The Dark Symphony Read Online Free PDF

to the right of the judges, ready to watch the misfits—Guil and Rosie. Guil looked for some sign of the three losers, could find none. No bodies meant that all three must have buckled early, must have been carried away right off. No, not necessarily. A sound creature, after all, did not leave signs of its victims. It engulfed them whole, negated the molecular vibrations that constituted them, and vanished with them, effectively canceling them out of existence.
    Quaking, he walked before the towering Bench, bent his neck so he could see the judge called Handel peering at him from the centermost throne. "Guillaume Dufay Grieg?"
    I want to run
, he thought
I want to get out of here, out of here and far away
. "It is I, your honor," he said.
    "Are you prepared to begin your test?"
    No, no
, he thought.
I'm not prepared. I'm afraid. I'm more afraid than a baby in the dark
. Yes, your honor," he said.
    "Do you have any particular statements or requests to make at this time?"
    Let me out! Let me the hell out of here! This
is
like the prisoner receiving his last meal, only my terminal privilege will be to speak a few pieces of wit, of wisdom
. But he could not say any of that, for there was his father to consider. And, besides, they would not let him go as he wished. They would burn him. "No special requests or statements, your honor."
    "Very well," Handel said. He coughed, wiped a hand across his mouth. "Let the tests begin!"
    The orchestra struck the proper note and swept off into a complicated piece written by the originators of the rituals to stir excitement among the spectators while the preparations were being made.
    It was an oddly eerie tune.
    An attendant dressed in traditional white shimmer-cloth with a pulsating flash-fabric collar crossed to Guil; the collar threw angelic glare over his face, obscuring his features. All that was visible was his eyes, bright with reflected throbbings of light. He brought Guil three weapons: the sound-sedative whistle, the sonic knife, and the deadly sound rifle.
    No longer trying to suppress the tremors that shook him like a dry leaf, Guil strapped the knife to the waistband of his leotard suit, hung the whistle about his neck by the glistening shimmer-metal chain, and cradled the rifle in his arms. With a nod to the judges, he took a hundred paces into the arena, turned back to the hundred foot monolith that was the Bench, braced himself mentally and physically, puffed out the stale air and took in clean, and nodded once again.
    The music subsided, was gone.
    "You have been chosen Class IV," Judge Tallis boomed. He was a hawk of a man, wizened, with a beak nose, his two eyes like the eyes of a predatory bird. His hands appeared out of the robe to push back at the sides of his hair, then disappeared into the folds again.
    Class IV. The echo of the words throbbed a moment before the soundproofing walls negated their patterns.
    Father will be disappointed
, Guil thought. But there was nothing to say except: "I accept my station."
    "Have you chosen an identisong?"
    A phrase from your identisong was recorded on a small lapel badge and had merely to be activated to allow you the use of all machines used by your station and to give you entrance into all places your class was permitted entrance. Fourth Class identisongs had to be duple-metered. He realized, as he scanned what hundreds of tunes he knew, that he should have had one already in mind. Then he thought of a choice that would please his father with its irony and its connection with
Drr Erlkonig
from the previous evening. "I chose Schubert's
Marche Militaire
."
    Tallis confirmed the choice.
    The orchestra began muted music,
    "Let us begin!" Tallis said.
    The wall of the Bench shimmered, opaqued in the center, then dissolved in part to form a hole fifty feet across and seventy feet high. For a moment, there was silence that held like smoke in air, as if there would never again he a noise of any sort Except for the almost inaudible