Wolfstroker

By Alan Dean Foster

You’re getting fat, Sam Parker. Too fat and too old. You drink too much, you smoke too much, and you go around with bad ladies, yes. Why don’t you wise up, Parker? Cut out the stogies, lay off the liquor, read a good book once in a while.

Why don’t you shut up, Sam Parker. I can’t, Sam Parker sighed. I’m you, He chomped down defiantly on the cheap cigar and gave the dingy exterior of the club another look. Name: Going Higher. Parker shook his head slowly. Going down, more likely, into the depths. Just like him.

The only hint of brightness on the exterior, which fronted on equally drab Pico Boulevard, was the small neon sign that belligerently shouted “Beer on Draft” to the uncaring double-lane strip of tired asphalt. It hadn’t been a good week for Mrs. Parker’s little boy. On Monday “Deanna and her Performing Pups” had played their first engagement under his aegis. In the middle of the act, what does one of the rancid bitches do but take a sinking leap into the audience and proceed to put the fang to a couple of hysterical moppets. Sam’s abortive relationship with Madame Deanna had dissolved faster than a headache tablet. He escaped partnership in three separate lawsuits only because the apologetic madame had providentially signed her name to their agreement in the wrong place. And now this.

The January wind poured out of the Hollywood Hills like white wine and stung his cheeks. It had to be warmer inside. He walked down the three steps.

The crowd was a surprise, larger than he’d expected. Considering the near-mystical affectation for dirt and filth by today’s generation, he should have known better. He took an empty table in a front corner, forsaken because you had to lean outward to see more than half the performing area that passed for a stage. He put down the stub of his cigar. One fast glance around the club told him all he’d need to know about it and all he’d ever want to.

The “fresh flowers” on the tables might qualify as passable lichens. The nicest thing one could say about the rest of the place was that it wouldn’t be hurt by a new coat of paint. Naturally in keeping with proper atmosphere, it was too dark to see your own pants.

A young man with blond hair like Aryan seaweed appeared at Sam’s side, pad in hand. He had a dreamy, disaffected look, probably from trying to study all day and work all night. Sam felt a smidgen of sympathy for him.

“Scotch and soda.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the youth murmured. “We don’t serve hard liquor. Can I get you a hot cider?”

Saints preserve us, hot cider! Parker would have laughed, only it was bad for his ulcer. That Lipson kid had been so enthusiastic about this place! Well, he nodded imperceptibly, he’d learned his lesson. Last tip he took from that quarter of the “in” people.

“Can I maybe get a Heinekin’s?”

“Not on tap, sir.”

“That’s all right,” said Parker thankfully. “A bottle will be fine.” The waiter vanished.

You couldn’t rightly say the stage lights came on. Rather, the section of club that served for performing became slightly less stygian than the rest. Then the band—he used the term advisedly—moseyed out on stage.

With the possible exception of the lead guitar, they were as sad-looking a group as he’d ever seen. Lead guitar, bass, drums, and yes, it had to be, a xylophone, for God’s sake! He almost smiled. Maybe the quiet evening would present him with a chuckle to go with his good beer.

Sam Parker, if you haven’t guessed by now, was an agent. Not undercover, but theatrical, which was harder on body and soul. One of a multitude of busy ants, forever scrounging the ashcans of talent. Occasionally an ant died. Then he was casually dismembered by his fellows and carried into the hill to be eaten. Sam had come close a few times, but so far he was still intact and out among the scavengers. He was very observant, was Sam. So he didn’t miss the unmistakable aura of expectancy that had settled over the audience. For this schlock group? This skeletal collection of insensate clods? Something didn’t smell right. He found himself getting just a teensy bit excited.

Well, the drummer killed that when he started things. Sam resisted the melodramatic gesture of putting hands over ears. It was no worse than the performing pups. But if this kid had a real rhythm in his body he was preserving it for his death throes.

The bass was next, fumbling at his strings like he was sorting soggy spaghetti. Worse and worse. The xylophonist—Sam still hadn’t recovered from that— joined in. Or rather, he started playing. What he played bore no relationship—rhythmically, melodicaUy, harmonically—to the bass or drummer. Sam was ready to go, but he’d only started the beer. He shut out the disaster on stage and tried to concentrate on the music in the bubbles.

The lead guitar shuffled up to the single mike. There was one sad spotlight, which might have been a big flashlight on a string. He had a face like polished sandstone, full of lines that shouldn’t have appeared there for another forty years yet. Straight black hair cut off at thin, bony shoulders was caught up in a single rawhide headband. He wore faded blue jeans, faded from heavy use and not modish bleaching, a stained flannel shirt, and boots whose leather had merged forever with caked earth and gray clay.

A colorless, tired, dead personality, washed up at the age of twenty-four, maybe twenty-five.

Only in the eyes, something. Eyes, pieces of fine old obsidian… and Gorgon’s hair for fingers.

It didn’t take a song, or even a stanza for Sam Parker to know. Those long young-old fingers came down and gentled on the strings, the left hand rose and curled vinelike about the top. A finger moved, touched the electric guitar, which made a sound. Near the back of the room a girl moaned.

His name was Willie Whitehorse, and he played like a god.

Sam Parker sat up straight in his cider-damp chair and leaned forward, wheezing a little. It didn’t matter that the drummer couldn’t carry a simple beat. It didn’t matter than the bass had hands like wrought-iron shovels. It didn’t matter that the xylophone player ignored the others for his own private limbo. It only mattered that Willie Whitehorse played—and sang.

Sang about what it was like to be like the brown eagle, to be alone. Sang how love was like snow-melt on hot winter days. Sang about smooth rocks and small crowded bird bowers and fresh green holly sprigs, about the crusty feel of tree bark under your palms and the smell of dry firewood and old histories. Sam Parker missed a lot of it, but he missed none of the crowd.

When the black-eyed singer sang happy, the audience laughed, and strangers nudged their neighbors. When he sang sad, the cynical students cried. When he sang angry, just a little, there were frightening mad mutterings from the far blacknesses of the club, and somewhere a glass broke.

He was skinny and tired and all alone up there. But there was something in him and in his music that reached out and toyed with the souls of those who listened; grabbed and twisted and tweaked and hung on tight, tight without letting go, till it had flung them twice round the white moon and back again.

