The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

Despite his occasional recourse to prayer in times of stress, Dr. Williams was not a religious man and correspondingly had little faith in miracles, but he couldn’t help feeling that his finding himself in his present surroundings constituted something closely akin to such a happening. But whatever the cause, he existed in a place of earth and rock and water, bountifully equipped with fruit and vegetables that cautious experiment soon proved tastily edible, abundant shelter, a total absence of any other life-form larger than a rabbit, and its immediate region otherwise populated solely by himself and the brightly hued being that had become his constant companion and sharer of endless musical excursions that soon left him with a lip like iron and an instrumental technique that he had never dreamed could possibly be his.

There were minor inconveniences, it was true. Insects were frequently present in both variety and abundance, but while they were an undoubted nuisance, he was, oddly, never bitten. Also, it rained—not often, but torrentially when it did happen. Dr. Williams found these things moderately unpleasant, but readily acknowledged that they were a remarkably small price to pay when viewing the picture in toto.

During the early days of his relationship with the creature, understandably excited by what seemed to him to be the perfectly reasonable possibility of establishing verbal contact, he attempted simple conversational training, but it soon became apparent that his efforts in this direction were to be in vain. It obligingly aped his carefully enunciated phrases—always, disconcertingly, mimicking his own light baritone—but there it ended. It was plain that this activity was simply regarded as some inexplicable diversion on his own part which it was willing to humor, and Dr. Williams was forced to the reluctant conclusion that its own mode of communication took some entirely different course to that of his own species. Possibly it was telepathic, an achievement that still remained little more than a dream in the minds of men. But his disappointment was short-lived. Musically, they daily reached a degree of rapport that spoke effortlessly of universal feelings and reactions, an emotional link that invoked his own immediate responses and from which he derived enormous comfort.

If there was a happier man anywhere in the universe, Dr. Williams would have laughed with uproarious disbelief on being informed of his existence. He still found it beyond him to fully accept that his present circumstances were anything other than a dream, but since he was a thinking man and therefore one who had frequently pondered on the true nature of reality, he was not unduly perturbed. Perhaps this was reality and the man-made clutter of plastic, steel and concrete that he had suddenly and astonishingly come to loathe was the dream, a nightmare peopled with uncaring, uncomprehending individuals with whom he had never really communicated and whose idly uniform acceptance of the multi-sensory exercises that now constituted their staple entertainment he scorned with the fervor of the true purist. Occasionally he thought about his wife, and shuddered. Was it possible that such a person really existed, that such a bizarre liaison had been formed! At such times he would hastily assemble his clarinet, and then immerse himself in a positive fury of invention that successfully, if only temporarily, dispelled such horrifying shadows.

The pattern of his new existence was soon formed. During the days they would wander through the placid confines of the forest, Dr. Williams engaged in desultory exploration, his companion plainly content to let itself be led by its new-found friend. Occasionally, they came across evidence of a civilization, oddly deserted machinery that lay rusting and overgrown in the green shadows, always without any hint of its nature or clue to its ownership. At such times the creature would lurk at a distance, its customary exuberance stilled, only returning when they moved on and the corroded enigma was well behind them. Once they came to a village, a bleakly regimented block of unpractically pyramidal buildings that squatted silent and deserted among the encroaching fronds. Dr. Williams entered one, and found its walls and floor liberally decorated with huge and rusting shackles. They departed, hastily, his companion tooting its obvious relief and his own ethnological suspicions further confirmed by what he had seen.

The creature’s amiable lack of intelligence, coupled with its particular musical capabilities, was the key. Clearly, it was a member, possibly the sole survivor, of a subject race— slaves and entertainers, the playthings of a technically advanced but cruel species who had, for reasons that would almost certainly remain unexplained (plague?), deserted them, fleeing the forests to seek the shelter and assistance to be found in their cities. Dr. Williams hoped with grim fervency that these were either several thousand miles away or preferably on another planet altogether.

Each evening, as they rested in the darkening shadows, he would produce the machine, solemnly select a spool, and for a while the brassy effervescence or sadly declamatory strains of jazz, performances that spanned the ninety brief years of its existence as an entity, would stir the stillness of the sleeping forest. Then, when the final blast or sigh had died and the rhythmic pulse was stilled, the recital would begin again, and he would listen, head bowed, to the patterns of simulated brass and reed that hummed and chortled in the darkness, marveling at the now hair-fine accuracy of the copy, yet always conscious of the minutely subtle differences that labeled it as such.

For Dr. Williams understood his chosen music well, and his knowledge that in its moments of greatness it became a highly personal means of statement he found both heartening and sad. It meant, simply, that when the last of the batteries had been used, access to the music in its true form would be gone forever. Yet might this not be, he reflected, in some ways for the best? He was living a new life in a new world, and nostalgia could all too easily imprison him in a cocoon of memories, only partially aware of the truths of his miraculously compatible existence.

Weeks later, a spool faltered for the last time. Sadly but firmly, as though unable to bear the death agonies of a dear friend, Dr. Williams pressed the switch, cutting Chu Berry off in uncharacteristically faltering mid-solo. He packed machine and spools neatly in their case, and when morning came scooped a hole at the base of a tree and buried them. The creature stood some little distance away, respectfully silent, its posture one of sadness and commiseration. Dr. Williams marked the tree with the five lines of the stave, carefully carved the notations of the flatted third and fifth in the key of b flat, then turned and walked away without a backward glance.

The effects of his loss soon passed. It still echoed in their own musical forays, sudden glaring reminders of lifelong idols and favorite performances that he learned to accept with equanimity and use as harmonic springboards to creations of their own. Each passing day found him increasingly aware of the understanding that integrated their musical conception, something that had existed from the beginning but was now of an interweaving complexity beyond anything that he had ever remotely envisaged. The barrier between them, composed of space and environment, was shredding, and they were moving inexorably toward a blending of musical thought and tradition that he sensed would be the greater both for its fusion and the inevitable discarding of parts of both.

This hitherto untrod plateau was reached one sultry afternoon some weeks later. Dr. Williams lay beneath a tree at the edge of a large clearing, drowsily contemplating the profuse and picturesque greenery in the near distance, while his companion wandered close by, droning a pleasant but seemingly aimless pattern of sound that played softly and at first soothingly.