The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 19 —CCA— “… the illusion of purpose.”

Wonders Upstairs, said the sign at street level.

It seemed an outlandish claim for such an unprepossessing structure—a barnlike two-story wood frame building on a commercial street ten blocks from the Rice University campus. Downstairs was the Small Planet Grocery, a busy food and drug co-op which seemed to have an exemption from every licensing law and packaging code. Above, under the gambrel roof, was Wonders.

Daniel Keith recognized on first sight that the three-hundred-seat club was organically one with the co-op below—that is, Spartan, quaint, and inexplicably successful. Everything that wasn’t handmade seemed secondhand. Half the seating was comprised of unpadded wooden benches, the other half of uncomfortable plastic chairs packed too closely together.

Most surprising, the only performance support was a twelve-channel sound system and an autospot. There was no net feed, no audio optimizer, no prompter—to say nothing of such cutting-edge technologies as a SyncScreen or harmonizer. But, as Keith learned when he editorialized aloud, that state of affairs was the result of the owner’s philosophy, not his poverty.

“What fun is it if there’s nineteen layers of insulation between me and the performer?” snorted Bill “Papa” Wonders, he of the great white beard like an Elizabethan ruffled collar. “That’s like putting a tourist in a six-axis harness and a thrill-ride helmet and calling him a gymnast. My musicians work without a net.”

The audience had somewhat better support: A little bar and food counter in a glass-walled annex sold bottled drinks, light polypep, and a smattering of desserts—all of the crunchless variety, out of consideration to the performers.

But it was the music, not the menu, which filled the seats in Wonders at fifteen dollars per, six nights a week. Techjazz, English vocal, electric filk, revival rock, antitonal—everyone agreed that Papa Wonders had eclectic tastes. Most agreed that he also had good taste.

Which is why only Tuesdays were free for sampling new performers, two on a split bill, an hour set each with a break between. Tonight, the poster in Wonders’s narrow stairway read:

At a quarter to eight, Keith slipped into the little room that served as the performer’s warm-up room and found Christopher bending over his instrument with surgical concentration.

“What’s up, guy?”

“Broke a string.”

“Ah. Better here than on stage, eh?”

“Better,” Christopher agreed. “How are things outside?”

“Greg has the recorders all ready to roll. The multi is audience center, fifth row, so he can do splits on your fingering, and the tank camera is front row left. And he’s doubling sound with a digital MIDI.”

Christopher shook his head. “God. He really went overboard.”

“You ask a techie to help, you let them do it their way,” Keith said with a shrug. “Nobody’s going to think it’s strange.”

“No? Fifty thousand dollars of hardware and fifty people in the audience?”

“Says who? The room’s filling up nicely. I think it’ll be close to full.”

Christopher was taken aback. “Really. Bonnie and Ambika must have a following.”

Keith shook his head. “If they do, they’re gonna have to stand in the back. There’s a good dozen archies out there, and at least half the other faces look familiar. Looks like word got out around the center.”

“That Greg’s doing, too?”

Grinning, Keith said, “Well, not exactly. I didn’t think you’d mind a friendly audience, after all the work you’ve been banking. And with graduation Friday and winter holiday coming up this weekend, I didn’t have to twist any arms. We even got a few out from Noonerville.”

Christopher sat back, the neck of the guitar held loosely between his knees, and looked sideways up at his friend. “Thanks, Daniel,” he said. “I don’t mind. I just hope I’m up to it.”

“Just have some fun,” Keith said. “They’ll enjoy it if you do.” He nodded. “You’d better finish with that.”

“It’s tuned,” said Christopher. “You know, I’ve never done a whole set with just the Martin before. But that’s what Bill asked for.”

“High time,” Keith said. “All that synth fill and bangbox stuff is for cowards.”

“Who told you to say that?”

“Papa Bill did.”

“He would.” Christopher’s expression darkened. “Just to save me from looking—I don’t suppose Loi or Jessie—”

“Sorry. No,” Keith said. “Not unless they came in while I’ve been in here.”

Tight-lipped, Christopher shook his head. “I didn’t expect them.”

“Still at war?”

“Trenches and mortars. They won’t pick a new counselor, I won’t go back to the old one. We lob words back and forth at each other a couple times a day.”

“Bad juju. But save it for later,” Keith said, glancing at the clock behind Christopher. “Five minutes. I’m going to get out of here and let you collect yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“You all right?”

“Nervous,” confessed Christopher.

“Nervous is good, I hear.”

“I’m not used to playing for people who’re there to listen instead of to get laid.”

“If it’ll make you feel better, I can try to get laid.”

A laugh broke through the nervousness. “Oh, gee, Dan, it’s awfully nice of you to offer, but I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Sure you could,” Keith answered with a grin. “Anything for a buddy. Break a string, huh?”

