![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Painful Symphony 3: The Soloist Who Came In From The Cold
Originally written for Cohost for the prompt 'Mech pilot who never got to play in a band'
The Soloist Who Came In From The Cold
"Sir." Safer than trying to guess whether a 'Ma'am' would have been more appropriate.
"Your record demonstrates to my satisfaction that you are familiar with the full Uniphonon Code of Fleet Conduct."
"…S…ir?"
"While you are under my command there is one rule that you will adhere to and enforce above any in the Code." She pointed to the placard. A gentle, slightly amused smile spread across her face and her tone softened. "It says 'pilots' because they wouldn't understand 'phonists' but I mean it absolutely. Beyond this door, it's for us only, ok?"
Finding his neck oddly stiff, Zek nodded.
The Commander turned the handle and the door gave a hefty clunk. Then she paused, with it open only a few centimetres. "One other thing, Zek. Beyond here, it's first names only."
"Sir?"
That brought a chuckle in response. The commander's free hand came up in the space between them, one finger raised. Her fingernail was lacquered sparkling turquoise. With the voice of a lullaby, she said, "Last time, Zek."
Zek nodded again, not trusting himself to speak, cheeks hot but back chilled.
The commander – Elra – pushed the door open, revealing a space bathed in light the same colour as her hair. Faint, dancing synth music spilled out from somewhere further inside. Elra said, "Welcome home."
Zek followed her inside and into an anteroom where the mellow light drifted gently from creamy-yellow painted walls. Blinking, he realised that the paint wasn’t applied directly to metal. The finish was too smooth, lacking panel edges. Was it plastered? The door swung quietly shut behind him, closing with a heavy, dull thud. Soundproofing?
There was carpet on the floor. Not even cheap institutional tile stuff. A real, fitted carpet. Zek could feel his boots pressing into it, sense the stillness it leant to the air. He looked again at the commander, brain a frozen whirl.
She must have heard it in his breathing or something. She smiled. “Like the decor? We do it all ourselves.”
“Your-”
“When I say phonists only, I mean it. Fleet personnel do not cross that threshold, ever, ok?” Elra’s gentle laughter was like a distant harp. “Of course, that means you’ll have to do your share of the cleaning. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others.”
With that, she crossed the anteroom to the cracked-ajar inner door, from which bright music still arpeggiated. Zek followed, counting sounds. At least four instruments, but probably one of them was a prerecorded sequence. Two performers?
One of the instruments went silent as Elra pushed the door open, the others following shortly after. The next room was larger, its colour warmer, laid out as a scruffy lounge with three big sofas. Musical instruments were everywhere, on the walls, on the sofas, on the floor, a big drumkit over by the back wall, a piano - a real piano! – down one end. Wood-bodied with a gleaming brass pin block exposed, the front panel stood against the wall next to it. Opposite the piano down the long axis of the room was a massive double synth console, stacks of keyboards obscuring the lower half of the floor-to-ceiling racks behind.
For a long moment, Zek just stared, dimly aware of Elra announcing him to the handful of phonists present. Every movement of the air whispered with the resonant chambers of a hundred instruments. He swallowed. He wanted to cry. He was crying, tears chill on his cheeks despite the climate-controlled warmth.
A hand on his shoulder. The commander. Elra. She was smiling at him again, that patient, kindly smile. Crinkles at the corners of her eyes. “And now you see why it has to be for us alone, right? Welcome home. Let me introduce your new family.”
The group that gathered around them numbered five. Zek could guess why the last member of the wing was absent. That was the part that was really churning his gut as he stood there.
“This is Bochaw, ARIA OF VEINS. He/him,” Elra said, indicating the thick-set man to her immediate right. He had risen from the sofa opposite the drumkit with the silent grace of immense physical strength. Implants framed his right eye and trailed down that side of his face and neck into the collar of a washed-out red tshirt, shiny old scratches on the metal standing out against his mottled skin. The ARIA OF VEINS, Zek thought, had to be the stiletto-slender scout Frame parked in the bay next to Zek’s. Her murmuring as he passed had had overtones of tinny old synthetic echo effects.
Bochaw offered his hand to shake; veins stood out on the backs of his fingers, except for his right ring finger, which was entirely cybernetic. There weren’t any callouses that Zek could identify on the ridge or palm of his hand. He didn’t say anything, just met Zek’s eyes and nodded slightly.
Elra moved to the next in sequence. “Tollex, UNDERTONES OF A MEADOW, she or they.”
Tollex had the height and shoulders of an Old Shipper, coppery hair cut shoulder-length and wrapping their neck in elegant curling tips. They wore a rumpled cream suit with cut-short sleeves and trouser legs. They’d have to be the pilot of the Frame in bay 4, the one with the atmo-dive aero kit and the silent song of Tollex’s obvious restless love of dance.
When Zek had entered, Tollex had been perched on the back of the couch in front of the synths, head back and eyes closed. Now, though, they turned bright, aquamarine eyes on Zek and smiled. “Welcome home, Zek.” Their voice was higher and thinner than he’d expected, probably they sang an absolutely haunting alto.
Next to Tollex stood a monitor with beige-green scales, standing more upright than most of their kind. It took Zek a moment to notice why - their tail was missing, which had to ruin their natural balance. Still, they crouched low, long neck and snout bowed in welcome, and whistled a surprisingly clear, “One is Echersen Sganch, WALTZ OF VERMIN. One delights in making your acquaintance, Hadrel Zek. One hopes we harmonise soon.”
Zek bowed in return, making sure to drop his head fully. Informal as this odd place was, observing the formalities with monitors was a deeper kindness than just manners. “I’m glad to meet you too, Echersen Sganch.” Sganch’s WALTZ was obviously the big lancer opposite Bochaw’s ARIA, that muttered of polyrhythms and interferences and was armoured in the scars of near misses. The monitor had been behind the synths when Zek followed Elra into the room.
The commander - Elra! - moved to the next person in the circle, who’d been Sganch’s accompanist on the keys. “Tollex’s wingmate, Darate. FREQUENCIES OF DEPARTURE. She/her today.”
Darate, clad in an extravagant silk tea dress whose skirts had been bulked out with architectural petticoating, chuckled deeply and mocked a curtsey. “You won’t have trouble keeping track, don’t worry. Welcome home, kiddo.” She had a wide, round face and a smile to match, hair growing dense and black above it. FREQUENCIES was the Frame in bay 3, then, the one that had kept its secrets close as Zek had walked past.
