Bear, Greg - The Infinity Concerto

VIP免费
2024-12-07 0 0 665.71KB 198 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
The Infinity Concerto
Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1
Greg Bear
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (1 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
EON
ETERNITY
BLOOD MUSIC
THE FORGE OF GOD
QUEEN OF ANGELS
TANGENTS
PSYCHLONE
HEADS ANVIL OF STARS
LEGEND
Copyright © Greg Bear 1984,1986 Afterword © Greg Bear
To Betty Chater dear friend, teacher, and colleague and for Kristine, a kind of Beatrice
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (2 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his
soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke — Ay! — and what
then?
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What song did the sirens sing?
— Ancient Riddle
Chapter One
Contents - Next
Are you ready?
"Huh?" Michael Perrin twitched in his sleep. An uncertain number of tall white forms stood around his
bed, merging with the walls, the dresser, the bookcases and easels.
He's not very impressive.
Michael rolled over and rubbed his nose. His short sandy hair tousled up against his pillow. His thick
feathery red eyebrows pulled together as if in minor irritation, but his eyes stayed shut.
Look deeper. Several of the forms bent over him.
He's only a man-child.
Yet he has the hallmark.
What's that? Wasting his talents in all directions instead of concentrating? Never quite able to make up
his mind what he is going to be? A ghostly arm waved at the easels and bookcases, at the desk swamped
with ragged-edged notebooks, chewed pencils and scraps of paper.
Indeed. That is the hallmark, or one of —
Michael's alarm clock went off with a hideous buzz. He jerked upright in bed and slapped his hand over
the cut-off switch, hoping his parents hadn't heard. He sleepily regarded the glowing green numbers;
twelve thirty in the morning. He picked up his watch to check. "Damn." The clock was eight minutes late.
He only had twenty-two minutes.
He rolled out of bed, kicking a book of Yeats' poems across the floor with one bare foot. He swore under
his breath and felt for his pants. The only light he dared use was the Tensor lamp on his desk. He pushed
aside the portable typewriter to let the concentrated glow spread farther and spilled a stack of paperbacks
on the floor. Bending over to pick them up, he smacked his head on the edge of the desk.
Teeth clenched, Michael grabbed his pants from the back of the chair and slipped them on. One leg on
and the other stuck halfway, he lost balance and steadied himself by pushing against the wall.
His fingers brushed a framed print hung slightly off balance against the lines and flowers of the
wallpaper. He squinted at the print — a Bonestell rendition of Saturn seen from one of its closer moons.
His head throbbed.
A tall, slender figure was walking across the print's cratered moonscape. He blinked. The figure turned
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (3 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
and regarded him as if from a considerable distance, then motioned for him to follow. He scrunched his
eyes shut, and when he opened them again, the figure had vanished. "Christ," he said softly. "I'm not even
awake yet."
He buckled his belt and donned his favorite shirt, a short-sleeved brown pull-over with a V-neck. Socks,
gray hush-puppies and tan nylon windbreaker completed the ensemble. But he was forgetting something.
He stood in the middle of the room, trying to remember, when his eyes lit on a small book bound in
glossy black leather. He picked it up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket, zipping the pocket shut. He dug in
his pants pocket for the note, found it folded neatly next to the key-holder and glanced at his watch again.
Twelve forty-five.
He had fifteen minutes.
He trod softly down the wall-edge of the stairs, avoiding most of the squeaks, and half-ran to the front
door. The living room was black except for the digital display on the video recorder. Twelve forty-seven,
it said.
He opened and closed the door swiftly and ran across the lawn. The neighborhood streetlights had been
converted to sodium-vapor bulbs that cast a sour orange glow over the grass and sidewalk. Michael's
shadow marched ahead, growing huge before it vanished in the glare of the next light. The orange
emphasized the midnight-blue of the sky, dulling the stars.
Four blocks south, the orange lights ended and traditional streetlamps on concrete posts took over. His
father said those lights went back to the 1920's and were priceless. They had been installed when the
neighborhood houses had first been built; back then, they had stood on a fancy country road, where
movie stars and railroad magnates had come to get away from it all.
The houses were imposing at night. Spanish-style white plaster and stucco dominated; some, two stories
tall with enclosures over the side driveways. Others were woodsy, shake shingles on walls and roofs and
narrow frame windows staring darkly out of dormers.
All the houses were dark. It was easy to imagine the street was a movie set, with nothing behind the walls
but hollowness and crickets.
