Symphony in a Minor Key

Development

“Look’s good from this side, Dr. Robbins.”

Robbins examined himself in the changing room’s full-length mirror, and nodded in agreement. The “Night Operations Camouflage” suit that Miles, the Portal Technician, had just helped him put on resembled a deep-black wet suit, covering him from shoulders to ankles with an opening for his head. A wand-like digital scanner hung from a black belt around his waist.

Miles continued, “I calibrated and focused the portal just before I came here. You can translocate as soon as you finish getting dressed.”

Robbins sat down on a bench and tugged a pair of black boots on. “We’ll have to wait for Harrison. He’s bringing the vaccine I’m going to use.”

Miles frowned. “Dr. Harrison’s bringing it?”

“That’s what he told me. Why do you ask?”

“Because just before I left the Portal Room to help you, Dr. Ertmann came in. I assumed she had it.”

“Well, as long as one of them brings it.” He stood up, and Miles handed him a black hood. It covered his entire head except for small circles at his eyes and slits for his mouth and nostrils. Robbins pressed the edges of the hood and suit together. Their magnet: ic strips made a tight seal.

Miles handed him a pair of black goggles. Securing them with a strap behind his head, Robbins turned them on. A multicolored display appeared at the top of the left lens. “Fully charged, diagnostics check out,” Robbins read. “Lights off.”

In the darkened room the goggles switched to “NightVision” mode. Though it was like looking through green-colored lenses, everything in the room could be seen as clearly as in normal light.

“Lights on.” Robbins checked himself in the mirror again, and smiled. Billingsley called the NOC suit a “cat burglar outfit”—not a bad description for what it was designed to do.

To avoid contact with the people of TCE as much as possible, most of the work done there consisted of searching through rooms at night for manuscripts or other documents. Should a “native” happen to come into one of those dark rooms unexpectedly, the NOC suit was supposed to keep the wearer undetected long enough to hide or escape.

“Don’t forget this.”

Robbins took the bracelet from Miles and snapped it around his left wrist. No, he didn’t want to forget that. Without it, he couldn’t activate the portal from TCE and return to their Earth.

They walked back through the short corridor to the Portal Room.

Harrison was there, bending over a young woman wearing a white lab coat who was slumped forward in a chair near the main control console. Robbins didn’t recognize her. She seemed to be in her early thirties, with cascading red hair and pale skin. Sobbing violently, she buried her face in her hands.

Harrison looked up at Miles and him, obviously worried. “Do either of you know what’s wrong with Dr. Ertmann?”

Miles shrugged. “Beats me. She was fine when I left her about ten minutes ago.”

Harrison bent down again, close to the woman’s ear. “Dorothy, what’s the matter? Are you sick? Do you want me to get some help?”

Slowly Ertmann looked up at Harrison. Her face was drawn, her eyes red and moist. When she wasn’t crying, Robbins thought, she was probably quite pretty. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “I should have known better than to—She stopped suddenly, staring at Robbins. “Who is he?” she demanded.

“That’s Dr. Robbins.” Harrison said. He frowned at Robbins’s black, hooded form. “That is you, isn’t it?”

Robbins nodded.

“Dr. Harrison, do you mind if I leave now?” Ertmann pleaded. “I’m sure he”—she pointed at Robbins—“will tell you what happened!”

“Do you feel up to walking? I can get a wheelchair—.”

“No, that’s all right.” With an effort Ertmann lifted herself out of the chair and headed toward the exit. “I just need to go to my room and ... lie down for a while.”

“Well, if you’re sure you’re up to it—.”

“I’m sure. Please, I just need to be alone!”

After she left, Miles said, “Doc, what was that all about?”

Harrison shrugged. “I don’t know. I arrived just before both of you came in, and found her sitting there, crying!” He paused. “Dorothy has always been—sensitive. When things don’t go right she can get very flustered. But I’ve never seen her this upset before.”

Shaking his head, Harrison took a small white box from the floor and opened it. “I’ll go check on her after we finish here.” He extracted a device resembling an automatic pistol, and a small bottle filled with clear fluid. Flipping its metal tab off, with a twisting motion he inserted the top of the bottle into a round slot on the bottom of the body of the device, then gave it to Robbins. “Any questions?”

“No.” Robbins hefted the transcutaneous injector in his hand. Yesterday Harrison had demonstrated how easy it was to operate by using it on him. “Press the tip of the injector firmly against the upper arm like this, release the safety catch, and pull the trigger.” Robbins had felt only a slight tingle as the sterile water Harrison had loaded it with passed through his skin, leaving a small red spot that quickly disappeared.

Robbins nodded to Miles. “Ready when you are.” The latter moved toward the control console, pausing to pick up several objects off the floor and replace them on a nearby shelf. Glancing over the displays on the console, he said, “The portal is still stable and active. Local time on TCE is now... 1:10 A.M., November 17, 1825.”

