Tales of Old Earth (24 page)

With a lurch and a harsh clatter of gears, the trolleybus started off. A year ago it would have run soundlessly. Next year it might not run at all. Thank you, Comrade Gorbachev.

More posters floated by, singly and in groups. On the blind side of an old warehouse they had been plastered up four-by-three, like a video array set to multiply the same static image over and over.

IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT

IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT

IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT IN CONCERT

Somebody had defaced each and every poster with the circle-and-A anarchy symbol.

“Vandals!” The turtle woman jabbed a bony finger in Tex's ribs. “That's a disgusting way to treat the People's property! These hoodlums probably go to the same school as you—why don't you and your friends do something about them? Band together, show some solidarity, teach them respect. Sevastopol is such a beautiful city, after all, don't you agree?”

“Sevastopol is a shithole.” Tex turned away from the outraged O of her mouth and stared out the window again. They were going by a park; wrought-iron bandstands, couples out strolling hand in hand. It was very nineteenth-century. He sighed.

He didn't even know why he was bothering.

Both Boris and Andrei had sneered when he asked if they wanted to come along. It was pointless, they said. The little he could hear from outside wasn't going to be worth listening to. Anyway, the Boss was old stuff, little more than a walking cadaver kept alive by cryonics, morphine, and bimonthly whole-blood changes. Three surgeons traveled as part of his road crew and a team of paramedics waited on standby alert backstage whenever he performed.

Then Andrei had said that if Tex wanted to take in some real music, he had the new Butthole Surfers bootleg, which his sister's boyfriend, who worked a Black Sea merchanter, had copped in a greymarket bazaar in Turkey. They could maybe score some hashish from one of the Afghan War vets who hung around the servicemen's club, and go out behind the skating rink and get stoned and drunk and break things.

Tex had replied that he was sick to death of hardcore and that it was just an excuse for no-talents who could scream but couldn't sing to avoid learning how to finger bar chords. That hadn't pleased Boris, who had just settled on the stage name of Misha Cyberpunk and was thinking of shaving his head. He'd asked if that meant they were going to work up yet
another
version of “Mustang Sally.” At which point Andrei had had to step in to prevent a fight.

So he was going alone.

Worse, his friends had a point. This trip was a perfect example of what his teachers called “the cult of personality” whenever the bastards got onto the subject of their students' taste in music. He was being a jerk. No question about that.

But still. This was more than just another appearance by just another guitar hero. This was more than just another one-night stand by one of the founding fathers of rock and roll. So what if he had to listen from outside the hall? It was the last chance he was ever going to have to get even that close to the man.

It was the Boss's farewell tour.

Forty minutes later the trolleybus let him off at the concert hall.

The Fisherman's Palace of Culture stood above Kamyshovaya Bay, surrounded by gently sloping grass lawns. It was a great four-story square building, all glass and concrete, with seating for two thousand spectators and half again that many more if they decided to pack the aisles. They could have booked the act into the soccer stadium and filled every seat; but the Boss preferred concert halls. The acoustics were more to his liking.

It was late afternoon. A salt breeze blew up from the water, and he could look down on the fishing craft at anchor in the bay. The lawns were heroically large, muscular Social Realist landscaping intended to proclaim the glory and triumph of the Soviet sod and fertilizer industries. The effect was badly undercut by the line of totalitarian grey high-rises across the roadway, concrete monsters identical down to their water stains. Some of their hard-faced denizens had set up card tables by the parking lot and were offering packs of Winstons and Belgian beer at thirty rubles a can. A surprisingly large number of people were standing casually about the concert hall grounds, trying not to look conspicuous.

A fisherman reclined on the grass, cap on his knee and a brown paper bag in his hand. His trousers were dirty and his sweater torn. “Comrade musician! Come, have a swig.” He waggled the bag invitingly.

Tex shrugged and awkwardly sat down beside him. Inside, though, he felt a wonderful warmth. For this one moment, everything was okay. Sitting above the bay, sharing a bottle with a real fisherman, was an authentic experience, an unquestionably cool thing to be doing. He accepted the bottle and drank. The vodka was warm and tasted of fusel oil.

