THE PIANO WAS a good one. A fine old Steinway, it had weathered centuries of use. It had traveled, by ship and air carrier, to every continent and climate on the planet Earth. Its journey had continued, out into the solar system of the star called Sol, and beyond. Its ivory keys had yellowed and chipped and been replaced, but the instrument itself had retained its integrity and excellence, its perfection of sound, the facility with which it could be played.
No other grand piano in the galaxy was as well preserved. Its owner had designed new systems, new chemicals for treating its wood and preserving it, for treating its strings, its joints, its polished pedals of brass. And now, the piano would outlast him. He could no longer preserve himself.
Flint sat with his eyes closed, and let his large hands wander the keyboard at their will. His thoughts did not wander over the infinite plane of time and existence. They were concentrated now on one of the lives he had lived, one of the personas he had chosen to be. He had to be that man again, now, and through him create new kinds of music not conceived of in his time, create it light-years away from his original world.
As Johannes Brahms his hands moved again, his mind composed. His thoughts flowed again in German, and the faces, voices, scenes from that life swam in the music that he played.
He had not composed before becoming Brahms. Music had challenged him and intrigued him, yet he had not taken the time to master its principles, learn the rules of harmonics and relative keys, the capacity of sound of each of the major Western instruments.
He felt spurred on to try his hand at it in the nineteenth century largely through a love for the classical European traditions, which he saw threatened by experimenters. There were obscure composers he had heard over the last century who he wished to rediscover for the world through variations on their songs. There were ancient melodies, long forgotten, he could restore as his own. There were modern masters to whom he wanted to pay tribute … and there was the challenge of creating entirely on his own, expressing himself through the idiom of sound, for the first time in his life.
Another challenge was becoming a persona, a recognizable constant figure who must mature and age and pass away, as the man who created him slipped away to another country, safe and obscure. It was a challenge he had, by the 1800s, met many times before and mastered. His facility at disguise: producing a background, causing his features to age, arranging for a "burial" from which he would be absent, had become very great. And so Brahms had appeared, a young man playing the piano in various bordellos and taverns, developing his musical sensibility even as the veteran impostor who portrayed him learned the musical craft.
As a "twenty year old," he showed his work to Schumann, and the centuries he had spent hearing and imbibing the evolution of music were ghostly present in his work. Schumann wrote of him, praising, "a musician who is destined to voice ideally the spirit of his times, who reveals his mastery, not in a gradual unfolding, but like Athena springing full-armed from the head of Zeus … a young man over whose cradle the graces and Heroes have stood their watch. His name is Johannes Brahms …"
Sweet words, though they hinted at a young man oddly lacking youth, coming out of nowhere in full bloom. Schumann had been his patron, and with the onset of his madness and death, the widow, Clara, had remained a lifelong friend to Brahms.
As Brahms, Flint had never married and never fathered children. It was during a time of personal bitterness toward women that he assumed this identity, a time of anger at the impermanence of any love. He spent his gruff bachelor evenings drinking in the Red Hedgehog tavern. Stiff, blunt, antisocial, he kept himself from all intimate attachments that might hurt him, when they were severed.
The hands that wandered the piano keys paused, struck a cadence, and his right hand reached for the pen beside him on the piano bench. The pen was modern and leakproof, with modern ink, yet it was designed to look like an Old World quill, and its holder like an inkstand. Modern implements of writing had no elegance for Flint.
He scratched at the paper, connecting notes, filling the bar with dots. A piano sonata was taking form beneath his hands. But the hands were stiff, there was an unfamiliar difficulty in the way they gripped the pen, the way they traveled the keys. And so at last he knew. This was how it felt to be aging, to have your mind conceive of things that your decaying body can barely execute. Time had claimed many before him, and now at last he felt its pull.
He threw off thoughts of his condition, focused his eyes on the wet ink on the page before him, and let his hands play over what they had just written. And again he was in Vienna, the music center in which this persona had given him a niche—such pleasure he had felt in being a part of it! There he had collected the autographed originals of so many great works; they were in his music library still. "Scraps of God," he said aloud, absently, and then scratched out part of what he had been writing.
