“We leave in three days; three days you got rehearsing with the band, and you will learn my set until you can play it in your sleep! You get food, you get board, we’ll see about money when we know what you can bring to the table; don’t forget I have your contract!” He waved the grubby cardboard begging sign. “What’s your name, boy?” Miles sighs and looks up from his plate with bleary eyes; he’s aware of how far he’s let himself go, and it’s embarrassing.
“I’m Miles Ravenscroft” he all but whispers. There is a silence; atmospheric pressure is high round about this time in the evening; nothing you can do about the heat when Centauri B begins her descent and the seconds string out in that way even as hours march resolutely by, sometimes it can make your ears pop. Rueben ‘Froot’ Shugga exhales.
“Man I heard you was dead! Came here straight out of service and the first thing I did was see the New Igniters.” He pulls a familiar ten inch double disc from his kitbag; Maximum Purity.
“This is just about the best thing I ever heard in my life; all I want from you, is we make a better one.” They walk from the main drag into Denmark Street and enter a building; inside it looks like the national grid has exploded all over a rehearsal room. A man looks up from a circuit board he’s soldering; despite the gloom he is wearing sunglasses.
“What you got there, Froot?”
“New guitarist; says he used to be Miles Ravenscroft.” The shopkeeper removes his shades and stares.
“Man, I heard you was dead.” Miles shrugs philosophically.
“Could be; I heard it twice today myself.” Froot grunts.
“He’s got a smart mouth for something I found dying in a gutter. You got anything electric made up right now, Sol’?
“Just set up this very afternoon; one piece American ash with a rosewood fingerboard.” It wasn’t a lash up like Miles’ guitar; this was electric from the ground up with not even the pretence of a soundbox. The wiring was neatly hidden away, and a telephone operator’s jack socket connected it to the outside world. As Miles picked it up he reached into an old record sleeve and dragged a lost avatar into the present day; it made the twentieth century so real he felt homesick. His fingers ran away from him down the neck, and the strings were so close to the fretboard it seemed the slightest breeze would hold a note.
“This is not a gift! It will come out of your wages as and when I decide to pay you any.” An electric bass is hung on the wall, similar in design to the instrument he now apparently owns. A cursive scroll on the headstock catches his eye; su quattro II. Wow, he thought; Jenny’s been busy.
Solomon shuts up shop and the trio make their way to a red house over yonder, apart from the others on the edge of town; the great mass of Alpha Centauri B is retreating from the evening sky. The clapboard construction is sparsely furnished save for instrument cases; many of the Big Band are ex service personnel who returned to find the folks back home had the best jobs and a head start. Sometimes they came back from unpopular wars, and then you just keep right on walking. The standard guitar, keys and drums line up of groups like the Igniters is supplemented with a four piece horn section and backing singers, so the House of the Red Sun seethed with sound and activity until everyone passed out round about sunrise. The residence belonged to someone’s family, and various outside interests bring in enough food, fuel, booze and exotic stimulants to keep the band a going concern. A pale, blonde woman eyes Miles warily from a sofa; her voice is strangely glottal, but with an undercurrent of immense power softly idling.
“Right I’m just gonna flat out say it; your man here smells, I mean real bad. I’m like ten feet away and it’s bad.” Froot sniffs the air.
“I can’t smell nothin’, and what of it?”
“What of it is you boys are to show this poor man where the bathroom is, and then you’re to burn his clothes and go right back out for something clean.”
“I’m not his mother.”
“I should be yours for the common decency I have to teach you!” Sol’ claps Froot on the shoulder.
“C’mon Cuz, you know we’re doing this.” He calls to Miles as they leave “bathroom’s first right off the landing; the lock’s broken but it’s not like you can’t sing loud.” A liquid fuel furnace in the basement spat rusty water through hammering pipes in fits and bursts; it took Miles a while to lower his carcass into a steaming crimson substance bearing more commonality with lava than dihydrogen monoxide. By the time he’s washed the grime from his skin and the grit from his matted hair, there’s a small pile of old clothes waiting outside the door.
Rueben Shugga was once a Lance-Corporal in the Royal Naval Outer Infantry, but never did progress any further. He’d lived a hard life, even by pre-war mountain standards, and for all the brains God gave him early conditioning bequeathed few options for problem solving. It’s no easy task to bully and abuse four full grown Infantry troopers, but somehow he managed it and official complaints were frequent. One way or another he always escaped court martial, generally because of a fresh victory, but they got him in the end and meted out a dishonourable discharge for stealing catering supplies. Makes more sense when you know his brother had a restaurant back home hitting some hard times, but there it is. Solomon is Froots’ cousin, and a few years older; he plays keyboards and becomes something of an ally of Miles’. His main instrument is an enormous tonewheel organ, designed to be a complete music production suite in its’ own right. It could mimic a symphony orchestra, or sound like nothing you’d ever heard before; it had valve amplifiers and revolving speakers, and one or two settings had been disabled for safety reasons. You had to be as much of an engineer as a musician to get anything from it or keep it running, and Sol’ was both.
Most the Big Band hail from the mountain town of Nightride and besides olive skin, dark hair and something around the eyes they share another distinguishing feature, which intrigues Miles.