Yes, it even touched Sam Parker. And for thirty-five years nothing, absolutely nothing had affected Sam Parker. But there was a strange wildness at work here that passed the ramparts erected by decades of Dorsey and James and Lombardo to tantalize the little man slightly.

And right at the finish there was something that frightened him just a little. It went away fast and he forgot it soon enough, for now. As he watched Willie Whitehorse, for just the shortest odd second there was no guitar in those thin arms, no guitar but instead a vapory gray outline. Like one of those things everyone sees out of the corner of their eyes and aren’t there at all when they turn to look at them. A funny outline that had four legs and a tail, in those arms. Four legs, a tail, sharp pointed ears, long snout clustered with coconut-pale teeth, and two tiny eye pits of red-orange that burned like wax matches.

Beer and bad lighting, of course, and Sam Parker forgot it quick.

After a while the musicians and applause drifted away and the stage lights followed. Sam sat staring at the empty place for a few minutes, thinking. Then he tapped his vest pocket, heard the faint rustle of the blank contract he always carried there. He liked to joke about it, his “soul” contract. If the Devil ever presented Sam with an offer for same, he wanted to be ready for him. Know better what he was getting and Satan might try to back out of the deal.

“Another beer, sir?” Sam blinked and looked around. The waiter was back at his side, as sleepy and tired as before.

“What?”

“Would you care for another drink, sir?”

“No. No thanks.” Sam shoved back his chair and stood. He handed the kid a five-dollar bill.

“I’ll get your change, sir.”

Sam put an arm out. “Hold it, s—pal. I got enough change. I’m rolling in change. Just tell me how to get to the dressing room.”

The waiter licked his lips, eyed the faded green paper. “Won’t be anyone there, ‘cept maybe Whitehorse. His first name’s Willie.” The bill vanished into a shirt, to be replaced by directions.

II

He hadn’t really expected to find a dressing room in this dump, but damned if there wasn’t one. As if unconsciously aware of the incongruity, it partly compensated by having no door.

Someone sat inside on a bench in front of a chest of drawers that had seen good days before the last world war. There was a mirror above it. An electric guitar lay across the chest, like an Aztec maiden readied for sacrifice. Sam hesitated at the entrance, rapped on the inside of the wall.

“Can I come in?” The singer turned and Sam saw the bottle, near empty.

“Can’t keep you out,’ muttered the figure, finishing a long swallow. He choked, wiped his lips with the back of a wrist. This was bad, but it didn’t stop Sam.

“Yes you can. Just tell me to and I won’t come in.”

The singer seemed ready for another swallow, paused, and vested a flicker of interest on Sam. It disappeared before anyone might see it.

“Come in or get lost, as it pleases you. Makes no difference to me.”

Sam walked in, sat down in the single wicker chair, facing the singer’s back.

“I’ll be short and to the point. I’m an agent.”

A slight smile touched the corners of the singer’s mouth as he turned slowly. There was no humor in it.

“How sad for you.”

“That’s an opinion others share,” Sam agreed. “Sometimes I feel that way myself. You Willie Whitehorse?”

Barely audible around sips of raw sad whiskey. “Yeah.”

“You’re an Indian?”

That produced the first reply above a mumble. Whitehorse opened his eyes all the way (how black they were!) and glared at the agent. Sam squirmed a little. They seemed to back up to naked space.

“You’re a Jew, aren’t you?”

“I am,” replied Sam, unperturbed.

“Parker your real name?”

“No. My folks changed it when I was small.”

The singer shook a little. It might have been laughter. It was probably the liquor.

“Well, Whitehorse is my real name, and my folks didn’t go and change it! And I’m not about to.” His gaze was unsteady but defiant. “Guess that makes me just a cut or two above you, don’t it?”

Folding his hands over his tummy, Sam replied quietly, “If it pleases you to look at it that way.”

The eyes glittered a moment longer. Then they closed tight, like wrung-out washrags, and turned away.

“God damn you,” Whitehorse hissed. “Oh, God damn you!”

Pause; quiet. “You got an agent, Willie?”

“No.” With satisfaction, “Can’t stand ‘em.”

“I’m not surprised. Most of us are pretty obnoxious.”

“And you’re different, I suppose?” he sneered.

“I think so. You may come to think so. You know what I think, Willie? You’ve got talent. A lot of talent.” When there was no reply to that, Sam continued:

“I’d like to handle you. I think you could be a big star. The biggest, maybe. Get you some respectable sidemen, put together a decent band. Like a chance to work with some guys who can play more than chopsticks, Willie?” Still no reaction. But no rejection, either. Encouraged, Sam plunged on:

“I guarantee to get you out of this sump heap, anyway.” He sat back, concealing his anticipation with the ease of long practice. “What do you say, Willie?”

Only sound the greasy tinkle of the bottle tapping rhythmically against the wooden bench. It was empty and so was the rhythm.

Then, “Sure, why not? At least somebody else can fight with the owners for drink money. Stupid bastards, think they all know music … Yeah, sure, you can be my agent. What’d you say your name was?”

“Parker,” Sam repeated patiently. “Samuel Parker.”

“Okay, Samuel Parker. Deal. Manitou help you.”

“Fine,” said Sam, reaching into his vest. “Now if you’ll just sign here, and he—” Whitehorse was shaking his head.

“Huh-uh. No contracts, no papers. If I want to quit, I up and quit. Just like that.”

“Where does that leave me?” prompted Sam.

“In hell for all I care. I could give a damn. That’s a problem for the Great Spirit, not me. Take it or screw it.”

Sam sighed. “I’ll take it. Now that that’s done with,” he stood and extracted a fresh cigar, “what’s the first thing I can do for you, to seal our agreement?”

Whitehorse hungrily sucked the last recalcitrant drops from the glass. He gazed at it moodily, hefting it by the neck. When he threw it into the far wall it shattered in a crystalline shower of quick brilliance and cheap wind chimes.

“Get me another bottle.”

III

Without even seeing the hovel Whitehorse was living in, Sam offered the singer the use of his own apartment. Whitehorse refused, but he didn’t like riding the bus. So he accepted Sam’s offer of a ride home.

On the way Sam nearly blew it.

“You know,” he mused conversationally, “I’ve been thinking about ideas, presentation. Every group’s got to have a gimmick to make it these days.” . “Yeah,” muttered the singer indifferently, staring out the window. “Hey, I know,” he turned suddenly. “You’re probably thinking that Indians are pretty ‘in’ right now, huh?”

