Dork gazed out over this surreal vista and paled, regrets about high attendance and low sobriety on their part, and insufficient gin on his, haunting his bloodshot eyes. Then he shook himself, adjusted his silver pompadour, forced a greasy smile and strode up to the microphone at the front of the stage.
His first attempt to address this unnerving assemblage set off a shriek of feedback that should have peeled the red fur patches of the hundred or so sk’rrli closest to the stage. Instead they ceased their pincer-snapping and gave him their undivided attention, looking peculiarly pleased.
His face gone almost as red as a lobbear’s, Dork glared at someone offstage. The feedback ceased. The audience looked disappointed, their segmented feelers drooping.
“My friends,” he began, the sound system warping his words into a shrill, loud, garbled version of the chittering and growls of sk’rrli. “As I have often told you, my world is a place of many fine things. Of wondrous objects you have never dreamed of, of goods and services you would desire if only you saw them and understood how badly you needed them. Many gifts have we brought you through our embassy, and tonight I offer yet another. Yet this gift is no mere object. It is instead a taste of one of Earth’s finest cultural treasures.”
He beamed at them like a secondhand aircar salesman about to close on a clunker with bad fans. “What I offer you tonight is an example of the cultural heights you yourselves might reach with our generous help, and through fair and honest and mutually profitable trade.”
Maire leaned toward me and whispered, “Is this joker for real?”
“Unfortunately. Just smile and remember he’s worth ten plus points to you.”
Dork had worked himself up into a fist-shaking harangue. “You can make something of your brutal lives! You can rise above your present savage, uncivilized, uncouth state!”
“You can let us have bathroom and bedroom walls!” wailed one of the embassy staff down in front.
A wistful look flitted across Dork’s patrician features, followed closely by pique at the interruption of his oration. “We are here to show you the way if only you will let us! We are here to improve your lives and prospects for the future! And we would, if only you would stop acting like a bunch of ill-tempered, uncooperative, utterly charmless excuses for sentient life who look like half-cooked lobsters and don’t have the sense to—”
He caught himself, blinked and offered an unctuous smile. “But I should leave such matters for the bargaining table. Tonight all you need do is enjoy this generous taste of what my kind have achieved. So without further ado, I present a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.”
He waited a few moments for applause. None came. A fixed smile on his face, he went to his big fancy chair and sat down. He grabbed the glass from the table beside him, drained it, then refilled it from his silver pitcher. The color that bloomed in his cheeks suggested it wasn’t mineral water.
The three of us bowed to our urso-crustacal audience. I gave Maire a nod. She activated the mike in her music stand, then growled and chittered at our listeners in their own tongue. She’d asked to do this, having taught herself a sk’rrli phrase that roughly translated as: May what we offer rend nicely and taste/feel good.
When she finished we took our seats. I called up the score on our stands. Each gave me a nod to say they were ready. I had the stands give us a downcount. When it ended we began to play.
Now we’re back to the place I started with at the beginning. The part where the crowd was getting ugly. Remember? Believe me, it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d ever forget.
We were about three minutes into the first movement, playing tightly and sweetly, our timing and phrasing immaculate. A normal audience would have been rapt. The sk’rrli weren’t a normal audience, even for us.
Immediately after the opening notes they had begun acting like a nest full of cranky hornets stirred with a stick, moving restlessly around waving their feelers and snapping their pincers in agitation. The longer we played the more aggravated they became. Before long they had started advancing on the stage, radiating enough raw menace to send the embassy staff scurrying to hide behind it. The mood grew so palpably ominous even Dork noticed it through his haze of gin and egotism. His face turned increasingly pale and waxy as the red tide surged closer.
Still playing, I leaned over toward him and hissed, “I don’t think they’re Vivaldi fans.”
He blinked uncertainly. “Maybe they just, uh—”
His voice had failed him at the sight of a dozen or so lobbears preparing to clamber up on the stage. It looked unlikely that they were coming up to hand us bouquets. A plan to hand us our own heads seemed a lot more likely.
I didn’t need the house to fall on me. “We’re going to stop playing,” I said, not much caring if he liked it or not.
I’m not sure he even heard me. Five of the lobbears were on the stage now, and they were advancing on him with snicking pincers and bared teeth. Lots of teeth. It made sense that they’d go for him first; he’d taken all the credit for our performance. Still I imagined they’d get around to us sooner or later.
I twisted around toward Maire and Rube, making a show of taking my bow away from my violinna. They did the same, looking relieved.
The lobbears were reaching for Dork by then, and seemed inclined to peel him out of his chair like a marinated prawn from its shell. He locked his hands on its arms in a death grip. “Help me!” he bawled. “Do something!”
Running seemed apropos. More of the lobbears had gained the stage and more were about to make the climb.
“MO!”
I whipped around toward Maire at her shout.
“Give me the baton! Now! Before it’s too late!”
“What—” I began, now not only terrified but confused.
“Just do it!”
Now a lobbear was stalking me like some old movie monster. But this was real. I frantically banged on my stand’s controls. Maire’s supple fingers flew across her stand’s keypads. The Vivaldi blanked.
Moments later a new piece of music appeared on its display, along with the command SLAVE MODE THREE. I stared at it for a second, then went for my violinna’s controls. Now the music stand would, cued by notations in the score, directly control the various voices our instruments’ could emulate, along with volume and a variety of effects.
There was no time to look at her or Rube, the downcount was already under way. I took a deep breath, the creature so close I could smell mrr’ggh and Yummi-Ade on its breath, and poised my bow, shiveringly aware of the pincered paws reaching for me.
The downcount ended a heartbeat before they got me.
The original instruments of violin, viola and cello were some of humankind’s greatest creations. While these fragile wooden constructs were capable of creating lush, soul-moving sound, they were also limited in range, voice and volume. Moreover, they require certain temperatures, humidity and air pressure levels, not to mention atmospheric compositions, to sound true to their design. The modern cybronic analogues, the violinna, viola la bamba, and cellotta are unfettered by such considerations.
Take range. Five performances before the one on Sk’rrl we played for a race who used ultrasound for communication and navigation. The brains in our instruments transposed what we were playing (Flight of the Bumblebee was one of their favorites) umpteen octaves up, which had us producing sounds so high-pitched even dogs couldn’t have heard us.