Outnumbering the Dead

by Frederik Pohl

  'Now you, Rafiel,' Victorium said, nodding, and Rafiel took up his lines.

  OEDIPUS: Calm? Come possibile for me to be calm?

  I've killed my pop and shtupped my dear old mom.

  ANTIGONE: It's okay, dad, we're all with you.

  It'll be a lousy life but we'll be true.

  Wherever you go-

  'No, no,' Charlus cried, breaking in. 'Excuse me, Victorium, but no. Bruta, this is tap, not ballet. Keep your feet down on the floor, will you?'

  ''Aspet'!' Victorium snapped. 'I'm running this rehearsal, and if you keep interrupting-'

  'But she's ruining it, don't you see?' the choreographer pleaded. 'Just give me a minute with her. Please? Bruta, I want you to tap on the turn, and give us a little disco hip rotation when you sing. And I want to hear every tap all by itself, loud and clear....'

  There was, naturally, more objection from Victorium. Rafiel backed away to watch, not directly involved, and turned when he felt Docilia plucking at his arm.

  'Be real careful,' she whispered. 'Don't let Mosay push you into anything. I think he wants you to really do it. The blinding,' she added impatiently when she saw that he hadn't understood.

  Rafiel stared at her to see if she was joking. She wasn't. 'Believe me, that's what he wants from you,' she said, nodding. 'No faking it. He wants real blood. Real pain. Pieces of eyeball hanging out on your cheek.'

  'Docilia!' he said, grimacing.

  'Was ist das "Docilia"? Voi sapete how Mosay is. Oh, maybe he wouldn't expect you to permanently blind yourself. After the shooting was over he'd pay so the doctors could graft in some new eyes for you - but still.'

  'Mosay wouldn't ask anybody to do that,' Rafiel protested.

  'Wouldn't he? Especially considering- Well, when he comes back, just ask him,' she said, and stopped there.

  Rafiel had grasped her meaning, anyway. Especially considering could only be that, in the long run, they were beginning to be looking on him as expendable.

  When he finally did get through to his agent she was only perfunctorily apologetic. 'Mi scusi,' Jeftha said. 'I had a hard night.' That was all the explanation she offered, but her dark and youthful face supported it. The skin was as unlined as always, but her eyes were red. 'Acrobats,' she said, wearily running one hand through her thick hedge of hair.

  'You shouldn't sleep with your clients,' Rafiel said, setting aside the historical fact that she had, on occasion, with himself. 'Now, this woman Hillaree....'

  When Jeftha heard about the dramaturge's surprise visit she was furious. 'The puta!' she snapped. 'Going behind your agent's back? She'll never cast a client of mine again - but how could you, Rafiel? If Mosay finds out you've been dealing with a tuppenny tinhorn like Hillaree he'll go berserker!'

  'I wasn't dealing with her,' Rafiel began, but she cut him off.

  'Pray he doesn't hear about it. He's in a bad enough mood already. When he got to look at his locations somebody told him that the Thebes he was trying to match was the wrong Thebes - two of them with the same name, Rafiel, can you imagine that? How stupid can they be? The Thebes in Egypt didn't count. The Thebes somewhere north of Athens was the one where Oedipus had been king, and it was an entirely different kind of territory.'

  'He's back?'

  'He will be in the morning,' she confirmed. 'Now, was that what you were so fou to talk to me about?'

  He hesitated, and then said, 'Forget it now, anyway.' Because he couldn't quite bring himself to ask her the question that was mostly on his mind, which was whether it was at all possible that Docilia's hints and implications could possibly be right.

  8

  The work of a dramaturge does not end with making sure a production is successfully performed. A major part of the job is making sure that audiences will want to spend their money to see it. In the furtherance of this endeavour, sweet are the uses of publicity; for which reason Mosay has arranged to do his first costumed rehearsals in a very conspicuous place. The place he has chosen is the public park on the roof of the arcology, where there are plenty of loungers and strollers, and every one a sure wordof-mouth broadcaster when they get home. Nor has Mosay failed to alert the paparazzi to be present in force.

