‘Don’t be pedantic, Jacky. Call them PJs like everyone else does.’
The older man flushed, ran his fingers through his gray beard as though he were combing mice out of it. ‘Habit. Trying to stay dignified in front of the students. Hell, you were my student.’
‘I remember. And you were a good teacher, too. You should have stayed with it instead of taking the library job.’
‘Well, it gives me time to – you know. I know you call it my hobbyhorse, Tas, but it isn’t just that. Really. Some days I think I’m that close.’ He held up a pinched thumb and finger, almost meeting. ‘That close. I know we’re actually talking to the things! It almost seems I can understand what the words are….’
‘Until someone comes along with a new PJ?’
‘No, that’s been the trouble up until now. I’ve been assuming all the … PJs should have a common element, right? But what if Erickson was right? What if it is really language.’ Jaconi’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, and he looked around to be sure no one was listening. ‘I mean, we don’t always say the same things under similar circumstances. Suppose I step on your toe. I could say, “Gee, I’m sorry,” or “Excuse me,” or “That was clumsy of me,” or “Oh, shit,” or any one of a dozen other things, all equally appropriate.’
‘That’s true.’ Tasmin was interested, despite himself.
‘Always before, I was looking for identical elements. All those translators I bought, I was always looking for words or phrases or effects that were the same and had the same effect. But if we don’t always say the same thing to convey the same emotion, then maybe the Presences don’t either and what I should be looking for is clusters. Right?’
‘It sounds logical.’
‘Well, so that’s what I’m looking for now. I may even have found some. There are similar elements in about ten percent of all PJs.’
‘What do you mean, similar?’
‘Tone progressions of vowel sounds, mostly. With similar orchestrals. Horns and drums. There’s percussion in ninety-five percent of the clusters and horns in over eighty percent, and the other twenty have organ effects that are rather like horn sounds.’
Jaconi’s description had set off a chain of recollection in Tasmin’s mind, and he reached for it, rubbing his forehead. ‘Jacky, I brought you the new Enigma score a week or so ago.’
‘You poor guy. I looked it over after you left it and it was a bitch.’
‘Well, yeah, it was complex, but not that bad, really. The Explorer’s notes were excellent; I’ve never seen better. It did have a long sequence at the first of the PJs, though, lots of vowel progressions in thirds and fifths and percussion and horns.’
‘Who came up with it?’
‘Some explorer who normally works way up in the northwest. Don Furz? Does it ring a bell?’
‘Furz’s Rogue Tower Variations. Furz’s Creeping Desert Suite. Furz’s Canon for Fanglings.’ He pronounced it ‘Farzh.’
‘Oh, Farzh. I should have realized.’
‘When’s it scheduled for trial?’
‘It isn’t. The Master General wanted it on file, that’s all.’
‘No volunteers?’
‘That’s a bad joke, Jacky. We’ve been trying the Enigma for about a hundred years and what’s the score by now? Enigma, about eighty. Tripsingers, zero. We won’t have a volunteer unless we have someone set on suicide.’
Celcy had spent the week prior to the concert creating a new dress. Deepsoil Five was hardly a hotbed of fashion, and she often made her own clothing, copying things she saw in holos from the Coast where the influences of the star ships coming and going from Splash One and Two kept the style changing. Her current effort was brilliant orange, shockingly eye-catching with her black hair and brown skin, particularly inasmuch as it left bits of that skin bare in unlikely places.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Tasmin told her, knowing it was not entirely for him that she’d created the outfit. She took his admiration for her physical self for granted.
‘I am, aren’t I?’ She twirled before the mirror, trying various bits of jewelry, settling at last on the firestone earrings he had given her for their fifth anniversary after saving for two years to do so. He still felt a little guilty every time he saw her wear them. The money would have helped a lot on what he was saving for his mother’s medical treatment, but Celcy had really wanted them, and when she got things she wanted, she was as ecstatic as a birthday child. He loved her like that, loved the way she looked in the gems. They, too, glittered with hot orange flares.
He stood behind her, assessing them as a couple, he tall, narrow faced and towhaired, like a pale candle, she tiny and glowing like a dark torch. Even in the crowded concert hall after the lights went down, she seemed to burn with an internal light.
He had told himself he would detest the music, and he tried to hate it, particularly inasmuch as he recognized the Password bits, the words and phrases that had cost lives to get at, here displayed purely for effect, used to evoke thrills. Here, in a Tripsinger citadel town, Lim had sense enough not to bill anything as a tripsong, not to dress as a tripsinger and to stay away from the very familiar stuff that anyone might be expected to know. Except for those very sensible precautions, he used what he liked, interspersing real Password stuff with lyrics in plain language. Even though Tasmin knew too much of the material, he still felt a pulse and thrill building within him, a heightening of awareness, an internal excitement that had little or nothing to do with the plagiarized material. The music was simply good. He hated to admit it, but it was.
Beside him, Celcy flushed and glittered as though she had been drinking or making love. When the concert was over, her eyes were wide and drugged looking. ‘Let’s hurry,’ she said. ‘I want to meet him.’
Lim had made reservations at the
