The Music of the Spheres

by Allister Thompson

  “What?” They all turned to him in amazement.

  Hastings was still sitting in a daze on the side of the stage, forlornly swinging his legs. “It was the drugs from that Colombian dealer … he was there watching the gig … he smiled when Guy collapsed, and then he left.”

  “Why would anyone want to poison us? And Marty took the same stuff. He’s still here. Don’t be preposterous, Simon!”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Marty, appearing from backstage. “I was saving the stuff for later. Didn’t want to blow the gig by having a bad trip. If only that bastard Guy could have controlled himself … well, I guess it wouldn’t have made a difference in the end. Anyway, the police are on their way, for what it’s worth.”

  “I doubt they’ll be willing to do anything,” Billy said grimly. “You know their feelings about long-hairs and radicals. Anyway, there’s no evidence yet that he was poisoned. Marty, you’d better pass your drugs on to them.”

  “If they won’t analyze them, I will,” said the young doctor. They all looked at him. “Guy was a hero of mine.”

  “Well, there’s no use waiting to talk about it … what are you lads going to do now? I need to get some sort of press release out there.” Though tears were rolling down his chubby face, Billy was, shockingly, already getting back to business as usual.

  “’Ow can we bloody well talk about that at a toim loike this, you bastard!” The Hammer roared, roused to sudden anger. Billy cringed back in his chair. “Worried about yer bottom line, arsehole?”

  “I can tell you one thing, guys,” Electron Z suddenly piped up, to everyone’s shock. His face was as unreadable as ever, and he spoke in his usual near-whisper. “This is it for me. It’s a sign. This has been fun.” He got up and headed for the door.

  “That’s it? Just like that? Where the hell are you gonna go?” Marty called disbelievingly after him.

  Electron Z had a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ve always dreamed of seeing the Arctic and northern lights, so I think I’ll head up to Lower Canada for a while. Nice knowing you.” Then he was gone. The other four and the almost-doctor remained in silence for a few minutes.

  “Well, then there were three, eh?” Marty said with a bitter laugh. “That’s the end of us.”

  “Don’t say that! You’ve still got bass, guitar, and drums. You fellows owe it to Guy to carry on…”

  Marty was rolling his pragmatic eyes, and The Hammer was about to interject angrily when two New York City police in khaki uniforms strode nonchalantly through the doors. They wore the martial cut of the uniforms stiffly but proudly, and they looked around them in disgust as they neared. One was tall and heavily built, the other small and slight.

  “I’m Officer Stuyvesant, and this is Officer Peeler,” said the heavily built cop, rubbing the side of her chiseled jaw. “I understand there’s been a fatality on the premises. This the stiff?”

  “Yes, there it is,” Marty said sarcastically, gesturing wearily at the former Guy. The bassist looked silly and uncomfortable standing there in his aviator’s outfit; his jaunty cap was askew and his goggles were crooked.

  “We’ll have to get this corpse taken to the morgue to determine cause of death … I guess,” Stuyvesant said without enthusiasm. “Pretty unhealthy-looking feller, huh?” Both of the officers smirked.

  Billy was now incensed, practically springing up out of his wheelchair. “Do you have any fucking idea who this is? What a fucking tragedy this is? You wankers! And what’s more, we have very good reason to suspect foul play, right, Simon?”

  Hastings told the officers about the evening’s events, but they seemed unimpressed. “Look, I sympathize with your loss,” Officer Peeler said, looking anything but sympathetic and twitching his wispy mustache, “but if a guy does as many varieties of illegals as your friend here probably did, he’s gonna run into something sketchy someday. And I shouldn’t need to remind you that the purchase of street drugs can earn you a strict fine, at the very least.”

  “The man was deliberately poisoned, you fucking idiot!” Billy screamed. “We demand justice!”

  “All right, all right, keep your panties on.” Stuyvesant sighed. “They’ll do a toxin analysis on the body. Then, and only then, they’ll decide on whether this should be a murder investigation. We’ll go and call for instructions. You crazy long-hairs all stay here. You’ll have to answer a few questions.”