An hour alone on stage can be an instant or an eternity. For Christopher McCutcheon that night, it was an eternity, and Daniel Keith’s heart ached for him.

The worst of it was that it was no one’s fault but Christopher’s. Papa Wonders kept his introduction low-key and discreet, careful not to oversell his inexperienced opening act or splash Christopher with the taint of Allied Transcon. And the friendly crowd gave Christopher a warm reception as he came down the aisle. The portents were all good. All he had to do was rise to the moment.

But when Christopher went to mount the small stage at the narrow end of the hall, he stumbled and nearly fell, cracking his guitar sickeningly against the steps. Collecting himself, he crossed to the stool at center stage and worriedly inspected his instrument.

“Is there a luthier in the audience?” he murmured, almost to himself, as he fingered a spot on the edge of the body. Finally satisfied, he looked up and out at the audience. “Good thing I don’t have to walk and play guitar at the same time.”

The honeymoon was still in effect; the weak joke got a stronger response than it deserved. Keith could only imagine what it felt like to look out from there and see more than two hundred people looking back at you expectantly.

“Anyway, thank you for the welcome. I’m going to try to give you about six hundred years of music in about sixty minutes,” he went on, speaking quickly, “so I won’t waste too many of those minutes talking. Just sit back and let me drive the time machine. And remember, if the scenery gets dull, you can always take a nap for a hundred years or so.”

The laughs were noticeably weaker for the second jest. They had come to be entertained, and Christopher was parading his self-doubt before them like an anxious youth drafted for a recital before the relatives. His shaky confidence was understandable, but letting it show was a mistake.

So was the first number, a movement from the Bach cello suites, though Christopher forgot to announce it as such. Elegant and coldly precise, it seemed to Keith to steal the energy and enthusiasm from the room. It did not matter that Christopher played it well. The audience settled back into show-me mode, and though that was what Christopher had asked for, Keith wondered if he would be able to bring them back up to the higher pitch when he wanted.

If he wanted. Keith studied Christopher’s face carefully, trying to read his emotions. It wasn’t easy. Christopher rarely looked up, rarely made eye contact beyond the front edge of the stage. It occurred to Keith that perhaps Christopher was so uncomfortable with the audience that he preferred them at a distance, that he had to hold them down to hold himself together.

Ah, Chris, what are you doing here? Why did you let yourself in for this?

At the end of the Bach, the applause was solidly polite, but nothing more. Barely acknowledging the audience, Christopher introduced the next number as an Irish reel, and immediately launched into another instrumental. This one was up-tempo, energetic, and, to Keith’s ears, monotonously repetitive.

Even so, the audience was good-naturedly clapping, more or less in rhythm, when Christopher’s fingers seemed to forget their place. Though he recovered from the muff, he couldn’t conceal it, and when the tune was done there was as much talk as applause. All around him, Keith could hear the registers falling in place, click-click-click. Whose idea was this? Say, where do you want to go afterward? What time is it, anyway? I think I’ll go get another beer. Come on, Chris, just look out here and sing to me, goddammit, Keith urged silently. Pick a pair of pretty eyes and sing to them. You can’t pretend we’re not here.

But Christopher did just that, through two more instrumental numbers. It seemed he did not have enough confidence to win their confidence, or enough concentration to survive being conscious of where he was. And so he withdrew from them, into himself, as though he were alone in his room.

Secure in that place, he played well, tight-jawed and sure-fingered. But to get there, he sacrificed all emotional rapport with what had started out as an easy room. You’re a musician, not a performer, Chris my friend, Keith thought sadly. And you should have known.

Halfway through his set, Christopher won back a few jury points with a bizarre story-song full of flashy harmonics, called “All Along the Watchtower.” He immediately lost half the gains with an endless and mostly incomprehensible twentieth-century love song involving, as near as Keith could figure, a man, a woman, and a taxi.

His one “contemporary” number, the gloomy AIDS lament “Walls Between,” was marred by a memory lapse that stretched out painfully until someone called out the next line from the audience. By that point, Papa Wonders was looking at his watch with an expression that did not promise any return invitations for the man struggling on stage.

And then something curious happened to that man, a kind of transformation. It was as though, knowing how poorly he had done, he suddenly felt no pressure. And he raised his head. He looked out into the room, looked around the audience. And he spoke to them the way Christopher would.

“One more and we’re out,” he said. “This is the song I really came here to do. I wrote the chorus almost six years ago, when I was still living on the Coast and hearing a lot from my father-none of it good—about the Diaspora Project. The funny thing was, even though I wrote this song for him, he still hasn’t heard it. It never seemed quite right or quite good enough. Actually, it turns out, the problem was it wasn’t quite finished. It wasn’t until last night that I realized there was a verse missing. I like it better now. My father wouldn’t, which means that maybe you will.”

