“Till Philadelphia,” I said. “Like Marjory Cale.”
Plisetskaya blew smoke, frowning. “You spoke to that woman?”
“Of course. About the concert.”
“What did the bitch say?” Boston asked lazily. His aide handed him tissues and cold cream. Boston dabbed the Kleenex and smeared make-up from his face.
“She asked me what I thought. I said it was too loud,” I said.
Plisetskaya laughed once, sharply. I smiled. “It was quite amusing. She said that you were in good form. She said that I should not be so tight-arsed.”
“ ‘Tight-arsed’?” Boston said, raising his brows. Fine wrinkles had appeared beneath the greasepaint. “She said that?”
“She said we Muslims were afraid of modern life. Of new experience. Of course I told her that this wasn’t true. Then she gave me this.” I reached into one of the pockets of my vest and pulled a flat packet of aluminum foil.
“Marjory Cale gave you cocaine?” Boston asked.
“Wyoming Flake,” I said. “She said she has friends who grow it in the Rocky Mountains.” I opened the packet, exposing a little mound of white powder. “I saw her use some. I think it will help my jet lag.” I pulled my chair closer to the bedside phone-table. I shook the packet out, with much care, upon the shining mahogany surface. The tiny crystals glittered. It was finely chopped.
I opened my wallet and removed a crisp thousand-dollar bill. The actor-president smiled benignly. “Would this be appropriate?”
“Tom does not do drugs,” said Plisetskaya, too quickly.
“Ever do coke before?” Boston asked. He threw a wadded tissue to the floor.
“I hope I’m not offending you,” I said. “This is Miami, isn’t it? This is America.” I began rolling the bill, clumsily.
“We are not impressed,” said Plisetskaya sternly. She ground out her cigarette. “You are being a rube, Charlie. A hick from the NIC’s.”
“There is a lot of it,” I said, allowing doubt to creep into my voice. I reached in my pocket, then divided the pile in half with the sharp edge of a developed slide. I arranged the lines neatly. They were several centimeters long.
I sat back in the chair. “You think it’s a bad idea? I admit, this is new to me.” I paused. “I have drunk wine several times, though the Koran forbids it.”
One of the secretaries laughed. “Sorry,” she said. “He drinks wine. That’s cute.”
I sat and watched temptation dig into Boston. Plisetskaya shook her head.
“Cale’s cocaine,” Boston mused. “Man.”
We watched the lines together for several seconds, he and I. “I did not mean to be trouble,” I said. “I can throw it away.”
“Never mind Val,” Boston said. “Russians chain-smoke.” He slid across the bed.
I bent quickly and sniffed. I leaned back, touching my nose. The cocaine quickly numbed it. I handed the paper tube to Boston. It was done in a moment. We sat back, our eyes watering.
“Oh,” I said, drug seeping through tissue. “Oh, this is excellent.”
“It’s good toot,” Boston agreed. “Looks like you get an extended interview.”
We talked through the rest of the night, he and I.
My story is almost over. From where I sit to write this, I can hear the sound of Boston’s music, pouring from the crude speakers of a tape pirate in the bazaar. There is no doubt in my mind that Boston is a great man.
I accompanied the tour to Philadelphia. I spoke to Boston several times during the tour, though never again with the first fine rapport of the drug. We parted as friends, and I spoke well of him in my article for Al-Ahram. I did not hide what he was; I did not hide his threat. But I did not malign him. We see things differently. But he is a man, a child of God like all of us.
His music even saw a brief flurry of popularity in Cairo, after the article. Children listen to it, and then turn to other things, as children will. They like the sound, they dance, but the words mean nothing to them. The thoughts, the feelings, are alien.
This is the dar-al-harb, the land of peace. We have peeled the hands of the West from our throat; we draw breath again, under God’s sky. Our Caliph is a good man, and I am proud to serve him. He reigns, he does not rule. Learned men debate in the Majlis, not squabbling like politicians, but seeking truth in dignity. We have the world’s respect.
