Thunder and Roses

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Don’t be silly,” said the radio executive. He looked keenly at Wylie, sighed, and drew up another contract. It was for two thousand. Wylie signed with alacrity. “Make that out in two checks, payable to cash,” he said. “One eighteen hundred, and one two hundred.”

  The man behind the desk made out the checks. “Yours is the ten percent check?” he asked. Wylie smiled.

  “I think you’re a heel,” said the exec, and handed the papers over.

  At the door, Wylie tipped his hat and grinned. “Thank you very much, sir,” he said. He went and found Drecksall and gave him his check. “Go buy yourself some clothes,” he said. Drecksall looked at it and gasped.

  “Two hundred dollars?”

  Wylie nodded. “You’re hired. Let’s get out of here.”

  That was only the beginning. Wylie knew an amazing number of people, and before the year was out, Drecksall was nationally known. Money poured in, and, as Wylie was shrewd as well as slick, he saw to it that Drecksall got plenty. Since there was so much always on hand, Drecksall never questioned the cut that Wylie took, and Wylie was remarkably secretive about where he put his own money.

  And one other thing of importance happened.

  One afternoon Drecksall hurried home to the apartment he shared with Wylie in Safrisco. It was a quietly elaborate place, and it included the one thing Drecksall demanded—a totally soundproofed practice room. Flinging open the door, Drecksall was halfway across the sumptuous living room before he quite realized that on entering he had seen someone else in the room. He swung around, staring.

  “Hello,” said Gretel. She set down her drink and swung her feet off the couch. “Remember me?”

  Drecksall nodded silently, watching her, stripping gloves off his hands.

  “You’re changed,” he said after a bit, looking at her clothes, her hair.

  “I should be.” She smiled vapidly. “I’m married.”

  “Oh.” It penetrated slowly. “Who to?”

  “Pascal.”

  “He—he changed you?”

  Gretel’s bird-brain manufactured a bird’s laugh. “Sure.”

  “Good God,” whispered Drecksall in disgust. He went into his room and closed the door. He had just begun to hate Wylie.

  Gretel picked up her drink again. “He’s still crazy,” she said.

  In nearly all things Vernon Drecksall was as reasonably sane as the rest of us; but he was a monomaniac, and he could hardly be blamed for assuming the things he did. He and his odd conception of Gretel were made for each other. He was the form-fitting husk for his vision of her, and she had filled it completely. She could never do so again, because so much of that vision was composed of sunset gold and purple shadow and that unforgettable tinge of pink when the light shone through her nostril. He could not be expected to understand that. He only knew that the vision didn’t fit any more; that something had happened to change her from that utter perfection. And he had her own word for it that Pascal Wylie was that thing. He slumped into the most driving kind of misery. He couldn’t see that there was anything he could do about it except to go ahead with his building. Some day he would have her back. Some day she would emerge from his violin in a great bubble of melody which would settle before him, open up and reveal her there as she had been on that summer evening. And she would be his. Toward that iridescent ideal, he strove. Hour upon hour, alone in his soundproofed cell, he wrought the Largo. Sometimes he was rewarded by sustained flashes of completion. He had a phrase for her hair, a swift run for her strange eyes as she turned her head, a dazzling contrapuntal passage for the sound of her voice. Each little detail that was mastered was carefully scored, and he would play them jealously now and again, seeing his visions, spurring himself on to represent the duller notes which represented the more prosaic part of the picture—the window frame behind her, the scratched surface of the old Hammond organ, the crack at the side of her shoe.

  During the war, and the ruinous period afterward, he was glad that there was no longer any time for concerts or broadcasts or public appearances, for it left him time to work. Deep in the heart of a half-ruined hotel he labored by candlelight, while the three great counter-revolutions rolled and swirled around his little citadel of silence. Twice he saw Pascal Wylie in a gibbering state of fear; both times he had thrown him bodily out of his practice-room, ignoring his pleading and his warning that they were all going to be shot. Wylie was in politics up to his ears and over, though fortunately for him he had stayed in the background and let dollars speak for him. When it was all over and the exhausted world began to build again, Drecksall was possibly the only man alive who neither knew nor cared what had happened. He had been touched by it too; his investments were completely wiped out, but that meant nothing to him. He was certain that there would be more, and he was right. The Great Change was on, and with the nation’s rebirth there was plenty for such as he.

