Clarin nodded to him, eyes fastened on his. ‘Tell it,’ she said. ‘Tell it the truth. Find the words, somehow, and tell it the truth.’
‘What do you want me to sing?’ whispered Bondri. ‘It is a very important question the god has asked.’
‘I don’t want you to sing,’ Tasmin cried. ‘I want to tell it myself. Me. And Clarin and Jamieson. I want to tell it exactly what we mean to say!’
‘Do the Loudsingers have the words?’
‘No, Bondri. You know we don’t have the words. We have to have a while to get the words.’
‘Then I will tell the Highmost Darkness that the Loudsinger is preparing an answer.’
The troupe sang a short phrase, three times repeated, and a cascade of sound belled from the Tower.
‘It understands the difficulty this question poses,’ said Bondri. The Great One found intriguing alternatives in encoding it linguistically and can extrapolate there would be alternative possibilities in answer. It allows you time.’
Shaking their heads over this, trying to believe they were living a reality rather than a dream, they gathered around Donatella’s synthesizer. Tasmin bent above the keyboard, making quick notations as the translator gave him each key concept. Clarin was beside him. Jamieson heaved himself up, tottering, and Vivian ran to hold him up.
‘Lie down, young man. You’re not fit to be up.’
Jamieson grinned. ‘You think I’m going to let that old man do all the singing, Vivian?’ He staggered a little. ‘I’ll get stronger if I move around.’
He went to peer over Tasmin’s shoulder. Tasmin looked up, shook his head disapprovingly, then turned back to the machine. After a time, Jamieson leaned closer, to help.
Occasionally the translator beeped, clucked, and refused to offer anything at all. When this happened, Tasmin turned to Bondri and asked, ‘How would you say …’ or ‘Is this how you say …?’ Bondri offered him word or correction, and Tasmin returned to his work.
What concepts would the Black Tower have? No organic ones, surely. One could not talk of hearts, of blood, of pain. Did they feel pain? Did they have honor? Did they understand truth? There were honorifics aplenty, so they had some concept of glory and power, but what did even these mean to them? They did understand beauty, so much was clear. There was not a phrase sung by the viggies that was not beautiful, and that could not be accidental. There was not a word or phrase in a successful Password that was not beautiful either, and that should have told them something. Though perhaps it told them only that viggy and human had similar esthetics.
It emerged that the Presence had no concept of its own crystallinity. Its mind existed within the great crystal as the mind of humans existed within its cells. Was the human mind aware of its cellular nature, of its neurons and receptors? Only from the outside did that kind of awareness come. And what were the minds of the Presences after all but vast arrays of dislocations, molecular vacancies, self-reproducing line, and planar defects generating energy along infinitesimal fault lines, molecular neurons rather than biological ones, atoms of chromium instead of dopamine, with vacancies in the infinite grid serving as receptor cells.
And yet they were aware. They knew inside from outside. They spoke from their own universe to a universe outside themselves. It would suffice – as a starting point.
Slowly, lines of musical notation grew beneath Tasmin’s hands. More slowly yet, the words were chosen.
‘I can’t do that,’ sighed Jamieson, indicating a soaring line of vocalization. He was able to stand without help, able to move with only minor discomfort. Or so he told himself, refusing to admit how much of his competence at the moment was mere adrenaline. But he couldn’t sing that…
‘I can,’ said Clarin. Her voice was factual, without expression, and yet her eyes were alive with concentration.
‘Yes, better let Clarin do that. You take the other part. This will be yours, Clarin,’ Tasmin muttered, slashing the notation pen across the staff, notes blooming in its wake. ‘Here’s another one for you, Clarin. The main theme is mine. I’m leaving the embellishments to you two.’
Jamieson grunted, making notes on his own machine, subvocalizing certain phrases to set them in mind.
Tasmin scowled, erased, notated once more. ‘This cadence, here. Take it slow; don’t hurry it. Extend this syllable out, out, that’s the base. Build on that, don’t lose it. Come up on the vibrato softly, then let it grow, make it tremble….’
‘Wait a minute,’ Clarin muttered, reaching for the pen and pointing to the screen. ‘Here, and here, do it this way.’ The glowing notes and words shivered and changed. Tasmin considered. Yes, it was better. Was it enough? Only the attempt would tell.
‘I don’t get this bit,’ Jamieson said. ‘Shouldn’t it fall into the minor, TA-daroo, like that? You’ve got it on the next syllable….’
‘No, it works. You initiate the harmonic line and Clarin comes in here, and me, here.’
‘What are they doing?’ Bondri whispered to Donatella.
‘I’m not sure,’ the Explorer answered. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do it before.’
‘How can they make a song without singing it?’
‘It’s just something they do,’ she replied.
An hour wore away, and most of another. Words and phrases were changed in meaning by others that came before or after, by subtle modifications in emphasis or key. They sang very softly to Bondri, phrase by phrase, and he nodded, wondering at the strangeness of this. What would the Great Ones make of this concept of difference? Of dominance of one group by another group?