  While the officers were outside calling for an ambulance, Hastings found that he had lost track of time and glanced at his watch. It was one thirty. The second set would have been well under way by now, but that life already seemed years ago, buried under the crushing weight of the sudden end of a dream.

  Silence reigned for a few minutes as each man stared forlornly at the sticky, cigarette-butt-strewn floor. Hastings and Marty were clearly trying to clear away the detritus in their brains from what had ended up a decidedly bad trip of their own. The Hammer looked like he was desperately trying not to throw up the contents of his stomach, and Billy was taking great pains to control his sobbing.

  “Anyone got a syringe?” the doctor said suddenly.

  “Of course we do,” Marty said, “but this is hardly the time—”

  “I need to take a blood sample.” The doctor’s eyes were now surprisingly hard for such a meek-looking man. “They won’t examine the body, you know. They won’t test anything. They’ll come back any moment now and tell us there’s no room at the morgue … as you know, these guys don’t really like our type. I’ve seen situations like this before.”

  Without another word, Marty scavenged in his pockets to produce a small needle. The doctor swiftly jabbed it into Guy’s pale forearm, pockmarked with the tiny craters of a thousand hits, and took a full blood sample. This was Guy Calvert’s last puncture. The doctor then rummaged through the pockets of Guy’s olive drab army jacket and took the drugs he had bought from the sinister Latino. He also took the drugs Marty had bought.

  “All right, someone give me a phone number.” Hastings wrote his down on a matchbook just as the officers sauntered back into the bar, a brand-new pair of anticipatory smiles plastered on their faces.

  “Well, fellers, we seem to have a bit of a problem here. Seems there’s been so many murders and overdoses amongst you hippies tonight that there’s no room at the morgue,” Peeler said cheerfully. “I declare that this unfortunate died of natural causes. We’ll have the body removed to the funeral parlor of your choice, but that’s the best we can do.”

  “You fuckers!” Billy was practically frothing at the mouth.

  Peeler turned on him with such anger that even Billy fell back in surprise. “Listen, you little fucking cripple! The only poison this asshole died from was the shit he put in his system every fucking day. They can legalize that stuff, they can say it’s safe, they can legitimize your godless fucking lifestyle until there’s no order left in society at all, but if you expect any support or sympathy from decent people, don’t come running to the law. We. Will. Not. Help. You.”

  He turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the club. Even big Officer Stuyvesant seemed taken aback by her partner’s outburst. She shrugged a slight apology and followed at a casual slouch.

  The Hammer bellowed like an enraged bull and commenced destroying the band’s equipment, starting with the drums.

  *

  Hastings peered gloomily out the windows of the cab. The fog was now so thick that the storefronts emerged like creepy doorways to crumbling mausoleums. It was two thirty. He was too tired even to think, which should have been difficult anyway, what with the incessant chatter of the fat, bearded driver, but thoughts forced their way in nonetheless.

  The driver clearly hadn’t recognized Hastings, but when he had ascertained that his fare was a musician, he started recounting the tragic life of his half-brother, who had played the accordion with a regiment in the Hungarian army back in the thirties and had apparently come to a very sudden end during the East European Nuclear Incidents that had de
stroyed all traces of the ancient cities of Belgrade, Sofia, and Budapest. Hastings wasn’t even listening to the tragic tale, but at least he didn’t have to talk.

  Marty and The Hammer had guided the now unconscious Billy home in another cab, carrying Guy’s corpse in the trunk to save it from the trash heap, a Christian funeral home, or from being dumped in the river. Their cab had nearly run over a couple of reporters, and they had parted company with the young doctor with gratitude. He had promised to call Hastings the next day, the moment he had any test results. The newspapers were no doubt already preparing sensational front-page speculations concerning the bizarre public demise of a rock celebrity. Hastings really had no idea what to do next; the whole night had been such a blur. For once, he wished he hadn’t gotten so high.

