Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2) Read online

  Our cities were no longer decaying warrens imprisoning the impoverished masses. The few people who remained behind could pick and choose among the best housing. Landlords were forced to reduce rents and keep properties in perfect repair just to attract tenants.

  Hunger was ended when the ratio of consumers to food producers dropped drastically. Within ten years, the population of Earth was cut in half, and was still falling.

  For the same reason, poverty began to disappear. There were plenty of jobs for everyone. When it became apparent that the nuhp weren't going to compete for those jobs, there were more opportunities than people to take advantage of them.

  Discrimination and prejudice vanished almost overnight. Everyone cooperated to keep things running smoothly despite the large-scale emigration. The good life was available to everyone, and so resentments melted away. Then, too, whatever enmity people still felt could be focused solely on the nuhp; the nuhp didn't mind, either. They were oblivious to it all.

  I am now the mayor and postmaster of the small human community of New Dallas, here on Thir, the fourth planet of a star known in our old catalog as Struve 2398. The various alien races we encountered here call the star by another name, which translates into "God's Pineal." All the aliens here are extremely helpful and charitable, and there are few nuhp.

  All through the galaxy, the nuhp are considered the messengers of peace. Their mission is to travel from planet to planet, bringing reconciliation, prosperity, and true civilization. There isn't an intelligent race in the galaxy that doesn't love the nuhp. We all recognize what they've done and what they've given us.

  But if the nuhp started moving in down the block, we'd be packed and on our way somewhere else by morning.

  SYMPHONY FOR A LOST TRAVELER

  Lee Killough

  They walked in a moving band of light, into and out of darkness. The floor and ceiling panels of the corridor brightened as Cimela and the butler-- in formal black-and-silver jumpsuit-- entered each new section; glowing milky white, then dimming out behind them. The passage bored straight through the moon's rock. A glassy sheen of fused stone reflected back at Cimela between the succession of contemporary and classic paintings decorating the walls: abstracts by Tanguy, a Bosch, Seth Koerner's bleak planetscapes, and starships and aliens signed Herring and Whelan.

  Cimela frowned. Kerel Mattias Ashendene's artistic taste ran to the fantastic. Why, then, had he sent expensive shuttle and Moon rocket tickets along with the enigmatic invitation to his lunar retreat-- I would like to discuss the creation of a truly unique symphony-- to a composer whose work celebrated nature?

  She wished she had been able to learn more about the man than public facts: that his Interstellar Mining and Drilling, Inc. issued franchises to more than half the independent miners in the asteroids and Jupiter and Saturn's moons, that he owned controlling interests in numerous other corporations, including those manufacturing pharmaceuticals and computers and contragrav units. Journalist friends could supply only two pieces of tape on him, both eleven years old. One recorded his removal from the twisted wreckage of his sailcar and the other his departure from the hospital months later in a floatchair.

  The butler clapped his hands. A section of wall opened to reveal an elevator. "Ask for level four, madam. Mr. Ashendene is waiting."

  He was sending her alone into the lion's den? Cimela reflected wryly.

  Near-normal gravity returned briefly, but faded again when the car stopped rising. The doors opened.

  Cimela gasped in horror. Before her lay the open surface of the Moon, the side and bottom of a crater dropping away in a sharp pattern of light and shadow!

  For a moment she did not see distorted smear of her reflection on the inside of a transparent surface... the bittersweet of her jumpsuit a flame beneath her mahogany face and the ebony velvet of her close-cropped hair. Then breath returned in a gasp of relief. A dome! Even so, stepping out of the elevator, she felt for the polyplastic to reassure herself.

  "You're quite safe," a deep resonant voice said.

  She turned toward the sound and found herself in a large, circular room. An assortment of tables and chairs floated above the glowing floor along with a bed, a computer station, and a desk piled with papers and minidisc files. Cimela barely noticed the furnishings. Above the waist-high cabinets and bookcases around the edge-- filled with genuine printed and bound volumes-- the dome and wire lattice generating its meteor screen rose invisibly, creating the illusion that nothing separated the room from the lunar crater. Earth hung overhead, a brilliant sapphire suspended against midnight velvet studded with diamonds. With difficulty, she dragged her eyes from the view to the man gliding toward her in a floatchair.

