Universe Between Page 2

  Twenty years since the Edict and to this day I don’t know which was the hardest to adjust to: Utopia or the Edict.

  All because of a soft rock ballad about two redneck lovers from Georgia getting it on in the moonlight got put inside some space probe.

  The Invader started swaying awkwardly, off-tempo as the first verse played, eyes closed, his face even more woebegone as the low notes of the bass guitar climbed and the organ swelled.

  Ria had started out as a gospel singer as a child, and most of her songs were sparsely accompanied. A lead guitar, a bass, drum kit, a piano slightly mistuned like a honky-tonk, and a Wurlitzer church organ. Her arrangements tended to put a sad and mournful gospel sheen on even hillbilly hijinks.

  After the first and second verses, the first chorus started. Each of the choruses was worded slightly different than the rest.

  ***

  Slow Answer

  Two romancers

  Question what is real

  Slow Answer

  Starshine dancer

  Only know the way I feel

  ***

  The song continued past the last verse, the swirling fuzz guitar of the bridge, and the last two choruses. It ended with a fading cymbal roll and the final mournful note.

  The Invader’s face eyes snapped open. The transfixed look vanished. He shook himself as if to gather his thoughts. He nodded again at me, only to me, and left.

  I stood there with my mouth open.

  “Whattaya know. A barhopping Invader. I didn’t know they did that,” Nick said,

  “Me neither.”

  “I also didn’t know that old Wurlitzer even worked,” Nick said. “I just kept it around for decoration. Didn’t seem right to have a bar without a jukebox, and I figured they couldn’t get too mad if all I kept in it was a 45 of that song.”

  He started to add something else, but I didn’t hear him.

  I was already out the door and headed across the street to my workshop.

  ***

  In the confusion immediately after the Invader’s arrival, I’d left Caltech and headed as far East as I could, ending up eventually in Brooklyn. I acquired an old brownstone building right after the Invaders started handing out Santas. Caught up in the general euphoria, the owner basically handed me the keys and gave the property away.

  The top floor of the brownstone was a big open loft space. The previous tenant had been running a dance lesson studio. I remodeled it, heavily soundproofing it to serve as a sound studio.

  The soundproofing wasn’t for the Invaders; I knew I couldn’t fool them; I didn’t even intend to try. I soundproof for the neighbors. I intended on making a systematic examination of the Invaders’ fascination with Ria Calvin’s song, and I didn’t think the neighbors would enjoy hearing night after night, year after year endless repeat playing of “Slow Answer.”

  Besides, I had my own reasons for keeping a low profile.

  Courtesy of my Santa, I outfitted my studio lab with every acoustic analytical device I could think of—equipment I could only have dreamed of having at Caltech. Like Nick and his jukebox, I’d been pretty sure the Invaders wouldn’t mind all the Edict-breaking devices if I confined my research to that one allowed recorded song.

  They hadn’t.

  In fact, unless I misjudged the Invader tonight singling me out by nod, they were very much aware of my activities.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the implications of that.

  I clicked on the song to play on continuous loop. Not so much to listen to, but because after nearly twenty years I found I thought better with it playing. As the song played, I leaned back in my chair, the slight allowable buzz from the drinks over at Nick’s relaxing me, and poured over my notes and graphs and measurements, hoping that in light of tonight’s events, I’d see something I’d missed.

  I’d seen a lot of theories over the years as to the whys and wherefores of the Edict against recorded music: that the Invaders had such hypersensitive hearing that loud amplified bass notes could cause Mars Attacks-like spontaneous alien brain explosions; that the magnetic inductance of loudspeaker coils caused interference whatever broadcast technology the Invaders used to monitor and detect Edict violations (rather circular reasoning, that); that the Santa devices needed biomass for the material objects they created and the Edict Soylent Green-ishly supplied that mass.

  Less attention was paid as to why “Slow Answer” was the exception to their Edict. I had always believed if we could figure that out, perhaps we could figure out a way to get out from under the Edict.

  So I’d spent the years systematically measuring “Slow Answer,” analyzing it, graphing it. Yet, tonight had shown me that all I had done was measure the mechanical properties of the song’s sound waves. I knew nothing at all of how it affected the Invaders. Did they even hear music the same way we did? How did they hear melody? Harmony? Rhythm?

  Just like the song. All I could do is question what was true. Slow, slow answers, indeed.

  Eventually I fell asleep in my lab as the song repeated over and over again, dreaming of the Invader slowly and gently swaying to the music.

  ***

  Late afternoon the next day found me on my usual barstool in Nick’s Place. Nick didn’t whistle when he brought me drinks and I didn’t feeling like talking, either.

  I just sat there, staring into my shot glass and the reflection of my face. The evening customers came straggling in and still I sat there.

  Somebody from the neighborhood, one of the actors from the theatre next door I eventually realized, came running in waving a newspaper, a special Extra edition.

  “She’s dead, she’s dead!” he shouted.

