I was not doing what he asked. I was not hearing him. “You told Mark this same fish tale, didn’t you? Oh, Sam, how could you? It’s cruel to give him hope of finding Bela!”
He eyed me coolly. “I think we can, if he’s alive. Five years ago, no, but communications are improving out there. People are getting on their feet well enough to think about organizing. These days, expelled domers are recruited more often than victimized. Did you think what’s going on in Harmony is unique? For every event like the Stockholm riot where we do get the word out into the world, three others go unreported. It’s hard to spread the truth when you don’t own the media and there’s impenetrable walls around the centers of power.”
I stilled, caught by a memory of evidence I could not deny. “There is a world Outside—”
“That’s right, Rhys, there is.”
“I meant the pamphlets in the vacuum tubes—”
His interest quickened. “What? When?”
I told him about Sean and the recycler.
“Damn! Smack into enemy hands! A delivery like that takes months to set up.” He grasped his knees to his chest, chewing on his thumb. I could practically hear his brain ticking away, calculating time lost, contacts wasted. The Organizer. It was hard not to gaze at him fondly, whether I believed him or not.
“Sam, why are you telling me all this?”
“You asked, as I recall.”
“What if I turned you in?”
“Looking at me the way you do?” The glint was back in his eye. “Besides, I thought you didn’t believe me.”
“I don’t, I… but…” My confusion reduced him to laughter. I frowned stonily. “You’re saying there’s lots like you Out There?”
He cupped my breast and kissed it. “No one like me, love.”
“I mean… you know…”
“Two arms, two legs, you mean? No communicable diseases? Normal?” He fell back on the pillows, roaring helplessly.
I was humiliated. “What’s so goddamn funny?”
He lifted his head, regarded me drolly. “Well, think about it. You just spent three hours making drop-dead love to your worst nightmare.” He flopped back, laughing again, his arm thrown over his eyes. “Ah god, I’m gonna sleep well tonight!”
But we only dozed, and then he woke me with kisses between my thighs and much more after that.
PHASE III
Technical Rehearsals
THE MORNING AFTER:
It was Sam who slept the sleep of the innocent that night, not me. My world was in upheaval. Not since my first day in Harmony had I so much reconceiving to do all at once. People out there, if I believed him, lots of them. Not all criminals and misfits. Normals. Families, maybe whole communities, struggling since before the domes with a dying ecology, poisoned water, deadly air. Children without families, making their way in the world despite all. Orphans. Like Sam. Was this the truth Mali meant to make unavoidable?
I wondered if this was what they’d said to Jane that so disconnected her. It was having that effect on me. Meanwhile, Micah needed me functional. We still had a show to do.
The Eye did not follow the age-old actors’ custom of sleeping late. By eight-thirty the next morning, Ule had already run the company through warm-up exercises and a modified barre in Cora’s music room. The brick-walled kitchen was as busy as a dormitory dining hall. I wandered in dazedly, following Sam as if he were a magnet, loath to be out of his arm’s reach even in this room I’d so admired and felt welcomed in. That morning I saw it as artifice, a careful romantic reconstruction, like one of Micah’s castle halls for the Marin project. Comfortable. Charming. Unreal. Like everything else in Harmony.
Cris looked relieved to see me, maybe because I was alive and well, more likely because I’d found a distraction of my own to ease the burden of his guilt, if he felt any. Public newsbox printout was spread across the refectory table. Ule and Tua bent over it, eating papaya and reading passages out loud. Even Cora was up, wrapped in silk the color of new leaves, leaning contentedly against Mali’s hip as he talked with Mark in the light from the tall lavender windows.
Jane sat in isolation at the end of the table. I felt a sudden kinship with her and wished for something as steadying as her intense involvement in sectioning an orange. At the other end, Pen reenacted his narrow escape in holographic detail for Tuli and Lucienne. Songh listened wide-eyed, as if he hadn’t been there to see it all himself.
