by John Varley
I heard the door squeak open on rusty hinges.
"I don't want to talk now, Elwood," I said. I could see his shadow on the floor. He nodded, and closed the door quietly. He knows I'm moody when I've just packed Toby.
Soon I was asleep.
* * *
About an hour later I sat up, instantly awake. I had the terrible feeling I'd forgotten something important. Something impossibly important. I cast my mind back over the day, which had been a fairly eventful one. I could come up with only one thing, and it was silly.
Surely he had been kidding. Surely...
There was nothing for it but to call the union. I got a computer. Don't tell me PFPA never sleeps. I showed my union card to the screen, which agreed I was a member in good standing of the Pluto Federation of Performing Artists (luckily for me you can still be in good standing though in arrears on your dues), delivered a canned lecture concerning the matter of P$795.03 due and payable or we are entitled to deduct said sum from any residuals received by this office (don't hold your breath), and asked what it could do for me.
"Search announced productions. Stage. King Lear. Polichinelli."
There was a short pause, and the computer was sorry to inform me no such production had been billboarded. Not on Pluto, not on Charon—
"Not Pluto, you idiot. Polichinelli never travels. Check the Luna listings."
"Inner-planet bookings are not handled by this office, sir. Please call—" Which I did, only to be answered by an identical computer voice. After the same rigmarole (oddly, this office felt I owed them P$795.13), I asked the same question.
The pause was even shorter.
"General casting call, all parts, King Lear, by William NMI Shakespeare (b. 1564, d. 1616). Production announced E-day 1/1/38. Casting begins 10/1/38. Venue: Golden Globe Theater, 2001 The Alameda, King City, Luna. Director: Kaspara V. Polichinelli. Producer—"
"Lear! Lear!" I was shouting. "Has Lear been cast?"
There was that little gurgle a voice program sometimes makes when shifting protocols.
"Dramatis personae," it intoned. "Lear, King of Britain: TBA. Goneril, daughter to Lear: TBA. Cordelia—"
I broke the connection so hard I almost broke my finger as well. Then I was fumbling with the card by the room phone, trying to find out how to call Luna. I got the hotel computer—the same voice I'd just heard from the union; a very good program salesman had been through here at one time—which regretted to inform me that such calls must be paid in advance.
After a bit of shouting I figured it out. That goddamn clerk was trying to pocket the change from my payment!
I stormed into the lobby in my dressing gown and slippers. Naturally the blackguard was not on duty. The night clerk looked up, doe-eyed, from a large crossword she was working on. I throttled my anger; she looked like a sweet kid, probably a drama student. She had enough heartbreaks in her future without me adding mine.
"I would like to send a telegram to Luna," I said.
"A what?"
"Eight letters, starts with T, a Western Union wire. Good lord, child, haven't you ever read about Flo Ziegfeld? He used to send them from stage right to people standing at stage left, because they made an impact. I want to send a written message. A fax, if you please."
"Okay." She shrugged. "But you can get voice and picture at the same price."
"Polichinelli dislikes telephones," I said.
"Polichinelli?" she whispered. Apparently she had heard of Polly, because her lovely fawn-colored orbs grew even wider. "You're sending a fax to Kaspara Polichinelli?"
I sighed, and lifted the flap in the counter and came around to stand beside her. I selected a pen from a great pot full of them, and pulled a sheet of white paper from a cubbyhole. I held them up for her to see, then pushed up my sleeves and rested my elbows on the counter. I chewed on the end of the pen for a moment. She leaned close to watch as I wrote the following:
* * *
Kaspara Polichinelli
c/o Directors Guild of Luna
1750 The Alameda
King City, Luna.
We two alone will sing like birds in the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing I'll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies. You have found your Lear, and he draws nigh.
K. C. Valentine
* * *
I handed the paper to her, and she read it unabashedly. Then she read it again. When she looked up her eyes were misty.
"That's beautiful," she breathed. "Did you write this yourself?"
