Chorus Skating

by Alan Dean Foster

  Jon-Tom gaped at him. “There are humans here?”

  “Oh, very definitely. I’m afraid you won’t have the chance to meet any. Your presence here is an anomaly which must be redressed, and soon, or there will be consequences the seriousness of which I cannot predict.”

  “Right, then; suits me, guv,” announced Mudge. “Ship us back.”

  “I hope to do just that, bearing in mind the capricious nature of my equipment.”

  “I still don’t understand.” Jon-Tom wanted to return, but not without some sort of explanation. “All this for a cluster of chords?”

  The physicist tilted his head to one side, the physical equivalent of a human raising his eyebrows. “Those chords are needed to complete the final and greatest composition of the immortal J’Ameltanek, the foremost composer of visual music of my generation. No one quite understands how they happened to go missing, but music is a law unto itself. Out of my own respect and admiration for J’Ameltanek’s work I decided to try and track it down. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it had slipped through a most recent interdimensional rip.”

  “Not slipped. It was abducted, stolen.” Jon-Tom looked at Mudge. “Remember? Hinckel spoke of taking music from other worlds. Our little cloud must have been his first bite out of this one. But he couldn’t constrain it the way he has all the rest. At the same time, it couldn’t find its own way back here. So it went looking for help.”

  Caz’s gaze shifted from otter to human. “Now it is my turn to not understand.”

  “It’s something we have to take care of,” Jon-Tom told him. “When we get back. Or there’ll be more incidents like this one. Not only in your world but in mine, and in every other one, assuming there are others, where music is listened to and loved.” He indicated the softly ringing chord cloud.

  “So it did not flee but was taken. Interesting. If what you say is true, and I have no reason to think it otherwise, this individual must be stopped.” The physicist shook his head. “No species has a monopoly on evil.” Four hands and sixteen digits spread wide. “How can I help?”

  “I tried to fight him,” Jon-Tom explained. “I’m pretty sure I could defeat him one on one, but he’s called up and has some serious help on his side. Since I don’t know how to do likewise, I need something to strengthen my own powers.”

  The insectoid considered. “Might I suggest voice lessons?”

  Fate was a never-ceasing wonder, Jon-Tom decided. Of all the aliens in the universe to interact with, naturally he would end up facing a music critic.

  “We don’t have time for that,” he replied testily.

  “Yes, yes, of course you’re right. Then we must think of something else. Meanwhile, you must go back.” Cazpowarex indicated the bank of instruments. “Your presence is generating wave distortions which are rapidly approaching the explosive. Already, prudent chronological parameters have been exceeded. I wouldn’t want you to come apart all over my floor.”

  “Oh, now, that sounds pleasant, that do.” Mudge took up a stance in the middle of the room. “Let’s get goin’, then.”

  “Excellent idea.” Moving to stand close to the otter, Cazpowarex gestured for Jon-Tom to join them.

  “Stand close to me, please. Put your arms around my thorax. Mind the breathing spicules.”

  Jon-Tom found the chitinous exoskeleton smooth and warm under his touch. As the physicist fine-tuned controls, there was a repeat of the stomach-churning disorientation they had experienced earlier. This was accompanied by a brief moment of quasi-unconsciousness.

  Then they were back, hovering just above the rocky beach. Mudge dealt with the transposition effortlessly. To his chagrin, Jon-Tom stumbled and collapsed on the narrow strip of sand.

  “I’ll provide whatever assistance proves feasible.” Caz waved from within the supportive vapor. “Assuming anything does, of course.” There was an actinic flash of light and a muffled phut like the sound of an imploding soap bubble. The mist and its impacted passenger promptly vanished.

  Mudge gave his friend a hand up. “Wonder if ’e’ll keep ’is promise.”

  “He’s a true music lover.” Jon-Tom brushed black sand from his legs. “He may not find a way to help, but I think he’ll damn sure try.”

  Of the rainbow bridge there was no sign. It had evaporated the instant the one who had called it forth had vanished from this world. Voices hailed them and they returned the cries as best they were able.

  Then the princesses and soldiers were clustered close, all talking and questioning at once.

