by Kage Baker
“Oh dear God,” said Mr. Morton.
***
“I didn’t think I was that bad,” said Crispin miserably. They were sitting together in their little state-of-the-art kitchen, over a couple of mugs of Martian-style tea. Yellow lakes of melted butter swam on its surface, but it was surprisingly soothing.
“You weren’t really,” said Meera. “It’s only that…it’s not a comedy, darling.”
“It could be,” said Crispin. “It could be played funny. Why doesn’t anybody see the humor in the thing? Nobody could see the humor in The Dancing Daleks either. Why are people so serious? Life isn’t serious.”
“No, but Art is,” said Meera. “Apparently.”
“The big guy, Alf, he’s amazing. We talked, you know, about all his adventures on the road up here, really awful stuff he’s lived to talk about, and you should hear him! ‘So dere I was wiv, like, dis sand doon over me, and I finks to myself: How da hell am I gointer find out wevver Arsenal won da match? So I reckoned I’d better get a shovel or somefink, but dere weren’t no shovel, so I tore da seat off da lavvy and dug out wiv it.’ It’s all in a day’s work to him! He was laughing about it!”
“That was nice; you got his voice exactly,” said Meera.
“These people live on the edge of destruction, all the time, and they manage by treating it all as a joke,” said Crispin. He folded his arms the way Mother Griffith did and cocked his head at Meera. “‘Oh, my goodness no indeed, you don’t want to let a little thing like an asteroid hitting the bloody planet bother you! Just come up to the Empress for a pint, my dears!’ So why can’t Morton see how really innovative it would be to play this thing for laughs?”
“I don’t know,” said Meera. “But, you know, it’s his vision. And it’s his theater. And these people have been awfully good to us.”
“So I don’t suppose I could walk out of the show,” said Crispin. He gave her a furtive look that meant: Could I?
“No,” said Meera firmly. “This isn’t like walking out on Anna Karenina, where it didn’t matter because Mummy loaned us the money to get the car fixed. Or walking out on From the Files of the Time Rangers, when it didn’t matter because your aunt left you that bequest. It isn’t just a matter of scraping by until one of us gets a commercial. You’re right; you can’t leave. We can’t leave. Remember why we’re here.”
“I know,” said Crispin, and sighed. He looked at her sadly. “Life has caught up with us, and it’s going to suck us in. I have to grow up now, don’t I?”
“Grow up?” Meera laughed, though she felt tears stinging her eyes. “Crispin, you’re having adventures on bloody Mars! You’re living in a Star Wars flat beneath the surface of another planet! Our baby’s going to think Father Christmas has four arms and tusks! Do you think growing up is going to be boring?”
He giggled, looking shamefaced.
“No, no, see, it’s all wrong. If I’m having adventures on Mars, I ought to be in my space suit, with my rocket ship in the background, and my clean-cut jaw sticking out to here—” he thrust his chin out grotesquely. Meera couldn’t help laughing. He jumped up on the table and struck an attitude.
“And I’d have a ray gun in either fist—and I’d be firing away and dropping alien hordes in their tracks, brrrzzzt! Aiee! Die, space scum! ‘Retreat, my minionth! It ith Thtar Commander Delamare! Curthe you, Earthman!’ And I’d have this gorgeous babe, naked except for some strategically-placed pieces of space jewelery, clinging to my leg as I stood there. Played by the beautiful and exotic Meera Suraiya.” He smiled down at her.
“Would she be pregnant?”
“Of course she would,” said Crispin, jumping down and kissing her. “Got to repopulate the planet somehow.”
***
“It’s standing room only!” said Mr. Morton, biting his fingernails. “Look! Look! Look at them out there!”
Cochevelou peered through the gap in the curtain. He spotted Mother Griffith in the front row, arms folded, with most of the tavern staff seated to either side of her. Behind them, in ranks all the way to the back wall, were haulers and miners. Some were washed and combed and wearing their best indoor clothing; some had clearly come straight from their rigs, or from their mine shifts, for they wore psuits or miner’s armor and had tracked in red dust on the purple carpet.
