probably need to work the act up here before we go on to our next venue.’
‘And where will that be?’ sneered Vid. ‘Someone’s garden shed?’
Tony patted Vid on the shoulder. ‘Word will spread,’ he told him. ‘This is only the beginning. After a month on the road, you won’t be waiting for the crowds - they’ll be waiting for you. Then you’ll be able to come back and play any venue you choose.’
Vid’s digital eyes rolled. ‘We never will, though, will we?’ he said.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘We’ll stay on the road. Once we’ve made a name here we’ll just go somewhere else and start again. We’ll be living night by night.’
‘I d-don’t think I could d-do that,’ said Nutter quietly.
‘Why not?’ said Ben. ‘You lost fights before didn’t you?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘And you always had another go? You had the heart to lose another fight?’
‘I s-suppose so.’
‘Then don’t worry. We can cut it.’
‘Y-you’re right.’
Riff sighed. ‘You’re going to listen to this joker?’ he muttered.
Ben turned to him. ‘Are you saying I’m wrong? What else do you suggest?’
‘I don’t care if you’re wrong or right. I just play the guitar.’
The stage in the converted church wasn’t as large as that at The Turret¸but neither was it as small as that at Café Igneous. It was, however, somewhat casual in its construction. Keys helped Nutter to set up his drums on an improvised podium of wooden packing cases at the back of the stage, whilst Riff, Ben and Vid busied themselves setting up the electrics. Occasionally Ben muttered something about manual labour, but a glance from Riff was enough to silence him.
After half an hour the stage was set. Riff picked up his guitar, switched on the amp and improvised a few bars of jazz. The sound resonated around the high ceiling, notes blending into chords, grace notes vibrating like the voice of angels. A few bodies to dampen the worst of the echoes and it would sound impressive. Riff nodded satisfactorily in spite of himself.
Ben breathed in the decaying embers of Riff’s guitar and sighed. There was something deeply spiritual about the place, despite the faded glory. ‘What was this place?’ he asked.
‘Church of some kind,’ said Keys.
‘I guessed that. Which religion?’
Keys looked at the vaulted ceiling and at the high arched windows. He took in the heavy wooden doors and the uneven stone floor. ‘An old one,’ he said eventually.
‘Is that all you can tell?’ Ben snapped. ‘I thought you knew everything.’
‘Why would I know that? It’s not as if they have religious programming on cable.’
‘It’s just you make yourself out to be so clever.’
‘Alright, if makes you happy I saw it on Changing Religions. It was an ancient or acoustic designers who quit when they found they were all tone deaf. Does that make you happier? Why do you care, anyway?’
Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just wouldn’t want to, you know, offend anyone.’
‘Try not speaking, then,’ said Vid.
Ben turned on the hovering robot. ‘Do you have to jump on everything I say?’ he snapped.
‘Just making sure it’s dead.’
Riff looked up from where he was tuning his guitar and stared at them sternly. ‘Are we here to play or argue?
‘Play, of course,’ said Vid. Ben said nothing. Riff looked at him, his eyes glowing a subtle shade of red.
‘Play, I suppose,’ Ben admitted finally. ‘It’s just he keeps making these wisecracks and it’s beginning to get to me.’
‘Look,’ said Riff. ‘We’re all tired. None of us got much sleep last night, so we’ll give them the best we can and then go back to the hotel for some rest.’
‘You’re tired?’ said Ben. ‘I didn’t think robots needed sleep.’
Riff ignored him as he continued to tune his guitar. Ben turned to Keys with a quizzical expression.
‘Oh, I see, now you want my opinion,’ said Keys. ‘You think I’ll know this one, do you?’
‘Please.’
‘Alright. We don’t sleep, as such, but we do have to have downtime. It gives us a chance to reorganise information we’ve taken in and cached, then we can store the bits that matter and throw out the garbage.’
‘And what happens if you don’t do that?’
‘Filing new information takes longer; our recall slows down and we take more energy to do less work.’
‘In other words you get tired.’
‘It could be said to amount to that, yes.’
‘And is it normal for robots to get sarcastic when they’re tired?’