Twelve fifty-eight. He crossed the last intersection and turned to face his destination. Four houses down
and on the opposite side of the street was the white plaster, single-story home of David Clarkham. It had
been deserted for over forty years, yet its lawns were immaculately groomed and its hedges trimmed,
walls spotless and Spanish wood beams unfaded. Drawn curtains in the tall arched windows hid only
emptiness — or so it was realistic to assume. Being realistic hadn't brought him here, however.
For all he knew, the house could be crammed with all manner of things… incredible, unpleasant things.
He stood beneath the moon-colored streetlight, half in the shadow of a tall, brown-leafed maple, folding
and unfolding the paper in his pants pocket with one sweaty hand.
One o'clock in the morning. He wasn't dressed for adventure. He had the instructions, the book and the
learner key-holder with its one old brass key; what he didn't have was conviction.
It was a silly decision. The world was sane; such opportunities didn't present themselves. He withdrew
the paper and read it for the hundredth time:
"Use the key to enter the front door. Do not linger. Pass through the house, through the back door and
through the side gate to the front door of the neighboring house on the left, as you face the houses. The
door to that house will be open. Enter. Do not stop to look at anything. Surely, quickly, make your way to
the back of the house, through the back door again, and across the rear yard to the wrought-iron gate. Go
through the gate and turn to your left. The alley behind the house will take you past many gates on both
sides. Enter the sixth gate on your left."
He folded the note and replaced it. What would his parents think, seeing him here, contemplating
breaking and entering — or at the very least, entering without breaking?
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (4 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
"There comes a time," Arno Waltiri had said, "when one must disregard the thoughts of one's parents, or
the warnings of old men; when caution must be put temporarily aside and instincts followed. In short,
when one must rely on one's own judgment…"
Michael's parents gave parties renowned throughout the city. Michael had met the elderly composer
Waltiri and his wife, Golda, at one such party in June. The party celebrated the Equinox ("Late," his
mother explained, "because nothing we do is prompt"). Michael's father was a carpenter with a reputation
for making fine furniture; he had a wide clientele among the rich and glamorous folk of Los Angeles, and
Waltiri had commissioned him to make a new bench for his fifty-year-old piano.
Michael had stayed downstairs for the first hour of the party, wandering through the crowd and sipping a
bottle of beer. He listened in while the heavily bearded, gray-haired captain of an ocean liner told a young
stage actress of his perilous adventures during World War II, "on convoy in the Western Ocean."
Michael's attention was evenly divided between them; his breath seemed to shorten, the woman was so
beautiful, and he'd always been interested in ships and the sea. When the captain put an arm around the
actress and stopped talking of things nautical, Michael moved on. He sat in a folding chair near a noisy
group of newspaper people.
Journalists irritated Michael. They came in large numbers to his parents' parties. They were brash and
drank a lot and postured and talked more about politics than writing. When their conversation turned to
literature (which was seldom), it seemed all they had ever read was Raymond Chandler or Ernest
Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Michael tried to interject a few words about poetry, but the
conversation stopped dead and he moved on again.
The rest of the party was taken up by a councilman and his entourage, a few businessmen and the
neighbors, so Michael selected a reserve supply of hors d'ouevres and carried the plate upstairs to his
room.
He closed the door and switched on the TV, then sat at his small desk — which he was rapidly
outgrowing — and pulled a sheaf of poems from the upper drawer.
Music pounded faintly through the floor. They were dancing.
He found the poem he had written that morning and read it over, frowning. It was yet another in a long
line of bad Yeats imitations. He was trying to compress the experiences of a senior in high school into
romantic verse, and it wasn't working.
Disgusted, he returned the poems to the drawer and switched the TV channels until he found an old
Humphrey Bogart movie. He'd seen it before; Bogart was having woman trouble with Barbara Stanwyck.
Michael's troubles with women had been limited to stuffing love poems into a girl's locker. She had
caught him doing it and laughed at him.
There was a soft tap on his door. "Michael?" It was his father.
"Yeah?"
"You receiving visitors?"
"Sure." He opened the door. His father came in first, slightly drunk, and motioned for an old, white-
haired man to follow.
"Mike, this is Arno Waltiri, composer. Arno, my son, the poet."
Waltiri shook Michael's hand solemnly. His nose was straight and thin and his lips were full and young-
looking. His grip was strong but not painful. "We are not intruding, I hope?" His accent was indefinite
middle-European, faded from years in California.
