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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c96508e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51379 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51379) diff --git a/old/51379-h.zip b/old/51379-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index a764497..0000000 --- a/old/51379-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/51379-h/51379-h.htm b/old/51379-h/51379-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 2196cd4..0000000 --- a/old/51379-h/51379-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1803 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Music Master of Babylon, by Edgar Pangborn. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1, .ph2, .ph3, .ph4 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: xx-large; margin: .67em auto; } -.ph2 { font-size: x-large; margin: .75em auto; } -.ph3 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } -.ph4 { font-size: medium; margin: 1.12em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Music Master of Babylon, by Edgar Pangborn - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Music Master of Babylon - -Author: Edgar Pangborn - -Release Date: March 6, 2016 [EBook #51379] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="396" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<h1>The Music Master of Babylon</h1> - -<p>By EDGAR PANGBORN</p> - -<p>Illustrated by KRIGSTEIN</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="600" height="421" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph3"><i>What more fitting place for the last man on<br /> -Earth to live in than a museum? Now if only<br /> -he could avoid becoming an exhibit himself!</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>For twenty-five years, no one came. In the seventy-sixth year of his -life, Brian Van Anda was still trying not to remember a happy boyhood. -To do so was irrelevant and dangerous, although every instinct of his -old age tempted him to reject the present and dwell in the lost times.</p> - -<p>He would recall stubbornly that the present year, for example, was -2096; that he had been born in 2020, seven years after the close of the -Civil War, fifty years before the Final War, twenty-five years before -the departure of the First Interstellar. (It had never returned, nor -had the Second Interstellar. They might be still wandering, trifles of -Man-made Stardust.) He would recall his place of birth, New Boston, -the fine, planned city far inland from the ancient metropolis that the -rising sea had reclaimed after the earthquake of 1994.</p> - -<p>Such things, places and dates, were factual props, useful when Brian -wanted to impose an external order on the vagueness of his immediate -existence. He tried to make sure they became no more than that—to shut -away the colors, the poignant sounds, the parks and the playgrounds of -New Boston, the known faces (many of them loved), and the later years -when he had briefly known a curious intoxication called fame.</p> - -<p>It was not necessarily better or wiser to reject those memories, -but it was safer, and nowadays Brian was often sufficiently tired, -sufficiently conscious of his growing weakness and lonely unimportance, -to crave safety as a meadow mouse often craves a burrow.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He tied his canoe to the massive window that for many years had been a -port and a doorway. Lounging there with a suspended sense of time, he -was hardly aware that he was listening. In a way, all the twenty-five -years had been a listening. He watched Earth's patient star sink toward -the rim of the forest on the Palisades. At this hour, it was sometimes -possible, if the Sun-crimsoned water lay still, to cease grieving too -much at the greater stillness.</p> - -<p>There was scattered human life elsewhere, he knew—probably a great -deal of it. After twenty-five years alone, that, too, often seemed -almost irrelevant. At other times than mild evenings, hushed noons or -mornings empty of human commotion, Brian might lapse into anger, fight -the calm by yelling, resent the swift dying of his echoes. Such moods -were brief. A kind of humor remained in him, not to be ruined by sorrow.</p> - -<p>He remembered how, ten months or possibly ten years ago, he had -encountered a box turtle in a forest clearing, and had shouted at it: -"<i>They went thataway!</i>" The turtle's rigidly comic face, fixed by -nature in a caricature of startled disapproval, had seemed to point up -some truth or other. Brian had hunkered down on the moss and laughed -uproariously—until he observed that some of the laughter was weeping.</p> - -<p>Today had been rather good. He had killed a deer on the Palisades, -and with bow and arrow, thus saving a bullet. Not that he needed to -practice such economy. He might live, he supposed, another decade or -so at the most. His rifles were in good condition and his hoarded -ammunition would easily outlast him. So would the stock of canned -and dried food stuffed away in his living quarters. But there was -satisfaction in primitive effort and no compulsion to analyze the why -of it.</p> - -<p>The stored food was more important than the ammunition. A time would -come soon enough when he no longer had strength for hunting. He would -lose the inclination for trips to cross the river. He would yield -to such laziness or timidity for days, then weeks. Some time, when -it became months or years, he might find himself too feeble to risk -climbing the cliff wall into the forest. He would have the good sense -then, he hoped, to destroy the canoe, thus making of his weakness a -necessity.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There were books. There was the Hall of Music on the next floor above -the water, probably safe from its lessening encroachment. To secure -fresh water, he need only keep track of the tides, for the Hudson had -cleaned itself and now rolled down sweet from the lonely, uncorrupted -hills. His decline could be comfortable. He had provided for it -and planned it. Yet gazing now across the sleepy water, seeing a -broad-winged hawk circle in freedom above the forest, Brian was aware -of the old thought moving in him:</p> - -<p>"If I could hear voices—just once, if I could hear human voices...."</p> - -<p>The Museum of Human History, with the Hall of Music on what Brian -thought of as the second floor, should also outlast his requirements. -In the flooded lower floor and basement, the work of slow destruction -must be going on. Here and there, the unhurried waters could find their -way to steel and make rust of it, for the waterproofing of the concrete -was nearly a hundred years old. But it ought to be good for another -century or two.</p> - -<p>Nowadays the ocean was mild. There were moderate tides, winds no longer -destructive. For the last six years, there had been no more of the -heavy storms out of the south. In the same period, Brian had noted a -rise in the water level of a mere nine inches. The window-sill, his -port, was six inches above high-tide mark now.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Earth was settling into a new, amiable mood. The climate had -become delightful, about like what Brian remembered from a visit to -southern Virginia in his childhood.</p> - -<p>The last earthquake had come in 2082—a large one, Brian guessed, but -its center could not have been close to the rock of Manhattan. The -Museum had only shivered and shrugged; it had survived much worse than -that, half a dozen times since 1994. After the tremor, a tall wave had -thundered in from the south. Its force, like that of others, had mostly -been dissipated against the barrier of tumbled rock and steel at the -southern end of the submerged island—an undersea dam, Man-made though -not Man-intended—and when it reached the Museum, it did no more than -smash the southern windows in the Hall of Music, which earlier waves -had not been able to reach. Then it passed on up the river, enfeebled. -The windows of the lower floor had all been broken long before that.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>After the earthquake of '82, Brian had spent a month boarding up all -the openings on the south side of the Hall of Music—after all, it was -home—with lumber painfully ferried from mainland ruins. That year, he -had been sixty-two years old and not moving with the ease of youth: -a rough job. He had deliberately left cracks and knotholes. Sunlight -sifted through in narrow beams, like the bars of dusty gold Brian could -remember in a hayloft at his uncle's farm in Vermont. It was quite -pleasant.</p> - -<p>The Museum had been built in 2003. Manhattan, strangely enough, had -never been bombed, although, in the Civil War, two of the type called -"small fission" had fallen on the Brooklyn and Jersey sides—so Brian -recalled from the jolly history books that had informed his adolescence -that war was definitely a thing of the past.</p> - -<p>By the time of the final War, in 2070, the sea, gorged on the melting -ice caps, had removed Manhattan Island from history. Everything left -standing above the waters south of the Museum had been knocked flat -by the tornados of 2057 and 2064. A few blobs of rock still marked -where Central Park and Mount Morris Park had been, but they were not -significant. Where Long Island once rose, there was a troubled area of -shoals and tiny islands, probably a useful barrier of protection for -the receding shore of Connecticut.</p> - -<p>Men had yielded the great city inch by inch, then foot by foot; a full -mile in 2047, saying: "The flood years have passed their peak and a -return to normal is expected."</p> - -<p>Brian sometimes felt a twinge of sympathy for the Neanderthal experts -who must have told each other to expect a return to normal after the -Cro-Magnons stopped drifting in.</p> - -<p>In 2057, the island of Manhattan had to be yielded altogether. New York -City, half-new, half-ancient, sprawled stubborn and enormous upstream, -on both sides of a river not done with its anger. But the Museum stood. -Aided by sunken rubble of others of its kind, aided also by men because -they still had time to love it, the Museum stood, and might for a long -time yet—weather permitting.</p> - -<p>It covered an acre of ground well north of 125th Street, rising a -modest fifteen stories, its foundation secure in that layer of rock -which mimics eternity. It deserved its name: here men had brought -samples of everything, literally everything known in the course of -humanity since prehistory. It was, within human limits, definitive. In -its way, considering how much the erosion of time must always steal -from scholars, it was perfect.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>No one had felt anything unnatural in the refusal of the Directors -of the Museum to move the collection after the Museum weathered the -storm of 2057. Instead, ordinary people, more than a thousand of them, -donated money so that a mighty abutment could be built around the -ground floor, a new entrance designed on the north side of the second. -The abutment survived the greater tornado of 2064 without damage, -although, during those seven years, the sea had risen another eight -feet in its old ever-new game of making monkeys out of the wise.</p> - -<p>It was left for Brian Van Anda alone, in 2079, to see the waters slide -quietly over the abutment, opening the lower regions for the use of -fishes and the more secret water-dwellers who like shelter and privacy. -In the '90s, Brian suspected the presence of an octopus or two in the -vast vague territory which had once been parking lot, heating plant, -storage space, air-raid shelter, etc. He couldn't prove it; it just -seemed like a comfortable place for an octopus.</p> - -<p>In 2070, plans were under consideration for building a new causeway to -the Museum from the still expanding city in the north. In 2070, also, -the final War began and ended.</p> - -<p>When Brian Van Anda came down the river late in 2071, a refugee -from certain unfamiliar types of savagery, the Museum was empty of -the living. He had spent many days in exhaustive exploration of -the building. He did that systematically, toiling at last up to the -Directors' meeting room on the top floor. There he observed how they -must have been holding a conference at the very time when a new gas was -tried out over New York in the north, in a final effort to persuade the -Western Federation that Man is the servant of the state and that the -end justifies the means.</p> - -<p>Too bad, Brian sometimes thought, that he would never know exactly what -happened to the Asian Empire. In the little paratroop-invaded area -called the Soviet of North America, from which Brian had fled in '71, -the official doctrine was that the Asian Empire had won the war and -that the saviors of humanity would be flying in any day to take over. -Brian had doubted this out loud, and then stolen a boat and got away -safely at night.</p> - -<p>Up in the meeting room, Brian had seen how that new neurotoxin had been -no respecter of persons. An easy death, though—no pain. He observed -also how some things survive. The Museum, for instance, was virtually -unharmed.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Brian had often recalled those months in the meeting room as a sort -of island in time, like the first hour of discovering that he could -play Beethoven; or like the curiously cherished, more than life-size -half-hour back there in Newburg, in 2071, when he had briefly met and -spoken with an incredibly old man, Abraham Brown, President of the -Western Federation at the time of the Civil War. Brown, with a loved -world in almost total ruin around him, had spoken pleasantly of small -things—of chrysanthemums that would soon be blooming in the front -yard of the house where he lived with friends, of a piano recital by -Van Anda at Ithaca, in 2067, which the old man remembered with warm -enthusiasm.</p> - -<p>Yes, the Museum Directors had died easily, and now the old innocent -bodies would be quite decent. There were no vermin in the Museum. The -doorways and floors were tight, the upper windows unbroken.</p> - -<p>One of the white-haired men had a Ming vase on his desk. He had not -dropped from his chair, but looked as if he had fallen comfortably -asleep in front of the vase with his head on his arms. Brian had left -the vase untouched, but had taken one other thing, moved by some -stirring of his own never-certain philosophy and knowing that he would -not return to this room, ever.</p> - -<p>Another Director had been opening a wall cabinet when he fell; the -small key lay near his fingers. Plainly their discussion had not been -concerned only with war, perhaps not at all with war—after all, there -were other topics. The Ming vase would have had a part in it. Brian -wished he could know what the old man had meant to choose from the -cabinet. Sometimes, even now, he dreamed of conversations with that -man, in which the Director told him the whole truth about that and -other matters; but what was certainty in sleep was in the morning gone -like childhood.</p> - -<p>For himself, Brian had taken a little image of rock-hard clay, -blackened, two-faced, male and female. Prehistoric, or at any rate -wholly primitive, unsophisticated, meaningful like the blameless motion -of an animal in sunlight, Brian had said: "With your permission, -gentlemen." He had closed the cabinet and then, softly, the outer door.</p> - -<p>"I'm old," Brian said to the red evening. "Old, a little foolish, talk -aloud to myself. I'll have some Mozart before supper."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He transferred the fresh venison from the canoe to a small raft hitched -inside the window. He had selected only choice pieces, as much as he -could cook and eat in the few days before it spoiled, leaving the rest -for the wolves or any other forest scavengers who might need it. There -was a rope strung from the window to the marble steps that led to the -next floor—home.