Nervously, Robbins went to the entrance of the portal. It was a large cylinder, about six meters long and laid on its side. It was flattened a little where it touched the platform, and its entrance was about three meters in diameter. When the portal was active, like now, at the near end of the cylinder was pure blackness. From past experience Robbins knew better than to stare into that utter emptiness. It made him dizzy, as if he were looking down over the edge of a high cliff into a bottomless chasm.

Here goes. Walking into the portal wasn’t painful. It felt like his whole body had been turned into a mildly vibrating tuning fork, resonating at middle C. Miles had told him the sensation was due to his passing through “low-level phase-inverted force fields” used to keep air molecules and microorganisms from passing from Earth to TCE. Those fields did, however, let “slow-moving, macroscopic objects” like him through. And, the portal was basically a one-way path from Earth to TCE. With a few exceptions, like the oxygen bound in his blood when he breathed there, no matter or energy originating on TCE could come into their world—.

Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted—he was there. His first breath brought a multitude of unpleasant smells. The NV goggles activated automatically in the dark room.

He was in the kitchen of Beethoven’s quarters. A fireplace filled with musty ashes was set into one wall. The room had several tables and open shelves, with plates, bowls, and utensils on them. In one comer stood a dusty, dilapidated pianoforte. Robbins smiled slightly. It was ironic that the composer, who had started out as a piano prodigy and contributed so much to the literature for the instrument, had become so indifferent to it in his final years. After finishing his last sonata and the Diabelli variations a few years before, he wrote no other major works for it. Maybe it was because he couldn’t hear and enjoy his own playing, or was too preoccupied with major projects like the Missa Solemnis or the Ninth Symphony. Whatever the reason, it was sad to see his piano so badly neglected. Given extra years of life, maybe he would write for it again.

He didn’t notice the knife lying on the floor until he accidentally kicked it. It skidded across the floor and rattled into a corner. Robbins froze instantly, straining to hear anyone talking or moving, alerted by the noise. But everything stayed silent.

Slowly, he entered the main living area, carefully avoiding bumping into the small writing desks and chairs scattered around it. He was tempted to examine the partially-notated sheets of staff paper on the desks, but refrained. First things first.

The door to Beethoven’s bedroom was open. Moving even more cautiously, he entered it.

The composer was lying on his right side in a small wooden bed, snoring quietly. A thin blanket covered him up to the waist. He wore a plain night shirt that was tom in several places. A fringe of unruly hair peeked out from beneath his night cap.

Robbins contemplated the sleeping figure. Here, he knew, was one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, one who set a standard of excellence that no later composer had ever surpassed. Superficially, though, all he saw was a paunchy man, prematurely old at fifty-four, with a homely, pockmarked face.

With a grunt the man on the bed strained and farted loudly. Robbins froze again, expecting him to wake up any second. Instead, a smile came to the man’s face. He resumed his melodious snoring.

Robbins looked carefully for a place to inject the vaccine. Fortunately, there was a large tear in the night shirt over the upper left arm. Cautiously, he raised the triangular flap of cloth upward, exposing the skin beneath. He released the safety on the injector and pressed it down—.

There was a faint click as the injector fired. Robbins jumped back, watching to see what the composer would do. But he only snorted, and kept on sleeping.

Slowly, Robbins retraced his steps back out to the main room. There he succumbed to temptation and ran his scanner over the sheets of music he’d seen before. Back in the kitchen again, he checked the chronometer display in his NV goggles. He had been on TCE ten minutes—and was right on schedule. Since an equal amount of time had passed for Harrison and Miles on the other end, they would be expecting him to return about now.

The next step was to reactivate the portal, return temporarily to Earth, and then translocate back to see if the composer was still alive in Vienna on March 27,1827—the day after he was “supposed” to die. Excitedly, he pressed a stud on the retrieval bracelet. The air shimmered in front of him, like heat waves above a hot street, indicating where his end of the portal was located. He stepped into the shimmer...

Robbins took another peek over the rim of the crater. The Cossacks were still coming slowly toward him—about seventy meters away. Ducking his head back down, his mouth slid wetly across the muddy side of the crater. A few measures from On the Beautiful Blue Danube lilted through his brain before he could shut it off. He was going to have to make a run for it and take his chances. Not a great choice, but better than just staying there in the mud and dying on his belly—.

Suddenly he heard the Cossacks yell excitedly. Glancing up again, he saw them pointing toward the barrel of a rifle poking through the second-floor window of a building on his left. There was a sharp crack! and the tall black hat of one of the Cossacks went flying off.

Immediately two of them dismounted and ran into the building. The other pair quickly brought themselves and all of their horses close to the front of the building, out of range of the rifle. Robbins braced himself to make a run for the alley containing the portal while the Cossacks were distracted, but thought better of it. The two by the building were directly across the street from the entrance to the alley. They would probably see him before he reached it—and he doubted they were in any mood to take a prisoner.

