“We’re wondering how’s the magic trick,” announced Howie genially.
“Coming, it’s coming.” Sean shuffled some papers on his desk.
“Yeah? And how do you figure it?”
Sean moved over to the drawing board. He hauled the ground plan out from under the pile of prints and smoothed it flat with splayed hands. “Show me exactly where you need this guy to disappear.”
Howie stabbed a forefinger at a spot downstage center.
“Right,” said Sean. “Well, what I’m thinking is maybe a light curtain, a one-man elevator, and a small reflecting force field around it, set into the deck.”
Howie whistled. “Small enough for one man?”
“Yup.” Sean was still not meeting Howie’s eyes.
“You ever seen one that small?”
“No, but me and my mechanic are working up some modifications to the smallest one we can order. It’s expensive, but it’ll be just the thing.”
“Invisible?”
“I’d rather say transparent. Totally new look. Not effectsy, y’know?”
“And it’s safe?”
“Hey, have I killed any of your actors so far?”
Howie chuckled. “Hell, go for it. The business is crucial, so don’t worry about the expense. If we have to, we’ll take it out of something else.”
“What else?” I worried. But I was delighted to have at least one bit of good news to carry back to my boss.
“Just so long as we don’t bankrupt the entire organization,” laughed Howie.
“Oh no,” said Sean, “Crossroads is going to do that.”
This reminded Howie of Cam Brigham again, and he frowned into his empty beer. “Sean, my man, who do I talk to about getting some better lighting down in the lower lobby?” He turned to me with a wolfish grin. “I’ll show that s.o.b. I’ll turn that piss-poor lobby into the best damn gallery in Harmony!”
WORLDNET/NEWS
07/23/46
BANGKOK, 07/22/46
Mirek Labs revealed today that six tons of pharmaceuticals were lost in shipment between Bangkok and Lahore last week. Mirek investigator Rima Parseghian discounted rumors of Outside interference. “Vacuum-tube technology is far too sophisticated for any Outsider to understand, let alone manipulate,” Ms. Parseghian stated. “Even if they could dig a hole deep enough to access a tube, the idea of them being able to do it in the Indian Wasteland is even more absurd.” She advised that her company will begin secretly marking drug shipments to be able to trace the stolen goods when they reappear in the marketplace.
STOCKHOLM, 07/22/46 Special to WorldNet/News
Civil order has been reestablished in all quarters after Tuesday’s outbreak of violence during a circum-dome march to protest the detention for psychiatric evaluation of Open Sky spokeswoman Ingrid Hibberd. The radical anti-dome faction had promised a peaceful demonstration, but Security Police were summoned when Open Sky marchers assaulted bystanders who pelted them with vegetables and rotten fruit.
TUAMATUTETUAMATU, 07/21/46
The Port City police declared a “state of urgency” today in response to the latest series of strikes by plantation and hotel workers protesting the planned Enclosure of the island. A “state of urgency” is described as having lesser status than martial law. It imposes a ban on public assembly and rescinds the civil rights of laborers remaining off the job after the declaration goes into force.
The Planters’ Association made accusations of sabotage last week when fire destroyed two warehouses containing a recent harvest of coffee beans. Several suspects are being held for questioning, but the police have been unable to apprehend their chief suspect, the mysterious Conch, despite the substantial reward being offered for his capture. The Conch was recently indicted on charges of inciting to riot, sabotage, and treason. Tuatuan officials have said the trial will proceed in the Conch’s absence if he refuses to appear as ordered.
MARK:
“It sounds feasible,” allowed Micah the next morning when I told him about Sean’s force-field idea. “Have Cris look into it.”
Cris was running a test of some Marin reprogramming in the conference room. Through the open doorway, I saw little red and purple holographic dragons squaring off over the white tabletop.
“Sean said it would be expensive,” I told Micah. “I got the feeling it was still very much in the planning stages.” With non-computer-generated special effects, we usually knew what was possible in theory, but were at the mercy of the “outside experts” when it came to the mechanical details. This was one of the things that made a thinking, innovative builder like Sean so valuable.