</p> - -<p>It had not been possible to save much from the submerged area, for its -treasure was mostly heavy statuary. Through the still water, as he -pulled the raft along the rope, the Moses of Michelangelo gazed up -at him in tranquility. Other faces watched him. Most of them watched -infinity. There were white hands that occasionally borrowed gentle -motion from ripples made by the raft.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="164" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<p>"I got a deer, Moses," said Brian Van Anda, smiling down in -companionship, losing track of time. He carried his juicy burden up the -stairway.</p> - -<p>His living quarters had once been a cloakroom for Museum attendants. -Four close walls gave it a sense of security. A ventilating shaft -now served as a chimney for the wood stove Brian had salvaged from a -mainland farmhouse. The door could be tightly locked; there were no -windows. You do not want windows in a cave.</p> - -<p>Outside was the Hall of Music, an entire floor of the Museum, -containing an example of every musical instrument that was known or -could be reconstructed in the 21st century. The library of scores and -recordings lacked nothing—except electricity to play the recordings. -A few might still be made to sound on a spring-wound phonograph, but -Brian had not bothered with it for years; the springs were rusted.</p> - -<p>He sometimes took out the orchestra and chamber music scores, to -read at random. Once his mind had been able to furnish ensembles, -orchestras, choirs of a sort, but lately the ability had weakened. -He remembered a day, possibly a year ago, when his memory refused to -give him the sound of oboe and clarinet in unison. He had wandered, -peevish, distressed, unreasonably alarmed, among the racks and cases of -woodwinds in the collection, knowing that even if the reeds were still -good, he could not play them. He had never mastered any instrument -except the piano.</p> - -<p>"But even if I could play them," he muttered, now tolerantly amused, "I -couldn't do it in unison, could I? Ah, the things that will bother a -man!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Brian recalled—it was probably that same day—opening a chest -of double basses. There was an old three-stringer in the group, -probably from the early 19th century, a trifle fatter than its modern -companions. Brian touched its middle string in an idle caress, not -intending to make it sound, but it had done so. When in use, it would -have been tuned to D; time had slackened the heavy murmur to A or -something near it. That had throbbed in the silent room with a sense -of finality, a sound such as a programmatic composer—Tchaikovsky, -say, or some other in the nadir of torment—might have used as a tonal -symbol for the breaking of a heart. It stayed in the air a long time, -other instruments whispering a dim response.</p> - -<p>"All right, gentlemen," said Brian. "That was your A." He had closed -the case, not laughing.</p> - -<p>Out in the main part of the hall, a place of honor was given to what -may have been the oldest of all instruments, a seven-note marimba of -phonolitic schist discovered in Indo-China in the 20th century and -thought to be at least 5,000 years of age. The xylophone-type rack was -modern; for twenty-five years, Brian had obeyed a compulsion to keep -it clear of cobwebs. Sometimes he touched the singing stones, not for -amusement, but because there was an obscure comfort in it. Unconcerned -with time, they answered even to the light tap of a fingernail.</p> - -<p>On the west side of the Hall of Music, a rather long walk from Brian's -cave, was a small auditorium. Lectures, recitals, chamber music -concerts had been given there in the old days. The pleasant room held -a twelve-foot concert grand, made by Steinway in 2043, probably the -finest of the many pianos in the Hall of Music.</p> - -<p>Brian had done his best to preserve this, setting aside a day each -month for the prayerful tuning of it, robbing other pianos in the -Museum to provide a reserve supply of strings, oiled and sealed up -against rust. No dirt ever collected on the Steinway. When not in use, -it was covered with stitched-together sheets. To remove the cover was a -sober ritual; Brian always washed his hands with fanatical care before -touching the keys.</p> - -<p>Some years ago, he had developed the habit of locking the auditorium -doors before he played. Even with the doors locked, he would not glance -toward the vista of empty seats—not knowing, nor caring much, whether -this inhibition had grown from a Stone Age fear of seeing someone there -or from a flat, reasonable certainty that no one could be.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The habit might have started (he could not remember precisely) away -back in the year 2076, when so many bodies had drifted down from the -north on the ebb tides. Full horror had somehow been lacking in the -sight of all that floating death. Perhaps it was because Brian had -earlier had his fill of horrors; or perhaps, in 2076, he already felt -so divorced from his own kind that what happened to them was like the -photograph of a war in a distant country.</p> - -<p>Some of the bodies had bobbed quite near the Museum. Most of them -had the gaping wounds of primitive warfare, but some were oddly -discolored—a new pestilence? So there was (or had been) more trouble -up there in what was (or had been) the Soviet of North America, a -self-styled "nation" that took in east New York State and some of New -England.</p> - -<p>Yes, that was probably the year when he had started locking the doors -between his private concerts and an empty world.</p> - -<p>He dumped the venison in his cave. He scrubbed his hands, blue-veined -now, but still tough, still knowing Mozart, he thought, and walked—not -with much pleasure of anticipation, but more like one externally -driven—through the enormous hall that was so full and yet so empty, -growing dim with evening, with dust, with age, with loneliness. Music -should not be silent.</p> - -<p>When the piano was uncovered, Brian delayed. He flexed his hands -unnecessarily. He fussed with the candelabrum on the wall, lighting -three candles, then blowing out two for economy. He admitted presently -that he did not want the serene clarity of Mozart at all right now. -This evening, the darkness of 2070 was closer than he had felt it for -a long time. It would never have occurred to Mozart, Brian thought, -that a world could die. Beethoven could have entertained the idea -soberly enough; Chopin probably; even Brahms. Mozart would surely have -dismissed it as somebody's bad dream, in poor taste.</p> - -<p>Andrew Carr, who lived and died in the latter half of the 20th century, -had endured the idea from the beginning of his childhood. The date of -Hiroshima was 1945; Carr was born in 1951; the inexhaustible wealth of -his music was written between 1969, when he was eighteen, and 1984, -when he died in an Egyptian jail from injuries received in a street -brawl.</p> - -<p>"If not Mozart," said Brian to his idle hands, "there is always The -Project."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Playing Carr's last sonata as it should be played—as Carr was supposed -to have said he couldn't play it himself—Brian had been thinking of -that as The Project for many years. It had begun long before the -war, at the time of his triumphs in a civilized world which had been -warmly appreciative of the polished interpretive artist, although no -more awake than any other age to the creative one. Back there in the -undestroyed society, Brian had proposed to program that sonata in the -company of works that were older but no greater, and play it—yes, -beyond his best, so that even critics would begin to see its importance.</p> - -<p>He had never done it, had never felt that he had entered into the -sonata and learned the depth of it. Now, when there was none to hear -or care, unless maybe the harmless brown spiders in the corners of the -auditorium had a taste for music, there was still The Project.</p> - -<p>"<i>I</i> hear," Brian said. "<i>I</i> care, and with myself as audience I want -to hear it once as it ought to be, a final statement for a world that -couldn't live and yet was too good to die."</p> - -<p>Technically, of course, he had it. The athletic demands Carr made on -the performer were tremendous, but, given technique, there was nothing -impossible about them. Anyone capable of concert work could at least -play the notes at the required tempos. And any reasonably shrewd -pianist could keep track of the dynamics, saving strength for the -shattering finale in spite of the thunderings that must come before. -Brian had heard the sonata played by others two or three times in the -old days—competently. Competency was not enough.</p> - -<p>For example, what about the third movement, that mad Scherzo, and the -five tiny interludes of sweet quiet scattered through its plunging -fury? They were not alike. Related, perhaps, but each one demanded a -new climate of heart and mind—tenderness, regret, simple relaxation. -Flowers on a flood—no. Warm window-lights in a storm—no. The -innocence of an unknowing child in a bombed city—no, not really. -Something of all those, but much more, too.</p> - -<p>What of the second movement, the Largo, where, in a way, the pattern -was reversed, the midnight introspection interrupted by moments of -anger, or longing, or despair like that of an angel beating his wings -against a prison of glass?</p> - -<p>It was, throughout, a work in which something of Carr's life and Carr's -temperament had to come into you, whether you dared welcome it or not; -otherwise, your playing was no more than a bumbling reproduction of -notes on a page.</p> - -<p>Carr's life was not for the contemplation of the timid.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The details were superficially well known. The biographies themselves -were like musical notation, meaningless without interpretation and -insight.</p> - -<p>Carr had been a drunken roarer, a young devil-god with such a consuming -hunger for life that he had choked to death on it. His friends hated -him for the way he drained their lives, loving them to distraction and -always loving his work a little more. His enemies must have had times -of helplessly adoring him, if only because of an impossible transparent -honesty that made him more and less than human.</p> - -<p>A rugged Australian, not tall but built like a hero, a face all -forehead and jaw and glowing hyperthyroid eyes. He wept only when he -was angry, the biographers said. In one minute of talk, they said, -he might shift from gutter obscenity to some extreme of altruistic -tenderness, and from that to a philosophical comment of the coldest -intelligence.</p> - -<p>He passed his childhood on a sheep farm, ran away to sea on a freighter -at thirteen, studied like a slave in London with a single-minded -desperation, even through the horrors of the Pandemic of 1972. He -was married twice and twice divorced. He killed a man in an imbecile -quarrel on the New Orleans docks, and wrote his First Symphony while he -was in jail for that. And he died of stab wounds in a Cairo jail. It -all had relevancy. Relevant or not, if the sonata was in your mind, so -was the life.</p> - -<p>You had to remember also that Andrew Carr was the last of -civilization's great composers. No one in the 21st century approached -him—they ignored his explorations and carved cherry-stones. He -belonged to no school, unless you wanted to imagine a school of music -beginning with Bach, taking in perhaps a dozen along the way, and -ending with Carr himself. His work was a summary and, in the light of -the year 2070, a completion.</p> - -<p>Brian was certain he could play the first movement of the sonata -acceptably. Technically, it was not revolutionary, but closely loyal -to the ancient sonata form. Carr had even written in a conventional -double-bar for a repeat of the entire opening statement, something that -made late 20th century critics sneer with great satisfaction. It never -occurred to them that Carr expected a performer to use his head.</p> - -<p>The bright-sorrowful second movement, unfashionably long, with its -strange pauses, unforeseen recapitulations, outbursts of savage -change—that was where Brian's troubles began. It did not help him to -be old, remembering the inner storms of twenty-five years ago and more.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As the single candle fluttered, Brian realized that he had forgotten -to lock the door. That troubled him, but he did not rise from the -piano chair. He chided himself instead for the foolish neuroses of -aloneness—what could it matter?</p> - -<p>He shut his eyes. The sonata had long ago been memorized; printed -copies were safe somewhere in the library. He played the opening of -the first movement, as far as the double-bar; opened his eyes to the -friendly black and white of clean keys and played the repetition with -new light, new emphasis. Better than usual, he thought.</p> - -<p>Now that soaring modulation into A Major that only Carr would -have wanted just there in just that sudden way, like the abrupt -happening upon shining fields. On toward the climax—<i>I am playing -it, I think</i>—through the intricate revelations of development and -recapitulation. And the conclusion, lingering, half-humorous, not -unlike a Beethoven ending, but with a questioning that was all Andrew -Carr.</p> - -<p>After that—</p> - -<p>"No more tonight," said Brian aloud. "Some night, though.... Not -competent right now, my friend. Fear's a many-aspect thing. But The -Project...."</p> - -<p>He replaced the cover on the Steinway and blew out the candle. He had -brought no torch, long use having taught his feet every inch of the -short journey. It was quite dark. The never-opened western windows of -the auditorium were dirty, most of the dirt on the outside, crusted -wind-blow salt.</p> - -<p>In this partial darkness, something was wrong.</p> - -<p>At first Brian could find no source for the faint light, the dim orange -with a hint of motion that had no right to be here. He peered into the -gloom of the auditorium, fixed his eyes on the oblong of blacker shadow -that was the door he meant to use, but it told him nothing.</p> - -<p>The windows, of course. He had almost forgotten there were any. The -light, hardly deserving the name, was coming through them. But sunset -was surely well past; he had been here a long time, delaying and -brooding before he played. Sunset should not flicker.</p> - -<p>So there was some kind of fire on the mainland. There had been no -thunderstorm. How could fire start, over there where no one ever came?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He stumbled a few times, swearing petulantly, locating the doorway -again and groping through it into the Hall of Music. The windows out -here were just as dirty; no use trying to see through them. There must -have been a time when he had enjoyed looking through them.</p> - -<p>He stood shivering in the marble silence, trying to remember.</p> - -<p>He could not. Time was a gradual eternal dying. Time was a long growth -of dirt and ocean salt, sealing in, covering over forever.</p> - -<p>He stumbled for his cave, hurrying now, and lit two candles. He left -one by the cold stove and used the other to light his way down the -stairs to his raft. Once down there, he blew it out, afraid. The room -a candle makes in the darkness is a vulnerable room. With no walls, it -closes in a blindness. He pulled the raft by the guide-rope, gently, -for fear of noise.</p> - -<p>He found his canoe tied as he had left it. He poked his white head -slowly beyond the sill, staring west.