Read Online The Dark Symphony by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

her.
    "Dismissed," the judge said.
    "You can't do this to me," she said.
    "Yes," the judge said. "Dismissed."
    Guil watched her walk off the floor, back into the rooms beyond the arena where she would change and leave. Rosie had been influential enough—in the heat of the moment, at least—to get her a chance to try for a Class, but his influence had not lasted. He was a Composer, but it would take more than a future saint and god to change the order Vladislovitch had established. The judges had seen their mistake, had realized this could open the door to more women seeking Class, and had found a way to slam that door in her face.
    He was next.
    For a moment, he considered the wisdom of refusing on the grounds that the girl had been cheated. Then he decided that would be decidedly unwise, stupid even. Who was he, after all, to dispute with the judges? And who was he to say that the ways established by Vladislovitch should now be overturned? Ahead of him lay a peaceful life within this pleasant society. There was no reason to strike out and demolish his future. He could not singlehandedly change the masculinist policy, and he would succeed only in bringing his own ruin. He stepped forward.
    The pillar hummed, pulsated from dark brown to light brown and back to dark again.
    He had faced it as a child. He must remember that.
    He stepped into the pillar, through the gate into another world, the world of Death from which the researchers .had never returned…
    There was before him a raven sky, black from horizon to horizon, stung with faint brown stars. To his right was a row of chocolate-hued mountains cut by a gem-glistening river that was very dark green and terribly wide. Abruptly, he thought of his dream:
    Above the bleak banks of the green river there is a barren wall of stone jutting to a shelf of polished black onyx a hundred feet overhead. It is an indeterminable hour of the night. The sky is clear, but it is not blue. As he watches, it threads from black to lighter shadows, an odd brown and a rotten tan that approximate the color of dried blood where they overlap. At a bend in the river, the onyx shelf juts completely across the water, forming a roof, and on this roof is a purple building of massive columns rimmed with black stone faces at their tops. Drifting on a leaf, he approaches the building…
    Then he elaborated on the dream, took it one step further:
    Within, he sees for the first time, what seem to be cavorting, dancing figures which…
    Then he realized he was standing too long in the column. It was best to get out in the normal time length, to give the psychiatrist and his machines no chance whatsoever to ban him from adulthood. He stepped back into the Great Hall.
    For a moment, he was struck with a melancholy, almost overwhelming sense of loss. The psychiatrist came forward, slipped the bands on his wrists and the mesh pick-up cap on his skull. He was not found wanting. He Lad passed the final test. It was over. Done. But a sick-sweet feeling within told him that it was far from over, a long, long way from done. Single file, they left the Great Hall, the totem of the pillar roaring a siren song behind.
    In the rooms behind the Great Hall, he found a dressing and shower cubicle. He tossed off his cape, grabbed his chest and hugged himself. He thought of the Pillar of Ultimate Sound, of the throbbing desires to return there, and he vomited over the pretty blue floor which had been programmed—due to past experience with testees on Coming of Age Day—to sound-annihilate just such a vile fluid…
    The sound shower, activated by his identisong medal,
    "washed" away his perspiration, pelleted him with tuneful cleansing. But it could not reach wet fingers down through the muck of him and cleanse his soul. And that was the thing that was dirtied, much more blackened than his skin. In just one day, so many things had happened and the world seemed so suddenly wrong. First, he had seen the savage blood lust hidden