Rock On

by Howard Waldrop

  “Drag queen,” Rickenharp said. He slipped a folded twenty newbux note through the slot in the window. “Okay?”

  “Okay, but she takes her chances in there,” Carter said, shrugging. He tucked the twenty in his charcoal bikini briefs.

  “Sure.”

  “You hear about Geary?”

  “Nope.”

  “Snuffed hisself with China White ’cause he got green pissed.”

  “Oh, shit.” Rickenharp’s skin crawled. His paranoia flared up again, and to soothe it he said, “Well, I’m not gonna be licking anybody’s anything. I’m looking for Frankie.”

  “That asshole. He’s there, holding court or something. But you still got to pay admission, honey.”

  “Sure,” Rickenharp said.

  He took another twenty newbux out of his pocket, but Carmen put a hand on his arm and said, “We’ll cover this one.” She slapped a twenty down.

  Carter took it, chuckling. “Man, that queen got some real nice larynx work.” Knowing damn well she was a girl. “Hey, Rick, you still playing at the—”

  “I blew the gig off,” Rickenharp cut in, trying to head off the pain. The boss blue had peaked and left him feeling like he was made out of cardboard inside, like any pressure might make him buckle. His muscles twitched now and then, fretful as restive children scuffing feet. He was crashing. He needed another hit. When you were up, he thought, things showed you their frontsides, their upsides; when you peaked, things showed you their hideous insides. When you were down, things showed you their backsides, their downsides. File it away for lyrics.

  Carter pressed the buzzer that unlocked the door. It razzed them as they walked through.

  Inside it was dim, hot, humid.

  “I think your blue was cut with coke or meth or something,” Rickenharp told Carmen as they walked past the dented lockers. “Cause I’m crashing harder than I should be.”

  “Yeah, probably . . . What’d he mean ‘he got green pissed’?”

  “Positive test for AIDS-three. The HIV that kills you in three weeks. You drop this testing pill in your urine and if the urine turns green you got AIDS. There’s no cure for the new HIV yet, won’t be in three weeks, so the guy . . . ” He shrugged.

  “What the ’ell is this place?” Willow asked.

  In a low voice Rickenharp told him, “It’s a kind of bathless gay baths, man. Cruising places for ’mos. But about a lotta the people are straights who ran out of bux at the casinos, use it for a cheap place to sleep, you know?”

  “Yeah? And ’ow come you know all about it, ’ey?”

  Rickenharp smirked. “You saying I’m gay? The horror, the horror.”

  Someone in a darkened alcove to one side laughed at that.

  Willow was arguing with Yukio in an undertone. “Oi don’t like it, that’s all, fucking faggots got a million fucking diseases. Some side o’ beef with a tan going to wank on me leg.”

  “We just walk through, we don’t touch,” Yukio said. “Rickenharp knows what to do.”

  Rickenharp thought, Hope so.

  Maybe Frankie could get them safely off Freezone, maybe not.

  The walls were black pressboard. It was a maze like a tingler gallery but in the negative. There was a more ordinary red light; there was the peculiar scent that lots of skin on skin generates and the accretion of various smokes, aftershaves, cheap soap, and an ingrained stink of sweat and semen gone rancid. The walls stopped at ten feet up and the shadows gathered the ceiling into themselves, far overhead. It was a converted warehouse space, with a strange vibe of stratification: claustrophobia layered under agoraphobia. They passed mossy dark cruising warrens. Faces blurred by anonymity turned to monitor them as they passed, expressions cool as video cameras.

  They strolled through the game room with its stained pool tables and stammering holo-games, its prized-open vending machines. Peeling from the walls between the machines were posters of men—caricatures with oversized genitals and muscles that seemed themselves a kind of sexual organ, faces like California surfers. Carmen bit her finger to keep from laughing at them, marveling at the idiosyncratic narcissism of the place.

  They passed through a cruising room designed to look like a barn. Two men ministered to one another on a wooden bench inside a “horse stall” with wet fleshy noises. Willow and Yukio looked away. Carmen stared at the gay sex in fascination. Rickenharp walked past without reacting, led the way through other midnight nests of pawing men; past men sleeping on benches and couches, sleepily slapping unwanted hands away.

