The Enigma Score

THE ENIGMA SCORE
Sheri S. Tepper
www.sf-gateway.com


Enter the SF Gateway …
In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’
Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.
The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.
Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.
Welcome to the SF Gateway.


Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Appendix
Website
Also By Sheri S. Tepper
Author Bio
Copyright


1
When Tasmin reached for the gold leaf, he found the box empty. The glue was already neatly painted onto the ornamented initial letter of the Enigma score, and it would dry into uselessness within minutes. He spent a fleeting moment wanting to curse but satisfied himself by bellowing, ‘Jamieson!’ in a tone that was an unequivocal imprecation.
‘Master Ferrence?’ The boyish face thrust around the door was wide-eyed in its most ‘Who, me?’ expression, and the dark blond hair fell artfully over a forehead only slightly wrinkled as though to indicate ‘I’m working very hard, now what does he want?’
Undeceived by all this, Tasmin waved the empty box and snarled, ‘One minute, Jamieson. Or less.’
The acolyte evidently read Tasmin’s expression correctly for he moved away in a nicely assessed pretense of panic mixed with alacrity. The gold leaf was kept in a store-room up one flight, and the boy could conceivably make it within the time limit if he went at a dead run.
He returned panting and, for once, silent. In gratitude, Tasmin postponed the lecture he had been rehearsing. ‘Get on with what you were doing.’
‘It wasn’t important, Master.’
‘If what you were doing wasn’t important, then you should have checked my supplies. Only pressure of urgent work could have excused your not doing so.’
‘I guess it was important, after all,’ Jamieson responded, a quirk at the corner of his mouth the only betrayal of the fact that he had been well and truly caught. He let the door shut quietly behind him and Tasmin smiled ruefully. The boy was not called Reb Jamieson for nothing. He rebelled at everything, including the discipline of an acolyte, almost as a matter of conviction. If he weren’t almost consistently right about things; if he didn’t have a voice like an angel …
Tasmin cut off the thought as he placed the felt pad over the gold leaf and rubbed it, setting the gilding onto the glue, then brushed the excess gold into the salvage pot. It was a conceit of his never to do the initial letter on a master copy until the rest of the score and libretto was complete. Now he could touch up the one or two red accents that needed brightening, get himself out of his robes and into civilian clothes, and make a photostat of the score for his own study at home – not at all in accordance with the rules, but generally winked at so long as the score didn’t leave his possession. The finished master manuscript would go into a ceremonial filing binder and be delivered to Jaconi. They would talk a few minutes about the Master Librarian’s perennial hobby horse, his language theory and then Tasmin would borrow a quiet-car from the citadel garage and drive through the small settlement of Deepsoil Five, on his way home to Celcy.
Who would, as usual, greet his homecoming with sulks for some little time.
‘This whole celibacy thing is just superstition,’ she pouted, as he had predicted. ‘Something left over from old religious ideas from Erickson’s time. We’ve all outgrown that. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to come home at night even if you are copying a score.’
The phrases were borrowed; the argument wasn’t new; neither was his rejoinder. ‘That may be true. Maybe all the ritual is superstition and nonsense, Celcy love. Maybe it’s only tradition, and fairly meaningless at that, but I took an oath to observe every bit of it, and it’s honorable to keep I oaths.’
‘Your stupid oath is more important than I am.’
Tasmin remembered a line from a pre-dispersion poet about not being able to love half as much if one didn’t love honor more, but he didn’t quote it. Celcy hated being quoted at. ‘No, love, not more important than you. I made some oaths about you, too, and I’m just as determined to keep those. Things about loving and cherishing and so forth.’ He tilted her head back, coaxing a smile, unhappily aware of the implications of what he had just said but trusting her preoccupation with her own feelings to keep her from noticing. Sometimes,