Music Hath Charms

“Oh, look, Jaivy! Spars and his Demonflute are on the news!”

I sighed and poked one eye over my filmreader. Eleni, almost bouncing in her excitement, was pointing at the screen. Sure enough, there was Spars, dressed to the hilt in the standard colander haircut, body paint, and idiot grin of a Thwokerjag performer—a look, I’d often thought, probably attained by dressing quickly in a dark swamp. Clutched in his hand was that monstrosity of an instrument he’d dug out of some ruins on Algol VI a month ago. “I still say it looks more like a clarinet,” I commented, focusing on the Demonflute as the more photogenic of the two. A clarinet, that is, with a lopsided bulge in the middle, a strangely shaped and oversized flare at the end, a truly terrifying key arrangement—well, anyway, it looked even less like a flute.

“No one cares what it looks like,” Eleni chided, her eyes still glued to the screen. “It’s the neat sound that’s gonna start Thwokerjag zooming again.”

“You’ve heard it?” I asked, ignoring for the moment the musical tragedy that a Thwokerjag renaissance would signify.

“Sure—he was practicing downstairs when I went over to see Ryla yesterday. It sounds kind of like a chirper, only shriller. I’ll bet it’ll really knurl the neurons when he plays it with the amp tonight at Moiy’s. I still think you could’ve gotten us tickets if you’d tried.”

“Starguard preserve us,” I muttered. “A shrill chirper and some idiot sold him an amplifier to go with it? Aren’t there laws against abetting physical assault?”

“The amplifier’s built in,” she said, ignoring the dig. “It’s in that bulge in the middle—that’s what makes it so heavy. You don’t have to plug it in, either—Ryla said it pulls energy from cosmic radiation or somewhere. Neat, huh?”

“Very.” My half-formed fantasy of protecting the city by knocking out its power stations slid off into oblivion.

Spars had been replaced on the screen by someone else, and Eleni turned the full force of her Patient But Annoyed expression on me. “Y’know, I really don’t understand how you could have spent your whole life here without at least being willing to give Thwokerjag a try. I mean, it all started here.”

It had indeed; and it had singlehandedly raised Haruspex from total obscurity to a status of genuine distaste among music lovers throughout the galaxy. From here Thwokerjag had swept outward to the other worlds of the Great Republic, inciting whole teenage populations as no other movement before it. For a while it had looked like it might bury even Neodisco beneath its onslaught … but even as sheer size slowed its momentum an unexpected resurgence of Classical Impressionistic Rock dealt it a blow that had ultimately proved its undoing. Now, only on Haruspex was Thwokerjag the dominant musical force, and even here a more classically oriented person like myself could find concerts and records that suited my taste.

One eventually got used to feeling like a fifth columnist.

“I appreciate your patience with me,” I told Eleni, hoping the implication that I might convert someday would sidetrack the otherwise inevitable argument-cum-recruitment pitch. “If you’re finished with the news, why don’t we grab the trans and go downtown for dinner?”

“Sure. Let’s eat at Moiy’s.”

“You don’t give up, do you? Anyway, I told you before that I couldn’t get tickets.” I passed up the obvious comment that if she were as well glommed onto the fringes of Spar’s group as she thought she was, a brace of free tickets ought to have been forthcoming.

She sighed theatrically and got her coat, and a few minutes later we were on the inbound trans. As we sat there I found my mind drifting toward the Demonflute. The name itself, I guessed, was a product of Algol’s “Demon Star” nickname and Spars’s limited imagination. As far as I knew it was the first musical instrument of alien design ever found, and while I deplored the use it was about to be put to, that was hardly its fault. “Ele, you didn’t by any chance get to see the Demonflute up close, did you?”

Eleni turned from her contemplation of the holo-ad drifting past our noses. “Sure. Spars let me hold it, even.”

So she was deeper into Spars’s friendstack than I’d thought. My opinion of the group went down one more notch: no free tickets for anyone, apparently, when a concert looked to turn a profit. “Can you describe it for me?”

“It’s about yi by yi,” she said, indicating sizes with her hands, “with a sort of flat mouthpiece and eighteen separate keys. The end—the far end, I mean—swivels a little, probably so you can change how you’re holding it and still point the music at the audience. Um … it’s made of a coppery sort of metal with some neat curlicue engraving down one side. Spars says it’s at least three hundred years old, and that it says a lot about Algolite technology that the amp is still working.”

