Vienna Station by Robert Walton Read Free Book Online Page B

chair. The other is a lushly padded recliner. Mozart seats himself at the musician’s chair and activates the console.
    I step to the other chair. “Is this where I sit?”
    He smiles up at me. “Yes, but first you need take off your outer clothing.”
    I grin. “That’s quite a line. I bet you use it on all the girls.”
    He blushes, shakes his head. “Never.”
    I laugh and begin skinning out of top and black jeans. Mozart turns to the synthesizer. His fingers dance across its keys. Lights turn on. The computer screen glows green.
    After a moment, he mutters, “Damn!”
    I pause with my turtleneck above my head. “What?”
    “There’s security here I didn’t count on. I can only establish a partial link with my equipment on the station. It will receive what we do here and retransmit our composition to Felix. That’s the most important part. But it won’t let me extract information from my system.”
    “What do you need?”
    “Some of my father’s music. I may be able to reproduce what I need from memory, but that will take time.”
    “Which pieces?”
    Mozart looks up. “Several movements from his last composition, the Requiem.”
    I drop my turtleneck on the floor. My perkey is on a gold chain around my neck. I hold it up. The overhead light blazes through it, casts purple sparkles across the console. “I have the whole composition here.”
    “Wonderful! Is it operational now?”
    “As long as it’s touching my skin.”
    He motions to the chair. “Sit down now. The synthesizer will access the files later.”
    I sit. The chair embraces me, more than embraces me. Thousands of tiny spider legs caress and grip me. I choke back a scream.
    Mozart glances at me. “Sorry. I should have warned you about the chair. The instrument needs to connect with you completely. That can be disconcerting.”
    I grimace. “That’s not the word I’d use.”
    “Also, there will be a precautionary I-V.”
    I look at him. “Is this thing dangerous?”
    “Yes.”
    I think about this before I ask, “What does it do exactly?”
    Mozart’s fingers dance continuously across the mysterious keyboard. “It takes your sensations, perceptions, thoughts and emotions and combines them with music I will compose. The process will dissolve physical and mental barriers. We will enter the music. The distinction between performer and listener will disappear. Souls and minds will be joined.”
    I take a deep breath. “That sounds intense.”
    Mozart, still working furiously at the keyboard, nods. “It must be. Only a message of the greatest intensity may stop my poor, mad brother from committing this atrocity.”
    “We’re doing this to change his mind?”
    “Felix is as lonely and bitter as any human who has ever lived. The directors and scientists of Vienna Station are using him for their own ends. He is a weapon to them, nothing more. His despair and vast pain are their tools. We must prove to him that he is not alone.”
    I shake my head. “Using this synthesizer, using your music will do that?”
    “I don’t know. We must try. We must try to join with him, try to alter his course. He needs to know that we care and that his care matters to us. He is quite mad. That’s the danger. We may become so too.” His fingers stop. He looks at me. “Your risk is even greater than mine.”
    I smile. “What do I do?”
    He smiles in return. “You create music with me, great music. I’ve entered Vienna Station’s communications system. We are already linked to Felix.”
    “Will he listen?”
    “He has no choice. He’s a captive audience, after all.”
    I nod. “Let’s do it.”
    Felix sits shrunken and deformed beneath the stars. Various wires connect him intimately, obscenely so, to the mechanical parts of his body, the probe. Low, gentle chords played by cellos and violas suddenly sound in his ears. He straightens. Then a wave of sensations engulfs him.
    Small waves ripple and slide up a pristine beach. Sun warms me and