by Linda Jaivin
Baby hooted with laughter. ‘Tube screamer? Tube screamer?’
‘I better get some gaffer tape,’ mumbled Jake, feeling uncharacteristically embarrassed. ‘If you go wild it’s better to have the cables taped to the stage.’ He fled.
Baby was still giggling to herself when an intense young man wearing jeans and a black Frenzel Rhomb t-shirt advanced upon her with squeaking sneakers and a vague air of menace. His long lank hair was gathered in a loose ponytail at the back. The great clutch of keys, Maglite torch and mobile phone jangling from his studded belt made him seem like some sort of rock n roll prison warden. He came to a halt about a metre from where she knelt. Staring emotionlessly into her eyes, he raised his hands and clapped sharply. And again. And once more.
Baby raised her hands and clapped back.
Mr Frenzel shook his head dismissively. ‘You don’t do that. I do that.’
‘Who are you and why do you do that?’ Baby wasn’t sure whether to grab her crotch in greeting or not. From the response she got on the street, she’d gathered it wasn’t always appropriate. Earthlings were so complicated. On Nufon, whenever you met someone, you simply put your hands on your hips, bent over to the left and stamped your right hoof twice. The all-occasions greeting. Here it was ‘Wanna suck my cock?’ one minute, ‘How are you today, Ma’am?’ the next, and now clapping. How was anyone supposed to negotiate this social maze?
‘I’m testing the resonant frequency in the room,’ explained the hand-clapper self-importantly. ‘I’m Henry. The mixer.’
‘Mixer?’ said Baby. Her translation chip was giving her: non-alcoholic component of a cocktail; kitchen gadget; a person adept at mingling. ‘Are you adept at mingling then? Or are you just a tonic?’
Henry raised an eyebrow. He knew it wasn’t said aloud these days, but Henry believed the proper place of chicks in rock n roll was in front of the stage, screaming at the band. Or chatting up the mixer. Sucking in his cheeks to deepen his expression of grave misgiving, he retreated to the mixing board, flicked a few switches and adjusted the faders. Then he rubber-soled back over to the stage.
Glancing at the amp, Henry shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you’re using a Marshall,’ he said. ‘It’s such a rock n roll cliche. I mean, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam—I reckon everything sounds the same with a Marshall.’
‘But what—’
‘I know, I know, most amps only go to ten and Marshall goes to eleven. I’ve seen Spinal Tap too. Frankly, if you want my advice, I’d use one of the lesser known brands if I were you. You’re looking for a distinctive sound, aren’t you? Take Sovtek for instance,’ Henry steamrolled on. ‘Made in Russia from old tank parts. Or so they say. I like to believe it.’
‘What’s the diff—?’
‘Well, for one thing, Sovtek’s got a crunchier distortion, more bottom-end drive…’ Henry crapped on, and on, and on.
Baby’s head was hurting. Her translation chip was giving her static. She couldn’t make head or tail of what Henry was saying.
‘Soundcheck,’ is what he was saying now. ‘Shall we do a soundcheck? Or do you want to just stand there and let me imagine what your levels will be like?’
‘Uh, what should I do?’
Henry rolled his eyes. ‘Play me something,’ he said. He went back to the desk. She’d no sooner started when he came flying across the room, waving his hands. ‘Wind your tops down,’ he ordered her. ‘It’s too sharp. You’re cuttin’ my ears off.’ Baby began again. He was back in a flash. ‘Turn your volume down a bit. You’re way too loud,’ he complained. ‘It’s only a small room. You don’t have to be that loud.’ Each word pricked another one of the lovely translucent spheres which made up Baby’s bubbly confidence.
Where the hell was Jake? She slipped the Locate-a-tron out of her bag and with nervous fingers, hammered in his code. At the head table of a state banquet in Canberra, the wife of a very important government leader suddenly let rip with what sounded like the mother of all farts. Whoops! Wrong number. By the time Baby had worked out what had happened, Jake had returned with the tape. Baby clutched at his arm. Jake could have sworn she was burning neat little holes in his skin where her fingertips were gripping. He could almost smell the scorched flesh. ‘Jake,’ she whispered, ‘I’m nervous. I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘It’s only rock n roll,’ he reassured her, yanking his arm away before it turned into kebab meat. Immediately, he panicked at the thought that she’d misunderstand and think he didn’t like her touching him. He loved her touching him. In theory anyway. If she could only wind down her tops first, that’d be ideal. ‘You don’t have to know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You just play.’
