The Dark Symphony

and negate. Guil felt swallowed by it, like a morsel of food dropped into a giant's throat Somehow, he felt more alive under its pounding echo. He was exhilarated as he had never been. Not only his own success, but now this! Did Rosie really think he could make it? Only fourteen had tried in four hundred years, and only Aaron Copeland Mozart had made it That had been—how long?—two hundred and twelve yean ago.
And I know him
, Guil thought.
And no matter whether he makes it or not, he will go down in Vivaldi's city history
.
    The gigantic key orchestra was brought into the arena after a delay of some minutes. The audience quieted as the hunchback approached the instrument, drew the stool before it, ran his hands over the hundred and twenty keys, drifted feet over the eleven pedals, and cast his eyes up and down the three rows of blue and red toggles stretched twenty to a line above the keys.
    Rosie sucked in his breath and bent over the board like a nearly blind man over a book. The audience took its seats with a
tvhump
! like the wings of a huge bird thumping in heavy air. Guil realized he had not been breathing. He breathed. And Rosie began his original composition…
    The opening theme was proud and chivalric. It was piano only, but promising more later. The octaves for the left hand approached the limits of what a piano could do. It seemed as if only the full orchestra with its trumpets and drums could do justice to the marvelous conception. Then, abruptly, as he threw toggles and pumped pedals, there
was
a full orchestra.
    Lull…
    An interminably long lull. Finished? Guil wondered. Finished already?
    No! An artless tune, much like a folksong, was played by a solo bassoon
andantino
and
caprlccioso
, happy-go-lucky. The Great Hall was tomb-silent except for the music. The people might just as well have died or faded away into some other continuum.
    Tension began to increase in the middle of the movement. There were tremolos on the strings and ominous pronouncements by the trombones and trumpets… Violins… Then a repetition of the theme by cellos and woodwinds.
    Sound coursed magnificently through the Great Hall, whirlpooled the recesses of Guil's mind, stung his teeth with irresistible vibration, forced him through the womb-waves of its theme and countertheme as instrument was played against instrument, hand against hand, shadow orchestra against main orchestra, dissonance against consonance—for one thing is nothing without the other.
    Strings, strings, a wire waterfall of strings. Violins, viola, violoncello, contrabass playing
legato, staccato
, now
legato
again. Suddenly a piccolo
cadenza
without lessening the plunge toward climax… bugles, bugles, brass challenges at midnight… whirling, flashing, crashing, bone-rending and… silence.
    Guil stood, panting, his entire body shaking, his fingers gripping the platform railing as if he would split it beneath his grasp. His legs felt like rockets that would send him shooting into the ceiling, flame trailing behind. He started to shout a bravo, but the crowd beat him to it, tearing his own voice away in the flux of the greater roar. Still he cheered and waved his arms madly, tears on his face as Rosie stood, those damned hunched shoulders nonexistent in the face of this absolute and resounding triumph. The years and years of the mutant's battling had terminated in this, a final reward that more than compensated for the rigors of his childhood. Guil, vision blurred, turned to the Bench and saw that the judges too were overwhelmed. Handel was pounding his fists on the Bench top, pounding and pounding until they must have been bruised, pounding in joy, not in a call to order. The boom sounded even above the cheering as his flesh hammers struck squarely, unheeding of their own condition. Just when Guil was certain the sound configuration of the Great Hall must be disrupted and fade into nothingness, Rosie drew himself up and turned, bowing to the audience. The shouting doubled, tripled impossibly, quadrupled as ten thousand pairs of lungs wrenched themselves apart to congratulate. The sound blasted Guil until his ears ached. Nevertheless, the screaming continued and would continue until lungs were afire, throats cracking. Rosie was a Composer.
One
of the greatest of all time if this selection was any indication. And he was theirs!
    In time, the fury died.
    Rosie received the Medallion of the Composer which could change the vibrations of any mechanism or any