Playing the Sondomme

"The other part is music. It’s still the most mysterious force in the universe—why these sounds should make anyone feel anything, it’s astounding. And in some ways, it’s the realest thing there is."

Music had been a part of Liryre Garson’s life from before she was born. Diedre, her mother, a music teacher, had strategically made use of headphones on her pregnant belly whenever Liryre kicked up a fuss in utero, and, for the most part, it had worked like a charm. Soothing sounds had settled Liryre then, and music almost always worked to calm her nerves even after she was born, so her mother was liberal with the therapeutic use of music with her crying newborn.

Soon after, came the first lessons. The wondrous sounds had order and structure, an origin, and seemingly a purpose. These earliest music lessons were some of Liryre’s earliest memories. And just as most children become enculturated to the normalcy of their familial surroundings, it never struck Liryre that it was possible to live without music, for she had no conception of life outside a musical household. Nor could she conceive of a life lived anywhere other than an Ag cylinder except as an abstraction, even though the vast majority of Dreeson’s Star’s residents lived aboard one of the massive orbital rings encircling the two mid-system gas giants.

Most of the music came from there— either Iophos, the innermost of the two great planets, or from Athos, the nearer ringed gas giant, a beautiful pearl-white gaseous maelstrom with a contiguous megalopolis of a ring, home to four trillion urbane residents, many of whom loved music as much as Liryre did, and a select few who composed and performed the soundtrack to Liryre’s young life in Peabody Homestead, one of six hundred seventy-six Ag cylinders in the Bantham cluster, which the Garson family called home. Peabody Bantham itself, was home to roughly fifty thousand agricultural engineers and farmers, as well as the support personnel, who made Peabody Bantham a home—the caretakers, engineers, workers, tavern owners, and pilots. They were a small fraction of the people in the Dreeson System, but without knowing how different her life was, Liryre was confident in expressing to her school pen pal on the Athos ring that her life was normal, and when asked whether she ever got dizzy living in a cylinder or whether it was strange seeing the other side of the cylinder above her instead of sky, she replied confidently that Peabody’s lightbar was too bright to ever look straight into the sky, and because the crops were all trellised vertically, it was very hard to tell they lived on a cylinder at all. Liryre’s home, like the homes of all the other residents of the Peabody Homestead, was set in the rim itself, a very homey two-story flat with plenty of space and light, and even a spare room where her mother gave private music lessons after school.

It was Liryre who was the primary beneficiary of those extra hours of work, both as a student herself but also in the added income, as it was Diedre’s added income that allowed the Garsons to invest in musical instruments and curriculum tools for Liryre that trained her in sightreading, sight-singing, and developing perfect pitch. All this before her sixth birthday.

The name Sondomme first entered Liryre’s consciousness as merely a place where the music came from. It may as well have been a mythological land in the same way the ancient peoples of Earth attributed the birth of the winds to gods in far off lands. And, in a childish sense, Liryre’s intuition was correct, for much of the system’s great music could trace its origins to many of the Sondomme Conservatory’s student and alumni composers and the neighborhood in Athos’s capital city of Ithaca named for the system’s most prestigious music school.

Liryre was six years old when she first began to understand what Sondomme truly was, for it was at this age when she first remembered watching the Haig Prize recital, which was the performance portion of the conservatory’s entrance auditions, with winners gaining admittance and the top performers even winning scholarships. She was drawn to it that year in particular, because for the first time in over thirty years, a young man from one of the industrial clusters, Ben Waller—the son of a foundry worker—was invited to audition, and all of the millions of citizens in the Ag clusters, industrial clusters, the miners, and the workers of the outer extremities of the system had all adopted young Ben Waller as their own. Despite the disadvantages of his rural education, his lack of refined instruction, his parents’ limited means, and the discouragement he received at every turn, Ben had persevered and achieved his dream of competing in the Haig auditions, and he had the support of the Garsons, who watched like seemingly everyone else in Peabody Homestead and each of the other six hundred seventy-six Ag cylinders in the Bantham Cluster, all of whom rooted feverishly for young Ben Waller.

Liryre was awed by the competition. The refinement of the applicants, all seemingly so young—twelve and thirteen—yet each seemed to play like tenured professionals. Their musical selections and presentations were calculated and well practiced. Their pitch, tone, control—all as expert as Liryre had ever heard. She’d never seen kids play like that before, and sure, they were older, but she could see they were still kids. And the commentary made her nervous for Ben. The announcer, in between performances, discussed the nuances of each presentation, followed by a former professor at the Sondomme, who critiqued each player harshly, indicating which bad habits they would need to improve should they gain admission and even outright declaring which of these amazing performers weren’t cut out for the Sondomme. Liryre could hardly distinguish a difference in their quality—yet he, the sage keeper of the Sondomme critical ear, declared harshly that among these most brilliant, there were unworthy.

