We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2

by Christopher Stasheff

  I tell you, I’ve known fear, often and sharp—but it was always something in the background, something I could shove out of the way. After all, it was just fear of getting hurt, and I’ve done that time and again, and always walked away. But this was fear of … I don’t know what. When the individual stands alone in front of the mob, stark panic hits, the certainty that they’re going to get you, descend on you, annihilate you …

  Maybe. All I really knew right then was that I was paralyzed, that every inch of me was sodden with fear.

  Then a hand fell on my shoulder, and Marty’s voice whispered in my ear, “Don’t let ’em get to you, Ramou.

  They can’t do anything—and they’re really hoping you’ll astound them. They’re just an audience.”

  I almost sagged with relief, just knowing that I wasn’t out there alone. I stole a quick glance at Marty, and almost jumped—he wore a bloody bandage around his head, with trickles of crimson over his forehead and down his cheeks. It took me a second to remember that the “blood” was glycerine, and his scalp was unscratched under the bandage.

  Everything clicked back into perspective suddenly—but the audience was still there.

  Then a wall moved between me and them, and a voice hissed, “Hey, Ramou! Where’d you say we were supposed to go?”

  I looked up; the voice was Bolo, come to the rescue. Suddenly, I couldn’t afford to be frozen; I had to supply answers, give directions. They were depending on me.

  “Over to the other side of the stage, Bolo,” I hissed. “Help me with Marty.”

  He stuck a hand under Marty’s armpit, and Marty obligingly slumped between us, but still bore most of his own weight, limping very believably. We paced down left with him, and I stole a quick glance at the audience again. They were just an audience now, a small mass of people way far away at the long end of a very large gym.

  And there was a man in gray right smack dab in the middle of them.

  Then I had to look away to see where we were going. I couldn’t take time for a long look—but I knew he was there and I knew he was the guy who had been in the locker room. I didn’t have a chance to look for him again until the end of the show—but I didn’t need to.

  Ogden started to follow them, but I held up a hand to restrain him. He blinked down at it owlishly, as if wondering what it was doing there, and my heart sank; the bottle we wrested away from him had not been his only supply. Apparently he had outbidden Ramou for Chovy’s services— though I wouldn’t have put it past our enterprising young local to have taken money from both. I waited for the extras to settle down, trying to look depressed, while isolated laughs of disbelief echoed from the audience, followed by shouts of, “Hey, Bolo! I like your tin suit!” and, “Chovy, mate! How’s the stockings feel?”

  But I must admit those voices came thin and strained— they were a long way away.

  When enough time had elapsed, I took my hand away from Ogden’s chest and nodded. He moved nobly if somewhat unsteadily out onstage, flanked by two of the local boys. As the nearest one passed me, I hissed, “If he starts to tilt, push him back upright.”

  I could hear Ogden’s opening line, “What bloody man is that? He can report, as seemeth by his plight, of the revolt the newest state.” But I could also hear a puzzled rumble from the other end of the gym. Apparently the sophomores did not understand Elizabethan English. “Break a leg, Mr. Kemp,” I hissed as Marty passed me.

  “Did you say that to Merlo, too?” he whispered nervously, then stepped out to proclaim, “God save the king!”

  The rumbling from the far end of the gym was a little louder now.

  It had grown to a steady, muted sound like distant surf, punctuated by an occasional erratic clinking, before the scene had finished. Ogden came back in a suitably royal rage. “Why, those insubordinate, immature yokels! Those unsophisticated, uncultured boors! What the blazes was that clinking?”

  “Soft-drink bottles, rolling down the steps of the aisles,” I told him grimly.

  “Pop bottles! I haven’t heard that since we played North Platte forty years ago!”

  “No doubt the source of the original colonists.” He was right; I knew I had heard it before.

  ‘They won’t stop talking long enough to listen to us!” Marty, for once, was not laughing.