‘Depends on how they’re programmed. If coming up with a quick answer is prioritised over coming up with the right answer I suppose, yes, it probably is.’
22
Coming down in the world in the world could easily lead to the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable; in this instance this was not least because the limited amenities the church afforded didn’t extend to a curtain. The band waited in what they could only assume to have formerly been the choir’s dressing room, waiting for their signal to go on.
Despite his stated optimism, Ben felt the change perhaps most of all. It was he who had felt most the star at The Turret; now his star appeared, for the moment, to have faded. It was difficult, under the circumstances, to feel particularly motivated.
The cue came and they went on. The audience clapped, but they sounded as unenthusiastic as the band. Nutter counted them in and they began to play, skipping the opening number by unspoken agreement on grounds it was too theatrical for this gig.
As they immersed themselves in their music, they were able to escape their worries a little. Perhaps Riff’s guitar wailed a little more with its player’s fatigue; perhaps Ben’s voice had more emotional depth; perhaps it was just an acoustic effect of the hall. Whatever it was, it came across well, and by the time the gig came to a close the audience were enraptured. They left the stage to a tumult of applause.
Back in the changing room, Ben paused by the open door and listened as the appreciation decayed into echoes. Then he sank gratefully into the room’s only chair and sighed. After a few moments he became aware of a sound, like the echo of distant drums. He put his head on one side and listened.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘What’s what?’ said Keys.
‘The banging.’
Keys listened. It was as if an army was marching slowly, but steadily toward in from the hills. ‘Sounds like they’re stamping.’
‘What for?’
‘Perhaps some killer ants have crawled out of the woodwork. It wouldn’t surprise me.’
Riff plucked his guitar thoughtfully. ‘They want an encore,’ he said.
‘Encore? Isn’t that something to do with fruit?’
‘It means they want us to play another song.’
‘But we just played,’ said Ben.
‘We played everything,’ added Vid. ‘Apart from the opener, anyway.’
Riff listened quietly. The stamping appeared to be getting louder. ‘Are you going to tell them?’ he said.
‘So what do we play?’ said Keys.
‘It’ll have to be a cover.’ He noticed the blank looks. ‘Someone else’s song,’ he explained.
‘Oh,’ said Vid. ‘Alright. Leave it to me.’
He rolled off in the direction of the stage. The band exchanged glances, but made no move to follow him. Outside, the stamping subsided to be replaced by cheering. Keys peered round the door.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Ben.
‘He seems to be just standing there.’
‘Perhaps he’s fallen asleep.’
Suddenly, music filled the room. It was coming from Vid, but it wasn’t his voice and he wasn’t even holding an instrument. The song seemed to be something about a lady who was fairly certain that e
verything she owned was worth a fortune and she was trying to pawn it all to buy a ride on the escalator to Nirvana. The audience had gone completely silent.
Ben looked at the others. ‘What the hell is he up to?’ he asked.
‘When Riff suggested we play someone else’s song, I think Vid thought he meant their recording of the song,’ said Keys. ‘I think we need to program him with a music dictionary.’
The song had now reached the point where it started to talk about disturbances at country fairs, which Ben had never really understood. ‘I’ll reprogram him with something,’ he muttered. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Well we could go out there, pick up our instruments and mime,’ suggested Keys.
‘What, now?’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Yes. We’ll stay back here and wait till he comes back off of the stage. It’s less embarrassing.’
‘Who for?’
‘Us.’
‘Fair enough.’
They continued to watch as Vid got to the bit where the listener is told that if they strain their ears they could hear the lady from the first verse re-entering the song and they could learn to become immobile rocks.
‘That song never did make much sense,’ said Keys to no one in particular.
‘Good guitar solo, though,’ said Riff.
Keys nodded. ‘Can you play it?’
In answer, Riff stretched out his arms as if he were playing guitar and began to move his fingers rapidly up and down his imaginary instrument.
‘And can you play it on a real guitar?’
‘Never tried. They won’t let me play it in the museum, anyway. There’s some kind of superstition about it.’
The song ended and Vid left the stage to a resounding silence. He smiled cheerily as he entered the changing room. ‘That stunned them,’ he said.
‘You think?’ said Ben.
