Free The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II by David G. Hartwell Page B

horns.
    “Your mockery is misplaced, my friends. It just so happens that this genius is not I, but another. And since she has thus far had no opportunity to join in the revelry, your inimitable
friend, as The Student, will take her hand, as The Nightingale, in the final pas de deux from Act III. That should delight her, yes?”
    The address system clicked off amid clapping and a buzz of excited voices, punctuated by occasional shouts.
    She must escape! She must get away!
    Anna pressed back into the crowd. There was no longer any question about finding a man in a polka dot suit. That creature in white certainly wasn’t he. Though how could he have
recognized her?
    She hesitated. Perhaps he had a message from the other one, if there really was one with polka dots.
    No, she’d better go. This was turning out to be more of a nightmare than a lark.
    Still –
    She peeked back from behind the safety of a woman’s sleeve, and after a moment located the man in white.
    His pasty-white face with its searching eyes was much closer. But what had happened to his white cap and gown? Now , they weren’t white at all! What optical fantasy was this?
She rubbed her eyes and looked again.
    The cap and gown seemed to be made up of green and purple polka dots on a white background! So he was her man!
    She could see him now as the couples spread out before him, exchanging words she couldn’t hear, but which seemed to carry an irresistible laugh response.
    Very well, she’d wait.
    Now that everything was cleared up and she was safe again behind her armor of objectivity, she studied him with growing curiosity. Since that first time she had never again got a good look at
him. Someone always seemed to get in the way. It was almost, she thought, as though he was working his way out toward her, taking every advantage of human cover, like a hunter closing in on wary
quarry, until it was too late . . .
    He stood before her.
    There were harsh clanging sounds as his eyes locked with hers. Under that feral scrutiny the woman maintained her mental balance by the narrowest margin.
    The Student.
    The Nightingale, for love of The Student, makes a Red Rose. An odious liquid was burning in her throat, but she couldn’t swallow.
    Gradually she forced herself into awareness of a twisted, sardonic mouth framed between aquiline nose and jutting chin. The face, plastered as it was by white powder, had revealed no
distinguishing features beyond its unusual size. Much of the brow was obscured by the many tassels dangling over the front of his travestied mortarboard cap. Perhaps the most striking thing about
the man was not his face, but his body. It was evident that he had some physical deformity, to outward appearances not unlike her own. She knew intuitively that he was not a true hunchback. His
chest and shoulders were excessively broad, and he seemed, like her, to carry a mass of superfluous tissue on his upper thoracic vertebrae. She surmised that the scapulae would be completely
obscured.
    His mouth twisted in subtle mockery. “Bell said you’d come.” He bowed and held out his right hand.
    “It is very difficult for me to dance,” she pleaded in a low hurried voice. “I’d humiliate us both.”
    “I’m no better at this than you, and probably worse. But I’d never give up dancing merely because someone might think I look awkward. Come, we’ll use the simplest
steps.”
    There was something harsh and resonant in his voice that reminded her of Matt Bell. Only . . . Bell’s voice had never set her stomach churning.
    He held out his other hand.
    Behind him the dancers had retreated to the edge of the square, leaving the centre empty, and the first beats of her music from the orchestra pavilion floated to her with ecstatic clarity.
    Just the two of them, out there . . . before a thousand eyes . . .
    Subconsciously she followed the music. There was her cue – the signal for The Nightingale to fly to her fatal assignation with the white