• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 266 0

the local land-scape into a smoking crater. He’d been three hundred meters away from their cubicle when it had gone off, and even at that distance the blast had been enough to knock over glasses, rattle the furniture, and shake a few pictures from the shelter’s walls. Zan, who had been in the middle of some concerto or another, didn’t miss a note. When he was done, he’d looked around, puzzled, at the mess. "If you don’t like the music, just say so," he’d said to Jos.

Besides, Jos didn’t want to interrupt the music, which had gone from the driving beat of leap-jump right into the heartbeat bass and melody of heavy isotope. Amaz-ing how his friend could make a single stringed instru-ment suggest the sounds of omni box, electroharp, and all the other instruments of a six-piece band...

After another minute or so, Zan stopped.

Trying to act casual, Jos said, "Interesting. What, uh, was that?"

Zan grinned. "That? ’Etude for Dawn,’ the Sixteenth Vissencant Variation. Good to see you’ve become a classical music fan at last, my lead-eared friend. "

Jos stared. "Didn’t your mother ever tell you your horns would grow if you told a lie?"

"I admit I speeded it up a hair. And shifted the timing in a couple of places, brought up the bass line, but es-sentially... well, judge for yourself."

He began to play again, looking not at the fret board but directly at Jos, a small smile on his lips.

Jos listened. Sure enough, it was the same piece of music, but with an entirely different tone and mood - definitely classical now.

"How’d you do that? One minute it’s good, the next it’s lift-tube music."

Zan laughed. "You’re pathetic. A space slug is less tone deaf."

Something about the way Zan was watching him, as if waiting for something to sink in, sank in. "All right," Jos said. "Fire the second round."

Now Zan really laughed. "If you had any education past the end of your scalpel, you’d know there were only fifteen Vissencant Variations. What I played was Duskin re Lemte’s ’Cold Midnight,’ a leap-jump/heavy isotope fusion just out on the HoloNet. I downloaded it a couple of days ago. Slow it down, add a little contra-puntal line, and it isn’t bad. Re Lemte obviously had some classical education on his way to the mass market. Not that you would know."

"You’ll suffer for this," Jos said. "My revenge will be terrible. Maybe not swift or particularly inspired, but definitely terrible."

Zan chuckled and started playing again. "Couldn’t be any worse than your musical taste."

Alone in her cubicle, fresh and clean from the sonic shower, Barriss Offee sat naked on the floor. Her legs were crossed and knotted, ankles over thighs, her back straight, in the position called Repose. Her hands rested, palms up, on her knees; her eyes were open, but unfocused. She breathed slowly, drawing the air in through her right nostril and whirling it deep into her belly, then expelling it slowly through her left nostril.

Floating meditation was, for her, one of the trickiest of the Jedi exercises. There were days when it was as smooth as mercury on a transparisteel plate: she would sit, and breathe, and be there-gravity would fall away, and she would rise like a balloon, to hover weightless half her body-length in the air. But at other times her mind refused to clear, and no matter how long or hard she concentrated, her rear stayed firmly on the floor.

Today was one of those times. Thoughts chased each other through the corridors of her mind like Tyrusian butterfly-birds, chittering inanely. Master Unduli would be shaking her head, Barriss knew, if she could see her Padawan now.

The thought of her Master released a flood of mixed emotions. Back on Coruscant, Barriss had thought of herself as an average Padawan, a little more adept than some, a little less so than others. Not brilliant, but not particularly stupid, either. Her Master had told her this was part of the limitation Barriss had put upon herself. She could remember that lesson well. It had come after a long hand-to-hand combat workout at one of the training centers, followed by lightsaber practice