Chorus Skating

by Alan Dean Foster

  And many, all too many more.

  If the threat hadn’t been so real, it would have been drop-dead funny. As it was, that was half true, and Jon-Tom was acutely conscious of the rising danger. He had to find some way to fight back. But it was hard to think of chords and lyrics when your ears were screaming in pain, your teeth were jangling, and the soul of music itself was being riven before your very ears.

  In the midst of the caterwauling, cacophonic specters he had called forth from some unimaginable Necronomicon of Pop stood Hieronymus Hinckel and his harmonica, grinning like a malevolent troll. Beset from all sides, Jon-Tom’s purple haze writhed and twisted under the dissonant assault. Just as antimatter could annihilate matter, so Hinckel’s antiharmony threatened to do the same to whatever spellsong Jon-Tom tried to promulgate.

  The odious vibrations threatened to shake the irreplaceable duar to splinters. If the duar failed, all was lost. Jon-Tom saw no recourse but to retreat.

  “Midi, veni, vici!” Hinckel cackled. Beckoning his army of failures to follow, he loped off in pursuit of the intruders.

  Trailed by Hinckel’s wailing phantasms, Jon-Tom and Mudge fled the keep. Around them the solid rock of the mountain was exfoliating as the antimusic pulverized the gray basalt, reducing it to traumatized shards. It was not surprising that in the confusion they missed the slope by which they had ascended.

  Screeching to a stop at the edge of a sheer precipice, Mudge sought frantically for an alternate route. Waves crashed against naked rock impossibly far below, their echoing boom a distant white-foam whisper. Jon-Tom slowed to a halt alongside.

  Hinckel and his unholy chorus were right behind.

  “Sorry, man. You had your chance. I can’t let you or anyone else stand in my way.” Then he did the worst thing possible.

  Accompanied by his spectral attendants, he began to sing.

  The open air did nothing to improve his voice, as pernicious an instrument as was ever propounded by an inimical strand of DNA.

  Mudge teetered at the edge of the drop, paws clapped desperately over his ears. “Do somethin’, Jon-Tom! I can’t stand it!”

  The spellsinger peered into the gorge. Not even an otter’s agility could get them down that smooth rock face. If they could cross the chasm to the next peak lower down, they could easily negotiate a path to the shore. Since neither of them possessed wings or the immediate prospect of acquiring same, this seemed an unlikely course of action.

  “I don’t know …”

  “Sing somethin’ ’opeful, optimistic,” Mudge urged him frantically. “Sing it loud, sing it clear.”

  The years had given Jon-Tom practice in composing melodies and lyrics under pressure. The song he eventually essayed was as lovely as Hinckel’s was harsh. Compared to their antagonist, Jon-Tom’s usually uneven tenor sounded like Nat King Cole.

  Exactly how Donner’s solo from the conclusion of Das Rheingold sprang to mind he couldn’t have said, but a rock version of the heroic soliloquy turned out to be exactly what the situation called for. He didn’t have a hammer with which to strike the stone underfoot, but he could call upon some seriously heavy metal.

  Purple haze billowed from the duar, not as a cloud this time but in a straight, almost machined arc. It leaped from the duar’s nexus across the dizzying abyss, changing color as it coalesced. Racing through all the hues of the spectrum, it solidified into a rainbow bridge that not only spanned the chasm but didn’t terminate until it reached all the way to the distant shoreline.

  Half mad from the pain of being subjected to Hinckel’s macabre vocalizing, Mudge didn’t hesitate. He jumped out onto the rainbow and started down, his boots sinking a couple of inches into soft florid evanescence with every stride.

  “Come on, mate!” he called back to Jon-Tom. “She’s holdin’!”

  “Not fair, not fair!” Hinckel tried to follow, but his courage wasn’t sufficient to let him step out onto the shimmering, translucent bridge. He didn’t have to. A ketchup-stained finger pointed in Jon-Tom’s direction. “Get ’em! Go for the ears. Turn up the volume!” On tattered but all-too-functional wings, the dissonant choir soared out over the bridge in pursuit.

