Chapter 17

Asmedogh napped for most of the rest of the day, still recovering his strength from what had to have been pretty major surgery. His kind seemed to recuperate a bit faster than we, but his body still wasn't functioning at par. And it was clear, especially from the shared impressions my mind had gleaned from him, that our talk had taken a lot out of him.

For my part I had a lot to think about. Part of me was already questioning the wisdom of what I'd suggested to him, and was clamoring for me to break my just-given vow and turn him in. But I shoved that part quickly under the rug, and mentally stomped on it a couple of times for good measure. In the first place I'd given him my word; in the second I kind of shared his species' view of the "warlike" nature of ours, and couldn't imagine anything even approximating a reasonable reception that he'd receive if I did report him.

I had Scarpia's example before me if I was in any doubt. He questions Cavaradossi, the tenor, briefly about information that he, Scarpia, wants, and when Cavaradossi won't answer immediately puts him to horrific torture. Sure, that was just grand opera, but it was verismo opera—meant to parallel the truth—and the scenario was pretty readily accepted as realistic. And with about half the country already supporting torture as an acceptable means of extracting information from suspected—only suspected!—terrorists, I wouldn't submit a goldfish to that type of "interrogation."

Come to think of it, that wasn't about to change—either my own views or the serious possibility of that kind of response if Asmedogh clammed up, and why wouldn't he? Which left me with an even greater dilemma than I'd first realized.

I was also beginning to think of the many questions I hadn't asked Asmedogh, and whose answers might be very important to how I resolved that dilemma. I knew I'd think of more as soon as I had the answers to my first set. But Asmedogh, I recognized, was done for the day.

Well, put it on the back burner for now. I did what I usually did in such cases, turned my mind off to whatever was troubling me at the time and on to music.

To Tosca.

I had, as I'd told Camilla, the notes; they were clear in my mind. But now I needed to assemble them into the music the composer had written, and that was another matter. I shifted my focus from rote memorization to an effort to dissect the character of the role.

Opera isn't, or at least isn't supposed to be, simply vocalizing the notes in the score. The whole idea is that there's at least some rudimentary acting that goes along with the music, so the thing comes together as a fully realized stage presentation.