</p> - -<p>Merely a bonfire gleaming, reddening the blackness of the cliff.</p> - -<p>Brian knew the spot, a ledge almost at water level. At one end of it -was the troublesome path he used in climbing up to the forest. Usable -driftwood was often there, the supply renewed by the high tides.</p> - -<p>"No," Brian said. "Oh, no...."</p> - -<p>Unable to accept, or believe, or not believe, he drew his head in, -resting his forehead on the coldness of the sill, waiting for dizziness -to pass, reason to return. Then rather calm, he once more leaned out -over the sill. The fire still shone and was therefore not a disordered -dream of old age, but it was dying to a dull rose of embers.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He wondered a little about time. The Museum clocks and watches had -stopped long ago; Brian had ceased to want them. A sliver of moon was -hanging over the water to the east. He ought to be able to remember -the phases, deduce the approximate time from that. But his mind was -too tired or distraught to give him the necessary data. Maybe it was -somewhere around midnight.</p> - -<p>He climbed on the sill and, with grunting effort, lifted the canoe -over it to the motionless water inside. Wasted energy, he decided, as -soon as that struggle was over. That fire had been lit before daylight -passed; whoever lit it would have seen the canoe, might even have -been watching Brian himself come home from his hunting. The canoe's -disappearance in the night would only rouse further curiosity. But -Brian was too exhausted to lift it back.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Why assume that the maker of the bonfire was necessarily hostile? Might -be good company.</p> - -<p>Might be....</p> - -<p>Brian pulled his raft through the darkness, secured it at the stairway, -and groped back to his cave.</p> - -<p>He then locked the door. The venison was waiting, the sight and smell -of it making him suddenly ravenous. He lit a small fire in the stove, -one that he hoped would not be still sending smoke from the ventilator -shaft when morning came. He cooked the meat crudely and wolfed it down, -all enjoyment gone at the first mouthful.</p> - -<p>He was shocked then to discover the dirtiness of his white beard. He -hadn't given himself a real bath in—weeks? He searched for scissors -and spent an absent-minded while trimming the beard back to shortness. -He ought to take some soap—valuable stuff—down to Moses' room and -wash.</p> - -<p>Clothes, too. People probably still wore them. He had worn none for -years, except for sandals and a clout and a carrying satchel for -his trips to the mainland. He had enjoyed the freedom at first, and -especially the discovery in his rugged fifties that he did not need -clothes even for the soft winters, except perhaps a light covering -when he slept. Then almost total nakedness had become so natural, it -required no thought at all. But the owner of that bonfire—</p> - -<p>He checked his rifles. The .22 automatic, an Army model from the 2040s, -was the best. The tiny bullets carried a paralytic poison: graze a -man's finger and he was painlessly dead in three minutes. Effective -range, with telescopic sights, three kilometers; weight, a scant five -pounds.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus3.jpg" width="600" height="235" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<p>He sat a long time cuddling that triumph of military science, listening -for sounds that did not come, wondering often about the unknowable -passage of night toward day. Would it be two o'clock?</p> - -<p>He wished he could have seen the Satellite, renamed in his mind the -Midnight Star, but when he was down there at his port, he had not -once looked up at the night sky. Delicate and beautiful, bearing its -everlasting freight of men who must have been dead now for twenty-five -years and who would be dead a very long time—well, it was better than -a clock, Brian often thought, if you happened to look at the midnight -sky at the right time of the month when the Man-made star could catch -the moonlight. But he had not seen it tonight.</p> - -<p>Three o'clock?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>At some time during the long dark, he put the rifle away on the floor. -With studied, self-conscious contempt for his own weakness, he strode -out noisily into the Hall of Music with a fresh-lit candle. This same -bravado, he knew, might dissolve at the first alien noise. While it -lasted, though, it was invigorating.</p> - -<p>The windows were still black with night. As if the candle-flame had -found its own way, Brian was standing by the ancient marimba in -the main hall, the light slanting carelessly away from his thin, -high-veined hand. Nearby, on a small table, sat the Stone Age clay -image he had brought long ago from the Directors' meeting room on the -fifteenth floor. It startled him.</p> - -<p>He remembered quite clearly how he himself had placed it there, obeying -a half-humorous whim: the image and the singing stones were both -magnificently older than history, so why shouldn't they live together? -Whenever he dusted the marimba, he dusted the image respectfully and -its pedestal. It would not have taken much urging from the impulses of -a lonely mind, he supposed, to make him place offerings before it and -bow down—winking first, of course, to indicate that rituals suitable -to two aging gentlemen did not have to be sensible in order to be good.</p> - -<p>But now the clay face, recapitulating eternity, startled him. Possibly -some flicker of the candle had given it a new mimicry of life.</p> - -<p>Though worn with antiquity, it was not deformed. The chipped places -were simple honorable scars. The two faces stared mildly from the -single head; there were plain stylized lines to represent folded hands, -equally artless marks of sex on either side. That was all. The maker -might have intended it to be a child's toy or a god.</p> - -<p>A wooden hammer of modern make rested on the marimba. Softly, Brian -tapped a few of the stones. He struck the shrillest one harder, waking -many slow-dying overtones, and laid the hammer down, listening until -the last murmur perished and a drop of hot wax hurt his thumb.</p> - -<p>He returned to his cave and blew out the candle, thinking of the door, -not caring that he had, in irrational bravado, left it unlocked. Face -down, he rolled his head and clenched his fingers into his pallet, -seeking in pain and finding at last the relief of stormy helpless -weeping in the total dark.</p> - -<p>Then he slept.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They looked timid. The evidence of it was in their tense squatting -pose, not in what the feeble light allowed Brian to see of their faces, -which were as blank as rock. Hunched down just inside the open doorway -of the cloakroom-cave, a dim morning grayness from the Hall of Music -behind them, they were ready for flight. Brian's intelligence warned -his body to stay motionless, for readiness for flight could also be -readiness for attack. He studied them, lowering his eyelids to a slit. -On his pallet well inside the cave, he must be in deep shadow.</p> - -<p>They were aware of him, though, keenly aware.</p> - -<p>They were very young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, -firm-muscled, the man slim but heavy in the shoulders, the girl a fully -developed woman. They were dressed alike: loin-cloths of some coarse -dull fabric and moccasins that might be deerhide. Their hair grew -nearly to the shoulders and was cut off carelessly there, but they were -evidently in the habit of combing it. They appeared to be clean. Their -complexion, so far as Brian could guess it in the meager light, was the -brown of a heavy tan.</p> - -<p>With no immediate awareness of emotion, he decided they were beautiful, -and then, within his own poised, perilous silence, Brian reminded -himself that the young are always beautiful.</p> - -<p>Softly—Brian saw no motion of her lips—the woman muttered: "He wake."</p> - -<p>A twitch of the man's hand was probably meant to warn her to be quiet. -His other hand clutched the shaft of a javelin with a metal blade. -Brian saw that the blade had once belonged to a bread-knife; it was -polished and shining, lashed to a peeled stick. The javelin trailed, -ready for use at a flick of the young man's arm. Brian opened his eyes -plainly.</p> - -<p>Deliberately, he sighed. "Good morning."</p> - -<p>The youth said: "Good morning, sa."</p> - -<p>"Where do you come from?"</p> - -<p>"Millstone." The young man spoke automatically, but then his facial -rigidity dissolved into amazement and some kind of distress. He glanced -at his companion, who giggled uneasily.</p> - -<p>"The old man pretends to not know," she said, and smiled, and seemed -to be waiting for the young man's permission to go on speaking. He did -not give it, but she continued: "Sa, the old ones of Millstone are -dead." She thrust her hand out and down, flat, a picture of finality, -adding with nervous haste: "As the Old Man knows. He who told us to -call him Jonas, she who told us to call her Abigail, they are dead. -They are still-without-moving for six days. Then we do the burial as -they told us. As the Old Man knows."</p> - -<p>"But I don't know!" said Brian, and sat up on his pallet, too quickly, -startling them. But their motion was backward, readiness for flight, -not for aggression. "Millstone? Where is Millstone?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Both looked wholly bewildered, then dismayed. They stood up with -splendid animal grace, stepping backward out of the cave, the girl -whispering in the man's ear. Brian caught only two words: "Is angry...."</p> - -<p>He jumped up. "Don't go! Please don't go!" He followed them out of the -cave, slowly now, aware that he might well be an object of terror in -the half-dark, aware of his gaunt, graceless age and dirty hacked-off -beard. Almost involuntarily, he adopted something of the flat stilted -quality of their speech: "I will not hurt you. Do not go."</p> - -<p>They halted. The girl smiled dubiously.</p> - -<p>The man said: "We need old ones. They die. He who told us to call him -Jonas said, many days in the boat, not with the sun-path, he said, -across the sun-path, he said, keeping land on the left hand. We need -old ones to speak the—to speak.... The Old Man is angry?"</p> - -<p>"No, I am not angry. I am never angry." Brian's mind groped, certain -of nothing. No one had come for twenty-five years. Only twenty-five? -Millstone?</p> - -<p>There was red-gold on the dirty eastern windows of the Hall of Music, -a light becoming softness as it slanted down, touching the long rows -of cases, the warm brown of an antique spinet, the arrogant clean gold -of a 20th century harp, the dull gray of singing stones five thousand -years old and a clay face much older than that.</p> - -<p>"Millstone?" Brian pointed southwest in inquiry.</p> - -<p>The girl nodded, pleased and not at all surprised that he should know, -watching him now with a squirrel's stiff curiosity. Hadn't there once -been a Millstone River in or near Princeton? He thought he remembered -that it emptied into the Raritan Canal. There was some moderately high -ground around there. Islands now, no doubt, or—well, perhaps they -would tell him.</p> - -<p>"There were old people in Millstone," he said, trying for gentle -dignity, "and they died. So now you need old ones to take their place."</p> - -<p>The girl nodded vigorously. A glance at the young man was full of -shyness, possessiveness, maybe some amusement. "He who told us to call -him Jonas said no marriage can be without the words of Abraham."</p> - -<p>"Abr—" Brian checked himself. If this was religion, it would not do -to speak the name Abraham with a rising inflection, at least not until -he knew what it stood for. "I have been for a long time—" He checked -himself again. A man old, ugly and strange enough to be sacred should -never stoop to explain anything.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They were standing by the seven-stone marimba. His hand dropped, his -thumbnail clicking by accident against the deepest stone and waking a -murmur. The children drew back alarmed.</p> - -<p>Brian smiled. "Don't be afraid." He tapped the other stones lightly. -"It is only music. It will not hurt you." He was silent a while, and -they were patient and respectful, waiting for more light. He asked -carefully: "He who told you to call him Jonas, he taught you all the -things you know?"</p> - -<p>"All things," the boy said, and the girl nodded quickly, so that the -soft brownness of her hair tumbled about her face, and she pushed it -back in a small human motion as old as the clay image.</p> - -<p>"Do you know how old you are?"</p> - -<p>They looked blank. Then the girl said: "Oh, summers!" She held up both -hands with spread fingers, then one hand. "Three fives. As the Old Man -knows."</p> - -<p>"I am very old," said Brian. "I know many things. But sometimes I wish -to forget, and sometimes I wish to hear what others know, even though I -may know it myself."</p> - -<p>They looked uncomprehending and greatly impressed. Brian felt a smile -on his face and wondered why it should be there. They were nice -children. Born ten years after the death of a world. Or twenty perhaps. -<i>I think I am seventy-six, but did I drop a decade somewhere and never -notice the damn thing?</i></p> - -<p>"He who told you to call him Jonas, he taught you all that you know -about Abraham?"</p> - -<p>At sound of the name, both of them made swift circular motions, first -at the forehead, then at the breast.</p> - -<p>"He taught us all things," the young man said. "He, and she who told -us to call her Abigail. The hours to rise, to pray, to wash, to eat. -The laws for hunting, and I know the Abraham-words for that: Sol-Amra, -I take this for my need."</p> - -<p>Brian felt lost again, dismally lost, and looked down to the grave clay -faces of the image for counsel, and found none. "They who told you to -call them Jonas and Abigail, they were the only old ones who lived with -you?"</p> - -<p>Again that look of bewilderment. "The only ones, sa," the young man -said. "As the Old Man knows."</p> - -<p><i>I could never persuade them that, being old, I know very nearly -nothing.</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Brian straightened to his full gaunt height. The young people were not -tall; though stiff and worn with age, Brian knew he was still a bonily -overpowering creature. Once, among men, he had mildly enjoyed being -more than life-size.</p> - -<p>As a shield for the lonely, frightened thing that was his mind, he put -on a phony sternness: "I wish to examine you about Millstone and your -knowledge of Abraham. How many others are living at Millstone?"</p> - -<p>"Two fives, sa," said the boy promptly, "and I who may be called -Jonason and this one we may call Paula. Two fives and two. We are the -biggest, we two. The others are only children, but he we call Jimi -has killed his deer. He sees after them now while we go across the -sun-path."</p> - -<p>Under Brian's questioning, more of the story came, haltingly, obscured -by the young man's conviction that the Old Man already knew everything. -Some time, probably in the middle 2080s, Jonas and Abigail (whoever -they were) had come on a group of twelve wild children who were keeping -alive somehow in a ruined town where their elders had all died. Jonas -and Abigail had brought them all to an island they called Millstone.</p> - -<p>Jonas and Abigail had come originally from "up across the -sun-path"—the boy seemed to mean north—and they had been very old, -which might mean anything between thirty and ninety. In teaching the -children primitive means of survival, Jonas and Abigail had brought -off a brilliant success: Jonason and Paula were well fed, shining with -health and cleanliness and the strength of wildness, and their speech -had not been learned from the ignorant. Its pronunciation faintly -suggested New England, so far as Brian could detect any local accent at -all.