Free Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

when he realized
that the late nights, irregular meals, and frequent intake of
alcohol were wearing down his body. He used to arise no earlier
than eleven o'clock in time to shower and shave after a night
checking for violations. That part was pleasant. The unpleasant
part was informing the performers and the management of their
wrongdoing. He used to admire musicians before he got into this
business. If he hadn't learned to divorce his appreciation for the
music from the bloody-mindedness of its performers long ago, he
wouldn't have been able to continue his work.
    Listening to the steady thump of the drum
machine, the lyrics being bawled into his ear, he began to feel
that perhaps the time had come when he no longer did appreciate the
music. Certainly he didn't care any more for Duck Soul and his lot
than he had for others he'd dealt with—although he had never been
called upon to chastise Soul yet.
    Soul had managed to override the
obscenity laws due to a cross-generational language barrier, and
Graham could almost understand both sides of the conflict now. The law said that
records containing obscene lyrics couldn't be sold to minors, and
stores went out of business all over the country as SWALLOW agents
helped police crack down. They confiscated lots of old English and
Scottish murder ballads and, for a time, rap and rock records, but
then the producers of the music got smart and garbled the lyrics so
badly no one but the targeted teenage audience could understand
them. When the lyrics were printed for publication, of course, they
were perfectly innocuous. When the rap records were intelligible,
they were encoded. He wondered how the kids deciphered the messages
in the songs.
    But though for a time his job had been
increasingly interesting as he enforced regulation after
regulation, it had, now that most people were used to the
regulations, finally become grindingly dull. Because except for
Soul, and until recently the few of his brethren who could afford
to pay the licensing fees, taxes, and union dues, and to bypass the
laws, there was now very little music for the man from SWALLOW to
listen to, never mind regulate. He was wondering what he ought to
do about that—request assignment in England or Europe and search
out new frontier, regulation-wise? Even though the music scene was
still so wild and untamed over there as to be impossible, it would
be a challenge.
    Or perhaps he might quit altogether.
Because, since he was not an unintelligent man, he began to see
that there just might be some sort of cause and effect between the
zeal with which he had done his job because he was such a music
lover and the fact that music of most species was now, in the
States, extinct or endangered.
     
    * * *
     
    Gussie didn't plan what she was going to
tell the police when she half fell through the cafe door. She just
wanted to put the door between her and the nut who was after her.
When she saw the brown uniform sitting at the stool in front of the
counter, she thought she had hit a snag, and she was too tired and
too plain scared to deal with it.
    "Help me," she panted. "Lock—the—door.
There's a crazy guy out there. Got a knife. Blue pickup. Chased me.
Lights—green lights—God, do you mind if I sit down?"
    She fell into one of the booths along
the side of the room, and the cop, standing cop-style with his
hands on his hips and his feet spread, said, "Take it a little
slower now—this guy what ?"
    She looked up but couldn't see him for the
sweat that was pouring into her eyes. She grabbed a handful of
napkins from the rectangular metal dispenser and mopped her face,
then did her best to look like an innocent little old soul who just
had the pee-waddin' scared out of her. "This nut followed me,
officer. I—" She took a better look at his face, which was very
familiar. She hadn't seen it for seven years, but they had spent an
intense week together in a traffic jam along the Oregon Trail when
the devils were trying to kill