The Dark Symphony

Ones… She said that Rosie had some of it. That she and Guil had it. That old, white-haired Franz was compassionate. But that she could not recall having ever met anyone else who cared for anyone other than himself.
    "No," he had said. "You're wrong."
    "Ami?"
    "Of course."
    "I rather think it's a case of your not noticing what the world is really like. You must lead a somewhat conservative and sheltered existence as son of the Grand Meistro, after all. Name me one person who has a genuine compassion for others—aside from the four already mentioned. Go on."
    "My father," he said.
    "Present for examination one instance when this compassion showed."
    He started to speak, then realized there was no instance that he could recall. He had always been aware that his father thought first of his own interests, of his own image. They had never been close, and now he saw why. It was not merely because they were of different generations, but because they were totally different types. Tisha was right.
    And now, as he left the rooms behind the Great Hall and went out into the early evening air, his mind rambled over the other faults he had recently begun to see in this supposedly Utopian world. The blood lust of the spectators in the arena. The crookedness of the judges in their handling of Tisha—and the ready acceptance of such crookedness by the audience. The cruelty of the rituals themselves, the barbarous percentage of healthy young boys who were fed to the disposal furnaces. And, for some reason, he also connected the ruins of the Popular Sector with the string of failures of Musician society. He did not know exactly why this should be. The Populars were mutated Earthmen, twisted and warped as a result of their own foolish wars. And yet…
    He turned away from the streets that led deep into the Congressional Tower and his father's apartments, walked instead toward the ring of the neon stone gardens that marked the boundary between Musician city-state and Popular Sector. The first ring of stones was white, just beginning to shimmer in these first minutes of semi-darkness. The next ring was pale green, then darker green, then blue, then purple, then deep yellow, orange, and last of all, fiery red. He paused at the last ring and looked at the ruins as he had the day before on his way home from his lessons.
    This was a different section of rubble. There were three buildings standing within the mounds and piles of debris, three weary sentinels. Two of them, buildings of plastic and steel, had melted slightly and now leaned against each other like drunken comrades, offering mutual support without which both would have cracked and fallen to join the mangled mess of mortar and materials at their feet. The third building, one of stone—he vaguely remembered that these square, red blocks were called bricks—stood almost unscathed. There were even a few windows still intact, though they were crusted with grime. As he concentrated on one of those windows, he saw that there was something inside, looking out at him…
    He could not distinguish any of its details, for the dirt on the pane was too thick. Then, as he watched, it disappeared.
    The thought returned that the Musician society was somehow responsible for the Popular Sector. Why didn't they rebuild it? Why didn't they offer civilization to the Populars, the mutants? Oh, he knew the reasoning. The mutants were savages. They could not be civilized. The radiation had done things to their minds as well as their bodies. The Musicians were being merciful by not exterminating them altogether. Yet… Yet…
    He caught a blur of movement on the roof of the intact structure. He shifted his gaze to see what it was. On the roof, staring down and across at him, was the black figure without a face.
    It's the shadows
, he thought. I
just can't see any face because of the shadows. It really has a face; it has to
!
    Or did it have to?
    He shuddered.
    There were no rules that proscribed the limits of diversification in the Populars. He had seen some examples of things that had once been human but no longer remotely resembled a man. There were the slugform mutations that bore a human face at the end of a pulpy, segmented body. This faceless man, certainly, was no stranger than that.
    He tried to look away. He could not.
    And the faceless man waved to him.
    Involuntarily, he waved back.
    Then the faceless man was gone.
    A while later, he turned away and walked back through the neon stone