</p> - -<p>"Did they teach you reading and writing?" he asked, and made writing -motions on the flat of his palm, which the two watched in vague alarm.</p> - -<p>The boy asked: "What is that?"</p> - -<p>"Never mind." He thought: <i>I could quarrel with some of your theories, -Mister whom I may call Jonas.</i> "Well, tell me now what they taught you -of Abraham."</p> - -<p>Both made again that circular motion at forehead and breast, and the -young man said with the stiffness of recitation: "Abraham was the Son -of Heaven, who died that we might live."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The girl, her obligations discharged with the religious gesture, tapped -the marimba shyly, fascinated, and drew her finger back sharply, -smiling up at Brian in apology for her naughtiness.</p> - -<p>"He taught the laws, the everlasting truth of all time," the boy -recited, almost gabbling, "and was slain on the wheel at Nuber by -the infidels. Therefore, since he died for us, we look up across the -sun-path when we pray to Abraham Brown, who will come again."</p> - -<p>Abraham <i>Brown</i>?</p> - -<p>But—</p> - -<p><i>But I knew him</i>, Brian thought, stunned. <i>I met him once. Nuber? -Newburg, the temporary capital of the Soviet of—oh, the hell with -that. Met him in 2071—he was 102 years old then, could still walk, -speak clearly, even remember an unimportant concert of mine from years -before. I could have picked him up in one hand, but nobody was ever -more alive. The wheel?</i></p> - -<p>"And when did he die, boy?" Brian asked.</p> - -<p>Jonason moved fingers helplessly, embarrassed. "Long, long ago." He -glanced up hopefully. "A thousand years? I think he who told us to call -him Jonas did not ever teach us that."</p> - -<p>"I see. Never mind." <i>Oh, my good Doctor—after all! Artist, statesman, -student of ethics, philosopher—you said that if men knew themselves, -they would have the beginning of wisdom. Your best teacher was -Socrates. Well you knew it, and now look what's happened!</i></p> - -<p>Jonas and Abigail—some visionary pair, Brian supposed, maybe cracking -up under the ghastliness of those years. Admirers of Brown, perhaps. -Shocked, probably, away from the religions of the 21st century, which -had all failed to stop the horrors, nevertheless they needed one, -or were convinced that the children did—so they created one. There -must later have been some dizzying pride of creation in it, possibly -wholehearted belief in themselves, too, as they found the children -accepting it, building a ritual life around it.</p> - -<p>It was impossible, Brian thought, that Jonas and Abigail could have -met the living Abraham Brown. As anyone must who faces the limitations -of human intelligence, Brown had accepted mysteries, but he did not -make them. He was wholly without intellectual arrogance. No one could -have talked with him five minutes without hearing him say tranquilly: -"I don't know."</p> - -<p>The wheel at Nuber?</p> - -<p>The <i>wheel</i>?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Brian realized he could never learn how Brown had actually died. Even -if he had the strength and courage to go back north—no, at seventy-six -(eighty-six?), one can hardly make a fresh start in the study of -history. Not without the patience of Abraham Brown himself, who had -probably been doing just that when the wheel—</p> - -<p>An awed question from the girl pulled Brian from a black pit of -abstraction: "What is that?" She was pointing to the clay image in its -dusty sunlight.</p> - -<p>Brian spoke vaguely, almost deaf to his own words until they were past -recovering: "That? It is very old. Very old and very sacred." She -nodded, round-eyed, and stepped back a pace or two. "And that—that was -all they taught you of Abraham Brown?"</p> - -<p>Astonished, the boy asked: "Is it not enough?"</p> - -<p><i>There is always The Project.</i> "Why, perhaps."</p> - -<p>"We know all the prayers, Old Man."</p> - -<p>"Yes, I'm sure you do."</p> - -<p>"The Old Man will come with us."</p> - -<p>"Eh?" <i>There is always The Project.</i> "Come with you?"</p> - -<p>"We look for old ones," said the young man. There was a new note in his -voice, and the note was impatience. "We traveled many days, up across -the sun-path. We want you to speak the Abraham-words for marriage. The -Old Ones said we must not mate as the animals do without the words. We -want—"</p> - -<p>"Marry, of course," said Brian feebly, rubbing his great, long-fingered -hand across his face so that the words were blurred and dull. -"Naturally. Beget. Replenish the Earth. I'm tired. I don't know any -Abraham-words for marriage. Go on and marry. Try again. Try—"</p> - -<p>"But the Old Ones said—"</p> - -<p>"Wait!" Brian cried. "Wait! Let me think. Did he—he who told you to -call him Jonas, did he teach you anything about the world as it was in -the old days, before you were born?"</p> - -<p>"Before? The Old Man makes fun of us."</p> - -<p>"No, no." And since he now had to fight down physical fear as well -as confusion, Brian spoke more harshly than he intended: "Answer my -question! What do you know of the old days? I was a young man once, do -you understand? As young as you. What do you know about the world I -lived in?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Jonason laughed. There was new-born doubt in him as well as anger, -stiffening his shoulders, narrowing his innocent gray eyes. "There was -always the world," he said, "ever since God made it a thousand years -ago."</p> - -<p>"Was there? I was a musician. Do you know what a musician is?"</p> - -<p>The young man shook his head, watching Brian—too alertly, watching his -hands, aware of him in a new way, no longer humble. Paula sensed the -tension and did not like it.</p> - -<p>She said worriedly, politely: "We forget some of the things they taught -us, sa. They were Old Ones. Most of the days, they were away from -us in—places where we were not to go, praying. Old Ones are always -praying."</p> - -<p>"I will hear this Old Man pray," said Jonason. The butt of the javelin -rested against Jonason's foot, the blade swaying from side to side. -A wrong word, any trifle, Brian knew, could make them decide in -an instant that he was evil and not sacred. Their religion would -certainly require a devil.</p> - -<p>He thought also: <i>Merely one of the many ways of dying. It would be -swift, which is always a consideration.</i></p> - -<p>"Certainly you may hear me pray," said Brian abruptly. "Come this way." -In a fluctuating despair, he knew that he must not become angry, as a -climber stumbling at the edge of a cliff might order himself not to be -careless. "Come this way. My prayers—I'll show you. I'll show you what -I did when I was a young man in a world you never knew."</p> - -<p>He stalked across the Hall of Music, not looking behind, but his back -sensed every glint of light on that bread-knife javelin.</p> - -<p>"Come this way!" he shouted. "Come in here!" He flung open the door of -the auditorium and strode up on the platform. "Sit down over there and -be quiet!"</p> - -<p>They did, he thought—he could not look at them. He knew he was -muttering, too, between his noisy outbursts, as he snatched the cover -off the Steinway and raised the lid, muttering bits and fragments from -old times, and from the new times.</p> - -<p>"They went thataway. Oh, Mr. Van Anda, it just simply goes right -through me; I can't express it. Madam, such was my intention—or, as -Brahms is supposed to have said on a slightly different subject, any -ass knows that. Brio, Rubato and Schmalz went to sea in a—Jonason, -Paula, this is a piano. It will not hurt you. Sit there, be quiet, -listen."</p> - -<p>He found calm. <i>Now if ever, now when I have living proof that human -nature (some sort of human nature) is continuing—surely now, if ever, -The Project—</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>With the sudden authority that was natural to him, Andrew Carr took -over. In the stupendous opening chords of the introduction, Brian very -nearly forgot his audience. Not quite, though. The youngsters had sat -down out there in the dusty region where none but ghosts had lingered -for twenty-five years or more. The piano's first sound brought them to -their feet. Brian played through the first four bars, piling the chords -like mountains, then held the last one with the pedal and waved his -right hand at Jonason and Paula in a furious downward motion.</p> - -<p>He thought they understood. He thought he saw them sit down again, but -he could pay them scant attention now, for the sonata was coming alive -under his fingers, waking, growing, rejoicing.</p> - -<p>He did not forget the youngsters again. They were important, -terrifying, too important, at the fringe of awareness. But he could -not look at them any more. He shut his eyes.</p> - -<p>He had never played like this in the flood of his prime, in the old -days, before great audiences that loved him. Never.</p> - -<p>His eyes were still closed, holding him secure in a secret world that -was not all darkness, when he ended the first movement, paused very -briefly, and moved on with complete assurance to explore the depth -and height of the second. This was a true statement at last. This was -Andrew Carr; he lived, even if, after this late morning, he might never -live again.</p> - -<p>And now the third, the storm and the wrath, the interludes of calm, the -anger, denials, affirmations. <i>Was there anything he didn't know, this -heir of three centuries who died in jail?</i></p> - -<p>Without hesitation, without any awareness of self, of age or pain or -danger or loss, Brian was entering on the broad reaches of the last -movement when he opened his eyes.</p> - -<p>The youngsters were gone.</p> - -<p>Well, he thought, it's too big. It frightened them away. He -could visualize them, stealing out with backward looks of panic. -Incomprehensible thunder. But he could not think much about them -now. Not while Andrew Carr was with him. He played on with the same -assurance, the same joyful sense of victory. Savages—let them go, with -leave and good will.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Some external sound was faintly troubling him, something that must -have begun under cover of these rising, pealing octave passages—storm -waves, each higher than the last, until it seemed that even a -superhuman swimmer must be exhausted. An undefinable alien noise, a -kind of humming.</p> - -<p>Brian shook his head peevishly, shutting it away. It couldn't matter, -at least not now. Everything was here, in the beautiful labors his -hands still had to do. The waves were growing more quiet, settling, -subsiding, and now he must play those curious arpeggios which he had -never quite understood—but, of course, he understood them at last. Rip -them out of the piano like showers of sparks, like distant lightnings -moving farther off across a world that could never be at rest.</p> - -<p>The final theme. Why, it was a variation—and how was it that he had -never realized it?—a variation on a theme of Brahms, from the German -Requiem. Quite plain, quite simple, and Brahms would have approved. -Still it was rather strange, Brian thought, that he had never made the -identification before in spite of all his study. Well, he knew it now.</p> - -<p><i>Blessed are the dead....</i></p> - -<p>Yes, Brian thought, but something more remained, and he searched for -it, proudly certain of discovering it, through the mighty unfolding of -the finale. No hurrying, no crashing impatience any more, but a moving -through time with no fear of time, through radiance and darkness with -no fear of either. Andrew Carr was happy, the light of the Sun on his -shoulders.</p> - -<p><i>That they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow after -them.</i></p> - -<p>Brian stood up, swaying and out of breath. So the music was over, -and the young savages were gone, and somewhere a jangling, humming -confusion was filling the Hall of Music, distant, but entering with -violence even here, now that the piano was silent. Brian moved stiffly -out of the auditorium, more or less knowing what he would find.</p> - -<p>The noise was immense, the unchecked overtones of the marimba fuming -and quivering as the high ceiling of the Hall of Music caught and -twisted them, flung them back against the answering strings of harps -and pianos and violins, the sulky membranes of drums, the nervous brass -of cymbals.</p> - -<p>The girl was playing it. Really playing it.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Brian laughed once, softly, in the shadows, and was not heard. She -had hit on a most primeval rhythm natural for children or savages and -needed nothing else, hammering it out swiftly on one stone and then the -next, wanting no rest or variation.</p> - -<p>The boy was dancing, slapping his feet, pounding his chest, thrusting -out his javelin in perfect time to the clamor, edging up to his -companion, grimacing, drawing back to return. Neither was laughing or -close to laughter. Their faces were savage-solemn, downright grim with -the excitement, the innocent lust, as spontaneous as the drumming of -partridges.</p> - -<p>It was a while before they saw Brian in the shadows.</p> - -<p>The girl dropped the hammer. The boy froze briefly, his javelin raised, -then jerked his head slightly at Paula, who snatched at something. -Only moments later did Brian realize that she had taken the clay image -before she fled. Jonason covered her retreat, stepping backward, his -face blank with fear and readiness, javelin poised. So swiftly, so -easily, by grace of a few wrong words and Steinway's best, had a Sacred -Old One become a Bad Old One, an evil spirit.</p> - -<p>They were gone, down the stairway, leaving the echo of Brian's voice -crying: "Don't go! Please don't go! I beg you!"</p> - -<p>Brian followed them unwillingly. It was a measure of his unwillingness -that moments passed before he was at the bottom of the stairway looking -across the shut-in water to his raft, which they had used and left at -the window-sill port. Brian had never been a good swimmer; he was too -dizzy now and short of breath to attempt to reach it.</p> - -<p>He clutched the rope and hitched himself, panting, hand over hand, -to the window, collapsing there a while until he found strength to -scramble into his canoe and grope for the paddle. The youngsters' canoe -was already far off, heading up the river, the boy paddling with deep -powerful strokes.</p> - -<p>Up the river, of course. They had to find the right kind of Old Ones. -Up across the sun-path.</p> - -<p>Brian dug his blade in the quiet water. For a time, his rugged ancient -muscles were willing. There was sap in them yet. Perhaps he was gaining -slightly.</p> - -<p>He shouted hugely: "Bring back my two-faced god! Bring it back! It's -not yours. <i>It's not yours!</i>"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They must have heard his voice booming at them. At any rate, the girl -looked back once. The boy, intent on his effort, did not.</p> - -<p>Brian roared: "Bring back my god! I want my little god!"</p> - -<p>He was not gaining on them. They had a mission, after all. They had to -find the right kind of Old Ones. But damn it, Brian thought, my world -has some rights, hasn't it? <i>We'll see about this.</i></p> - -<p>He lifted the paddle like a spear and flung it, knowing even before his -shoulder winced how absurd the gesture was. The youngsters were so far -away that even an arrow from a bow might not have reached them.</p> - -<p>The paddle splashed in the water. Not far away: a small infinity. -It swung about to the will of the river, the heavy end pointing, -obediently downstream. It nuzzled companionably against a gray-faced -chunk of driftwood, diverting it, so that presently the driftwood -floated into Brian's reach.