Bedtime Stories From the Nightwalker Homeworld

By Christian Klaver

 

            Decades later, when officials went over the log files of his first contact with the denizens of Night’s Garden, Dr. Blake Menken’s narrative spoke mostly about the music. How the lowest tones of the D’rinm melody throbbed through metal and splak suit, through the flesh, beautiful and lyrical and strange. How the higher registers trickled into his brain like an epiphany, or a new philosophy that would cause him to change his entire focus of being.
            Biographers thought he should have talked about the Galac-Rail Wave accident, and the near destruction of his ship. Or the Nightwalker attack that followed. Others thought the discovery of his wife in sexual congress with the ship’s Guild Engineer worth a mention. The death of several of his friends, first contact, and the opening of trade negotiations with the space faring Nightwalkers all seemed momentous, but he would only talk about the music.
           
           
            When the Nightwalker Marauder Battleship The Falling Sword glided across the fuzzy gray edge of the moon’s terminator, it emerged from the darkness with a grand sweep. Its curved porpoise-like sides bristled with innumerable weapons and sensors. The devices waved to and fro like kelp in the ocean as they strained to find other Nightwalker ships to immobilize, board and violate. There was nothing more dangerous to a Nightwalker than another Nightwalker of a different clan.
            The D’rinm known as Urnm Stone Trembler sat at the window looking out at the stars, and felt an unease come over him. Humans would call his duress a panic of faith, but that wasn’t how Trembler thought of it. Possibly because he didn’t have the words to express it. No D’rinm would. The closest he could come was thinking that he did not hear all of the song, and what he heard, he didn’t understand. He hummed bits of it anyway, woven in movements into the Pensive Moments During Search For Battle song he was currently on.
            No one looking at a D’rinm would mistake them and the Nightwalkers as the same race. Where the Nightwalkers were sleek, furred and low to the ground, and a variety of colors, the D’rinm were more uniform and bland in appearance.
            The D’rinm looked something like an elephant sized boulder, mottled brown. Stone Trembler’s head was squat, without any neck, and a ragged looking clump of thick, dark fibers stuck out of the top. The clump ran down his back, and most of the way down each of his arms, and they waved as if there were a gentle breeze. He moved slowly, but with a surprising dignity and grace for a creature his size.
            It was trying, being a religious counsel to an entire Nightwalker warship. He wondered how the D’rinm before him had managed. Being a spiritual guide to your average Nightwalker was like counseling a raging waterfall. Everyone expected him to be here, to bless the proceedings, but everyone knew that his input was limited to the extreme. Cra would do as he would do.
            The acoustics in his chamber were magnificent, of course, so his powerful humming drifted back to him in textured waves. It was standard, since no D’rinm would accompany a ship without suitable quarters, and no Nightwalker ship would dream of launching a military expedition without proper spiritual guidance. And all of the Nightwalker launches were military expeditions.
            The pitch of the ships Ionic Turbines suddenly lurched and elevated. Stone Trembler reluctantly let his song trail off. Silence and Cacophony! He could hear the weapons powering up, too. He lurched to his feet and then caught himself, the long fibers on his head and back waving frantically. Disaster or no, dignity must be preserved. If enough D’rinm of his station were seen running in the halls, his station wouldn’t exist anymore, his Elder had once told him. It is not the composer, but the song. Not what is meant or sent, but the message that is received, the song that falls upon the listeners fronds is all that matters. Perception.
