The Dark Symphony

dark vision, this song.
The robo-orc swirled on, full instrumented and misty-bodied. His father watched.
    The father shudders, He speeds ahead,
    He clasps to his bosom the sobbing child,
    He reaches home with pain and dread;
    In his arms, the child lay dead!
    Goethe by Schubert.
    Wer reitat so spat durch Nacht und Wind?
    …
in seinen Armen das Kind was todt
…
    There was something about the German language that made the words even more sinister.
    Guil shivered, turned to his father and saw the Meistro was watching him expectantly, his mouth now empty of fruit, his eyes cloudy and unreadable. It was obvious that he expected his son to say something, though Guil was not exactly sure what would be proper. "Father, the song,
Der Erlkonig .
. ."
    "Yes?"
    His mother busied herself clearing the table although the sonic-servants could have done the job quicker and easier. She disappeared into the kitchen with a stack of dishes in her hands. His father watched her go, then turned back to Guil.
    "It is very strange," Guil said, "that you should want to program it for tonight—a night when we are supposed to be having a celebration."
    "No," the Meistro said. "It is perfect for tonight. For to night, there is really no other song."
    And then he understood. His father knew that it might be hard for him in the arena, knew that there was a strong possibility that he would not make it In a way, his father was trying to tell him that he understood this and that he would be able to accept it if his son were to be sent to the disposal furnaces. For a moment, Guil felt relief of a sort His father could accept, could maintain his pride even if he failed them. Was that not a wonderful thing? Then came a second wave of emotion. Yes, damn it, maybe his father could accept it, but then it was not his father who was going to die. It was not his father who would be torn and mutilated in the arena and later fed to the licking flames of the disposal furnaces. The high spirits that he had just attained sunk quickly into black-ness and despair.
    Later, alone in his room, he fell asleep with the last line of the song still on his lips. Fell asleep into a dream that he had had ever since he could remember, a dream always the same. Like this:
    Above the bleak banks of the river, there is a barren wall of jutting stone to a shelf of polished black onyx a hundred feet overhead. It is an indeterminate hour of the night The sky is neither blue nor black, mottled in-stead, an odd brown and rotten tan. Where these two colors overlap, it looks much like blood that has dried and grown flaky. At a bend in the river, the onyx shelf juts completely across the water, forming a roof, and on this roof is a purple building fronted with massive columns that are rimmed with black stone faces at their tops. There is a great and profound silence that does not just hang upon things but which radiates from the landscape. The moon is a motionless gray disc. He seems to be approaching the shelf and the building—as always—floating up from the river on a black leaf, which is strange, considering the total lack of wind. Then, passing over the columned structure, he again floats down, down to the river once more. Gently, with a cradlelike rocking, he floats toward a Stygian sea that engulfs him, towing him toward the lightless bottom where a river of air moves him along the sea floor, past the same purple building, the same promontory, into the same sea where, at the bottom, he is greeted by the exact same river, exact building, dark ocean, and…
    He woke sweating, his eyes aching as if they had actually looked upon the impossibility of the dream. His heart pounded with fear that was at the same moment indescribably delicious and desirable. He had been having that dream ever since, as a three year old child, he had been with his father in the arena, inspecting preparations for a Coming of Age Day ceremony. The Pillar of Ultimate Sound had been humming darkly in the center of the floor, the gateway to that land beyond life where everything is different He had been very interested in the pillar and, after breaking away from his father, had gone to it and reached through, had placed his head inside and had seen the strange land beyond.
    He did not know whether he was afraid or whether he welcomed his meeting with the pillar tomorrow at the end of the ceremonies.
    Tomorrow…
    The arena…
    Suddenly, he wondered if he was not going to have a difficult time getting back to