And the fact that they’d made a gadget that sounded like a shrill chirper said a lot about their musical tastes, too, I told myself silently. No wonder the race had died off.

But I didn’t care nearly as much about the late denizens of Algol VI as I did about what the Demonflute was going to do for Thwokerjag. I wasn’t all that well-versed in musicology, but I did know that new instruments had often revitalized movements that were supposedly on the decline. Until Classical Rock or Canton-Nadir could adapt the Demonflute to their own music, Thwokerjag would have the edge in impressing the pocket change out of the billions of novelty-­seekers out there. Of course, if someone started duplicating Demonflutes fast enough the power balance would remain essentially unchanged—

That is, if anyone could duplicate the thing. For all I knew, the Demonflute could have a tone/texture mix that even the best synthesizer couldn’t handle.

A unique instrument in the hands of Spars and Thwokerjag. It gave me cold chills just to think of it.

The passageway door ahead opened and one of the security guards strolled through, eyes alert for trouble. I winced slightly as he passed me and the flared nozzle of the Peacekeeper in his belt almost brushed my ear. Call me paranoid, but I’ve never liked the idea of some overeager junior lawman being able to turn my legs to putty with instant subliminals. Sure it’s humane, but I prefer to know when someone’s telling me to stop or—

My trans of thought froze on its rail. Turning quickly, I got one more look at the guard before he left the car. There was no mistake: the nozzle of his Peacekeeper looked exactly like the flared end of the Demonflute.

Eleni was looking at me questioningly. “Ele,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “why did Spars conclude the Demonflute was a musical instrument?”

Her eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Because when you blow into it music comes out?” she suggested, obviously waiting for a punchline.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. Sound comes out, all right. But sound comes out of lots of things.”

She rolled her eyes skyward. “I hate it when you get all abstruse like this. What, in plain English, are you driving at?”

“Could the Demonflute be the Algolite version of a Peacekeeper?”

She looked at me as if I’d sheared a pin. “You mean with all that subliminal suggestive stuff? Don’t be silly. The group’s been practicing with it for a month now. Nobody’s gone frizz-brained yet.”

“Has Spars tried it with the amp?”

“No-o-o,” she said slowly. “They’ve checked to make sure the amp works, but I think that was all done electronically. I don’t think he actually played it during the tests.”

“Who would build a musical instrument with a built-in, self-contained­ amplifier?” I continued. “And you said yourself it sounded like a shrill chirper. A chirper alone is already playing close to the uppersonic frequencies a Peacekeeper’s message comes in on.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “You mean the whole audience at Moiy’s is going to be wide open to suggestion tonight? Thwokerjag really will be on the way back up.”

“Maybe,” I said, suppressing a shudder at that idea. “But only if the uppersonic carrier is the only part still working.”

“There’ll be interstellar tours again—what? What do you mean?”

“A Peacekeeper doesn’t just set up a suggestive state, you know. It beams in a prerecorded capitulation message.”

Eleni could be as dense as hullmetal when she wanted to be, but I could see by the look on her face that she’d picked up on this one fast enough. “But the Demonflute would have an Algolite message in it. What would it do to humans?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not sure I’d like to find out first-hand.”

“We’ve got to call the cops,” she said, fumbling for her phone. “Or try to talk to Spars or—”

I stopped her. “We haven’t got even a shred of evidence,” I pointed out. “Until we do no one’s going to waste ten seconds listening to us.”

“What kind of evidence can we possibly get?”

“Well … you said there was some engraving on the Demonflute, right? Could it be some sort of writing?”

“I suppose so. But I can’t even remember what it looked like.”

“You won’t have to.” The trans was slowing down, and I took a quick look out the window to see where we were. “Come on,” I said, grabbing Eleni and hauling her all but bodily out the door.

“This is where we get off for Moiy’s,” she said, looking around her as she rubbed her arm. “I thought you said we couldn’t tell Spars yet.”

“We’re not going to. This way; come on.”

The library was only two blocks from the trans station. Once inside, I pulled a copy of the newstape Eleni had been watching earlier and we ran it through a filmreader to the spot where Spars had been showing off the Demonflute. Moving the tape frame by frame, I finally found a shot that Eleni said was at the right angle to see the engraving. Jiggling the controls to keep the Demonflute centered on the screen, I ran the enlarger to its limit.

