“You’re from Kovashi?” asked Mantenon, affecting surprise.
“I thought I’d told you. That’s why I write in seren-form: it’s traditional. I suppose that’s why I like your music, too… all those interlocked cycles.”
Mantenon shrugged. “Music is universal,” he said. “We’re taught modes that give pleasure to most.”
“I don’t know…” Arki stuffed in a whole ration square and nearly choked, then got it down. “Thing is, Georges, I’d like to have these set to music… if you have time…”
“I’ve got to finish this composition,” Mantenon said. “Maybe before I go into deepsleep for the outsystem transfer… how about that?” He saw the flicker in Arki’s eye: so they really were close to a port.
“Well…” Arki said, evading his glance. “I really did want it soon…”
“Klarge.” Mantenon said it softly, on an outbreath, which made it milder. “The second movement has problems anyway—maybe it’ll clear if I work on your stuff briefly. But I can’t promise, Arki—the contract has to come first.”
“I understand,” said Arki. “Thanks, and—oh, there’s Kata.” He bounced out of his chair to greet the woman who’d just come in.
Mantenon hugged the double gift to himself. Now he knew the home system of the senior Security officer aboard, and, thanks to the poet, had an excellent excuse for composing highly emotional music designed to affect someone from that system. If Arki was telling the truth: if that whole conversation were not another interlocking scheme of Security. Mantenon glowered at the Meirinhoff’s main keyboard, now dull with his handling. It would be like Security, and like any Kovashi, to build an interlocking scheme. But—he thought of the power hidden in his composition—it was also a Kovashi saying that a knifeblade unties all knots.
As if Arki’s poems were a literal key for a literal lock, he studied them word by word, feeling how each phrase shaped itself to fit into a socket of the reading mind. And note by note, phrase by phrase, he constructed what he hoped would be the corresponding key of music, something that fit the words so well it could not have been meant for anything else, but which acted independently, unlocking another lock, opening a deeper hidden place in the listener’s will. Briefly, he thought of himself as a lover of sorts: like Arki’s penetration of Kata, opening secret passages and discovering (as the Kovashi still called it) the hidden treasures of love, his penetration of Crinnan’s mind searched secret byways and sought a hidden treasure… of freedom. The songs—asked for by crew, and therefore surely less suspect—could be played openly, without Psych review, and he hoped by them to stun Crinnan and the captain into musical lethargy long enough to play the whole song of power that would free him.
It was hard—very hard—to stay steady and calm, with that hope flooding his veins. Against it he held up the grim uncertainty of success, the likely consequence of failure. He could be killed, imprisoned, taken to a mining planet and forced into slavery. He might live long and never hear music again, save in his own ears… and they might twist his mind, he thought bleakly, and ruin even that. Surely others had tried what he was trying. In all the years the artists and musicians had gone out, surely some of them had tried to use their art to free themselves. If Crinnan were chuckling to himself now, listening to his work through a tap, he was doomed.
But he wanted out. He had to keep going. And shortly after that he had finished the work. The knife, a mere three minutes of Arki’s lyrics set to music, lay at hand: the heavy weaponry was loaded, ready to play on his signal. Mantenon called Arki on the intercom.
“Want to hear it?” he asked.
“It’s ready? That’s good, Georges; we don’t have much—I mean, I’ve got a few minutes before the end of shift. Can you send it along?”
“Certainly.” His finger trembled over the button. He could see the music, poised like a literal knife, heavy with his intent. He pushed the button, positioned his hand over the next control, the one that would send the main composition over the main speakers. And thumbed with his other hand the intercom to Security. Crinnan would be listening—had to be listening—and if asked while he was listening…
Crinnan’s voice was abstracted, distant. Mantenon reported that the planetary composition was finished at last. He requested permission to play it, as he had all the others, on the main speakers. Crinnan hesitated. Mantenon visualized the speaker tag in his other ear, could see the flutter of his eyelid as the song slipped through the accumulated tangle of CUG regulations and Security plots, straight for the hidden center of his life, the rhythm woven in it by his homeworld and its peoples. “I suppose…” he said, a little uncertainly. “You’ve always done that, haven’t you?”
Mantenon answered respectfully, soberly. Now the song would be at this phrase; Crinnan should be nearly immobile. He heard in his ear a long indrawn breath, taken just as he’d designed. For a moment the sense of power overwhelmed him, then he heard Crinnan grant his request. More: “Go on—I’d like to hear it,” said Crinnan.
The interval between song and main composition was crucial. Those who heard both must feel the pause as an accent, precisely timed for the composition on either side of the interval. Those who were not in the circuit for the song must have no warning. But for someone whose fingers and toes controlled whole orchestras, this was nothing: Mantenon switched his output to full ship, and pressed the sequence for the linking program.
Even though he’d written it—even though he knew it intimately, as a man might know a wife of thirty years, sick, healthy, dirty, clean, sweet, sour, fat or lean—even so, its power moved him. For twenty bars, thirty, he lay passive in the Meirinhoff, head motionless, toes and fingers twitching slightly, as the music built, with astonishing quickness, a vision of delight. Then he forced himself up. He, alone, should be proof against this: he could give it a formula, dissociate from its emotional power. And he had things to do.
Their farewells were touching, but Mantenon could hardly wait to be free of them. His new world seemed huge and small at once: a slightly darker sky than Central Five’s, a cooler world of stormy oceans and great forested islands. A single continent fringed with forest, its inner uplands crowned with glacial ice, and a broad band of scrubby low growth—for which he had no name, never having seen or studied such things—between. He had seen it on approach, for an hour or so, and then been landed in a windowless shuttle. At the port, green-eyed dark men and women in dark lumpy garments had scurried about, complaining to the shuttle’s crew in a sharp, angular language as they hauled the Meirinhoff across to the blocky shelter of the single port building. He himself shivered in the chill wind, sniffing eagerly the scent of his new prison: strange smells that brought back no memories, mixed with the familiar reek of overheated plastics, fuel, and ship’s clothing. He wondered—not for the first time—if he’d done right. But at least he would have the Meirinhoff. Or the planet would. He didn’t yet know what his status would be, after all the turmoil on the ship. He’d had no chance to play the cube the captain had given him.
“Ser Mantenon?” It was a narrow-faced, dour man whose CUG insignia had tarnished to a dull gray. His accent was atrocious; Mantenon could just follow his words. “It is our pleasure to welcome such an artist as yourself to the colony. If you will follow…”
He followed, down a passage whose walls were faced with rounded dark cobbles. Around a turn, left at a junction, and the walls were hung with brilliant tapestries, all roses, pinks, reds, glowing greens. Into a room where a cluster of people, all in dull colors, waited around a polished table. He was offered a chair: richly upholstered, comfortable. His escort found a chair at the head of the table.