Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 56 Read online

  Chen just looked down at his hands. Trent, too, refused to meet her gaze. “Well?” she said.

  Finally, Chen cleared his throat and spoke. “They never ran a full-power test,” he said. “No budget for it. No time on the schedule.”

  “Then they’re — ”

  “They’re fine,” Carter said. He glanced at Trent, who looked away, fixing his gaze on the datapad and its churning flood of simulated plasma. “Just slower than expected. Marina, you’ll need to adjust the inventory. We’re first wave, now, not second. Find room for the groundbreaking gear we left out — seed stock, hydroponics, water purification. Chen, do what you need to do.”

  Chen looked up. “Trent?” he said. “Mr. Bishop?”

  Trent finally looked away from the datapad. He focused uncertainly on Carter, but said nothing.

  Carter gave him a reassuring smile. “I’ve got this,” he said.

  With a tiny nod, Trent swung his gaze toward Chen. “We’ll make it beautiful for her,” he said.

  Valikova sat back, sliding down in her seat. “When I was young,” she said, looking at Carter, “I’d always hoped to find such a love.”

  “You said it yourself.” Carter nodded toward Trent as he spoke. “The man’s a Romantic.”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Him too.”

  It’s this way, isn’t it? He turns to the right, proceeding slowly, but steadily, and without his descendant’s assistance.

  She stays two steps behind, urging him to return to his room, but he ignores her. This is something he must do, something he always does when he awakens. This time, it feels more urgent, though. There is little time and he still has much to do.

  It’s a beautiful world you’ve made, his multi-great granddaughter says. The coastal outpost is a city now. Three hundred thousand strong. The wave generators and the kelp farms you ordered have made it grow, and we’ve adapted the Earth prawns, as well. There is food and power for millions more.

  He asks her about the shuttles. Have they been maintained? Is the fuel plant running? Has anyone been up to Irene recently?

  She isn’t sure, but she thinks the last launch was decades ago.

  He wants to be angry about that, but he is too tired to stoke the fire beyond being annoyed. He merely sighs. There is always something more to do. They are building more than a world on Terranova. They are building a future. This place should be a step, not a terminus.

  She laughs, but cuts it off quickly. A colony’s colony? Would he leave them so soon?

  Soon enough, he fears, but not by rocket. No, his place is here. Exactly here. He stops and touches the door before him. It’s the room he’s been seeking. He takes a deep breath, gathering himself.

  Alone, he tells her. She almost protests, but he repeats himself. I go in alone. Always alone.

  Carter stepped into Trent’s living room to find the man leaning against the big design station, coughing. He put his hand in his pocket and gripped the small container there, waiting for the coughing fit to subside.

  Trent noticed him. He straightened up when the coughing stopped. “This damned cold,” he said. “Just won’t let go.”

  Carter stared at him. “I’ve spoken to your doctor,” he said. “Selenosis.”

  Trent barely looked surprised. He nodded. “Too damn many trips through poorly filtered airlocks,” he said. “Too hands-on. Always had to be there in person, you know?” He moved to the couch and eased himself down onto it. “Didn’t you lecture me once about the Republic’s privacy laws?”

  “That should tell you how serious I am,” Carter said. He pulled the pills out of his pocket. “Take these. They’ll help you rest.”

  “Too much to do,” Trent said.

  Carter handed the medicine to Trent and got a cup of water from the kitchen. “You’re done,” he said. “Chen’s redesigned bell looks good to go. The ship is stocked. The passengers are mostly in h-sleep. You’re done.”

  “The details.”

  “There are always details.” Carter held the cup out. “Nothing I can’t handle. I know the plan. I know how you work. I can take care of it.”

  Finally, Trent relented. He took two of the pills, set the cup down, and leaned his head against the back of the couch. “It’ll be up to you, you know. When we get there. I’ll do what I can in the couple of years I have, but after that — .”

  “Just rest,” Carter said.

