The Music Master of Babylon
()
About this ebook
Read more from Edgar Pangborn
More Fantastic Stories: Works by R. A. Lafferty, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Clifford D. Simak, Carl Jacobi, Edgar Pangborn, Andre Norton, and Frank Herbert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngel's Egg Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWest of the Sun Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Classic Sci-Fi Collection - Volume III Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Edgar Pangborn MEGAPACK® Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Good Neighbors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilderness of Spring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWest of the Sun Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music Master of Babylon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilderness of Spring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngel's Egg Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music Master of Babylon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trial of Callista Blake Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Music Master of Babylon
Related ebooks
A Natural Lizard Activity Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gone Fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRupert of Hentzau Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurfacing (Novella) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War Surf Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Metropolis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLady Grayl: Owl With a Mission Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClarkesworld Magazine Issue 96: Clarkesworld Magazine, #96 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWheelworld Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The House of Pride, and Other Tales of Hawaii Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Special Service Patrol Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmazing Stories Fall/WorldCon 2018 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Whenabouts of Burr: A Science Fiction Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Warm Place to Call Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last Bonanza Kings: The Bourns of San Francisco Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shepherd of the Brilliant Valley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErik's Tale: The Phantom Saga Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shipwrecked Mermaid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 128 (January 2021): Lightspeed Magazine, #128 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sky Is Falling Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 82: Clarkesworld Magazine, #82 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHurricane Moon: Aeon's Legacy, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the Sundial Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mind Over Ship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Autumn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Scythian Crisis: Space Colony One, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Golden Cat: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Volume 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Fantasy For You
Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Desert: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Immortal Longings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Talisman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wizard's First Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dandelion Wine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Music Master of Babylon
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Music Master of Babylon - Edgar Pangborn
The Music Master of Babylon
By Edgar Pangborn
© 2016 Positronic Publishing
Cover Image © Can Stock Photo Inc. / 3000ad
Positronic Publishing
PO Box 632
Floyd VA 24091
ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-0599-3
First Positronic Publishing Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Music Master of Babylon
By Edgar Pangborn
What more fitting place for the last man on Earth to live in than a museum? Now if only he could avoid becoming an exhibit himself!
For twenty-five years, no one came. In the seventy-sixth year of his life, Brian Van Anda was still trying not to remember a happy boyhood. To do so was irrelevant and dangerous, although every instinct of his old age tempted him to reject the present and dwell in the lost times.
He would recall stubbornly that the present year, for example, was 2096; that he had been born in 2020, seven years after the close of the Civil War, fifty years before the Final War, twenty-five years before the departure of the First Interstellar. (It had never returned, nor had the Second Interstellar. They might be still wandering, trifles of Man-made Stardust.) He would recall his place of birth, New Boston, the fine, planned city far inland from the ancient metropolis that the rising sea had reclaimed after the earthquake of 1994.
Such things, places and dates, were factual props, useful when Brian wanted to impose an external order on the vagueness of his immediate existence. He tried to make sure they became no more than that—to shut away the colors, the poignant sounds, the parks and the playgrounds of New Boston, the known faces (many of them loved), and the later years when he had briefly known a curious intoxication called fame.
It was not necessarily better or wiser to reject those memories, but it was safer, and nowadays Brian was often sufficiently tired, sufficiently conscious of his growing weakness and lonely unimportance, to crave safety as a meadow mouse often craves a burrow.
*
He tied his canoe to the massive window that for many years had been a port and a doorway. Lounging there with a suspended sense of time, he was hardly aware that he was listening. In a way, all the twenty-five years had been a listening. He watched Earth’s patient star sink toward the rim of the forest on the Palisades. At this hour, it was sometimes possible, if the Sun-crimsoned water lay still, to cease grieving too much at the greater stillness.
There was scattered human life elsewhere, he knew—probably a great deal of it. After twenty-five years alone, that, too, often seemed almost irrelevant. At other times than mild evenings, hushed noons or mornings empty of human commotion, Brian might lapse into anger, fight the calm by yelling, resent the swift dying of his echoes. Such moods were brief. A kind of humor remained in him, not to be ruined by sorrow.
He remembered how, ten months or possibly ten years ago, he had encountered a box turtle in a forest clearing, and had shouted at it: "They went