The Dark Symphony

children (and he would always look young, it appeared; he had stopped growing when he reached four feet, and although there were enough indications of his blossoming manhood to assuage fears that he might be a throwback and not just a mutation, his countenance, casually examined, was that of a sweet and innocent baby) should be the most protected. After all, there was Strong to look after Loper and Babe, and Loper to concentrate on Babe alone. Yet, one day, when things seemed to be going along every bit as peacefully as possible, they discovered that Babe was missing.
    They searched the ruins carefully, afraid that he might have fallen into some pocket or shaft in the debris, might now be trapped and unable to free himself.
    But he was not there.
    That left, as far as Strong could see, only one other place where the child might be found. This was the week of the Festival, that yearly time when the Musicians gathered in their halls and in their streets for celebrations in honor of the one they called Vladislovitch. As an integral part of some of these street fairs, Populars were brought into the city to entertain the spectators. The games played were cruel. The Populars did not always return of a piece—or return at all.
    Although only fourteen, Strong felt sufficiently powerful and clever to skirt the edges of the city-state—perhaps even venture inside—and try to locate his brother. Ho had long felt that he had been meant to strike back and destroy the Musicians. What other reason for his tremendous size? Now, perhaps, he would have a chance to do just that. Against the advice of his father, he left the ruins and worked across the no-man's-land to the edges of the neon stone gardens…

CHAPTER NINE
    A week passed quickly, and the day before the revolution was at hand.
    The days since his visit to the Popular Sector had been troublesome ones for Guil as he wrestled to come to grips with himself and with the purpose of the years that still lay ahead of him. It would have been so nice to be old, old like Franz and content to know that there was not much more to be borne. He knew his future was aligned with the pillar and the land beyond that he had only glimpsed twice, and both of those times for only brief moments. He knew he should be afraid of Death. The Musician concept—indeed, a major concept all through history as far as he could tell—held that Death was permanent and dark and a vast nothingness. The reason he felt no fear was because he did not hold with this concept; he had seen the land beyond the Pillar of Ultimate Sound. There was some form of existence there.
    To prepare himself for what was soon to come, he slept through the last afternoon, dreaming of a leaf boat that carried him down a green river toward a promontory where a purple, column-faced building stood inviolate. In this dream, silence was awful and deep, though he had an odd recollection that he had been to this building before when there had been a hint of singing and the leaping shadows of dancers…
    Afternoon faded into evening, though the night sky with its stars remained on his ceiling the entire time. After a time, sleep was fitful and came in patches separated by minutes when he was half-awake and when visions of the future and different but beckoning dreams fused to add a third dimension to his mind, another plane somewhere where between the conscious and unconscious wherein scenes were acted out that did not wholly belong in either of the other two. Somehow, his un-spoken pledge with Tisha had released the agony of his burden. He was no longer a man in the middle, for there was a third alternative which both realized would keep them together, yet would not subject them to living in a tower, ridden by their guilt, or in a rat-infested world of Populars. First: the revolution, the guns, and the fires. Then, when they were certain the self-centered Musician empire had fallen, he and Tisha could be off to their own world, their own society, to the place where they belonged if they belonged anywhere at all.
    If only he could stifle his remaining fear…
    Self-centered… The word struck him again and again as he tumbled in and out of sleep. It was the perfect modifier for the Musicians' world, for their heritage and their future. Self was their god. Yes, they managed to masquerade it in the form of the great composers and Vladislovitch. But these were figureheads. No, maybe even false gods, and he saw now that the Musicians must