by John Varley
* * *
If you were looking for all the inside dope on the mysterious Heinleiners, you'll have to go elsewhere. I could relate what went on, using assumed names and euphemisms, but it would be ninety percent lies. For one thing, most of the people I met prefer to stay firmly underground at this point. Remember, not that long ago duly appointed representatives of the Lunar state were shooting at them. They're still a little pissed off. Wouldn't you be? For another, I've been shown some things I swore never to talk about, and talking around them would soon leave me with nothing to say.
Then there's the matter of what I was doing in there. Changing my appearance yet again, naturally. Obtaining a few necessary items for Poly—nothing more than little white lies, in her case—and sending her on her way. (Goodbye, sweet Poly, you were a great traveling companion. Sorry about the fingers. And we'll see no more of you in this story.)
But most of my short time there was consumed in several strictly illegal activities involving becoming someone else. We're not talking about phonying up a hopper's license here; this identity had to stand up to close scrutiny for whatever time I'd be spending in Luna. The statute of limitations hasn't expired on any of it, so it would be foolish to set down the details here. And, frankly, you never know when you'll need to pull some of these same tricks again. Better they don't become common knowledge. If you really need to know how to do it, find a criminal and ask him. And be ready to pay.
* * *
When you travel around as much as I do, and have lived as long as I have, the one constant you notice is change.
The species is still expanding, though the talk about doing something to correct that has been getting more and more serious. (What, pray tell? Spaying and neutering? Ah, but don't get me started on that.) I'm not denying it is a problem. With the death rate edging closer and closer to zero, about all that has saved us so far is that very few people want more than one or two children. It's not hard to see a time when every bit of rock in the system is honeycombed down to the core with antlike trillions. There's a school of thought that maintains one reason for the Invasion was our overpopulation of the earth. If we keep growing exponentially, the reasoning goes, might the Invaders take notice of us once again?
I don't pretend to understand anything about the Invaders, beyond the fact that it took them three days to nearly annihilate the human race, and that in spite of our bravest efforts, the final score was twenty billion to nothing. I'm not eager for a rematch.
But frankly I sort of like the changes I see in my travels. Almost always it is an expansion of what I saw before, and like my father, I hold to an old-fashioned idea once called "progress." Other than a growing population, there hasn't been a lot of it since the Invasion. Scientific research is at an all-time low. And why not? We live practically as long as we want, in perfect health and vitality. Machines can do practically everything that needs to be done, so that leisure has become our biggest "problem." Biology is well understood, and the practical limits of the exploration of physics have been reached, for now, anyway.
So I take pleasure in seeing how this or that enclave has grown. I was delighted at Oberon, and when I return, if ever, I'm sure it will delight me again to see the wheel complete.
But Luna is a little different. Luna is, and always will be, "home." Unstable as my early childhood was, numerous as my "homes" might have been, it was always Luna, the fabulous Golden Globe, that I hailed from. There's a bit of snobbery in that, something like the way the residents of New York, London, Paris, or Rome might have felt. All roads lead to the Big Apple, as it were. If you're from somewhere else, you're from nowhere. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
But the other part is the same, I suspect, whether you hail from The City or from Catfish Row, from the Golden Globe or from Bottom. You sort of wish it would stay the same. You'd like to go back and find something familiar.
You'd like to think you can go home.
You can't, of course. Even if the old hometown is stagnant as a played-out mine, it's gotten older, and so have you. You look at it through different eyes. The ivy on the old castle walls has grown thicker, the paint on the old shack has peeled off. More likely, the old castle has been torn down to make room for a housing development, and the shack... well, you can't even locate where it was. It gives you a certain feeling of transience.
My whole life has been transient. When I go home, I want to return to something solid.
Fat chance. I spent my first few hours wandering aimlessly through the broad commercial corridors of King City, a place I used to know like Act One of Julius Caesar, always just a little bit lost.
I spent a few hours training and slidewalking to various haunts from my past, finding most of them either no longer there or so changed as to be almost unrecognizable. It had been a good many years since I had dared return to Luna, and even that had been a rash chance on my part. After that many years, even if the place is still there and not much altered physically, the people are different. Where's that old gang of mine? Moved, most often. Hanging out somewhere else. So I moved on, too, on to the Rialto.
For drama in the English language, the de facto tongue of our time, when you think Theater District, you think Broadway. London may have eclipsed it in some ways, in some eras, but it never had the glitter. Shortly pre-Invasion, the theater scene in Miami was certainly one to reckon with. But how many songs can you think of about Collins Avenue?
No, the Great White Way was the theater Mecca... until The Rialto came along.
It had to be that way. Luna is by far the most populous of the inhabited planets. King City is the biggest city in Luna, three times larger than its nearest competitor. Our civilization is blessed or cursed with more leisure time than any in history. The urge to find something to do can get a little desperate. The living theater was never going to give movies and television much competition for the leisure dollar, but even a tiny fraction of the Lunarians' vast disposable income was enough to support a broad boulevard two miles long and bespangled with more theatrical jewels than the Tsarina's Tiara. When the "day" lights dimmed overhead and the marquees lit up, the street didn't so much glitter as explode in colored light.
