The Dark Symphony

know this as well as he did. But his pledge with Tisha, the decision to reject this society, removed him from any burden of shame at having been a part of it. There was still a gram of disgust, but nothing more. Self was then-god. Witness the center of their lives, the focal point around which their world revolved: sensonics. Each Musician spent at least eight, usually ten hours a night under the sensonics. Holidays were often devoted to "retreats" which were nothing more than escapes into the fleshy, unreal desire world of the sound configurations, a h prolonged electric orgy. Much better and much easier than real sex, for in real sex every experience may not be perfect. And every experience may not involve multiple orgasm as the sensonics produced. Besides, in real sex, you had to deal with another human being. You had to worry about pleasing someone, about another individual's feelings and his or her self-respect. That was an awful lot of bother when there was this much easier method.
    Also, there was the Vladislovitchian precedent to follow. Something had always seemed strange about that placid, white face seen in photographs and reproduced in the great altars. At times, Guil thought it resembled the face of a moron, loose and silly and vaguely pathetic. At other times, he could trace lines of intelligence in the face and corrected his judgment to the decision that this was merely the visage of an unimaginative, lifeless man. But neither of these impressions meshed with what Vladislovitch had accomplished. Now he realized that it was something more subtle, something infinitely more pressing that had given Vladislovitch the drive to master sound and vibration, to forge a new society, to set out with it and colonize another world. Simply: the man had not been heterosexual.
    Oh, perhaps it was just that he could not make it with women and therefore denounced them except indirectly through sensonics and as procreators of other men. Somehow, Guil felt certain that if Vladislovitch's sensonic machine could have been tested during the man's lifetime, the tests would have discovered that his own sound configurations were not those of bosomy women with satiny skin, long legs, and questing tongues, but of young boys. Young, smooth, virile boys with flawless skin and vaguely sweet faces…
    Sterile, smooth, and soft, the face of Vladislovitch pitched impotently through his dreams
…
    Self-centered, impotent, it must surely fall. He could only be doing the right thing by hastening its collapse. But were not all of Man's societies self-centered and impotent? How could he know the preMusician world, the prewar world, had been any different? Indeed, to listen to Strong's quotes from the Seven Books, it could be argued that societies had always been self-centered and impotent as they were constantly warring against one another, or splitting apart in their own guts, eventually falling to vet another social form that would fall in turn and be replaced by another that would… so on and on and.
    At least there was Tisha and the Erlking. The latter would not be so difficult to face with the former at his side. The pillar hummed darkly in the arena floor, waiting…
    He was in the shallow between dream crests when the door opened and closed, and there was someone else within the room…
    He struggled to sit up, squinted.
    Above, the false stars glittered in the fake night.
    "Who's there?" he asked.
    Silence.
    Who is it?"
    Still silence.
    He was suddenly bowled from the bed, clutching at the sheets and pulling them with him and whatever it was that had struck him! In the dim light and with sleep matting the comers of his eyes, he could not see well.
    "Wait a minute," he said.
    But there was no reasoning with whoever had attacked him.
    He struck upward with a fist, felt it caught in a vise-like grip. He tried to wrench himself free, but his shoulders were pinned to the floor and a heavy body prevented him from twisting away. Whoever this was, he was a strong bastard—and he was determined.
    "Who is it?" He demanded to know, though he felt foolish making any demands from his present position.
    "I won't let you do it." The stranger's voice was harsh and breathless, but Guil thought that he recognized it.
    "Rosie?"
    "You can't!" Rosie applied more pressure with his knees. "You can't go ahead with it."
    "You're hurting me."
    "Good." .
    "Go ahead with what?" he asked, hoping a change of tactics would bring relief. If he tried to calm the