The Dark Symphony

looked skyward with the phrase on his lips again, Guil thought this latter thing must be true.
    But would not the Musicians be shouting the same things to their gods? Would Chopin and Grieg and Rimsky-Korsakov and Vladislovitch come streaking from the heavens in a thunderous symphony, wrench the vile manbats from the face of the earth and cast them into the airless void beyond the sun? Of course not. Neither side would witness the arrival of their divinities. Gods, Guil saw now, were part of the toolmaster-tool concept. The users made them up to satisfy the used. Gods were as grease and oil, making the tools work better and longer and with less friction.
    He realized that he had never really believed in gods, but that he had never analyzed religion to understand his lack of faith. Or to understand why other men needed gods. It was a far deeper thing than superstition. Gods, as men interpreted them, were nothing more than panaceas, candies to pacify the people.
    His head spun with his discoveries of this night, these new perceptions so rapidly gained. Tonight, not that day in the arena, he had come of age.
    At length, all the Musicians without shields were dead, strewn hideously across the ground. The battle had progressed toward the great courtyard in the center of the neon stone gardens, and it seemed as if the Musicians might quell the rebellion yet.
    "Chances?"
    "Only a thirty percent chance of success," Gypsy Eyes reported.
    Strong's fingers danced nervously over the controls without pulling or pushing any of them. His gods seemed to have abandoned him to his own fate. The night was incredibly dark. But he knew this could also be a test to see whether he was still faithful. The Seven Books were full of tests. "We're going down. Gideon, can those shields be broken with sound rifles?"
    Guil thought a moment "Yes. It takes a longer hold on target, but it can be done. There's a danger the shield might strike back along the rifle's beam and negate the gun as it is negated itself. You might run out of captured sound rifles pretty quickly." When he was finished, he wandered if this bit of advice had increased the degree of his guilt.
    "We'll have to risk that," Strong said.
    Pulling back on the controls, the big Popular took the sled down toward the battle…
    Strong stood in the dark, covered alleyway watching the two Musicians come toward him. They were silhouetted in the light from the courtyard behind them, and he would have been able to pick them off quite easily if he had thought to bring a crossbow. Then he realized that he, too, must be outlined against the light from his end of the corridor, and he danced sideways against the cold wall of the building.
    The Musicians had not noticed him. They came on, still laughing and slapping at each other in high good humor. He tried to find some place to go, an indentation, doorway, anything to conceal him—but he had no luck. Just as he tensed for the inevitable battle that must come, one of the men stopped and exclaimed that he had forgotten something or other that he had meant to bring home from the Festival. They argued a moment about the advisability of going back, then turned and went back into the courtyard and out of sight.
    Strong sighed, realized he had been trembling, and was angry at his fear. He moved slightly away from the wall and hurried to the end of the alley and the courtyard beyond. He crouched at the mouth, just at the edge of sunlight, and looked about There were booths and pennants and games. Musicians wandered here and there, amusing themselves as best they could, considering the terrible heat of the summer day.
    In a way, the heat was a blessing. If the courtyard had been crowded, his chances of finding Babe would have been about nil—and his chances of being apprehended would have been astronomically high.
    The group of young Musician boys who stood in the center of the courtyard, ringed about something they found highly amusing, was still there. He tried to see what it was that caused so much laughter, had little luck. He was about to give up and look elsewhere when the boys shifted to make room for whatever they encircled, and he got a glimpse of Babe.
    They had done something to the young mutant, though Strong could not guess what. There was a mesh cap of shimmering sound material over his head, and the device made a low warbling sound. Babe's face was slack, loose, like the face of an idiot. Strong could see that he was drooling, his tongue