Grantville Gazette 43 Read online

  What was I now, a conspiracy freak? Murder couldn't be right, just accidents. I shook my head, and focused on the remaining transcriptions.

  The artistry of the decomposition distracted me. What a symphony! Like the music orchestration for individual songs, Mozart grouped voices together into likely conversations with each voice having its own instrument line on the score. A few groupings made no sense. Without a separate identification linked to each voice instrument, Mozart's decision on what constituted a conversation missed about twenty to thirty percent of the time. Understandable—overheard conversations, like archaeological shards, often make little sense to an outside listener.

  Similar to musical notes in a composer's score, Mozart used VML, Verbal Markup Language, to punctuate the English sentences in the libretto. VML extended MIDI specifications to spoken words. Given voice samples for each participant to serve as the playing instrument, Mozart could read the VML score to render a high fidelity performance of the conversation with amazing accuracy much in the same way that a conductor used an orchestra and the composer's score to reproduce the music the composer envisioned. Far more difficult was taking the noise of multiple simultaneous conversations and separating them into individual conversations. This was what I had spent four years designing Mozart to do: to decompose not only music into instrument line voices based on a group performance, but also to separate the individual human voices in a conversation from the ambient noise.

  Five of the extracted conversations from the Kelso data were in Spanish, Mozart left the Spanish transcript as phonetic spellings with tonal coding because I specified English only. Phonetically rendered Thai from an apparently disgruntled caterer formed a solo monologue with only one instrument line of tonemes in which the pitch changes affected the meaning of the words.

  Skimming through the bars and measures of several conversations, I found nothing else to suggest a conspiracy. Not quite relieved, I resolved to give the entire transcript to Mr. Thompson. Keep the customer happy. Let him decide what was important. I planned to stay silent about my new interpretation of the Kelso conversation. Perhaps ostriches don't survive by sticking their heads in the sand, but for the moment that was my only strategy.

  I hesitated on the last entry. A glitch in the decomposition? Mozart had isolated a faint voice with a frequency range from three to fifteen Hertz that played underneath the entire score. I reviewed Mozart's verbal transcription. The libretto for the low notes contained one nonsensical toneme held across seventy-three minutes. That made no verbal sense to me. Moreover, the voice range was lower than a human could hear, much less speak. Rather than ask Mozart to decode the toneme, I stripped the line from the output. I would trouble-shoot the transcription process later, but I wanted no questionable output going to Mr. Thompson—nothing that might raise my profile or cast suspicion on what I surmised.

  ****

  When I answered the door, Christine smiled. She wore a red tank top and white tennis shorts. I recognized the loose-fitting shorts. They came off easily. That gave me love-thirty. She continued to serve. Maybe she realized how her jealousy had wrecked our future.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Hello, Christine," I returned. I didn't ask how she found my apartment; I didn't need to—she was a smart girl.

  "Are you going to invite me in?" Excellent volley. I hadn't seen her in the month since she testified against me, but she still played brilliantly.

  "Do you think that's a good idea?" I extended my hand to the doorjamb as if I worried about social proprieties.

  She knew better. She ducked under my arm and squeezed past me into the apartment. Her smile vanished when she glanced about the sparse room. "Oh, Wally, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Your other apartment was so nice. I don't know why I . . . well, yes, I—"

  "This isn't so bad, just a place to sleep." I closed the door and stepped close behind her. "And my prospects are improving."

  She must have known that I meant her because she snuggled back against me and pulled my arms about her. Hmm, soft, and she smelled good. My mind glazed over, my resolve melted, and I disappeared into her warmth. She guided my hands away from her stomach and turned her face up for me to kiss. As always, she was irresistible, and I had never been immovable.

  Just like I remembered, the shorts easily came off.

  Afterwards as usual, we cuddled with her head snuggled against my chin, but something had been different from the Christine I remembered. Tentative? Reserved? Did those adjectives describe her? What had she wanted to say before I cut her off? At first, I attributed her sudden shyness to our month of separation, but then I contemplated her new behavior until the obvious explanation battered its way into my slow-witted brain.

