The Last Day of the War, with Parrots

The bot’s attention remained fixed on the ground.

“Alas, milady,” said the Singer, “some petty vandal damaged its direct audio input with a laser drill. Now it can only respond to radio instructions.” He drew a tiny radio transmitter from his pocket and spoke into it. “Please carry the lovely Lyra to that bunker over there.” His finger pointed to a squat concrete building set into a nearby hill. Turning back to me, he said, “Worry not, milady. This machine is programmed for transporting archaeological artifacts, so it will bear you quite gently... unless you force it to exert its strength.”

I didn’t have time to get away. Before I could twitch a muscle, the bot had snared my ankle with one of its steel cable tentacles. I tried one desperate yank with my leg, hoping to catch it off balance and topple it forward to the grass; but the bot was firmly planted and far too heavy for me to dislodge. Patiently, it stretched out more tentacles and I couldn’t avoid them all. In a matter of seconds, I was well and truly webbed in.

“A pity we had no tape rolling,” the Singer said, gazing down on my trussed-up body. “Your struggles would have made good footage.”

“Footage for what?”

“A song we’ll be recording in just a few minutes. A ballad named “Parrot Blood Baptism.” And you have a starring role.”

I assume he wanted to scare me; but I was lying wrapped in steel cable, with a robot whirring above me as it calculated how to heave me about like a sack of potatoes, and suddenly my fear hardened into anger. I met the Singer’s stare and asked, “What kind of melodramatic bullshit are you trying to pull?”

His eyes narrowed. He lifted the radio transmitter and told the robot, “Please hold for a moment.” The robot whirred as the Singer turned back to me.

“We’re going to record a song,” he said. “Just you and I, milady. I’m afraid our colleagues back at camp are indisposed — it seems they took poorly to telepathy. Fights broke out, a number of people locked themselves in their huts, others were grabbed by robots... suffice it to say, no one is in any condition to help us or disturb us.”

“What are we going to record?” I asked.

“A song, milady, a real song. I cannot tell you how tired I’ve grown of the juvenile pap that passes for music these days. All the world adores my album... but what is that album but shallow artifice? Fog from machines. Women screaming on cue. I am reduced to a puppet, prancing amidst hackneyed symbolism, to portray a dangerous man. A sanitized danger. A packaged little danger to delight complacent adolescents who fancy themselves rebels.

“Well... not tonight, milady. Tonight we shall have no special effects or stunt doubles. Tonight the script calls for unflinching reality.”

I snorted in derision. “So you’re going to baptize me with parrot blood? Yeah, sure, that’s a brilliant departure from hackneyed symbolism. I haven’t seen a blood baptism since... oh, that one Lew Jackell did on ’Bad Night for a Burning.’ And the Black Sabbath sequence from the latest album by Chocolate Oracle. And Oiled Heat did a blood baptism too, if I recall correctly, in that terrible little number they recorded on those mud flats... what was its name? ’Sweet Soulless Machine’?”

The Singer put a single finger under my chin and pressed it sharply into the softness of my throat. “Milady,” he said, “remember that I can hear your thoughts. You are simply trying to make me angry.”

“I’m trying to tell you, you’re not as smart as you think you are,” I replied. “Alex only trots you out for concerts and recording sessions; you can’t know dick about the industry at large or how things really come together. You’ve never been to a rehearsal or a sound check... and as for creating songs, you do nothing. Roland writes the tunes and lyrics, Helena storyboards the visuals, Alex walks through it all and helps refine things till they click. Oh, sure, when the tape starts rolling you’re the spark that adds the magic, there’s no question you’re the spark... but a spark isn’t worth squat if someone doesn’t chop the firewood first. And now you’re going to show us how to cut a real song? I can’t wait to see it.”

Half my outburst was genuine anger, half was trying to pierce him, deflate him any way I could. But he simply removed his finger from my chin and patted my cheek gently. “Through long afternoons in Roland’s basement, while Alex lay on the couch and read comic books, I listened to Roland poke at his piano and I learned how songs were born. Late nights in hotel rooms, as Helena muttered to herself about camera angles and lighting effects, Alex may have slept but I didn’t. And at rehearsals, who kept Alex working when he was bored and hated the thought of one more run- through? Who’s held him together all these years? Who grew up while Alex stayed a child?

“When Alex and I were young, milady, we were two souls in one body. Ah” — he smiled thinly — “your mind says, ’Split personality.’ A number of psych-techs reached the same conclusion many years ago and salivated at the chance to handle such an exotic condition. They plied us with drugs, hypnotherapy, symlinks, and eventually announced Alex cured. As if I were an appendix they could casually snip off. Their efforts only drove me into hiding, down to the depths of our shared unconscious, and I grew up there, wary and sly.

“Let me tell you,” he went on, “Alex does not ’trot me out.’ I come when I’m needed. The hero arriving in the nick of time. I believe Roland told you about that night at Juicy’s? Alex playing the fool to impress Helena, angering the rest of the audience... until suddenly he realized he was in desperate trouble, that people could actually hate him enough to hurt him. It’s hard to say which frightened him more, the physical threat or the hatred. Alex had never been hated before. He fell to pieces... and I came to the rescue. Helena had nothing to do with my emergence, you understand? Nothing. Alex got into a scrape he couldn’t handle and my presence was required.

“The same thing happened earlier tonight, when the blood on his hands assailed him with strange unsettling voices; Alex retreated in confusion, and lo, I was there. I’m always backstage, milady, waiting in the wings. Biding my time for the show.

“And now it’s showtime again.”