Zek bobbed his head gently to Darate, sensing that she would suffer no further formality. Then he turned to his left, to the last of the five to arrive, who’d come into the lounge from a hallway off to the side. “Hey rookie, I’m Fonie.” A leaning elbow settled on Zek’s shoulder. “WHISPER OF FEAR. She/her.”
Suddenly tense again, Zek looked into eyes whose irises were as close to black as any he’d ever seen. Fonie’s hair was cut short, peaked slightly atop her high forehead, and heavily gelled. Apart from Elra, she was the only one wearing anything like uniform, though hers had been slashed and torn in all the sleeves, as well as covered in entirely non-regulation patches and pins.
“...Hi.” Zek managed, neck stiff with the effort of not leaning back. Fonie was taller than him, though not as tall as Tollex, and there was an intensity to her androgyny that he didn’t know what to make of. The WHISPER would be the heavyset frame with the enormous resonance projectors on its back, parked in bay 2. He matched her overbearing presence perfectly.
“Don’t scare the boy, sweetie,” Elra said, then put her hand on Zek’s other shoulder. “Sorry about my wingmate, you’ll get used to her.” Fonie took a step back, and Zek tried to hide his relief as her arm stopped pressing down on him. From the smile on her face, he didn’t do a terribly good job.
A slight tightening of Elra’s fingers pulled his attention back to her. She’d sobered while he wasn’t looking. “That’s us, apart from Kamren, PHASES OF STREAMS. He’s sleeping, or trying to. We agreed that would be best. Splik was his first wingmate.”
By process of elimination, PHASES OF STREAMS was the artillery Frame parked opposite REVERB. Splik must be the dead pilot who he was there to replace. Trying to strike a balance between respect for the dead and the gentleness of this wondrous place, Zek bowed his head. PHASES had radiated the liquid harmonics of cnida piloting, but Kamren didn’t sound like a homegrown cnid name.
That would have to be an anxiety for a later moment. While Zek was still grappling with his thoughts, Fonie pressed again, this time without touching him at all. "So what's your instrument, then?"
Zek stared at her, feeling the symphonic sub-hum of the room. Like any qualified phonist, he played a dozen different instruments to virtuoso standard, could produce at least parlor music on anything in at least eight different families of instrument, and would have little trouble getting notes out of basically anything placed in his lap anywhere in the seven galaxies.
"She means your first instrument," Bochaw said quietly. Had Zek's confusion been so obvious?
Before he'd even realised he was doing it, Zek looked at the piano. He couldn't do anything else. He'd seen acoustic pianos before, even heard one played once, but never more than that. How Elra had managed to get a hundred and fifty kilos of real instrument onto a deployment literally millions of light years from the nearest planet where pianos had ever been manufactured was beyond him.
Something deeper than an ache rose between the bones of his fingers, but he forced himself to speak past it. "Digital… digital piano."
"Go on, then," Fonie said, a low line of slight smirking stretched across her lips. She nodded along the room. "Show us what you can do."
Zek gaped at her, his throat gurgling tightly.
Elra patted his shoulder again. "It's ok, it's just like digital, only the action's a little stiffer."
"But… but…" he could feel tears welling up again. They couldn't possibly mean for him to play it, could they? The real thing? With his eyes stinging, he couldn't see clearly enough to see if there was a digital piano down there somewhere.
Darate stepped in front of Fonie, taking Zek's other shoulder. "These are ours, kiddo. They were made to be played, so we play them. And we take care of them. That piano is older than controlled nuclear fission, it's survived wars we don't even have history books for. You won't break it, I promise."
Some signal passed between Darate and Elra, and Zek let them lead him gently in the direction of the piano. The rest of the wing parted to make way and then followed. Even Fonie kept her peace. Tremors rose in Zek's arms. It couldn't really be that old, could it? Pre-space age? Eight centuries?
The stool that sat in front of the piano certainly wasn't, though the basic design of it might have been. It was squat, upholstered in black synfab, and with large, round handles for adjustment on both sides. Zek sat, finding it oddly high. Maybe Tollex had played it last.
He started to reach for the handles but Darate caught his arm. "Leave it high, you'll find the pedals are higher than you're used to." The exposed strings whispered with Darate's breath.
Of course. Zek's head swam. Looking to either side, he could see where the piano's frame stood on high old castors, pressing them into the carpet pile. The pedals weren't a wire-in electronic sensor block but a real acoustic mechanism, built into the bottom of the piano's body. He put his foot forward, on the floor beside the sustain pedal, and stared at it.
The pedal was a droplet shape, polished shiny by centuries of feet. Not ornamented, exactly, but still far less prosaic than he was used to. It curved outward, a symmetric pair with the damper pedal so that they looked like two spurts of a fountain. He could see what Darate meant; despite the height of his uniform boot toes, he could have slid his entire foot underneath the pedal.
Okay, no adjusting the seat. Should he take his boots off? The other phonists wore a variety of footwear, except Bochaw, whose gnarled toes were bare. Fonie had boots on, but she hadn't been in the lounge when Zek arrived, so maybe she wouldn't normally play with them on.
"Come on, newbie, what are you waiting for?" Fonie's voice again.
"Be nice, Fonie," said Elra, her tone singsong with humour. The murmur that drew from the patient instrument shredded Zek's gut. The commander finished, "Or I'll tell him how you reacted the first time you saw this thing."
There were chuckles from around behind him. Darate said, "Please play something, Zek, we'd love to hear your music." She leant forward, arm gently across his back. "If it helps, this isn't even our most valuable piano. There's a medium grand in the studio."
Zek shuddered, twitching away from Darate's touch. If that was true, it was impossible. An absurdity. He looked at the row of keys in front of him. Their plastic coating was yellow with age, and clearly not original. The wood that framed them, though… there were handwritten marks in slightly-shiny grey pressed into the inside of the frame where the front panel would have sat. They were hard to read but it looked like dates, and sure enough, some of the years began with '19'. Was that graphite? Ancient pencil?
Fingers shaking, Zek lifted his hand, left index finger extended, and rested it on middle C. The piano itself seemed to exhale at the touch. Zek pressed down, and the chime that sounded, even just that one note, rolled up and down the soundboard like an ocean. It was almost overwhelming – how did you play cleanly with so many overtones?
He squeezed his eyes shut and spread his hands. It was easier if he didn't look at what he was playing. Maybe he could pretend it wasn't an antique, just a very pricey high-end simulator. It took him a moment to find the sustain pedal by touch, the positioning really was unfamiliar.
