Songs of Earth and Power: The Complete Series

by Greg Bear

Universes may co-exist in the same wave-train, operating as the harmonics of a complex of frequencies. Analogous to the groove in a phonograph record, which is easily distinguished into horns and strings by the practiced ear—horns one universe, strings another. We may exist in all universes, but ‘hear’ only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs. All Sidhe know this when they do magic.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings—stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

Any world is just a song of addings and takings away... The difference between the Realm and your home, that’s just the difference between one song and another...

Clarkham had sent him a missile loaded with death,

The part that thinks death is sleep. Lose that part. The part that seeks warm darkness and oblivion. Lose that self. He will embrace it. He desires rest and escape from the pain.

I cannot ‘hear’ the last hundred measures. I’ve been reading scores for four and a half decades now, but I can’t hear those notes. That’s odd, and maybe it’s magic, too. But I’ve played them on the keyboard and on a piano, and they’re quite interesting.”

“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Moffat said. “It’s downright chaotic. There’s no way in hell it should work. Psychotropic tone structure or not, it reads like Korngold and Mahler take a vacation with Schönberg and end up on Krakatoa with a gamelan.” “You mean, it’s bad?” Michael asked, feeling as if the last firm foundation was about to be pulled from beneath his feet. Moffat smiled up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s impossible, but it’s wonderful. The few sections I’ve played—masterful. Demonic, but masterful. Liszt with his hair in braids and on LSD.”

Mahler had once written a song-cycle/symphony called Das Lied von der Erde—the Song of the Earth. The name had been applied, perhaps, to the wrong piece. His Tenth was a Song of the Earth, of Earth as it had been. The Infinity Concerto was heralding the Earth to come.

And Michael felt himself in it. He was described there—not personally, but in his role. Growing, mutating, uncontrolled, all potential and little achievement. It frightened him. The music was not gentle now. It was complex, demanding, full of discord. Discord. Discard. Start again. Renew. Unite. (How?)

Create. Creat...

Through technology, they made music the Sidhe could have created only through magic.

Humans had found their place in the world to come. They had lived in this universe long enough to master it not with magic, but on its own terms. Not with outside skill, but with skills taught by the hard, unyielding nature of reality. And they had turned those skills into devices for creating wonderful, impossible music.

“You’ll do what you must, obviously,” the Serpent said. “Conflict is part of your existence. Why are you ashamed of your mistakes?”

“Sin is refusing to accept things as they are and refusing to learn from them. Sin is acting out of deliberate ignorance. Did you act out of deliberate ignorance?”

He said sin was a violation of god’s law. That is the philosophy of a tyrant, not a creator. He wished to keep all humans subjugated and ignorant. Human growth was anathema to him. He wished to keep us in ignorance and darkness. There is no god’s law. Why should a god impose arbitrary limits? There is only growth and understanding. Through growth and understanding, there is love. Where there is no understanding and no growth, only ignorance, there is no love. That is sin. But to grow is to commit mistakes. To learn sometimes requires trial and error. It should be apparent to you now that all sins are youthful transgressions. All evil is youthful. After a few thousand years, thoughts of evil become ineffably boring, like the posturing of ill-mannered children.”

“If you do not believe you can work magic, then you cannot work magic. Simple and effective; another link in the chain the Sidhe forged thousands of years ago. Adonna taught humans that even if magic can be worked, it is evil, a sin. How have humans compensated?” “By working with matter. Science and technology.”

“We are eternal. We change, we die, we return, and the combinations and permutations go on forever and ever. And slowly, we progress. Ever higher and higher. I imagine that long ago, we were simple vibrations in nothingness, small songs, each individual differing only in subtleties. How long the simple songs lasted, who can say? But they became more complex and more involved with each other. The songs joined and withdrew. Again and again they found patterns together, and the patterns broke down to make new patterns. New collections of songs, new styles, new addings and takings away. At times, what might seem setbacks—even disasters—happened, but across the greatest spans

of time, there was progress. You must draw back before you can leap. “And finally, that progress has come down to us. There was no beginning. There shall be no end. Only variations on a theme, never repeating, always improving.”

“Then you know that what must be learned cannot be taught with words.”

“All is waves, with nothing waving across no distance at all.” “The Sidhe part of a Breed,” she had explained, “knows instinctively that any world is just a song of addings and takings away. To do grand magic, you must be completely in tune with the world—adding when the world adds, taking away when the world takes away.”

Magic is transferred through the female.

Say good-bye to everything you’ve ever been. There’s a sixteen-year-old boy still buried in you who wants nothing more than a normal adolescence. You’ll kill him; he is you. A new person starts here, not normal, weighed down with impossible responsibilities.

The role he wishes upon me. Power lies in placing others in their weakest postures.

Within his own pearl, Michael felt all the contradictions and difficulties of the unruly Earth. Spice in the mixture. Give the creation a little autonomy; allow it to surprise the maker. Leave the sting in the bee, the thorn on the rose, and the spider in the garden. These incongruities will remind the inhabitants of the thorns within themselves, the evils that spring not from worlds but from individuals, and perhaps they will not soon forget, and not soon succumb to the disaster that befell all races sixty million years before.