“There,” Eleni said, pointing. “His hand’s covering about half of it, but you can see the last few squiggles.”

“Okay. Go find us a computer terminal while I get a hard copy of this picture.”

It took a few minutes for me to get my photo and join Eleni at a terminal. We then spent the better part of an hour programming the machine to scan the engraving in the picture and compare it to any previous data on Algol VI languages. I wasn’t sure any such information even existed, But it seemed unlikely that anyone would have let Spars poke around those ruins unless the archeologists had already been there and gone. The computer seemed to agree with my logic, informing us there would be a short wait while the proper files were located.

I leaned back in my chair and tried to relax. It was already seven fifty-eight, my watch told me, which meant Spars was due on stage in two minutes.

“Don’t worry,” Eleni said as I muttered something evil under my breath. “No Thwokerjag performer ever goes out on time.”

“I hope they goof up his body paint and have to do the whole thing over,” I growled. “No telling how long this is going to take.”

“Jaivy,” Eleni said after a moment, “if the Demonflute really is some sort of Peacekeeper, why did Customs let Spars bring it here?”

I shrugged. “Customs is so overworked these days that about all they can look for are drug smugglers and tariff jumpers. Spars probably just walked in, waved the thing under their noses, and walked back out again. He’d never get away with that on Earth or Vega, but out here in the boons everything’s a lot slacker.”

“Yeah.” Abruptly, she stood up. “I’m going to go talk to the librarian, see if he can speed things up any.”

I gazed at the viewscreen for a long minute after she left as new and unpleasant possibilities began to multiply in the back of my mind. What if it hadn’t been simple incompetence that had turned the Demonflute loose on Haruspex? Could Customs have learned of its function while examining it and deliberately let it through? It seemed crazy … but there were a lot of people who missed the days when Haruspian Thwokerjag dominated music in the Great Republic … people who might be willing to do anything to see that power regained. If Eleni was right—if it turned out that only the uppersonic carrier remained of the Demonflute’s original programming—then the hardcore fans at Moiy’s tonight would leave there with Thwokerjag just a bit more firmly a part of their psyches. A few more profit-making concerts—some publicity—revived curiosity—and Thwokerjag would indeed be on its way back to the top.

And if some of the recorded Algolite messages did remain, the whole audience could wind up the evening by painting each other’s feet orange.

Which, for all I knew, might add that much more to Thwokerjag’s appeal.

Abruptly, the standby symbol vanished from the screen. I glanced around quickly without spotting Eleni, then hunched forward to read. The Algolite language, I was informed, wasn’t completely deciphered yet; but the probability was greater than ninety-five percent that the word on the Demonflute was ezt’ghic, a verb-adjective form meaning—

Maker/causer of death.

I stared at those four words, listening to my heart thump and my theories crumble into kitty-litter. This was no simple opinion swayer—Spars had dug up a bona fide lethal weapon.

And brought it to the stronghold of Thwokerjag.

To play in front of Thwokerjag’s most ardent followers.

My suspicions about official collusion did a fast and frightening backflip. Far from secretly supporting a Thwokerjag revival, could someone in power have decided to end it once and for all? And if so, what would happen to me if I got involved any deeper than I already was?

For that matter, where did my own sympathies lie? Didn’t I, too, want to see Thwokerjag wiped out?

And then Eleni appeared around the corner a few booths away. “Anything yet?” she stage-whispered, hurrying toward me.

My finger was bare centimeters away from the erase button. The screen could be blank before Eleni was close enough to see. …

“It’s even worse than we thought,” I told her. “Take a look.”

She did, and her jaw dropped. “Maker of death? Jaivy—does that mean what I think it does?”

“Yeah,” I said, snapping off the terminal. “And we’ve got to stop Spars before he wipes out Moiy’s whole place. Do you have the number for anyone in his group?”

She was already punching phone buttons. “I’ll try Ryla. … Come, on; come on … They must already be on stage, Jaive. We’ll have to call the cops.”

Practicalities—and lingering questions about official involvement—forced my decision. “No. We can be at Moiy’s faster than we could explain this mess over the phone. Come on.”