By the time Ben Waller performed, the stage had been so steadily graced with brilliance that his talent was evidently lacking by comparison. Had Liryre seen him in the Common House or the Crest performing as he did on that stage, she’d have been mesmerized by his ability. But the contrast made it evident to even a six-year-old, albeit a very musical one, that Ben Waller was not Sondomme material. Nonetheless, when he finished, she was proud that he’d made it there. He was there before billions of children of Athos, most of whom played music of some kind. Ben Waller from Ixos Foundry had made it to the Haig stage and played well for the son of a foundry worker.

Then came the moment that shaped Liryre’s life. The commentator, Professor Alby Murtach uttered the following: “It sounded as though the outer bearings need a greasing from that cylinder lad. Best to send him back to his proper place.” And the professor continued along those lines for minutes in between acts. Many of the words would burn an impression on Liryre’s mind so deep that she put them up on her wall in the following years. Most of the professor’s comments reflected Murtach’s belief that young Ben Waller, to protect him from the humiliation he’d endured, should never have been accepted to the auditions in the first place, and, that in the future, to prevent a similar occurrence, applications should be limited to the children of Athos from accredited schools—vetted children of pedigree, with musical class. It hadn’t been right to see a child so shamelessly and publicly outclassed before the entire star system.

Liryre was equally heartbroken and furious. At six, she lacked the vocabulary to express her outrage. “Why is that man so mean?” was all she could manage to express to her parents through her tears. He was mean, yes, but words like cruel, callous, arrogant, imperious, sanctimonious—and a host of other accurate characterizations were beyond her. Sondomme, for the first time, became a harsh place for her kind, the seat of broken dreams as much as divine music. Liryre decided she was not going to take such naked cruelty lying down. Homesteaders could play music too. She vowed she would prove it to those Sondomme snobs. She, Liryre Garson, would not only perform at the Haig auditions, as Ben Waller had, and win the Haig prize, as he’d failed to do, but Liryre Garson was going to wipe the stage with those stuck up Athosian jerks if it was the last thing she ever did.

Danos and Diedre Garson thought it would be like most childhood experiences, a passing moment in their daughter’s development, a lesson about the class differences between the trillions on the rings and the millions on the cylinders whose labor supported the wealthier lifestyles on the urbane megalopolises of the planetary rings. They expected that Liryre would have forgotten the Haig auditions by the following afternoon. But after school, she took up her ciolina and practiced nearly ceaselessly until she was called to dinner, her auditory tutor keeping time and correcting for tone at every beat along the way. Diedre and Danos discussed it in bed as that night, expecting that it would pass. And then it didn’t. Not over a week, nor over a month, until a year went by with Liryre monomaniacally pursuing musical perfection through hours of endless practice.

Liryre, between her natural gifts, her mother’s tutoring, and her own love of music, had always been accelerated for one of her age, but when she began to practice unceasingly, she soon turned herself into something of a local prodigy. Though both Danos and Diedre were extremely proud of their daughter, Liryre’s persistent drive toward musical perfection did not progress without tension within the Garson household, for as much as Diedre encouraged her daughter to surpass levels she had only ever hoped to achieve herself, Danos feared that the pursuit of such lofty goals would eventually lead to the kind of monumental failure that had crushed Ben Waller and every other outsider who attempted to burst into Athos’s cultural space unwelcome and unwanted. At the end of it, he feared only heartbreak awaited his daughter and he hated watching her practice away her childhood, hardly pausing to enjoy that precious time in her life.

Yet before they knew it, their little girl, their ceaselessly motivated prodigy, was not so little anymore. She was wowing audiences with her perfect technique and musical mastery. Between her mother’s lessons, her constant studying, and the vast computer-based instruction and resources, Liryre’s playing became peerless in the Ag homesteads and all the support clusters as well.

In the year of her twelfth birthday, Liryre did just as Ben Waller had done before her, submitting her application to her local cluster’s audition rounds for thirteens a year early, so that she could still be considered for the Haig auditions at Sondomme the following year should she prove worthy. No one had attempted admission to Sondomme from the cylinders since, and though it never became a formal rule as Alby Murtach had suggested, the humiliation he’d dished out had served as such a deterrent that it was an all but unwritten rule, a rule Liryre Garson vowed to break.