  “They will listen to me, or no mystic fourth wall ever imagined will protect them!” Mamie snapped, and strode onto the stage, every inch a queen, pacing with nervousness, the note in her hand—but nonetheless, she found some believable motivation to look up and glare at the audience, as if Lady Macbeth were defying destiny itself. The young folk out there actually did throttle back to a dull roar. I scarcely blamed them; if Mamie looked at me with that much venom, I would have become very still, too.

  Satisfied, Mamie turned, stopped pacing, and began to read the note in her hand. “They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge.”

  The dull roar grew sharper.

  So did Mamie’s tone. “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised; yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way ..

  The roar grew.

  Mamie reddened. “Hie thee hither, that I may pour the spirits in thine ear …”

  I knew what she was doing wrong, of course—what they had all been doing wrong. I’m sure Ogden would have realized it if he had been sober, but the rest of them were simply too young—they were used to real theaters with excellent acoustics, and 3DT studios with sensitive microphones—or, if they had toured before, were accustomed to body mikes and amplifying systems.

  I, however, had begun with a struggling summer company in a tent and, moreover, one that had been forced to tour as a condition of its government grant, but had been too poor for such luxuries as amplifying systems. I knew why the audience was so restive, and how to cure it.

  So, when the moment came, I entered, bowed, and blasted out so loudly as to make those distant ceiling girders ring, ‘THE KING COMES HERE TONIGHT.”

  The audience fell totally silent.

  Mamie looked at me in shock, wondering why I had blared like a trumpet. Then I saw understanding come into her eyes, and she belted back at me, “THOU ART MAD TO SAY IT! IS NOT THY MASTER WITH HIM?” as well as the finest pop-song singer ever heard.

  “SO PLEASE YOU, IT IS TRUE,” I thundered, and went on to bellow at her how one of the soldiers had sped on ahead to bring just that much news and no more.

  She kindly belted back, “GIVE HIM TENDING; HE BRINGS GREAT NEWS.” Then I bowed, turned, and left.

  Behind me, I could hear Mamie soliloquizing with all the subtlety and confidentiality of a trombone in mating season.

  But the audience was quiet. They could finally hear.

  “A hit, a palpable hit,” Winston whispered, grinning at me with delight.

  “I’ll settle for being able to finish the play,” I hissed back.

  He whisper-chuckled like a snake in hysterics, then stepped past me onto the stage, roaring, “MY DEAREST LOVE, DUNCAN COMES HERE TONIGHT!”

  Beside me, Lacey stared, pale as milk. “I can’t possibly do that!”

  “Of course you can,” I whispered. “ ‘Pack your tones against your belt,’ as the old Elizabethan actors used to say. Bring it up from your diaphragm, but keep your throat relaxed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to utter secrets at a hundred decibels. After all, you’re on as a witch next, and if you can’t let yourself go and rock the rafters with your cackling in that sort of part, when can you?”

  The absurdity of the question didn’t seem to reach her; certainly she made no attempt at the further absurdity of the answer, but only developed a gleam in her eye and said, “You’re right, Mr. Burbage. If I want to steal a scene by sheer volume, I’ll never have a better chance.”

  Well, that wasn’t quite how I would have thought of it—but anything to motivate her to blast
like a typhoon….

  Which gave me an idea. I sidled over next to Susanne and whispered, “Lacey may try to steal the scene by simply outshouting you.”

  Susanne was looking just as aghast as Lacey had, but my jibe brought the color back to her face and determination to her lip. “She’ll get nodes on her vocal folds, Mr. Burbage. If that phony thinks she can drown me out, she’d better look to her hearing aid!”

  So they went on determined to compete for sheer volume. I wasn’t too worried—I was certain they were both alert to the dangers of shouting. They would project, not blast—but project more loudly than any drill sergeant in an open field.

  Winston came off, and I grinned at him, whispering, “What’s your motivation?”

  “To be heard,” he muttered back.

  “But what of subtlety? Nuance? Interpretation?”