  And so the years swept by him as had the violence of war and revolution and renascence. Time left him alone, and it was with something of a shock that Wylie, during that rocky period, realized that the strange creature was the only solid, unchanging thing in the universe. Gretel changed by the day, for hers was the scintillant peasant beauty that fades early. She gave every promise of finally occupying some chimney-corner until she grew into a gargoyle and became part of the mantel. Wylie cared for her casually from force of habit, and bent his efforts to rebuilding his fortune. And Drecksall played.

  Something else was creeping into the building of the Largo. The central theme itself, that breathing, mutant reproduction of Gretel, was being framed in a darker, deeper mass of tones. It was a thing like hatred, like vengeance, that frame. It was Pascal Wylie, and it wound round and about the thing that was Gretel. This was not mere music. This was something more definite than even Drecksall’s crazed kind of music. It was the outline, the detailed description, of a definite plan of action. The same impulse that drove him to do something about his vanished Gretel was forcing him to deal, in his own way, with Wylie.

  There came a time when Drecksall felt that the Largo was nearly complete. It would need more than scoring for the composition to be fully rounded. It would need an audience, and it would need a setting. It couldn’t be played in any ordinary concert hall, nor in the open air. For its full effect, it must needs be played in an auditorium built for it, and it alone.

  A building like that never existed, nor did Drecksall expect it to. He built it himself. It took two years or more. It cost thousands—so much, indeed, that he went to Wylie for more; and Wylie, fearing that he would begin asking questions, gave him more and more of his own earnings, telling him blandly that theater managers and the broadcasting chains were paying more these days. Drecksall didn’t care, as long as he got enough for his purpose.

  He had no end of trouble. It was months before he found an engineer who would dare attempt the auditorium, more months before he found one who could be convinced that he meant what he said when he gave his specifications. They were to be followed to the thousandth of a millimeter, and Drecksall’s rages when he saw tiny variations on the blueprints were really beautiful to behold. In time, the indignant words, “After all, Mr. Drecksall, I’m a graduate engineer, and while you may be the world’s foremost violinist, you are not qualified to—” became real poison to him. After breaking up a few expensive violins and accessories over their erudite heads, he gave up personal visits from architects and contractors and handled the thing vitriolically, by mail.

  But when the auditorium was finished, it was what he had ordered, from the bedrock and soil he had specified to the top of the heavy square tower. It was certainly a strange affair. It was not very large, and looked like the conventionalized nose of a space cruiser. Its walls were thin at the bottom, thick and massive at its domed top. Inside, the basic construction was easily seen. It was made of thirty-eight arches all joining at the top and forming the circular walls at the sides and base. The tower was squat and massive; solid, steel-rei
nforced concrete. There were no windows, and the door was self-sealing, an integral part of its wall. It was lighted from a fixture which also was built into the contours of the wall. The only thing that detracted from that symphony of metrical lines on the interior wall was a heavy concrete block that jutted out over a stone chair—high over it. On the other side of the chamber was another such chair, but the wall over it was like all the others. At the exact center of the building was a tiny red tile, set into the floor, and this was the only indication of a stage, a place from which to perform. It was certainly a strange creation; but then, it had been built for a strange purpose.