At twelve, in front of the thousands in attendance at the Acton Admin Cylinder’s Tobin Opera House, Liryre Garson bested the competition beyond any doubt, and in her acceptance speech she challenged the Sondomme faculty to try and keep her from the Haig Prize the following year. Liryre Garson put the entire Athos Ring on notice. She would be in Ithaca the following year for thirteens auditions whether they invited her or not, and she would settle for nothing less than top of the podium if she had to storm the stage to perform.

Liryre hardly took a moment to acknowledge her accomplishment, being the youngest applicant ever to win thirteens at Acton and gain admission to the Tobin Conservatory.

“You should be happy, Liryre, and proud of yourself,” Diedre told her on the shuttle ride back to Peabody Homestead.

“I would be disappointed if it didn’t happen,” Liryre responded. “But happy? I don’t get to be happy yet.”

“When do you get to be happy?”

“I’m not sure,” Liryre said. “But not yet. Who says everyone gets to be happy anyway?”

Liryre declined the invitation to the Tobin Conservatory, both because of her parents’ desire for her to remain at home and because of Tobin’s long-term focus, which Liryre feared would end up being more of a distraction from her goal of victory at Sondomme the following year. Six months after her victory at Acton, she received a message from the famous conservatory that read: “No need to storm the stage, Miss Garson. We’ve received your application to audition and were sufficiently impressed with your talents to invite you. More details will follow to connect you with our application system. Congratulations, and good luck.”

She spent the following six months preparing her repertoire, both in the required pieces and in her own selections. And then, on a day that was an ordinary Tuesday for all the other humans in the Galaxy, Liryre Garson departed Peabody Homestead with her mother Diedre for Athos, on her collision course with the Sondomme Conservatory.

The trip was the longest mother and daughter had spent together for as long as Diedre could remember. In the shuttles—first from Peabody Homestead to Acton Central and then on to Ithaca on Athos—there was nowhere for Liryre to practice. It was the first day Diedre could remember Liryre not playing her ciolina since she was a very small child. It did nothing to improve Liryre’s mood. She was impatient and grouchy, spending most of her time with her ears on, reviewing the pieces she knew already as firmly as she knew her own name. Yet she studied still, spent time in mental repetition and reflection, preparing not only for the musical performance but for the crowd, the lights, the pressure, the steps she would take to control her breathing and her manner. But Diedre had no such script to prepare to be a supportive mother. In some ways it felt as though her daughter was putting on armor, and as a mother, she had both the instinct to protect her from the need but also the necessity to bring Liryre forward to her aspirations. She could only hope those aspirations wouldn’t prove too harsh for Liryre to endure. For much of the voyage to Athos, Diedre wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for everyone if she’d stayed home with Rian instead of Danos, for there was no way all four Garsons could afford two weeks on Athos, and Diedre had long questioned how much musical guidance she could offer Liryre anymore. So, she decided to just be the best mom she could be.

Even Liryre, as indifferent as she tried to be, was drawn to the window of the shuttle as Athos grew larger in view. The planet’s milky color and busy, tumultuous upper gas layers were a wonder to both their eyes. They were able to count out four of the eleven moons as they approached the ring, which as familiar as the sight was on screens, in pictures, on logos and iconography, something about seeing it with the eyes stirred excitement in the outsiders that neither Liryre nor Diedre could quite express. Mom held her daughter around the shoulders as they watched quietly in wonder. The ring grew in scope as the planet did. What seemed a tiny band around a fat globe became an immense regular structure hovering against an impossibly enormous, amazingly bright, cloudy-white horizon. By the time the shuttle began to transect the ring’s side, the black of space had completely disappeared from the window, and only the bright white of Athos loomed.

Next, the ship drew over the inner edge of the ring, hovering over the inner-facing nano sheet, and the shuttle matched speeds with the progression of the ring, slowly pulling itself into unison with Ithaca’s sky portal. Once opened, Liryre could see darkness again beneath them, but the darkness was broken up by city lights that extended as far as she could see once the shuttle dropped below the portal’s rim. Then the portal itself closed, shutting out the light of Athos, save for pinpoint gaps in the light shield that mimicked the stars of the night sky.

“It is night now?” Liryre said as they seemed to descend to Ithaca, whose lights grew prominent quickly in the window.

“Does it not seem so?” Diedre said. “I am exhausted myself.” But she could see that as much as Liryre tried to act unimpressed, she was far too excited to be as tired as her mother. It had been so long since she’d seen such wonder in her eldest daughter’s eyes.