  “What of characterization?” he rejoined. “It’s nothing but a bellowing contest out there. At least the younger folk are proving they know how to project.”

  I didn’t tell him that I included him as one of the “younger folk” I hadn’t been sure of. Perhaps I should have, though—the comment about age might have done him a world of good.

  The audience had begun talking among themselves again—after all, most of them were merely in their teens— and a steady hum had arisen from the distant bleachers. However, it was nowhere nearly as loud as the dull roar had been. Many of them were, I think, actually becoming interested in the story that was unfolding on stage. No doubt it was a surprise to them.

  Then the three witches began again, and the hum lessened and shifted higher in pitch. The boys had stopped gossiping to watch Lacey and Susanne move about, and the girls had started exclaiming to each other about the shamelessness and lewdness of those hussies onstage, and about anyone’s being able to be beautiful with as many false appliances as the younger witches were doubtless using. The only things false about Lacey and Susanne, of course, were their eyelashes and face paint—but the teenage morsels couldn’t know that—and didn’t want to.

  The witches were well worth the watching—they were dancing about the cauldron, with some movements that I doubted Shakespeare had ever thought of. For that matter, neither had Barry.

  A high-pitched retching echoed from the audience—the local girls, with a legitimate excuse for expressing then-opinion of this imported competition. It was nice to know they were paying attention. On the other hand, with all three ladies blaring away at their maximum volume, there wasn’t a corner of the gymnasium that wasn’t ringing with their chant. I was gratified to notice that Grudy’s voice was louder than either of the younger ladies. Experience will always tell, and loudly, too.

  Toward the end of Act II, I had happened to glance up through the gap between the leg curtain and the return flat, at the audience—not to count them, of course; that would have been bad luck. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure in gray against that darkness, but thought nothing of it at the time; I was far more interested in the impression that, where there had before been only a small black mass of people more or less centered against the lighter darkness of the bleachers, they had now, amoebalike, spread to engulf almost all of the seating.

  By the middle of Act III, I was certain of it.

  “Surely the audience has not grown!” I whispered to Barry.

  He looked up, startled, then smiled slowly. “Do you know, Horace, I do believe they have.”

  “But how?” I hissed.

  “No doubt some freshmen have been sent to notify the truants that they are actually missing an exciting show. Let us hope the newcomers mentioned the fact to their parents.”

  They had. During the intermission, the harried and elderly custodian actually had to come out and turn a key, causing the side bleachers to glide out from the walls.

  “We have them!” Barry crowed in the locker room, as exultant as any air-hockey coach. “But don’t let up, good friends! You will have audience near the stage, but the youngsters at the far end still need to hear you! And with so many bodies soaking up sound, the acoustic situation may be even worse!”

  “Just how many of them are out there, Barry?” Ogden asked.

  “Publius says he has sold a thousand tickets at the box office—and they are still streaming in.”

  “For Shakespeare?” Lacey was completely amazed. “Why?”

  “The excitement of live theater, child.” Mamie no doubt meant it as withering scorn, but she was too elated for the comment to emerge as anything but an insight.

  “The Bard speaks to all cultures and all ages,” Ogden pontificated, “provided they can see his stories come alive on the stage, not have to labor through an alien vocabulary on the printed page.”

  Barry nodded. “They are following the story line from the action they see, even if they miss many of the words. Congratulations, friends. You are reaching them!”

  “But how?” Larry seemed completely at a loss. “Characterization, interpretation, concentration—it’s all swallowed up in the sheer need to be heard!”

  “Nonetheless, the characters are emerging,” Winston said, his eyes glowing. “Our concentration is definitely beginning to develop. The interaction with the audience does it, my lad. There is something about knowing that the people out there appreciate what you are doing that makes the character come alive within you in a way nothing else can!”

  Ramou came hurrying in, passing out inch-wide wafers. “Body mikes, Mister Tallendar! Chovy sent somebody to rustle up a sound system, and Charlie got it set up and working!”

