Daveen began to play—a slow, mournful, lingeringly lovely melody. Melodic lines intertwined in complex polyphony; Kesley found himself following the music with breathless excitement. It soothed and tensed him at the same time.
Daveen sang a deep, lulling, wordless chant. Beneath his voice the music swept to a gentle crest of subdued excitement, and Kesley felt his nerves quivering with expectation.
The music, strange, atonal now, shifting keys with impossible rapidity of modulation, held suddenly.
Daveen stopped.
There was complete silence.
In that silence, Daveen said, "One!"
And Kesley felt light flash numbingly through him.
He huddled in his chair while the frozen brain-cells at last discharged the information they had stored for nearly five years. The words went rumbling over his synapses, repeating themselves endlessly.
Finally it stopped. Hesitantly, he looked up at the calmly smiling Daveen.
Then he looked down at his hands—his own hands, the hands he had farmed with and killed with.