  “Don’t look down, mate!” While wide enough to accommodate them side by side, the rainbow arch was hardly expansive. On either side the earth fell away for several thousand feet.

  Harmonic travesty assaulted their ears as they ran. Looking back, Jon-Tom saw that Hinckel’s minions were rapidly closing the gap between them. “They’re coming after us!”

  Mudge tried to increase his pace. He could move much faster than Jon-Tom, but his short legs put him at a serious disadvantage.

  “We’ll never make it, mate!” the otter gasped. “They can fly faster than we can run.”

  “I know. You can’t outrun bad music.”

  Hinckel intended to finish them, he knew. He wasn’t about to let someone of Jon-Tom’s ability run loose on his island, wouldn’t tolerate his presence as he did that of his sorry ex-band members. Already the rainbow was beginning to vibrate uncertainly as it suffered the distorting harmonics.

  Their pursuers had wings. Could he give himself wings?

  Of all things, what sprang unbidden to mind was a commercial jingle for a girl’s doll. A ludicrous snatch of mercantile doggerel, but it would have to serve. He didn’t have time to ruminate and reflect. Providing it with a ZZ Top lilt, he gave voice to a chorus of mind-numbing mediocrity.

  Silver air swirled about their feet. There were soft pinging sounds. An instant later they had resumed their downhill flight, this time accelerating without effort. Their outraged pursuers redoubled their efforts both aerial and musical, to no avail. The distance between pursuers and the pursued began to widen.

  All Jon-Tom and Mudge had to do now was keep their balance.

  “Bloody ’ell, mate; wot are these things?” Blessed with astonishing natural agility and a low center of gravity, Mudge had no difficulty maintaining his equilibrium. While he quickly mastered the situation, Jon-Tom was forced to work at it.

  “They’re called rollerblades!” Even though the otter was skating right alongside, Jon-Tom had to raise his voice to make himself heard. The wind in their ears increased along with their velocity.

  “Methinks I like ’em!” So saying, the otter began to skate backward, then on alternate feet, while Jon-Tom struggled mightily just to remain vertical. He almost said something when Mudge executed a neat forward flip, landing effortlessly on both skates. Screw him, he thought. If he goes sailing off the edge, it’ll be his own damn fault. He was too busy keeping upright to voice criticisms.

  “Never saw the like!” As he raced along, the otter bent double to study the alien devices now attached to his boots. They weren’t wings, but they enabled the two of them to rapidly outdistance the pursuing phantasms. The frightful music was now no more than a scratchy murmur in the distance.

  “Left ’em starin’ at themselves, we ’ave!” Gleefully, Mudge looked over at his friend. “Only one thing troubles me a mite, mate.”

  “What’s that?” Jon-Tom didn’t dare let his gaze deviate from the multihued path ahead.

  “’Ow do you stop in these things?”

  “You got me.” Nearly losing his balance, the spellsinger flailed madly with both arms and managed to recover. His duar bounced and bonged against his back.

  Using one hand to keep his feathered cap from flying off, the otter crouched low on his blades. “Righty-ho, then. I expect we’ll find out when we reach the bottom. Till then I aim to enjoy every minim o’ this. ’Tis a grand way to go, in every sense o’ the word!”

  Moving at a velocity somewhere between twenty and two thousand miles per hour, they rocketed past the startled trio of displaced Jerseyites. As soon as they recognized the speedsters, the ragged musicians let out a cheer. Neither man nor otter could turn to acknowledge the shout of approval: They were too busy trying to keep on their feet.

  Their constant companion from the time they’d
left the Bellwoods, the glowing chord cloud was forced to stretch itself to keep up with them. Attenuated to a thin line of notes, it looked like a pink wire pacing them down the rainbow slope. Having less mass than your average ghost, it could do nothing to help brake them.

  Having adopted an air of resigned detachment, Jon-Tom noted that the ground was coming up very fast now. He still had no idea how to stop. Nor could he utilize the duar; it was ludicrous to think of trying to play anything at the speed they were traveling. A wild light in his eyes, Mudge hung close to his side. It was a gleam Jon-Tom hadn’t seen in years. His rambunctious, irrepressible friend had reverted to the otter of his youth. Should they fail to survive their escape, at least one of them would perish in a state of sublime contentment.