From the building Robbins heard men shouting—and then a woman scream, “No!” A moment later the two Cossacks emerged dragging a young man, and a woman Robbins assumed was his wife. She was in her late teens, with auburn hair, and obviously pregnant. She pleaded with their captors not to hurt her husband Josef, her baby, or her. The young man just shouted curses at them.

The Cossacks laughed harshly. One of the pair still on horseback dismounted and said something to the couple in broken German. Robbins couldn’t make out all of it, but what he did understand made him feel sick. Then the Cossack nodded to the one holding the woman. The latter pulled her down on her back to the dirty street, pinning her arms and grinning wolfishly in patient anticipation as she struggled futilely. The other one knelt beside her, and roughly pulled and ripped her long skirt high above her waist.

Paralyzed with horror, Robbins stared open-mouthed at the scene playing out in front of him. The bare thrashing legs and waist of the woman. Glimpses of her protruding, pregnant abdomen. The husband, locked in a tight bear hug by the Cossack standing behind him, no longer cursing but pleading with them in the names of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin. The other Cossack, standing with his back to Robbins just in front of the young woman’s feet, slowly, methodically, pulling down his pants.

Robbins clenched his fists, reflexively praying to God himself to tell him what he could do to help her. He wasn’t a fighter, he didn’t have any kind of weapon. If he tried to stop them they’d just take a minute to kill him, and then get on with it.

What could he possibly do to change things—.

“Nothing changed.”

Robbins slumped down into the cushioned chair in the Chancellor’s office. He was still dressed in a long coat, coarse woolen trousers, white shirt and vest—typical dress for a Viennese bourgeois, c. 1827.

The Chancellor sat behind her desk, a look of concern on her face. Everett sat in a chair next to him.

“I translocated to Vienna again a little after dawn on March 27, 1827. After I came out of the alley containing the portal, I walked several blocks and found a street vendor selling newspapers.” Robbins paused dejectedly. “On the front page it said, ‘Yesterday afternoon, our beloved Herr Beethoven passed on to his reward.’ Then I returned to Earth, and translocated back to Vienna on the afternoon of March 29, 1827.” Briefly he described blending in with a large crowd of mourners as the composer’s funeral procession wended its way through the streets of Vienna.

He looked at Everett. “Why didn’t it work?”

The latter shook her head. “I don’t know. From the standpoint of transcosmological physics, there are two possibilities. One is that I’ve been wrong all these years about the pliable’ nature of TCE’s history. The other is that, by injecting Beethoven with the vaccine, you may actually have prolonged his life—but in a new ‘subbranch’ universe you created by that intervention. The problem is, if that were so, we might be able to translocate only into the ‘original’ Universe where he died on the same day as in our history. Thus, from our point of view, we will seem to have done nothing.”

So that’s that. Robbins loosened the collar of his starched linen shirt and sighed. So close—.

“But, there is another possibility.”

He looked at Everett again.

“The reason may not be transcosmological, but medical. Maybe Harrison’s opinion that Beethoven died of hepatitis is wrong. Maybe you didn’t give the vaccine properly.”

Robbins frowned. Well, he thought he had—.

“Also, Harrison said the success rate with the vaccine was 95 percent. That means it would fail one time out of twenty. Maybe we’ve just been unlucky.”

Robbins looked thankfully at Everett, feeling like a condemned prisoner who had received, if not a full pardon, at least a stay of execution.

The Chancellor asked, “What do you propose we do?”

Everett shrugged. “Harrison’s the expert on the medical possibilities. I suggest we discuss them with him.” She paused. “Speaking of Harrison, wasn’t he supposed to be at this meeting too?”

Just then the office door opened and Harrison walked unsteadily into the room. He collapsed into an empty chair and wiped a pale forehead with his palm. Right now, Robbins thought, he looked more like a patient than a physician.

“Sorry I’m late,” he mumbled. “I—Dr. Ertmann is dead.”

The Chancellor frowned. “Who?”

“Dorothy Ertmann. She’s been with me for five years.”

“I’m sorry to hear this.” The Chancellor looked truly concerned. “How did it happen?”

“She killed herself.” Harrison massaged his eyes. “At least she knew what to inject herself with to make it quick. Relatively painless.”

Everett said, “Do you know why she did it?”

“She left a note. But it wasn’t very specific. Something about her being so sorry that she’d betrayed the Institute and all of us. Especially me.” Harrison sighed. “Her closest relative is a younger sister in Des Moines. I’ll have to call her.”

The Chancellor said, “I know how upset you must be, and we won’t keep you here any longer than necessary. Before you arrived, we were discussing why Dr. Robbins’s project failed.”

Harrison listened patiently as Everett repeated sotto voce what she’d told them earlier. He said, “Based on our tests, I’m certain our diagnosis of the cause of Beethoven’s death is correct. And I taught Dr. Robbins to use the injector myself. It’s so simple to use, it’s virtually idiot-proof.” He glanced at Robbins. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right.”

“No offense taken.”

Harrison continued, “Also, the vaccine won’t work if the recipient can’t generate a good immune response, or if the infection is too severe.”

