In Chapter 3, Kerr has made the uncomfortable realization the composer of this music Tom's discovered in his cabin, the one everybody called Cousin Emaline, was actually someone he'd met on one of his time-traveling forays with the Kapellmeister during the course of the previous novel, In Search of Tom Purdue. But how could he explain he knew her and the young man who later became her husband when he attended a reception at Harvard in 1886?
They set off for the Standing Stones, continuing their discussions, leaving Cameron more or less to his own thoughts. When they reach the Stones, Kerr's phone rings: it's Sarah Bond from the International Music Police.
= = = = = = =
CHAPTER 4
Cameron just stood there, looking around, and dared himself not to use words like “awesome” or any other equally tired cliché (“interesting”), whether a very natural “wow!” or a barely better “amazing” or “impressive.” But these so-called “Standing Stones” were beyond anything he'd expected and he reacted to them with jaw-dropped silence, itself a cliché. Just as well Dr. Kerr had been distracted by his phone – convenient, even – otherwise Cameron would've had to listen to a barrage of scientific and anthropological facts rather than just being able to “feel.”
The whole place was “amazing,” and he was duly impressed Tom, a rather unassuming, retired college teacher and self-described has-been composer, could own a home like this, one that commanded a view like this. Not to mention land with its own, strange stone circle which sounded like a miniature Stonehenge, whoever built it and why.
Last summer, Terry took them to Stonehenge, Cameron and Toni mildly disappointed, three small souls lost in a sea of tourists, the stones impressive enough but the overall site was rather small, wasn't it? Then after that, they wandered through Salisbury Cathedral, followed by dinner at a restaurant associated with some novel (he'd forgotten which).
He'd stood back, amazed men could build such things, places where they would worship their gods, both supremely imposing and worthy of the purpose they'd been intended for, considering what technology they'd had available.
Whatever the intent, he couldn't shake the idea they – prehistoric builders of Stonehenge or medieval masons of Salisbury – hadn't overdone it, creating something on such a scale to approximate the hubris of Babel's tower, as if bragging to others “our god's more impressive than yours” while awing mere citizens into stupefied submission to their faith.
After a few minutes' silence, he looked around from one side across to the other, seeing what he saw, and wondered what the purpose had been of whoever had built this, however long ago.
It seemed small: how big was the space originally before the forest grew back? Probably not much larger, as close as the stones were to the cliff (unless part of the cliff had collapsed).
It still made him feel small, only slightly insignificant. Maybe that's why others found solitude here, and a place to think.
So Cameron stood there, knowing he needed solitude and a place to think. He also knew he might have been doing a little too much thinking whenever he could find an hour's quiet time. What he needed, he'd long realized, was “productive thinking” rather than the constant grinding of historical facts into endless fictional probabilities.
He had been walking along the path a short distance behind Kerr and Purdue as they engaged in their musicological nit-pickings. That's what he assumed older people did, building on life's accomplishments, polishing details.
His mind set to “random,” he allowed his thoughts to wander along with him, and picked idly through the resulting observations. If he assembled his “quantum autobiography,” maybe all it needed was some editing. Maybe, he felt, at the right moment the right alignment of random facts might produce a possibility that wasn't so fictional.
His job at the used-book store, if you'd call it a job, was part-time and equally random, filling in as needed when someone was sick or when Mr. Bloom's assistant Stephen took a vacation to visit his Dublin cousins; or the week after the old clerk Paddy died (they'd closed the store for his funeral). He'd helped out at Christmas, temporarily replaced another clerk caught stealing from the cash register – but it was hardly a career. That was the question, wasn't it: what could he do for a career?
Naturally, his parents had wanted to see him become a lawyer or a doctor if he wasn't cut out for a Wall Street position like his father; even a scientist would've been half-way acceptable. But a musician seemed so wrong: “how would you make a living?” – because being successful's only possible when you've got money. Everything with his father was about money, most of it, Cameron felt, morally tainted by the stinking cesspool benefiting the already-rich. And his mother, daughter of an Iranian academic, sat by in silent compliance.
Only a mediocre violinist, he was ignorant of those details others understood before entering places like Juilliard at half his age. A smaller school, one for would-be musicians with little talent, might accept him, if all he wanted was a teaching job. Music, his mother'd said, was okay for a hobby, like her yoga class.