  A cheer went up from the whole company.

  “Pity.” Mamie sighed. “I was almost looking forward to straining my corset in this delightfully new way.”

  “I wasn’t.” Lacey rubbed her throat. “I wasn’t sure I could keep it up for another hour.”

  “Praise heaven, you should not have to,” Barry said, but Ogden reached over and knocked on the nearest seat.

  “It’s as close as we can come to knocking on wood. Hopefully, St. Vidicon will keep our microphones working—but if Finagle should triumph, be ready to project again.”

  “The caution is well taken,” Barry agreed. “Something so quickly set up, may just as quickly fail. We should have some respite, though.”

  Chovy came running in, grinning from ear to ear, and Ramou looked up. “What did Publius say?”

  “He says to hold the curtain!” Chovy exulted. “They’re still pouring in!”

  Another cheer made the walls ring.

  As it died, I developed a suspicion. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

  Chovy shrugged modestly. “Had a few lads in the audience, ready to take word to some more lads outside, that’s all. Each one told ten, and each of them called up ten more—you know how word gets around.”

  “Apparently not as well as you do.” Barry exhaled.

  “Young man, when this is over, I don’t suppose you would be interested in a position as a publicist?”

  “What, traipsing from planet to planet?” Chovy’s grin vanished. “Thanks for the sweet word, mate, but I couldn’t think of it. This is my world here, and my people and my work. It’s my life, is all.”

  “Can’t see that working in an oxygen plant on a boondock planet is much of a future,” Larry muttered, so low that only Winston and I could hear him, and that only because we were right next to him. My own inclinations agreed with his—but there was some quality in Chovy’s tone, some earnestness, that I had never seen in him before. I stared at him, startled, and saw an iron determination there for just a second, before he masked it with his customary, devil-may-care grin. For some reason, it seized my spinal column with chills and gave my vitals a stab of foreboding.

  But Barry was saying, “Back up onstage, friends! We must be ready for Publius’s signal! Chovy, if you would be good enough to continue as courier … ?”

  “Ramou won’t let me, in costume,” Chovy answered, “but I’ve got a cousin running for us. Little scaper,
still in school.”

  Which meant that he knew these halls very well and would no doubt be an extremely efficient channel of communication.

  “Thank you!” Barry turned to us all, eyes gleaming. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!”

  “Wrong play,” Larry muttered, but even he couldn’t make it sound like the sneer he intended. We all streamed out the door, eager for action.

  Boy, did we have action! I mean, I had it bad enough, trying to argue my superannuated juvenile delinquents into their camouflage outfits—branches tied to their helmets, tabards of leaves. Out on stage, Winston and the ladies were having a field day.

  Horace told me it was a very appreciative audience. Winston told me they cheered damn near every line—and when the witches were on, I could hear the whistling and stamping all the way down to the locker rooms. I had to come up and see it, risking leaving my gang to Chovy’s tender mercies.

  They really loved the drunken porter. I mean, the way Marty was playing it, it would have gotten laughs without any words at all—but why the audience roared with mirth when he greeted the equivocator, I couldn’t tell. It was the line about not being able to equivocate between God and the devil—and come to think of it, maybe the roars weren’t entirely amused. They sure were approving, though. They booed the murderers with a ferocity I couldn’t believe, and when Banquo called, “Fly, good Fleance, fly!” and rolled over dead, I thought the audience was going to come give him a hero’s funeral right then and there. So I wasn’t too surprised that they really loved the banquet scene—why, I don’t know, but every time Macbeth looked up and saw Banquo’s ghost, the audience howled their approval. When Lady Macbeth cried, “Stay not upon the order of your going!” and chased the barons out, she was met with a roar that rocked the set.

  Susanne was bright-eyed and breathless. “They love us! They really love us!”

  “It’s not us, dearie,” Lacey said sourly. “It’s a couple of hussies who happen to look like us, and who they think are available. When you go out the stage door tonight, keep a hand on your girdle.”