He came to himself, after a long reverie, sitting with clenched hands in an empty room. Well. He could do nothing, musician that he was, but make music. If he refused, he would be punishing himself as much as he punished the government or the Union. So… Georges Mantenon rose stiffly, and made his way back to his quarters. So he would compose. They thought he was too good to stay near the centers of power? They would find out how good he was. Anger trembled, cymbals lightly clashed, a sullen mutter of drums. Outrage chose a thin wedge honed by woodwinds, sharpened on strings. They would refuse power? He would create power, become power, bind with music what they had forbidden him to hold.
His mind stirred, and he felt as much as heard what music was in him. He had not imagined that kind of power before. Hardly thinking, he slipped into the Meirinhoff’s embrace, thumbed it onto the private circuit only he could hear, and began. He had plenty of time.
When he spoke to the captain again, his voice was smooth, easy. He would not repeat, he said, his earlier mistake of isolation and overwork… he requested permission to mingle with the crew, perhaps even—if it was permitted—play incomplete sequences to those interested. The captain approved, and recommended regular Psych checks, since the mission would last so long. Mantenon bowed, and acquiesced.
He began cautiously, having no experience in deceit. He asked the crew what they’d thought of Opus Four, and what they thought he should call it. He chatted with them about their favorite musicians and music. He told anecdotes of the musicians he’d known. And he composed.
He made a point of having something to play for them every few days… a fragment of melody, a variation on something they already knew. One or two played an instrument as a hobby. Gradually they warmed to him, came to ask his advice, even his help. A would-be poet wanted his verses set to music to celebrate a friend’s nameday. The lio player wondered why no one had written a concerto for lio (someone had, Mantenon told him, but the lio was simply not a good solo instrument for large spaces).
In the weeks between the first planet and the next in that system, Mantenon did nothing but this. He made acquaintances out of strangers, and tried to see who might, in the years to come, be a friend. He knew he was being watched for a reaction, knew they knew he was angry and upset, but—as he told the most clinging of his following with a shrug—what could he do? He had signed the contract, he was only a composer (he made a face at that, consciously seconding the practical person’s opinion of composers), and he had no way to protest.
“I could scream at the captain, I suppose,” he said. “Until she called Med to have me sedated. I could write letters to the Union—but if in fact the Union wants me out here, what good would that do?”
“But doesn’t it make you angry?” the girl asked. He was sure it was a Security plant. He pursed his lips, then shook his head.
“I was angry, yes—and I wish I could go back, and hear my music played. It doesn’t seem fair. But I can’t do anything, and I might as well do what I’m good at. I have a good composing console—that’s a full-bank Meirinhoff they gave me—and plenty of subjects and plenty of time. What else could I do?”
She probed longer, and again from time to time, but finally drifted away, back into the mass of crew, and he decided that Security was satisfied—for a time. By then they were circling the second planet he was to survey.
This one, luckily for his slow-maturing plans, was one of those rare worlds whose basic nature was obvious to everyone. Habitable, beautiful, it was the real reason that the system was being opened; the other worlds—like the marginal mining planet he had begun to call “Grand Crunch”—were merely a bonus. It had three moons, glinting white, pale yellow, and rosy. Its music had to be joyous, celebratory: Mantenon thought first of a waltz, with those three moons, but then changed his mind. Three light beats and a fourth strong, with a shift here to represent that huge fan of shallow sea, its shadings of blue and green visible even from orbit. It wrote itself, and he knew as he wrote it that it would be immensely popular, the sort of thing that the eventual colonial office would pick up and use in advertising.
So lighthearted a work, so dashing a composition, could hardly come from someone sulking and plotting vengeance. Mantenon enjoyed the crew’s delighted response, and noted the captain’s satisfaction and Security’s relaxation. He was being a good boy; they could quit worrying. For a while.
One solid piece of work, one definite hit—he wished he could see his credit balance. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask earlier, and he was afraid that if he asked now, he’d arouse their suspicions again. But—assuming they were registering these as they were supposed to, he would end up as a rich old man.
The next worlds were each many weeks apart. Mantenon wrote an adequate but undistinguished concerto for one of them; a quartet for woodwinds for another; a brass quintet for the crazy wobbling dance of a double world. Week after week of travel; week after week of observing, composing, revising. Even with his music, with the Meirinhoff, it was monotonous; he had been accustomed to the lively interaction of other musicians, people who understood what he was doing, and appreciated it. He had enjoyed afternoons spent lazing in the courtyards or gardens, listening to others struggling in rehearsal halls.
Without the music he knew he would have gone mad. CUG ships used a seven-day week and four-week month; since there was no reason to worry about a planetary year (and no way to stay in phase with any particular planet), months were simply accumulated until mission’s end, when the total was refigured, if desired, into local years. Mantenon felt adrift, at first, in this endless chain of days… he missed the seasonal markers of a planet’s life, the special days of recurrent cycles. Surely by now it was his birthday again. He asked one of the med techs about it during one of his checkups… surely they had to keep track of how old people were?
“Yes, it’s simple really. The computer figures it—ship time, background time, factors for deepsleep. Most people like to choose an interval about as long as their home planet’s year, and flag it as a birthday.”
“But it’s not their real birthday… I mean, if they were back home, would it be the same day?”
“Oh no. That’s too complicated. I mean, the computer could do it, but it’s not really important. The point is to feel that they have their own special day coming up. Look—why don’t you try it? What day of the week do you like your birthday to come on?”
“Well… Taan, I suppose.” The best birthday he’d ever had fell on Taan, the year he was eight, and his acceptance to the Academy was rolled in a silver-wrapped tube at one end of the feast table.
“Taan… right. Look here.” The tech pointed out columns of figures on the computer. “Your true elapsed age is just under thirty.” Mantenon had to force himself to stay silent. Thirty already? He had lost that many years, in just these seven planets? The tech noticed nothing, and went on. “Today’s Liki… what about next Taan? That gives you three days to get ready. Is that enough?”