We ran the entire five blocks and arrived at Moiy’s gasping for breath. One of the least seamy of the cheap-food-ditto-entertainment type of places favored by Thwokerjag adherents, Moiy’s covered nearly half a block and I had to pause just inside the foyer to orient myself. Spars would be performing in the main dining room, just ahead of us. One of the side doors might get me to the stage without having to run the entire maze of tables. Eleni beside me, I headed toward a likely-looking corridor.

“Tickets?” Like magic the ticket taker appeared in our path. From his size, I guessed he also doubled as a bouncer.

There was no time to explain, even if I’d had the breath to do so. “Gotta stop Spars,” I gasped; and as he frowned, I ducked under his arm and tore down the hall. Reaching my target door several steps ahead of him, I yanked it open and dived into the cacophony of Thwokerjag at its worst.

And found I’d miscalculated. The door I’d come through was still ten meters from the stage, with several tables between Spars and me. But even as I started to thread my way through the screaming fans, I saw I was too late. The back-up men on chirper, Omni-Chord, and xyloplane had brought the music to a fever pitch and Spars was raising the Demonflute to his lips.

There was no way I could get back out of the room in time. I froze in place, my eyes riveted to that swivel flare—adjusted, I saw, to sweep the audience at eye-level—and with a sick feeling in my stomach watched Spars start to play.

It was the most hideous sound I’d ever heard. Eleni had called the Demonflute a shrill chirper, but she’d been entirely too charitable—the damn thing sounded more like a banshee in heat running cats through a paper shredder. Spars played over a whole unearthly scale, hitting notes that must’ve grounded every bat for fifty kilometers. The noise went on and on … and suddenly I noticed I was still alive.

I looked around the room, dumfounded. Everywhere the Thwokerjag fans were swaying and clapping with the beat, just as they always did. Unless the Demonflute killed by inducing St. Vitus’s dance it didn’t seem to have any effect on them at all.

I was still standing there like an idiot when the bouncer finally caught up and carried me unceremoniously from the room.

The bouncer was pretty casual about the whole thing, and once he learned that Eleni was an acquaintance of Spars’s he even let us wait in the foyer for the end of the concert.

“I just don’t understand,” Eleni complained as we collapsed into chairs. “Did the computer goof?”

“I doubt it.” I felt like a ribbon-winning moron. “The engraving was probably a pet name the original owner had for it—you know, like the way you call your cycle the Boneshaker.”

“Or a model name, like the Nissan-Lockheed Sunjammer.” She giggled with released tension. “Imagine some alien trying to make sense out of that.”

“Uh-huh.” But the issue wasn’t settled yet, I knew; not by a long shot. If the Demonflute wasn’t a killing weapon, then maybe we were back to the Peacekeeper idea—and if that blipped out, it would just mean looking somewhere else for the answer. Because the Demonflute wasn’t just a musical instrument, and I knew I wouldn’t rest until I found out what else it really was.

Eleni broke into my musings. “You could’ve gotten killed in there,” she said quietly, taking my hand. “You risked your life to try and save people whose music you don’t even like.”

I shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable in the role of hero. “People are people, no matter what their tastes are.”

“Hard to argue with that,” she conceded.

A motion off to the side caught my eye, and I looked up to see old man Moiy himself wander into the foyer. He was bent over strangely, his eyes on the floor, and for a moment I wondered if he was sick. But just then he noticed us and bounded over, beaming happily.

“Good evening,” he said. “I trust you’re enjoying the show?”

From his words and attitude it was obvious he’d mistaken us for paying customers who were taking a breather. Eleni apparently shared my thought that there was no point in disillusioning him. “Uh, the Demonflute’s an unusual instrument, isn’t it?” she said.

Moiy nodded vigorously. “A remarkable sound; just remarkable. That boy is welcome back any time he wishes. Remarkable!”

“You mean you like that racket?” I blurted without thinking.

“Just between us, the music makes my teeth hurt,” he confided, winking. “But who cares? The kid and his whasis have done something me and City Health have been trying to do for years.”

“Oh? What?”

“Why, look around,” Moiy said, waving toward the corners of the foyer.

Where he pointed, I noticed for the first time, were some black spots scattered on the floor. With a strange feeling in my stomach, I looked back at Moiy.

Still beaming, he nodded. “Greatest little exterminator I’ve ever seen. Killed every single cockroach in the place.”