            It was just as well. He wasn’t built for running. The ship pulsed all around him as he pushed his ponderous frame into action. Picking his tune back up, he hummed the command notes to open his door. D’rinm usually moved gracefully, buoyed by a series of supportive methane sacs that ran along under his arms, beneath his shoulder blades, along his sides and near his hips. It was an adaptation that helped the enormous D’rinm move easier, but here on the ship, he didn’t have that option. Repeated use of the methane sacs polluted the air supply, so he had to do without.
            He nearly ran into a group of Nightwalker shock troops in the corridor. Stone Trembler’s ungainly haste still wasn’t very fast, but he still nearly ran them over. They were obviously meant to be part of a boarding party. They were carrying pulse deflector pads and powered whipsticks, close quarters combat gear. They flung themselves out of his way, crushing themselves into the bulkheads to allow him to pass.
            Their leader, Cra, might be deeply religious, but no D’rinm Priest that prevented or sabotaged combat efforts would survive long in a Nightwalker ship or community. The average Nightwalker would starve, die, mate out of ceremony, kill (especially kill) and go without mating at all for any of the D’rinm religious leaders, but they would not quit war.
            In theory, the war effort required his blessing to proceed, and now Stone Trembler would have to sing the blessing in the retroactive chant.
            It was to be expected. Life on The Falling Sword.
            There was a sense of relief when Stone Trembler came onto the bridge, and several of the Nightwalkers turned back to their instruments with renewed vigor. He immediately started the ‘Blessed Death’ Hymn, even as he took his station.
            “Excellent, Urnm,” Cra said. He had to shout to be heard, but he had the voice for it. “You’re just in time. The loose breeding K’track of the Everdarkening Clan have developed a superweapon, but eagerness drove them to use it too soon, before it was completely ready. It appeared out of nowhere, some sort of instant travel, or lightness device that shields them from detection.” His words came out in a natural rhythm, timed to match the hymn. “Or maybe the Pearled Spear Clan. No matter. We have their weapon now, and it will be their deaths!”
            Stone Trembler paid no attention to the words. The words were stupid. They didn’t matter. It was the tone and strength of the song that mattered, and Cra had risen to position based on his charismatic voice.
            “They would almost certainly plan to use this weapon,” Cra said, “to conquer and enslave our clan, if left unchecked.”
            Their mutual effort had the desired effect. It always did. The bridge members were already relaxing, the tension of fear leaving their faces while a predatory mania took it’s place. He was a charismatic leader, indeed.
            The subordinates were shouting reports and Stone Trembler altered his symphony to include them, rippling musical echoes of them through the pattern of his song.
            “Attack posture achieved!”
            “Retriovula Mandibles deployed!”
            “Breach pods ready!”
            Cra’s voice dipped to an expectant whisper, and the song followed suit. “Open fire.” He let the first salvo tear into the enemy ship before adding, “Close the distance. Fast. Bring the Mandibles in range. We will crack open their ship and take what we want.”
            Stone Trembler looked at the readings on the strange ship. It didn’t look right. Certainly like no ship he’d ever seen. It looked odd, ungainly and foreign. It had to be a Nightwalker ship. Only the Nightwalkers built ships. The D’rinm didn’t build them and the Idrik didn’t need them. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t hear all of the song.
            “Urnm,” Cra said, turning to Stone Trembler. “We’re to the pods. I will feel the lifeblood of these traitors with my own hands.”
            Stone Trembler rumbled his assent and followed.
           
