Шарон Ли - Agent of Change

Edger stopped, enchanted.

The building continued its song while people gathered around it, each crying out in what could very possibly be some hasty new harmony. This was counterpointed by the screaming sirens atop the two bright red vehicles which had so recently arrived on the scene.

Edger left the walkway and moved across the crowded street toward the building that sang. His Clan members, seeing him in the throes of his passion, followed.

They moved through the crowd at the entrance very like a herd of elephants moving through grassland, and they did not stop at the policeman's order. Possibly, he had not been heard. Or his voice might merely have been approved for its place in the song, the words disregarded in the present of the experience.

Rapt, Edger came into the lobby, kin trailing after. Here, he noted, the sound of the sirens was not so shrill; the rich counter-harmony of the singers faded to a primal growl over which the solitary, single-noted song of the building soared triumphant, nearly incandescent.

And there were other textures herein encountered, doubtless meant as a frame to the piece: the softness of the carpeting beneath his feet; the clearness of the colors; the harshness of the light reflected from the framed glass surfaces. Edger stepped deeper into the experience, opening his comprehension to the wholeness of this piece of art.

Patiently, his Clan members waited.

* * *

TOO DAMN EASY, Miri thought with habitual distrust of easiness. The service corridor formed a small cul-de-sac off the first-floor hallway, and they had loitered there until the evacuation team arrived and began knocking on doors and hustling people to safety. Val Con had stepped quietly into the group of refugees, Miri at his shoulder, and so they had gotten rescued, too.

When the group hit the lobby, he as quietly dropped out, slipping ghostlike into the foliage of an artificial oasis. Intrigued by this return to complexity, Miri dropped out with him.

In the next few minutes, the situation in the lobby had grown noisier and more confused. Cops and firefighters were everywhere, yelling and pushing people around. Miri caught sight of two rescue workers shoving Peter Smith toward the door, and grinned.

"Tough Guy?"

"Hmm?" A gaggle of turtles had wandered into the lobby and he was staring at them, brows pulled together in a half-frown.

"Do you know Terrence O'Grady?"

The green eyes flicked to her face, his frown smoothing away to that look of bland politeness. Miri braced herself for a lie.

One of his eyebrows slid slightly askew and he took a deliberate breath, then released it.

"I don't know Terrence O'Grady," he said slowly. "But, for a few days, I was Terrence O'Grady."

The truth, after all. Miri blinked.

"I was afraid of that." She jerked her head toward the aliens in the lobby. "Friends of yours?"

He returned to his study. "It is difficult to be certain at this distance. They may actually be—kin."

She looked at him blankly and saw his face go from intent concentration to extreme pleasure as one of the Clutch began expounding incomprehensibly in its foghorn voice.

"That's Edger."

"It's what?" she demanded, dropping a wary hand to his arm.

"Edger," he repeated. "The big one in the middle is my brother Edger."

"Oh." She frowned at the group, and then at him. Maybe he's flipped, Robertson, she thought nervously. Don't look it, though.

The Clutch members were standing together, three of them waiting with visible patience, looking at nothing in particular, while the fourth—the loud one who stood a large head taller than his fellows—was in an attitude of animated attention. Edger, Miri reminded herself.

"Okay," she said, going with the gag for the moment. "What's he doing here?"

"I think . . . ." He paused, eyes on the four aliens. "I think that he must be listening to the music."

Miri grabbed at the ragged edge of her patience. "What music?"

Her partner waved a slim hand, encompassing the pandemonium within and without. "Edger is a connoisseur of music. I met him when I was training as First-In Scout. I had a portable 'chora with me . . . ." He shook his head, eyes still on the Clutch members, face relaxed, lips half-smiling.

"He enjoyed my playing. After I—got to know him, he offered me a place in his household, as Clan musician." The half-smile became a full smile briefly. "He also offered to import a lifemate for me, or a series of pleasure-loves, so I wouldn't sicken for my own kind."

Miri was staring at him. "First-In Scout?" she repeated, in whispering awe.

His face closed like a trap, skin pulling tight over his cheekbones and tiny muscles tensing around the eyes; the smile was gone as if it had never been.

Damn your tongue, Robertson! "What's next, boss?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice matter-of-fact.

He was already out of the tiny jungle. "Let us talk with Edger."

They moved quickly across the lobby, dodging firefighters and crowds of tenants being rescued. Val Con stopped before the largest of the Clutch people, Miri at his shoulder.

Slowly, hands hanging loose, he performed the bow of youth to age, as was proper when one who was yet shell-less would address the magnificence of one whose twelfth shell has set. He bent with the suppleness of a dancer until his forehead brushed his knee, then unbent as slowly and stood waiting to be acknowledged.

The measured pace of the bow, delivered with correct timing and in counterpoint to the frenziedness of the performance all about, drew Edger's eye. He studied the small figures before him: the brightly furred one standing in motionless respect, and the one who had performed the bow which had drawn the eye bearing a distinct resemblance to—

"By the first Egg of the first Clutch!" he boomed in joyful Trade. "It is my brother the musician! The dragonslayer! The stranger who teaches! Ahh, I had had suspicions, I will allow, but now they become certainties! Tell me, brother," he continued, lowering his voice to a mere bellow as he gestured about him with a three-fingered hand the size of a child's head. "This is yours, is it not?"

Val Con performed another slow bow, less profound than the first.

"I am honored that you recognize the workmanship," he murmured in soft Trade, "but I ask that you humor your soft brother. The work, which I had not known you might witness, is a specialty. It is to remain anonymous, known only to myself—and you, now, brother—and this lady, who assists me."

Edger sighed a tornado.

"What genius dwells within my brother! What nobility of purpose is his, who recognizes that art may be set free and allowed to pursue its own destiny and fulfillment!

"I am in your debt yet again, and I ask that you forgive my attention to the work which required you to bow such a bow. As your brother I ask that you not bow so to me again."

He paused to gaze at his brother the musician with wonder in his saucer-sized eyes.

"Frequently, I meditate upon that last work you played for the Clan, wherein you juxtaposed elements of the music of your people with the music of my own. That you could achieve such a thing without prior composition is a continuing astonishment to me. It is my opinion that most members of your race would rest, had they achieved such virtuosity upon an instrument. But you—I find you exploring other dimensions, tying the filaments of your work together with strands of discord and rhythm . . . ." He let this drift away in order to sample again the music happening now.

"It is I who must bow to you!" he announced suddenly, nearly knocking over a passing firefighter as he attempted so do just that.

His brother waved his many-fingered hands, as if he would hold back the torrent of praise.