We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2

by Christopher Stasheff

  “A triumph, Merlo,” Barry concurred.

  Mamie gave him a glare of irritation.

  “Hey, it was Ramou’s doing.” Merlo had to be the most generous man I’d ever met, with everybody except Mamie. “I don’t know where he got that formula, but it’s a honey.”

  “Not terribly well tried, then.” Barry turned to me, looking concerned.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I told him. “I learned about it in Materials Science—even us EE boys had to take it, ’cause there are so many formulas that affect current flow now.”

  Mamie eyed the new swords warily. “What are they made of?”

  “A complex alloy of silicon compounds,” I said. “Silicon?” Mamie stared at me. “You made them out of glass?”

  “A sophisticated ceramic,” I answered. “They use it for the outer skins of ships that have to go through atmosphere. It rings just like steel.”

  “But it will shatter!”

  “Not a bit,” I assured her. “See, just think of it as being a frozen liquid…”

  “Not ice! Ice shatters, too!”

  “… like iron. Only with iron, we beat the hell out of it and add bits of other elements, and come up with fantastic alloys that won’t bend or break.”

  Mamie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not trying to tell me you can do the same thing with glass!”

  “More like pottery.” I took a deep breath, reining in my temper.

  “Pottery? I’m going to trust my life to a clay pot?”

  Fortunately, I still was still holding my breath. I let it out gently and tried a different tack. “Well, if it’s only clay, it can’t hurt you if it breaks, can it?”

  “Broken vases can cut!” she snapped.

  I nodded. “And if clay can be made hard enough to cut, it can also be made strong enough and resilient enough so that it won’t break. But it still rings like …” I bit off “crystal goblet” just in time and substituted, “Quasimodo’s bell—and it won’t melt even in the middle of a blast furnace.”

  I didn’t tell her that modern ceramics weren’t clay—she wasn’t the kind who could understand anything outside her own experience.

  Still, the compound out of which I’d had the Constructor craft the sword bore about as much resemblance to clay as a blade of grass does to a bamboo pole. I mean, they’re both basically the same, aren’t they? Both grasses—and technically, just different varieties of the same thing. Of course, there are so many differences piled on top of that basic sameness that they look totally different and don’t behave at all alike, but those are just details.

  “Well, I’m delighted to hear they can stand the heat.” Mamie scowled, hands on hips. “But I’m a bit more concerned about their breaking, young man.”

  “Not to worry,” I told her. ‘There’ve been the occasional crash landings—and the steel inside the ship has bent, the plastics have broken, but the tiles made out of this formula never even cracked. That’s why I thought it would be good for these swords. I’ll admit I didn’t know about the ringing, though.” I threw that in because I could see she needed something to feel superior about. From her viewpoint, there was a definite chance that I knew something she couldn’t even begin to understand, and that made her feel intimidated.

  “Very fortunate, I’d say,” Winston held up his blade, scrutinizing it. “Well, if it can take a spaceship crash, it ought to withstand the worst we can give it, eh, Barry?” Mamie eyed me askance, and coldly. “How do we know it won’t break? It’s still very much of an experiment, in this application. You just made this up, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Merlo said. “It’s been used for—”

  “The outside of spaceships, I know.” Mamie’s lip curled. “But has it been used for swords before?”

  “Well …” I said.

  “Of course not,” Merlo snapped.

  “Well, then.” Mamie leaned back, preening herself. “We don’t know it won’t be worse than the iron ones, do we?”

  “All right, we’ll test it.” Merlo sighed. “Just to be safe, one more collision.”

  “Yes, quite so,” Barry said slowly, “but I’d like to see what Ramou can do with it.” He held his sword out, pommel first, to me.

  “Hey, I’m not all that strong,” I protested.

  Susanne went into a coughing fit.

  “Perhaps.” Barry looked pretty skeptical himself. “But you do know how to concentrate what force you do apply. Give it a go, will you, Ramou?”

