Intermusings

by David Niall Wilson

  Still, these feelings were not easily switched off as he pulled over the keyboard, slid it into his lap, and sat back to write. What rose to the surface was a piece he'd started more than once already. "Virtue's Mask." A comment on the nature of intimacy in present day society. He could feel the music now, rising from the depths of his own anger, his own sense of betrayal. Musical shorthand fell out on the screen, dropping automatically to the synthesizers which, with a little direction and prodding, sorted his rough composition into working instruments. An oboe here—he liked that, the haunting, distant cry like the howl of a lone wolf. A kazu matsui there—the long, ghostly whisper of the all but forgotten woodwind instrument echoing the exact empty timbre of his soul. A lone piano, the whine of an electric guitar, then a cello, then—

  But no, it was all wrong.

  He wasn't writing the fantasy. He was writing the reality. It wasn't music for Dead at Dawn. Oh, it would have been at one time. He'd named the band correctly. It had been his intention in their early days to follow the suicidal rock movement started by bands like Throw it all Away and Die with Me. With songs like "Kill me in the Morning" and "Love is a Razor Blade," Dead at Dawn set out to make their mark. But repeated incidents had left the club scene with little passion for suicide rock. There were too many teenagers turning up dead in the bathrooms, puddles of blood and liquor and drugs spilling out from under the stalls. If Dead at Dawn was going to get anywhere, they needed the money and the momentum that playing the clubs would give them. Therefore they would have to play appropriate music. Safe music. Music that made you feel that there was a reason to be here when the sun came up tomorrow. Music that didn't make you feel like shit. There would be time later, everyone assured them, to lay down tracks like "Virtue's Mask."

  With a long sigh, Havoc dumped the composition, knowing even as he did it, that it wasn't forgotten, simply tucked away. How could he forget it when it was the very music flowing through his veins?

  Then, suddenly, the speakers emitted some absurd, "unplugged thing" that sounded like a cartoon theme: "Don't worry, be happy."

  "Nancy?" he asked the suddenly blank computer screen.

  You need to quit obsessing with that stuff, Big Brother.

  He smiled, but the smile was bittersweet. Through the miracle of virtual reality, his sister was able to communicate. Even after three years, he couldn't bring up the image of how she'd looked before she got sick. All he could see was her too-white face, wires and sensors protruding at every angle, staring endlessly at the ceiling above her bed.

  Nancy had contracted a disease at age 14—a disease she shouldn't have been subjected to, wouldn't have been subjected to, in a perfect world. It was about three strains ahead of the doctors, yet they'd managed to halt its progress. Temporary stasis, they called it. A medical first. What it was, was an induced coma. Living death.

  With her neural interface, Nancy's mind was free. More free on the nets than anyone locked to a keyboard and monitor could hope to be. She was fully interfaced . . . an integrated part of the system.

  You still there? She asked. Though she could easily synthesize a voice through his sound system, Nancy preferred communicating on the terminal. He'd never pressed her for a reason for this inefficient mode of expressing herself, but Havoc suspected it had to do with the inability to recognize or appreciate the sound of one's own recorded voice and the dislocated impression aural communication must leave her with. She seemed far more at ease hiding behind the machine.

  "Yeah, I'm here, Sis. I've got a ton of work to get done though."

  I won't keep you then. I just popped in to let you know that our project is a success. Her words were accompanied by a series of colorful pixel explosions. From the speakers came a sound he hadn't heard since he was a child: the distance-muted popping of fireworks.

  Now the pressure to finish the new music was doubled. Nancy had just secured the financial wherewithal Dead at Dawn needed to wine and dine a major record label. "Thanks, Sis." He waited, but there was no response. Back into the ether. It wasn't her way to wait around. The seconds between his responses must seem like eternities to her, running, as she was, at net speeds. Their conversations were always brief. Their time together, nonexistent.

