The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “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 somber. Not just somber, 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 petaled 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 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 ça 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. “I’m 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 mind. “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 ha
nds. “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 high-wheeled 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 anesthetic 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.”

  The ami was Mosay, full of concern and sweetness. Rafiel was glad to see him.

  “I’m sorry about being so silly, but I’ll be ready to get back to work in the morning,” Rafiel promised, leaning on the hard, strong form of the nurser.

  “Sans doute you will,” Mosay said worriedly. “Here, sit in the chaise, let the nurser give you a ride to the cars.” And at the elevator, taking over the wheelchair himself: “Still,” he added, “if you’re at all tired, why shouldn’t you take another day or two to rest? I’ve picked a location spot in Texas . . .”

  That roused Rafiel. “Texas? Pas Turkey?”

  “Of course not Turkey,” Mosay said severely. “There’s just the right place out in the desert, hardly built up at all. Now, here we are at your place, and they’ve got your nice bed all ready for you – Gesù Cristo!” he interrupted himself, staring. “What’s that?”

  Weak as he was, Rafiel laughed out loud. His server was coming toward him welcomingly, and padding regally after, tail stiff in the air, was the kitten.

  “It’s just my cat, Mosay. A present from a friend.”

  “Does it bite?” When reassured, the dramaturge gave it a hostile look anyway, as though suspecting an attack or, worse, an excretion. “If that’s what you like, Rafiel, why should I criticize? Anyway, I’ll leave you now. You can join us when you’re ready. We’ll work around you for a bit. No, don’t argue, it’s no trouble. Just give me your word that you won’t come out until you’re absolutely ready . . .”

  “I promise,” said Rafiel, wondering why it felt so good to be undertaking to do nothing for a while. It never had before.

  9

  Rafiel, who loves to travel, seldom has time to do much of it. That seems a bit strange, since he is a famous presence in all the places where human beings live, on planet and off, but of course his presence in almost all of those places is only electronic. He is looking forward eagerly to the ride in the magnetrain, with no one for company but the little white kitten. When he finally embarks, after the obligate few days of loafing around his condo, it really is as great a pleasure for him as he had hoped – well, would have been, anyway, if he weren’t continuing to be so unreasonably tired. Still he enjoys watching the scenery flash by at six hundred kilometers an hour – arcologies, fields, woods, rivers – and he enjoys doing nothing. He especially enjoys being alone. With his presence on the train unknown to the fans who might otherwise besiege him, with only the servers to bring his meals and make up his bed and tend to the kitten, he thinks he almost would not mind if the trip went on for ever. When they reach their destination at the edge of the Sonora Desert he is reluctant to get off.

  Rafiel arrived at the Sonora arcology just in time to catch a few hours’ sleep in a rented condo, not nearly as nice as his own, in an arcology an order of magnitude tinier. When he reported for work in the morning even Turkey began to seem more desirable. This desert was hot.

  Mosay was there to greet him solicitously – proudly, too, as he waved around the set he had discovered. “Wunderbar, isn’t it? And such bonne chance it was available. Of course, it’s not an exact copy of the actual old Thebes, but I think it’s quite interessante, don’t you? And there’s no sense casting great talents, is there, if you’re going to ask them to play in front of a background of dried mud huts.”

  Wilting in the heat, Rafiel gazed around at Mosay’s idea of an “interesting” Thebes. He was pretty sure that Thebes-in-Sonora didn’t much resemble the old Thebes-in-Boeotia. So much marble! So much artfully concealed lighting inside the buildings – did the Greeks have artificial lighting at all? Would the Greeks have put that heroic-seized statue of Oedipus (actually, of Rafiel himself in his Oedipus suit) in the central courtyard? And, if they had, would they have surrounded it with banked white and yellow roses? Did they have moats around their castles? Well, did they have castles at all? Questions like that took Rafiel’s mind off the merciless sun, but not enough.

