The music changed again, leaving chaos behind. Arla, she noted, had a moment to rest, and wiped her sweaty face. She had a softer expression now, and gazed at the other string players, across from her. Ereza wondered what she thought at times like this. Was she thinking ahead to her own next move? Listening to the music itself? What?
Brasses blared, a wall of sound that seemed to sweep the lighter strings off the stage. Ereza liked horns as a rule, but these seemed pushy and arrogant, not merely jubilant. She saw Arla’s arm move, and the cello answered the horns like a reproving voice. The brasses stuttered and fell silent, while the cello sang on. Now Arla’s face matched the music, serenity and grace. Other sections returned, but the cello this time rose over them, collecting them into a seamless web of harmony.
When the conductor cut off the final chord, Ereza realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out with a whoof. She would be able to tell Arla how much it meant to listen to her and mean it. She was no musical expert, and knew it, but she could see why her sister was considered an important cultural resource. Not for the first time, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that it had been her less-talented right arm lost to trauma. When her new prosthesis came in, she’d be able to retrain for combat; even without it, there were many things she could do in the military. But the thought of Arla without an arm was obscene.
The rehearsal continued to a length which bored Ereza and numbed her ears. She could hear no difference between the first and fifth repetition of something, even though the conductor, furious with first the woodwinds and then the violas, threw a tantrum about it and explained in detail what he wanted. Arla caused no more trouble—in fact, the conductor threw her a joke once, at which half the cello section burst out laughing. Ereza didn’t catch it. At the end, he dismissed the orchestra, and told Arla to stay. She nodded, and carried her cello over to its case; the conductor made notes on his papers and shuffled through them. While the others straggled offstage, she wiped the cello with a cloth and put the bow neatly into its slot, then closed the case and latched it.
Ereza wondered if she should leave now, but she had no idea where Arla would go next, and she wanted to talk to her. She waited, watching the conductor’s back, the other musicians, Arla’s care with her instrument. Finally all the others had gone, and the conductor turned to Arla.
“Miss Fennaris, I know this is a difficult time for you—” In just such a tone had Ereza’s first flight officer reamed her out for failing to check one of the electronic subsystems in her ship. Her own difficult time had been a messy love affair; she wondered why Arla wasn’t past that. Arla wisely said nothing. “You are the soloist, and that’s quite a responsibility under the circumstances—” Arla nodded, while Ereza wondered again what circumstances. “We have to know you will be able to perform; this is not a trivial performance.”
“I will,” Arla said. She had been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes to the conductor’s face—and past them, to Ereza, standing in the shadows. She turned white, as if she’d lost all her blood, and staggered.
“What—?” The conductor swung around, then, and saw that single figure in the gloom at the back of the hall. “Who’s there! Come down here, damn you!”
Ereza shrugged to herself as she came toward the lighted stage. She did not quite limp, though the knee still argued about downward slopes. She watched her footing, with glances to Arla who now stood panting like someone who had run a race. What ailed the child—did she think her sister was a ghost? Surely they’d told her things were coming along. The conductor, glaring and huffing, she ignored. She’d had permission, from the mousy little person at the front door, and she had not made one sound during rehearsal. “Who told you you could barge in here—!” the conductor began. Ereza gave him her best smile, as she saw recognition hit. She and Arla weren’t identical, but the family resemblance was strong enough.
“I’m Ereza Fennaris, Arla’s sister. I asked out front, and they said she was in rehearsal, but if I didn’t interrupt—”
“You just did.” He was still angry, but adjusting to what he already knew. Wounded veteran, another daughter of a powerful family, his soloist’s twin sister…there were limits to what he could do. To her, at least; she hoped he wouldn’t use this as an excuse to bully Arla.
She smiled up at her sister. “Hello again, Arlashi! You didn’t come to see me, so I came to see you.”
“Is she why—did you see her back there when you—?” the conductor had turned away from Ereza to her sister.
