Collected Short Fiction, page 47
“Am I right in assuming that this circuit controls the interpretative aspects of music?” I asked.
He nodded. “Exactly right, sir. You can set the synthesizer for whatever esthetic you have in mind, and it’ll faithfully follow your instruction. You merely have to establish the esthetic coordinates—the work of a moment—and the synthesizer will handle the rest of the interpretation for you. But that’s not exactly the goal of my circuit, sir,” he said, tactfully, as if to hide from me the fact that he was telling me I had missed his point “With minor modifications—”
He didn’t get a chance to tell me, because at that precise moment Kolfmann came dashing into my studio. You see, I never lock my doors. For one thing no one would dare disturb me without good and sufficient cause, and for another my analyst had pointed out that working behind locked doors had a bad effect on my sensibilities.
I always work with my door unlocked, and that’s how Kolfmann got in. And his arrival at just that moment saved Macauley’s life, for if he had gone on to tell me what was on the tip of his tongue I would have regretfully incinerated him and his circuit without an instant’s hesitation.
Kolfmann was a famous name to music lovers everywhere. He was perhaps eighty now—possibly ninety, if he had a good gerontologist—and he had been a brilliant concert pianist many years before. Those of us who knew something about pre-synthesizer musical history linked his name with that of Paganini, and regarded him almost with awe.
But the man I saw now was a tall, terribly gaunt old specter in ragged clothes who burst unannounced into my studio and headed straight for the synthesizer, which covered the entire north wall with its gleaming, complicated bulk.
He had a wrench in his hand heavier than a crow-bar, and he was about to destroy a million credits’ worth of cybernetics when Macauley effortlessly intercepted him and took the instrument away from him. I was so flabbergasted I could only stand behind my desk and stare.
Macauley brought him over to me and I looked at him as if he were a mass murderer in the flesh.
“You poor, misguided fool,” I said. “What’s the idea? You can get a long prison sentence for wrecking a cyber—or didn’t you know that?”
“My life is ended anyway,” he said in a thick, deep, despairing voice. “It ended when your machines started desecrating music.”
He took off his battered cap and ran his thin fingers through his hair. He hadn’t shaved for several days, and his face was speckled with stiff-looking white stubble.
“My name is Gregor Kolfmann,” he said. “I’m sure you haven’t heard of me.”
I had, of course, but decided to pretend otherwise. “Kolfmann, the pianist?” I asked.
My admiration was not lost on him. He nodded, pleased despite everything. “Yes, Kolfmann, the former pianist. You and your machine have taken away my life.”
Suddenly all the hate which any normal person feels for a cybewrecker evaporated, and I felt guilty and very humble before this truly great old man. As he continued to speak, I realized that I, as a musical artist, had a responsibility to him. I still think that what I did was wise—and entirely justified.
“Even after synthesizing became the dominant method of presenting music,” he went on, “I continued my concert career. There were always a few discerning people who would rather see a man play a piano than watch a technician feed a tape through a machine. But I couldn’t compete with the machines.”
He sighed. “After a while anyone who went to live concerts was looked upon as a reactionary, and I stopped getting bookings. I turned to teaching as a means of livelihood. But no one wanted to take piano lessons. A few have studied with me for antiquarian reasons, but they are not artists. They are just curiosity-seekers. They have no artistic drive. You and your machines have much to answer for!”
I looked at Macauley’s circuit and then at Kolfmann. I put away my graph for the Beethoven, partly because all the excitement had made it impossible for me to get anywhere with it and partly because I knew it would only make things worse if Kolfmann actually saw what Macauley had done.
Macauley was still standing expectantly before my desk, waiting to explain his circuit to me. I knew it was important. But I felt deeply indebted to old Kolfmann, and I decided to take care of him before I let Macauley do any more talking.
“Come back later,” I told him.
“I’d like to discuss the implications of this innovation—as soon as I’m through talking to Mr. Kolfmann.”
“Yes, sir,” Macauley said, like the obedient puppet a technician becomes when he is confronted by an unbending superior. As soon as the door closed behind him I gathered up the papers he had left and stacked them in a neat pile on my desk. I didn’t want Kolfmann to see them for one moment, even though I knew they wouldn’t mean anything to him except as symbols of the machine he hated.
As soon as we were alone I gestured Kolfmann to a plush pneumochair, into which he settled with the distaste for excess comfort which had been so characteristic of his generation. I saw my duty plainly. I must make things better for the old man.
“We’d be glad to have you come to work for us, Mr. Kolfmann,” I said smiling. “A man of your great brilliance—”
He was up and out of that chair in a second, his eyes blazing. “Work for you? I’d sooner see you dead and your machines crumbling! Your scientists have dealt a death blow to art, and now you’re trying to bribe me!”
“I was just trying to help you,” I said, soothingly. “Since, in a manner of speaking, we’ve interfered with your livelihood, I consider it my duty to make amends in any way I can.”
He said nothing, but stared at me coldly, with the anger of half a century burning uncompromisingly in him.
“Look,” I said. “Let me show you what a great musical instrument the synthesizer actually is.”
