The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance Read online

  “But Margaret,” a voice whined peevishly. It was Anton Vaccero, her new lighting chief. In the light his red hair looked like a crown of flame. “How will I know what the show will look like?”

  “You’d better know already,” Margaret said. “Now turn those off. Other people have work to do.” She walked over to the thin plastic partitions that had been set up around the perimeter of the roof to hide the Orchestra from the crowd below. Anton followed her, and pointed between two panels. There one segment of Lowell pulsed under banks of lazed light, packed light, bent light, broken light … Margaret disliked the effect. “It hurts the eyes,” she said.

  “You’d better get used to it.”

  “I will never get used to it. Look at all those people.” The city below shifted and heaved like a honeycomb under bees: people everywhere. Each rooftop patio was packed, and the grassy open land between the clumps of buildings was mobbed.

  “Have you been to the May festival before?” Anton asked.

  “Yes. I was the manager for Yablonski’s last tour. But I liked it no better then.”

  “You don’t have crowds like this on Iapetus?”

  “I suppose. But they are different. You Plutonians are strange edgefolk. Even your cities show this. On the terras you can forget where you are—all is green, the sky is blue—they are like little Earths. Iapetus is different, but even there great continents of life have been created. Here, every town is like an oasis, overlooking some black abyss.”

  “It’s deliberate,” Anton said. “We do it to remind ourselves where we really are.”

  Margaret gestured out at the city’s edge, where the hemisphere of air and light ended abruptly and the crater-ringed surface of Tartarus began. “And that is strange.”

  The Planck Double Reed squawked loudly. “There’s something wrong with that amp,” Margaret said.

  “Or with the Orchestra.”

  “No—there’s seldom a problem with the Orchestra itself, I’ve found.” Margaret called for Delia, fitting her shouts in between squawks. “Delia!” EhhnnnnnRAHN!—“Delia!”

  Then there was a flurry at the elevator door, and several people appeared there. Anton stepped back against the panel. Margaret walked over to greet Karnasingh Godavari, her security chief. He smiled at her briefly, then looked about the roof, frowning slightly at the dark and the bustle. He was as tall as Margaret, black-haired and dark-skinned. As his people spread out to search the roof the two of them conferred. “How does it look?” Margaret said.

  Karna shook his head nervously and didn’t reply. Margaret had hired him as security chief for her last four tours, and she knew that his silence meant he was at work. He gestured at the elevator.

  Two of his employees emerged, flanking a short, slight man. A certain hush fell over the workers, so that the din from the city below was more evident. There was a smattering of applause, and Margaret said loudly, “Get to work.” Johannes Wright did not appear to notice either the applause or her command. He headed straight for the Orchestra, tilted his head back to peer into it. Margaret went to his side and he looked up at her.

  “Hello, Margaret. Will we be ready on time?”

  “We’re ready now, almost. But Delia is having trouble with the Double Reed’s amp. Maybe you could help her.”

  He nodded. The photoptic cells that had replaced his eyes glinted, reflecting Anton’s enprism lights. They did a good job with the cells, Margaret thought, they looked like real eyes; still, when you are looking into the face of a man with two artificial eyes, you know it.

  Delia appeared and Wright led her into the Orchestra. Around Margaret people were arguing over electrical connections, pounding with hammers, firing away with staple guns. She wiped sweat from her forehead and grinned, enjoying the work. She returned to Karna’s side.

  “How did he seem to you?” she asked.

  Karna shrugged. “Quiet. I don’t know what that means. Do you know him well?”

  “No. I met him when I managed Yablonski’s last tour, but only briefly. As apprentice he didn’t come along.”

  “Ah.” Karna was distracted. “Listen, Margaret.” He guided her to a corner of the roof. Frowning, he said, “My people have heard things down on the street that I don’t like. Someone said that Wright will be killed on this tour.”

  “What?”

  “I know. It’s bad news. It makes me nervous.”

  “But it’s absurd!”

  “Yes. It may just be part of the festival craziness—nothing to it. But Marie-Jeanne was on the street when a man came up to her and said, ‘The Greys are going to kill the Master this time.’”

