At Presley Hall, the Helltones were back in all their original, mutated glory, grinding out their most popular tunes amid a music system reengineered to be capable of sounds never before exploited in the music industry. The lead singer and his troupe looked and sounded the same, although inside the workings and movements were constructed more economically, and the number of programmed commands and range of response was considerably smaller. The aim here was disposability.
There was a first performance, with predictable songs and physical gyrations that defied visual explanation, even for mutadroids—all of which most of the people in the audience had seen a hundred times on videos or during prior performances. The second show had always been the best in the past, because that was when the people in the front rows could shout out requests for an encore and the ’droids would process the requests and randomly select a set of three or four songs to perform. As a tangible expense item, the Helltones were significantly cheaper now that the programming and microprocessors necessary to function at that level of memory and custom response could be eliminated. After all, none of the group would ever make it to the encore portion of the performance again.
The Manhattan ordinances that regulated live and electronic performances required Synsound to prominently warn the public of the nature of the group’s act. The corporation chose to do it via the splashy lights and moving displays on the marquees that jutted from the outside of the building at five locations:
RETURN OF THE HELLTONES! NIGHT OF DEATH! THE FABLED PRESLEY HALL SLAUGHTERNIGHT RE-CREATED!
Inside, every detail had been painstakingly re-created from the footage in the security cameras, starting with the alarmingly life-size android re-creations of the alien that leaped onto the stage from an unseen perch above the platform. True to the memories of those among the gore-loving audience who had been there on the original bloody night, the Helltones’ band members were the first to be destroyed, the fragments of their music—
“My knife of lo—CHIK! My knife of lo—CHIK! My knife of lo—CHIK!”
—rolling from the speakers as the immense vidscreeen showed the carnage in close, panoramic shots that had been impossible on the original night. Its destruction on stage achieved, the oversize android alien moved into the crowd, systematically butchering some twenty-odd selected fans and jelly junkies in the first ten rows—androids all—as it followed its meticulously programmed instructions. Not a drop of human blood was spilled, not a single living soul was endangered, and the viewers and listeners, including those who now considered themselves fortunate to have been there for the genuine thing, adored it.
There had been a few lawsuits, but they were trivial against the deep pockets of the company that controlled the world’s music. They were settled quickly and out of court, although Synsound wouldn’t have cared otherwise. Court battles gave the lawyers in their legal department busywork and provided wonderful media exposure, especially if things got heated. The marketing division had used its creativity to turn the massacre into the biggest moneymaker the company had ever stumbled across, and the best part of it was that no live actor had to be paid an advance or royalties—ever. Now Synsound already had scriptwriters and composers laboring over fresh ideas combining concerts and what they now called the mutadroid audience participants in their acts: performing androids. An entire new department had been created to house several dozen eager artists and mechanical architects; now they were enthusiastically designing formerly undreamed-of “alien” monsters to be included in future acts.
As always, the concert’s ultimate moment was when the grenade split the alien android’s carapace and the creature exploded. There was no acid alien blood to rain down upon the audience, no melting flesh or warm and sticky human blood—no real pain or mortal fear for anyone. Only the sound so lovingly engineered and coveted but never heard by Damon Eddington, captured three months ago with faithful accuracy by Synsound’s patented recording microphones despite the wails of the injured and dying…
The alien’s death scream.
Soaring with dark and invisible wings above the heads of the concert hall’s roaring multitude until the mob’s own screams of delight swallowed it up.
31
Two blocks away, the late-evening crowd gathered at Gorasmi Recital House for the premiere of Damon Eddington’s Rage Symphony was an altogether different one.
Peering between heavy maroon curtains, Michael Brangwen thought he knew what it felt like to be one of those small, insignificant spots of life staring into the face of the vast world that awaited.
