Rediscovery by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online

someone else. I haven’t time to go through the whole theory of art right now.” She cleared her throat pointedly, but David did not take the hint.
    “Well,” he said, with a creak that told Ysaye he had settled back in the chair, “I’d enjoy music much more if every modern composer had to submit a song in the style of Schubert, a chorale in the style of Bach, a sonata, and a classical symphony before doing anything more modern, and I think most audiences would agree with me. Your modern symphonies are losing their audience because they deliberately write music no one wants to listen to; they’re competing with the past. Of course, in folk music—”
    Ysaye drifted off to sleep to the sound of their amiable bickering about music. Or rather, David’s monologue; Elizabeth made nothing more than absentminded noises as she got involved in her work. It occurred to her, in a vague sort of way, that David’s harping on music was symptomatic of the mild craziness that had infected everyone.
    Too much idle time; not enough real work to occupy our minds… nonessentials are getting to seem as important as the job we’re supposed to do…
    She woke to the printer’s swoosh as it produced a new map and David’s startled
    exclamation.
    “What is it, David?” Ysaye asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “Is something malfunctioning?”
    “Something’s wrong here—and maybe it’s another glitch with the computer,” he
    told her. “Remember that big storm I said was building on these plains here?” He tossed her the earlier map.
    Ysaye frowned at it; it looked perfectly normal to her, at least, it looked like the storm patterns she’d seen in simulations. The clouds formed the usual swirls of a storm in a satellite photo; she had seen the same pattern on dozens of worlds and thousands of simulation runs. “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Nothing,” he said. “But it isn’t there now. It just vanished.”
    Ysaye shook her head. “Computer glitches don’t erase storms. You’ve misread the
    map, that’s all. You probably need a nap, too.”
    “Look for yourself,” he said, handing over the new map.
    Ysaye glanced first at the time on it; she had been asleep for a little over two hours. Elizabeth came to sit on the blanket beside her and look on.
    “He’s right,” Elizabeth said, tapping the map with her finger, “see that low
    pressure area right there? The low’s still there, but the clouds are gone. There’s no sign of a storm; no rain, no snow—nothing.”
    “Maybe on this planet, a low doesn’t mean a storm,” David said uncertainly.
    “There’s nothing else it could mean,” Elizabeth said, looking extremely puzzled,
    “unless this planet is completely unique in the Galaxy. Maybe all those mountains change things—or that monster glacier. Or all the snow.” But she sounded doubtful.
    “Anything is possible,” Ysaye replied.
    “True. Still, I wonder where that storm went. We’ll wait and see whether the low’s on the next weather map.” She shrugged. “Well, at least I’ll have something to report.
    ‘Lost: one storm.’ It is rather a big thing to mislay.”
    “God help me. Don’t say that. You know regulations; we’ll probably have to set
    up a special lost and found bureau for missing weather patterns,” David joked. “I can see it now. Reports in triplicate, and entries on the notes of every meeting. Lost: one tropical depression, two hurricanes…” He pretended to tear out his hair.
    “That’s ridiculous—” Elizabeth giggled.
    “Well, you certainly seem to have mislaid this one,” he pointed out.
    “I didn’t lose it,” Elizabeth said indignantly. “My job is to report and predict the weather, not make it. Maybe it’s a computer malfunction. Maybe the computer reported a low where there really wasn’t one, and the storm clouds were just—just an odd
    formation in dispersal. Or else the storm was all set up to come roaring down out of wherever these storms