“Bourbon over ice,” said Arthur, thinking that the least the baritone could do to atone for his interruption was to buy a round.
But Harden simply beckoned the steward and ordered one bourbon over ice. Resignedly Arthur ordered another and a Deimos Delight for the girl, and hastily threw the conversation back to her with a reference to Dr. Weddergren.
For the first time he felt a warm devotion in her as she spoke of the scientist who had molded her voice. The transference with singer and vocal teacher is not unlike that with patient and psychiatrist, and even Weddergren’s purely scientific method seemed to have evoked the same phenomenon.
“He’s wonderful!” she said. “There isn’t a man alive who understands the voice as he does—and can make you understand it too.”
“My teacher,” said Harden, “says it’s bad to understand too much; you should feel!’
“Nonsense!” Faustina Parva announced flatly. “You sound like a Populist!”
“That’s bad?” the baritone snapped.
It was as well that the drinks arrived then; Populist-Academist arguments were never safe, and especially uncomfortable to Arthur in his loathing of both sets of extremists. By the time the drinks were signed for, the Parva was safely back on vocal training.
“And did Dr. Weddergren show you Marchesi?” she asked.
“He did—damnedest experience I’ve ever had, not even excepting,” he added, “your audition.” (Was the corner of his eye tricking him, or had the baritone just dropped something into his own bourbon over ice?)
“Please!” She was imperious. “Don’t be gallant!”
“I’m not. Just factual.” He looked at her for a moment with intense and concentrated devotion. (Which allowed the move which he had next expected; with sleight of hand worthy of such legendary figures as Robert-Houdini or Rawson, the baritone had switched the two bourbons.)
“Who is Marchesi?” Harden asked.
“You don’t know the name?”
“Never heard it.”
“That’s odd.” And it was, for a singer. “Considered the greatest vocal teacher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and possibly of all time.”
“Until now,” the Parva interrupted.
“As you will. And Weddergren has his Marchesi too. Look over at the bar, Harden; you see that electronic mixer?” Harden looked. (And the bourbons changed places again; juzor training develops ones aptitude for sleight of hand.)
“What about it?” Harden asked.
“It’s a fine example of a usuform robot, made to do one thing superlatively well. Weddergren has made a singing robot—a precise reproduction of the ideal human vocal apparatus, but incapable of human errors.”
“Not quite precise,” the girl corrected him. “It has a slightly larger uvula than any human being. Dr. Weddergren thinks that’s important; one reason he chose me to train was my uvula. Look—it’s extraordinarily well developed.”
She opened her generous mouth. Now the face which had begun to seem oddly beautiful to Arthur was distorted into a comedy mask; he leaned forward and peered, honestly interested professionally in this odd physiological fact. (For one instant even the corner of his eye was observing nothing but a singular uvula.)
“And does this Marchesi sing well?” the baritone asked.
“Perfectly,” said the Parva.
“I’ll agree,” Arthur added. “But I’m not sure that’s a desideratum. The voice is free of human errors—and of humanity.” (If I were Harden . . . He could have switched them then; if he did I should switch back. But is he counting on that? Did he leave them alone so that I would switch them back andfeed myself whatever he’s slipped in there?)
“Freedom from errors,” the girl said a trifle sharply, “should be humanity’s goal.”
“Please! Let’s stay away from politics and keep to music.” (Or is it indeed my turn to switch anyway? Where is it now ? First he . . . Then . . .)
The girl’s glass was empty. “Gentlemen, neither of you’s even sipped his drink. And I shouldn’t have had two Deimoses; they’re too sweet. I want a taste of whisky to clean my mouth. Which of you will be so kind?”
(Which glass is it? Which was the last switch? And if it is mine and I offer it, will he let her . . . ?)
As if actuated by one control button, the two men rose, neatly upsetting the table. The two streams of bourbon, toxic and intoxicant, mingled on the floor.
It is not within the scope of this narrative to detail the three months of the trip. That scene in the bar was in its way typical enough.
Conversations, in and out of the bar, with Faustina Parva followed the same pattern. The two were drawn together by their common deep devotion to singing, and held apart by the difference in their attitudes. And at the moment when Arthur was struggling hardest to repress a sharp retort to some philosophical echo of Weddergren, he would find himself wondering why he had never noticed before that she had unusually deep dimples, which lent a curious softness to an otherwise almost severely carved face.
There was no doubt that Ivor Harden was a Populust agent, and that his singing career was a fraud. His inadequacy as a vocalist did not prove it; some of the least talented can be the most career-minded. But it was significant, for instance, that he bothered to avail himself of an air lock for practice only twice in the course of the trip.
It was also not without significance that the steward reported his presence in Arthur’s corridor just before the incident of the Martian sand adder in the bedclothes, and that he had left his palmprints on the cargo box which so nearly decapitated Arthur when the captain (his warmest friend since the lock-solution) was showing him over the hold.
Typical Populist scorn of the methodology of any science—criminalistics, in this case—not to know that palmprints are as sure as fingerprints, nor to realize that Arthur would long ago have unobtrusively secured all the baritone’s prints (smiling to himself with the pleasant notion that something might be solved