‘Just play?’ she said despairingly, thinking, why’d he pull his arm away like that? Didn’t he like her touching him? She was so agitated she neglected to read his mind. ‘Just play. It’s that easy, is it?’
‘Baby. If anyone makes it look that easy, you make it look that easy,’ Jake declared honestly, if somewhat distractedly.
Of course it was easy. She knew it was easy. What a silly little panic attack she was having. God! Why was she going on like this?
It’s simple, really, Baby. Basic Earthling psychology. A case of the Pseudo Blues. You’re just using stage fright—a concept that is really just about as alien to you as, oh, staying drug-free for whole days at a time would be to your fluffy-headed friend here—as an excuse. What you really want is to get close to Jake. Don’t ask Me why. Personally, I don’t see the attraction. Not My type. Then again, few Earthlings are. Anyway. This shmuck Henry was clearly trying to intimidate you for his own, pathetic, ego-related reasons, and you were letting him in order to generate a minor crisis. Your hope in doing so was to rouse Jake from his characteristic emotional torpor so that he could assume a heroic posture, to save you, as it were, thus generating a sense that you’d been through something crucial together. Which would give you a good excuse to jump him.
I see. You’re so wise and all-knowing. What do you think I should do now?
How the fuck should I know? I may be omniscient, but I’m not an advice columnist in some women’s magazine, for My sake. Figure out what you really want to say, what you really want to do. Say it. Do it. Be happy, don’t worry. And, if that’s all, I’ve got a sound check for a supernova I’m organising on the other side of the yoon. Should be spectacular. I’ve abducted the guy who usually does the lighting for the Nine Inch Nails to help out with effects.
Cool. Hey, thanks a lot, God.
Catch ya round like a rissole.
Baby focussed her big, watery green eyes on Jake. She lowered her head and a tangle of pink and orange plaits tumbled endearingly in front of her face, mixing in with the violet fringe. She managed a pathetic but thoroughly charming smile. ‘I don’t know shirt,’ she murmured.
‘That’s shit,’ Jake corrected. ‘“I don’t know shit”.’
‘You know shit, Jake. Don’t give me that.’ A flirtatious tone had returned to her voice.
Jake wasn’t sure how to take this. The joint he’d smoked when he stepped out for the gaffer tape was just beginning to kick in. He looked at Baby curiously. Who was she? She seemed very large at this moment, not just physically but psychically. She was huge. Why was she accusing him of knowing shit? What.did he know? And why was she green? What did it all mean? Par. Ah. Noy. Ah. Par. Ah. Noy. Ah. No! No! Don’t hit me! Aaaaaah.
‘You should see the expression on your face,’ laughed Torquil.
Jake jumped. ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that, man,’ he sulked.
Torquil shook his head and watched Doll and Lati clamber on stage for their sound checks. ‘Oh, man, you ever play pinball with Doll? She’s awesome.’
Lati tuned her bass and played a riff. ‘Oi! Henry! I can hear a bit of high and ring, a honk around two hundred K. Fix it, will you?’
Henry nodded and gave her the thumbs up. To Doll, who was bashing away at her drums, he advi
sed, ‘I could put a short gate on it with a bit of delay to fill it out if you want.’
‘Yeah,’ she responded authoritatively, ‘make it about 1.5 seconds with a 35 millisecond delay.’
‘Cool,’ said Henry. ‘Done.’
Baby looked at Lati and Doll in wonderment. Where’d they learn to talk like that?
Read their minds, Doll telepathed. It’s that simple. Piece o’ cake, these Earthlings, piece o’ cake.
What’s that mean, piece o’ cake?
Fucked if I know.
Baby felt another surge of anxiety. She tugged on the hem of Jake’s t-shirt. ‘We have to talk.’
‘What about?’ Oh, no. Oh no. Not a relationship talk!
Oh yes. ‘Us.’
Aaaaaaargh. Help! Help! The threat of serious interpersonal communication, particularly of the ‘about us’ kind, always triggered Jake’s fight or flight reaction, even when he wasn’t ripped off his tits. The fact that he had decided, pretty much anyway, that Baby was the one girl he loved, or something like that, made no difference to his primal instincts. He struggled to keep his legs from pedalling. ‘Mm?’ he responded, with a forced smile and a sound akin to that of a strangulating cat as the knot of paranoia rose from his stomach. ‘Maybe later would be—’
‘Jake. Not later. Not indefinite future. Now. Now. Now. I am getting, as you say, angsty.’
