by John Varley
Six hundred seats. A steeply raked balcony. Retractable chandeliers. Three elevated boxes on each side. An arched ceiling, gentle acoustic curves built into the walls. It was old-fashioned without making a big point of it.
"Perfect," Valentine breathed. "I couldn't ask for more."
"You did a great job," Kenneth said.
Valentine accepted this in silence. Then he grinned, and hurried over the narrow bridge spanning the orchestra pit. He disappeared behind the curtain and Kenneth heard the sound of backstage ropes being pulled. The curtain rose, and banks of lights clicked on one by one. Valentine strode out to center stage and beckoned for Kenneth to join him.
"Rehearsals begin tomorrow," he said. "Are you ready, Romeo?"
"I think I know my lines," Kenneth said.
"I'm jealous," Valentine said, with an affectionate smile. "Part of me says, 'John, you're not too old to play Romeo. You could still show that little upstart a thing or two.' "
"I'll bet you could."
"And I will, Kenneth. I will. 'Directed by John Valentine.' I like the sound of that."
"You directed a lot of things on Neptune," Kenneth reminded him.
"Ah, yes, but this feels like a new beginning. Not much of a talent pool out there in the outers, my boy. Rather pathetic, most of them. Now I'll be working with the best. With the fifth generation of Valentines. The one destined to be the best of all."
"I'll sure try, Father."
"Count on it. You will be the best."
And Kenneth knew he had better be.
* * *
Back aboard Hal...
You'd think a guy who is seldom at a loss for words, a guy who could cover umpty-ump pages with a description of a trip from Pluto to Oberon where, basically, nothing happened except I got hungry... you'd think I'd have something useful to say about a close encounter with the sun.
Hmmm. Well, how about... it got hot.
It did, a little. Up to about ninety-five or ninety-six. Not so impressive until you realize that any variation from a desired temperature is cause for worry aboard a spaceship. Such things are supposed to be under control. That should give you some idea how close Hal was cutting things.
Not too impressed? Well, neither was I. How about, it was fast. Over in less time than it takes to talk about it.
It was grand. It was beautiful. It was awe-inspiring.
Ho-hum, right?
It was dangerous. But the trouble was, I just couldn't get too excited about it. If something happened, it would all be over too quick for me to notice it, Hal assured me.
I think that, in the end, after all my adventures on my way from one of humanity's most distant outposts to within the orbit of mankind's closest, I just got sort of burned out. You should excuse the expression. And we had done a mighty close skim of Jupiter, a place I feared a lot more. I guess once you've seen one giant ball of gas up close, seeing another just doesn't pack the wallop you might expect it to. Even if it is on fire.
It was the same with our speed. I never asked for a speedometer check. I didn't really want to know. We were moving about as fast as anyone had ever moved before, I guess, but you couldn't tell it, not until we were right down in the photosphere. (Oh, yes, we came that close.) After Jupiter, old Sol grew larger at a prodigious rate. But so what? Three days or thirty days, you still can't see it grow. It still looks static, like any starry night.
But if there were any speed limits set in the solar system, there would have been traffic cops staked out behind every billboard from Mercury to Earth, waiting to pull us over. "Honest, Officer, I was only going a hundred thousand miles per second." "Boy, that wasn't nothin' but whatcha call a 'relativistic effect.' We clocked you at point-nine-nine-nine c, and 'round these parts we figger c ain't jist a good idea, it's the law!"
There were changes around the ship. Spin had to be stopped again, and since there wasn't going to be a lot of time on the other side, certain housekeeping measures to take care of. All the wonderful animals had to be stowed away, back into cold sleep. Many of the plants were "mothballed" in some way I didn't understand. The pond was drained. The whole place became rather depressing, to tell you the truth.
No one was more depressed than Toby, though. The poor little thing was inconsolable. He spent a whole day searching for his big, striped lady love, and when I got out his storage container he actually seemed eager to go to sleep.
And then we were there. Free-falling because Hal had to maneuver the radiation shields of the engine module to stay between us and the sun.
