She said, “I would like to meet him.”
The guy called Justin may have silently snorted, I’m not sure. He had beady eyes and his mustache was like mine except smaller and more neat. I was running into a lot of mustaches like mine. The guy who was killed had one, too. Maybe I should shave mine off.
“Yes,” I said. “Tom’s a good guy.” I really didn’t want to start thinking about the dead man again. I remembered then that I’d dreamt about him, but I couldn’t remember what the dream was. I said, “Does the phrase ‘sugar bear’ mean anything to either of you?”
“No. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Had they reacted? Maybe. Maybe not. Justin looked at me, then his eyes shifted away. I decided he squinted too much. I said, “What do you people do?”
“I’m a foreman for a construction company,” said Justin.
Danielle said, “I take pictures. Of models, yes?”
“A photographer,” I said.
“What about you?” she said.
“I just do music.”
She nodded. “It is good that you can make a living at it, at doing what you want.”
“I don’t need much,” I said.
“But still—”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “I like it.” Nice smile.
Justin studied his nails.
Danielle said, “How did your band start?”
I wondered if she really wanted to know, or if she was just making conversation. Hard question, in any case, but I could pretty much stick to the truth. “We met right here,” I told her.
“At Cowboy Feng’s?” She pronounced it “Fenges.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were from someplace different.”
“We travel quite a bit.”
“And you happened to—”
“Jamie and Rose came in to hear some guy, and I opened for him.”
“Opened?”
“Played first.”
“Ah.”
“We got to talking after the show, and—” I stopped, as Jamie came walking up. “You can ask Jamie about it.”
“About what? Hi, I’m Jamie.”
I said, “Danielle, Justin. Danielle was asking about how we got together.”
“Oh. Rose and I introduced Billy to Bushmill’s Irish whiskey.”
“That was it,” I said.
Tom and Carrie joined us and Carrie performed introductions. She seemed excited about the whole thing, almost hyper. Her arms flailed madly about as she spoke, describing arcs and circles. I wondered if she was always like that. We brought Tom up-to-date on the conversation, and he said, “That was about the time I met Rose and Jamie, playing on the street. It was just a few days later, I think.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “Then, what, a month later, maybe, we went back to hear another band, and ran into Billy again, stayed up all night playing music, and had a band by morning.”
“Feng’s was the first place we played, too,” said Tom, which, like the rest of the story, was true as far as it went; we still hadn’t mentioned that it had been on another planet in another solar system in another time.
“And now you are back?” said Danielle. “It is wonderful. How many days will you play?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This weekend for sure, after that we’ll see. And speaking of performances, anyone want to go to see Souci tonight?”
The three locals said they were busy. Tom said he’d like to come along. I said, “We probably don’t want to stay out too late, since I want to move tomorrow.”
“Are you going to move it to yesterday, or to today?”
“Man” said Jamie.
“That almost isn’t funny,” I said.
La Violette turned out to be only a few blocks away. One thing I’ve noticed about colonies is that most businesses seem unwilling to pay the expense of neon. I’ve about come to the conclusion that this is good. The outside of the place was covered in bright fluorescent paint with scenes of people dancing, and, well, it seemed both fun and inviting. We went in.
I wonder how far back in human history the concept of “bouncer” goes, and if it has always been easy to pick them out. This one had red curly hair, a wide face with a square chin, and he wore a sleeveless grey sweatshirt. He probably took steroids. We yelled at him over the music, discovered he didn’t speak English, but when I told him my name, he found it and Rose’s on the pass list. After a brief discussion with Eve, the rest of our group was waved through.
It was the sort of club that seems as if it could have existed in any place at any time. Too dark, too crowded even on a Sunday night, air that was too stale and too full of smoke. The band was a five-piece called Les Sons Magiques. I couldn’t hear anything except the bass drum and the electric bass, with the exception of occasional notes from a Strat copy set to armor piercing. There were two rooms full of people trying to drink enough to distract themselves from how crowded and stuffy the place was, and I was very glad we weren’t there on a weekend.
“This is great,” shouted Rich into my ear. There’s no accounting for taste.
I shouted into his, “I’d like it more if they’d mix the vocals higher.”
“Why?” he shouted back. “You don’t speak French, anyway.”
A point. We found a table that was big enough for two. The six of us stood around it for a moment, then Rich and Jamie wandered off, and eventually came back with three chairs each. I don’t know how they do these things. By that time I’d begun to enjoy the swing quality to the beat and to appreciate some of the honky-tonk piano licks the keyboard player was throwing in. From the lead guitarist’s expression, he wasn’t taking things too seriously, which I liked as well. After watching him for a while, I decided he was sharing some sort of inside joke with the keyboard player; at least, they’d look at each other and laugh whenever they played a C-major seventh. I still wished I could hear the vocals.
