The Music of the Spheres

by Allister Thompson

  We depend on one another

  So the wisdom goes

  But have you ever wondered why

  It’s so easy to forget someone

  When they’re gone?

  A face you’ve known all your life

  A voice you loved in time

  Still haunts your brightest dreams

  But you awake to find it slipped away

  When they’re gone

  And when at last I pass away

  My voice soon lost forever

  Lay me down in an open field

  Whisper my name to the driving wind

  And let me go

  For the first time since his friend’s death, he felt a real weeping fit coming on, and he didn’t fight it. Where had Guy gone? Where had his mother gone? And where would he, Simon Hastings, at the end of a life wracked by cynicism and doubt, go when his turn came? Why could he not reconcile himself to living in the darkness of the world, eternally damned to know nothing was ever certain, lost in a vacuum where our only realities were the myths we created to comfort ourselves?

  Hearing a sound, he saw Teresa approaching him from across the room. She also had tears in her eyes. She sat down and put her arms around him as the darkness deepened another shade.

  *

  At eleven thirty, Hastings stood beside the stage, watching openers the Sonic Assassins as they closed their set, as always, with their most popular number, “Brainbox Pollution.” The Assassins sound, which they called “space-rock,” was driven, like The Spheres’ had been, by an innovative use of modern electronics and synthesizers, in addition to traditional rock n’ roll instrumentation. Their songs were much heavier and simpler in structure, almost primitive-sounding, and their aim seemed more to overwhelm the audience with the sheer size of their sound rather than soothe and cajole them. Their latest album, The Space Ritual, was somewhere in the Imperial Top Twenty at the time. Hastings considered them to be most enlightening musical experience going, but a little hard on the ears after an hour.

  Listening to his friends’ music had set him more at ease, and now, after a couple of joints and a vial of Alpine Mist (a stimulant and another Kässel Pharma product), he now felt much more himself, whoever that might be. It would be his first performance as a lead vocalist. Teresa and Marty were engaged in a cheerful argument about current men’s fashion styles, yelling in each other’s ears over the noise, and they seemed to be perfectly calm. Only Basil Baker looked nervous. He was banging his sticks on a wooden tabletop, and although it wasn’t audible over the roar of the Assassins’ “oscillators,” the sight of it was threatening to damage Hastings’ newfound calm.

  He walked over to the drummer, who had never been in a real band before and whose emaciated-looking face was sweating profusely, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, lad,” he yelled into the young man’s ear. “We know you’re good enough. We wouldn’t have brought you in otherwise.”

  Basil broke into a grin and stopped pounding. “Thanks,” he mouthed.

  The final cacophony of “Brainbox Pollution” ended suddenly, degenerating into a chorus of raucous shouts and cursing.

  “—I wear a little mascara myself, but not enough for the chaps to — oh…” Marty’s voice blared into the split second of silence before the stunned audience could recover enough from the sonic attack to applaud. “Er — well, time to play, eh?” He walked over to his bass stand, hissing at Hastings as he went by. “If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll kill you.” He picked up the bass, pulled his aviator’s goggles over his eyes, and waved toward the short staircase leading to the stage. “Those about to die salute you!”

  The Sonic Assassins came piling down the stairs as he spoke, their faces lit by broad grins. Stick Turner’s bearded face was red from nonstop puffing into his saxophone.

  “Warmed ’em up a bit for you, lads,” he rasped, collapsing on a table.

  Brock shook Hastings’ hand. “We’re going out front to watch, old son. Do the Grove proud tonight.”

