Vienna Station (6 page)

Mozart says, “That was exciting.”

Luis turns to him, grips his shoulder with strong fingers. “Good with the gun, man! Good!”

I shiver. “If you two are through, let’s get inside.”

Mozart nods. “Good idea.”

Avoiding the still sparking dober-bot, I step toward the building. “Don’t these things have alarms?”

Luis shakes his head. “No. They have bounce-backs for location purposes and they set up a big howl when they pin somebody. But they didn’t get us!” He laughs again.

Mozart passes me and leads us to the first building. He looks left and right. “There should be a service door.”

Luis points. “Over there.”

We walk to the door. Mozart removes his backpack and looks inside.

Luis, scanning the area behind us, murmurs, “Your turn, Mr. Mozart.”

Mozart takes out a slender device and presses it against the door’s electronic lock. The door clicks open. He grins. “No bells.”

Luis pats his back. “It’s two hours and forty-seven minutes until dawn. We should be out of here in two hours and thirty minutes.”

Mozart nods. “Upstairs.”

Luis hefts his bat. “I’ll stay here and keep my eyes open.” I take his hand and squeeze it. He returns the squeeze, gently.

Stars no longer bother Felix Mozart. They used to penetrate his mind, shrivel him with their vastness. He used to keep the crystal half globe of his habitat opaque for weeks on end. Now stars are mere fixtures, powerless to intrude. Now he has a noble mission.

He has a mission and it is half complete. The asteroid missiles are launched. A million globes of virus are poised to burst. He checks his systems and then the screen with its countdown tic. Less than a day until he will send the signal to release the virus. Less than a day until humanity will be chastened and cleansed, cleansing fire, cleansing hunger. He smiles. Silver, blue-white, red and gold—stars hang powerless above his shoulder. He stretches the one clawed finger of his right hand to caress the computer screen. Cleansing fire. Cleansing hunger.

“Is this it?”

Mozart nods. “This is the synthesizer.”

We stand in the doorway of a large, dim room. Mozart steps forward and a circle of light blossoms in the room’s center. What looks like an organ keyboard embedded in a console is revealed. A concave computer screen rests atop the keyboard. Mozart walks to the console. Two chairs stand before the console. One is a high, straight-backed musician’s chair. The other is a lushly padded recliner. Mozart seats himself at the musician’s chair and activates the console.

I step to the other chair. “Is this where I sit?”

He smiles up at me. “Yes, but first you need take off your outer clothing.”

I grin. “That’s quite a line. I bet you use it on all the girls.”

He blushes, shakes his head. “Never.”

I laugh and begin skinning out of top and black jeans. Mozart turns to the synthesizer. His fingers dance across its keys. Lights turn on. The computer screen glows green.

After a moment, he mutters, “Damn!”

I pause with my turtleneck above my head. “What?”

“There’s security here I didn’t count on. I can only establish a partial link with my equipment on the station. It will receive what we do here and retransmit our composition to Felix. That’s the most important part. But it won’t let me extract information from my system.”

“What do you need?”

“Some of my father’s music. I may be able to reproduce what I need from memory, but that will take time.”

“Which pieces?”

Mozart looks up. “Several movements from his last composition, the Requiem.”

I drop my turtleneck on the floor. My perkey is on a gold chain around my neck. I hold it up. The overhead light blazes through it, casts purple sparkles across the console. “I have the whole composition here.”

“Wonderful! Is it operational now?”

“As long as it’s touching my skin.”

He motions to the chair. “Sit down now. The synthesizer will access the files later.”

I sit. The chair embraces me, more than embraces me. Thousands of tiny spider legs caress and grip me. I choke back a scream.

Mozart glances at me. “Sorry. I should have warned you about the chair. The instrument needs to connect with you completely. That can be disconcerting.”

I grimace. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

“Also, there will be a precautionary I-V.”

I look at him. “Is this thing dangerous?”

“Yes.”

I think about this before I ask, “What does it do exactly?”

