Automatically, he lifted a fist to knock, then caught himself. He tried the knob and the door opened. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
His first impression was one of awesome clutter. Papers and books were strewn haphazardly about, covering every conceivable surface. A small space had been cleared on one side table for a glass coffeemaker and a few chipped cups and saucers. There was a washstand with unmopped puddles of water on the floor beneath, and an unmade bed in the corner with more papers scattered across it. The room was not particularly large, and no fewer than three pianos crowded it still further. The tops of the pianos themselves were used as catch-alls, and Lester glimpsed a miscellany of objects that included a small ivory bust and several ear trumpets.
One of the pianos had its legs sawed off, so that it rested directly on the floorboards. Beethoven was sitting on the floor in front of it, amidst a rat's nest of crumpled papers, his legs splayed out awkwardly on either side. Lester knew what that was all about from Ted Fisher's briefing; it was so that Beethoven could feel the floor vibrations when he was thumping the piano.
Beethoven's back was to Lester, but he must have sensed his presence, because he swiveled around and looked up angrily.
"Wer sind Sie?" he demanded.
Beethoven looked like an unmade bed himself. A shaggy mane of graying hair stood out stiffly, looking as if it had seen neither comb nor scissors for a while, and his shirt was rumpled and unbuttoned. He looked pretty much like the busts and pictures: a short, broad, muscular man with a wide forehead and the burning eyes of the portraits.
Lester controlled his excitement. He reached past Beethoven and picked up the pencil and conversation book that were lying on the piano. He caught the word Verzeihung on the open page; Schindler must have been apologizing for something.
He turned the page and scribbled out: Ich bin Amerikaner, Herr Beethoven. Beethoven's eyebrows rose, and he grew more cordial. He passed the book back to Lester. "Schreiben Sie mehr."
It went more smoothly than Lester could have hoped for. He explained to Beethoven that he had many admirers in America, and that there was a wide demand for whatever piano and chamber music became available from overseas. Now a truly amerikanischer symphony orchestra with the highest professional standards was being assembled in the city of Neu York and the subscribers had determined that only a new symphony by the great Herr Beethoven would do for the inaugural concert. They had gotten up a fund and authorized a big advance.
Beethoven perked up at the “big advance,” and he invited Lester to sit down. He disposed of the formalities right away, and they started negotiating in earnest. Beethoven was an aggressive bargainer, and kept raising the ante every time Lester thought he was getting somewhere. He seemed to sense that he had Lester over a barrel. Lester knew he was out of his depth when they got to eight hundred florins for the advance alone. At one point, Beethoven claimed that his publisher, Schott, was offering him sixteen hundred florins for a package to include a “great mass” and a symphony, and he did not want to disappoint him. But, he said, if they could reach a suitable—"Geeignet"—agreement, he might squeeze in a new symphony for Lester and put Schott off with a few trifles. Lester knew where that was headed. Beethoven could pocket both advances and palm off the same symphony on both of them. In his own sweet time.
“No, no, that's impossible!” Lester said desperately, forgetting himself and speaking out loud. He willed himself to remain calm and resumed writing in the conversation book. The date of the American concert could not be altered. The wheels were already in motion. Time was of the essence. The subscribers had instructed Lester to remain in Vienna until the symphony was finished and to bring the manuscript back to America with him. He would pay to have a copy made for Beethoven's use before he left Vienna. But—and here Lester took a brave leap—he could not release a single pfennig until they came to an ironclad agreement. Like it or not, Beethoven would have to write to a deadline.
Lester sat back and waited for the explosion. And it came.
Beethoven's face darkened. He shouted, “There is only one Beethoven! I am not some tradesman, grinding out sausages! I will not be treated this way! You may take your amerikanischer money and—” Here, Beethoven used an expletive that Lester had never heard before, but whose meaning was unmistakable.
Lester waited it out, his heart pounding. Then they started negotiating all over again.
