Remnant Population

She had never thought of aliens as making music. She had never known any musicians at all. Music came from boxes: from cube players, from transmitted entertainment. Sometimes she had seen, in a cube drama, someone actually making music, and far back in her life, in the primary school, the children had been taught music appreciation. She could still remember the field trip to the symphony rehearsal. But no one she knew could play an instrument. Everyone sang, of course. Some better, some worse, but all mothers, she supposed, hummed to their babies. All couples in love sometimes sang along with favorite songs, strolling down a crowded street… she and Caitano had. But Humberto had told her she couldn’t carry a tune, and after that she sang only for the babies, tuneless murmurings that soothed them. The other women had sung, sometimes, as they worked together, but she had never joined in. How did those creatures make music? She tried to think of the things they carried on those straps slung around them. Sacks and gourds, mostly, and the long knives in their sheaths. No instrument she had seen a picture of would fit into those shapes. Were they just singing and pounding the floor? She edged off her inadequate pad of cloth and cautiously opened the door a crack. She could not see them; they must be down the hall somewhere. But she could hear better, and what she heard had a lilting, laughing quality that made her chuckle even as she told herself it was ridiculous. DA-dah-dah DIM-duh DIM-duh DIM-duh… and a tune that tickled her ears. It wasn’t quite right, she thought; perhaps they all sang flat, the way Humberto had said she did, or perhaps their music was simply that different. But it was music, and she had to know how it was made. She told herself that her joints hurt too much to go back to sleep.

She opened the door wider and put her head out. Nothing to see. Light spreading from the open door of one of the sewing rooms. A faint whiff of unpleasant odor from the floor, where they’d cleaned up their messes. And that sound.

Slowly, silently, Ofelia crawled down the hall toward the light. Now she could hear complex underrhythms, little sounds much like seeds in a seed pod, or a handful of beads. A haunting, breathy sound carrying the tune, a sound she identified with no instrument she knew. And something else, something that tingled in her ears.

When she peered around the door, they were all sitting in a ring; they had pushed the long tables to one side. She could not see much, but she could see that one of them had a set of tubes up to its mouth. It must be blowing them. The elbows of one with its back to her moved, and a tangle of notes rang out above the melody. Ofelia felt tears burning her eyes. What was that? Suddenly the others began to chant something, more or less along with the instruments. One held up a hand, and they lowered their voices abruptly; several glanced in the direction Ofelia would have been had she been in the control room. If they had been humans, that would have been awareness of someone sleeping, someone who should not be disturbed. But these were aliens. What were they thinking? She crouched against the wall of the hall, not looking, just listening. Their voices together had a roughspun quality, more like thick crochet or knitted fabric than fine weaving. Her ears liked it, as her hands liked thick soft yarn better than thin thread. She did not know she had gone to sleep in their music until she woke to find them standing over her. She had fallen asleep half-sitting against the wall; she had a crick in her neck, and her mouth felt dirty and used. She blinked up at them. One still held the handful of tubes. It blew into them now, soft breathy sounds, notes that might have been no more than the wind around corners except they were so pure. Then the creature cocked its head to one side.

Was it asking if she’d heard? Or if it had woken her? Or if it had put her to sleep? She had no idea. She liked the sound. She reached out, meaning to gesture Go on, and the creature handed her the tubes. There were seven of them, polished, tied together with braided strips of grass almost as fine as thread. Ofelia bent her head to look closely at the work. Someone had made those narrow strips, then braided them — evenly, she noticed — and then braided the braid with others, and wrapped the tubes. The tubes themselves felt light, like the bones of birds or stems of great reeds. They had been stained a deep vermilion, so she could not tell what color they had been. Unless that was the color. They smelled like the creatures themselves, a pungent but unclassifiable odor.

The creature’s hand came close now, pointing to one end of the tubes. Ofelia saw little notches carved in the tubes. She blew experimentally into the end of one; a sound came out, not musical at all but breathy and harsh. She tried another with the same result.

“I’m sorry,” she said, handing it back to the creature. “I can’t play it.