“Well, he’s got time, if he moves along with it.” Micah went back to his sketch for Willow Street’s Fire! Sean didn’t have a lot of time, just under four weeks before the set was due in the theatre. Micah’s confidence in him soothed any real anxiety, but I’d have felt easier if the build had at least been started.
It was after that, really, that the problems began.
With Bela gone, we had expected a new face in the studio next door. But Marie reported that the Apprentice Administration had finally suggested she make do with one assistant for a while.
“Sure, I’ll manage,” she allowed, “but really!”
Mark sat further down the cluttered lunch table, empty chairs to either side of him. After three weeks his sad, angry manner still asked for space to mourn. Songh sat opposite, shy but solicitous as a nursemaid, honoring Mark’s vigil with his own soulful silence.
“Perhaps some form of formal protest…” Micah offered.
Marie fluttered her hands. “Not worth it. Plenty of SecondGen kids working in the costume shops—I’ll groom one of them.”
Micah looked thoughtful. “Attrition,” he murmured.
“Beg pardon?”
“Attrition. That’s how they’ll do it.”
They exchanged sober glances over the lunch table, then Marie changed the subject abruptly. “The stitchers are saying the Eye’s laid a curse on the costume shop.”
The perfect intro for a shop tale, but shop tales had always been Bela’s province. We’d suffered through some sober lunches lately without him.
“Well, not the whole shop,” Marie explained. “One of the sewing machines, actually. The one that’s been biting people a lot because the shop’s too busy to retire it for repair. Now nobody’ll use it.”
“Why do they say it’s Eye?” I asked.
“Because it’s more fun than the real reason. Haven’t you been hearing the voodoo rumors running around the theatre?”
“The Eye does not practice voodoo,” said Crispin.
“Well, whatever you call it. Plus all these threats about what happens if you violate a taboo. One of Liz’s assistants fell off his bike the other day, and now he’s saying it was Te-Cucularit getting even because this kid scolded him for being late to rehearsal. That got the girls in a state.” Marie smiled, leaning over her plate. “Or how about this? We had a fitting with two of the men the other day—they showed up an hour late, which for them is almost on time, but all the tailors had gone home. Jorgen said go ahead anyway, then was called to the phone. Ah, the look on little Sarah’s face when those two hunks, Moussa like some oiled ebony god and our young holo-hero Pen, dropped trow right there in front of her!”
“She works in a costume shop,” Cris said. “She should be used to seeing people undress.”
“But, my dear, you do have to get extremely intimate to fit this particular garment. It’s nothing but a long strip of cloth, and it requires some, uh, manual adjustment to get it into place.”
“As it were,” said Micah.
Out of respect for Mark, I was trying not to laugh out loud. Marie was so bright and animated and a wonderful mimic, especially of Jorgen, the sour, self-pitying head of the Ark’s costume shop. He was good at his job, but nobody liked him much. Sarah was a SecondGen seamstress, and only seventeen.
“They could have left their jocks on,” remark
ed Jane.
“Moussa thought he could make it easier if he helped, but because he’s as naughty as my five-year-old, he couldn’t resist teasing her a little…” Marie writhed like a belly dancer, pitching her voice as low as she could to groan in comic ecstasy. “Then Pen got impatient and uppity like he does, and by the time Jorgen returned, poor Sarah was in tears and a terror with the pins and Jorgen finally had to send her home.”
The thought of Jorgen dampened Marie’s hilarity. She stirred her coffee, tapped the rim with her spoon. “Jorgen said later they ought to be thankful they’re in Harmony instead of back home in all that mess and why don’t they behave themselves? Now he’s pissed at me and Howie and the cast and starting to give me reasons why he can’t do this or that, and the stitchers still refuse to use machine seven and Jorgen blames that on the Eye as well.” Marie flopped back in her chair with a sigh. “What ever happened to professionalism?”
“They do seem to be a handful,” Micah conceded.