He'd decided to major in pre-med, specifically psychiatric research into Asperger's Syndrome, on impulsive, inspired by his boyfriend Dylan's “condition.” Before he'd completed his degree, science already deleted the term “Asperger's” from their vocabulary. Once their relationship began floundering in emotional complications as young love often did, Cameron realized he had made a substantial miscalculation.
Like music, he hadn't prepared himself for what such a goal would require, and when it came down to the core, “psychiatry-in-general” no longer held his interest; even the politics of research proved dispiriting.
What he missed, he discovered, was music, and where his violin teacher – that was how he'd met Kerr – inspired him initially, the inspiration he found in Dr. Kerr might take him a little further. Perhaps he wasn't meant to be a violinist, always more interested in the composers behind the music than in its performance. Dr. Kerr was willing to take him on as a student of sorts, in return for helping him with his research, particularly with his cases, if the world really needed a “consulting music detective.”
Living full-time with Dr. Kerr and being introduced as his “assistant” was barely less awkward than being passed off as his nephew; and sometimes he felt, with no real responsibilities, more like a “houseboy.” Younger friends would've been nice, maybe even a relationship; but someone cared for him like a father, and that helped immensely.
So, it's come down to this: he'd recently turned 23, a college graduate with no more direction toward a career than he'd been after graduating from high school, all dreams and no realistic foundation. Sitting in on these conversations between Kerr and Toni may have unlocked a fascination for “what makes music tick,” but would that alone make him a composer, regardless of his lack of technical training? The finer muscles of the hands were beyond developing the dexterity a violinist or pianist needed, but what about his brain?
After that first extended period, a concentrated “semester” following Frieda's funeral last summer, he'd begun to absorb this more in-depth approach to music theory that Kerr gave Toni, more relaxed outside a typical classroom. Now, with this interrupted “spring semester,” Cameron felt he'd made progress even if his assignments couldn't match Toni's for sheer creativity.
“Music History” fascinated him and learning about the repertoire they would listen to – Kerr didn't want to call it “Music Appreciation” – was enjoyable and easily digestible in Kerr's casually conversational, “interactive” way of proceeding. For someone who often talked like a professor, Kerr made the music accessible, once you figured out how to keep up.
They'd switch gears in the midst of listening to a piece by Brahms and suddenly they're talking about some chord pattern or how the middle voices moved without calling it “Theory 101” or “Counterpoint.”
Just as suddenly, everything became more intense as they concentrated on these more intellectual aspects most listeners would never think about; but it was the logic behind much of this that fascinated him most. If it took more time to grasp this and several attempts to figure it out, he just needed to work harder.
Cameron studied, went back to re-examine the scores, memorized his notes, read the books Kerr set aside, wanting it explained again. He was intent on discovering the logic and figuring out how things worked.
And there, as Hamlet said, was the rub: Toni sailed through all this brilliantly, rarely needing to have any detail repeated. She seemed to grasp everything intuitively and knew without thinking why things worked.
Was he feeling envy, jealousy, a potential rivalry? What he wouldn't give to attain what she achieved with so little effort...
Walking into the woods, he wondered how long before Terry would mention Salieri, since he'd become so obsessed with those letters. In an on-line biography, Cameron read how Florian Gassmann, an influential composer back then, essentially adopted the orphaned Salieri when he was 15, took over his musical training and got his career started which reminded him of another boy, a baker's son from Legnago, the one Salieri “essentially adopted” when he was a teenager, taking him on as an apprentice, paying a debt forward to honor Gassmann's generosity.
Whether young Benedetto Speranzani ever grew up to become a famous composer or even a modestly successful one didn't really matter: the point was, Salieri understood how important Gassmann's gesture was to his life. What Cameron hadn't realized before was how Dr. Kerr was doing the same thing for him, carrying on an honorable tradition.
But like any young person growing up with all this modern technology, Cameron was impatient when he wasn't getting instant results: “if I program a computer to do this, why isn't it doing this?” Like any student who did all his homework, regardless how well it was done, why wasn't he getting a better grade?
He'd watch Toni during those times when they played through their assignments, and he couldn't understand why his talent wasn't blossoming as fast as hers was: he was certainly working harder than she was.
Cameron understood why he's been included in Toni's lessons, not that Kerr wanted to call them “lessons” (nothing class-like about them), and he was grateful for the opportunity, less self-conscious than being by himself. In a larger class, he could easily have felt swamped, left behind as the faster students quickly moved on beyond him. Here, if Kerr needed to repeat something or explain things differently for him, it was reinforcement for Toni, an alternative approach. Plus sometimes Toni came up with explanations that made things click into place.
