Post by yewtree on Oct 15, 2005 14:37:29 GMT
The members of the orchestra were attuning their instruments to the Perfect Harmony of Radiance as Edouard and his colleagues filed silently into the vast pure-white space of the concert hall. One by one, each instrument lost itself in the great whole, its dissonance cancelled out by the great overriding harmony.
Edouard looked surreptitiously at his watch. He hated these grand functions, but supposed that he had no choice but to attend. He wondered if he would still have time to get to the Old Easy before it closed.
The Chancellor of Etesian University processed onto the stage with his retinue, and everyone stood up. Edouard looked around at his colleagues from the faculty, applauding politely, dressed in their white robes of office with the gold braid and insignia of the Radiant. Edouard was dressed in his usual formal wear of the faded green robes of Cordonazo University. He sensed his colleagues looking askance at him, with his long hair and scruffy robes, and the absence of Elixir-enhanced looks. A deep furrow creased his forehead, giving him the appearance of a warrior, but his eyes betrayed vulnerability and shyness. He was clean-shaven, but a shadow of stubble on his chin showed that he had not succumbed to electrolytic hair removal procedures.
Once the Chancellor was enthroned on the great cathedras, the audience sat down again, and the conductor raised his resonator, a kind of circular aerial. The first piece was called “Pure White Light”, and had apparently been inspired by the ethereal sound of the composer’s wind chimes. Edouard doodled absent-mindedly on the programme. He groaned inwardly on reading that the next piece was called “Celestial Choir” and represented, according to the programme notes, “the purest harmony of the celestial realms, with all dissonance eliminated from the perfected homogeneity of the music”. It got worse. After the interval, there was to be a performance of the interminable “Holistic Vision” symphony, followed by the “Crystal” andante from the “Primordial Essence” suite.
As the music chimed and fell softly into his ears like artificial syrup, Edouard longed for the music available at the Old Easy. Within each note there would be entwined both resonance and dissonance, the dissonance included and enveloped in the resonance, twanging and plucking at the listener’s gut. No sweet and plangent higher celestial harmonies, but expressions of real suffering and pain and joy. Edouard thought of pearls forming in oysters, how beauty was formed around the foreign body, the grain of sand; just so the music gathered the dissonance to itself and forged the harmonies in the crucible of passion and desire. He wanted to introduce dissonance into the purity of this saccharine offering, but did not dare, and sat silently fuming at its banality.
The interval was the usual round of canapés and social climbing, and as usual, Edouard found himself standing in a corner, glowering at the multitudes.
He slipped into a reverie, yearning for Beethoven piano sonatas, or real music of any kind. He had inherited a magnificent CD collection from his great-grandfather, and kept it under lock and key, far from the prying eyes of the Radiant and their acolytes.
His musings were interrupted by the approach of a woman he had not seen before. She was not dressed in white and gold, but in the purple robes of Tokalau University. Her dark hair framed her face, which was small, pointy, and sunburnt. She was slight but strong and wiry, and had green eyes.
“Not your sort of thing?” she asked.
Edouard looked at her closely, and decided to take the risk.
“No, not really,” he said.
“Nor mine,” she said.
“Shall we go?” said Edouard, emboldened by this revelation.
“Yes, let’s.” They slipped away down a side passage. No-one saw them go.
As they emerged into the night, Edouard inhaled the cool night air with some relief. The air in the concert hall had been artificially perfumed, and it had made his head feel fuzzy.
“Do you know the Old Easy?” asked his companion.
“Yes, that’s where I was going after the concert,” said Edouard.
“Excellent.”
“Are you a member of the University?” asked Edouard as they walked along.
“Yes, I’m on secondment from Tokalau.”
“What’s your subject?”
“Ecobotany. And you?”
“Archaeology.”
“Wait a minute… are you Edouard Olszewski?”
“That’s me.”
“Aha! The black sheep of the Arts Faculty – I’ve heard about you. I was at the Unity Awareness Breakfast, and some of the dons were talking about you.”
“Nothing flattering, I’m sure.”
“No.”
“Well, now you know all about me, some reciprocity might be in order?” suggested Edouard. He was drawn into banter (not his usual conversational style) by her manner, which he found stimulating.
“My name’s Serendipity Zvetin. I don’t even qualify as a sheep; I’m generally counted with the goats.”
“Really?” enquired Edouard.
“Yes, that’s why I was sent here, to the heart of the Radiance, in the hope that some of it might reflect on me.”
“And has it?”
“No, I’m still a wild woman.”
“You must have experienced a great deal of pressure to conform.”
“Well, I just let it all slide over me, really. My people have the technique of social invisibility honed to an art.”
“Your people?” queried Edouard.
“I’m a nomad.”
“Of course! Zvetin; I should have recognised the name – your father was Ilya Zvetin?”
“Still is.”
“But I thought…”
“That he died in prison? No, he escaped.”
Edouard whistled.
“Are you in contact with him?”
“Not for a while. I’ve no idea where he is.”
“Oh,” said Edouard. “Better that way, I suppose,” he added.
“Yes. It is,” said Serendipity evenly.
