blocks. The Society man who examined his qualifications as
a member had run through the questions with no more
interest than might have been shown by a veterinarian
examining his four thousandth sick calf.
“Had anything published?”
“Yes, nine tone poems, about three hundred songs,
“Not when you were alive,” the examiner said, somewhat
disquietingly. “I mean since the sculptors turned you out
again.”
“Since the sculptorsah, I understand. Yes, a string
quartet, two song cycles, a”
“Good. Alfie, write down ‘songs.’ Play an instrument?”
“Piano.”
“Hm.” The examiner studied his fingernails. “Oh, well.
Do you read music? Or do you use a Scriber, or tape clips?
Or a Machine?”
“I read.”
“Here.” The examiner sat Strauss down in front of a view-
ing lectern, over the lit surface of which an endless belt of
translucent paper was traveling. On the paper was an im-
mensely magnified sound track. “Whistle me the tune of
that, and name the instruments it sounds like.”
“I don’t read that Musiksticheln,” Strauss said frostily, “or
write it, either. I use standard notation, on music paper.”
“Alfie, write down ‘Reads notes only.’ ” He laid a sheet of
grayly printed music on the lectern above the ground glass.
“Whistle me that.”
“That” proved to be a popular tune called “Vangs, Snifters
and Store-Credit Snooky” which had been written on a Hit
Machine in 2159 by a guitar-faking politician who sang it at
campaign rallies. (In some respects, Strauss reflected, the
United States had indeed not changed very much.) It had
become so popular that anybody could have whistled it from