</p> - -<p>He caught it, and flung it toward the paddle, hoping it might fall -on the other side and send the paddle near him. It fell short, and -in his oddly painless extremity, Brian was not surprised, but merely -watched the gray driftwood floating and bobbing along beside him with -an irritation that was part friendliness, for it suggested the face of -a music critic he had met in—New Boston, was it? Denver? London? He -couldn't remember.</p> - -<p>"Why," he said aloud, detachedly observing the passage of his canoe -beyond the broad morning shadow of the Museum of Human History, "I seem -to have made sure to die."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Van Anda has abundantly demonstrated a mastery of the instrument -and of the—" <i>You acid fraud, go play solfeggio on your linotype! -Don't bother me!</i>—"and of the literature which could, without -exaggeration, be termed beyond technique. He is one of those rare -interpreters who at the last analysis—"</p> - -<p>"I can't swim it, you know," said Brian.</p> - -<p>"—have so deeply submerged, dedicated themselves, that they might -truly be said to have become one with—" Gaining on the canoe, the -gray-faced chip moved tranquilly, placidly approving, toward the open -sea. And with a final remnant of strength, Brian inched forward to the -bow of the canoe and gathered the full force of his lungs to shout up -the river: "Go in peace!"</p> - -<p>They could not have heard him. They were too far away and a new morning -wind was blowing, fresh and sweet, out of the northwest.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Music Master of Babylon, by Edgar Pangborn - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON *** - -***** This file should be named 51379-h.htm or 51379-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/3/7/51379/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Music Master of Babylon - -Author: Edgar Pangborn - -Release Date: March 6, 2016 [EBook #51379] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - The Music Master of Babylon - - By EDGAR PANGBORN - - Illustrated by KRIGSTEIN - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - - What more fitting place for the last man on - Earth to live in than a museum? Now if only - he could avoid becoming an exhibit himself! - - -For twenty-five years, no one came. In the seventy-sixth year of his -life, Brian Van Anda was still trying not to remember a happy boyhood. -To do so was irrelevant and dangerous, although every instinct of his -old age tempted him to reject the present and dwell in the lost times. - -He would recall stubbornly that the present year, for example, was -2096; that he had been born in 2020, seven years after the close of the -Civil War, fifty years before the Final War, twenty-five years before -the departure of the First Interstellar. (It had never returned, nor -had the Second Interstellar. They might be still wandering, trifles of -Man-made Stardust.) He would recall his place of birth, New Boston, -the fine, planned city far inland from the ancient metropolis that the -rising sea had reclaimed after the earthquake of 1994. - -Such things, places and dates, were factual props, useful when Brian -wanted to impose an external order on the vagueness of his immediate -existence. He tried to make sure they became no more than that--to shut -away the colors, the poignant sounds, the parks and the playgrounds of -New Boston, the known faces (many of them loved), and the later years -when he had briefly known a curious intoxication called fame. - -It was not necessarily better or wiser to reject those memories, -but it was safer, and nowadays Brian was often sufficiently tired, -sufficiently conscious of his growing weakness and lonely unimportance, -to crave safety as a meadow mouse often craves a burrow. - - * * * * * - -He tied his canoe to the massive window that for many years had been a -port and a doorway. Lounging there with a suspended sense of time, he -was hardly aware that he was listening. In a way, all the twenty-five -years had been a listening. He watched Earth's patient star sink toward -the rim of the forest on the Palisades. At this hour, it was sometimes -possible, if the Sun-crimsoned water lay still, to cease grieving too -much at the greater stillness. - -There was scattered human life elsewhere, he knew--probably a great -deal of it. After twenty-five years alone, that, too, often seemed -almost irrelevant. At other times than mild evenings, hushed noons or -mornings empty of human commotion, Brian might lapse into anger, fight -the calm by yelling, resent the swift dying of his echoes. Such moods -were brief. A kind of humor remained in him, not to be ruined by sorrow. - -He remembered how, ten months or possibly ten years ago, he had -encountered a box turtle in a forest clearing, and had shouted at it: -"_They went thataway!_" The turtle's rigidly comic face, fixed by -nature in a caricature of startled disapproval, had seemed to point up -some truth or other. Brian had hunkered down on the moss and laughed -uproariously--until he observed that some of the laughter was weeping. - -Today had been rather good. He had killed a deer on the Palisades, -and with bow and arrow, thus saving a bullet. Not that he needed to -practice such economy. He might live, he supposed, another decade or -so at the most. His rifles were in good condition and his hoarded -ammunition would easily outlast him. So would the stock of canned -and dried food stuffed away in his living quarters. But there was -satisfaction in primitive effort and no compulsion to analyze the why -of it. - -The stored food was more important than the ammunition. A time would -come soon enough when he no longer had strength for hunting. He would -lose the inclination for trips to cross the river. He would yield -to such laziness or timidity for days, then weeks. Some time, when -it became months or years, he might find himself too feeble to risk -climbing the cliff wall into the forest. He would have the good sense -then, he hoped, to destroy the canoe, thus making of his weakness a -necessity. - - * * * * * - -There were books. There was the Hall of Music on the next floor above -the water, probably safe from its lessening encroachment. To secure -fresh water, he need only keep track of the tides, for the Hudson had -cleaned itself and now rolled down sweet from the lonely, uncorrupted -hills. His decline could be comfortable. He had provided for it -and planned it. Yet gazing now across the sleepy water, seeing a -broad-winged hawk circle in freedom above the forest, Brian was aware -of the old thought moving in him: - -"If I could hear voices--just once, if I could hear human voices...." - -The Museum of Human History, with the Hall of Music on what Brian -thought of as the second floor, should also outlast his requirements. -In the flooded lower floor and basement, the work of slow destruction -must be going on. Here and there, the unhurried waters could find their -way to steel and make rust of it, for the waterproofing of the concrete -was nearly a hundred years old. But it ought to be good for another -century or two. - -Nowadays the ocean was mild. There were moderate tides, winds no longer -destructive. For the last six years, there had been no more of the -heavy storms out of the south. In the same period, Brian had noted a -rise in the water level of a mere nine inches. The window-sill, his -port, was six inches above high-tide mark now. - -Perhaps Earth was settling into a new, amiable mood. The climate had -become delightful, about like what Brian remembered from a visit to -southern Virginia in his childhood. - -The last earthquake had come in 2082--a large one, Brian guessed, but -its center could not have been close to the rock of Manhattan. The -Museum had only shivered and shrugged; it had survived much worse than -that, half a dozen times since 1994. After the tremor, a tall wave had -thundered in from the south. Its force, like that of others, had mostly -been dissipated against the barrier of tumbled rock and steel at the -southern end of the submerged island--an undersea dam, Man-made though -not Man-intended--and when it reached the Museum, it did no more than -smash the southern windows in the Hall of Music, which earlier waves -had not been able to reach. Then it passed on up the river, enfeebled. -The windows of the lower floor had all been broken long before that. - - * * * * * - -After the earthquake of '82, Brian had spent a month boarding up all -the openings on the south side of the Hall of Music--after all, it was -home--with lumber painfully ferried from mainland ruins. That year, he -had been sixty-two years old and not moving with the ease of youth: -a rough job. He had deliberately left cracks and knotholes. Sunlight -sifted through in narrow beams, like the bars of dusty gold Brian could -remember in a hayloft at his uncle's farm in Vermont. It was quite -pleasant. - -The Museum had been built in 2003. Manhattan, strangely enough, had -never been bombed, although, in the Civil War, two of the type called -"small fission" had fallen on the Brooklyn and Jersey sides--so Brian -recalled from the jolly history books that had informed his adolescence -that war was definitely a thing of the past. - -By the time of the final War, in 2070, the sea, gorged on the melting -ice caps, had removed Manhattan Island from history. Everything left -standing above the waters south of the Museum had been knocked flat -by the tornados of 2057 and 2064. A few blobs of rock still marked -where Central Park and Mount Morris Park had been, but they were not -significant. Where Long Island once rose, there was a troubled area of -shoals and tiny islands, probably a useful barrier of protection for -the receding shore of Connecticut. - -Men had yielded the great city inch by inch, then foot by foot; a full -mile in 2047, saying: "The flood years have passed their peak and a -return to normal is expected." - -Brian sometimes felt a twinge of sympathy for the Neanderthal experts -who must have told each other to expect a return to normal after the -Cro-Magnons stopped drifting in. - -In 2057, the island of Manhattan had to be yielded altogether. New York -City, half-new, half-ancient, sprawled stubborn and enormous upstream, -on both sides of a river not done with its anger. But the Museum stood. -Aided by sunken rubble of others of its kind, aided also by men because -they still had time to love it, the Museum stood, and might for a long -time yet--weather permitting. - -It covered an acre of ground well north of 125th Street, rising a -modest fifteen stories, its foundation secure in that layer of rock -which mimics eternity. It deserved its name: here men had brought -samples of everything, literally everything known in the course of -humanity since prehistory. It was, within human limits, definitive. In -its way, considering how much the erosion of time must always steal -from scholars, it was perfect. - - * * * * * - -No one had felt anything unnatural in the refusal of the Directors -of the Museum to move the collection after the Museum weathered the -storm of 2057. Instead, ordinary people, more than a thousand of them, -donated money so that a mighty abutment could be built around the -ground floor, a new entrance designed on the north side of the second. -The abutment survived the greater tornado of 2064 without damage, -although, during those seven years, the sea had risen another eight -feet in its old ever-new game of making monkeys out of the wise. - -It was left for Brian Van Anda alone, in 2079, to see the waters slide -quietly over the abutment, opening the lower regions for the use of -fishes and the more secret water-dwellers who like shelter and privacy. -In the '90s, Brian suspected the presence of an octopus or two in the -vast vague territory which had once been parking lot, heating plant, -storage space, air-raid shelter, etc. He couldn't prove it; it just -seemed like a comfortable place for an octopus. - -In 2070, plans were under consideration for building a new causeway to -the Museum from the still expanding city in the north. In 2070, also, -the final War began and ended. - -When Brian Van Anda came down the river late in 2071, a refugee -from certain unfamiliar types of savagery, the Museum was empty of -the living. He had spent many days in exhaustive exploration of -the building. He did that systematically, toiling at last up to the -Directors' meeting room on the top floor. There he observed how they -must have been holding a conference at the very time when a new gas was -tried out over New York in the north, in a final effort to persuade the -Western Federation that Man is the servant of the state and that the -end justifies the means. - -Too bad, Brian sometimes thought, that he would never know exactly what -happened to the Asian Empire. In the little paratroop-invaded area -called the Soviet of North America, from which Brian had fled in '71, -the official doctrine was that the Asian Empire had won the war and -that the saviors of humanity would be flying in any day to take over. -Brian had doubted this out loud, and then stolen a boat and got away -safely at night. - -Up in the meeting room, Brian had seen how that new neurotoxin had been -no respecter of persons. An easy death, though--no pain. He observed -also how some things survive. The Museum, for instance, was virtually -unharmed. - - * * * * * - -Brian had often recalled those months in the meeting room as a sort -of island in time, like the first hour of discovering that he could -play Beethoven; or like the curiously cherished, more than life-size -half-hour back there in Newburg, in 2071, when he had briefly met and -spoken with an incredibly old man, Abraham Brown, President of the -Western Federation at the time of the Civil War. Brown, with a loved -world in almost total ruin around him, had spoken pleasantly of small -things--of chrysanthemums that would soon be blooming in the front -yard of the house where he lived with friends, of a piano recital by -Van Anda at Ithaca, in 2067, which the old man remembered with warm -enthusiasm. - -Yes, the Museum Directors had died easily, and now the old innocent -bodies would be quite decent. There were no vermin in the Museum. The -doorways and floors were tight, the upper windows unbroken. - -One of the white-haired men had a Ming vase on his desk. He had not -dropped from his chair, but looked as if he had fallen comfortably -asleep in front of the vase with his head on his arms. Brian had left -the vase untouched, but had taken one other thing, moved by some -stirring of his own never-certain philosophy and knowing that he would -not return to this room, ever. - -Another Director had been opening a wall cabinet when he fell; the -small key lay near his fingers. Plainly their discussion had not been -concerned only with war, perhaps not at all with war--after all, there -were other topics. The Ming vase would have had a part in it. Brian -wished he could know what the old man had meant to choose from the -cabinet. Sometimes, even now, he dreamed of conversations with that -man, in which the Director told him the whole truth about that and -other matters; but what was certainty in sleep was in the morning gone -like childhood. - -For himself, Brian had taken a little image of rock-hard clay, -blackened, two-faced, male and female. Prehistoric, or at any rate -wholly primitive, unsophisticated, meaningful like the blameless motion -of an animal in sunlight, Brian had said: "With your permission, -gentlemen." He had closed the cabinet and then, softly, the outer door. - -"I'm old," Brian said to the red evening. "Old, a little foolish, talk -aloud to myself. I'll have some Mozart before supper." - - * * * * * - -He transferred the fresh venison from the