by Anthology
She could feel the dish magnifying the vibration, up through her feet. Sound was powerful. Music could change the world. She had to believe that.
As the strings quieted, Rinna stripped off her mittens, then lifted her conductor’s baton from its velvet-lined case. The polished mahogany grip was comfortable in her hand, despite the chill. The stick itself was carved of mammoth ivory, dug out of the ground centuries ago.
She ran her fingers up and down the smooth white length. It was fitting, using a relic of an extinct animal in this attempt to keep humans from going out the same way.
She stepped onstage, squinting in the stage lights, as the wind instruments began to tune. First the high silver notes of the flutes, then the deep, mournful call of the French horns and low brass. Sounded like the tubas had gotten themselves sorted out.
From up here, the ice spread around stage—not pale and shimmering under the distant stars, but dark and clotted with onlookers. Originally, she’d imagined performing to the quiet, blank landscape—but that was before some brilliantly wacko entrepreneur had started selling tickets and chartering boats into the bitter reaches of the North.
The concert of a lifetime, plus the novelty of cold, drew spectators from all over the planet. No doubt the thrill of the chill had worn off, but the performance, the grand experiment, was still to come.
And truthfully, Rinna was glad for the crowd. Thermo-acoustics aside, she knew from long experience that the energy of playing in front of responsive listeners was different. Call it physics, call it woo-woo, but the audience was an integral part of the performance.
The project director had been reluctant at first, constructing only a small shelter and selling tickets at prices she didn’t even want to contemplate. The enclosed seating held roughly forty people: heads of state, classical music aficionados, those with enough money and sense to try and stay warm. But when the boats started arriving, the tents going up, what could he do?
The spectators all wanted to be here, with the possible exception of Dominic hovering beside the podium.
The crowd caught sight of her striding across the stage, and applause rushed like a wind over the flat, frigid plain. She lifted her hand in acknowledgement. Overhead, the edge of the aurora flickered, a pale fringe of light.
Rinna stepped onto the podium and looked over her orchestra, illuminated by white spotlights and the ruddy glow of the heaters.
She’d bribed and bullied and called in every favor owed her, and this was the result. The best symphony orchestra the entire world could offer. Rehearsals had been the Tower of Babel: Hindi, Chinese, English, French—over a dozen nationalities stirred together in a cacophonous soup. But the moment they started playing, they had one perfect language in common.
Music.
The orchestra quieted. One hundred and five pairs of eyes fixed on her, and Rinna swallowed back the quick burst of nausea that always accompanied her onto the podium. The instant she lifted her baton and scribed the downbeat, it would dissipate. Until then, she’d fake feeling perfectly fine.
“Dominic?” she called, “are the techs ready?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Blow your nose.” No point in marring the opening with the sound of his sniffles.
Pasting a smile on her face, Rinna turned and bowed to the listeners spread out below the curve of the stage. They applauded, sparks of excitement igniting like distant firecrackers.
She pulled in a deep breath, winced as the air stabbed her lungs, and faced the orchestra—all her brave, dedicated musicians poised on the cusp of the most important performance of their lives.
The world premiere of Ice.
The air quieted. Above the orchestra a huge amplifier waited, a tympanic membrane ready to take the sound and feed it into the engine, transmute it to frigidity.
Rinna raised her arms, and the musicians lifted their instruments, their attention focused on her like iron on a magnet. She was their true north. The baton lay smoothly in her right hand—her talisman, her magic wand. If there ever was wizardry in the world, let it come to her now.
Heart beating fast, she let her blood set the tempo and flicked her stick upward. Then down, irrevocably down, into the first beat of Ice.
A millisecond of silence, and then the violins slid up into a melodic line colored with aching, while the horns laid down a base solid enough to carry the weight of the stars. The violas took the melody, letting the violins soar into descant. The hair on the back of her neck lifted at the eerie balance. Yes. Perfect. Now the cellos—too loud. She pushed the sound down slightly with her left hand, and the section followed, blending into the waves of music that washed up and up.
Rinna beckoned to the harp, and a glissando swirled out, a shimmering net cast across dark waters. Was it working? She didn’t dare glance up.
High overhead, the thermo-acoustic engine waited, the enormous tubes and filters ready to take her music and make it corporeal—a thrumming machine built to restore the balance of the world.
It was crazy. It was their best chance.
Ice was not a long piece. It consisted of only one movement, designed along specific, overlapping frequencies. Despite its brevity, it had taken her three years to compose, working with the weather simulations and the best scientific minds in the world. Then testing on small engines, larger ones, until she stood here.
Now Rinna gestured and pulled, molded and begged, and the orchestra gave. Tears glazed her vision, froze on her lashes, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t working from a score; the music lived in her body, more intimately known to her than her own child.
The clarinets sobbed the melody, grieving for what was already lost. The polar bears. The elephants. The drowned cities. The silenced birds.
Now the kettle-drums, a gradual thunder—raising the old magic, working up to the climax. The air throbbed and keened as Rinna rose onto her toes and lifted her hands higher. Higher. A divine plea.
Save us.
