lights vanished, and the darkened concert hall was gone, and in its place was the ballroom of Lowenhoff, golden and glistening.
The Graf sat bolt upright, listening in growing fury at the scandal this man had brought upon him and his family; Dziwny could see his disapproval in every line of his body. He knew this was the last concert he would ever give under von Firstengipfel’s patronage, but he would not accept the callous dismissal he had been given—that way lay ruin for him and a tarnished reputation for the Graffin. No, he would show the Graf what he thought of his arrogant termination with one far more damaging than anything the Graf had promised. The fugue began simply enough, and he played the octaves with deceptive ease, thinking of the song he had heard so many times in his childhood: Endless Love. The melody, plaintive and sweet, echoed from hand to hand, growing and enlarging in long cantabile passages that led to the astonishing fermata. He laid his left hand on the keys and began to play the long restatement of the fugue’s theme, while he reached for the pocket in his swallow-tail coat.
Fumbling with her skirt on the piano bench, Vanessa was transfixed by Dziwny’s composition. Her face was without expression, and everything but her hands moved like a doll, stiffly and automatically. With a sudden cry of frustration, she rose from the bench, slapped the side of her head and collapsed, falling between the bench and the forte-piano as Warren sat all but mesmerized by what he saw on his screen.
* * * *
Faster was on one side of her and Warren on the other when Vanessa finally walked out of Cummings Hall some three hours later. “I still want you to see the doctor tomorrow,” Faster was scolding her. “I can’t have you fainting during a performance.”
“Not to worry,” said Vanessa. She was feeling a bit embarrassed for putting these two men—and the tuner—through an hour of anxiety. “I’ll be fine.”
“I want to be sure of that,” Faster said, then rounded on Warren as they reached the edge of the street. “What were you thinking, putting all that equipment around her? Didn’t it occur to you it might hurt her?”
“How could it?” Warren asked as calmly as he was able.
“I don’t know. It’s your equipment. You should know better than anyone what it’s apt to do.” Faster signaled for his town-car, and kept his hand protectively on Vanessa’s arm.
“I don’t think it was his equipment,” said Vanessa, startling both men. “I think it was the forte-piano.”
The two men stared at her with varying expressions of disbelief. Finally Faster spoke. “You sure you’re okay? That sounds a bit…nuts.”
“To me, too,” she said, watching as his Lincoln pulled up to the curb. “But it happened before Professor Warren set up his monitors, only not so intensely.”
“What happened?” Faster demanded, his patience finally failing him. “What are you talking about?”
“About the fugues,” she said, and laughed sadly. “It set…I don’t know…something off. Something that the forte-piano is part of.” Although Faster opened the door for her, she didn’t get in immediately. “It’s still there, you know. It’s still at Lowenhoff, and it always will be.”
“You mean the instrument?” Warren asked.
“If that’s what it is,” said Vanessa as she allowed Faster to assist her into the town car. She stared straight ahead as Faster got in and they sped away, leaving Warren alone on the sidewalk.
DEAD BABIES, by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Allie’s baby was coming, wasn’t any doubt of it as her water had broke, so I put her in the truck and jumped in myself. My hands was trembling so hard I could hardly turn the key, but I got it started somehow and backed it out the driveway so as not to take the time to turn it around, and I clipped one of the posts at the end of the driveway but I didn’t stop. I got us out on the road and put ’er in first and tore across the ford so fast the water was spraying twenty feet on each side.
“Bill, take it easy,” Allie said as I upshifted. “Won’t do us no good to hurry if you put us in a ditch somewheres.”
I saw that she was right, so I tried to slow down and watch the road as we passed Miller’s Grocery and turned onto the pavement, but every so often she’d breathe funny, give a little gasp or something, and every time she did that I’d look over at her and my foot would just tromp down a bit more on the gas.
About halfway to town I remembered that I should’ve called the doctor and told him to meet us at the hospital in Lexington, but I wan’t about to go back to do that, and there weren’t exactly a lot of pay phones on Becket’s Fork Road, so I figured I’d stop by Doc Everett’s house in Dawsonville and tell him in person, as it wasn’t more than a mile or two out of our way.
But by the time we hit the blinker at the south end of Main Street in Dawsonville Allie was gasping and sort of heaving up from the seat every minute or so, and I wasn’t any too sure we were going to make it to the hospital anyways—that was a good twenty-five miles yet, and the interstate didn’t cover but half of it. So when we stopped in front of the Everetts’ house I went around to her side and got her down out of the truck and I walked her up to the door of the house and rung the bell.
A woman answered, and I asked her where the doc was, and she said, “Why, he’s still in bed.”
It was gone seven by then, but some folks do sleep in late, so I didn’t wonder too much, I just asked, polite as I could, “Could you wake him, please? I think it’s an emergency.”
“Of course,” she said. “Wait right here.”
And she closed the door.
Allie sat down right there on the porch, gasping.
A moment later the door opened again, and the woman said, “You just come right on in.” She showed us in and turned us sharp right in the foyer there, into a smallish room like an old-fashioned parlor, and sat us down on a fancy couch, then went to fetch the doctor. We sat there, and I noticed this weird nasty smell, and I hoped it was from the house, all the medicines and stuff, and not from something wrong with the baby.
A minute later Doc Everett came in in his bathrobe with his doctor’s bag. He took one look at Allie and shooed the woman and me out and closed the door behind us.
So there we were in the foyer, and I looked around and saw a telephone on a little table and a big fancy mirror on the wall, but there wasn’t nowhere to sit except maybe the stairs. There was a big sliding door across from that little parlor, and I sort of looked at it hopefully, I guess, because the woman looked at it, too, and said, “We can’t go in there, I’m afraid; the baby’s asleep and I don’t want to wake him.”
Well, right then I wouldn’t have minded playing with a baby, what with our own about to be born by the look of it, but I didn’t want to be rude, and besides, the woman seemed a little on edge, sorta, so I didn’t say that. I said, “How old is he, Mrs. Everett?”
“Oh, it’s Miss Everett,” she said, all flustered. “Laura Everett. I’m Doctor Everett’s sister.”
“Bill Sellers,” I said, holding out a hand. I figured it might not be a real good idea to inquire as to just whose baby it was that was sleeping, if Miss Everett weren’t married, and besides, there was something about her made me think I didn’t want to have too much to