  “Who’s dead?” Nick asked.

  “Ria Calvin!” he answered. “Ria Calvin’s dead!”

  I snatched the paper from his hands. It was true. Ria Calvin had died, whether by suicide, or just a broken heart, they couldn’t say. However miraculous the nanites inside us, they couldn’t repair massive sudden trauma or the slow concerted will to let go and die.

  Whatever else the Invaders had taken away from us with their Edict, they had left us our free agency for committing grief and harm.

  I could well picture her willing herself to die for all the suffering and torment the Edict had caused, for her unwitting part in it. I’d often felt the same urge on many a long and lonely night alone in my lab.

  I looked around the bar, at Nick, at the actor, at the others seated in the booths. The shock each of us was feeling, akin to that of JFK’s assassination, to that of 9/11. That was the measure of how much the Edict and Ria Calvin’s song haunted us, hung over us. And now the gossamer thread holding the Damoclean Sword had snapped.

  The Invader walked into the bar again.

  The same one as far as I could tell. It was dressed identically. It did not pause to nod or anything this time. It walked straight to the jukebox, waved a nickel into existence, and played Ria’s song.

  I held my breath as the record skritched into life.

  The piano intro started and eased into the first verse. Unusual for a vocal pop song, that too was instrumental, with Ria only humming the verse’s melody.

  The verse as written explicitly established that the song was about two redneck lovers meeting in the trees for an illicit liaison.

  For the first time, despite twenty years of hearing the song over and over, I suddenly realized that by omitting the first verse, the meaning of the song changed. It was no longer about a romp in the pine trees; it was about something much much more.

  The second verse came in right after the first without benefit of chorus:

  ***

  Pine cone trees

  in Georgia Mountains

  Whisper winds

  through silken hair

  As we lay

  in Southern starlight

  Moon shines down

  on hearts laid bare

  Slow Answer

  Two romancers

  Question what is real<
br />
  Slow Answer

  Starshine dancer

  Only know the way I feel

  ***

  The Invader visibly trembled now, gyrating as the fuzz guitar’s wild riff in the bridge became achingly heartbreaking.

  He threw his head back as the third verse started. He began to utter a low keening moan, the first vocal sounds anybody had ever heard an Invader utter. It wasn’t anything even approximating human speech. It was the wail of a wild animal in mortal pain, the ragged edge of a raven’s caw, the bay and howl of a winter wolf, and I realized with that the pitiful creature was trying to sing the words to the song, an alien body— a mouth; a tongue, a form—of such wrongness that it could never be able to.

  ***

  Never ask

  what sunrise brings us

  Never question

  what seems to be

  Here and now

  the starlight heaven

  Answers all

  for you and me

  Slow Answer

  Two romancers

  Question what is true

  Slow Answer

  Truth’s own dancer

  Only know that I love you

  ***

  The lead guitar wailed, attempting to go back into the bridge again, but Ria’s clear penetrating voice rode over the top of it, forcing the song back into the final chorus.

  ***

  Slow Answer

  Truth’s advancer

  Question you and me

  Slow Answer

  Truth-held answers

  Only know a love set free

  ***

  The tempo slowed and one by one the accompanying instruments dropped away as Ria near-whispered repetitions of the final line.

  ***

  Only know a love set free

  Only show a love set free

  Only show a truth set free

  ***

  The Invader buried its face in its hands. For long moments, he shook in great racking sobs, and then, recovering himself, fled outside.

  I followed.

  I yelled at it, screamed at it, pleaded with it. “What is it you hear?” I demanded. “What is it you hear?”

  I, too, was sobbing I realized.

  The Invader slowed but did not stop.

  “We can’t keep living this way,” I told it. “We need it back, the way we were before you came.”

  The Invader stopped.

  “What is it you want from us? Tell us! You owe us that much at least,” I yelled.

  The Invader turned towards me. By now a crowd had formed around us.

  “You owe me that much. I’m the one who put that song on the probe.” My voice faded to whisper. “I’m the one.”

  The crowd growled at the secret I’d kept so long. They looked likely to pick up things to throw, but the would-be mob wilted under the gaze of the Invader.

  He gestured and a Santa device floated in the air next to him. It uttered a mechanical voice saying: “We are well aware of the gift you gave us, Paul Cloward. We have ever been aware. Your gift brought us. That is why we came. That is why we are here beside you now.”

  A mechanical voice. One that uttered what the mute Invaders could not. And then I knew, at least in part. And knew what I must ask.

  “I need to hear what you hear, feel what you feel when you play that song,” I told him, “if I’m to help at all.”

  And we were elsewhere.

  I found myself floating inside a large oblong fifty-foot sphere, roughly the shape and color of a Thompson seedless grape. The grape wasn’t quite hollow. I was swimming in a stringy green syrup.

  Great, a snot-filled hollow giant alien grape.

  I started reflexively choking until I realized I could breathe the thick liquid into my lungs without ill effect.

