Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“You're not far wrong, Mudge, you're not far wrong.”
“I don't see 'ow this can 'elp us, unless one o' the pieces falls on that Hinckel bloke.”
“Just watch, and listen.”
Stumbling through the black sand, Jon-Tom hurried past the baffled soldiers and princesses. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for. The cable was as thick around as his arm and ended in a flat, featureless terminus unlike anything he'd ever seen. But its purpose was clear enough.
“Everybody get down,” he shouted, “and hold on!” Uncomprehending but responsive, his companions dropped to the sand.
Clutching the duar tightly with his right hand, he grabbed the cable with the other and jammed the terminus into the sensitive nexus where the instrument's strings intersected. Light exploded from the body of the instrument in a succession of concussive waves, while a golden nimbus expanded to engulf the immense ovoid. Though the cable writhed like a menopausal python, he held on to the duar. He wished he had some cotton for his ears, but there was no time for that now.
He'd always wondered what his music would sound like properly amped and played back through a decent pair of speakers.
SUBTLY MODIFIED BY
Jon-Tom to relate to their present perilous situation, the first stupendous blast of Alice Cooper's
“HEY STUPID!”
erupted from the monoliths. It blew a stunned Hinckel completely off his feet and sent him tumbling head over heels backward until his flight was arrested by a large, scraggly bush.
Frantically flailing their wings, his tone-deaf minions struggled to maintain their bearings. They didn't have a chance against subwoofers the size of a city bus. The over-amped spellsong blew them away like leaves, overwhelming both their music and their atrophied muscles.
Somehow they held their positions. Flapping like a parody of a flock of harassed hummingbirds, they recovered, advancing to free their master from his prickly prison. Fear of failure had driven these spirits throughout eternity, and it constituted a powerful motivating force. They resumed their singing but were unable to make any headway against Jon-Tom's playing.
The result was a musical standoff of near cosmic proportions. No matter how virtuostically he played, Jon-Tom couldn't drive them off. The power of his spellsinging and that of the alien amp was matched by the sheer determination of the greatest failures in the history of music. The battle soon degenerated into a contest to see whose hands and lungs would give out first.
Hinckel took heart from his recovery and resumed his singing and playing with a will. Like many rockers, he held more strength and energy in his skinny frame than at first glance appeared likely.
There had to be a way to break the stalemate, Jon-Tom reasoned even as he sang on. Something more was needed, something else. A supplemental force not even Hinckel could counter.
A chorus of whales might have done it, but Hinckel had control of their songs, and besides, there was no way they could get close enough to shore to help. The princesses hugged the sand, too benumbed to offer assistance of any kind. If only Buncan, Nocter, and Squill had been there, he knew, thinking of the kids. They were spellsingers in their own right. But they were hundreds of leagues away. Musically, he was all alone.
That left one individual he felt he could depend on but whose musical abilities were somewhat in doubt.
Though he kept on playing, he took a break from vocalizing. “Mudge!”
From his position prone on the sand the otter twisted to look up at him. “Wot is it, mate? You're doin' great!”
“We need to do better! Mudge, I've never asked you this before even though you have two musically talented cubs. Can you play an instrument?”
“Crikey, me?” The otter blinked. His fur rippled from the force of his friend's playing, as if a strong gale were blowing across him. “I've kind o' left the playin' to me kids, mate.”
“Anything!” Jon-Tom's voice barely rose above the cosmic cacophony. “Any instrument at all!”
“Well, I don't go about braggin' on it.” The otter considered. “Too much else to brag about. But I always did like muckin' around with a set o' drums if one 'appened to be 'andy.”
Percussive counterpoint would be just the thing, Jon-Tom decided excitedly. Unfortunately, the requisite instrument was not available, and there was no way to put such a request through to their extradimensional friend.
Which, as usual, left it up to Jon-Tom.
“A simple, straightforward rhythm,” he told the otter. “Something to underlie the duar line and back me up!”
Resuming his song, he invented some hasty lyrics to fit the Coopertuned melody. Compared to some of the things he'd tried to spellsing up in the past, this seemed a comparatively simple conjuration. Though with his spellsinging, one never knew.
