“Why.” He made a sound like something brittle breaking. “It doesn’t matter why! He’s rationalized it to himself and everyone else—scheduling, time, money, men, whatever, the final straw—but the truth is that he’s chosen to desert an ongoing production because of some agenda of his own and that’s wrong. Not lazy or pragmatic. Just plain wrong.”
“Yes, but what if—”
“No. If we give in and smile and cajole, and accept that this is the way things work, we make a mockery of the whole idea of right and wrong. What are we left with? He who shouts the loudest wins the day, Art and Quality be damned? There goes civilization down the drain.”
“Micah, what if it gets the show built?”
“We can get the show built!” His whole body tensed with conviction. “If we have to become like him to do it, what’s the point?”
I thought of Te-Cucularit then and his stubborn keeping of the old laws, even in the face of risk and ridicule.
Micah said harshly, “All right, I lied! I do care why he’s deserted me! I don’t understand what makes a man like Sean overturn the habits of a lifetime, desert a show, throw a friend to the wolves…!”
I waited while he fought through his outburst and grew grave again and thoughtful. I could offer him nothing, since I didn’t understand, either.
“Sean’s tired,” he mused finally. “We all get tired, I suppose. Burned out. And then the battle no longer seems worthwhile. And that makes us scared, because if it’s not worthwhile, what the hell have we been killing ourselves for all our lives?”
“Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it?” I asked him quietly.
“Every day of my life and oftener, the older I get. So far the answer’s always come back yes. I guess for Sean, it finally came back no.”
SAM:
We decided to sleep in the theatre that night, Cris and Jane and I, to avoid the alternate threats of arrest or mugging on the doorstep of our own dorm. Jane bundled up some musty masking velours for bedding and dragged them into the corner of an empty dressing room.
“We’ll curl up like a pack of Outsider dogs,” I remarked lightly.
Micah frowned. “This is not good. Not good at all.”
“Oh, it’ll be fun,” said Jane dreamily.
After everyone left, I watched Jane make methodical preparations for bed: washing, brushing her teeth with her finger, stripping to her underwear, and hanging her coveralls neatly on a costume rack. Cris came in and hauled a length of velour from the pile.
“I’m crashing next door,” he announced. “Night, all.”
Jane barely seemed to notice.
“Think I’ll just work a little while longer,” I said dispiritedly.
“Don’t stay up too late,” she said, as if she was my mother.
It is definitely not healthy to work alone in an empty theatre. You start remembering every story you’ve heard about theatre ghosts, and there are a lot of them, though I couldn’t recall ever hearing one about the Arkadie. You find yourself trying to work very quietly so you can hear the little noises you don’t want to hear. You can’t even look into the cavernous darkness of the house, in case you should spot the shadowed figure watching you from the balcony or the silhouette lurking in an open lobby door.
But my alternatives were bedding down with a madwoman or having that fight with Crispin that would officially end our relationship. The end I was ready for. The fight I was not. So I went back to work on that rock I hadn’t finished and terrorized myself, listening too hard, keeping my head safely down.
A quiet plop in my water bucket sent my knife skittering across the ragged foam. I held my breath until I was collected enough to look up. A white rose bloomed among the brush handles. The stage seemed as empty, maybe emptier than it had a moment before. The house was dark as well.
“Damn you,” I said aloud.
Sam laughed and emerged from behind the base of the cherry picker. “Only woman I ever met who doesn’t like getting flowers.”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
He dropped to the deck in front of me, sprawling comfortably with his head propped up on one elbow. His gray sweats were well worn and damp, his face faintly flushed. “Sorry.”
“You look like you’ve been running.”
“Have been. Oh, don’t worry. Nothing chasing me tonight. It’s part of the company regime.”
“You do this every night?”
“Ule’d have my head if I didn’t. Been off it since I got myself shit-kicked. You ought to come with me. It’s only six, seven klicks. You domers don’t get enough exercise. I was just heading in when it occurred to me somebody here might need an escort home.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“To your dorm, woman. Safely to your dorm. I’m not an idiot. I can read the signals.”
