“Hey, look at this!” Hook called across to me. He was waving a square of paper. I crossed back to him.
“It’s a program,” he explained, and began to read out loud, “ ‘Number Eighteen, the Hot Six Jazz Band, from Jupiter Metals, Pallas—an instrumental group specializing in traditional jazz, a twentieth-century style of composition and performance characterized by vigorous improvisation.’ Ha! Vigorous improvisation!” He laughed again. “I’ll vigorously improvise those—”
“Who’s that up there?” Fingers asked, pointing with his good hand at the video screen they had up on one wall. The performer on stage at the moment was a red-robed singer, warbling out some polytonal stuff that many of the people in the room looked like they wanted to hear, judging by the way they stared at Hook. The harmonies and counterpoints the performer was singing with himself were pretty complex, but he had a box surgically implanted in one side of his neck that was clearly helping his vocal cords, so even though he was sliding from Crazy’s tuning note up to the A above high C while holding a C-major chord. I wasn’t much impressed.
“‘Number Sixteen,’” Hook read (and my heart sledged in my chest all of a sudden; only two to go), “‘Singer Roderick Flen-Jones, from Rhea, a vocalist utilizing the Sturmond Larynx-Synthesizer in four fugues of his own composition.’”
“Shit,” Crazy remarked at a particularly high turn, “he sounds like a dog whistle.”
“Pretty lightweight,” Washboard agreed.
“Lightweight? Man, he’s featherweight!” Crazy shouted, and laughed loudly at his own joke; he was feeling pretty good. I noticed we were causing a general exodus from the main waiting room. People were drifting into the practice chambers to get away from us, and there was a growing empty space surrounding our group of chairs. I caught Hook’s eye and he seemed to get my meaning. He shrugged a “Fuck them,” but he got Crazy to pick up his tuba and go over some turns with him, which calmed things down somewhat.
I sat down beside a guy near our chairs who was dressed up in one of the simpler costumes in the room, a brown-and-gold robe. He had been, watching us with what seemed like friendly interest the whole time we’d been there.
“You look like you’re having fun,” he said.
“Sure,” I agreed. “How about you?”
“I’m a little scared to be enjoying myself fully.”
“I know the feeling. What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the instrument in his lap.
“Tone-bar,” he said, running his fingers over it; without amplification it made only the ghost of a rippling glissando.
“Is that a new thing?” I asked.
“Not this time. Last time it was.”
“You’ve tried this before?”
“Yes,” he said, “I won, too.”
“You won!” I exclaimed. “You got one of the grants?” He nodded. “So what are you doing back here?”
“That grant only gets you from place to place. It doesn’t guarantee you’re going to make enough to keep traveling once you’re done with it.”
“Well, will these folks give a grant twice?”
“They’ve never done it before,” he, said, and looked up from his tone-bar to smile lopsidedly at me. “So I’ve got quite a job today, don’t I.”
“I guess,” I said.
We watched the video for a while. As the singer juggled the three parts of his fugue Tone-bar shook his head. “Amazing, isn’t he,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “The question is, do you listen to music to be amazed.”
He laughed. “I don’t know, but the audience thinks so.”
“I bet they don’t,” I said.
This time he didn’t laugh. “So did I”
Number Sixteen was leaving the stage and being replaced by Number Seventeen. That meant we wouldn’t be on for an hour or so. I wished we were going on sooner; all the excitement I had felt was slowly collecting into a tense knot below my diaphragm. And I could see signs of the same thing happening to the others. Not Crazy; he was still rowdy as ever; he was marching about the room with his tuba, blasting it in the technicians’ ears and annoying as many people as possible. But I had seen Fingers wandering toward the piano, undoubtedly planning to join Hook and Crazy in the phrases they were working on; some character wrapped in purple-and-blue sheets sat down just ahead of him and began to play some fast complicated stuff, classical probably, with big dramatic hand-over-hands all up and down the keys. Fingers turned around and sat back down, hands hidden in his lap, and watched the guy play; and when the guy got up Fingers just sat there, looking down at his lap like be hadn’t noticed.
And Sidney got quieter and quieter. He stared up at the video and watched a quartet of people fidget around a big box that they all played together, and as he stared he sank into his chair and closed around his clarinet. He was getting scared again. All the excitement and energy the band had generated on the trip over had disappeared, leaving only Washboard’s insistent tapping and Crazy’s crazy antics, which were gaining us more and more enemies among the other performers.
While I was still wondering what to do about this (because I felt like I was at least as scared as Sidney) Crazy made his way back to our corner of the room, did a quick side shuffle, and slammed into another musician.
“Hey!” Crazy yelled. “Watch it!”
I groaned. The guy he had knocked over was dressed in some material that shifted color when he moved; he had been making loud comments about us from the practice rooms ever since we had arrived. Now he got his footing and carefully lifted his instrument (a long many-keyed brass box that turned one arm back into itself) from the floor.
“You stupid, clumsy, drunken oaf,” he said evenly.
“Hey,” Crazy said, ignoring the description, “what’s that you got there?”
“Ignorant fool,” the musician said, “It’s a Klein synthesizer, an instrument beyond your feeble understanding.”
“Oh yeah?” Crazy said. “Sounds a little one-sided to me.” He burst out laughing.
“It is unfortunate,” the other replied, “that the Blakely Foundation finds it necessary to exhibit even the most atavistic forms of music at this circus.” He turned and stalked over to the piano.
“Atavistic!” Crazy repeated, looking at us. “What’s that mean?”
I shrugged. “It means primitive,” said Tone-bar. Hook started to laugh.
“Primitive!” Crazy bellowed. “I’m going to go hit that guy and let him think it over.” He turned to follow the musician, tuba still in his arms; and before anyone could move, he missed the step down and crashed to the floor, as loud as fifty cymbals all hit at once.
We leaped over and pulled the tuba off him. It was hardly dented; somehow he had twisted so it fell mostly on him.