The Dark Symphony

out of here! This
is
like the prisoner receiving his last meal, only my terminal privilege will be to speak a few pieces of wit, of wisdom
. But he could not say any of that, for there was his father to consider. And, besides, they would not let him go as he wished. They would burn him. "No special requests or statements, your honor."
    "Very well," Handel said. He coughed, wiped a hand across his mouth. "Let the tests begin!"
    The orchestra struck the proper note and swept off into a complicated piece written by the originators of the rituals to stir excitement among the spectators while the preparations were being made.
    It was an oddly eerie tune.
    An attendant dressed in traditional white shimmer-cloth with a pulsating flash-fabric collar crossed to Guil; the collar threw angelic glare over his face, obscuring his features. All that was visible was his eyes, bright with reflected throbbings of light. He brought Guil three weapons: the sound-sedative whistle, the sonic knife, and the deadly sound rifle.
    No longer trying to suppress the tremors that shook him like a dry leaf, Guil strapped the knife to the waistband of his leotard suit, hung the whistle about his neck by the glistening shimmer-metal chain, and cradled the rifle in his arms. With a nod to the judges, he took a hundred paces into the arena, turned back to the hundred foot monolith that was the Bench, braced himself mentally and physically, puffed out the stale air and took in clean, and nodded once again.
    The music subsided, was gone.
    "You have been chosen Class IV," Judge Tallis boomed. He was a hawk of a man, wizened, with a beak nose, his two eyes like the eyes of a predatory bird. His hands appeared out of the robe to push back at the sides of his hair, then disappeared into the folds again.
    Class IV. The echo of the words throbbed a moment before the soundproofing walls negated their patterns.
    Father will be disappointed
, Guil thought. But there was nothing to say except: "I accept my station."
    "Have you chosen an identisong?"
    A phrase from your identisong was recorded on a small lapel badge and had merely to be activated to allow you the use of all machines used by your station and to give you entrance into all places your class was permitted entrance. Fourth Class identisongs had to be duple-metered. He realized, as he scanned what hundreds of tunes he knew, that he should have had one already in mind. Then he thought of a choice that would please his father with its irony and its connection with
Drr Erlkonig
from the previous evening. "I chose Schubert's
Marche Militaire
."
    Tallis confirmed the choice.
    The orchestra began muted music,
    "Let us begin!" Tallis said.
    The wall of the Bench shimmered, opaqued in the center, then dissolved in part to form a hole fifty feet across and seventy feet high. For a moment, there was silence that held like smoke in air, as if there would never again he a noise of any sort Except for the almost inaudible sweetness of the orchestra. And Guil wondered, looking at the hole in the Bench, just what could be so damned big! Seconds later, he got his answer. From the portal came a yellow dragon with white-white teeth, scales as large as shovel blades and eyes as red as blood with tiny clotted black pupils. Drool collected on the dragon's lips and slipped down its chin in rivulets.
    The tension in the orchestra's music increased.
    Guil felt the rising urge to flee, but gripped himself with his fear and used it to hold him there. He tried to tell himself that it was only sound, that it was not real. Not real at all. Not in the sense of flesh and blood. It was a man-structured sound configuration, a weaving of molecular vibrations to form a false entity—just like the ten towers and the piano Rosie had played yesterday and, yes, even the cape and leotard suit he wore. Then his father's words of the night before fled through his mind: "They will only be creatures of sound directed by men, brainless on their own. But remember, they can kill you just as surely as if they were real.
    He was very much afraid.
    The dragon snorted, blew piercing sound waves from its nostrils instead of the conventional fire of fairy tales and legends. It looked over the galleries, roaring its defiance. And incidentally putting on a show for those who expected horror and pain. It waved its mighty head on the top of its thick, scaled neck, and gnashed its teeth, seemingly pleased with the response of the audience. Then it saw Guil,