by Various
I sit there with my beer in my hand and think about it for a while, while Hotlips looks at me like a lost sheepdog. I scratch my head but I do not even come up with dandruff.
Finally, I say, "Well, thrush or not, if you play no better than you do this afternoon, Frankie will make you walk back home without a spacesuit."
"That is for positive," Hotlips agrees sadly. "So what can I do?"
I am forced to admit that I do not know just what Hotlips can do. "However," I say, "I have an idea." And I call Mamie over and tell her the problem. "So you are a woman and maybe you know what my musician friend can do," I suggest.
Mamie sighs. "I am at a loss for words concerning what your friend can do, but I know just how he feels, for it is like that with me, too. I am in love of a handsome young musician who comes in here, but he does not take notice of me, except to order some beer for him and his friend."
I click my teeth sympathetically at this news.
"And I am too shy and dignified a girl to tell him," Mamie continues sadly. "So you see I have the same problem as your friend and cannot help you."
"See," I whisper to Hotlips, "it is perfectly normal."
"Yes," he hisses back. "But I am still miserable, and the only company I desire is that of Stella Starlight."
"Maybe it really is your trumpet," I suggest, not very hopeful, though.
Hotlips shakes his head. "Look," he says and takes the trumpet from his case and puts it to his lips, "and listen to this."
Inwardly, I quiver like all get out, because I figure that is just what the management will tell us to do, once Hotlips lets go. Hotlips puffs out his cheeks and a soft note slides from the end of the trumpet--low, clear, and beautiful, without a waver in a spaceload. Only a few people close by can hear the note and they do not pay us any attention, except to think that maybe we are a little nuttier than is normal for musicians.
From his first note, Hotlips shifts to a higher note which is just as pretty. Then he goes on to another one and then to another, improvising a melody I do not hear before and getting higher all the time. After a while I can hardly hear it, it is so high, but I can feel the glass in my hand vibrating like it wants to get out on the floor and dance. I hold on to it with both hands, so my beer will not slosh over the side. Then there is no sound at all from the trumpet, but Hotlips' cheeks are puffed out and he is still blowing for all he is worth--which is plenty, if he can play like this when Stella Starlight is around.
I tap Hotlips on the shoulder. "Hotlips, that is all very well for any bats in the room which maybe can hear what you play, but--" He does not pay me any attention.
Suddenly there is a large crinkle-crash of glass from the bar and a hoarse cry from the bartender as he sees his king-size mirror come down in little pieces. At the same time, glasses pop into fragments all over the room and spill beer over the people holding them. Even my own glass becomes nothing but ground glass and the beer sloshes over the table. At the moment, however, I do not worry about that.
There are other things to worry about which are more important--like Hotlips' and my health, for instance, which is not likely to be so good in the near future.
Like I say, Hotlips does not play loud and it is noisy in the place, so there are not too many who hear him. But they look around, all mad and covered with beer, and see him there with the trumpet in his hand and a funny look on his big face, and they put two and two together. I can see they figure the answer is four. And what makes things worse, they are between us and the front door, so we cannot sneak past like maybe we are just tourists.
"Hotlips," I say to him, my voice not calm like is usual, "I think it is a grand and glorious idea that we desert here and take ourselves elsewhere."
Hotlips agrees. "But where?" he wants to know.
I am forced to admit to myself that he comes up with a good question.
"Over here," Mamie said suddenly, and we look across the room to see her poking her nose through a side door.
We do not wait for a formal invite but zoom across the floor and through the door into another, emptier room. Mamie slams the door and locks it just as two or three bodies thump into it like they mean business.
"The manager is out there and is not completely overjoyed with your actions of a short while ago," Mamie informs us, explaining, "I recognize the thump the character makes."
"Evidently," I surmise, "he is in no mood to talk to concerning damages and how we can get out of paying them, so we will talk to him later instead of now."