  The Scotsman's Kilt catered to those with an inclination for mechanical stimulation. Whether you wore your own kilt in or paid for one of the disposable ones at the door, there were seats in the huge converted warehouse to suit your own peculiar fetish—eight hundred and sixteen seats to be exact. Havoc had counted them one night between sets, back when he and Dead at Dawn had played clubs even less reputable than Fantasy's. Add to the mechanical seats the totally nude servers (protected by tight, poly-vinyl suits to prevent intimate contact with the clientele), the reasonably priced liquor (a shot of synth whiskey was less than ten credits and a beer could be had for five), and the thirty-six stages featuring every carnal act imaginable performed LIVE BEFORE YOUR VERY OWN EYES! (as the marquee out front proclaimed in garish chartreuse and yellow neon), and the Scotsman was a popular, if disreputable, establishment.

  Havoc, of course, trusted none of it. Forget the guarantee that every seat with its array of mechanical arms, probes, needles, electrodes, forceps, retractors, and vibrators was sterilized between each and every use. Forget the fact that a medical staff was standing by in case some of the more elaborate—and masochistic—stimulations went awry. (There were, for instance, procedures to tap into the femoral artery to cycle the blood through a deoxygenating unit for that ultimate high, what they called the Little Death; others that electrically stimulated the nerves of the labia and rectum; and still others that could peel back flesh to expose the very nerves of one's genitalia to autoeroticism.) Forget the live shows, perhaps the best in town, rumored to actually show real intercourse on occasion (though Havoc had yet to see anything remotely resembling real sex). Forget it all. From an unequipped stool at the bar, Havoc was buying none of it. He'd politely declined the loan of a kilt at the door, preferring the safe impenetrability of his jeans. He'd shrugged off the plastic-coated hand of a hostess who'd wanted to show him to a table, and instead found his own way to the bar where he could see most of the stage shows and had no one but an anachronistic, live bartender at his back. In this way, he hoped to see his contact before the contact saw him. There's always the chance, Havoc acknowledged, that I might decide to run.

  The customers at the Scotsman were cut from a slightly lower cross-section of metropolitan perversion than those Havoc had of late grown accustomed to at Fantasy's. He'd forgotten how absorbed they were in their own egocentric self-indulgence. He'd forgotten how those nights playing here on a stage forgotten and ignored had driven home his now innate desire for something different.

  Watching the wiretaps with their spider-like bundles of neurocables, he recognized the birth of his fear of the machine, the fear that he could become so lost in false neural signals that he could wander in a daze, reality an ever receding and increasingly untouchable blur. In the questing eyes of the cube-junkies, always seeking someone with whom to trade their stored adventures, dreams, and nightmares, he saw his fear of the familiar, the routine, the well-known collective experience that left one with nothing left to desire. In the plastic-sheathed women waiting on the tables, he saw acceptance of the charade. In those who still yearned to touch them, more than acceptance—defeat. In the cyber-whores who worked the shadows, selling themselves a synapse at a time, complete and utter surrender. In those with their own kilts, slumped over the chair's Little Death, the real death.

  His contact arrived at last, easily spotted because, like Havoc himself, he didn't fit with the Scotsman's crowd. He wove his way through the tables, avoiding their occupants as if they were plague victims—which, thought Havoc, in a way, they were. He was older than Havoc, but not by much. He was better dressed, considerably so—extravagantly so. Better fed. Better rested. Better prepared. He wasted no time, didn't bother with introductions, went straight to the point.

/>   "I don't think you can afford this," he said. His eyes were very cold. His lips were very thin. Havoc took an immediate dislike to him.

  Havoc set his drink aside, used that hand to draw a credit chit from his shirt pocket. His left hand remained on his knee, the line of his forearm perpendicular to the rotund belly of the man who in other days would have been called a pimp. There was a projectile weapon there, strapped along the inside of his wrist. If he made a fist of his left hand and pulled back, someone's insides would be introduced to daylight. He had no doubts about how dangerous the man before him was. This was the black market. Of the ten million sexual diversions that could be had, one only went to this kind for one thing. If it came down to it, Havoc thought he could kill this man, or at least threaten to do so, if it got him what he wanted.

  He tossed the chit on the bar between them. "One million credits, you said."

  The man did not reach for the card. "I checked into you, Havoc—or should I call you Henry?"

  Havoc congratulated himself on not reacting.