  Barely able to acknowledge the enthusiastic waves and shouts, the two novice bladers shot past the assembled princesses and quartet of soldiers. Appropriately, the rainbow bridge terminated at the base of a cluster of wave-polished black boulders situated where the land met the water. There was no way anyone could possibly survive the coming impact.

  Jon-Tom was about to close his eyes when a swirling, confused haze coalesced before them. In its midst hovered a by-now familiar shape.

  “It’s about time! I didn’t think I’d ever—” The fixed compound eyes couldn’t widen, but the multiple jaw sections parted in surprise and both antennae shot straight up as man and otter plowed into the scintillating mist.

  It sucked away their inertia as efficiently as Jon-Tom would slurp chocolate milk with a straw. Throwing up his hands at the last instant to shield his face, he felt himself strike something unyielding. His stomach did a two and a half gainer with a triple twist. Nearby, Mudge let out a yelp of surprise.

  Jon-Tom decided the Earth was flat, just as the ancients had insisted all along. Someone had just flipped it like a coin, and against all odds it had come down on its edge.

  Chapter 24

  WHEN HE NEXT OPENED his eyes, he was lying on a parquet floor of yellow-orange wood. The individual tiles formed interlocking hexagons. Gone were the blades on his feet. His first thought was for the precious duar, which had miraculously survived intact.

  The floor didn’t feel right. Closer inspection revealed that it was not made of wood but some kind of clever plasticized imitation. Feeling carefully of himself he found he was bruised and sore but otherwise unhurt. Nothing was broken or bleeding, everything appeared to work as nature intended.

  What nature hadn’t intended, he told himself, was whatever had just happened to them.

  Mudge was already on his feet, sword in hand as he confronted their fellow traveler. It was, Jon-Tom had noted just before everything had gone cockeyed, the peculiar insectoid who had been dogging them ever since they’d left Mashupro.

  It stood facing them, fiddling with the thorax controls for the device strapped to its back. As Jon-Tom looked on, the instrument’s internal lights faded to black.

  Mudge didn’t take his eyes off the creature. “Jon-Tom, are you … ?”

  “I’m okay, I’m fine.” To prove it he made himself stand. His muscles registered a formal protest with his nervous system, but complied.

  “This was not foreseen,” their host was saying.

  “You’re not kidding.” Jon-Tom towered over the insectoid, which stood eye-level with Mudge. The chamber in which they found themselves had a domed ceiling. Furniture designed to accommodate someone with as many limbs as Jon-Tom and Mudge put together occupied all but the far wall. This was filled to the ceiling with electronics of a type unknown to Jon-Tom. Not that this was surprising. He had never been technically adept, believing, for example, that all computers were inherently hostile toward him and that any switch on a stereo beyond the volume up/down and on/off was superfluous.

  Of one thing he was certain: There was technology of a high order at work here. Or magic. It was all a matter of definition, or a definition of matter.

  “What happened to us?”

  “Oi, wot’s goin’ on ’ere?” Mudge gestured with his weapon, which in no wise seemed to intimidate their host.

  The creature’s voice emerged from a box hanging below its mouth. It preened its antennae with one hand while gesturing descriptively with the other three.

  “I thought that I had finally managed to appropriately engage your physical presence. Indeed, in that I was successful. Unfortunately, I was unable to adjust to the condition of your motion. In fact, I barely had time to swap the field. By which time I did, you were both already impacted. I can tell you, we were most fortunate to survive.”

  “I can believe that,” Jon-Tom declared. “I thought for sure we were people paste. Mudge, put up your sword. This … person … doesn’t mean us any harm.”

  “I certainly don’t.” The insectoid spoke with feeling. “You might as well know that while the circumstances of identified retrieval were imperfect, the final result was satisfactory.”

  Jon-Tom blinked. “Retrieval?”

