Finally I searched through my record albums, selected Toscanini conducting Tristan and Isolde, in the scene where Tristan mourns his parted lover, and carefully transcribed another tape.
That night I drove down to Lagoon West, parked my car by the beach on the south shore and walked out on to the surface of the lake. In the moonlight the summer-house half a mile away looked like an abstract movie set, a single light on the upper terrace illuminating the outlines of my statue. Stepping carefully across the fused silica, I made my way slowly towards it, fragments of the statue’s song drifting by on the low breeze. Two hundred yards from the house I lay down on the warm sand, watching the lights of Vermilion Sands fade one by one like the melting jewels of a necklace.
Above, the statue sang into the blue night, its song never wavering. Lunora must have been sitting only a few feet above it, the music enveloping her like an overflowing fountain. Shortly after two o’clock it died down and I saw her at the rail, the white ermine wrap around her shoulders stirring in the wind as she stared at the brilliant moon.
Half an hour later I climbed the lake wall and walked along it to the spiral fire escape. The bougainvillaea wreathed through the railings muffled the sounds of my feet on the metal steps. I reached the upper terrace unnoticed. Far below, in her quarters on the north side, Mme Charcot was asleep.
Swinging on to the terrace, I moved among the dark statues, drawing low murmurs from them as I passed.
I crouched inside Zero Orbit, unlocked the control panel and inserted the fresh tape, slightly raising the volume.
As I left I could see on to the west terrace twenty feet below, where Lunora lay asleep under the stars on an enormous velvet bed, like a lunar princess on a purple catafalque. Her face shone in the starlight, her loose hair veiling her naked breasts. Behind her a statue stood guard, intoning softly to itself as it pulsed to the sounds of her breathing.
Three times I visited Lunora’s house after midnight, taking with me another spool of tape, another love-song from my library. On the last visit I watched her sleeping until dawn rose across the desert. I fled down the stairway and across the sand, hiding among the cold pools of shadow whenever a car moved along the beach road.
All day I waited by the telephone in my villa, hoping she would call me. In the evening I walked out to the sand reefs, climbed one of the spires and watched Lunora on the terrace after dinner. She lay on a couch before the statue, and until long after midnight it played to her, endlessly singing. Its voice was now so strong that cars would slow down several hundred yards away, the drivers searching for the source of the melodies crossing the vivid evening air.
At last I recorded the final tape, for the first time in my own voice. Briefly I described the whole sequence of imposture, and quietly asked Lunora if she would sit for me and let me design a new sculpture to replace the fraud she had bought.
I clenched the tape tightly in my hand while I walked across the lake, looking up at the rectangular outline of the terrace.
As I reached the wall, a black suited figure put his head over the ledge and looked down at me. It was Lunora’s chauffeur.
Startled, I moved away across the sand. In the moonlight the chauffeur’s white face flickered bonily.
The next evening, as I knew it would, the telephone finally rang.
‘Mr Milton, the statue has broken down again.’ Mme Charcot’s voice sounded sharp and strained. ‘Miss Goalen is extremely upset. You must come and repair it. Immediately.’
I waited an hour before leaving, playing through the tape I had recorded the previous evening. This time I would be present when Lunora heard it.
Mme Charcot was standing by the glass doors. I parked in the court by the Rolls. As I walked over to her, I noticed how eerie the house sounded. All over it the statues were muttering to themselves, emitting snaps and clicks, like the disturbed occupants of a zoo settling down with difficulty after a storm. Even Mme Charcot looked worn and tense.
At the terrace she paused. ‘One moment, Mr Milton. I will see if Miss Goalen is ready to receive you.’ She walked quietly towards the chaise longue pulled against the statue at the end of the terrace. Lunora was stretched out awkwardly across it, her hair disarrayed. She sat up irritably as Mme Charcot approached.
‘Is he here? Alice, whose car was that? Hasn’t he come?’
‘He is preparing his equipment,’ Mme Charcot told her soothingly. ‘Miss Lunora, let me dress your hair —’
‘Alice, don’t fuss! God, what’s keeping him?’ She sprang up and paced over to the statue, glowering silently out of the darkness. While Mme Charcot walked away Lunora sank on her knees before the statue, pressed her right cheek to its cold surface.
Uncontrollably she began to sob, deep spasms shaking her shoulders.
‘Wait, Mr Milton!’ Mme Charcot held tightly to my elbow. ‘She will not want to see you for a few minutes.’ She added: ‘You are a better sculptor than you think, Mr Milton. You have given that statue a remarkable voice. It tells her all she needs to know.’
I broke away and ran through the darkness.
‘Lunora!’
She looked around, the hair over her face matted with tears. She leaned limply against the dark trunk of the statue. I knelt down and held her hands, trying to lift her to her feet.
She wrenched away from me. ‘Fix it! Hurry, what are you waiting for? Make the statue sing again !’
I was certain that she no longer recognized me. I stepped back, the spool of tape in my hand. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ I whispered to Mme Charcot. ‘The sounds don’t really come from the statue, surely she realizes that?’
Mme Charcot’s head lifted. ‘What do you mean – not from the statue?’
I showed her the tape. ‘This isn’t a true sonic sculpture. The music is played off these magnetic tapes.’
A chuckle rasped briefly from Mme Charcot’s throat. ‘Well, put it in none the less, monsieur. She doesn’t care where it comes from. She is interested in the statue, not you.’
I hesitated, watching Lunora, still hunched like a supplicant at the foot of the statue.
‘You mean –?’ I started to say incredulously. ‘So you mean she’s in love with the statue?’
Mme Charcot’s eyes summed up all my naivety.
‘Not with the statue,’ she said. ‘With herself.’
For a moment I stood there among the murmuring sculptures, dropped the spool on the floor and turned away.
They left Lagoon West the next day.
For a week I remained at my villa, then drove along the beach road towards the summer house one evening after Nevers told me that they had gone.
The house was closed, the statues standing motionless in the darkness. My footsteps echoed away among the balconies and terraces, and the house reared up into the sky like a tomb. All the sculptures had been switched off, and I realized how dead and monumental non-sonic sculpture must have seemed.
Zero Orbit had also gone. I assumed that Lunora had taken it with her, so immersed in her self-love that she preferred a clouded mirror which had once told her of her beauty to no mirror at all. As she sat on some penthouse veranda in Venice or Paris, with the great statue towering into the dark sky like an extinct symbol, she would hear again the lays it had sung.
Six months later Nevers commissioned another statue from me. I went out one dusk to the sand reefs where the sonic sculptures grow. As I approached, they were creaking in the wind whenever the thermal gradients cut through them. I walked up the long slopes, listening to them mewl and whine, searching for one that would serve as the sonic core for a new statue.