Everett said, “Could the dose itself have been defective in some way?”

Harrison shook his head. “No. I tested it myself shortly before giving it to Dr. Robbins. It never left my possession until I gave it to him.”

“Then what do you suggest, Dr. Harrison?” the Chancellor asked.

Harrison shrugged. “Dr. Robbins should go back again, and inject Beethoven with nanoscrubbers. Barring previous treatment with a specific blocking agent, they’re essentially M-safe.”

Everett frowned pensively at Harrison. “While I was listening to you I thought of another possibility.” She paused. “Deliberate sabotage.”

Harrison sat straight up in his chair. “What are you suggesting?”

“It strikes me that both the transcosmological and medical reasons for this Mure are so remote that we can’t rule out the human factor.”

“I told you, I tested the vaccine myself and kept it with me until—.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. Or Dr. Robbins either.”

Me? Robbins thought. This is my project. How could she think—. He paused. Unless she thinks I’m so diabolically clever I proposed it just to sabotage it, so no one else would try to change TCE’s past. Robbins felt a trickle of sweat form under his armpits. I know I didn’t sabotage it. But how can I prove it to them?

Everett continued, “Do you know anyone else who had both the technical knowledge and opportunity to sabotage the project?”

Harrison frowned. “Well, I suppose—.”

“Dr. Ertmann.”

They all looked at Robbins.

“Remember, Dr. Harrison? She was in the Portal Room just before I translocated. Could she have done something?”

Harrison glared at him in a way unbecoming someone dedicated to the saving of lives.

“Madame Chancellor,” he said, “I find Dr. Robbins’s insinuation in very poor taste, considering the person in question has just died under tragic circumstances and cannot defend herself.”

“We understand, Dr. Harrison,” Everett said. “However, try to put your personal feelings aside, and give us an honest answer.”

Harrison’s shoulders sagged. “Dr. Ertmann was very—idealistic. She was one of the most caring and dedicated physicians I have ever worked with.”

He paused. “However, I must say this too. When Dorothy went back and obtained those specimens from Beethoven, she was under the impression it was a standard pathology project to discover his cause of death—the kind she and I have done on so many other historical figures before. After Dr. Robbins’s project was approved, I”—he hesitated—“told her what its real purpose was. And yes, I know that information was only supposed to be given on a strict ‘need to know’ basis. But I believed that, considering the dangerous work she’d done, she had the moral, if not technically the legal right to know.”

Everett said, “And how did she react when you told her?”

“She became very angry. She cited the potential risks of erasing our own world, or of causing some unforeseen catastrophe on TCE—much like Dr. Brentano did at our recent meeting. She even accused me of lying to her, and betraying her.”

The Chancellor asked, “But—what does this all mean?”

“It means,” Everett answered, “that we try again. But this time, it’s going to be a little more complicated. And,”—she looked at Robbins—“a lot more dangerous.”

After putting on his NOC suit, Robbins re-entered the Portal Room. Miles was talking to Everett and Harrison. “—Now that you mention it, I did pick up a pair of NV goggles and a retrieval bracelet off the floor after Dr. Robbins and I came back into the Portal Room.”

Everett looked at Robbins. “The technician says Dr. Ertmann was left unattended at the active portal for ten minutes. So she had time to enter TCE, and do something to sabotage your attempt to vaccinate Beethoven. Harrison says she probably injected him with a blocking agent which would prevent him from responding to the vaccine you gave, or any nanoscrubbers we might inject later.”

Harrison nodded.

Robbins said, “Tell me again. What exactly am I supposed to do?”

“The technician has set the coordinates to translocate you to Beethoven’s apartment about five minutes before we believe Dr. Ertmann arrived. What you need to do, is stop her. Confront her when she arrives. Convince her to return without doing what she came to do.” A grim smile formed on Everett’s lips. “Be creative.”

Robbins replied, “But how is that going to change anything? You’re saying that if I stop Dr. Ertmann, the vaccine I injected should work then, and Beethoven will live longer. But, 1 know he didn’t live longer, because when I went to TCE the day after he was ‘supposed’ to die, he was dead. Therefore, I won’t succeed, I can’t succeed in stopping her! Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” Robbins frowned. He wasn’t sure he understood what he was trying to say. “It sounds like I’m supposed to change what’s already happened. And I remember you said it’s impossible to change our past.”

“No,” Everett replied patiently, “we can’t travel back along the timeline of our own branch Universe and change its past. But, as I said at your meeting, we can change the ‘past’ of TCE without running into the kind of causality problems you’re trying to describe. In other words, from our past’ and ‘present’ perspective, Dr. Ertmann did succeed in preventing the vaccine from working and prolonging Beethoven’s life. However, if you go back ‘now’ and stop her, from our ‘future’ point of view—which will become the present’ when you return through the portal after stopping her—at that time, from our perspective, she will have failed, and the vaccine you gave will work. Is that clear?”

Robbins knew she couldn’t see his face through the black hood of the NOC suit, but she must have guessed how bewildered it looked.