“Well, I was sort of considering—”

“You were thinking of maybe fixing me up in something real authentic. Beads and buckskin, maybe, with a full war bonnet and moccasins. Call us ‘War Party’ or something? Hey, how about a handful of fake cigars, too?”

“Not exactly that,” Sam countered, aware he’d somehow upset the singer. “There’s already a group with a similar name and—”

” ‘Come see the real Indian band play the sacred music of the Red Man as you’ve never heard it before. The new in, now powwow sound—that it, Parker? That’s pretty good, ain’t it, ‘powwow’?” His voice was getting close to a shout.

“Easy, easy,” said Sam placatingly, not looking into those volcanic orbs. They ate at something in him. “I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“No?” screamed Whitehorse. What bothered Sam wasn’t the kid’s violence. Darned if he didn’t seem to be almost crying. Abruptly the singer seemed to collapse in on himself.

“No. Maybe you didn’t. I’m sorry.” He put his head in his hands and rocked a little on the seat. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ve taken so much of that, that sickening, sticky, patronizing—” He coughed twice, violently the second time.

“Ought to lay off that stuff,” Sam commented, keeping his tone carefully neutral. Whitehorse swayed, laughed a little wildly.

‘“Thunk I’m drunk, don’t you?”

“No—” began Sam.

“Well, I’m not! Most Indians drink, mister agent Parker. Not ‘cause they like this rot. Not that. They drink ‘cause most of what they were was ripped away from them by the white man’s world before they got born. Liquor blurs over all the empty spaces a little. All those dark wide holes that were once full of beautiful things. And the worse thing is, Parker, that you don’t really know what they were, those things. Just a big nothingness feeling that they aren’t there anymore.

“No, I’m not drunk, Parker. When I’m drinking I’m sober. I’m only drunk when I’m playing.”

Sam slowed and pulled into the curb. He didn’t offer to come up. They weren’t in Beverly Hills. It took the singer three tries to get the door open.

Sara leaned over from the wheel, looking out. “Remember, Willie. The studio tomorrow. Sure you can find it?”

Whitehorse swayed, turned to face the agent. He held the guitar to him like a mute child. “I’ll find it.” It was hard to tell whether he was laughing or crying. “Man, I’m an Indian! I can find my way to anywhere, don’t you know that? Yeah, I’ll get there, if I can make it up the stairs.” He put his hand to his mouth, blew out.

“Woo, woo, w—!” The third war whoop expired prematurely, subsumed in wracking cough. Sam turned away, embarrassed.

“I’ll be there. I’ll be there.”

IV.

Three young men stood in the concrete womb of the studio and stared impatiently at the white walls, their instruments, and Sam Parker. Sam transferred his gaze to his innocent watch and tried not to let them see how worried he was. He’d told Whitehorse ten o’clock. It was now twelve thirty and the trio was not in good humor.

He couldn’t blame them. They were top performers all, maybe the best three unattached musicians in L.A. just now. He’d spent all night begging, pleading, offering his unmarketable soul again, to get them to cancel their other plans and show up here. No, he didn’t blame them for being impatient. These guys were good, damn good, and Sam knew he couldn’t expect them to hang around much longer. The next time he asked for a little more time they would laugh at him.

Meanwhile every half hour in the studio was costing him money, lots of money. Money he didn’t have. The only thing that was doing well was his ulcer. He’d been a fool not to drag his discovery home with him, keep him in sight. Damnfool crazy drunken kid! Might have done anything. Might’ve hopped a plane to anywhere, or more likely a freight.

Every five minutes he’d phoned Whitehorse’s apartment, then every ten. The last call had been forty-five minutes ago. If he was still there he wasn’t asleep, he was catatonic. Or dead. Sam’s hopes and visions were dying just as fast.

Drivin’ Jack Cavanack stopped clicking stick on stick and looked up from behind his drums.

“Hey, man, this hotshot of yours better show up real quicklike, or I’m splitting. I got a gig in Seattle tonight and I do not, positively do not, feel like gettin’ in there in the dark and cold. Comprende?”

Uccelo plunked his bass for the thousandth time and didn’t look up at Parker. “Right on.” Vincente Rivera honked a few funky free notes on his harmonica, gazed sympathetically at the harried agent.

“Sorry, Sam, but Jack’s right. We all of us have got other things to do than wait around here. This is a favor from me to you, I know. But we been here for too many hours now, Sam. Offhand, I don’t think your wonder boy’s gonna show.”

He snapped open a small black case with red velvet guts and eased his harmonica therein.

“Please Vince … Jack, Milo. Give me a chance, willya? Hey, another ten minutes, that’s all I ask. Okay? Ten lousy minutes. I’m sure he’ll be here. He promised me he would.”

Rivera sighed, snapping the latch on the case. “Sam, I think you’ve been had.”

“He was had when he decided on joining his noble profession,” came a thin voice from the studio door. Sam spread a relieved grin from ear to ear, but inwardly he was seething.

“Willie!” It came out like a curse. “Knew you’d make it, fella!” Whitehorse walked past Sam, ignored the preferred palm.

“Sure, Sam. Promised.” The singer looked only slightly less haggard than he had the previous night.

He found a plug, started to hook himself into the ganglion of his guitar’s mechanical lungs, and talked while he worked:

“You know, Sara, I wasn’t going to come.”

Parker pretended not to hear as he closed the studio door.

“I was just going to leave you flat, go to Phoenix. Big joke. This whole thing,” and he took in the studio in a half-wave, “doesn’t appeal to me. Then I thought Grandfather, whatever he might think of this, wouldn’t like to hear I’d gone back on my word. So, what the hell,” he finished lamely.

Bless all grandfathers, prayed Parker silently. He felt like a man who’d just pulled an inside straight while hoping for a simple pair.

“What do you want me to do, Sam?” Whitehorse asked.

“Well, Willie, I want to find out if you four are compatible, soundwise. If you are, I’d like to work you together into a group.” Uccelo hit a sour note on his bass and snorted derisively.

“Willie, that’s Drivin’ Jack Cavanack on skins, Milo Uccelo on bass, and Vincente Rivera on harmonica, organ, Moog, and just about everything else you can imagine. Boys, Willie Whitehorse.”