He began to play, simple chords, brisk and rhythmic, a cross between sea chantey and Irish folk song. The preamble was short, and for the first time that night, when he opened his mouth it was to sing to them, not for them:

Christopher sang the first few verses with an innocence, his voice shining with the bright joy of the song’s narrator, strong with the narrator’s bold confidence as his youthful dreams come true. Christopher sang of a glorious sailing, a true cause, a steady course, and they sang the refrain with him:

As quickly as that, the audience—or at least the sizable portion from AT-Houston—was with him, caught up at last by something that touched them in a familiar place. Though the song was a romance in a fictional world, they saw, or thought they did, past the disguise. Click-click-click. He’s singing about us. He’s talking about me.

Keith watched with clinical detachment, knowing the turn which was to come. And as Christopher’s voice became harder and the verses darker, the narrator battered by disappointments, disillusionment, the faces of those around him began to be etched by resistance, even anger.

They don’t want to hear it, Keith thought. You can’t tell them that it won’t all be wonderful.

When Christopher sang of a ship destroyed between the stars, he struck them with a body blow. When he sang of hopes dashed by worlds too harsh and too alien, of the survivors wearily searching for a place that might be home, the chorus they had so eagerly taken up had turned on them, its words now cynical and mocking.

The solo riffs that followed had an anger that matched the words. Christopher wrung from the instrument and himself a fury of sound, all ringing strings and hammered notes. He forgot the audience once more, but this time they were with him, whether caught by disbelief or pain.

One crashing chord, and there was a moment’s silence. When Christopher began again, the instrument muted, his voice cleansed of the anger, once more soft with innocence, strong with confidence, as he sang the new verse, the son’s verse:

With those few words, he gave them back their illusion, gave the struggle a purpose. And they threw their emotional arms around him and thanked him with an accolade that threatened to lift the slats from the club’s wooden rafters. Keith saw tears on more than one cheek, felt the tightness in his own throat as he clapped and cheered.

Christopher himself seemed drained, overwhelmed. He stood and lifted his hand to them, but his expression was pained, and he did not stay long on stage. The trip down the aisle to the warm-up room had the smell of a panicky flight.

Keith slipped out into the aisle and followed him inside.

“Terrific,” he said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “You really got them with that one. A good finish.”

“It’s a lie,” Christopher said, slumping in a chair.

“What? Listen, they’re still clapping. You’ve gotta go back out.”

“You don’t understand,” Christopher exploded. “It was completely cynical. I don’t believe a word of it. I thought they’d cut my throat if I did it the way I always do. I wanted it in the library. I wanted them to like me.”

“Listen. They do,” Keith said. “Go on back out.”

“I don’t have anything more,” he said hoarsely. “Tell Bill.”

“Jesus, Chris—are you sure?”

“I just want to be alone. Can you be a friend and keep people out for a few minutes?”

“Well—I guess,” Keith said uncertainly, knitting his brows in puzzlement. “Chris—”

“Please. Just get out.”

Keith frowned, shrugged, and slipped out through the door. The lights were already coming up, the audience getting up and milling. He lingered in front of the door, winking and waving to friends as they passed by in the throng, catching a thumbs-up from Greg, who was hunched over the replay screen. Keith decided he must look official: Someone asked if he could see the guitar; someone else wanted to know if “Caravan to Antares” had been published. Both were disappointed that the answer was no.

Then he saw a face in the crowd that he had not noticed before, a face he had not expected to see.

“Good evening, Mr. Keith,” said Tidwell when he had drawn close. “That last song was recorded?”

“As far as I know.”

“Have a copy sent to Edkins in Culture. The young man is inside?” Tidwell asked, nodding in the direction of the door.

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“Can you give him a minute? Chris is a bit wrung out.”

“I understand that.”

Keith hesitated. “He’s an archie, in Building 16.”

“So I understand. Is there a point?”

“You can catch him at your convenience—tomorrow morning, say—”

“Thank you. I would prefer to talk to Mr. McCutcheon now.”

Keith swallowed, nodded reluctantly, and stepped aside. “He doesn’t know who you are,” he added.

“Then I’ll tell him,” Tidwell said, and smiled a tight smile. “Then he will know whom to blame for the intrusion.”

Almost a third of the seats were empty when the lights went down for Bonnie Tevens and Ambika. Daniel Keith watched from behind the annex glass as they took the stage. Their high-gloss black clothing dazzled in the spotlight, but the sounds from their wind controllers were more subdued, aping a traditional flute (Bonnie) and oboe (Ambika).

Shortly, Greg emerged from the darkened club to join Keith at the window. “Where’s Chris?”

“Gone,” said Keith. “Dr.—Tom Grimes, one of the colonists, dragged him away.” Tidwell had had, at most, a couple of minutes in private with Christopher before Ambika arrived and chased the two men from the dressing room. Christopher had little to say when he emerged, and his frame of mind was unreadable, except that he was obviously uncomfortable with the hail-fellow-well-met praise that swirled around him. He and Tidwell had left quickly, almost an escape.