When he pushed the pedal, it was much stiffer than an electronic one, the action uneven and a little lumpy. Rods and levers clunked gently through the frame. Zek had thought the piano was breathing earlier, but now he felt like it was growling at him. Impatiently.
Even played quietly, the chord he struck almost stung. The feel of the keys was like the pedal, as bony as his fingers as they descended into the murky end of their travel. The sound poured out in a torrent, enveloping him. He was crying again, not breathing, all his performance training lost.
He moved his wrists, played a second chord, lifting his ankle and lowering it again, feeling the wood hold the older notes well after the strings were damped and sounding with the new. Though the action was unfamiliar, the spacing of the keys was exactly what he was used to, so that his fingers moved to the next position automatically. There, and then there, displacing the bodily discomfort of tears and terrifying new wingmates with music.
"Are you a robot?" Fonie's voice cut through Zek right as he was finding the melody. "You can play other people's tunes whenever. We need to hear your music."
"I don't-" Zek said, into the ringing emptiness as the piano went still. He spoke so quietly that he couldn't hear any hint of his own voice reverberating from the instrument in front of him. He'd never been trained in composition.
"Fonie," Elra started, a touch of sternness in her tone.
"Just make something up, doesn't have to be fancy." Fonie had a long, silver wind instrument in her hand, a bit like a flute but with several mouthpieces along an extended head joint. There wasn't as much pressure in her expression as there had been earlier when she was leaning on his shoulder but Zek still felt like a mouse looking at a hawk.
He watched her put the flute-thing to her lips and blow through it gently, not generating a note. The instrument thickened the sound of her breath. A trickle of chill went down the small of Zek's back. She was going to join in if he started playing.
Which made sense; if they were going to fly and fight together as phonists, they had to be able to play together too. And doubtless a unit as irregular as Elra's, out here on the frontier, would have to improvise to a degree unthinkable to Zek's formation trainers back at the academy. And a cadet as decorated as Zek should be able to keep up, play along, play with others.
The corners of his vision were fuzzy. His skin prickled against the inside of his flight suit. He probably smelled awful, at least to Tollex and Sganch's heightened senses. The piano called him back, though. Maybe he could play something simple, at least.
He placed one hand on the keys again, fingers flat at first. Lifted his wrist up and leaned into the sustain pedal. Began rocking his fingers back and forth on a major third, pouring sound into the woodwork slowly, so that it built over time. Gently played the matching chord underneath. Frowned at the keys, looking for the shape of the next chord to move to.
He moved. Pedal up, pedal down, wrists a half-inch to the right. A melancholy, summery progression, childishly plain. His eyes were still watery, he had to squint a bit and it made it harder to think. Zek had had all the advanced music theory training available, but it was difficult to translate that to his fingers live. With sheet music in front of him, he'd have been able to explain what the notes were and why for hours, but not while playing at the same time.
Fonie's flute sounded a low chord, to match Zek's. How was it making the second tone? It was a hollow sound, more wooden than metallic, and it tugged at Zek's ears. Awkwardly, he changed chord again, subdominant to mediant, and listened as Fonie followed, a moment behind. Only one note changed, the other had to be a drone… that would be what changing mouthpiece would do, probably.
Zek changed chord again and heard Fonie falter, the steady harmony of the flute dropping out for a second, longer than it would take to move her lips. Zek turned his head halfway to glancing up at her and immediately hit a bum note. Suddenly conscious of how much he was sweating, he looked back at his hands and tried to turn the mistake into a transition – that's what improvisers were supposed to do, right? – and found himself on a chord that could only be described as 'experimental'.
He stopped, the piano mumbling reproachfully as it drifted into silence. His posture was hunched and terrible, everything his tutors would have scolded him for. Head bowed, elbows too low, hands curling inwards. He shouldn't have tried.
"You want to try sticking to a key or time signature?" Fonie said.
"Fonie!" Elra, her voice heated. Then a hand on Zek's shoulder, "Don't let her get to you, Zek. It's hard to play with new people, I know this is all a bit overwhelming."
Fonie started to say something and fell silent, in a way that suggested that, for all her informality, Elra's command of her unit was effective.
Someone perched on the edge of the stool beside Zek. Broad-shouldered enough that they imposed on Zek's awareness physically, irrespective of how much he folded in on himself. Tollex. The old shipper said, in their piping-high voice, "When was the last time you made music with someone? Just music, not training or anything?"
Regular recitals had been a part of Zek's schedule throughout his training, did that count? If not, then not since he'd been recruited. Eight years? Maybe more like nine, now, there'd been a few months between recruitment and reporting for training where he hadn't had any bookings. In a way he felt the distance more than the time. Galaxies away.
"You… have played with other musicians before, right?" Tollex kept their voice quiet, and Zek was very glad it was them and not Fonie who'd asked the question. Inwardly, he felt like he was shaking. Could Tollex feel that?
"Zek was a celebrated concert virtuoso before enlisting." Zek winced. Of course Elra would have had access to his file. Would the rest of the wing react the way the other cadets had? Assuming he'd be a snob, or rightly guessing his parents' wealth and hating him for it? The commander's voice was mellow, her tempo cautious. "Soloist on piano, viherra, and tamprens."
Somewhere off to the side, someone let out a slow, toothy whistle, the sound of it distinct from Sganch quietly asking "Tamprens?"
It was Bochaw who asked, gruffly, "How old are you?"
Zek scrunched up his face and prayed Elra wouldn't tell them. Part of him wanted to throw himself backwards off the piano stool, just so he'd be further away from the irreplaceable treasure in front of him if he needed to lash out. If he heard the word 'prodigy' in this place, thrumming back from those strings, the ancient wood…
A hand on the nape of his neck, light pressure against the stiff synfab of his collar, sending a tingling rush down his spine. He shook himself, and somehow it was easy to look up and round, into Darate's pleated bodice. She said, "Let me rephrase Tol's question, kiddo. When was the last time you played with other musicians? No conductor, no trainer, no schedule?"
He started to rise, only to be interrupted once more by Darate's hand. "Where are you going, kiddo?"
"I thought- the comm- Elra, I mean," Zek tried to look round, but all the angles were awkward. "The piano-"
"Please, feel free. It belongs to you too. Play what you feel like." Darate smiled again, a whole-face expression, eyes twinkling. "If Fonie gives you crap again I'll sit on her."
"Hey."
"Okay, Elra will sit on you instead."
"And not in any of the comfy ways," Elra added dryly. "Zek, please, play whatever you feel like, it's been a while since we've had a pianist good enough to get the best out of our pianos."