Sam had seen more instant camaraderie among a group of pallbearers.

“All right, Sam, we all know what we play, man,” said Cavanack boredly. “Let’s get this over with, huh? I got a plane to catch.”

“Sure Jack, sure!” smiled Parker hurriedly. Cavanack turned his indifferent gaze on Whitehorse.

“What you want to play, man?”

“I only play my own stuff,” Willie replied with equal indifference. “You can follow me.if you like.”

“Now look here, man … !” began Cavanack, rising to his full six-five and glowering over his cylindrical zoo.

“Please, Jack!” Sam pleaded, waving his arms. “It’s just for a few minutes. Be the big man for a few minutes, huh?” He smiled desperately.

“Okay, Sam,” Cavanack agreed warningly. “But you ask a lot, man.” He sat down. Willie set his guitar in his arms with that smooth cradling motion.

“Hey, brother,” interrupted Uccelo, “don’t you want to tune up?”

Eyes of smoked ice fixed on the bass player, just above tight lips.

“I’m not your brother, Uccelo … and I’m always in tune.”

“Sure, Willie,” Sam all but begged. “Go ahead and play something, willya?”

Willie looked over at him quietly. “Sure, Sam. I’ll play something.”

Willie Whitehorse played.

As a boy my Father told me

When the mountains and the rivers were being

taken down

Down taken, taken down down down Down down taken way down Tom down…

He sang and he played and he played and he sang. And Milo Uccelo and Vince Rivera and Drivin’ Jack Cavanack, they just listened. Sat and they listened. Any cop who’d gotten a look at their frozen faces would have busted ‘em right then, on suspicion. No question, they were high. High and wild, shootin’ up on the music of Willie Whitehorse.

Rivera was the first to join in, moving like a dream man, coaxing a sweet quail-wail from his chrome harmonica, finding the blank spots few in Willie’s song and filling them in with notes like crystallized honey.

Then a low giant step from the back of the studio, getting louder and louder, moving faster and quicker, the hunger cry of a dragonfly. Drivin’ Jack Cavanack, his eyes glazed and distant, put his wheels under Willie’s guitar and Rivera’s harmonica and took off down the yellow brick road at a hundred twenty per.

Uccelo fought it, swam in it, gave in to it. His hands seemed to move of their own volition, the deep heavy bell-clear sound coming right out of his fingers, to scatter like black orchid blooms about the room.

Sam felt it too, but he had nothing to bring in. Nothing except the faces at the control-room window, noses and hands of employees and passersby squinched up tight against the cool glass. Bodies beneath moving, heaving, twisting to the irresistible, pounding, relentless power of the music.

This time he saw it twice.

Once it was somewhere in the middle, and once again at the end. Sam saw or thought he saw the steel-silvery outline with the sulfurous sight that burned, burned, bulked in the protective arms of Willie Whitehorse.

They finished perfectly together, the last note dying a lingering, unwilling death. Sam blinked, looked at his watch.

They’d been playing nonstop for twenty-two minutes.

His shirt was soaked opaque under both arms, and if you’d asked him he’d have insisted he hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time. Except maybe in his throat.

Willie calmly unhooked his guitar and walked over to where Sam stood.

“When you want me to play a place, call me, mister agent.” He slammed the door behind him.

That seemed to shatter the spell that had settled shroudlike over the studio. The musicians crowded around Sam, but no one shook his hand, no one pounded his back. They were solemn, but it was an excited solemn. That was the way Jack Cavanack looked at Sam.

“I gotta apologize, man. Count me in but excuse me now. I gotta go cancel that Seattle gig.”

“Thanks, Jack. I’m glad.” Sam had a thought. “Wait, hold up, Jack. This a solo?”

“Yeah. They back me with some locals, I play for awhile. It’s a good club, Sam.”

“Okay, tell your guy he’s getting a whole group for the price of a solo and to dump the college band boys,” Sam said rapidly. “Tell him you’re bringing your own people.”

“Okay, Sam,” agreed Cavanack, hand on the studio door. “Anything you say.”

Rivera remained on the low stage. He was staring at his harmonica, turning it over and over in his hands as though he didn’t recognize it. Sam didn’t know much Spanish, but he could identify the musician’s mumbled “Madre de Dios, madre de Dios,” because he said it over and over. And other things, too. Rivera blew a few simple notes on the instrument. In the now quiet studio they sounded as lost as a paper plane in the Grand Canyon.

Uccelo walked over, looking concerned.

“Hey Sam, my hands are shaking, you know that? How about that?” He held them out. It was barely a flutter to Sam, just a hint of movement in the fingertips, but it obviously meant something strong to the bass player.

“Never had that happen to me, Sam. Ever.” He shook his head. “I never played that good before, either. Sam, I swear I never heard a sound like that in my life.”

The agent smiled, mopped his balding dome with a dirty handkerchief. “You think he’s good too, then?”

Uccelo gave him a funny look. “Good? They haven’t invented a word for what that fellow is.” He swallowed. “I don’t think you’ll understand this the way it’s meant, Sam, because you’re not a musician. But when we were moving .up there, really moving, it was better than making it, man.” He still looked troubled as he turned away to unhook his bass.

“I’ll tell you this, though,” he added, working at the wires. “I’ll play bass for that man anytime, anywhere. For free, if I have to. But I won’t stay in a dark room with him.”

V.

Sam smiled sleepily as the 727 dropped through the clouds toward the Tacoma-Seattle airport. In a few hours he’d have a better idea of what he had. That he had something special he’d known since he’d heard that first guitar note back in the Going Higher. But just how special he couldn’t tell for sure … yet.

Of course, he mused gently as he rolled over in the reclined seat, those people at the studio window had given in to the force of the music as completely as the kids in that club.

Just before he drifted off to sleep, it occurred to him to wonder how anyone had been able to hear the music outside the closed-off, soundproof studio. But he fell asleep then.

SEATTLE 22 JAN (UPI)—The Aquarius, one of downtown Seattle’s best-known rock nightspots, was heavily damaged last night when the audience rioted during the performance of the Whitehorse Band, a new group from Los Angeles. Police, who were called to the scene by Aquarius owner Marshall Patrick, were unable to handle the crowd and were forced to call on the city’s special tactical squad for aid. A squad of MPs from nearby Fort Lewis also aided in subduing the crowd, which included a number of young soldiers on leave from the base.