He took too large a mouthful, choked, gasped, and forced a smile. “Good stuff,” he said.

“American!” The fisherman sounded pleased. He held out a hand. “It is good to meet a fine young American boy like you. My name is Yuri.”

He took the proffered hand and shook his head. “I've been a citizen for years. My father's a researcher for the Institute of Oceanography.” He was sick of the questions everyone asked when they heard his accent and he hated his parents for bringing him here. There were times when even the beatings the kids back in Austin gave him for being a Commie pinko creep would be a small price to pay if he could return home. He wasn't treated all that much better here anyway.

“The guys at school call me Tex.”

He managed to make it sound as if they'd never meant it as an insult.

Yuri grinned broadly, showing steel teeth and hideous gums. “Play some music. Something romantic, maybe it will draw in some pretty girls.”

“Uh, well …” He unlatched the case, drew out the guitar, began tuning the strings. “Actually, I'm not as good as I'd like to be. I've got this band together,” presuming that Andrei and good old Misha Cyberpunk hadn't dismantled Chernobyl in his absence, “but it's hard to find a place to practice.” He strummed a C chord, shifted to an F and then a B. Finally he settled on a slow version he'd worked up of “I Am the Walrus,” singing the words in English and crooning the “yellow matter custard” line with exaggerated sweetness.

“You are another Vladimir Vysotsky,” the fisherman said admiringly. A couple of art students—the boy was dressed in black and had dyed his hair an unnatural red—wandered within range of Yuri's bellow, and he waved them over. “Comrade artists! Come join us, have a swig!”

“You know why I'm here?” Yuri asked two hours later. The No. 7 bus had just pulled up to the front of the hall, and the latest load of ticket-holders was getting off. They were chatting happily, eagerly, the pampered offspring of Party officials, most of them, with a few low-ranking Red Army or Black Sea Fleet officers scattered here and there for flavoring. Many were vacationers from the bathing resorts, dressed in Benetton fashions. They pooled and flowed elegantly up the twin stairways to the second-floor entrance. In addition to the art students, Yuri had drawn in a young grocery clerk, a locksmith, and a scruffy blond girl who said she was a truck driver, though nobody believed her. “Do you know why?”

Smiling, they shook their heads.

“I am here because of
them
. All those guys walking up the steps into the Fisherman's Palace of Culture. I thought, how embarrassed they must be at not having a single fisherman in the Fisherman's Palace. So here I am. You're welcome!” he shouted to a cluster of apparatchiks climbing out of their Mercedes.

They pointedly ignored him.

“Ahh, I love those bastards, and they know it.”

“You may be here,” said the redheaded art student, “but you couldn't get inside that building tonight to save your life.”

“Who said that?” Yuri sat up straight and stared around him incredulously. “Of course I could get in. There is always a way in for a man like me.”

The student laughed uneasily, like someone who is trying to be pleasant but is not sure he understands the joke.

“You don't believe me? I'll show you. I'll get in, and I'll get all of you in with me.” He lurched to his feet. “Come on, it's my treat!”

“This is crazy,” Tex said. They had circled the building three times, trying all the side doors and sizing up security—very tight—at the loading dock out back where the equipment trucks were parked. Now they were back at the first door they had checked.

“It couldn't hurt to try.” Yuri knocked. Nothing happened. He tried again, louder. Still nothing. Balling his hand into a fist he pounded at the door until it echoed and boomed.

After a minute, the door opened slightly. A beefy militiaman stood within, a big mustache all but hiding his mouth. “What do you want?” He glared at them. Tex could see he was holding the door from the inside so it couldn't be grabbed away from him. Yuri smiled ingratiatingly and said, “Comrade! Look at us. I have the honor to be an honest fisherman. My friend here”—he nodded at Tex—“is a factory worker and himself a talented musician. This young man in black is a student who spent the last harvest digging potatoes on a cooperative. This fine young woman—”

The guard started to close the door, and Yuri grabbed at the edge.