An hour or so later, they arrived by tram at Sondomme Square, and to both of them, they may as well have been arriving at the Roman Coliseum. For the people of Dreeson’s star, the Sondomme had grown as sanctified in legend as the great pyramids of Giza, the New York Statue of Liberty, or the Indeeta of Suravhi. The brilliance of the yellow stone, the classical architecture and statues, the white marble walkways, even in darkness, the genius of the Sondomme seemed to illuminate the night. Never had mother or daughter seen such a city. They settled in that night, opting to splurge on a big breakfast the following morning.

From the rooftop garden of the hotel’s dining area at daybreak, with the light slowly coming up, Diedre and Liryre took turns pointing out sights on the long horizon, from the mountainous boundaries of the ring’s edges to the north and south to the landmark buildings of Ithaca, ranging from the nearby neighborhood of Sondomme, all the way to Petros on the horizon in the east and the suburbs in the west where the horizon, which they knew to be curved seemed flat and unending to the eyes. The morning light of Athos, processed through the nano sheet’s filter, seemed the bluest blue, a sky meant to mimic Earth’s. Everything about the city seemed welcoming and right, even as the pressure of the auditions loomed. Their waiter, a lifelong resident of the Sondomme section of Ithaca recognized Liryre from her Acton performance and confessed that despite his local bias, he would be rooting for the outsider.

After breakfast, Liryre began the long practice schedule she’d planned to get out of the way so she and Diedre could see the city in the afternoon before they were scheduled for check-in with the conservatory’s Haig Commission that evening. About an hour into her routine, Liryre was interrupted by a ping at the door, and because Diedre was in the shower, she had to get up to answer it.

When the door opened there was a girl there, and even annoyed as she was at being interrupted, Liryre found that it was difficult to be angry at the unexpected visitor, for she had a pleasant, dimpled smile and a friendly welcoming look about her, even though she didn’t speak at first.

“Can I help you?” Liryre asked.

“Of course, I’m sorry. I came to say hello. You’re Liryre,” she said. “I was hoping we could be friends, and I’m very excited and I say stupid things when I’m excited like right now, but I’m really very glad you’re here.”

“You seem lovely,” Liryre said. “But I was practicing, and I’m not sure…who are you?”

“Oh! I forgot that too. You probably don’t know because you’re from the cylinders. I’ve never known anyone from the cylinders before. I’m Terra Michel.”

“I’m happy to meet you, Terra Michel,” Liryre said. “It was very kind of you to stop by, but I really must get back to practice.”

“Yes, if you insist, Liryre, I’ll leave you to it, but I wanted to see if you’d like to…well, I knew you weren’t from Athos, and I thought, ‘What could I share with a ciolinist from the cylinders that she would really love?’ So, I wanted to offer to take you to the Ibiri Collection. It’s my favorite place—well, one of my favorite places. They have musical instruments from all over the system, and the best part, they have three instruments from Earth made from real wood from real trees that grew over two thousand years ago.”

“And they’ll let us see them?”

“Um-hmm. I’ve been there so much they just let me go in. They say that Mr. Keinholm has even played one.”

“They work?”

“Yes, that’s one of the, uhm, the curators have to make sure they still work and make repairs if there’s ever something wrong, but they keep them in careful conditions.”

“I would really love to go, but—”

“She would love to go,” Diedre said, appearing, wet hair and all, from the adjacent room. “Your father will be thrilled to hear you’ve already made a friend.”

Liryre turned around toward her mother and gestured with her head toward her room, as if to say practice should take precedent.

“Liryre would love to go with you—I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

The young girl smiled, almost as though she thought it was funny they didn’t know her, “I’m Terra Michel, Mrs. Garson. My sister is in her fourth year at the Conservatory, so I know my way around very well. I know all the best spots to visit and relax and eat and practice—all the best spots.”

“That sounds wonderful, Terra. You girls have a nice time. Just be sure to be back by four. I’m sure Liryre will let you know, but we have an important event to register for tonight.”

Terra smiled and shook her head, “Of course, Mrs. Garson, we’ll be back in plenty of time.”

Terra Michel led the way from the Garson’s room at the hotel to the Tram stop underground, which was two stops from the Grand Museum, which housed the Ibiri Collection. Outside, there was a crowd like nothing Liryre had ever seen, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people queueing up to get inside the Grand Museum of the Sondomme.

“I’ve never seen so many people,” Liryre said. “It’s overwhelming.”

“It’s okay,” Terra said. “You should see it on the weekend, especially this weekend. You won’t be able to move out here.”