Mozart’s fingers dance continuously across the mysterious keyboard. “It takes your sensations, perceptions, thoughts and emotions and combines them with music I will compose. The process will dissolve physical and mental barriers. We will enter the music. The distinction between performer and listener will disappear. Souls and minds will be joined.”

I take a deep breath. “That sounds intense.”

Mozart, still working furiously at the keyboard, nods. “It must be. Only a message of the greatest intensity may stop my poor, mad brother from committing this atrocity.”

“We’re doing this to change his mind?”

“Felix is as lonely and bitter as any human who has ever lived. The directors and scientists of Vienna Station are using him for their own ends. He is a weapon to them, nothing more. His despair and vast pain are their tools. We must prove to him that he is not alone.”

I shake my head. “Using this synthesizer, using your music will do that?”

“I don’t know. We must try. We must try to join with him, try to alter his course. He needs to know that we care and that his care matters to us. He is quite mad. That’s the danger. We may become so too.” His fingers stop. He looks at me. “Your risk is even greater than mine.”

I smile. “What do I do?”

He smiles in return. “You create music with me, great music. I’ve entered Vienna Station’s communications system. We are already linked to Felix.”

“Will he listen?”

“He has no choice. He’s a captive audience, after all.”

I nod. “Let’s do it.”

Felix sits shrunken and deformed beneath the stars. Various wires connect him intimately, obscenely so, to the mechanical parts of his body, the probe. Low, gentle chords played by cellos and violas suddenly sound in his ears. He straightens. Then a wave of sensations engulfs him.

Small waves ripple and slide up a pristine beach. Sun warms me and shines in my baby’s hair. My baby smiles at me and waves her hands in joy. Benedictus from the Requiem sifts through the air around us.

Enormous titanium missiles, nuclear warheads trailing kilometers behind them like tails on kites, streak toward the asteroid fragments. Their solid heads crash into rock and iron, liquefy it and plunge deep. The warheads, milliseconds behind, follow and then detonate. Purple light, bright enough to incinerate watching eyes, devours much of the targeted rocks. No eyes are watching, however, not even Felix’s.

Music from Confutatis leads to a transition and an achingly sad Lachrymosa, something new, something opening in the mind of the new Mozart. And in my mind.

It is dusk. Dust blows across a rock-strewn slope before me. I’m holding something, a bundle. The wind rises, slams into me. I stagger and fall. Stones bite into my elbows and knees, but I cushion the bundle from the shock. Blood stains my sleeves, but I’ve kept the bundle safe. It is my baby.

I open the gray blanket. My baby’s face is pale and still. I touch her forehead with my lips. It is cold, cold.

Grief explodes within me. I clutch her and rock. A cry rends my throat, but I have no tears. This desert has taken my tears.

Felix sits motionless among his wires and blinking lights. The last chords of his brother’s music fade. A tear springs from the corner of his one remaining eye and runs down his sallow cheek. He touches the screen before him. The virus-globe detonation tic at the top of the screen stops. Felix touches the screen again. The tic disappears.

Lola puffs meditatively on her cigarette and stares at computer enhanced images of rogue asteroids exploding.

“You should really quit smoking those, my dear.” CEO Frederick approaches her from behind and stops a few paces from the screen.

She puffs again. “I have spares of everything in Genuflect tanks, Herman, just as you do.”

Frederick shrugs, staring at the lurid images. “I suppose it’s just as well our little asteroid ploy didn’t work.”

Lola faces him. “Nothing worked! Not even the self-destruct on the probe. Can we still trigger the virus from here?’

Frederick’s jowls wobble as he shakes his head. “No. The Mozart clone was our cutoff. No one can connect us to the virus. The down side is it is now useless.”

“Why? Couldn’t we cobble something together, a trigger of some sort?”

Frederick sighs. “The virus has a failsafe. Even now it is deteriorating. It will be harmless within two weeks.”

“That seems like poor planning to me.”

Frederick spreads his hands. “Well, we didn’t want to wipe all humans from Earth. We just wanted to inconvenience them a little.”

Lola stubs out her cigarette in a carved jade ashtray. “So no one knows of the virus attack?”

“Mozart knows.”