  Rafiel thought seriously of taking the kitten with him to show off at the day's rehearsal - after all, who else in the troupe owned a live cat? But the park was half a kilometre square, with a lake and a woodsy area and sweet little gardens all around. There was even a boxwood maze, great for children to play in, but all too good a place for a little kitten to get lost in, he decided, and regretfully left it in the care of his server.

  The trouble with the rooftop was that it was windy. They were nearly a kilometre above the ground, where the air was always blowing strong. Clever vanes deflected the worst of the gusts, but not all of them; Rafiel felt chilled and wished Mosay had chosen another workplace. Or that, at least, they hadn't been instructed to show up in costume: there wasn't much warmth in the short woollen tunic. The winds were stronger than usual that day, and there were thick black clouds rolling toward them over the arcologies to the west. Rafiel listened: had he heard the sound of distant thunder? Or just the wind?

  He shivered and joined the other performers as they walked around to get used to their costumes. Although the rooftop was the common property of all the hundred and sixty-odd thousand people who lived or worked in that particular arcology, Mosay had managed to persuade the arcology council to set one grassy sward aside for rehearsals. The council didn't object. They agreed that it would be a pleasing sort of entertainment for the tenants, and anyway Mosay was a first-rate persuader - after all, what other thing did a dramaturge really have to be?

  The proof of his persuasive powers was that, astonishingly, everyone in the cast was there, and on time: Mosay himself, back from his fruitless quest but looking fresh and undaunted, and Victorium, and Charlus, the choreographer - no, assistant choreographer, Rafiel corrected himself resolutely - and all the eleven principal performers in the show and the dozen members of the chorus. Rafiel had practised with the sandals and the sword in his condo, while the watching kitten purred approvingly; by now he was easy enough in the costume. Not Andrev, the Creon, who kept getting his sword caught between his knees. There weren't any costume problems for Sander, the Tiresias, since his costume was only a long featureless smock, and Sander, who was a tall, unkempt man with seal-coloured hair that straggled down over his shoulders, wore the thing as though he were ignoring it, which was pretty much the way he wore all his clothes anyway. All the women wore simple white gowns, Docilia's Jocasta with flowers in her hair, the daughters unembellished.

  But when Rafiel first saw Bruta, the Antigone, turn toward him his heart stopped for a moment, she was so like Alegretta. 'Che cosa, Rafiel?' she asked in sudden worry at his expression, but he only shook his head. He kept watching her, though. Apart from the chance resemblance to his life's lost love, Bruta struck him as a bit of a puzzle. Bruta looked neither younger nor older than anyone else in the cast, of course - Rafiel himself always excepted - but it was obvious that she was a lot less experienced. That interested Rafiel. Mosay was not the kind who liked to bother with newcomers. He left the discovery of fresh talent to lesser dramaturges; he could afford to hire the best, who inevitably were also the ones who had long since made their reputations. Rafiel thought of asking Docilia, who would be sure to know everyone's reasons for everything they did, but there wasn't time. Mosay was already waving everyone to cluster around him.

  'Company,' said Mosay commandingly. Tm glad to be back, but we've got a lot of work to do, so if I may have your attention?' He got it and said sunnily, 'I do have one announcement before we begin. I've found our shooting location. Wunderbar, it has an existing set that we can use - oh, not exactly replicating old Thebes, in a technical sense, but close enough. And we'd better get on with it, so if you please… ' Rafiel concealed a grin at the way Mosay was making sure he looked every centimetre the staging genius as he played to the spectators be
hind the velvet ropes, and, of course, to the pointing cameras of the paparazzi. When he had everyone's attention he went on. 'We aren't going to do the short fighting-the-Sphinx scene because we don't have a sphinx' - well, of course they didn't; there never would be a sphinx until the animation people put one in 'so we'll start with the pas de quatre, where you kids' nodding to the four 'children' of Oedipus and Jocasta 'sing your little song about how after Oedipus saved Thebes from the Sphinx he married your maman, the widowed Jocasta, whose husband had been mysteriously murdered and thus Oedipus became koenig himself-'

  'Oh, hell, Mosay,' said Docilia warmly, 'that's a whole play right there. Bisogniamo say all that?'

  'We must. We'll get it in, and anyway that's not your problem, Docilia, is it? In fact, you're not even in this scene, or the next scene either, except to stand around and look pretty, because this is where Creon makes his entrance and tells Oedipus what the oracle of Apollo said.'