  “You’ve done so much.” Trent’s voice grew softer, slurred. “Given up so much. I screwed up. But there you were. To catch me.”

  “Always,” Carter said. He stood watching for a while, until he was sure the man was asleep. He went to the apartment door and opened it.

  Valikova slid into the room. “It is done?”

  “Yes.” Carter led her to where Trent slept. “Call your team.”

  She laid her fingers on Trent’s neck, checking his pulse. “You are sure about this?”

  Carter shrugged. “Not much choice,” he said. “It’s the only way to give him what he wants.”

  “And you, my dear?” She straightened up and stepped closer to Carter, touching her palm to his cheek. “Do you get what you want?”

  He gave her a faint smile, took her hand from his face and held it in both of his. “I accepted the way things are a long time ago,” he said. “Instead, I get to build a world.”

  “For them?” she asked.

  “For him.”

  He takes a deep breath and opens the door. The lights brighten automatically. He blinks and squints until his eyes adjust. There, in the center of the room, lies a hiber-sleep sarcophagus. It has been running, uninterrupted, for a quarter of a millennium. Inside, Trent Bishop sleeps, as he has slept since that day on his sofa.

  Carter lays his hand on the cool metal. Soon, he says. She’ll be here soon. You’ll be angry with me, I know, but it won’t last. And I may not be around to see it. The important thing is you’ll get your wish. A few more years with Irene. Here, in the world we’ve made for her. In the world I’ve made for you.

  About the Author

  Jason K. Chapman lives at the intersection of Geek and Art. His two main interests come together in his job as the IT Director for Poets & Writers (pw.org), where he was worked for twelve years. His short fiction has appeared in Cosmos Magazine, Grantville Gazette-Universe Annex, and others. This is his second appearance in Clarkesworld Magazine. He has stories coming up from Asimov’s and Bullspec.

  John Barry: A Retrospective on a Wordless Poet

  John T. Stanhope

  On January 30, 2011, iconic and very prolific musician and composer John Barry passed away, having been in ill health for some time. He was seventy-seven years old at the time of his passing, but he was a creative force that lived a very full and productive life, as the mourning over his death has attested.

  You may not immediately know him by name, but you certainly know his sound. He has written many famous and popular film scores and is known the world over for his iconic work on nearly a dozen James Bond pictures. He may not have written the ultra-famous Bond theme (as we’ll touch on more in a bit); however, his heavy stamp is all over its arrangement, which was his official task in its creation.

  His influence didn’t end there though. A multitude of respected projects would be graced by his composer’s pen. He was an emotionally introspective and poetic composer whose haunting themes and pulsing atmospheric rhythms gained him far reaching notoriety. He was also a five-time Oscar winner (Born Free — both score and song; The Lion in Winter; Out of Africa; Dances with Wolves), a Grammy winner (Dances with Wolves), and two-time BAFTA winner (The Lion in Winter and the Academy Fellowship award). He was nominated for 11 Golden Globe awards, taking home a win for Out of Africa. His work was far from limited to a specific genre and he famously contributed many excellent scores to science fiction, fantasy, horror, drama, comedy, romance and action films — including, of course, several Bond pictures.

  Born John Barry Prendergast in 1933, the son of a movie
theater owner in York, England, he would be bitten by the film and music bug at an early age. Young Barry studied classical piano and, like many of his generation (and after), he developed a keen interest in jazz. Given how much he used the guitar in his compositions — especially earlier in his career — it’s interesting to note that the trumpet was his chosen instrument to play.

  Barry studied under American jazz musician Bill Russo as well as composer Dr. Francis Jackson at York Minster and, after a three year stint in the military — having served in a band unit — he decided to strike out on his own. He formed a band, The John Barry Seven, and started a successful career in the pop and jazz genres. The band would, for approximately seven years, ironically, become one of the two or three busiest and most successful rock & roll bands in the UK. They worked as the backup group to large acts, including the likes of Paul Anka, who was quite popular in England at the time, were busy on BBC television shows and signed on with EMI’s Parlophone label. All the bouncing around between York, London and other parts of the British Isles took its toll though, and the band became less stable, with some members going and new ones coming. Guitarist Ken Richards would exit as just one of the band’s casualties and be replaced by Vic Flick, who would reach a much respected status in his own right (among other things, his would become that famous guitar riff in the James Bond theme).