I turned the block of foam over and resumed work on it. “No, I mean I’m staying here. We all are, ’cause of the new arrest order. The others are already asleep.”
“Oh?” Sam stretched out on his back, arms folded behind his head. He studied the grid thirty meters above. “I passed your asshole boyfriend ten minutes ago on his way to Cora’s.”
I stared at the foam for a bit, then let go of the breath I was holding for no particular reason. “And you just had to come by and tell me about it.”
“What are you mad at me for? It’s him being the jerk.” He rolled onto his side to look at me, and the work light threw his face into shadow. Only my cursed memory placed blue eyes in that darkness. “I liked us better before you figured out I’m hunting you.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“Sure is. Hot pursuit. Now if I can just keep Tua interested in the kid, though I don’t know, with her attention span… ha!” He jabbed a triumphant finger at me. “Almost. Almost a smile. Damn, woman! Why do you fight it so hard?”
I’d been gripping my chunk of foam as if he’d threatened to steal it. I eased my hold and isolated a particular detail to chip away at with great concentration.
Sam swiveled up to face me, cross-legged. “What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“What is it that bothers you? About me.”
“Urn.”
“Come on, I can take it.”
Chipping away, I said, “You frighten me.”
“I… ?” He rocked back with a surprised little laugh. “Why?”
“I don’t… know what you are.”
He was silent a moment, pushing wood scraps around on the floor in front of him. “That’s something two people usually spend awhile finding out together.”
“I don’t mean who, I mean what.”
“What. Hmmm. Well, I’m male, Caucasian, thirty-four, five foot eleven, hundred and seventy-two pounds… ah, let’s see… actor, mostly character roles, reliable company man, blood member of the Clan of the First Station—”
“Sam, that’s not what I—”
“Why do you need to know ahead of time? Ah, stupid question. I forgot where I was.” His eyes raked the ceiling beyond the grid and the invisible ceiling of the dome beyond that. “The Land of Borders and Limits.”
Goaded, I let it out at last. “Does Te-Cucularit really think the world will end if the Clans can’t walk the Stations?”
Sam looked annoyed. “Is this about the Preacher or me?”
“Well, does he?”
“Probably he does. TeCu needs his reality tightly structured.”
“And you?”
“Do I believe? That depends on your definition of the end of the world.” When I frowned, he said, “Not the right answer, eh?”
“Sam, I need to… when you were hurt… what healed you so fast?”
“Again?” His mouth quirked. He settled back on one elbow and grinned at me. “Ah. Is that it, love? Spooked by a little garden-variety magic?”
“Was it?”
“Magic?”
“Was it?”
“Is that what you want?”
My han
ds clenched. “I want the truth!”
“The truth. Hmmm.” He nodded, sat up. “Easier said than done in this world.”
“Something that is not an act or a lie, not a manipulation, not a subterfuge, not a—”
“Hey!” He caught my pinwheeling arms. “Easy now, come on. In my experience, the truth is as slippery as everything else. But I’ll make you a deal: the truth between us, or the closest thing we can come up with.” He released my wrists. “But just between us.”
“You mean, don’t tell anybody.”
“No one.” He watched me carefully.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “We like to play our cards close to the chest.”
I’d agree to anything to get a few answers. “Okay.”
He slid closer, picking at the loose threads on the cuff of my coveralls. “What healed me. And yes, I know you’re going to ask, Tuli also. Omea is Third Station. Her clan has practiced for centuries a kind of earth magic that is nothing more terrifying than the homeopathy the frontiers of medical research have been struggling toward for the last hundred years: the body repairs itself notably faster in a certain kind of deep trance where all the energies and processes can be dedicated to the healing. Omea can induce this trance and encourage its efficiency with the herbal pharmacopoeia that is the heritage of her clan. It’s magic that can’t end or begin a life, but can certainly help save it, as it has mine on more than one occasion.”