           
           
            Gern Stanick remembered it as a day of screw ups.
            The first was that Gern should have been on the bridge, instead of sprawled naked with Menken’s wife. He should have been monitoring gauges, sipping coffee and eyeing the glittering console switches. Sniffing the figurative salt air like the mariners of old. According to Guild by-laws, he should not have been rutting with another man’s wife during the Wave Transfer.
            It wouldn’t have changed anything, though. When the Wave went bad, it went faster than sensors could monitor. He couldn’t have changed anything. The transfer node would still have exploded, sending his ship, The Leviathan, tunneling off course, skipping through galaxies like an intergalactic champagne cork.
            When the first galactic explorers of the Earth Consortium first started using the Tellinger Wave Galac-Rail, they had a saying: “Only as strong as the weakest link.” This mantra passed from the engineers like a new religion, profound in its simplicity, brutal in application. In order for the Consortium to expand, it had to build nodes like laying track into the far reaches of space. Faster than light travel could only happen along the nodes, along the chain. Occasionally, a malfunctioning node could drop you off course, and it would take several lifetimes of traveling to get back to the closest node. Any mishap along the chain, was, in fact, a death sentence. Or at least permanent exile from the known world.
            Gern knew as soon as the node blew. The whole ship knew. He stopped mid-motion his invasion of the willing body beneath him. Seconds ago, he’d been thrilled in her smell, her touch, her slender body and cornflower hair. It further excited him that he was really giving it to both of them: Sarah and Blake.
            Then the Sateenfab couch they were on, as well as the rest of the ship, shuddered. A sickening twisting feeling in his stomach built, then stretched, far, far beyond the normal wrenching of the Wave Transfer.
            He rolled off Sarah, accidentally throwing himself into the wall. He bounced off the wall into a deluge of clothes, papers and small bottles as the contents of Sarah’s quarters drifted around the room. A number of the bottles broke on the wall, filling the quarters with tinkling and a wave of too much perfume. The couch took a second longer, like a cosmic joke that hit him just a second later. The Leviathan was a commercial vehicle, nearly a pleasure cruiser, and never meant to list and roll the way she was now.
            Gern was just struggling to his feet, pushing the mattress off, when the weapons fire started impacting off the hull. It might have been debris, or a meteor swarm, but Gern didn’t think so. It was too fast, with strafing patterns by the sound of it. And he thought he could feel the shudder of a nearby decompression. The hull was breached.
            When the Wave went wrong, it could bounce your ship into a meteor shower or shred it into a million pieces. But whatever happened, it happened quick. The effect passed instantaneously. The Wave didn’t hold onto you and pound your hull and then start shorting out your control systems. It must have planted them near something, or someone, very dangerous.
            Gern didn’t have any clothes, or any weapon, or any plan, but he knew that Davies was no match for the situation. Gern had to get to the Ulong Drive Chamber, and fast. Leaving Sarah in a tangle of mattress and glass, he tried to get to the cabin door. He didn’t have any purchase, and flailed for a handhold. He thought Sarah must be alive, from the sounds behind him, but didn’t stop to look. If they’d blown out the grav gens, and Gern was sure they had, then they were screwed. No way would Davies be able get the drives back up. Gern might, and if a better engineer than Davies didn’t reach the Chamber soon, the whole ship was as good as dead.
            The rest of the stabilizers blew, and they lurched again. Gern thought they were probably spinning in space, though he’d have to see outside to know for sure.
            Sarah Menken and Gern floated away from the wall in a cloud of debris, most of it glass. Sarah screamed, a much different and entirely more believable scream than she had moments ago. Then the ship shuddered and they were slammed into the ceiling with enough force to slam the air out of their lungs, which silenced Sarah. A small blessing for which Gern was infinitely grateful. The gravity fluctuation stopped, and they were floating yet again. It was all happening very fast.
            A barrage of smaller jerks followed, and the smell of something burning. The lights and computers all went out together, as well as a dozen other minor systems. One of the minor systems was the door mechanism, and Gern swore as the door irised open.
            The ship lurched again, and capricious fluctuation of gravity slammed everything in the room, including Gern and Sarah, to one side. Gern slammed into a corner of the couch, and all the air whooshed out of him. He was wrapped around one end of the couch as the other end of it slammed into the wall. The corner of the couch smashed him between the legs, and he had enough time to wonder if it was some cruel revenge of the universe. Sarah had gotten to one of the ladder rungs in her room and clung there.
            The couch tumbled as the ship went fully weightless again, and Gern’s momentum flipped him end over end. Clawing for something to hold onto he ended up clinging to the lip of the round doorway, his naked bottom and legs (and more) drifting in the hallway.
            In other circumstances, it might have been funny or horrifically embarrassing, as panicked and floating crewmembers sailing down the hallway bumped into him. But Iverson’s charred body and empty face and Tsui Chang’s twisted and limp body drove such thoughts out of Gern’s head.
            Whatever was pounding the ship was merciless. Gern thought it was more than a Wave malfunction.
            An enormous clang of metal boomed through the station like a hollow echo, then an enormous screeching of metal.
            “What...the hell...was that?” Gern said.
            “The hull’s been compromised,” Sarah gasped.
            Gern had nearly forgotten about her, but she was right. Something was ripping the ships hull open, steady and methodically.
            Most of the rest of the ship (those that had been at their posts) knew what was causing the breach.
           