“Hey, Jane,” I called, “what’s up?”
“The news. And this.” She pushed a paper toward me.
E-mail: CITIZENS OF HARMONY, BEWARE! WHEN CHILDREN USURP DUE PROCESS, A COUP IS ON THEIR MINDS! CLOSE THE DOOR!”
I patted her shoulder. About all one could offer her these days was reassurance. I certainly had nothing better.
“Here’s the announcement.” Cris straightened up from the table, trailing printout. “ ‘At Thursday’s Town Meeting, the scheduled agenda will be put aside to allow citizens to consider a special issue: Is Outside Adoption still right for Harmony?’ ”
Sam read over Ule’s head. “ ‘Outbursts of youthful enthusiasm led to several minor disturbances in and around Founders’ Park after a cordial meeting between apprentice representatives and the mayor.’ Guess we know what the official line on this is going to be.”
“ ‘Only minor injuries reported.’ ” Ule grinned. “Squeaked by again, Sammy boy. What they don’t know, we won’t tell.”
“A few kids’ll have some tricky explaining to do.”
“Yeah, that reminds me,” called Pen from his end of the table. Silvery metal arced gracefully through the air past Crispin’s nose and pronged into the planking beside Sam’s hand. “Thanks, old man.”
Ule clucked. “Pen, lad. Cora’s priceless table…”
The knife was bone-handled and slim, double-edged unlike Ule’s heavier weapon. The silky metal was engraved with fine dark lines. Hickey, from his prop master’s store of arcane knowledge, would have called it a dirk. Sam gentled the blade free and stowed it I-don’t-know-where. It simply was there and then it wasn’t.
Ule brushed papaya juice off the printout. “Even if you did ice the guy, we surely won’t see it here.”
Sam grunted. “Question is, who put him on to us?”
Ule sucked his teeth, nodded. “Brigham?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Sam steered me toward the sink, where Moussa was slicing a gigantic pineapple. “The big guy with the knife was a plant, a ringer aimed at us. Whoever put him there cleaned him out fast and quiet. If he’d really been one of the soccer kids, your news services’d be screaming bloody murder.”
“You mean, you think you… killed him?”
He looked at me warningly, passing over a chunk of Moussa’s pineapple. “Here. Eat. Got to get you to the theatre in one piece.” He raised his voice to include the rest of the room. “Time to wear something less conspicuous than these damn coveralls.”
“No,” said Mark.
Sam had not expected contradiction. “What?”
Mali smiled, pushed himself away from the windowsill. “He’s right, you know. Hiding is not the point here.”
“Neither is dying.”
“Then we should teach them to take care of themselves.”
Mark looked to me. “Anyone afraid to wear the blues?”
“No way!” said Cris.
“Great,” Sam muttered. “A bunch of fucking heroes.”
But Mali looked amused and proud.
HARMONET/COMMENT
08/12/46
The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the network.
AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL APPRENTICES
CITIZEN’S EDITORIAL by Susan Wakeman Brown
Please! Is this any example to set for our children? No wonder they’ve forgotten how to behave themselves!
While you are running around raising a fuss and bringing violence to our idyllic streets, does it ever occur to you to be grateful to
the Town that has taken you in and given you shelter and training, though it had no obligation to? You weren’t born here. Nor were your parents. Yet we allowed you in to share in the richness of our community. And now you presume to tell us how to run our Town?
You have forgotten that you are our guests. Perhaps it is not so wise to abuse our hospitality.
FIRST TECH:
The streets were quiet on the way to the Arkadie.
“Too quiet.” Sam left us at the stage door. “Watch yourselves.”
Micah and the head scenic artist were setting out the big rolling fans to dry a full-stage coat of paint. He frowned when he saw us. “Where… I called your dorm… ?” He didn’t finish the thought. With a side glance at the painter, he said firmly, “Congratulations. Your voice was heard. The issue’s out in the open at last.”
Cris raised a clenched fist. “You should’ve seen us up there! It was great! We were great!”
