New Planetary Blues

 

SIX

 

James Malcolm's Journal

 

'Grossed-out' is, I think, how my Old Earth contemporaries would have phrased it, but I feel more comfortable with 'appalled'. My brain teemed with glaring, riotous images as I lay in my twee four-poster in the Doctor Thorne Suite, and my dreams, when I eventually managed to fall into uneasy sleep, jumbled them promiscuously. The bear figured most prominently: the unfortunate animal had clearly made an indelible impression, since it appeared, causing serious disruption, in every scene my fevered reveries presented to me. Conga lines of bearded Victorian patriarchs and shrieking can-can dancers were scattered by the slavering beast; Sydney Carton's head became a football in a match between eleven demonic tricoteuses and a team of ursine sans-culottes; Lily Dale, tranquilly harvesting marijuana from her compost heap, was badly frightened by a massive grizzly in a posing pouch.

I was endeavouring, with little success, to banish these unwelcome images from my mind – not to mention trying to cope with the first hangover of my new life, the result of combining Jane's powerful home-grown with the unavoidable ambient alcohol piped automatically into the atmospheres of the various bars we'd visited – when I heard a knock at my door. I groaned an invitation to enter, and Panoply bounded in, looking revoltingly chipper.

'Ah, good, youíre awake!'

'Apparently,' I replied.

He skipped briskly over to a small cupboard on the wall above my bed. 'Let's see what's in Doctor Thorne's medicine chest. Yes, here we are. Drink that.' He handed me a bottle filled with crimson liquid, and seeing my hesitation, chuckled unnecessarily loudly. 'All the rooms have them, in case you need to shake off the alcohol haze. How many bars did you go in last night? You do realize they have alcohol pumped into them? You didn't drink extra, I hope? That's not a good idea.'

'Oh do stop prattling,' I moaned. 'I haven't touched alcohol for over three hundred years; I'm entitled to a hangover. And no, I didn't drink anything myself. I know the rules. I wasn't expecting quite so much alcohol in the air, mind you.'

'It'll be because you bar-hopped,' Panoply said cheerfully. 'Some bars have stronger atmospheres than others, and they differ slightly, so –'

'I mixed my drinks. Thanks for the tip; I'll be more careful in future.'

'Oh, you'll find the jazz clubs on Planet Music rather more to your taste, I imagine: they provide a mixture of cannabis smoke and alcohol – different clienteles demand different stimulants, apparently.' He made a little moue of disapproval, then seeing me looking at him suspiciously, he frowned to himself, then explained: 'You came complete with extensive records, some of them criminal.' He laughed delightedly at what he clearly considered an outrageously funny pun.

My head was no longer throbbing, thanks to the crimson tonic, so I was beginning to think more clearly. It did occur to me that Panoply might have been trying to cover up a minor indiscretion with his weak humour. He would undoubtedly have been aware of my grass-assisted evasion of Adept surveillance the previous day, but if Jane was right, he would not wish me to know this, and so would have tried to find another feasible source for his knowledge of my herbal predelictions. In plumping for a run-in with the law, he had been a little unlucky: unlike many of my contemporaries, I had no criminal record hanging over me from the drug wars of the 1970s and 1980s. It was another useful little nugget of information in our cat-and-mouse game. Jane was right: surveillance of Sleepers was routine and secret.

I decided to play Panoply at his own game, and leapt energetically out of bed, singing praises to the beauty of the morning. I'd got as far as measuring the height of the crops against a pachyderm's facial features when Panoply objected.

'Please, James! Old Earth musicals I find deeply puzzling. This one, for instance: did they have elephants in Oklahoma?'

'Poetic licence,' I shouted to him from the shower. 'Anyhow, how come you've heard of Oklahoma! but not The Wizard of Oz?'

'I don't know. Some things have survived; others haven't. Which was more famous?'

The fearsomely esoteric discussion prompted by this question lasted right through breakfast in the Orley Buttery, and we were still nattering away to each other, about Porgy and Bess (which has survived, apparently) and Showboat (which hasn't), when we arrived at the spaceport, driven not by Barkis this time, but by an altogether more sinister-looking individual in a cal–che.