           
            Menken was still frantically attempting to organize some sort of defense when the alien ship tore the hull open and the alien shock troops started coming in. There wasn’t any gravity, and hard fabricore cases still floated around the large cargo bay. Menken hoped they might get in the aliens’ way half as much as they were getting in theirs.
            A crack appeared in the metal wall, the hull, and started widening. The howl of air rushing out was deafening. A few minutes ago, this had been the dance hall. Now it was a disaster.
            A little over a dozen guards crouched behind recreational tables welded to the metal floor. A few more were behind the bar. Most of the guards had a Laze-Rifle or Flachette gun, the best armament Menken could find. It wasn’t much. At least the guards had some space gear, and wouldn’t freeze, asphyxiate or float away when the hull opened. Still, a few Consortium soldiers could have overrun the entire ship, and all the defenders knew it. What alien attackers might be capable of, no one knew. What they wanted, no one knew, either.
            The hole widened and the howling stopped. There was more clanging as something mechanical engaged, or disengaged. It rang through the ship like a football-field sized copper gong.
            Gunfire hit the wall behind Menken, though he still couldn’t see anyone over the top of the bar. One of the shots hit near to his head and shattered off the wall, releasing a vaguely phosphorescent yellow gas. Menken got a face full, but it didn’t penetrate his suit. Chemical warfare? But they’d need to know human chemistry, wouldn’t they? He didn’t have time to wonder more. The aliens themselves were hurtling in.
            The copper-gong sound wasn’t dying out, was actually growing in noise, swelling both in volume and texture, with a tinny crackling in the background.
            They swarmed in, horribly fast, and the few shots that Menken and his troops got off didn’t even come close. The targeting sensors didn’t seem to work right, and Menken wondered if that was on account of the phosphorescent gas, though the gas seemed barely opaque, and not enough to block visibility. But the creatures themselves were just too fast, shiny and multi-legged, they sprang from the breach like panthers, easily navigating through or rebounding off of the many floating obstacles. They were low to the ground, or would have been in gravity, with a multitude of arms and legs like half of a two-ton plastic centipede. They moved easily from surface to surface, clinging as they went without any accidental drift. This gecko-like movement further increased the lizard impression.
            The copper sounding noise was flickering somehow, sounding like a river bubbling over stones, even if it was a copper river and stones the size of Egypt. It was very beautiful, and Menken thought he could hear words, human words, whispered in the background.
            Stenson got in a few shots, blazing two of the aliens into smoldering missiles that impacted on the bar in front of them. The fire might have caught on the bar, but it flickered in the waning oxygen and died.
            The noise was unmistakably music now, brassy and metallic, and Menken thought the beauty of it somehow compensated for his impending death.
            One of the first invaders leapt on the bar like a jumping lizard, wielding some kind of blazing length of cable that lashed out and took Stenson’s arm off. Two more hurdled the bar and crashed into Menken, and they all went down in a bundle. Menken lost his rifle immediately. The creature slammed him against the wall and reared up, something like a stubby caterpillar lifting its front end. This revealed four arms, two sets of two. Menken wasn’t very proficient in hand to hand combat even with people; he certainly wasn’t ready for boxing four-armed lizards. It was still standing on two more limbs, with a tail acting like a brace, which allowed the creature to pin Menken to the wall with two limbs, while the other two stabbed wicked-looking daggers deep into Menken’s midsection.
            The rumble of the music was molten again, bright and silvered as if under moonlight and Menken thought that Heaven must have this music, which would explain its presence now.
            The daggers twisted and he screamed inside his suit, the scream blending into the music, and suddenly the pressure was off. The creature hopped back, letting Menken drift back into the wall and upwards. It looked at the dagger, coated red, and back at Menken. It opened its mouth, or muzzle, and pantomimed a barking motion. Menken realized through the haze that the creature was wearing some kind of film. A protective suit. Whatever noise it was making, it didn’t match the music, and Menken couldn’t hear it anyway.
            The creature hopped away, and Menken had the impression of others following...
            But it didn’t matter anymore.
            The music rolled on, lyrical and beautiful and strange.
           