“No.” Arla drew a long breath. “I did not see her until she came nearer. I haven’t seen her since—”
“Sacred Name of God! Artists!” The conductor threw his baton to the floor and glared from one to the other. “A concert tomorrow night, and you had to come now!” That for Ereza. “Your own sister wounded, and you haven’t seen her?” That for Arla. He picked up his baton and pointed it at her. “You thought it would go away, maybe? You thought you could put it directly into the music, poof, without seeing her?”
“I thought—if I could get through the concert—”
“Well, you can’t. You showed us that, by God.” He whirled and pointed his finger at Ereza. “You—get up here! I can’t be talking in two directions.”
Ereza stifled an impulse to giggle. He acted as if he had real authority; she could just see him trying that tone on a platoon commander and finding out that he didn’t. She picked her way to a set of small steps up from the floor of the hall, and made her way across the stage, past the empty chairs. Arla stared at her, still breathing too fast. She would faint if she kept that up, silly twit.
“What a mess!” the conductor was saying. “And what an ugly thing that is—is that the best our technology can do for you?” He was staring at her temporary prosthesis, with its metal rods and clips.
“Tactful, aren’t you?” She wasn’t exactly angry, not yet, but she was moving into a mood where anger would be easy. He would have to realize that while he could bully Arlashi, he couldn’t bully her. If being blown apart, buried for a day, and reassembled with bits missing hadn’t crushed her, no mere musician could.
“This is not about tact,” the conductor said. “Not that I’d expect you to be aware of that…arriving on the eve of this concert to upset my soloist, for instance, is hardly an expression of great tact.”
Ereza resisted an urge to argue. “This is a temporary prosthesis,” she said, holding it up. “Right now, as you can imagine, they’re short-handed; it’s going to take longer than it would have once to get the permanent one. However, it gives me some practice in using one.”
“I should imagine.” He glared at her. “Now sit down and be quiet. I have something to say to your sister.”
“If you’re planning to scold her, don’t bother. She’s about to faint—”
“I am not,” Arla said. She had gone from pale to a dull red that clashed with her purple tunic.
“You have no rights here,” said the conductor to Ereza.
“You’re just upsetting her—and I’ll have to see her later. But for now—” He made a movement with his hands, tossing her the problem, and walked offstage. From that distance, he got the last word in. “Miss Fennaris—the cellist Miss Fennaris—see me in my office this afternoon at fourteen-twenty.”
“You want lights?” asked a distant voice from somewhere overhead.
“No,” said Arla, still not looking at Ereza. “Cut ‘em.” The brilliant stage lighting disappeared; Arla’s dark clothes melted into the gloom onstage, leaving her face—older, sadder—to float above it. “Damn you, Ereza—why did you have to come now?”
Ereza couldn’t think of anything to say. That was not what she’d imagined Arla saying. Anger and disappointment struggled; what finally came out was, “Why didn’t you come to see me? I kept expecting you.…was it just this concert?” She could—almost—understand that preparing for a major appearance might keep her too busy to visit the hospital.
&n
bsp; “No. Not…exactly.” Arla looked past her. “It was—I couldn’t practice without thinking about it. Your hand. My hand. If I’d seen you, I couldn’t have gone on making music. I should have—after I beat you at Flight-test I should have enlisted. If I’d been there—”
“You’d have been asleep, like the rest of us. It wasn’t slow reflexes that did it, Arlashi, it was a bomb. While we slept. Surely they told you that.” But Arla’s face had that stubborn expression again. Ereza tried again. “Look—what you’re feeling—I do understand that. When I woke up and found Reia’d been killed, and Aristide, I hated myself for living. You wish I hadn’t been hurt, and because you’re not a soldier—”
“Don’t start that!” Arla shifted, and a music stand went over with a clatter. “Dammit!” She crouched and gathered the music in shaking hands, then stabbed the stand upright. “If I get this out of order, Kiel will—”
Ereza felt a trickle of anger. “It’s only sheets of paper—surely this Kiel can put it back in order. It’s not like…what do you mean ‘Don’t start that’?”
