Gianni

latest Aztec gear to replace the lab clothes he had worn since his awakening. He had his prematurely gray hair dyed red. He acquired jewelry that went flash, clang, zzz, and pop when the mood-actuated sensoria came into play. In a few days he was utterly transformed: he became the perfect young Angeleno, slim, dapper, stylish, complete with the slight foreign accent and exotic grammar.

“Tonight Melissa and I go to The Quonch,” Gianni announced.

“The Quonch,” I murmured, mystified.

“Overload palace,” Hoaglund explained. “In Pomona. All the big groups play there.”

“We have Philharmonic tickets tonight,” I said feebly.

Gianni’s eyes were implacable. “The Quonch,” he said.

So we went to The Quonch. Gianni, Melissa, Sam, Sam’s slice-junkie livewith, Oreo, and I. Gianni and Melissa had wanted to go alone, but I wasn’t having that. I felt a little like an overprotective mother whose little boy wanted to try a bit of freebasing. No chaperones, no Quonch, I said. The Quonch was a gigantic geodesic dome in Pomona Downlevel, far underground. The stage whirled on antigrav gyros, the ceiling was a mist of floating speakers, the seats had pluggie intensifiers, and the audience, median age about fourteen, was sliced out of its mind. The groups performing that night were Thug, Holy Ghosts, Shining Orgasm Revival and Ultrafoam. For this I had spent untold multi-kilogelt to bring the composer of the Stabat Mater and La Serva Padrona back to life? The kids screamed, the great hall filled with dense, tangible, oppressive sound, colors and lights throbbed and pulsed, minds were blown. In the midst of the madness sat Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), graduate of the Conservatorio dei Poveri, organist of the royal chapel at Naples, maestro di capella to the Prince of Stigliano—plugged in, turned on, radiant, ecstatic, transcendent.

Whatever else The Quonch may have been, it didn’t seem dangerous, so the next night I let Gianni go there just with Melissa. And the next. It was healthy for both of us to let him move out on his own a little. But I was starting to worry. It wouldn’t be long until we broke the news to the public that we had a genuine eighteenth- century genius among us. But where were the new symphonies? Where were the heaven-sent sonatas? He wasn’t producing anything visible. He was just doing a lot of overload. I hadn’t brought him back here to be a member of the audience, especially that audience.

“Relax,” Sam Hoaglund said. “He’s going through a phase. He’s dazzled by the novelty of everything, and also he’s having fun for maybe the first time in his life. But sooner or later he’ll get back to composing. Nobody steps out of character forever. The real Pergolesi will take control.”

Then Gianni disappeared.

Came the frantic call at three in the afternoon on a crazy hot Saturday with Santa Anas blowing and a fire raging in Tujunga. Dr. Brandon had gone to Gianni’s room to give him his regular checkup, and no Gianni. I went whistling across town from my house near the beach. Hoaglund, who had come running in from Santa Barbara, was there already. “I phoned Melissa,” he said. “He’s not with her. But she’s got a theory.”

“Tell.”

“They’ve been going backstage the last few nights. He’s met some of the kids from Ultrafoam and one of the other groups. She figures he’s off jamming with them.”

“If that’s all, then hallelujah. But how do we track him?”

“She’s getting addresses. We’re making calls. Quit worrying, Dave.”

Easy to say. I imagined him held for ransom in some East L.A. dive. I imagined swaggering machos sending me his fingers, one day, waiting for fifty megabucks’ payoff. I paced for half a dreadful hour, grabbing up phones as if they were magic wands, and then came word that they had found him working out with Shining Orgasm Revival in a studio in West Covina. We were there in half the legal time and to hell with the California Highway Patrol.

The place was a miniature Quonch, electronic gear everywhere, the special apparatus of overload rigged up, and Gianni sitting in the midst of six practically naked young uglies whose bodies were draped with readout tape and sonic gadgetry. So was his. He looked blissful and sweaty. “It is so beautiful, this music,” he sighed when I collared him. “It is the music of my second birth. I love it beyond everything.”

“Bach,” I said. “Beethoven. Mozart.”

“This is other. This is miracle. The total effect—the surround, the engulf—”

“Gianni, don’t ever go off again without telling someone.”

“You were afraid?”

“We have a major investment in you. We don’t want you getting hurt or into trouble or —”

“Am I a child?”

“There are dangers in this city that you couldn’t possibly understand yet. You want to jam with these musicians, jam with them, but don’t just disappear. Understood?”

He nodded.

Then he said, “We will not hold the press conference for a while, I am learning this music. I will make my debut next month, maybe. If we can get booking at The Quonch as main attraction.”

“This is what you want to be? An overload star?”

“Music is music.”

“And you are Giovanni Battista Pergo—” An awful thought struck me. I looked sidewise at Shining Orgasm Revival. “Gianni, you didn’t tell them who you—”

“No. I am still secret.”

“Thank God.” I put my hand on his arm. “Look, if this stuff amuses you, listen to it, play it, do what you want. But the Lord gave you a genius for real music.”

“This is real music.”

“Complex music. Serious music.”

“I starved to death composing that music.”

“You were ahead of your time. You wouldn’t starve now. You will have a tremendous audience for your music.”

“Because I am a freak, yes. And in two months I am forgotten again. Grazie, no, Dave. No more sonatas. No more cantatas. Is not the music of this world. I give myself to overload.”

“I forbid it, Gianni.”

He glared. I saw something steely behind his delicate and foppish exterior.

“You do not own me, Dr. Leavis.”

“I gave you life.”

“So did my father and mother. They didn’t own me either.”

“Please, Gianni. Let’s not fight. I’m only begging you not to turn your back on your genius, not to renounce the gift God gave you for—”

“I renounce nothing. I merely transform.” He leaned up and put his nose almost against mine. “Let me free. I will not be a court composer for you. I will not give you masses and symphonies. No one wants such things today, not new ones, only a few people who want the old ones. Not good enough. I want to be famous, capisce? I want to be rich. Did you think I’d live the rest of my life as a curiosity, a museum piece? Or that I would learn to write the kind of noise they call modern music? Fame is what I want. I died poor and hungry, the books say. You die poor and hungry and find out what it is like, and then talk to me about writing cantatas. I will never be poor again.” He laughed. “Next year, after I am revealed to the world, I will start my own overload group. We will wear wigs, eighteenth-century clothes, everything. We will call ourselves Pergolesi. All right? All right, Dave?”

He insisted on working out with Shining Orgasm Revival every afternoon. Okay. He went to overload concerts just about every night. Okay. He talked about going on stage next month. Even that was okay. He did no composing, stopped listening to any music but overload. Okay. He is going through a phase, Sam Hoaglund had said. Okay. You do not own me, Gianni had said.

Okay. Okay.

I let him have his way. I asked him who his overload playmates thought he was, why they had let him join the group so readily. “I say I am rich Italian playboy,” he replied. “I give them the old charm, you understand? Remember I am accustomed to winning the favors of kings, princes, cardinals. It is how we musicians earned our living. I charm them, they listen to me play, they see right away I am genius. The rest is simple. I will be very