The Green leader was younger than me. She leaned in to murmur to Liz, something about a security search.
“Now?” Liz demanded. “In the middle of a rehearsal?”
The woman shrugged, then signaled her squad to proceed. Four of them poked unconvincingly among the artificial flora. The other eight headed straight for the Eye.
“Hold it,” Liz objected. “You said ‘search the hall.’ ”
I felt it, a subtle shift of the energy in the room. Out on the floor, the volume escalated abruptly.
“No way!” Pen yelled. “She does that, she takes the scene entirely!”
“Whoa, easy.” Howie had not yet noticed the Greens beginning their search. “It’s perfectly within her character.”
“But it’s my moment!” Pen threw his script. The crack as it hit the floor stopped the Greens short. Eleven heads swiveled toward their leader.
“You think every moment’s yours!” Tua retorted. “Whether it’s in the script or not!”
Howie’s hands made swimming motions. “Let’s talk this over quietly.”
Tua gestured rudely. “He couldn’t play a quiet scene if his life depended on it.”
Lucienne and Tuli burst into high-pitched giggles, like teenagers overreacting. The Eye was moving about without really moving. The patrol captain’s head jerked toward them and back as Pen began to pace in tight, angry circles.
“Is this part of the play?” she demanded.
“Not last time I checked the script,” Liz replied.
“Little Miss Jealous Nobody!” Pen barked. “Trying to undermine me from the beginning, but I’m putting a stop to it!”
Mali rose from the floor, every muscle intent on Pen. I expected Sam, his peace-keeping strong-arm, to follow. But Sam stayed put, edging closer to Ule, murmuring with Moussa. The Greens flicked silent questions at their captain, drawing closer to the light from the windows, away from the shadowed perimeter of the hall.
“You’ll do what your director tells you,” Mali rumbled.
Howie stepped in front of Mali. “Please. Let me handle this.”
Pen shoved past him. “Who are you, telling me what to do?”
“Your elder.”
“Please,” Howie begged. “Please!”
“Elder?” Pen snarled in Mali’s face. “Useless old man!”
A collective growl erupted from the sidelines as the other actors scrambled up in protest. A soft ululation began, Lucienne and Tuli holding hands and chanting, louder and louder until Omea joined them. The Greens’ eyes widened. Something nudged my elbow. A script lay on the table where there’d been none before. Sam stood a few paces away, watching the fracas.
The patrol captain shook Liz’s arm. “Aren’t you going to stop this?”
“They’d be after us in a second if we interfered.”
The Green went a little limp and backed up a step. Sam turned, meeting my inquisitive glance head-on. His blue eyes reminded me of the papers they’d been passing, like the pipe, no longer in evidence. My hand stole to the script beside me, easing it under the crook of my arm. Sam’s eyes lidded in a half smile. He turned away.
“Goddamn!” Howie yelled. “Can’t you people get along?”
He won a silence he hadn’t expected. The Eye stared at him.
“Settle your damn differences outside the rehearsal hall,” he grumbled anticlimactically.
“Howie,” Liz called softly, “we’ve got another problem.”
After that, the search was over quickly. Mali drew himself up scowling before the green-uniformed boy who approached him so tentatively, then laughed out loud. He reached into his jeans pockets and pulled them inside out, spreading his arms. “Help yourself, bro.”
Of course, nothing was found. Except the patrol leader’s ID card, which miraculously turned up in Sam’s shirt pocket. Even Ule was squeaky clean. The suspicious books in Mali’s backpack that the skinny Green insisted his superior inspect were revealed to be three novels by Thomas Hardy, all properly signed out of the Harmony Free Library. The patrol leader took Howie’s word that this was not subversive material.
The Greens did not search Howie or Liz or her assistants. They did not search me, sitting silent at the production table with my hand resting gently on Sam’s script. I was pretty sure where the blue papers had gone, but I did wonder how he’d managed to totally disappear Ule’s smoking pipe.