Vid frowned. He looked to the other members of the band, all of whom fixed him with stern gazes. ‘What?’ he said.
‘You don’t think there was something… odd… in what you did?’ said Keys.
‘Odd?’
‘You don’t think, perhaps, it’s not usual to go to a concert to listen to the radio?’
Vid frowned, then realisation crossed his face along with a scrolling line of asterisks and punctuation marks. ‘You meant that we should have…’
The others nodded. ‘And you let me…’ Vid pointed back towards the hall.
‘You didn’t really give us time to stop you,’ said Keys.
‘Oops,’ said Vid, his screen flushing faintly red.
‘Oops, indeed,’ said Riff.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Keys, putting an arm around his friend. ‘You’re just tired.’
‘What are we going to do if we get an encore tomorrow?’
Riff and Keys exchanged glances. Riff shrugged. ‘Perhaps we need to learn a new song,’ he said.
23
The trip back to the hotel was made in near silence, the band members exhausted by lack of sleep and the day’s various emotional highs and lows. Only Nutter, perhaps as a drummer oblivious to developments15, seemed to have any energy. Deprived of conversation, he sat quietly at the back of the van, beating a gentle rhythm with his sticks on his knees.
They reached the hotel without incident, rousing from near slumber only at the cessation of the van’s engine. Back in the hotel, Tony walked beside them as they tramped along the corridor. He frowned slightly at the greeting from the trio of robots in the alcove, but made no comment. Once they reached the suite, he stood waiting expectantly for them to enter.
Ben was the first through the door. On the third attempt he fumbled the lock open and tripped – almost fell – into the room. Lifting his gaze from his feet, he stopped, stared and pointed questioningly at what appeared to be a small, white grand piano.
‘Was that there before?’ he asked.
Vid was the next to enter. He rolled up to look over Ben’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose it might have been.’
Keys entered and floated over to the instrument. He lifted the lid and picked out a few notes. ‘Well it’s definitely here now,’ he said. ‘We aren’t dreaming.’
‘It’s on loan from the ballroom,’ said Tony.
The band turned to look at him. ‘On loan?’ said Vid.
‘There’s a ballroom?’ said Ben.
Tony gestured broadly. ‘It’s an indefinite loan,’ he said. ‘They don’t make as much use of it these days.’
‘But why would we want a piano in here?’ Ben looked at his manager accusingly.
Tony appeared not to notice. ‘Tell me,’ he addressed the band as a whole. ‘What went wrong this evening?’
The band exchanged glances. ‘Nothing,’ said Vid eventually. ‘Unless you count the encore.’
‘The encore.’ Tony nodded.
‘The show was over,’ said Ben, but again Tony seemed to ignore him.
‘First rule of show-business: when the vox populi cries for an encore they must have an encore.’
‘I thought the first rule was don’t perform with children or animals,’ said Vid.
Tony moved to the piano. Vid moved aside to let him sit on the stool. The manager picked out a handful of notes, evoking an atmosphere of spaghetti and men in pinstriped suits. ‘The people are your reason,’ he said. ‘Without them, you’re just a bunch of nobodies who sing to themselves. When you stop listening to the people, they will stop listening to you.’
‘So we should have prepared, fine,’ said Ben. ‘Next time we’ll just hold a song back.’
This time Tony acknowledged him with a glare and a dischordant thump of the piano keyboard. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never hold anything back. You must always give your all.’
‘We did. That’s the problem.’
‘You must give a hundred and ten percent. That is why you need the piano.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘So you want us to write some more songs?’ said Keys.
‘I?’ Tony looked accused. ‘I? I want nothing. It is the voice of the people.’
‘Fine,’ said Riff. ‘We’ll write some more songs.’
‘Good. Tomorrow you will play me this song. It will be the kind of song that brings a show to an end.’
‘That shouldn’t be too hard,’ said Keys. ‘I suspect anything we write without sleep would persuade an audience to go home.’
‘No. It will be the song that people raise their lighters to.’
‘And torch the place?’ said Ben.
‘It will be… a finale.’ With that, Tony rose and departed. The band watched the door close, then turned to each other.