She looks up. “Can he expose us?

“It’s highly doubtful. If he tries, we have a dupe ready.”

“Alex?”

“Alex. He’s the only one who has taken direct action in this matter. If necessary, he will suicide, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And admit all first?”

“And admit all first.”

“How very thorough of you, Herman.”

Frederick shrugs, “Just standard operating procedure, my dear. I’m sure that you’ve made precautionary preparations too.”

Lola looks at him. “You have no idea.”

Frederick chuckles. “I’m sure I don’t and I hope never to find out.” He chuckles again. “Never.”

I enter Mozart’s private habitat and again walk between pine trees down to the lovely brook. I feel like I’m walking in a dream after waking from a deeper dream. Mozart is again sitting at the harpsichord. I stop perhaps a dozen feet from him.

He looks up. There are circles beneath his eyes and his face is drawn, but he smiles at me, a small smile. “Coffee?” he asks.

I nod.

We sit again beneath a pine tree and are quiet for many minutes, listening to the brook sing to itself. I sip coffee and turn to him. “So how did you get me back here?”

“Luis carried you out of the Genuflect compound. The rest wasn’t too difficult. The med people here kept you sedated for thirty hours. I’ve waited for you to wake up.”

“Thanks.” I look at him. “Did it work?”

“I think it did.” He sets his coffee cup down on the grass.

“Have you talked with him?”

Mozart shakes his head. “No. It’s too soon. We don’t need to speak with him right now.” He looks at me. “They were going to murder him to cover their tracks. I disarmed a self-destruct device from here.”

“Felix is safe now?”

Mozart nods. “Until we get him back here. We must bring him back soon. He is close to us now.”

I nod.

Mozart continues, “We became him and he became us. He’ll call us when he feels able to talk. We must wait.”

I look at the stream. “The composition was powerful.”

“It was, far more powerful than I expected. You were wonderful.”

“Was I?”

Mozart smiles again. “You were.”

“I knew that you were going to use the Requiem, but I was surprised by what you did with it. You turned it, built upon it. Amazing!”

He looks down. “Thank you. Father’s Requiem has always been special for me, especially the Confutatis. The new Lachrymosa is for us all.”

“It’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, even better than the 2nd movement of your new concerto.”

He nods. “I can do no better.” He looks at me. “For a moment, when your baby died, I thought I heard Felix cry.”

I reach out, take his hand. “When will we know for sure that it worked?”

He squeezes my fingers. “Soon. Felix did not explode the globes on time. I don’t think he will now. The virus is already starting to degrade and I doubt they’ve got a back-up trigger mechanism. They’re too cowardly to take direct action.”

I look at the stream and shrug. “We’ve saved Earth from the virus. What now? It’s still a mess.”

Mozart straightens, grins. “I have a few ideas about that.”

“You do?”

He nods. “I do. Ah, Dru?”

“I’m listening.”

“Would you like to rule the world?”

I let go of his hand and stare at him. “Not at all!

He laughs and fatigue disappears from his face. “Neither would I, but I would like to run things in different places for limited periods of time, a legislature here, a city council there. I’d like to make some serious changes.”

I shake my head. “That would be dangerous.”

“Almost certainly.”

“And you want me to help?”

He leans forward. “Would you?”

I snort. “That would be worse!”

He grins again. “But very amusing!”

I take a deep breath. “I don’t think intervening in Earth’s politics is a good idea.”

“Nonsense! We’ll be careful. We could start with L.A. I thought we might include Luis in our meetings with city officials.”

“Could he bring his bat?”

Mozart laughs. “No.” He is silent for a moment and then says, “We also have enemies here on Vienna Station, serious enemies. We must not underestimate them and we must take measures to render them harmless.”

I let the stream, the pines and the sunshine work relaxing magic upon me for a long moment. I glance at Mozart after a few moments. He is smiling, gazing at wildflowers on the far bank. I ask, “Might we talk about all of this another time?”

He looks at me. “Surely. Why?”

“We have something more important to do first.”

His smile is gentle and lights his eyes. “I agree.” He takes me in his arms.