'Jonathan Harker's driver from Dracula?' I hazarded.

'I believe so,' said Panoply. 'I'm no expert. You'd have to ask Seasalt Chive – or ask Jane. There she is.'

My Old Earth friend was indeed there to see us off, and as I said goodbye to her, she pressed a book – a genuine paperback – into my hand: the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past. 'Be careful with it. Real books are rare here. Take your mind off the wormhole.'

We kissed and hugged while Panoply fussed with his luggage, and soon he and I were in the pod, soaring towards our rendezvous with the spaceplane in orbit above the planet.

Another long journey followed, which I whiled away initially by complaining at length to Panoply about the crass nature of the tourist entertainment on Planet Literature, then, when he disappeared into the cockpit to send messages back to HoloCorp Central and ahead to Planet Music, by writing up my Journal and flicking through Proust.

Jane had enclosed a brief letter in the battered paperback telling me that future secret communication between us might be effected via sympathetic spaceplane staff, a small number of whom she had managed to befriend during her time on Planet Literature. I was on no account to approach anyone myself. They would approach me, if the need arose, using the codeword 'Guermantes', a word unlikely to crop up confusingly in everyday conversation, but one which, she imagined, would be easily memorized by me.

Hawthorn blossom, Aunt Leonie and Swann's amorous frustrations evoked an entirely lost world, and I found myself so absorbed by the Narrator's childhood memories of Combray that I even attempted to interest Panoply in them when he returned from his lengthy sojourn with the pilot. He was noticeably puzzled as I waxed lyrical about the cascades of memory released by precise sensory stimuli, but I lost him completely with my descriptions of the tortures suffered by young Marcel as he waited for his mother to kiss him goodnight.

'BioClone Betas, I'm afraid, are like those old missile launchers: fire and forget,' he said, surprising me with the hint of ironic ruefulness in his voice. 'And I find it difficult to understand, despite your obvious passion and undoubted eloquence, just what's so fascinating about a cake dipped in tea ...'

Exploring our mutual incomprehension passed the rest of the journey agreeably enough, and by the time I was on Planet Music, being introduced to its Overseer, Spindrift Thimble, I was beginning to think that I might, after all, have misjudged Panoply, that he might possess a few redeeming features, among them a rudimentary sense of humour. This last is a characteristic notable by its almost complete absence from other Adepts, and in this regard, Spindrift Thimble is entirely true to his race. I initially thought that I might be able to connect with him through his genuine and deep love of jazz, but after listening to him enthuse at length about it (all the way back from the spaceport, all the way up to his top-floor apartment, and then, subsequently, as we sat drinking tea with Panoply), I slowly and reluctantly came to the conclusion that his love for the music sprang not so much from his admiration of individual musicians' improvisational skills, but from his ghoulish enjoyment of what he regarded as their tragic lives and edgy, eccentric personalities.

I managed to bite my lip during his long disquisitions on Thelonious Monk's hats, Chet Baker's chronic drug addiction and Lester Young's melancholy end, and even succeeded in staying silent when he professed to admire the last recordings of Billie Holiday (whom he invariably referred to as 'Lady Day', as if she'd been a close friend) more than her Teddy Wilson-era material, but when he referred to Charlie Parker as 'Bird' and called him a 'doomed genius who burned too bright for the square world' it was either speak out or throw up.

'I'm sure if he'd known he was going to be so thoroughly appreciated by the cream of New Planetary society three hundred years after his death, Charlie Parker would have been delighted to have spent his life as a neglected junkie, and died happy and fulfilled, even though he was only thirty-four.' Of course, as soon as I'd said it, I felt I'd behaved churlishly, not to mention pompously, but I'd underestimated both Thimble's extraordinary ego, which renders him impervious to insult, and his inability – an Adept trait – to perceive irony.

'I wouldn't perhaps say "delighted", but he's certainly appreciated on this planet. He probably plays to more people here than he ever did in his lifetime.'

