Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

A fourth woman appeared, her face pale and spectral in the glimmering light from the fire. She looked very old. And as Wagner watched she lifted her arms to the moon and turned toward him. “Richard,” she said, “escape the curse of the Ring.”

A chill ran through him.

“Do you recognize her, Herr Wagner?”

“It’s Erda. The earth goddess. The others are her daughters—.”

“They are.”

“The Norns. They foretell the future.”

“That is correct.”

“We are back in the theater.”

“No. We are where we seem to be.”

“But they are myths.”

She smiled. “Am I not a myth?”

The anger was draining away. His hands shook, and his body trembled. “Who are you?”

“I think you know.”

He listened to the wind moving through the trees. Waited until his voice steadied. “And the Norns? What have they to do with me?”

“They know of the effect your Ring operas will have. And they know that this will lead nowhere but to disaster.”

“That’s rubbish!”

“Is it? Ask the Norns, Herr Wagner. I know what they have read in your future, and I think you should know of it too.”

One of the Norns held up a skein. “This is the future that will be, that you will help bring about.” She stepped aside and Wagner looked past her into a clearing. Into a field, which widened as he watched. And he could see movement. Hundreds of gray, shabbily dressed people staggered past in a line that seemed to have no end. They were little more than skeletons. Their skin was mottled and he could see their bones. Their eyes were black, and he could smell sickly, unwashed bodies. And there were children with them. Cries and moans escaped the marchers and were blown away on the wind.

They walked beside a fence, topped by cruel-looking spikes. Soldiers wearing steel helmets escorted them, struck them with the butts of their weapons, hit them again when they stumbled and fell. And the soldiers laughed.

The commands were given in German. Occasional curses were in German. The laughter was German.

“That’s not possible,” Wagner said.

“What isn’t?”

“We would never behave that way. We are a civilized people.”

“One might make the argument there are no civilized people.” Ahead, at the front of the line, orange lights had come on.

“Nonsense. Why are these people here?”

“They have been declared criminals .”

“Criminals.” While he struggled to understand, the majestic opening chords of Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Gotterdammerung rose into the night air. Impossible. “That is my music.”

“So it is.”

“But—”

“They use it in an attempt to give meaning to this .” She studied the people stumbling past.

“You said they are criminals. What crime have they committed?”

“They are Jews.”

“And—?”

“They are Jews, Herr Wagner.”

The air was heavy. The Funeral March swirled around him, graceful and magnificent and clinging to the stars. A farewell to the greatest of German heroes. “What are the lights? Up where the orchestra is?”

“Those are ovens, Herr Wagner. Welcome to the new world.”

“Tell me again why this is happening.” They were back on the street, in front of the bake shop. Wagner’s cheeks were wet, and he was still trembling.

“It’s not happening yet. It will happen.”

“When?”

“In a little more than half a century.”

“And you’re telling me that my music is the cause?”

“It’s an appeal to a tribalism that has always been dangerous. But it becomes more so in a future world where everyone can hear your music. A world with ways to communicate you cannot now imagine.”

“And these people are being killed because—.”

“—They belong to the wrong tribe.”

“So you are saying that if I go no farther, if I cancel what I have already produced, that march we saw out there tonight will not come to pass.”

“Oh, no, Herr Wagner. It will happen. There is too much entrenched hatred and stupidity for it not to happen. What I am offering you is a chance to keep your name clean. To avoid being drafted into it as a collaborator.”

“A collaborator? How can I be a collaborator? I’ll be long dead when these things occur.”

“Nevertheless, your hand will be part of it. Your genius will make its contribution.”

Finally, a coach appeared on the street. It was unoccupied. But Wagner made no move for it. “If it means so much to you, why don’t you intervene? Step in. Stop it cold. Surely you can do that.”

Her eyes slid shut and he was able to breathe again. “Unfortunately,” she said quietly, “we cannot halt the flow of history. We could strike dead the madman who will perpetrate it. But there would only be another madman. It is the attitude that is the problem. The attitude that you, Herr Wagner, are at this moment helping to foster.”

He was silent a moment, knowing that what she said was madness, but feeling in it the ring of truth. “No,” he said finally. “I can’t believe that.”

“The problem is not the occasional murderous dictator,” she went on. “It never is. The problem is the help he receives from the likeminded and the fearful. Civilization will collapse here not because of one man and his army of thugs, but because ordinary people will turn in their neighbors. And because geniuses will write martial masterpieces. There are too many collaborators.”

He was never certain it had actually happened. So, even though he briefly toyed with the prospect of giving up his career, of abandoning everything he loved, everything that made life sweet, he could not bring himself to do it. It wasn’t the money. And it wasn’t even that his name would be lost to history, that Richard Wagner would simply become one of the millions who pass through this life unnoticed except for the few around them, ultimately having no impact.

No.

At the end of the week, as he sat watching Brunnhilde in Gotterdammerung , he was swept away by the power of the performance, and he understood that he could not deprive the world of such a magnificent creation. He owed it to the future to hold his ground. Whatever the cost.

He needed only look around at the audience, which was utterly transported, to know he had done the right thing.

When it was over, he did not linger as he traditionally had after an opening night performance. Instead, he left quickly, signaled a carriage, and gave the driver his destination. As it pulled away from the theater, he saw a woman in a red cloak watching him. He almost told the driver to stop.

David was dead at last.

I will carry all my days the vision of Nick frozen against the sunlight while the wind blew the preacher’s words across green fresh-cut grass.

The boy had never drawn a breath that was free of pain. He’d slipped away, almost unexpectedly, on the eve of his fifteenth birthday. “In God’s hands,” they murmured over the sound of the trees. “He’s better off.”

Afterward, Nick refused my offer to stay with us a few days. I was uncomfortable at the prospect of my brother buried in his apartment. But he assured me he’d be all right, that there was enough going on at work to keep him engaged. “It’s been coming a long time,” he said, voice tight. And: “What I’m grateful for is, he never gave up. I don’t think he ever believed it would actually happen.”

I tried to stay in touch, but it was a busy time for me, and Nick wasn’t very good at returning phone calls anyway. On the occasional evenings when my duties took me to the branch bank on Somerset, I made it a point to drive a few blocks out of my way, past his condo. It was on the rooftop of a squat five-story stone building. I stopped to talk to him only once, and he seemed so uncomfortable that I did not do so again. But from the street I could see him moving around in there, backlit, staring out over the city.