We have earned it, for we paid the martyr’s price. We Muslims are one in five in all the world, and as long as ignorance of God persists, there will always be the struggle, the jihad. It is a proud thing to be one of the Caliph’s Mujihadeen. It is not that we value our lives lightly. But that we value God more.
Some call us backward, reactionary. I laughed at that when I carried the powder. It had the subtlest of poisons: a living virus. It is a tiny thing, bred in secret labs, and in itself does no harm. But it spreads throughout the body, and it bleeds out a chemical, a faint but potent trace that carries the rot of cancer.
The West can do much with cancer these days, and a wealthy man like Boston can buy much treatment. They may cure the first attack, or the second. But within five years he will surely be dead. People will mourn his loss. Perhaps they will put his image on a stamp, as they did for Bob Marley. Marley, who also died of systemic cancer; whether by the hand of God or man, only Allah knows.
I have taken the life of a great man; in trapping him I took my own life as well, but that means nothing. I am no one. I am not even Sayyid Qutb, the Martyr and theorist of Resurgence, though I took that great man’s name as cover. I meant only respect, and believe I have not shamed his memory.
I do not plan to wait for the disease. The struggle continues in the Muslim lands of what was once the Soviet Union. There the Believers ride in Holy Jihad, freeing their ancient lands from the talons of Marxist atheism. Secretly, we send them carbines, rockets, mortars, and nameless men. I shall be one of them; when I meet death, my grave will be nameless also. But nothing is nameless to God.
God is Great; men are mortal, and err. If I have done wrong, let the Judge of Men decide. Before His Will, as always, I submit.
Bruce Sterling is a science fiction novelist and technology blogger who unites his time between Austin, Turin, and Belgrade. His most recent book is a short story collection, Gothic High-Tech. As far as Sterling’s rock-lit, his early novel The Artificial Kid references the world of rock and roll, and his excellent short story “Dori Bangs” posits an alternate history in which rock critic Lester Bangs and underground comix writer/artist Dori Seda fall in love.
At Budokan
Alastair Reynolds
I’m somewhere over the Sea of Okhotsk when the nightmare hits again. It’s five years ago and I’m on the run after the machines went berserk. Only this time they’re not just enacting wanton, random mayhem, following the scrambled choreography of a corrupted performance program. This time they’re coming after me, all four of them, stomping their way down an ever-narrowing back alley as I try to get away, the machines too big to fit in that alley, but in the malleable logic of dreams somehow not too big, swinging axes and sticks rather than demolition balls, massive, indestructible guitars and drumsticks. I reach the end of the alley and start climbing up a metal ladder, a ladder that morphs into a steep metal staircase, but my limbs feel like they’re moving through sludge. Then one of them has me, plucking me off the staircase with steel fingers big enough to bend girders, and I’m lifted through the air and turned around, crushed but somehow not crushed, until I’m face to face with James Hetfield out of Metallica.
“You let us down, Fox,” James says, his voice a vast seismic rumble, animatronic face wide enough to headbutt a skyscraper into rubble. “You let us down, you let the fans down, and most of all you let yourself down. Hope you feel ashamed of yourself, buddy.”
“I didn’t mean . . . ” I plead, pityingly, because I don’t want to be crushed to death by a massive robot version of James Hetfield.
“Buddy.” He starts shaking me, holding me in
his metal fist like a limp rag doll.
“I’m sorry, man. This wasn’t how it was meant . . . ”
“Buddy.”
But it’s not James Hetfield shaking me to death. It’s Jake, my partner in Morbid Management. He’s standing over my seat, JD bottle in one hand, shaking me awake with the other. Looking down at the pathetic, whimpering spectacle before him.
“Having it again, right?”
“You figured.”
“Buddy, it’s time to let go. You fucked up big time. But no one died and no one wants to kill you about it now. Here.” And he passes me the bottle, letting me take a swig of JD to settle my nerves. Doesn’t help that I don’t like flying much. The flashbacks usually happen in the Antonov, when there’s nowhere else to run.