  “Naturally. You don’t think I’ve gone through all this trouble simply to talk to you? This time my memory held and I remembered what it was I was after in the first place. This has required a far greater effort than I originally allowed for, but I believe it has been worth it.” He gestured to his left.

  Confined within some kind of flickering force field was the chord cloud. It hummed softly to itself, seeming not to mind that its movements were constrained.

  “You mean all this time that’s wot you were after?” Mudge was dubious. “That bit o’ wanderin’ music?”

  “That’s right.” The creature nodded in a most humanlike manner. “As our previous encounters have been all too brief and my memory subject to selective transposition-imposed blackouts, I have not had the opportunity to explain myself. That will be rectified.

  “First you should know that our more recent and altogether too hurried meeting has resulted in your being transposed from your world into mine. This is not a consequence of predetermined intent. When I planned our most recent confrontation I did not expect to find you hurtling toward me at a dangerous rate of speed. Circumstances compelled me to act with haste instead of forethought. Was I correct in assuming that you had little control over your velocity?”

  “Not exactly,” replied Mudge. “See, we didn’t ’ave little control. We ’ad no control wotsoever.” Studying the strange environment, he found himself speculating on the function of various objects and devices. Also on their possible monetary value back home.

  “You’re some kind of sorcerer?” Jon-Tom inquired uncertainly.

  Cazpowarex tapped his translator, as if to reassure himself that it was functioning properly. “In a manner of speaking. I am a dimensional physicist.” This time he smelled, Jon-Tom reflected, like frangipani.

  “I am also,” their pleasantly aromatic host continued, “a performing artist and musician.”

  “Now that’s an unusual professional pairing,” Jon-Tom commented.

  “In my world as well. By the way, though I am unfamiliar with your instrument, I’ve observed that you play quite well.” Jon-Tom swelled with pride. “As for your singing, however, I have to say that—”

  “Don’t you start. I have enough trouble dealing with his comments.” The spellsinger jerked a thumb in Mudge’s direction.

  “It would seem that your playing invokes physical properties that transcend ordinary physics. Some might think of it as magic.”

  “You should talk to my mentor, Clothahump. You two are sort of in the same business. How long have you been jumping between worlds, or dimensions, or whatever it is you’ve been doing?”

  “You have been privy to my initial attempts. The instrumentation, not to mention the driving theorems, are still under development. I thought to keep things simple by searching first for something vital which had gone missing.” He indicated the drifting, caged chords.

  Suddenly conscious of how tired he was, Jon-Tom looked for something that might serve as a chair. Finding nothing, he
remained standing.

  “Seems like you’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble to run down a few missing bars.”

  “Ah, but they are critically important.” Moving to a cabinet, he waved the doors aside and withdrew a device that looked enough like a gun to make Jon-Tom start. Picking up on his companion’s reaction, Mudge moved closer to his friend.

  “Wot is it, mate, wot’s wrong? And where are we? In one of the nearer hells?”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Caz commented. Jon-Tom stiffened slightly as their host turned to face them. “Would I go into your home and say something like that?”

  “You haven’t seen his home.” Jon-Tom kept a wary eye on the metallic blue device in the insectoid’s hand.

  Placing it on a small circular table, the physicist touched something on the side. Instantly the room was filled with music. It was all around them, as if the walls themselves were functioning as speakers. Which for all Jon-Tom knew, they were.

  There was visual accompaniment as well, in the form of an oscillating mist that changed shape and color in accordance with subtle shifts in tempo and volume. Though utterly alien to Jon-Tom’s ears, the waveforms were not unpleasant. A sweet, soaring melody served as the foundation for a succession of unique percussive effects. It was simultaneously uplifting and unsettling, the latter doubtless because he did not possess the cultural referents which would enable him to fully understand the music.

  Having covered his ears when the first notes sounded, Mudge now relaxed and listened. While he didn’t comprehend, neither was he repulsed. More musically sophisticated, Jon-Tom did a little better.

  “It’s very beautiful… I think.” The notes still lingered in Jon-Tom’s mind and the colors on his retinas well after Cazpowarex had shut them down. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “Your reaction is understandable. It accords with that of your fellows.”