“I don’t think I would like that. How will we ever get inside with such a line?”

“Come on,” Terra said, taking Liryre’s hand and pulling her through the crowd. She brought Liryre to a shady corner at the side of the entrance marked in small lettering “conservatory.” And they were promptly admitted to the museum.

Terra led the way to the Ibiri room. Inside it was dark and cool and quiet as people snaked their way through the collection of beautiful and curious instruments. Some of them, Liryre had never seen or even heard of before, and she marveled at all the ways that humans had invented to make beautiful sounds fill the air. She wondered at the prospect that each of these bizarre-looking instruments would have hundreds of masters, who like her, would have spent years of their lives dedicated to coaxing the perfect tone from such elaborate arrays of strings, skins, boxes, pipes, and reeds. Then finally, Terra took Liryre by the hand and brought her before the three wooden instruments from Earth. The first, a violin from a nation called France, about which Terra related all of the details—that it came from multiple types of trees and had been played by a succession of notable masters for over a thousand years before coming to the Sondomme seven hundred years earlier. “That’s wood?” Liryre kept repeating. “It doesn’t look like it could come from a tree at all. It’s beautiful.”

“And,” Terra said, “made by the hands of a single master craftsman, but I can’t say his name correctly because it’s very strange.”

Next, Terra showed her the wondrous wooden contrabass, which towered over the two girls. And finally, the youngest and most beautiful of the instruments, a guitar from the twenty-first century, which was the only instrument of the three where the fine grain of the wood was evidently observable. It called to Liryre most especially, given its similarity to her own ciolina recordare, which she’d spent her whole life cradling in her lap.

As their time in the museum progressed, Liryre noticed that people were noticing them, primarily Terra, but because of the eyes drawn to her, Liryre could see that some in the crowd were recognizing and pointing her out as well.

“It’s really only in the Sondomme you’ll get recognized,” Terra said. “Some other places in Ithaca. Some cities where they follow the Haig closely or maybe serious music students. You’ll get used to it.”

“So you’re in the competition as well, Terra?” Liryre asked.

She nodded and smiled. “I hope we can still be friends.”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

It was the first moment all day the smile fell from Terra Michel’s face.

“They’re all so competitive, like you, Liryre. It makes me almost like the enemy. It’s hard for me to have friends in music, and I don’t know anyone who isn’t a musician, not here in the Sondomme.”

Later that evening, at registration, Terra came over to Liryre to say hello, and what had been subtly apparent in the museum became self-evident in the staging area. All eyes that weren’t directed in the immediate vicinity of the competitors and their families were at varying times following the movements of Terra Michel. Liryre could feel it immediately when Terra approached her, suddenly the room was curious about her, “the barrel girl” as she’d heard some whisper behind her back, “Is she friends with Terra Michel now? She must be as good as it seems.”

“Liryre, I just wanted to say that no matter what happens, good luck, and I hope you do come here, because I’d like to be friends and to study with you.”

“Me too,” Liryre said, “and you too. Good luck, I mean.”

She felt the tension at that moment, and from that moment, almost as if that single interaction had changed everything, all the other applicants took a step back from her, either out of respect, reverence, or perhaps even fear, but Liryre didn’t like the feeling. For the first time since they’d arrived on Athos, she thought of Ben Waller and what he must have felt in that same room seven years earlier.

Liryre didn’t see Terra Michel for two days once the auditions began. Liryre made it a point to never watch other performers during competitions, finding it a distraction from her personal routine, which she performed every bit as faithfully as the pieces themselves. However, on day three, in a back hallway on the way from a solo recital of etudes, Liryre bumped into Terra, who smiled and asked if she could sit with Liryre for a few minutes in one of the side annexes and chat. Liryre was finished for the day, so she was happy to have the company. Terra professed to be doing well and enjoying herself; although, she mentioned that the one thing she hated about these auditions was the idea that music was causing so many of these most dedicated musicians so much stress. “That just seems wrong somehow,” Terra said. “But maybe it makes all of us better in the long run.”

By Saturday the Grand Jury had been selected along with the top fifty thirteens in the whole of the Dreeson system. These fifty signature performances were the predominant factor in who was selected as the Haig winner, and Liryre knew her standing to be exactly where she expected—quite high—as indicated by her early evening time slot. The top five applicants would be selected for an encore performance after the winners were announced.