Zek rubbed his eyes, trying to dry them. His sleeve would be no help with that, the synfab outer layer was antiabsorbent. His fingers felt scratchy against his already-raw cheeks. He had to wring his hands a couple of times to get rid of the transferred tears.
He felt awful. The journey from the Conservatory had been a fortnight, the last three days alone in his Frame. Longflight rations were a stodgy weight in his gut. The shorts he wore under his flight suit had a crease that was itching across his hip. His head ached with a decade of grief and shame.
At least the light in the lounge was low. It wasn't stage spots, and he wasn't in a tuxedo. He found middle C, lifted his foot onto that high sustain pedal, and moved his right ring finger and left thumb to an octave pair of Fs. A single, slow breath, not too deep or dramatic.
Then he began to play, a gentle unison phrase descending for an introduction across the skeletal keys, slow and delicate. It was hard to play this piano quietly, like shushing an ocean. When he reached left for the low note to start the first phrase of the A section, the wood rang like an ancient bell, murky and aquatic.
Down he led the melody and up and down again, shoulders weaving with the weight of his leg rising and settling on the pedal. It was hard to keep his wrists steady, physically hard to do the legwork in a way he'd never experienced on a piano before. One benefit of military fitness training. Second time through the A section he leant on some of the rhythms, emphasising the drowsy lilt of the tune.
The deep runs of the B section came out thunderous even played at half the weight he usually gave them, the low octaves burrowing into the woodwork until he could feel them pouring out through the pedal even with the thick sole on his boot. Above them the right-hand chords chimed bright. There was so much sustain in the frame of the piano that he could come off the pedal completely for the last, staccato phrase and still carry the harmonics.
He played through the B section again, dragging the middle run down to a crawl and flattening the rhythm, only to surge again in the fanfare at the end of the phrase. Quick syncopated notes were hard, requiring full-wrist jerks that stiffened his fingers and almost threw him off, but he kept it together.
The C section rolled out louder and darker than the B, crashing against Zek's hearing, almost too much, every string on the piano shouting. Trying to bring it back down for the closing phrase was like trying to fold a parachute in high wind. On the repeat he stretched and twisted the right hand melody, dragging it across the precise two-step of the chords in which every note he'd played in the last two minutes seemed to linger.
Somehow, the piano behaved as he moved, oh-so-delicately, into the final section, feathering the pedal for a beat or two and drawing out glass-clear high tones. Barely touching the keys with his left hand, as slow as he could go on the action. Undertones swirled, but Zek mastered his balance and kept light on the footwork, searching for there, the chord that he could never quite play without welling up, lingering on it in payoff of all his earlier rhythmic trickery, letting not just the whole piano but every other instrument in the room add murk and glitter to it.
He finished out the section, played the repeat, stretching and squeezing the tempo with the rise and fall of the phrasing. The piece had its roots in a dance, but you couldn't dance to Zek's rendition unless you wanted to fall over. As he lifted his hands from the keys, he fancied that some part of the final chord hung on well past sound, as if this piano had the power to immortalise a part of every tune ever played on it.
Stillness awaited from the phonists behind him. He didn't turn, listening to the sacred whisper of the air. Slowly, gently, someone began to clap, fingertips against palm. Fonie's voice, breath short with reverence, murmured, "That, I can work with."
The assembled wing didn't break into applause like a concert hall would. Instead, they gathered back close around him, questions and laughter and touch, tips and encouragement, fingers pointing to the keys or the felt hammers fo the piano, conversations and contraconversations bubbling through one another as he told them what he knew about the piece's composer, stretched his hands and worked his stiffening hip, sharing Darate's irreverent joke above the physical labour of playing such an antique.
Fonie took up her flute again and played an uptempo reel. Darate sang a ballad unaccompanied while Tollex danced. They didn't ask Zek to accompany them – in fact, he didn't play with any of them that afternoon – but they talked, showed him things, got him playing other instruments. Sganch ducked out, then Fonie, and Elra finally forced the others to let Zek go and freshen up. He returned from his shower right as Fonie served dinner.
After food, Bochaw asked Zek to help wash the dishes. They talked, Zek listening as the cyborg outlined the relationship between the phonists and the carrier's crew, while the sounds of Sganch teaching Darate something complicated about synthesisers, the interrupted lesson from that afternoon, squeaked and burbled through the open kitchen door.
Elra gave him a tour of the whole facility – there really was a grand piano in the recording studio, which was itself a miracle of agglomerated technology – and then sent him out to the hangar with Bochaw and Tollex. They scuttled along the echoing bays like children sneaking out for a midnight snack, coming back with the two small cases of baggage that the Quartermaster's staff had unloaded from the REVERB. Zek listened to the Frames as they passed, hearing their pilots all the more clearly for the day's music.
He went to bed crying, a surging release of emotional pins and needles. Even the bed was an impossibility on a military carrier, a full-sized double with a sprung mattress and a plush quilt, despite the memory it bore of other bodies that had lain there before Zek's. In the dark he hugged a pillow to his chest and rocked gently, wondering if he would wake up instead of falling asleep. Nothing since Elra had pointed to the 'pilots only' sign seemed possible, but if any of this could be real then maybe he could, finally, learn to play with others.
The Soloist Who Came In From The Cold
The Frame hangar of the PAINFUL SYMPHONY ate its own echoes as Zek trailed his new commander across the bare titanumin floor. He watched her wavy train of blonde hair sway slightly with her gait, reading the curls like a waveform and trying not to think about how much the length was against the rules. The commander – she'd introduced herself as Elra and not given a rank or state name, but he'd managed to spot her insignia before she'd turned to lead him aboard – was just different enough from the Conservatory officers he'd trained under to be unsettling.
The hangar was familiar in its merciless vastness, at least. Zek listened to his footsteps disappearing, measuring the size of the Frame bays, the irregular shapes of the eight deadly machines within. Already his own, in the furthest bay near the launch hatch, felt a long way away. He didn't look back. No-one could move the REVERBERATION OF BLOSSOMS without him hearing it. There was no reason to worry.
Blinking, he realised the commander wasn't leading him towards the main double doors between the hangar and the rest of the carrier. Instead, they were headed for a small structure huddled up against the bulkhead, facing the Frames. Well, small only relative to the hangar itself and its occupants. It was as large as some concert halls Zek had played in.
