“I didn’t,” the person pointed out. He realized she was a woman. “You had finished, I believe; I did not speak until you had turned off the audio.”
Mantenon frowned. “Nonetheless—”
“The captain wishes to speak with you,” said the woman. “About projecting all that without warning.”
“Projecting—?” He was confused. “All I did was compose—that’s my job.”
“You had that thing on external audio,” she said, “and you nearly blasted our ears out with it. You’re not supposed to be hooked up to the ship’s speakers without permission.”
“Was I?” He remembered, now he came to think of it, something the attendant had said about the bank of switches near the console. He had been so glad to see the Meirinhoff, he hadn’t paid much attention. He gave a quick glance at the recording timer: two minutes fifteen seconds—quite a long time, actually, if they didn’t know it was coming or how to interrupt it.
“You were.” Her mouth quirked; he realized she was trying not to laugh at him. “Your suite has an override for anything but emergency; that’s so we could hear if anything was wrong.” She nodded at the Meirinhoff. “That was more than we bargained on.”
“I’m sorry. I—it had just been so long, and I didn’t know the hookup was on…” He hadn’t felt so stupid since his second year in the conservatory. He knew his ears were red; he could feel them burning.
“All right. I understand it wasn’t intentional. I’d thought maybe you were going to insist that we listen to every note you played—”
“Klarge, no! Of course not. But the captain—?”
She grinned at him. “I’m the captain, Mr. Mantenon. Captain Plessan. You probably don’t recall meeting me before; you were sedated when they brought you aboard.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything to say, polite or otherwise. “I’m sorry about the speakers—”
“Just remember the switch, please. And when you’ve recovered fully, I’d be glad to see you in the crew lounge.”
“I’m—I’m fine now, really—” He started clambering free of the Meirinhoff, flipping controls off, resetting the recorders, fumbling for his slippers. He’d like to have stayed, listened to his composition, refined it, but everything he’d been told about shipboard etiquette urged him to go at once. He’d already insulted the captain enough as it was.
He had hoped the lounge viewscreens would be on, but blue drapes with the Exploration Service insignia covered them. The captain waved her hand at them. “You were probably hoping to see your world, Mr. Mantenon, but regulations forbid me to allow you a view until your initial briefing is complete. You must then sign your acceptance of the contract, and acknowledge all the warnings. Only then can I allow you to see the world.”
“And how long will that be?”
“Not long. Only a few hours, I expect.” A chime rang out, mellow, with overtones he recognized at once. Several others came into the lounge, and the captain introduced them. Senior crew: officers, the Security team, medical, heads of departments. These would see to his needs, as well as the ship’s needs, in the coming months. He tried to pay attention to them, and then to the final briefing the captain gave, but all he could think of was the new world, the unknown world, that hung in space outside the ship. He signed the papers quickly, glancing through them only enough to be sure that the Musician’s Union had put its authorization on each page. What would that world be like? Would he be able to express its unique beauty in music, as his contract specified, or would he fail?
At last the formalities were over. The other crewmembers left, and the captain touched controls that eased the curtains back over the viewscreens and switched video to the lounge.
His first thought was simply NO. No, I don’t like this world. No, I can’t do this world. No, someone’s made a mistake, and it’s impossible, and it wouldn’t take a musician to express this world in sound. A large crunching noise would do the job. His trained mind showed him the score for the crunching noise, for both Meirinhoff and live orchestra, and elaborated a bit. He ignored it and stared at the captain. “That?” he asked.
“That,” she said. “It’s going to be a mining world.”
That was obvious. Whatever it was good for, anything that disgusting shade of orange streaked with fungus-blue wasn’t a pleasure world, or an agriculture world. That left mining. He forced himself to look at the screens again. Orange, shading from almost sulfur yellow to an unhealthy orange-brown. The blue couldn’t be water, not that shade… he thought of bread mold again. Something vaguely greenish blue, and a sort of purplish patch toward the bottom… if that was the bottom.
“Does it have any moons or anything?” he asked.
“All that information is in the cube I gave you, but yes, it has three of them. Let me change the mags, here, and you’ll see…” She punched a few buttons and the planet seemed to recede. Now he saw two moons, one small and pale yellow, the other one glistening white. “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “Please don’t use the ship speakers for your composition without letting me know, and if you need anything just ask.” And without another word she turned and left him.
Monster, he thought, and wasn’t sure if he meant the planet or the captain. Ugly bastard—that was the planet. Someone must have made a mistake. He’d been told—he’d been assured—that Psych service had made assignments based on his personality profile and the planet’s characteristics. The planet was supposed to represent something central to his creativity, and draw on the main vectors of his genius. Or something like that; he couldn’t quite remember the exact words. But if he hated it from the beginning, something was wrong. He’d expected to have to court a reaction, the way he’d had to do with so many projects: the Karnery vase, the square of blue wool carpet, the single fan-shaped shell. Each of those had become an acceptable composition only after days of living with each object, experiencing it and its space, and the delicate shifts his mind made in response.
But he saw nothing delicate in that planet. And nothing delicate in his response. It hung gross and ugly in the sky, an abomination, like a rotting gourd; he imagined he could smell it. He could not—he would not—commit that atrocity to music.
In spite of himself, a melodic line crawled across his brain, trailing harmonies and notations for woodwinds. He felt his fingers flex, felt himself yearning for the Meirinhoff. No. It was ridiculous. Anything he might compose in this disgust would be itself disgusting. His study was beauty; his business was beauty. He glanced at the viewscreen again. The white moon had waned to a nail paring; the yellow one was hardly more than half-full. He wondered how fast they moved, how fast the ship moved. How could they be in orbit around the planet, and yet outside its moons’ orbits? He wished he’d paid more attention to his briefings on astro-science. He remembered the cube in his hand, and sighed. Maybe that would tell him more, would explain how this world could possibly be considered a match for him.
But after the cube, he was just as confused. It gave information: diameter, mass, characteristics of the star the planet circled, characteristics of atmosphere (unbreathable), native life forms (none noted by surveys), chemical analysis, and so on and so on. Nothing else; nothing that gave him any idea why the psychs would pick that planet for him.
Restless, he moved over to the Meirinhoff. He couldn’t tell the captain no, not after signing the contract. He had to compose something. He checked to make sure he was not hooked into the speaker system and climbed back into his instrument. At least he could refine that crunch of dismay… it might make an accent in something else, sometime.