“You mean, once the physical repair was done… ?”
He nodded. “Dr. Jaeck glued together what he could, the trance state did the rest. Helps if you’re good at holding trance—Mali and the Preacher are great at it, I’m only so-so—but it’s pretty simple. Is it really magic? Omea says yes. I say, depends on your definition.”
Lacking a definition was precisely my problem.
“You’re disappointed.”
“No, I—”
“You are.” He grinned sourly. “Bet you’d hop right into bed with me if I were the Conch.”
“You don’t understand.”
His voice gentled. “Yes, I do. I went through it, too. I wasn’t born to this blood, remember.” His finger traced the seam of my pant leg up to my calf, heading for my thigh, but stopped at my kneecap, tapping gently, once, twice. “Gwinn, don’t think less of magic for being the product of a human skill. Magic makes you question. It teaches you awe and reverence. Our ability to make magic is our only true claim to divinity. You want that lecture, too?”
I smiled at my block of foam. “And I thought Mali was the talker. Yes. The lecture, please.”
“Rightio. My own magic, for instance.” Sam sat up, elbows on his knees. “I run my routines every day in front of a mirror, without fail, wherever I am. I know I’ve got it right when a trick is magic even to me. Just that split second where the sleight works so well that I believe it entirely.”
It was like when he talked politics. His concentration gathered. The woman beside him, an object of trivial pursuit, fell out of focus before his passion for his craft. His hands sketched deft and complicated sequences in the air. His eyes and body placed his ideal audience somewhere out in the dark pit of the empty house. I relaxed in my obscurity, riveted.
“In your theatre, your effects tech can make anything seem real. Your audiences ooh and ahh, but in admiration, not in wonder. They know they’re surrounded by machines.
“In my theatre, there’s only my hands and my ability to distract you from what those hands are really up to—to misdirect, as we say, from the actual business. Magic is creating in someone else or even yourself that blessed willing suspension of disbelief, that conviction for the time or forever that there’s absolutely no other explanation for what they’ve just seen happen. No holos. No lasers. No projections. Not even the old-fashioned traps and mirrors. Just me. Magic is where you find it… or in my case, where I make it. And I don’t always need or want a theatre to make it work.”
He turned his eyes to meet mine. I felt his focus swing back like a ray of heat. “You want to know what I am? I’m the best sleight-of-hand man you’ll ever hope to see.” He smiled and his finger drew circles on my knee. “What are you?”
I gripped my stone again, easing away from his touch. “Oh, nothing so exotic.”
“Un-unh,” he warned.
“Maybe an innocent shouldn’t answer that.”
“Smartass replies don’t make it, either.”
I really didn’t have an answer, and that troubled me.
Sam leaned toward me. “Not so easy, is it? You want neat little explanations? Fine. When you can shoehorn everything you think you are into a convenient three sentences, maybe I’ll have some answers ready for you.” He levered himself brusquely to his feet. “You’re an exasperating woman, you know that?”
Which of my tacit refusals had put him off so suddenly? “I’m just trying to understand.”
“Call me when you do.”
“Sam, I…” I was surprised it mattered so much that he not go away angry with me.
“Remember our deal. Truth for truth. You owe me, Rhys.”
When he’d gone, I picked the rose out of the bucket and stared at it for a long time.
E-MAIL:
The theatre maintenance crew showed up early to clean the dressing rooms and rousted Jane and me out sternly but not unkindly. Even they could see that all was not as it should be, with the set so unfinished and the cast due in the theatre the next day.
They let us wash up, even loaned us a towel from their actor stock. I smiled at them and pretended to feel fully refreshed. Jane stood contemplating yesterday’s wrinkles in her coveralls. Sleep lines marked her face like a child’s. Unwilling to miss a free meal, she volunteered to bike back to the dorm and cadge us some breakfast.
I wandered muzzily into the theatre. Sam was right: Cris was nowhere to be found. Faint echoes from the shop—tired voices raised in irritation, tool cabinets being unlocked, buckets being washed and tossed about impatiently. The morning crew showing up for their six A.M. call.
