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His office hours were posted on the department’s website, just like any other professor. Xu Jun waited until the last fifteen minutes, in order not to interfere with actual students wanting help with their coursework.
(And also because he was a little nervous. All he knew about the Black-Cloaked Envoy came from what he’d seen on the news around 4-27, the way everyone was already referring to the day Dragon City had been invaded; he didn’t have much more than an image of dignity, spilled blood, and dark power. But Xu Jun was an academic, it was instinctive to start his work by talking to another academic, and it wasn’t like he knew who else to reach out to…)
He knocked, and entered.
“Yes?” The man behind the desk was one he’d seen around campus, memorable for his elegance and his exquisite suits, including the dark grey one he had on now, along with a pale blue ascot at his throat. Xu Jun reminded himself that as a lowly grad student he was doing well to have a tweed sports jacket on over jeans without holes in them.
“Professor Shen? My name is Xu Jun, I’m a doctoral student in the Musicology Department. I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time?”
“Yes, of course. Do sit down. You’ll forgive my not standing—I haven’t been quite well lately—”
A good voice, Xu Jun thought absently, falling into his usual habits. A singer’s voice, with careful breath control, a well-produced baritone with range to spare at both ends.
“Xu-tongxue?”
“Oh! I’m sorry.” Xu Jun took the offered seat and extended the little box he’d brought. “Er, I thought you might enjoy this tea? I didn’t want to come empty-handed.”
Professor Shen’s smile was momentary, but breath-taking, distracting even Xu Jun from his vocal timbre. “That was extremely kind of you. What is it I can help you with?”
Xu Jun took a deep breath and explained what he was interested in—the chance encounter on the radio with a broadcast he’d never heard before, its intersection with his undergraduate research.
“I don’t have any other contacts with Dixing,” he added, “and so I wondered if, er, you might be able to…to introduce me to any resources, or…?”
Shen Wei sat still, hands folded on the desk in front of him, eyes fluttering closed behind his glasses. Xu Jun swallowed, trying to figure out how to apologize for having tripped on a subject closed to Haixingren.
Before he could come up with anything helpful, Shen Wei opened his eyes, gave him just a tiny curl of a smile, and rose a little stiffly to his feet. “Let us sample this promising-looking tea of yours while we talk,” he said, and found two elegant porcelain cups.
When the tea was made, Professor Shen held the cup to his lips, breathing in the scented steam. “It’s difficult for me to help you,” he said.
Xu Jun looked down into the pale amber pool of his own teacup. “I really didn’t mean to offend, I just—”
“You haven’t offended at all. If anything, I am…pleased…moved, to find a Haixingren scholar interested in researching Dixing music, and well-informed enough to have heard of sishengti singing.”
Xu Jun’s face was hot.
“The problem,” Shen Wei continued, “is that Dixing quartet singing in particular is not amenable to complete analysis in Haixing terms. The acoustic aspects of the performance are…I may say, augmented?...”
“Hopefully not diminished,” Xu Jun muttered before he could think better of it. “Sorry,” he added, blushing harder.
“Nicely put. Augmented or perhaps supplemented, then, by what we call dark energy.”
“I’ve heard of it…from 4-27…” Xu Jun looked across the table and saw the Black-Cloaked Envoy, Shen Wei’s face suddenly drawn and far away. Panicking slightly, he went on, “But I didn’t know it had a musical aspect?”
“Strictly speaking, there is no musical aspect per se in dark energy, any more than in radio or electromagnetic waves, but part of sishengti performance is the use of dark energy to enhance the chord and the overtones.”
“Is that it,” Xu Jun said, enlightened. “I couldn’t tell how many voices were singing when I heard that fragment on the radio. I thought it was four, but then—” It had been quite a blow to his ear-training pride.
“The effect is considerably stronger when heard live.” Professor Shen cupped his hands around his teacup and sipped for the first time. “A very fine blend… I’m afraid matters with Dixing are still in…well, a delicate state. At some future point it might be possible for you to attempt some fieldwork there, but at the moment, especially given that there is no university counterpart at which you could study…”
“No universities?” Xu Jun said, and saw Professor Shen wince again. “Oh, um, well, never mind. You’ve told me more than I knew already, anyway—”
“I wonder…” Shen Wei drank tea. “I’m acquainted with the managers of the radio station you most likely tuned into. It might be possible…the actual performance of sishengti could in fact take place in Haixing…” He set his teacup down with a precise little clink. “Our hopes for, as it were, post-4-27 community relations include the sharing of cultures. Most Dixingren have some experience with this particular art form. I will make some inquiries.”
“That would be fantastic,” Xu Jun said, experiencing a mixture of researcher’s delight and purchaser’s panic. “That would be really great.”
The concert was in Zhujinhua Square, in a quarter of Longcheng that Xu Jun wasn’t very familiar with. There was a hastily prepared banner wrapped around the gate at the entrance to the square: “Radio Dixing Presents the First Annual Dixing Quartetsong Concert!” Xu Jun grinned to himself, wondering how many years they planned to continue for.
