He couldn’t remember, and didn’t care. Now that she held it, he wanted her to go on and play the thing. He had to see her reaction, good or bad, had to know whether he’d truly finished. “Go on,” he said, and then remembered that she was the captain. “If you want to.” She smiled again.
Played on the lounge sound system, it was different, changed by the room’s acoustics and the less agile speakers which were not meant to have the precision of the Meirinhoff’s wave generators. Even so, and even with the volume held down, Mantenon thought it was good. And so, evidently, did the captain; he had been taught to notice the reactions of the audience to both live and replayed performances. Smiles could be faked, but not the minute changes in posture, in breathing, even pulse rate that powerful music evoked. In the final version, his original reaction framed the whole composition, the crunch split, literally, in mid-dissonance, and the interstice filled with the reaction, counterreaction, interplay of themes and melodies. Then the crunch again, cutting off all discussion, and the final splatter of the seeds—the moons. As the cube ended, Mantenon waited tensely for the captain’s reaction.
It came, along with a clatter of applause from the speakers—she had switched the lounge sound system to transmission, and the crew evidently liked it as well as she did.
Mantenon felt his ears burning again, this time with pleasure. They were used to hauling musicians; they must have heard many new pieces… and he… he had pleased them.
The captain handed his cube back to him. “Remarkable, Mr. Mantenon. It always amazes me, the responses you artists and musicians give…”
“Thank you. Is it possible—excuse me, Captain, but I don’t know the procedure—is it possible to transmit this for registry?”
Her expression changed: wariness, tension, something else he couldn’t read, swiftly overlaid by a soothing smile. “Mr. Mantenon, it is registered. You mean you weren’t aware that immediate… transmission… for registry was part of the Musicians Union contract with this vessel?”
“No. I thought… well, I didn’t really think about it.” He was still puzzled. He remembered—he was sure he remembered—that the licensed musician had to personally initiate transmission and registration of a composition. But Music Law had always been his least favorite subject. Maybe it was different the first time out.
“You should have read your contract more carefully.” She leaned back in her seat, considering him. “Whenever you’re employed to do the initial creative survey, you’re on CUG Naval vessels, right?”
“Well… yes.”
“It’s different for landing parties, though not much. But here, all communication with the outside must be controlled by CUG Security, in order to certify your location, among other things. In compensation for this, we offer immediate registration, datemarked local time. You did know there was a bonus for completion within a certain time?”
“Yes, I did. But—does this mean we aren’t going back soon?”
“Not to Central Five, no. Not until the survey’s complete.”
“Survey?” Mantenon stared at her, stunned.
“Yes—you really didn’t read your contract, did you?”
“Well, I—”
“Mr. Mantenon, this was just the first of your assignments. Surely you don’t think CUG would send a ship to each separate planet just for artistic cataloging, do you? There are seven more planets in this system, and twelve in the next, before we start back.”
“I… don’t believe it!” He would have shouted, but shock had taken all his breath. Nineteen more planets? When the first one had taken… he tried to think, and still wasn’t sure… however many weeks it had been. The captain’s smile was thinner. She held out a fac of his contract.
“Look again, Mr. Mantenon.” He took it, and sat, hardly realizing that the captain had settled again in her seat to watch him.
The first paragraph was familiar: his name, his array of numbers for citizenship, licensure, Union membership, the name of the ship (CSN Congarsin, he noted), references to standard calendars and standard clocks. The second paragraph… he slowed, reading it word for word. “…to compose such work as suitably expresses, to the artist, the essential truth of the said celestial body in such manner…” was a standard phrase. There was specification of bonuses for instrumentation, vocal range, difficulty, and time… but where Mantenon expected to find “… on completion of this single work…” he read instead, with growing alarm, “… on completion of the works enumerated in the appendix, the musician shall be transported to his point of origin or to some registered port equidistant from the ship’s then location as shall be acceptable to him, providing that the necessary duties of the CUG vessel involved allow. In lieu of such transportation, the musician agrees to accept…” But he stopped there, and turned quickly to the appendix. There, just as the captain had said, was a complete listing of the “celestial bodies to be surveyed musically.” Eight of eleven planets in the CGSx1764 system, and twelve of fifteen planets in the CGSx1766 system. It even gave an estimated elapsed time for travel and “setup,” whatever that was… cumulative as… Mantenon choked.
“Twenty-four years!”
“With that many planets in each system, Mr. Mantenon, we’ll be traveling almost all the time on in-system drive.”
“But—but that means by the time we finish, I’ll be—” he tried to calculate it, but the captain was faster.
“By the time we return to Central Five, if we do, you’ll be near sixty, Mr. Mantenon… and a very famous composer, if your first work is any indication of your ability.”
“But I thought I’d—I planned to conduct its premier…” He had imagined himself back at the Academy, rehearsing its orchestra on their first run through his own music. If not his first contract composition, then a later one. “It’s not fair!” he burst out. “It’s… they told us that Psych picked our first contracts, to help us, and they gave me that disgusting mess out there, and then this!”
“To help you, or best suited to you?” The captain’s lips quirked, and he stared at her, fascinated. Before he could answer, she went on. “Best suited, I believe, is what you were told… just as you were told to read your contract before signing it.”
“Well, but I—I assumed they’d screened them…”
“And you were eager to go off-world. You requested primary music survey, that’s in your file. You asked for this—”
And with a rush of despair he remembered that he had, indeed, asked for this, in a way he hoped the captain did not know—but he feared she did. He had been too exceptional… he had challenged his professors, the resident composers, he had been entirely too adventurous to be comfortable. When he looked at the captain, she was smiling in a way that made her knowledge clear.
“The Union has a way of handling misfits, Mr. Mantenon, while making use of their talents. Adventure, pioneering, is held in high esteem—because, as a wise reformer on old Earth once said, it keeps the adventurers far away from home.” And with a polite nod, she left him sitting there.
He knew there was nothing he could do. He was a musician, not a rebel; a musician, not a pioneer; a musician, not a fighter. Without the special shoes to counteract the surgery on his feet, he couldn’t even walk down the hall. Besides, he didn’t want to cause trouble: he wanted to compose his music, and have it played, and—he had to admit—he wanted to be known.
And this they had taken away. They would use his music for their own ends, but he would never hear it played. He would never stand before the live orchestra—that anachronism which nonetheless made the best music even more exciting—he would never stand there, alight with the power that baton gave him, and bring his music out of all those bits of wood and metal and leather and bone, all those other minds. By the time he returned—if they ever let him return—he would be long out of practice in conducting, and long past his prime of composing. He would know none of the players anymore: only the youngest would still be active, and they would be dispersed among a hundred worlds. That was the worst, perhaps—that they had exiled him from his fellow musicians.