* * * *
“...and good luck...” Marty was saying as Lester vanished, and then he broke off as lights began blinking on the monitor board. The booth remained empty, and he turned to Roy Hendricks and said, “I thought it was supposed to be instantaneous."
“It is, in one sense,” Roy said. “Lester's just in Schrodinger's waiting room till the capacitors come up to speed again.” He squinted at the monitor board. “The mass indicator's right on target. I wonder what he's using for ballast. Sand's always popular. So are jugs of water. Usually in much smaller quantities than your requirements, needless to say. The gold stays in 1824, of course..."
The lights flickered. “Ah, here he comes now,” Roy said.
Two people, not one, popped into existence in the booth. One was Lester. The other was a short, stocky man with wild hair, wearing a rumpled shirt, baggy trousers, and bathroom slippers. He needed no introduction.
“Lester, what the hell did you do...” Marty began, then desisted as Lester shushed him with a warning gesture.
“Herr Direktor,” Lester said in stiff, formal German, “permit me to present Herr Beethoven...” In a quick English aside, he said, “For God's sake, Marty, try to look important. And stuffy.” To Roy Hendricks, he hissed, “No, don't try to shake hands with him. Just bow and look respectful."
Beethoven was peering all around with intense interest. It was impossible to tell how much sense he was making of it. The electronic equipment lining the walls could have had no meaning for him. The office furniture scattered through the staging chamber looked nothing like the heavy desks and solid chairs he would have recognized. And the people sitting in those strange spidery seats, who seemed to be some sort of clerks, had no pens, inkwells, or paper, and scarcely any decent surface to write on anyway. But he was fascinated by the electric lights. His eyes darted from desk lamps to overheads and back again, then fixed on the glowing screens that the clerks were staring at.
“Where's the manuscript?” Marty said sotto voce. “What's he doing here?"
“Later,” Lester said. “First we better get him settled. A hotel's too risky. We'll have to use the company's hospitality suite. And fix him up with some clothes. And while we're doing all that, you have to get on the stick and get him an appointment with an audiologist."
Harv had told his secretary to cancel all his appointments. He was alone in his office with Marty and Lester. He closed the door and pulled down the Venetian blinds, and turned around to face them.
“All right, Lester,” he said. “You better explain yourself."
Lester was sweating. “It couldn't be helped, Harv. He knew he had me by the marshmallows. I could have gone through the roof on the money offer, but with the advance in his pocket, he would have just kept me on hold when it came to actually delivering the symphony. Even if I'd lied to him about the size of the deposit we made in the Henickstein account, he wouldn't have gone ahead till Henickstein verified the amount. He just kept saying things like ‘What is money to a true artist? I am resigned to being a poor man in the service of my art.’ And so forth. And then he would go into self-pity mode and complain about having to ‘scribble, scribble, scribble for the sake of bread and money.’ Believe me, it was a stalemate. I had to get out of the money rut."
He glanced at Harv's frosty expression and took a deep breath.
“So I made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
* * * *
“But how did you convince him that you were really from the future, and not just another con artist?” Marty said.
They were following
the nurse who was pushing Beethoven's wheelchair down the hospital corridor, trailing her at a distance and speaking in low tones. Beethoven had been admitted as a “Mr. Pfeffer."
“Magic tricks from the twenty-first century,” Lester said. “I had my Palm-All with me. I never travel without it. He couldn't hear the music, but I could show him visuals of orchestras playing and street scenes of the future, with automobiles, skyscrapers, women's bare legs, and so forth. He tried to act cool, but he was pretty shook up. In the end, I got a commitment from him. A ‘sacred compact,’ as he put it. And of course I'll keep reminding him of who he owes for getting his hearing back."
“I have to hand it to you, Lester. You pulled the rabbit out of the hat. I thought Harv was going to have apoplexy when you asked him to put Beethoven on his own medical insurance. As a visiting relative, no less. He'll end up paying out of his own pocket, of course."