He had a couple of guides from the tram stop, two young men from the Special Investigation Division, which sounded formidable but was apparently the official organ of communication with Dixing post-4-27. One was tall and gangly, with a friendly smile, an embarrassed giggle, and a posh Central Longcheng intonation; the other was squarely built, with a badly scarred face and the traces of what Xu Jun was learning to recognize as a Dixinghua accent. The two of them—Agent Guo and “just call me Ye Huo”—made sure Xu Jun and his recording setup had a good seat in the little plaza.
“Chief Zhao had us all come today—that’s him over there, with the mustache and the lollipop? He and Professor Shen, well, you know. I’d have come anyway, though. Chu-ge—my partner—Professor Shen asked him to perform with them,” Agent Guo confided to Xu Jun. His face was bright with anticipation. “I’ve never heard Chu-ge sing, I didn’t know he could. Ye Huo-ge, do you do it too?”
Ye Huo shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I was never much at it, and it’s been harder since—” He jerked his chin sideways, drawing attention to the terrible burn scar across jaw and cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Guo Changcheng said, gentle and sad, unembarrassed.
Ye Huo patted him, roughly, on the back. “No big deal. Let’s see what da-ge and the Lord Envoy have to offer us.”
Although there seemed to have been no signal, the little crowd fell silent. In front of them, four mismatched men—Dixingren—stood in a semi-circle, close enough for their shoulders to touch; Xu Jun recognized only Professor Shen among them. The four exchanged quick glances, and there was a momentary yielding to Shen Wei, who shook his head slightly and opened his palm in the youngest man’s direction.
He smiled, sweet and sly—short and slight, he looked young enough to be a Haixing undergraduate, with a sweet grin and a pleasant snub nose—and turned to the little circle of listeners. “Thank you so much for coming to hear us today! I’m Chen Jue, I’m a singer from Dixing. Can you understand me, is my accent okay?”
“Juejue!” a girl called from the back of the group, followed by a burst of giggles, one ponytailed teenager hiding her face in another’s shoulder, while the adults smiled.
Chen Jue laughed, blinking fast. “Maybe we met on the radio? If you’ve heard me before, I sing solo a lot of the time, but today I get to sing the first voice in sishengti, which I love doing. With me today are Li Minfei singing the second voice—” the older man next to him, tall, spare, and weatherbeaten, nodded stiffly. His face relaxed a little when a young child’s voice demanded “Yeye sing?” from somewhere in the crowd. “Singing the third voice,” Chen Jue went on, “and it’s a big honor for us, we have Dixing’s very own Lord Black Cloak.”
“Professor Shen!” and that happy shriek was unmistakably Shen Wei’s tiny TA, bouncing on her toes to see. Shen Wei smiled, just barely. He wore black like the Envoy, suit trousers and vest like Professor Shen, with his shirt collar open and his glasses tucked into the shirt pocket.
Chen Jue grinned. “Sorry! Dixing’s own Lord Envoy and Haixing’s Professor Shen! An honor on both counts! And singing the fourth voice, Chu Shuzhi of the Special Investigation Division.”
Chu Shuzhi bent his head, all in somber black, solemn rather than sullen (one corner of his mouth twitched up when Guo Changcheng got in on the trend and shouted “Chu-ge!”). He was standing close enough to Shen Wei that the professor could rest one hand on his forearm to keep himself steady.
“And now,” Chen Jue said cheerfully, “without further ado we’re gonna sing! Our first song is about something that all of us Dixingren find amazing when we first come up here.”
“And ever after,” Li Minfei said, unexpectedly.
“And ever after,” Chen Jue agreed. “Ladies and gentlemen, here's the 'Sun.'"
Chen Jue was obviously a professional, in everything from phrasing to breath control. His voice soared easily beyond the standard tenor range and up into the soprano register, clear and poignant even on the kind of high notes Xu Jun had never heard a man hit before. And yet he wasn’t acting like a diva, doing his own thing and treating the other three as accompaniment: he breathed in tandem with them, modulated his tone to blend more effectively with theirs, stepped back vocally here and there to let one of the lower voices predominate.
The other three lacked the vocal power and polish of a trained singer, but they could keep up with him, and the intonation of every chord was spot on. Xu Jun wondered if perfect pitch—or just really good relative pitch—was typical among Dixingren, as a power of some kind or simply a genetic characteristic.
Li Minfei rocked gently back and forth on his feet in rhythm with the song, singing a steady, pleasantly woody mid-range tenor; he didn’t have Chen Jue’s amazing high notes but the arrangement meant he didn’t need to, and for an older man he didn’t engage in undue vibrato.
Shen Wei’s face was calm, impersonal, the look of the implacable Black-Cloaked Envoy or of the unflappable Professor Shen; but there was a flush across his cheekbones, and on the most plangent of the harmonies his eyes drifted closed as he sang, lost in the music and its message. His voice was a clear, flexible baritone, with a wide range that he used effectively, sometimes in a triple harmony against the bass line, sometimes coloring the middle range with deeper notes.
Chu Shuzhi sang a deep, resonant bass with workmanlike solidity, anchoring the quartet’s harmony and holding the rhythm in place, in the pocket like a jueshi bassist. For someone so grim of countenance, he looked remarkably satisfied.