  'I already know all the Creon lines,' Andrev said proudly. He had the reputation of being a slow study.

  'I certainly hope so, Andrev. Places, everybody? And now if we'll just take it from the last bars of Victorium's opening...'

  It wasn't a big scene for Rafiel. He didn't even get to make a real entrance, just ambled onstage to wait for Creon to show up. The scene belonged to the Creon. Victorium had written the music accordingly, with a background score full of dark and mystical dissonances - right enough for an oracle's pronouncements, Rafiel supposed.

  What Creon brought was bad news, so Rafiel's responses had to be equally sombre. Not just sombre, though. Rafiel made sure all his gestures were, well, a trifle less portentous than the Creon's - after all, Rafiel was not merely playing an old, doomed Theban king, he was playing himself playing the king. That was what being a star was all about.

  Rafiel flinched at a boom from the sky. Thunder was crashing somewhere in the distance, and Mosay agitatedly demanded of a watching arcology worker that they erect the dome. Just in time; rain was slashing down on the big transparent hood over the roof before the petalled sections had quite closed over them. Rafiel shuddered again. He found that he was feeling quite tired. He wondered if it was showing up in his performance ... though of course it was only a dress rehearsal.

  All the same, Rafiel didn't like the feeling that his dancing was not as lively - as bumptiously clumsy - as his audiences expected of him. He forced himself into the emotions of the part - easily enough, because Rafiel had all the ambiguity of any actor in his beliefs. Whatever he privately thought or felt, he could throw himself into the thoughts and feelings of the character he was playing; and if that character took silly oracular conundrums seriously, then for the duration of that role so would Rafiel. He worked so hard at it that at the end of the third run-through he was sweating as he finished his meditative pas de seul. So was the Creon, although he had no dancing to do. But it was Rafiel Mosay was watching, with a peculiar expression of concern on his face, and it was Rafiel he was looking at when he declared a twenty-minute break.

  'Comment ca va?' Docilia asked, taking Rafiel's elbow.

  He blinked at her. 'Fine, fine,' he assured her, though he didn't think he really was. Was it that obvious? He hadn't missed Mosay's watchful eyes, though now the dramaturge had forgotten him in the press of making quick calls on the communications monitor at the edge of the meadow. Rafiel made an effort and pressed Docilia's arm against his side amatively - well, maybe there was his problem right there, he thought. Deprivation. After all, why should any healthy person deliberately stop having sex, thus very possibly endangering not only his performance but even his health?

  'You don't look all right,' Docilia told him, steering him through the park to a formal garden. 'Except when you're looking at that Bruta.'

  'Oh, now really,' Rafiel laughed - actually laughing, because the thought really amused him. 'She's just so young.'

  'So amateurish, you mean.'

  'That too,' he acknowledged, slipping his arm around her waist in a friendly way. Tm surprised Mosay took her on.'

  'You don't know?'

  'Know what?' Rafiel asked, proving that he did not.

  'She's his latest daughter,' Docilia informed him with pleasure. 'So if you're shtupping her you're going to be part of the family.'

  Rafiel opened his mouth to deny that he was making love to Bruta, or indeed to anyone else since the last time with Docilia herself, but he closed it again. That, after all, was none of Docilia's business, not to mention that it did not comport well with the image of a lusty, healthy, youthful idol of every audience.

  But she might have been reading his own. 'Oh, poor Rafiel,' she said, tightening her grip on his waist. 'You're just not getting enough, are you?' She looked around. There was hardly anyone near them, the casual spectators mostly still watching the performers in the rehearsal area. And they were near the maze.

  'I have an idea,' she murmured. 'Can we go in the maze for a while?'

  After all, why not? Rafiel surrendered. 'I'd like nothing better,' he said gallantly, knowing as well as she did that the best thing one did in the isolation of a maze was to do a little friendly fooling around with one's companion - on whom, in any case, Rafiel was beginning to feel he might as well be beginning to have sexual designs again, after all. They had no trouble finding a quiet dead end and, without discussion, Rafiel unhesitatingly put his hand on her.