Gorasmi was small, what the advertising department at Synsound liked to call intimate. Essentially that meant it could seat two hundred comfortably; beyond that number, the ticket holders would close down and simply shut the doors. Black-gray upholstered seats lined the small room until they disappeared into the shadows at its rear, and the best description of the stage was a forty-by-twenty slab of concrete under carpet. This was no concert-sized, standing-room-only hall reserved for Synsound’s best moneymakers; rather, it was in rooms like these that Damon Eddington had made his living for most of his musical career. If nothing else good could be said about the place, at least the sound system was top of the line, with a row of appropriately sized speakers placed strategically along the stage and a state-of-the-art music control console at the stage’s center point.
Slipping back into the safe darkness behind the stage curtain, Michael brushed his hair back nervously, then eased out the rear stage door and made his way to the front entrance. Even the ticket taker didn’t know him and he had to show his Synsound employee identification card to go inside without buying a ticket. The feeling of anonymity was frightening and nearly suffocating—that impression of being a tree bud returned—and again Michael thought of Eddington and how he had deteriorated so badly toward the end of his life. If things had been this lonely and overwhelming for the deceased composer, no wonder the man had gone insane.
The show wasn’t due to start for another twenty minutes and there were no more preparations that Michael could think of to fiddle with. In less than a half hour, it would be a do-or-die situation, and he hadn’t gone through the ordeal of the Eddington project and Mozart, followed by the last three months of painstaking work, to turn coward and abandon it all. Right now he just wanted to… mingle, blend in with the crowd, such as it was, and hear what they were saying, feel what he hoped was an air of anticipation. Among the small gathering of fans, he recognized a few of the faces in the sparse audience as local critics and his mouth turned down. Already he could tell by their expressions that they would not be kind, and Michael thought caustically that even in death, they continued to haunt Eddington, to condemn him before they ever heard the music. He set his shoulders and dismissed them as he continued on his way; as long as he stayed away from the reserved front row, no one would recognize him.
There wasn’t much to hear. Fewer than twenty-five of the seats were taken and so much empty space lent the room an echoing quality that Michael found appealing although he wondered how it was going to affect the presentation. Most of the people were silent as they waited; others murmured to each other so quietly that Michael couldn’t catch their words as he drifted down the side aisle toward the steps that led to the rear of the stage at the right side. Only one group of three were seated close enough to the end of a row for Michael to understand their preconcert conversation. The few sentences he caught brought a sad smile to his face.
“I heard he died instantly in a skiing accident,” said the young black man in an expensive blue turtleneck who sat at the end of the row. “Massive head injuries—they had to have a closed funeral service.”
In the middle of the three was a woman about the same age as her companion but with eyes the color of swimming-pool water and blunt-cut golden hair. An expensive necklace of amethysts adorned her neck and the matching earrings sparkled prettily as she tilted her head, puzzled. “I didn’t know Eddington skied.”
�
��He didn’t,” said the final member of the threesome as he studied his program.
As he passed out of earshot, Michael thought that the shaggy-cut hair and fashionably worn shirt of the final speaker seemed far more in keeping with the listeners Damon Eddington had spent his life trying to reach.
* * *
Yoriku saw Jarlath Keene and his escort for the evening in their seats as soon as he entered the recital hall. Engrossed in the woman seated beside him, his vice president didn’t look up until Yoriku and his companion were standing in front of the seats that had been reserved for them.
“Jarlath,” Yoriku said silkily. He extended a hand when Keene jumped to his feet with a wide, obviously practiced smile. They shook, Yoriku squeezing slightly harder than he should have, the most minute show of power that the other man didn’t dare try to outdo. Yoriku knew it would eat at Keene to be bettered in so small a thing… just like he knew about the little games that Keene so often played and thought were such well-kept secrets. While it had provided some immense entertainment, in the end Keene’s latest and greatest diversion had cost more than Yoriku had anticipated. Some things were irreplaceable, and tonight he would bring all those little amusements to a crumbling halt, annihilate the shaking foundation on which Keene had so stupidly based his existence. And tomorrow for Jarlath… ah.
