by Moira Crone
“I wouldn’t—call them that. They pay. And you don’t have to keep in character for me—”
“What?” she asked.
Before I could elaborate, Sebastian called down, “Curtain now.” And the last chapter in the Ginger saga, the “Sim of a Lifetime,” was center stage. Recorded horns, then violins. The lights that hung off Sebastian’s bridge came up even brighter, illuminating the area around the bed, and also spots beaming onto the stage from the back of the arena, which were so bright I could not see the audience anymore. They became that familiar Heir choir of gasping and whispering I remembered from my youth. Tamara’s face gave me the shivers. She was so convincing, and so consciously unconscious—her surprise at the curtain when it finally rose. She really seemed horrified to find herself on stage. They all did.
*
Several hours had passed. Heirs were milling around in the aisles, subdued, though excited.
“‘Sim Verite,’ huh?” Gepetto asked. “Can it get any better than this? You know of course what everybody says.” He looked up at me. He was sitting on the floor, holding his knees near his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Can’t say,” he said. “Get people in trouble. What do you think, true?”
“What do I think about what?” I said. “Repetitive script. That’s my review.”
His eyes widened, he put a hand on each cheek, opened his tiny mouth into an oval.
When my boredom had set in like a hard freeze, about three in the morning, something new came. A low, stuttering sound, like one stick being dragged across another jagged stick, but in a kind of echo chamber. And then, softly, Ginger shuddered.
Tamara put her hands around both of Ginger’s shoulders, and held her, tightly. “He will be here,” she said, rather loudly to Ginger. “I know he will.”
“No he won’t,” Naroh whispered back.
There was a call out from the back of the auditorium, like a cat call, then a whistle.
Tamara looked over at me, her green eyes articulating: there was some disaster. But where? She was an excellent actress of her kind, I concluded. Almost at the same time, a figure emerged from the rear of the stage, a man in a white tunic with a u-shaped placket, and simple trousers. He wore a hood, and his hair was long, silver white, curling, falling out of it onto his breast.
“What is he doing?” Naroh asked. He covered his small button mike in order to say this, so the audience couldn’t hear. “Now he shows.”
When the figure got to the bedside, he wrapped Ginger’s emaciated fingers inside his large, wide palm. I knew the hand, I did. It didn’t make sense.
“What I have always wondered,” Gepetto was going on, “was why he wanted to be a real boy when he didn’t have to do that—”
“Shh,” I said. “I’m trying to understand what she’s saying.” Tamara had just taken off her mike. She was facing me in the wings, mouthing words, wanting me to do something.
A deeper, growlier shudder this time, without melody. The man with the hood was nodding. I still had not seen his face, neither had the audience. Then suddenly, he left the stage, head hidden in his elbow.
Oohs and ahhs from those watching. Very bad form, how the actor just left like that, without a reason. Had he forgotten his lines? Next, Naroh stomped off.
Somber flute music came on. The first soundtrack in some hours.
“Water” was Tamara’s unvoiced request, I finally realized. Poor thing having to carry the scene alone. Everyone was so unprofessional.
There was a fountain by the fire exit door. When I came back with a cup, it was time for an intermission. I dropped the curtains.
In the next moment, Tamara asked me to help her hoist Ginger up so she could take a sip. I told Gepetto to stay where he was. His response: “This is heaven, and how could I leave?” I went over and took Ginger’s sad smelly shoulders. Tamara brought the cup to the lips, but the actress would have none of it. Even with the curtain down, she was completely uncooperative. Tamara tried twice more, then handed the small vessel over and asked me, “Is there a place for air? I’m going to faint.” All this improvised, unrelenting drama. Where were Naroh and the hood?
“I can’t go through with this,” she said. “Her father wants to stop it. We can’t stop it now! This was my brother’s idea, and the younger enclavers,” she said. “And Ginger’s, of course, she wanted to do this for us. Our sacrifice for the Exodus, she said. So we can be resettled. Her father was against it. I see now why. Naroh said, ‘I never knew it would be this hard.’”