Interestingly, it was also a lesson in how to teach composition, identifying different students' different levels of ability, and proceeding accordingly. Cameron wasn't made to feel the “control factor” Toni could gauge herself by. It happened often, when Cameron had trouble grasping an idea, Kerr would ask her to find another way to explain it.
This was a challenge for her, naturally so intuitive, often frustrating when she couldn't find better words than “it just is.” They both understood there were rules and they were rules for a reason. Part of the process was unlocking the reasons why they'd become rules and why there were times you could break them.
Rather than say “Parallel Fifths are forbidden,” they'd explore passages where Mozart clearly avoided them, then played them with parallel fifths. If you believed contrary motion was stronger, you sensed which one was weaker.
Even though she was seven years younger than Cameron, Toni had already left behind the beginner's fascination with imitating favorite composers, branching out to more advanced possibilities she wanted to try, or risk trying. They were encouraged to take something new they'd just heard and find out what they liked about it and imitate it.
“Then, once comfortable with that, let's add something else that goes beyond that.” Toni adored Late-Beethoven and Michael Tippett but couldn't find a way to push ahead that didn't sound forced, that grew naturally.
Cameron liked Bartók, particularly his rhythmic edginess and crunchy dissonance, but was finding it difficult to imitate, unaware “integration” came later; still, a far cry from the watered-down Dvořák-like Romanticism he'd been reproducing before. But when he'd add a dash of rock music's driving pulse to Bartók, maybe he was on to something less derivative.
So, if he's making progress, Cameron wondered, why was he thinking so much about that large glossy postcard advertisement in his mail when they'd gotten home from Venice, the one from the Allegro Conservatory? If he's serious about studying music, where does he take it from here? Kerr's not an accredited music school; he's not going to get a degree; it's not going to land him a job. Could he get the basic training there he'd missed out on to be accepted into a regular college's music degree program...?
Of course, there were questions: this Allegro Conservatory (catchy, isn't it?) offered fast-track degrees in skill-sets that took time to develop. Did the school claim they could turn anybody into a composer? (Define “composer”.) It's not like computer programming or furnace installation. It wasn't even “Become the Next Mozart” – it was “Be the Next Mozart!”
He was able to put it out of his mind but in two days he'd gotten spam in his e-mail (how did they get his address?) and now ads were popping up on Facebook. This had long been the way advertising manipulated humanity in the past but how did this Conservatory know to target him?
It felt like some technologically all-powerful, mind-controlling universal intelligence which men in the 19th Century, with or without gods, called “Fate.” He half-expected to find the dean of the school was one Dionisio Ciapollo.
“So far, they're being very quiet,” Cameron noted, following them deeper into the woods, news he considered something of a blessing after that outbreak over the manuscripts and Kerr's off-the-wall statements about those composers. He wasn't sure how much Kerr recalled, exactly, especially since they'd noticed how memories tended to fade after experiences like that. “That whole business” – Tom's being kidnapped and everything around it – “was some of the strangest stuff I've ever dealt with in some very strange adventures,” not sure how any of them could be explained.
He wondered what kind of woodpecker he was hearing further up the hill, peering off beyond the saplings near the path. “Nature's head-bangers,” he'd called them with their constant but steady, headache-inducing woodblock back-up. Tom started talking, barely above a whisper in the solitude, pointing out violets (which Cameron knew) and hepatica (which he didn't).
A child of the Internet Age, naturally Cameron had checked the Allegro Conservatory's website last night before going up to bed (too bad Tom's place didn't have wi-fi access) while Terry and Tom reminisced. It was very slick, eye-catching, geared to attract younger clientele than himself – he's 23, now; was he too old for them? It didn't seem to be a two- or four-year program, not even an eight-month program, so how soon before they could turn him into the Next Mozart (not that that's what he was after)?
Was hoping to get a well-grounded basis in harmony and music history – more organized in its approach, more continuous, with (he hated to admit) more rote-learning – being ungrateful for everything Terry's done for him? If it was possible he could make it in music as such a late-bloomer, shouldn't he be more realistic? (Define “realistic.”)
If he had any talent to become a composer, what could he do with it? Terry often told him a degree won't turn him into a composer: he can compose music without a degree.