Liryre was too focused to spend any time appreciating the magnitude of the moment. It was the lifelong aspiration of almost every musician in the system to be a center-stage soloist at the Grand Opera House of the Sondomme in Ithaca. She was here now, barely thirteen years old. Acknowledging that honor—just like watching her competitors’ performances—was another dis-traction from the perfect execution of her routine, which Liryre believed would see her through. She thought only of the number of steps to center stage, her execution of the bow she’d practiced through every performance of her young life, and positioning her instrument elegantly and perfectly, like she did each time she played. She was ready.

For a brief moment, before she began, she thought of her mother, seated somewhere in the dim light of the amphitheater, her father and sister at home, the crowd at the Common House on Peabody Homestead, doubtless gathered to watch her, just as they’d all gathered to watch Ben Waller all those years ago—only this time on Peabody they needn’t adopt a foundry worker’s son as their own: Liryre Garson was truly one of them. And she was center stage, Sondomme, with the lights down and the orchestra coming up. It was her moment to shine. She took a final breath before the ciolina’s entrance and played her heart out. And after twenty minutes, she could honestly say that she had never played better.

After several minutes of applause, a shower of flowers on the stage and more bows than she could count, she was ushered backstage to a second-story box side-stage that she hadn’t been able to see in the blind focus of the spotlight. There were two empty seats left. As she was sat, she was greeted by one of the other five finalists, Caley Obfer, who said to her, “I think you were incredible tonight, Liryre. Congratulations. You played like a goddess.”

After a few minutes of quiet buzz in the warm light of the opera house, Terra Michel was introduced.

“Here she comes,” she heard a girl’s voice behind her say. “Little miss perfect.” Another contestant shushed the speaker.

Then the lights went down, the orchestra came up, and Terra began.

Liryre understood within a few notes why people stared at Terra Michel. She hadn’t played but a few measures before Liryre decided she’d never quite even heard music before. It wasn’t any one thing. The tone, the technique, the genius of her choices in interpretation—the totality of everything—it was as though an entirely different world of music lived in harmony alongside them at any given moment and no one had even realized it existed, until Terra Michel simply and effortlessly opened the door to this world, allowing the rest of the blessed souls in the room to listen in. Liryre was so overwhelmed and awestruck that she couldn’t keep tears from welling up and streaming down her face. By the time she’d finished playing, Liryre was convinced that Terra Michel was an entirely different species of human being. A blessed one. So blessed. Liryre didn’t know how to make sense of it.

When Liryre was informed that she’d been selected for an encore, she didn’t quite know what to do. She was ushered downstairs and sat in a practice space, where she attempted to refocus, improvising variations on the piece, which itself was a set of modern variations on a collection of interpretations of a twentieth-century Earth composer named Lauro. Liryre’s interpretation was a technical and extraordinarily upbeat choice for an encore, and now she felt entirely inadequate even attempting it with Terra Michel in the building.

After a few minutes of practice, Liryre heard a knock on the door. Terra Michel peeked her head in. She was smiling. Liryre smiled back. She couldn’t understand how the others could resent Terra for her gift. It was like being jealous of the stars for their beauty.

“You were wonderful tonight, friend,” Terra Michel said.

Liryre nodded. “I’d never seen you play before, Terra. I don’t think I could ever play like you.”

“You can play like you, Liryre. You’re very special. Everyone loved your playing.”

It was difficult for Liryre to separate her feelings about the musician from the friend she’d made. Both of them were real, but one was ordinary and unassuming and easy to like. The other was difficult for Liryre to even comprehend, but she knew she didn’t want that overwhelming feeling to prevent them from kindling a friendship.

They talked for a few minutes more before she confessed to Terra that she was having trouble focusing on her encore after watching Terra play.

“I like to close my eyes sometimes and pretend that I’m weightless on one of the moons playing to a flock of butterflies,” Terra said. “It really helps.”

“I’m going to try it,” Liryre said.

An hour later when she was introduced, Liryre was named second seat by the Provost of the Sondomme, who declared Liryre a once-in-a-generation talent who’d be the Haig winner in any other year but for the once-in-a-lifetime talent of Terra Michel.

Unbeknownst to her, Liryre’s tears had been caught on the broadcast and interpreted, unfairly, as sour and jealous, yet Liryre’s manner when she was reintroduced belied that notion, for she seemed gracious as she sat, and she played her encore magnificently, envisioning butterflies frenetically circling her ciolina as she sat weightless on the Sondomme stage.

Liryre was reunited with her mother backstage and they watched Terra together.

“What do you make of your new friend?” Diedre asked when Terra had finished and the applause had finally died down enough to make herself heard.

“I think she’s just different,” Liryre said. “And I think I have a lot to learn about music.”

Diedre pulled her daughter toward her. “I’m so incredibly proud of you.”

