Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [22]
The Sun Dogs were two well-built Brits or Scands in torn cashmere, and their gear consisted only of an electric cello, plugged into a compressed-air auxetophone amplifier that looked like a threatening tuba, and a Frying Pan amplified to the point of distortion. As soon as the room started to vibrate, and as a dark, ominous drone started to coil around the walls, it became palpably clear that this music directly linked one’s eardrum to one’s intestines and that it was, beyond good or bad, to be digested rather than listened to. It also had at times, under the murk, the repetitive, trance-like quality of Eskimo chant. This indeed was not without its effect upon intoxicated listeners, who swayed back and forth with the ebb and flow of the gravelly sound waves. The Sun Dogs’ best song was called Hyperborean, and if Gabriel understood it correctly, it was a cryptic paean to snowcaine. It went something like this:
She blinks and she thinks she knows what’s on my mind
There she goes through my nose and she is gonna find
A lonely frozen sea that’s gonna blind her eyes But if by chance she can dance this is a paradise
Hyperboreal
Hyperboreal
Lubberland, blubberland made of ice field and floe
Ruined cities, memories moving like drifting snow
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d died from the cold
But your body, baby, it will never grow old
Hyperboreal
Hyperboreal
Oh for the kind of stuff that my dreams are made of
It’s never dark enough let’s turn the heavens off
Northern lights polar star
However bright they are
It’s all light
pollution
imperfection
of night
This was, Gabriel had to admit, the most exact captation of the collective life—and of his own—that he had ever heard from one of those bands. He had simply, in his ravishment, forgotten Phoebe. The audience must have felt the same: they all looked enthralled, unless their immobility had more to do with a fear of being noticed by that stubborn chord that whirled closer and closer and closer as if to decapitate them. Some people were even crouched on the floor, looking bleak and frightened, as if praying for the sonic scythe to spare their worthless lives.
But then, all of a sudden, as if the plug had been torn from the socket, everything stopped and a rush was heard (through slightly buzzing ears) in the back of the room. Gabriel turned to see a pack of Gentlemen of the Night invading the premises, dressed to kill in top hats and Inverness coats, their dreaded sword-canes in hand. He was not long in spotting among the intruders a monocled Sealtiel Wynne, who was equally quick to notice him. The policeman lightly touched his hat to him with the knob of his cane, adding a sly little smile that made Gabriel want to bite his head off.
One of the Gentlemen had hopped up on the stage and, carbon microphone in hand, suavely addressed the dumbstruck crowd:
“Ladies and Gentlemen. We hope you will excuse this intrusion in the middle of a very pleasant evening. We would gladly have dispensed with the interruption if a matter of some urgency had not constrained us to act on behalf of your health. I have here”—he flourished a paper—“a recommendation from Doctor Playfair, from the Kane Clinic. He informs us, after long and painstaking research by the best experts in the field, that, unfortunately, the joint exposure to psychotropic products and droning sounds is hazardous to the well-being of the persons exposed, and is even, he regrets to say, likely to have irreversible effects on the nervous system. Not wanting to take any chances with the health of the citizens, the Council has delegated us, your humble servants, to take the measures necessary for your protection. As a consequence, and assured as we are of your understanding and cooperation, we take upon ourselves the