  “It’s you and Docilia now, please,” Mosay said – commanded, really. “Places!” And on cue Docilia began Jocasta’s complaint about childbirth Rafiel reacted as the part called for as, shoulders swaying, head accusingly erect, she sang:

  Che sapete, husband? I did all the borning,

  Carrying those devils and puking every morning.

  Never peine so dur, never agony so hot,

  It was like pushing a pumpkin through –

  “No, no, cut,” Mosay shouted. “Oh, Rafiel! What do you think you’re doing there, taking a little nap? Your wife’s giving you hell about the kids she’s borne for you and you’re gaping around like some kind of turista. Get a little movement into it, will you?”

  “Sorry,” Rafiel said, as the cast relaxed. He saw Charlus coming, deferentially but with determination, toward him, as he turned his face to the server that came over to mop the sweat off his brow. There wasn’t much of it, in spite of the heat; in the dry desert air it evaporated almost as fast as it formed.

  “Do you mind, Rafiel?” Charlus offered, almost begging. “I was just thinking, you might want to wring your turn out and let the arms go all the way through when she starts the ‘puking every morning’ line.”

  “I didn’t want to upstage her.”

  “No, of course not, but Mosay’s got this idea that you have to be interacting, you see, and—”

  “Sure,” Rafiel said. “Let’s get on with it.” And he was able to keep his mind on his work, in spite of the heat, in spite of the fatigue, for nearly another hour. But by the time Mosay called a break for lunch he was feeling dizzy.

  Instantly the sexy young Bruta was at his side. “Let me keep you company,” she said, almost purring as she guided him to a seat in the shade. “What would you like? I’ll bring you a plate.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” he said, with utter truth. He didn’t think he would ever be hungry again.

  Bruta was all sympathy. “No, of course not. It is dreadfully hot, isn’t it? But maybe just a plate of ice cream – do you like palmfruit?” He gave in, and watched her go for it with objective admiration. The girl was slim as an eel, with a tiny bum that any man would enjoy getting his hands on. But it was only objectively that the thought was interesting; nothing stirred in his groin, no pictures of an interesting figure developed in the crystal ball of his mind.
Only –

  His mouth was filling with thin, warm saliva.

  It could not be possible that he was about to vomit, he thought, and then realized it was quite possible, in fact. He got briskly to his feet, prepared to give a close-lipped smile to anyone who was looking at him. No one was. He turned away from the direction of the buffet table, heading out into the desert. As he got behind Oedipus’s castle he picked up his pace, pressing his palm of his hand against his involuntarily opening mouth, but he couldn’t hold it. He bent forward and spewed a cupful of thin, colorless fluid on to the thirsty stand.

  It wasn’t painful to vomit. It was almost a pleasure, it happened so easily and quickly, and when it was over he felt quite a lot better – though puzzled, for he hadn’t eaten enough that morning to have enough in his stomach to be worth vomiting.

  He turned to see if any of the troupe had been looking in his direction. Apparently no human had, but a server was hurrying toward him across the desert. “Sir?” Its voice was humble but determined. “Sir, do you need assistance here?”

  “No. Hsieh-hsieh,” Rafiel added, remembering to be courteous as ever, even to machines.

  “I must tell you that there is some risk to your safety here,” the server informed him. “We have destroyed or removed fourteen small reptiles and other animals this morning, but others may come in. They are attracted by the presence of warm-blooded people. Please be careful where you step.”

  Rafiel almost forgot his distress, charmed by the interesting idea. “You mean rattlesnakes? I’ve heard of ‘rattlesnakes.’ They can bite a person and kill him.”

  “Oh, hardly kill one, sir, since we are equipped for quick medical attention. But it would be a painful experience, so if you don’t mind rejoining the others? . . .”

  And it paced him watchfully, all the way back.

  It didn’t seem that anyone had noticed, though Bruta was standing there with a tray in her hand. “Nothing to eat after all, please,” Rafiel begged her. “It’s just too hot.”