  And found Frankie in the TV lounge.

  The TV lounge was bright, well-lit, the walls cheerful yellow. The OmeGaity was cheap—there were no holo cubes. There were motel-standard living-room lamps on end tables; a couch; a regular color screen showing a rock video channel; and a bank of monitors on the wall. It was like emerging from the underworld. Frankie was sitting on the couch, waiting for customers.

  Frankie dealt on a porta-terminal he’d plugged into a Grid-socket. The buyer gave him an account number or credit card; Frankie checked the account, transferred the funds into his own (registered as consultancy fees), and handed over the packets.

  The walls of the lounge were inset with video monitors; one showed the orgy room, another a porn vid, another ran a Grid network satellite channel. On that one a newscaster was yammering about the attempted assassination, this time in technicki, and Rickenharp hoped Frankie wouldn’t notice it and make the connection. Frankie the Mirror was into taking profit from whatever came along, and the SA paid for information.

  Frankie sat on the torn blue vinyl couch, hunched over the pocket-sized terminal on the coffee table. Frankie’s customer was a disco ’mo with a blue sharkfin flare, steroid muscles, and a white karate robe; the guy was standing to one side, staring at the little black canvas bag of blue packets on the coffee table as Frankie completed the transaction.

  Frankie was black. His bald scalp had been painted with reflective chrome; his head was a mirror, reflecting the TV screens in fish-eye miniature. He wore a pinstriped three-piece gray suit. A real one, but rumpled and stained like he’d slept in it, maybe fucked in it. He was smoking a Nat Sherman cigarette, down to the gold filter. His synthcoke eyes were demonically red. He flashed a yellow grin at Rickenharp. He looked at Willow, Yukio, and Carmen, made a mocking scowl. “Fucking narcs—get more fancy with their setups every day. Now they got four agents in here, one of ’em looks like my man Rickenharp, other three took like refugees and a computer designer. But that Jap hasn’t got a camera. Gives him away.”

  “What’s this ’ere about—” Willow began.

  Rickenharp made a dismissive gesture that said, He isn’t serious, dumbshit. “I got two purchases to make,” he announced and looked at Frankie’s buyer. The buyer took his packet and melted back into the warrens.

  “First off,” Rickenharp said, taking his card from his wallet, “I need some blue blow, three grams.”

  “You got it, homeboy.” Frankie ran a lightpen over the card, then punched a request for data on that account. The terminal asked for the private code number. Frankie handed the terminal to Rickenharp, who punched in his code, then erased it from visual. Then he punched to transfer funds to Frankie’s account. Frankie took the terminal and double-checked the transfer. The terminal showed Rickenharp’s adjusted balance and Frankie’s gain.

  “That’s gonna eat up half your account, Harpie,” Frankie said.

  “I got some prospects.”

  “I heard you and Mose parted company.”

  “How’d you get that so fast?”

  “Ponce was here buying.”

  “Yeah, well—now I’ve dumped the dead weight, my prospects are even better.” But as he said it he felt dead weight in his gut.

  “ ’S your bux, man.” Frankie reached into the canvas carry-on, took out three pre-weighed bags of blue powder. He looked faintly amused. Rickenharp didn’t like the look. It seemed to say, I knew you’d come back, you sorry little wimp.
>
  “Fuck off, Frankie,” Rickenharp said, taking the packets.

  “What’s this sudden squall of discontent, my child?”

  “None of your business, you smug bastard.”

  Frankie’s smugness tripled. He glanced speculatively at Carmen and Yukio and Willow. “There’s something more, right?”

  “Yeah. We got a problem. My friends here—they’re getting off the raft. They need to slip out the back way so Tom and Huck don’t see ’em.”

  “Mmm. What kind of net’s out for them?”

  “It’s a private outfit. They’ll be watching the copter port, everything legit . . . ”

  “We had another way off,” Carmen said suddenly. “But it was blown—”

  Yukio silenced her with a look. She shrugged.