Everett said sympathetically, “Even if you don’t understand, just take my word. If you do what I tell you, it will work.” Then a real smile flickered on her lips. “Trust me, I’m a physicist!”

Robbins and the other two men blinked. Now’s the time she decides to show she has a sense of humor, he thought.

Recovering first, Miles said, “The portal is stable and active, Dr. Everett.”

The latter said, “Good luck, Dr. Robbins.” Sounds like I’ll need it. He walked to the portal entrance—.

“One more thing.” Caught with one leg in the air, Robbins teetered on the threshold of the portal before righting himself.

The grim smile was back on Everett’s lips. “Make sure you stay on TCE no more than fifteen minutes. Otherwise you might—literally—run into your past’ self coming through to inject the vaccine. I’m not sure what would happen if that occurred, but some of the possibilities are very—unpleasant.”

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already.

At least the translocation went smoothly—no rude surprises so far. The kitchen in the composer’s apartment was almost exactly as he remembered it. His NV goggles guided him back to the main studio room. He positioned himself in the corner of the room farthest from the bedroom door—and waited.

After what seemed like an eternity, he heard a faint rustle from the kitchen. A few seconds later, she came through the open doorway. Ertmann was dressed just as he’d last seen her in the Portal Room. She was wearing the NV goggles and bracelet Miles had mentioned. In her left hand she held an injector like the one he’d used to inject the vaccine—or was that “going to use”? He let her get half way to the bedroom door before he whispered, “Stop.”

She froze like a statue. While the rest of her remained immobile her head swiveled slowly towards the direction of his voice.

“I know what you’re planning to do, and I can’t let you do it.” Robbins hoped he sounded menacing.

“Dr. Harrison sent you, didn’t he,” she whispered back.

“Yes.”

Shoulders slumped in resignation, she placed the injector in a pocket on the side of her lab coat. “I should have known it wouldn’t work.”

“Now we’re going to go back to the kitchen together, activate the portal, and leave. Understood?”

The expression on her face was so forlorn he had to suppress an urge to go over, give her a hug, and say, “There, there, it’s all right.”

Ertmann shrugged. “Why not?”

Moving quietly to her side, Robbins steered her back toward the kitchen. As they entered it he started to activate the retrieval bracelet on his wrist—and then she broke away from him and screamed, “No!”

Startled, Robbins froze. What if she’d just woken Beethoven up—.

“What you and the others are planning to do is wrong!” she shouted. “It could destroy our world, and this one! Billions of living, breathing human beings—on our Earth, this one, all of us—might be snuffed out like we’d never existed, or maybe suffer something worse than we can possibly imagine! I can’t let you do it!”

She snatched a wicked-looking, vaguely familiar knife from a nearby table and pointed it at him.

Robbins stared at her. What was he supposed to do now? He was taller than she was, probably stronger. But he was no fighter, she was about fifteen years younger than him—and she had a knife.

“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “It’s over. Just what do you think you’re going to do with that knife?” Remembering too late that she was probably an expert at surgery, he hoped she’d take it as a purely rhetorical question. “We’re on to your plan, and you can’t fight all of us!” Of course, he added to himself, the rest of “us” don’t happen to be here right now—.

The knife in Ertmann’s hand drifted slowly downward. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I can’t fight all of you.”

You’ve got her on the ropes, now finish her off! “Harrison took you into his confidence. He trusted you—and you betrayed him! You betrayed all of us at the Institute—but most of all you betrayed him. He’s been like a father to you all these years, and you still betrayed him!” He wasn’t sure if the “father” part was true, but it sounded good.

The knife clattered to the floor. Robbins glanced over his shoulder, expecting to hear curses in German and see an irate composer storm out of the bedroom to confront the prowlers in his home.

“You’re right,” Ertmann repeated. The NV goggles covered her eyes so he couldn’t see the tears, but she was sobbing. “What do you want me to do?”

“Activate the portal and leave—now!”

It was hard to act so cruelly. He had to suppress another urge to give her a comforting hug. Quietly, she fumbled with the bracelet on her wrist. The portal snapped to shimmering life—and then she was gone.

Robbins exhaled slowly. Didn’t know you had it in you.

Then he tensed again. Just because Beethoven hadn’t made a dramatic entrance into the kitchen didn’t mean he wasn’t stumbling around in his bedroom trying to light a candle to see who was making the commotion. Cautiously, Robbins walked to the bedroom, and peeked in.

The great man was snoring heavily, lying in the same position Robbins had seen (would see?) him in when he came with the vaccine. Robbins mentally kicked himself for forgetting something so basic. Ertmann could have shouted and made noise all night and it wouldn’t have woken Beethoven up!

He went back to the kitchen. He wasn’t sure how much time he had before “he” would come through from the other side. And he certainly didn’t want to find out first-hand what kind of unpleasant things Everett was alluding to if he encountered his “earlier” self.