“Where are we?” I ask groggily.
“About three hours out.”
I perk up. “From landing?”
“From departure. Got another eight, nine in the air, depending on head-winds.”
I hand him back the bottle. “And you woke me up for that?”
“Couldn’t stand to see you suffering like that. Who was it this time? Lars?”
“James.”
Jake gives this a moment’s consideration. “Figures. James is probably not the one you want to piss off. Even now.”
“Thanks.”
“You need to chill. I was talking to them last week.” Jake gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. “They’re cool with you, buddy. Bygones be bygones. They were even talking about getting some comp seats for the next stateside show, provided we can arrange wheelchair access. Guys are keen to meet Derek. But then who isn’t?”
I think back to the previous evening’s show. The last night of a month-long residency at Tokyo’s Budokan. Rock history. And we pulled it off. Derek and the band packed every seat in the venue, for four straight weeks. We could have stayed on another month if we didn’t have bookings lined up in Europe and America.
“I guess it’s working out after all,” I say.
“You sound surprised.”
“I had my doubts. From a musical standpoint? You had me convinced from the moment I met Derek. But turning this into a show? The logistics, the sponsorship, the legal angles? Keeping the rights activists off our back? Actually making this thing turn a profit? That I wasn’t so certain about.”
“Reason I had to have you onboard again, buddy. You’re the numbers man, the guy with the eye for detail. And you came through.”
“I guess.” I stir in my seat, feeling the need to stretch my legs. “You—um—checked on Derek since the show?”
Jake shoots me a too-quick nod. “Derek’s fine. Hit all his marks tonight.”
Something’s off, and I’m not sure what. It’s been like this since we boarded the Antonov. As if something’s bugging Jake and he won’t come out with whatever it was.
“Killer show, by all accounts,” I say.
“Best of all the whole residency. Everything went like clockwork. The lights, the back projection . . . ”
“Not just the technical side. One of the roadies reckoned ‘Extinction Event’ was amazing.”
Jake nods enthusiastically. “As amazing as it ever is.”
“No, he meant exceptionally amazing. As in, above and beyond the performance at any previous show.”
Jake’s face tightens at the corners. “I heard it too, buddy. It was fine. On the nail. The way we like it.”
“I got the impression it was something more than . . . ” But I trail off, and I’m not sure why. “You sure there’s nothing we need to talk about?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Fine.” I give an easy smile, but there’s still something unresolved, something in the air between us. “Then I guess I’ll go see how the big guy’s doing.”
“You do that, buddy.”
I unbuckle from the seat and walk along the drumming, droning length of the Antonov’s fuselage. It’s an AN-225, the largest plane ever made, built fifty years ago for the Soviet space program. There are only two of them in the world, and Morbid Management and Gladius Biomech have joint ownership of both. Putting Derek’s show together is so logistically complex that we need to be assembling one stage set when the other’s still in use. The Antonovs leapfrog the globe, crammed to the gills with scaffolding, lighting rigs, speaker stacks, instruments, screens, the whole five hundred ton spectacle of a modern rock show. Even Derek’s cage is only a tiny part of the whole cargo.
I make my way past two guitar techs and a roadie deep into a card game, negotiate a long passage between two shipping containers, and pass the fold-down desk where Jake has his laptop set up, reviewing the concert footage, and just beyond the desk lies the cage. It’s lashed down against turbulence, scuffed and scratched from where it was loaded aboard. We touch up the yellow paint before each show so it all looks gleaming and new. I brush a hand against the tubular steel framing.
Strange to think how alarmed and impressed I was the first time, when Jake threw the switch. It’s not the same now. I know Derek a lot better than I did then, and I realize that a lot of his act is, well, just that. Act. He’s a pussycat, really. A born showman. He knows more about image and timing than almost any rock star I’ve ever worked with.
Derek’s finishing off his dinner. Always has a good appetite after a show, and at least it’s not lines of coke and underage hookers he has a taste for.
He registers my presence and fixes me with those vicious yellow eyes.
Rumbles a query, as if to say, can I help you?