  “I think I’d better take the other one.” Merlo plucked the blade from Winston, looking a little nervous. “But if we’re going to treat it as something potentially dangerous, let’s use all due precautions. Do we have chest protectors and masks, Winston?”

  “Of course.” The Mordant Emperor grinned. “I never travel without my kit.”

  “Could we borrow it, please?”

  We could. In ten minutes, Winston had delivered the “kit” and was helping me into my chest protector. “You’ve used these before, Ramou?”

  “Something like ’em,” I admitted. “We ran more to bamboo, where I was trained.”

  Winston raised his eyebrows in surprise, then stepped back. “I really believe Barry and I should make the experiment—after all, we are the ones who will be wielding these weapons in the actual duel.”

  Merlo looked thoughtful, but I said, “We want to test them under maximum conditions, Mr. Carlton.”

  “Maximum?” Winston frowned. “Are you implying that you can strike so much harder than I can?”

  I stilled the tip of my sword on the floor, me glowering down at it. The conflict between truth and modesty had me again.

  Merlo saw. “Yes, he can,” he assured Winston. “Besides, it’s the tech man’s job to make sure the props are sound, before he lets the actors have them.”

  “But I’m quite sure—”

  “Mamie isn’t,” Merlo reminded him, “and it’s her hide as much as either of yours. Okay, everyone get way back, now. Heads up!”

  They got. With that huge cavernous gymnasium, they could get a long way, and they did.

  “Okay, Ramou,” Merlo said quietly.

  “Real, or looking good?” I asked.

  “Showy,” he answered, “but with everything you’ve got.”

  I brought it up from the subbasement, and I brought it up hard and fast. There was a huge clang Then I was standing there looking down at my sword again, its point on the floor. It was whole.

  “What made that noise?” Susanne was asking.

  Mamie cried, “Are we to believe he swung?”

  They were putting it on. I remembered the tale of the sword master who moved so fast nobody saw him, but I never really believed that. Besides, I wasn’t a master in that Way.

  “He swung,” Marty assured her. “You must have blinked at the wrong moment.”

  Mamie turned on him, angry, but Merlo said, “My blade’s still there. Intact.”

  She turned back, staring at the two swords. Then she said, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Slower this time, Ramou,” Merlo said. “Now!”

  I saw him swing out of the corner of my eye and brought my blade up to meet his. It was beautiful—two matching arcs, exactly opposed. The swords met and bounced off each other. I used the bounce to return to guard.

  Mamie was staring.

  “That the kind of sound you wanted?” I asked Merlo.

  “Just fine,” he assured me, “but I’d scarcely say the durability’s been fully tested. Let’s make it a real bout, Ramou. Five minutes.”

  “En garde!” Winston called.

  It wasn’t my style or my language, but I knew what it meant. I was still on guard. Merlo swung his sword up to cross mine. Winston stepped in and whisked his toothpick up, separating our blades, and we started chopping.

  “Remember!” Barry cried. “Not real! For show!”

  So he had heard me ask. I nodded to show I’d heard, blocked Merlo’s slash, then whirled my blade around to
come in low. I deliberately went slowly, but not quite enough—he just barely got his sword down to block mine. They rang like hammer and anvil, and I stepped back to whirl around full circle and come in with a horizontal cut at belt height.

  “Wonderful!” Winston cried.

  Merlo stepped back and met my roundhouse with one of his own, then guided his sword on the rebound to chop in low. I swung and blocked it, then hopped over my sword and swung it up for a vertical blow.

  “Can’t either of them hit the other?” Mamie exclaimed in scorn.

  “That’s not their purpose just now, young lady,” Ogden rumbled. “They’re testing the mettle of the swords, not of each other.”

  “But I thought they were glass!” she protested.

  Ogden shrugged. “It looks like metal, it sounds like metal, it behaves like metal …”

  I thought it was nice of him to cover for her lack of vocabulary.