  The band’s dream seemed to be over. That dealer, he was sure, had deliberately removed Guy and had been aiming to kill the whole lot of them. On whose behalf was the question. The attitudes of the investigating officers were by no means a reflection of a minority opinion, and Peeler’s words contained a grain of truth. Though reform had created an atmosphere in which people like Guy could express themselves reasonably freely, half of the Empire’s politicians, sensing public unease, tried aggressively in every session of Parliament to have the old laws of social control reapplied.

  The general public, hiding in suburban fortresses with their plastic toys, their 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. office jobs, and two- to four-child families, hadn’t voted for change, and they had never wanted it. No one could have anticipated the reforms begun suddenly by Profumo’s Liberal government in the mid-fifties, and most older people, set in their ways by centuries of social certainty, were still having trouble coming to terms with things like free speech, free sex, legalized drugs, and rock music. The only reason the Profumo-ites were still in power was that there was simply no strong political alternative, the only other legal party in the two-pole system being the Tory Fascists, and not many people wanted that extreme. The Queen had also thrown in her lot with the Liberals, and no one dared gainsay her word; after all, she was the head of the army and the church.

  So it could have been politicians, police, some obsessed moralist wacko or wound-up family man … maybe Ned Loogeant had done it as a sick joke. Maybe it was an out-of-work symphony conductor. Hastings had to smile bitterly at that thought, remembering Guy’s hostility toward classical music. He hadn’t quite agreed and rather enjoyed a spot of Debussy or Rameau every now and then. They had fought many times over the topic, with Guy usually winning through sheer force of loquaciousness. Hastings fought back some tears.

  The cabbie was sounding a bit choked up as well. “…so my brother, well, like I say, my half brother, you know, he was vaporized in few seconds, like seven million others, my mother and father and sisters and aunts and uncles too. Just crazy, man. No reason why we should kill each other like that.”

  “I know,” Hastings murmured. The cab pulled up in front of his building.

  “Well, things have to get better. I have faith,” the driver wheezed. “As long as people keep trying to change things. Young people, eh? Like you. My brother didn’t want to die for some country, just to live for the drink and women! Good luck to you.”

  Hastings smiled and gave the man the generous tip, although his own financial future would now be much more uncertain without a career.

  Upstairs in his flat, he lay on his bed in the dark, too tired to think and too disturbed to sleep. He gazed through the uncurtained window at the sky, where a few pinprick stars fought to be seen against the fog and light pollution.

  You believed in a greater meaning in life, and I didn’t, he thought. Are you finishing the set in some kind of hippie heaven right now, or are you just going to rot? We won’t let them forget what we achieved.

  Whatever might come, Simon Hastings was determined to find out who was responsible for the death of Guy Calvert.

  From The Modern City: An Urban Theorist’s Travelogue

  by Prof. S.R.J. Kilbey

  (Geelong University Press, 1969)

  New York is the largest (and most polluted) city in the Virginias, receiving a constant influx of immigrants, not only from the Empire but from around the world, attracted by plentiful jobs and the happy prospect of a consistent food supply. The older communities (Welsh, Danish, etc.) having spread to the newly pioneered areas of this vast continent, the older neighborhoods have been occupied as the thriving ghettos of new immigrants. The climate of New York is increasingly multicultural, and by far the largest neighborhood is Spanish Stockholm. The purchase of the Floridas from the Spanish by the Belgians (well-known for their brutal colonial policies) forced many of the original settlers northward, where they settled in this part of town. The sprawling district has a rather unjust and frankly bigoted reputation for uncleanliness and violence, but an architecture buff will find more fine nineteenth century buildings left intact in this part of the city than in any other, many of them in the famous Malmö style. Despite the disdain with which life in Spanish Stockholm is viewed by members of the Anglo-Saxon community who accuse the inhabitants of all sorts of iniquities, this neighborhood is well worth a visit by the curious in search of livelier, earthier environment.

  five

  After a deep but poor sleep populated by phantasms of Guy’s corpse in progressive stages of decay, Hastings woke unrefreshed at around eight o’clock. The mists had finally parted, and the hot sun was beating through the windows, which he had forgotten to curtain the night before. He missed his girlfriend, Teresa Cappadocia, a fiery Italian-American-British radical who would be as devastated as he was at the news, but she was off in some southern wilderness communing with the local traditions or something, and he had no way of reaching her. Hastings rolled out of bed, groggily lit a Silk Cut, and checked his refrigerator. He had always been the most health-conscious member of the band and generally kept a well-stocked larder.