And then, what about some dreaded day-job? How does he “earn a living”? Even Kerr was a college professor or journalist. How long had it been since he – or Tom – had a live performance?
Tom pointed out this path to the top of the hill, “a dead-end,” he said. (So, reaching the top's a dead-end...?)
Across the banner of the Conservatory's website under the usual links about applying to the school or for various loan programs flashed a rotation of standard images of students playing instruments, practicing or performing; a Black girl, standing beside a piano, sang; a Latino boy sat deep in thought over a computer tablet (presumably composing). A distinguished man, barely forty, conducted a large orchestra of casually dressed students; other students, slightly older, rehearsed a scene from on opera under a 30-something director's watchful eye, their pianist still a teenager.
Superimposed on each were different question in bold fonts asking “What is talent?” or “Does traditional education enhance or stifle talent?” Finer-print, blurb-like answers, none more than 50 words long, scrolled by too quickly. Others FAQs included “Where does Inspiration come from?” and, enticingly, “how do I become a famous pianist or a great composer?”
What answers he could read struck him as simplistic, predictable and generally misleading, reinforcing their firm conviction the Allegro Conservatory will help you do just that: realize more potential than you ever knew possible. “Every person has talent – the question is how do you unlock it? The Allegro Conservatory – let us teach you the keys.”
The argument implies everybody has an immeasurable amount of talent to do anything: “Want to become a violinist, a composer, maybe a rocket scientist or brain surgeon? Let us unlock whatever's holding you back!”
“Let us teach you the keys”? Cameron laughed. Did that even make sense?
Unlocking what's holding you back suggests there's a conscious decision in your past not to become a famous violinist, doesn't it? Did he fail to become a good violinist after five years' hard work because, deep down, he didn't really want to? It didn't even begin to get into the whole negative idea behind parental disapproval or lack of educational or cultural support. Were they basing their philosophy around Participation Awards? How did they determine “success”?
Still, their rampant enthusiasm and cloyingly positive affirmations went right to the core, designed to get the gullible shouting, “shut up and take my money!” before anyone realized how long P.T. Barnum's been dead.
The more he lingered, the more difficult it was to close the tab. There was much more he needed to check.
“Discover what you can do,” it said – the Sorcerer's Apprentice might have been more appropriate background music here than Schubert's “Unfinished” – “even if your teacher's already told you you have no talent for music.” Another panel, its background a dozen cheerful faces, declared “the Allegro Conservatory would unlock musical secrets you never knew you had.”
Would they give him some musical aptitude test to find out the best instrument for him like you'd find on Facebook? He'd taken one of those before and laughed when it came up “Accordion.”
“Composers, give us eight months of your time,” this blurb continued, “and after studying with our qualified faculty, some of the brightest new talents in the country, success will be a mere heartbeat away!” The next paragraph contained a single line, printed in bold: “even if right now you can't read a note of music!”
He needed to discover what he could do, what he wanted to do. Maybe being a composer wasn't just a dream...? But what if the Allegro Conservatory could give his dream a firmer foundation? It's not that Kerr wasn't helping, but maybe this route would be faster – not that he needed to become another Mozart.
And speaking of “Fate” – wasn't part of the problem he's competing with Toni whose secret is she's directly descended from Beethoven? Given that old gypsy's prophecy, isn't she destined to become “The Next Beethoven”?
“What about bears behind us?” Cameron heard Tom mention he hadn't been back along this path since he was a kid and, yes, maybe there were bears in these woods, coming out of hibernation.
“Seriously?” He decided it might be better to stay a little closer to Terry and Tom, rather than absent-mindedly wander off.
The state of these paths, especially cave-ins, was a major concern, Tom warned. Falling onto a sleeping bear was one thing, but falling into a hole and landing in some parallel universe? No thanks.
The next link had drawn Cameron deeper into the Allegro's website, speaking of rabbit holes, a report on “one of our most successful recent alumni,” a young man from the Midwest named Dexter Shoad. A humble, unassuming boy in Missouri, Dexter was talked into taking piano lessons despite being destined for life on the farm.
There'd been no indications of early talent, this page continued, broken into shorter sections with convenient headings, except his mother Eunice noticed as a child he liked to conduct the hymns sung in church. Maybe he'd grow up to become a minister, or, depending on his day job, the choir director of their hometown congregation. Nothing was done about it and after a while, he showed less and less interest in music until high school when a pretty little girl played a little Mozart sonata at a church social.
