Century Rain Part 89

"I kept meaning to ask her, but events got in the way. What's the deal, Tunguska? Is music seen as a primitive art form here, like cave painting or bone carving?"

"Not exactly," Tunguska said. "We still listen to music in the Polities, although it's a rather different sort of music than any you're likely to have experienced. But Auger and her compatriots simply don't have the option of listening to music at all. It was all our fault, you see. We stole music from them."

"How can you steal music, Tunguska?"

"You engineer a viral weapon. It can't have escaped your attention what a central role music plays in the morale of a nation at war. Now imagine taking that away, in a single stroke. We'd already designed a viral weapon that could have killed them all, had it been allowed to infect a sufficient number of hosts. But we didn't want to kill them: we wanted to turn them to our own ideology, so that our own numbers could be strengthened. Besides, a lethal virus is rather difficult to deploy across a wide sphere of battle. As soon as people start dying, quarantines are enforced. Brutal measures are taken to curtail its spread. So our thinkers went away and re-honed their weapon to attack the part of the mind a.s.sociated with language, thinking that such a virus would have a better chance of spreading before its effects were noticed."

"Nasty," Floyd said.

"But still not satisfactory," Tunguska continued, his voice as measured and untroubled as ever. "Our forecasts showed that the end result would still be tens of millions of deaths, as their habitat-based society unravelled due to lack of communication between key workers. So again our thinkers reworked the weapon. What they came up with was Amusica: a virus keyed to certain areas of the right brain hemisphere, a.n.a.logous to those left-brain foci a.s.sociated with the perception and generation of language. It worked beautifully. Victims of Amusica lose all sense of music. They can't make it, can't sing it, can't whistle it, can't play it. They can't even listen to it, either. It means nothing to them any more: just a cacophony of sounds. To some it's actively painful."

"Then Auger...and Susan White?"

"Amusica spread through Thresher society very rapidly. By the time anyone had noticed what was happening, it was far too late to do anything about it. Even now there are mutant strains of the virus in circulation. And because of the way the weapon was designed, once you have it, you pa.s.s it on to your children...and your children's children. That's the future, Floyd: a world without music, for most of them."

"Most of them?"

"It didn't touch them all. One in a thousand escaped its effects, although we still don't know why. They consider themselves very fortunate. They're hated and envied in equal measure."

"But if you can take music away...can't you put it back?"

Tunguska smiled tolerantly. "We've tried, in a spirit of bridge-mending. But volunteers are naturally reluctant to submit to even more neural intervention. Most Threshers wouldn't trust us to set a broken leg, let alone rewire their minds. And the few that do volunteer...well, the results haven't been startlingly successful. If they remember what music once sounded like, they complain that it now sounds pale and unemotional. They might be right."

"Or they might just be feeling the way we all do," Floyd said. "No one ever took music away from me, but I'm d.a.m.ned if it ever sounds quite as good as it used to when I was twenty."

"I confess that was also my suspicion. But given the harm we've done, the least we can do is give these people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there is something missing after all."

"What about your people? If this virus is everywhere, shouldn't you have caught it by now?"

"We would have, except the machines swarming through our bodies and minds keep the virus at bay." Tunguska hesitated. "Now that the subject has been broached, Floyd, I should warn you that, since you lack these machines yourself-" "That virus could hop aboard any time it likes."

"You're probably safe at the moment," Tunguska said. "You'd need to be exposed to more than one carrier before the virus has a chance of establishing itself. But if you were to remain in the system- moving freely in Thresher society-then the virus would eventually find you."

Floyd looked at the disc, his own reflection gleaming back at him. "Then I'd lose music, just the way Auger did?"

"Unless you had the good fortune to be the one in a thousand who can resist the virus...then yes, I'd say it was more or less guaranteed."

"Thanks," Floyd said. "I'm glad you told me."

Tunguska looked a little taken aback. "Thanks wasn't exactly the reaction I was expecting. Hatred and condemnation, perhaps, but not grat.i.tude."

"Bit late for condemnation, wouldn't you say? What's done is done. I don't get the impression you're particularly proud of what you did."

"No," Tunguska said, sounding genuinely relieved. "We're most certainly not proud. And if there was anything we could do to make amends-"

"Maybe once you get this small matter of a war out the way," Floyd suggested, "then you can think about rebuilding some of those bridges again. But first we have to stop Niagara."

"There was something in the cargo he needed," Tunguska said. "But he knew what he was looking for. We don't. It would be difficult enough trying to find it even if we still had the cargo, or if Ca.s.sandra had had enough time to scan the contents at a higher level of resolution."

"Wait," Floyd said, turning the record over again. "If she didn't have time to examine the cargo in detail, where did this copy come from?"

"Ca.s.sandra did the best she could, which means that the books and magazines and other journals haven't been subjected to the kind of scrutiny she might have wished. But the recordings? It was actually a rather simple matter to make a holographic scan of the groove. A lot easier than scanning a paper doc.u.ment at microscopic resolution, looking for some hidden message."

Floyd tilted the sleeve this way and that. "But if there was a hidden message here, you'd have missed it as well."

"A hidden message like the co-ordinates of the ALS? Yes. But you already know that it would only take a tiny amount of data to specify that position. A few digits...easily hidden anywhere."

"Then it's useless."