"Not at all," Michael said. He felt a little awkward; his grandparents had died before he was born, and he
wasn't used to old people.
Waltiri examined the prints and posters arranged on the walls. He paused before the print of Saturn,
glanced at Michael, and nodded. He turned to a framed magazine cover showing insect-like creatures
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (5 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
dancing near wave-washed beach rocks and smiled. "Max Ernst," he said. His voice was a soft rumble.
"You obviously like to visit strange places."
Michael muttered something about never having actually been to anyplace strange.
"He wants to be a poet," his father said, pointing to the bookcases lining the walls. "A packrat. Keeps
everything he's read."
Waltiri regarded the television with a critical eye. Bogart was painstakingly explaining a delicate matter
to Stanwyck. "I wrote the score for that one," he said.
Michael brightened immediately. He didn't have much money for records — he spent most of his
allowance and summer earnings on books — but the five records he did have consisted of a Bee Gees
album, a Ricky Lee Jones concert double, and the soundtrack albums for the original King Kong, Star
Wars and Citizen Kane. "You did? When was that?"
"1940," Waltiri said. "So long ago, now, but seems much closer. I scored over two hundred films before I
retired." Waltiri sighed and turned to Michael's father. "Your son is very diverse in his interests."
Waltiri's hands were strong and broad-fingered, Michael noticed, and his clothing was well-tailored and
simple. His slate-gray eyes seemed very young. Perhaps the most unusual thing about him were his teeth,
which were like gray ivory.
"Ruth would like for him to study law," his father said, grinning. "I hear poets don't make much of a
living. Still, it beats wanting to be a rock star."
Waltiri shrugged. "Rock star isn't so bad." He put a hand on Michael's shoulder. Usually Michael resented
such familiarities, but not this time. "I like impractical people, people who are willing to rely only on
themselves. It was very impractical for me to want to become a composer." He sat on Michael's desk
chair, hands on his knees, elbows pointed out, staring at the TV. "So very difficult to get anything
performed • at all, not to mention by a good orchestra. So I followed my friend Steiner to California—"
"You knew Max Steiner?"
"Indeed. Sometime you must come over to our house, visit Golda and me, perhaps listen to the old
scores." At that moment, Waltiri's wife entered the room, a slender, golden-haired woman a few years
younger than he. She bore a distinct resemblance to Gloria Swanson, Michael thought, but without the
wild look Swanson had had in Sunset Boulevard. He liked Golda immediately.
So it had all begun with music. When his father delivered the piano bench, Michael tagged along. Golda
met them at the door, and ten minutes later Arno was guiding them around the ground floor of the two-
story bungalow. "Arno loves to talk," Golda told Michael as they approached the music room at the rear
of the house. "If you love to listen, you'll get along just fine."
Waltiri opened the door with a key and let them enter first.
"I don't go in here very often now," he said. "Golda keeps it dusted. I read nowadays, play the piano in
the front room now and then, but I don't need to listen." He tapped his head. "It's all up here, every note."
The walls on three sides were covered with shelves of records. Waltiri pulled down big lacquered masters
from a few of his early films, then pointed out the progression to smaller disks, scores released by record
companies on seventy-eights, and finally the long-play format Michael was familiar with. For scores
composed in the 1950's and 60's, he had tapes neatly labeled and shelved in black and white and plaid
boxes. "This was my last score," he said, pulling down a bigger tape box. "Half-inch stereo eight-track
master. For William Wyler, you know. In 1963 he asked me to score Call It Sleep. Not my finest score,
but certainly my favorite film."
Michael ran his finger along the tape box labels. "Look! Mr. Waltiri—"
"Arno, please. Only producers call me Mr. Waltiri."
"You did the music for Bogart in The Man Who Would Be King!”
"Certainly. For John Huston, actually. Good score, that one."
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (6 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
"That's my favorite movie," Michael said, awed.
Waltiri's eyes sparkled. For the next two months, Michael spent most of his free time in the Waltiri house,
listening to him recite selections on the piano or carefully play the fragile masters of the scores. It had
been a wonderful two months, almost a justification for being bookish, something of a loner, buried in his
mind instead of hanging out with friends. . ..
Now Michael stood on the porch of Clarkham's house. He tried the handle on the heavy wooden door;
locked, as expected. He removed the key from his pants pocket. It was late for the old neighborhood.