As Robbins started to activate the portal a sudden thought stopped him. When he re-emerged back on Earth, Ertmann would still be alive—wouldn’t she? He’d assumed that, by going back into the “past” to confront her and change what she’d done, he’d also be preventing her from committing suicide. Now, trying to remember what Everett had said, he wasn’t so sure. But you couldn’t talk to a “dead” person like that—could you? Then he remembered what he’d told Ertmann, how she’d betrayed everyone, especially Harrison—and where he’d heard those words before. If she was still dead when he returned to Earth—.

Feeling sick, he activated the portal and stepped through.

“Well, was it worth it?”

Robbins smiled at her. “I think so.”

He sat down next to Antonia on the couch in his apartment. The last ten days had been the most exhausting—and exhilarating—of his life. He’d made thirty-two trips to TCE since translocating a second time to Vienna on March 27, 1827—and this time finding the newspaper headline was about somebody named Metternich, and not Beethoven’s death. Daylight trips to music shops, more nighttime excursions to the composer’s home during his additional lifetime—. Beethoven’s apartment now seemed as familiar to him as his own.

After the composer died in 1834, he and his staff made scouting excursions every one to two years to see what effect his “new” music had produced on other composers. So far the survey had reached 1847—and found no significant changes. Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Berlioz—the new masterpieces Beethoven created hadn’t affected their music. Maybe it was because those final works were so distinctly in his own individual style—an apotheosis of everything he had previously written. A musical valedictory, rather than breaking new ground like the Eroica.

Antonia said, “When can we hear this wonderful music?”

“Soon.” Late this afternoon his staff had finished downloading all the scores he’d scanned from the composer’s manuscripts into the musicology section’s own computer system. After assigning digitized instruments to each part, and adjusting the dynamics and tempos, they now had versions of the music ready for playback.

“I have to admit, I am curious. What did he write during those ‘extra’ years?”

“Mostly chamber music. The remaining movements of his string quintet in C major. Three string quartets. Two piano sonatas. Three trios for piano, violin, and cello.” He paused. “And one work for orchestra.”

Antonia arched her eyebrows.

“You and I will be the first people on our Earth to hear Beethoven’s final symphony.

“The A minor.”

“The Tenth.”

Raising his arm as if holding a baton, he brought it down with a sudden down-beat. “Computer—begin!”

The slow introduction to the first movement began with a series of crashing dissonances by the full orchestra. Finally the clashing chords resolved themselves into a quiet, gentle theme in C major, introduced by a solo clarinet and supported by pizzicato strings. Gradually the melody was taken up by the rest of the orchestra, underwent a brief development—then suddenly disappeared in a dark descent into A minor as the main Allegro section began. A short exposition presented two tragic themes. (“Both,” Robbins whispered, “are derived from ones in works by J. S. Bach. The ‘Crucifixus’ section of the Mass in B minor, and a cantata entitled ‘Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death.’ ”) The development section kept almost exclusively to minor keys, the sense of pain, foreboding, and heroic but futile struggle in the music becoming more and more intense. The recapitulation brought no relief, finally ending in a whisper of hopeless resignation in the tonic minor.

The Andante second movement was a set of alternating variations on two themes, one in F major and the other in C minor. (Robbins smiled at the quizzical look on Antonia’s face. “Sound familiar, don’t they? Both melodies are similar to ones in Messiah. The aria He Was Despised, and the chorus, ‘Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.’ Beethoven once said Handel was his favorite composer.”) The movement’s initial quiet, pastoral mood eventually gave way to darkness and despair in its last measures.

The third movement Scherzo was a Presto in C minor that sounded like a dame macabre, a hideous joke. (“The main theme is like the one Mozart used in the ‘Dies Irae’ section of his Requiem.) Each return of the prayer-like melody (“More Mozart—from the Masonic Funeral Music”) in the A-flat major Trio sections was, just as a glimmer of hope seemed to appear, abruptly trampled by the reappearance of the dark theme of the main section.

And then—the fourth and last movement, initially marked Moderate. It opened with the reappearance of the original gentle C major theme from the beginning of the symphony, played this time in A minor. The higher strings and woodwinds played it softly, tentatively. Just as it swelled into a tragic sigh a harsh new theme played fortissimo by the trombones and lower strings tried to overwhelm it. ( “That new theme,” Robbins whispered, “is a verbatim quote of music Beethoven’s old teacher, Haydn, wrote to honor the emperor of his native Austria.”) Despite this onslaught by the second subject, the primary theme returned again and again, each time more forcefully, until it and the Emperor’s Hymn seemed locked in a titanic struggle full of clashing dissonances. Then, after a sudden and dazzling modulation to its original key of C major, with trumpets blaring and timpani thundering the primary theme overwhelmed the “imperial” one, shattering it into scattered notes and crushing it out of existence. Its true power and strength finally revealed, the full orchestra took up the melody in a coda of orgiastic celebration and joy that made the ending of Beethoven’s preceding symphony seem tame and restrained by comparison. Finally, amid martial fanfares of barbaric intensity by the brass and percussion, the strings and woodwinds played the victorious C major theme in a massive contrapuntal tour de force that brought the symphony to a triumphant close.