           
            Images drifted in and out, but the music went on forever. Even when he slept, he could feel it, like a shroud drifting over him, the haunting melodies. They didn’t repeat, but were all connected, like the life of one artist, a Picasso or Urossnian or Mozart, separate but linked. He felt it, too, didn’t just hear. And it supported him, lifting him in a sea of wistful regret.
            “Blake?” It drifted out to him like a voice from far away carried by the wind. “Blake, honey?”
            It was Sarah, but her voice was sing-songy, as if she could hear the music, then music drifted away, and it was just her voice.
            “Blake?” She wasn’t singing anymore.
            Menken stirred. He was lying on something soft. The space felt enclosed, and smelled like tomato plants, or dill, or something like it.
            “Whaaaa...” His voice more a noise than words. A deep resonant hum he’d never had before.
            An earthshaking hum enveloped him, riding the same spot on the tonal scale that he’d used, but far more potently. He felt a gentle, but powerful wave of emotion flowed with it. Love...support...expectation... It was more powerful than music, more tangible than emotion.
            It was everything.
           
            Sara watched her husband’s face as it became transformed. Blake looked radiant. She looked behind her nervously at the behemoth that lurked, floating gently behind her. It had been there, bobbing patiently like a guardian dirigible for the past few weeks. The D’rinm. She didn’t understand the Nightwalkers very well. She knew even less about the D’rinm.
            “Blake?” Sarah said, frightened. He didn’t seem truly awake. There was a far away look on his face that didn’t seem...human.
            The D’rinm hummed something, like a brassy foghorn, and Sarah shrieked. Blake hummed something back and the D’rinm hummed something else, something that sounded a bit like words. Blake responded. This went on, back and forth, each time sounding less like music, and more and more like words. It sounded for all the world like the alien was leading Blake back to normal language. Back to English. With a shock, Sarah recognized the reedy sound that Blake had been repeating as her name.
            “Yes, Blake Menken,” the D’rinm said in a rich voice that still sounded like a song. “Your wife’s name is Sarah.”
            Christ, when had the D’rinm learned her name? Or even English, for that matter?
            “Sarah?” Blake said. This time he sounded like a person again.
            “Oh, God! Blake!” She flung herself into his arms and thought that despite it all, everything was going to be all right again.
           
           
           
            “It’s not our hearing,” Blake said. “Nightwalker ears are far better than ours. But the Nightwalker throat is inadequate for music, far inferior to ours. Still, that’s not really the biggest problem, Stone Trembler says. It’s more of a conceptual barrier. The Nightwalkers can hear the music, but they can’t conceptualize and see the deeper meaning like we can. Stone Trembler says...”
            Sarah smiled and tried to keep herself from stabbing her husband in the eye with her Nightwalker eating utensil. Stone Trembler says...Stone Trembler says... She wanted to scream. Instead, she mashed her knife (fork, what the hell was this thing - it looked like a wooden spear carved in miniature by Dr. Suess) spreading the black grapefruity sort of Nightwalker fruit around the wooden trench that Nightwalkers used to eat. God, she would give her kidney for a damned tuna sandwich.
            The D’rinm was blessedly absent, at least. Back aboard the ship that had blasted most of her friends into the vacuum of space. But it was okay, because they were expecting some other ship, a Nightwalker ship. And they always fired upon those other ships on sight, but they didn’t mean to fire on us. We’re all good friends now. God knew, Blake didn’t talk about anyone else but the damned bloodthirsty savages. It was like he’d forgotten that there were even people on the ship.
            The place they were housed was barbaric. Even the artificial materials were made to look natural, rich chocolate browns and a pale light colored dirt. Stone Trembler told her that this was artificial, too, and very expensive. Sarah was disgusted. Who would manufacture dirt so that they could throw it on the floor? The walls, all curved and misshapen, were covered with a clutter of crystalline blue statuary and lethal looking spears and swords. If they had lived in the Stone Age, they could have cut their way out, Sarah thought. If the guards outside didn’t have energy weapons. And if Blake even wanted to leave.
            Sarah wondered if any of the Nazis had befriended any of the Jews in Auschwitz. Or if any of the Japanese had Chinese friends at Nanking.
            And Sarah and Blake were trapped here and never going home. They relied on the Nightwalkers and D’rinm for protection, shelter, food and water. Friends or not, you couldn’t become much more of a prisoner than that.
           