I rummaged in my cabinet and withdrew the tape of the Hohenstein Viola Concerto which we had performed in ’69. It was a rigorous twelve-tone work and it was probably the most demanding, unplayable piece of music ever written.
It was, of course, no harder for the synthesizer to counterfeit than the notes of a Strauss waltz. But a human violist would have needed three hands and a prehensile nose to convey more than a tiny sampling of Hohenstein’s musical thought. I activated the playback of the synthesizer and fed the tape in.
The music burst forth in a magnificent opening stanza, and Kolfmann watched the machine suspiciously. The pseudo-viola danced up and down the tone-row while the old pianist struggled painfully to place the work.
“Hohenstein?” he finally asked, his voice tremulous with awe.
I saw that a conflict was raging within him. For more years than he cared to remember he had hated us with a burning hate because we had made his art obsolete. And here I was showing him a use for the synthesizer which more than justified its existence. It was synthesizing a work impossible for a man or woman to play. He was unable to reconcile the paradox in his mind, and the struggle to do so hurt. He got up uneasily and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Away from here,” he said. “You are a devil.”
He tottered weakly through the door, and I let him go. The old man was badly confused. But I had a trick or two up my cybernetic sleeve to settle at least some of his problems and salvage him for the world of music. For, whatever else you say or think about me—particularly after this Macauley business—you can’t deny that my deepest allegiance is to music.
For the rest of the day I stopped work on my Beethoven Seventh, and put away Macauley’s diagram, and called in a couple of competent technicians and told them what I was planning. Our first line of inquiry, I decided, would be to find out who Kolfmann’s piano teacher had been. We had the reference books out in a flash, and found the man without much difficulty. His name was Kellerman, and he had died nearly sixty years before. Here luck was with us. Central was able to locate and supply us with an old tape of the International Music Congress held at Stockholm in 2187.
At that meeting Kellerman had spoken briefly on The Development of the Pedal Technique. His discussion had been extremely boring, but it wasn’t the subject matter which interested us. We split his speech up into phonemes, analyzed, rearranged, evaluated, and finally went to the synthesizer and began feeding in tapes.
What we got back was a new speech in Kellerman’s voice—or reasonable facsimile thereof. Certainly it would be good enough to fool Kolfmann, who hadn’t heard his old teacher’s voice for more than half a century. When we had everything ready I sent for the old musician and a couple of hours later they brought him in, looking even more dispirited and more worn.
“Why do you bother me?” he asked. “Why do you not let me die in peace.”
I ignored his questions. “Listen to this, Mr. Kolfmann,” I said. I flipped on the playback, and the voice of Kellerman came out of the speaker.
“Hello, Gregor,” it said. Kolfmann was profoundly startled. I took advantage of the prearranged pause in the recording to ask him if he recognized the voice. He nodded, his lips white. I could see that he was frightened and suspicious, and I hoped that the whole plan wouldn’t backfire.
“Gregor, one of the things I tried most earnestly to teach you—and you were my most attentive pupil—was that you must always be flexible. Techniques constantly change, even though great art remains unchanged. But you did not take my advice.”
Kolfmann was starting to realize what we had done. His pallor was ghastly now.
“Gregor, the piano is an outmoded instrument. But there is a newer, and a greater instrument available to you. Why do you deny greatness? The wonderful new synthesizer can do all that the piano could do—and more. It is a tremendous step forward—”
“All right,” Kolfmann said. His eyes were gleaming strangely. “Turn that machine off.”
I reached over and flipped off the playback.
“You are very clever,” he told me. “I take it you used your synthesizer to prepare this little speech for me.”
I nodded.
“Well, you have been highly successful—in your silly, theatrical way,” he said. He paused and shook his head. “And I—I have been even more foolish than you. I have stubbornly resisted when I should have joined forces with you. Instead of hating you, I should have been the first to learn how to create music with a new and untried instrument.”
Such was the measure of his greatness! He could with complete honesty and complete humility admit error and rechart his entire career.
“It’s not too late to learn,” I said. “We could teach you.”
Kolfmann looked at me steadily for an instant, and I felt a shiver go through me. But my elation knew no bounds. I had won a great battle for music, and I had won it with ridiculous ease.
He went away for a full month to master the technique of the synthesizer. I gave him my best men, the technicians I had been grooming to take over in my place when age forced my retirement. In the meantime I completed my Beethoven, and the performance was a most gratifying success. And then I got back to Macauley and his circuit.
Once again circumstances conspired to keep me from fully realizing just how serious a threat the circuit had posed. I did manage to grasp that it could be refined to eliminate almost completely the human element in musical interpretation. But I had ceased to concern myself with laboratory work for so long a period that I no longer adhered to my old habit of studying any sort of diagram and mentally tinkering with it and juggling it to see if some greater use could not be made of it.
While I was examining the circuit one disturbing thought did occur to me, however. Since anyone would be able to create a musical interpretation, and artistry would no longer be an operative factor I might very well find myself out of a job. I was worrying about that when Kolfmann came in with some tapes. He looked twenty years younger. His face was no longer haggard and despairing and there was a triumphant sparkle in his eyes.
