But she never did. A prospective employer never wanted more than one look at her slight body and her worn, sullen face. And Baque doubted that he would receive any better treatment.
He could get work as a multichord player and make a good income—but if he did he’d have to join the Performers’ Guild, which meant that he’d have to resign from the Tunesmiths’ Guild. So the choice was between performing and composing; the guilds wouldn’t let him do both.
“Damn the guilds! Damn Coms!”
When he reached the street, he stood for a moment watching the crowds shooting past on the swiftly moving conveyer. A few people glanced at him and saw a tall, gawky, balding man in a frayed, badly fitting suit. They would consider him just another derelict from a shabby neighborhood, he knew, and they would quickly look the other way while they hummed a snatch from one of his Coms.
He hunched up his shoulders and walked awkwardly along the stationary sidewalk. At a crowded restaurant he turned in, found a table at one side, and ordered beer. On the rear wall was an enormous visiscope screen where the Coms followed each other without interruption. Around him the other customers watched and listened while they ate. Some nodded their heads jerkily in time with the music. A few young couples were dancing on the small dance floor, skillfully changing steps as the music shifted from one Com to another.
Baque watched them sadly and thought about the way things had changed. At one time, he knew, there had been special music for dancing and special groups of instruments to play it. And people had gone to concerts by the thousands, sitting in seats with nothing to look at but the performers.
All of it had vanished. Not only the music, but art and literature and poetry. The plays he once read in his grandfather’s school books were forgotten.
James Denton’s Visiscope International decreed that people must look and listen at the same time, and that the public attention span wouldn’t tolerate long programs. So there were Coms.
Damn Coms!
When Val returned to the apartment an hour later, Baque was sitting in the corner staring at the battered plastic cabinet that held the crumbling volumes he had collected from the days when books were still printed on paper—a scattering of biographies, books on music history, and technical books about music theory and composition. Val looked twice about the room before she noticed him, and then she confronted him anxiously, stark tragedy etching her wan face.
“The man’s coming to fix the food synthesizer.”
“Good,” Baque said.
“But the landlord won’t wait. If we don’t pay him day after tomorrow—pay him everything—we’re out.”
“So we’re out.”
“Where will we go? We can’t get in anywhere without paying something in advance.”
“So we won’t get in anywhere.”
She fled sobbing into the bedroom.
THE NEXT MORNING Baque resigned from the Tunesmiths’ Guild and joined the Performers’ Guild. Hulsey’s round face drooped mournfully when he heard the news. He loaned Baque enough money to pay his guild registration fee and quiet the landlord, and he expressed his sorrow in eloquent terms as he hurried Baque out of his office. He would, Baque knew, waste no time in assigning Baque’s clients to his other tunesmiths—to men who worked faster and not so well.
Baque went to the Guild Hall, where he sat for five hours waiting for a multichord assignment. He was finally summoned to the secretary’s office and brusquely motioned into a chair. The secretary eyed him suspiciously.
“You belonged to the Performers’ Guild twenty years ago, and you left it to become a tunesmith. Right?”
“Right,” Baque said.
“You lost your seniority after three years. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“I did, but I didn’t think it mattered. There aren’t many good multichord players around.”
“There aren’t many good jobs around, either. You’ll have to start at the bottom.” He scribbled on a slip of paper and thrust it at Baque. “This one pays well, but we have a hard time keeping a man there. Lankey isn’t easy to work for. If you don’t irritate him too much—well, then we’ll see.”
Baque rode the conveyer out to the New Jersey Space Port, wandered through a rattletrap slum area getting his directions hopelessly confused, and finally found the place almost within radiation distance of the port. The sprawling building had burned at some time in the remote past. Stubbly remnants of walls rose out of the weed-choked rubble. A wall curved toward a dimly lit cavity at one corner, where steps led uncertainly downward. Overhead, an enormous sign pointed its flowing colors in the direction of the port. The LANKEY-PANK OUT.
Baque stepped through the door and faltered at the onslaught of extraterrestrial odors. Lavender-tinted tobacco smoke, the product of the enormous leaves grown in bot-domes in the Lunar Mare Crisium, hung like a limp blanket midway between floor and ceiling. The revolting, cutting fumes of blast, a whisky blended with a product of Martian lichens, staggered him. He had a glimpse of a scattered gathering of tough spacers and tougher prostitutes before the doorman planted his bulky figure and scarred caricature of a face in front of him.
“You looking for someone?”
“Mr. Lankey.”
The doorman jerked a thumb in the direction of the bar and noisily stumbled back into the shadows. Baque walked toward the bar.
He had no trouble in picking out Lankey. The proprietor sat on a tall stool behind the bar. In the dim, smoke-streaked light his taut pale face had a spectral grimness. He leaned an elbow on the bar, fingered his flattened stump of a nose with the two remaining fingers on his hairy hand, and as Baque approached he thrust his bald head forward and eyed him coldly.
“I’m Erlin Baque,” Baque said.
“Yeah. The multichord player. Can you play that multichord, fellow?”
“Why, yes, I can play—”
“That’s what they all say, and I’ve had maybe two in the last ten years that could really play. Most of them come out here figuring they’ll set the thing on automatic and fuss around with one finger. I want that multichord played, fellow, and I’ll tell you right now—if you can’t play you might as well jet for home. There isn’t any automatic on my multichord. I had it disconnected.”
“I can play,” Baque told him.
“All right. It doesn’t take more than one Com to find out. The guild rates this place as Class Four, but I pay Class One rates if you can play. If you can really play, I’ll slip you some bonuses the guild won’t know about. Hours are six P.M. to six A.M., but you get plenty of breaks, and if you get hungry or thirsty just ask for what you want. Only go easy on the hot stuff. I won’t go along with a drunk multichord player no matter how good he is. Rose!”
He bellowed the name a second time, and a woman stepped from a door at the side of the room. She wore a faded dressing gown, and her tangled hair hung untidily about her shoulders. She turned a small, pretty face toward Baque and studied him boldly.
“Multichord,” Lankey said. “Show him.”
Rose beckoned, and Baque followed her toward the rear of the room. Suddenly he halted in amazement.
“What’s the matter?” Rose asked.
“No visiscope!”
“No. Lankey says the spacers want better things to look at than soapsuds and flyers.” She giggled. “Something like me, for example.”
“I never heard of a restaurant without visiscope.”
“Neither did I, until I came here. But Lankey’s got three of us to sing the Coms, and you’re to do the multichord with us. I hope you make the grade. We haven’t had a multichord player for a week, and it’s hard singing without one.”