A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  "How did you find out about this one?" I asked.

  "I'd be a poor Ambassador if I didn't know what was going on in Utilitopia—and a worse one if I told people how I found out."

  "You'd probably also be a poor diplomat if you gave an honest review of the show thus far," I said.

  His smile deepened. "Oh, not at all. I honestly find every bit of art I have ever encountered, in thirteen different cultures, since going to work for the Council, to be charming and delightful. It's part of my job."

  He turned to talk to someone else. Just as well—the thought of having to like anything made me shudder.

  Bruce came by with the wine. We chatted for a minute or two about things out on the farm before, to my surprise and delight, Valerie joined us.

  "Hi," she said. "There's something I wanted to ask you, a really big favor, and it would be just fine with me if you said no."

  Bruce chuckled. "Something tells me that's about the most irresistible offer Giraut is ever likely to hear."

  "Something tells you right," I said.

  Valerie blushed. "Well, I just feel stupid because I could have asked you before. I was listening to some Occitan music, and sometimes checking the annotations, and I noticed that you have a way of improvising together? More than one musician at a time, I mean? And what I wondered is, do you have to practice doing that, or can two people who've never played together before play together and sound good enough to be out in public—because what I'd really like you to do is to come up and—I mean after I do some songs, of course, but if I asked you to come up—"

  "You're asking me to jam with you?" I asked.

  Her eyes got wide, and even Bruce looked a little startled, and I realized I had just inadvertently acquired an expression in the local slang. I hastened to explain. "Anyway, the answer—at least to making music together!—is yes," I said. "Pickup playing is actually very common in Occitan clubs. I'd be glad to."

  She blushed again, very prettily I thought, and said she'd look forward to it, before scooting back to the table to relieve Margaret, who seemed more baffled than ever. She whispered something to Margaret. From the way Margaret suddenly guffawed and slapped the table, it was probably about the little misunderstanding of "jam."

  Bruce winked at me.

  Just then Thorwald bounded up onto the stage again. "All right everyone—"

  A voice in the back bellowed. "Let me get another beer before I have to watch anything you wrote!"

  There was a roar of applause at this; Thorwald grinned sheepishly. "More time for intermission?"

  It got one of the biggest ovations that night. Thorwald sat down, and people continued to socialize, although now they were drifting slowly toward their seats.

  When I got there, I discovered that Margaret was now sitting on the other side of me from Aimeric. Aimeric seemed to be talking to his neighbor about something, so I took my seat and—with, I admit, a certain inner weariness—resolved to be courteous to this very plain girl.

  I think Margaret would have been plain no matter where she was; no full set of Occitan skirts could have concealed her oversized rump, no possible top reshaped her too-wide shoulders and small, flaccid breasts, and no arrangement of hair softened the harsh planes of her face or concealed her lumpy complexion. But in the unisex clothes of Caledony, she was honestly hideous—her crewcut hair only amplified the shiny, unhealthy pallor of her face, the pullover only revealed her old-woman bust and belly, and the knee-high protective boots and baggy trousers only emphasized that her scrawny legs were capped by big, sagging buttocks. In Nou Occitan she might have made a forest ranger, or joined one of the survey teams for Arcturus's lifeless worlds, or perhaps sailed in the round-the-planet skimmer races—any occupation where most of the time she could be away from people. Here, she even seemed to be popular.

  And in any case, whatever she looked like, I was not going to allow myself to be rude. "So are you enjoying the show?" I asked.

  Her smile turned under just a bit. "I'm too involved, I guess. Everything that isn't perfect embarrasses me, and everything that works makes me want to jump up and cheer. Is it... is it really like this every night, I mean, are there really a lot of things like this, in Nou Occitan?"

  Determined to stay polite, I dismissed every answer I had and simply said, "There are a lot of performances and a lot of art, yes..." meaning to leave it dangle there, and hope she didn't catch any other implications, but as I looked around the room, and saw all those people squirming and waiting for things to resume, not studying each other for later comment as they would have been at any theater in Noupeitau, I found myself, quite unwillingly, saying "I don't think we appreciate it as much as you do. When there's so much, it's just not as exciting to us ... and of course, we're awfully apolitical, so there's just not the ... passion there."

  She seemed to think that my answer was a compliment, and maybe it was. And, plain or not, I liked her. I was glad that what I said had made her happy. For a moment, we were awkward and shy with each other, the way you are when a friendship is just forming. Then probably looking for something to say, she added, "Valerie is really nervous."

  "She shouldn't be. She's likely to be the hit of the evening. But I suppose it's her first time in front of a live crowd, or at least a live crowd that she can hear."

  "Yeah, but even more so ... she's throwing so much away..."

  "Throwing?"

  "You didn't know? But I suppose there was no way you would. The decisions about who gets to compete for the prizes are based on the average score of the last nineteen public performances or competitions. Since the aintellects will score this extremely badly..."

  "Deu! She'll lose everything!"

  "Well, she seems to want to perform this way. And as she points out, as long as she can sell tickets, all she has to do is please a lot of people consistently. And if not, there's always work, you know—we aren't barbarians."

