Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [200]
The piece ran for twenty minutes, until the players were gasping and sweat spun off them in tiny drops to speed in sparking streaks into the darkness, and still they whirled and thundered. Miles had to stop himself from hyperventilating in sympathy, heartbeat synchronized with their rhythms. Then, one last grand blast of joyous noise—and somehow the shifting net of four-armed men and women resolved itself into two chains, which flowed away into the exits from which they had emerged a revelation ago.
Darkness again. The silence was like a blow; behind him, Miles heard Roic exhale reverently, longingly, like a man home from war easing himself into his own bed for the first time.
The applause—hand-clapping, of course—rocked the room. No one in the Barrayaran party, Miles thought, had to pretend enthusiasm for quaddie culture now.
The chamber hushed again as the orchestra emerged from four points and filtered into positions all around the great window. The half-a-hundred quaddies bore a more standard array of instruments—all acoustic, Ekaterin observed to him in a fascinated whisper. They spotted Nicol, assisted by two more quaddies who helped manage and secure her harp, which was nearly the usual shape for a harp, and her double-sided hammer dulcimer, appearing to be a dull oblong box from this angle. But the piece that followed included a solo section for her with the dulcimer, her ivory face picked out in spotlights, and the music that poured forth between her four flashing hands was anything but dull. Radiantly ethereal; heartbreaking; electrifying.
Bel must have seen this dozens of times, Miles guessed, but the herm was surely as entranced as any newcomer. It wasn't just a lover's smile that illuminated Bel's eyes. Yes. You would not be loving her properly if you did not also love her improvident, lavish, spendthrift excellence. No jealous lover, greedy and selfish, could hoard it all; it had to be poured forth upon the world, or burst its wellspring. He glanced at Ekaterin and thought of her glorious gardens, much missed back on Barrayar. I shall not keep you away from them much longer, love, I promise.
There was a brief pause, while quaddie stagehands arranged a few mysterious poles and bars sticking in at odd angles around the interior of the sphere. Garnet Five, floating sideways with respect to Miles, murmured over her shoulder, "Coming up is the piece I usually dance. It's an excerpt from a larger work, Aljean's classic ballet The Crossing, which tells the story of our people's migration through the Nexus to Quaddiespace. It's the love duet between Leo and Silver. I dance Silver. I hope my understudy doesn't muck it up . . ." She trailed off as the overture swelled.
Two figures, a downsider male and a blond quaddie woman, floated in from opposite sides of the space, picked up momentum with hand-spins around a couple of the poles, and met in the middle. No drums this time, just sweet, liquid sound from the orchestra. The Leo character's legs trailed uselessly, and it took Miles a moment to realize that he was being played by a quaddie dancer with dummy legs. The woman's use of angular momentum, drawing in or extending various arms as she twirled or spun, was brilliantly controlled, her changes of trajectory around the various poles precise. Only a few indrawn breaths and critical mutters from Garnet Five suggested anything less than perfection to Miles's perceptions. The false-legged fellow was deliberately clumsy, earning a chuckle from the quaddie audience. Miles shifted uncomfortably, realizing he was watching a near-parody of how downsiders looked to quaddie eyes. But the woman's charming gestures of assistance made it seem more endearing than cruel. Bel, grinning, leaned over to murmur in Miles's ear, "It's all right. Leo Graf's supposed