“He can afford it."
Up ahead, Beethoven was being difficult. He was treating the poor nurse to a never-ending stream of invective in German. He didn't like the hospital gown. Why was it open in back? It was indecent. Why did he have to ride in a wheelchair? He was perfectly capable of walking. Vorsicht! You are going to bump the wall! You are a dolt! Fortunately, she didn't understand him. She stoked his temper still further by ignoring him, as if he were an unruly child.
The nurse turned into the pre-op room, and Lester and Marty followed her inside. The audiologist who had examined Beethoven was waiting for them with a small computer and a tray full of happy-face stickers. He irritated Beethoven further by speaking to Lester and Marty first.
“I hope you gentlemen can keep him calmed down. I'm going to map the facial nerve for the surgeon, so that he can avoid any damage. It should take about twenty minutes if he's cooperative."
“Is it really gonna work, doc?” Marty said.
“The cochlear implant?” The audiologist pursed his lips. “You're getting a state of the art device—a 1,024 nanoelectrode array. Both ears. It's going to be hideously expensive, but I understand that's no problem. The early cochlear implants got good results with as little as an eight-electrode array. By the turn of the twenty-first century, we were up to a sixteen-electrode array, then thirty-two, then sixty-four. Some of the recipients of those primitive versions claimed they were even able to enjoy music again, though the fi couldn't have been very high. I understand that your Mr. Pfeffer was some sort of musician?"
“That's right,” Marty said. “Uncle Hans was always the life of the party."
“He got a little crabby after he lost his hearing,” Lester added.
“Well, the 1,024 electrodes in the array don't approach the thousands of cilia in a normal cochlea, of course, but they're past the threshold where the brain cares about the difference. The normal cochlea provides analog information to the auditory nervous system, and the brain sorts it out. A cochlear implant provides digital information, already sorted out by its little microprocessor, to whatever remains of the auditory nerve dendrites and spiral ganglion cells, and the brain interprets it as sound.” He smiled with professional satisfaction. “Your Uncle Hans should hear as vividly as he ever did, once the brain learns to rewire itself for the new type of input."
“And how long will that take, doc?” Marty said.
“Oh, usually just a few weeks. We'll have to wait until the skin flap over the mastoid bone heals. Then we'll need a couple of sessions to fine-tune the computer program. All done wirelessly, of course, not like the old days when you had to wear an external gadget. Your uncle will need a little patience."
Lester and Marty looked at each other. They were both thinking the same thing: the security problems of an extended stay in the present.
“Uncle Hans isn't too good with patience,” Marty finally said.
“I'm sure it will go smoothly. You gentlemen have been doing fine with him so far."
Beethoven had been stewing while they talked. He erupted with a scowl and a gruff "Gott macht gesund, und der Doktor bekommt das Geld!"
The audiologist smiled pleasantly, and motioned the nurse to wheel Beethoven over to the little table holding the computer. She held Beethoven's hands while the audiologist moved a probe over his face, pasting a line of little happy faces to mark the boundaries of the facial nerve.
“What did he say?” Marty whispered.
“God gives us back our health, and the doctor gets the money,” Lester said.
When the audiologist was through with him, Beethoven had a visit from the anesthetist. They'd gone through it before, but Marty had to assure him all over again that Beethoven had no history of any problems in that department, and that the cardiologist had cleared him for surgery. Beethoven showed no interest in the proceedings until a phlebotomist arrived to insert an IV. It was no good trying to explain to him what was going on, and he managed to give her a good smack in the chops before they pinned him down. “Murderers, murderers!” he kept yelling, but they held onto him until the preliminary tranquilizer began to take effect. He remarked that he was feeling pleasant, and closed his eyes.
There was no more trouble after that. They stayed with him until an attendant arrived to wheel him to the operating room. The nurse followed, pushing the IV stand. She had scratches and finger marks on her arms, and a glacial expression on her face. She turned at the door and said, “It'll be a few hours. You gentlemen can use the family waiting room."