‘Maybe we should find someplace a bit more private,’ he stalled, looking around for a bolt-hole. He pointed to the back room just beyond the pool table, where the pinball and video machines were. They found the room empty except for Ozone, a member of another rock band. Ozone sat hunched over Major Strike, a video game that was like a golf tournament, but better, because you didn’t actually have to go out into the fresh air or lug anything heavy around to play it. Ozone’s hair looked like it had just escaped the laboratory of the mad scientist who’d created it. He was wearing a shiny green polyester shirt, a greasy brown suit jacket, jeans and Blundstones. A cigarette hung out of the side of his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy and, although he was just past thirty, too many late nights and too many weird chemicals had begun to etch hard lines into his face. ‘Oi. Jake,’ he mumbled in greeting, slugging at his beer and jiggling the game levers.
‘Oze,’ Jake replied, grateful for the diversion. ‘My man.’ Jake studied the screen over Ozone’s shoulder. ‘Shit. Water hazard.’
‘Jake,’ Baby fumed.
‘Just a tick. Crucial shot coming up here.’
Baby’s impatience was causing her ichor to boil. This, in turn, set off a chain reaction of riotous electrical impulses. Jake hardly had time to wonder at the current running up his spine when there was suddenly a loud explosion and smoke began billowing out of the top of the golf game.
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Ozone, falling off the stool. Jake had flown backwards and landed on the seat of a motorcycle race simulator. If he was getting paranoid earlier, he could definitely be said to have got it now. All three watched in silence as flames licked out the top of the game. The screen cracked and the small animated figure wielding a club began to melt down. His happy little face transmogrified into a mask of terror.
‘Now do I have your attention?’ Baby ground the words out from between gritted teeth.
‘Barbecue!’ cried Doll and Lati, attracted by the smell of melting hardware. Grabbing a handful of hot metal each, they went back to the pub’s main room.
Ozone lay in foetal position on the floor, shaking like a leaf. ‘I nevva shudda left ennay,’ he slurred.
Baby’s Transling-a-tron was shorting out. She looked at Jake, who had righted himself and was trying desperately to appear as though he’d only ever been leaning suavely against the motorcycle seat. ‘Who’s Ennay?’ she asked. ‘His girlfriend?’
‘NA,’ he grimaced. ‘Narcotics Anonymous.’ Jake recoiled from this particularly uncomfortable vision of the rock n roll future.
‘I feel terrible,’ she said, abashed. ‘I was the causatrix of all this. Guilt-o-rama. But what’s an anonymous narcotic? And do you think we should effect him to be vertically postured again?’
Jake bent down and slipped his hands into Ozone’s armpits, perceptibly damp even through the jacket, and hauled. And hauled. ‘Oof,’ he groaned. ‘I don’t think I can lift him.’
‘Move aside, Earth boy,’ said Baby. She looked Jake in the eyes, and did a quick mind scan. Holy Hyperion, what a mess it was in there! It was the psychic equivalent of his room. Lurking in the corners were men with evil faces, trench coats and.switchblades, hissing, ‘Jay-ake! Jay-ake! We’re coming to get you!’ Something had to be done. Baby shook her head, focussed her antennae, aimed and fired.
BOOM! Jake instantly felt as though someone had dunked him in a great big bathtub of warm milk upon which floated fragrant rose petals.
Oh, how he loved it when she called him ‘Earth boy’! He watched with a soft and gooey expression as she hooked a finger under Ozone’s collar and gently brought him up to standing position.
Oh, man, she was cool. She was more than cool. She was…she was…she was whatever it was when you were more than cool. More than kyool. She was.
She was letting go of Oze’s collar. Staring at her with uncomprehending, pinned eyes, Ozone crumpled back down on the floor.
‘He’ll be right,’ Jake said, smiling stupidly. ‘He spends a lot of time on floors.’ He looked at Baby with unadulterated tenderness shining out from his big browns.
‘Ready to talk?’ she queried sweetly.
Jake nodded.
‘I’m not quite sure how to say this, Jake, but I think there’s something that’s standing between us.’
