It isn't much, God knows, but it's all I have left.” It may be idiotic, and it may be sickening, but it's going to be done right. If a Com goes out with my name on it, it's going to be composed. I will not turn my arranging over to hacks. Run down and buy some fresh meat.”īaque slammed his fists down and shouted above the shattering dissonance. And the food synthesizer's broken down again.” (But what a feeble, distorted brass choir!) He hesitated, touched a button, touched several buttons, and wove weird harmonies out of the booming tones of a brass choir. “Must we go through all that again, Val?” he asked. (“But God, how preposterously unlike a clarinet!” he thought.) With a lightning flip of his hand he touched a button, and the thin treble tones were suddenly fuller, more resonant, almost clarinetlike. Instead he leaned forward, his left hand tearing a rumbling bass figure from the multichord while his right hand fingered a solemn melody.
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In the lobby of one of the thousand spacious hotels, in the waiting room of the remarkable library where a copy of any book you request is reproduced for you free of charge, in the eleventh balcony of Beethoven Hall, a ghost shuffles haltingly, clutches an arm, asks a question.Įrlin Baque sensed her presence behind him, but he did not turn.
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If you respond with a torrent of ecstatic praise, the old man eyes you impatiently and only waits until you have finished to ask again, “I say, do you like it?”īut a smile and a nod is met with beaming pride, a gesture, a shout. Or you stand in resplendent Plato Avenue, between the Wagnerian Theater, where the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen is performed daily, and the reconstruction of the sixteenth-century Globe Theatre, where Shakespearean drama is presented morning, afternoon and evening. A strident laugh, an innocent, childish smile of pleasure, a triumphant shout.
In your perplexity you can do no more than nod as you turn away-but your nod brings a strange response. He takes a step forward, and his eyes are eager, pleading. “Like it?” he says, and eyes you expectantly. The hand extends in a sweeping gesture that embraces the far horizon, and you notice that the fingers are maimed or missing. You stare, take in the slumping contortion of one crippled shoulder and the hideous scar of a missing ear, and back away in alarm. The leathery face is scarred and wrinkled, the thin strands of hair glistening white. Directly below, you see the curious landscaping of an eighteenth-century French jardin and, nearby, the Moliere Theater.Ī hand clutches your sleeve, and you turn suddenly, irritably, and find yourself face to face with an old man. The twin towers of a facsimile of the Rheims Cathedral rise above the horizon. They watch eagerly, delighted to see in person what millions are watching on visiscope.īeyond the theater, the tree-lined Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard curves into the distance, past the Dante Monument and the Michelangelo Institute. Sunlight plays on their brightly-colored clothing. Off to the left, on the slope of a hill, you see the tense spectators who crowd the Grecian Theater for Euripides. You are standing in the observation gallery of the towering Bach Monument. It is awesome, it is overpowering, it is-everything.Īnd though few of its visitors know about this, or care, it is also haunted. The Center is colossal, spectacular and magnificent. It is a monumental summary of man's cultural heritage, and like a phoenix, it has emerged suddenly, inexplicably, at the end of the twenty-fourth century, from the corroded ashes of an appalling cultural decay. It is square miles of undulating American Middle West farm land, transfigured by ingenious planning and relentless labor and incredible expense. It is the vacation land of the Solar System.
From the babe in arms to the centenarian looking forward to retirement, everyone has been there, and plans to go again next year, and the year after that. It isn't possible to explain the Center, and it isn't necessary. You can emerge from the rolling mists of the Amazon, or the cutting dry winds of the Sahara, or the lunar vacuum, elbow your way up to a bar, and begin, “When I was at the Center-” and every stranger within hearing will listen attentively.
From Bombay to Lima, from Spitsbergen to the mines of Antarctica, from the solitary outpost on Pluto to that on Mercury, it is-the Center. It has another name, a long one, that gets listed in government appropriations and has its derivation analyzed in encyclopedias, but no one uses it.
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