"See what I mean, though, Eddie," Hotlips says. "I play fine when Stella Starlight is not in the place. Like I say, it is love and what can I do about it."
"It is a problem," I say. "Even if you do play, you will no doubt be fired and cannot pay for the damages to the bar room and to the customers' clothing." Already there are holes in my plastic clothing where the beer splashes. "If you can only give out on the Saturn like you play here," I sigh, "we can break all records and show Frankie--"
Suddenly Mamie is tugging at my arm.
"Mamie," I inquire politely of her, "why are you tugging at my arm?"
"That is it," she informs me and leans forward and whispers in my ear.
"But--" I say.
"Hurry," she says, pushing us out another door. "You have only got this afternoon to do it."
"But--" I say again, and Hotlips and I are in the alley looking at the door which Mamie closes in our face.
"What does Mamie say?" Hotlips wants to know eagerly. "Can she fix it up with me and Stella Starlight?"
I scratch my head. "That I do not know, Hotlips, but she does give me an idea which is so good I am surprised at myself I do not think of it alone."
Hotlips gives me a blank stare. "Which is?"
"Come on," I say mysteriously. "You and me have got things to do."
It is hard to say who is more nervous that night, Hotlips or a certain piano player with my name. Frankie is smirking like always, and Stella Starlight is sitting and looking beautiful while she waits for her cue. Hotlips is fumbling with his trumpet like maybe he never sees one before. And I--even I am not exactly calm like always.
The band begins to warm up, but we do not knock ourselves out because there are still no customers to speak of. Frankie's license makes it plain that he has to stay over the western hemisphere so he has to wait until it gets dark enough there for the people to want to go night-clubbing, even though it is not really night on the Saturn, or morning or anything else.
We play along like always, and Hotlips has his trumpet pressed into his face, and nothing but beautiful sounds come from the band. I do not know if Frankie is altogether happy about this, for he does not like Hotlips and would like this chance to bounce him. But what surprises me most is that the thrush, Stella Starlight, keeps looking back at Hotlips like she notices him for the first time and is plenty worried by what she sees.
We have a short break after a while and I am telling Hotlips that the idea goes over real great, when Stella Starlight waltzes over. Hotlips' big eyes bug out and I can see him shaking and covered with goosebumps.
"You do not play like that before, Hotlips," she coos. "What did you do?"
Hotlips blushes and stammers, "Eddie and I fix--" But I give him a kick in his big shins before he gives the whole thing away.
"Hotlips does some practicing this afternoon," I tell her, "to get his lip in shape for tonight."
She looks at me like she is looking through me, and then she turns back to Hotlips and says, soft and murmuring: "Please do not play too high, Hotlips. I am delicate and am disturbed by high sounds."
She waltzes away, and I scratch my head and try to figure out what this pitch is for. Hotlips is not trying to figure out anything; he just sits there looking like he has just got his trumpet out of hock for the last time.
"Hotlips," I say to him.
"Go away, please, Eddie," he tells me. "I am in heaven."
"You will be in the poorhouse or maybe even in jail if yo
u tell somebody how we fix your playing," I warn him.
"I still feel funny feelings though, Eddie," he tells me, frowning, "like I cannot hit high notes now if I try."
"Then do not try," I advise. "One problem at a time is too much."
There is a commotion at the entrance on the other side of the dance floor, where some people all dressed up come in. A woman is holding her head and moaning and threatening to faint all over the place.
Frankie hurries over to us, running fidgety hands through his hair. "For goodness sake, play something," he almost begs.
"What gives?" I inquire.
"Flying cuspidors," Frankie says in a frantic tone. "They are all around the place, like they are maybe mad at something, and a few minutes ago they buzz the ferry and get the passengers all nervous and upset. If they do that again, business will be bad; maybe even now it will be bad. Play something!"
He hops out in front with his baton and gives us a quick one-two, and we all swing into "Space On My Hands," real loud so as to get people's minds off things which Frankie wants to get people's minds off of.