  The Invader’s mechanic prosthesis voice filled the sphere. I wasn’t so much hearing as feeling the sound.

  “We had once hoped that the woman who created the Song could…” The voice trailed off. “But her hatred, her fear of us never relented. Now there is only you, and we now see it was you all along.”

  It paused for the briefest of moments.

  “Why did you place the Song in the gift your kind sent to the stars?” it asked. “Your last minute gift was not meant to be included. Why did you place the Song inside?”

  “An accident,” I said. “A mistake. I was the acoustic engineer for the project in charge of formatting the audible part of the solid state information player. They’d miscalculated the amount of space needed. There was exactly enough space left over, just enough for one song. So I—”

  “Why did you place the Song in the gift?” the voice insisted. I realized it was asking why that particular song and not another.

  “Because,” I said. “that song had once touched my heart during a sad time in my life. I wanted—”

  “You wanted the Song to touch our heart,” the voice finished, half-asking, half-confirming. “But it did not touch our hearts. Not of itself. We see that now.”

  I started to mumble something but the voice cut me off.

  “You wanted us to love the Song as you did. All the other music included in the star gift tasted only of status, of propriety, of wanting to show your kind’s best face forward. Your gift tasted…”

  It stopped, then continued.

  “You are here because you asked what we hear in your gift. Inside this constructive you will hear as we hear, listen as we listen, harken as we harken.”

  The light in the sphere dimmed to total black and I realized that hollow grape served at least in part as some sort of sensory deprivation chamber.

  Ria’s song started and I felt violently bludgeoned to the core of my soul by a wall of solid sound crashing down upon me like Jericho. The piano played one bar, two, then three and suddenly an annoying high pitched whine drowned it out.

  I curled into a fetal position, covering my ears and shouting “Too loud, too loud.”

  Both the whine and the music stopped instantly.

  “Our apologies,” the voice said. “You experienced the feedback we experience from an Edict violation. The violation has been rectified.”

  I never felt so grateful in my life. I would have Edict-removed the entire human race to stop that pain.

  The music started again, again a wall of sound that I as much felt down to the core of my soul as my ears heard it, but this time at proper volume.

  The song progressed through the instrumental first verse. It was the most glorious thing I’d ever experienced. When Ria started to sing, I could feel her pouring herself, her essence into it.

  The words, as I had realized earlier that evening, the essence and being of the song were no longer about a love-struck couple but about the search for, the acquisition of, the very nature of Truth. All Truth. Complete Truth. Absolute Truth. Universal Truth.

  I stretched out my hand and touched the face of Truth itself. I wanted to sing, to fly, to burst into light like a supernova across the night sky. I wanted to—

  The final note of the song ended. It was over.

  I, too—like the Invader earlier this evening—shook in great racking sobs. My throat was raw, my voice hoarse, and I realized I been singing, almost shouting at the top of my lungs. The lights inside the grape brightened.

  “What did you hear?” the voice asked, then answered for me. “You heard what we hear in your gift: Absolute Truth. We, who know every fact, every truth in this mortal cosmos. We, who never question for we know all answers. We find among a crawling mewling newborn people on a tiny insignificant world, we find that which we cannot answer, we find a Higher Truth we have never known.”

  Without warning I was back in the street outside Nick’s Place. The crowd was still gathered about, the same as before. One thing was different: instead of facing just the one Invader from Nick’s, I faced all of them, every Invader on Earth. Invaders as far up the street as the eye could see.

  “You asked what it is we hear a
nd we have answered. You asked what it is it we want from you and we now answer that, too,” the sad, tinny voice of the floating Santa device said.

  “You have heard what we hear; moreover, you have heard more. You were able to do that what we were not. In lifting up your voice, in entwining your own voice with that of the Song, you were able to reach your hand just that much farther to touch the face of the Highest where we cannot.”

  The Invader before me trembled. “You, Paul Cloward. You who lo! these many years have measured and tasted the song down to the last quivering atom, know that the Truth buried in the song is not found in its physical sum and sine waves, but in the heart and the soul of the singer.” He paused. “And in the heart of the listener adding his own voice to the Truth therein.”

  There was a collective nod from all the Invaders.

  “Of all creatures in all of creation, Paul Cloward, only your kind does not stand mute before Truth. Only yours know the method of lifting up your voice in joining that Truth.”

  The Invaders dropped to their knees as one.

  “Teach us to sing.”

  Introduction to “One-Night Stands for Love and Glory”

  David H. Hendrickson learned early that he could make people laugh. He’s enjoyed that talent since he “got an entire cabin of my 12-year-old friends to roar with laughter. I still feel a faint glow of that decades-old pleasure.”

  But Dave also has a dark side that he indulges in his novels, such as Cracking The Ice, which Booklist called “a gripping account of a courageous young man rising above evil.”

  Dave’s first story for Fiction River taps both sides of his personality—the one that loves to make people laugh, and the one that taps into his greatest fears.