“We're almost set,” Roy Hendricks told them. “Just a few more minutes now."
“Back to Vienna, kid,” Marty said jovially. “Don't sweat it. You'll be back here before I know it."
Beethoven was wandering around the staging area as though he owned the place. He was in high good humor, even pausing at a console or two to flirt with the young women stationed there, if his heavy-handed badinage could be called flirting. Now he was standing in front of one of the wall monitors, his hands clasped behind his back, staring at a frozen image of his own apartment, just as he had left it a couple of hundred years ago.
“It was a good move, getting him the piano,” Marty was saying. “He didn't like being cooped up in the hospitality suite. It kept him out of trouble."
“Except for the time he got out,” Lester said. “It was a mistake letting him have money."
“You can't blame him. He was bored and restless. He liked to take a break in the afternoon and go out to have a beer and read the papers. That piano bar he ended up in was the closest thing to the Viennese taverns he was used to that he could find."
“Yeah, but then he pushed the piano player off the bench and started improvising. The happy hour crown didn't appreciate the kind of music he was playing. If only they hadn't started booing him for not responding to requests. That's when he lost his temper. He was used to being lionized when he was a young virtuoso. God knows what would have happened if we hadn't tracked him down in time."
“But we did. We smoothed things over with the bartender and bought a round for the house, and everybody's forgotten about it by now."
“I don't know, Marty. What if The Music Factory heard about the incident and put two and two together?"
“That was two weeks ago, and there hasn't been any trade scuttlebutt. Relax, Lester. You worry too much. As far as anybody knows, it was just another old drunk who thought he could play the piano. Happens all the time.” He glanced over toward Beethoven. “Look at him. He's happy as a clam."
“He ought to be. He's got his hearing back. He can hear himself play for the first time in years. And he can wow his contemporaries again, even if he's hopeless at show tunes and rock."
“That's more like it, kiddo. He owes us now. And he's promised to come across with a tenth symphony this time. I think he's feeling guilty about stiffing you on the advance. He sounded like he meant it when he swore his undying gratitude, or whatever it is in German."
Lester nodded in reluctant agreement. “Immortal Dankbarkeit. And then he gave his solemn oath. His Heiliger Versprechen. Those were his own
words. Unsolicited."
Marty slapped Lester on the back. “See, what did I tell you? Buck up, my boy."
Roy was over at the time booth, unsuccessfully trying to get Beethoven's attention. He gave up and signaled to Lester.
“I think they're ready for us,” Lester said. “See you later."
He pried Beethoven away from the wall monitor and squeezed into the booth with him. Beethoven was still in a good mood. He gave Marty a jaunty little wave as he vanished.
* * * *
This time the delay was imperceptible. Lester seemed to vibrate into a sudden change of posture, like a jerky animation. He was wearing a different suit than the one he had left in. Beethoven had been replaced by a pile of sandbags, topped by what looked like a few souvenir items that Lester must have spent part of his mass budget on.
Roy moved to sever the time line immediately. His fingers flew over a keyboard, and the monitors started blinking like crazy. “Got it,” he said.
Lester stepped out of the booth, his arms loaded with a wooden cuckoo clock and other assorted knickknacks from the past. Marty didn't see anything that looked like a manuscript.
“All right,” Marty said in a strained voice. “Where is it?"
Lester seemed to have trouble looking at Marty. He stood there, clutching his souvenirs. He cleared his throat and said, “There's been a slight hitch."
“Hitch? What do you mean, hitch?"
Lester cleared his throat again. “Getting his hearing back made him reevaluate his priorities. I mean, when he started to go deaf in his thirties, it sort of threw him off his career track."
Marty grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “What the hell are you talking about? Where's the damn symphony?"
Lester dropped the cuckoo clock and tried to bend over to retrieve it, but Marty still had him in his grip.
Analog SFF, April 2008 Page 8