Stella Starlight gets up to sing, but she looks more like she would rather do something else. She stares at Hotlips and at the trumpet on his lips and begins to quiver like she is about to do a dance.
I remember she says she does not like high notes, and this song has some pretty well up in the stratosphere, especially for the trumpet section, which is Hotlips.
She is frowning like maybe she is thinking real hard about something and is surprised her thoughts do no good. Her face becomes waxy and there is a frightened look on it.
She quivers some more, as the notes go up and up and up. Then she lets out a shriek, like maybe she is going to pieces.
And then she does. Actually.
Right before our popping eyeballs she goes to pieces.
As each one in the band sees what is going on, he stops playing, until finally Hotlips is the only one. But the trumpet is in Hotlips' hand, and the music is coming from the recording machine we place under his chair. The notes are clear and smooth, and you can almost feel the air shaking with them.
But nobody notices the music or where it comes from. They are too busy watching the thrush, Stella Starlight.
She stands there, her face as white as clay, shaking like a carrot going through a mixmaster. And then tiny cracks appear on her face, on her arms, even in her dress, and then a large one appears in her forehead and goes down through her body. She splits in the middle like a cracked walnut, and there in the center, floating three feet from the floor is a small flying cuspidor.
Nobody in the room says anything. They just stand there, bug-eyed and frightened like anything. Somewhere, across the room, a woman faints. I do not feel too well myself, and I am afraid to look to see how Hotlips takes this.
There is no sound, but I hear a voice in my mind and know that the others hear it too. The voice sounds like it is filled with wire and metal and is not exactly human. It says:
"You win, Hotlips Grogan. I, as advance agent in disguise, tell you this. We will go away and leave you and your people alone. We place a mental block in your mind, but you outsmart us, and now you know our weakness. We cannot stand high sounds which you can play so easy on your trumpet. We find ourselves a home someplace else."
With that, the cuspidor shoots across the room and plows right through the wall.
"That's the engine room!" Frankie wails.
There is a sudden explosion from the other side of the wall, and everybody decides all at once they would like to be someplace else, and they all pick the same spot. The space ferry is pretty crowded, but we jam aboard it and drift away from the Saturn--musicians, waiters and paying customers all sitting in each other's laps.
The Saturn is wobbling around, with flames shooting out at all angles, and Frankie is holding his head and moaning. In the distance, you can just about make out little specks of cuspidors heading for the wild black yonder.
So all is well that ends well, and this is it.
Frankie uses his insurance money to open a rest home on Mars for ailing musicians.
Hotlips is all broken up, in a manner of speaking, over Stella Starlight's turning out to be not human, but he consoles himself with a good job playing trumpet in a burlesque house where the girls wear costumes made of glass and other brittle stuff.
* * * * *
As for me, Mamie gets me a job playing piano at the place where she works, and everything is okay except for one thing. When Mamie is around I cannot seem to concentrate on my playing. I feel a funny feeling in my stomach, like maybe it is full of supersuds or something, and my mouth is dry like cotton candy.
I think maybe it is indigestion.
* * *
Contents
I LIKE MARTIAN MUSIC
by CHARLES E. FRITCH
Longtree played. His features relaxed into a gentle smile of happiness and his body turned a bright red orange.
Longtree sat before his hole in the ground and gazed thoughtfully among the sandy red hills that surrounded him. His skin at that moment was a medium yellow, a shade between pride and happiness at having his brief symphony almost completed, with just a faint tinge of red to denote that uncertain, cautious approach to the last note which had eluded him thus far.
He sat there unmoving for a while, and then he picked up his blowstring and fitted the mouthpiece between his thin lips. He blew into it softly and at the same time gently strummed the three strings stretching the length of the instrument. The note was a firm clear one which would have made any other musician proud.
