«Yeah, Fandango is—them's some of his drums on the stage there. He went for the rest.»

There was a shuffling and banging from the direction of the back hall just then, and a voice called, «That you, Greg? Help me with these, will you?»

«Whatever I can carry in one hand, Tommy.» Tucking the pelican case under his arm and sipping the beer as he went, Rivas groped his way to the back hall, relieved the puffing Fandango of one of his smaller drums and led the way back across the already somewhat brighter room to the stage.

Fandango put his drums down carefully and wiped sweat from his chubby face. «Whew ,» he said, leaning against the raised stage. «Spink was askin' me this morning when you'd be in,» he remarked in a confiding tone.

Rivas put down the drum he'd been carrying and then glanced at the younger man. «So?»

«Well, I don't know, but he seemed mad.»

«How could you tell? He probably sleeps with that smile on.»

«He said he wanted to talk to you about something.» Fandango avoided looking at Rivas by concentrating on tightening a drumhead screw. «Uh, maybe about that girl.»

«Who, that Hammond creature?» Rivas frowned, uneasily aware that Fandango had been seeing the girl first, and had introduced her to him. «Listen, she turned out to be crazy.»

«They all do, to hear you tell it.»

«Well, most of them are crazy,» Rivas snapped as he climbed up onto the stage. «I can't help that.» He untied the knots that held the vinyl case closed, flipped up the lid and lifted the instrument out.

Though not even quite two feet long, it was said to be the finest in Ellay, its neck carved of mahogany with copper wire frets and polished copper pennies for pegs, and its body a smoothly laminated half sphere of various woods, waxed and polished to a glassy sheen. The horsehair bow was clipped to the back of the neck, and in profile the instrument did look something like a pelican's head, the body being the jowly pouch and the long neck the beak.

He put the case on the stage floor, sat down on a stool with the pelican across his knees, and plucked out a quick, nearly atonal gun riff; then he swung it up to his shoulder, undipped the bow and skated it experimentally across the strings, producing a melancholy chord.

Satisfied, he laid the instrument back in the open case and put the bow down beside it. He picked up his glass of beer. «Anyway,» he said after taking a sip, «Spink wouldn't be bothered about any such crap. Hell, this is the eleventh year of the Seventh Ace—all that chastity and everlasting fidelity stuff left by the Dogtown gate before you and I were born.»

As was very often the case, especially lately, Fandango couldn't tell whether Rivas was being sincere or bitterly ironic, so he let the subject drop and set about arranging the drum stands around his own stool.

«Say,» he ventured quietly a few minutes later, «who's the guy by the window?»

Mojo had got several of the chandeliers lit by now, and the kitchen corner of the room glowed brightly enough to show a heavy-set man sitting at a table just to the right of the streetside window. Rivas stared at him for a moment, unable to tell in that uncertain light whether or not the man was looking his way, or was even awake; then he shrugged. «Jaybush knows.»

«And he ain't tellin',» Fandango agreed. «Say, is it still gonna be mostly gunning tonight? I've been practicing some newer songs, some of these bugwalk numbers, and it seems to me—»

Rivas drained his beer. «Catch!» he called, and tossed the glass in a high, spinning parabola toward Mojo, who looked up wearily, clanged his lamp down and caught the glass before it could hit the floor.

«Goddammit, Greg . . .» he muttered, getting to his feet and shambling toward the bar.

«Yeah,» said Rivas, frowning slightly as he watched the old man's progress, «it'll be gunning. They don't pay to hear Rivas doing bugwalk.» No, he thought. For that you want those savage kids coming out of the southeast end of town—Dogtown—the kids who rely on the ferocity of their voices and ragtag instruments to make up for their lack of musical skill. «Why?»

«I still can't get the hang of the beat on it,» Fandango complained. «If you'd just let me bang away in the same time as what you're playin', or even the time of what you're singin', I could handle it, but this third and fourth layer stuff, all at different paces but having to touch the peaks and bottoms together . . .»

«We're going to gun,» Rivas said firmly.

After a few moments, «Are you gonna do 'Drinking Alone'?» Fandango persisted. «It's the hardest.»

«Christ, Tommy,» said Rivas impatiently, «this is your job. Yes, I'm going to do that song. If you don't want to learn the whole trade, you may as well grow a beard and beg out on the street.»

«Well, sure, Greg, except—»

«Think I moved back here from Venice working like that?»

«No, Greg.»

«Damn right. Maybe we'd better go through it now, before the show, to give you some practice.»

Before Fandango could reply, a chair rutched back in the corner and the man at the windowside table stood up and spoke. «Mr. Rivas, I'd like to have a word with you before you start.»

Rivas cocked a wary eyebrow at the man. What's this, he wondered, a challenge over some despoiled daughter or wife? Or just a bid for a private party performance? The man was dressed respectably, at least, in a conservative off white flax shirt and trousers and a dark leather Sam Brown belt—in contrast to Rivas's own flamboyant red plastic vest and wide-brimmed hat. «Sure,» said Rivas after a pause. «Shoot.»

«It's a personal matter. Could we discuss it at the table here, perhaps over a drink?»

». . . Okay.»

Mojo bumbled up to the stage with the refilled beer glass just as the pelicanist hopped down. «Thanks,» said Rivas, taking it from him. «And a glass of whatever for the citizen yonder.»

Mojo turned toward the stranger, who said, «A shot of that Currency Barrows, please.»

Rivas walked over to the man's table, holding the beer in his right hand so that his knife hand was free, and when he got there he hooked back a chair for himself with his foot.

Mojo arrived with the glass of brandy a moment later, set it down in front of the stranger, then stepped back and cleared his throat.

«On my tab, Mojo,» said Rivas without taking his eyes off the stranger—who, he noticed, had no hair on his head at all, not even eyebrows or lashes.

«No, I insist,» the man said, «and Mr. Rivas's beer, too. How much?»

«Uh . . . one ha'pint.»

The stranger took a bugshell moneycase from his belt pouch, snapped it open and handed Mojo a one-fifth card. Mojo took it and lurched away.

«Never mind the change,» the man called after him.

Mojo slowed to a more comfortable pace. «Thank you, man,» he called back in a voice from which he was unable to keep a note of pleased surprise.

«Well?» said Rivas.

The man gave Rivas a distinctly frosty smile. «My name is Joe Montecruz. I'd like to hire your services.»

Though still a little puzzled, Rivas relaxed and sat back. «Well, sure. You want a backup band too, or just me? It's twenty fifths a night for me, and for this band it's seven fifths ha'pint extra. If I put together a better group it'd be more, of course. Now I'm booked solid until—»

Montecruz raised a hand. «No no. You misunderstand. It's not in your musical capacity that I wish to hire you.»

«Oh.» I should have guessed, he told himself. «What, then?» he asked dutifully, just to be certain he was right.

«I want you to perform a redemption.»

He'd been right. «Sorry. I'm retired.»

Montecruz's not quite friendly smile didn't falter. «I think I can make an offer that will bring you out of retirement.»

Rivas shook his head. «Look, I wasn't being coy. I've quit. I make plenty now with the music—and anyway, I'm thirty-one years old. I don't have that kind of reflexes and stamina anymore.» Or luck, either, he thought sourly. «And it's been three years since my last one—the country will have changed. It always does.»