“Why do you all have American accents? Well, not American, sort of Irish; it always reminds me of New York cops in old movies.” Sol’ nods.
“Most of what you’re hearing is the original British accent; before public radio broadcasts, working people sounded much the same on both sides of the Atlantic.”
“Not following you.”
“Early radio was not crystal clear; there was a lot of static and signals were often very weak. The phonetic alphabet didn’t work for weather reports and afternoon plays, so broadcasters over-emphasised words. You say transmitted, I say transmidded but these transmissions came from an official government department and citizens were licensed to receive them; when the public tuned in they assumed it was how the top people spoke and began to copy them, which is where your accent came from.
“So did Queen Victoria say ‘we ah naddamused?” Sol’ smiles but shakes his head.
“Unlikely; the British royal family were German by then. The nobility sounded different anyway ‘cause they spoke French and Latin, the romance languages; they were not native English speakers. As the classless experiment of the U.S. progressed, British English became redefined as ‘not American’.”
“Didn’t the U.S. have radio?”
“In the States it began as a niche interest fuelled by a handful of private broadcasters, so its image was less authoritarian. The Americans had a different mindset anyway; still saw themselves as an egalitarian society back then. The working man didn’t ape his betters, because all men were equal; it was how they drew the line between old Europe and the land of the free, a distinction which the rounded vowels of the new British accent emphasised.”
“Still doesn’t explain why Nightriders talk that way.”
“Well this is the thing about living and dying in a closed community miles up a mountain; you miss some stuff. How long have the Reivers been up there? They still got border accents hard enough to saw down the Dughall Mor and nobody blinks an eye. Anyway, how are you finding Froot?”
“Bit mystified why he has me in the band; doesn’t seem to rate me very highly.”
“Why are you not practicing the jazz riff? I know you been having trouble with it and so help me if you mess up tonight after spending the whole day blowin’ weed and talking crap…” Miles picks up his guitar and plays faultlessly.
“It’s nailed Froot; you want it behind my head?” He slings the instrument over his shoulder and plays it backwards. Froot grunts, unimpressed.
“Now play it with your teeth.”
“Your mother my teeth!” Froot starts towards Miles, who is on his feet all of a sudden and anything can happen in the next ten seconds; Solomon stands between them.
“Now hold on there Rueben, I don’t think you realise what a capable musician he has become under my tutelage!” Froot exhales, glaring at Miles over his cousins’ shoulder.
“Yeah well, that’s probably the best kept secret in the whole system.”
If Blue Cheer powered the mines, an emotional rainbow of substances powered the first system wide tour of the Froot Shugga Big Band. Miles was stoned almost constantly (plus ça change) but shunned anything stronger, and rarely drank. He reckoned he was on his second, possibly third chance in life so far and was being careful not to knacker it again. He kept accounts and receipts on his interface; the ubiquitous appliance carried by most everyone took many forms, both wearable and as an accessory. Entanglement tech meant its physical form could be left at home while not in use, so it didn’t ruin the line of your slacks and dropping it had no effect; it wasn’t there unless you were holding it. Implanted devices and shared worlds had come and gone, but many consumers found it helpful to have a real object to throw at a wall when it annoyed them, even if it was impossible to break the thing. Miles wore a wide detachable band around his forearm; he’d pulled everything capable of communication, creating a closed environment with information unable to leave or enter unless he put it there. When he was paid he bought something valuable and hid it somewhere safe; he felt he could trust a good solid bar of rhodium over fickle numbers cavorting shamelessly across somebody else’s balance sheet. As a child of the post Streamer boom recession, Miles disliked cash and the reason was inflation.
To use the term ‘inflation’ almost makes it sound as if something positive is happening. In the interests of growth, we are told, inflation must run close to two percent, but why is such growth necessary? Back in the day, inflation was not a thing. A Roman soldier in Christ’s time received one denarius a day, a coin containing a tenth of an ounce of silver; this was also the going rate for factory workers in the early twentieth century, and the coins they carried were still made of silver. Real money is a long term store of wealth over lifetimes and centuries, but currency is only good currently.
The Great War of 1914 brought money to an end. Battle had been the preserve of sovereign states, but the cost of mechanised combat was beyond the avarice of kings; countries took out loans to fight and their liabilities are still being paid, along with many others since incurred. Banks steadily skim and governments keep in the black, but people get a little poorer year on year. The truth is prices don’t rise; economies of scale and production invariably cause real costs to plummet, and without this debt we would all be working three hour weeks by now. Only when a price drop is dramatic, as with motor cars in the first half of the twentieth century or personal computing in the second, is it steep enough to be visible to the naked wallet. Everything else seems to cost more every year.