  'Are you sure you aren't too tired?' she asked, but turning toward him as she spoke; and, of course, that imposed on him the duty to prove that he wasn't tired at all. He realized he didn't have much time to demonstrate it in, so they wasted none. They were horizontal on the warm, grassy ground in a minute.

  It was strange, he reflected, pumping away, that something you wanted to do could also be a wearisome chore. He was glad enough when they had finished. ... And almost at that very moment, as though taking a quick cue, a voice from an unseen person, somewhere else in the maze, was thundering at them.

  It was Mosay's voice. What he was saying - bawling was: 'Rafiel! Is that you I hear in there with Docilia? Come out this minute! We need to talk.'

  Rafiel was breathing hard, but he managed to grin at his partner and help her to her feet. 'Can't it wait, Mosay?' he called, carefully conserving his breath.

  'It can not,' the dramaturge roared. 'Expliquez yourself. Who's this woman who's claiming she's got you signed up for a new production?'

  Rafiel groaned. Mosay had in fact found out. Docilia put an alarmed hand on his forearm.

  'Oh, paura. You'd better pull yourself together,' she whispered, doing the same for herself. 'He's really furioso about something.'

  Rafiel gave in, tugging his underpants back on. 'Well,' he called to the featureless hedge, 'we did talk a little bit, she and I-'

  'She says you agreed? snapped the invisible Mosay. 'She's got a story about it in all the media, and I won't have it! Rafiel, you're making me look like a dummkopf.'

  'I never actually agreed-'

  'But you didn't say no, either, did you? That's not cosi buono. I won't have you making any commitments after this one,' Mosay roared. 'Now vieni qui and talk to me!'

  His muttering died in the distance. Docilia turned to look into Rafiel's face. 'What in the world have you done?' she asked.

  'Nothing,' he said positively, and then, thinking it over, 'But I guess enough.' He could have thrown the woman out of his home without any discussion at all, he thought. He hadn't. Resigned, he braced himself for the vituperation that was sure to come.

  It came, all right, but not as pure vituperation. Mosay had switched to another mode. 'Oh, pauvre petit Rafiel,' he said sorrowfully, 'haven't I always done everything I can for you? And now you're conspiring behind my back with some sleazeball for a cheap-and-dirty exploitation show?'

  'It isn't really that cheap, Mosay, it's a hundred mil-'

  'Cheap isn't just money, Rafiel. Cheap is cheap people. Second-raters. Do you want to wind up your career with the has-beens and never-wases? No,
Rafiel,' he said, shaking his head, 'Non credo you want that. And, anyway, I've talked to your agent, and Jeftha says the deal's already kaput.' He allowed himself a forgiving smile, then turned away briskly.

  'Now let's get some work done here, company,' he called, clapping his hands. 'One more time, from Creon's story about the oracle....'

  But they didn't actually get that far, and it was Rafiel's fault.

  Rafiel started out well enough, rising in wrath to sing his attack on Creon's message from the oracle. Then something funny happened. Rafiel felt the ground sliding away underneath him. He didn't feel the impact of his head on the grassy lawn. He didn't know he had lost consciousness. He was only aware of beginning to come to, half dazed, as someone was - someones were - loading him on to a highwheeled cart and hurrying him to an elevator, and walking beside him were people who were agitatedly talking about him as though he couldn't hear.

  'You'll have to tell him, Mosay,' said Docilia's voice, fuzzily registering in Rafiel's ears.

  Then there was a mumble, of which all Rafiel could distinguish was when, at the end, someone raised his voice to say, 'Pas me!'

  'Allora who?' in Docilia's voice again, and a longer mumble mumble, and then once more Docilia: 'I think it'd be better from la donna.... '

  And then he felt the quick chill spray of an anaesthetic on the side of his neck. Rafiel fell asleep as the shot did its job. Deeply asleep. So deep that there was no need to worry about anything ... and no desire to wonder just what it was that his friends had been talking about.

  'Just fatigue,' the doctor said reassuringly when Rafiel was conscious again. 'You collapsed. Probabilmente you've just been working too hard.'

  'Probably?' Rafiel asked, challenging the woman, but she only shrugged.

  'You're just as good as you were when you left here, basically,' she said. 'Your ami's here to take you home.'