The Dark Symphony

beautiful works. Rosie's fingers flitted like insects across the keys as he hunched over the long board, his shoulder-length, coal-dark hair fluffed magnificently over the collar of his cloak. The pink tip of one large ear showed through the hairfall.
    Guil slumped to the floor, back against the wall, and listened and watched.
    The upper fingers of Rosie's right hand toiled with the elegant melody while the lower fingers articulated an accompanying figure. A difficult thing. An impossible thing for Guil. But he did not take time to brood on that He let the music flow through him, stir his mind with ridiculous fantasies of visual conceptualization.
    Rosie threw his body at the board, made his fingers bayonets of attack that were determined to rend from the keys the complete essence of the beauty contained on the sterile, white sheets of music.
    Hair flew as if windblown.
    Then the lyric section was over and the brilliant passage based on extended broken chords was flashing by expertly under Rosie's large hands. Before he knew it, Rosie was through the curtailed restatement of the first section and sent the keys pounding toward the rising climax. Guil's heart thumped and did not slow until the last of the gentle subsiding notes had been played.
    "That was excellent, Rosie," he said, standing.
    "What are you doing here?" The voice was quick, knife-edged with unassurance.
    Then Guil was conscious of the hunched back that was bent even when the keyboard was not before the boy, of the two tufts of hair on the edges of his forehead that had been combed inward in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the tiny horns under them. The stigmata. The markings Rosie carried with him to show his place. "I just stopped in to listen," Guil said, speaking a little more quickly than he had intended. "I heard it from the hall. It was beautiful."
    Rosie frowned, unsure of himself, searching for something to say. He was a rarity: a mistake of the genetic engineers, a slip of the gene juggling chamber. When you are toying with thousands of micro-micro-dots that represent bodily and mental characteristics, you are bound to make a mistake now and again, turn out something that is, in some small way, a freak Never before had a deformed child gained any distinction or even recognition among Musicians. Always, they had died on Coming of Age Day after thirteen years of impossible fumbling with every instrument and of inability to grasp the fundamentals of the Eight Rules of Sound. Rosie, on the other hand, had become the most accomplished Musician in the entire Tower of Learning. Some said that he was a better pianist than even the Grand Meistro, Guil's father. Guil thought this was very true, though he knew he was limited in his own critical capabilities and dismissed his own opinions as irrelevant. But Rosie, despite his achievements, was touchy. He looked for slurs, for references to his deformities in everything that was said. He was hard to make friends with no matter how much one valued his friendship, for he analyzed even the words of his loved ones.
    Now, having analyzed Guil's words and expressions, Rosie answered uncertainly. "Thank you."
    Guil crawled on top of the shimmering orange piano, dangling his legs only an inch from the floor. "Tomorrow came fast, didn't it?"
    "What do you mean?" Rosie asked, crossing his hands uncomfortably on the keyboard.
    Ah, yes
, Guil thought,
the hands
. Tiny hooks of bone-hard cartilage jagged upward an inch on the back of each hand. "I mean, thirteen years and I don't remember what happened to me since I was four. Frederic and the lessons and the strap and going to bed and getting up and suddenly I'm seventeen. All too fast."
    Rosie relaxed visibly. When the conversation was not about him directly, when it was focused on life in general, he could manage to suspend a little of his doubt and suspicions. "I hope you make it, Guil."
    "I hope so too."
    "I won't."
    Guil looked up, startled, not certain that he had really heard what he thought he had. Then he smiled. "Oh, you're kidding, of course."
    "No." There was something dark behind Rosie's eyes, something that made Guil want to turn away.
    "That's silly! You're better than the lot of us."
    Rosie shook his head, setting his hair to bouncing. I'm afraid, Guil."
    "Everyone is. Good Heavens, we all might die tomorrow!
    "You don't understand." His head hung in the hollow between his gristled shoulders, his piercing eyes catching the light of the glowing panels