“I’m sure.” Micah noted my graver expression.
I wanted to tell him more but could not for fear of exposing the Eye’s illegal weaponry. And Sam. How could I tell him about Sam? If Sam was what he claimed to be, his very existence in Harmony was illegal. I gestured at the still-damp paint. “All by yourselves? The two of you?”
“No, amazingly. Some of the painters dropped by after the Crossroads preview and stayed to work. But we outlasted them, didn’t we, Jan? All those young folks.”
The head scenic returned a yawn and a rueful nod. Paint smeared her cheek and chin and crawled halfway up her right arm. “Okay, Mi, I’m outa here. I can give you an official crew tomorrow morning when that fucker next door is done with.”
“You’ve already saved my life and made this afternoon bearable.”
The scenic waved and left. Micah added, “She didn’t want Sean seeing her do overtime without his permission. It’s only a base coat but…”
“But everything.”
The set was so much easier to look at, no longer oversized or ungainly, its intention at last apparent. The bright patchwork of raw materials was muted to a tapestry of greens and browns and gray. The rolling sweep of the deck focused the center of the space like a living presence and sank into the corners as if it had taken root. The back wall soared upward toward the grid like the flank of a rocky hill rising into velvet night.
“Look!” I snatched at Micah’s arm, startling him out of a tired reverie. A softly glowing green eye stared at us from the darkness at the top of the sweep.
Micah blinked, then smiled. “The gods watch us from Olympus.”
“When did they get the time to do that?”
“This time I’m gonna find out how,” Crispin swore.
Micah frowned. “No. Let it be as it’s intended. A gift of mystery. We need every bit we can get right now.”
The eye in the flies was still glowing faintly when Sean brought his crew in to continue installing the trick. He sent two men out into the house to set up a production table in the tenth row, where the electrics crew was already tuning remote intercoms and running cable for Louisa’s lighting console. Sean didn’t seem to notice the eye floating above his head, though a few of his men stared up at it with wondering smiles and shrugs. As far as they knew, it was some special effect Lou was trying out.
The tall kid Peter was hanging around, even though he’d worked his usual graveyard shift with Margaret.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I chided him.
He pointed at the hole in the deck. “This is a real genius idea! Sean won’t let me near it ’cause I’m not regular crew, but I gotta see how he does it.”
“I sure hope you’re right about the genius part.”
He moved closer to whisper, “Hear there was trouble last night.”
His puppy-eagerness put me off. “Yeah? What’d you hear?”
“Word is, some heads were broken.”
I looked amazed. “Really? Didn’t see that in the news. Where?”
“Around the park mostly.”
“Glad I missed it.” I tossed him a cheery grin and retreated to the shop to see how the tracking units were coming along.
I was gazing up at one of Eider’s drops that had been hauled in once again for revision when Hickey sidled up. “Are you guys okay?”
“Hick! Where have you been?”
“Crossroads, of course.” He drew me aside, looking me over closely. “You okay? Really?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Very nasty stories going around. Listen, about this petition thing. Lucienne told me it was all Mali’s idea.”
“Are you and Lucienne still seeing each other?”
Hickey shuffled. “A pipe dream. Couldn’t ever work out.” He wasn’t going to talk about it. “Gwinn, are you guys sure this is the right thing, putting all your names on paper, making targets of yourselves? Sam and Mali don’t know how things work around here. It could blow up right in your face!”
“Hickey, somebody’s got to stand up to these people.”
“Sure, sure. Just want you to be careful.” He draped an arm around me to walk me further away from prying ears. “Look, I got the data on the e-mails. It’s no big surprise. My friend says they were all billed through the Willow Street Theatre account, different departments and charge numbers, but the bills were eventually paid out of a private account she traced to Cam Brigham.”
“Can she prove it?”
“If need be. Pretty bold. The guy’s not even bothering to cover his tracks.”
“He figures he’s above suspicion.”