Arms raised high, Rinna held the symphony in her grasp, squeezed its heart for one more drop of musical blood. The musicians gave, faces taut with effort, shiny with sweat even in the chill. Bows flew, a faint sparkle of rosin dust flavoring the air. The trumpets blared, not missing the triad the way they had in rehearsal.
The last note. Hold. Hold. Hold.
She slashed her hand through the air and the sound stopped. Ice ended, yearning and dissonant, the final echo ringing into the frigid sky.
Above, nothing but silence.
Rinna lowered her arms and rocked back on her heels. From the corner of her eye, she saw the techs gesturing frantically, heads shaking, expressions grim.
The bitter taste of failure crept into her mouth, even as the crowd erupted into shouts and applause, a swell of sound washing up and over the open stage. She turned and gave them an empty bow, then gestured to the symphony—the musicians who had given and given. For nothing.
They stood, and one over-exuberant bassoonist let out a cheer and fist-pump. It sent the rest of the orchestra into relieved shouts, and she didn’t have the heart to quiet them. They began stamping their feet, the stage vibrating, humming, low and resonant.
Rinna caught her breath, wild possibility flickering through her.
She gestured urgently to the basses. Three of them began to play, finding the note, expanding it. The rest of the section followed, quickly joined by the tubas—bless the tubas. Rinna opened her arms wide, and the string players hastily sat and took up their instruments again.
“D minor!” she cried. “Build it.”
The violins nodded, shaping harmonies onto the note. The harpist pulled a trembling arpeggio from her strings, the wind instruments doubled, tripled the sound into an enormous chord buoyed up by breath and bone, tree and ingot, hope and desperation.
The stage pulsing beneath her, she turned to the crowd and waved her arms in wide arcs.
“Sing!” she yelled, though she knew they couldn’t hear her.
The word hun
g in a plume before her. She could just make out the upturned faces below, pale circles in the endless Arctic night.
Slowly, the audience caught on. Sound spread like ripples from the stage, a vast buzzing that resolved into pitch. Rinna raised her arms, and the volume grew, rising up out of five thousand throats, a beautiful, ragged chorus winging into the air.
Beneath their feet, the last of the world’s ice began to hum.
The techs looked up from their control room, eyes wide, as high overhead the huge engine spun and creaked.
Rinna tilted her face up, skin stiff as porcelain from the cold, and closed her eyes. She felt it, deep in her bones, a melody singing over and over into the sky. The thrum of sound transformed to super-cooled air, the long hard pull back from the precipice.
Something touched her face, light as feathers, insubstantial as dreams.
Quietly, perfectly, it began to snow.
The Sun Never Sets(Short story)
by Anthea Sharp
Originally published in 'Alt.History 101' (Windrift Books, 2015), edited by Samuel Peralta and Nolie Wilson and part of The 'Future Chronicles' anthology series, created by Samuel Peralta
London, 1850
Seven degrees above the horizon, she spotted it—a speck of diamond in the deepening twilight. A tiny dot of light that perchance was only a trick of vision, or a wayward dust mote.
But perhaps something more…
Miss Kate Danville’s heart raced at the prospect, but she forced herself to remain still. With a deep, steadying breath, she leaned forward and gently twisted the eyepiece of her telescope, careful not to bump the instrument. The pinprick of brightness lost focus, then sharpened.
She was not mistaken. Certainty flared through her, filling her with warmth.
The image blurred again, but this time due to her own triumphant tears. Kate sat back and brushed the foolish water from her eyes. She would show them all that her little hobby as Father called it—Mother used stronger words like unsuitable and distastefully unfeminine—was more than simply dabbling in the astronomical arts.
She, Miss Kate Danville, had discovered a comet!
Oh, she was not the first women to do so—a handful of amateur astronomers had been the first to spot celestial objects, including her idol, Maria Mitchell, who received the Danish gold medal just two years prior.
Kate closed her eyes and imagined the King of Denmark presenting her with that accolade in front of an admiring crowd. Why, she might even get to meet the esteemed Ms. Mitchell, and perhaps be inducted into the Royal Society—
“Beg pardon, miss, but her ladyship sent me up to fetch you to make ready for the ball.” The maid’s reedy voice broke through Kate’s daydream, bringing her down from the stars with a thud.
She opened her eyes, and was once again simply Miss Kate Danville, perched on the top of Danville House with her telescope and her fancies in the sooty June dusk.
“I need a bit more time,” she told the maid. “Please tell my mother I must notate my new discovery.”
The maid gave her a skeptical look, but dropped a curtsy. “I shall, but you know Lady Danville won’t take kindly to that answer.”
“I am well aware of my mother’s expectations.” They included a proper marriage and Kate’s abandoning her inappropriate scientifical leanings.
But that disapproval would surely change once Kate’s Comet was officially recognized.
Time was of the essence, however. Kate bent again to her telescope to jot down the exact location of the bright speck in the sky. If someone else notified the Royal Astronomical Society first, she would be robbed of her discovery. That must not be allowed to happen.
“Kate!” Her mother’s sharp tones drifted up from the stairwell leading to the attic. “If you don’t come down this instant, I declare I will have your father take your telescope away.”