Despite the size, the only door appeared to be a single manual swing panel. A simple placard just below eye height read 'PILOTS ONLY'. The commander placed her hand on the handle and turned to face Zek. When she spoke her tone was flat, still not quite as harsh as he was used to from officers. "Flight Officer Hadrel."
The hangar was familiar in its merciless vastness, at least. Zek listened to his footsteps disappearing, measuring the size of the Frame bays, the irregular shapes of the eight deadly machines within. Already his own, in the furthest bay near the launch hatch, felt a long way away. He didn't look back. No-one could move the REVERBERATION OF BLOSSOMS without him hearing it. There was no reason to worry.
Blinking, he realised the commander wasn't leading him towards the main double doors between the hangar and the rest of the carrier. Instead, they were headed for a small structure huddled up against the bulkhead, facing the Frames. Well, small only relative to the hangar itself and its occupants. It was as large as some concert halls Zek had played in.
Despite the size, the only door appeared to be a single manual swing panel. A simple placard just below eye height read 'PILOTS ONLY'. The commander placed her hand on the handle and turned to face Zek. When she spoke her tone was flat, still not quite as harsh as he was used to from officers. "Flight Officer Hadrel."
"Sir." Safer than trying to guess whether a 'Ma'am' would have been more appropriate.
"Your record demonstrates to my satisfaction that you are familiar with the full Uniphonon Code of Fleet Conduct."
"…S…ir?"
"While you are under my command there is one rule that you will adhere to and enforce above any in the Code." She pointed to the placard. A gentle, slightly amused smile spread across her face and her tone softened. "It says 'pilots' because they wouldn't understand 'phonists' but I mean it absolutely. Beyond this door, it's for us only, ok?"
Finding his neck oddly stiff, Zek nodded.
The Commander turned the handle and the door gave a hefty clunk. Then she paused, with it open only a few centimetres. "One other thing, Zek. Beyond here, it's first names only."
"Sir?"
That brought a chuckle in response. The commander's free hand came up in the space between them, one finger raised. Her fingernail was lacquered sparkling turquoise. With the voice of a lullaby, she said, "Last time, Zek."
Zek nodded again, not trusting himself to speak, cheeks hot but back chilled.
The commander – Elra – pushed the door open, revealing a space bathed in light the same colour as her hair. Faint, dancing synth music spilled out from somewhere further inside. Elra said, "Welcome home."
Zek followed her inside and into an anteroom where the mellow light drifted gently from creamy-yellow painted walls. Blinking, he realised that the paint wasn’t applied directly to metal. The finish was too smooth, lacking panel edges. Was it plastered? The door swung quietly shut behind him, closing with a heavy, dull thud. Soundproofing?
There was carpet on the floor. Not even cheap institutional tile stuff. A real, fitted carpet. Zek could feel his boots pressing into it, sense the stillness it leant to the air. He looked again at the commander, brain a frozen whirl.
She must have heard it in his breathing or something. She smiled. “Like the decor? We do it all ourselves.”
“Your-”
“When I say phonists only, I mean it. Fleet personnel do not cross that threshold, ever, ok?” Elra’s gentle laughter was like a distant harp. “Of course, that means you’ll have to do your share of the cleaning. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others.”
With that, she crossed the anteroom to the cracked-ajar inner door, from which bright music still arpeggiated. Zek followed, counting sounds. At least four instruments, but probably one of them was a prerecorded sequence. Two performers?
One of the instruments went silent as Elra pushed the door open, the others following shortly after. The next room was larger, its colour warmer, laid out as a scruffy lounge with three big sofas. Musical instruments were everywhere, on the walls, on the sofas, on the floor, a big drumkit over by the back wall, a piano - a real piano! – down one end. Wood-bodied with a gleaming brass pin block exposed, the front panel stood against the wall next to it. Opposite the piano down the long axis of the room was a massive double synth console, stacks of keyboards obscuring the lower half of the floor-to-ceiling racks behind.
For a long moment, Zek just stared, dimly aware of Elra announcing him to the handful of phonists present. Every movement of the air whispered with the resonant chambers of a hundred instruments. He swallowed. He wanted to cry. He was crying, tears chill on his cheeks despite the climate-controlled warmth.
A hand on his shoulder. The commander. Elra. She was smiling at him again, that patient, kindly smile. Crinkles at the corners of her eyes. “And now you see why it has to be for us alone, right? Welcome home. Let me introduce your new family.”
The group that gathered around them numbered five. Zek could guess why the last member of the wing was absent. That was the part that was really churning his gut as he stood there.
“This is Bochaw, ARIA OF VEINS. He/him,” Elra said, indicating the thick-set man to her immediate right. He had risen from the sofa opposite the drumkit with the silent grace of immense physical strength. Implants framed his right eye and trailed down that side of his face and neck into the collar of a washed-out red tshirt, shiny old scratches on the metal standing out against his mottled skin. The ARIA OF VEINS, Zek thought, had to be the stiletto-slender scout Frame parked in the bay next to Zek’s. Her murmuring as he passed had had overtones of tinny old synthetic echo effects.
Bochaw offered his hand to shake; veins stood out on the backs of his fingers, except for his right ring finger, which was entirely cybernetic. There weren’t any callouses that Zek could identify on the ridge or palm of his hand. He didn’t say anything, just met Zek’s eyes and nodded slightly.
Elra moved to the next in sequence. “Tollex, UNDERTONES OF A MEADOW, she or they.”
Tollex had the height and shoulders of an Old Shipper, coppery hair cut shoulder-length and wrapping their neck in elegant curling tips. They wore a rumpled cream suit with cut-short sleeves and trouser legs. They’d have to be the pilot of the Frame in bay 4, the one with the atmo-dive aero kit and the silent song of Tollex’s obvious restless love of dance.
When Zek had entered, Tollex had been perched on the back of the couch in front of the synths, head back and eyes closed. Now, though, they turned bright, aquamarine eyes on Zek and smiled. “Welcome home, Zek.” Their voice was higher and thinner than he’d expected, probably they sang an absolutely haunting alto.
Next to Tollex stood a monitor with beige-green scales, standing more upright than most of their kind. It took Zek a moment to notice why - their tail was missing, which had to ruin their natural balance. Still, they crouched low, long neck and snout bowed in welcome, and whistled a surprisingly clear, “One is Echersen Sganch, WALTZ OF VERMIN. One delights in making your acquaintance, Hadrel Zek. One hopes we harmonise soon.”