  As they stepped out onto the stage, they were greeted by a roar from the thousand-strong attendees. Hastings had to smile, but he wasted no time strapping on his Gibson and launching into the opening chords of “The Misanthrope’s Blues,” a simple boogie-style riff. The drums and bass kicked in with a thump. As always, the surge of intoxicating electricity almost threatened to freeze him to the spot. Controlling his excitement, he managed to start singing the first verse on key:

  Here comes the arrogant ape

  Mother Nature’s fatal mistake

  Each group wants the others dead

  Atrocities they love to make

  They strip the earth of all that’s good

  Always too blind to see

  Their evil sets my blood to boil

  So I’ll let this fire consume me

  This tribute to the misanthropic anarchy of Rick Farren and his ilk was something of a dangerous artistic move for a new group. There was little doubt that the VBC would ban the song if it were ever released as a single, which was why Franklin, whose mind was still focused on the business, was opposed to it being performed at all. Flower Power was in style, and the public, he claimed, had no time for cynical dismissals of the entire human species and its purpose. Hastings didn’t care; he was determined to finally express the negativity he felt about the world in more direct terms.

  This crowd, at any rate, seemed responsive. In fact, it was only on rare occasions like this that he felt such intensity in a room. The trancelike expressions he usually saw on the faces of the dancers had changed to hard, set looks of comprehension. These people were well aware of how radically their view of life differed from that of the society in which they were forced to live. Their dance and his music were statements that individual lives, beauty, and fellowship still lived on, despite the endless pursuit of material gain and power that swirled around them.

  As he went into his solo, his spine twisted into an unnatural shape by the strength of the vibe in the hall, he could feel the vibrations of Marty’s bass improvising an unplanned solo along with his and shaking the floor. The drumming was relentless, and Teresa’s organ drifted over the top of the mix like a fog over a tempestuous sea. There was no doubt about it, this band could be the most fulfilling thing that ever happened to him. He shot her a smile as he wound up his solo.

  Glancing back into the audience, he felt a sudden shock. Had he caught a glimpse of Ramón Rosas in the audience? He stared again at the spot as he sang but saw nothing. Rosas was starting to haunt every glance from the corner of his eyes. Not wanting to lose his concentration, he put that evil out of his mind as the song ended. This was no time to be morbid.

  The cheers of the crowd seemed louder than the band had been in the first song. They were engulfed in the adulation to the point where the emotion was almost too much. Hastings felt tears pricking at his eyes, and, looking over at Marty, he saw matching diamonds glittering in his. Then Basil counted in their second song, “Further Up, Further In,” which featured a repetitive and hypnotic rhythm part. Basil’s pattern on the snare and toms was the backdrop across which Marty spattered notes from his bass, and Hastings used his array of guitar effects to the fullest, casually floating long, sustained chords drenched in reverb into the mix. Teresa’s voice, which she deployed in her first gig without a trace of nerves, was beautiful. Hastings allowed her to start the verses alone and joined in with harmonies (something The Spheres hadn’t paid much attention to) on the chorus:

  Somewhere ahead, you foretell your end

  Stars as they fall,

  Lead you further up and further in

  And so the set went on, the audience’s enthusiasm mounting with each piece and cresting during the second encore, which was a souped-up version of the old Spheres song “Judgment Day,” the song Guy had been singing when he met his demise. This was a symbolic act that would not be wasted on the press and which pointedly began a new era in Hastings’ career. Who knows what promise Guy might hav
e fulfilled if he lived? The ghosts of Guy Calvert, Hunter Burlington, Miguel Gonzalez, and the shadow of Ramón Rosas were temporarily banished, along with Billy Prestwick, Electron Z, the Hammer, and all the rest of the people left behind in Virginia that he might never see again.

  I was in town for this gig (it was considered too important to miss), and I still regard it as the single most transcendent rock show I have ever attended. I have never seen a group of musicians and an audience meld like Astronomy did with the crowd at UFO that night. I myself had tears in my jaded eyes as the last majestic chords of “Judgment Day” echoed from the walls of a room that was suddenly, strangely, silent in an unplanned moment of respect. Then the place exploded with ricocheting cheers and screams until we were all deafened.

  The members of the band were drenched in sweat as, after shaking hands with and hugging the front row of the audience, they regretfully left the stage. They plainly did not want to leave, and we did not want them to go.