  “Verr-rry mysterious,” Frankie said. “But there are safety limits to curiosity. Okay. Three grand gets you three berths on my next boat out. My boss’s sending a team to pick up a shipment. I can probably get ’em on there. That’s going east, though. You know? Not west or south or north. One direction and one only.”

  “That’s what we need,” Yukio said, nodding, smiling. Like he was talking to a travel agent. “East. Someplace Mediterranean.”

  “Malta,” Frankie said. “Island of Malta. Best I can do.” Yukio nodded. Willow shrugged. Carmen assented by her silence.

  Rickenharp was sampling the goods. In the nose, to the brain, and right to work. Frankie watched him placidly. Frankie was a connoisseur of the changes drugs made in people. He watched the change of expression on Rickenharp’s face. He watched Rickenharp’s visible shift into ego drive.

  “We’re gonna need four berths, Frankie,” Rickenharp said.

  Frankie raised an eyebrow. “You better decide after that shit wears off.”

  “I decided before I took it,” Rickenharp said, not sure if it was true.

  Carmen was staring at him. He took her by the arm and said, “Talk to you a minute?” He led her out of the lounge, into the dark hallway. The skin of her arm was electrically sweet under his fingers. He wanted more. But he dropped his hand from her and said, “Can you get the bux?”

  She nodded. “I got a fake card, dips into—well, it’ll get it for us. I mean, for me and Yukio and Willow. I’d have to get authorization to bring you. And I can’t do that.”

  “Know what? I won’t help you get out otherwise.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “Yeah, I do. I’m ready to go. I just go back and get my guitar.”

  “The guitar’ll be a burden where we’re going. We’re going into occupied territory, to get where we want to be. You’d have to leave the guitar.”

  He almost wavered at that. “I’ll check it into a locker. Pick it up someday. Thing is—if they watched us with that bird, they saw me with you. They’ll assume I’m part of it. Look, I know what you’re doing. The SA’s looking for you. Right? So that means you’re—”

  “Okay, hold it, shit; keep your voice down. Look—I can see where maybe they marked you, so you got to get off the raft, too. Okay, you go with us to Malta. But then you—”

  “I got to stay with you. The SA’s everywhere. They marked me.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out in a soft whistle through her teeth. She stared at the floor. “You can’t do it.” She looked at him. “You’re not the type. You’re a fucking artist.”

  He laughed. “You say that like it’s the lowest insult you can come up with. Look—I can do it. I’m going to do it. The band is dead. I need to . . . ” He shrugged helplessly. Then he reached up and took her sunglasses off, looked at her shadowed eyes. “And when I get you alone I’m going to batter your cervix into jelly.”

  She punched him hard in the shoulder. It hurt. But she was smiling. “You think that kind of talk turns me on? Well, it does. But it’s not going to get you into my pants. And as for going with us—What you think this is? You’ve seen too many movies.”

  “The SA’s marked me, remember? What else can I do?”

  “That’s not a good enough reason to . . . to become part of this thing. You got to really believe in it, because it’s hard. This is not a celebrity game show.”

  “Jesus. Give me a break. I know what I’m doing.”

  That was bullshit. He was trashed. He was blown. My computer’s experiencing a power surge. Motherboard fried. Hell, then burn out the rest.

  He was living a fantasy. But he wasn’t going to admit it. He repeated, “I know what I’m doing.”

  She snorted. She stared at him. “Okay,” she said.

  And after that everything was different.

  Besides having written numerous stories and books, being seminal to cyberpunk sf, and termed a “post-modern Poe,” John Shirley was lead singer of the punk band Sado-Nation, the post-punk band Obsession (Celluloid Records), and was later in the band Panther Moderns. He currently records with The Screaming Geezers. He’s also written eighteen song lyrics recorded by Blue Öyster Cult. His latest novel is Everything Is Broken and his classic cyberpunk trilogy, A Song Called Youth, was recently released as an omnibus. (“Freezone” and Rickenharp became part of the first volume, Eclipse.) A compilation double album with selections of his music, Broken Mirror Glass: Recordings by John Shirley 1978-2012, will be released by Black October Records in December 2012. Other music by John can be heard at reverbnation.com/johnshirley. His website is john-shirley.com.