           
            Blake could speak English after that, but he still couldn’t seem to talk to his wife. He’d have periods of normal conversation, then days at a time when he found English seemingly incomprehensible. He spent more time with the D’rinm then he did with anyone human, even though all the human survivors were in this compound. He didn’t care. He was absolutely entranced with the D’rinm’s speech. And D’rinm music hit him like a quadruple martini. It was like he’d been deaf all his life, and now Stone Trembler was opening his ears for the first time.
            It started with learning the D’rinm language, a thing so barely removed from music that they didn’t deserve two distinct labels. And D’rinm music. Ah…like philosophy and poetry poured into a vessel of surpassing beauty.
            He didn’t speak less because of understanding, but he was finding it harder and harder to bear the ugliness and fallacy of human speech. People could talk for hours, and still not understand each other. Universities and schools would teach for days and weeks and years and still they would have to administer tests to make sure the students understood.
            When Stone Trembler told Blake of how the Idrik flew, or why the Nightwalkers made war or even how the young D’rinm composed his first song, it was like the experience was poured into Blake’s brain. It was like he’d seen the thing, or done it himself. He might have to ruminate for days to fully grasp all the implications, but the song was still there in his head, his heart, and he would never forget.
            And he still loved his wife, desperately. Hearing the D’rinm music was like an opening. He felt like he’d never understood anything, never felt anything, never truly loved anything, the way he did now. He enjoyed her company more than ever now, the scent of her hair, the way she’d move against him at night, or her presence with him at meal time. He even enjoyed her voice, it was beautiful, but shockingly empty of meaning and he found that the things she said to him were too small to occupy him for very long.
            Stone Trembler arranged for them to witness a D’rinm concert. A triad of virtuosos of the D’rinm community. Water Under the Brook, the Slough of Wind Through the Trees and the incredibly ancient and respected Winter Storm in the Twilight. It was an honor rarely accorded a non-D’rinm, since few would understand or absorb even so much as the D’rinm child. Blake was thrilled to his depths, but when Sarah found out it was nearly a week long, she refused to go.
            Blake went, despite Sarah’s protestations. He barely ate the entire time, refused to sleep, and had to be given medical care for malnutrition when he returned in a litter, barely able to walk, but with a beautiful smile on his face. Sarah thought it some murderous plot, and the fact that Stone Trembler saw to Blake’s recovery himself was hardly a reassurance. Blake was something of a curiosity in the D’rinm community, and Blake started receiving D’rinm visitors.
            After his recovery, he got some of the Idrik wood and started carving wooden flutes.
            It was a fine summer night when Stone Trembler took Blake to meet Winter Storm in a more personal setting. As always, Winter Storm humbly asked Blake if he might hear the flute playing that Stone Trembler had told him of. It was an unheard of honor so Blake withdrew, with shaking hands, his favorite flute. It was a long dark piece of curved wood nearly the length of his arm and Blake had an embarrassingly hard time getting the cover off.
            They had climbed to a rocky precipice for better hearing, and the air was warm, fragrant and very still. Stone Trembler and Blake played together. They always did. Blake’s flute playing was too sharp and flat by itself compared to the rich bass of the average D’rinm. But he had a delicacy and clear sweetness that offset the Stone Tremblers’ voice beautifully and the two of them together made a music that no human or D’rinm could make alone.
            They did not play long, and Blake found himself walking home, humming happily to himself as he walked the wide dirt thoroughfares that delineated the D’rinm community. The night air was still warm, it was always warm on Night’s Garden, and the pale streaks of sunrise threw crimson streaks across the sky like an enormous reverse shadow. Once, he could hear murmur of the other human survivors in another home, also settled in the D’rinm community. But it didn’t mean anything to him. The air smelled of rich loam, somehow clean. The night was silent. He had his flute in a cloth bag made for it, slung over his shoulder. His sandaled feet made no noise in the soft dirt and there wasn’t any kind of real door to open when he reached his house. Their quarters were in the D’rinm style, simple and quiet.
            The rhythmic music came to his ears immediately as he came into the common area. It was Sarah’s voice, he knew, oddly measured, and it mixed with the concert that still ran in his head. It was plaintive and beautiful, much more than she usually was. Was she talking to someone, singing to herself? His head was too full of music to tell.
            Everything fit together, the sound of the fabric case sliding across his hands as he dropped the flute to the floor, his own breathing, his heartbeat thrumming in time to Sarah’s voice, the subtle shifting of the wood furniture as someone shifted weight, and something else…
            A man’s voice…
            When he stepped into the bedroom, he understood.
            Gern. The engineer from the ship was naked, as was Sarah. The both faced away, shagging like dogs and Gern had a handful of Sarah’s beautiful corn yellow hair and yanked savagely, like a man abusing his horse. And now Blake Menken could understand the words. Sarah was screaming Gern’s name, over and over, like a litany.
            Blake’s scream was wordless, starting high and terrible as he rushed back into the common room and snatched a barbed Nightwalker sword off the wall, growing louder and deeper and more savage as he rushed back with the sword held over his head like a two-handed ice pick, and finally ending in a snarling low rumble that spat out of his mouth as he ran back to the bedroom and transfixed man, wife and bed in one two handed thrust.
            The man died instantly, collapsing in a heap onto Menken’s wife without a sound. Sarah had time to whisper only, “you were never here…never here…” before she died herself. There was surprisingly little visible blood, but a slow stain was spreading across the soft white cloth of the bed.
            He collapsed on the bed, next to Sarah and Gern. Stone Trembler found him that way later that morning.
           