“It was like the heavens opened up and there it was, this incredible feeling inside of me,” the site quoted him. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life – make music!” So the girl's mother introduced him to her piano teacher in the next town over – and he began studying with her.
After two years of aimless piano lessons, bored with Mozart and Beethoven, he decided he wanted to write his own music. That's when he discovered the Allegro Conservatory and enrolled: “his talent literally exploded!”
While ordinarily images of somebody's talent exploding inside of him – “incredible feeling,” right? – quite literally would've been the end of it, Cameron was drawn in by the suddenness of it: “what could've caused this?”
Lost in these recollections, he bumped into Terry standing there in the path with Tom, both laughing about squirrels up ahead.
Embedded in the middle of the Conservatory's page on Dexter Shoad, a video enticed curious visitors to check out his first completed work, the recently premiered orchestral tone poem he called Absence & Return. What first struck Cameron was, “What a cool title,” with its Beethoven reference. The second was, “His first work's for orchestra?” He hovered the cursor over the start button, not sure to listen now or maybe save it for later – “okay, now.” Lights soon revealed a high school auditorium's stage complete with a full orchestra.
He would've expected a “first work” to be a short piano piece where he'd try working out some basic issues of simple melody and simpler harmony, written for an instrument he'd be familiar with. But a fifteen-minute work for full orchestra – and a good-sized one – seemed unlikely. “This,” he thought, “is going to be awful.”
As the orchestra tuned in the background, a “text-over” offered a brief program note, how “the title comes from Beethoven's Les Adieux Sonata which Shoad had been struggling to master for over a year.” It also struck Cameron as a bit odd a teacher would assign a work that challenging to a second-year piano student.
“I'm guessing it'll be a pastiche of favorite bits with phrases of Beethoven's tunes in a beginner's orchestration,” he remembered thinking. He needed to know: would it be embarrassing? – a lesson in creative overreach?
The orchestra had stopped tuning (the video quality was amateurishly awful, not boding well for the performance or the piece itself). Another superimposed text read, “The composer explained it was inspired by his piano teacher who helped shape his early musical interests and so he dedicated it to her – Ms. Rose Philips of Sanza, Missouri.”
After a pause, another text popped up, a clipping from the local newspaper, The Sanza Times, highlighting lines quoting Ms. Philips: “a hard-working, curious boy... but I never imagined he had this in him.”
The video switched to a still photo labeled “Ms. Philips teaches a student in the piano studio of her Missouri home,” indistinguishable from the thousands of other small-town women around the country offering lessons. A dowdy old woman with gray, dishwater hair pulled into a bun, Cameron looked at her, doubting she'd fire anyone's inspiration.
He looked up to see Tom push back some underbrush and motion for Terry and him to look beyond his cane. Another path, what's left of one, descended over rocks, steps in a hillside. “The path to the swimming hole?” he asked, trying not to sound disappointed. “Too early for swimming anyway,” he told himself.
If Cameron had expected an embarrassment from Shoad's Beethoven hommage, he was disappointed. Predictably, the opening three chords reflected Beethoven's opening motive – “Le-be-wohl” – but here they were completely re-imagined, each one differently, strikingly orchestrated.
As the piece gradually unfolded, with two different slow themes gradually intertwining, one mournful, the other wistful, Cameron's attention never wavered. The chord motive recurred, harmonically transformed, at key cadential points, pushing everything forward.
The traditional argument was increasingly difficult to ignore: surely this must've been written by one of his teachers at the Conservatory!
The sounds ahead of him, as they turned around another bend in the path, had gotten more heated – an argument was starting up again. “Can't these guys just let it go, whatever it is?” Whatever it was they weren't letting go of, he assumed it had something to do with Salieri – something that “caused friction.”
Cameron had been thinking about Shoad's piece ever since – such a powerful impact. If the Allegro Conservatory could do this for him, maybe Toni's wasn't the only way you could reveal your musical genius?
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Given the static as I stepped into the clearing, I could barely hear what Agent Bond was trying to say; she said I was breaking up as well. “Is this a bad time, Professor?”
“Well, I'm in the middle of the woods, out on a pleasant walk,” not sure what else she needed to know.
I avoided looking around beyond where to put my feet but the clearing was hardly “clear,” in any number of ways. There was much I could trip over plus Tom had warned about cave-ins.
