My Brother's Keeper by Charles Sheffield Page A

tonight."
    "What for? An' what about 'im ?" Pudd'n laid one big hand on the top of my head.
    "Don't worry about that." Dixie smiled so wide I could see the top of his dentures. "You can leave him to me."
    Pudd'n shrugged. "All right. I'll leave in an hour, an' I'll hand over to you when I go."
    He dragged me back along the landing and on through into the music room. All the way there I looked for a sign of anything that might be useful later. There was nothing.
    "It's a big house," I said to Pudd'n, after he had moved me over near the piano and seated himself on the stool. He grunted noncommittally.
    "How many bedrooms?" I went on.
    He swiveled round to face me. "Look here, mate, I'm younger than you but I wasn't born yesterday. Don't try an' pump me, all right? If you're relyin' on me to tell you, you already know all about this house that you're goin' to know. Talk about something else."
    I shrugged and leaned back in the chair. "All right. I was just interested, that's all. I'm surprised that you don't take piano playing more seriously. I could tell that you didn't have any trouble playing for Dixie—it didn't stretch you at all."
    "Ah, he just wants easy stuff—dance tunes, mostly." He sniffed. "Fancies himself as Fred Astaire, silly old fart. He's past it. I play anythin' he asks me to, but it's not real music."
    "So why not play real music? How are you in sight-reading and improvising?"
    "I'm good—'specially improvising." His expression was interested, and he was getting into the conversation more. I didn't see how it could lead anywhere useful, but I had nothing better to do.
    "I'd like to hear you," I said.
    "Pick a tune." He looked positively eager. So was I. It was one thing to meet a musical thug, but natural talent is hard to find anywhere and it's intriguing when you meet it.
    "How about a contemporary work?" I said. "How many late twentieth century piano pieces do you know?"
    "Damn few—an' that includes early twentieth century as well." He struck a few sparse and dissonant chords that sounded like an extract from Webern, but not one I could place. "Hear that?" he said. "That's not music."
    "So what is music?"
    He thought for a moment. "This is." He began to play a beautifully balanced piano transcription of the first movement of the Schubert String Quintet, nodding his head with the rhythm.
    After about a minute he stopped.
    "Go on," I said. I was ready to hear more. "Who did the piano arrangement?"
    He looked sheepish. "I did it myself, from listening to records an' all that."
    "I'd like to see a copy."
    "Aw, I don't bother to write much stuff down." He sniffed. "If it's any good you remember it anyway."
    "Could you improvise on part of that?"
    He shrugged noncommittally, and began again. This time he took only the first subject and began to carry it through a series of variations and modulations. He was soon so far away from C Major that I wondered how he was proposing ever to get back. Finally he set up a mock fugato , in which successive voices began to move him elegantly through the different keys. When he finally landed back in the tonic he grinned at me in triumph, ran through a flashing display of double octaves, and added a jaunty little coda. I noticed that his left hand, in spite of its less smooth movement, was perfectly agile and made the wildest jumps accurately.
    "You're damned good," I said when he paused. For a few minutes I had forgotten that I was tied to an uncomfortable chair, a prisoner in a strange house with an unknown tomorrow. No denying it: Pudd'n was a better improviser than I ever was or ever would be.
    He was flushed with pleasure. "Bit of all right, that, eh? It had me really goin' for a while with that fugue, but it came out not bad."
    "Better than not bad. Look, if you want to try and earn an honest living, come and see me." (As I said that, it occurred to me that I wasn't going any place. See me where?) "You need some advanced training on use of the pedals, and that left