“They’re not so bad! They’re just…” Marie’s blousy sleeves and dark hair flew about her head. “Well, so we’re getting a lot of attitude! Most of the time they’re just trying to have fun! These people sit at the sewing tables all day and gossip and bitch about how bored they are, then when something new shows up, all they do is complain that it’s not what they imagined it would be!”
Mark broke his silence suddenly. “It’s just like clothing.”
All of us waited for him to continue.
His eyes were tired, half-lidded, and his full mouth tight from holding in his grief. But his voice was steady with conviction. “It’s a question of signals. Because we live in the same small world, us and the Eye and everyone, we share a set of surface signals—clothing, haircuts, expressions—but all these signals carry subtext, and subtext is very local. We didn’t grow up in the Eye’s subtext, so the signals get crossed. We misinterpret them. Because the surfaces are often familiar, we interpret some signals as if they were our own when they’re not, and some as different when really they’re just the same. People get uptight when they suspect they’re misreading someone. They feel ignorant. It makes them want to blame the other person.”
This was a big bite to chew on. Finally Micah shifted in his seat, nodding gravely. “Very well said, Mark.”
“Yeah,” Cris seconded softly. And since there was not much one could add after that, lunch ended then and there.
Songh’s glance followed Mark back to Marie’s studio. I decided he had found a new hero, one who might not give him as hard a time as Crispin always did.
Back at my drawing table, I said to myself, Now, that’s the way a costume designer should think. But was any talent worth sacrificing the less talented? Would keeping Bela on really have meant the eventual loss of both? How could such choices be weighed? The only thing I was sure of was I was grateful the decision wasn’t mine.
RUN-THROUGH:
What finally pushed Micah out of the studio was Sean calling up to complain. “Damn stage managers won’t give me the friggin’ model ‘til you and Howie have a little chat about it!”
But Howie wasn’t at rehearsal when we arrived, sweaty and irritable from the Friday matinee crowds. There was a basketball game going on. Not on the video feed. Right there in the room.
The hall shimmered with noise and pounding feet and a rainbow of racing, naked skin. Mali and Cu, stripped to their jeans, were teamed with Omea against Moussa the giant, young Pen, and Sam. Only the magician Sam wore shoes, I noticed. Omea’s flowing rehearsal skirt was hiked up around her thighs. Lucienne laughingly guarded a trash can at one end of the hall, and Tuli a smaller metal wastebasket at the other. Matching goalies, dark and light. Even the sultry siren Tua cheered like a tomboy from the sidelines.
Liz Godwin’s amiable calm was showing strain. She sat at the production table winding the ends of her red curls around her pencil and tapping her foot. The other stage managers pretended to be busy, even the assistant with the splinted ankle, fresh from his mysterious bicycle accident. Overhead, birds fluttered in the rafters.
Micah surveyed the chaos with bemused astonishment. “Did Howard give up and go home?” I was amazed myself. Serious, dignified Mali and maternal Omea scrambling around like adolescents?
“Howie,” replied Liz heavily, “is down at Town Hall, bailing out our choreographer.”
“Whatever for?”
Harmony’s jail was a block of small holding cells where inebriated tourists could sleep it off. To discourage its use as an impromptu hotel, bail was exorbitant.
Liz shut her eyes and took a ragged breath. “Security found Ule asleep in Founders’ Park this morning. Just lying there, right on the grass, happy as a clam.”
“And?”
“They arrested him, of course.”
I looked to Micah. “Is that a crime?”
He sucked his teeth uncomfortably. “There are vagrancy laws, I suppose.”
“He’s not a vagrant!” I recalled what Hickey had said. “He just hates sleeping indoors!”
“Indoors is where you’re supposed to sleep!” Liz shook her head, realizing how that sounded. “I mean, he should have known better. How’s this going to look for Howie and the Arkadie? They give you these big airs of spiritual superiority, then they go and do a thing like this.”
“He probably never thought—” I protested.
“Well, he should have!” she snapped, and immediately regretted it. “Look, it’s just, you know, the world is watching.”