Perhaps she should consider a career in hotel management. Drama school hadn't taught her much. I took the paper from her and put it on the desk, placed a bill on top of it.
"This should cover the cost of the telegram," I said. I took her tiny hand and kissed the back of it, then turned it over and pressed a shiny new ten dollar piece into it, folded the fingers over the coin. "This is for your trouble. And this"—I put my arms around her, gabled my eyes down into hers for a moment, and said—"this is for me." I gave her a long, black-and-white kiss: that is to say, no tongue. Her lips were very warm. She made no resistance. How could she resist, and call herself an actress?
It begins to be silly in a minute, with nothing to fade out to, so I broke the kiss, and smiled at her.
"Wish me luck," I said.
"Break a leg," she whispered.
* * *
There was going to be no chance at all of getting any more sleep.
The room had no chair. I dragged the bed over to the single, narrow window, which I cranked open. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out over Pandemonium's neon hell.
This was the notorious Thirteenth Avenue. Two blocks to my left was Pluto's equivalent of the Great White Way, the Rialto. It was six blocks of exclusive shops and restaurants, and about a dozen legitimate theaters. If I stuck my head out the window I could almost see it. But what was the point? It was late; the last show had let out hours ago, and the tasteful marquees were dark. Most of the restaurants were empty, too, their patrons on the trains to the suburbs or already snuggled in bed. Anyone who still wanted to party had to come here, to 'Teenth. If you want a parallel, think of Forty-second Street in little old New York. Naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty; the 'Teenth was all of that, and more. Here the lights still flashed, urging one in to baser amusements. At one end was the slash-boxing arena. Ten blocks away, beyond the Rialto, was the Motorpsycho racetrack. In between were dozens of orgy rooms, virtuality dens, rough bars and spike bars and squeeze bars and cyberpunk bars, dance halls, bordellos, live sex shows, and the Salvation Army mission. There were other theaters, too, the stepchildren of the glittering palaces around the corner, our modern equivalents of vaudeville and burlesque, revues and skit houses and stand-up comedy stages. There was an actual old-fashioned strip show. There were three or four experimental theaters, though most of that was farther downtown, sub-Rialto. Across from my room was the menacing edifice of the Grand Guignol, granddaddy of the Theater of Cruelty. Headlined in flashing lights: The Garden of Torture. I decided to skip that one.
It was "summer" in Pandemonium. The bright, hot overheads were out, but the air was still balmy. My room was on the fourth floor, just one below the roof. I sat on my bed and watched the traffic in the street.
It was a colorful bunch. I saw people being led around on leashes. A group of motorcyclists thundered by, on their way to a competition at the velodrome. Directly below me, two naked whores laughed and chatted with a beat cop, cool in his summer khaki.
I looked at the clock with the skull face and the skeletal hands across the street at the Grand Guignol. It had been three hours since I sent the wire. At least another three hours to go. With any luck, Polly should be getting my message just about then.
I can't imagine why no one has yet done anything about this speed-of-light business. To think that in this day and age we have to wait three hours for a message to crawl to Luna, and three hou
rs for an answer to return. No amount of bribery will get it there any faster. My father, for one, never believed that. All his life he was convinced that rich people had a faster way, and that they kept it from the populace out of spite.
My thumb caressed the little frog-and-skull netsuke there in the semidark. At the last moment I had decided not to set it on Roy's desk. Don't ask me why. I opened my hand and looked at it, pulsing red and blue, pale washes from the neon outside. A truly evil little thing. The frog looked back at me impassively. He wasn't impatient. He had plenty of time. A fly would drift by sooner or later.
I heard the door creak behind me, then a soft sound as it closed. I knew I wasn't alone.
"I don't much feel like talking, Elwood," I said.
"Who's Elwood?" came the soft whisper. "Are you gay?"
"How can you ask that of a man who kisses like that?"