  Their friends were waiting backstage. Bottles were cracked and vials were opened. Basil Baker’s eyes showed he was still far away as he toweled off his drenched hair. Marty embraced Hastings as they stood together in the center of the room.

  “Well, we’ve done it, eh?”

  “We’ve done it, you bastard! I’ve never been so relieved.”

  Teresa walked over to the table in the corner and stat down heavily on the rickety wooden chair. She idly scooped up a piece of notepaper that had floated to the floor during the excitement.

  Hastings and Marty were already talking about planning a full tour of the island and possibly the intact and relatively radiation-free zones of Europe when she interrupted.

  “Uh, Simon?”

  “Yes, dearie?”

  “I think you better look at this.” Her face was taut as she handed him the soiled scrap of paper.

  Hastings’ jaw dropped as he read. “Shit.”

  “What! What?” Marty grabbed the paper. It contained one line of typed text: Dear Simon: I’ve left a surprise for you at your home. I’m sorry. Ed.

  “Ed? What the hell? Is this a joke?”

  Hastings’ face was grim as he rummaged in his gig bag for his gun. “Ed’s in trouble. He wouldn’t have written a note like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something to do with our goddamned friend the assassin.”

  “It says home. Does that mean our home?”

  “We’d better go see. I’m expecting the worst. Damn us! We should have found him.”

  Marty and Hastings quickly corralled Steve Brock to give them a ride to Ladbroke Grove in the Sonic Assassins’ battered old van. It was another night of wind and freezing rain as the threatened storm hit furiously. Hastings shivered in the back seat as he pondered what could have been done to Ed Barrett. Any way you looked at it, it wasn’t good. I’m sorry.

  When they pulled up in front of the house, they could see through the rain that the front door was open, and a light was on in the parlor. Once again, the door was blowing violently in the gusts. Hastings jumped out first and ran to the entrance, his weapon in hand in his pocket. When he reached it, he fell back, his face twisted. Marty rushed by him.

  “No!”

  Ed Barrett was sitting in a chair, staring glassily at them. His black, curly hair was wet, as were his clothes, as if he had been carried or dragged through the rain. A long scratch disfigured the muddy side of his face, on which there was a dull, emotionless expression. Brock walked cautiously up to him.

  “Ed? Can you hear me?” He waved his hand in front of Ed’s face, but there was no change.

  “He’s dead.” Hastings still stood by the door, leaning on the frame. A great ennui had fallen over him. “Look at him. Don’t bother touching him. He’s bloody well dead.”

  eighteen

  The scene in the house was nightmarishly familiar. Two bobbies had shown up, friendly chaps on the surface but just as disbelieving as their New York counterparts. An ambulance had also come, which was at least an improvement.

  The paramedics examined Ed’s body then shook their heads. “Looks like massive toxic shock,” said one. She held up an empty package with the Colombian Cartels logo on it. “Maybe mixed some homebrew product with this, which is a safe product, as long as you follow the directions. We see this sort of thing all the time.”

  She looked disdainfully around the room, as if expecting to see dirty drug-taking paraphernalia littered everywhere. Hastings actually kept the room painstakingly well organized. He bit back an angry retort and spoke to the police officers instead.

  “Listen, Constables…”

  “DC MacSweeney.”

  “DC Khan.”

  The two clean-cut officers looked exactly the same in every regard, with the same short cut under their caps, not a hair out of place, clean-shaven and buttoned-up. They looked like they belonged in the army, not the constabulary.

  “I’d like to have a word with you about this matter.”

  “Certainly, sir,” DC Khan said. “But this appears to be a clear-cut case. The message you’ve shown us looks like an obvious suicide note.”

  “But why would it show up at a gig I was playing? Did his ghost fly over and put it there?”

  Khan sighed. “It could have been placed there before, sir.”

  “Anyway, that’s not the point I wanted to raise.” Hastings told them briefly about the New York murders and some of his subsequent experiences. Khan took sparse notes in a small notebook, shaking his head in disbelief.