Zek bowed in return, making sure to drop his head fully. Informal as this odd place was, observing the formalities with monitors was a deeper kindness than just manners. “I’m glad to meet you too, Echersen Sganch.” Sganch’s WALTZ was obviously the big lancer opposite Bochaw’s ARIA, that muttered of polyrhythms and interferences and was armoured in the scars of near misses. The monitor had been behind the synths when Zek followed Elra into the room.
The commander - Elra! - moved to the next person in the circle, who’d been Sganch’s accompanist on the keys. “Tollex’s wingmate, Darate. FREQUENCIES OF DEPARTURE. She/her today.”
Darate, clad in an extravagant silk tea dress whose skirts had been bulked out with architectural petticoating, chuckled deeply and mocked a curtsey. “You won’t have trouble keeping track, don’t worry. Welcome home, kiddo.” She had a wide, round face and a smile to match, hair growing dense and black above it. FREQUENCIES was the Frame in bay 3, then, the one that had kept its secrets close as Zek had walked past.
Zek bobbed his head gently to Darate, sensing that she would suffer no further formality. Then he turned to his left, to the last of the five to arrive, who’d come into the lounge from a hallway off to the side. “Hey rookie, I’m Fonie.” A leaning elbow settled on Zek’s shoulder. “WHISPER OF FEAR. She/her.”
Suddenly tense again, Zek looked into eyes whose irises were as close to black as any he’d ever seen. Fonie’s hair was cut short, peaked slightly atop her high forehead, and heavily gelled. Apart from Elra, she was the only one wearing anything like uniform, though hers had been slashed and torn in all the sleeves, as well as covered in entirely non-regulation patches and pins.
“...Hi.” Zek managed, neck stiff with the effort of not leaning back. Fonie was taller than him, though not as tall as Tollex, and there was an intensity to her androgyny that he didn’t know what to make of. The WHISPER would be the heavyset frame with the enormous resonance projectors on its back, parked in bay 2. He matched her overbearing presence perfectly.
“Don’t scare the boy, sweetie,” Elra said, then put her hand on Zek’s other shoulder. “Sorry about my wingmate, you’ll get used to her.” Fonie took a step back, and Zek tried to hide his relief as her arm stopped pressing down on him. From the smile on her face, he didn’t do a terribly good job.
A slight tightening of Elra’s fingers pulled his attention back to her. She’d sobered while he wasn’t looking. “That’s us, apart from Kamren, PHASES OF STREAMS. He’s sleeping, or trying to. We agreed that would be best. Splik was his first wingmate.”
By process of elimination, PHASES OF STREAMS was the artillery Frame parked opposite REVERB. Splik must be the dead pilot who he was there to replace. Trying to strike a balance between respect for the dead and the gentleness of this wondrous place, Zek bowed his head. PHASES had radiated the liquid harmonics of cnida piloting, but Kamren didn’t sound like a homegrown cnid name.
That would have to be an anxiety for a later moment. While Zek was still grappling with his thoughts, Fonie pressed again, this time without touching him at all. "So what's your instrument, then?"
Zek stared at her, feeling the symphonic sub-hum of the room. Like any qualified phonist, he played a dozen different instruments to virtuoso standard, could produce at least parlor music on anything in at least eight different families of instrument, and would have little trouble getting notes out of basically anything placed in his lap anywhere in the seven galaxies.
"She means your first instrument," Bochaw said quietly. Had Zek's confusion been so obvious?
Before he'd even realised he was doing it, Zek looked at the piano. He couldn't do anything else. He'd seen acoustic pianos before, even heard one played once, but never more than that. How Elra had managed to get a hundred and fifty kilos of real instrument onto a deployment literally millions of light years from the nearest planet where pianos had ever been manufactured was beyond him.
Something deeper than an ache rose between the bones of his fingers, but he forced himself to speak past it. "Digital… digital piano."
"Go on, then," Fonie said, a low line of slight smirking stretched across her lips. She nodded along the room. "Show us what you can do."
Zek gaped at her, his throat gurgling tightly.
Elra patted his shoulder again. "It's ok, it's just like digital, only the action's a little stiffer."
"But… but…" he could feel tears welling up again. They couldn't possibly mean for him to play it, could they? The real thing? With his eyes stinging, he couldn't see clearly enough to see if there was a digital piano down there somewhere.
Darate stepped in front of Fonie, taking Zek's other shoulder. "These are ours, kiddo. They were made to be played, so we play them. And we take care of them. That piano is older than controlled nuclear fission, it's survived wars we don't even have history books for. You won't break it, I promise."
Some signal passed between Darate and Elra, and Zek let them lead him gently in the direction of the piano. The rest of the wing parted to make way and then followed. Even Fonie kept her peace. Tremors rose in Zek's arms. It couldn't really be that old, could it? Pre-space age? Eight centuries?
The stool that sat in front of the piano certainly wasn't, though the basic design of it might have been. It was squat, upholstered in black synfab, and with large, round handles for adjustment on both sides. Zek sat, finding it oddly high. Maybe Tollex had played it last.
He started to reach for the handles but Darate caught his arm. "Leave it high, you'll find the pedals are higher than you're used to." The exposed strings whispered with Darate's breath.
Of course. Zek's head swam. Looking to either side, he could see where the piano's frame stood on high old castors, pressing them into the carpet pile. The pedals weren't a wire-in electronic sensor block but a real acoustic mechanism, built into the bottom of the piano's body. He put his foot forward, on the floor beside the sustain pedal, and stared at it.
The pedal was a droplet shape, polished shiny by centuries of feet. Not ornamented, exactly, but still far less prosaic than he was used to. It curved outward, a symmetric pair with the damper pedal so that they looked like two spurts of a fountain. He could see what Darate meant; despite the height of his uniform boot toes, he could have slid his entire foot underneath the pedal.
Okay, no adjusting the seat. Should he take his boots off? The other phonists wore a variety of footwear, except Bochaw, whose gnarled toes were bare. Fonie had boots on, but she hadn't been in the lounge when Zek arrived, so maybe she wouldn't normally play with them on.
"Come on, newbie, what are you waiting for?" Fonie's voice again.
"Be nice, Fonie," said Elra, her tone singsong with humour. The murmur that drew from the patient instrument shredded Zek's gut. The commander finished, "Or I'll tell him how you reacted the first time you saw this thing."
There were chuckles from around behind him. Darate said, "Please play something, Zek, we'd love to hear your music." She leant forward, arm gently across his back. "If it helps, this isn't even our most valuable piano. There's a medium grand in the studio."
