The Dark Symphony

immortality, for your name and reputation to go on one or two more generations—and in the Musicians' case, duty. A passion, carelessness, or duty could not repay debts even if there were debts. Confusion boiled in his mind again. The walls of the room were alien and distant, seemed to sway slightly, as if this were a ship on a rough sea. The woman drying her tears before him was only a statue that had come to
life
with all the attitudes and desires of a human being—except for true mother love. Blue lacked that.
    They came to an end of the corridor where a bomb pocket had opened a mouth into caverns beneath the old city. The darkness in the caverns was all but impenetrable, so thick it seemed as if it could be touched and poured into a pitcher. They had left Tisha behind with Blue, had come this far alone. Guil was glad of that, for he did not want her to see him shaking. His hands trembled, and his lips twitched. He was, somewhat, afraid of this man who claimed to be his father.
    It had not taken long for him to find that Strong was a religious fanatic, for the big Popular was constantly spouting off homilies and prayers from some source he called the Seven Books. It seemed to have been a world religion sometime before the holocaust, but Guil could not be certain. He had never heard of it, but then again he was not particularly well-schooled in Earth history.
    All he knew was that Strong wanted him to fight for an ideal. He had not said as much yet, but the trend of his discussion headed in that direction. He was going to ask Guil to fight for something in those Seven Books, to take up weapons for a religion four hundred years dead. And he did not think he could do it. It would be the same thing as if he had joined the Musicians in a bloody war against the Populars—supposedly under the blessing of Vladislovitch. No, he would not risk everything for a mere ideal Some practicality, yes. If Strong made the point that the Populars had been hideously treated, deserved a right to a place of power—then, he might join battle. Even that, however, was not a certainty. It would have been so much easier, he thought, if he had liked them immensely. But he did not.
    Strong led the way down through the hole in the floor, clutching at projecting rocks and beams, came out on a level area again. When Guil was beside him, he stepped forward and disappeared. There was the sound of skin and cloth scraping over sand.
    Guil went to the edge where the plain dropped abruptly, could see for a few inches. It seemed like a long slope of sand that could not be traversed any way but by crude tobogganing. If he tried to stand and run down, the steep slope would probably pitch him forward onto his head just as he reached a more solid flooring. He held his breath, pushed off from the edge, and went slithering down five hundred feet of fine-grained earth. He was glad that he had a leotard suit on that covered most all his body, and he briefly wondered how Strong had been able to withstand the brush-burning without screaming.
    Strong was waiting for him, grasped his shoulder and squeezed it affectionately. He turned then and led the way over more rubble toward the two luminous moth-like eyes that shone in the darkness and gave off a little light to their left In the backwash of the ocular glow, Guil could see a man hanging upside down from a beam, his toes gripping some precarious perch in the shadows above. Guil and Strong stopped at an out-cropping of cement barely visible in the gloom, sat down facing the specter.
    The hanging man flapped leathery wings, wrapped them around himself and surveyed the man and boy, his lantern eyes washing them with green light. There was a haughty air about him, a mild look of disdain on his wizened, ugly features. "Him?" he asked.
    "Yes," Strong said. There was pride in his voice, and he was purposefully accentuating it to let the manbat know that he thought Guil a fine specimen of a son.
    "You're certain?" the manbat asked.
    "Positive. He is my son."
    "They could have found out, could have switched someone on you."
    "I know my son!"
    The manbat fluttered, and his clawed toes scraped as he readjusted his purchase on the rusting steel.
    Guil coughed, wondering how long it would take one of them to think of including him in their conversation. After all, he was the focal point of this whole business.
    "Oh," Strong said, "Gideon, this is Redbat."
    "Redbat," Guil said courteously.
    "An oddity," the upside-down