I strolled down the avenue, hands jammed in my pockets, wishing for a fedora hat and a studio cloudburst so I could be Gene Kelly singin' in the rain. I wanted to hoof it through the shoeshine parlor like Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon. I was George M. Cohan, a Yankee Doodle boy. I was a brass band, a wild Count Basie blast, the bells of St. Peter's in Rome, and tissue paper on a comb. If I had a home, this was it. The center of the universe.
Oh, I'm not saying it was all familiar. Twenty years earlier a fever of renovation had swept down The Rialto like a demented dervish, and not all the changes were to my liking. The street was now lined with lampposts pretending to be gaslights; some spavined city planner's idea of "quaint," I shouldn't wonder. A lot of the old neon—a quaint vision I did like—had been replaced with higher-tech lighting effects that tended to overload the senses. But these things come and go; I can live with them. The important thing was the theaters themselves, dozens of them, strung out or bunched together, flashing into the artificial "night" the names of old friends and new arrivals: A Doll's House, Twelfth Night, Padlock, Into the Woods, Forget-Me-Not, The Wild Woman, School for Scandal. Oh, and the human friends, too, though you never could tell. You could figure that, even fifty years later, most of them would still be alive, in the physical sense. Professionally, it was another matter. It's a cruel trade. Some thought destined for glory by their own generation could be forgotten very quickly. Others who had labored hard for three, four, five decades became overnight sensations.
Legends? Our time doesn't produce a lot of them. It's a lot easier to become a legend if you die, close the book, and let the legend makers get to work. Mere stardom can be conveyed willy-nilly and last no longer than a soap bubble. So no one is going to chisel your name in stone until everyone's sure you're not coming back to
be an embarrassment.
About half the theaters on The Rialto had achieved landmark status. You might buy and sell the structures, but you couldn't tear them down and the names were there forever. The rest were up for grabs. I wasn't familiar with this "Golden Globe" house and I had forgotten the address as the months went by, but I recalled thinking it couldn't be far from the site of my last appearance as Sparky: the late lamented John Valentine Theater.
I was right. It was in the neighborhood. Like everything else, the neighborhood had changed, but I knew approximately where I was.
I walked up and down in front of it. It had been so long since I'd played in a real Rialto theater I just wanted to get a feel for the place again. I liked what I saw. Something called Two Problems in Logic was playing, a title I wasn't familiar with, though the writer and director were both known to me. Only two players were listed, one with her name above the title, and I had never heard of either of them. That was depressing.
Pushing one of the brass-and-glass doors, I entered a long, thick-carpeted lobby in lavender and ecru. Spaced along the walls were posters from past productions at the Golden Globe. I gathered the house specialized in new works by established playwrights, though there was the occasional old war-horse guaranteed to put butts in seats, and a few revivals of faded stars who'd only had the one hit, reprising the role for the ninety-ninth time.
Finally I came to the back of the theater itself, and looked down a long aisle to the stage.
There was something oddly familiar about it.
I walked down a few rows and looked around. Even more familiar.
I hurried back to the lobby, paused to get my bearings, and followed a branching corridor that led to the rest rooms. Just beyond them was a bank of fire exit doors. My heart was hammering as I banged through one of them, setting off a distant alarm. I found myself outside on a side street, around the corner from the main entrance. It was a narrow way, not quite an alley, and just off to my left was a small park with a gazebo that, other than a fresh coat of paint, had not changed in seventy years.
The Golden Globe was the John Valentine Theater.
I staggered into the park and collapsed on a bench.
Memories.
* * *
"En garde!" Valentine shouted, and slashed at his son's face.
It was a backhand stroke, and the tip of the blade drew a red line on Kenneth's left cheek. There was no more pain than from a razor cut. He touched his cheek with his free hand and looked at the blood on his fingers.
"I said en garde, sir," Valentine said. "Raise your weapon."
Kenneth slowly did so.
"Are you ready this time?"
He nodded.
"Then fight, damn you." Valentine slashed again, not quite as quickly. Kenneth parried the move, felt the clash of blade up through his wrist. And here, the blade was coming at him again, and he parried once more, and again, and again... and his father's blade tore through the fabric of his sleeve. This time he felt some pain, and a wet heat as blood ran down his arm.
"Again." And once more the sword was flashing in his face. He got the blade up just in time. But no sooner had he fended off the first thrust than another was coming at him. And another, and another.
Parry, riposte. Sixte, seconde. The words flew around in his mind, mocking him. I'll bet you wish you'd studied now, they said. Frantically, he tried to remember, but it just wasn't there. If you had to think about it, you were already too late. Your body must simply respond. Thinking was for the attack, and it would be a long time before young Kenneth was ready for that. The best he could do was try to keep his blade up, try to keep it between his body and the slashing, hungry steel that had a life of its own. That's what it had to be. His father could not be trying to kill him.
He felt pain again. This time it was his hip. A thrusting wound, this one hurt more than all the others put together. Others... how many were there now? Five? Six? He had lost count.
He was blinded by sweat. He stopped, turned his back, wiped his face with his sleeve. Then he turned around and tried to smile.
