The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan

Author:Robin Sloan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Elettra Brixi in Concert

After the daubing is done, it is time for the concert. On a mountainside in northernmost Italy, a machine made in Japan sings to ancient vines.

Elettra Brixi and her synthesizers face the mountainside, so James and the rest of the audience, sitting in two lines of chairs set up in a shallow curve, see her framed against the castle’s towering backside. The braziers have been doused, so the stage is dark except for the lights on Brixi’s synthesizers, really not as twinkly as one would hope, and the lamp clipped to the music stand, illuminating the strange score. Earlier, James clipped it there, and also made a show of unplugging several cables, holding them up to his eye, frowning, then immediately plugging them back into the same sockets. The work of a technician, right?

Brixi begins, launching herself into a confident orbit: she strides between the music stand and the synthesizers, her expression alternating between consideration and action. She listens, makes a decision, executes it. A knob is turned. A cable rerouted. She’s got to be quick and sure with those cables; miss a socket or a beat, and the music will stutter.

The music does not stutter.

James turns in his chair and looks up at the vines. It should be clear to him by now that the guests are not the primary audience for this performance. Rather, it’s me.

That doesn’t matter to Brixi, who is fully absorbed by her task. She has established a deep thrumming beat—there was no beat at Club Tuxedo—and on top of it, she swirls sad melody. A plaintive croon; a plea to return. It’s wonderful. She is following the score perfectly.

She tears away each page as she finishes it, and as the sheaf dwindles, she builds toward a crescendo, the beat now like a bow skipping across the strings of a cello as big as the castle itself. I want an instrument even larger, of course—I want an instrument like the ones I heard long ago—but this will suffice; more than suffice. This is the best performance I have heard in a very long time. It is exactly what I needed.

The guests have twisted themselves around in their chairs to look toward the vines, expectation clear across their faces. James twists, too. Hello.

Light sweeps across the mountainside, a wash of greenish sparks, so faint they would not register on a human eyeball if there weren’t so many of them. It might be fireflies, except it is winter, and there are no fireflies. It might be a rising mist catching the moonlight, except there is no mist, and no moon. The light is very faint, and faintly it throbs, keeping time with Brixi’s performance, because I am, let me tell you, feeling it.

The performer perceives that her audience’s attention has wavered. She glances up, and her gaze hangs, because the light on the mountainside is growing brighter and pulsing—can it be?—in direct response to the music she is making. Brixi’s hands freeze mid-manipulation, and the synthesizer’s sound hardens into a harsh BEEEEEEP.

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