The Dark Symphony

over his leotards and walked to the elevator shafts.
    As he fell to the ground floor and left the building, the questions began arising again. Was the nuclear war responsible for the Populars—or were the Musicians the culprits? But how could the Musicians be responsible? They surely didn't have the power to warp thousands of—
    Then he remembered the genetic engineers and the gene juggling chamber in the Primal Chord. Still, that explained nothing. The men from the ruins would not, surely, willingly submit to such atrocities. They would not willingly amble into the Primal Chord of their own free will and come out monsters. Some would escape, hide, evade…
    It made no sense, none at all. And now, hours and hours after the message tape had been triggered, he was no closer to a solution of his dilemma than he had been moments before the end of the tape when the first awe and terror had swept into his mind.
    What was the solution then? Run away? To another of the city-states that dotted Earth? But he could remember times when representatives from those other city-states had been to Vivaldi. From what he heard and read, their own cities were patterned after the social order of Vivaldi, on a gladiator rite of passage and on a strict class system. More than likely, he would fight his way across vast distances to another city-state and find it as bad or worse than this one.
    What, then?
    He needed someone to discuss the situation with, someone to garner an opinion from. If he could gather new insights, perhaps the problem could be easily solved. But he could not imagine whom he could tell of his Popular origins without getting himself shipped to the disposal furnaces. Anyone he told would have him carted away within the hour. Except… Except, Tisha.
    He went to the directory at the nearest vidfone station and located the address of her parents. This time, buoyed by his distinct purpose, he found that the walking was even enjoyable. He thought about Tisha, about her face, her full body, the way she talked and moved. She would help him. She would prove his balm to salve the tensions in him.
    Though he could not know it, the path of action he had chosen and would continue to choose would lead him directly to the featureless black man who waited in the ruins, watching…
    FIRST:
    Strong burst into the Healing Room with Dragon close behind He crossed quickly to Blue. Blue… It was a fitting name. Truly, other features came to mind when one caught sight of her—such as her breasts (now high and distended with milk), her lovely, smooth brown legs, her feet like tiny feet on porcelain figurines—but two things were most impressive: first, the eyes blue and penetrating; second, the fine, semitransparent web membranes between the fingers, the stigmata that kept her from passing as an exceptionally beautiful Musician's Lady.
    "I thought you wouldn't make it," she said, reaching for his hand.
    "Dragon plays games—a treacherous reptile."
    "Out of the way," Sparrow snapped, moving bird-fashion before the prone girl-woman. "It's time. The pains. I know when it's time."
    As if on cue, Blue convulsed with labor pains, her face so twisted that it frightened Strong to look at her. But her nails dug the callused flesh of his palms, and he was forced to look.
    Sparrow pushed them to the door, then turned to the audio receptors of the giant robo-doc computer system embedded in the wall "She's with child, doctor. Can you heal her?"
    "An abortion will require—"
    "No! No, abortion is out. Can you deliver it?"
    "May I be presented with the patient?" it asked in its husky, no-nonsense voice.
    Sparrow slid the operating table into the slot in the robo-doc's middle. Blue was gone from sight now.
    "I can do it," the computer said.
    "Well?" Strong asked Sparrow.
    "Well what?" she asked in return, her black eyes ringed with hairlines of weariness and age, the chitinous, beak-like rim that replaced her lips faded from black of youth the gray of age.
    "Well, what do we do next?"
    "We sit on the floor," Dragon said. "And we just wait."
    They sat.

CHAPTER SIX
    Guil searched her eyes, trying to find some hint of what her true thoughts were, and he wondered whether he had any right dragging her into this. After all, it was
his
real father who had given him away to foster a revolution,
his
past that needed discovery, and
his
problems that needed solutions. The world had turned topsy-turvy in a single day, had whirled and left him upside down and