"I yield!" he shouted. "The first lesson has gone badly for me, I admit it. But I'll work all night, and you'll see a new man for lesson number two." He dropped his sword. "Now, do you want to do some blocking on that scene? Maybe we should get Tybalt in here to help."
"Pick up your weapon, sir."
"Father, I—"
"Your weapon, sir!"
Slowly, Kenneth reached down and took the bloody hilt.
"En garde." And once more the blade flashed.
* * *
As usual, his father was right. This was the perfect way to teach swordsmanship. If the pupil survived it.
Within an hour Kenneth had improved markedly. Like all his father's methods, it was a simple process. The student made a careless move. The teacher showed him the error of his ways in the form of a small cut. The student tried another approach, which was a little better. No cut. Again the teacher offered the same move, and the student found a variation that actually might give him a small advantage. Then the teacher varied the first move. Once more, a cut. Again. Not so good, Kenneth; another cut, deeper this time. Now don't think, let your body remember what you did wrong last time, what you did that resulted in pain. Your body will remember and find a way to avoid the pain. Here it comes again—
—and that was much better. No pain. Try it again. No pain. Again.
Now, try this....
The pain in Spain is mainly for the slain.
Again.
* * *
With a spiraling motion worthy of Errol Flynn, John Valentine's blade twisted the sword from Kenneth's hand and sent it flying into the wings. "Get it," he said.
"Father, could we have a break?"
"Ten more minutes. Go."
Kenneth didn't move for a moment. He was barely able to stand. "Son," Valentine said, gently. "You brought this on yourself. I know it hurts. I went through this with my father, and I'm the better for it. Soon you'll be disarming me, and the audience as well. But in the meantime it is going to hurt. At the end of the day we'll have you patched up. And we'll start fresh tomorrow."
Patched up.
Tomorrow. What a frightening thought.
"Now go get your weapon."
Kenneth turned and trudged toward the curtain. He was afraid that if he reached down to pick up the sword, he would simply pass out. He did bend down for the sword, and his head did swim, but he did not pass out.
And then a strange thing happened. Kenneth reached for the saber—
—and Sparky picked it up.
It was invigorating, just being Sparky again. He was still hurting, badly, and he was still weak, but in the ways that mattered Sparky was strong. He didn't really know who this Kenneth person was, but he knew he was weak.
And he knew John Valentine was weak, in the ways that mattered.
So Sparky forced himself to stand erect, stiffen his spine. He lifted his chin and he strode back to center stage. Holding the saber with both hands, he raised it high, and plunged it down into the stage. He let it go and it quivered there, the point buried in two inches of wood.
"I quit," he said.
Valentine cocked his head slightly, as if not sure of what he had heard. Then he shrugged good-naturedly.
"All right. Maybe I'm pushing too hard. We'll resume tomorrow."
"You didn't hear me. I quit."
"You quit."
"You want me to spell it for you? I quit the swordsmanship lessons. I quit Romeo. I quit Shakespeare. I quit acting. I quit."
Valentine turned away and his body sagged. He rubbed his forehead with one hand. He sighed deeply. It was silent-movie acting, every move deliberate and exaggerated. Sparky studied Valentine's back. He imagined pulling the sword from the stage and thrusting it between the shoulder blades.
No. That wasn't the way.
Valentine turned around.
"You quit. Just like that. Suddenly twenty years of�
��"
"Twenty-nine years. I'm twenty-nine. You've been teaching me since I was in the cradle."
Valentine laughed.
"Make it thirty, son. Count the nine months in the womb."
"In those thirty years," Sparky said, unperturbed, "there is one thing you never did. One thing you neglected."
"And what would that be?"
"You never asked me what I wanted to do."
Valentine laughed. He made a grand sweeping gesture with his sword, and a courtly bow.
"So, my son, tell me. What do you want to do with your life?"
"I don't know," Sparky admitted. "I've never had time to think about it. You never gave me any time."
"Go on. This is fascinating."
"You never asked me anything. Your plans were always 'our' plans, but I was never consulted."
"You are a child."
"I was never a child. I never had a chance to be one. I was a pretty fair performing monkey, though. 'Put a dime in the cup, folks. Watch little Kenny recite from Shakespeare. Perhaps today he'll get through it without shaking and gasping for breath.' "
"Do you believe that's how I thought of you?"
"No. No, I don't, Father. I think you thought of me, still think of me, as an extension of yourself. Any glory I earn is your glory."
Once more, Valentine laughed. But he sobered quickly, and looked intently into his son's eyes.
"No, my son. It's much more than that. You are me."
"In your mind, maybe. Up until today, maybe. But I've had enough, Father. I quit. I'm going to walk out of here, and from this moment on I make my own decisions."
Valentine looked into his son's eyes, and they did not waver. At last, almost apologetically, he sighed deeply and spread his hands.
"I simply can't allow that."
"You'll have to stop me."
"I will, son. I will."
Sparky stood his ground. The sword still swayed slightly between them, a steel gauntlet, an intolerable challenge.
"Now take your weapon, and take your position. We still have ten minutes of lesson to get through."