  Drecksall made his demands several weeks before he intended to play the Largo, because he expected resistance. He got it. Wylie failed to see why he should sit through a highly involved musical masterpiece when he had never cared particularly for music; why he should go out into the wilds, miles from the nearest city, to hear it; why it couldn’t be played in the apartment or at their country place; and most particularly, why he should rouse Gretel from the intellectual stupor she had fallen into these last years and drag her out there to the auditorium. Drecksall heard him out patiently, said, “It really isn’t much to ask,” and left the room. He was back in a moment with the concert violin which he wrapped carefully in a plexiskin and put away in its case. “I’m not going to play again,” he said quietly, “until I play the Largo for you and Gretel, in my auditorium.” Then, leaving Wylie to give puzzled shrugs at the violin-case, he went out.

  It took just forty-eight hours for Wylie to discover that Drecksall was really serious, for it was that long before the violinist had an engagement. Wylie got into his soup and fish, went to call Drecksall, and found him sprawled smiling on the couch of his practice room. He refused to go. Fuming, Wylie canceled the concert. He didn’t give in on that occasion, nor on the next, but when he read a note on one of the facsi-papers to the effect that the Old Master was at long last developing temperament, and that perhaps the word “maybe” should be inserted before the date of each of his scheduled concerts, Wylie broke down, at last asking himself why he had made an issue of it at all. Drecksall had been easy enough to get along with.

  And at long last they hired a heliplane and whirred the long miles out to the auditorium. As they landed, Wylie broke his glum silence to ask, “How long’ll we be here?”

  “I couldn’t say,” grinned Drecksall happily.

  “How long will it take to play the thing?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Shall I tell him to come back in about that time?” asked Wylie, nodding toward the cab-driver.

  Drecksall alighted from the cab and helped Gretel out. “If you like,” he said.

  The plane shot away and they walked up the rough trail toward the auditorium. “That the place?” asked Wylie.

  “That’s the place.”

  Wylie looked at it. “Hell! What did you go and spend all that jack on that place for? Why, it wouldn’t hold fifty people!”

  “It wasn’t meant to,” said Drecksall gently.

  They reached the door—that is, the point where the path ended against the wall. Drecksall paused and looked at them.

  “You have a hard collar on,” he said. “Take it off.”

  “Take—what for?”

  “This building is the last word—my last word—in acoustics. I can’t have anything spoiling it.” He looked at Gretel. She was standing there, uncomplaining as ever. “Tell her to take off those stockings, too. They’re sheer plastic, and might echo.”

  Wylie glanced over his shoulder at the speck that was the retreating heliplane, shrugged, and took off his collar. “Take your stockings off,” he said to Gretel.

  The spasm that signified mental activity crossed Gretel’s bland face. “He’s crazy,” she said, looking at Drecksall.

  “You’re kiddin’,” said Wylie. “Go on—take ’em off.”

  Once that was disposed of, Drecksall opened the door and followed them in. He turned on the lights, closed the door. “Sit over there,” he said to Wylie, indicating the stone seat under the jutting block. He led Gretel over to the other chair. Then he took his violin out and put the case into a recess in the wall. A panel slid over it.

  “This is a looney sort of place,” said Wylie. His voice echoed so that it hurt his ears. For his own comfort, he whispered. “What gave you the idea for it?”

  Drecksall stopped rubbing his bow with rosin to stare at his manager. “What gave me the idea? Study, you fool. Years of it. Infinite patience in going into the laws and phenomena and—and tricks of acoustics. Be quiet. I’m going to play.”

  He snuggled the tail of the violin into the hollow of his throat, bowed the open strings, flattened one of them microscopically. Then, without another word, he began to play.

  Little else could be said here than that he played his Largo. It began stridently, weaving that dreadful flaming frame for the vision of Gretel; and Wylie was whisked deep into it. One part of his brain ticked busily away, still wondering about this auditorium, the fact that it was built for an audience of two, the surprise in discovering that for years Drecksall had had a secret activity, the realization that the acoustics of the place were indeed amazing. The notes spread out from his inspired violin, were gathered at the top of the dome and hurled back with a force that made the building tremble. Yes, the building echoed; soon, it had far more echoed sound in it than original, so that Drecksall could slip into a thin, sweet piping and be accompanied by a tumultuous background of sound that he had created long seconds before.