  The man smiled. "Hit a nerve, Henry? I know everything there is to know about you. Parents dead. One sister who—"

  "You want to make this deal or not?" Havoc cut him off. "I can go to psych services and get a free deep recall any time I want a trip down memory lane. What the fuck am I sitting here listening to you for?"

  "Cause," the pimp sneered, "I got the women. Pity is, you ain't got the cash."

  Havoc nodded at the chit. "Better be sure, fat man. I can go to someone else if you're not interested."

  "Checked you, asshole. Two bit, wanna-be rock stars like you are a quarter credit a dozen. You ain't got spit to pay for her with, Henry. I only came 'cause I was looking to offer you a job bending over for some of my government clients. Now that I see how fucking ugly you are though. . ."

  Havoc managed to keep his left hand unclenched. Barely. "You ran the wrong accounts, dildo. Run this one."

  The pimp cocked his head, considering. Havoc considered opening his fat abdomen and dancing on his entrails, but the truth was this pompous ass was the only one Havoc had been able to locate who was reputed to deal in live flesh.

  Finally, the pimp took up the chit. "Hal, come here."

  The bartender materialized out of thin air, a talent that mechanical replacements were unable to duplicate. "Need a drink, Mister C?"

  "Run this for me."

  "Yessir."

  While he was gone, Havoc and the now identified Mister C stared at each other with something rapidly approaching hatred.

  "Assuming you got the funds," Mister C said dryly, "where'd you get it, kid?"

  "My business," was all Havoc would say. "You supply the goods."

  "Oh, I got the goods. Best goddamn goods you ever seen."

  The bartender returned, handing Havoc's credit chit to Mister C. "Credit line's a little over a mil, Mister C. You need anything else? Drink maybe?"

  "No thanks, Hal. Please leave us alone now." Mister C slipped the chit into a dainty little purse on his belt. "Here's how it goes down, kid—"

  "First," Havoc interrupted, "you quit calling me kid. You quit calling me Henry. You quit treating me like shit. My name is Havoc. I just gave you a million and change and that demands some goddamn respect. You don't like those terms, you can pass me my credit, kiss my ass, and watch me take my business elsewhere." Havoc smiled. "Are we clear?"

  The pimp surprised him by smiling back. "Okay, kid—er, sorry, Havoc. Deal. But here's the way it goes down. You're playing Fantasy's Friday night. You're gonna wanna knock off early. Maybe your throat's not feeling up to it, I dunno. You're gonna see this gorgeous blonde on your way out—uh, blonde's okay, ain't it?"

  "Fine."

  "You take her back to your place. You have fun. In the morning she's out of there. Any trouble with her leaving and I send over the two biggest monkeys you ever seen to break both your legs, maybe break your dick too. Turns out you ain't clean, we break more than your dick—we break your ties to this world. You got that medcard we asked for?"

  Havoc passed it over.

  "How old's the damn thing?"

  "Two hours," Havoc answered. "I got retested just for this. What about your girl? Turns out she ain't clean and—"

  "She's clean. You just make sure she leaves in the morning. You bought one night, understand? Some customers, they fall in love with the merchandise. You don't wanna do nothing stupid like that." Mister C was still smiling. "Are we clear?"

  "As ice," Havoc whispered.

  It had been a long time since the jitters had hit him so hard. It wasn't the music—Havoc knew that nobody paid that much attention to the band. The music was a backdrop, a convenient rhythm to fall into once you reached your particular groove, your personal fantasy. Tonight's nervousness had nothing to do with Dead at Dawn's performance.

  Somewhere in the crowd was a woman, a flesh and blood, soft-as-silk, living woman, and she was waiting for him. Sure, he'd paid for her to be waiting, but that didn't change the thrill of it. He felt like a kid again. Standing at the microphone, he felt an insatiable passion fueling his voice. That kind of intensity had been lacking for a long, long time.

  As he sang, his eyes swept the crowd, making contact a dozen times, snapping free. There were blondes everywhere, mixed in with an amazing array of redheads, brunettes, neon-hued exotics, and even a thin, bald woman in black rubber with tattoos covering her skull. Which was his "date?"

  By the time he'd reached the mid-point of the second set, he was a nervous wreck. His hands were shaking. He was about to invent an excuse and make his exit when he saw her.