  I was silent. A girl like that, and an artist besides, could end up shoveling stables or scraping paint, merely because she thought she was a better musician than a machine ... I was beginning to phrase my next letter to Marcabru already...

  Margaret patted my arm and said, "It's really her choice, you know. And you didn't lead her into it or anything. Don't take it too hard."

  I was spared the need for a reply by the lights coming down. Thorwald came out on the stage, and the same voice heckled him again: "Scared you off last time, hunh?"

  "Paul, you're bad for business."

  With a mutual snort, Margaret and I both realized that in fact it was Paul who had been heckling before. "He was right, though," she whispered. "We do have to give people time to do what they're doing. We really can't just make them all come to order on the clock..."

  "You're sounding very Occitan tonight," I teased—and could see it was a mistake. She flushed the way Val did, which meant it had read as flirting ... and flirting with someone you couldn't possibly be interested in is the worst sort of cruelty. I would have to be very careful for a while with Margaret—especially because I did want her friendship.

  How would I explain her to Marcabru? I could present Thorwald and Paul as nascent jovents, Valerie as a donzelha, but Margaret?

  The Occitan solution occurred to me. I would say nothing of her, but if he ever saw her, or pictures of her, and voiced a critical thought, I would offer him challenge atz fis prim, to the first death.

  Life really was simpler, back home.

  Thorwald was introducing Valerie; he seemed to think that this was going to be the most shocking act of the evening, so he was apparently trying to prepare the crowd adequately, stressing the "freedom and power of expression" that came from this "new—or new to us—technique of improvisation. You are going to hear things in the music that you have never heard before; it is our belief that they have always been there, that Valerie simply brings them forth." He went on in that vein for a while, long enough to have convinced me, if I hadn't known better, that we were about to see a
n exhibit in musical anthropology.

  When Valerie finally came on the stage, she didn't get quite the applause that Anna or Taney had gotten, and "small wonder after that yawn-y introduction," Margaret whispered. I nodded emphatically.

  Valerie had obviously decided to break them in gradually. She started with a few old ballads from the Scottish, Argentine, and Texan traditions—it was strange how, when they crossed over to Terstad, they seemed to become so similar. Her introductions were brief, usually just telling us where a piece came from and in what century—the most controversial thing she did, probably, was to play "Diego Diablo," an old ballad of the Southern Hemisphere League from the years right after the Slaughter that was thoroughly loaded with the traditional hatred of the Latin Americans for United Asia, throwing all the blame and blood of the destruction of the Plata Transpolis (and its 130 million people) on the "Butcher-King of Taipei," and glorifying the counterstrike that leveled Honshu Transpolis. Even after hundreds of years, on a world tens of light-years from Earth, it could stir and freeze your blood—I would have to point out to Thorwald how very natural the lust for a fight is in a human being.

  It was when she broke into another piece that everything went crazy. She had taken one of Anna K. Terwilliger's poems, one of the ones that had made no sense at all to me but drawn fierce applause, and set it to what was apparently another traditional contest piece, one that was supposed to be instrumental.

  The uproar when she began was deafening, and so many people were on their feet that the rest of us stood up to see. Most of the arguments were in Reason, so I had little idea what was going on at the time, and I still don't really, but it seemed to be that Anna had written a sort of Godel's Theorem of the local theology in that poem, proving that if it were true, there had to be true things that it could not comprehend—and that was heresy. To top it off, Valerie had set it to a melody that was traditionally a dirge, played in some ceremony where they contemplated ... well, the Reason for it translates as the "TradeOffNess of Life," and the title of the piece is "You Can't Always Get What You Want"— anyway, I still don't entirely understand it, and I don't think a non-Caledon ever can, but the point was it was played at many of their most serious religious rites, and dated clear back to the legendary founders of their faith in the Industrial Age, and she was playing it in ragtime.

  In short, between the angry words and the mocking music, this was bitter sarcasm hurled straight into the face of Caledon thought, and the riot that followed was probably about the most restrained response that could have been expected.

  Everywhere around me people shouted into each other's face; you could see couples breaking up into furious acrimony with each other, Caledons pushing each other (Deu I was glad I hadn't yet taught any of them to punch or kick effectively!), and one pale blond woman standing on a chair screaming at the whole crowd—but though her mouth moved, and she could not have been more than six meters from me, I could not hear a word she said.

  I turned to Aimeric and he wasn't there; in his place was what looked at first like a redheaded child—it took me a moment to realize it was Prescott—who was shouting at Margaret on my other side. He drew back a fist as if to strike her, and I swept his foot and dumped him to the carpet, hoping that would cool him off and keep him out of trouble. I noticed that Paul and Thorwald actually moved up to stand in front of the stage, as if they were bouncers and this some rowdy bar, and I flatter myself that their balance was just that much better, their assurance just that much stronger, from their dueling arts work—no one seemed to want to close with them. After a moment I saw that Aimeric and Bruce were joining them. I started working my way through the crowd.

  It went pitch-black all at once, and then obviously a suppressor web was lowered into the space, because suddenly you could barely hear anything, as the ambient sound was erased. I realized it meant the police, and that was bad, but I was so relieved that for a moment I didn't care.

