The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

A sudden and unexpected modulation occurred, a tonal and harmonic obliquity that caused Dr. Williams to stiffen abruptly and twist his head towards the now still figure that faced him from the centre of the clearing. The creature sang on, sounds that built gradually to a complex of timbres that he had never heard before yet which flicked tantalizingly against his mind, stimulating areas of reaction that were contradictorily both new and hauntingly familiar. Something boiled sharply inside his consciousness and as suddenly subsided, an abruptly cleansing explosion that left him shaking with unfulfilled awareness.

He sat up, removed the sections of his clarinet from his haversack, and assembled them with a trancelike deliberateness. Still seated beneath the tree, he began to play, probing low-register adornments that added harmonic sinew to the bubbling search, shepherding the other’s inventions firmly toward the ultimate cohesion that he knew had come at last, and suddenly, like an exultant shout, the pattern was resolved into a sustained sonic tapestry that rang about the clearing, dissolving their surroundings and the very ground beneath them; timeless, placeless sound that seemed to radiate out to the farthest reaches of infinity. Eyes closed, Dr. Williams let his now unbidden fingers seek out the ingredients that were his contribution to this miracle, never faltering in their search, surely predestined in the unhesitating lightness of their choice. He soared and plummetted in a vast sea of sound of which he was an integral part, filled with a sense of completeness that he had never known or dreamed could possibly be. Time was without meaning, space a boundless vista that echoed the triumph of their empathy. Weeping and unresisting, Dr. Williams let himself be reborn.

Soft and distant at first, so faint that he at first accepted it as a not yet integrated part of this happening, an oddly discordant note infiltrated his awareness, a gradually swelling intrusion that bored implacably into this emotional narcosis. Vaguely, he wondered if he had suddenly become acceptable to the native insect population, perhaps about to pay a symbolic toll that marked his physical as well as spiritual acceptance into his new world. He flapped a temporarily unoccupied hand by his ear. The buzzing persisted, loudly now, a pointless, jarring obbligato to the music which flooded about him, its creator seemingly lost in an ecstasy of sound and movement that grew in intensity as it progressed.

His inability to ever fully accept the reality of his surroundings had been a natural precaution on Dr. Williams’ part, an instinctively erected barrier against the possible presence of insanity that he had only lowered completely minutes before. Now, suddenly, as the dark pool of shadow swept across the clearing and the huge and writhing figure that faced him, it was as though it had snapped back into place of its own volition, insulating him, so that he watched what followed in a detached way, warily waiting for its completion before committing himself to accept it as fact

The shadow passed on, yet somehow it had remained, a whispily fringed darkness that now dulled the customarily bright body of his friend. Dr. Williams watched stiffly as its movements accelerated explosively from a graceful weaving pattern to grotesque and terrifying frenzy. Simultaneously, the music dissolved into screaming clamor.

The creature’s collapse was slow. To Dr. Williams’ disbelieving eyes it seemed to shrink upon itself, movement that was blurred by the thickening haze of smoke around it and which now touched his nostrils, acrid and sickening. He watched its tendrils aimlessly collide and intertwine, still blaring their dissonant agony but weaker by the second, a dying fall of sound that slid jerkingly down in deathly accompaniment to the movements of its maker.

Its final fall was punctuated by various unpleasant sounds. It lay before him, a charred and convulsively deflating thing that bubbled offensively at irregular intervals. Otherwise, it was quite silent.

From the comer of his eye, Dr. Williams saw other movement. He turned his head to watch the small scout ship that had just landed and disgorged two men who now made their way hurriedly towards him. As they passed the still smoking mound they produced weapons and fired them in its direction.

How pointless, he thought. Anyone can see that it’s dead.

They reached him and assisted him to his feet, sudden movement that made him feel violently ill. He stared at them, serious faces above blue uniforms.

“We had a hell of a job finding you,” one face said. “The automatic signal got through all right, so we didn’t have any trouble with the coordinates, but this place is all trees. You must be best part of a hundred miles from the ship. Why didn’t you stay close to it?” There was a pause. After a moment, the other face said, “It’s lucky for you you were out in the open when we did find you. We couldn’t have happened along at a better time if we’d rehearsed it. What was that thing, anyway?”

Dr. Williams found that he was still unexpectedly holding his clarinet. He shook his head, focused squintingly, grasped it with both hands, and swung it like a club at the nearest face. There was a startled ejaculation, a blur of movement, and he was thrown face down onto the ground. Someone straddled him, and he felt moist coldness dabbing on his aim.

“Poor guy,” a panting voice said. “He must have really taken off. If anybody saved me from a thing like that, the last thing I’d do would be to try and brain them.” There was a prick that he hardly felt, and the voice faded, abruptly.

And then Dr. Williams slept and dreamed dreams that were full of huge shadows and burning men in blue uniforms who screamed and sang mad songs while they danced and died. He watched their fuming gyrations critically, applauding as they disintegrated into ashes at his feet. Occasionally it seemed to him that they loomed close, smiling down at him and talking to him in soothing voices, and then he in turn would scream at them until they were momentarily snuffed out, reappearing through the diffusing pall of smoke, once more singing their tortured and incoherent songs and performing their burning dance against the darkness beyond.

When the ship reached Earth he was immediately rushed to a place where doctors and machines were waiting to seal off the nightmares forever behind impregnable doors, and after a time they succeeded. Under treatment, his experiences shrank and grew misty in his mind until they finally winked feebly out, pushed firmly and efficiently beyond the boundaries of recall. He still knew—because he was told—that he had been involved in an accident of some kind, but the doctors prudently fabricated a suitable story as to its supposed nature and whereabouts. Knowledge of the truth was the key to memory and possible disaster, and the treatment was an expensive business that the insurance people were reluctant to pay for more than once per claimant. Consequently, he was encouraged to believe that he had been the victim of a piece of careless driving on the part of an unapprehended jetster, and was indignantly content to accept this as the cause of the blank spot that persisted in his mind. He was also reunited with his wife, whose tearful solicitude was quite genuine and which lasted for all of three weeks before being replaced by the verbal prodding that he somehow found rather less bearable now.

Following a period of convalescence, Dr. Williams resumed his professional activities, lecturing to bored or faintly amused audiences on campuses and in sparsely filled halls, only rarely encountering a flicker of genuine interest or understanding. He had grown accustomed to this a long time before, but now, at times, he somehow shared their apathy. The music still stirred him with its brassy melancholy, but there were occasions when it seemed that its vitals had been suddenly and inexplicably removed, leaving behind a thin and empty shell of sound that rang hollowly on his ear. When this happened, Dr. Williams would feel something that was inescapably buried inside him stir faintly, a dim and fading cadence that sounded far beyond his remembering but which briefly moved him to wonderment and an intangible longing.