Jake looked at the space between them.
‘It’s sex.’
He looked harder. Then he looked up. ‘Sex?’
‘You know how I mentioned that we’d already had sex?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ Jake squirmed. ‘I seem to recall you saying something like that, now that you mention it, yes.’
‘I wanted to clean the air.’
‘Clear.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That’s “clear the air”.’
‘Whatever. Anyway. You see, we sort of abducted you and—’
‘Hey, green girl.’ Groovy Gregory popped his head in the room. ‘You’re on in five.’ He lounged against the door frame and registered the awkward silence that ensued. ‘Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,’ he said, hoping exactly the opposite.
‘—we, uh, performed a number of sexual experiments on you.’ She glanced up at Greg. She certainly had the attention of both of them now.
‘Piss off, Greg,’ suggested Jake, adding, ‘and you know I mean that in the nicest possible way.’
Gregory shrugged and off-pissed, flashing five fingers at them as he went. He didn’t like heavy scenes anyway.
Jake returned his attention to Baby. What had she just said? Jesus. ‘Like, what sort of experiments?’ And did that somehow, he thought with a shudder, explain his ridiculously itchy behind?
‘Uh, yes, it does. We, uh, inserted a homing device up there,’ she answered, looking at the floor. Jake blushed bright scarlet, a sight that even his own mother would have paid good money to see. ‘Want me to take it out?’ she offered. ‘I mean, we know how to find you now, and all.’
Jake’s hands instinctively flew to cover his arse. ‘Later,’ he mumbled. ‘But, tell me. What exactly did these experiments involve? Are there any photos?’
‘Videoed the whole thing. Uh, but we use Betamax in the outer, so, like, you’d have to come to our place if you wanted to view it.’
‘Right. I see.’ He was trying to take all this in. ‘Was it all three of you?’ This was not an unpleasant thought.
‘Yeah. No. Four, actually. Revor was in it too.’
The blood drained out of Jake’s face. ‘What—’ On second thought, he didn’t think he really wanted to know. That thing had sex with Iggy, for Christ’s sake. Eeeyurgh. Be cool, he told himse
lf. Be cool. ‘So,’ he asked as jauntily as possible under the circs, ‘did I enjoy it?’
Gregory reappeared. ‘You’re on,’ he said to Baby.
‘Yes,’ she informed Jake, turning to follow Gregory into the bar area. ‘I believe you did.’
It suddenly occurred to Jake that maybe that’s why he found it so hard to make a move with Baby. He’d already had sex with her. He’d always found it difficult committing to a second time.
Baby stepped up to the mike and looked around at the dozen or so punters. The abductees, a motley crew if ever there was one, were flashing besotted grins. Two girls with leopard-print hair had parked their skinny arses on the ledge by the window and were skimming apathetically through the fanzines piled up there. One or two of the crusties from two weeks before, having been liberated from their hairlock, stared expressionlessly at the stage from under floppy dreads.
‘We’re the Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space,’ Baby announced to desultory applause, most of which came from the abductees, the Bosnia boys, Saturna, Skye and Gregory. ‘First up we’d like to do a kind of love song.’ Inadvertently she found herself looking at Jake when she said the word ‘love’. Jake looked away. What else could he do? How could he possibly look at her at a moment like that? With her sharp eyesight, Baby caught one of the girls in the corner rolling her eyes at ‘love song’.
‘Close Encounter You!’ she roared. Doll, who’d taken off her leather jacket and was wearing a black t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, attacked the drums furiously. The muscles in her lithe arms flexed and rippled. Lati swooped in on the bass, dipping her shoulders and shaking her head from side to side with the beat. Baby came in on her guitar. The song was fast, furious, and yet instantly memorable.
I had a dream
about a hill
about a boy
about a girl
you weren’t there
in the light
you weren’t there
on the hill
I want you in my vision
I want you in my night
I wanna
close encounter you
By the second verse, the cat girls had put down their zines, jumped into the space in front of the stage and were throwing themselves bodily into the music. The crusties had wrestled their dreads out of their eyes and the serious drinkers at the bar focussed bloodshot orbs in the direction of the small stage. By the time they launched into their second song, ‘Space Dogs’, the pool players had abandoned their game. Even Ozone managed to haul himself up off the floor and was leaning on the wall by the bar, an expression of awe on his face.