The following day, Terra, Liryre, and Sabbie, the third of the three medalists were honored at a string of events at all corners of the Sondomme, which culminated in an awards dinner where all three were formally invited to take up study in the professional orchestral course, which was eight years of the most rigorous course of musical study in the known galaxy.

“I feel like I don’t know anything about music,” Liryre confessed to Terra after they were presented their emblems.

“Let’s learn it all together, then,” Terra said. “If you come.”

And Liryre realized that for all the work she’d put into winning the Haig prize, she hadn’t considered what might come after. It was beyond the moment, but she was beginning to envision it.

After the dinner, Diedre whisked Liryre off to the hypermag. “I have a surprise for you, but we’ll have to go to New Corinth, and we’ll have to stay up late.”

“I’ll try to stay awake,” Liryre said.

“You can take a nap on the way. The ride is four hours.”

The hypermag took them nearly a quarter of the way around the ring nearly as fast as a shuttle ride could have traversed the distance. Liryre did sleep on her mother’s shoulder as the train hummed along, and when they popped up again in New Corinth, the light was just fading from the day for a second time, and Liryre, exhausted as she was from the week, was excited to see what her mother had planned for them.

The city seemed a totally different world. Where Ithaca, particularly the Sondomme area, seemed a place centered around classical beauty, calling back to ancient roots, art, and architecture, New Corinth seemed new, calling forth to something bright and unseen. There was a different kind of vibrant energy about its streets. Though it didn’t seem grand in the same sense Ithaca did, it smelled of blossoming flowers and street food, and though the streets were more regular and less graceful, every block seemed to have a small park where people were gathered, playing games, playing music, or sitting in quiet comfort.

Liryre knew better than to ask what her mother was up to. She understood there was some purpose to it.

When they finally stopped walking, Diedre sat them down at a tavern that was half inside, half spilling out into a piazza that had a kind of warm night life lit by tiny colored strings of light garlands and faux candles on the tops of roped-off tables. As they sat, they snacked on fried potatoes and watched the people enjoy the evening, and after an hour or so, a band came out to play.

Liryre hadn’t heard much music like it before. It was very simple—too simple for her tastes, a repetitive progression of a handful of chords over a regular beat, and what it lacked in inventiveness it seemed to make up for in volume, yet the people in the crowd—all young adults to Liryre’s eyes—they seemed to revel in the noise, dancing, cheering wildly, and singing along. That venue seemed an odd choice for her music teacher mother to choose for their mother daughter time. They sat just outside the roped-off area for a few hours, sipping Ayger sweet-cha from the Ralston cluster, which was quite good, but Liryre still couldn’t quite figure out what they were doing there of all places on Athos.

When the band finished several hours later, the group of nearly a hundred revelers cheered loudly and surrounded the players, exhorting them to keep playing later into the night, but the band disappeared into the tavern and the crowd slowly dispersed, breaking off into groups and gravitating toward music emanating from the other venues lining the square.

As things quieted down, Liryre was about to ask her mother what the trip was all about when a young man approached the table, shook hands with Diedre, said “nice to meet you,” and sat.

“And you too,” the young man said to Liryre. “The superstar of the cylinders.”

He looked familiar, and after a few seconds, Liryre realized that he’d been the contrabass player from the band, only he’d ditched the wig, sunglasses, and garish jacket he’d sported during the show. Still though, there was something else.

“Your mother tells me that you were a big supporter of mine back in the day, Liryre,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m certainly a big fan of yours now. You were wonderful this weekend.”

“I’m sorry,” Liryre said, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I recognize you.”

“I don’t tell a lot of people this,” he joked, “but I’m Ben Waller, you know, that Ben Waller.”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Liryre said. “Now I see it. You didn’t have facial hair back then.”

“I didn’t have a lot of things back then, most of all a clue, but who does at thirteen?” Ben said. “Hey, we’re all so proud of you, Liryre. I spoke to my parents over the weekend. They were watching. Everyone was watching. And it was so crazy to have Diedre track me down out of the blue and tell me she wanted us to meet. Just…well, for me that was a tough time, and then to hear that it had inspired you. I never would have thought that any good would have come from that.”

“I’m speechless. I don’t know what to say, Ben,” Liryre said. “I thought you’d be at conservatory somewhere.”

“I was for a while. In Bayrn, which is about another two hours down the hypermag line. They were one of the only schools that would take me after Sondomme. I switched instruments, started playing bass. I was there four years before I just didn’t want anything to do with formal training anymore.”

“But this?” Liryre said. “It’s so different.”