  At the very end of the 1950’s, the John Barry Seven had moved on to a television series called Drumbeat. It starred an up-and-comer named Adam Faith. Barry quickly became his arranger while the group became his backing band. It all must have been by the hand of providence because Adam Faith became a star and that is one of the main impulses that led to Barry becoming one of the biggest successes in early British rock & roll. The John Barry Seven was one of the two top backing bands in England. Only a group called The Shadows could claim more success than them. In fact, the group was so popular that they rather succinctly came to be known as JB7.

  Soon John Barry and his band left Parlophone and signed with EMI’s more prestigious Columbia label. They maintained their working relationship with Faith, though, on both recordings and on tour. Providence continued playing its hand and in 1960 the John Barry Seven were attached to Adam Faith’s first feature film, Beat Girl, for which they created some rather spunky musical accompaniment.

  Not long after this, composer Monty Norman was working on a little film project called Dr. No, the first movie in what was hoped would become a series of films about a secret agent named James Bond. Norman liked and identified with Barry’s style and recommended that he do the arranging — not the writing, mind you — on the theme for the film’s main character. What’s that they say about the rest being history? Barry took Norman’s theme and turned it into what has arguably become the most famous piece of film music on all of planet Earth.

  It’s not too difficult to see why Barry was given the opportunity to head up the music on From Russia with Love, the second Bond outing. For it Barry once again worked magic and created an iconic score that helped elevate the Bond franchise to a vaulted level that it might not quite have otherwise met.

  With everyone being so happy with Barry’s work on From Russia with Love and its huge box-office and critical success, there was little question as to who would be scoring the next Bond outing. Goldfinger would be the third in the series (which has thus far seen 22 screen adaptations with a 23rd on the way) and to this day it is still considered one of the very best Bond films of all time, not to mention a true classic in the annals of cinema history. Once again, a solid portion of the film’s success and endearment was due in no small part to John Barry. Just as the film as a whole is considered quintessential Bond, so too is Barry’s powerfully emotive score. Very few would question its status as not only one of the very best scores in the series, but also as one of the best and most evocative films scores of all time. The title song as sung — or rather gloriously belted out — by the great Shirley Bassey was a runaway hit, as was the soundtrack itself (it even pushed the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night off the top of the album charts and won Barry a gold disc). If there was any doubt that Barry was the perfect person for the job, it was wiped forever clear after this.

  Intriguingly, however, not long after Barry completed his work on Goldfinger he received communication from producer Harry Saltzman. “I got a phone call from Harry,” cited Barry in a 2006 article in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph newspaper. “He never used to come down to the recording sessions, and he says (of the title song): ‘John, that is the worst f***ing song I ever heard in my life. We open in three weeks’ time, otherwise I’d take that f***ing song out of the picture. I’d take it out! Out!’”

  Now, to be fair, Saltzman was not a producer prone to such colossal miscalls, but this was certainly one that lay at his feet. Still, when all was said and done, little questioning of Barry’s choices would occur again in relation to the scoring of a James Bond picture. He would go on to score eleven of those Ian Fleming-based secret agent films and, as indicated, in so doing would cement a solid position in the history of his profession.

  To return to Dr. No and musician-composer Monty Norman for a moment, it is true (though some still like to sentimentally argue that it isn’t) that Norman did write the main theme for Dr. No (along with the rest of the score). However, it was Barry’s arrangement and performance of that version for the 007 cue which would become one of the most re-recorded pieces of music in history. Ultimately, Monty Norman landed as little more than a footnote in Bond history. Musically speaking, it became all Barry’s and he would grow into a sentimental favorite composer of film and film music fans all over the globe.