Such a method actress. I said, “You can’t just quit. You have to have an ending.”
She looked at me. “Her father thinks we can.”
“Well you are improvising, no? So just stop now. It’s not so complicated. You are going to have all the encores, if I know anything about Heir audiences. So you might as well come to some conclusion about the main production.”
She asked me, “You a Nyet? That collar? Where did you come from?” She was hostile, but I had no idea why.
“From Audubon Island.”
“A Nyet from Old Lazarus’s place? One of those he trotted off to work at five or six years old?” she asked.
“You know Lazarus’s Place?”
“Yes. All about it.” She stalked off. How had I offended her?
Music—the curtain. I had to open again.
*
Around four a.m., Gepetto defined the sounds coming from the stage as “agonal breathing.” The crowds had been riveted since the last intermission. It was quiet, I could hear the two men arguing faintly, off stage—Naroh and the hood.
There was a slight shift in Ginger, then. Peculiar that she moved on her own, after being still for hours. Then, a sudden kind of expansion in the air about her and—amazing, as if for a moment everything got bigger, and more vibrant, I didn’t know how they managed this illusion. A slight color—white this time, bluish-white, really, but otherwise, like what I saw that night with O.
The lights went out, then, not just those on stage, throughout, all except the exit lamps. Another electrical failure. Yet the white-bluish glow remained. “Please take your seats,” Sebastian called down through a battery megaphone. Some in the audience lit small pen lights, and lanterns, so it was possible to see their very similar faces, their narrow noses, their glistening teeth. Standing up, talking excitedly, and gasping. “Please take your seats. This will be the final intermission. Auxiliary generators will be up and running momentarily.”
Tamara shouted, as soon as the curtain was down, “NAROH, NOW.” She faced the back of the stage, the direction Naroh and the hood had gone. Then she turned to me and said, “I can’t leave her now. Go get them. Find them!”
“Where—?” I asked, under the spell of this dull skit. I mean, really, I thought a minute later, why didn’t she just leave the “dying woman’s” bedside and go find them herself? They weren’t far, I’d heard them arguing.
In the corridor directly behind the stage, I collided with the “father.”
“Malcolm,” he said.
How did he know my name? He removed his hood, then, and his face formed itself into one of the most familiar in the world to me. But now, it was inside an old, sagging, Yeared’s visage.
“Vee,” I hugged him. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I am on my way home. I have to talk to Lazarus. Something’s wrong with my Trust—”
He looked confused. “Oh, that. I can hardly see in this hall,” he said.
“Lead me to the stage. Tamara was calling me. It’s time, it’s Ginger.” His large brown hand fell over my arm, and I led him where he wanted to go.
“PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS,” Sebastian hooted from his megaphone as we passed beneath his catwalk.
The sudden boom and rattle of a generator.
“HOUSE LIGHTS,” Sebastian yelled. “CURTAIN, CURTAIN.” Someone else opened it—I didn’t. I was still linked to Vee. A few Heirs
out of their seats gathered around the apron below the stage. They were saying, “Let us up there. Let us touch. Help us.”
I asked Vee, “Did Ariel do something—did you hear?”
No comprehension.
Tamara was now on the bed, folded up behind the Ginger, who was panting, and not very regularly. And more alert. Naroh on his knees, holding one of her skeletal hands, and weeping. Vee was on the opposite side of the bed from Naroh, also holding Ginger’s hand, speaking softly into her ear. Chants of his, I recognized.
I remembered what he had told me, once, that you make the expression another makes—and I made his grimace.
Ginger sat up, and opened her eyes, and said, “Here, all here!” loudly, clear as a bell. After all that silence, she finally spoke. There was something remarkable, profound, I couldn’t deny. And then she closed her eyes, jerked a little to the left. The white glow I’d seen before widened around her head.
Vee and the other man threw their bodies over her form on the bed, clasped hands, and wept—some symmetry there.