Such awe he had felt for the masters who had been in that city before him, who in their brief spans of life had flashed a musical genius that amazed. After twenty years of professional life in music he had felt tall enough, despite the shadow of Beethoven, to show his first symphony. He had fought against the trend of the violent story telling of Wagner and Liszt, defended an older ideal of music, one of abstract emotion and thought. The piece he was composing now was true to that ideal, though it perhaps showed the more recent influence of Rigellian water music, as well.
He had watched, in his time, and after he had "passed away," the reactions of critics and the public to his work, their changing evaluation of what he had done, what he had achieved. He had been called both a sensualist and a calculating craftsman, a relic from the age of the symphony, and finally, decades later, he was recognized as one of the great masters, became one of the most performed.
This was one of his most amusing pastimes, to withdraw to the sidelines of history, and observe in anonymity how a man he had been was remembered. How and if his work survived. He had been some great men who were long forgotten, and others, like Brahms who were credited with the importance he knew they deserved. And they meant strange new things to people with every passing century.
The tough old hands ached with a strange new ache, yet Flint did not stop playing. Here in the act of creation he could forget Rayna, and all her predecessors. Here he could forget the end that awaited him, in his solitude, and feel a connection to something human …
Yet he was interrupted, by a robot's whirr. The small device hung in the air behind him, and he pulled himself back into the present and turned slowly to face it.
"Yes, M-7. Why do you disturb me when I am working?"
"It is necessary, signor," the robot replied in its flat dead voice, using the title he had programmed into it, the one with which he was most comfortable. "There is a call for you on the Priority One Starfleet channel. A member from the Federation ruling council wishes to address you."
This was urgent business. His sonata would have to be set aside until later. For the millionth time, Flint cursed these meddlesome lesser beings. How they inconvenienced him! Why had he restored contact with them? Why let this Priority One channel be installed?
"Very well, M-7. Tell the councilman I will join him presently."
The robot obediently floated out the door, to deliver the message. A few minutes later, Flint was in his salon, and standing before a large screen, face-to-face with a Tellarite. This creature had to be a minister of great stature, Flint knew, else he would not be serving on a Federation council. But his physical appearance repelled: the furry skin, the long snout in place of a nose, the hooflike hands, and beady eyes all seemed to denote a lesser intelligence. Still, Flint greeted him courteously. "If I can be of help to you, sir."
Unfortunately, Tellarites had a rude and temperamental manner, to match their rough appearance. "The Federation does not use the Priority One channel lightly, Mr. Flint. We used it because all other channels to your home were not being responded to."
"That is because I did not wish to be disturbed by anything less than an emergency. I prefer solitude, for my meditation and work."
"Well, what we have now is an emergency. You are surely the last in the galaxy to be informed. Relations between the United Federation of Planets and both the Klingon and Romulan empires have gone critical. We may not be able to avoid direct conflict much longer."
"Is that all?" Flint asked blithely. He had seen, he felt, larger crises than this.
"All?" the Tellarite repeated incredulously.
"What I mean to say is, how does this relate to me? How am I expected to help you in this matter?"
"Mr. Flint, the Federation is counting on your help. It is crucial that you design a new weapons system for us, with which our starships and battleships can be armed. If our enemies learned we had such a system, it would surely cause them to sue for peace."
Flint smiled wisely. "And what if it were to provoke them instead?"
"If they remain belligerent, then obviously, with such a system we will be better equipped to defend ourselves. We will have the advantage in battle. Mr. Flint, I appeal to your loyalty to the Federation in this. You are from the planet Earth. You must believe in the Federation, and all it stands for."
The argument was wearyingly familiar. Flint had had his loyalty appealed to before, fealty to generals, kings, empires and planets, leaders who planned to conquer eternity, who vanished in an instant. "I will design no weapons for you," he said firmly. "I have seen enough of war, and what men are capable of doing to each other. I have taken part in such violence before—I will not do so now. You must find another inventor."
