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crowded cells.
Lights flared, an exuberant fountain of red and orange and gold, and from all
sides, the performers flowed in.
Thundered in. Quaddie males, athletic and vastly enthusiastic, in skin-fitting
ship knits made splendid with glitter.
Drumming
.
I wasn't expecting hand drums.
Other free fall performances Miles had seen, whether dance or gymnastic, had
been eerily silent except for the music and sound effects.
Quaddies made their own noise, and still had hands left to play hands-across;
the drummers met in the middle, clasped, gripped, exchanged momentum, turned,
and doubled back in a shifting pattern. Two dozen men in free fall took up
perfect station in the center of the spherical auditorium, their motion so
controlled as to permit no sideways drift as the energy of their spins and
duckings, twistings and turnings, flowed through their bodies one to another
and on around again. The air pulsed with the rhythm of their drumming: drums
of all sizes, round, oblong, two-headed; not only played by each holder, but
some batted back and forth among them in an eye-and-ear-stunning cross between
music and juggling, never missing a beat or a blow. The lights danced.
Reflections spattered on the walls, picking out flashes from the boxes of
upraised hands, arms, bright cloth, jewelry, entranced faces.
Then, from another entrance, a dozen female quaddies all in blues and greens
geysered up into the growing, geodesic pattern and joined the dance. All Miles
could think was, Whoever first brought castanets to Quaddiespace has much to
answer for.
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They added a laughing descant note to the percussive braid of sound: hand
drums and castanets, no other instruments. None needed. The round chamber
reverberated, fairly rocked. He stole a glance sideways; Ekaterin's lips were
parted, her eyes wide and shining, drinking in all this booming splendor
without reserve.
Miles considered Barrayaran marching bands. It wasn't enough that humans did
something so difficult as learning to play a musical instrument. Then they had
to do it in groups
. While walking around.
In complicated patterns
. And then they competed with one another to do it even better
. Excellence, this kind of excellence, could never have any sane economic
justification. It had to be done for the honor of one's country, or one's
people, or the glory of God. For the joy of being human.
The piece ran for twenty minutes, until the players were gasping and sweat
spun off them in tiny drops to speed in sparking streaks into the darkness,
and still they whirled and thundered. Miles had to stop himself from
hyperventilating in sympathy, heartbeat synchronized with their rhythms. Then,
one last grand blast of joyous noise -
and somehow the shifting net of four-armed men and women resolved itself into
two chains, which flowed away into the exits from which they had emerged a
revelation ago.
Darkness again. The silence was like a blow; behind him, Miles heard Roic
exhale reverently, longingly, like a man home from war easing himself into his
own bed for the first time.
The applause - hand-clapping, of course - rocked the room. No one in the
Barrayaran party, Miles thought, had to pretend enthusiasm for quaddie culture
now.
The chamber hushed again as the orchestra emerged from four points and
filtered into positions all around the great window. The half-a-hundred
quaddies bore a more standard array of instruments - all acoustic, Ekaterin
observed to him in a fascinated whisper.
They spotted Nicol, assisted by two more quaddies who helped manage and secure
her harp, which was nearly the usual shape for a harp, and her double-sided
hammer dulcimer, appearing to be a dull oblong box from this angle. But the
piece that followed included a solo section for her with the dulcimer, her
ivory face picked out in spotlights, and the music that poured forth between
her four flashing hands was anything but dull. Radiantly ethereal;
heartbreaking; electrifying.
Bel must have seen this dozens of times, Miles guessed, but the herm was
surely as entranced as any newcomer. It wasn't just a lover's smile that
illuminated Bel's eyes.
Yes. You would not be loving her properly if you did not also love her
improvident, lavish, spendthrift excellence.
No jealous lover, greedy and selfish, could hoard it all; it had to be poured
forth upon the world, or burst its wellspring. He glanced at
Ekaterin and thought of her glorious gardens, much missed back on Barrayar.
I shall not keep you away from them much longer, love, I promise.
There was a brief pause, while quaddie stagehands arranged a few mysterious
poles and bars sticking in at odd angles around the interior of the sphere.
Garnet Five, floating sideways with respect to Miles, murmured over her
shoulder, Coming up is the piece I
usually dance. It's an excerpt from a larger work, Aljean's classic ballet
The
Crossing
, which tells the story of our people's migration through the Nexus to
Quaddiespace. It's the love duet between Leo and Silver. I dance Silver. I
hope my understudy doesn't muck it up... She trailed off as the overture
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