  Merlo’s sword was coming right at my sinuses, and I didn’t feel like trusting to that flimsy wire mask Winston had given me. I dropped to one knee, swinging up overhand, and my sword chimed against his. He swung down at me, just as he should have, but I had baited the trap, and I wasn’t about to be there when I sprang it. I leaped out of the crouch and back, and let his blade crack into the platform beneath us. It left a scar, but the sword stayed whole. I timed my swing so it would reach while his blade was still down, but he ducked under it and came up from below. I met his cut backhanded, and …

  “Time!” Winston called.

  We dropped our points, and Merlo took off his mask, panting, sweating, and smiling. “We ought to do that more often, Ramou! I need the exercise.”

  “As do we all.” Barry turned to face the full company. “Fencing practice for all men, and for those ladies who wish it, at four P.M., as soon as we are back aboard ship, and until our next planetfall. Winston, will you oversee the sessions?”

  “Glad to—but I’d like young Lazarian to show us a few of those movements he used today,” Winston said, with a devilish grin. “It’s a style I don’t know.”

  Larry stared, scandalized.

  I shrugged. “I was making it up as I went along, Mr. Carlton. You said to be showy.”

  “Then let’s see if you can remember it long enough to teach the rest of us, eh? And perhaps show us the discipline they came from.” He turned to Merlo. “I think these new swords will be just what we need, Merlo. Don’t you, Mamie?” He turned the full strength of his diabolical beam on her.

  Mamie glared at him and clipped out the words syllable by syllable. “Why, yes, Winston—I think they’ve proved durable. But let’s see how they wear, shall we?”

  Merlo turned away to hide his sigh.

  I came back early from dinner, figuring to get into my costume and makeup before my bravos arrived; it would be bad enough listening to their wisecracks when they saw me in lipstick and rouge, without having to suffer the extra lines they could come up with while I was putting it on.

  Besides, I just couldn’t sit still.

  I came through the door and stopped dead still.

  The intruder looked up with a polite smile, one hand still on the locker. He was tall, dark-complexioned, and blackhaired—and he was wearing a gray business complet.

  I went cold with the anger of invaded territory. “Excuse me, but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “Isn’t this the men’s room?” he asked.

  “No, it’s the locker room—ordinarily. But right now, it’s a dressing room for a troupe of actors.” I nodded at the portable makeup table that almost filled the center aisle between the lockers and the showers.

  “Oh.” He glanced at it. “I see. Sorry about the mistake.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I stepped aside and watched him as he brushed past me and out. I was memorizing every feature of his face, because this was the first time I’d seen him up close—but I was sure I’d seen him before, on Terra. He was the man in gray who’d been in the mob that watched the reporter ambush us, watched the gang that jumped us on our way home, and tried to serve the restraining order on us as we were trying to take off.

  I know—gray suits all look alike. I could be making a very simple mistake.

  But I was sure I wasn’t. It wasn’t a matter of recognizing a face in the background of a photo—it was remembering a face I’d seen stare right at me, alive.

  His footsteps faded away up the stairs. I hurried over to check the locker he’d had his hand on, but it was securely fastened shut. So was the one next to it, and the one next to that.

  But just to be safe, I checked every locker in the place.

  So it was opening night, and I was running around frantically from the boys’ locker room to the door of the girls’ locker room, the stage in the Grand Gym to the tech booth in the press box. “Everything going okay? Only an hour till curtain!”

  Why they called it “curtain” was a mystery to me—this was a medieval set, none of the windows had any hangings. The closest they came was the tapestries on the walls of Castle Macbeth, but we didn’t bring those up until Scene Two.

  Of course Merlo told me, while we were wiring things up, that way back in the old, old days, the actors used to hide the set from the audience by an actual, genuine, gigantic piece of drapery. Then, when it was time for the show to begin, they’d raise it up, revealing the set, like a picture inside the frame of the proscenium.

  Then the picture came to life.