"Good." I heard soft footsteps, and looked to my left. She was across the room, by the dresser, nude, with some sort of wrap in her right hand. With her left she was placing something on the dresser, something that glinted in the next flash of blue neon that turned her from a gray shadow to a magical dolphin girl. I saw the sway of her hanging breast as she bent over the dresser, and again as she straightened and turned toward me, dropping the gown, hips moving, a bit pigeon-toed, her pubic triangle bold and black as her skin now burned the red of smoldering coals. I looked back out the window. I'd seen enough; I was in love. She'd put the ten dollar coin on the dresser so there would be no question of the nature of the coming transaction.
I heard springs creak and felt the bed move as she put first one knee, then the other, on the mattress. I felt soft hands on my shoulders, massaging gently.
"My name is Margaret Sawyer," she whispered. I wondered if she always whispered, or just around me. "People call me Peggy." Everyone has a cross to bear. "Are you having a hard time waiting for your answer?"
I gestured at the dark room. "These luxurious surroundings go a long ways to soothe my anxieties."
"Mine enemy's dog," she said, "though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father, to hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw? Alack, alack!"
Alack indeed. "Do not laugh at me, for as I am a man, I think this lady to be Cordelia." I tried to look at her over my shoulder, but she kept massaging me. "And not the ignorant bumpkin I took her for."
"I've been reading the last few hours," she admitted. "And I've been wondering if you're old enough to play King Lear."
"Pray, do not mock me," I quoted. "I am a very foolish fond old man, five score and upward, not an hour more nor less."
She pressed herself against me, all softness but for the stiff brush of hair against my spine, all firm but for the pillows of her breasts on each side of my neck. Her hair fell around me, smelling of soap and jasmine. She still wouldn't let me turn as her hands moved over my face, chest, belly.
God, it had been a long time. What had happened to my sex life? Miranda didn't count, of course. That was business. Before that, the brief run as Juliet, and I'd been catching, not pitching. Oh, yes, of course. The governor's daughter. Sweet as she'd been, I realized I hadn't really stopped running since that goddamn gumshoe tapped me on the shoulder, way back in Brementon. I certainly hoped little Peggy Sawyer didn't come with so many strings attached.
"Your father isn't a member of Congress, is he?" I murmured.
"My father was two cc's of white fluid in a test tube."
"The best kind." I twisted, took her in my arms, pressed her against the bed. She wrapped her legs around me and looked up with flashing eyes.
"Lord, you feel wonderful," I said. There's nothing like a woman's body. She must have been reading my mind.
"Why are our bodies soft and weak, and smooth, unapt to toil and trouble in the world, but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts?"
Good question. It had always seemed to me to strike at the heart of the eternal mystery of sex. And she was no shrew.
I could have bid her kiss me, Kate, but I'd used that line in more comical circumstances, and besides, another was at hand.
"The wren goes to it, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight," I told her. "Let copulation thrive."
* * *
And it did prosper mightily there on that short and musty straw.
Eventually we repaired to the facilities down the hall to see if anything could be done about the damages. I examined myself in the mirror while she got busy at the bidet. There were a few bite marks, nothing a little maxfac couldn't cover up. Lips a bit swollen. Hair... well, perhaps a good beautician could give me a cost estimate.
"Once again, my father was right," I said.
"How's that?"
"When he urged me to brush up my Shakespeare. Claimed it was the quickest way to get girls in the sack. 'Just declaim a few lines from Othella, and they'll think you're a helluva fella.' "
"Well, it's the first time Shakespeare got me in the sack." She looked up, suspiciously. "Are you sure that was your father's line?"
"Dad stole all his best lines," I admitted. "But he only stole from the best. In this case, Cole Porter."
She shook her head; never heard of him. And to think, I was considering asking her hand in marriage.
By the time we got dressed and I was packed, "day" was dawning on the street outside, and there was still no reply from Polly.
Cordelia followed me as I trundled the Pantechnicon to the lobby and out onto the street. We embraced there, kissed, and I told her I'd drop in again as soon as the cruise run was over. And I would have, too....