“I will say it again,” he told me, placing the tapes on my desk. “I have been a fool. I have wasted my life. Instead of tapping away at a silly little instrument I might have created a new music with this machine. Look. I began with Chopin. Put this on.”
I slipped the tape into the synthesizer and the F Minor Fantasia came rolling into the room. I had heard that majestic drum roll a thousand times, but never with such glorious overtones.
“This machine is the noblest instrument I have ever played,” he said.
I looked at the graph he had drawn up for the piece, in his painstaking, crabbed handwriting. The ultrasonics were literally incredible. In just a few weeks he had mastered subtleties it had taken me fifteen years to learn. He had discovered what skillfully-chosen ultrasonics, beyond the range of human hearing—but not beyond perception—could do. He had discovered how to expand the horizons of music to a point that would have been inconceivable to the presynthesizer composers, with, their crude instruments and faulty knowledge of sonics.
The Chopin almost made me cry. It wasn’t so much the actual notes which Chopin had written, and which I had heard so many times before. It was more the unheard notes the synthesizer was striking in the ultrasonic range. The old man had chosen his ultrasonics with the skill of a craftsman—no, with the hand of a genius.
I saw Kolfmann in the middle of the room, standing proudly while the piano rang out—a glorious tapestry of sound.
He handed me another tape and I put it on. It was the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and as the sound of a super-organ mingled with the soaring supersonics the unearthly splendor of the composition almost took my breath away. And Kolfmann stood there entranced.
I looked at him and tried without success to relate him to the seedy old man who had attempted to wreck the synthesizer a few short weeks before.
As the Bach drew to its close I thought of the Macauley circuit, again, and of the whole beehive of blank-faced technicians striving to perfect the synthesizer by eliminating the one imperfect element: Man. And I woke up.
My first decision was to suppress the Macauley circuit until after Kolfmann’s death, which could not be long delayed. I made this decision out of sheer kindness. Kolfmann, after all these years, was having a moment of supreme triumph. If I let him know that no matter how magnificent his achievement became the new circuit could do it better, he would never survive the blow.
He fed the third tape in himself. It was the Mozart Requiem Mass, and I was astonished by the inspired brilliance which had enabled him to master the difficult technique of synthesizing voices. Still, with the Macauley circuit, the machine could handle all such details by itself.
As Mozart’s sublime music swelled and rose, I took out the diagram Macauley had given me, and stared at it grimly. At that moment I reached my final decision. I would pigeonhole it until the old man died. Then I would reveal it to the world and, having made my own future meaningless, would sink into peaceful obscurity with at least the assurance that Kolfmann had died happy.
It was sheer kindheartedness, gentlemen. There was nothing malicious or reactionary about it. I didn’t intend to stop the progress of cybernetics—at least, not at that point.
No. I didn’t make my last shattering discovery until I got a better look at what Macauley had done. Quite possibly he didn’t even realize it himself, but I could be pretty shrewd about such things. Mentally, I added a wire or two here, altered a contact there, and suddenly the full truth dawned on me.
Macauley had assured me that a synthesizer hooked up with the new circuit wouldn’t need a human being to provide an esthetic guide to its interpretation of music. Up to now, the synthesizer could imitate the pitch of any sound in or out of nature. But we had to control the volume, the timbre, and all the other factors which make up interpretation of music. With Macauley’s innovation the synthesizer could handle every one of those factors.
But also, I now realized, it could create its own music—from scratch, and with no human help. Not only the conductor but the composer would become obsolete. The synthesizer would be able to function independently of any human being. And art gives dignity and purpose and direction to human life.
That was when I ripped up Macauley’s diagram and heaved the paperweight directly at the synthesizer, cutting off the Mozart in the middle of a high C. Kolfmann turned around in horror, but I was the one who was really horrified.
I know. Macauley has redrawn his diagram and I haven’t stopped the wheels of science. I feel pretty futile about it all. But before you label me reactionary and send me to prison, consider this:
Art is a major, determining function of intelligent beings. When once you’ve created a machine capable of composing original music, capable of an artistic act, you’ve created an intelligent being. And one that’s a great deal stronger and smarter than we are. We’ve synthesized our successor.
Gentlemen, we are all obsolete.
The Beast with 7 Tails
The walking nightmare came apparently from nowhere, to prowl the world. Its burning eyes found Janice. Its hideous bulk barred her path to safety. What could she do? Trapped as she was between the monster and the deep blue sea?
THROUGH the limitless reaches of interstellar space, moving at the velocity of light, sped a sleek, goldenhulled missile. Guided by far-reaching, complex interstellar webs of subradio beams, the space vessel moved unerringly toward its destination. Under ordinary conditions, the slim, golden needle would have made the sixty-thousand light-year trip in a matter of days, held on its course by the great robot-controlled subradio beams that controlled it.
But even the best systems can go astray. The sleek ship’s course led it near an unstable star, a sun that was about to vent its energies in that greatest of all stellar explosions, the supernova.
Accidents are caused by coincidences; seagoing vessel strike icebergs, automobiles run into cows, and aircraft hit high-flying eagles. The result is disastrous.