  Poor kid. She's taken everything on herself. No wonder she cracked and went desperate. When does she plan to tell me?

  ****

  The output for the mayor's party included another low frequency voice. Such a low frequency can't carry much superimposed intelligence, but mild variations in frequency and amplitude intrigued me because they appeared more organized than random noise. This time, I gave Mozart the task of analyzing the tonemes for the hypo-low frequency.

  Unexpectedly, Mozart identified the base line as spoken words. At a very low frequency the formation of each complete word required many minutes, but the words weren't random either. Rather they all described emotions: ANGER, FEAR, ENVY, HATE, GREED, with one short burst of LUST.

  Emotions? Whose emotions? How had they become verbal? At that frequency, the formation of the simplest word required compressing at least ten minutes of sound from the low voice. No one could speak that slow or low—lower even than a Mahler basso profondo. Someone was playing games. Extreme low frequency signals, although unheard, could produce uneasiness in unsuspecting listeners. Had someone introduced the signal deliberately? Did they want to manipulate the people at the party?

  Perhaps the signal was an accident rather than deliberate. Rather than allow this anomaly to distract Mr. Thompson—he might lose faith in my methods, and I might lose more than just money—I again deleted the line for the low-frequency voice from the transcript.

  ****

  I managed to remain standing until Jenkins hit me the third time. Then, my legs wouldn't properly work, and they buckled. He was an expert at administering pain, each blow calculated for maximum effect without permanent damage, each insufficient to render me unconscious. Although confused, I appreciated his finesse when he smiled and helped me to my knees.

  "Sorry, Doc." He smoothed my collar and brushed dirt off my shirt while I struggled to my feet. "I don't like doing this, but Mr. Thompson wants to be sure you understand. Do you?"

  My tongue felt thick, and I tasted the blood on my lip. Murder as a business strategy no longer seemed so far-fetched. "Yeah."

  "What?" His grip dug into my arm. "I couldn't hear you."

  "Yes, I understand. No more transcripts."

  "The first transcript was okay for starters. Mr. Thompson found what he wanted, but a transcript ain't no good to show the mayor. Any jerkwater writer can make up a transcript. But when the boss asked for something better, he didn’t mean no second or third transcript with more details and numbers scratched in the margin. He wants a recording of the mayor's conversation, one where the old hypocrite can hear himself talk. That'll help keep the old boy in line in case the D.A. gets persnickety. So you just filter out the noise and give Mr. Thompson what he wants."

  "It doesn't work like tha . . . ." I shut up when Jenkins frowned and raised his fist. "Okay, okay. No more transcripts. I'll get him the audio he wants, but I'll need voice samples."

  "Get them off TV. The mayor is on every day."

  "I need a sample for each voice in the conversation." I could substitute other voices from my collection, but they wouldn't stand up to expert scrutiny.

  "No problem, Doc," Jenkins said. "I left you some jelly beans and two hydrocodone on the table. Try it, you'll feel better. I'm glad you're gonna coop
erate. You keep searching the recording for more good stuff. Good money to be made—we'll add a bonus ten thousand to the twenty you was promised if you find more—and your girlfriend won't have to be icing up no more bruises."

  "Girlfriend?" What did Jenkins know? I made sure she wasn't around during business visits.

  "Your girlfriend, Christine. We always keep tabs on the new help, but she's too noisy in the sack for my taste." Jenkins winked and headed for the door. "See you later, Doc."

  After Jenkins closed the door, my legs trembled, and I sagged onto a kitchen chair. The paper towels were out of reach, so I dried the blood from my lip on my shirtsleeve.

  Where did they hide it? I glanced about the room. Stupid. I was the sound expert, yet they had bugged me, and I never guessed.