He made all that complication vanish in our overhead display. All we saw was the sun, or actually an image of the sun suitably translated for our frail senses. We could see sunspots, and flares, and prominences, and they all looked rather small. You could tell yourself that a hundred Lunas would fit into that tiny black speck and still leave room for fifty Marses, but you couldn't get a real perspective on it. You might know that the friction from the near vacuum of the photosphere was heating the ship's hull to within a few degrees of its melting point... but even if you could believe that, you didn't want to dwell on it.
We passed within a hundred thousand miles of Icarus, the asteroid that was moved into close solar orbit forty years ago and has been slowly ablating away ever since. They figure it still has about a century to go before it's all used up. We'd never have seen it, of course, but Hal provided a telescopic image: just a smooth ball of molten rock on the Brightside. We could see the tips of some of the instruments peeking around from Darkside. Hal, acting the cheerful tour guide, told us those instruments were continually extended as the ends were burned away. He said Coronaville was now mounted on cooled pillars, as the whole planetoid had become too hot to walk on. I decided to cross it off my list of vacation destinations.
And then we were past and the sun was dwindling behind us. Poly seemed to have enjoyed the experience more than I. She took hundreds of pictures, most of which must have shown little more than patterns of orange-and-yellow streaks with the occasional black pimple. I didn't point out to her that all she was photographing was a television display on the cockpit dome. Why spoil her fun?
Suddenly, after endless weeks of nothing to do, we were in a big hurry. Our velocity was now such that Hal didn't have a hope of bringing us to a stop anywhere close to Earth's orbit—and he didn't have the fuel for it, either. What he had was enough to boost at a steady one gee until he ran out of gas within a million miles of our destination, still going like a bat out of hell.
When he went over his plans with me, I was shocked.
"What do you mean, interstellar space?" I asked him.
"It was the only option," he said. "You said you had to get to Luna. You didn't say I had to."
"But... of course you have to," Poly said. "Tell him, Sparky. He can't just... just drift for a million years."
"It could be a lot longer than that," I said. "How about it, Hal? There's got to be a way you can slow down."
"Yes, of course," he said. "There is always a way." And he shut up.
I still don't know if he would have spoken up for himself. He seemed so human, most of the time. It was easy to forget he was a machine, and though he mimicked human emotions—and I believe actually felt some of them—he operated under different protocols than Poly and I.
"Well?" Poly asked. "What do you have to do?"
"I would need to rendezvous with a refueling drone," he said. "One could be launched from Titan in a few hours, and several months from now we could meet at around eleven billion miles from the sun. A few days to slow down, and head back system-ward... in a year's time I could be back in solar space."
"Then do that," I said.
"I'm not authorized to initiate such an expenditure," he said.
At last I got it. I marched to the freezer in the kitchen—well, marched isn't exactly the word, since I was moving poorly in the one-gee environment—and retrieved Izzy's tired old thumb. Gad, only a week ago I had toyed with the idea of feeding it
to Hobbes. And Hal would be on a one-way trip to the Big Bang.
I pressed it to the credit plate and authorized the chartering of an expendable drone full of fuel. I looked at the price tag this time, and had to smile. Isambard's credit had been cut off everywhere in the solar system shortly after we left Oberon... but not here. Hal's credit-verification software had been shut down, on my order. It was possible this new, outrageous charge would cause him trouble. Perhaps he, his wife and children and parents and all the rest of his family would be clapped into debtor's prison when he returned home. I had no idea if Charonese had such a thing, but one can hope.
"Do you have everything?" Hal asked. "Spacesuits, extra oxygen?"
"Something to read?" I suggested. "Candy? Toys?" See what I mean? There was a list in his memory that we'd worked on for days, and he knew each item had been checked and double-checked. If we'd forgotten to put something on the list, we were unlikely to think of it now. He was a computer, dammit, he could not forget things. But here he was sounding like an anxious mom sending her kids off to summer camp. I took it to mean he was worried about us. And that he would miss us. I was pretty sure he could feel lonely.