"There is no one equal to yourself," the councilman said, stating the undeniable. "We need a system from you. You have said you intend to help the Federation. Do you renege on your promise?"
"I do not. I do help the Federation; science and the arts have profited by my knowledge. And if you want proof of my loyalty, recall that I have already designed a major system for Starfleet, my new cloaking device. If you are concerned about being attacked, ships armed with my device will have excellent camouflage. Let that suffice."
"It will not suffice!" the Tellarite snapped, barely holding his temper in check. After a moment, he said, "Mr. Flint, you are a hard man, and you force me to discuss matters which are dangerous to delve into, even on a Federation Priority One security channel. Your commitment to Starfleet surely does not begin and end with the cloaking system. What would you say if I told you your device had disappeared?"
Flint replied, with a trace of irony, "That was, after all, the purpose it was designed for."
"No! I do not jest. I mean, it has been abducted."
"By whom?" Flint asked sharply.
"The details are sketchy, we still don't have all the facts … a skirmish on a small world … though some of us here at Starfleet are unwilling to rule out some kind of direct Romulan involvement …"
"You idiots," Flint said coldly. "Why was it not guarded properly? Why were precautions not taken?"
"It was being tested out in a small craft, and the craft was stolen. We don't even know if the thieves understood what they had aboard."
"And why was I not informed immediately?"
"The technology is ours now," the Tellarite said defensively. "And secrecy is of the greatest importance. We do not want our enemies to learn of the theft, or even to have solid proof of the device's existence."
"Well," Flint said, "I am sorry for you. I am sure it complicates your life. But if you think this news will tempt me to design new systems for Starfleet, you are mistaken. You have blueprints for my cloaking system and, as you say, the technology is yours now, and you can construct another if you wish. But consider this the end of my military contributions. I will design no weapons."
"Hypocrisy!" came the response, as the councilman's projected form buzzed and crackled. His image on the screen pointed its hard stump of a hand at Flint. "The cloaking device can also be an aid in battle. It can provide cover for one vessel attacking another. If you were willing to do that much for us, why will you not now come through with a weapons system?"
Flint stood before his screen and regarded him coolly. The sad eyes in the wise, noble old face stared into the fuzzy furious one of the Tellarite and found it difficult to understand. "The design problems involved in the cloaking device interested me. That is why I agreed to do it. But it is in essence a passive system, a means of escape from danger. I will design no aggressive systems, no new methods of destruction. And that is my final word."
"You moralize, and endanger the Federated Planets," the Tellarite sputtered. "The council is calling on you, in the name of decency, to help us, and yet you arrogantly shirk your duty, you turn your back—"
"Sir, I think you forget yourself," Flint said mildly.
The councilman stopped himself short, and recalled who this man was, in how high a regard the Terrans held him, and how beneficial he could be to the Federation. "My apologies, Mr. Flint." The words did not come easily to him. "We are all under stress at this time. I hope you will change your mind, and cooperate with the Federation in this matter."
"That is not at all likely. Please do not use the Priority One channel again for such a purpose."
The image of the Tellarite winked out. Flint walked away from the screen. He let his hand lean upon the curve of a marble statue, and sank against its coolness. He valued his hermitlike existence; exposure to such beings was most disquieting. Time had brought him detachment from passion; over the space of several millennia he had loved and fought and raged, and yet become ever more detached from the human drama, as repetitive blows and disappointments befell him.
Rayna had been his last emotional investment, and perhaps his greatest. Since her death, his fiasco with the officers of the starship Enterprise, and learning that he was soon to die, his detachment had become complete. How strange that these creatures could rage, could care about their petty threats and slights and rivalries and institutions, when all would crumble in a moment's time. For Flint there was only calm and quiet, the order that comes with knowing that all things are transient, ever changing. He had at last become a part of that flow. But what was it like to have such a disturbed, distorted spirit, to be as volatile, as suspicious as a Tellarite? What did it feel like?