Who would've looked after this clearing for the past thirty-five years, pulling weeds, cutting out the saplings of pines and oaks, since Burt hardly bothered living here, Tom said, beyond his short summer vacations? It's not like it would've been high on the grounds' maintenance “To-Do List,” and Mrs. Danvers admitted to avoiding the place.
“Hang on,” I said, working my way around some rocks past a large oak tree, heading toward a cave-like proscenium arch, its canopy of pine trees revealing a bit of sky and distant hills.
“Careful,” Tom called out, “not too close to the edge – that's a cliff, Terry, a pretty steep drop.”
“Good to know...!”
Perhaps they'd been happy to let Nature take its course, whatever anyone felt was “unnatural” about the place – evil, wasn't it? But in the decades the Nortons owned it, who held the forest back?
Without looking back, I gave Tom a thumbs up and stepped over chunks of rock and tangled roots – vines, it seemed. Leaves were slower to come in, Spring arriving a little later back here. Out around the cabin, the frost could be widespread, but the more open yards managed full sunlight which counted for something.
It wasn't just a week or two of winter hanging on that made me feel I'd stepped back in time; the whole place had the sense of years ago, even a century – maybe more.
“In case we get disconnected,” I said, struggling around an unyielding pine sapling, “I'm somewhere on a hillside near coastal Maine.”
“Ah, wonderful – sounds delightful. So, a much-needed vacation?”
“A vacation within a vacation...”
And yes, wonderful as long as I don't step into some wormhole and end up being transported to the Stone Age.
Keeping my back to Tom and Cameron was difficult since I wanted to see these stones Tom had been talking about, but I also didn't want to be distracted while talking to Agent Bond. It's not that I meant to be rude, but as long as they're both whispering behind me, I wouldn't be alone. Then, when I was finished with the IMP (which I hoped would be soon), I'd turn around and there they'd be: Tom's astounding Standing Stones along with Tom, Cameron, and hopefully no one else.
“Yes, that's right,” I said, when she asked if I was not alone, hoping my improvised chuckle didn't sound too forced. “Cameron and I are visiting Tom Purdue at his cabin up in Maine. We're out enjoying a walk through his woods on a delightful spring morning!” (At least, it had been, until you called...)
I hadn't heard from Bond or the IMP after we'd rescued Tom from the Aficionati, and I'd hoped they would've waited awhile longer before contacting me again, especially since I was only a consultant. Rarely would their asking for my advice ever involve just a single call; I didn't need a new assignment right now.
“Yes,” I continued, not to sound too obvious about it, “we were on vacation in Italy when Tom called me and... well, I hope to get back to my friends in Venice real soon...”
With any luck, I was hoping she'd just say “Well, okay, then, I'll call you back in a couple of weeks,” but no, she barged ahead, completely ignoring any further attempts to stall her. Clearly, given her impatience, she was not someone with time to waste, no matter I didn't want my time wasted either. Could I have gotten away with telling her I'd call her back later when it might be more convenient for me? Because invariably that would come at a time it was inconvenient for her.
“We've heard several reports on the Dark Web Osiris is back,” she said. “Have you heard any information regarding his whereabouts?”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping noticeably at the news. “Well, that's not good...”
“I'll take that as a 'no.' All we're aware of is he's resurfaced.”
“Aptly named, Osiris – always returning from the dead.”
Nobody knew who “Osiris” was, how long he'd been around, how old he was. Bond's spent her whole career chasing him. Two generations earlier, her “grandmentor,” Tony Kunstler, spent his whole career chasing him. Osiris was the legendary head of the Aficionati, a society of intellectuals claiming to be the musical equivalent of the Masons. They were so secretive, no one was really sure who was in charge, but since they've become more extreme, whenever something evil was in the works, Osiris generally seemed to be the acknowledged spearhead.
The assumption had been the wheelchair-bound Osiris died in the fire at the Old Haine Place, the farmhouse next to Purdue's house, where Tom had been held captive. But no body was ever found. True, he'd escaped death before, it seemed, according to Kunstler and his successor at the IMP, Bond's mentor, Inspector Davis Bundle.
And this wouldn't be the first time Osiris slipped through Bond's fingers, either. Yet everything invariably pointed to a single individual, not the least of which were the fingerprints when they could find them.
It was more than a name in common between dozens of cases the IMP had investigated, over eighty years, the mind-set, the patterns (above all, the patterns), all generated by the same obsessed brain.
