Danny arose and walked out of the enclosure. His work as an inventor was done. His accomplishments as a musician were just beginning.
The next two years Danny learned the instrument. Each time he switched it on with the key melody, playing until it was time to go, and then leaving, secure in his knowledge that the passage of time would disconnect his invention. He grew more assured of his technique, expanding and developing it. He had been good before. How much he now knew there was no way of gauging. He had no audience whose reaction he could test.
Of course there were the usual evening concerts. One night he sat in the balcony listening aimlessly. He let conversations flow past without actually hearing them. Background noise, an essential part of the scene at Music Hall.
Without knowing why, he became disturbed. Something was happening. He listened more closely. Several times he heard it mentioned. And no one but himself ought to know that.
For the first time he glanced at the program he'd taken on entering. He read through it with profound unease.
"Tonight's audience will participate in the most exciting musical event of the past generation. A new record has been found. The robot piano master, Horowitz Rubinstein Paderewsky Art Tatum Rozenthal will have a new technique added. Jelly Roll Morton will be integrated into the composite musical personality.
"The record was found several months ago during the excavation of a twentieth century slum. Shattered into several hundred pieces, at first it was not recognized. A keen student of music investigated, and, as a result of modern research was able to restore it to the original condition.
"Transposed to the brain of the robot master, the work is presented tonight for the first time in several centuries. Flee As A Bird To The Mountain...."
Danny laid the program down. A prophetic title. Advice that he ought to take, if he could. Flee As A Bird.... That was the key melody; it would bring in operation his invention, the meta piano.