           
           
            “I grieve for your loss,” Stone Trembler said. And when he sang it, Blake could feel the quivering low sadness and knew it to be pure and true. Blake had been composing for seventeen straight days now, an ambitious piece of D’rinm music that he was pouring all his grief into. He sat on the floor, kneeling on a cushion while he scribbled and shuffled the papers around a long, low table. On the floor around him lay more tablets and sheets of the oblong pale green paper the Nightwalkers made from the Idrik plant. The Nightwalker hardly used any paper, preferring electronic media, but the traditional D’rinm used it, largely for religious and musical purposes, which was much the same thing. It was thick and soft, and took the Yosuras ink beautifully.
            They had changed the bedchambers, but Blake insisted that the bloody sword be left where it had fallen in the doorway. No punishment had been decreed. Where you had no souls, there could be no murder.
            Stone Trembler stood at rest, fully inflated so that his grayish skin bulged in several places. His practical weight was down to only double or triple Blake’s.
            “But,” Stone Trembler continued. “You must decide what to do with the baby. It’s doing well in the Nightwalker hospital. They will be bringing it soon.”
            They were speaking in D’rinm. Blake hardy spoke anything else.
            “Baby?” Blake said, and a fresh wave of anger throbbed through him. He let it pour out his mouth in a descending chromatic groan and wrote down the notes immediately.
            “Yes. Sarah was with child. There were signs, I’m sure, but it was not so far along that you could have told by her swelling. The Nightwalker hospital is very advanced, and they have brought the child to term and out of harm’s way.”
            “I told you. When you bring it here, I’ll kill it.”
            “Perhaps one of the other human families here…”
            “You said it’s my child, right?”
            “Yes, by law, if not genetically. The child was, of course, Sarah Blake and Gern Stanick’s, as you know.”
            “But you said it’s mine by D’rinm law, which rules the Nightwalker codes?”
            “Yes, but there are no end of possible foster places willing to take a healthy child, and all life is a thing of beauty…”
            “It’s mine,” Blake snapped, dropping into English with a harsh snarl. “And I will have it. What I do with it is my concern.”
            Stone Trembler lowered his shaggy head in defeat. “It is so,” he sang softly.
            “Good, now sing this.” He thrust one of the sheets at Stone Trembler. Stone Trembler had some trouble with human musical notation, but he sang it dutifully after some study and Blake didn’t have to correct him this time.
            “It is beautiful, majestic,” Stone Trembler said. “This is a thing of wonder, Blakemenken, you should put the baby aside. Let others care for it so that you can finish it. I know you have barely begun, but it shows much promise. Hurmnnolum, Blakemenken. No one has ever done such a thing, make music with the texture and scope such as a D’rinm might do. The Nightwalkers music is childish, younglings with sticks could do better. And the Idrik music is…limited.”
            “Human music, too,” Blake said. “Garbage. Even Mozart, Sarjunct and Beethoven are feeble compared to what you make here. But none of them ever heard the D’rinm play. And the baby’s mine. When will it get here?”
            “Tomorrow.”
            “Good, play this.”
            Stone Trembler murmured low. This song was bad, that Blake was singing. Oh the composition was beautiful, startlingly so, like a killing flood put to song. But Blake’s own life, his personal music, was darker still. And Stone Trembler did not think it would end well. The Elders had proclaimed the human visitors soulless, so no harm should be done with the child’s death. At least by law. But they had not heard the music Blakemenken made. No soulless creature could play and compose like he did. Only the D’rinm did that. When they finally heard, they would know that letting the child’s life flicker out was a crime against the song. He could show them, when Blake finished his music. It would take the finished piece to convince them.
            But they would find out too late.
           