Was “Osiris” a single, albeit very old individual, or a like-minded, well-trained succession? Or, she wondered, was he perpetually resurrecting himself?
I let her do most of the talking, my occasional grunts or “uh-huh”s or “okay”s intended to give Tom and Cameron as well as Bond (but mostly Tom) the impression I was deeply involved. Unfortunately, the more she went on, the more involved I began to feel, none of this, obviously, boding well for Italy.
“So, what's new,” I asked, “what's materialized recently,” not wanting to say “since October,” because Tom might overhear what I'd said. Catching some reference to that might bring up Tom's innate sense of paranoia.
Plus I didn't want to turn around to see if they were watching me, only hoping they were so affected by having seen the Stones, both had been struck silent, standing deep in admiration. When Bond started describing what they've been hearing, my sense of being involved, paranoia aside, turned more into an increasing entanglement.
“So far, I'm not sure,” she said, “whether it's a new project or the old plan revitalized, taken one step further.”
That plan involved turning one of their own agents into a human bomb, detonating her in the middle of a concert. The only agent the IMP took into custody was brain surgeon Iván Govnózny. He explained the victim, an agent named Perdita Vremsky, had been “surgically altered” with a “control-unit receiver” implanted into her brain. She had become a walking automaton, the equivalent of a remote-controlled suicide bomber.
“Govnozny had told us, before we found him dead in his cell (apparently of natural causes), Vremsky was a working prototype for a suicide robotic device controlled long-distance by a radio transmitter's computerized code.”
That much we knew about – why the Aficionati stole Tom's Artificial Creativity software program, Clara; less, how they'd made it work.
Though how one of those things could infiltrate a concert or a large public gathering without raising suspicions was one of those nagging questions other agents above Bond's pay-grade had yet to figure out.
“Hmm,” I grunted, not knowing what else to say. “I have no idea...”
Bond plowed ahead with this latest, unofficial briefing.
“We'd heard the term 'Mobot' before which, since Govnozny didn't live long enough to explain it to us, we assume was the Aficionati's name for this kind of suicide robot – short for 'mobile robot'?”
“Hmm, don't know,” I grunted again, concerned I'd give her any encouragement. “Sorry.”
“There's this graffito showing up around New York City, places like Park Avenue,” she persisted. “Have you heard anything about it? 'MozART for the 1%,' a spray-painted stencil with 'A-R-T' in upper-case, bold letters. We have our theories, but what about you?”
“Hmm.” But after an uninterrupted pause, I wondered aloud, “since the wealthy class has always been highly supportive of the arts, perhaps some elitists feel the art they're paying for belongs only to them?”
“We thought that as well, so, yes, thank you, Professor, for corroborating that.”
“I've been in England and Italy for the past month or so, so, no, I'm not up on the latest news.”
“So far no one we know of's taken responsibility for it, but it sounds like a very Aficionati thing to say.”
“Hmm... Now that you mention it – what if the coincidence between the 'Moz-ART' slogan and the term 'mobot' isn't a coincidence?”
“You mean if the slogan is part of whatever Osiris' new project is?”
“We know they used this prototype 'mobot' at one of SHMRG pops concert, perhaps an opening salvo against SHMRG's populist endeavors.”
“Hmm,” Bond said, pausing momentarily. “And now they want to reclaim 'upper-case ART' for the elite? But why bomb pops concerts? To scare the common people away from going to any classical music concerts?”
“While I'm pretty sure your evil Dr. Govnozny didn't actually die of natural causes, even if he was in solitary confinement, I would be very concerned what this new project of Osiris' may be.
It sounds like the Aficionati, which has been around for centuries, is becoming more extreme, more violent, resorting to suicide technology. Or one faction of them: any word of a schism in the organization?”
“No, but if Osiris is back and behind that 'MozART' slogan, that sounds like something significantly escalating his war with SHMRG.”
It was enough the Aficionati had long been trying to maintain their, as someone once called it, “sacerdotal power” over classical music and hold a rigid priest-like control over the Great Mysteries of Art. It was not enough, to them, that you enjoy the music but that you understand the music, more “enlightenment,” less “entertainment.”
I've ridden that broom most of my life, in and outside my classrooms – in fact, I think it was Henry Joyce who talked about “elitist sacerdotal power” when Tom and I were at Faber. It wasn't until more recently I'd become aware – painfully aware – there even was a secret organization that called itself “The Aficionati.”
