The Dark Symphony Read Online Free Page A

either way in the arena.
    He cursed the keys and his fingers.
    He rammed his feet against the pedals until his toes felt us if they would break.
    And all the while, the piano sang
tomorrow
…
    FIRST:
    In the chapel of the Primal Chord, the genetic engineering tower, Loper crouched, facing the slowly opening door that he had been about to use himself. His nostrils widened, seeking odors, telltale perfumes.
    The Musician who opened the door did not see the Popular where he hunched next to the last pew, and he closed the door and turned to the altar. In ritual, he touched his fingertips together before his face, drew them apart into the position from which a conductor might begin the symphony. Then he saw Loper.
    The Musician opened his mouth to scream. Loper leapt. He crushed the Musician against the wall, bringing all of his three hundred pounds to bear. The Musician, in a moment of concerted effort brought to a peak by wildly pumping adrenalin, wrenched himself free and took one staggering step. Loper grasped one fist in the other, making a club of flesh and bone, and swung hard into the Musician's neck The man's spine snapped, and he pitched forward onto his face, his head tucked weirdly beneath his left arm.
    Loper hid the body behind the altar, then went back to the door and risked a look at the corridor beyond. Ceiling glow-lights highlighted the brown and black swirls within the shimmer-stone green walls so that it seemed as if living creatures composed these partitions, scrambling over one another like a swarm of lice, frothing in an attempt to break the bonds of the magic mortar, gnashing their teeth in fury as the mortar held. The corridor was empty. He stepped into it, closing the chapel door.
    Clutching his knife, ,he crept down the gleaming hall-way until he came to an elevator shaft It was unlike the inoperative shafts in the ruins of the Popular sector of the city, for it was clean and free of spiderbats. Also, this lacked any identifiable car or cable lift system. It appeared as if one stepped in and was carried upward by air or fell and was cushioned by air. He did not like it, but he had no choice. He punched out the number of the floor he wanted and stepped into the tube.
    There was a playing of dissonance and consonance in his bones. Sound swirled through him, crashed over him like a wind, lifting him up the shaft Abruptly, he ceased to rise and was floating before the exit onto the top floor. He pushed against the walls like a man in a gravityless environment, turning into a standing position, and shoved into the corridor, a little of his terror draining out of him as the elevator whined to a stop behind.
    He moved down the corridor to the first door and stopped. He held the knife before him, ready to gut anyone who discovered his presence. He was looking for the nursery, but he did not know what door it lay behind. Palming the door activator, he tensed as the portal slid open.
    Over a hundred naked women floated in a gleaming metal bowl at least a hundred and fifty feet across and twenty stories deep. They were held up by coursing, almost visible sound that gurgled from rim to rim and mouth to bottom of the incredible structure. They drifted, now with legs wide-spread, now drawn together in maidenly modesty, now with arms dangling loosely, faces split with axe wound grins of absolute pleasure as the duple, triple, quadruple, and sextuple-metered concertos laced their wombs. They were all pregnant, for this was the Inundation Chamber. Here, after the genetic engineers had done their work, had helped to fashion the fetuses, the women were brought to subject the advance stages of their unborn children to the hypnotic Inundation music. The music carried subliminals in primitive picture concept quantums that "brainwashed" the unborn children, smoothed the rough edges of the genetic engineers' work by indoctrinating the fetus with a love and respect of music and authority.
    Against his will, Loper looked away