“By the way,” Howie asked as the Greens were leaving, “who did you say sent you up here?”
The patrol leader blinked at him. “Why, your office, Mr. Marr. I understood it was at your own request.”
“Ah,” said Howie, “my overzealous staff again. They know I’ve been concerned about all this recent harassment of my actors.”
The Green leader was young but not stupid. “Sorry for the trouble, Mr. Marr,” she murmured, and got on out of there.
When the door shut behind them, Howie growled, “Liz, get Kim on line. I want to know who the hell made that call!”
Sam wandered up to retrieve his script just as I was realizing the Greens would have arrested me if they’d found me with anything suspicious. “Easier to make an elephant disappear than a nickel,” he remarked.
“What’s a nickel?”
“Never mind.”
“What made you so sure they wouldn’t search me?”
“Long experience as a person of no color.”
That sounded too personal to ask him what he meant. “Do I get to know what they would have found if they had?”
He looked down, tapping the script gently against his palm, then flipped it open, and handed over a thin stack of pamphlets and a sheet of newsfax. The newsfax was a HarmoNet editorial about the Conch. The pamphlets were sky-blue and crudely manufactured. The cover was blank. I pushed them back at him.
“Coward,” he grinned. He slid the papers into the script. “Now you’ll never know.”
HARMONET/COMMENT:
08/03/46
The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the network.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE CONCH?
CITIZEN’S EDITORIAL by Charles E. Pluck, Ph.D.
Many citizens in Harmony have lately found themselves absorbing information about a little place they may have thought was a vid show fantasy kingdom, the Isle of Tuatua in the South Pacific.
What was indeed the stuff of fantasy is turning into the grim meat of old nightmares as the island tumbles into civil war. Why should we in fortunate Harmony concern ourselves with the fate of a far-off speck in the ocean?
Because the issue in this war involves us intimately. The surface issue is to dome or not to dome, a question Harmony has not had to consider since our Founder Families first fought through the rights and wrongs of that question. But camouflaged by that accessible and hoary debate is one much more insidious and far-reaching.
There is no better image of this insidiousness than the elusive anti-domer figurehead, the CONCH.
Read his so-called writings, his speeches, his ultimatums to the legitimate government of Tuatua. Do they sound familiar?
Read the writings of Open Sky leader Ingrid Hibberd, and the connection will be obvious.
Though he masquerades behind the banner of mythology and an indigenous people’s understandable if impractical concern for the preservation of an ancient religious tradition, this Conch is clearly an operative for Open Sky. That traitorous organization seeks the destruction of the peace and security and quality of life fought for and won by domer soldiers and pioneers all over the world, those same rights we in Harmony are pledged to maintain.
If the Conch is indeed hiding out among us, as some have reason to believe, we must do all we can to swiftly root him out before he can work the nefarious business of the Open Sky conspiracy here in Harmony, exploiting the weak at heart, perverting the innocent minds of our children, and threatening the end of the world as we know it.
BETRAYAL:
Cris was madly jealous that h
e’d missed the raid.
“You know they were just looking for the guy with the big ‘CONCH’ sign around his neck,” he insisted at breakfast.
Because I went straight to the Arkadie, I didn’t see the newest e-mail salvo until mid-morning when Hickey slouched into our dressing room-paint shop. He tossed me a folded paper glider. “You might want to take a look at this.”
I flattened it out on the counter.
CITIZENS OF HARMONY! BETRAYAL FROM WITHIN! OUR ADOPTED CHILDREN NOW SHIELD OUR ENEMIES! CLOSE THE DOOR!
Clever, getting in that word adopted. The CDL had made both its targets into one.
“Very funny.” I crumpled it as if it were nothing, a cartoon, but Jane read my eyes and snatched the paper from my hand.
“But it’s a lie! How can they just say things like that!” She threw it away as if it had bitten her. “Oh god!”
