Before every performance, Matte washed the part of the instrument that would touch her neck. Pem watched her do it from the lower stool. When she finished, he inspected the seal, spread his palms against the two pressure sacs and let the membrane fill.
She could speak without him. Singing the music people bought tickets to hear required both of them.
The resonator had been grown from Pem's tissues. It contained no independent mind, but its living membranes responded to the chemistry and pressure of his body. He kept it stable through contact pads while she drove air across it. Her voice emerged carrying harmonics a human throat could not make. From the stage, she seemed to produce them alone.
Pem sat behind the acoustic partition. His name appeared on the transport manifest under support apparatus.
Matte had objected to that once. The tour manager said the category made customs easier. She let him keep it because it did make customs easier, and because changing the manifest would not change the music they made.
The problem began with a journey. Their next engagement required an overnight atmospheric transfer in a pressure cabin unsuitable for Pem's resting state. He asked to travel a day earlier by freight liner, which had a compartment he could use safely.
The manager proposed sedation for the overnight transfer. Pem would wake at the destination, receive assistance and be ready after sufficient recovery time. The medical adviser had written sufficient where the actual schedule allowed three hours.
Pem refused.
The manager took Matte aside and explained the cancellation costs. He spoke quietly, as if Pem could not understand a lower volume.
"He's essential," Matte said.
"Exactly. We need him there."
She went to Pem. He was separating the membrane folds so they would dry evenly. His broad hands made the task look easy. She had seen other people damage the folds while trying to imitate him.
"What would make the overnight route possible?"
"A different cabin. A different schedule."
"Neither is available."
"Then I am not available."
She heard, with some embarrassment, how unfamiliar a complete refusal sounded from him.
Matte postponed the performance. She paid the additional travel cost from her share and insisted that the next manifest name Pem as a collaborator. The manager warned her that the new designation would create contractual obligations. She said she understood, and for an afternoon she felt satisfyingly clear about what she had done.
Then Pem asked to change the ending of the central piece.
It ended with the note everyone waited for: a high sustained interval that seemed to remain in the room after she stopped breathing. Reviewers called it impossible. Audience recordings of that note had made the tour viable.
To stabilize it, Pem had to hold the membrane at a pressure that drove a compensating contraction through the contact pads into his hands and chest. Matte knew it was difficult. She had assumed difficulty meant the same thing for both of them.
He showed her the darkened areas along his palms.
"How long?" she asked.
"Since the third week."
"Why didn't you say?"
He looked toward the partition she sang in front of.
She remembered asking, on a bad evening, whether he could hold it a little longer. He had said he would try. She had used the word we when thanking the audience for letting them attempt something difficult.
Pem proposed a shorter passage with two unstable harmonics allowed to separate. It would sound incomplete to listeners trained to expect her final held note. He demonstrated the pressure changes while she breathed across the resonator. The new sound slipped out of alignment and found a rougher interval she could not reproduce immediately.
"They won't recognize it," she said.
"They can hear it."
At rehearsal she tried to restore a brief version of the famous note. His hands tightened on the pads. She stopped, angry with him for making the cost visible, then angry with herself for wanting it hidden again.
They rehearsed until Matte could follow Pem through the unstable interval without forcing him back toward the old note.
The following night's audience waited through the unstable harmonics for the expected resolution. Matte could feel their attention gathering toward a sound she had chosen not to make. She ended the breath where they had rehearsed. Pem let the membranes relax.
Several people applauded late. One called for the real ending. The manager met them afterward with refund requests and a statement from the venue about advertised repertoire.
Matte asked him to divide the account between two performers rather than subtract it from a singer and her equipment. Pem asked to read it himself before accepting any charge.
While she was removing the neck seal, Pem began a sequence through the resting membrane. Without her airflow it was low and intermittent, but there was a line she could almost follow.
She asked him to repeat it.
He said he was still deciding whether he wanted it in the next program.
Matte put the seal in its case and waited until he was ready to tell her what part, if any, he wanted her to sing.