There was no street traffic, not even the sound of distant airplanes. Everything seemed to have been
muffled in a blanket.
Two months before, on a hot, airless August day, Waltiri had taken Michael up to the attic to look
through papers and memorabilia. Michael had exulted over letters from Clark Gable, correspondence
with Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a manuscript copy of a Stravinsky oratorio.
"Up here, it feels like it's the forties again," Michael said. Waltiri stared down at lines of light thrown by a
wall vent across a stack of boxes and said, "Perhaps it is." He looked up at Michael. "Let's go downstairs
and get some iced tea. And on the way — instead of my talking about myself — on the way, I would like
you to tell me why you want to be a poet."
That was difficult. Sitting on the porch, Michael sipped from his glass and shook his head. "I don't know.
Mom says it's because I want to be difficult. She laughs, but I think she means it." He made a wry face.
"As if my folks should worry about me being different. They're not your normal middle-class couple,
either. She might be right. But it's something else, too. When I write poetry, I'm more in touch with being
alive. I like living here. I have some friends. But… it seems so limited. I try hard to find the flavor, the
richness, but I can't. There has to be something more." He rubbed his cheek and looked at the fallen
magnolia blossoms on the lawn. "Some of my friends just go to the movies. That's their idea of magic, of
getting away. I like movies, but I can't live in them."
The composer nodded, his slate-gray eyes focused on the distance above the hedges bordering the yard.
"You think there's something higher than what we see — or lower — and you want to find it."
"That's it." Michael nodded.
"Are you a good poet?"
"Not very," Michael said automatically.
"No false modesty now." Waltiri wiped condensation from his glass on the knee of his pants.
Michael thought for a moment. "I'm going to be."
"Going to be what?"
"I'm going to be a good poet."
"That's a fine thing to say. Now that you've said it, you know I'll be watching you. You must become a
good poet."
Michael shook his head ruefully. "Thanks a lot!"
"Think nothing of it. We all need someone to watch over us. For me, it was Gustav Mahler. I met him
when I was eleven years old, and he asked me much the same thing. I was a young piano player — how
do they say — a prodigy. 'How good will you be?' he asked after he heard me perform. I tried to dodge
the question by acting like a young boy, but he turned his very intense dark eyes on me and said again,
'How good?' Because I was cornered, I puffed up and said, 'I'll be very good.' And he smiled at me! What
a benediction that was. Ah, what a moment! Do you know Mahler?"
He meant Mahler's music, and Michael didn't.
"He was my god. The sad German. I worshiped him. He died a few months after we met, but somehow I
felt he still watched me, he would still be disappointed if I didn't make something of myself."
By early September, Waltiri had taken Michael even further into his confidence. "When I began to write
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (7 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
music for movies, I was a little ashamed," he said one evening when Michael came over for dinner. "Even
though my first score was for a good movie, Trevor Howard in Ashenden. Now I have no regrets, but I
thought then, what would my heroes say about writing for silly films? Still, it was next to impossible to
work otherwise. I had married Golda in 1930, and we had to live. Times were hard then.
"But always before me was the shining splendor of perhaps doing serious music, concert hall material. I
wrote some on the side — piano pieces, cantatas, exactly the opposite of the big orchestral scores for the
studios. A little has even been recorded recently, because I am so well-known as a film composer. I
wanted to do an opera — how I loved the libretti of Hofmannsthal, and how I envied Richard Strauss that
he lived in a time when such things were easier! 'Dream and reality are one, together, you and I alone,
always together… to all eternity…' 'Geht all's sonst wie ein Traum dahin vor meinem Sinn…" He laughed
and shook his head. "But I am wandering.
"I had one last fling with serious music. And…" Waltiri paused in the dim, candlelit dining room, his
eyes again focused on the distance, this time piercing a framed landscape over the china cupboard. "A
very serious fling it was. A man my own age then, perhaps a little older, by the name of David Clarkham
approached me at Warner Brothers one day. I remember it was raining, but he didn't wear a
raincoat…just a gray wool suit, without any drips on it. Not wet, you understand?"
Michael nodded.
"We had some mutual acquaintances. At first, I thought maybe he was just another studio vulture. You
know the kind, maybe. They hang around, bask in other peoples' fame and fortune, live off parties.
'Lounge lizards,' somebody called them. But it turned out he was knowledgeable about music. A
charming fellow. We got along well… for a time.