Hickey retrieved it, refolded it, and skimmed it into a waste can. “Sticks and stones. Until someone puts their name to this bullshit, it’s not going to fly with the people.”
“The people will believe it!” Jane exploded. “The people want to believe it, the people who vote, the people who run things, the people who want Harmony all to themselves! Damn Howie Marr!”
“Jane, Howie couldn’t have known—”
“He could have thought one second about something but himself and making his big splash! Damn this play! Damn the Eye and their goddamn Conch!”
I was on the verge of saying something Crispinish, like making a big splash is what being an artist is all about. Hickey took the male route. He tried to put his arms around her.
Jane shrieked and struggled free, her eyes showing too much white. “They can’t just come in here and wreck our lives like this!”
There were voices down the hall. I grabbed her and shook her.
Hickey padded to the door, his finger to his lips.
“There’s no need for such extreme action,” Howie was insisting. “We do that, we play right into this Close-the-Door thing.”
The other voice asked, “But just between you and me, any ideas which one of them it might be?”
At the door, Hickey mouthed: “Cam Brigham.”
“Which…?” The approaching footsteps stopped. “Cam, I am doing an important play with ten very talented actors, you hear? We are not harboring any felons, we are not involved in political intrigue, we are doing a play!”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Fuck me, I don’t believe this!”
“Howard, we need to think of the safety of our staff. These Open Sky types are dangerous.”
“They’re not… damn it, Cam, I won’t do it! I will not buckle in to this cowardly anonymous pressure! I will not close my show down because of some smear campaign before my actors get a chance to prove themselves! Cam, Cam, what’s the matter with you? I know you didn’t like this project, but are you really going to let your theatre get pushed around by some two-bit coffee-klatsch without even the balls to identify itself?”
Silently I applauded. Hickey offered a grudging nod.
Brigham was calm to the point of condescension. “It’s the Arkadie’s reputation I’m trying to protect. We don’t want ourselves identified in the marketplace with sedition and anarchy.”
“Our reputation is made by the quality of our Art!”
“Howard, what’s lost but a few tickets if we send these people on their way? I can square it with Reede, and Reilly can get on with finishing Crossroads the way it should be.”
“Crossroads!” Howie spat. “You haven’t even been near my rehearsal hall! You haven’t a clue what you’re trying to shut down!”
“He’s right,” Jane hissed. “They should close it down!”
I glared at her.
“Censorship is bad enough!” Howie let rage shove his voice down into his diaphragm where great performances are born. “But censorship based solely on preconception and innuendo…! Have you forgotten where you are? Have you forgotten the principles your own Founder Father helped to frame?”
“Oh rubbish, Howard. This is not censorship, it’s business sense. All this crap about risk taking. People don’t want risks. Times are hard. They want to feel safe in the theatre.”
“Times were one hell of a lot harder when Harmony was built in order to protect the right to take risks!”
Brigham chuckled tolerantly. “But we’re not that little enclave of wild-eyed idealists anymore, are we, doing Art to please ourselves? Harmony serves a wider public now. The Arkadie needs to stay alert to the changing times if we expect to hold on to our share of the trade.”
“Why do you think I put that piece of shit Crossroads on the schedule? Your needs have been satisfied, Cam. Leave me to mine. And no more sneak-search orders coming out of your office with my name on ’em! You want to muck around with Crossroads, that’s between you and your buddy-buddy Bill Rand, but keep your fucking hands off my show!”
Howie stormed off toward the theatre. Brigham continued in our direction, glancing automatically through the open door as he passed. He was scowling and barely seemed to notice us.
When he’d gone on down the hall, Hickey sagged against the doorframe. “Collaboration… the very soul of Art.”
“This show is going to be the death of us,” Jane moaned.
“Oh, Jane!” I snatched the crumpled e-mail out of the trash and shook it in her face. “These CDL people have already decided against us! We’ve got to help the people who’re on our side!”
“Like the Conch?”