  He extended a hand. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."

  "And I you." His hand crushed hers. Eyes the color of moondust slid over her, assessing, dissecting. Where in them, and in the assured voice, craggy features, gray-touched hair, and iridescent jumpsuit was the person who bought those paintings? "Tell me about your proposal."

  "Will you join me for tea?" He used the controls on one sweeping armrest to back his chair toward a table floating above the glowing floor.

  Cimela accepted the cup he handed her and folded into a freeform chair. Suddenly, from somewhere, music flooded the dome. She instantly recognized her Requiem For a Vanishing World, even without the holo track. It flowed around her, stately bass notes representing whales booming along under the high music of birds and the sinuous rhythms of predators, all intermixed with the sounds of the animals' own voices: twittering, whale songs, howls, snarls.

  Ashendene's moondust eyes continued to search her. "I never would have thought one could make music using DNA as the score. Four notes sound so limiting."

  She quirked a brow. "Nature manages well enough with them." She expected some reply, but he only continued to stare at her. The scrutiny brought a rush of irritation. "Am I not what you expected?"

  The moondust eyes flickered. "Oh, yes... black and all."

  She started. Could the man read minds?

  "I researched you, of course. Cimela Bediako, thirty-one years old, single, born in Ghana, bioengineer father, music training in Sidney, lead singer and song writer for the Neo-Renaissance band the Rococo Roos until you switched to symphonic music and presented World Primeval at the San Francisco Opera House five years ago. If I'm staring, it's in admiration of one not only supremely talented and beautiful, but a veritable Pied Piper as well."

  Cimela blinked. "Pied Piper?"

  Whale songs cried in counterpoint to the howl of wolves. Ashendene said, "World Primeval generated a renewed interest in dinosaurs, I understand, and your wildlife symphonies have inspired a growing conservation movement."

  "I hope so!" She glanced up at the luminous sapphire above them, so unflawed at this distance. "We're spreading out across the galaxy, but we're not leaving anything to come home to."

  "Not quite across the galaxy. We haven't left the solar system yet."

  Cimela shrugged. "Well, there's no practical star drive. Star ships would also take metals away, and we don't even know there's anywhere to go."

  The moondust eyes flicked over her. "Those are just the excuses we've concocted for abandoning the stars... all invalid. We do have an efficient drive and there's not only somewhere to go, but someone to meet."

  Her breath stuck in her chest. "Someone..."

  Ashendene leaned toward her. "Three years ago a miner I franchised found a derelict ship in the asteroids. It's three thousand years old."

  Her throat went dry. "We've been in the asteroids for only a century."

  "Yes." He sat back. "My scientists have taken the ship apart and learned the principles behind the drive. I want to put that drive in human ships now. That's why I asked you here. I plan to announce my plans at a dinner for potential investors and I want music to celebrate the occasion. In addition to keeping all rights to the music and being my guest while you work, you will, of course, receive m
onetary remuneration."

  He named a figure that any other time would have left Cimela dazzled, but now she could feel only the bitter stab of disappointment. Background music! This was his idea of a unique musical work? She stood. "No, thank you. I don't do commercials or waiting room music."

  The moondust eyes went chill as the crater outside. "Perhaps you would be polite enough to hear me out. The credit I spent bringing you here entitles me to at least that much of your time."

  She sat down again, stiffly, on the edge of the chair.

  Ashendene frowned. "I want very special music, a long piece to be performed after dinner by an orchestra, something arranged as only you can do it, on DNA. That ship wasn't empty, Ms. Bediako."

  Searing hot and cold shot through Cimela like an electric charge. Every hair on her body raised. "You found... people?" she whispered.

  "What remained of them. Now are you interested?"

