The Dark Symphony

obviously upside down, others squashed against the sides of still standing buildings as is they had been crawling insects beaten with a gargantuan flyswatter.
    In time, they moved under the demolished city, down into the underground thoroughfares that still contained u few scattered lighting panels aglow in the frosted white ceiling. It was by this dim but sufficient illumination that Guil saw the phantom's face close up for the first time. He had been partially right about what it must look like—but also partially wrong. There were no eyes as a normal man would think of them, though there were two lighter shades of black where eyes should have been, smoother textured than the rest of his facial tissue, resembling taunt, black drumheads. The nose was a mere slit in his face, his mouth a lipless affair without teeth— only dark, horny-looking gums. For some reason, he was no longer afraid of the phantom. It was not just because Tar had seemed friendly (in point of fact, he had seemed more cold and withdrawn than anything), but because he was faced with the minute pores of the reality here, where he had only seen the vague outline of the phantom on his earlier attempt to cross from city to ruins. With some of the mystery gone, the fear drifted off too.
    They went from the corridor to a shabby blue door upon which the phantom Tar knocked. The door buzzed, slid open, and they went inside. Tar left them. A hand reached out, grasped Guil's hand, its surface thrice as large as his. The face beyond the arm was as large as the mouth of a bucket. A big bucket "Son?"
    Guil stared a moment before comprehension came. He had been expecting to meet a Popular that was his father, and he should not have been shocked. Yet, somewhere in the dregs of his mind barrel, there lingered a hope that this wasn't true, that his father would be normal, un-mutated. "Yes," he said at last. "I'm Guil. Or—Gideon."
    "And this?" Strong asked, indicating Tisha.
    "Tisha Cimarosa," Guil said. He was about to go on to say that her brother had won the station of Composer at the rituals the previous day. Then he remembered that these were Populars. Even if Strong did understand Musician society enough to fathom the meaning of the Medallion of the Composer, it was almost a surety that he would not therefore think highly of Tisha. He might be able to accept her as a girl-not-yet-a-Lady, but he would never look favorably on her if he knew she had connections high within the city-state.
    "Tisha," Strong said, swallowing both her hands in one of his.
    There had been a time, years ago, even before the birth of Guil-Gideon, when Strong had come across the seven volumes of the Universal Church. At the time when he uncovered these books in the ruins, he was at a particularly depressive slump in his manic-depressive personality. He was looking for something, then, something to give shape and meaning to things. When he found the holy books, he knew, if only subconsciously, that these held the answer, these held a dogma and doctrine that made the injustices of life bearable.
    The Universal Church had come into being some eighty years before the final war that wiped out traditional civilization on Earth. For centuries, the religions of the world had been seeking to establish linkages; at last, they founded their individual ways into a conglomerate religion that encompassed most of the main beliefs of Mankind. The Universal Church had perished in the war with everything else—though a fragment of it now lived in Strong. He raised up the old banners, read the old words, and somehow only managed to take the spit and the fire and the brimstone and the vengeance. He left the mercy and kindness behind.
    Now, it seemed almost divinely appointed that he should play a major role in the destruction of the city-state of Vivaldi. And then, perhaps, of all the other city-states that had come back from the stars to throw chains around the mother planet. He was the father of the one who would bring about the changes. He saw it as a holy, divine, preordained situation. It was his paranoia. The completion of the plan was good. Anything that stood in its way was, of necessity, evil. And any sort of romantic entanglement between the boy and this Tisha person was bound to affect Gideon's fighting powers, his wit, his ingenuity. Indeed, might it not be possible, in the penultimate hour, for this Lady-to-be to persuade him to turn against his real people and work against the