This was too much. 'I hadn't realized you'd resurrected him like you have me. Is he suitably grateful, as I am?'

This time, even Thimble saw I was angry, but he refused to be deflected, and proceeded to treat me like a fractious infant, promising me the Royal Roost as a treat that evening if I 'got my head down', as he put it, for a couple of hours after my long flight.

I left Thimble and Panoply talking business and went to the room I'd been assigned. Through the window I could see the good burghers of Planet Music getting on with their lives. Thimble's flat is in the heart of the New Orleans section of JazzCity, and my room has an ornate balcony, from which I can see down into a dozen friendly-looking bars, traditional jazz pouring from some, funkier sounds from others. Had Thimble not been so obnoxious, I reflected, I would have been very much looking forward to the Royal Roost; as it was, I was dreading him swanning about, spreading his ghastly opinions and being generally offensive. I missed Jane, too.

When I woke from my siesta, Panoply had gone. He had problems to sort out in Ludwig, apparently. As I braced myself to endure a whole evening of undiluted Thimble, I noticed a saxophone leaning in the corner of his sitting room.

'Do you play?' I asked him.

He looked shifty, then grinned in what he clearly thought was a boyishly winsome manner. 'Ask me again tomorrow,' he said.

This was not the answer I'd been expecting, but I let it go.

The Royal Roost was more plush than I'd thought it would be, but I'd been right to anticipate swanning, ghastly opinions and offensiveness: Thimble was able to provide all three in almost unlimited quantities. After slapping the barman's outstretched palm in a nauseating display of hip bonhomie, he guided us to a ringside table with a large RESERVED notice on it. People round about raised lazy hands in greeting as we took our seats, but Thimble seemed preoccupied, and got up again almost immediately.

'I've just got to go backstage for a second,' he said, and disappeared, carrying a small box he'd brought with us from his flat, through a door marked STRICTLY PRIVATE.

There was a buzz of anticipation in the standing-room-only crowd, but the club was quiet enough for what was obviously an argument, taking place in the backstage area, to be distinctly audible. At one point I thought I heard an American voice say: 'You can't do that, man,' but then everything went quiet and Thimble re-emerged, looking pleased with himself.

'What was all that about?' I asked him. 'Trouble?'

Thimble looked at me sharply. 'You couldn't hear anything out here, could you?' He suddenly looked worried.

'Not really. Just what sounded like a minor ruckus. Mr Parker giving you trouble, is he? Not always the easiest of people, are they, musicians? I know: I used to interview them for a living.' I felt a little disloyal saying this; it wasn't true – musicians had been unfailingly courteous to me throughout my working life – but I thought I might get more out of this frightful man if I appeared sympathetic.

He immediately perked up, sensing inside information about his heroes. 'Did you know Bird?'

'No, he died just after I was born, but I was friendly with a couple of people who knew him: Red Callender' – I was gratified to see Thimble looking perplexed – 'the bassist, you know' – he nodded, as if he'd not needed this explanation – 'and two drummers, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach.'

Thimble was suitably awestruck, as I'd intended him to be, so I decided to strike while his mouth was still hanging open.

'Even they found him impossible.' Now I felt really uncomfortable, remembering that all three men had actually been tremendously positive about Charlie Parker, and had been unanimous in their scorn for the received 'truth' about him, recalling as they did a witty, erudite, charming man with a voracious appetite for life and music, and being constantly dismayed to find this picture of him obscured by sensation-hungry writers who preferred the garish, dissolute legend to the more nuanced truth.

Thimble swallowed the bait whole and went into confiding mode. 'I don't think he'll be giving us any more trouble after tonight,' he said, with a self-satisfied little smirk. 'I've made a small adjustment to his program. I've also told him you're here, and that you know all about twentieth-century music, so he'll have to behave himself.'