There've always been two camps about the arts, diametrically opposed, that art's either intellectual or it is emotional; elitist or popular. The middle ground – that it's both – gets lost for those on the extremities.
Unfortunately, the modern trend in politics in the world has become even more divisive, especially now the Cold War threat with its Nuclear Winter has been trumped by the inflammatory extremism of religious fundamentalism. And as the world continues tearing itself apart over any variety of “-isms,” politics and religion have again infected the arts.
Henry pointed out if “Art Imitates Life,” various aesthetic divisions in the arts reflected the numerous wars that plagued our history. “Tempests in teapots” to some, he'd joked; real to art-lovers all the same.
There's very little I could do on my own, but I promised Bond if I'd heard anything, I would call her (not that I couldn't overhear something accidentally even on vacation, I reminded myself).
But that's how we often feel against this chaos we call reality – hopeless. Except hopelessness is not the answer we need.
That topic having, for the moment, exhausted itself, Bond told me there were also new developments on the SHMRG Investigation front, after their pilfered version of Clara, marketed eventually as “z'Art,” had been pulled. Somehow, they'd managed to keep the news quiet there'd been several deaths related to it, perhaps dozens, following near-record Christmas sales. I'd heard rumors to this effect but SHMRG called them “the competition's version of Fantasy News,” nothing that could be confirmed. Bond assumed SHMRG stole the software after the Aficionati already tampered with it.
The agent leading the IMP's on-going investigation, Capt. Jean-Baptiste Ritard, now working at the American Headquarters in New York, recently uncovered evidence Clara was initially hacked by a SHMRG insider, apparently a disgruntled employee. This sabotage led to Amanda Wences' death – “murder by technology” – and eventually over 55 unsuspecting, would-be disgruntled but alas dead customers.
“Also,” Bond added, “you should be aware N. Ron Steele seems to be making a come-back” – Steele, SHMRG's former, disgraced CEO. “He's resurfaced after hiding out in various undisclosed locations with various assumed identities.” There were numerous charges they could never make stick, relating to several suspicious deaths including ordering my friend Robertson Sullivan's murder.
Convinced he'd be identified as the killer of Daisy, the fictional secretary in the firm where Sullivan set his opera, Faustus, Inc., the paranoid Steele allegedly ordered a hitman to take care of Sullivan.
Whatever Steele thought I knew about his role in Rob's death, he knows I've been working against him for years, now, and was instrumental in bringing about the death of his henchman, Garth Widor (granted, it had been an accident: I merely opened a door, knocking him off balance so he fell over a railing). But in the dangerous, dog-eat-dog world of corporate politics, the assumption was, once Steele's back, I was a marked man, “shark-meat.” However, after a few years on the lam, perhaps he's forgotten about me.
“It seems the failure of their new, so-called “z'Art” Artificial Creativity Software has spelled political and economic doom for Lucifer Darke,” Bond continued, mentioning the usurping CEO who'd displaced Steele in a corporate coup. “And with enough pro-Steele support still on SHMRG's board, it looks as if Steele's in line to take over once again.”
Over the years, SHMRG – an acronym for the firm, “Steele, Haight, Mayme, Rook & Griedman” – evolved from a simple off-Broadway music licensing firm into one of the most ruthless corporate powerhouses on Wall Street. If unchecked, they were well on their way to dominating the world-wide music market, controlling music and artists around the globe.
“They'd once plotted turning SHMRG into the first corporation to run for President this year, but Steele's disappearance made that impractical. Now,” she said, “there's talk Steele may run on his own in 2020.”
“There's so much stuff Steele's been charged with, he'd never become a serious candidate,” I said, making light of Bond's concern. “Besides, with those tax returns, they'll lock him up before anyone nominated him.” But hadn't they said similar things, charges aside, about a Grade-B actor from Hollywood back in the 1970s? You never know...
Not that I wasn't concerned about potential fallout from the whole Widor thing, whatever else Steele and his cronies got into. Plus, there's always some new populist plot to take over the Music Business.
“By the way,” I said, wishing to wrap up this call and get back to my friends, “I should mention something Tom Purdue told me about, something called the Casaubon Society that sounds fishy.”
Explaining it without its sounding ridiculous was difficult.
“Right,” Bond agreed, “that does sound like the Aficionati – we'll look into it.”
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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