  His sarcasm went unnoticed over the crescendo of her heart. People. Aliens! Life different from any that had ever walked this world! How were they built? Did all life share the same nucleotides, or would their genetic matter sing a different song? And Ashendene offered her the chance to see first. Breathlessly, she asked, "When may I see a printout of the nucleotide sequence?"

  A thin smile crossed his mouth. "Today. I'll have it brought to your room. There's a computer station and synthesizer already there for you, but if you need anything else, just ask for it. Albert will show you the way."

  * * *

  Her "room" consisted of a large suite, one entire wall of which had been built of the same polyplastic as the dome and looked out into the crater. Neither Earth nor Ashendene's study were visible from it; just moonscape, starkly lifeless in patterns of black and silver, with the crater ringwall rising jaggedly into the velvet-and-diamond canopy of sky.

  Staring out, she caught a reflection of the room: the butler entering with an overall-clad young woman pushing a contra-gee cart piled with computer printout. Cimela lost all interest in the crater. Pulse leaping, she spun on the cart and fingered the printout in anticipation. "Did you bring holos of the aliens, too?"

  The young woman shook her head. "They didn't give me any."

  Cimela frowned. She needed them to pick appropriate instruments and tempi, and to build the holo track. She would have to ask Ashendene for them.

  The butler and technician set the printout on the floor while Cimela unpacked her electronic keyboard. After the door slid closed behind them, she arranged the paper in a circle on the carpet, creating her own ringwall. Then she sat cross-legged in the center, keyboard in her lap, and began reading through the nearest stack of printout.

  Some corner of her mind remembered a servant serving supper, and that she flung herself on the bed for awhile, but most of her awareness focused on the nucleotide sequences. She saw nothing else and heard only the music they made in her head and on the keyboard.

  The computer had not printed out the chemical structure, either as formulas or zigzag diagrams, but the terminology told her the aliens' "DNA" differed from humans': A', G', C', and T' where A, G, C, and T usually stood for the nucleotides, plus two more named PU-3 and PY-3, indicating an addition purine and pyrimidine. Six nucleotides! Their genetics must be very complex... but more than that, this time she had six notes to work with.

  Except that a seventh, out of key, kept intruding. She tried to ignore it.

  "Ms. Bediako!"

  Cimela started with enough force to lift her off the carpet. Turning, she met the keen gaze of moondust eyes regarding her from the doorway.

  Ashendene floated his chair into the room. "I came to check on you. Alfred said you didn't touch breakfast or lunch and wouldn't answer the door chime."

  Meals? Door chime? Oh... the seventh note. She grimaced. "I should have warned you how engrossed I become when I work."

  A brow quirked. "Indeed. However, I didn't bring you here to expire from anorexia. To reassure me of your nutrition, will you have dinner with me this evening?"

  Dinner? That would mean losing two or three hours of working time. Still, it might also give her the chance to learn where the steely businessman became the lover of fantasy. "Thank you. What time and where?"

  "I take my meals in my room normally. Alfred will be pouring the wine at nineteen hundred hours. It's a house vintage, from grapes in our hydroponics farm. I think you'll like it."

  Spinning his chair, Ashendene sailed it out of the room. Only after the door had closed behind him did Cimela remember that she had forgotten to ask him for holos of the aliens. Shrugging, she returned to work.

  By eighteen hundred hours she had decided on the length of the symphony, chosen the key, and decided that the notes from Mi up to Do would comprise her scale. She stood stiffly, stretching, ready for a break before looking for the strand sequences to harmonize with and make a counterpoint to the main sequence.

  * * *

  Ashendene greeted her with a nod of approval. "Lovely."

  Cimela smiled. Though this was just a break in work, she had dressed carefully, choosing a gauzy gold jumpsuit with the voluminous sleeves and legs, snuggly cuffed at wrists and ankles, that the Moon's low gravity inspired in this year's fashions. Sitting down at the round library-type table where dinner had been set, she looked out at the crater and up to the luminous globe of Earth overhead. "Do you like this room best for its view of Earth or the moon?"