I was prevented enquiring further by the arrival on stage of the Charlie Parker All Stars, sans leader. Although they were, visually at least, anonymous, non-specific holograms, they'd been skilfully programmed: they whipped through the theme of 'Now's the Time' with fire and gusto, so by the time Parker strolled on the place was jumping with barely controlled excitement. He closed his eyes, planted dead centre-stage, and began playing. Chorus after chorus poured out of him, exhilarating, exuberant, with just the right touch of rawness. I was immediately transported. When it was over, I looked quickly round the club. Everywhere there was the same expression I could feel on my face: the sort of involuntary grin generally associated with post-coital satisfaction.

'Whatever you said to him before the gig certainly worked,' I murmured to Thimble, while the band fussed with their equipment and joked with each other.

He was just about to reply when Parker stepped up to the announcements mike. This I found rather surprising, given the paucity of genuine recorded examples of his stagetalk, but the holo proved not only confident, but positively urbane, welcoming us to the club, hoping we were enjoying our evening, encouraging us to relax and let the band do the work.

The rest of the set flew by: all the old favourites received passionate, sometimes frantic readings, and the patrons went wild. As he left the stage, Parker even punched the air in triumph.

I was mildly puzzled at these touches of showmanship, but exaggerated my surprise to pump Thimble. 'What on earth's got into him?' I asked. 'He's become quite the entertainer.'

Thimble smiled, flattered by my interest. 'Just a little something I gave him before the gig.'

'Really? Something legal, I trust.'

Thimble looked faintly shocked. 'Of course. I made a small adjustment to his program, as a matter of fact. Glad you liked it.' He smirked again, milking the moment. 'He was giving everyone a lot of grief, so I've fixed him. Made him more docile.'

I took a leap in the dark, hoping he'd think I knew more than I did. 'Ah, yes, Panoply told me about that.' I knew that whatever Thimble had taken into the dressing room in that box had come to the planet with Panoply, but I had no idea what it was, and I hoped that Thimble might enlighten me.

Thimble clammed up. I'd made a mistake. Raiment Panoply had, I now realized, probably sworn Thimble to secrecy while I'd been asleep, so he was not fooled by my attempt to bluff him; indeed, he looked at me suspiciously, then said lightly, 'Glad to see you taking your job so seriously.'

This both shut me up and put me in my place, so I just smiled at him as guilelessly as I could and settled back to await the next set. The atmosphere in the club was now even more heightened, thanks to the cannabis/alcohol mix that was being discreetly pumped into it; by the time Parker came back on, the crowd was perfectly primed, relaxed by the alcohol, but made more sensitive by the cannabis.

Some of the wildest, most uninhibited music I'd ever heard poured from the bandstand during that second set. Despite the fact that I knew I was listening to a computer's idea of what Parker might sound like live, a sort of distillation of his extant live performances fed into a simulacrum of the man, I was thrilled and moved in almost equal proportions. The only fly in my personal ointment – apart from my distaste for the company at my table – was my nagging feeling that Parker 'himself' – whatever that meant – was discernibly unhappy. He kept wincing and grimacing, as if immersed in a deeply private battle, and even his announcements became less fulsome, more terse, as the evening progressed.

What happened during the final number, though, made me – metaphorically, at least – sit bolt upright in my seat. Throughout both sets, Parker had been weaving all sorts of witty musical quotations into his solos, generally taken from the standards and showtunes of the 1930s and 1940s. During a climactic 'Donna Lee', however, I heard brief snatches of two entirely different tunes: an unmistakable passage from 'Voodoo Chile', and another – accompanied by what I thought was a fleeting nod from Parker to me – from 'Help!' It was as if he'd grabbed my attention with the first, then sent me a specific message with the second.

I glanced at Thimble, but he was just sitting there in full jazz-hipster mode, his legs twitching, his head nodding, digging the music, man. Revolting specimen! He was patently undisturbed by Parker's anachronistic quotations, though, so I said nothing, and we returned to the New Orleans district in high spirits, discussing the finer points of the extraordinary gig we'd just witnessed. Thimble was still wittering on about 'protean inventiveness' and 'music from the edge' when I fell asleep in his sitting room, exhausted, but determined to find out just why I had received a plea for assistance from a holographic stranger.

 

© Chris Parker 2006