“Heh,” said Cochevelou, leaning back. He took a small flask from an inner pocket, and had a sip before passing it to Morton, who drank and coughed. “Now, see, if you’d charged ’em for tickets like I’d told you, you’d have made a chunk of change tonight.”
“No! These poor fellows would never have access to the finer things in life on Earth; I won’t deprive them of the chance, here on Mars,” said Mr. Morton. “The Arts shall be free! If only…”
“If only?” Cochevelou tucked away the flask and peered at him. It was dark backstage, and Mr. Morton’s licorice-stick silhouette was barely visible; his pale face seemed to float above it, like the mask of tragedy.
“If only it wasn’t for the human element,” he said mournfully.
“Ah. The holotalent?” Cochevelou shrugged. “Well, and what if the boy’s terrible? It ain’t like this lot will know any better.”
“There is that,” Mr. Morton admitted. “But…I have built my theater. I am about to accomplish a thing of which I have dreamed my life long. I am a dramaturge, Maurice. My players are assembled, my Shrine to the Arts is filled…and…”
“And?”
“What if it disappoints me?” Tears stood in Mr. Morton’s eyes.
Cochevelou stroked his beard, regarding Mr. Morton in wonder.
“Well,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t be the first man it’d happened to, would you? And after all, it ain’t about you being happy, is it? It’s about giving all them out front something that’ll take their minds off dying up here.”
“Of course it is,” said Mr. Morton, and sighed. “But oh, the terror of dreams fulfilled! It must go on now, mustn’t it? No way to wave a magic wand and crumble my theater back into the violet dust of unlimited possibilities?”
“No, there ain’t,” said Cochevelou. “The show’s going on, and you’re sitting in the little boat about to go over the edge into the whirlpool. Let’s just hope there’s something nice at the bottom.”
“Ten minute call, Mr. Cochevelou,” said Durk.
“Oh dear,” said Mr. Morton, and ran for the wings. Then he remembered that he was supposed to give a speech before the curtain rose, and ran back. Cochevelou kept going, to the little dressing room he and Alf shared. Alf was dutifully smearing adhesive on his face, preparatory to attaching his false beard.
“You ought to grow a real one,” said Cochevelou, flipping the end of his own with pride.
“Can’t,” said Alf, looking at him in the mirror. “On account of the meds they gave me in Ospital.”
Cochevelou winced. “Not ever?”
“I don’t mind so much,” said Alf, fitting on the false beard. “This don’t arf tickle.”
“Well.” Cochevelou thumped him on the shoulder. “We’re almost on.”
Meera was standing quite still in the wings, summoning all the despair and anger she could. Exxene was walking in a tight circle, muttering “Kill, kill, kill.” Mona was fussing with her ribbon-stick, looping it through the air in swirly arcs.
“I don’t like this one,” she whispered. “Can I trade with you?”
Meera simply nodded and handed over hers. She was exhausted; Crispin had had a bad case of performance nerves and hadn’t slept much the night before. He had tried not to wake her, but every time he had climbed into or out of bed, the hiss of the air-seal had brought her to sharp consciousness and the certainty that an asteroid was plummeting straight for Griffith Towers.
Uncertain applause out front: Mr. Morton clearing his throat.
“I bid you welcome, friends, to the inaugural season of the Edgar Allen Poe Center for the Performing Arts! When future generations of Martians look back to this ev
ening, upon which the shy Muse of Tragedy first ventured onto our rocky soil, they will undoubtedly…”
Crispin emerged from his dressing room, and would have looked haggard even without benefit of makeup. As he passed between the colored lights on his way to the wings, his photoreactive beard and wig flickered, black-white-black. He stepped into place beside Chiring, and nodded.
“What’s the house like?”
Chiring gave him two thumbs up.
“That’s the ticket,” said Crispin, as cheerfully as he could. He began to bounce on the balls of his feet. “Energy-energy-energy, come on Crispin, aah eeh eye ohh oooh. Run run run!” He drew up his fists and began to run in place.
