed against her back, his pulse beating hard as the bridge vibrated in the rushing gales. She looked up at him with a flushed face. The wind, the night, the danger-it brought her alive. Without stopping to think, he pulled her into an embrace.

  Sliding her arms around his neck, she drew his head down into a kiss. He returned the favor with pleasure, making up for eight years of solitude. He couldn’t believe this, that she wanted him. Who would have thought it?

  Jato paused. Why did she want him? Lifting his head, he looked down at her. He was trapped on Ansatz for life and they both knew she would soon leave. What was this, take advantage of the love-starved convict, then go back to her life where she didn’t have to worry about him?

  Soz watched his face, her eyes alternately visible and hidden as the wind threw around her hair. She touched his cheek with fingers as gentle as the smile that kept emerging and hiding behind those glorious curls. Jato decided the "why" didn’t matter. He wanted to tell her things, how good she felt, how lovely she looked, but he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound clumsy. So instead he kissed her again.

  The bridge’s vibrations were increasing, making it pitch like the deck of a sea-ship. It gave a particularly inspired heave and knocked Soz and Jato apart, separating them as if it were their chaperon. They stumbled back from each other, both flailing their arms for balance. Jato laughed and Soz spread her arms wide as if to address the Giant’s Skeleton itself with her protest.

  Then something on the plateau caught her attention. She went back to the wall and peered toward Nightingale. "What are those?"

  Looking out, Jato saw what she had noticed, the familiar statues, massive and tall, halfway between the plateau’s edge and the city. Sometimes those gigantic stone beasts were lit and other times they stood in the dark, like now, their mouths forever open in silent roars.

  "Wind Lions," Jato said. Coming to stand behind her, he put his arms around her waist. "Wind machines. If they were ever turned on, the cliffs would magnify their effect."

  "No wonder it’s so windy up here."

  He bent his head and spoke against her ear. "This is normal wind. The Lions aren’t on."

  When his breath wafted against her ear, she closed her eyes and sighed. With her back against his front, she raised her arms and slid them around his neck. The motion pulled up her breasts, making her nipples point at the stars. He kissed her ear, and she rubbed her head against his cheek like a cat. Then she murmured, a soft noise audible only with his head so close to hers, one of those sounds he had forgotten a woman made when she liked the way a man touched her. Maybe it was the eight years of solitude, but he couldn’t remember any woman on Sandstorm feeling this fine. He wondered how it would be to make love up here in the wild gales, three kilometers above the Giant’s chasm.

  "Why not?" she asked.

  He smiled. Why not indeed? "Why not what?"
r />   She lowered her arms and turned in his embrace. "Why aren’t the Lions ever on?"

  He tilted his head toward the courtyard. "Do you remember the design in the tiles back there? The curving lines?" When she nodded, he said, "It’s a plot of the vortices for a single-degree oscillator with an undamped torsional flutter." He stroked her blowing curls back from her face. "Wind makes the Promenade twist. If it ever blew hard enough, the vortices in its wake around the bridge would drive a self-induced resonance until the Promenade tore itself apart."

  "What would ever possess them to set it up like that?"

  Jato smiled. "Because they’re crazy." As he bent his head to kiss her, the bridge gave a violent shudder and threw them to the side. They stumbled along the wall, lurching from side to side as they struggled to regain their footing. It didn’t work; they finally toppled over and hit the walkway with a thud.

  "Hey!" Soz laughed, struggling to wriggle out from under Jato’s bulk. "It’s mad at us."

  "I’ve never seen it this windy." Jato managed to get up to his knees, but when Soz tried to do the same, the agitated bridge knocked her over again. She finally succeeded by moving with an unnatural speed, as if she had toggled a switch that activated an enhanced mode of her body. They knelt there face to face, Jato holding her shoulders, she with her hands braced against his chest. The Promenade kept moving, more than he had ever felt it do before, rippling almost. It moaned in the assault of air as if the Giant were waking from his mountainous grave.

  Soz wasn’t smiling any more. "The Lions are blowing."

  He couldn’t believe it. "That’s impossible. The Dreamers consider this art. They would never destroy it."

  "The whole bridge is shaking. It doesn’t feel stable."

  They stared at each other. Then they scrambled to their feet and took off running for the northern cliffs. The cliffs were closer than the courtyard, but even so they had nearly a kilometer to go.

  Suddenly the bridge lurched like a string shaken by a mammoth child. Flailing

  Then it came: a great booming crack. Thunder roared as if a great mountainous rib was tearing away from the Giant’s skeleton. The bridge convulsed and they sprawled forward, slammed down onto the path. Rolling onto his side, Jato grabbed Soz and they held on to each other while the universe convulsed around them.