He held the radio transmitter to his lips and murmured, “Resume. Take her to the bunker.” Immediately the robot hoisted me off the ground... not roughly, but it clearly hadn’t been programmed to maintain a woman’s dignity. Its gripping arms didn’t care where they gripped, and it held me on a slight downward angle — I could feel my blood draining into my head. When it started to walk, each step was spring-loaded: not jarring, but a big upward movement, then a sudden dip down as the bot shifted its weight to the next leg. Up, down, up, down, very smoothly, and if I’d been an archeological artifact, I wouldn’t have felt jostled a bit. Being human, however, I got seasick after the first three steps.

The Singer walked beside the bot for a few moments, watching me surge up and down with the bot’s motion. Then he tossed something light onto my pinioned body. “That is your costume for the song,” he said. “Please do me the honor of donning the outfit when you reach the bunker.”

I craned my neck to get a better look at the clothes. Scanty and gossamer, of course. “Are you going to tell me what I do in this song?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I prefer it to be a surprise.”

“No rehearsal, no direction, a brand-new song and I don’t know the words or the tune...”

He caressed my hair with his long, cold fingers. “You’ll be superb, milady. I have faith in your professionalism.”

The bunker smelled of mildew and cement; its only illumination was a gun slit that let in a strip of light from the beam-lamps outside. The robot lowered me carefully to the floor, withdrew the cable tentacles wrapped around me, and took up a position blocking the exit.

Queasily, I got to my feet. “Let me leave,” I ordered the bot, and stepped toward the door. It couldn’t hurt me, could it? Robots are programmed not to injure humans. But the moment I moved, the bot spread its cables wide, closing off the doorway like a spiderweb, with a big bot spider in the middle. I wasted a minute trying to pry free enough cables to give me room to escape; but steel is stronger than fingernails, and at last I gave up. I wasn’t getting through that door till the Singer ordered the bot to let me out.

Sighing, I turned away and looked over the rest of the bunker’s interior. It would cheer me no end to discover some functional weapon left from the war, a snare rifle, a jelly pistol, or whatever alien armament once fired through the gun slit; but the bunker had been emptied as meticulously as the rest of the planet. All I could make out in the shadows were cobwebs, dirt, and weeds sprouting from cracks in the concrete.

I began to pace, idly fingering the flimsy costume I was supposed to put on. One strong pull could rip the fabric to swatches, but that wouldn’t help — the Singer would just drag me out naked. Angry at the thought, I gave the wall a good solid kick.

<SPLINK>

“That damned Silk sure gets around,” I grumbled. But if it really was a biological weapon, I shouldn’t be surprised it could take root in enemy strongholds. During the day, enough light would come through the bunker’s doorway for the Silk to keep growing.

I tapped the wall with my foot.

<SPLINK>

<SPLINK>

<SPLINK>

Tiny feet scuttled across the floor toward the sound.

“Hello,” I said. “Rotten little beasts.”

A few minutes later, I was dressed in sheer see-through and making final adjustments on the sash about my waist. The sash wasn’t part of the original costume — I’d made it from folding and twisting the blouse I’d been wearing — but I needed the sash to hide my hitchhikers: two parrots that had come scurrying at the sound of popping Silk. I’d slung them at my hips like six-guns, tucked under the sash and sleeping placidly after a full meal. Their small bodies pressed lightly against me, just inside the ridges of my pelvis, on either side of the flat of my stomach. Even under the bright beam-lamps outside, they’d be completely hidden.

The parrots weren’t touching my skin — with stockings wrapped around my hands, I’d picked up the parrots and nestled them between my costume and the outer sash. It was hard to resist touching the little beasts just once, just the brush of a finger to hear if other minds were nearby. But now was not the time for pointless voyeurism; I had a different plan.

Once before I’d tried to close my mind to the Singer, trying to drown out all thought with the Trash and Thrash  song. It didn’t work. As the Singer said, he lived in songs, especially songs that were hard-edged and troubled... not to mention that the parrots were designed to broadcast trouble loud and clear. To hide, I had to lose myself in gentleness, restrict my thoughts to the kind of caring and concern where the parrots were mute.

I had to fall in love.

Concentrate on Alex: his face, his smile. I’d made love with him on the hill, clumsily, tenderly. No, to be honest it wasn’t making love, it was just running away from my fear of the Singer, and the jangle of emotions aroused by using the parrots; but it could turn into love, couldn’t it? Alex, beautiful, gentle child. In need of protection from himself and the world. Alex, who had tears in his eyes as he held unconscious Roland’s hand. And Alex, coming to me in my own hut, stumbling over his words as he talked about his concern for Roland... if that really was Alex, and not just the Singer pretending to be Alex. No, it was Alex, it was Alex, even if he was feeling the Singer creep up inside his mind as the parrot blood took effect. It was appalling to imagine that: Alex hearing an icy other voice lurking beneath the surface of his thoughts, a second personality slowly gripping...

Damn. Concentrate, Lyra.

Deep breath. Falling in love with Alex. Who was kind and eager and vulnerable. A handsome prince held prisoner by his evil twin and now desperately yearning for a loving minstrel-girl to save him.

Alex’s smile. His eyes. His need.

When it flows, it flows.

The lights bake the stage, the beat is driving hard, the music stabs you like a grimy finger. Your heart pounds, and if you don’t kiss the first face you see, you’ll grab the throat and squeeze. You feel hot style. You want to put on a show.

And if you’re in love, the flow is creamy juicy lightning.

The music starts and you’re on. Cue the backup singer. Showtime.