Zek shuddered, twitching away from Darate's touch. If that was true, it was impossible. An absurdity. He looked at the row of keys in front of him. Their plastic coating was yellow with age, and clearly not original. The wood that framed them, though… there were handwritten marks in slightly-shiny grey pressed into the inside of the frame where the front panel would have sat. They were hard to read but it looked like dates, and sure enough, some of the years began with '19'. Was that graphite? Ancient pencil?
Fingers shaking, Zek lifted his hand, left index finger extended, and rested it on middle C. The piano itself seemed to exhale at the touch. Zek pressed down, and the chime that sounded, even just that one note, rolled up and down the soundboard like an ocean. It was almost overwhelming – how did you play cleanly with so many overtones?
He squeezed his eyes shut and spread his hands. It was easier if he didn't look at what he was playing. Maybe he could pretend it wasn't an antique, just a very pricey high-end simulator. It took him a moment to find the sustain pedal by touch, the positioning really was unfamiliar.
When he pushed the pedal, it was much stiffer than an electronic one, the action uneven and a little lumpy. Rods and levers clunked gently through the frame. Zek had thought the piano was breathing earlier, but now he felt like it was growling at him. Impatiently.
Even played quietly, the chord he struck almost stung. The feel of the keys was like the pedal, as bony as his fingers as they descended into the murky end of their travel. The sound poured out in a torrent, enveloping him. He was crying again, not breathing, all his performance training lost.
He moved his wrists, played a second chord, lifting his ankle and lowering it again, feeling the wood hold the older notes well after the strings were damped and sounding with the new. Though the action was unfamiliar, the spacing of the keys was exactly what he was used to, so that his fingers moved to the next position automatically. There, and then there, displacing the bodily discomfort of tears and terrifying new wingmates with music.
"Are you a robot?" Fonie's voice cut through Zek right as he was finding the melody. "You can play other people's tunes whenever. We need to hear your music."
"I don't-" Zek said, into the ringing emptiness as the piano went still. He spoke so quietly that he couldn't hear any hint of his own voice reverberating from the instrument in front of him. He'd never been trained in composition.
"Fonie," Elra started, a touch of sternness in her tone.
"Just make something up, doesn't have to be fancy." Fonie had a long, silver wind instrument in her hand, a bit like a flute but with several mouthpieces along an extended head joint. There wasn't as much pressure in her expression as there had been earlier when she was leaning on his shoulder but Zek still felt like a mouse looking at a hawk.
He watched her put the flute-thing to her lips and blow through it gently, not generating a note. The instrument thickened the sound of her breath. A trickle of chill went down the small of Zek's back. She was going to join in if he started playing.
Which made sense; if they were going to fly and fight together as phonists, they had to be able to play together too. And doubtless a unit as irregular as Elra's, out here on the frontier, would have to improvise to a degree unthinkable to Zek's formation trainers back at the academy. And a cadet as decorated as Zek should be able to keep up, play along, play with others.
The corners of his vision were fuzzy. His skin prickled against the inside of his flight suit. He probably smelled awful, at least to Tollex and Sganch's heightened senses. The piano called him back, though. Maybe he could play something simple, at least.
He placed one hand on the keys again, fingers flat at first. Lifted his wrist up and leaned into the sustain pedal. Began rocking his fingers back and forth on a major third, pouring sound into the woodwork slowly, so that it built over time. Gently played the matching chord underneath. Frowned at the keys, looking for the shape of the next chord to move to.
He moved. Pedal up, pedal down, wrists a half-inch to the right. A melancholy, summery progression, childishly plain. His eyes were still watery, he had to squint a bit and it made it harder to think. Zek had had all the advanced music theory training available, but it was difficult to translate that to his fingers live. With sheet music in front of him, he'd have been able to explain what the notes were and why for hours, but not while playing at the same time.
Fonie's flute sounded a low chord, to match Zek's. How was it making the second tone? It was a hollow sound, more wooden than metallic, and it tugged at Zek's ears. Awkwardly, he changed chord again, subdominant to mediant, and listened as Fonie followed, a moment behind. Only one note changed, the other had to be a drone… that would be what changing mouthpiece would do, probably.
Zek changed chord again and heard Fonie falter, the steady harmony of the flute dropping out for a second, longer than it would take to move her lips. Zek turned his head halfway to glancing up at her and immediately hit a bum note. Suddenly conscious of how much he was sweating, he looked back at his hands and tried to turn the mistake into a transition – that's what improvisers were supposed to do, right? – and found himself on a chord that could only be described as 'experimental'.
He stopped, the piano mumbling reproachfully as it drifted into silence. His posture was hunched and terrible, everything his tutors would have scolded him for. Head bowed, elbows too low, hands curling inwards. He shouldn't have tried.
"You want to try sticking to a key or time signature?" Fonie said.
"Fonie!" Elra, her voice heated. Then a hand on Zek's shoulder, "Don't let her get to you, Zek. It's hard to play with new people, I know this is all a bit overwhelming."
Fonie started to say something and fell silent, in a way that suggested that, for all her informality, Elra's command of her unit was effective.
Someone perched on the edge of the stool beside Zek. Broad-shouldered enough that they imposed on Zek's awareness physically, irrespective of how much he folded in on himself. Tollex. The old shipper said, in their piping-high voice, "When was the last time you made music with someone? Just music, not training or anything?"
Regular recitals had been a part of Zek's schedule throughout his training, did that count? If not, then not since he'd been recruited. Eight years? Maybe more like nine, now, there'd been a few months between recruitment and reporting for training where he hadn't had any bookings. In a way he felt the distance more than the time. Galaxies away.
"You… have played with other musicians before, right?" Tollex kept their voice quiet, and Zek was very glad it was them and not Fonie who'd asked the question. Inwardly, he felt like he was shaking. Could Tollex feel that?
"Zek was a celebrated concert virtuoso before enlisting." Zek winced. Of course Elra would have had access to his file. Would the rest of the wing react the way the other cadets had? Assuming he'd be a snob, or rightly guessing his parents' wealth and hating him for it? The commander's voice was mellow, her tempo cautious. "Soloist on piano, viherra, and tamprens."
Somewhere off to the side, someone let out a slow, toothy whistle, the sound of it distinct from Sganch quietly asking "Tamprens?"
It was Bochaw who asked, gruffly, "How old are you?"