  The Double Reed honked mournfully, like a foghorn. “The Greys,” Margaret said. She knew little of them; they were one of the more obscure religions, and tended, she thought, to congregate downsystem. “But how would anybody but a Grey know about it?”

  Karna shrugged. “True.”

  “And someone just said this out of the vacuum to Marie-Jeanne?”

  “It was probably just nonsense. But…”

  “We’ll have to keep an eye out,” Margaret said.

  “Yes.” Karna peered anxiously up into the glass arms of the Orchestra, which under the lights were an autumn blaze of gold and red, brown and silver.

  ernst ekern

  Ernst Ekern stood on the roof of the Holywelkin Institute, apart from the small group of acquaintances who had joined him for the concert. Some of his guests were members of the Orchestra’s board of directors; others were fellows of his secret order, and they mingled with the unknowing board members with ease, as if to mock Ekern with the incongruity. He ignored them and peered out over the commons below. The banks of light set on certain public rooftops around the city were conspiring to make the rooftops appear islands in a wave-filled sea of light, a rainbow ocean. The heads of the people rippled like sea-cabbage under a surging tide. All manner of bizarre and pathetic hopes were represented in those drowned heads below. And on the rooftop islands in that sea of madness stood concert parties, chattering in their gardens—the aristocracy, waiting for his Orchestra to be revealed. Between the two crowds patterns of relationship swirled; shouts exchanged could be jovial or insulting. In his group the tangled pattern of relationship shifted continuously as fellows of his order circled the roof and engaged board members in conversation. The Magus herself explained to the board’s senior vice president the nature of her friendship with Ekern; all a complex lie. And Atargatis stood alone in the corner by a lemon tree, his bright eyes observing all. Diana might be the Magus, but it was Atargatis whom Ekern respected (and therefore feared)—Atargatis of the bright looks and the subtle mind.