“What are you doing?” whispered Chiring.
“Gearing myself up,” said Crispin, running faster and faster. “Never fails to kill those butterflies in the tummy. YeeOW!” He finished, as he always had, by launching himself into midair.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten about Martian gravity. Crispin soared up and straight into the blue can spotlight, which rang like a gong when it connected with his skull. He dropped like a sack of flour, out cold.
“Mr. Delamare!” Chiring stared down at him, aghast.
“What the hell?” Cochevelou leaned down from the curved framework meant to symbolize a fishing boat. “Oh. Drunk, is he?”
“No!” Chiring fell to his knees and slapped ineffectually at Crispin’s face. “Oh, no, Mr. Delamare—oh, look, he’s cut his scalp too—”
“What was that—” Mona ventured out from Stage Left, saw Chiring, and gave a stifled shriek.
“What is it?” Meera looked up, startled.
“Chiring and your husband are fighting! He’s knocked him down!” cried Mona.
“What?” Meera raced across the stage, closely followed by Exxene who, when she came in range, aimed a roundhouse blow at Chiring. Chiring yelped, ducking, and waved his hands in panic.
“What are you hitting me for? He hit his head on the light!”
“Cris!” Meera knelt beside him. “Oh, baby—somebody call the paramedics!”
“What paramedics?” said Cochevelou, climbing out of the boat frame.
“So what were you fighting about?” Mona asked Chiring.
“What do you mean, what paramedics?” said Meera, horrified.
“We weren’t fighting!” said Chiring.
“I mean we haven’t got any,” said Cochevelou. He knelt beside Crispin too and thumbed open an eyelid. “Not to worry, ma’am. He’ll come round. Morton has a cot in his office; let’s stow him in there until he sobers up.”
“But he isn’t drunk!”
“But we’re about to go on!” said Mona.
All this while, the sound of Mr. Morton’s speech had been in the background, but it had begun to falter. They heard hesitant applause and then Mr. Morton leaped through the curtain.
“What the hell is going on back here?” he demanded. He spotted Crispin, unconscious and bleeding on the floor, and his eyes went wide.
“He jumped up and hit his head and knocked himself out and I had nothing to do with it!” screamed Chiring. He stabbed a finger at the blue can spot. “It was that light right there!”
Mr. Morton made a sound suggesting that all the air had been knocked out of him. He fell to his knees.
“Aw, now, it’ll all come right, Morton dear,” said Cochevelou. He pulled out his flask, uncapped it and stuck it in Mr. Morton’s nerveless hand. “Just you drink up. Alf, give us a hand with old Brophy Bear.”
“But we’re about to go on!” said Mona.
“Yeh,” said Exxene. “What’ll we do?”
In tears, Mr. Morton shook his head. He tilted the flask and drank.
“Alf knows the part,” said Mona. “He knows all the parts.”
Everyone, including Alf, gave her a withering look. Quite clearly, they heard someone in the audience saying:
“Well? When are we going to see something?”
“Looks like it’s you, son,” said Cochevelou. He bent over Crispin and peeled off his false beard, but when he pulled the wig off too it was full of blood. “Oh, bugger.”
Meera leaped to her feet and advanced on him menacingly.
“I don’t care how you do it,” she said, “But you’re getting my husband to some kind of medical facility, and you’re doing it right now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cochevelou, backing away. He thrust the wig and beard at Alf, and turned and ran for his life. Meera knelt again beside Crispin, accepting a handful of tissues Exxene had fetched her to compress his wound.
“Scalp wounds bleed buckets,” she told Meera reassuringly. “It don’t mean nothing.”
“Oi!” shouted someone in the audience. “Are we going to sit here all shrackin’ night?”
“I might have known this would happen,” said Mr. Morton, tragically calm. “They’ll riot next, I know it.”
“No! The show must go on, right?” said Mona. “Come on, Alf! Look, Mr. Morton, see how nice he looks in the other beard? And you can wear his beard, and you can play the youngest brother, because there’s no lines—”
“Raise the damn curtain!” said someone in the audience.