What set the Big Band apart from the outset was scale. Whatever the pros and cons of people just standing on a stage and cranking out great music, with the Big Band you got a circus. On the road, personalities became exaggerated; to watch the entourage check into a hotel was more entertainment than some people’s entire back catalogue. Froot had a talent for self promotion and wasn’t the only one; everything about the band was larger than life and they sold out from day one. No medium was too mainstream or too cheesy and they’d play corporate events, tramp streamers, officers’ messes and formal balls; Froot pushed them forward for jingles and advertising, installed them as house band on prime time shows and generally flogged the Hell out of them. Ex Big Banders had the option of a short career in celebrity papers and entertainment shows, which was something new. The Big Band became an institution, swallowing up publishing companies and ticket networks; more than a few unknowns owed their houses to Froot slapping one of their old numbers on an album and in time he earned a grudging respect, not least because a tour of duty in the Big Band was about the one time in your life you’d get paid properly. It wasn’t for everyone though; you had to play damn near perfectly to avoid incurring your leaders’ wrath, and be able to defend yourself against eighteen stone of furious ex Lance-Corporal should you not come up to scratch.
Big money was being made, but big money was being invested and life on the road remained as frugal as ever. One night when the band ran low on funds ahead of another engagement their backing singers, the Sisters, sang for beers. That may sound grim, but these were gifted and powerful voices calling down glory. What may have started with a bored innkeeper spotting a target for his regulars’ coarse merriment ended with conquering warrior queens exacting tribute from the vanquished, and drinking them under the table. Piece by such pieces are legends built, and Miles remembered Anna’s words about the cult of personality.
The Sisters were a female three piece vocal ensemble; two, Sharazad de Feauvoir (Sharon Fahey when she’s at home) and Silver Gift (previously Tracey), were actual sisters, pale blonde Saxons[††††] from the English flatlands, while Starbel Jagger was a mountain girl with the characteristic olive complexion and hooded eyes of her people. Tracey and Sha’ were the daughters of a welfare officer, assigned by her company to improve medical care, schooling and transport for the cheap skilled labour which poured down from the heights every morning to work the plains. They grew up with the families and children of the mountain people; they spoke their languages, ate their foods and participated in their festivals and celebrations. It wasn’t easy; Tracey went to school on her own at first, Sha’ being a year younger, and the spooked children didn’t know what to make of this flaxen spectre. As far as they could tell, she’d apparated into their close knit community overnight; the entire class suspiciously huddled in whichever corner was furthest from the pale interloper while a frustrated and embarrassed nun tried to stop them all being so silly and play nicely with the new girl.
Little Starbel Jagger reached the schoolroom around lunchtime, having repaid her working parents trust by binge watching all three Fabulous Flower Fairy films on a usually forbidden English channel. Tracey looks up in surprise as a child with shining eyes takes her hand and pulls her to her feet.
“You come with me, fairy!” The white girl is marched to the front of the class and presented to the teacher; Starbel feels certain facts need to be established, so everyone knows where they stand.
“My name is Starbel and I’m four” she points to Tracey “this is a fairy I’ve found, and we’re going to be friends now.”
A Hotel Balcony on Planet Van de Kamp
Sundown, 2224 A.D.
If Britain had become a rowdy place since leaving the brotherhood of nations, some blame must be laid at the door of their new friends in the colonies; the Centaurians were more or less what you’d expect from an enlightened and advanced species, but the Barnards were nutters. The indigenous population of planet Van de Kamp in the system of Barnards’ Star accept reincarnation unquestioningly, and what they absolutely do not have anywhere in their culture is ‘thou shalt not kill’. Your body is not you, they reason; if anything it’s less you than your clothes or your house because you made a conscious decision to acquire those. If a moth chomping a hole in your best suit is no biggie, how much less is death? Barnardians are not bad people; they’re good pe
ople who do things you and I would consider bad, and they realise now we have no sense of humour where fatalities are concerned. If it hadn’t have been for the protection of the Nephilim, the first human settlers would have been wiped out. One reason for this collective death wish is Van de Kamp being a virtual paradise, situated at such an opportune point in spacetime as to be covered with temperate forests of low hanging fruit. They have no natural predators and discovered fire surprisingly late as everything they eat is fresh off the vine and they’re always warm. They have a high tolerance to pain as they just don’t need our hypersensitive early warning system; put simply, their environment isn’t trying to kill them. As a species they’ve had a remarkably easy time of it, and without scant respect for the sanctity of life would have piled up like mole rats by now.
Froot Shugga is on a hotel balcony in the heart of the mainly human city state of Camp de Kamp, and he is watching the sun go down over a nearby airfield. The Big Band bought a used sixteen seat plane for their tour of the one vast continent, painted their logo over the garish livery of Pangean Airways and renamed it the Mothership. Booking one central hotel and flying works out cheaper, as the Barnards have no teleporters. Well, it’ll work out cheaper when the Mothership is sold on at the end of the tour; if they can’t shift it they’ll be in a lot of trouble, but you have to speculate to accumulate and it keeps ticket prices down. They absolutely scalped fans on merchandise of course, but merch was optional like cinema popcorn so was considered a victimless crime. As a military man, Shugga’s perfectly aware he’s not been alone for the last minute and thirty nine seconds. He pays Sha’ no mind and carries on blowing smoke rings into the cooling air; she’ll get to the point in her own time, or when her legs get tired. There is a cough behind him.
“What’s the deal with Miles?” Froot doesn’t look around.
The Only War Page 9