"We'll be okay, Hal," Poly told him. You can't kiss a computer good-bye, so we waved at him and piled into the lifeboat.
That's right, lifeboat. There were two aboard, and we needed both of them. Hal had fixed them up as a two-stage vehicle, the one we would ride perched on the nose of the other. The bottom one would blast until it ran out of fuel, then be discarded, whereupon our own boat would blast. By then we'd be feeling major gees, but it wouldn't last as long as the boost from Oberon.
Don't look so shocked. It's the way humans first got to Luna, throwing away most of their rocket along the way. Insanely expensive, but hang the cost, say I. The Charonese could afford it.
We got into our acceleration couches and Poly briefly squeezed my hand. We'd be splitting up as soon as we landed, and I'd barely gotten to know her. Story of my life. And probably lucky for her. The few medium-term relationships I've had have ended badly. I've had even fewer long-term ones.
"Hasta la vista," Hal said, over the radio.
"Until we meet again," I said. And the lifeboat's engine fired.
* * *
John Valentine turned his back on the company, put his fists on his hips, and stood motionless for a full ten seconds. No one breathed. One lesson you learned early when being directed by Valentine was that when the great man wasn't saying anything, someone was in trouble.
"Everyone take the afternoon off," he said, at last. "Go on, get out. Be back here at eight sharp."
No one dallied. There were a few murmured conversations as cast members grabbed scripts and purses and bags and thermos bottles, and even that was stilled when Valentine, still facing the back wall, raised his voice.
"Except Kenneth," he said. People moved a little faster, and within a minute the stage was bare but for father and son. Kenneth stood silently, hands resting on the hilt of his wooden sword.
John Valentine walked slowly along the rear of the stage, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He glanced at his son, sighed, and strode into the wings. When he came back he had a pair of sabers. He tossed one to his son. Kenneth dropped his prop sword and caught the saber by the hilt. Valentine moved back a few steps and addressed the younger man.
"Do you want a mask?"
"Not if you're not wearing one."
"En garde," Valentine said, and assumed that position with easy grace. He tapped the blade of Kenneth's sword with his own, and attacked.
Clang, clang, clang, and the sharp tip of the saber rested solidly on Kenneth's sternum. Kenneth swallowed hard. His father lowered his weapon, turned, and walked back three steps.
"Again," he said quietly.
It went no better for Kenneth the second time, or the third. There didn't seem much point to a fourth engagement. John Valentine walked in slow circles for a while, massaging his temples.
"You expect problems," he said, at last. "You expect obstacles and setbacks. You are ready to deal with incompetence—it's always around somewhere. You expect these things, and you think you are prepared for anything. So when the disaster strikes, you think you are prepared for it." He looked up at last. "But from my own son? This... this I wasn't prepared for."
Kenneth could think of nothing to say. He knew where this cold, quiet calm could lead.
"My Romeo can't handle a saber." He looked into the wings, then back to his son. "Tell me it's because you're used to the foil."
Kenneth shrugged, and reluctantly shook his head.
"Then tell me how it was done. No, wait, let me guess. Your fencing instructor... needed a little extra cash."
"A lot of extra cash," Kenneth admitted.
"Well, thank god he didn't come cheaply. He was highly recommended, and his reports to me couldn't have been more glowing. I should have suspected; the man didn't have the imagination to write that well. You write well."
"My staff writes even better."
"Of course." Valentine laughed. "Honing their skills on Sparky. I should have detected the flavor of fantasy." He sighed. "I blame myself, son. I never should have absented myself so long." Then he pointed to Kenneth and raised his voice only slightly, but it made the accusing finger more deadly than his blade. "But I must blame you, too, Kenneth. Oh, yes, I think that you must share the blame for neglecting one of the basic skills of the thespian art. Did you think you would continue in your childhood forever? Did you think someone could 'morph' swordsmanship, as though this holy stage were no more than your television fantasy world? Did you think you would never grow up and shoulder a man's work?"
It seemed best not to answer. But as the silence stretched, Kenneth knew he would have to.