  “Easy, one at a time.” Jon-Tom made quieting motions with both hands. “We were transported to another world, another dimension.”

  “’Orrible place it were,” Mudge added. “Fraught with unimaginable dangers every step o’ the way! Fortunately I—”

  “Another, uh, magician carried us through and sent us back.” Jon-Tom threw a piercing glance in the otter’s direction. “It was the strange hard-bodied creature whom we’ve encountered several times before. He was trying to recover the music Mudge and I have been following.” To his surprise, Jon-Tom found that he missed the softly luminescent chord cloud. Its familiar chiming had been good company on their long journey. Now it was only a memory.

  One which he would carry with him as he strove to find a way to stop the megalomaniacal musician atop the mountain.

  “Before he sent us back, he promised to try and help.” He pointed to the dark clouds which hugged the topmost crags. “All the stolen music we’ve been hearing about is up there, and more is being wrenched from its proper place even as we stand here talking. There’s a musician from my world up there whose capacity for evil far exceeds his talent. Mudge and I tried to stop him but had to retreat.”

  “The rainbow bridge,” remarked Seshenshe.

  “Yes.”

  “We thought you weren’t coming back.” The look in Ansibette’s eyes hinted that this would have more than merely disappointed her.

  Otters being rather more demonstrative, Pivver flung her arms around Mudge and planted a whiskery smack square on his lips. The startled otter stumbled. For one of the few times since he’d made Mudge’s acquaintance, Jon-Tom saw his friend at a loss for words.

  “I’m glad you’re back.” Lieutenant Naike shook Jon-Tom’s hand, then nodded toward the mountain. “Whatever’s up there is in a foul mood.”

  As if to emphasize his observation, an aural avalanche of thunder louder than any they’d yet heard came rattling down the mountain. Black lightning scored blue sky.

  Using her long tongue instead of a hand, Quiquell pointed. “look! something’s coming off the mountain!”

  Figures were descending from the belly of the blackest cloud, as if the storm itself were giving birth. At this distance their outlines were still unclear, but Jon-Tom and Mudge didn’t need to be any nearer to know what they were. Having failed to finish off the intruders atop his peak, Hieronymus Hinckel was coming down after them.

  As the winged shapes drew closer Jon-Tom recognized one specter after another, from the would-be Elvis to the dissolute southern belle rapper. They played and sang as they descended, their frightful music preceding them.

  “What is that horrible noise?” Ansibette’s pretty face was screwed up in a rictus of distress.

  For what he knew might be the last time, Jon-Tom readied the duar. Knowing the nature of their opponent, this time he would be better prepared. However, nothing had happened to change the fact that he was still badly outnumbered.

  The princesses had to be protected. Firmly putting the odds out of his mind, he took up a stance between the ladies and the mountain, instrument at the ready. He knew he was going to have to sing like he’d never sung before in his life.

  As the onrushing mass began to resolve itself into individual figures, gasps of dismay arose from the soldiers and the princesses clustered behind them. Naike ordered his troops to form a line behind Jon-Tom. Their halberds and courage would be of little use against the oppone
nt they were about to confront, but Jon-Tom was grateful for the expression of support nonetheless.

  Maybe Hinckel’s powers would be reduced away from the comfortable surroundings of his fortress, Jon-Tom rationalized. Maybe.

  A familiar voice chirped stridently at his side. “So where’s your bleedin’ sympathetic bug? I didn’t think he’d be o’ no use.”

  “Don’t go too hard on him. We’ve only been back a few minutes. It’s not like he’s had a lot of time to analyze the situation. Besides, speed isn’t a scientist’s forte.”

  “We could use some kind of forte,” the otter complained. Despite his pessimism he held his ground, carefully notching an arrow to his bowstring.

  The chanting of Hinckel’s minions started a pounding at the back of Jon-Tom’s skull. If he had to listen to much more of that atrocious playing and indescribably bad singing, he was afraid the throb could develop into a migraine. He’d never tried to spellsing with a migraine and didn’t know if he could.

  Mudge raised his bow. “Maybe I can pick a couple of ’em off.”