“Maybe!” I returned, too hotly.
“I knew it.” Her mouth shrank to a pucker in her face. She swallowed her next thought and bent her head over her work.
“Well, I think I’ll go watch some more shit hit the fan,” Hickey drawled morosely. “Any estimate on finishing these gizmos?”
“Get me more paint help and we might make it by opening.”
Hickey grunted and left. Jane and I painted in silence for several minutes, then she set her brush down carefully and walked out. Half an hour later she was back, red-eyed but, I hoped, recovered. We worked without speaking until Micah arrived at noon for a promised conference with Sean.
He also brought the e-mail, carrying it like a piece of garbage he was looking for a place to dump.
I waved my wet brush at it. “Seen it already.”
“I’m glad you’re taking it so well,” he said.
My eyes flicked to Jane. “Some of us.”
Micah crushed the sheet in one hand. “It really is time to put a stop to this.”
Jane raised her head.
“How?” I asked.
“There’ll be a good many people turning up at Town Meeting this week who don’t usually bother to go when civic matters are progressing normally.”
Jane muttered, “Town Meeting isn’t ‘til Thursday!”
“And nothing is going to happen until then,” Micah returned pointedly. To me he said, “We’re meeting Sean in Rachel’s office ten minutes ago. You ready?”
* * *
Sean seemed weary but in control. He grinned at me and shook Micah’s hand. “How are ya, buddy?”
Micah returned his smile. “On my second round of bids for Marin. Hope I look better than you do.”
Sean shook his head. “Sweet sufferin’ Jesus, this is a ball-breaker! My wife thinks I’ve left her.”
“Bill Rand’s very involved in Big,” said Micah.
“Ah, Bill’s okay. It’s Eider who’s killing me.” Sean sank gratefully into an upholstered chair. “So here’s the story.”
Rachel ended a phone call and settled in to listen.
“I’ve got three men busting ass on your show right now. Soon as Crossroads is loaded in, I’ll break more crew off that. Long as we can keep Howie out of the theatre, we’ll be done but the painting by first tech.”
“Including the effects and mechanics?” Micah inquired.
Sean’s eyes strayed to the powder blue walls with
their three framed prints. “Probably have to work some kinks out during technicals.”
“I’d like to see a coat of paint on it before Louisa starts setting light levels.”
“And pal o’ mine, I’d like to give it to you! It’s just… where is Lou? Electrics still hasn’t got a plot from her!”
“Amsterdam. I sent her drawings.” Micah refused the diversion. “What would it take to get the necessary paint time?”
Sean offered up a brittle grin. “How ’bout a miracle?”
Rachel stirred within the fortress of her desk. “I think our most pressing problem is that I can think of no way of keeping Howard out of the theatre.”
“Whadda ya mean?” said Sean. “Why?”
Rachel shrugged. “It is his theatre.”
“C’mon, Rache, we go through this every time. He doesn’t need it.”
“He thinks he does. Howie’s not insensitive to your needs, Sean. He’s discussed it with me thoroughly, and it’s his feeling that in light of recent events, keeping this particular cast within the safer confines of this building is critical enough to risk putting a little extra strain on the technical departments.”
“A little?”
Micah leaned forward. “Rachel, I really think Howard must let us have the theatre.”
“He is adamant.” Rachel arranged a row of paper clips on her desk. “But here’s good news. Reede Chamberlaine says he’s heard all the way from London how far behind we are. He’s agreed to put in an additional sum if we can match it. After some financial gymnastics, I found what we need. I can make this money available to Sean for overhire.”
“Oh, marvelous,” said Micah.
But Sean didn’t look relieved. He looked cornered. “You got money out of Chamberlaine?”
Micah was already gearing up. “This means we can put on a night crew without burning up your permanent staff.”
“No, we can’t.” Sean was shaking his head slowly, as if there was something he could not quite come to grips with.
“Well,” said Micah, “however you want to do it.”
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