Lady Danville would never attempt to navigate the steep stairs—neither her wide skirts nor her temperament would allow the journey—but she was not averse to raising her voice. Or delivering threats.
“Coming,” Kate called.
She hastily scribbled a second set of notes, then tucked the precious piece of paper into her pocket. Time to face her mother, and yet another social tedium where the gentlemen asked her whether she liked roses, or droned on about their own accomplishments.
She blew out an unhappy breath. Lady Danville was determined to see Kate betrothed by the end of the summer, while Kate was equally determined to resist.
Although, upon further consideration, attending the ball that evening might be for the best. If Viscount Huffton or one of the other Royal Society astronomers were there, she could notify them of her discovery at once.
***
At breakfast two days later, Kate stared at the morning headline in the London Times. Shock stole her breath and held her motionless for a heartbeat.
“Viscount Huffton Discovers New Comet,” the paper declared.
No. That weasel had taken credit for her discovery!
“I won’t stand for it,” she gasped, leaping to her feet and nearly overturning the teapot. “I must pay a call upon Lord Wrottesley at once.”
Surely, as one of the founding members of the Royal Astronomical Society, he would aid her. She knew he was in London, for the odious Viscount Huffton had mentioned it at the ball. The ball where he had stolen the fruits of her labors. Her hands clenched into fists.
“Sit down,” her mother said, regarding her sternly over the white damask tablecloth. “What an unladylike outburst. And you have never been introduced to Lord Wrottesley. You cannot simply visit the man—what would he think of such improper behavior?”
Kate slowly sank back into her chair and used her napkin to mop up the spilled tea. “Please, mother. It’s important.”
Thank heavens she’d kept her original notes. She only prayed Lord Wrottesley would listen when she explained that she had spotted the comet first, then brought her findings to the viscount. Who was supposed to have reported it to the Royal Society, not claimed the discovery as his own, the worm.
Lady Danville raised her brows. “Is this matter important enough that you will consent to receive Lord Downing-Wilton tomorrow, should he pay you a visit?”
Oh, rot it. Kate should have known her mother would take every opportunity to foist a suitor upon her. She closed her eyes a moment, pushing back the scream of frustration bubbling in her throat. When she had mastered herself, she opened her eyes.
“Of course, mother. Only, we must see Lord Wrottesley today.”
“So you keep insisting.” Lady Danville regarded her a moment more. “It is most irregular. Perhaps you ought to admit Sir Wexfield into your circle, as well.”
“As you say.” Kate spoke the words through gritted teeth.
“And perhaps—”
“I shall go up and change now.” Kate tossed the tea-stained napkin upon the table. She had lost her appetite completely.
“Wear your dove walking dress with the violet trim,” her mother said. “If we are fortunate, Lord Wrottesley will be entertaining gentleman guests when we arrive.”
As it transpired, and to Kate’s great relief, Lord Wrottesley was at home, and he was alone. The butler ushered them into his cluttered study, where Kate presented her notes and explained the circumstances.
“Hmph.” Lord Wrottesley peered at the jotted numbers and angles, then shook his head. “That puppy Huffton needs to be taken down a peg. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Miss Danville.”
Kate slid forward to the edge of her chair. “Does this mean my claim will be upheld?”
Lady Danville, seated in the adjoining wingback, gave her a placid smile. “Patience, my dear. I’m certain Lord Wrottesley does not like to be rushed. He will do what is best.”
“But—”
“Thank you, sir, for your time.” Lady Danville rose. “Certainly you have more pressing concerns than listening to my daughter complain.”
“Per
haps.” He folded Kate’s notes and tapped them against his hand. “I shall review the evidence and share it with the Royal Astronomical Society. Thank you for your visit, ladies.”
Before Kate could protest, her mother hauled her to the doorway. She dropped a quick curtsey to Lord Wrottesley, and then the butler shut the study door in her face.
***
Kate spent a wretched two days being polite, if not pleasant, to a stream of gentleman callers. None of them were the least bit interested in discussing any type of science, let alone astronomy, and several of them looked faintly horrified that she would broach the subject at all.
It was worth it, though, when she received the letter bearing the seal of the Royal Society, confirming that she, Kate Danville, was credited with the discovery of what would henceforth be known as Miss Danville’s Comet.
Throughout the following week, the mote in the sky grew brighter. First it matched, then overtook, the light of the stars, until it was visible during the day as well as searing the night. Her comet went from being a source of mild speculation to casting a worrisome light over the population of London. Reports soon came in that the comet was affecting every corner of the British Empire.
Local uprisings, raving prophets, and strange tides were reported regularly in the newspapers, along with sensationalized speculation: the comet would smash into London and devastate the country—nay, the entire world, it was not a comet at all but a vehicle bearing explorers from the stars, the end times were nigh and everyone might as well drink and make merry while they still could. Some took this as a call to rampage about the streets, causing an increasing number of clashes between unruly members of the populace and the constabulary.
Queen Victoria issued a half dozen regal reassurances—none of which were taken to heart. It was noted that she and Prince Albert sent their children up to Scotland with a coterie of Royal Nannies, prompting an exodus of nobly-born sons and daughters to the countryside.
Kate, however, refused to go.