“That ‘you’re not a soldier’ rigmarole. I know perfectly well I’m not, and you are. Everyone in the family is, except me, and I know how you all feel about it.”
“Nonsense.” They had had this out before; Ereza thought she’d finally got through, but apparently Arla still worried. Typical of the civilian mind, she thought, to fret about what couldn’t be helped. “No one blames you; we’re proud of you. Do you think we need another soldier? We’ve told you—”
“Yes. You’ve told me.” Ereza waited, but Arla said nothing more, just stood there, staring at the lighter gloom over the mid-hall, where the skylight was.
“Well, then. You don’t want to be a soldier; you never did. And no need, with a talent like yours. It’s what we fight for, anyway—”
“Don’t say that!”
“Why not? It’s true. Gods be praised, Arlashi, we’re not like the Metiz, quarrelling for the pure fun of it, happy to dwell in a wasteland if only it’s a battlefield. Or the Gennar Republic who care only for profit. Our people have always valued culture: music, art, literature. It’s to make a society in which culture can flourish—where people like you can flourish—that we go to war at all.”
“So it’s my fault.” That in a quiet voice. “You would lay the blame for this war—for that bomb—on me?”
“Of course not, ninny! How could it be your fault, when a Gavalan terrorist planted that bomb?” Musicians, Ereza thought, were incapable of understanding issues. If poor Arla had thought the bombing was her fault, no wonder she came apart—and how useless someone so fragile would be in combat, for all her hand-eye coordination and dexterity. “You aren’t to blame for the misbegotten fool who did it, or the pigheaded political leadership that sent him.”
“But you said—”
“Arlashi, listen. Your new cello—you know where the wood came from?”
“Yes.” That sounded sullen, even angry. “Reparations from Scavel; the Military Court granted the Music Council first choice for instruments.”
“That’s what I mean. We go to war to protect our people—physical and economic protection. Do you think a poor, helpless society could afford wood for instruments? A concert hall to play in? The stability in which the arts flourish?” Arla stirred, but Ereza went on quickly before she could interrupt. “I didn’t intend to lose a hand—no one does—but I would have done it gladly to give you your music—”
“I didn’t ask you for that! You didn’t have to lose anything to give me music. I could give myself music!”
“Not that cello,” Ereza said, fighting to keep a reasonable tone. She could just imagine Arla out in the stony waste, trying to string dry grass across twigs and make music. Surely even musicians realized how much they needed the whole social structure that depended on the military’s capacity to protect both the physical planet and its trade networks. “Besides—war has to be something more than killing, more than death against death. We aren’t barbarians. It has to be for something.”
“It doesn’t have to be for me.”
“Yes, you. I can’t do it. You could fight—” She didn’t believe that, but saying it might get Arla’s full attention.
“Anyone can fight, who has courage, and you have that. But I can’t make music. If I had spent the hours at practice you have, I still couldn’t make your music. If I die, there are others as skilled as I am who could fight our wars. But if you die, there will be no music. In all the generations since Landing, ourfamily has given one soldier after another. You—you’re something different—”
“But I didn’t ask for it.”
Ereza shrugged, annoyed. “No one asks for their talent, or lack of it.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Arla struggled visibly, then shrugged. “Look—we can’t talk here; it’s like acting, being on this stage. Come to my rehearsal room.”
“Now? But I thought we’d go somewhere for lunch. I have to leave soon.”
“Now. I have to put my precious war-won wood cello away.” Arla led the way to her instrument, then offstage and down a white-painted corridor. Ereza ignored the sarcastic tone of that remark and followed her. Doors opened on either side; from behind some of them music leaked out, frail ghosts of melody.
Arla’s room had two chairs, a desk-mounted computer, and a digital music stand. Arla waved her to one of the chairs; Ereza sat down and looked over at the music stand’s display.
“Why don’t you have this kind onstage? Why that paper you spilled?”
