The Dark Symphony

reduced, in their opinion, to something less than men. And, I sometimes think, they discovered in the new mutations a source of entertainment."
    "There are theaters," Guil admitted.
    "Everyone," Strong said, "needs something to make him feel superior, some group he can look down upon. The Musicians in Vivaldi have a class system which allows this. I have learned this much. Your Class Is can look down on your Class Us, your Class II's on your Class Ills, and the III's on the IVs. But where do the Class IVs go to find someone to feel superior to? The Populars, of course. So, aside from revenge, aside from entertainment value, and aside from a simple sadistic streak that cuts down the middle of their society, they needed us to provide the logical final rung in their social order."
    They sat for a time, watching the beach. Several crabs scuttled out of the water and wobbled around the sand for a few moments, looking for something only they could define. It was growing darker. And colder. The mists were thicker, reaching fingers even into the hole in the wall where they sat.
    "Are you ready?" Strong asked.
    "Yes," Guil said, standing. "Let's go."
    As they finished their trek home, maintaining silence by unspoken agreement, Guil tried to decide if, after absorbing this ugly detail, he was finally committed to the Populars in this coming war. All he found was that he was on the thin line between sides, balancing. And he was a good balancer. He would not fall one way or the other. He tried to make himself ashamed of his wavering. The evidence balanced against the Musicians. He should already be deep into the Popular struggle. Yet…
    Yet he liked the comfort of the society in which he had been raised. He could not give it up easily. If he foiled this attempt at revolution, the Populars might never be able to rise again. And he would be safe. He knew it was not a heroic stance he now occupied. In many ways, it was gutless, cowardly, and revolting.
    One more piece of sympathy for the Populars, he thought, and he would accept his role as a leader of revolution. If just one more thing would happen to make him pity them and feel more deeply for their plight. Then he would be their champion. But it was highly unlikely that anything else would happen to persuade him. Highly unlikely…
    FIRST:
    Strong hunkered in the piles of brick and steel, holding his infant son in his huge arms. The robo-doc had placed a chemically time-triggered, micro-miniature message tape in the child's brain. It would go off seventeen years from now, hopefully just after the boy had gained manhood in Musician society. He had no doubts that the boy would reach a Class. His son, after all, was a prophet. And prophets were nearly omnipotent.
    There had been a moment when Blue had tried to dissuade him from the plan, just after she had seen the child that had come from her belly. To sooth her, he had sought a phrase from one of the Seven Books, had found it: "Wherefore didst thou marvel? This shall make war for the Lamb and the Lamb shall help him to overcome them, for he is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bear it."
    YOU MUST SURELY BEAR IT…
    Somehow, he did not think Blue had gotten the solace from those lines that he had.
    Now, crouched in the tumble-down walls of his city, he watched the yellow shields of the Musicians as the search party came across the nightmare landscape, prying into pockets of deep shadow, details of them breaking off to enter tunnels down into the Popular Sector. When he judged the moment to be the most dramatic, when the enemy was dangerously close at hand, he leaped up, ran away from them, the baby slung under his arm so that they might spot it immediately.
    There were shouts behind.
    A sound rifle beam sang into a marble slab as large as a house that lay at a forty-five degree angle to his right. The marble fizzed into thousands of fireflies whose light lasted only an instant, was gone.
    Then another bolt. Much closer. Too close, in fact He stopped and put his child down on an old sofa whose vinyl-plast covering had kept it from serious rot, then turned and ran faster than he had ever run before in his life.
    The Musicians fired after him.
    But, soon, the chase was over. They had found the baby, and they were, temporarily anyway, satisfied. Whether they would visit