Life was good, and Yoriku was always the victor.
“It’s so good to see you, Yoriku.” Jarlath beamed at them and indicated the woman at his side with a nod of his head. “This is Rilette.” Keene’s brunette date nodded and gave them a tight smile, eyeing Yoriku’s companion suspiciously.
Yoriku looked past them to where Darcy Vance struggled to position her crutches so she could stand. Before she could succeed, he stepped forward and touched her arm. “Please, Ms. Vance,” he said, “don’t trouble yourself. It is good to see you up and about. You had us all quite concerned.”
“I-I—thank you,” she managed, her expression relieved. She looked considerably different from when he’d studied the video in her personnel file four or five months ago; now she was thin to the point of wasted and her eyes seemed overly large, sunken into her face above puffy, bruised skin. Some of that might be attributable to her injury, but her hair had changed, too—she had shaved it almost to fuzz on the sides and back, and left a flat-topped crown of gel-combed curls going up at least two inches. The style looked too radical for the restrained young woman he’d handpicked for the project; maybe it was her association with Eddington that had done it, a dose of his strange, so-called artistic influence and musical “genius” permeating her personality.
Or perhaps, Yoriku mused, in another year Darcy would end up just like the dead composer, an addict obsessed with a creature she could never control; a shame, really, because Yoriku had always known that Damon was destined to die for his art, but Darcy had always struck him as the sort of woman who lived, rather than died, for her work. Decades of this business had taught Yoriku that musicians and artists were weak people, so very malleable. How easy it had been to have Ahiro slip that vial of jelly into Ken Petrillo’s pocket in such a way that it was guaranteed to roll out, how predictable that Damon Eddington would be unable to resist its lure, how downright laughable that Jarlath had thought he had invented and manipulated more than a sliver of the entire project. And Eddington… no doubt the composer had spent hours justifying his jelly dependence and absolving himself of any wrongdoing by reason of his imagined mastery. Given those factors, for Eddington to become an addict was nearly preordained, as was his death in the name of his music. No matter what the critics said, the success of Eddington’s “Rage Symphony,” as Michael Brangwen had elected to rename it, was clinched the moment Synsound’s press release had hit the NewsVids and papers. Carefully engineered advertising and promotion programs would ride the swells of popularity and see to it that the same waves were continually well fed. All those complicated things about which Keene knew nothing beyond the fulfillment of some piddling revenge trip, and one not even successfully carried through to its ending. In truth, dead musicians were so much more popular, so identified with, that Synsound’s expensive promo push on Eddington’s behalf would be more than worthwhile; how ironic that Eddington’s music would finally have the support that could have made the man a success in his life.
Darcy, Jarlath, and—what was it?—Rilette were looking at him expectantly and Yoriku allowed himself a final, brief moment of satisfaction before turning to the woman whose delicate hand was now so warmly tucked into the bend of his elbow. Never before had he bothered to socialize with Jarlath or introduce the man to anyone among his inner circle, another thing that he was positive played a major part in Keene’s continuous plans to undermine and embarrass him. Yoriku’s lady friend was wearing an outfit sewn from virtually nothing but a multitude of black scarves inset with glittering bits of gold-tinted cubic zirconia, an ensemble that sent a mixed message of mourning and affluence. Such an odd thing to wear to the world premiere of Damon Eddington’s Symphony of Hate, and no doubt Keene was assuming that Yoriku was accompanied by a new mistress.
Keene couldn’t have been more wrong.
Yoriku steered his companion carefully forward and she began gracefully pulling aside the sparkling material obscuring her face. While he smiled graciously at all of them, his eyes were trained on Keene’s face as the man’s smug expression began to falter. “This is my companion,” Yoriku said. He kept his voice mild but took great pains to make the words as formal as possible. “She has recently returned after a short business assignment and comes to hear the Rage Symphony in the midst of mourning for her brother, who died to help make it possible. You remember him, of course—Ahiro?” Yoriku’s gaze was bright and sharp in the low light of the recital hall as Keene nodded woodenly. Beside him, Darcy had perked up considerably as she listened.