“I know. I had all the same thoughts, trying so hard to impress all those music snobs. All those fancy people. But these are my people. You know, our people. The ones who keep food on the table, keep the lights on, keep the trains running. I like playing for them better. Not too stuck up to dance and sing along and let you know they’re having a good time.”

“I was just…you don’t find it boring? I mean the music? Five chords in four-four time, over and over again all night?”

“Your mother and I were talking about this, Liryre. I was the same at your age too. You work so hard at learning to play music—it’s your sole focus, the goal, the objective—that you miss what music really is. I had to learn it from a pop singer I was playing contrabass for in bars like this. I only started playing pop to make a little extra money while I was in school. And before too long, the band started doing really well, because this singer understood something they don’t teach you in conservatory.”

“What’s that?”

“That it isn’t about the music, or at least not what you think the music is. It sounds strange. But he kept telling me after shows, ‘I need something more out of you, Ben,’ and I would tell him, ‘I’m doing my job. I’m playing the songs perfect,’ and it wasn’t hard, because this pop music is really simple music. But then he started saying before every show, ‘Ben, tonight we’re playing the Sheridan Theatre. Tonight, we’re playing The Tenpenny. Tonight, we’re playing The Copper Bell.’ All the club names, just like that. And it took me probably six months before I slowly began to realize he meant that literally, that when he changed the set in the middle of the set, he was reading something in the theatre, moving the energy through it in a different way, changing the notes, creating nuance. His instrument wasn’t the microphone or his voice or the band or the words or even the music itself. When he said we were playing the Sheridan Theatre, he meant we were playing the Sheridan Theatre, and that’s when I began to understand what music really is, Liryre. It’s what makes your friend Terra Michel different. She probably doesn’t even know that she knows it, but that’s what she’s doing, playing the Sondomme.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that, Ben.” Liryre said. “How do you even begin to practice that?”

“Exactly,” Ben said.

The lights in the square began to dim as several of the venues on the far side of the piazza closed their doors. Liryre noticed for the first time that the sky at night here on Athos did look just like the stars from the west bay window on Peabody Homestead.

“It changed me when I first learned that too,” Ben said. “You work so hard for so long to play music, and then realize, you’re doing a whole different thing than you thought you were. It’s a little crazy.”

“I’m not sure I know what to do about it. So, you’re saying I shouldn’t go to Sondomme?”

“Oh, God, no! Liryre, by all means. What an opportunity. Go. Learn. There are maybe a billion kids on this ring alone who would give anything to trade places with you. And maybe, even as much as Sondomme itself, you’ll get to play with Terra. Learn all this together. She might be your best teacher. Really. And don’t let me change your mind. I’m just trying to maybe open your eyes a little.”

“Okay. It’s just…it’s all so much. I had this idea of what it would all be, and a week ago, I had no idea. I didn’t understand anything.”

“And you still don’t probably. You may never. I don’t. Part of that’s growing up. The other part is music. It’s still the most mysterious force in the universe—why these sounds should make anyone feel anything, it’s astounding. And in some ways, it’s the realest thing there is.”

At that point, the purveyors came out and began to remove the tables, so Diedre, Ben, and Liryre left the tables and walked into the square, at the center of which was a small fountain.

“When’s your train?” Ben asked.

“Two hours,” Diedre said. “Should get us back by daybreak.”

At the front of the fountain there was a woman sitting cross-legged bowing pop jazz on a cyolin she’d set on a blanket in front of her on the cobblestone floor. Ben, Diedre, and Liryre stood in the square listening, unsure whether to part then and there. The fountain behind the cyolin player was cycling through colors as the water sprayed up and fell behind her. A group of revelers leaving one of the taverns on the other side of the square began to sing as they approached the fountain. Liryre didn’t know the song, but the revelers knew every lyric word-for-word.

“Mirrors. Signs. All the sounds that ring in time…”

 They sang the whole song with the cyolin player as Ben, Diedre, and Liryre looked on, smiling as the group passed by into the night.

“I’ll be here if you need anything,” Ben said before parting. “I’m just a train ride away, and I can’t wait to come down and see you play the Sondomme, Liryre Garson. You are something of a miracle, and your story has just begun.”

There on the night side of Athos, in a city of twenty million souls, on a planetary ring filled with more people than had ever graced their home world, in the center of a city square, by a fountain, a mother and her daughter stood beside a single musician, listening, and in the darkness, the quiet world itself seemed to vibrate through them, resonating, lingering as the music played, and as the sound died down, they stood there together while the vibrations slowly faded out.