But Longtree frowned, and at the disappointment his body flushed a dark green and began taking on a purple cast of anger. Hastily, he put down the blowstring and tried to think of something else. Slowly his normal color returned.
Across the nearest hill came his friend Channeljumper, striding on the long thin ungainly legs that had given him his name. His skin radiated a blissful orange.
"Longtree!" Channeljumper exclaimed enthusiastically, collapsing on the ground nearby and folding his legs around him. "How's the symphony coming?"
"Not so good," Longtree admitted sadly, and his skin turned green at the memory. "If I don't get that last note, I may be this color the rest of my life."
"Why don't you play what you've written so far. It's not very long, and it might cheer you up a bit."
You're a good friend, Channeljumper, Longtree thought, and when Redsand and I are married after the Music Festival we'll have you over to our hole for dinner. As he thought this, he felt his body take on an orange cast, and he felt better.
"I can't seem to get that last note," he said, picking up the blowstring again and putting it into position. "The final note must be conclusive, something complete in itself and yet be able to sum up the entire meaning of the symphony preceding it."
Channeljumper hummed sympathetically. "That's a big job for one note. It might be a sound no one has ever heard before."
Longtree shrugged. "It may even sound alien," he admitted, "but it's got to be the right note."
"Play, and we'll see," Channeljumper urged.
Longtree played. And as he played, his features relaxed into a gentle smile of happiness and his body turned orange. Delicately, he strummed the three strings of the blowstring with his long-nailed fingers, softly he pursed his frail lips and blew expertly into the mouthpiece.
From the instrument came sounds the like of which Channeljumper had never before heard. The Martian sat and listened in evident rapture, his body radiating a golden glow of ecstasy. He sat and dreamed, and as the music played, his spine tingled with growing excitement. The music swelled, surrounding him, permeating him, picking him up in a great hand and sweeping him into new and strange and beautiful worlds--worlds of tall metal structures, of vast stretches of greenness and of water and of trees and of small pale creatures that flew giant metal insects. He dreamed of these things which his planet Mars had not known for millions of years.
After a while, the music stopped, but for a moment neither of them said anything.
At last Channeljumper sighed. "It's beautiful," he said.
"Yes," Longtree admitted.
"But--" Channeljumper seemed puzzled--"but somehow it doesn't seem complete. Almost, but not quite. As though--as though--"
Longtree sighed. "One more note would do it. One more note--no more, no less--at the end of the crescendo could tie the symphony together and end it. But which one? I've tried them all, and none of them fit!"
His voice had risen higher in his excitement, and Channeljumper warned, "Careful, you're beginning to turn purple."
"I know," Longtree said mournfully, and the purple tint changed to a more acceptable green. "But I've got to win first prize at the festival tomorrow; Redsand promised to marry me if I did."
"You can't lose," Channeljumper told him, and then remembered, "if you can get that last note."
"If," Longtree echoed despairingly, as though his friend had asked the impossible. "I wish I had your confidence, Chan; you're orange most of the time, while I'm a spectrum."
"I haven't your artistic temperament," Channeljumper told him. "Besides, orange is such a homely color I feel ashamed to have it all the time."
As he said this, he turned green with shame, and Longtree laughed at the paradox.
Channeljumper laughed too, glad that he had diverted his friend's attention from the elusive and perhaps non-existent note. "Did you know the space rocket is due pretty soon," he said, "perhaps even in time for the Music Festival?"
"Space rocket?"
"Oh, I forgot you were busy composing and didn't get to hear about it," Channeljumper said. "Well, Bigwind, who has a telescope in his hole, told me a rocket is coming through space toward us, possibly from the third planet."
"Oh?" Longtree said, not particularly interested.
"I wonder if they'll look like us?" Channeljumper wondered.
"If they're intelligent, of course they will," Longtree said certainly, not caring. "Their culture will probably be alien, though, and their music--" He paused and turned a very deep yellow. "Of course! They might even be able to furnish the note I need to complete my symphony!"