At the loading door I blundered into Sean, hauling in a four-wheeled dolly stacked with tools and vacuum-transport boxes.
“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Worked late.”
Sean jerked at the laden dolly to muscle it over a thick run of power cable. “You didn’t hear there’s a curfew on?”
“That’s why we stayed over.”
“Get back to your dorm and get some sleep.”
“Well, uh…” I began.
Jane came up behind me. “Are you throwing us out?”
Sean braced his legs against the dolly’s weight. “Come on, you mother,” he snarled.
Jane’s boldness shamed me. “Are you throwing us out?” I repeated. “Because otherwise, we’ve got work to do.”
Sean stood free of the unmoving load. Freshly shaved and showered, he still looked worn as an old shoe, exhausted beyond understanding by this anger he could not let go of. Give it up, I begged him silently. Then maybe we could all laugh and get on with it. I missed his sleepy-eyed laughter and his ribald joking. The shop was an uneasy place without it.
“Fuck it,” he growled finally. He redoubled his grip on the dolly’s hauling bar. “If you guys wanna bust ass for a turkey like this, it’s no business of mine.”
“It’s not a turkey!” Jane shot back.
Cris stuck his head around the loading door. “ ’bout time you guys woke up.”
“You here, too? Christ, gimme a friggin’ hand, will ya?” Sean readied himself for another heave. Cris and I pushed from the hind end and the load bumped over the hump. “At least get some coffee in ya,” Sean yelled as he threaded the dolly around the decking supports. “Don’t want any accidents in my theatre!”
“Sleep well, Cris?” I asked sweetly.
Jane eyed me and, being morning-lucid, said she thought she’d just skip coffee and go right away for food.
Cris stopped her. “You don’t w
ant to check the e-mail?”
“E-mail! Right!” Differences shoved aside, we beelined for the terminal in Sean’s office.
“Don’t think Sean wanted us to see he’s actually working on the show,” Cris observed as we scurried up the stairs.
Sean’s door was shut and the lights off.
“Jane, keep a watch.” Cris went straight to the console and punched up the morning’s public messages. “Nothing, nothing… wait. Here it is. Goddamn! She pulled it off!”
I peered over his head at the screen, blue as sapphires, white as snow: FASCISM IS THE DEATH OF ART. OPEN ALL THE DOORS.
“That sounds like Mali,” I noted fondly.
Jane deserted her post at the door to stare at the message silently.
“Magic…” I murmured.
“Very close to it. She’s good, the girl is very good.” Bent over the screen, Cris began his habitual morning scan of the news. “Oh,” he said suddenly. “Wow.”
It was a small bit toward the end of the WorldNet report, where the items of minor interest get tossed: OPPOSITION LEADER RETURNS.
Cris read aloud. “Tuamatutetuamatu. Sunday, August 10. A locally broadcast inspirational message from the Antidomers’ fugitive figurehead contradicted recent reports that the Conch had fled and set off tribal celebrations across the island…’ ”
“He’s back!” marveled Jane.
“He never left,” I said, ashamed that Sam had been savaged for nothing and that it had been our fault.
But Cris had seen Tua at work. He thought in terms of the world computer network more instinctively than I, a daughter of isolationist Chicago. “Or he’s Mali, after all. It’s gotta be!” Then, angry at his own impulsive tongue, he glared at Jane. “But this time we’re keeping it to ourselves!”
Jane’s eyes widened reproachfully. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Mali. I’d rather die first.”
DAT OFF:
When Sean decided to do a thing, he did it, for whatever reason.
When we came back from breakfast, Ruth was starting a crew on the tracking units. In the theatre, five men clustered downstage center, banging and muttering and lowering equipment into the hole in the deck.
Sean stood by watching. His beer gut had swelled during the past few months. He eyed us sidelong with a trace of his old humor. “There goes most of your budget, into the pit.”
Harmony Page 35
