Music Man

 

The door hissed open and the tall Corrian guard escorting John Benner shoved him roughly out into the hallway.

“Hurry up, Maggot!”  The translator hissed.  The Corrians always came through the translator with a surly tone of voice when addressing beings not of their own world.  Although there were no such things as maggots on their home planet of Corr, the translator’s computer tried to render meanings and intents more than actual literal translations.

The Corrians took John Benner prisoner five months ago, and during that time he spent most of it in their brig, wondering why they should want him – a musician – of all people.  He walked down the deserted hallway with the guard close at his heels.

The ship’s airlock was docked at an ancient Earth outpost in what was now Corrian space.  After the last treaty ended the most recent war between Earth and the planet Corr vast swaths of space came under the Corrian totalitarian iron fist.  Benner vaguely remembered it as an ancient repository of curiosities, a museum of lost arts and cultural heritages.  The old repository was virtually crumbling with age, still in orbit around the planet that originally requested it built centuries ago.  The people and their descendants were long gone and the planet with its repository, long deserted for other places.

John and the guard rounded a corner in the ancient hallway and there at the end of a short corridor, was the Corrian commander, standing next to a metallic vault, fitted with an old fashioned musical lock.

So, this is why they wanted me, he thought.  The old time musical locks were designed so that only human beings could open them.  No other species were as musical as human Earthers.  To most creatures not of Earth, music was just a bunch of random sounds.  This was especially true for the sober, fierce Corrians, to whom music made no sense at all.

“I want you to open this, Maggot,” the Corrian commander said.  “Many other Earthers have tried and failed, but I understand that even among Earthers, you have a special type of training in opening such things.”

“Well, yes, opening musical locks is simple enough for me.  I’m a concert pianist, which means I play music for others as a sort of entertainment.”

“I don’t care why, or what you are Maggot.”  The huge commander glowered, grabbing the much smaller Earth man by the front of his tunic and lifting him up off his feet.  “You open up this vault, or I will feed you to my flowers.”  The flowering shrubs on Corr recently found the taste of human flesh appealing and since the last war, all Corrians kept their flowers just slightly hungry.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly.  In such an ancient place, there couldn’t be anything of any real value stored here anyway.  There would be little sense in throwing his life away for nothing.

The towering Corrian commander smiled wickedly as only they can smile and slowly let him down, taking a step backward from the old vault.

Benner stepped up to the keyboard and flexed his fingers for a moment before striking the middle “C” note on the musical lock.  That was how the musical lock worked.  You struck a single note; usually “C” and then the musical lock would play a short tune that you had to match exactly.  The original locksmith usually put in a small, familiar tune, like “Happy Birthday,” or “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” or some other simple little ditty.  This was just enough to separate human Earthers –  who found it child’s play –  from other species who found it totally baffling.

The musical lock began to play a complicated, undulating melody, with running chords and rapid multiform rhythms and tempos.  Benner gasped.  This was no ordinary musical lock.  No wonder so many people before him failed.  It was a full, symphonic score playing out on the keyboard.  As Benner stood intently listening, it sounded familiar like one of the old baroque masters.  It was also quite long, playing for several minutes.  Finally, the musical lock ceased and the towering Corrians looked at him expectantly.  Benner stood quietly for a moment, staring at the keyboard, deep in thought.

“Well?” the commander growled through his translator.

“Give me some time,” John said impatiently, stalling.  He was sure now that he knew the tune, it was by an old Earth master called Bach, but now he wasn’t sure whether to open the lock at all.  To have such a complicated tune for the lock meant that there must be something very valuable inside.  He looked up at the threatening Corrians who were getting impatient and restless.  He sighed.

“Well, I can do it, but it’ll take some time,” he said.

“Bah!  I knew it Commander!”  The other Corrian said.  “He can’t do it!  Just like all the others.  Let’s just get it over with, blast it open and feed this maggot to the flowers.”

“Idiot!”  The commander said.  “What if they have Magtite crystals in there, or something?  You want to ruin a fortune in Magtite for only a few minute’s wait?  We’ve waited this long, we can wait for a while longer.”  The Corrian commander gave Benner a rough shove, knocking him hard up against the wall.

“Come on Maggot!  We’re waiting!”