“Is he coming back?”

“It didn’t sound like it.”

“Too bad,” said Greg, rattling the plastic-cased chipdisks he held in one hand. “I made a couple of quick copies for him. Oh, well. I’m going to do some touch-up edits tonight, and he can have the whole banana tomorrow.”

“Let me have one of those, then,” Keith said.

“Sure. I can’t break down until after the second set,” the tech said, peering through the glass. “Are you staying?”

Keith patted the end of the guitar case which was leaning against the wall beside him. “I got custody of Claudia,” he said. “A responsibility I’ll be glad to be done with. I think I’m going to just run it past Chris’s place and go on home. Unless you were really asking for help?”

Greg shook his head. “Sandy’s staying, and that’s all the extra hands I need. Take baby home.”

Outside, a half dozen bodies were blocking the stairs as they shared a pep-pack. They made way for Keith to squeeze by, but only barely, and then went back to passing the stick and giggling. Keith headed down the street toward where his flyer waited.

Halfway down the block, his ears pricked up at the sound of quick, light footsteps behind him. Keith spun around, suddenly on alert, to find himself confronting a redheaded girl in a black leather jacket, short boots, and black jeans. In the streetlight, she was a black ghost with a sallow yellow face.

“You’re not the singer,” she said, her features contorting with surprise.

“No.”

“Damn. Is he gone already?”

“I’m afraid so,” Keith said, and started to turn away.

“Wait,” she said. “You have to tell me something. He’s a Memphis colonist, isn’t he? He has to be.”

“No,” Keith said. “He’s not.” The denial was automatic and emphatic.

“But you’re all from the Project, aren’t you?”

That denial was automatic, too. “He’s from Oregon. I’m from Illinois.”

“I can read,” she said, pointing toward his shirt.

Keith looked down to see his AT-Houston ID dangling from his shirt pocket. “Look—” he began, giving himself a mental mule-kick as he unpinned the badge.

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t any secret in there. And I’m a friendly.”

“Look, ah—”

“Jinna.”

“Jinna,” he echoed. “Like I said, Chris is gone. I’m just playing porter for him. Sorry to disappoint you.”

She took a step closer. “I’d really like to meet him. Couldn’t you take me along where you’re taking that?”

“Sorry. I can’t help you.”

Her voice shifted into a husky timbre. “I haven’t given you a reason to yet.”

“Look—”

“Yes—look,” she said, opening her jacket. Underneath, she was naked—or nearly so. From her small rounded breasts to her slender waist she was heavily skin-painted, a feral jungle of flowers and vines intertwined with a sinuous green python. The snake’s glowing eyes—a jeweled piercing through the left nipple, lit with its own light—argued for the painting being a permanent laser tattoo.

She let the jacket fall closed and stepped closer, within arm’s reach. “Is that your flyer?” she asked “Take us up to a thousand and put it on auto. I’ll give you a thank-you in advance.”

Keith shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

She reached for his crotch, stroked the fabric over his bulge. “You ought to find out what you’re turning down. Come on, step out of the light and I’ll audition.”

Annoyed at his own response, he pushed her hand away angrily. “What do you want from Chris? What do you think he can give you?”

“I just want to meet him. We’re twins, inside. I could tell it when he sang. We want the same things. We hurt in the same places.”

Keith studied her. “What was your prescreen score?” he asked, guessing.

She held her head defiantly high. “They didn’t test for what I’m best at. And you’re about to make the same mistake.”

“We can’t get you on board,” Keith said bluntly. “Nobody can. No matter how hot a fuck you are.”

“I hear there were sixteen stowaways on Ur.”

“Oh? Did you look that up on DIANNA?”

“You know it wouldn’t be there. They don’t want anyone to know. But I have a friend who knows someone who got on. His parents get dispatch mail every month, but they’re not allowed to tell anyone, or Allied will cut them off. So there has to be a way.”

“If there is, I don’t know it,” Keith said. In fact, there had been twenty-eight stowaways, most of them Takara construction crew or orbital staff. The irrepressible rumors were right, but they had the story all wrong. “I’m sorry, Jinna. I know it hurts. I’m hoping for Knossos, myself.”

“I just want to meet him. To tell him I understand how he feels.”

“You don’t know how he feels,” Keith said sharply. “Songs are stories. Stories are lies.”

Her face took on a desperate cast. “You don’t have to take me anywhere. Just give me his address, so I can call him. So he can decide if he wants to meet me. I’ll still do you.” She pulled her jacket open again, and the eyes glowed at him.

Keith paused, considered. “No. I don’t think he needs that right now,” he said, backing away into the night. “Good night, Jinna.” He gestured with his free hand. “But don’t read me wrong, that is one truly special snake.”