First he tried the dance hall next door. The entry foyer was crowded with machines dispensing candy bars, two-bit love potions — 'Slip her this, and she'll promise you anything!' — and spot dressings for blisters. The main hall was empty, for this was the dead morning shift. Several shaggy teenagers were on the stage, working out with drums, guitars, and an electric organ, bashing out dissonance with a deafening beat. This was rehearsal time, though Zane could not see how such noise could profit from practice.
Zane approached and put his hand on the largest drum, the fingers of the glove causing its sound to die immediately. 'I require a performance,' he said.
He had their instant attention, though they did not recognize his nature. 'Hey, a gig? How much?'
'One song, for charity, next door.'
They laughed. 'Charity! Go soak your snoot in battery acid, mister!' the drummer said. 'We don't do nothing for nothing!'
Zane turned his potent gaze on the kid. 'One song.' Like the nurse before him, the youth blanched. People seldom saw Death when they were not clients or closely attached to clients, but Death could indeed force his awareness on them when he wished. Hardly ever did a person face Death directly without feeling the impact. 'Uh, yeah, sure. Guess we can do one song, like for practice.'
'A hymn,' Zane said.
The laugh was louder, though somewhat uncertain. 'Man, we don't do church junk! We're the Livin' Sludge! We boom, we flow, we fester; we don't damn well hymn!'
Again Zane delivered the Death stare. Young punks like this were more resistant to it, since they did not believe they were ever going to die. 'One hymn. Holy, Holy, Holy.' His bony, square eye sockets bore into the fleshed orbs before him.
Again the kid was fazed. 'Sure, well, I guess we could try. Like, it's only one tune. But our singer's out, she's zonked on magic H, and anyway, we'll have to rehearse. It'd take two, maybe three days, you know, just to start.'
'Now,' Zane said. 'Within the hour. I will find you a singer.'
'But we don't have no music or nothing!' the youth protested desperately.
'That, too, I will provide,' Zane said, controlling his ire. Had he ever been this age himself? 'Go now to the nursing home next door and set up your gear. I will rejoin you with a singer presently.'
'Yeah, sure, man,' the kid said faintly. 'We'll be ready in half an hour. But you know, this ain't exactly our bag. It ain't going to be too sharp.'
'It will suffice.' Zane left them and strode to the church on the other side of the nursing home.
He was in luck. The church choir was rehearsing for the coming weekend service. Several black girls were present, doing what to Zane's ear was a mishmash of notes and ululations.
The preacher spotted him immediately. 'Hey, don't you go takin' none of mine. Death!' he protested. 'We're good folk here. We don't want no trouble with you!'
Zane realized that this church might be poor and backward, but the preacher was a true man of God, able to discern a supernatural manifestation instantly. That would help. 'I only want a hymnbook and a singer,' Zane said.
'Hymnbooks we got,' the old man said eagerly. 'This white do-gooder group, they raise money, bought us books, don't know nothin' 'bout our music. Got a big pile of 'em under dust in the closet. But one of my girls — Death, I won't stand by and — '
'Not to die,' Zane said quickly. 'To sing one hymn for the folk next door. For a man who is about to die.'
The preacher nodded. 'Man's got a right to one last melody. What's it called?'
'Holy, Holy, Holy.'
'That's in the book, but we don't sing it. Not our style.'
'Find a singer willing to try.'
The preacher addressed the practicing choir. 'Anyone sing white music? Hymnbook stuff?'
There was a murmur of confused negation.
'Listen,' the preacher said. 'You don't know this person in the hood, and you don't want to. But I know him. The eye of the Lord is on him, and he needs one hymn, and we've got to help him any way we can. So if any of you can even try to oblige him, come on.'
At length one rather pretty girl in her teens spoke. 'Sometime I sing 'long on the radio stuff, jus' for fun. I guess I could try, if I got the words.'
The preacher rummaged in the closet and brought out an armful of hymnbooks. 'You got the words, sister. Come on, we'll go help this person. Won't be long.'
Zane took some of the books and led the way to the nursing home, where the Livin' Sludge was setting up, to the considerable entertainment of the inmates and the non-protesting nurse. Probably there had not been an event like this here in decades. Cables and loudspeakers and instruments seemed to fill the main room. 'Hey, don't set those big speakers in here,' the nurse was saying. 'Small place like this, that noise'll deafen these old folk, and they've got problems enough already. Face those monsters out the windows.' And it was done, for it seemed the Livin' Sludge was constitutionally unable to function without full-volume amplification.
The young singer eyed the Sludge, and the Sludge eyed her. Each evinced a certain morbid fascination with an alien life form, but neither evinced approval. Zane realized it had probably been a mistake to involve the instrumental group; the girl would have done better a cappella. Too late now.
The preacher stepped in, seeing the need. 'You boys don' know hymn music, okay? This is Lou-Mae; she don' know junk music, so you're even. So let's try her doing the hymn, you follow, okay?' He was more or less speaking pigeon, in order to get his meaning across to these foreigners. He passed out the hymnbooks.
The musicians leafed through the books, bewildered. 'This scene's worse'n bad-spelled H!' one muttered. Zane knew that H was bad, enchanted H was worse, and badly enchanted H was a horror. But addicts had to take what they could get. 'We'll never live this down.'
'You boys getting high on S-H?' the preacher asked, frowning. 'That'll put you in H!' He pointed down, signaling the change in meaning. 'You better find some better interest before it's too late.'
'Wish we could,' the drummer confessed. 'But you know, we're locked into the scene. S-H don't let nobody go.'
'Neither does H,' the preacher said, with a dark glance down. 'Nobody hooked on either H in my church.'
'Yeah, sure,' the drummer said wearily.
Zane got them on the page with Holy, Holy, Holy. 'Play this,' he said.
They tried. They were, underneath, reasonably competent musicians. The tune did not adapt well to drum and guitar, but the electric organ picked it up easily enough.
The phone rang, the sound almost lost amidst the noise of preparations. 'But I can't sing into a mike,' Lou- Mae protested. 'It's in my way, and it looks funny.'
'I'll tell you what it looks like!' the Sludge drummer said, grinning.
'Jus' ignore it, sister,' the preacher advised quickly. 'Jus' sing your way.'
'There are people gathering outside,' a nursing home inmate cried gleefully by the window. 'Gawking at the loudspeakers!'
'Hey, they must think we have a party in here!' another said. 'Cutting the mustard!'
'Sure we are! You can tell by the smell!' Laughter burbled around the inmate sector. This was turning into the biggest event of these old people's lives.
'Hey, mister,' the male nurse called through the din. 'That was my boss on the line. For once he checked with his answering service. I told him I couldn't stop the music, so he's calling the police. Better do that song and get out of here soon.' It was fair warning, but obviously the nurse was enjoying the ongoing event.
The Sludge was still getting organized, piecing out bits of melody, trying to integrate unfamiliar elements. 'I can't do this,' Lou-Mae complained. 'Singing a hymn to a drum roll?'
'Listen, black doll, we don't like it either,' the drummer said. 'But we got to have a beat.'
'You jus' do your best,' the preacher said soothingly to both. 'The Lord will make it right.'
'Man, He better!' the drummer muttered. 'This whole thing's crazier than a double-bum trip!'
'Still worth doing right,' the preacher said.