canoe to a small raft hitched -inside the window. He had selected only choice pieces, as much as he -could cook and eat in the few days before it spoiled, leaving the rest -for the wolves or any other forest scavengers who might need it. There -was a rope strung from the window to the marble steps that led to the -next floor--home. - -It had not been possible to save much from the submerged area, for its -treasure was mostly heavy statuary. Through the still water, as he -pulled the raft along the rope, the Moses of Michelangelo gazed up -at him in tranquility. Other faces watched him. Most of them watched -infinity. There were white hands that occasionally borrowed gentle -motion from ripples made by the raft. - -"I got a deer, Moses," said Brian Van Anda, smiling down in -companionship, losing track of time. He carried his juicy burden up the -stairway. - -His living quarters had once been a cloakroom for Museum attendants. -Four close walls gave it a sense of security. A ventilating shaft -now served as a chimney for the wood stove Brian had salvaged from a -mainland farmhouse. The door could be tightly locked; there were no -windows. You do not want windows in a cave. - -Outside was the Hall of Music, an entire floor of the Museum, -containing an example of every musical instrument that was known or -could be reconstructed in the 21st century. The library of scores and -recordings lacked nothing--except electricity to play the recordings. -A few might still be made to sound on a spring-wound phonograph, but -Brian had not bothered with it for years; the springs were rusted. - -He sometimes took out the orchestra and chamber music scores, to -read at random. Once his mind had been able to furnish ensembles, -orchestras, choirs of a sort, but lately the ability had weakened. -He remembered a day, possibly a year ago, when his memory refused to -give him the sound of oboe and clarinet in unison. He had wandered, -peevish, distressed, unreasonably alarmed, among the racks and cases of -woodwinds in the collection, knowing that even if the reeds were still -good, he could not play them. He had never mastered any instrument -except the piano. - -"But even if I could play them," he muttered, now tolerantly amused, "I -couldn't do it in unison, could I? Ah, the things that will bother a -man!" - - * * * * * - -Brian recalled--it was probably that same day--opening a chest -of double basses. There was an old three-stringer in the group, -probably from the early 19th century, a trifle fatter than its modern -companions. Brian touched its middle string in an idle caress, not -intending to make it sound, but it had done so. When in use, it would -have been tuned to D; time had slackened the heavy murmur to A or -something near it. That had throbbed in the silent room with a sense -of finality, a sound such as a programmatic composer--Tchaikovsky, -say, or some other in the nadir of torment--might have used as a tonal -symbol for the breaking of a heart. It stayed in the air a long time, -other instruments whispering a dim response. - -"All right, gentlemen," said Brian. "That was your A." He had closed -the case, not laughing. - -Out in the main part of the hall, a place of honor was given to what -may have been the oldest of all instruments, a seven-note marimba of -phonolitic schist discovered in Indo-China in the 20th century and -thought to be at least 5,000 years of age. The xylophone-type rack was -modern; for twenty-five years, Brian had obeyed a compulsion to keep -it clear of cobwebs. Sometimes he touched the singing stones, not for -amusement, but because there was an obscure comfort in it. Unconcerned -with time, they answered even to the light tap of a fingernail. - -On the west side of the Hall of Music, a rather long walk from Brian's -cave, was a small auditorium. Lectures, recitals, chamber music -concerts had been given there in the old days. The pleasant room held -a twelve-foot concert grand, made by Steinway in 2043, probably the -finest of the many pianos in the Hall of Music. - -Brian had done his best to preserve this, setting aside a day each -month for the prayerful tuning of it, robbing other pianos in the -Museum to provide a reserve supply of strings, oiled and sealed up -against rust. No dirt ever collected on the Steinway. When not in use, -it was covered with stitched-together sheets. To remove the cover was a -sober ritual; Brian always washed his hands with fanatical care before -touching the keys. - -Some years ago, he had developed the habit of locking the auditorium -doors before he played. Even with the doors locked, he would not glance -toward the vista of empty seats--not knowing, nor caring much, whether -this inhibition had grown from a Stone Age fear of seeing someone there -or from a flat, reasonable certainty that no one could be. - - * * * * * - -The habit might have started (he could not remember precisely) away -back in the year 2076, when so many bodies had drifted down from the -north on the ebb tides. Full horror had somehow been lacking in the -sight of all that floating death. Perhaps it was because Brian had -earlier had his fill of horrors; or perhaps, in 2076, he already felt -so divorced from his own kind that what happened to them was like the -photograph of a war in a distant country. - -Some of the bodies had bobbed quite near the Museum. Most of them -had the gaping wounds of primitive warfare, but some were oddly -discolored--a new pestilence? So there was (or had been) more trouble -up there in what was (or had been) the Soviet of North America, a -self-styled "nation" that took in east New York State and some of New -England. - -Yes, that was probably the year when he had started locking the doors -between his private concerts and an empty world. - -He dumped the venison in his cave. He scrubbed his hands, blue-veined -now, but still tough, still knowing Mozart, he thought, and walked--not -with much pleasure of anticipation, but more like one externally -driven--through the enormous hall that was so full and yet so empty, -growing dim with evening, with dust, with age, with loneliness. Music -should not be silent. - -When the piano was uncovered, Brian delayed. He flexed his hands -unnecessarily. He fussed with the candelabrum on the wall, lighting -three candles, then blowing out two for economy. He admitted presently -that he did not want the serene clarity of Mozart at all right now. -This evening, the darkness of 2070 was closer than he had felt it for -a long time. It would never have occurred to Mozart, Brian thought, -that a world could die. Beethoven could have entertained the idea -soberly enough; Chopin probably; even Brahms. Mozart would surely have -dismissed it as somebody's bad dream, in poor taste. - -Andrew Carr, who lived and died in the latter half of the 20th century, -had endured the idea from the beginning of his childhood. The date of -Hiroshima was 1945; Carr was born in 1951; the inexhaustible wealth of -his music was written between 1969, when he was eighteen, and 1984, -when he died in an Egyptian jail from injuries received in a street -brawl. - -"If not Mozart," said Brian to his idle hands, "there is always The -Project." - - * * * * * - -Playing Carr's last sonata as it should be played--as Carr was supposed -to have said he couldn't play it himself--Brian had been thinking of -that as The Project for many years. It had begun long before the -war, at the time of his triumphs in a civilized world which had been -warmly appreciative of the polished interpretive artist, although no -more awake than any other age to the creative one. Back there in the -undestroyed society, Brian had proposed to program that sonata in the -company of works that were older but no greater, and play it--yes, -beyond his best, so that even critics would begin to see its importance. - -He had never done it, had never felt that he had entered into the -sonata and learned the depth of it. Now, when there was none to hear -or care, unless maybe the harmless brown spiders in the corners of the -auditorium had a taste for music, there was still The Project. - -"_I_ hear," Brian said. "_I_ care, and with myself as audience I want -to hear it once as it ought to be, a final statement for a world that -couldn't live and yet was too good to die." - -Technically, of course, he had it. The athletic demands Carr made on -the performer were tremendous, but, given technique, there was nothing -impossible about them. Anyone capable of concert work could at least -play the notes at the required tempos. And any reasonably shrewd -pianist could keep track of the dynamics, saving strength for the -shattering finale in spite of the thunderings that must come before. -Brian had heard the sonata played by others two or three times in the -old days--competently. Competency was not enough. - -For example, what about the third movement, that mad Scherzo, and the -five tiny interludes of sweet quiet scattered through its plunging -fury? They were not alike. Related, perhaps, but each one demanded a -new climate of heart and mind--tenderness, regret, simple relaxation. -Flowers on a flood--no. Warm window-lights in a storm--no. The -innocence of an unknowing child in a bombed city--no, not really. -Something of all those, but much more, too. - -What of the second movement, the Largo, where, in a way, the pattern -was reversed, the midnight introspection interrupted by moments of -anger, or longing, or despair like that of an angel beating his wings -against a prison of glass? - -It was, throughout, a work in which something of Carr's life and Carr's -temperament had to come into you, whether you dared welcome it or not; -otherwise, your playing was no more than a bumbling reproduction of -notes on a page. - -Carr's life was not for the contemplation of the timid. - - * * * * * - -The details were superficially well known. The biographies themselves -were like musical notation, meaningless without interpretation and -insight. - -Carr had been a drunken roarer, a young devil-god with such a consuming -hunger for life that he had choked to death on it. His friends hated -him for the way he drained their lives, loving them to distraction and -always loving his work a little more. His enemies must have had times -of helplessly adoring him, if only because of an impossible transparent -honesty that made him more and less than human. - -A rugged Australian, not tall but built like a hero, a face all -forehead and jaw and glowing hyperthyroid eyes. He wept only when he -was angry, the biographers said. In one minute of talk, they said, -he might shift from gutter obscenity to some extreme of altruistic -tenderness, and from that to a philosophical comment of the coldest -intelligence. - -He passed his childhood on a sheep farm, ran away to sea on a freighter -at thirteen, studied like a slave in London with a single-minded -desperation, even through the horrors of the Pandemic of 1972. He -was married twice and twice divorced. He killed a man in an imbecile -quarrel on the New Orleans docks, and wrote his First Symphony while he -was in jail for that. And he died of stab wounds in a Cairo jail. It -all had relevancy. Relevant or not, if the sonata was in your mind, so -was the life. - -You had to remember also that Andrew Carr was the last of -civilization's great composers. No one in the 21st century approached -him--they ignored his explorations and carved cherry-stones. He -belonged to no school, unless you wanted to imagine a school of music -beginning with Bach, taking in perhaps a dozen along the way, and -ending with Carr himself. His work was a summary and, in the light of -the year 2070, a completion. - -Brian was certain he could play the first movement of the sonata -acceptably. Technically, it was not revolutionary, but closely loyal -to the ancient sonata form. Carr had even written in a conventional -double-bar for a repeat of the entire opening statement, something that -made late 20th century critics sneer with great satisfaction. It never -occurred to them that Carr expected a performer to use his head. - -The bright-sorrowful second movement, unfashionably long, with its -strange pauses, unforeseen recapitulations, outbursts of savage -change--that was where Brian's troubles began. It did not help him to -be old, remembering the inner storms of twenty-five years ago and more. - - * * * * * - -As the single candle fluttered, Brian realized that he had forgotten -to lock the door. That troubled him, but he did not rise from the -piano chair. He chided himself instead for the foolish neuroses of -aloneness--what could it matter? - -He shut his eyes. The sonata had long ago been memorized; printed -copies were safe somewhere in the library. He played the opening of -the first movement, as far as the double-bar; opened his eyes to the -friendly black and white of clean keys and played the repetition with -new light, new emphasis. Better than usual, he thought. - -Now that soaring modulation into A Major that only Carr would -have wanted just there in just that sudden way, like the abrupt -happening upon shining fields. On toward the climax--_I am playing -it, I think_--through the intricate revelations of development and -recapitulation. And the conclusion, lingering, half-humorous, not -unlike a Beethoven ending, but with a questioning that was all Andrew -Carr. - -After that-- - -"No more tonight," said Brian aloud. "Some night, though.... Not -competent right now, my friend. Fear's a many-aspect thing. But The -Project...." - -He replaced the cover on the Steinway and blew out the candle. He had -brought no torch, long use having taught his feet every inch of the -short journey. It was quite dark. The never-opened western windows of -the auditorium were dirty, most of the dirt on the outside, crusted -wind-blow salt. - -In this partial darkness, something was wrong. - -At first Brian could find no source for the faint light, the dim orange -with a hint of motion that had no right to be here. He peered into the -gloom of the auditorium, fixed his eyes on the oblong of blacker shadow -that was the door he meant to use, but it told him nothing. - -The windows, of course. He had almost forgotten there were any. The -light, hardly deserving the name, was coming through them. But sunset -was surely well past; he had been here a long time, delaying and -brooding before he played. Sunset should not flicker. - -So there was some kind of fire on the mainland. There had been no -thunderstorm. How could fire start, over there where no one ever came? - - * * * * * - -He stumbled a few times, swearing petulantly, locating the doorway -again and groping through it into the Hall of Music. The windows out -here were just as dirty; no use trying to see through them. There must -have been a time when he had enjoyed looking through them. - -He stood shivering in the marble silence, trying to remember. - -He could not. Time was a gradual eternal dying. Time was a long growth -of dirt and ocean salt, sealing in, covering over forever. - -He stumbled for his cave, hurrying now, and lit two candles. He left -one by the cold stove and used the other to light his way down the -stairs to his raft. Once down there, he blew it out, afraid. The room -a candle makes in the darkness is a vulnerable room. With no walls, it -closes in a blindness. He pulled the raft by the guide-rope, gently, -for fear of noise. - -He found his canoe tied as he had left it. He poked his white head -slowly beyond the sill, staring west. - -Merely a bonfire gleaming, reddening the blackness of the cliff. - -Brian knew the spot, a ledge almost at water level. At one end of it -was the troublesome path he used in climbing up to the forest. Usable -driftwood was often there, the supply renewed by the high tides. - -"No," Brian said. "Oh, no...." - -Unable to accept, or believe, or not believe, he drew his head in, -resting his forehead on the coldness of the