  It must have been magical, especially back then in those primitive times. I mean, Merlo says this started in the 1600s and went all the way into the 1900s. I can imagine what it must have been like—sitting there in the theater, the lights suddenly going out all around you, then this streak of light appearing in front of you, widening until it showed you a living picture … It must have really seemed magical, to people who’d never seen much theater. Maybe even to people who’d seen a lot; maybe it always had a tinge of the enchanted.

  Then the electricians gave the actors so much control over light that they started the show just by bringing up the lights—and of course, nowadays, we make the set glow into existence, too. Even so, I guess the term stuck. We didn’t have a curtain anymore, but Merlo had told me I was supposed to keep everybody notified as to how long it was till “curtain,” and that it still meant the beginning of the play, so “curtain” it was, and I was keeping everybody posted.

  Every ten minutes.

  “An hour?” Mamie shrilled from inside that mysterious country where no man has gone before. “Why in heaven’s name are you bothering us so early, you blithering idiot? Grudy! Where is Grudy! The fit on this costume is abominable!”

  “Yes, Ramou, stop blithering,” Lacey’s voice snapped. “Susanne! Fasten my seam, will you? Why in heaven’s name did Grudy put the press joint up the back?”

  I took the hint and ducked into the boys’ locker room. “An hour till curtain!”

  “Idle down, Ramou,” Marty said with a grin. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Yes, quite impossible,” Larry snapped. “Don’t be any more of a fool than you have to be, Ramou.”

  Before I could reply, Horace’s hand was on my shoulder, and he was saying, “Really, Ramou, you’re already in costume and makeup, and we truly do have more than an adequate amount of time to prepare. Why don’t you run a check on the tech systems?”

  “Yeah, sure, Horace, great idea!” And I was out the door and up the stairs.

  “Ramou’s having his first-opening-night jitters, eh?” Barry asked from his seat at the portable makeup table.

  “In spades,” I confirmed as I sat down beside him. “I don’t know whether he’s more excited or more frightened.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “He actually asked if makeup was really necessary.”

  “Of course it is,” Barry said. “It gives us something to do for the hour before the show.”

  “Well, will you look at that!”

  I turned to Charlie Publican. He sto
od before his open locker in makeup, frowning and holding up a needle. “Where did that come from, Charlie?” Winston asked. “My tights.” Charlie laid it carefully aside and pulled on the article in question. “If I hadn’t happened to notice it, I would have had a very unpleasant surprise.”

  Winston stared, appalled. So did I.

  Then I turned on Larry. “Now, this has gone positively far enough! It’s one thing to go opening lockers and rifling through them, young man, but to try to inflict pain on your fellows, as a practical joke, is completely unacceptable!”

  “What? You don’t think /…?” Larry looked up, completely taken aback. Then his face darkened. “Now, see here, Mr. Burbage! I might practice a harmless prank now and then, but certainly nothing of that sort! What would make you think I would?”

  “Your general level of interpersonal interaction with the other members of this company,” I snapped, stepping closer, “coupled with the fact that only you, among us all, knows how to pick locks!”

  “I didn’t do it!” Larry looked up at Winston, who was crowding him from the other side. “I didn’t, I tell you! If I had intended that, would I have let you see that I could open locks? Come to that, whoever did, obviously didn’t let the ability show! Any of you might have done it!”

  I was about to press the point when Charlie intervened. “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” he said softly. “It’s over and done with, and no one hurt. It’s really not worth your emotion— and we do have a play to do.”

  I frowned, reminded of the overwhelming concern of the evening. “Quite so—and tensions run high on opening night.” I stepped back to my own locker. “But if there is the slightest sign of any further prank, Larry, you may be sure it will not be so easily resolved!”

  I dashed into the tech booth. “Everything okay?”

  “You’ve asked that five times,” Merlo said, “and we’ve checked both boards three times. Yes, everything’s okay, Ramou—except you. Calm down.”

  I stilled, then sank down on a stool, looking up at the camera monitor, which showed me an expanse of gym floor with the stage we’d set up, as seen from the side and above. Then I went rigid. “The bleachers! They still haven’t pulled ’em out!”