Her attempt to divert Arla’s attention won a wry grin. “Maestro Bogdan won’t allow it. Because the tempo control’s usually operated by foot, he’s convinced the whole orchestra would be tapping its toes. Even if we were, it’d be less intrusive than reaching out and turning pages, but he doesn’t see it that way. Traditionally, even good musicians turn pages, but only bad musicians tap their feet. And we live for tradition—like my cello.” Arla had opened the case again, and tapped her cello with one finger. It made a soft tock that sounded almost alive. With a faint sigh she turned away and touched her computer. The music stand display came up, with a line of music and the measure numbers above it. She turned it to give Ereza a better view.
“Do you know what that is?”
Ereza squinted and read aloud. “Artruud’s Opus 27, measure 79?”
“Do you know what that is?”
Ereza shook her head. “No—should I? I might if you hummed it.”
Arla gave a short, ugly laugh. “I doubt that. We just played it, the whole thing. This—” She pointed at the display, which showed ten measures at a time. “This is where I blew up. Eighty-two to eighty-six.”
“Yes, but I don’t read music.”
“I know.” Arla turned and looked directly at her. “Did you ever think about that? The fact that I can play Flight-test as well as you, that my scores in TacSim—the tests you had me take as a joke—were enough to qualify me for officers’ training if I’d wanted it…but not one of you in the family can read music well enough to pick out a tune on the piano?”
“It’s not our talent. And you, surrounded by a military family—of course you’d pick up something—”
“Is war so easy?” That in a quiet voice, washed clean of emotion. Ereza stared at her, shocked.
“Easy! Of course it’s not easy.” She still did not want to think about her first tour, the near-disaster of that patrol on Sardon, when a training mission had gone sour. It was nothing she could discuss with Arla. Her stump throbbed, reminding her of more recent pain. How could Arla ask that question? She started to ask that, but Arla had already spoken
“But you think I picked it up, casually, with no training?”
“Well…our family…and besides, what you did was only tests, not real combat.”
“Yes. And do you think that if you’d been born into a musical family, you’d have picked up music so casually? Would you be able to play the musical equivalent of Fligh
t-test?”
“I’d have to know more, wouldn’t I?” Ereza wondered where this conversation was going. Clearly Arla was upset about something, something to do with her own wound. It’s my arm that’s missing, she thought. I’m the one who has a right to be upset or not upset. “I’d still have no talent for it, but I would probably know more music when I heard it.”
“Yet I played music in the same house, Eri, four to six hours a day when we were children. You had ears; you could have heard. We slept in the same room; you could have asked questions. You told me if you liked something, or if you were tired of hearing it; you never once asked a musical question. You heard as much music as many musicians’ children. The truth is that you didn’t care. None of our family cared.”
Ereza knew the shock she felt showed on her face; Arla nodded at her and went on talking. “Dari can tell you how his preschool training team pretended to assault the block fortress, and you listen to him. You listen carefully, you admire his cleverness or point out where he’s left himself open for a counterattack. But me—I could play Hohlander’s first cello concerto backwards, and you’d never notice. It’s not important to you—it’s beneath your notice.”
“That’s not true.” Ereza clenched the fingers of her left hand on the arm of the chair. “Of course we care; of course we notice. We know you’re good; that’s why you had the best teachers. It’s just that it’s not our field—we’re not supposed to be experts.”
“But you are about everything else.” Arla, bracing herself on the desk, looked almost exultant. Ereza could hardly believe what she was hearing. The girl must have had this festering inside for years, to bring it out now, to someone wounded in her defense. “You talk politics as if it were your field—why this war is necessary, why that legislation is stupid. You talk about manufacturing, weapons design, the civilian economy—all that seems to be your area of expertise. If music and art and poetry are so important—if they’re the reason you fight—then why don’t you know anything about them? Why don’t you bother to learn even the basics, the sort of stuff you expect Dari to pick up by the time he’s five or six?”
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 438