  No use to search. If I removed the mic, they would only put in another and likely punch me for the inconvenience. Better not tell Christine. She would want to know why I was bugged, and she would not behave normally; then Jenkins would know that I had told her. Can't have her drawn into this mess, too dangerous in her condition.

  ****

  Christine was scared after I got beat up, and then she wouldn't leave my apartment after Jenkins accosted her and suggested that she should encourage me to work faster. So much for keeping her out of harm's way.

  "Work faster at what?"

  "Just a programming job," I told her. "Jenkins thinks you're a distraction—and you are. Besides, I worry. This neighborhood isn't safe. I don't want you getting mugged like me. Why don't you stay here for a few days?"

  Aggravating to have her always underfoot when I had a deadline, but I didn't want her to get hurt.

  After two days in the small apartment, she was antsy.

  "When are you coming to bed?" she asked.

  "Soon." I adjusted my earphones to cancel outside noise, which meant Christine.

  The mayor's voice was distinctive. I fed his sound sample into Mozart and asked Mozart to play the mayor's part of the conversation. Mozart used the voice sample to construct an appropriate virtual instrument and applied the Verbal Markup Language to synthesize a performance of the libretto from the mayor's melody line.

  Not bad. Sounded just like the mayor giving a speech. A few edits would smooth out any obvious glitches. Other flaws would pass as background noise or poor recording quality.

  Christine wrapped her arms about my neck and pressed her chest against the back of my head. She was naked. For Christine, getting naked was the first step in getting her way.

  "What'cha doing?" She nuzzled my earphones askew so that I couldn't help but hear. "Can I help? I'm good with Mozart."

  "I'm synthesizing a conversation by having Mozart apply sampled sounds as instrument voices to the orchestration lines from the transcript. You know the drill. Add in one voice at a time to reconstruct the conversation."

  "Remember when you deliberately came to class late and had me secretly record ten minutes of class conversation before you came in?"

  "Yes." Certainly, I remembered. I'm always looking for additions to my voice sample collection. "But please, Mr. Thompson wants this re-created recording in four days. I've got a lot of work to do."

  "You had me match a sample of each student's voice to its orchestration line in the Mozart transcript." She lifted the headset free and kissed behind my ear. "That was fun. I felt more like a secret agent than an eavesdropper. You should have seen your face when you played back the student comments that Mozart extracted. Some of those kids didn't like your class, but I did."

  "You were great . . . " Desperation seized me, Thompson and Jenkins scared me, and I was struggling to stay afloat until I could find an out. "Look, give me another half hour, and I'll quit for the night."

  "That girl Janet who sat next to me on the front row, you know, the one who always wore the low-cut halter top. You must remember—you couldn't keep your eyes off her boobs. Anyway, I swapped my voice sample with hers. Bet you didn't know that. You thought she said bad things about you, but all the time it was me playing up the part to Mozart."

  Loosening her arms, I swiveled in my chair. Her warm closeness almost lured me in. She smiled down at me as if she had anticipated my response, as if she held sway over me. Damn me if she didn't. I blinked hard and forced myself to ignore her nakedness and look only into her eyes.

  "Christine, I've got work to do, and the people I work for are . . . wait a minute." Fighting the intoxication of her fragrance, I slipped my hands about her waist and pulled her closer. "Why don't you get dressed, and we'll walk to the corner store for ice cream. On the way, you can tell me again what you did to Janet."

  ****

  "You've been hearing voices?" Jenkins leaned against my apartment door and screwed up his face in disapproval. "Mr. Thompson ain't gonna like that. He can't have no wackos on the payroll."

  "I didn't say I heard voices—" The bruises on my face were finally gone, and I didn't want Jenkins to think he had a fresh canvas. "Look, the recording for the mayor is almost complete, and that's the only voices I've been listening to."

  "Your girlfriend says you been hearing weird stuff." The thug clenched his fist.

  Although I had asked Christine to sit quietly on the bed, she couldn't keep her mouth shut.

  "All I said was that Wally got the voice of God on a transcript." She placed her sandwich on the bedside table. "I thought it was cool."