  But, he thought, it was Ekern who controlled all the patterns that swirled around him: the concert and the crowd, the garden party and his fellows. He stared across the town through disorienting light to the top of the power plant. There an octet of panels lowered like a blossom unfolding, and standing like the complex pistil of the flower was Holywelkin’s Orchestra. It began very slowly to rotate, and the crowd roared. Interwoven with the roar was the beginning of the music, an imitation of the crowd’s shouting that rose out of it into song. Chromatic clickings crossed and crossed again, and Ekern’s company stopped talking. Many of them fell into the half trance necessary to follow the intricacies of the typically thick Plutonian musical style, a polymelodic mesh of sound in which one had to seek for the patterns in a weave as dense as chaos.… Almost automatically Ekern began to fall into this listening trance, although he did not want to; he wanted to observe his party and the whole city, to see the effect of the music on them, and so he struggled back up from the impact of the music’s beginning as from a sudden immersion under water. Clear of it now, and with that freedom came the usual surge of elation, at the feeling of control; for he controlled not only his own mind, but also that omphalos of the city that everyone else now helplessly attended: he was the true Master of the Orchestra. And yet—the music, there—and there—and there—the phras
es were like premonitions in sound, they were the forms of premonitions without the content, and Ekern shuddered as his memory was brushed ever so lightly by images of the end of the concert—of concerts to come.… He shook off these vague impressions and regained control by forcing the music into a single thing, a lump of inchoate sound irrevocably outside him. There: success. His power was greater than Wright’s—and yet listen to that!—a sudden wash of music over him; he shook himself free of it again. Emotions roiled in him, forming a wild confluence. He was in control, the power to conduct, to point at the crowd and say move now, shout now, cry now was his, his and no one else’s. (And yet—) He determined all the conditions that had created this music, and the puppet in the machine was only playing what he, Ekern, maneuvered him to. (A great falling screech from the Planck Reed) but to think of Wright instantly brought to Ekern’s flailing imagination the image of Wright in the Orchestra, at that moment, playing before all: and the terror of performance raced through his blood. In this panic Atargatis’s steady eye pierced him most acutely. The great live oak tree spun, throwing out running clicking tension, strands of melody melting away the moment his ear acknowledged them … keeping a stoic front for Atargatis helped him to resist this assault, as it tended to distract him entirely. Must show nothing, must display complete control … not an easy thing to do in this tempest of sound. That Wright was a bad one, all right. Ekern had opposed him all down the line, his original investiture, the decision to keep him after he destroyed his eyes, the suicidal fool—and since then.… But there! Down in the streets the masses were battling! A tall figure in a green coat darted through the crowd like a bottom fish, leaving swirls of anger, shouts that fit the music’s powerful pulse. All sound was stripped away to the wail of the godzilla, the low ominous canon of basses and triple basses. His guests stood like statues of Lot’s wife, all but Atargatis, who like Ekern himself now paced the garden in a nervous, undirected walk. Bass waves flirted with the subsonic, twenty hertz oscillating in the stomach, and all of Ekern’s fierce resistance disappeared: this music was terror. Each new basal distortion rent the air, struck at the swirling crowd, brought Ekern to such peaks of fear and despair that he had to pace about to counter them, thinking it’s only music, only sound. But there … “No!” he cried out, and immediately felt humiliated. But no one could hear him. Then he saw that while the directors of the Institute still stood frozen at attention, all the members of his order were free of the music, it was just noise to them now, they were from downsystem and didn’t understand; and as he saw this his own understanding fell away as well, the sounds became only an unnatural rapid tumbling of bass tones. The storm-tossed crowd shrieked and screamed, the fellows of the order watched him and he met their eyes, he nodded, feeling his control return in an exhilarating rush, he pointed up at the Orchestra, saying against the din, Yes, yes, this is the start of it. This is the start of my performance in the art without a stage. The opening act. The others attempted no response; there was none to make. Ekern’s conception was gigantic, his execution flawless. Groups in the mass below jumped up and down rhythmically. Fists pummelled bodies frozen in the strobe of broken light. All on their own Ekern’s fists clenched as well, and he longed to leap into the crowd and flail away, oh, this Johannes Wright was evil! His music was dangerous—destructive—worthy of destruction. It was fitting to Ekern’s higher art, the art that would contain it; it made a stunning opening burst to the play that his order was here to witness. How the Magus rolled her eyes! How the others shivered, plugged their ears, glanced in awe toward Ekern! Great storm waves pulsed in the crowd below, the noise was a force battering at all, it was an ambient fluid they swam in, Atargatis spoke to Ekern and Ekern saw only the ironic mouth, moving. One could shriek like the damned in this assault and it would mean nothing to the man beside you. Ekern ignored Atargatis’s disturbing mouth, he said, “I will end you. I will finish you,” as if thinking to himself. Turning his back on all the rooftop audience he burst into strained laughter. The rainbow ocean made its tidal surge, the lights turned everywhere upward, lazing, splitting, prisming, chroming the air; the coda of Wright’s formless roar echoed from the discontinuity of the spheres. Ekern’s senses were overwhelmed, he burned in a blaze of triumph; he held onto the roof patio railing for support, feeling like Iago on the battlements of Cyprus.

  retrogradation

  Unfortunately for Dent Ios, there was a mistake in the scheduling of the shuttle flight from the transCharon orbits to Lowell, and a subsequent delay of an hour or two. When the shuttle came to a halt Dent ran down the tunnel to Lowell’s terminal and hurried to a small festival information booth.

  “When will Holywelkin’s Orchestra perform?” he asked.

  The guide in the booth looked surprised. “It’s just over, friend. You’re late.”

  “It’s over?”

  “Ended half an hour ago.”

  Dent struck his head with the palm of his hand. “Late! Late! Damn this tour!” Dent cursed June and his collective, his spaceliner and the shuttle crews, Johannes Wright and his stupid Orchestra: “Exiled to Pluto to witness this spectacle, and then kept from seeing it! And the next concert of the Grand Tour is right back home on Titania.” It was too much.