sill, waiting for dizziness -to pass, reason to return. Then rather calm, he once more leaned out -over the sill. The fire still shone and was therefore not a disordered -dream of old age, but it was dying to a dull rose of embers. - - * * * * * - -He wondered a little about time. The Museum clocks and watches had -stopped long ago; Brian had ceased to want them. A sliver of moon was -hanging over the water to the east. He ought to be able to remember -the phases, deduce the approximate time from that. But his mind was -too tired or distraught to give him the necessary data. Maybe it was -somewhere around midnight. - -He climbed on the sill and, with grunting effort, lifted the canoe -over it to the motionless water inside. Wasted energy, he decided, as -soon as that struggle was over. That fire had been lit before daylight -passed; whoever lit it would have seen the canoe, might even have -been watching Brian himself come home from his hunting. The canoe's -disappearance in the night would only rouse further curiosity. But -Brian was too exhausted to lift it back. - - * * * * * - -Why assume that the maker of the bonfire was necessarily hostile? Might -be good company. - -Might be.... - -Brian pulled his raft through the darkness, secured it at the stairway, -and groped back to his cave. - -He then locked the door. The venison was waiting, the sight and smell -of it making him suddenly ravenous. He lit a small fire in the stove, -one that he hoped would not be still sending smoke from the ventilator -shaft when morning came. He cooked the meat crudely and wolfed it down, -all enjoyment gone at the first mouthful. - -He was shocked then to discover the dirtiness of his white beard. He -hadn't given himself a real bath in--weeks? He searched for scissors -and spent an absent-minded while trimming the beard back to shortness. -He ought to take some soap--valuable stuff--down to Moses' room and -wash. - -Clothes, too. People probably still wore them. He had worn none for -years, except for sandals and a clout and a carrying satchel for -his trips to the mainland. He had enjoyed the freedom at first, and -especially the discovery in his rugged fifties that he did not need -clothes even for the soft winters, except perhaps a light covering -when he slept. Then almost total nakedness had become so natural, it -required no thought at all. But the owner of that bonfire-- - -He checked his rifles. The .22 automatic, an Army model from the 2040s, -was the best. The tiny bullets carried a paralytic poison: graze a -man's finger and he was painlessly dead in three minutes. Effective -range, with telescopic sights, three kilometers; weight, a scant five -pounds. - -He sat a long time cuddling that triumph of military science, listening -for sounds that did not come, wondering often about the unknowable -passage of night toward day. Would it be two o'clock? - -He wished he could have seen the Satellite, renamed in his mind the -Midnight Star, but when he was down there at his port, he had not -once looked up at the night sky. Delicate and beautiful, bearing its -everlasting freight of men who must have been dead now for twenty-five -years and who would be dead a very long time--well, it was better than -a clock, Brian often thought, if you happened to look at the midnight -sky at the right time of the month when the Man-made star could catch -the moonlight. But he had not seen it tonight. - -Three o'clock? - - * * * * * - -At some time during the long dark, he put the rifle away on the floor. -With studied, self-conscious contempt for his own weakness, he strode -out noisily into the Hall of Music with a fresh-lit candle. This same -bravado, he knew, might dissolve at the first alien noise. While it -lasted, though, it was invigorating. - -The windows were still black with night. As if the candle-flame had -found its own way, Brian was standing by the ancient marimba in -the main hall, the light slanting carelessly away from his thin, -high-veined hand. Nearby, on a small table, sat the Stone Age clay -image he had brought long ago from the Directors' meeting room on the -fifteenth floor. It startled him. - -He remembered quite clearly how he himself had placed it there, obeying -a half-humorous whim: the image and the singing stones were both -magnificently older than history, so why shouldn't they live together? -Whenever he dusted the marimba, he dusted the image respectfully and -its pedestal. It would not have taken much urging from the impulses of -a lonely mind, he supposed, to make him place offerings before it and -bow down--winking first, of course, to indicate that rituals suitable -to two aging gentlemen did not have to be sensible in order to be good. - -But now the clay face, recapitulating eternity, startled him. Possibly -some flicker of the candle had given it a new mimicry of life. - -Though worn with antiquity, it was not deformed. The chipped places -were simple honorable scars. The two faces stared mildly from the -single head; there were plain stylized lines to represent folded hands, -equally artless marks of sex on either side. That was all. The maker -might have intended it to be a child's toy or a god. - -A wooden hammer of modern make rested on the marimba. Softly, Brian -tapped a few of the stones. He struck the shrillest one harder, waking -many slow-dying overtones, and laid the hammer down, listening until -the last murmur perished and a drop of hot wax hurt his thumb. - -He returned to his cave and blew out the candle, thinking of the door, -not caring that he had, in irrational bravado, left it unlocked. Face -down, he rolled his head and clenched his fingers into his pallet, -seeking in pain and finding at last the relief of stormy helpless -weeping in the total dark. - -Then he slept. - - * * * * * - -They looked timid. The evidence of it was in their tense squatting -pose, not in what the feeble light allowed Brian to see of their faces, -which were as blank as rock. Hunched down just inside the open doorway -of the cloakroom-cave, a dim morning grayness from the Hall of Music -behind them, they were ready for flight. Brian's intelligence warned -his body to stay motionless, for readiness for flight could also be -readiness for attack. He studied them, lowering his eyelids to a slit. -On his pallet well inside the cave, he must be in deep shadow. - -They were aware of him, though, keenly aware. - -They were very young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, -firm-muscled, the man slim but heavy in the shoulders, the girl a fully -developed woman. They were dressed alike: loin-cloths of some coarse -dull fabric and moccasins that might be deerhide. Their hair grew -nearly to the shoulders and was cut off carelessly there, but they were -evidently in the habit of combing it. They appeared to be clean. Their -complexion, so far as Brian could guess it in the meager light, was the -brown of a heavy tan. - -With no immediate awareness of emotion, he decided they were beautiful, -and then, within his own poised, perilous silence, Brian reminded -himself that the young are always beautiful. - -Softly--Brian saw no motion of her lips--the woman muttered: "He wake." - -A twitch of the man's hand was probably meant to warn her to be quiet. -His other hand clutched the shaft of a javelin with a metal blade. -Brian saw that the blade had once belonged to a bread-knife; it was -polished and shining, lashed to a peeled stick. The javelin trailed, -ready for use at a flick of the young man's arm. Brian opened his eyes -plainly. - -Deliberately, he sighed. "Good morning." - -The youth said: "Good morning, sa." - -"Where do you come from?" - -"Millstone." The young man spoke automatically, but then his facial -rigidity dissolved into amazement and some kind of distress. He glanced -at his companion, who giggled uneasily. - -"The old man pretends to not know," she said, and smiled, and seemed -to be waiting for the young man's permission to go on speaking. He did -not give it, but she continued: "Sa, the old ones of Millstone are -dead." She thrust her hand out and down, flat, a picture of finality, -adding with nervous haste: "As the Old Man knows. He who told us to -call him Jonas, she who told us to call her Abigail, they are dead. -They are still-without-moving for six days. Then we do the burial as -they told us. As the Old Man knows." - -"But I don't know!" said Brian, and sat up on his pallet, too quickly, -startling them. But their motion was backward, readiness for flight, -not for aggression. "Millstone? Where is Millstone?" - - * * * * * - -Both looked wholly bewildered, then dismayed. They stood up with -splendid animal grace, stepping backward out of the cave, the girl -whispering in the man's ear. Brian caught only two words: "Is angry...." - -He jumped up. "Don't go! Please don't go!" He followed them out of the -cave, slowly now, aware that he might well be an object of terror in -the half-dark, aware of his gaunt, graceless age and dirty hacked-off -beard. Almost involuntarily, he adopted something of the flat stilted -quality of their speech: "I will not hurt you. Do not go." - -They halted. The girl smiled dubiously. - -The man said: "We need old ones. They die. He who told us to call him -Jonas said, many days in the boat, not with the sun-path, he said, -across the sun-path, he said, keeping land on the left hand. We need -old ones to speak the--to speak.... The Old Man is angry?" - -"No, I am not angry. I am never angry." Brian's mind groped, certain -of nothing. No one had come for twenty-five years. Only twenty-five? -Millstone? - -There was red-gold on the dirty eastern windows of the Hall of Music, -a light becoming softness as it slanted down, touching the long rows -of cases, the warm brown of an antique spinet, the arrogant clean gold -of a 20th century harp, the dull gray of singing stones five thousand -years old and a clay face much older than that. - -"Millstone?" Brian pointed southwest in inquiry. - -The girl nodded, pleased and not at all surprised that he should know, -watching him now with a squirrel's stiff curiosity. Hadn't there once -been a Millstone River in or near Princeton? He thought he remembered -that it emptied into the Raritan Canal. There was some moderately high -ground around there. Islands now, no doubt, or--well, perhaps they -would tell him. - -"There were old people in Millstone," he said, trying for gentle -dignity, "and they died. So now you need old ones to take their place." - -The girl nodded vigorously. A glance at the young man was full of -shyness, possessiveness, maybe some amusement. "He who told us to call -him Jonas said no marriage can be without the words of Abraham." - -"Abr--" Brian checked himself. If this was religion, it would not do -to speak the name Abraham with a rising inflection, at least not until -he knew what it stood for. "I have been for a long time--" He checked -himself again. A man old, ugly and strange enough to be sacred should -never stoop to explain anything. - - * * * * * - -They were standing by the seven-stone marimba. His hand dropped, his -thumbnail clicking by accident against the deepest stone and waking a -murmur. The children drew back alarmed. - -Brian smiled. "Don't be afraid." He tapped the other stones lightly. -"It is only music. It will not hurt you." He was silent a while, and -they were patient and respectful, waiting for more light. He asked -carefully: "He who told you to call him Jonas, he taught you all the -things you know?" - -"All things," the boy said, and the girl nodded quickly, so that the -soft brownness of her hair tumbled about her face, and she pushed it -back in a small human motion as old as the clay image. - -"Do you know how old you are?" - -They looked blank. Then the girl said: "Oh, summers!" She held up both -hands with spread fingers, then one hand. "Three fives. As the Old Man -knows." - -"I am very old," said Brian. "I know many things. But sometimes I wish -to forget, and sometimes I wish to hear what others know, even though I -may know it myself." - -They looked uncomprehending and greatly impressed. Brian felt a smile -on his face and wondered why it should be there. They were nice -children. Born ten years after the death of a world. Or twenty perhaps. -_I think I am seventy-six, but did I drop a decade somewhere and never -notice the damn thing?_ - -"He who told you to call him Jonas, he taught you all that you know -about Abraham?" - -At sound of the name, both of them made swift circular motions, first -at the forehead, then at the breast. - -"He taught us all things," the young man said. "He, and she who told -us to call her Abigail. The hours to rise, to pray, to wash, to eat. -The laws for hunting, and I know the Abraham-words for that: Sol-Amra, -I take this for my need." - -Brian felt lost again, dismally lost, and looked down to the grave clay -faces of the image for counsel, and found none. "They who told you to -call them Jonas and Abigail, they were the only old ones who lived with -you?" - -Again that look of bewilderment. "The only ones, sa," the young man -said. "As the Old Man knows." - -_I could never persuade them that, being old, I know very nearly -nothing._ - - * * * * * - -Brian straightened to his full gaunt height. The young people were not -tall; though stiff and worn with age, Brian knew he was still a bonily -overpowering creature. Once, among men, he had mildly enjoyed being -more than life-size. - -As a shield for the lonely, frightened thing that was his mind, he put -on a phony sternness: "I wish to examine you about Millstone and your -knowledge of Abraham. How many others are living at Millstone?" - -"Two fives, sa," said the boy promptly, "and I who may be called -Jonason and this one we may call Paula. Two fives and two. We are the -biggest, we two. The others are only children, but he we call Jimi -has killed his deer. He sees after them now while we go across the -sun-path." - -Under Brian's questioning, more of the story came, haltingly, obscured -by the young man's conviction that the Old Man already knew everything. -Some time, probably in the middle 2080s, Jonas and Abigail (whoever -they were) had come on a group of twelve wild children who were keeping -alive somehow in a ruined town where their elders had all died. Jonas -and Abigail had brought them all to an island they called Millstone. - -Jonas and Abigail had come originally from "up across the -sun-path"--the boy seemed to mean north--and they had been very old, -which might mean anything between thirty and ninety. In teaching the -children primitive means of survival, Jonas and Abigail had brought -off a brilliant success: Jonason and Paula were well fed, shining with -health and cleanliness and the strength of wildness, and their speech -had not been learned from the ignorant. Its pronunciation faintly -suggested New England, so far as Brian could detect any local accent at -all. - -"Did they teach you reading and writing?" he asked, and made writing -motions on the flat of his palm, which the two watched in vague alarm. - -The boy asked: "What is that?" - -"Never mind." He thought: _I could quarrel with some of your theories, -Mister whom I may call Jonas._ "Well, tell me now what they taught you -of Abraham." - -Both made again that circular motion at forehead and breast, and the -young man said with the stiffness of recitation: "Abraham was the Son -of Heaven, who died that we might live." - - * * * * * - -The girl, her obligations discharged with the religious gesture, tapped -the marimba shyly, fascinated, and drew her finger back sharply, -smiling up at Brian in apology for her naughtiness. - -"He taught the laws, the everlasting truth of all time," the boy -recited, almost gabbling, "and was slain on the wheel at Nuber by -the infidels. Therefore, since he died for us, we look up across the -sun-path when we pray to Abraham Brown, who will come again." - -Abraham _Brown_? - -But-- - -_But I knew him_, Brian thought, stunned. _I met him once. Nuber? -Newburg, the temporary capital of the Soviet of--oh, the hell with -that. Met him in 2071--he was 102 years old then, could still walk, -speak clearly, even remember an unimportant concert of mine from years -before. I could have picked him up in one hand, but nobody was ever -more alive. The wheel?