Keys picked out a few notes on the piano. ‘I guess that’s that,’ he said. ‘The order is given.’
‘He is rather demanding, isn’t he?’ said Ben.
‘Demanding?’ said Riff. ‘This is him being generous. You don’t want to see him demanding.’
‘What I want to know is how long this is going to go on,’ said Keys. ‘Is he just going to keep us going around the country until he gets bored or we stop making money and then leave us to our own devices.’
‘N-No,’ Nutter interrupted, the first thing he’d said since they had arrived. ‘H-he told me t-that this was j-just the beginning.’
The band looked at him. ‘Did he tell you anything else?’ asked Keys.
‘I c-can’t remember. Tony t-took me for a c-chat and… I m-must have fallen asleep.’
‘Good conversationalist,’ muttered Vid.
‘Y-yes,’ said Nutter. He took a step, then fell backward onto the floor. ‘I m-must still be t-tired.’
Vid and Riff helped him to his feet and escorted him into one of the ante-rooms. They exchanged worried glances as they returned.
‘Well, he seems even odder than usual,’ said Keys.
Riff shrugged. ‘Touring just takes it out of some people,’ he said.
‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand,’ said Vid.
‘What’s that?’
‘How do we give a hundred and ten percent? Surely, if we write another song that’s still a hundred percent, isn’t it?’
24
“Songwriting is a black art only performed by creatures who converse with darkness.” So it is written in The Litany of the Soul, the most controversial chapter of the book of sermons of the blue flame on Omicron II. It’s not a text popular with musicians, or even those drummers who can read16.
Religious doorsteppers on Omicron, however, are made of less tolerant stuff. As they wander from house to house, spreading the bad news that all life is sin, they are generally expecting some kind of challenge to their beliefs, and a vague protest from a half-stoned musician who has been dragged out of his hovel at some ungodly hour of the afternoon is little more than grist to the mill of their argument.
For the more difficult customer, however, the Litany provides the would-be supreme advocate with valuable argument. Much of the writing is vague – almost to the point of incomprehensibility – and this means that it can be readily twisted to suit any question that might arise. Should, for example, a music-lover argue that songs are a thing of beauty and cannot therefore be evil, the pamphleteer would argue that the fires of Hell can seem pretty to those who have not lived in blue. This usually at least confuses the arguer into silence.
The book also has more specific things to say about songwriting. In fact, it is the one topic on which it can be said to be specific:
1. And from where O’profaner of souls does your music come?
2. I cannot say, but that it comes to me.
3. You say it comes to you? Aha.
4. What do you mean, “Aha?”
5. I mean only that you admit in your words that the music comes from elsewhere.
6. That’s not right. You used the word “come” before I did. I was only repeating it.
7. Silence, profaner. You cannot answer from where your music comes because you do not know. You are not in control of your mind.
8. Look, when the muse takes me…
9. Fie!! You speak possession. For who is this muse if not an embodiment of the evil one? You may argue that your song came from inspiration, from dreams, or a man on a flaming pasty gave you a songbook in exchange for your soul17, but the fact remains…
And this is hard to argue with. After all, no musician would ever claim his songs are simply the product of staring at too many girls in tight trousers, or something that came up after a really good joint, not least because even they would realise that this was to play into the zealot’s hands. All of which explains why the Litany is not simply popular with doorsteppers, it is considered the source of absolute and irrefutable truth – although of what nobody is really sure.
One question which musicians will happily answer is where they write their songs. Many will say that they find expensive holidays are conducive to good songwriting, whether it be a tax-deductible snow-covered mountain retreat or a hut on a beach somewhere; others will say that they prefer to write at home or in their own studio; some will even say that they prefer to write on a train or in a car, where the changing scenery can stimulate their minds and help with the flow of ideas.
It is almost universally agreed that the worst place to write songs is in a hotel room when your manager has locked you in with a piano.
Plonk-plonk-plonk plonk-plonk-plonk, plonk-plonk-plonk plonk-plonk-plonk, plonk-plonk-plonk plonk-plonk-plonk, plonk-plonk-plonk-plonk diddle-diddle… Keys idly played the piano with one hand whilst scratching his chin with another. He didn’t have an itch, but he had heard