By the time I reached the garage, the tour group had already filed in. I found them standing wordlessly around a green British automobile of pre-World War II vintage. Their heads were bowed, and a few people wiped away tears.
Finally, one of the VR women broke the silence. "Is this the car?" she whispered.
"Yes," replied Slingsby solemnly. "It was restored and brought here after the accident. No one has driven it since."
"Such a tragedy," said one man. "And he was so young, too."
"Actually, 88 was considered quite old back then. The average life span was about 75. The Great Master outlived many of his peers for several reasons: his usually optimistic demeanor, healthy weight maintenance, an aversion to dangerous pastimes, and his propensity for drinking several glasses of wine a day.
"Of course, there were some negative adjustment factors too. Chief among them were many nights performing in smoke-filled rooms, a series of stressful romantic relationships in his younger days, and his having accidentally established his Frequent Flyer Mileage account in Steve Chapman's name."
Slingsby's voice trailed off, and the room grew still again. I walked around the front of the car and ran my hand over the hood. "When did he buy the Bentley, Slingsby?" I asked softly.
"In 2009," he replied. "Prior to then, his lifelong preference was towards small red sports cars, especially convertibles. The only exception was the years 1997 through 1999 when, while going through a mid-life crisis, he drove a used yellow station wagon with imitation wood side panels and an 'I (heart) Bryce Canyon' bumper sticker."
Whatever. He told me what I needed to know. There would be no poll results hidden on the car. I turned my attention to the shelves along the wall. On one was an odd collection of items: Old jogging shoes, a lump of coal, a parka, a stuffed rooster, a table candle, a rusty street sign, and a small tactical nuclear warhead. I still can't believe those used to be legal. The National Missile Association sure had some awesome lobbyists.
Towards the end of the shelf were three boxes of ready-to-plant seed. One was for apples. One was for, of all things, hay. And the third was for heather imported from the Great Master's native Scotland. On the side of the box, just below the planting instructions, were the following words:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Uptempo/Driving Song
# Song Album Votes ----------------------------------------------- 1 Feel Like FLW 14.25 2 Apple Cider Reconstitution MT 11.00 3 Genie On A Tabletop FLW 9.75 4 Running Man 24C 6.00 5 Antarctica LDOTC 5.50 6 Last Days Of The Century LDOTC 5.25 7t Post World War II Blues PPF 4.00 7t Valentina Way TP 4.00 9 Mondo Sinistro 24C 3.00 10 License To Steal LDOTC 2.25
I switched off the TSR and tried my best to suppress a smile. It didn't seem right to look happy while everyone else in the room had such long faces.
Slingsby took a deep breath. "The accident itself was shrouded in mystery until recently. It seems...."
"Oh, no sir," interrupted the elderly lady. "Everyone knows about the accident. He went out late one night to purchase a bottle of wine."
"It was dark," called someone.
"It was raining," said another.
"He didn't see the light or some such," said a third.
The whole tour group sighed. "It was just one of those things," we said in unison.
Slingsby politely folded his hands. "All quite true," he said after a dignified pause. "But there's more to it than that. The coroner's office listed heart failure as the cause of death, not the injuries he suffered in the crash. Doctors had speculated for years that he suffered a massive coronary just moments before skidding off the road.
"The mystery was solved only recently with the invention of the Temporal Audio Restorer. This is the first cousin to the Temporal Sight Restorer favored by so many archaeologists today," he added with a nod in my direction. "Both were developed by noted physicist Natasha F. Kamsky, working off her great-great-great-great-grandmother's plans.
"The TAR allows one to reproduce the sound emanating from an object at any specific moment in history. Researchers from the Brady University of Medicine visited Stewart Manor about three years ago to examine the Bentley. Specifically, they scanned the car radio in the minutes before the Great Master's death."
"Folks," he said gently but firmly. "What they learned is not for the faint of heart. I recommend that small children and those with serious medical or emotional problems please step outside."
The elderly woman turned to her granddaughter. "You heard Mr. Stewart, Delia."
"Aw, Grandma, do I have to?"
"Yes, dear. I don't want you to have any nightmares tonight."
"But I'm old enough! I won't be scared! Really!"
"No, sweetheart. This isn't for children. Don't you have a new game you can play on your craniocomputer?"
The little girl's face brightened. "Oh, yeah! 'Mortal Kombat XLVIII: Fun With Flame-Throwers!'. But I can't get past the Ginsu Flaying Monster that guards the Orgy Room."
"Well, I'm sure if you just work hard and practice you'll figure it out. Now run along."
She skipped happily out the back door. Her grandmother shook her head. "Kids," she said with a sigh. "It's so hard these days to protect them from all of the horrible things in life."
"Indeed it is," agreed Slingsby understandingly. "Now then. You're about to hear a clip of what the Brady researchers found when they scanned the car radio. These were the last sounds heard by the Great Master in his life. You'll recognize the opening music, then I'll translate the spoken words afterwards. Here we go..."
He made a quick hand signal, and the final few bars of 'Year of the Cat' played from a hidden audioport. A man began speaking loudly just as the music faded out, and he said....
Oh...my...God!
I slumped against the far wall. Slingsby no doubt noticed the pained look on my face. "Are you all right, sir? I forgot that you spoke Old English."
I nodded weakly. "Yes, but....what a shock. I assume that savage was tried and punished, right?"
"No, sir. Desecration of the Great Master's works was not criminalized until earlier this century."
"Will someone please tell us what it said?" snapped the middle-aged man.