The applause, deafening. It took forever, but in the end, a very good show, I had to give it to them. Gepetto stood and started slamming his two thin hands together, elbowing me to clap as well. Eventually, after a rather stretched-out, recorded, violin interlude, Sebastian called down to me to close the curtain.
All of them were still holding onto the body. I saw the crowd from the edge of the stage. The houselights were up: about a quarter of the audience had now gathered around the apron—very eager.
“Announce an encore,” I called up to Sebastian.
“WHAT?”
Tamara came over to me to say, “Stop them. Make them go.” I peeked out the closed curtain and saw two Heirs, un-athletic as they were, were trying to crawl up on the stage. I had never seen such a thing, so undignified. They were on a ledge near the top of the orchestra pit, trying to move some stools into place for steps.
I saw Serpent walking out in front, below, trying to pull himself up. “Need me Malc? Need me? Stampede coming—”
I did need him. I went over to give him a hand—by the time I got him on my level, there were four trying to crawl over each other and up. But they weren’t coordinated enough.
I called up to Sebastian, “Don’t know what an encore is?”
I felt a presence on my left. Vee. “I thought you hated Sims,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I came to stop this travesty. The money is there, now. So Lazarus—”
“You came to tell me about my money? How did you find me?” I asked, thrilled for a moment. “It’s there? There’s no lien? It was a mistake?”
His eyes were bulging. “She’s my daughter.”
I looked into the sweetness of his ruined face. He was truly a Yeared now. His lids were so long and heavy they only lifted so you could see half his eyes. The bags beneath were swags of skin, loose downward loops. I said, “You were so well cast. Why didn’t they change your name?”
“Malc?” he asked. He was looking at me with what almost seemed pity. Then he shrugged, as if to himself. “Why do you have that bloody ear child?”
“Shot at in Port Gram. Long story,” I said.
“You were shot?” he asked, reaching for my shoulder—
“You said something about my money?” I asked. “Do you know why Lazarus hasn’t answered me?”
Tamara called for him before he could respond..
“This is my cue,” he said, lightly, and he walked away.
“Well, thank goodness, encore,” I said.
*
“Encore, we agree, we all agree with you—” an Heir in a purple gown, a very fancy embroidered vest, and a gold headjob, the first of that huddle who had managed to get on the stage, was saying. I encountered him in the wings near the front curtain. A small entourage followed behind him. They were in pale lilac gowns, like uniforms, all the same. Six or so of them. The gold head had taken over as leader.
This little crew pounded their hands together, made that thudding sound. “More, more, and more.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“No you will not!” Sebastian screamed from overhead.
Behind the canvas, under meager lights, Naroh, Tamara, and Vee were trying to cover Ginger with a blanket—why didn’t she just get up, play was over. As I reached them, they realized the hospital style bed sheet was too short, so they couldn’t pull it high enough to cover her head—last gesture in the drama, apparently. Naroh took off his shirt to cover her face. Why these touches, at a time like this. No one was watching—I interrupted them, said “You need to do an encore. We’ll have a riot if you don’t. I’ll announce it, Vee, listen,” I said. “Convince that stage manager up there,” and I grabbed the little button of the mike off the bed where Tamara had thrown it.
“Help them out of here!” Sebastian barked.
“YOU! PROTECT US!” Tamara shouted, livid.
“I am trying,” I said. “Just give them what they want.”
The crowd led by goldhead who had followed me was right on top of us now, all saying, “Can we feel her? That would be better, much better. Even than an encore, that’s what we think. Just touch her before she gets hard, we heard they get hard! OH PLEASE!”
“This is a Sim,” I told them.
Naroh, who was covering Ginger with his entire body by then, to keep them from touching her, used one arm to swat the leader away. They gasped, shirked, but didn’t stop coming. “Help us get out of here,” he yelled to me, with disbelief. “Get them off of us.”
Gepetto in the wings, starting to pound his hands with glee.
“DON’T YOU MAKE THEM GO AWAY? ISN’T THAT YOUR JOB?” Tamara shouted, struggling to loosen the brake on the bed, to roll away, to safety. Naroh, taking out the tubes, knocking down the pole, to get the bed out, but he was only using one arm—as he was still guarding Ginger from the Heirs’ probing hands.