  When he had finished, MacSweeney raised an eyebrow. “You really expect us to believe this?”

  “Take a look for yourself! You’ll find that the circumstances of Guy Calvert and Hunter Burlington’s deaths were very similar. You’ll also find out that I was indeed in Colombia for the period I’ve stated.”

  “Hmm. Of course, we’ll try to check these things out. You seem like a level-headed enough fellow for someone of your sort, Mr. Hastings, but as a straight-living teetotaler, I have to wonder whether you dreamed all this up during some kind of trip.”

  “Listen, you—”

  “Ah-ah, none of that, sir! None of that!” MacSweeney seemed to be enjoying himself. Even Khan rolled his eyes a little at his colleague’s self-righteous tone.

  Marty was arguing with the paramedic, and Brock had retreated outside. He stood on the porch, smoking ferociously, his brows knitted.

  “Listen, sir,” MacSweeney said, puffed up, adjusting the peak of his cap and twirling his baton, “I’ve already investigated three stabbings and one shooting tonight. The London Police Force investigates any suspicious deaths in the metropolitan area with equal thoroughness, regardless of economic standing, race, or … hair length. This case will be no exception. We will contact the New York police and compare the cases. But since you have no real evidence of foul play here to back up your word—”

  “Why don’t you contact the Colombian authorities? I spoke to the bloody minister of the environment!”

  The officers exchanged looks that made plain their agreement on Hastings’ mental state. “Ahem, well, Mr. Hastings, yes, absolutely, we’ll have someone talk to th … um … Colombian authorities and the consulate there. Absolutely. Now,” Khan said officiously, seeing the paramedics removing Ed’s body. “I believe we’ve taken all of your statements. I’m sorry about your friend. Good evening.”

  Hastings didn’t answer, just stared after the officers as they briskly exited. Brock stuck out a leg to try to trip MacSweeney as he descended the porch stairs, but the officer nimbly leapt over his leg and disappeared into the heavily armored police car without so much as a backward glance.

  Hastings couldn’t believe what had happened. It was obvious that Rosas had sent him a message, and the message was: You’re next. He could now see that their unspoken hope Rosas would simply give up on fulfilling his task had been feeble. This man was a professional thug who probably enjoyed his work a great deal. He had engineered the murders to appear as overdoses or suicide
s, knowing full well what the police would fall for it without question. But if there were no authorities to appeal to, and the killer was as crafty as he seemed, how could they ever hope to defend themselves?

  *

  Another hasty conference was called the next day, this time in the front room of the band’s house. Hastings meant business, and he kept a tight rein on the proceedings. All of the same people were there (with the additions of Ferris, Baker, and Rick Farren, the latter having reluctantly agreed to briefly join them from his sewer dwelling), but the adventurous atmosphere and black humor of their previous meeting was replaced by a gloomy pall that matched the omnipresent cloud of tobacco smoke.

  “All right.” Hastings cast his gaze over the assembly. “Obviously, we’re dealing with a crisis. There’s a hired killer running around, and no less than four of us are still on his list. Who knows whether he might go for some bonus pay and knock off some more?” Steve Brock’s face blanched a little. “We all know that the authorities won’t help us, here or anywhere. What shall we do?” He brandished a copy of the day’s paper, which contained a tiny news item.

  Popular Singer Found Dead

  LONDON (Reuters) Singer Ed Barrett, formerly with psychedelic pop band “The Peuce Frank,” was found dead of an apparent overdose at a friend’s house. Police contacts said that Barrett had a history of illegal substance addiction and that an investigation would not be forthcoming. There is also some unconfirmed rumor of a suicide note. The Minister of Justice was quoted as saying that this “should be warning to those unfortunate thrill-seekers who are tempted to go beyond the Empire’s already lax laws concerning recreational pharmaceuticals into the shady world of the underground drug trade.”

  “Look,” Farren said, “this arse is having no problem tracking us down, is he? While we sit here like cowards shaking in our boots. It’s time we made him run.”