Slingsby glanced at me. "Well," I said slowly. "I think the speaker was what they used to call a 'disc jockey', and he said 'KAOS, 102.3 on your FM dial, Howard Stern all morning, Golden Soft Rock Oldies from the Mid-1970's all day. That's 'Year Of The Cat', a 1976 smash from the great Michael Bolton!' "
One tourist screamed, another fainted, and a third dropped to both knees and crossed herself. All things considered, I think they took it rather well.
Slingsby, the consummate professional, gave everyone time to regain their composure. I took a seat on an old folding chair that had been leaning against the wall. What a day! After this tour, the Haunted Winery at Alistair's Kingdom would seem like a walk in the park.
Then as I sat back, I noticed something curious. Strapped to an armrest of the chair was a seashell and a child's toy wristwatch. A quick scan with the TSR revealed these words etched on the plastic:
1995 ASML BOAP: Best Romantic/Reflective Song
# Song Album Votes ------------------------------------------ 1t Modern Times MT 7.50 1t Rocks In The Ocean 24C 7.50 3 End Of The Day TP 7.00 4 Laughing Into 1939 BTW 6.50 5 Fields Of France LDOTC 5.50 6 Where Are They Now LDOTC 5.00 7t Love Chronicles LC 4.00 7t Timeless Skies TP 4.00 9t Don't Forget Me FLW 3.50 9t Optical Illusion 24C 3.50
I do believe that was the first tied category. Quite an honor for 'Rocks' to have finished so well since it's one of the Great Master's relatively obscure works.
"I hope everyone is OK," said Slingsby finally. Several people were still fanning themselves with tour maps. "I think you now have a better understanding regarding the Great Master's demise. All we as a society can do is take steps to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated."
"My goodness," said one man, more to himself than anyone else. "How could the radio station allow such an egregious error to go over the airwaves?"
Slingsby looked at the floor and shuffled his feet.
"Slingsby?" asked someone after a few seconds. "It *was* a mistake, wasn't it?"
He took another deep breath. "Yes, I'm sure it was. However, there are those who disagree. A handful of radical conspiracy theorists actually believe that the Great Master was..." -- and here he swallowed hard -- "...murdered!"
Everyone gasped in horror.
"I must stress to you that this is not the mainstream view," he added quickly. "But in his forthcoming holomovie entitled 'AIS', director Fagan Stone argues that the Great Master was done in by a cabal of celebrities, music critics, and record company executives whom he had offended over the years.
"The evidence is distinctly underwhelming. Neighbors reported seeing two people fleeing the grounds of Stewart Manor just before the Great Master emerged from his house. One was a man of undetermined age wearing a Janus Records satin jacket. The other was a woman of about 60 on roller skates, carrying a crowbar. Stone's conjecture is that they broke into the car and tuned the radio to the fatal station.
"According to Lady Kristine, the Great Master had received a phone call about five minutes earlier from someone purporting to be from the local wine shop, claiming that a 1998 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild had just arrived. Stone claims no employee working that night admitted to placing the call and that no such shipment was received.
"The most damning item, in Stone's view, is that the disc jockey was a one-time substitute with a slight Dutch accent whose identity has never been established."
Slingsby stopped talking and raised his hands in the universal gesture for 'that's all, folks'. "Who does Stone think was the mastermind?" asked one woman.
"Joan Baez. Again, the evidence is sketchy. Stone claims that Baez was also behind the deaths of Paul Simon in a boxing accident, Peter, Paul, and Mary in a plane crash, Arlo Guthrie in a train wreck outside Memphis, and Bob Dylan in an avalanche. He also claims that Baez made an unsuccessful attempt to run down Don McLean on a dry river bed in a Chevy pickup.
"The motive was jealousy. Baez became unhinged when passed over for induction in the Folk-Rock Hall of Fame, which opened in Hong Kong in 2026. She embarked on a secret wave of terror in which she eliminated the competition, as it were. Stone believes the particular hit on the Great Master was bankrolled by a retired jurist from the Swiss town of St. Albans, for reasons unknown.
"The accidents took place over a ten-year period. Stone puts much stock into the fact that none occurred during September, 2029 and the following March, when Baez was serving a six-month sentence in Minneapolis for a DWI conviction incurred while leaving a professional football game."
I found myself engrossed by the story, which was a big no-no. I had work to do. While Slingsby fielded more questions, I slipped off to search the rest of the garage.
In one corner was something I recognized as a fuse box. They were used to regulate electricity through the wiring in older homes, before the perfection of broadcast power. I opened the front panel and was surprised to find the following table scratched into the metal plane surrounding the main circuit switch:
1995 ASML BOAP: First Al Song
# Song Album Votes -------------------------------------------- 1 Year Of The Cat YOTC 40.33 2 Roads To Moscow PPF 14.50 3 On The Border YOTC 7.33 4 Time Passages TP 7.00 5 Bedsitter Images BI 4.00 5t Carol MT 4.00
At first, that seemed to me to be an especially odd place to hide a poll result. I didn't understand the connection at all. Then I recalled how the question was phrased on my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's ballot: 'What was the first song that turned you on to Al?'
I doubled over in pain, my arms clenched around my stomach. One younger woman ran up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. "Are you OK? Is it something you ate?" she asked. "Bad Cat Burger? Bad Hippo Shake?"
"No," I gasped. "Bad pun."
"Oh, I hate those. They knock the wind right out of you," she said disgustedly.
"Folks," announced Slingsby, "it's time to go back and finish our tour of the main house. Next stop, the bedrooms on the second floor. Follow me, please"