Reports vary on how the disturbance began, but the general impression given was that the crowd was overcome by the fervor of the new group’s performance, though conflicting reports raise some doubt on this issue.

The actual disturbance apparently broke out during the final number of the evening, which one young listener out on bail described, somewhat dazedly, as having something to do with “slaughtered babies and howling dogs.” Police Sergeant Michael Washington, a Seattle force veteran, had this to say: “In twenty years on the force I’ve never seen a crowd behave Hike this one. It was like a nuthouse. Kids crying, singing, spitting, and squalling like wildcats. Some of my men were scratched up pretty good. Usually it’s just the girls, but this time the guys seemed to have gone berserk too. I’ll tell you, it scared the —— out of me! I’ve seen so-called riots at rock concerts before, but nothing like this! Most of !em don’t even seem to know what happened. I don’t like using clubs on teenagers, but my men had to do it hi self-defense. It was like a madhouse in there.”

Damage was heaviest to fixtures and breakables. Owner Patrick commented on the destruction: “This was the worst demonstration, I’ve ever seen, worse even than that last concert in Belgium. But I’ll tell . you, I’d book that bunch in here steady if I could get ‘em! I offered their agent everything short of a blank check and he turned me down. Said if I wanted to hear the group again I’d have to come to the Atheneum in Los Angeles. It didn’t affect me the way it did those kids, but there’s no doubt about it, that lead of theirs, Whitehorse, really has something special.”

(In Los Angeles, John Nat Burns, millionaire owner and builder of the Atheneum, refused to comment on band agent Samuel Parker’s statement).

Discussing the band’s performance, several members of the audience remarked on the interesting optical effect achieved when lead singer WilUe Whitehorse’s guitar seemed to take on the outline of a small animal. Some say it was a fox, others insist it was a wolf. All agree the technical device, probably achieved with offstage lights, was quite well done.

VI.

Sam leaned back in the chair in his Wilshire office and contentedly surveyed the list resting on the desk in front of him. It was a list of U.S. cities, and it was now more than three-quarters full. Stops on their first nationwide tour, if tonight’s concert came off.

Word-of-mouth is a wonderful thing. No less than six major record companies had waved contracts at him in the two weeks since Seattle. When they heard the minimum terms Sam would accept, they reacted in various ways, from mild amusement to outright disgust. Sam smiled to himself. After tonight’s concert they’d beg to sign on his terms.

Yes, word-of-mouth was a wonderful thing. The advertising had been minimal, but the wire-press story had piqued interest and the rock underground had taken care of the rest. All sixteen thousand seats had been sold out the day after the ticket agencies offered them. The Atheneum would be picked for the Whitehorse Band’s first major appearance.

The intercom dinged for attention. He pacified it by depressing the proper switch.

“Yes, Janet?”

“Mr. Parker, there’s a gentleman here who insists on seeing you. He says .his name is Frank Collins.”

“Tell Mr. Collins that all business concerning bookings, recordings, or advertising rights is being deferred until after the concert. Give him an appointment— oh, Tuesday, if he wants, and tell him I’m not seeing anyone today.”

“He knows the concert is tonight, Mr. Parker, but I think you might like to meet him. He’s not after money or offering it. At least, I don’t think so. He says he has a Ph.D. in psychology. He doesn’t look it.”

Well, Sam had heard plenty of ploys, but the inventiveness of the human mind is a wonderful thing. For a moment he was tempted to have Janet tell the joker to go peel his bananas. Then he considered that the claim was just weird enough to be legit. Besides, he’d never met a real live scientist. Closest he’d come was Morris, the bookie.

“All right, Janet, send him in. I’ll see him.” He released the switch.

Janet was one of the few luxuries he’d permitted himself to acquire with the advance from tonight’s sellout. She could type 90 words a minute, had a degree from UCLA, an IQ of 130, and a forty-one-inch bust.

Frank Collins wore a dark gray suit and tie, was about Sam’s age, had blue eyes, plump cheeks, no chin, a brown briefcase, and much more hair than Sam. For the latter Sam disliked him on sight.

“Sit down, Collins, but don’t make yourself at home.” The psychologist settled into the chair opposite the desk.

“You’re Sam Parker?”

“Unless my mother lied to me. You really a Ph.D?”

Collins had an ingratiating smile. “I like to think of myself as somewhat more than three letters and two periods.” He steepled his fingers, grew serious. “I’m very interested in a young man you represent named Willie Whitehorse.”

“Who isn’t?” Sam acknowledged. He caressed a box. “Cigar?”

“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

“Too bad for you.” Sam lit his own, puffed contentedly. From Havana by way of London. Another little luxury. “You’re not endearing yourself to me, Collins. What’s your angle? Why are you interested in Willie?”

“For the past ten years I have been especially interested in all the parapsychological aspects of rock music, Mr. Parker.”

“That’s certainly very interesting,” nodded Sam. “Suppose you tell me what that is in English, so I can get interested too.”

“Perhaps if I explain exactly what it is about rock that has intrigued me—”

“Sure,” Sam said, glancing pointedly at the clock on his desk. “Only don’t take too long, huh?”

Collins smiled again in a faintly superior way and began earnestly, “Have you ever noticed the power certain rock performers have over their audiences?”

Sam wasn’t impressed. “Naturally. Only the top people have it. Though I don’t know exactly as I’d call it ‘power,’”

“Oh, but what else could one call it, Mr. Parker? Surely you’ve had occasion to observe the audience as well as the players. A few musicians, and usually one lead performer, exercising what amounts to total emotional control over thousands and thousands of rapt spectators. Playing with their feelings, juggling their thoughts, all but directing their bodily movements with their music.”

Sam chuckled. “You make it sound like witchcraft.”

Collins did not chuckle back. Instead, he nodded. “In old times it would be called exactly that. In fact, music sometimes often was called a power of the devil. But it’s all far from supernatural. Psychic powers have long been postulated, Mr. Parker. The ability to control others through the power of one mind. Somehow music seems to increase the projection of the performer and the receptivity of his audience. All music does this to a certain extent, but rock music seems to do so to a far greater extent than any believe possible. And my counterparts are still playing with Rhine cards!” The last was uttered almost contemptuously.