Rich and Jamie set off once more, this time on a quest for drinks. By the time they returned, the band had taken a break, and there was canned music coming over the PA at just about the same volume. I didn’t recognize any of it—which was interesting. We’d left behind most of what was popular when we left London and arrived at Ibrium City—but then there’d been a whole style of music influenced by the bop of the 1950s that had followed us as far as Jerrysport, and it seemed we’d finally left it behind in exchange for an approach based on Classical European harmonies, Baroque melody lines, and Middle Eastern rhythms, the whole overlaid with some of the twisted minor-key changes I recognized from French Canadian fiddle tunes.
The vocals were still mixed too low.
Souci came on at the beginning of the next set, and, yeah, she was a good dancer. She and another were positioned at either side of the stage, and they got a high proportion of the total lighting in the room, and, from what I could see, the attention of the assembled hordes. She was wearing all black, and either makeup or the lighting was making her face even more pale than I’d remembered it. Someone, I don’t remember who, told me redheads aren’t supposed to wear black. Whoever said it was nuts.
It looked like we made eye contact and there was a flicker of recognition on her face, but I might have imagined that. I went back to watching the show. The other girl danced all right, but seemed a bit lackluster. The dancing involved wandering around the stage in a kind of shuffling walk, all but ignoring the music, then, at irregular intervals that must have had their own internal logic, they would break into hyperactive ballet movements. It really did fit quite well. The dancing taking place on the floor involved keeping one’s feet motionless, or else moving very little, while undulating one’s shoulders and neck. It looked unhealthy. Eventually Jamie and Rose got up and danced, and then I danced with Rose. They said it was more fun than it looked. We all drank some more. Tom drank nonalcoholic beer. I didn’t smoke. There you have it.
When the set ended, I had the bouncer send
a message to Souci that we were here. She didn’t appear right away, but I bought a drink for the lead guitarist, who was a pleasant fellow with very long brown hair and a shaggy beard. His name was Christian, and it turned out he spoke English and had a collection of old discs that included the Neville Brothers, Merle Travis, and B. B. King, as well as some that I probably should have known but didn’t. I drank some more and Tom started making jokes but Christian didn’t seem too put off.
Then there was another set, which was much like the first, then the night was over. Christian stopped over to say goodbye, and we suggested he swing by Feng’s next weekend, and he said he might. I had another gin and tonic while we waited for Souci, and I decided that I wouldn’t ask her whether I’d imagined her jumping at “sugar bear” yesterday; she could tell me or not. I also decided that I didn’t really want to let her know how hard I seemed to be falling for her; I had the impression that knowing about it might frighten her.
After about half an hour I asked about her and was told that she’d left for the night. Then we went home.
The next day we moved into the apartment that what’s-her-name had helped me find. It was a much smaller production that you might think. We brought Rose’s fiddle, my banjo, Tom’s mandolin, and Jamie’s six-string, one bundle of bedding each, a coffee maker, coffee, and cocoa powder. Tom’s new friend Carrie came along, and whenever nothing else was happening they were looking soulfully into each other’s eyes. It was to fwow up.
We sat on the floor and did a few tunes and drank coffee. I was feeling a sort of pleasant melancholy, and it was one of those rare, wonderful evenings where everyone is glowing with each other’s company, and you’re not talking about anything important, except that you are, and we didn’t laugh much, but smiled a great deal.
Later Jamie, Rose and I drifted back to Feng’s and I had spaghetti with white wine sauce which Rose refused to touch because it had mushrooms in it and Jamie pretended to be surprised about because it wasn’t spicy and he thinks I can’t eat anything that isn’t spicy. Rose went off to practice her scales, and Jamie said, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Nothing in particular,” I said. “You?”
He dropped his voice and leaned toward me, conspiratorially. “I’m going to start trying to figure out about this place.”
It was a moment before I realized that he wasn’t joking, then I remembered what he’d said before. “How are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might have some ideas.”
“Exactly what are you trying to find out?”
“Why it is that we keep landing places that are about to have nuclear weapons dropped on them, and why we keep bouncing out of them. Haven’t you ever wondered?” I think this last was irony.
I said, “There hasn’t been much chance to wonder since we, um, departed London. And when we arrived there, I think we were all pretty much in shock.”
“That’s true. Do you see any reason not to try to find out what I can?”
“Not offhand.”
“Okay. Any ideas on how to go about it?”
“I don’t know. Start with asking Fred and Libby. Maybe they’d know something.”
“Good idea. Want to help?”
“No, I’m going to find a library. I want to find out what’s happened in the universe since we’ve been away. For all I know, we’ve jumped a few hundred years.”
“I doubt it,” said Jamie. He looked around. “I haven’t seen anything really, you know, futuristic.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Shut up, asshole.”
After my morning coffee with cocoa I set out to find a local library. It was an interesting experience, which led to three different bookstores in three different parts of town before I figured out that “librairie” in French meant bookstore, and library was “bibliothèque.” After that I found a pretty big one, and I sat down and began digging, and kept digging until I lost track of time.