  Then, out of the web, modulating its interference pulses, came the flat, emotionless voice of an aintellect. "There is evidence of serious irrationality in this gathering. We request Thorwald Spenders and Paul Parton to identify themselves."

  "Here," they said, simultaneously. By now the room was quiet again, and the suppressors seemed to be slowly fading out, leaving the weird hum in the ears I always got when they were applied.

  "Please develop some method of calming this assembly, on penalty of having this gathering and all similar ones declared a hazard to rationality."

  The lights now came back on—full on, leaving us all blinking and uncomfortable—and I could see Thorwald thinking desperately; then Paul spoke up.

  "We will provide, to everyone who wishes to leave now, a full refund of tonight's admission price, and if they wish, a free pass for any future performances."

  There was a stunned silence, and then a little burst of applause—I didn't see why, since surely that was the simplest—

  "Objection," the aintellect said. "It is not rational for you to do that. These people have already consumed more than half the performances you have offered."

  Paul spoke slowly. "I understand that. But I also understand that many of them are quite disappointed because what they saw was not what they had hoped to see. This way, assuming there are any future performances, they will still be rational in attending them as a speculative venture, on the chance that they might like them."

  "Objection. This supplies them with a means of defrauding you."

  "Yes, but as long as we maintain shows of sufficient quality, they will wish to see the last act through to its finish— and if they see that, they will not be able to claim a refund."

  "All objections withdrawn. Proceed."

  It took Paul and Thorwald a few minutes to give refunds to the twenty or so people that wanted their money back; meanwhile I went up to talk to Valerie, partly to congratulate her on her set so far and keep her spirits up, and mostly to see where I could get with another round of flirting.

  She was in surprisingly good spirits; apparently a large crowd had not been nearly so frightening as she'd thought it would be, and moreover, she was gratified that the whole intent of her song had been understood so immediately and thoroughly. "Well," she said, "if I'm going to strike off in this way, then at least I know that people will understand it. Hate it, maybe, but understand it. And knowing that I'm making sense counts for something."

  "But—the risks you run—"

  She smiled and shook her head. "What risks? I get to play what I like; they can't stop my doing that. I can write songs and rely on audience approval rather than what some aintellect thinks it ought to sound like—even if I have to give the songs away, they'll get sung."

  "But you could end up shoveling shit!"

  She shook her head sadly at me. "Do you know how many of the great songwriters of the past two thousand years have worked with their hands? It won't kill me and it's a small price for freedom."

  I realized that pointing out that there was something perverse and profoundly wrong in the idea of a girl with a beautiful voice and the face of an angel doing that kind of work would clinch the argument with an Occitan, but that a Caledon would just stare at me, so I contented myself with planning to write a very long, passionate letter to Marcabru as soon as I got home.

  At that point Thorwald came up to tell us that we'd be starting again soon. "Margaret seems to think she's squeezed about all the utils she can out of the crowd, Val, so she wants you to know that you don't have to cause any more unplanned intermissions."

  Valerie giggled and nodded; she suggested we simply do half a dozen Occitan pieces, "to keep things a bit calmer—I do think that we've given them enough excitement for the night, don't you?"

  It struck me that as soon as the subject was music or performing—rather than flattery—her shyness disappeared. "Oh, certainly, if you wish," I said. "I hope they won't regard it as a letdown."

  "Tonight nothing could be a letdown," Paul said, coming over and sitt
ing next to Valerie. "Mister Leones—"

  "Giraut, please," I said. "I've been meaning to tell you I prefer that you use my given name."

  "Giraut, then. I don't suppose you can imagine what all this means to us."

  I sighed. "I really don't suppose I can, either."

  The lights were beginning to flicker—where had they learned that traditional signal for show about to start?—so Paul, with another nod, got down off the stage, and Thorwald brought up my lute in its case. "We had it expressed from the Center when Val told us," he explained. "I hope that was all right."

  "It was splendid of you," I said, meaning it. "I always prefer playing my own instrument."

  I had all the normal tension I get just before a performance, but packed into the five minutes of tuning while Thorwald made some veiled political jokes about the police and "what a night, friends—our first cabaret, our first poet, our first riot." The crowd seemed quieter and more subdued.

  If I may say so, Valerie and I were brilliant together. Her instincts for improvisation were every bit as good ensemble as solo, and I don't think there have been very many finer performances of the dozen Occitan standards we went through.

  And yet—warm and friendly as the audience was, good as the performance was—as much as I knew that in style and quality, we were far ahead of everything so far that night ... I had a curious empty feeling about it People were applauding beauty, which was as it should be—but somehow that moved them less than Valerie's defiant (and to me incomprehensible) anthem, or Anna's dreadful verses—or even, as I hated to admit to myself, less than Taney Peterborough's stale jokes.

  I moved back to let Valerie take all the remaining bows, to applaud her myself. The applause was hers by right; I found that I resented the whole situation a little, and felt deep shame, like a spreading stain on my enseingnamen, that I could be so petty. I thought of some things Bieris had said to me earlier, and realized how silly some of my posturing must look to her ... and to the students at the Center.