Next to Yoriku, his companion had pulled away the last of the scarves and now stood regally at his side. One look at the exquisite oriental woman had made Rilette turn her face sullenly toward the stage; her expression was so rigid that a tap on the cheekbone might have shattered it. Yoriku’s next words certainly didn’t help matters. “Jarlath, I believe you and my lady friend have met.”
* * *
Keene’s brain was screaming at him—danger! danger! danger!—
—long before the face beneath the gauzy black fabric was fully revealed. Yoriku’s chuckle seemed to come from an immense distance as the woman locked gazes with him. For an instant Keene was enveloped in flash memories of black glitter in a starless room; then he was sure that someone had stolen the air from his lungs and covered his head in a suffocating plastic pillowcase as Yoriku serenely continued with the remainder of his dignified introduction.
Had the older man said business assignment? Sweet Jesus, Yoriku had known about Keene’s plans the entire time, had probably masterminded more than Keene could comprehend—
“Of course you know Jarlath Keene, my dear,” Yoriku said silkily. “Jarlath, this is…
“Mina.”
* * *
Returning behind the curtain, Michael risked one final peek through its dusty folds and wondered if Eddington would have appreciated the presence of the people who sat in the front row. Already seated was Jarlath Keene and his companion, a woman who had to be less than half his age and who hung on his arm like a tenacious vine to a windowsill. On his other side, grasping a set of crutches that jutted above her seat, was Darcy Vance. Of course she would be here after nearly dying because of the project, how could she miss what the program book announced as The World Premiere of Damon Eddington’s Rage Symphony as completed by Michael Brangwen? He hadn’t been sure about calling her and offering her the complimentary pass, but she hadn’t been shocked or offended. Rather, she had made it clear that she was delighted that Michael had finished the composition. Her presence here tonight and eager expression were proof that she’d been telling the truth.
Right before the lights dimmed, Michael was surpr
ised to see the three in the front row joined by two more, none other than Synsound’s esteemed chief operating officer himself. At his side, moving so smoothly she seemed more a fragile butterfly than a human being, was a woman swathed in black chiffon sprinkled with faint, glittering specks of gold. He was too far away to hear the introductions that were made, but he did see the woman’s delicate fingers reach gracefully to the black folds hiding her face and draw them aside. Suddenly it didn’t matter that he was yards away; Michael could tell that she was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, outshining and outclassing the instantly jealous lady Keene had chosen to escort this evening. Inexplicably, Keene’s face drained of color as he stared at her; then the lights dimmed and the Synsound party sat back down.
Okay, Michael thought with a deep breath, here it is— the final work for which Damon Eddington, Ken Fasta Petrillo—and, yes, even Ahiro—had died to see created. Fingers resting on the controls as a single, shining yellow spotlight suddenly bathed his station, Michael closed his eyes for a second, then pressed the first of the keys that would fill the small recital hall with music and alien fury.
Sometime toward the end of the recital, his ears ringing with the screams of an alien dead a quarter year, Michael dared a glance at the audience. What he saw was a mixed blessing—the rapt enjoyment of the fans, the smug and self-assured expression on Yoriku’s face, a puzzling, vague terror on Keene’s. What drew him most was the distaste and disdain on the faces of those few reviewers sitting in the audience, notepads in hand with pens wielded like bloody-edged razors. Frustration, stronger than any he’d ever known, welled so sudden and fierce inside him that Brangwen’s fingers almost stumbled on the arrangement. Outwardly calm, his movements deceptively smooth and precise, his thoughts were raging at their premature dismissal. All that work, the sacrificing of lives, the crippling of a lovely young woman, the blood—and look how little Eddington or he received in return for their efforts! Sneers and snide remarks, biting words that would be plastered in the columns of newspapers across the city for everyone to see.
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