Hulsey winced and shook his head sadly. “I see. Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. Here’s the check for the Sana-Soap Com.”
Baque took the card, glanced at it, and scowled.
“You were behind in your guild dues,” Hulsey said. “Have to deduct them, you know.”
“Yes. I’d forgotten.”
“I like to do business with Sana-Soap. Cash right on the line. Too many companies wait until the end of the month. Sana-Soap wants a couple of changes, but they paid anyway.” He unsealed the briefcase and pulled out a folder. “You’ve got some sly bits in this one, Erlin my boy. They like it. Particularly this ‘sudsy, sudsy, sudsy’ thing in the bass. They kicked on the number of singers at first, but not after they heard it. Now right here they want a break for a straight announcement.”
Baque nodded thoughtfully. “How about keeping the ‘sudsy, sudsy’ ostinato going as a background to the announcement?”
“Sounds good. That’s a sly bit, that—what’d you call it?”
“Ostinato.”
“Ah—yes. Wonder why the other tunesmiths don’t work in bits like that.”
“A harmonizer doesn’t produce effects,” Baque said dryly. “It just—harmonizes.”
“You give them about thirty seconds of that ‘sudsy’ for background. They can cut it if they don’t like it.”
Baque nodded, scribbling a note on the manuscript.
“And the arrangement,” Hulsey went on. “Sorry, Erlin, but we can’t get a French horn player. You’ll have to do something else with that part.”
“No horn player? What’s wrong with Rankin?”
“Blacklisted. The Performers’ Guild nixed him permanently. He went out to the West Coast and played for nothing. Even paid his own expenses. The guild can’t tolerate that sort of thing.”
“I remember,” Baque said softly. “The Monuments of Art Society. He played a Mozart horn concerto for them. Their final concert, too. Wish I could have heard it, even if it was with multichord.”
“He can play it all he wants to now, but he’ll never get paid for playing again. You can work that horn part into the multichord line, or I might be able to get you a trumpet player. He could use a converter.”
“It’ll ruin the effect.”
Hulsey chuckled. “Sounds the same to everyone but you, my boy. I can’t tell the difference. We got your violins and a cello player. What more do you want?”
“Doesn’t the London Guild have a horn player?”
“You want me to bring him over for one three-minute Com? Be reasonable, Erlin! Can I pick this up tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’ll have it ready in the morning.”
Hulsey reached for his briefcase, dropped it again, leaned forward scowling. “Erlin, I’m worried about you. I have twenty-seven tunesmiths in my agency. You’re the best by far. Hell, you’re the best in the world, and you make the least money of any of them. Your net last year was twenty-two hundred. None of the others netted less than eleven thousand.”
“That isn’t news to me,” Baque said.
“This may be. You have as many accounts as any of them. Did you know that?”
Baque shook his head. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“You have as many accounts, but you don’t make any money. Want to know why? Two reasons. You spend too much time on a Com, and you write it too well. Sponsors can use one of your Coms for months—or sometimes even years, like that Tamper Cheese thing. People like to hear them. Now if you just didn’t write so damned well, you could work faster, and the sponsors would have to use more of your Coms, and you could turn out more.”
“I’ve thought about that. Even if I didn’t, Val would keep reminding me. But it’s no use. That’s the way I have to work. If there was some way to get the sponsors to pay more for a good Com—”
“There isn’t. The guild wouldn’t stand for it, because good Coms mean less work, and most tunesmiths couldn’t write a really good Com. Now don’t think I’m concerned about my agency. Of course I make more money when you make more, but I’m doing well enough with my other tunesmiths. I just hate to see my best man making so little money. You’re a throwback, Erlin. You waste time and money collecting those antique—what do you call them?”
“Phonograph records.”
“Yes. And those moldy old books about music. I don’t doubt that you know more about music than anyone alive, and what does it get you? Not money, certainly. You’re the best there is, and you keep trying to be better, and the better you get the less money you make. Your income drops lower every year. Couldn’t you manage just an average Com now and then?”
“No,” Baque said brusquely. “I couldn’t manage it.”
“Think it over.”
“These accounts I have. Some of the sponsors really like my work. They’d pay more if the guild would let them. Supposing I left the guild?”
“You can’t, my boy. I couldn’t handle your stuff—not and stay in business long. The Tunesmiths’ Guild would turn on the pressure, and the Performers’ and Lyric Writers’ Guilds would blacklist you. Jimmy Denton plays along with the guilds and he’d bar your stuff from visiscope. You’d lose all your accounts, and fast. No sponsor is big enough to fight all that trouble, and none of them would want to bother. So just try to be average now and then. Think about it.”
Baque sat staring at the floor. “I’ll think about it.”
Hulsey struggled to his feet, clasped Baque’s hand briefly, and waddled out. Baque closed the door behind him and went to the drawer where he kept his meager collection of old phonograph records. Strange and wonderful music.
Three times in his career Baque had written Coms that were a full half-hour in length. On rare occasions he got an order for fifteen minutes. Usually he was limited to five or less. But composers like the B-A-C-H Baque wrote things that lasted an hour or more—even wrote them without lyrics.
And they wrote for real instruments, among them amazing-sounding things that no one played anymore, like bassoons, piccolos and pianos.
“Damn Denton. Damn visiscope. Damn guilds.”
Baque rummaged tenderly among the discs until he found one bearing Bach’s name. Magnificat. Then, because he felt too despondent to listen, he pushed it away.
Earlier that year the Performers’ Guild had blacklisted its last oboe player. Now its last horn player, and there just weren’t any young people learning to play instruments. Why should they, when there were so many marvelous contraptions that ground out the Coms without any effort on the part of the performer? Even multichord players were becoming scarce, and if one wasn’t particular about how well it was done, a multichord could practically play itself.
The door jerked open, and Val hurried in. “Did Hulsey—”
Baque handed her the check. She took it eagerly, glanced at it, and looked up in dismay.
“My guild dues,” he said. “I was behind.”
“Oh. Well, it’s a help, anyway.” Her voice was flat, emotionless, as though one more disappointment really didn’t matter. They stood facing each other awkwardly.
“I watched part of Morning with Marigold,” Val said. “She talked about your Coms.”
“I should hear soon on that Slo-Smoke Com,” Baque said. “Maybe we can hold the landlord off for another week. Right now I’m going to walk around a little.”
“You should get out more—”
He closed the door behind him, slicing her sentence off neatly. He knew what followed. Get a job somewhere. It’d be good for your health to get out of the apartment a few hours a day. Write Coms in your spare time—they don’t bring in more than a part-time income anyway. At least do it until we get caught up. All right, if you won’t, I will.