"I just thought the recordings might help the time pa.s.s. Given how much you like music-"

"Yes," Floyd said. "Very much so. And the gesture's appreciated. But without something to play these on..."

"Come, now," Tunguska said, with a playful gleam in his eye. "You don't think I'd have forgotten that, do you?"

He was looking at something behind Floyd, on the bedside table next to the sunrise wireless. Floyd turned around. There stood a phonograph set, a good one, where there had definitely not been one a minute ago.

"That's a pretty good trick, Tunguska," he said, smiling.

"Enjoy the music, Floyd. I'll return when I have some news."

After he had gone, Floyd slipped the disc on to the phonograph turntable and lowered the diamond-tipped needle into the groove. It crunched on to its track and then became quiet, except for the occasional click of static. Then the music began, Armstrong's trumpet filling the room effortlessly, Lil Hardin's piano bright and clear and cool, like rain on a hot day. Floyd smiled-it was always good to hear Satchmo, no matter the time or place-but there was something about the music that couldn't rescue his spirits. Perhaps he was too worried about Auger and the rest of it to let the music have its intended effect. But even his scratched old Gennett copy had a life to it that was missing from this version. Somewhere between Paris and Ca.s.sandra's ship, some essential spark had been bled from the music. Floyd pulled the platter off the turntable and returned it to its sleeve. He leafed through the box, finding the other jazz recordings and trying some of them, before abandoning the exercise. Maybe it wasn't the recordings so much as the player, or the acoustics of the room, but something was wrong. It was like listening to someone almost whistle a tune.

Nice try, Tunguska, he thought.

Floyd leaned back on the bed, hands crossed behind his head. He turned on the wireless again, but the news was still the same.

"You can speak to her now," Tunguska said. "But please-take things easily. She's been through a great deal in the last couple of days."

"I'll treat her with kid gloves."

"Of course. By the way, Floyd-how are you getting on with those recordings?"

"They're a real nice thought," Floyd said.

"As in-'it's the thought that counts?'"

"I'm sorry, Tunguska, but there's something off about them. Maybe that phonograph needs a new needle. Or maybe it's just me."

"I just wanted you to feel at home."

"And I appreciate the gesture. But don't worry about me, all right? I'll cope."

"You put a brave face on things, Floyd. I admire that."

Tunguska led him into the bright white chamber of the recovery room.

"I'll leave you alone with her," Tunguska said. "The machines will let me know if she experiences any

difficulties."

He stepped back through the white wall, which sealed itself tightly behind him, like blancmange.

Auger was in a state of drowsy wakefulness, sitting up in bed with a fog of silver machines twinkling

around her head and upper body. She saw him walking towards the bed and-despite her evident

weariness-managed a smile.

"Floyd! I thought they were never going to let you see me. I began to wonder if you were really all right."

"I'm fine," he said, sitting on a toadstool-shaped pedestal next to the bed. He took one of her hands and stroked the fingers. He expected her to pull away, but instead she tightened her grip on him, as if she needed this moment of human contact. "Tunguska wanted you to have some peace and quiet while you got your head together."

"It feels as if I've been here for a hundred years, with my head ringing all the while."

"Is is better now?"

"A bit. It still feels as if there's a small debating society holding their annual meeting in my skull, though."

"Ca.s.sandra's machines, I suppose. You remember what happened, don't you?"

"Not everything." She pushed a strand of sweat-damp hair from her eyes. "I remember Ca.s.sandra

dying...but not much else."

"Do you remember her machines asking permission to set up camp in your head?"

"I remember feeling very frightened about something, but knowing I had to say 'yes,' and that I didn't

have long to think it over."

"You did a very brave thing," Floyd said. "I'm proud of you."

"I hope it was worth it."

"It was. For the time being, anyway. Do you know where you are?"

"Yes," she said. "At least, as soon as I realise there's something I don't know, the information seems to

pop into my head. We're back on Ca.s.sandra's ship, except that Tunguska's running the show now."

"You think we can trust him?"

"Yes, absolutely," she said firmly, as if that should have been obvious. Then she frowned, just as

suddenly less sure of herself. "No. Wait. How could I know him that well? That must be one of Ca.s.sandra's memories..." Auger shook her head, as if she'd just taken a bite from a lemon. "This is strange. I'm not sure I like it."

"Tunguska said that Ca.s.sandra's machines seem to have taken a shine to you," Floyd said.

"Don't tell me I'm stuck like this for ever." She said it in an off-hand way, but not quite convincingly enough. "Probably just until the crisis is over," Floyd said, doing his best to sound rea.s.suring. "Do you remember that escape craft Ca.s.sandra was confident they were going to shoot down?" "Yes," Auger said, after a moment.

"Well, it got away. Made rendezvous with a bigger, faster ship. According to Tunguska, the evidence

trail points to Niagara."

This, at last, seemed to push Auger towards full alertness. She sat up straight in the bed, pushing her hair back. "We have to stop that ship before it reaches a portal. Nothing else matters."

"We tried," Floyd said.

"And?"

"No one could catch up with Niagara. And he'd already taken control of the portal."

"I thought you said we were still chasing him."

"We are. Tunguska sent reinforcements to regain control of the portal. His boys kept it open for us.

We're in the hyperweb at this very moment."