  "The stars." Ashendene said

  The butler poured wine and served dinner, gliding over the glowing floor silent and efficient as a robot. Her Kings of the Air played softly around them, a chorus of strings singing the nucleotide sequences of the great raptors.

  Ashendene asked, "How did you happen to begin using DNA as a score?"

  Cimela sipped her wine. It was delicious, pale and lightly sweet as moonlight. "My father once gave my mother a birthday card that was a sheet of music with notes assigned to nucleotide sequences that resulted in the pigmentation of her hair, skin and eyes. 'The song is you,' I remember him telling her. That fascinated me. I started playing with DNA tunes. Even the music I wrote for the Rococo Roos had DNA sequence themes, and later, when I began writing about life that had vanished or seemed about to, what better than to let the very substance of those animals plead for them? World Primeval sounds like any symphony, but even its themes are expanded from nucleotide sequences of the shark, lizard, echidna, and platypus."

  Ashendene laughed. "I'm astonished how well it all sounds with such a restricted form, but even more amazed at the profound emotional effect your music has on people."

  That always surprised her, too. "A friend once came up with a theory in an inebriated moment. He said the response results from resonance, a recognition on a deeply subconscious level of its similarity to the pattern of our own genetic structure. It's as good as any other explanation I've heard. I'll be interested in seeing how people react to an alien coding."

  The moondust eyes flickered. "I would think they'd feel the same, given that the music uses human instrumentation."

  She frowned. Human instrumentation. Could that be wrong? Perhaps aliens deserved new and more exotic sounds. She would play with the synthesizer. Which reminded her-- knowing what they looked like would help her select appropriate sounds. "Mr. Ashendene, I need tapes or holos of the aliens."

  He sipped his wine and grimaced. "There aren't any worth seeing."

  She shrugged. "I don't care how poor they are; I need something for a basis of the visual track."

  "The bodies were too badly damaged to tell much about their appearance. The 'DNA' has been read from a few cells that froze quickly enough to be thawed without destroying the internal structure."

  "Even damaged bodies are worth something," she protested. "Are they large or small? How many limbs do they have? What's their clothing like? What about the ship?"

  The moondust eyes stared into her, then went thoughtful. "I see what you mean. We have holos of the ship and you'll have them by morning.
We're working on a computer reconstruction of the aliens based on a composite and skeletal structure and you'll have that, too, as soon as it's finished. From what I saw, the aliens are a bit smaller than we are, covered with... bronze or gold feathers."

  Golden bird people? She grinned in delight. Perhaps flutes and strings, or chimes, should carry the musical theme. She played with the idea in her head the rest of dinner, and afterward programmed the synthesizer in her room for airy instrumental sounds.

  * * *

  Cimela kept working with the synthesizer, at the same time deciding on secondary and tertiary musical lines. During rests she studied the holos of the ship. It appeared strictly utilitarian, without decoration or color. Ceilings pressed low overhead, barely centimeters above the squatly arched doorways. The crew apparently never used furniture except tables and something like low blanket racks with padded bars. Water-filled mats on the floor served as beds. Beyond that the holos told her nothing about the aliens. She set them aside.

  Every evening she ate with Ashendene in the domed study. The floor glowed beneath them; Earth shone overhead; moonwine filled their glasses like luminous silver. Ashendene entertained her with stories about his early days mining the asteroids. "IMDI was just me, five buddies, and a patched junk ship in those days."

  Cimela smiled at him over her wineglass. "You sound like you enjoyed it. Why did you give it up for a desk?"

  He shrugged, looking past her at the sky. "The asteroids are just a way station."

  After dinner they took tea in the study, or he showed her through another portion of the house. It had the facilities of a small colony: laboratories, workshops, staff apartments, and a hydroponics farm. Working on the ship here, no wonder he had been able to keep his find a secret. At some point they passed to a first-name basis, and one evening during her second week there she had the chance to learn about his love of fantastic art.