“Jimmy!” Miss Manning wailed. “My program—cut off. How could you?”
“Shut up, damn it! I just passed the word, Baque. Lankey's doesn't open tonight. Not that it'll make any difference to you.”
Baque smiled gently. “I think you've lost, Denton. I think enough music got through to beat you. By tomorrow you'll have a million complaints. So will the government, and then you'll find out who really runs Visiscope International.”
“I run Visiscope International.”
“No, Denton. It belongs to the people. They've let things slide for a long time, and they've taken anything you'd give them. But if they know what they want, they'll get it. I gave them at least three minutes of what they want. That was more than I'd hoped for.”
“How'd you work that trick in my office?”
“That wasn't my trick, Denton—it was yours. You transmitted the music on a voice intercom. It didn't carry the overtones, the upper frequencies, so the multichord sounded dead to the men in the other room. Visiscope has the full frequency range of live sound.”
Denton nodded. “I'll have the heads of some scientists for that. I'll also have your head, though I regret the waste. If you'd played square with me I'd have made you a live billionaire. The only alternative is a dead musician.”
He stalked away, and as the automatic door closed behind him, Marigold Manning clutched Baque's arm. “Quick! Follow me!” Baque hesitated, and she hissed, “Don't stand there like an idiot! He's going to have you killed!”
She led him through a control room and out into a small corridor. They raced the length of it, darted through a reception room and passed a startled secretary without a word, and burst through a rear door into another corridor. She jerked Baque after her into an anti-grav lift, and they shot upward. At the top of the building she hurried him to an air car strip and left him standing in a doorway. “When I give you a signal, you walk out,” she said. “Don't run, just walk.”
She calmly approached an attendant, and Baque heard his surprised greeting. “Through early this morning, Miss Manning?”
“We're running a lot of Coms,” she said. “I want the big Waring.”
“Coming right up.”
Peering around the corner, Baque saw her step into the flyer. As soon as the attendant's back was turned, she waved frantically. Baque walked carefully toward her, keeping the flyer between the attendant and himself. A moment later they were airborne, and far below them a siren was sounding faintly.
“We did it!” she gasped. “If you hadn't got away before that alarm sounded, you wouldn't have left the building alive.”
“Well, thanks,” Baque said, looking back at the Visiscope International building. “But surely this wasn't necessary. Earth is a civilized planet.”
“Visiscope International is not civilized!” she snapped.
He looked at her wonderingly. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide with fear, and for the first time Baque saw her as a human bejrig, a woman, a lovely woman. As he looked, she turned away and burst into tears.
“Now Jimmy'll have me killed, too. And where can we go?”
“Lankey's,” Baque said. “Look—you can see it from here.” She pointed the flyer at the freshly painted letters on the strip above the new restaurant, and Baque, looking backward, saw a crowd forming in the street by Visiscope International.
Lankey floated his desk over to the wall and leaned back comfortably. He wore a trim dress suit, and he'd carefully groomed himself for the role of a jovial host, but in his office he was the same ungainly Lankey that Baque had first seen leaning over a bar.
“I told you all hell would break loose,” he said, grinning. “There are five thousand people over by Visiscope International, and they're screaming for Erlin Baque. And the crowd is growing.”
“I didn't play for more than three minutes,” Baque said. “I thought a lot of people might write in to complain about Denton cutting me off, but I didn't expect anything like this.”
“You didn't, eh? Five thousand people—maybe ten thousand by now—and Miss Manning risks her neck to get you out of the place. Ask her why, Baque.”
“Yes,” Baque said. “Why go to all that trouble for me?”
She shuddered. “Your music does things to me.”
“It sure does,” Lankey said. “Baque, you fool, you gave a quarter of Earth's population three minutes of Sex Music!”
Lankey's opened on schedule that evening, with crowds filling the street outside and struggling through the doors as long as there was standing room. The shrewd Lankey had instituted an admission charge. The standees bought no food, and Lankey saw no point in furnishing free music, even if people were willing to stand to hear it.
He made one last-minute change in plans. Astutely reasoning that the customers would prefer a glamorous hostess to a flat-nosed elderly host, he hired Marigold Manning. She moved about gracefully, the deep blue of her flowing gown offsetting her golden hair.
When Baque took his place at the multichord, the frenzied ovation lasted for twenty minutes.
Midway through the evening Baque sought out Lankey. “Has Denton tried anything?”
“Nothing that I've noticed. Everything is running smoothly.”
“That seems odd. He swore we wouldn't open tonight.”
Lankey chuckled. “He's had troubles of his own to worry about. The authorities are on his neck about the rioting. I was afraid they'd blame you, but they didn't. Denton put you on visiscope, and then he cut you off, and they figure he's responsible. And according to my last report, Visiscope International has had more than ten million complaints. Don't worry, Baque. We'll hear from Denton soon enough, and the guilds, too.”
“The guilds? Why the guilds?”
“The Tunesmiths' Guild will be damned furious aboiut your dropping the Coms. The Lyric Writers' Guild will go along with them on account of the Coms and because you're using music without words. The Performers' Guild already has it in for you because not many of its members can play worth a damn, and of course it'll support the other guilds. By tomorrow morning, Baque, you'll be the most popular man in the Solar System, and the sponsors, and the visiscope people, and the guilds are going to hate your guts. I'm giving you a twenty-four-hour bodyguard. Miss Manning, too. I want both of you to come out of this alive.”
“Do you really think Denton would—”
“Denton would.”
The next morning the Performers' Guild blacklisted Lankey's and ordered all the musicians, including Baque, to sever relations. Rose and the other singers joined Baque in respectfully declining, and they found themselves blacklisted before noon. Lankey called in an attorney, the most sinister, furtive, disreputable-looking individual Baque had ever seen.
“They're supposed to give us a week's notice,” Lankey said, “and another week if we decide to appeal. I'll sue them for five million.”
The Commissioner of Public Safety called, and on his heels came the Health Commissioner and the Liquor Commissioner. All three conferred briefly with Lankey and departed grim-faced.
“Denton's moving too late,” Lankey said gleefully. “I got to all of them a week ago and recorded our conversations. They don't dare take any action.”
A riot broke out in front of Lankey's that night. Lankey had his own riot squad ready for action, and the customers never noticed the disturbance. Lankey's informants estimated that more than fifty million complaints had been received by Visiscope International, and a dozen governmental agencies had scheduled investigations. Anti-Com demonstrations began to errupt spontaneously, and five hundred visiscope screens were smashed in Manhattan restaurants.
Lankey's finished its first week unmolested, entertaining capacity crowds daily. Reservations were pouring in from as far away as Pluto, where a returning space detachment voted to spend its first night of leave at Lankey's. Baque sent to Berlin for a multichordist to understudy him, and Lankey hoped by the end of the month to have the restaurant open twenty-four hours a day.