My diligence was rewarded. First of all, I discovered, in the English-language section, that New Quebec had been founded in what could be considered Earth year 2306. Then I turned to the section on galactic history, wondering how long there had actually been a need for such a section. It took a while, but I found out what I’d wanted to know.
I sat there until a librarian came along and threw me out. I’m not sure how I managed to find my way back to Feng’s, but I did, and I sat at the bar staring off into space. Libby wiped the bar in front of me and said, “What’s wrong, Billy?”
I shook my head.
She said, “Is it that redhead who was in here?”
I shook my head again.
She stared at me for a while, then said, “Is there something I can get for you?”
I thought about that, and its ramifications in a number of ways, and said, “Laphroaig.” She poured me a tumbler and gave me a glass of water along with it. The whiskey didn’t go down smooth; it never does. But the taste is strong, and to me it tastes more like scotch than any other. A bagpiper I knew in London insisted that it tasted like bagpipes. In point of fact, it tastes like I would imagine a peat bog to taste. I guess that was why I wanted it, just then. I enjoyed it not only for its flavor, and for its rarity on this planet, but for the fact that it was, essentially, irreplaceable, as was everything else produced on the radioactive ball that used to be the Earth.
Intermezzo
She looked so neat with her two bare feet
And the sheen of her nut-brown hair.
“Star of the County Down,”
Traditional
Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a house called fear. Every window was a place where strangers could look in, every door a means whereby they could enter. She stayed in her house as long as she could, and she kept the windows shut and the doors locked and only snuck a hand out every Tuesday and Thursday, early in the morning, to bring in the mail.
But she was not a foolish girl. In fact, she was very smart, and especially wise in the ways of the house of fear. While she knew that leaving the house was to invite strangers to poke and pry at her, and to Find Out about her, she also knew that she couldn’t stay there forever.
She made herself go out of the house. She never liked it, but she did it. She made herself act as comfortable as she could on the streets, because if she looked as frightened as she felt, it would attract the strangers.
Soon, she became skilled in blending into almost any crowd, any environment. She learned to speak foreign languages, and she made herself visit foreign countries, because she was frightened to. Each of her fears, in turn, she faced, and faced down, and defeated, because she knew that it was the only way she would be able to find someone strong enough to guard and protect her, so she could safely go back, and never emerge again from the house called fear.
Chapter 4
“Oh, bedamned then,” said Jack,
“This is quare bungle rye raddy rye.”
“Bungle Rye,”
Traditional
I finally told Libby, of course. I had to. Oh, I briefly entertained thoughts of keeping it to myself, but she’d have found out, anyway, and I make a lousy martyr. So after my first glass, I took a deep breath and said, “I’ve just learned what the current condition of the Earth is.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I know about it. Maybe I should have told you before.” She appeared unconcerned by the whole thing, except that she was wiping down an already clean bar, and pressing the cloth into the bar as if she wanted to take the polish off.
I accepted a second tumbler. “Do any of the others know?”
“Fred does.”
“How’d he take it?”
“Fred doesn’t worry about things he can’t help.”
“Yeah, I guess he doesn’t.” I took another sip. “I do.”
“I know. Pinhead.”
I was beginning to feel a bit woozy. I’ve always been a cheap drunk. I finished the scotch, which burned ni
cely all the way down, and Libby gave me another glass. I started to take an inventory of things that were forever gone from the universe, and I felt my eyes begin to fill with tears before I reached the third item.
“I’m getting maudlin, Libby. Distract me.”
“All right,” she said. “Want to go into the back room and screw?”
“Anytime.”
She laughed and so did I. I always wondered if she meant it. I had a little theory that she wondered, as well. I’d been tempted more than once to see what would happen if I called her bluff.
Libby said, “I want to buy some lights for this place.”
“Lights?”
“For the stage. Real lighting. Psychedelic stuff.”
“That’d be fun. Are you going to?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Go ahead and do it.”
She nodded, poured me another glass, focused on something behind me, and moved down to the other end of the bar.
I said, “Hi, Souci.”
She said, “Hi.”
There were several things I wanted to say to her, and several more things I wanted to ask her, but what came out was, “I’m drunk.”
“I can tell.” She sat down next to me and sipped some of my drink. She made a face.
“It’s a single malt whiskey,” I said. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“Why did you want to acquire it?”
I laughed, probably more than it deserved. Her eyes were either naturally narrowed or she kept them that way to make her look more feline. It was very effective, in any case. I leaned my head on her shoulder. She tensed, then relaxed. I touched her hair. I always think of red hair as being thin and stringy, but hers was not. It might have been whatever she used on it. Or maybe it was dyed. I rubbed it with my fingers and said, “Wanna take me home?”
“Okay,” she said, and helped me stand up.
On the stumble back to my apartment, I said, “Why didn’t you come out and see me, at the club?”
“Let’s not talk about it.”