  The music suddenly took an ear-shattering turn, and then began a theme—a theme that caught both Wylie and the comatose Gretel the same way, made them both stretch their memories back and back until they settled on a dark lake. They saw again a figure on a rock, pressing notes out through the warm air on a hilltop lake. The same theme—and then again that crashing series of bass runs; and then, before the listeners had time to be startled by it, that almost telepathic theme again. Back and back again he returned to it, the roar of the bass strings and the compelling measures of the memory theme; and always they were faster, and louder, and closer together. They blended finally into a great crescendo, a monster welling of sound that gathered in the dome and came crashing down, pressing the stone block away from the wall, sending its massive tons down on Pascal Wylie. Its crash was symphonic, precisely blended with the mood and rhythm of the music; and as the echoes died away, that whole section of floor sank out of sight, bearing Wylie’s crushed body and the pile of rubble that hid it; and a panel slid across the opening. Now the auditorium was acoustically perfect for the greater task that was at hand.

  Gretel sat in a paralysis of fear, and Drecksall played earnestly on. This part of the Largo was justice. He had long wanted to kill Wylie because Wylie, he felt, had killed the Gretel he pictured. But artistic integrity forbade the use of any weapon but music, for music was so deeply involved.

  And now began the recreation of his old, old vision. He did not look at the unmoving Gretel, but sketched in the essentials of his tone-portrait, and then went over them and over them, filling in. He never lost sight of the shades he had already drawn, but all the while he strove for more and more perfect completion. Even Gretel began to see it. The music moved, with mechanical perfection, across her mental screen, burning indelibly wherever it touched. It moved with speed, slowly, the way the darting photoelectric beam slowly draws a transmitted photograph. It moved as indirectly and as purposefully and as implacably.

  The laboring strings hummed and crackled, and Drecksall’s fingers were a blur. Gretel, shockingly, felt the fabric of the clothes she had worn that day, all over her body; she felt the warmth of the setting sun on her back, and her lips began to move in the words she had spoken then, so vivid was the music.

  And then, shrilly, the thing was complete. The picture was there, sustained by one thin, high note that fell and fell until it became low and vibrant and infinitely compelling. It continued u
nbearably, filling the room, filling it again at twice the pressure, again and again. A trickle of powdered stone came down from the tower’s base, and then the tortured stone could stand no more. The upper walls cracked and the tower burst through.

  And as it did, Vernon Drecksall saw and claimed his reward. The mass of masonry opened high over his head and a shaft of golden sunlight speared through, and in the roaring, dust-filled auditorium Gretel sat spotlighted. Her pose, her hair, her very expression, were, to his crazed and triumphant mind, the Largo, come alive. With a glad cry he hurled his violin away and caught her in his arms on the very instant that the great tower crushed down on them both. He had his revenge, and he had his consummation.

  The chandeliers on the eighty-first floor of the Empire State Building swung wildly without any reason. A company of soldiers marched over a new, well-built bridge, and it collapsed. Enrico Caruso filled his lungs and sang, and the crystal glass before him shattered.

  And Vernon Drecksall composed his Largo.

  Thunder and Roses

  WHEN PETE MAWSER learned about the show, he turned away from the GHQ bulletin board, touched his long chin, and determined to shave. This was odd, because the show would be video, and he would see it in his barracks.

  He had an hour and a half. It felt good to have a purpose again—even shaving before eight o’clock. Eight o’clock Tuesday, just the way it used to be. Everyone used to catch that show on Tuesday. Everyone used to say, Wednesday morning, “How about the way she sang ‘The Breeze and I’ last night?” “Hey, did you hear Starr last night?”

  That was a while ago, before all those people were dead, before the country was dead. Starr Anthim, institution, like Crosby, like Duse, like Jenny Lind, like the Statue of Liberty.

  (Liberty had been one of the first to get it, her bronze beauty volatilized, radioactive, and even now being carried about in vagrant winds, spreading over the earth—)