           
            When they brought the child, Blake took it from them immediately. Then he forced the D’rinm priest and Nightwalker medical officials back out. They didn’t resist. They had done their duty.
            The baby darker than he expected, and very soft. It moved ever so slightly in a dark reedy basket and pushed at the swaddling, a yellow Icju skin, soft and fibrous. They both smelled like the skin, which was earthy, clean and pleasant. Blake set the basket on the floor and went back to work. Stone Trembler was still there. He wouldn’t leave, of course. He would see it all out.
            Blake was stuck, tearing and crumpling sheets in his rage and fury, but the next part wouldn’t come. He sang to himself, pushed pieces of notation at Stone Trembler in a peremptory fashion, played his flute, listened to the Nightwalker chimes. Nothing helped. The music wouldn’t take shape.
            When the baby started wailing, Blake’s face took on a manic smile.
            “It is hungry,” Stone Trembler said, moving towards the basket and accompanying supplies. “The medical staff have left suitable…”
            “Don’t!” Blake screamed. His voice was ragged and high pitched. It cracked when he shouted again. “Don’t!”
            Stone Trembler froze, shocked.
            Blake went back to his papers, suddenly inspired. He lifted his head once or twice, seeming to absorb the now wailing baby’s screams. Then he settled down for some serious work.
           
           
            They grew together: the baby’s wails and Blake’s music and Stone Trembler’s growing sense of horror.
            I am watching a soul blossom, starve and perish, Stone Trembler thought to himself, but he wasn’t sure which human soul he meant. He would appeal to the D’rinm
            Elders. He had to, before it was too late.
            This one human will change the status for all humankind on my world, Stone Trembler knew. But when he elevates them to people, he will be elevating himself to murderer. If I tell them now, they will think my personal song has been warped by human contact. They will think me insane.
            But when the music is done, they will all understand.
           
            Blake finished his symphony in time to save one life, but not soon enough for both. Stone Trembler held the pieces of paper in his hand knowing that Blake had succeeded. The music would be magnificent. He would need to play it for them, to translate the human notes. And he would need to find someone to play the human part. That might take time, but Stone Trembler had time.
            First he fed the child, near dead of malnutrition, but still able to take food. He’d need medical staff to make sure, but Stone Trembler knew in his hearts that the child would survive its horrible ordeal. Five days without food, screaming until its voice withered to a horrible whispery cry. It would always carry the taint of this tragedy, but it would live. Grow and learn to play. Stone Trembler would show the little girl her father’s flutes, and how they worked. She would play the other part, and Stone Trembler was nothing if not patient.
            For the father, he could do nothing. Blake had inflicted worse on himself then he had inflicted on even the child. Stone Trembler hadn’t been sure that Blake had had the strength to finish, since he refused food for himself, as well.
            But Stone Trembler hadn’t understood, after all. He knew the roiling shame and grief that Blake held, but didn’t understand what Blake would do. He’d change life for all humankind on Night’s Garden, starve himself, nearly murder his child, finish his musical masterpiece, then impale himself on the same sword that had ended the lives of Sarah Menken and Gern Stanick.
            Stone Trembler took the child, and the music away. Let the others deal with the house of Blake Menken. It didn’t matter. He held the thick pieces of paper. Blake’s soul, what is left of it after his madness, is here. He would give up the military life. He had the right. He would take the child to the Incantorium, to bring her up amidst the music.
            It would be good.
            He kept humming and the music rolled on, beautiful and lyrical and strange.