By this time they had arrived at the doors of the Old Easy, and after giving the password, were admitted. They walked down a narrow and dank corridor to the specially soundproofed room where the itinerant musicians gathered to play blues, jazz, klezmer, cajun, baroque, medieval, and other music that was regarded as decadent by the establishment. The walls of the Old Easy were hung with the portraits of radical musicians and poets, dissidents and practitioners of the arcane sciences that fell outside the hallowed precincts of the Radiant. Old photographs of Einstein, Gabor, McLuhan, and Poincaré were interspersed with Le Guin, Emerson, Robbins, Byatt, Jeunet and di Caro, Pullman, Allende, and other celebrated heretics. The portraits gazed with equal composure on the battered sofas and rickety tables clustered in the corners of the Old Easy, the uneven deep-red tiles of the dance floor, and the clientele milling around beneath them.
Edouard and Serendipity made straight for the bar, and the bar 'borg approached immediately.
“What will you have?” he asked. “I owe you one for rescuing me.”
“A pint of bitter, please.”
“Make that two,” said Edouard.
“Two pints of bitter coming up,” said the cyborg mechanically.
They took their drinks over to a corner table, and talked about Ilya Zvetin. He had been imprisoned about ten years ago for publishing a book about the principles behind the Gate, which were, rather inconveniently, based on quantum mechanics and string theory, both of which contradicted the doctrines of Radiance. Edouard had always suspected that the powerful commercial interests that controlled the Gate technology did not want its secrets to be widely known either.
Tonight’s band was a group of musicians from Mali, travelling under the guise of crystal salesmen.
“All the way from Timbuktu, Kutayaa Banku, will you please welcome the fabulous Prester John Band,” said the MC, and the audience cheered wildly.
“So imaginative, those early colonists,” said Serendipity drily in Edouard’s ear.
“What do you mean?”
“Kutayaa Banku is Mandinka for ‘New Earth’,” she explained.
“Perhaps they were homesick,” suggested Edouard.
The band started with some traditional music, and it was not long before the whole crowd was dancing. Edouard noticed that Serendipity danced well, with a lithe grace. She smiled conspiratorially at him, and launched into the nomad seduction dance, backing and turning away, only to return, hands on hips. Edouard stamped his feet appreciatively, falling back on the Polish style he had learnt from his grandfather. He felt alive, stirred by the music and Serendipity’s dancing, and his heart twisted with a fierce and painful joy.
They danced for most of the band’s first set, then returned to the bar. Serendipity bought the drinks, and they settled down on the sofa in the corner again.
“So what made you a rebel, then?” she asked.
“The Assimilation,” said Edouard. “I wanted to keep my culture and my heritage, and the Homogeneity Movement was the last straw.”
“Yes, I remember my father wrote an article against it. They put him in therapy for a month.”
Edouard looked surreptitiously at his watch. He hated these grand functions, but supposed that he had no choice but to attend. He wondered if he would still have time to get to the Old Easy before it closed.
The Chancellor of Etesian University processed onto the stage with his retinue, and everyone stood up. Edouard looked around at his colleagues from the faculty, applauding politely, dressed in their white robes of office with the gold braid and insignia of the Radiant. Edouard was dressed in his usual formal wear of the faded green robes of Cordonazo University. He sensed his colleagues looking askance at him, with his long hair and scruffy robes, and the absence of Elixir-enhanced looks. A deep furrow creased his forehead, giving him the appearance of a warrior, but his eyes betrayed vulnerability and shyness. He was clean-shaven, but a shadow of stubble on his chin showed that he had not succumbed to electrolytic hair removal procedures.
Once the Chancellor was enthroned on the great cathedras, the audience sat down again, and the conductor raised his resonator, a kind of circular aerial. The first piece was called “Pure White Light”, and had apparently been inspired by the ethereal sound of the composer’s wind chimes. Edouard doodled absent-mindedly on the programme. He groaned inwardly on reading that the next piece was called “Celestial Choir” and represented, according to the programme notes, “the purest harmony of the celestial realms, with all dissonance eliminated from the perfected homogeneity of the music”. It got worse. After the interval, there was to be a performance of the interminable “Holistic Vision” symphony, followed by the “Crystal” andante from the “Primordial Essence” suite.
As the music chimed and fell softly into his ears like artificial syrup, Edouard longed for the music available at the Old Easy. Within each note there would be entwined both resonance and dissonance, the dissonance included and enveloped in the resonance, twanging and plucking at the listener’s gut. No sweet and plangent higher celestial harmonies, but expressions of real suffering and pain and joy. Edouard thought of pearls forming in oysters, how beauty was formed around the foreign body, the grain of sand; just so the music gathered the dissonance to itself and forged the harmonies in the crucible of passion and desire. He wanted to introduce dissonance into the purity of this saccharine offering, but did not dare, and sat silently fuming at its banality.
The interval was the usual round of canapés and social climbing, and as usual, Edouard found himself standing in a corner, glowering at the multitudes.
He slipped into a reverie, yearning for Beethoven piano sonatas, or real music of any kind. He had inherited a magnificent CD collection from his great-grandfather, and kept it under lock and key, far from the prying eyes of the Radiant and their acolytes.