“Listen to me! We are the Masses, we are the People, we are the Revolution! Those well-dressed people in there”—he pointed scornfully—“who are they? The privileged class, I say this not angrily but in sad truth. Why are they inside and we without? This is a betrayal of the principles of—”

“Fifty dollars American,” said the militiaman, “and I'll let six of you in. No more. If you get the money together come back to this door and knock.”

He slammed it in their faces.

But when they pooled their resources it turned out they were all of them paupers. All together they had only eighty-nine rubles and three American singles. “Anyway,” the grocer grumbled, “even if we had the rubles, where would we find somebody with the hard currency to sell?”

The locksmith glanced significantly at the scraggly line of card tables by the lot but said nothing.

“Don't be downcast,” Yuri said. He gathered the paper notes together, arranging them in his fist so they made an untidy mass with the greenbacks on the outside. “Looks pretty good, eh? I'll wave these in fatso's face, and when he makes a grab at them, Tex will yank open the door and we'll all push forward. We'll overwhelm the little prick.”

They went back to the door. “I can't believe we're doing this.” The female art student hugged herself and shivered.

Yuri raised a hand. “Are we all in place? Tex—stand right there, be ready for action.”

Tex positioned himself, setting his guitar case by his feet to free his hands. Their little group was drawing attention now. Three or four loiterers joined them to see what was up. Yuri banged on the door. “Hey in there! Get off your thumb and open up!”

The door opened a cautious crack. “Let me count—” the militiaman said suspiciously, and “
Now
!” Yuri shouted.

Eight hands seized the door, and it flew open with a crash. Scooping up his guitar, Tex joined the others as they surged forward. The guard fell back in angry astonishment, pulling a truncheon from his belt.

All was confusion. Tex was running wildly down the hallway when a sudden
crack
made him turn his head. Yuri was sinking to his knees, face a glistening red. Drops of blood flew from the billy club. It was paralyzing, unbelievable. Tex stopped, the art students flashing by hand in hand, and stared.

“Run!” Yuri gasped.

Then the fat militiaman was coming directly toward him, with an expression so cold and violent that Tex panicked. He fled blindly, guitar case knocking against his side. What am I doing here? he wondered. He no longer had the slightest interest in seeing the show.

He pushed through a crowded corridor. People were running, shouting, struggling. There was a militiaman kneeling atop the little truck driver's chest. She was trying to bite his arm. Tex turned a corner, ran up a concrete and steel stairway. Heavy footsteps pounded behind him.

He ran like the wind, through corridors and empty rehearsal halls, without shaking his pursuer. His mind was blank with fear. He was hopelessly lost.

The militiaman caught up to Tex in the doorway of a dressing room and knocked him to the ground. The guitar case skittered away. A boot smashed into his ribs, and in the sudden crystalline clarity of the pain, he found himself looking up into the goateed face of a man who had swiveled in his seat from a makeup mirror to see what the fuss was about. It was a heartbreakingly familiar face.

It was the Boss himself—Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, idol of millions, the man known to his countless fans as Nikolai Lenin.

In that agonized instant there was time enough to take in everything and yet no time in which to act. He saw Lenin's calm, dispassionate face looking thoughtfully down at him, and heard the sadistic chuckle of the guard as he reached down to grab Tex's collar. He saw the knick-knacks on the dresser top, a framed autographed picture of Karl Marx holding his saxophone, a silver hairbrush, a pack of Salems. Half sunk in shadow, the objects seemed freighted with awful significance.

Lenin watched silently as the militiaman hauled Tex up and smashed him in the face with his brutal fist. Tex felt a wondering sense of betrayal and then he was slammed against the cinder-block wall and his vision whited out.

When sight returned, he saw the guard raising a booted foot over his guitar case.

“No!” he croaked. “Not my axe!”

For the first time, a spark of interest animated Lenin's face. He raised an index finger and the militiaman froze, foot in air.

“So,” Lenin said. “A fellow musician?”