"I... I just didn't enjoy it, I guess," he said.
"Speak up, son!" Valentine thundered. He stamped his foot on the stage. "On top of everything else, I will not have you whimpering while you tread these honored boards. Take your puling and squeaking elsewhere, back into your boardroom, perhaps, as it seems that is where you have spent the period of my absence. Surely, your skills there have purchased this theater, I'll not take that away from you... but do you think I care about that? Do you not realize I'd sooner present Shakespeare on a barren patch of sand than to cast as Romeo a boy who cannot fight? A boy who, in the crucial scene—you might recall it; Act Three, scene one?—must slay the valiant Tybalt? The scene that is the very center of the play? The scene that seals Romeo's fate, that sets the lovers finally on the road to ruin?
"Have you seen Tybalt's swordplay? Have you watched the man rehearse? The man is better than me, my poor, poor son. So what shall I do? Have Tybalt fight left-handed? He would destroy you. Break his arms? He would kick you to death. Blind him? Hamstring him? Hire a new Tybalt, a straw man for my son to knock down?"
Valentine threw his weapon clattering into the wings.
"No. No, I must instead create my Romeo from these pitiful makings. I must wrench this wretch—clawing and screaming, if necessary—from his pathetic cocoon, from this Sparky buffoon, and into a man's estate. Assistant stage manager!"
The timid but bright drama student with the misfortune to hold that job peeked from the wings where she had been hiding. Valentine had never learned her name (it was Rose), but had impressed on her from the first day that she was never, never to be beyond the reach of his voice. So when he had cleared the theater, she had found a hole to hide in, but not one so remote as to spare her Kenneth's humiliation. Mister Valentine—always to be called mister, as though he needed distinguishing from Kenneth—usually called her ASM. When he used the full tide, nothing good could come of it.
"Yes, Mr. Valentine?"
"Bring me my sword. Contact everyone. Rehearsals are suspended for a period of... make it two weeks. My son needs to attend drama school."
"Yes, sir."
"This is not to be taken as license to loaf. Upon their return to the stage, all cast members will be
expected to know their lines. Cold."
"Yes, sir." Rose handed him his sword.
"Come, Kenneth. We have much work to do."
"Yes, Father."
"En garde!" Valentine shouted, and slashed at his son's face.
* * *
Henry Wauk was not precisely asleep when the knock came at his door.
In West Texas, everybody had a siesta during the hottest hours of the day. At three in the afternoon you could fire a cannon down the middle of Congress Street and not worry about hitting anyone. Of course, you could do that at just about any hour; New Austin was not a bustling place.
"Doctor" Wauk took his daily siesta in the office that connected with his, at the top of the stairs over the Long Branch Saloon. Theoretically, this office belonged to Dr. Heinrich Wohl, D.D.S., but just then there was no Dr. Wohl, and there hadn't been for almost fifteen years now. There had been once, and perhaps there would be again, but these days the big dental chair in Wohl's office was never used except when Wauk stretched out in it, shoved his black hat down over his eyes, and sacked out.
Henry never sweated during these naps, though the temperature in his office often reached well over one hundred degrees in the Fahrenheit scale used in Texas. He loosened his string tie and he took off his boots, but made no other concession to the heat. He often bragged to his friends that he was half gila monster and half prairie dog, and that's why he stayed dry. They responded that it was because there was very little water in his system, and he said yeah, that, too. Henry Wauk was an alcoholic.
He counted himself lucky to live in a society that didn't give a damn what he put into his body or what he did with his life. No busybodies had ever tried to reform him. He was a happy drunk. He was also happy to have found, many years ago, the perfect job, which was to be "Dr. Wauk." That was not his real name, but merely the one some wag had written on the shingle outside the doctors' offices in West Texas when the disneyland was built. Wauk and Wohl, get it? He hadn't, actually, but it had been explained to him, and he was content to be Henry Wauk now. Actually, if you had asked him what his name had been, originally, he would have been unable to tell you. "I'm sure it's written down here somewhere. Library card, or something."