"He had some theories about music that were highly unusual, to say the least." Waltiri went to a glassed-
in bookcase, lifted a door, and withdrew a small thick volume in a worn wrapper. He held it out for
Michael's inspection. The title was Devil's Music and the author was Charles Fort.
"We worked together, Clarkham and I. He suggested orchestrations and arrangements; I composed."
Waltiri's expression became grim. His next words were clipped and ironic. "'Arno,' he tells me — we are
good friends by this time — 'Arno, there shall be no other music like this. Not for millions of years have
such sounds been heard on Earth.' I kidded him about dinosaurs breaking wind. He looked at me very
seriously and said, 'Someday you will understand what I mean.' I accepted he was a little eccentric, but
also brilliant. He appealed directly to my wish to be another Stravinsky. So… I was a sucker. I applied his
theories to our composition, using what he called 'psychotropic tone structure.'
"'This,' he tells me, 'will do exactly what Scriabin tried to do, and failed.'" Michael didn't know who
Scriabin was, but Waltiri continued as if with a long-rehearsed speech.
"The piece we wrote, it was my forty-fifth opus, a concerto for piano and orchestra called 'Infinity.'" He
took the book from Michael's hand and opened it to a marked passage, then handed it back. "So we get
infamous. Read, please."
Michael read.
"Or of strange things musical.
"A song of enchantment.
"Judge as you will, here is the data:
"That on November 23rd, 1939, a musician created a work of undeniable genius, a work which changed
the lives of famous men, fellow musicians. This man was Arno Waltiri, and with his new concerto, Opus
45, he created a suitable atmosphere for musical catastrophe.
"Picture it: a cold night, Los Angeles, the Pandall Theater on Sunset Boulevard. Crowds in black silk
hats, white tie and tails, long sheer gowns, pouring in to hear a premier performance. Listen to it: the
orchestra tuning, cacophonic. Then Waltiri raising his baton, bringing it down…
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (8 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
"We are told the music was strange, as no music heard before. Sounds grew in that auditorium like
apparitions. We are told that a famous composer walked out in disgust. And . then, a week later, filed suit
against Waltiri! 'I am unable to hear or compose music in a sensible fashion!' he said in the court
deposition. And what did he blame? Waltiri's music!
"Consider it.
"What would prompt a well-known and respected composer to sue a fellow composer for an impossible
— so doctors tell us — injury? The case was dropped before it ever reached court. But… what did that
concerto sound like?
"I submit to you, perhaps Waltiri knew the answer to an age-old question, namely, 'What song did the
sirens sing?'"
Michael closed the book. "It's not all nonsense," Waltiri said, returning it to the shelf. "That is roughly
what happened. And then, months later, twenty people disappear. The only thing they have in common is,
they were in the audience for our music." He looked at Michael and lifted his eyebrows. "Most of us live
in the real world, my young friend… but David Clarkham… I am not so sure. The first time I saw him,
coming out of the wet with his suit so dry, I thought to myself — 'The man must walk between raindrops.'
The last time I saw him it was also raining, in July of 1944. Two years before, he had bought a house a
few blocks from here. We didn't see each other often. But this wet summer day he comes to stand on our
porch and gives me a key. 'I'm going on a trip,' he says. 'You should have this, in case you ever wish to
follow me. The house will be taken care of.' Very mysterious. With the key there is a piece of paper."
Waltiri took a small teak box from the top of the bookshelf and held it before Michael, pulling up the lid.
Inside was a yellowed, folded paper, and wrapped partly within, a tarnished brass house key. "I never
followed him. I was curious, but I never had the courage. And besides, there was Golda. How could I
leave her? But you… you are a young man."
"Where did Clarkham go?" Michael asked.
"I don't know. The last words he said to me, he says, 'Arno, should you ever wish to come after me, do
everything on the paper. Go to my house between midnight and two in the morning. I will meet you." He
removed the note and key from the box and gave them to Michael. "I won't live forever. I will never
follow. Perhaps you."
Michael grinned. "It all sounds pretty weird to me."
"It is very weird, and silly. That house — he told me he did a great deal of musical experimentation there.
I heard very little of it. As I said, we weren't close after the premiere of the concerto. But once he told me,
"The music gets into the walls in time, you know. It haunts the place'
"He was a brilliant man, Michael, but he — how do you say it? — he 'screwed me over.' I took the blame
for the concerto. He left for two years. I settled the lawsuits. Nothing was ever decided in court. I was
nearly broke.
