Diamond Star Read Free

drums are too heavy, though."
    Mac liked the driven quality of the drums, but he was curious to hear what Del would do. "I can show you how to edit the song."
    Del let the music fade away. "You know how to do that?"
    "It's my job."
    Del blinked at him. "I thought you were an agent."
    "I'm called a front-liner," Mac said. "I get auditions and contracts for my clients. To sell their music, I need to understand what they do. I can't sing or compose, but I'm pretty good with the technical side."
    "Then, yeah." Del grinned. "Show me."
    They sat together at the table while Mac taught him how to use the ticker. When Del achieved the result he wanted, the instrumentals for the song had a beautifully eerie quality.
    "It's good," Mac said. "Better than the usual undercity work."
    Del shot him an annoyed look. "Just because you don't like undercity music, that doesn't make the musicians hacks."
    "Oh come on. It's the quality I'm talking about."
    "Why?" Del demanded. "Because they don't follow the boring mainstream?"
    "No," Mac said. "Because a lot of them can't sing, play, or compose worth shit."
    Del waved his hand as if to brush away the comment. But he didn't deny it. He was too accomplished a musician not to realize that for some, going undercity was little more than an attempt to define a lack of talent as progressive. The scene had produced some remarkable music, but they had also put out some of the worst dreck Mac had ever heard.
    "You can sing circles around them," Mac said.
    Del made a disgusted sound. "I doubt it."
    It wasn't the first time Mac had heard Del make derogatory references to his own singing. He didn't understand why the youth felt that way. Del had no sense of his own talent. He was probably Mac's greatest find--and Mac couldn't do a damn thing with that discovery.
    Well, almost nothing. He could listen. "So how does the song itself go?"
    Del drummed his fingers on the ticker, set the oval on the table, then picked it up again. "I can't sing without something to hold."
    Del wasn't the first vocalist Mac had seen who didn't know what to do with his hands while he sang. Mac almost laughed, thinking that some did have ideas, but they couldn't get away with it. The censors would come down on them like the proverbial ton of plutonium.
    "Sing into the ticker," Mac said. "It'll record you. Then you can listen to your voice."
    "Oh. All right." Del flicked on the ticker, looking self-conscious. "This is only a rough cut of the vocals."
    The music began with an exquisite and simple melody played by only a harp, from what sounded like a Gregorian chant. When it finished, the guitar riff played that started the music Mac had helped Del edit.
    And Del sang.
    His lyrics weren't the formulaic doggerel expected in the modern day universe of popular music. He varied the syllables more per line, sometimes drawing out words, other times rushing them. He used repetition to deepen the song rather than following a formula, and he gave the verses a freer form than current mainstream work:
    No answers live in here,
No answers in this vault,
This sterling vault of fear,
This vault of steel tears,

Tell me now before I fall
Release me from this velvet pall
Tell me now before I fall
Take me now, break through my wall

No answers will rescue time
No answers in this grave
This wavering crypt sublime
This crypt whispering in vines
    He stopped, staring at the ticker, his lashes shading his eyes. "It's still rough," he said, as if apologizing.
    "I like it." Mac wondered at the dark edge to the lyrics. Del wrote in a range of styles, from danceable tunes to ballads to hard-driving blasts. Sometimes he came out with these eerily fascinating pieces. Although the major labels probably wouldn't consider them commercial, Mac thought they had a lot more to them than the pabulum produced for popular markets.
    "I've no idea what it means, though," Mac added.
    "I suppose it's about never knowing answers even after you die. Or maybe that's what kills you."