James Gardner - The Last Day of the War, with Parrots

“Sounds to me like the Singer is just being a shit,” Jerith said to my back. Maybe he was trying to comfort me, maybe he was only talking to avoid an embarrassing silence. “This ’come into my realm’ stuff,” Jerith went on, “that’s pure stage show. Popular music often dresses up in demon clothes. I mean, Paganini in the 1800s, he encouraged the public to think he’d sold his soul to the devil. And farther back, in almost every shamanistic tradition, music was associated with otherworldly — ”

“Jerith?”

“What?”

“Stop being an archaeologist.”

“Sorry.” He was quiet for five seconds at most, then hurtled on. “My point is, you talk about the Singer as if he’s some malevolent supernatural force. As if he’s got some sinister master plan. I think you’re overdramatizing. This stuff back at the camp... toying with people is just what the Singer always does. That’s his act, isn’t it, when he’s onstage. He spooks people. He gets under your skin.”

I had to admit Jerith was right.

“So what he’s doing with the parrots is more of the same,” Jerith went on. “Smearing people with blood... it’s all theatrics. Harassing people, making them sweat.”

“If the effects of the blood are permanent — ”

“I’m not denying he’s dangerous,” Jerith interrupted. “I don’t want him smearing blood on me; I don’t want to hear everyone being hateful for the rest of my life. I’m just saying he’s not some demonic evil — the Singer is an ordinary punk getting his kicks by making a mess. A petty vandal, nothing more.”

My only reply was a shrug. If Jerith wanted to believe the Singer was an ordinary punk, I wouldn’t waste breath arguing. I knew better. Nothing about the Singer was ordinary.

“The immediate question,” I said, “is what do we do now?”

“Sooner or later, we have to go back to camp,” Jerith replied. “You knew that, right? But we can wait till morning if you like. It’s not raining, and it won’t get too cold; spending the night outside won’t kill us.”

The longer I went without facing the Singer, the happier I’d be. And sunlight would give me courage... a little bit, anyway. “All right,” I told Jerith. “A night in the great outdoors, huddled together for warmth. But I doubt if I’ll get much sleep.”

He looked at me, obviously trying to figure out if I had intended any sexual overtones. I liked that look of uncertainty. It was refreshing that someone didn’t know exactly what was on my mind.

Sleep. Not comfortable sleep — the patch of grass Jerith led me to wasn’t as soft as advertised — but I did sleep, deeply and with ugly dreams.

The dreams were broken by a voice: “Are you awake? Are you awake?” whispered over and over again, until I surfaced from confusion and opened my eyes. I closed them again immediately, appalled by the brightness around me. Even with the light red-filtered through my eyelids, it was bright enough to be painful. I tried to scrunch my eyes shut more tightly.

“I take it the damned sun has risen,” I growled. “Top of the morning to you, Jerith, but if you don’t want a punch in the nose, you’ll let me go back to sleep.”

“Ah, milady,” whispered a voice in my ear, “yond light is not daylight; I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhales to be to thee this night a torchbearer and light thee on thy way to... well, let thy destination remain unspoken.”

Chilled, I opened my eyes again. The Singer was there, kneeling beside me. “A passage from Romeo and Juliet,” he said. “Their last scene together. Or more precisely, the last scene with both of them alive.” He smiled.

The sky above his head was still black, flecked with stars. Off to one side, several anti-grav platforms floated in the air, holding the huge beam-lamps we had brought for recording at night. The lights all aimed at me, as if I were a surgery patient on an operating table.

I jerked up to a sitting position and looked around for Jerith. He was gone. The grass he’d slept on still showed the imprint of his body.

“What did you do with him?” I asked.

“I anointed him,” the Singer said, “rather forcibly. Specifically, I tucked a pretty little parrot under his hand while he slept, then crushed hand and parrot under my heel. The pain woke him briefly, but with the lovely jumble of thoughts that rose in his mind as the parrot died... ah, well, he passed out again. I kindly instructed one of Jerith’s robots to carry his body back to camp. Very cooperative machines, those robots.”

Another robot picked its way through the grass toward us, the blue lights from its eyes sweeping the ground for safe places to plant its feet. “Grab this man!” I shouted to the bot. “He wants to hurt me.”

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’?”