“Or that nobody would be asking where those e-mails are coming from. Like they’re not ready to get up and say it themselves, but they’re sure glad somebody is.”
The Willow Street connection was a bit of a surprise. I didn’t picture Bill Rand as one of Sam’s “power brokers,” the sort who knew the supposed “truth” about the Outside.
Strolling, we reached a wall. Hickey turned to face me. “Now you know this, you’ll see why I couldn’t sign your petition. I hate what they’re trying to do to you, but if Cam found out I signed, he could trump up some excuse to have me fired.” His fingers curled into my shoulders like claws. “Gwinn, without this job, I’m nothing.” He shook me gently. “Only one unimportant little name less. You understand, right?”
“Sure, I understand.”
“Right.” He glanced away miserably. “Well, here comes old Crispin. You two still fighting?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Don’t. There’s enough of that going on.” He patted me on the back and slouched away. I frowned after him until Cris moved into my line of sight. I let Cris have the full-bore stare.
He grinned at me slyly. “You and Sam, hunh? I wouldn’t have figured that.”
“Yeah, well, I had all this extra time on my hands.”
“Hey, we’re still friends, aren’t we? We’ll both be here after they’ve played their four weeks and moved on.”
I sensed that Sam’s taking me to bed had raised my value in Crispin’s eyes, but I didn’t want to talk about after. Didn’t even want to think about it. “Wouldn’t be too sure. Hickey was just explaining how he didn’t sign the petition because he’s afraid for his job.”
“You mean the job he gave up his real work for? Getting him fired might be the biggest favor we could do him.”
“Try telling him that.”
“I might.”
“Cris, the point is, he won’t dare argue for us at Town Meeting, either. A lot of people won’t, for the same reason.”
“You worry like Jane. Speaking of which, you seen her around?”
“Not since after breakfast.”
“Micah’s looking for her. Never mind, I’ll deal with it.”
“Yeah?” Could he actually be maneuvering for reconciliation?
He threw back his shoulders. “Hey, this is me. C. Fox, Assistant Extraordinary.”
My laugh was flat and dry. “Sure, kid.”
“Don’t call me that!”<
br />
I shrugged at him innocently.
His lip curled. “Sounds too much like Sam.”
* * *
The Eye stumbled about on the set that afternoon, feeling their way, taking possession of it as actors must before they can stop hating it for not being their safe and familiar rehearsal hall.
The technical rehearsal started off at a decent pace until Howie decided to restage several scenes. He made it clear the set was in the way of his blocking, but he’d just have to live with it. Things bogged down as the actors got bored and testy. Omea began whispering all her lines “to save her voice.” Te-Cucularit had a growling match with the prop head after a woman crew member was seen handling one of the Puleleas. Howie had to stop everything for a lecture about respecting other people’s values. It was the usual technical-rehearsal tension, but I hated watching the Eye misbehave like normal actors. I wanted them to be bigger than that.
To spare Micah my restlessness, I excused myself for a shop check. Most of the scenic artists were still playing catch-up on Crossroads, but the tracking units were nearly finished and Cris had recruited one of the paint boys to throw a base coat on the scenery as fast as the carpenters could build it. My pal Flick thought Jane had gone home to sleep. An odd thing for her to do without asking Micah, but which of us was behaving normally anymore?
I went to the crew room for coffee and found a bunch of the guys in there talking. The room went dead in that stalled sort of way. A few of them greeted me. Most of them looked at the floor or into their coffee mugs. I filled my cup and got out, but not without noticing that everyone there was SecondGen.
So I went back to the theatre and sat house center, immobile with lack of sleep and too much conflicted thought. Wanting Sam, fearing what he stood for. Distracted, pretty much useless. Micah wandered the darkened theatre studying the set from every possible angle. If he wanted company, he didn’t say so. Every so often I’d catch him staring at his scenery with an eerily blank intensity, not so much seeing it as willing it to happen, to become whole as he sat there, before his very eyes.
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