  “Sure, if they can be affected by anything so pedestrian and mortal as a mere arrow.”

  The otter looked up at his companion and sniffed. “That’s right, mate, go on an’ encourage me.”

  Jon-Tom would have responded, but a wave of pseudo-rock caused him to wince in pain. A chorus of moans rose from behind him as the princesses were similarly affected. So profoundly repulsive was the music that it carried a physical punch.

  Like everyone else, Jon-Tom found himself forced back toward the lagoon. Several of the princesses were soon standing ankle-deep in the tepid seawater. Beyond the reef he could hear sundry cetaceans bellowing in distress. He knew he had to do something soon: They were running out of space as well as time.

  As the music momentarily subsided, a threadbare, winged drunk dressed like Liberace and a heavyset batwinged ex-headhunter from Irian Jaya who had a xylophone fashioned from human skulls hanging around his neck reverently deposited Hinckel atop the sand-and-gravel berm that marked the high-tide line. Guitar against his chest, thrashed harmonica dangling from one hand, he glared down at them like a rejected extra from the world’s chintziest heavy metal video.

  “You like music? I’ll give you music! You’ll learn to admire it, even to cherish it.” His gaze rose skyward. “Everyone will listen to me! Or suffer the consequences.”

  “Wouldn’t that be one and the same?” Jon-Tom remarked evenly.

  “You have no choice.” Putting the harmonica to his lips, the deranged musician blew a single note so off-key it could have stuck honey to Teflon.

  Backed by his horde of failures, he began one more time to play and sing.

  Screams arose from the huddled princesses, and even the resolutely stoic Naike let out a moan. Jon-Tom struggled to come up with a suitable rejoinder, but the sheer volume and energy of the grotesque chorus threatened to addle his senses.

  Taking aim, Mudge loosed his arrow. It flew straight and true toward Hinckel’s neck. Lost in a reverie of his own brilliance, the singer paid it no mind. Unearthly sounds emanated from his throat, sounds reminiscent of a steam train loaded with live chickens locking up its brakes at seventy miles an hour.

  So severe were the conjoined vibrations that the shaft of the arrow disintegrated in midair. The metal arrowhead spun harmlessly to the ground several feet short of Hinckel’s sneakers. Behind him, Jon-Tom could hear their lifeboat shaking, the nails threatening to vibrate right out of the planks. The sand on the beach was trembling, while the water in the lagoon twitched in agitation. Even the crabs were abandoning their burrows, tripping and tumbling over their own claws as they sought the relief of deep water.

  A look of hopelessness crossed the otter’s face. Putting up his bow, he drew his sword preparatory to making a suicidal charge in the hopes of giving Jon-Tom enough respite to gather his thoughts and come up with some kind of musical riposte.

  “Jon-Tom!” Ansibette’s tormented wail rose above the din. “Make it stop!”

  Having nearly exhausted his capacity for invention, Jon-Tom had a song pop unbidden into his mind. Yes, that might work! Modify a word here, a line there … With a determined expression on his face and a firm grip on the duar, he began to play and to sing.

  A vast, surging, opalescent fog began to form where the sea met the sand … behind him.

  Startled and surprised, the soldiers and princesses hurried to scurry clear of the dilating mist. Gigantic, blocky outlines began to coalesce within the iridescent vapor. One was a monstrous gray ovoid afire with laser-bright lights. It was flanked by two towering dark slabs that reached toward the sun. Each of the rectangular monoliths was matte black and featureless. As the mist began to evaporate and the sun struck them more forcefully, they acquired an onyxlike sheen, seeming to absorb the light as much as reflect it. So massive were they that they blocked out the cries of the despairing whales.

  There was no way Hinckel could ignore them. He gawked at the mammoth apparitions but continued to sing and play, as did his revolting choir.

  Temporarily forgotten, Mudge’s sword hung at his side as he stared at the stupendous tripartite formation. “Bloody ’ell, mate, wot’s all this?”

  Pausing in his playing, Jon-Tom, too, had turned to gape at the gargantuan materialization. His long hair rippled in the ill wind generated by Hinckel and his minions. “I … I don’t know.” There was something so familiar about the arrangement …

  A broad grin spread over his face. “I know. This is our friend’s work.”