"He had made me write music that affects the way a person thinks, as drugs affect the brain. I have
written nothing like it since."
"What will happen if I go?"
"I don't know," Waltiri said, staring at him intently. "Perhaps you will find what lives above or below the
things we know."
"I mean, if something happened to me, what would my parents think?"
"There comes a time when one must disregard the thoughts of one's parents, or the warnings of old men,
when caution must be temporarily put aside and instincts followed. In short, when one must rely on one's
own judgment." He opened another door in the bookcase. "Now, my young friend, before we become
sententious, I've been thinking there is one other thing I'd like to give to you. A book. One of my
favorites." He pulled out a pocket-sized book bound in plain, shiny black leather and held it out for
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (9 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
Michael.
"It's very pretty," Michael said. "It looks old."
"Not so very old," Waltiri said. "My father bought it for me when I left for California. It's the finest
poetry, in English, all my favorites. A poet should have it. There is a large selection of Coleridge. You've
read him, I'm sure."
Michael nodded.
"Then, for me, read him again."
Two weeks later, Michael was swimming in the backyard pool when his mother came out on the patio
with a peculiar expression. She brushed back a strand of her red hair nervously and shielded her eyes
against the sun. Michael stared at her from poolside, his arm flesh goose-bumping. He almost knew.
"That was Golda on the phone," she said. "Arno's dead."
There was no funeral. Waltiri's ashes were placed in a columbarium at Forest Lawn. There were features
on his death in the newspaper and on television.
That had been six weeks before. Michael had last spoken with Golda two days ago. She had sat on the
piano bench in her front room, straight-backed and dignified, wearing a cream colored suit, her golden
hair immaculately coifed. Her accent was more pronounced than her husband's.
"He was sitting right here, at the piano," she said, "and he looked at me and said, 'Golda, what have I
done, I've given that boy Clarkham's key. Call his parents now.' And his arm stiffened — — He said he
was in great pain. Then he was on the floor." She looked at Michael earnestly. "But I did not tell your
parents. He trusted you. You will make the right decision."
She sat quietly for a time, then continued. 'Two days later, a tiny brown sparrow flew into Arno's study,
where the library is now. It sat on the piano and plucked at pieces of sheet music. Arno had once made a
joke about a bird being a spirit inside an animal body. I tried to shoo it out the window, but it wouldn't go.
It perched on the music stand and stayed there for an hour, twisting its head to stare at me. Then it flew
away." She began to cry. "I would dearly love for Arno to visit me now and then, even as a sparrow. He
is such a fine man." She wiped her eyes and hugged Michael tightly, then let him go and straightened his
jacket.
"He trusted you," she had repeated, tugging gently at his lapel. "You will know what is best."
Now he stood on the porch of Clarkham's house, feeling resigned if not calm. Night birds sang in the
trees lining the street, a sound that had always intrigued him for the way it carried a bit of daylight into
the still darkness.
He couldn't say precisely why he was there. Perhaps it was a tribute to a friend he had known for so short
a time. Had Waltiri actually wanted him to follow the instructions? It was all so ambiguous.
He inserted the key in the lock.
To discover what is above or below.
He turned the key.
Music haunts the place now.
The door opened quietly.
Michael entered and shut the door tight behind him. The brass workings clicked.
Walking straight in the darkness was difficult. He brushed against a wall with his shoulder. The touch set
off an unexpected bong, as if he were inside a giant bell. He didn't know if he had crossed a room or
made his way down a hall, but he bumped against another door, fumbled for the knob, and found it. The
door opened easily and silently. To Michael's left in the room beyond was another doorway leading into a
smaller room. Moonlight spilled through French doors like milk on the bare wood floor. All the rooms
were empty of furniture.
The French doors opened onto a bare brick patio and a desolate yard, with a brick wall beyond. The door
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%2...wer%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20Concerto.html (10 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:31 AM]
摘要：

Bear,Greg-SongsofEarthandPowerVol.1-TheInfinityConcertoTheInfinityConcertoSongsofEarthandPowerVol.1GregBearContentsChapterOneChapterTwoChapterThreeChapterFourChapterFiveChapterSixChapterSevenChapterEightChapterNineChapterTenChapterElevenChapterTwelveChapterThirteenChapterFourteenChapterFifteenChapte...

展开>> 收起<<
Bear, Greg - The Infinity Concerto.pdf

共198页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：198 页 大小：665.71KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-07

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 198
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注