“And—I know! I’ll go out and dance for them,” said Mona.
“In a pig’s eye you will, my girl,” snapped Mother Griffith, shouldering her way backstage with Cochevelou close behind her. She stopped short, gaping at Crispin. “Goddess on a golf ball! Why haven’t you sent him to the clinic, you idiots?”
The audience had begun to sing Why Are We Waiting. Mother Griffith turned and thrust her head through the curtain.
“Shut up, you lot, we’ve got an injured man back here!” she shouted. “Manco! Thak! Come up here and help us.”
The audience, cowed, fell silent at once, as two of Mother Griffith’s staff scrambled over the footlights and so backstage. In short order Crispin was bandaged, tied into a chair, masked up and carried away down the tunnel, with Mother Griffith leading the way.
“Wonder why they were fighting?” whispered a miner to a hauler.
“I hear those Hollywood types are temperamental,” the hauler whispered back.
The scurrying and cries behind the curtain faded away. For a moment it hung still, so motionless its folds might have been carved from stone; then it rose, to reveal Edgar Allan Poe standing on an outcropping of rock, before a backdrop of severe sky and a sea like black stone. He was sweating, looked frightened and miserable. He looked out at the audience and said:
“‘You must get over these fancies,’ said my guide.”
The old man, an immense old man like a walking hill, stepped forth from the wings. There was a disturbing glare in his eyes. Were those streaks of blood in his wild white beard? He looked at Poe and said quietly:
“For I ave brort you ere dat I might tell you da ole story as it appened, wiv da spot just under yer eye. Look out from dis mountain upon which we stand, look out beyond da belt of vapor beneaf us, into da sea.”
Poe shrank visibly. He licked his dry lips and said:
“I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive…”
Meera, sitting huddled on a chair in the wings, felt Exxene grip her shoulder.
“Come on, that’s us,” she said.
May as well, thought Meera, rising mechanically. Show must go on. She moved out with the others, into the eerie light, into the eerier music. She put into the slink of her walk all the hopelessness she felt. Mother cat, looking for a safe place to have its kittens. But there was no safe place…
She and Crispin had been pulled under by the circling tide of history, two emigrants like any others, in the long outward flow of life from the place where it started to its unknown destination. Some washed up on the distant shore and did well for themselves, became ancestors to new generations of races…some failed to survive their first winters, and their names were forgotten.
She glanced int
o the audience on one pass around, and was shocked out of her reverie to see that they were watching raptly, leaning forward in their seats.
Why, look at that; they’re completely into it, she thought. Alf had stepped back from the rock, into the blue circle of light, and his beard and hair had gone to black; well, perhaps the stage effect had pleased them. Here came the rickety little boat effect, pushed by Cochevelou and Mr. Morton. Oh, no, look at the false beard hanging askew, under Mr. Morton’s chin! That was going to get a laugh.
It didn’t, somehow. Alf droned on without inflection, and the audience strained to hear, but his accents weren’t strange or comic, not to them.
“The roar of the water was drowned in a shrill shriek, like the sound of waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought that another moment would plunge us into the abyss—down which we could only see indistinctly. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge.
“The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; I saw mist, where the great walls of the funnel met together at the bottom. What a yell went up to the heavens from out of that mist! Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope. Round and round we swept—not with any uniform movement—but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl…”
And why shouldn’t the audience be transfixed? This was their story; they heard it every day. They had all lived through something like this, here, on this alien soil. Pitiless dunes that buried you, suffocating wastes that froze you, bombs that might roar out of the stars unannounced and strike with an impact that smacked you into flattened and broken strata. Mars in all its casual malevolence, against whom one miscalculation meant sudden death and a freeze-dried corpse pointed out to gawking tourists.
Meera flung up her arms and danced, and the other two whirled after her. They were black goddesses, they were nightmare crones, they were the Fates, they were the brides of Death in this bleak place. We are always at your elbow; never forget. The members of the audience stared openmouthed, started forward when first the one and then the other mariner was dragged down, seduced, pulled to his death out of sight.