The music would all be digitally recorded for Xu Jun to listen to any time he wanted, but he couldn’t think of any recording media ever invented that could capture the aural shimmer of dark energy infusing the quartet, coaxing the overtones into shining life, smoothing away the boundaries among the four distinct voices—like metal heated until it was fiery liquid—until they melded into an extraordinary whole, distinct and yet integrated. No wonder Professor Shen had told him you had to hear it live.
“…shining for you,” the music alive with light just as the lyrics were, and the first song came to an end, to be met with louder applause than seemed possible from this relatively small crowd.
Chen Jue laughed, wiping his face on a sky-blue handkerchief. “Did you like it? So glad you liked it! Now you know we love the Haixing sun, but we don’t forget we come of Dixing either, and here’s a song for our homeland."
This one was unfamiliar to Xu Jun, but the sweet, cascading major key phrases built on each other to striking effect, making him actually gasp at some of Chen Jue’s high notes. “…be thankful for the earth on which we stand…” Looking, with effort, away from the performers to the audience, he realized it was possible now to recognize the Dixingren there, outlined in threads of dark energy that gave something to the performance. How did they hear the singing, with that direct connection? Was there even more to it, further layers of counterpoint that Xu Jun’s Haixingren ears would never catch?
Guo Changcheng, beside him, had his hands clasped to his chest, eyes wide. Ye Huo’s face under the scarring bore something like grief, but his dark-energy thread was firm. Beyond them, Professor Shen’s TA looked delighted, while Chief Zhao was watching Shen Wei with a deep, focused intensity that Xu Jun couldn’t even look at without blushing.
The song ended on a chord spread over two and a half octaves, firm and solid as the earth underfoot, while Chen Jue’s high fifth rang like a struck bell.
When the applause had died down, Chen Jue turned to the crowd again. “You know,” soft-voiced, “that Dixing has been through very hard times lately, and longer ago.” Shen Wei was paler. Chu Shuzhi had moved a step closer to him, more obviously supporting him. “Here’s a song about what we've all longed for, about joining hands. I heard something on the radio from Haixing that reminded me of this not so long ago--” He nodded to Zhao Yunlan in the front row, and began to sing.
This song was slower, more stately, with long sweeping phrases over simple harmonies that emphasized the clarity of the pitch, and precise syncopations led by Chu Shuzhi’s firm bass. Unexpectedly, the audience started to join in on the last line as they learned the refrain. Xu Jun did not sing, too habituated to keeping any personal sounds out of the range of his recording equipment, but he heard Guo Changcheng and even Ye Huo joining in on either side of him. The dark energy effect seemed to lose a little of its beautiful precision, spreading wider and deeper instead.
“…when we’ll be free.” Chen Jue stretched out a hand on the last note, holding it long, until only the resonance of the dark energy remained. When it was gone, he smiled and took a large breath and laughed a little. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Just one more, we didn’t have so much time to rehearse, you know? It’s short, it’s for night and day, it’s for everyone we love.”
The last song was set in a lower register, letting the middle voices dominate, with Chen Jue’s effortless soprano just shading in the high notes. Chu Shuzhi and Li Minfei stood very still, glancing between each other every now and then to shape the rhythm. Shen Wei’s eyes stayed closed, eyelashes damp against his cheeks as he sang.
Resigned to the fact that he could not record the overtones of the dark energy, Xu Jun listened to it with his own ears: every song a once-in-a-lifetime experience, he thought, as they all used to be. Shen Wei’s voice and Chu Shuzhi’s parted company with the higher voices in a chromatic fall that brought unwitting tears to his eyes, and then the song ended—“love once again—" on a last soft, hard-won, rounded major chord. There was a long, long silence, while the glimmer of dark energy gradually faded from singers and listeners, followed by ringing applause.
Xu Jun took a deep breath and began to pack up his equipment, making sure all the digital recordings were safe. Ye Huo kept him company, arms folded and face impassive; Agent Guo had run over to Chu Shuzhi and was talking excitedly at him. Chen Jue was surrounded by a whole bevy of fans, and Li Minfei by what looked like a family group, Haixinghua and Dixinghua accents mingling.
Xu Jun looked for Professor Shen and found him among a mixture of university people and probably-SID staff, all talking at once. Gulping a little, he went over to pay his respects.
“Xu-tongxue.” Shen Wei looked very tired; Chief Zhao had an arm around his waist and he was not quite leaning into it. “Thank you.”
“I should thank you. This has been wonderful. It’s a whole new field of research!”
Chief Zhao threw his head back on a laugh. “You academics, heaven help us. I figure that’s your highest praise, eh?”
“Very close,” Shen Wei said calmly. “Xu-tongxue, I’ve taken the liberty of passing on your contact information to Xiao Chen and to Liu Hu’an, the Radio Dixing station manager. I imagine they will be eager to work with you in further research.”
“Thank you so much, Professor Shen. Really. This, well…” Xu Jun swallowed. “It was beautiful. I feel very lucky.”
Shen Wei smiled at him, warm and wistful. “You are. We all are. Very fortunate indeed.”