His musings were interrupted by the approach of a woman he had not seen before. She was not dressed in white and gold, but in the purple robes of Tokalau University. Her dark hair framed her face, which was small, pointy, and sunburnt. She was slight but strong and wiry, and had green eyes.
“Not your sort of thing?” she asked.
Edouard looked at her closely, and decided to take the risk.
“No, not really,” he said.
“Nor mine,” she said.
“Shall we go?” said Edouard, emboldened by this revelation.
“Yes, let’s.” They slipped away down a side passage. No-one saw them go.
As they emerged into the night, Edouard inhaled the cool night air with some relief. The air in the concert hall had been artificially perfumed, and it had made his head feel fuzzy.
“Do you know the Old Easy?” asked his companion.
“Yes, that’s where I was going after the concert,” said Edouard.
“Excellent.”
“Are you a member of the University?” asked Edouard as they walked along.
“Yes, I’m on secondment from Tokalau.”
“What’s your subject?”
“Ecobotany. And you?”
“Archaeology.”
“Wait a minute… are you Edouard Olszewski?”
“That’s me.”
“Aha! The black sheep of the Arts Faculty – I’ve heard about you. I was at the Unity Awareness Breakfast, and some of the dons were talking about you.”
“Nothing flattering, I’m sure.”
“No.”
“Well, now you know all about me, some reciprocity might be in order?” suggested Edouard. He was drawn into banter (not his usual conversational style) by her manner, which he found stimulating.
“My name’s Serendipity Zvetin. I don’t even qualify as a sheep; I’m generally counted with the goats.”
“Really?” enquired Edouard.
“Yes, that’s why I was sent here, to the heart of the Radiance, in the hope that some of it might reflect on me.”
“And has it?”
“No, I’m still a wild woman.”
“You must have experienced a great deal of pressure to conform.”
“Well, I just let it all slide over me, really. My people have the technique of social invisibility honed to an art.”
“Your people?” queried Edouard.
“I’m a nomad.”
“Of course! Zvetin; I should have recognised the name – your father was Ilya Zvetin?”
“Still is.”
“But I thought…”
“That he died in prison? No, he escaped.”
Edouard whistled.
“Are you in contact with him?”
“Not for a while. I’ve no idea where he is.”
“Oh,” said Edouard. “Better that way, I suppose,” he added.
“Yes. It is,” said Serendipity evenly.
By this time they had arrived at the doors of the Old Easy, and after giving the password, were admitted. They walked down a narrow and dank corridor to the specially soundproofed room where the itinerant musicians gathered to play blues, jazz, klezmer, cajun, baroque, medieval, and other music that was regarded as decadent by the establishment. The walls of the Old Easy were hung with the portraits of radical musicians and poets, dissidents and practitioners of the arcane sciences that fell outside the hallowed precincts of the Radiant. Old photographs of Einstein, Gabor, McLuhan, and Poincaré were interspersed with Le Guin, Emerson, Robbins, Byatt, Jeunet and di Caro, Pullman, Allende, and other celebrated heretics. The portraits gazed with equal composure on the battered sofas and rickety tables clustered in the corners of the Old Easy, the uneven deep-red tiles of the dance floor, and the clientele milling around beneath them.
Edouard and Serendipity made straight for the bar, and the bar 'borg approached immediately.
“What will you have?” he asked. “I owe you one for rescuing me.”
“A pint of bitter, please.”
“Make that two,” said Edouard.
“Two pints of bitter coming up,” said the cyborg mechanically.
They took their drinks over to a corner table, and talked about Ilya Zvetin. He had been imprisoned about ten years ago for publishing a book about the principles behind the Gate, which were, rather inconveniently, based on quantum mechanics and string theory, both of which contradicted the doctrines of Radiance. Edouard had always suspected that the powerful commercial interests that controlled the Gate technology did not want its secrets to be widely known either.
Tonight’s band was a group of musicians from Mali, travelling under the guise of crystal salesmen.
“All the way from Timbuktu, Kutayaa Banku, will you please welcome the fabulous Prester John Band,” said the MC, and the audience cheered wildly.
“So imaginative, those early colonists,” said Serendipity drily in Edouard’s ear.
“What do you mean?”
“Kutayaa Banku is Mandinka for ‘New Earth’,” she explained.
“Perhaps they were homesick,” suggested Edouard.
The band started with some traditional music, and it was not long before the whole crowd was dancing. Edouard noticed that Serendipity danced well, with a lithe grace. She smiled conspiratorially at him, and launched into the nomad seduction dance, backing and turning away, only to return, hands on hips. Edouard stamped his feet appreciatively, falling back on the Polish style he had learnt from his grandfather. He felt alive, stirred by the music and Serendipity’s dancing, and his heart twisted with a fierce and painful joy.
They danced for most of the band’s first set, then returned to the bar. Serendipity bought the drinks, and they settled down on the sofa in the corner again.
“So what made you a rebel, then?” she asked.
“The Assimilation,” said Edouard. “I wanted to keep my culture and my heritage, and the Homogeneity Movement was the last straw.”
“Yes, I remember my father wrote an article against it. They put him in therapy for a month.”