The Dark Symphony

the end, just as they would have all the others.
    They went to the elevator, throbbed upward on the sound currents. For a moment, Guil had visions of the building fading as the others had, of Tisha and himself flailing helplessly on the long, long fall, bouncing from floor to floor…
    They found the halfway that passed Guil's room, though it now seemed alien and strange to him. He could scarcely believe that he had ever lived here now that the end of it was so close. As they walked briskly toward the door, he felt like a prowler. No, more like a patron of the arts walking through a musty museum, for this was a museum of sorts, the last artifact of the Musician colony on Earth,
    He used his identisong to unlock the door, palmed.
    The panel slid back on darkness haloed by false stars.
    The sensonic lay round and sinister in the corner.
    And in the center of the room was Rosie…
    … hanging by the neck from the exercising bars…
    For a moment, they stood disbelieving, unable to accept it Then Tisha began to cry. Guil quickly closed the door behind them and walked to the corpse. The neck stood straight, the head high from the shoulders for the first time in the hunchback's life. His neck was clearly broken.
    "Why?" Tisha asked.
    He had told her, briefly, of the confrontation earlier in the night. Now, so that she might always understand Rosie's motives, he told her the story in detail, careful to phrase things as the hunchback had phrased them, incidentally telling her of the influence the Composer's philosophy had had on his own.
    "We can at least cut him down," she said at last.
    Guil got a sonic knife from his things and severed the cord, stepping back as the heavy body crashed to the floor, bounced, and lay still. "Don't cry," he said.
    "But—"
    "We have things to do. He did what he wanted."
    He took her and forcibly turned her from the scene, went with her to the door, out into the hall, leaving Rosie behind as a fixture of this grand museum, the last Composer of the Musician world, refusing in the only way he knew to become a tool. They dropped down the elevator shaft to the ground floor, embraced as they fell and found some solace in the circles formed by their arms.
    Outside, they could see that the battle still raged. It was also evident that the Musicians would lose.
    "The pillar?" Tisha asked.
    He saw, and was happy that her tears were gone. "We're going to have to pass by some of the fighting to get there."
    "Let's go."
    They went into the plaza, trying to stay close to the edge where neon stones glittered but where the battle did not rage. Ahead lay the humming, swirling pillar. They were halfway to it, at the rear of the present skirmish, when Guil saw Strong striding from the uproar, face lit with sweat-lathered insanity. "The girl, Gideon."
    Strong said "The war is won, and the girl cannot be a part of it."
    "What are you talking about?" Guil asked.
    "You're the prophet You know you're the prophet And she is of the enemy you helped us slay. And she's a woman. The books report that prophets are chaste, Gideon. Prophets are chaste. They abstain, you see." While he spoke, he came closer, reaching out for her.
    Before the madman's words could fully unfold in Guil's mind, he had Tisha, thick fingers dosing about her neck…
    "Stop it!" Guil shouted.
    "You are a prophet, Gideon. You were named for a prophet—"
    Guil leaped on the Popular, raked his hands over his face.
    Strong shook him loose as if he were a flea.
    Then he found the sonic knife in his hand, the same one with which he had cut Rosie down from his self-made gallows. He sliced with it, careful to keep it out of Tisha's way.
    He's my father
! Guil thought The thought was a silent scream inside his head.
    But he could not stop.
    Strong screamed, twisted, still holding the girl but forgetting, for the moment, to continue to choke her.
    Guil sliced again.
    Strong fell.
    Tisha screamed, was free.
    The faces above Strong were swimming in and out of a strange dream mixture that now and again contained some of them, often contained none of them. Who? Where? He tried to focus his eyes, but could not clear away the growing haze. Then the haze rippled, and he was looking into the past.
    He saw Babe in this past Babe was in a circle of Musicians, lying on the ground with a bitch hound…
    Strong screamed and ran toward his brother…
    Then everything rippled again, the haze cleared, and he was looking back up at the ring of people that stood about him,