  “Thought you said bloomin’ scientists, wherever they may be, need lots o’ time to do their work.”

  “They do, but our friend’s also a musician, and they tend to react instinctively. That’s what he’s done.”

  The otter eyed the monolithic structures. “Looks like parts o’ some bleedin’ alien temple, it do.”

  “You’re not far wrong, Mudge, you’re not far wrong.”

  “I don’t see ’ow this can ’elp us, unless one o’ the pieces falls on that Hinckel bloke.”

  “Just watch, and listen.”

  Stumbling through the black sand, Jon-Tom hurried past the baffled soldiers and princesses. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for. The cable was as thick around as his arm and ended in a flat, featureless terminus unlike anything he’d ever seen. But its purpose was clear enough.

  “Everybody get down,” he shouted, “and hold on!” Uncomprehending but responsive, his companions dropped to the sand.

  Clutching the duar tightly with his right hand, he grabbed the cable with the other and jammed the terminus into the sensitive nexus where the instrument’s strings intersected. Light exploded from the body of the instrument in a succession of concussive waves, while a golden nimbus expanded to engulf the immense ovoid. Though the cable writhed like a menopausal python, he held on to the duar. He wished he had some cotton for his ears, but there was no time for that now.

  He’d always wondered what his music would sound like properly amped and played back through a decent pair of speakers.

  Chapter 25

  SUBTLY MODIFIED BY Jon-Tom to relate to their present perilous situation, the first stupendous blast of Alice Cooper’s “HEY STUPID!” erupted from the monoliths. It blew a stunned Hinckel completely off his feet and sent him tumbling head over heels backward until his flight was arrested by a large, scraggly bush.

  Frantically flailing their wings, his tone-deaf minions struggled to maintain their bearings. They didn’t have a chance against subwoofers the size of a city bus. The over-amped spellsong blew them away like leaves, overwhelming both their music and their atrophied muscles.

  Somehow they held their positions. Flapping like a parody of a flock of harassed hummingbirds, they recovered, advancing to free their master from his prickly prison. Fear of failure had driven these spirits throughout eternity, and it constituted a powerful motivating force. They resumed their singing but were unable to make any
headway against Jon-Tom’s playing.

  The result was a musical standoff of near cosmic proportions. No matter how virtuostically he played, Jon-Tom couldn’t drive them off. The power of his spellsinging and that of the alien amp was matched by the sheer determination of the greatest failures in the history of music. The battle soon degenerated into a contest to see whose hands and lungs would give out first.

  Hinckel took heart from his recovery and resumed his singing and playing with a will. Like many rockers, he held more strength and energy in his skinny frame than at first glance appeared likely.

  There had to be a way to break the stalemate, Jon-Tom reasoned even as he sang on. Something more was needed, something else. A supplemental force not even Hinckel could counter.

  A chorus of whales might have done it, but Hinckel had control of their songs, and besides, there was no way they could get close enough to shore to help. The princesses hugged the sand, too benumbed to offer assistance of any kind. If only Buncan, Nocter, and Squill had been there, he knew, thinking of the kids. They were spellsingers in their own right. But they were hundreds of leagues away. Musically, he was all alone.

  That left one individual he felt he could depend on but whose musical abilities were somewhat in doubt.

  Though he kept on playing, he took a break from vocalizing. “Mudge!”

  From his position prone on the sand the otter twisted to look up at him. “Wot is it, mate? You’re doin’ great!”

  “We need to do better! Mudge, I’ve never asked you this before even though you have two musically talented cubs. Can you play an instrument?”

  “Crikey, me?” The otter blinked. His fur rippled from the force of his friend’s playing, as if a strong gale were blowing across him. “I’ve kind o’ left the playin’ to me kids, mate.”

  “Anything!” Jon-Tom’s voice barely rose above the cosmic cacophony. “Any instrument at all!”

  “Well, I don’t go about braggin’ on it.” The otter considered. “Too much else to brag about. But I always did like muckin’ around with a set o’ drums if one ’appened to be ’andy.”