  He settled on a week-old and rapidly deflating orange and a bowl of Dr. Jordan’s Hemp Flakes, a dry, papery cereal he hadn’t enjoyed and didn’t plan to purchase again. When he flipped on the radio to see how the media was reporting Guy’s death, Tom and Jerry’s latest hit, “The Prizefighter,” was playing. “I am going, but my anger still remains,” they cooed in their cherubic voices. Despite the excellent harmonies, the song’s melancholy tone hit too close to home, so he abruptly turned it off.

  Hastings was suddenly possessed by the desire to hear Guy’s voice and the music they’d never again make together. He selected their second and last album, Astronomy, and put it on the turntable, heedless of where the stylus dropped. One of Guy’s more sensitive numbers came on, “The Shining Sea,” a very nice song in A minor.

  The light takes so long to reach us,

  From the distant galaxies.

  And all our lives are but seconds long,

  These things we’ll never see.

  But there’s a meaning beyond the awe

  This smallness that I feel.

  And in the light that we create together,

  A beauty is revealed.

  The only thing we really own

  Is the love that we share.

  We’re just drops in the shining sea.

  It knows no joy or despair.

  Another unfortunately apt song to mark the occasion of Guy’s death, Hastings thought and was about to succumb to another of his dark reveries when the phone jarringly interrupted the beginning of the song’s first chorus. It was the young doctor.

  “Well, Mr. Hastings, looks like you were right,” the physician solemnly intoned.

  “Poison?”

  “You got it. There were several kinds of toxins in some sort of cocaine-based product that he must have injected.”

  “I knew it!” Hastings was angrier than he’d ever been in his life.

  “There’s more. I just dropped by the coroner’s office — an old girlfriend of mine happens to answer the phones there. I showed her my test results, and she had some ve
ry interesting news.” The doctor paused, as if for dramatic effect.

  “Yes, yes, get on with it!”

  “This very same mixture of chemicals was found in the blood of Hunter Burlington when he was found dead last week. There’s no doubt about it, these tests are very accurate. She didn’t think anything of it until I showed her Calvert’s results. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

  “So we have a serial murderer or an assassin on our hands. Someone with a bone to pick with radicals.”

  Hunter Burlington was the leading Virginian countercultural poet. Though he had started his career writing extremely abstract verse, over the last few years his pen had sharpened and his tone had become more overtly political. He had just released his first book of prose essays, Reflections on the Coming Revolution. This book featured several essays on rock music and its role in inciting the current unrest in youthful society. Guy had been overjoyed to find a kindred spirit when he read the piece titled “Classical Music: The Capitalist’s Tool of Cultural Oppression.” Hastings had only met him once but had seen him reading at Cashmere Overlords gigs, and it was after one of these gigs that he had been found dead. There was no way his and Guy’s deaths were unrelated.

  Everyone had mourned Burlington but assumed his lifestyle had caught up with him.

  “Mr. Hastings? You there?”

  “Yes, sure. Well, this is very interesting indeed.”

  “What you gonna do about it now?”

  “Make some inquiries of my own. Marty and I know the places where contraband dealers in the city hang out. If the police won’t help us, we’ll have to solve this ourselves. Thank you for doing this, Mr.—”

  “Wilkerson. Phillip Wilkerson. Hey, no problem. If you find out who did this, I’d be glad to wring his goddamned neck for you myself, man.”

  After he hung up, Hastings stood for several seconds, trying to control his breathing. No drugs today; it was time for action.