“Tell me, what do you suppose a youth at one of these performances is thinking about? Someone who is totally ‘with’ the music, as they try to be?”

“Beats me. I’m not one of these kids. Whatever the singer is singing about, I suppose.”

“Correct, Mr. Parker. And he is thinking that to the exclusion of everything else. Except for the music, his or her mind is a complete blank. ‘Becoming one with the music,’ it’s called. When the music ‘moves’ them, it really moves them.

“Usually this oneness is expressed in actions of joy and happiness. Occasionally, if the music is outrageous or strong enough, it engenders violent, antisocial action on the part of the listener. Emotional telepathy, Mr. Parker, on a grand scale, and right under our very noses! No wonder their parents don’t understand their actions.”

Parker didn’t completely understand this spiel, but he wasn’t buying any of it. “Baloney! All kids don’t react that way. Hell, some of ‘em don’t even like rock music!”

“Perhaps the minds of some are immune to the effect,” Collins shrugged. “Others have raised conditioned barriers in their minds to the music. But in those who are receptive, the reactions are universal. A top group will produce the same effects in an audience of young people in Rome, New York, or Rome, Italy; in Moscow, Idaho or Moscow, Russia.” His voice got low and excited.

“In some way, Mr. Parker, I believe that todays music releases the blocks against intermind communication that normally exist in the human mind. Today’s environment may have something to do with it. So may the use of electronics. Consider! Some of the most popular, idolized figures in rock have what are by professional musical standards no voice at all, and are technically weak instrumentalists to boot. They come from every conceivable cultural background, having nothing in common except this uncanny ability to submerge themselves and their audiences in the music.” He relaxed slightly, grew a little less fanatical.

“You see, then, with what interest I would read the report of your concert in Seattle.”

“And you think Willie exercises some kind of mind control on his audience when he’s performing?” Parker shook his head. “At least you’re not a boring nut, Collins.”

The psychologist looked grim. “Insults and skepticism do not bother me, Mr. Parker. My statistics prove my contentions. Your Mr. Whitehorse will strengthen that proof. I have seen too many blank, empty, mindless faces swaying to the rhythm of today’s bands for me to believe otherwise.”

“Why’d you come to see me?” Sam asked abruptly “What do you want?”

The scientist looked sheepish. “I must go to this concert,” he explained desperately, “and I … I couldn’t get a ticket. They were all sold.”

Sam hesitated. What he ought to do was throw this idiot out on his ear. This learned idiot. On the other hand, he reflected, there might be some terrific pr copy in this, yes.

“Tell you what, Collins. I’ll get you in. But if Willie starts singing about how all nasty mad scientists ought to be strung up, don’t blame me for supplying the rope.”

It was intended as a joke. Collins did not smile.

VII.

Sam had munched his way through two cigars and was hi the process of mutilating a third. Outside, beyond the curtain, was a stamping, screeching mob of what the press euphemistically classified as “young adults.” Sometimes their chanting grew typically obscene, sometimes merely impatient. Most often it thundered “WE WANT WILLIE! WE WANT WILLIE, WE WANT WILLIE!”

Well, Sam couldn’t argue with them. He wanted Willie too.

Nearby, Vincente Rivera, Milo Uccelo, and Jack Cavanack wore varied expressions of boredom, now shading into disgust. They also wore red leather and fringes. Cavanack was smoking.

Sam broke his thoughts, looked pleadingly at the drummer. “Look, Jack, can’t you get rid of that stuff? All I need now is for some overzealous security guard to come sniffing back here and bust you.”

Cavanack glanced up and smiled broadly. “Just killin’ some time, Sam. Till your buddy-boy Willie gets here. If he gets here.”

The agent grimaced, looked absently at Rivera.

“If I were you, Sam, I’d have me a fast set of wheels standing by. Because if we sit here much longer, that crowd’s going to get ugly. And I sure as hell am not going to be the one who has to go out there and explain things to ‘em.”

“Right on,” Uccelo concurred. “This ain’t no recording-studio jam session.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Sam cried. “If that son-of-a-bitch forces me to have the gate refunded … !”

“Hey, isn’t that him?” broke in Rivera suddenly, standing up and pointing. Sam whirled.

Sure enough, a familiar gangling figure was loping toward them, escorted by a pair of security fuzz. Cavanack had enough presence of mind to pitch his smoke under a hunk of scenery from some long-dead play. Sam halted the singer with a hand on each shoulder.

“Don’t do things like this to an old man, Willie. I can’t take it anymore. Listen to them out there! They’re ready for you. Ready and primed. Now go out there and—”

“I’m not going out, Sam.”

Parker stared blankly at him, then grinned sickly.

“Aw c’mon, Willie! Don’t joke with me. Like I told you, I’m too old for this stuff.”

Willie looked half dead and dead serious.

“I mean it, Sam. I’m not going to play.”

Parker stepped away, somehow managed to keep the agonizingly painful smile on his face. It was as real as margarine, but he kept his voice under control.

“All right, Willie. Why don’t you want to go out there?”

“Because of this.” He fumbled with his shirt, tossed a crumpled ball of paper onto a chair. Sam looked over at it, then back to the singer.

“It’s a letter from my grandfather,” Willie explained. “He’ll never win the Nobel Prize, my grandfather, but he’s a great man. You see, he saw the story about the Seattle concert, too. Told me my kind of singing isn’t meant for a big group of people. Said that I was embarrassing my ancestors.”

Sam tried to understand this, but he couldn’t. There was no reference point for him in this cultural desert, and he admitted it.

“I don’t follow you, Willie. I’d like to, but I don’t. How the hell can playing music disgrace your ancestors?”

Willie stared at him with eyes of limpid oil. “Sam, where do you think my songs come from?”

“I thought you made ‘em up, Willie.”

The singer shook his head.

“No, Sam. Only the words. Most of the music is based on chants. Old medicine chants, Sam. Passed down in my family for hundreds of years. It’s all the inheritance I got. Grandfather thinks I’m misusing them. I don’t know that I go along with him—I don’t feel so good—but I respect him. So I’m not going to play, dammit! Can’t you just believe that and leave me alone?” He stumbled, looked around wildly. “I need a drink.”

Sam leaned close to him, sniffed. “On top of what you’ve had already?”

A silly grin spread across Willie’s face. “Does it surprise you?”