  Still seething, Dent walked down a corridor to the spaceport’s tall entrance, where it opened out onto a broad boulevard of some sort. Altered light of all kind pulsed over the city, making it a jumble of color. And it was very noisy. “Oh my,” Dent said. “Impossible. I’m not going out there.” He returned to the information booth. “When does the next shuttle leave for the transCharon orbits?”

  The guide consulted a schedule. “At about six tomorrow morning, sir. That’s about eight hours from now.”

  “Eight hours!”

  “Yes. The last one just left, so it’ll be a while before the next one goes.”

  “Of course.” Dent stormed off to a waiting room adjacent to the corridor. “I will wait here,” he declared to the empty room. “I’ll be damned if I go out into that chaos when the whole reason for being here is gone.” And he plumped down in a thickly upholstered chair.

  Nearly an hour passed. From outside came faint shouts and howls of revelry; bent light bounced around the corners and bathed the chamber from time to time in its ghastly blue glow; and the seconds on the wall clock made their slow plod round to sixty, again and again. Dent had nothing to read, and his nails were already tended to. Boredom crept up on him. And from outside came brief snatches of music, conflicting strains from what he assumed were competing concerts. Slowly but surely Dent’s curiosity overcame his fastidiousness; besides, if he toured the streets after Wright’s concert, he could reproach his collective with whatever meager news he could gather.

  So he got up and went outside. The air was warm and humid, thick with the smoke of bonfires and the smell of sweat. Packed light dazzled his vision and shouts struck his eardrums like fists. “My,” he said, blood stirring. “This is awful!”

  He started walking toward what appeared to be the center of town, where the buildings were the tallest. The irregular streets of Lowell were paved with a tough grass, and they were flanked by oddly spaced three- and four-story buildings; most of the streets were as wide as boulevards, and seemed to function as parks, at least during the festival. Big pits in certain intersections held bonfires, and everywhere parties of people stood or sat in clumps and circles, so that Dent had to weave his way through the crowd, slipping into streams of celebrants taking the same route. Eventually they led him to what someone said was Tombaugh Square, a big park in the city’s center; the utilities building stood on one side of this square, and apparently the Orchestra had been placed on it during the concert, so that the park was still jammed. In all the commotion Dent didn’t know what to do next. A very large woman ran into him, knocking him down. As he got up he cried, “What was the concert like?” The woman only laughed, revealing teeth that had been stained bright red. “Too drugged to remember it, are you?” she sho
uted. “No!” Dent replied, but she was gone. He cursed her back angrily.

  Still, the exchange had given him a method. He wandered between groups, looking for single individuals who appeared congenial. In the altered light it was difficult to tell; shafts of packed inthrob light made people appear living flames, clothed in leaves of fire. Dent walked on. Across the park two oak trees bracketed a small bonfire; in the light of the blaze it might be possible to distinguish real features. Keeping his hands out as bumpers, Dent slowly crossed the square. Beams of spectralite, ultra, rodercone, and enprism assaulted him; even with his eyes closed he saw some of these lights, and walked through a kaleidoscope of shattered color.

  Beyond the oak trees a brace of water buffalo lowed uneasily, tugging at their tethers. The bonfire between the trees was rendered invisible by a sudden burst of inthrob. A friendly looking man with a beard stood contemplating the phenomenon. “What did you think of the performance?” Dent asked him.

  The man pulled his beard and grinned. “Sir, that young man lazed us! He packed us, he lazed us, he bent us, and then he shattered us!”

  “You’re a light technician, I take it.”

  “Not at all. But that young Master certainly is. And he’ll bring us all back to the white light of the godhead, you mark my words.”

  Dent walked away, shaking his head. Perhaps these interviews were not going to be of help after all.

  Suddenly he noticed a curious thing. There was no music being played anywhere in the square. This was so unusual as to be freakish. Typically after a concert of this sort soloists or small groups would be recreating by memory various parts of the performance, transposing them for the instrument they played; at a festival like this there would be so many street groups that the competition for sound spheres would be fierce. But tonight … nothing. The oscillant chatter of hundreds of voices in conversation—but no music. Dent bit his lip, stared about uncomfortably. What had Wright played, to cause such silence?