_ - -"And when did he die, boy?" Brian asked. - -Jonason moved fingers helplessly, embarrassed. "Long, long ago." He -glanced up hopefully. "A thousand years? I think he who told us to call -him Jonas did not ever teach us that." - -"I see. Never mind." _Oh, my good Doctor--after all! Artist, statesman, -student of ethics, philosopher--you said that if men knew themselves, -they would have the beginning of wisdom. Your best teacher was -Socrates. Well you knew it, and now look what's happened!_ - -Jonas and Abigail--some visionary pair, Brian supposed, maybe cracking -up under the ghastliness of those years. Admirers of Brown, perhaps. -Shocked, probably, away from the religions of the 21st century, which -had all failed to stop the horrors, nevertheless they needed one, -or were convinced that the children did--so they created one. There -must later have been some dizzying pride of creation in it, possibly -wholehearted belief in themselves, too, as they found the children -accepting it, building a ritual life around it. - -It was impossible, Brian thought, that Jonas and Abigail could have -met the living Abraham Brown. As anyone must who faces the limitations -of human intelligence, Brown had accepted mysteries, but he did not -make them. He was wholly without intellectual arrogance. No one could -have talked with him five minutes without hearing him say tranquilly: -"I don't know." - -The wheel at Nuber? - -The _wheel_? - - * * * * * - -Brian realized he could never learn how Brown had actually died. Even -if he had the strength and courage to go back north--no, at seventy-six -(eighty-six?), one can hardly make a fresh start in the study of -history. Not without the patience of Abraham Brown himself, who had -probably been doing just that when the wheel-- - -An awed question from the girl pulled Brian from a black pit of -abstraction: "What is that?" She was pointing to the clay image in its -dusty sunlight. - -Brian spoke vaguely, almost deaf to his own words until they were past -recovering: "That? It is very old. Very old and very sacred." She -nodded, round-eyed, and stepped back a pace or two. "And that--that was -all they taught you of Abraham Brown?" - -Astonished, the boy asked: "Is it not enough?" - -_There is always The Project._ "Why, perhaps." - -"We know all the prayers, Old Man." - -"Yes, I'm sure you do." - -"The Old Man will come with us." - -"Eh?" _There is always The Project._ "Come with you?" - -"We look for old ones," said the young man. There was a new note in his -voice, and the note was impatience. "We traveled many days, up across -the sun-path. We want you to speak the Abraham-words for marriage. The -Old Ones said we must not mate as the animals do without the words. We -want--" - -"Marry, of course," said Brian feebly, rubbing his great, long-fingered -hand across his face so that the words were blurred and dull. -"Naturally. Beget. Replenish the Earth. I'm tired. I don't know any -Abraham-words for marriage. Go on and marry. Try again. Try--" - -"But the Old Ones said--" - -"Wait!" Brian cried. "Wait! Let me think. Did he--he who told you to -call him Jonas, did he teach you anything about the world as it was in -the old days, before you were born?" - -"Before? The Old Man makes fun of us." - -"No, no." And since he now had to fight down physical fear as well -as confusion, Brian spoke more harshly than he intended: "Answer my -question! What do you know of the old days? I was a young man once, do -you understand? As young as you. What do you know about the world I -lived in?" - - * * * * * - -Jonason laughed. There was new-born doubt in him as well as anger, -stiffening his shoulders, narrowing his innocent gray eyes. "There was -always the world," he said, "ever since God made it a thousand years -ago." - -"Was there? I was a musician. Do you know what a musician is?" - -The young man shook his head, watching Brian--too alertly, watching his -hands, aware of him in a new way, no longer humble. Paula sensed the -tension and did not like it. - -She said worriedly, politely: "We forget some of the things they taught -us, sa. They were Old Ones. Most of the days, they were away from -us in--places where we were not to go, praying. Old Ones are always -praying." - -"I will hear this Old Man pray," said Jonason. The butt of the javelin -rested against Jonason's foot, the blade swaying from side to side. -A wrong word, any trifle, Brian knew, could make them decide in -an instant that he was evil and not sacred. Their religion would -certainly require a devil. - -He thought also: _Merely one of the many ways of dying. It would be -swift, which is always a consideration._ - -"Certainly you may hear me pray," said Brian abruptly. "Come this way." -In a fluctuating despair, he knew that he must not become angry, as a -climber stumbling at the edge of a cliff might order himself not to be -careless. "Come this way. My prayers--I'll show you. I'll show you what -I did when I was a young man in a world you never knew." - -He stalked across the Hall of Music, not looking behind, but his back -sensed every glint of light on that bread-knife javelin. - -"Come this way!" he shouted. "Come in here!" He flung open the door of -the auditorium and strode up on the platform. "Sit down over there and -be quiet!" - -They did, he thought--he could not look at them. He knew he was -muttering, too, between his noisy outbursts, as he snatched the cover -off the Steinway and raised the lid, muttering bits and fragments from -old times, and from the new times. - -"They went thataway. Oh, Mr. Van Anda, it just simply goes right -through me; I can't express it. Madam, such was my intention--or, as -Brahms is supposed to have said on a slightly different subject, any -ass knows that. Brio, Rubato and Schmalz went to sea in a--Jonason, -Paula, this is a piano. It will not hurt you. Sit there, be quiet, -listen." - -He found calm. _Now if ever, now when I have living proof that human -nature (some sort of human nature) is continuing--surely now, if ever, -The Project--_ - - * * * * * - -With the sudden authority that was natural to him, Andrew Carr took -over. In the stupendous opening chords of the introduction, Brian very -nearly forgot his audience. Not quite, though. The youngsters had sat -down out there in the dusty region where none but ghosts had lingered -for twenty-five years or more. The piano's first sound brought them to -their feet. Brian played through the first four bars, piling the chords -like mountains, then held the last one with the pedal and waved his -right hand at Jonason and Paula in a furious downward motion. - -He thought they understood. He thought he saw them sit down again, but -he could pay them scant attention now, for the sonata was coming alive -under his fingers, waking, growing, rejoicing. - -He did not forget the youngsters again. They were important, -terrifying, too important, at the fringe of awareness. But he could -not look at them any more. He shut his eyes. - -He had never played like this in the flood of his prime, in the old -days, before great audiences that loved him. Never. - -His eyes were still closed, holding him secure in a secret world that -was not all darkness, when he ended the first movement, paused very -briefly, and moved on with complete assurance to explore the depth -and height of the second. This was a true statement at last. This was -Andrew Carr; he lived, even if, after this late morning, he might never -live again. - -And now the third, the storm and the wrath, the interludes of calm, the -anger, denials, affirmations. _Was there anything he didn't know, this -heir of three centuries who died in jail?_ - -Without hesitation, without any awareness of self, of age or pain or -danger or loss, Brian was entering on the broad reaches of the last -movement when he opened his eyes. - -The youngsters were gone. - -Well, he thought, it's too big. It frightened them away. He -could visualize them, stealing out with backward looks of panic. -Incomprehensible thunder. But he could not think much about them -now. Not while Andrew Carr was with him. He played on with the same -assurance, the same joyful sense of victory. Savages--let them go, with -leave and good will. - - * * * * * - -Some external sound was faintly troubling him, something that must -have begun under cover of these rising, pealing octave passages--storm -waves, each higher than the last, until it seemed that even a -superhuman swimmer must be exhausted. An undefinable alien noise, a -kind of humming. - -Brian shook his head peevishly, shutting it away. It couldn't matter, -at least not now. Everything was here, in the beautiful labors his -hands still had to do. The waves were growing more quiet, settling, -subsiding, and now he must play those curious arpeggios which he had -never quite understood--but, of course, he understood them at last. Rip -them out of the piano like showers of sparks, like distant lightnings -moving farther off across a world that could never be at rest. - -The final theme. Why, it was a variation--and how was it that he had -never realized it?--a variation on a theme of Brahms, from the German -Requiem. Quite plain, quite simple, and Brahms would have approved. -Still it was rather strange, Brian thought, that he had never made the -identification before in spite of all his study. Well, he knew it now. - -_Blessed are the dead...._ - -Yes, Brian thought, but something more remained, and he searched for -it, proudly certain of discovering it, through the mighty unfolding of -the finale. No hurrying, no crashing impatience any more, but a moving -through time with no fear of time, through radiance and darkness with -no fear of either. Andrew Carr was happy, the light of the Sun on his -shoulders. - -_That they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow after -them._ - -Brian stood up, swaying and out of breath. So the music was over, -and the young savages were gone, and somewhere a jangling, humming -confusion was filling the Hall of Music, distant, but entering with -violence even here, now that the piano was silent. Brian moved stiffly -out of the auditorium, more or less knowing what he would find. - -The noise was immense, the unchecked overtones of the marimba fuming -and quivering as the high ceiling of the Hall of Music caught and -twisted them, flung them back against the answering strings of harps -and pianos and violins, the sulky membranes of drums, the nervous brass -of cymbals. - -The girl was playing it. Really playing it. - - * * * * * - -Brian laughed once, softly, in the shadows, and was not heard. She -had hit on a most primeval rhythm natural for children or savages and -needed nothing else, hammering it out swiftly on one stone and then the -next, wanting no rest or variation. - -The boy was dancing, slapping his feet, pounding his chest, thrusting -out his javelin in perfect time to the clamor, edging up to his -companion, grimacing, drawing back to return. Neither was laughing or -close to laughter. Their faces were savage-solemn, downright grim with -the excitement, the innocent lust, as spontaneous as the drumming of -partridges. - -It was a while before they saw Brian in the shadows. - -The girl dropped the hammer. The boy froze briefly, his javelin raised, -then jerked his head slightly at Paula, who snatched at something. -Only moments later did Brian realize that she had taken the clay image -before she fled. Jonason covered her retreat, stepping backward, his -face blank with fear and readiness, javelin poised. So swiftly, so -easily, by grace of a few wrong words and Steinway's best, had a Sacred -Old One become a Bad Old One, an evil spirit. - -They were gone, down the stairway, leaving the echo of Brian's voice -crying: "Don't go! Please don't go! I beg you!" - -Brian followed them unwillingly. It was a measure of his unwillingness -that moments passed before he was at the bottom of the stairway looking -across the shut-in water to his raft, which they had used and left at -the window-sill port. Brian had never been a good swimmer; he was too -dizzy now and short of breath to attempt to reach it. - -He clutched the rope and hitched himself, panting, hand over hand, -to the window, collapsing there a while until he found strength to -scramble into his canoe and grope for the paddle. The youngsters' canoe -was already far off, heading up the river, the boy paddling with deep -powerful strokes. - -Up the river, of course. They had to find the right kind of Old Ones. -Up across the sun-path. - -Brian dug his blade in the quiet water. For a time, his rugged ancient -muscles were willing. There was sap in them yet. Perhaps he was gaining -slightly. - -He shouted hugely: "Bring back my two-faced god! Bring it back! It's -not yours. _It's not yours!_" - - * * * * * - -They must have heard his voice booming at them. At any rate, the girl -looked back once. The boy, intent on his effort, did not. - -Brian roared: "Bring back my god! I want my little god!" - -He was not gaining on them. They had a mission, after all. They had to -find the right kind of Old Ones. But damn it, Brian thought, my world -has some rights, hasn't it? _We'll see about this._ - -He lifted the paddle like a spear and flung it, knowing even before his -shoulder winced how absurd the gesture was. The youngsters were so far -away that even an arrow from a bow might not have reached them. - -The paddle splashed in the water. Not far away: a small infinity. -It swung about to the will of the river, the heavy end pointing, -obediently downstream. It nuzzled companionably against a gray-faced -chunk of driftwood, diverting it, so that presently the driftwood -floated into Brian's reach. - -He caught it, and flung it toward the paddle, hoping it might fall -on the other side and send the paddle near him. It fell short, and -in his oddly painless extremity, Brian was not surprised, but merely -watched the gray driftwood floating and bobbing along beside him with -an irritation that was part friendliness, for it suggested the face of -a music critic he had met in--New Boston, was it? Denver? London? He -couldn't remember. - -"Why," he said aloud, detachedly observing the passage of his canoe -beyond the broad morning shadow of the Museum of Human History, "I seem -to have made sure to die." - -"Mr. Van Anda has abundantly demonstrated a mastery of the instrument -and of the--" _You acid fraud, go play solfeggio on your linotype! -Don't bother me!_--"and of the literature which could, without -exaggeration, be termed beyond technique. He is one of those rare -interpreters who at the last analysis--" - -"I can't swim it, you know," said Brian. - -"--have so deeply submerged, dedicated themselves, that they might -truly be said to have become one with--" Gaining on the canoe, the -gray-faced chip moved tranquilly, placidly approving, toward the open -sea. And with a final remnant of strength, Brian inched forward to the -bow of the canoe and gathered the full force of his lungs to shout up -the river: "Go in peace!" - -They could not have heard him. They were too far away and a new morning -wind was blowing, fresh and sweet, out of the northwest. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Music Master of Babylon, by Edgar Pangborn - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MUSIC MASTER OF BABYLON *** - -***** This file should be named 51379.txt or 51379.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/3/7/51379/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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