“No, of course it doesn’t, Willie. Now you just go out there with the boys and give those good people a song or two, and I’ll go and get you a nice fresh fifth of good stuff, whatever you want. Not the crud you’ve been gargling. How’s that? Look at it this way; you won’t be playing for a crowd, just for yourself. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Sam, I—” He blinked.

“I respect your grandfather’s opinions, too,” pressed Sam, “but you’ve also got a responsibility to those people out there. Most of ‘em stood in line for hours for the chance to hear you, Willie. Listen to them!”

“WILLIE, WILLIE, WE WANT WILLIE!”

“You can’t disappoint all those thousands. Be like going back on your own generation!”

Willie stood quietly and for a moment seemed almost sober.

“They’re not my generation.”

“Okay, okay, however you want to look at it.” Sam was beginning to lose his patience. “But you go out there and play for them. You’ve got an obligation to them. And you’ve also got one to the boys here—” he indicated the three waiting musicians, “—a legal one to me, and to the folks who put up the money for this concert.”

Willie tried to draw himself erect but couldn’t quite hold it. “I see. That’s how it is, huh?”

Sam looked back at him without wavering. “I’m afraid it is, Willie. For tonight, anyway. You’ll feel better tomorrow and we can talk then and—”

“No, no, that’s all right, Sam, I follow you. I follow you real good.” Onyx eyes blinking, the dark side of the moon. He swayed, caught himself. “Bet you think I’ve been playing for you, huh?

“You—Jack, Milo, Vince—you think I’ve been playing too, don’t you?” He turned back to Sam and smiled that sick, humorless smile. “Well, I got something for you. I haven’t been. Not really. Not back in that filthy backwater club where you found me, not in the studio that time, not in Seattle. You want me to go out there and play—all right.”

Sam tried to calm the singer but Willie wouldn’t give him a chance.

“What’s the matter, Sam? It’s okay. That’s what you want, that’s what you get. Get yourself a good seat, Sam. A real good seat. One where you can hear well and see, too. Because I’m going to play, yes.” He subsided, mumbled to himself. “Tonight I’m going to play.”

He spun and walked toward the stage. The others had to hurry to make the entrance with him.

A tremendous ovation met them, a roar of expectancy as the four musicians appeared on stage. After the long wait the audience was keyed to fever pitch. Some of them had been in the Aquarius that night in Seattle and had come all the way down to L.A. for this night. They didn’t cheer or yell. They just waited. Uccelo had gone first, running past Willie. He snatched up his bass and hurriedly hummed out the opening warm-up theme he’d composed. The crowd dropped its frenetic greeting and relaxed into a steady, familiar cheering and clapping, maybe a bit louder than that accorded the average new group.

Sam levitated a sigh from the vicinity of his ulcer and patted his face. Tomorrow Willie probably wouldn’t even remember what he’d said tonight. Sam picked up the balled letter and shoved it into a pocket. Then he walked into the wings and settled down to enjoy the show.

Willie ignored the crowd and picked up his waiting guitar. He turned it over and over in his hands, ran them sensuously up and down the shiny, spotless instrument. He was smiling at something.

“Play, dammit,” Sam hissed, fearful for a moment the singer might do something stupid like chuck it into the audience.

But it was okay. Willie put the strap over his head. He snuggled the guitar firm to his slim body and started to play.

Hush-dead silence greeted the first note. It was all wrong, that first note. It was too deep, too strong, too bad. It woke dark shapes that hid in the back of the mind, woke insect legs that creepy-crawl at night under bedsheets. It made the hair rise on the back of Sam’s neck. Willie held it, choked it, wouldn’t let it die. It wavered, floated, and finally drifted away crying from its mother the amplifier.

Willie’s fingers began to move. A tune emerged from the guitar, a low, ponderous, mephitic melody the like of which Sam had never heard before. It had granite weight and the patience of blowing sand in it, and it came straight from Hell.

Blank-eyed, Milo joined in, his perfectly picked bass a black brother to Wiliie’s guitar. Drivin’ Jack grunted and kissed his drums; thunder walked the stage. Rivera took the harmonica from his lips and sat down at the organ. And Willie began to sing.

A first clap, forlorn and naked, peeped from the thousands. Then another, and another. Then the whole sixteen thousand were clapping and moving in unison.

Willie played and he sang and he sang and he played. He played for ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Before you could think to breathe they swung into their second hour, never pausing, never resting, the same Hephaestean beat, the same haunted rhythm, with Willie piling variation on top of variation, weaving a spider web of blood-pulsing harmonics. Somehow Drivin’ Jack and Milo and Vince hung on, stayed with him.

Willie sang about the good earth and about rape, sang about young trees and sang about bate. He sang about the things man does to animals and about the animal man. He sang about man poisoning himself with envy, about dead-eyed children and too-young killers. Mostly, he sang about his people and their life and the writhing, insane alienness that was the white man’s. He cursed and he prayed and he damned and he praised.

He took that audience up to Heaven and banged their heads against the gates. He dragged them kicking and screaming down to the fiery pit.

And then, the sweat streaming off his face and his clothes hanging limp from his body, pulling him toward the ground in cpllusion with an evil gravity, he began to sing about the Things That Made no Sense, that were less and more than all that had gone before, and, in that was Madness.

The crowd screamed and howled at the constricting concrete sky and steel beams, wanting the stars. They broke and beat at themselves and one another in a frenzy.

Sam sat in the wings and shivered on the lip of his own private delirium as Willie sang hate and burning, sang anger and the final fire that burns in every man’s heart. And he saw the wolf. But it wasn’t gray this time. It was a twisting, spinning ball of four-legged yellow flame that shifted in his arms. Willie’s right hand was stroking its flank and the crowd shrieked. His left hand scratched an ear and they moaned. Then Willie played a note that shouldn’t have been. The wolf-thing opened its jaws and howled an unearthly sound poor Sam Parker could never have imagined. It didn’t come from Willie’s throat, was sure.

Hunching in his arms, the wolf-thing spun and clamped its fire-teeth over Willie’s mouth, and seemed to swallow. Willie Whitehorse became a pillar of flame.

Sam whimpered and fell to the floor, covering his eyes.

Eventually, lots and lots of sirens came.