“All right, all right!” Benner said, rubbing his shoulder.  “But I’m going to need some time to run the tune over for a while.  Each note has to be exact and it has to be within milliseconds of where it’s supposed to be in the song.  I’ll have to have quiet and I’ll have to concentrate – without interruptions!”

The Corrian commander took off his translator for a moment and nodded at the other Corrian who took off his also.  Then, in their high- pitched squealing type of communication, they talked among themselves for a few minutes.  Finally, the Corrian who wanted to feed him to the flowers stomped off angrily to the airlock and the commander sat down on the hallway floor.

“Go ahead Maggot,” he said.  “You’ve got all the time you need.”

For the next four hours Benner worked on the lock, studying the tune several times and practicing on the keyboard until he was certain that he could do it.

“I’ve almost got it Commander,” he said, turning to the still seated Corrian.  “But I’m going to need some help from your ship’s computer.”

The Corrian stood up and eyed him suspiciously.  “All right Maggot, but you better be here when I get back.  My flowers are very hungry right now, and there’s no place in this repository that we can’t find you.”

“Of course, Commander.”

The towering Corrian shambled off down the hallway, glancing back over his shoulder every few yards until finally he rounded the corner and was gone.

Immediately, Benner played the keyboard until after the last chord, he took a deep breath and stepped backward.  With a groaning, creaking rumble, the ancient vault door slowly and painfully swung open.  Benner stepped into the musty vault.  The old time light panels flickered on, lighting up the small room.  There, stacked in neat bundles, were piles of old time paper writing with rows and rows of staffs, lines and notes.

“This is music!”  John whispered loudly to himself as he took a sheet off from the stack and examined it incredulously.  “Real music!”  He turned around and on the wall, was a shelf full of old time music cubes.  He took one of them down and placed it into the palm of his hand, stretching it out in front of him.

“Rachmaninov,” he said and immediately the cube took him away back to a concert hall on Earth, centuries ago.  People packed the hall.  He could feel them all around him.  Here and there someone coughed and he could smell the perfume from the woman seated next to him – and the music – the music.

Suddenly, he was knocked down.  The Corrian stared down at him.  “Maggot!”  He sneered.  “Horseless Maggot!”

John blinked twice.  The translator didn’t always make sense with the Corrian language, but Benner got the meaning.

“I – I just got it open, Commander,” he said crawling backward.  “I just –”

The two Corrians stood looking down at him, their green eyes glowing angrily, until finally the commander shook his fist.

“You just wanted to get in here first didn’t you Maggot.  You wanted to see if there was anything of value in here that you could keep for yourself – didn’t you?”

“I ah – I ah.”  Benner stuttered as the two Corrians looked up and around the room.

“So.”  The commander laughed.  “What treasures did you find in here for us, huh?  What will we find?”

The two Corrians went over to the stacks of paper and to the shelves of music cubes, searching for something with intrinsic value.  At first, they searched eagerly, but then when they couldn’t find anything important, they became impatient and agitated.

Suddenly the other Corrian swept the music cubes to the floor.

“There’s nothing in here!”  His translator snarled.

The Commander jerked Benner up off the floor with one big hand and held him up high above his head, near the ceiling.

“Where are they?”  He shouted shaking John Benner like a small child.  “Where are the Magtites?”

“There aren’t any in here!”  Benner said, holding his hands out desperately.  “This is a music vault.  That’s all!”

“Liar!”  The Corrian’s green eyes glowed in the dim light.  “Why would they build such a complicated locking device and such a large, expensive vault for noise?  Huh?  Why?”

“Because these things are valuable.  They’re priceless antiques!  They’re artifacts!  For God’s sake, they wanted to protect them!  They’re our heritage!  To us, they’re more valuable than Magtite!”

The Corrian commander suddenly quieted and stared at the terrified Earthman for a moment, as the other Corrian tipped over tables and scattered sheet music.

“How much more valuable?”

“A lot more!  In fact, if you can get goliath over there to stop wrecking the place, I’ll trade you all the Magtite you can get for the contents of this room.”

The Corrian set him down and frowned.

“Where could you get Magtite crystals?”

“Delta 5 space port.  They have a very large Magtite vault there with a musical lock on it.  I’ve gotten into it before for the government.  It’s not very heavily guarded because – well, we don’t value Magtite as much as you Corrians do.  It’s nice, but it’s not the end all for us, like it is for you.  I don’t know.  What do you Corrians do with all that Magtite anyway?”