The ball slipped through Pen’s damp fingers and careened toward us. Sam bounded after it, silent and agile as a cat. He snatched the ball away an inch from my head, then grinned at my defensive cringe, and spread his arms wide. “Ha!” For an instant, the ball vanished. Then he had it again and was whirling back to the game. His T-shirt, as he turned, lifted to reveal long, parallel scars across his lower back. Old scars, pale against his biscuit-colored skin, at least a dozen of them. I stared after him.
“And then,” Liz was saying, “there’s this charming little thing.”
She grabbed a fold of paper and flipped it open in front of us. An e-mail printout, without identifying lettercode or signature.
“ ‘Citizens of Harmony,’ ” Micah read, “ ‘the door is open. Do you know who your neighbors are?’ ”
“What is that?” My vehemence surprised even me.
Micah eyed me curiously. “It was in the public-message board this morning.”
Liz said, “It was also taped to the front door of the Arkadie, and to the door here, and not to any other door I know of.”
“Howie’s street artist?” I offered brightly, wishing I’d never heard of the Closed Door League. “Trying out a new medium.”
“Yeah? So why is he picking on us?” She stuffed the paper away in her notebook. “Don’t tell them.”
“Them?”
She nodded toward the basketball players. “Howie doesn’t want them upset by stuff that doesn’t concern them. They’re distracted enough by what’s going on back home.”
A rolling clatter rocked the hall as Pen darted beneath Cu’s guarding arm and dunked the ball into the wastebasket. Cu was dancer-graceful but too controlled to match Pen’s loose, aggressive style. Tuli clapped her hands to her eyes and squealed with laughter. The wastebasket toppled and rattled off into a corner. Pen hooted and strutted. Cu scowled. He sent Tuli a rude gesture, which only made her laugh harder. Noting her lean bare arms, I began to doubt my memory of that first rehearsal day. Was it Tuli who’d been wearing the sling? Certainly no sign of injury now.
Mali trotted after wastebasket and ball. “Ho, Cu, you gotta watch out for these little guys!”
Pen tossed a punch at his ear as he passed. Mali ducked and swerved, laughing. Pen swore and bolted after him to swing at him again.
“Yah, bro!” Mali danced out of the younger man’s reach. The troupe’s pensive elder statesman was transformed into a grinning maniac. He whirled and sprinted away to scoop u
p the ball, then dribbled it a few times in Pen’s direction, tempting him to swing again. Tuli scrambled to restore her wastebasket. Cu moved in to cover. In the center of the hall, Omea leaped and yelled for the ball, while big Moussa and solid, compact Sam waited like a wall of dark and light behind her. A flock of small birds landed in a line on the overhead crossbeam, watching.
Mali sighted on Omea and stretched his long, flat-muscled arm to throw, the ball balanced on his palm. He hesitated, then pivoted, and lobbed the ball in a high, gliding arc toward the front entrance.
All eyes followed this sudden change of trajectory. The ball hit the floor once and bounded straight into No-Mulelatu’s hands as he jogged through the doorway.
He was barefoot in ragged cutoffs. A knitted wool cap perched on his braided hair. His plain white shirt hung open to his chest, the long shirttails flapping. Small wonder Security took him for a vagrant. On a thong around his neck, he wore a dark, carved bead just like mine. The one I still wasn’t wearing around the Eye.
The little choreographer caught Mali’s throw without breaking stride. He bounced the ball twice, let out a high-pitched yodel, and charged into the game. The others cheered in welcome.
I scolded myself for easy credulity, but it was hard not to see prescience in the perfect timing of Mali’s throw.
Howie halted in the doorway. “What is this, recess?” he growled at Liz. “Are we doing a run-through today or not?”
She look back at him helplessly. I thought she might cry, but she caught herself and produced a stony grin. “Just letting the children run off a little steam.”
Across the hall, the game wound down into a muttering huddle as Ule spun the tale of his arrest. Howie turned on Micah instead. “Well. You picked a fine time to show up!”
“What’s a better time?” inquired Micah mildly.
Harmony Page 17
