“Don’t you have work, John?”
“Nothing I can’t reschedule.” The few students he took were young, and would likely be glad to miss a session. “Please. I haven’t even met your sister, and what better time?”
They stepped outside, into a cool night breeze. “Sure, it’d be fine if you came.” She sounded less than gleeful. “I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea, John.”
“I’m not, Sara. Promise.” He got a time for them to leave, and then they split. John sat for a long time behind the wheel of his car, asking himself what idea he did have.
The doctors kept them waiting long enough to finish a test series, then made a dramatic presentation of Sara’s entrance. John watched from the door as Sara and Mara embraced. Mara’s hug was slightly impeded by wires running from behind her ears to a softball-sized box strapped between her shoulders. Sara began speaking sign language, but Mara stopped her with a touch to the lips. She devoured Sara’s spoken words with the unique enthusiasm attendant to a joy lost and regained.
Mara pointed his way and Sara waved him over. “Pleased to finally meet you,” he said after Sara introduced him, and he offered his hand.
Her attention was momentarily disconcerting, eyes focusing on his lips. Mara still had to read his words to understand them, but she was already connecting them to the sounds, reteaching herself this language lost since early childhood. Sara signed something to her sister, something she didn’t want John intercepting.
“Good to meet you, too.” Mara grimaced with frustration, hearing her own blurry words beside their clear speech. “Sara’s told me a lot about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she has.”
One of the doctors began giving Sara a progress report. Mara was testing superbly, outscoring most unimpaired people on sensitivity and range. He began outlining the workings of the system, but Sara said she had heard it all before.
“Actually, this is pretty new to me.”
The doctor gladly began explaining it on John’s behalf. The box on Mara’s back received the sounds, transmitting them to chip clusters implanted within each ear. Microcircuits measured intensity and pitch, passing the data to a stimulator that converted the signals to electrical impulses. The impulses went to an electrode array in her auditory cortex, bypassing the auditory nerves atrophied by long inactivity—and Mara heard.
John remained on the fringe of the sisters’ happy moment until the doctor stepped outside. Telling Sara he was going to find a bathroom, he followed seconds later.
“Doctor… Hippert.” John spied the name tag as the doctor turned. “Don’t mean to bother you. I was wondering… you said the implants measure the pitches of sounds. That’s pretty advanced.”
“True. If we’d had the implant technology five years earlier, our first experimental patients would have been tone-deaf.”
“So she has perfect pitch. Not all normal—er, reg—not everybody has that.”
“No, I understand it’s somewhat uncommon.” Hippert shifted his feet. “Take a deep breath, and come to your point.”
John wasn’t sure what his point was, until he heard himself blurt it out. “Could you do that with normal-hearing people, who just don’t have full pitch awareness?”
Hippert let his face go blank, then waved John into a side room. “If you’re talking about a voluntary procedure, remember that this operation is still classified experimental.”
“For how long?”
He let the question pass. “There’s no reason for such a procedure, no everyday benefit that outweighs the cost or the risks.”
“I’m not an everyday person,” John declared. “I’m a musician. A violinist. Doesn’t that suggest some benefits?”
Hippert’s snap answer died unspoken. He pulled over a chair, and sat to think. John watched his face, and thought he saw the moment when it shifted from hazard to opportunity. “It isn’t how the procedure was conceived.”
“But it’s possible. If it weren’t, you would have said already.”
Hippert smiled quietly. “It should be easier than full restoration. The circuits only have to measure pitch; the electrodes can hook into healthy ganglia. You wouldn’t need the external equipment. The worst problem would be synching the artificial input to what you get naturally.”
“Sounds like a worthy challenge.”
The smile hardened. “First, Mister Button, this procedure may not be approved beyond experimental applications. Second, insurance companies may have to cover experimental surgery, and correction of profound impairments. They won’t fund voluntary surgery, and you won’t get anyone to think that average hearing is impaired.”
“The money doesn’t matter. I have it.” His parents had provided well for him, or he could never have pursued the violin so fastidiously.
“You really do?” Hippert named a sum. Blood started pounding in John’s ears, but he nodded. “You really should think this over carefully, but if you do, and you’re still interested, I’ll handle it.”
He rose, but paused at the threshold. “You are right. It would be a challenge. Now, maybe you should get back to your friend.”
John stood there a second before reacting, and then almost passed Mara’s room before remembering why he was walking that way.
“Broad approval is coming, no more than two weeks from now.” Hippert’s call came a week later, just as John had begun dismissing the episode as a deluded fancy. “I need to conduct some scans and tests first. You can come in now if you like, so we can start immediately once they grant formal approval. I don’t know whether you’ve thought it over…”
“More than you know, Doctor.” With the moment upon him, he still wasn’t certain what he was about to say. “Friday morning’s the best time for me.”
“Fine. How about I expect you at nine? See you then.”
John hung up, and began staring blankly around his living room. That lurking notion, that one brief moment of courage… curiosity?… the momentum had carried him to this bizarre pass. He wondered at his presumption, wondered what could have compelled him.
Then he remembered, and felt his heart find its rhythm again.
He went to pick up the violin, restart his practice. He almost put his instrument back down. Should he make himself listen to a shadow of the music, when the full form of it was so near at hand? Would it someday soon seem a pitiful use of his time, to clutch at this shadow?
The bow lowered to the strings without his will, ending his equivocation. Such a beautiful shadow. How much more rapturous the full body would be.
John made it back to Caledon with time to spare for his afternoon pupils. He took dinner alone as usual, spent a while honing his vibrato, then drove to the practice hall. He casually greeted the tympanist on the way in, and didn’t notice the look.
The room sounded odd before John even entered, filled more with hushed voices than tuning instruments. Passing the threshold seemed to turn a switch, quieting the talk nearly to nothing. John intuitively kept his eyes low, but still the stares crowded in.
Once in his chair, John cleared his head. His anticipation was making him imagine things. Sure enough, the players were tuning up. He took a long breath, and started adjusting his own violin.
Sara arrived with a rustle. He turned to smile at her, but she was looking the other way. Before he could ask how her sister was faring, the conductor called for their attention, and they went straight into “The Montagues and Capulets.”