  She was dressed in red leather from head to foot. Her hungry eyes were locked with his own, full of promise, wild with danger. Her hair, silver blonde, rose in a moussed masterpiece that framed her slender, aquiline face to perfection. Her clothes hid nothing; they might have been painted on. Her body was a sinuous roll of curves and sculpted mysteries. There was a grace about her, not just in the sensuous way she brought her drink to her smoldering lips or the way her back was straight and her shoulders back. It was more an aura that she wore. There was grace in the delicately simple curve of her neck, the coif of her hair, the angle at which her legs crossed and the toe of her shoe pointed toward the ground, the silver glint of hair on her arms, and the snap of her lashes. There was grace in the very rise and fall of her breasts, in the pulse Havoc fancied he could see in her fragile wrist, in the bones on the back of her hand.

  The band was waiting for him to key the opening sequence of the next number, a simple piece about life as a cloud. Meaningless drivel, shit that he'd written while high on Blue Alice. All he had to do was thumb the second fader built into the mike and start the opening, a synthetic sequence. Since their keyboardist had come down with HIV-7, they'd been dubbing all the background instruments in advance.

  He couldn't do it. She was listening, and she was far too wondrous for crap like "Cloud High." Havoc set the mike aside and walked to the unattended bank of keyboards stage left.

  "What are you doing?" Nikki asked.

  "Take a break," Havoc told him, and then he was bringing up the synthetics on manual, working from memory. The tune in his heart had never been entrusted to a more secular storage medium. The other band members stared at him quietly as haunting bass echoes rose from the depths of the club's speakers, as the anachronistic kazu matsui whispered tangible pain and remorse. The sound system at Fantasy's was bar none, and until that moment even Havoc hadn't realized the full beauty and potential of his composition. When he had everyone's undivided attention, he pulled across a microphone and, eyes locked with the blonde's, he sang:

  "Touch me and I bleed, fallen angel, false bride;

  Mistress whose kisses taste of anger and ash,

  You wait long past your appointed hour,

  For me to take your offer of poison and death."

  There was a soft wooden clatter as Devon's sticks hit the floor. The drummer cursed vehemently, "He's gonna'
get us kicked out with this shit!"

  "Shut up," hissed Nikki, his eyes as lost as those of the audience. He too was caught in the hypnotic effect of the music, in the power of the lyrics. Such had always been the magic of the suicide rock movement, to create an affectation with Death like no other; such was Havoc's melodic delivery, proving that love of Death was beyond rationale argument. With that voice, in the soft lights delivered by a more than attentive stage hand, Havoc appeared almost angelic. An angel of song singing of an angel of death.

  But Havoc had no intention of singing his love for Death. Follow him, the audience might, but not to Death's dark kingdom. For Havoc, there were desires and loves stronger than that:

  "But I wait for another, knowing that she'll come

  If only I can resist your temporal temptations.

  Though you promise forever—while she, but a moment—

  When she looks upon me, I'll not wear virtue's mask."

  Havoc let it die there, the final chord the sorrowful echo of a cello, like the lonesome cry of a whale reverberating thousands of miles through the deep. Between the cello and the Japanese woodwind, Fantasy's audience had been introduced to instruments they'd probably never heard before, nor would hear again.

  "I've gotta get out of here, man," he mumbled to Nikki, and then he was off the stage and heading for the blonde by the door. He was halfway there before he realized the thunder in his ears was applause and his stumbling gait was a result not of his reeling mind, but of the many hands slapping him on the back.

  Reaching the blonde, Havoc extended a hand, his heart hammering faster than Devon's drums now pounding back to life behind him. On the stage, Nikki was trying to regain the bar's attention, his reedy voice rising in volume and filling the air with a cover tune of a truly old song, "Dream Lover." Of course, they'd modified the lyrics somewhat—no way around that. Instead of dreaming about a woman to hold, the song was now about sharing dreams—a tribute, of a sort, to the booths in the back rooms. On more than one occasion, the song had led him into an interesting, if unfulfilling encounter. Looking into the eyes of the blonde, Havoc knew there would be no more such encounters for him.