They sat together in silence for a long time, the music echoing in their ears, and hearts.

Finally Antonia spoke. “You’re right. It was worth it.”

“Actually,” Robbins said, “Beethoven started a new symphony, in C minor, in 1826. But it never got beyond some sketches. Then, in 1831, he started this work, and finished it early in 1834. He wrote in his diary he’d been inspired to write it by some recent events, like the Poles rising up and trying to free their country from Russian rule. And especially by a gift his nephew Karl gave him on his sixtieth birthday—a German translation of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. He said the music depicts the triumphant struggle of the human spirit and Life against tyranny and Death—the ultimate victory of freedom over oppression. Like the Fifth Symphony, or the Leonore Overture No. 3, only more so.

“Interestingly enough, a few years after it was first performed, the primary theme from the fourth movement, the one that closes the symphony so dramatically, was used as the basis for a very popular patriotic song. Just about every music shop I’ve gone into on TCE from 1837 on had copies of it for sale. The last time I went to Vienna, in 1847, a crowd was even singing it at some kind of street rally.”

The lyrics were by an obscure Hanoverian poet. In the original German, they were hardly great poetry. Lytton had written a version in English for him which was no better. Like the first verse—“Arise, ye German sons, unite! / No foe can stand before thy might! / The future now belongs to thee, / In union lies thy destiny!”

“It’s like the way new words were written about the same time to Haydn’s Kaiserhymne too, praising Germany instead of the emperor of Austria. Deutchland über alles, which became the German national anthem.”

“Did Beethoven get to hear the symphony before he died?”

“Well, he could never have ‘heard’ it. Towards the end of his life he was almost completely deaf. Remember the story, that when he conducted the first performance of the Ninth Symphony, someone had to turn him around to see the audience applauding? But if you mean, did he ever attend a performance—no. He died just before a set of concerts was going to start. It was first played a week after his funeral.”

He smiled at the bust of Beethoven on the piano. The composer scowled angrily back at him.

Robbins frowned disappointedly. I thought you d like hearing your symphony!

“What exactly did he die of, Howard?”

He blinked. “From injuries suffered in a tragic street accident.” Run over by a runaway wagon carrying offal. Never heard it coming. TCE had lost the romanticized story of the composer leaping from his deathbed to shake his fist in defiance at the lightning-filled sky. But, he believed, it had gained far more.

Antonia looked dreamily ahead, the music still playing within her. “When are you going back?”

Tentatively, he draped his arm over her shoulder. “Tomorrow morning. We’re right on schedule with our survey, up to 1847. Velikovsky says there were major political disturbances in Vienna in 1848 and 1849, so he told me to ‘jump ahead’ to 1852, when things should be safe.”

She replied, “So you’re free for the night.” Antonia’s eyes gazed deeply into his, a shy but gently inquisitive smile on her lips. He had last seen that look in her eyes far too long ago, and knew she wasn’t planning to go back to her own apartment tonight.

Much later, with Antonia lying asleep in his arms, Robbins gazed contentedly up at the ceiling of his bedroom. Memories of the music, of Antonia’s body moving rhythmically against his, wafted through his thoughts like a slowly-played fugue. It was moments like this that made Life worth living. Now, even if he were to die tomorrow, he would die happy.

But as he drifted off to sleep, memories he’d suppressed for the past ten days seeped back into his mind. Of Everett saying, “No, there was nothing you could have done to save her.” Of Harrison, Ertmann’s mentor, reassuring him, “No, it wasn’t your fault. She did it to herself.” Maybe they were sincere, maybe they were even right. But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t rationalize it, or forgive himself. So young, so beautiful. . . . He’d wanted to hug her, comfort her—not kill her! Remembering those things, the exuberance he’d felt from listening to the Tenth Symphony, from making love with Antonia, faded and died.

His semi-conscious mind tried to block those memories by replacing them with music. But the melodies it played were from tragic symphonies. Unlike those of Beethoven, some symphonies in a minor key, like Tchaikovsky’s B minor or Haydn’s E minor, did not finish in a bright, triumphant major key, but maintained the darker minor tonality and a mood of Sturm und Drang tragedy and despair to the very end. Sometimes, in music as in the real world, Death did defeat life.

As Antonia pressed warmly against him, sleep finally claimed him too. But he slept poorly. All through the night more music haunted his dreams. Motifs from Schumann’s overture to Manfred, especially the one representing Astarte. And the second movement of Schubert’s string quartet in D minor. The one subtitled, “Death and the Maiden.”

Robbins frantically pounded the sides of the crater with his fists. There had to be something he could do to help her! The Cossack’s pants were around his ankles now, his bare buttocks quivering as he laughed, relishing the woman’s terror—in no hurry to turn the horror of anticipation into the greater one of reality. He raised himself higher over the rim of the crater, his eyes desperately scanning the ground for a rock, a stick, anything he could use to fight them, even if he died trying!

