Flint, Weathers, Fortune, Siraj, Jayewardene. Oh, yes, I’ve got quite a little list.
And none of them would be missed.
Dirge in a
Major Key: Part I
S. L. Farrell
“DB, WHEN ARE YOU getting back? It’s been damn near a goddamn month now. S’Live wrote a new song he wants us to get on the album. Yeah, it’s last minute but KA says he can get it done. We’re using this crappy sequenced track right now, but it ain’t making it. We need you to really lay it down. And the engineer thinks we need to retake a couple tracks while we still have the studio reserved, and there are all your dubs we’ve been waiting on for fucking forever . . . .”
Michael was lying on his bed, in the room he and Rusty shared on the aircraft carrier USS Tomlin, currently sailing with its escort cruisers in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Michael thought he could feel the slow roll of the ship in the swells, but that was almost certainly an illusion. They’d been on the ship for almost three weeks now. The initial adrenaline rush at the thought of going into action had long ago vanished, to be replaced by simple boredom.
Here, it was two in the morning and the lights were off except for sleeping lamps. Michael stared up at the shadowed gunmetal gray ceiling with its lacework of piping. He’d snagged a pizza from the mess as a late-night snack an hour ago; it felt like a brick sitting in his stomach. Rusty snored on the bunk below him—both of their beds specially widened and reinforced to accommodate them—as Michael listened to The Voice talking half a world away. In the background, he could hear Bottom and Shivers discussing music: “Y’know, I wonder how would it sound if you played a low G under that Cm chord rather than the tonic . . . ?”
Once, hearing that, he would have wanted nothing more than to be back there in the studio with them. Once, it would have been him driving the band to get the tracks down, to get the final mix in the can, to get a tour together since that’s where the money was in the music business now, to get all the reviews and interviews they could. Now, it all just felt . . . distant.
He felt disconnected from everything. From everyone.
“Soon,” he told The Voice. “I gotta do this thing.”
“For the fucking Committee.”
“Yeah.”
“So where the fuck are you?”
“I can’t tell you. All that secrecy and security shit, y’know.”
The Voice gave a huff of exasperation. “Ain’t it enough they’ve damn near killed you a couple times over? Ain’t it enough that you’ve been doing publicity crap for them and campaigning for Kennedy and getting sent to every damn third world dustup more than you’re gigging with us?” The Voice’s scorn was flint on steel, sparking anger. “DB,” The Voice continued, “KA and the rest of the suits are fucking screaming. They expected us to get this CD wrapped up a month ago. And our fans are screaming, too—all those dates we canceled in the last year because of your ‘work’ with the Committee. That’s great for you, but we gotta make a living, too.”
“I know. I know. Look, I gotta do this, then I’ll be back, man. As soon as this is over. As soon as I possibly can. Things are gonna break now. They are. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
He heard the sigh and an under-the-breath curse. “Yeah. You promise. I have the great DB’s word and everything. There’s something we can take to the goddamn bank.” He heard the click a moment later.
The brick of undigested pizza slammed hard against his rib cage.
“Ya think soon, huh?” he heard Rusty say sleepily.
“I don’t know. It was what he wanted to hear.” That was only the truth. Michael didn’t know; Rusty didn’t know; Lohengrin or Tinker or Kate or even Babs didn’t know. No one in this damned flotilla circling the Gulf for too many tedious, hot, and numbing weeks knew. Only Jayewardene and Fortune had the answer.
Michael understood the arguments, or thought he did: industries were shutting their doors throughout the industrialized countries; rapid inflation threatened the world economy; in the U.S. and other countries, cars were being abandoned in the streets; hundred of thousands couldn’t get to their jobs and thousands more were being laid off or fired every day; the entire transportation system was under immense stress; there was talk of a burgeoning worldwide depression. UN forces were being staged all around the Caliphate as a threat, because without oil’s economic lubrication, people were going to die. He’d heard the arguments.
He wanted to believe them.
“Who the hell can tell,” Michael said into the dimness of the room. His fingertips pattered on his torso and drumbeats answered. “I mean, Jayewardene’s talks with Baghdad didn’t go anywhere, and Babs is back here on the Tomlin. Everything’s all ‘we’re not bluffing; this is fucking serious’ but nothing’s happening.” Michael shrugged even though he knew Rusty couldn’t see the gesture. “I’ve lost count of the number of fucking card games I’ve played, the bad movies I’ve seen, and those new episodes of American Hero they keep sending us are about as exciting as watching grass grow.”
“Kate’s here.”
Two words, uttered in that flat, quiet voice; they stopped Michael’s tirade. He chuckled into the semidarkness. “You’re not as dumb as people think. You know that, Rusty?”
“Cripes, get some sleep,” came the response.
Can’t stay the same, can’t stand still
Go on, try it, it might work
And if not what have we lost
Only something that was never ours
Around, around, around we go
Where we start, nobody knows
Inward, outward, up we go
Or is it down and out to close?
The words were from “Staying Still,” one of the cuts on Joker Plague’s second release. The guy singing—a shaven-headed ensign named Bob—didn’t have The Voice’s range or power, but he was doing a decent job. None of the four guys with Michael on the makeshift stage—all of them Navy personnel—were a match for S’Live or Bottom or Shivers, but it was good just to be playing, to banish some of the pent-up energy and tension with a barrage of furious, driving rhythms. While he was playing, while he was onstage, the rest of the world went away. That’s the way it always was, always had been. Onstage, there was only the moment and the energy and the applause. The drug of music was terribly addictive, and he’d long been in its thrall.
Three-quarters of the crew were gathered around the stage placed against the flight deck island: standing in the warm Arabian evening, listening and bobbing their heads, some of them dancing up front. Michael could see the aces there, too, standing in a group off to the side: Rusty, his arms folded and his head nodding in half-time to the beat; Lohengrin—in jeans, a blue USS Tomlin T-shirt and ball cap—looking more like a pudgy graduate student than a formidable ace; Barbara Baden, the Translator, back on the Tomlin since the collapse of the talks in Baghdad; Tinker, one of the new “recruits” in the Committee, whom Kate claimed could make useful tools out of anything.
And Kate. Curveball. Michael nodded to her, standing off to the side next to Lohengrin and Tinker. He moved to that side of the stage, his six arms flailing hard at his body, the drumbeats fast and loud and insistent. He opened one of his throat vents wider, letting the low thrump of the bass drum pound directly at her. He knew she’d feel the concussion, slamming against her body. She grinned at him, waving as he swayed to the beat in the improvised spotlights placed on the catwalks overhead.