  "Shut up," I said. She always butted in at the wrong moment—granted, fighting for her man—but look where that got us. "You're not helping."

  Anger creased Jenkins's forehead. "Sounds to me like you been hearing voices, Doc."

  "Look, the underlying sound is only low-level background noise, kind of like the uniform background radiation across the cosmos. Mozart got confused and interpreted the vibrations as spoken words."

  "I don't want to hear about no confusion from Mozart." Jenkins formed his right hand into an impressive fist. "He's just a machine. It won't be Mozart's legs I'll be breaking."

  Why had I told Christine about the background sound? Never speculate to a woman. She'll hear only what she wants and then take it as gospel. Despite my glare, she wasn't finished helping me.

  "Don't be silly. Wally thinks that some kind of group consciousness produced the vibrations and gave substance to the words." Christine shrugged and took a bite of sandwich. "But it came from people gathered together, and that sounds like the voice of God to me."

  Determination gripped Jenkins face. He reached for my arm. I needed to slow things down.

  "Don't mind her," I said." Christine was raised Catholic—she sees miracle faces in spaghetti-stained T-shirts. Like any human, Mozart sometimes makes an error in interpreting noise. Mozart's job is to pull meaning out of cacophony, but sometimes, he just goes too far. I can change the sensitivity, adjust the parameters to filter out the under-voice. Not really a problem and certainly not the voice of God . . . and you won't hear it in the mayor's recording."

  "You got two days left, Doc. I don't want no more hiccups, or you won't have no job, and I ain't got no drugs that will help you get over that." Jenkins slammed the door when he left. He hadn't eaten a single jelly bean during his visit.

  Christine ignored me, and between bites of a sandwich, she carefully applied a layer of polish to her toenails. She had no clue as to the kind of people I worked for—hell, I had only recently figured that out myself. I snarled. She shrugged. That was Christine. She always had this disconcerting way of shifting my life about, of throwing me off balance. Sure, I knew she was doing what she thought would be best for me—or perhaps best for us—but it really wasn't the same. My mind didn't work properly with her around. Suddenly, my advantage in our game was gone, and the best I could hope for was a call of deuce.

  "Please don't help." I turned on some music, adjusted the volume too high, and leaned closer to her. I whispered, "You don't understand the situation. These guys are dangerous."

  I glanced about and gestured to my ear to indica
te that someone might be listening.

  "Well, you keep saying we need to get away from Mr. Thompson," she whispered back, her breath smelling of cheese and pickles. "I just pushed it along. I think Jenkins already wants to fire you. I'm good at getting you fired."

  Her smile was adorable, but she completely misunderstood the situation. I shook my head to free myself from her spell. I had to tell her the truth. I planned a calm rational revelation, but that's not what came out.

  "Are you crazy, Christine?" By this time my voice was a sibilant hiss. "This isn't a joking matter. The only pink slip you get from Mr. Thompson is stapled to a coroner's report, and Jenkins will make sure that your toe is tagged alongside mine."

  ****

  "Were you followed?" I asked Christine when we met at the supermarket.

  "No." Up on her tiptoes, she kissed my cheek and offered me a grape she had stolen from the produce aisle. "I love it when we shop together."

  I munched the grape, swallowed the seed, and handed her a computer chip with copies of the two playbacks I had created with Mozart. "Mail this one from across town to the District Attorney. They shouldn't make delivery until tomorrow or a day later. Hopefully, everything will be over by then. Make sure to wipe the chip again for fingerprints. Don't call me or go back to the apartment."

  "When should I buy the train tickets?"

  "This evening. An hour before I meet you at the station. Cash only. If I don't show, go without me."

  "Wally—"

  "Shush. I plan to show, but if I don't, it will only be because I can't . . . do you understand? Don't wait for me. I will find you."

  "Yes, Wally." From the tone in her voice, I knew she wasn't playing against me. We were on the same side of the net playing doubles against the other team.