Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

Thinking of it reminded Bram to check his waistwatch for the time; the newer people might think him an old fuddy-duddy for clinging to habits learned on the Father World, but any honest person would have to admit that it was more polite to unobtrusively feel for the time with your fingertips than to read it off a visual wrist meter.

“We’d better think about going, Mim,” he said when he had a chance to get her attention. “It’s only two hours till the concert.”

Mim made the announcement general. “Sorry to rush off,” she said, “but I’m not cellist emeritus yet. I have to do my share with the others. Edard insists on a thick cello sound—he says he needs at least four.”

“I’d better go, too,” Ang said. She was in the violin section. “No, you stay a while if you like,” she said to Jao.

“I wish I could hear the concert, Mim -tsu-mu,” Ame said, “but I don’t think I’d be welcome with two yowling babies.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Smeth said.

“No, you go,” Ame told him. “Don’t you dare miss Edard’s premiere.”

“I can hear it later on tape,” he said.

“ Tape? ” Jao exploded. He put on an indignant expression for Mim’s benefit. “Have you been paying the remotest attention to what Ang and Mim’ve been saying? The whole point is that it’s living, breathing music. If you’re going to hear it through a speaker; Edard might as well’ve done it all on a synthesizer!”

“Since when are you the great music lover?” Smeth snapped.

Ame stopped him with a look. “You go on,” she said. “One of us ought to be there.” She apologized to Mim. “Tell Edard -tsu-hsiung I’m sorry. I’ll hear another performance of it.” The punctilious honorific she added to Edard’s name meant something like “ancestor-brother.” Immortality was stretching the language out of shape.

The door rasp sounded. “I’ll get it,” Smeth said, glad to escape.

While Mim and Ame said their good-byes, Bram heard raised voices at the door. Someone was wroth with Smeth. When leave-taking was done and Bram accompanied the two musicians to the entry chamber, he saw that the agitated caller was Jao’s granddaughter, Enyd, the tree systems officer.

“I didn’t expect to find you here, Captain,” Enyd said. “I came here to ask physics supervisor Smeth if it’s true that he plans to put Yggdrasil under acceleration again, and if so to lodge a protest.”

Smeth blustered, “The decision to reactive the drive is entirely the prerogative of—”

Bram cut him off. “Yes, it’s true, Officer Enyd. I planned to discuss it with you first thing in the morning. I apologize for the fact that word apparently got to you in a roundabout way before I had that opportunity. You should have been the first to know.”

“It was one of the technicians working on the overhaul,” Smeth fumed. “That loudmouth Perc, I’ll bet. He must have spread it all over the place. All I did was to flash the workcage to ask how soon they could promise start-up if we decided to go! But I told them to keep their mouths shut.”

“We’ll have to make an announcement,” Bram said.

“Captain, Yggdrasil’s barely had time to recover,” Enyd said. “It wants to spin normally for a while. It can’t go back so soon to the artificial rhythm of adjusting its lateral growth once every Bobbing.”

Bram looked at Mim. “Go on ahead, Mim. I’ll catch up.” Mim and Ame left after a belated, perfunctory exchange of greetings with the distracted Enyd.

“How is Yggdrasil’s ice reserve?” Bram asked, before Enyd could resume her complaints.

She hesitated, then said scrupulously, “Adequate, I suppose. But if we are to resume traveling, I would prefer to achieve satiety.”

“I’ll tell you what. When we get the fusion drive started, we’ll chase down a few more comets for Yggdrasil before proceeding inward.”

“Captain, water and trace elements aren’t the only point. Yggdrasill needs a summer season, relief from stress, time for sustained photosynthesis. I wouldn’t mind if you turned on the fusion fire for that; right now, Yggdrasil’s trying to make do with starlight … and the minor portion of infrared that it’s able to convert into the six-hundred-sixty-and seven-hundred-thirty-millimicron range.”

Her voice was almost tremulous, belying the cool, remote beauty that drove her suitors wild.

Bram spoke gravely. “I’m confident in your ability to monitor Yggdrasil’s metabolism and do whatever is necessary, Chief Officer Enyd. I’m going to ask you to keep this tree happy for two more years. That’s the time we’ll need to penetrate to the center of this system under one gravity’s acceleration. Then we can let Yggdrasil bask in the light of a real sun for a while, while we explore.”

Edard sat in the cello section with Mim and the other two cellists, but sometimes in the finicky passages he would leave off playing and beat time for the other musicians. Bram watched the slender, dark-haired figure with pride. The music was first-rate; everybody said so, Mim had told him after the rehearsals. Even the old diehard, Kesper, had said with tears in his eyes, “If Mozart had written another symphony besides the Jupiter, it would have sounded like this!”

In the seat beside Bram, Smeth was trying to suppress a cough. Jao glared at him fiercely, and Smeth grumbled, “Where’s the tune? Everybody’s playing something different.”

There were whispers of “ Quiet!” from the surrounding seats, and Smeth subsided. Bram looked around the great, carved wooden chamber. Every one of the eight thousand seats was filled, and a repeat performance had been scheduled for those who were unable to get in. Edard had refused to allow a microphone pickup, saying that it would only encourage people to listen in their own chambers.

The live sound was glorious, Bram had to admit. The acoustics of the wooden cavity, refined over the centuries, helped.

Stringed instruments had come a long way in five hundred years. The new cello was like a truncated pyramid the height of a child, and the performers played it vertically instead of horizontally on a stand, as before. The bow weighed only a couple of pounds now and could be played without an elbow clamp; it was a lightweight plastic framework with its own power source to keep the continuous friction band running smoothly around its sprockets. Mim was a stickler for proper bow technique. She told her students that the bow should hardly be moved at all—just raised or lowered on the eight strings.

The music was coming to a climax. The cellos all buzzed in unison; the violins soared; the horn players raised their long, conical instruments and blared in thrilling harmony.

It was over. Bram stood with the rest and applauded. On the central platform, Edard looked flushed and pleased. Mim went over and kissed him.

“You’ve got a talented boy, all right,” Jao said. “Too bad he has no head for science.”

Bram laughed. “Are you trying to sound like Smeth?”

“I’d never say a thing like that,” Smeth protested indignantly. “I thought it was … very good.”

The applause rose, swelled. The other musicians were closing around Edard, clapping him on the back, grasping his hands. Edard looked no younger than the others, but Bram could not help reflecting on his age. What will he develop into, he thought, with all eternity ahead of him?

The audience had settled down again for the encore. Edard had wisely refrained from repeating his own music and was giving them the familiar slow movement of the Jupiter Symphony—deliberately inviting comparison, Bram thought, smiling at the arrogance of youth. He closed his eyes and listened as the long-drawn cello melody gravely climbed its steps while the violins scolded it. The audience held its breath. Even Smeth sat rapt and silent beside him.