“Just stopping by, friend. I heard you went down a storm tonight. Melted some faces with “Extinction Event.” Bitching “Rise of the Mammals,” too. We’ll be shifting so many downloads we may even have to start charging to cover our overheads.”
Derek offers a ruminative gurgle, as if this is an angle he’s never considered before.
“Just felt I ought to.” And I rap a knuckle against the cage. “You know, give credit. Where it’s due.”
Derek looks at me for a few more seconds, then goes back to his dinner.
You can’t say I don’t try.
I’d been flying when Jake got back in touch. It was five years ago, just after the real-life events of my dream. I was grogged out from departure lounge vodka slammers, hoping to stay unconscious until the scramjet was wheels down and I was at least one continent away from the chaos in LA. Wasn’t to be, though. The in-flight attendant insisted on waking me up and forcing me to make a choice between two meal serving options: chicken that tasted like mammoth, or mammoth that tasted like chicken.
What was it going to be?
“Give me the furry elephant,” I told him. “And another vodka.”
“Ice and water with that, sir?”
“Just the vodka.”
The mammoth really wasn’t that bad—certainly no worse than the chicken would have been—and I was doing my best to enjoy it when the incoming call icon popped into my upper right visual field. For a moment I considered ignoring it completely. What could it be about, other than the mess I’d left behind after the robots went berserk? But I guess it was my fatal weakness that I’d never been able to not take a call. I put down the cutlery and pressed a finger against the hinge of my jaw. I kept my voice low, subvocalizing. Had to be my lawyer. Assuming I still had a lawyer.
“Okay, lay it on me. Who’s trying to sue me, how much are we looking at, and what am I going to have to do to get them off my case?”
“Fox?”
“Who else. You found me on this flight, didn’t you?”
“It’s Jake, man. I learned about your recent difficulties.”
For a moment the vodka took the edge off my surprise. “You and the rest of the world.”
Jake sounded pained. “At least make a effort to sound like you’re glad to hear from me, buddy. It’s been a while.”
“Sorry, Jake. It’s just not been the best few days of my life, you understand?”
“Rock and roll, my friend
. Gotta roll with it, take the rough with the smooth. Isn’t that what we always said?”
“I don’t know. Did we?” Irritation boiled up inside me. “I mean, from where I’m sitting, it’s not like we ever had much in common.”
“Cutting, buddy. Cutting. And here I am calling you out of the blue with a business proposition. A proposition that might just dig you out of the hole you now find yourself in.”
“What kind of proposition?”
“It’s time to reactivate Morbid Management.”
I let that sink in before responding, my mind scouting ahead through the possibilities. Morbid Management was defunct, and for good reason. We’d exhausted the possibilities of working together. Worse than that, our parting had left me with a very sour opinion of Jake Addison. Jake had always been the tail wagging that particular dog, and I’d always been prepared to go along with his notions. But he hadn’t been prepared to put his faith in me when I had the one brilliant idea of my career.
We’d started off signing conventional rock acts. Mostly they were manufactured, put together with an eye on image and merchandising. But the problem with conventional rock acts is that they start having ideas of their own. Thinking they know best. Get ideas in their head about creative independence, artistic credibility, solo careers. One by one we’d watched our money-spinners fly apart in a whirlwind of ego and ambition. We figured there had to be something better.
So we’d created it. Ghoul Group was the world’s first all-dead rock act. Of course you’ve heard of them: who hasn’t? You’ve probably even heard that we dug up the bodies at night, that we sucked the brains out of a failing mid-level pop act, or that they were zombies controlled by Haitian voodoo. Completely untrue, needless to say. It was all legal, all signed off and boilerplated. We kept the bodies alive using simple brain-stem implants, and we used the same technology to operate Ghoul Group on stage. Admittedly there was something Frankensteinesque about the boys and girls on stage—the dead look in their eyes, the scars and surgical stitches added for effect, the lifeless, parodic shuffle that passed for walking—but that was sort of the point.
Rock On Page 41