That's when the bellboy shambled up, pillbox hat askew, shirttail out, and pressed an envelope into my hand. He turned on his heel and left us standing there, apparently never dreaming I might actually tip him.
I tried not to let my hands tremble as I opened the envelope and unfolded the yellow paper within.
* * *
If thou wert my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou had been wise. Sparky, if you can make it, Phileas Fogg was a piker. But, as the Bard says:
The sweet and bitter fool will presently appear;
The one in motley here, the other found out there.
If he says you can do it, maybe you can. Lear is yours.
* * *
I modestly took my place as the one and only bass. I would have been tickled pink to oompah my little heart out except I had somehow neglected to take sousaphone lessons in preparing for a life on the stage. Though I knew it was rumored that if one pressed the middle valve down the music would go 'round and 'round and come out way up there somewhere, I had no personal experience of this. Hell, for the first two hours of rehearsal I'd worn the thing on the wrong shoulder. It still looked more like some plumber's catastrophic mistake than a musical instrument, but at least now, after a dozen performances, I knew where to blow.
Or pretend to blow. The sound system backstage took care of the actual music. My job was simply to be in the right place when the sousaphone was dropped from the fly loft, like a human horseshoe peg.
The "Seventy-six Trombones" number was the climax of the twenty-minute "Sounds of Old Broadway" piece we did twice a day, at six and eleven. At seven and midnight, it was "Caribbean Rhythms," where I got to fake it at a set of steel drums, dressed up like Carmen Miranda.
So when's the last time you demanded Oedipus Rex on a cruise ship? It was legitimate stage work, and I was glad to have it.
So I continued my high-kicking march step, in place, waving my Panama straw hat and grinning like mad at the audience as the music thundered to its conclusion and the curtain dropped down before me, seventy-six trombonists, a hundred and ten cornet players, and more than a thousand reeds.
Close enough. There were actually three 'bone pickers, four cornets, and five woodwinds. As Busby Berkeley is rumored to have said when
informed he could only have twenty chorus girls for a dance he was staging, "That's all right. I know how to make twenty look like a thousand."
The way he did it was through artistry and film editing. The director of this particular turkey had used a holographic echo generator. The images of my dozen chorus kids was picked up by this gizmo, and a computer introduced variations in height, skin color, facial shape, and so forth, then endlessly replicated the first row—the only row I had—into twelve infinitely long files, vanishing into the distance of a stage that was actually no deeper than a starlet's intellect.
Don't bother notifying the union about this, you dirty snitch. The contract plainly states that holo-echoes can be used for crowd scenes in medium-to-small houses. Nobody ever called Sparky Valentine a scab. Not under my real name, anyway.
I waited in the wings while the boys and girls took their bows, then bounded out as the spotlight picked me up. People were standing, but not, I was forced to admit, in an ovation. They had drinks in their hands waiting for the aisles to clear. I bowed as the music swelled, gestured to the maestro, who turned and smiled as one hand continued to conduct his three-piece augmented orchestra. I knew the applause would not extend for long, and besides, I'm not one of those pathetic hams who milk it beyond that Zen moment of one hand clapping. I bowed once more, and the curtain came down.
* * *
This was not, in point of fact, the Titanic, as I had told Roy, but her sister ship, the Britannic. A third ship, Olympic, completed the trio, faithful external copies of the White Star Line behemoths of the early twentieth century. It was a very Plutonian thing, to name a cruise fleet after such an ill-omened trio. Everybody knows what happened on that Night to Remember back in 1912; it's passed into the language as a synonym for catastrophe, and hubris. Titanic proved all too sinkable. Less familiar is the sad story of Britannic, converted to a hospital ship during a war and sunk by a mine. Would you believe there was actually a woman, Violet Jessop, who had the bad luck to be aboard both ships when they went down? And the incredible good luck to survive both disasters. It was in the tour brochure.