“Can we touch? Why are you doing that? Can I feel her heart? Why are you doing that?” came the lilac Heirs’ breathy voices. “Please explain why they are doing these things. Please.” The number of Heirs on the stage had tripled by now—they wanted to paw this scrawny little actress, this—
“YOU!” Tamara said to me. “WHAT ARE YOU?”
“Don’t yell at him, Tamara,” Vee said to her. “He’s Lazarus’s boy—”
“What? Is he blind? You a Bonesnake? One of them?”
“I’m a Not-Yet, I’m Malcolm, you know—”
Vee facing me, shaking his head.
Blind, Tamara had said.
She had said, blind. It was such a strange thing to call me. I’d always had fine sight.
Then, something I can only describe as a sooty cloth, perhaps, if you can imagine that, was lifted, from my lungs, first, and then from my neck, and my mouth, and my nostrils, and my eyes.
My life turned back on itself, like a sleeve.
A more impressive voice than mine shouted into the discarded button mike, “AWAY.” I startled the lilac team and the better dressed Heirs down below, for a moment. I rushed to pull the curtain closed again, and explained to the rest of the ones milling below, “There’s no encore, you’ve seen enough. Don’t you know what you saw? IT IS THE END.”
The first lilacs came after me in front of the curtain, saying in unison, Goldhead at the front: “We paid our money, we watched her, and we are fans, Ginger Fan Club—” There were easily fifteen of them now.
I begged Gepetto, who was idle at the edge of the stage, to talk those below.
He asked, “And stop the entertainment?”
“It’s not a show!” I screamed at him.
“Even better! Of course! Let me touch!”
They finally had the bed unstuck, and were moving it, wheeling it away, but every few inches, they were blocked by the fans who were trying to pull down Ginger’s sheets, her garments, hoping to touch her skin. I couldn’t even count how many surrounded us. Naroh started swinging at the swarm. Vee tried shov
ing the whole bed at them, a battering ram. A few Heirs fell down, got right back up again. That was when I did it, after the whole bed didn’t work—
I just picked one Heir in lilac up, and took him to the edge of the stage, and threw him off. He tumbled over and over in the orchestra pit. For a second, my assault froze the rest. Hah! What Vee had told me so long ago was true. They were practically weightless.
I went ahead, tossing Heirs right, left, so Vee and Naroh finally got out the rear way wheeling the bed, with Ginger, and locked the door.
Sebastian, bellowing, “PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS. DUE TO THE NATURE OF THIS PERFORMANCE THERE CAN BE NO ENCORE.”
Two Altereds with implanted feathers—these were big, hefties with muscles, not wisps like their masters, pinned me. They were huge men—warts, big teeth, beak noses. Nearby, Gepetto cheering: “Go go go.”
One of these was strangling me, literally, pressing down on my neck with a claw. The owner called out from the apron of the stage. “Get him, get him, traitor—” I was the enemy now, the target.
Out of nowhere, Serpenthead was crawling down along the stage floor, sneaking between two onlookers. The monsters had turned their heads for a moment, to get further instructions on torture from their owner below. Serp spoke into my better ear, said, “We can pull them off for a second, I’m going to come around behind, Peet too, you have to scram. Get up when I say—” He was signaling for Peet, in a fist fight about ten feet away. He said only, “Now’s—” And when Peet got there, they threw off the two of them, and in the next moment, when I was free, Serp took out the lovely knife with the thousand blades and tools, and slipped it in my shirt pocket, “Go north.”
“What?” I asked.
“But cut yourself loose if they get enthusiastic—”
“What?” I wasn’t sure what I was hearing.
“Go,” he said, and I started to.
But then, the same two feathered monsters had him by the throat—blood filling his face. He couldn’t talk; only mouth the words, “Get out! North. They will know you!”
“What? Who will they know?” I asked. For a second I believed he had answers, he had them all along.