Zek scrunched up his face and prayed Elra wouldn't tell them. Part of him wanted to throw himself backwards off the piano stool, just so he'd be further away from the irreplaceable treasure in front of him if he needed to lash out. If he heard the word 'prodigy' in this place, thrumming back from those strings, the ancient wood…
A hand on the nape of his neck, light pressure against the stiff synfab of his collar, sending a tingling rush down his spine. He shook himself, and somehow it was easy to look up and round, into Darate's pleated bodice. She said, "Let me rephrase Tol's question, kiddo. When was the last time you played with other musicians? No conductor, no trainer, no schedule?"
Zek opened his mouth, but all he could do was shake his head slightly, a few millimetres each way, peering up into Darate's face as her expression sank into a kind of aggrieved shock. Horror. That went right through Zek's stomach. They'd send him home. Away from this incredible place. Back to the austere halls of the Conservatory, the instructors, the drills.
"I think," Elra began, very slowly, "we should let Zek play something he's comfortable with, shouldn't we?"
He started to rise, only to be interrupted once more by Darate's hand. "Where are you going, kiddo?"
"I thought- the comm- Elra, I mean," Zek tried to look round, but all the angles were awkward. "The piano-"
"Please, feel free. It belongs to you too. Play what you feel like." Darate smiled again, a whole-face expression, eyes twinkling. "If Fonie gives you crap again I'll sit on her."
"Hey."
"Okay, Elra will sit on you instead."
"And not in any of the comfy ways," Elra added dryly. "Zek, please, play whatever you feel like, it's been a while since we've had a pianist good enough to get the best out of our pianos."
Zek rubbed his eyes, trying to dry them. His sleeve would be no help with that, the synfab outer layer was antiabsorbent. His fingers felt scratchy against his already-raw cheeks. He had to wring his hands a couple of times to get rid of the transferred tears.
He felt awful. The journey from the Conservatory had been a fortnight, the last three days alone in his Frame. Longflight rations were a stodgy weight in his gut. The shorts he wore under his flight suit had a crease that was itching across his hip. His head ached with a decade of grief and shame.
At least the light in the lounge was low. It wasn't stage spots, and he wasn't in a tuxedo. He found middle C, lifted his foot onto that high sustain pedal, and moved his right ring finger and left thumb to an octave pair of Fs. A single, slow breath, not too deep or dramatic.
Then he began to play, a gentle unison phrase descending for an introduction across the skeletal keys, slow and delicate. It was hard to play this piano quietly, like shushing an ocean. When he reached left for the low note to start the first phrase of the A section, the wood rang like an ancient bell, murky and aquatic.
Down he led the melody and up and down again, shoulders weaving with the weight of his leg rising and settling on the pedal. It was hard to keep his wrists steady, physically hard to do the legwork in a way he'd never experienced on a piano before. One benefit of military fitness training. Second time through the A section he leant on some of the rhythms, emphasising the drowsy lilt of the tune.
The deep runs of the B section came out thunderous even played at half the weight he usually gave them, the low octaves burrowing into the woodwork until he could feel them pouring out through the pedal even with the thick sole on his boot. Above them the right-hand chords chimed bright. There was so much sustain in the frame of the piano that he could come off the pedal completely for the last, staccato phrase and still carry the harmonics.
He played through the B section again, dragging the middle run down to a crawl and flattening the rhythm, only to surge again in the fanfare at the end of the phrase. Quick syncopated notes were hard, requiring full-wrist jerks that stiffened his fingers and almost threw him off, but he kept it together.
The C section rolled out louder and darker than the B, crashing against Zek's hearing, almost too much, every string on the piano shouting. Trying to bring it back down for the closing phrase was like trying to fold a parachute in high wind. On the repeat he stretched and twisted the right hand melody, dragging it across the precise two-step of the chords in which every note he'd played in the last two minutes seemed to linger.
Somehow, the piano behaved as he moved, oh-so-delicately, into the final section, feathering the pedal for a beat or two and drawing out glass-clear high tones. Barely touching the keys with his left hand, as slow as he could go on the action. Undertones swirled, but Zek mastered his balance and kept light on the footwork, searching for there, the chord that he could never quite play without welling up, lingering on it in payoff of all his earlier rhythmic trickery, letting not just the whole piano but every other instrument in the room add murk and glitter to it.
He finished out the section, played the repeat, stretching and squeezing the tempo with the rise and fall of the phrasing. The piece had its roots in a dance, but you couldn't dance to Zek's rendition unless you wanted to fall over. As he lifted his hands from the keys, he fancied that some part of the final chord hung on well past sound, as if this piano had the power to immortalise a part of every tune ever played on it.
Stillness awaited from the phonists behind him. He didn't turn, listening to the sacred whisper of the air. Slowly, gently, someone began to clap, fingertips against palm. Fonie's voice, breath short with reverence, murmured, "That, I can work with."
The assembled wing didn't break into applause like a concert hall would. Instead, they gathered back close around him, questions and laughter and touch, tips and encouragement, fingers pointing to the keys or the felt hammers fo the piano, conversations and contraconversations bubbling through one another as he told them what he knew about the piece's composer, stretched his hands and worked his stiffening hip, sharing Darate's irreverent joke above the physical labour of playing such an antique.
Fonie took up her flute again and played an uptempo reel. Darate sang a ballad unaccompanied while Tollex danced. They didn't ask Zek to accompany them – in fact, he didn't play with any of them that afternoon – but they talked, showed him things, got him playing other instruments. Sganch ducked out, then Fonie, and Elra finally forced the others to let Zek go and freshen up. He returned from his shower right as Fonie served dinner.
After food, Bochaw asked Zek to help wash the dishes. They talked, Zek listening as the cyborg outlined the relationship between the phonists and the carrier's crew, while the sounds of Sganch teaching Darate something complicated about synthesisers, the interrupted lesson from that afternoon, squeaked and burbled through the open kitchen door.
Elra gave him a tour of the whole facility – there really was a grand piano in the recording studio, which was itself a miracle of agglomerated technology – and then sent him out to the hangar with Bochaw and Tollex. They scuttled along the echoing bays like children sneaking out for a midnight snack, coming back with the two small cases of baggage that the Quartermaster's staff had unloaded from the REVERB. Zek listened to the Frames as they passed, hearing their pilots all the more clearly for the day's music.
He went to bed crying, a surging release of emotional pins and needles. Even the bed was an impossibility on a military carrier, a full-sized double with a sprung mattress and a plush quilt, despite the memory it bore of other bodies that had lain there before Zek's. In the dark he hugged a pillow to his chest and rocked gently, wondering if he would wake up instead of falling asleep. Nothing since Elra had pointed to the 'pilots only' sign seemed possible, but if any of this could be real then maybe he could, finally, learn to play with others.