A purple haze tinged with blue boiled from the duar. Unexpectedly, it continued to expand and grow. Puzzled and concerned, Jon-Tom didn't know what else to do except finish the spellsong.
Higher and wider ballooned the haze. He was about to give up when it began to dissipate, revealing that in spite of his doubts he'd been successful.
Maybe a little too successful.
There was only one drum, a blue chrome-bottomed timpani, but it tended to make up in size for what it lacked in numbers, being only slightly smaller than their boat. Rising to his feet, Mudge braced himself against the thunderous musical storm that continued to blast from the monoliths.
“Now that,” he exclaimed, eyes shining, “is wot I calls a
drum
!”
Clambering up the sides with unmatched otterish agility, Mudge soon found himself standing atop the taut, dance-floor-sized membrane. Removing quiver and bow, vest and pants, boots and jerkin, he stripped down to his bare fur. When Jon-Tom flashed him the go-ahead, the otter took a deep breath and began to dance. Wildly, maniacally, with the kind of energy that among all creatures only an otter could muster. It was an expression of sheer unrestrained joy and otter unadulterated delight, a 9.5 on the musical Richter scale.
It also had rhythm.
It made the difference, it carried the moment.
With the otter stepping out a berserk backbeat on the brobdignagian drum and the twin ziggurat speakers blasting Jon-Tom's inspired modifications of Cooper's classic lyrics, Hieronymus Hinckel, his morbid minions, and their ghastly concatenation were blown to bits. Feathers were blown off wings, worn leathery membranes shredded, instruments ripped apart.
Hinckel railed mercilessly at them as he clung to the ground, his fingers digging desperately into the sandy soil. There was little to differentiate his screeching from his singing, Jon-Tom decided. His demolished guitar ended up high in a tree, a clump of stringy rubble. Smashed like a tin shingle, the flattened harmonica caught a gusting chord and disappeared southward, a rectangular Frisbee caught up in the tintinabulatory tide.
The soldiers and princesses hung on as the music roared over them, shaking the very foundations of the island. It was not unlike, Jon-Tom reflected, a couple of concerts he'd attended. No wonder he was having such a good time.
“Enough, please!” The thin, reedy voice was barely audible above the reverb. Utterly exhausted, his clothes hanging in shreds, Hinckel somehow clung to a bent-over sapling. His gaunt body was stretched out parallel to the ground, fluttering in the speaker-wind like a thin, fleshy pennant as the music threatened to sweep him away.
Jon-Tom let his fingers fall from the duar's strings, stilling the thunder. Black cable trailing behind, he ascended the slight slope of the beach until he was staring down at the gasping, pummeled musician. Hinckel lay on his side, his scrawny chest rising and falling like a bellows.
“You promise? No more trouble, no more stealing of other people's music?” Hinckel nodded vigorously, despondently.
“Good.” Cutting loose with a final warning riff that balled his whining antagonist into a fetal position, Jon-Tom shifted the duar to a position of rest. For the first time ever, it was actually hot to the touch.
But then it had never made use of anywhere near this degree of amplification.
Gently he tugged on the end of the cable. The flat terminus pulled free of the duar, its tip singed and blackened. A few wisps of smoke curled skyward.
All was not silence. Climbing to their feet, the princesses chattered as they struggled to adjust their raiment. They joined the soldiers and Jon-Tom in gathering around the base of the colossal drum.
Tilting back his head, Jon-Tom cupped his hands to his mouth. “That's enough, Mudge!”
“Wot's that you say, mate?” As the otter leaned over the side, it seemed to Jon-Tom that a few curls of smoke rose from the tips of his whiskers as well.
“I said, you can stop now!” the spellsinger screamed at the top of his lungs.
The otter tapped the top of his head. “Can't 'ear a thing you're sayin', mate. Got to learn to use your voice.”
Clearing his throat, Jon-Tom drew a finger across it.
“Oi, 'tis like that, is it? Righty-ho.” Vanishing beyond the rim of the instrument for several moments, the otter soon reappeared fully dressed and shinnied down the side to rejoin them.