And then he saw it—a flash of metal against the waist of the fat dead man lying nearby. Tucked into his belt.

A pistol.

Suddenly he heard music again in his mind. The whole Tenth Symphony, compressed into an almost instantaneous burst of sound and power. The dramatic battle of the human spirit against evil and Death, always fighting back, never giving up no matter how much pain and suffering it had to endure, until finally winning its ultimate victory!

In an instant, like a Titan unchained, he raised himself up from the ground, ran toward the dead man, pulled the gun from his belt, and sprinted towards the group ahead. The tiny bit of his mind that remained rational tried to tell him that he’d never fired a gun, that he didn’t even how many bullets it had, but he ignored it. He screamed in Russian, “Stop!”

The Cossacks stopped laughing, and looked at him.

Holding the pistol outstretched with both hands, Robbins stood just far enough away so he could cover all four of them. The music within him started to fade as the reality of the situation sank in.

“Let go of them, you bastards!” The gun swiveled from one to the other. For the first time Robbins got a good look at the weapon. It looked like the kind he’d seen in that violent, century-old “Western” Billingsley had shown him once. Remembering what the hero of that “movie,” Shane, had done with his six-shooter, Robbins cocked the hammer of the gun with his thumb.

The Cossack directly in front of him slowly bent over, pulled his pants back up, and turned around.

“Peace be with you, my friend,” he said through broken yellow teeth. “The Czar has sent us to free you from your oppressors. Certainly not to harm you!” He gestured toward the woman on the ground. “There is enough here for us to share. Let us all pleasure ourselves, and be brothers.”

Even from five meters away Robbins could smell how foul his breath was.

The Cossack bent down again and seemed to brush some mud off his boot, curling his hand. Straightening up, he began to walk slowly towards Robbins. “Let me shake your hand in friendship—.”

“Stay back!”

The other man’s face looked wounded. “Surely you would not shoot down an unarmed man, one who only wishes to be your friend, like a dog! Surely you, a man of the German people, who are known even in our land for their courtesy and gentleness, would not do such a thing!”

Something glinted in the hand the Cossack had used to clean his boot. As the Russian raised his arm back to throw the knife he’d taken from the scabbard hidden in his boot, Robbins’s finger squeezed the trigger of the gun. The recoil staggered him. He recovered in time to see the other man and his knife begin a slow fall to the ground, the top of his head blown away in a scarlet shower of blood, bone, and brain.

The Cossack still on his horse tried to spur it at him. Two shots, and he too lay sprawled and bloody on the ground. The one pinning the woman down leapt up and pulled out his saber. It clattered to the street after a bullet tore through the center of his face.

The last one was still holding the woman’s husband, using him as a shield. As the Cossack tried to pull out his saber the man twisted away from his captor. Robbins put a bullet into the Russian’s belly.

The sound of the Cossacks’ horses whinnying and striking their hooves hysterically against the cobblestones snapped Robbins back to reality. The young man was at his wife’s side, brushing off the blood and gore that had splattered on her bare flesh. Gently pulling her skirt back down, he hugged and comforted the sobbing woman in his arms.

In a daze Robbins walked slowly toward each of the bodies in turn, careful not to step in the spreading red puddles on the street. He didn’t need Harrison here to tell him they all looked very dead. The gun at his side dangled from his finger, then dropped to the ground.

“Will you be all right now?” he asked the man, who’d raised his wife to an unsteady standing position.

“Yes, if you help me,” the man said, glancing toward the nearest horse.

Robbins helped him lift the woman onto its back, sidesaddle. Then the man led the horse down the street, avoiding the crater Robbins had just vacated. He watched the couple turn the comer at the other end of the street, and heard the woman shout over the distant rumble of artillery, “God bless you, and thank you!”

Then, trying not to look anymore at what was on the ground, Robbins walked slowly toward the entrance to the alley—and the portal home. So much for the “First Law of Contact,” he thought darkly as he reached for the bracelet on his left wrist—.

Suddenly there was a sharp bang! and a tearing pain ripped through his back under his right shoulder. Knocked down by the impact, he looked back toward the front of the alley and saw one of the Cossacks—it was the one he’d shot in the belly-lying on his side, pointing the smoking barrel of the gun at him. The Cossack grimaced, dropped the gun, and then lay still.

His back burning like acid, Robbins stared in disbelief at the red stain slowly spreading on the front of his shirt. Somehow he managed to stand up and stagger farther into the alley, fighting the urge to faint. When he tried to raise his right arm more pain lanced through him, and it was getting hard to breathe. Swinging his left wrist over toward his right hand, his numb fingers fumbled with the retrieval bracelet.

Suddenly the air in front of him shimmered, and the welcoming darkness of the portal appeared. Gasping for breath, legs feeling like lead, he stumbled into it. Blackness surrounded him, a peaceful oblivion without beginning or end...