“None of your business Maggot.  What we do is what we do.  But why would you do that for us?  You’d be breaking your silly Earth laws by opening up the Magtite vault for us, wouldn’t you?”

“Well yes, but it’d be worth it for me.”

“Why?”

By now, the other Corrian was finished venting his wrath on the room and he stormed over to the commander, his eyes glowing in rage.

“Commander!”  His translator roared.  “There isn’t anything –”

“Silence fool!”  The commander cut him off.  “I’m trying to get something of value here from the Earther!”

The other Corrians’ eyes opened wider and the green glow grew in intensity as he stared at Benner.”

“Now,” the commander said.  “What is it about this noise that is so valuable to you Earthers that you would trade Magtite for it?”

“Music is music.  It makes you feel things.  Some music makes you feel happy, some makes you feel sad, some makes you feel like falling in love.  It affects us all differently, yet somehow the same.  I can’t imagine living without it.  Of course, I make my living from music and so I’m affected by it more than most, but what’s in this room is priceless.  I dare say that I could live quite comfortably on what I could make by selling this stuff for the rest of my life.”

“And you would get the Magtite for us?”

“All you could carry, but you’d have to load the ship with everything in this room so we could take it with us.”

“Agreed.”  The commander said simply and carrying him like a sack of flour under his arm, they went back to the ship.

For the next five months, Benner languished in the Corrian brig, until finally the ship docked at Delta 5 and the Corrian commander came down to get him.

“How do you plan on making off with the Magtite, Maggot?”

“Well, like I said,” Benner explained as he and the two Corrians walked down the corridors to the lock.  “The vault isn’t very well guarded and so all you have to do is overpower the guards and take it.  It’ll be simple really.  We’ll just unload the antique music at the port.  That’ll give us an excuse to be there and –”

“No Maggot,”  The commander shook his head.  “We’ll keep the noise on board until after we have the Magtite safely loaded and we’re away.  Then, after we’re out of Earth colonial space, we’ll load it all into the shuttlecraft for you.  If you can get us enough Magtite, we’ll even let you have the shuttle, along with all your priceless, precious noise.”

“Agreed,” Benner said simply.

Benner walked down the crowded corridors between the two tall Corrians.  People looked at them with hostile stares and most got rapidly out of the way.  There were many in this isolated outpost who had at least one family member fall under the blade of the Corrian military machine.

Finally, they reached their destination, at the lowest deck of the great orbiting station.  To John’s surprise and the Corrians’ delight, there were no guards at all by the great vault.  The old corridors of the giant space station were quiet and deserted down here below decks.

John opened it easily and the two Corrians rushed in to find it totally empty.  They both turned around in rage, only to see the smiling face of John Benner as the massive door swung shut and the lock latched loudly into place.  The Corrians pounded on the door with their great fists, shouting treachery and oaths as Benner looked in the window and smiled.

“Let us out of here Maggot!”  The commander raged over the intercom.  “If you don’t, we’ll blow up the noise!  There’s a small acid bomb in the cargo hold and I’ll activate it right now, if you don’t let us out of here!”

John Benner laughed.  “Oh, you mean all that junk we got from the repository?  Why, I’ve got a collection at home better and more complete than all of that stuff.  I just told you it was priceless so that you’d take me here.  Did you think I was so stupid to believe you’d let me have one of your own shuttlecrafts – no matter how much Magtite I got for you?  No, I know you Corrians.”  Benner spat out bitterly, his eyes blazing with a light of their own.  “My wife was a victim of your damnable flowers!  I hope you both rot down here in this vault.

They never use antique musical locks anymore.  That’s why it’s empty and no one was guarding it.  They’re as much an antique as the music you have in your hold.  Music is so much more than just the paper it’s written on.  That’s why you’ll never understand it.  It’ll live on forever without us, but musical locks like this one are obsolete nowadays.

Nobody will ever come down here – at least not for a very long time.  There’s no reason to.”  Benner paused for a moment staring at the Corrians.  “I hope you both choke to death down here on your own foul breath, or kill each other before your air runs out – you horseless maggots!”

The Corrians’ translators failed at that and just emitted a high-pitched squeal, as they raged from inside.  Benner smiled as he left and whistled a cheerful tune – one of his wife’s favorites – as he walked down the deserted hallway.