  Hobnoblin Blues

  Elizabeth Bear

  Tracks: How do you define yourself?

  Loki: I don’t. (laughter) Fuck, why do you people always ask me that?[1]

  There’s always a secret history, stories that remain unreported, tales too ticklish to tell. No matter how many soul-and-skin-baring biographies are writ, no matter how many groupies sell their stories to The Midnight Sun.

  It’s a source of intense frustration to the press that more—don’t.

  Something about Loki makes people keep secrets. Not just his lovers (the ephemeral ones or the few that linger over more than breakfast). Even the interviewers do it, as if they need to hoard clandestine fragments to gloat over.

  You do it, too.

  But you have more to work with. You know his real name isn’t that stupid collection of nonsense syllables. And you know he doesn’t come from here.

  When he fell, you fell with him.

  Not for rebellion, but for love.

  Monster Bones, the second album by controversial British songwriter Loki, looks to be a major breakout. The nine tracks, unified by themes of loss and catastrophe, range from “Golden Apples,” a meditation on mortality—the apples hold the secret of eternal life, but like Sleeping Beauty’s are poisoned—to the epic, Zeppelinesque crunch of “Bad Water,” while the title track—a transparent commentary on the likely eventual legacy of the Vietnam conflict—uses crisp guitar and a killer bassline to underscore the point of view of a giant-killer revisiting the resting place of the adversary that crippled him: Prone under a forked white sky / I stare up a roof of bones / Bake under a crucified sun.

  For a rock-and-roll singer, Loki demonstrates an astonishing vocal range. It’s surprising to learn that he has no classical training, because the overall impression of his soaring performance is something like a Carole King with balls. With Monster Bones, Loki takes a hard look at the blues, and dumps it on its ass to take up with rock ’n’ roll. A brilliant departure.[2]

  Loki says, laughing, “Look at this nonsense, Hob. They can’t even get their own fairy tales right.”

  You pull the flimsy magazine from his hand, already folded to the important page. Loki is paying more attention to the pretty redheaded boy nuzzling his neck.

  Later, on the title track of a 1983 release, Loki will revisit those lyrics, in a song that most people will assume is about cocaine addiction.

  People, you will both have learned by then, will almost always assume.

  The cancer, he’ll sing, in the wailing apocalyptic style that’s just a crippled ech
o of his true voice, speaks with a forked white tongue. The cancer croons with a forked white tongue.

  He was born Martin Trevor Blandsford in Manchester, UK, in 1950, where he attended grammar and vocational schools. In 1966, he dropped out, ran off to London, and in the company of three other young men took a famously squalid two-room flat in Soho.

  There was nothing to indicate that within six years, Martin Blandsford would be transformed into a rock-and-roll avatar.

  He craved shock, but for years it must have seemed he was born just a little too late. His mid-seventies revelations of drug abuse, bisexuality, and financial mismanagement failed to adequately galvanize a press already inured to the excesses of performers such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, and the Rolling Stones.

  The fulfillment of Loki’s desire to set the music establishment on its heels—or on its ear—would have to wait until 1980. When he’d do just that, in the most spectacular manner possible.[3]

  Robbin Howard “Hobnoblin” Just:

  7 July 1950 –

  Instruments: saxophone, mandolin, keyboards, rhythm guitar. Backing vocals.

  A respected and steady-handed session musician, most noted for his work with Loki. Just was one of two members of the legendary 1970’s touring band to continue performing with the singer after his 1980-1981 transformation (the other was bassist Ramona Henkman). He continued to record and travel with Loki until 2004, when the androgynous rocker put himself, Just—and the entire music industry—out of a job.[4]

  Loki purses his lips, sips Irish coffee, and lifts the back-folded newspaper in his left hand. He reads over the tops of his sunglasses. “Seven months ago, when Loki toured in support of Monster Bones, he and his five-man backing band shattered attendance records—and possibly a few eardrums. Ranting, charismatic, with an indefatigable stage presence, the tall black-haired rock God bestrode the stage—and the microphone stand—like a modern titan.”