Terror. Tunnel sight ahead to the screen, the ship's screen, and space was twisted, a tunnel sucking him in, and he gripped the seat to calm himself. Cold perspiration poured down his face. His fingers that had fired the phasers quivered in front of him. He stared at them, as if from far away. His ears rang, as if they still heard all the screams …
Jahn had to get control. Control of himself, but there was no control, he could not control the ship, nor Rhea, nor Pal, they were afraid of him, they saw him with a Grup's eyes, they saw him as a Grup, he saw the Grups coming, he saw the cities burn and everyone got sick and turned bad. He had flattened himself on the roof, near the chimney bricks, and watched and listened. Then, he was in control.
But now Pal was whimpering. Rhea was telling him hush. Jahn wanted to take care of them, but they turn, they, the bitch, they both turn on me she won't let me near her, afraid of me, and he couldn't talk good, was not in control. That one fact was clear. That was established.
He had been on the root, and the Grups didn't get him, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, but then they got him, and it took them a very long time. Many centuries, they told him, when they came back. Onlies did not have time, but the Grups brought it back with them, with all their evil, and they seemed good, and Miri, I'm sorry Miri and Miri believed in them and the Center came … There were holes in his thoughts.
Voltmer Grup evil Voltmer hates me I've lost all control. Voltmer in the room with the chair I was on the roof the city burned they pushed me down I was on the roof and there were screams pushed me down the arm straps. And above my head …
Jahn got up and paced the cabin. Pal shrank from his movement, and Jahn felt like smacking him. "I'm going to lie down," he said, and his voice sounded strange. It was not his voice. "I'm going to lie down, Rhea, so you better take over. You're always saying I'm no good at maintaining the ship, anyhow."
"All right, Jahn. You rest."
Rhea's voice sounded too eager. Jahn eyed her suspiciously. "I'm going to sleep, Rhea. And you'll be running the ship. And you want to give it up to the Grups, suck up to the Grups, teacher's pet, that's what you want …"
"No, Jahn, don't worry, I promise I won't—"
"Well remember. Remember where we've just been. You heard people screaming in those alien ships. You remember the other ship? That was Federation. They tried to attack us—"
"No, they didn't, Jahn—"
"Quiet! They would have gotten us, and we killed them, crushed them. And now they're all after us. They'll take us back to Voltmer and he'll kill us and dissect us. So just think of that before you turn off the cloaking device. Think of that, think of that …" His scream had become one of hysteria, and he towered over her, felt he was viewing her from a great height, through a long tunnel. She blanched, and Pal huddled closer to her. Was that control? Was he in control? "I'm going, now," he said uncertainly, and fled through the swishing doors.
In the sleeping cabin he collapsed shudderingly, his head buried in a pillow. Used to respect me I led the Onlies, me Dag Louise Miri I'm sorry Miri and I led them all the little Onlies and I was the greatest best and I could take care of them. Grups scared of me frightened the little ones Voltmer in my mind sucked me into tunnels. Wants to rule instead of me unman me I can't think good now. I can't lead. The lights were too bright the lights in the tunnel my hands strapped down there holes in my thoughts. My mind skips. I can't control, I'm sorry Miri, Rhea knows I'm not a leader now.
He closed his eyes to block out the glaring white light that filled his mind. Thoughts flew in his mind like splinters of glass, like glass it hurt him to try to grasp on to them.
He had led. He had kept the Onlies, all there were, safe from animals, hunger, cold, and big Onlies who went bad. When the Grups came back it was hard for him. They would rule and he fought sometimes and Voltmer was scared of him, he knew it, set out to destroy me, grow up, a lie, arms strapped down…
They thought they could get him, but he'd kill them all, first. He could never go back, he had to get control, he'd show Rhea … In his mind he again saw the hull of the ships glowing, sending up sparks. Blasts ripping into them, I'm sorry Miri. Well, that just made it more final. Now Rhea knew they could not go back. If he rested, his mind would work good again. His thoughts would lose their walls, holes, tunnels, skipping, if he rested …
Jahn's form slowly relaxed into the softness of the bunk, and he drifted off into a nervous, much needed sleep.