At the bottom he exchanged a congratulatory hug first with his friend, then with the soldiers, and finally with the princesses, lingering in the grasp of several of the latter until they finally had to push him away.
“Been witness to plenty o' your spellsingin', mate, but this be the first time I've ever 'elped you in it. Bugger me for a goosed gopher if it weren't fun!”
“It often is.” Jon-Tom was smiling broadly.
“'Ave to speak up, mate. I can barely 'ear you. 'Tis fun, all right, except on those all too frequent occasions when your magic-makin' is more than a bit off.” Gaze narrowing, he tried to look behind his friend.
“Speaking o' folks wot are a bit off, where's that putrid excuse for a warm-blooded biped?”
Jon-Tom gestured over his shoulder. “Back there, trying to catch his breath.”
They found Hinckel where Jon-Tom had left him, somewhat recovered from the pounding he'd taken but still in no condition to offer so much as a modicum of resistance, even had he been so inclined. Rolling over, the erstwhile master of all music found himself staring up at an assortment of unensorceled but nonetheless very efficient metal blades wielded by Mudge and the quartet of soldiers.
Pauko looked over at his friend Heke. “Why not just cut his throat and be done with it?”
“Quick solution for a small problem.” Karaukul thrust the point of his halberd closer to Hinckel's neck.
“No, please! Don't kill me.” Their former nemesis scrambled to his knees. “I just wanted people to appreciate my music, that's all.” He turned forlornly to Jon-Tom. “You're a musician; you understand.”
“I understand music,” the spellsinger replied quietly. “I understand wanting to be famous and respected.” He shook his head slowly. “Swiping everyone else's music so they'd have to listen to you I don't understand.” He waxed philosophical.
“Every artist has to be able to handle criticism.” A small smile escaped his face as he caught Mudge watching. “I've had to cope with it most of my life. For example, I'm told that my own singing leaves something to be desired. It took a long time and a lot of practice for me to improve it to where it is today.”
“Which ain't very far,” the otter added under his breath.
“I'll practice, I'll work at it.” Hinckel was frantic. “I'll get better on my own.”
“What's all this talk?” Pauko jabbed with his halberd. “Kill him.”
“Or at least send him back. To his world, wot was once yours.” Mudge's voice dripped contempt. “Some'ow I don't see 'im as bein' much o' a threat there.”
Jon-Tom was uncertain. “Transposing people back and forth between our worlds never struck me as a good idea, Mudge. I don't want people commuting between the two. Folks from hereabouts wouldn't understand my world, and those from there would spoil it here.”
“I don't want to go back.” Hinckel was pleading. “People ⦠people laughed at me.”
“They 'ave some taste, then,” observed Mudge.
Hinckel sat back on his heels. “I kind of like it here.”
“Easy to say when you have power.” Umagi looked ready to wring the human's neck the instant Jon-Tom gave the word. “But can you live among others as an ordinary commoner?”
“One who'll take legitimate criticism?” Jon-Tom added.
“I'll try anything. I didn't mean to hurt anybody. I just wanted ⦔ he hesitated, choking up, “I just wanted an
audience.
”
Heke and Karaukul looked at each other and pinched their nostrils.
“Hey, I can get better!” Hinckel climbed to his feet. “Anyone can get better.” He gazed imploringly at Jon-Tom. “I'll do anything you ask.” The skinny figure had been transformed from threatening to pathetic.
“All right,” Jon-Tom told him evenly. “But before we part, I'm going to lay one heavy delayed-action spellsong on you. If you break your promiseâ”
“I won't, no way!”
“Well then, maybe we canâ”
It was at that point that the three remaining active members of Pancreatic Sludge appeared, quickly appraised the situation, and fell on the hapless Hinckel with kicks and blows. Fortunately they were too tired and enfeebled to do any real damage before Jon-Tom and the soldiers could pull them off the whimpering singer.
“Hang him up by his heels!” Gathers bawled. “I'll stuff that harmonica up hisâ”
Jon-Tom stepped between the terrified Hinckel and his former band mates. “That's enough. You're coming with us. All four of you.”
Mudge's jaw dropped. “With us? Oi, mate, wot's got into you?”