No, Els says.
So out with it. What do you have for me?
Too many miles have passed since home for Els to be sure.
I didn’t get very far.
That’s where your collaborator comes in.
I was trying to put music files into living cells.
A pause, a last flare-up of telepathy, and Richard laughs like a hyena.
What’s wrong with eight-tracks? So what does it sound like?
Richard. There is no piece. This was all proof of concept. They raided me before I could learn how.
Bonner scowls, puzzled by how a smart man can have such trouble with the obvious. There is. There is a piece.
No.
You’re not listening.
Bonner gazes through the scope again. Els stands nearby. He tunes in to the night, the cars and air conditioners. He listens, a little quieter, a little harder. Sounds everywhere, but still no piece. There’ll be no piece forever.
Then there is.
Oh, he says. Oh. You’re saying. . You mean. .
But Bonner, like music, doesn’t mean things. He is things. Things that can never be unmade.
The two of them start in again, like they’d only paused the old project for a moment, long enough for it to ripen. Bonner has been tinkering with an idea since first hearing of Els’s flight. Els has been working on the thing since childhood, his chance encounter with Jupiter. They talk, Els to Bonner, Bonner to the stars, through his lensed tube. They hum to each other, and the piece takes shape. Richard dials the pitch and yaw and roll of the scope in tiny increments, checking the eyepiece after each minor adjustment.
This is your baby, he tells his friend. Make it live.
The piece turns lethal. Music to panic a whole country. A thing of silence and nothingness. Required listening. Els feels the madness of it, and the brisk Phoenix night, the lights from the clinic, the traffic whipping back and forth on the nearby boulevard all say: Hear, and be afraid forever.
Use that Web thing — Tweety Bird. Tell the whole world, in short little bursts.
Bonner points across the way, to the glow of the clinic. We can use the machines in the lobby. Say that it’s all out there, spreading. Everywhere. Released into the wild. An epidemic of invisible music.
Els laughs, but it’s not a laugh. They’ll kill me, you know. The minute I. . The idea rushes away from him, like the five recombining lines of the Jupiter.
You got a problem with that? You weren’t doing anything else, were you?
Els presses his skull with both hands. Fatigue and the fugitive life catch up with him, because this all suddenly sounds suicidal and very, very doable.
Tell me, Bonner says. What was it that you wanted from, from. . He cranks his right hand, spooling up all the music Els ever tried to write.
There’s a place Els has been to, a few times in this life. A place free from the dream of security, where the soul beats to everything with a rhythm. And every one of his few visits there has reminded him: We’re entitled to nothing, and soon to inherit. We’re free to be lost, free to shine, free to cut loose, free to drown. But part of a harmony beyond the ear, and able, for a moment, to move.
I wanted awe.
Richard claps his hands. Done. Living music, swimming around in the water supply.
Surprise, Els says. Suspense.
Oh, they’ll be hanging on every measure.
Refreshment. A sense of the infinite.
Fear, you mean.
And change, Els thinks. Eternal mutation. For a beat, he forgets the piece isn’t real.
He comes clean. Beauty.
Richard’s eyes crinkle at the mention of the guilty secret. His lips twist up. Fine. What’s more beautiful than music you can’t hear?
Els looks up at the clear desert sky, speckled with light, even above this suburban sprawl. They’ll crush me like a bug.
Richard steps toward his friend and lays one hand on his shoulder. His eyes soften into something like sympathy. The words he wants evade him. But the look says: They’ll crush you anyway, even if you never make a peep.
He waves back toward the scope. Have a look.
Els puts his eye to a burst of stars. They cluster, a blue star nursery, spraying out new worlds. He feels like he did two years ago, when he first looked at a glowing stain of cells under the 1,000x objective and realized that life happens elsewhere, on scales that have nothing to do with him.
He calls out. Behind him, Richard chuckles. Once you hear the music of the spheres, the stuff you earthlings make is a bore.
The stars come toward him in a stippled rush. He pulls his head away. Richard is staring at the clinic half a block off — at the experiment that offered him hope and served up saline. He says, How much can they hurt you, anyway?
Els doesn’t answer. Words are for people who know things.
Richard squints into the distance. You have to do this. The largest audience for an experimental piece in history.
You always wanted me dead, Els says. Didn’t you?
Bonner is elsewhere. Eye of man hath not seen, he says. He stops, muddled. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen. .
The words dissolve. There’s an agonizing gap, which Els is powerless to fill. It strikes him, the one small compensation to where Bonner is going. Every look, every listen, will be like the first.
Something, something, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
Richard points: Flashing lights. A van and three cars, one of them unmarked, slink into the circular front drive of the clinic. Men in riot gear issue from the vehicles and fan out. A dozen of them rush the main entrance. Challenges ring out in English and Spanish. The clerk at the reception desk has at last remembered the face on last night’s news.
Bonner surveys the piece of theater as if it’s something he once choreographed. By the look on his face, the blocking is all wrong.
He turns to Els. You ready for this?
Whatever this is, the answer is no. Richard beckons and Els follows. They head around to the far side of the clinic buildings, to the long-term parking lot, leaving the telescope and mount in the middle of the empty field.
The building screens them from the officers a few dozen yards away. Shadows of shock troops dart down the windows of the men’s wing while two old men stumble toward a rented Accord. Bonner bends down near the right rear tire, like he’s hiding behind the vehicle or praying. He reaches up inside the wheel and withdraws a key.
This way, I can always find it. If I can find the car.
He hands the key to Els. Els can’t take it. His arms are numb. Freedom has come for him, impossible, huge, cold, blue, and he’ll drown, way out in the middle of it, out of sight of all land.
Take it, man. It’s just a rental. What’s a little grand theft auto, once they have you for terrorism? You’re doing the world a favor. They should have taken my license away four months ago.