The Dark Symphony

eyes from the piano, however, he missed the last third of an
arpeggio
and heard the familiar
tcch-tech-tech
of the instructor's tongue as it clicked against the roof of his mouth. Involuntarily, he shuddered, for he knew that that sound invariably meant trouble.
    He turned his eyes full on the keyboard and concentrated on his exercise. It would not have been too horrible to have been a Class IV Musician if only his instructor had been someone understanding like gentle Franz, someone not so demanding and able to see the boy's side of it when an occasional note was missed or a chord slurred. But this was Frederic, and Frederic had been known to use the leather sting-strap on young knuckles when he felt a boy had not been practicing. Guil, not daring to look away again, approached the next
arpeggio
with care. He had the span to reach the keys, to do things boys born with even slightly smaller hands could never do. Indeed, perhaps that was his very problem. Perhaps the genetic engineers had erred and given him hands too large for the keys, fingers too thin and long and bony to be graceful or adept on the board.
Clumsy hands
, he thought
I was born with cows for hands and big, floppy teats for fingers
!
    Despite his teatlike fingers, he made it through the trouble spot without difficulty. Ahead lay easy bars of music, things he could cope with. He risked a glance at the clock, careful not to move his head from its bent and proper angle. Two more minutes! In all that infernal, godawful self-inspection and tricky finger work, had no more time passed than that?
    Suddenly, his fingers stung with the bite of Frederic's strap. He tore them from the gleaming ivory-white keys and sucked them to draw off the pain.
    "You murdered that chord, Grieg!" The voice was thin, yet harsh, strained through a scrawny throat and sharp, pointed teeth.
    I'm sorry, sir," he said, licking the two fingers that had taken the brunt of the blow. He was sniveling again, acting miserably subservient, and he was ashamed of himself. He longed to wrench that strap from the old weasel's hands and use it across his face for a while. But there was his father to think about, all of the things his father expected of him. A word from Frederic to people in the right places, and Gull's future was so much gray ash. "I'm sorry," he said again.
    But Frederic was not to be appeased with apologies this time—he rarely was. He stood, his thin, long-fingered hands folded behind his back, and began pacing behind Guil, reappearing on the right for a few steps, turning again and stepping out of sight His face, a bird face, was drawn tight in sour disgust.
Did you get a bad-tasting worm, you old crow
? Guil thought He wanted to laugh, but he knew the strap would sting neck, cheeks, or head as easily as fingers. "This is perfectly simple," Frederic said. "Totally fundamental Nothing new in this exercise, Grieg. A review lesson, Grieg!" His voice was like a shrill reed instrument, piercing, somewhat painful-to hear.
    "Yes, sir."
    Then why do you persist in your refusal to practice?"
    "I do practice, sir."
    The strap burned a red welt across the back of his neck. "Nonsense, Grieg! Damned, utter nonsense!"
    "But I do, sir. I really do! I practice even longer than you say to, but it does no good. My fingers are—stones on the keys." He hoped he sounded distressed. He
was
distressed, damn it! He was supposed to be a Musician, a complete master of sound, a child of universal harmonics, born to understand and to use sound, to perform the rituals of music in a passable—no, a beautiful—manner. Though it might make his fingers a trifle too long, the gene juggling chamber should not fail in giving him the basic oneness with rhythm that was his birthright, the harmony with universal harmony that was his legacy, the blending with melody that was the core of every Musician's soul and the most basic of things required to gain a Class. And what the genetic engineering didn't do correctly, the Inundation Chamber should have compensated for. The Inundation Chamber was a huge room in which the Musicians' Ladies who were pregnant were placed in a weaving symphony of sound that carried subliminal suggestions even into the developing forebrain of the fetus. That treatment should have smoothed the rough edges on the genetic engineers' work. It should have made him want desperately to be a good Musician of a high Class. But, somehow, even that had failed. The only reason he cared to do well in