VIII

Estes Park, Colorado, is a tourist town, an attractive tourist town, at the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Once upon a time, the park and the rest of Colorado belonged to the Shoshoni and Wind River Shoshoni, the Ute and the Arapahoe. Today most of the state belongs to the Colorado River Land and Development Company and innumerable bastard cousins.

But it was beautiful country and as tourist towns go, Estes Park wasn’t bad. Neither were the neat little homes that nestled in the hills behind the town.

A late-model Chevy pulled up in front of one of them and a man got out. He looked at the numbers on the mailbox and then at a piece of paper he held. The paper was wrinkled badly, as if it might have once been crumpled in a fist. The man walked up to the hand-hewn wooden door and rapped on it. There was no bell.

The man who opened the door was very old. But he was straight as his long white hair and had a merry grin to go with the strings of bright beads around his neck, the faded dungarees, shirt, and a big turquoise ring on one hand.

“May I help you?” The voice was wise, patient. “I’m Sam Parker,” the figure said. He glanced at the paper, back at the guardian of the door. “Are you

John Whitehorse?”

The oldster nodded. Sam said, “I knew your grandson.”

Eyes widened slightly, their owner stepping back from the door. “Come in, please.” They walked into a small but nicely appointed living room. A baby played quietly in a playpen in the

far corner.

“Sit down,” invited John Whitehorse. Sam did. He looked at the child.

“That is Bill Whitehorse,” the old man informed him. “My grandson’s son.”

“I didn’t know,” Sam confessed apologetically. “Willie never mentioned him. Is Mrs. Whitehorse …?”

“Died in birthing. The boy came in whiter, in the middle of a terrible storm. He was very early. The doctor tried but could not get here in time. The woman—” and he gestured at the strong figure standing in the hallway, watching “—and I did what we could. Willie never recovered.”

“Then he had no other family?”

The old man shook his head slowly.

“His father, my son, was killed in the last world war. There is a picture of him on the table to your right.”

Sam peered over the side of the couch. There was a faded black-and-white photograph of a man in uniform in a small flat glass case. It centered a circle of shiny medals and two oak leaf clusters,. Sam noticed the medical insignia.

“His father was a doctor, then?”

John Whitehorse smiled. “All the Whitehorses have been men of medicine. As I am, and my father was, and my grandfather. Beyond that I do not know for certain, but it is so said in Council.

“We wished it for Willie, too, but…” He stopped. “Why are you here, Mr. Parker?”

“I took charge of the body. I wanted to make sure there was someone who could aff—would want to bury him.” Whitehorse nodded. “Do you know how he died?”

“There was some news in the paper that comes from Denver,” said the old man, “but not much.” He seemed sad. “It was a very small item. I had to look hard for it.”

“There was a riot,” Sam began. “Fourteen people were killed. A great many were injured. An important building, the Atheneum, was nearly torn down by the audience during Willie’s performance. Many of them don’t remember what happened. This sort of thing has happened before at similar concerts, but never anything approaching the scale and violence of this one.

“Two of the musicians who were playing with Willie suffered severe shock. One of them is still being treated by doctors. He may not be able to play again, I’m told.”

John Whitehorse nodded. “They were close to Willie and they followed him too far. I am glad they did not die.”

“As for Willie,” continued Sam, watching the old man with eyes that had lately seen too much, “the story being passed around is that he’d doused his guitar with gasoline. Then he set it afire—as a gimmick, an audience-pleaser—but it spread to his clothes before he could get rid of it. I believe he would bum hot—he had enough alcohol in him—but that’s not what happened. There was no gas on that guitar, was there?”

John Whitehorse looked tired. “Nadonema, the wolf.”

Sam’s mouth tightened, but he looked satisfied. “Yeah, the wolf. Everybody thought it was done with trick lights, with mirrors. How was it done, old man?”

“From birth every Whitehorse is made brother to a creature of the forest. I am kin to the bear. To help make big medicine, he will make a picture of it in his mind and try to partake of its strength. It is a great power that takes much time and experience to learn well. Willie was very young and made his medicine too strong. Or perhaps, for some reason, he did not care.”

“And his music?” Sam asked quickly.

“No Whitehorse can make medicine without music, Sam Parker, nor music without some medicine.”

Then Collins was right, Sam thought. Music opens the blocks between minds. Pity the psychologist couldn’t be here. He was number eleven on the coroner’s list. But Sam was still skeptical.

“C’mon, old man. Next you’ll be telling me you can make it rain and cure warts.”

“Not I, Sam Parker. I am a modern man and have thrown off the superstitions of the ignorant past.”.And he smiled softly.

“Go ahead and laugh at me, then,” invited Sam. “There was a guy named Collins, though, who thought there might be some connection between today’s music and a crazy sort of mind contact I don’t really understand, At first I thought he was nutty as a loon. Now…”

“Do you know, Sam Parker, an interesting thing has come about.” John Whitehorse leaned close. “For the first time in this land a generation of whites is growing up that is concerned about the earth and the plants and animals that are their brothers. Is it so surprising that they should be more responsive to their music? Music is the key to so many things. That they should feel deeper and believe stronger and think purer thoughts than you and yours?

“Perhaps it may take one more generation. But as always happens things will come full round one day, and the Indian will have a way to reclaim what is his.”

“Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Mr. Whitehorse.” The old man’s sudden earnestness made Sam nervous. After all, the guy’d lost his son, and now his grandson. He could be pardoned an occasional private madness. Sara stood.

“If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got to make a connecting flight to New York.

“Willie had a great gift for lyrics and music, that’s all. Maybe unique. It won’t happen again, but it was great while he had it. You’ll forgive me if I find your picture of adolescent medicine men taking over the country just a little amusing.”

“I suppose it does seem rather humorous, Mr. Parker. No doubt you are right. You are kind to an old man who wishes for too much. Still,” and he looked at Sam with diamond eyes, “it would be fun to think on what I have said the next time listeners at a concert do not behave in a manner understandable to their elders.”

“Sure, sure. Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Whitehorse.” He glanced over at the cradle. The baby had a coal smudge of black hair with oddly familiar dark-pool eyes. He looked back at Sam innocently.

“Your father was quite a phenomenon, Bill Whitehorse. I hope your great-grandfather raises you well.”

The baby had a little Hopi-like doll rattle in one hand. He gurgled and shook it, rattling the seeds inside against the tissue-thin wood.

Parker shivered from head to foot.

The End