  In a 1996 interview with Film Score Monthly, Barry credited big band leader Stan Kenton with the inspiration for the Bond style. “I think the genesis of the Bond sound was most certainly that Kentonesque sharp attack,” he said, pointing out Kenton’s brassy sound and notes that hit extreme highs and lows. Though that was not an actual claim of creating the theme itself, it’s close enough to cause confusion, and probably so by intent. For Norman’s part, the whole Bond theme genesis has been a real thorn in his side which he has felt compelled to pull at over the years. He has gone to court over it at least three times (twice against publications and in one instance involving Barry himself) and has been victorious each time. The theme, and the royalties from it, are his, but the fame, adulation and rare level of success are John Barry’s.

  The Bond theme actually goes back to an East Asian-set stage musical Norman was working on in the 1950s that never saw the light of day. One quick listen shows from whence the genesis of the Bond piece comes. A valuable lesson here might be to never throw out your work. You never know when the right time for it might come along… or when you might need it to defend something else you do.

  At any rate, fate made its call and Barry was its main beneficiary. The Living Daylights, in 1987, would be his final Bond film. When asked in 2006 by The Sunday Express of London why he never scored another in the series he replied, “I gave up after (that). I’d exhausted all my ideas, rung all the changes possible. It was a formula that had run its course. The best had been done as far as I was concerned.”

  Though Barry is perhaps best known for the work he did on the Bond series, those scores are merely a fraction of his body of work. He would eventually write the music for well over a hundred productions. In that there would be television, stage and radio — not to mention very personal efforts — that would beckon him to put pencil to music sheet. In 2006 he would work with ten well-known tenors on an album titled Here’s to the Heroes. This featured a number of past Barry themes with lyrics provided by his friend, Don Black. A very pleasant, top-selling listening experience was the result. Barry observed, “I’ve always loved writing for singers and to have 10 voices to write for was fantastic. They have all different kinds of techniques going — falsettos, the whole range of voice production — so it’s like a band of musical instruments. They’re extraordinary.”
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  Earlier, in 1998, Barry produced a personal work titled The Beyondness of Things. It is one of his most lovely and perhaps loving works, full of the romance and drama that the composer has been so famous for. One of its inspirations seems to have been the feelings he would sense while traveling back and forth between Northern England and Long Island, New York. In the CD’s liner notes he wrote: “Both these visions, past and present — ‘The Old Country’ and ‘The New World’ — harbour so many dreams, memories and reflections beyond the norm: The Beyondness of Things.” A typically romantic and longing sentiment from a poet who worked without words.

  In point of fact, John Barry was one of the most romantic film composers of his or any generation. Even his action cues have a romantic, moody quality which begs multiple listenings. And several films owe much of their critical and audience acclaim to his sweeping, melodic, moving style. Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves are two clear examples. These scores simply ascend with a lush beauty that instantly envelopes the viewer-listener and conjures something in the heart that refuses to be denied. Barry himself gives insight to this elegant strength within his work, as confided to The New York Times in 2000: “I like to score the inner feelings of a character — get into their shoes in an imaginative way and take the audience there and enlighten them in a poetic rather than realistic way.”

  Many composers, especially modern ones, have a style that, although not bad, can be fairly easily interchanged. Barry, however, was wholly himself. No one has ever sounded quite like him. And though he has on occasion been criticized for works which sound too similar, he consistently turned out material that continues to delight, stimulate and yet at the same time sooth the soul. The imagination of audiences and listeners of his music will no doubt continue to bloom as time marches ahead.

  We all have our inspirations in life and Kenton certainly wasn’t the only influence on Barry. In fact, it all inadvertently started with his father and those theater chains. As a teen Barry operated the projectors in some of those movie houses and fell in love with cinema and especially its music. He references composers like Bernard Herrmann, Erich Korngold and Max Steiner as some of those who worked their influential magic on him.