by Bill Adams
At first I cared for nothing except the release of it. To simply tell my story and be myself, revealing everything I’d guarded for ten years, was like being let out of prison into sunlight. But of course I had hopes, too. As the tale unwound, I could feel her begin to unbend. I’d had reasons for the things I’d done, usually good reasons. I’d been living under the burden of dangers she knew nothing about—the murder attempt on the Jade Canal, for instance. Although I no longer felt quite so cold—some form of emotional shock?—when I got to the part about Sturm’s torture, a careful and restrained account, I suddenly found myself in her bathroom throwing up. When I washed my face and returned, she had a cup of tea waiting for me, and sat close beside me on the bed as I finished.
I did not act. No doubt that was important. But it was probably my good luck that the tale was so rich and strange, so much vaster than the parts that had to do with her or me. It is not every night you can learn how the universe will end, or who secretly rules it; it would be a pretty poor poet who couldn’t weave a spell from material like that.
When I’d finally wound down, she brought me through it again with many gentle questions.
“And Domina?” she asked finally. “I’m not sure I understand. If she really tried to kill you…”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what pressure the Columnards put on her—at the time, I couldn’t quite believe they’d commit murder, but we all know better now. Maybe it was really Kostain’s idea. Maybe she just couldn’t live with us alive and apart. I don’t know.”
“But after that, how could you—?”
“Hard to say. Not quite the same woman anymore, that was part of it. And it was like one of those bubble universes I told you about. We were meant to love each other for all time, maybe, but not in those days, and not now—not anywhere in this universe. Last night was a world apart—we closed the circle and finished it. But I’m sorry to have failed her: this thing with Julia. It’s going to be very bad for the kid. It hurts as much as if she were my own daughter—I can’t even be sure she’s not, did I mention that?—and there’s nothing I can do about the pain the Pretender is going to cause her. And Domina.”
Foyle put her arm around me. “You never had any way to prevent that. You’re taking too much on yourself.”
“Who can say what’s too much? If I believe Summerisle, the whole universe will be pulled apart if he fails, and I was supposed to be watching the store for him here.”
“I don’t know what to think about that part,” she admitted. “Someone, somewhere must be the Consultant, but he’s become so much of a myth, it’s hard to believe it might be someone whose name I know. How would your old professor, a wanted fugitive, have become a high officer in naval intelligence, anyway?”
“A false identity, established by the same process of blackmail that took him all the way to the top, I suppose. If you think about it, that could explain how the Consultant was able to erase his previous identity from human memory—maybe there wasn’t much to erase.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t take everything he says at face value. He may have changed in a hundred years, too.”
“True. And there are certainly some big holes in the story he told me. Like, if bubble universes are tangent to time and space, how do the Few locate them and ‘unfold’ them from within our universe?”
“That’s one,” she said. “Here’s another. When you left the Barbarossa, your shuttle was programmed to sunplunge the nominal ‘star’ that was visible within your bubble universe. Have I got that right? That star was really our whole galaxy, viewed from outside space and time.”
“So he said.”
“But with billions of years of history and billions of stars in the galaxy, you managed to return to within a century of the time you left and within a traversable distance of the human sphere—our very tiny corner of the galaxy.”
“He said it was against the odds.”
“Too far against. There’s something wrong here. Maybe his whole theory of the universe is wrong, or maybe getting in and out of bubbles is easier than he wanted you to believe—but something.”
“Maybe. But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. He held something back, but I believe he trusted me as much as he dared.”
“I know the feeling,” she said ruefully, and I kissed her.
“You’re the one I trusted,” I said. “The only one I could ever tell it all to. I never wanted to lie to you. Do you believe that?”
“The truly pathetic thing,” she said, “is that I do. And if you ever lie to me again, I will probably try to kill you. But then, you like that in a woman.”
A longer and more intricate kiss.
“Even your mask looks exhausted. I’m putting you to bed. If we made love in the morning, would you be comparing me with her?”
“No.”
“I’m believing you again. Why is that?”
“You’re the one,” I said. “That’s why.”
And in the morning we proved it.
◆◆◆
“Well, you seem to be back in form,” the Pretender said, and tossed his practice rapier to Ivan. “Just needed sleep, I expect.”
“That must have been it,” I agreed.
“Don’t forget to meet me back here at three-thirty. Renfrew and I are going over the lights one more time, and with these Chinese effects you have to know exactly where you’re going to stand.”
“I remember.”
“En garde!” Ivan began his turn with me as the Pretender went off to a makeup room for a shower.
It was noon the next day, and I felt completely restored. Everything looked sharper and tasted better. The ham actor is always talking about his “instrument”; mine was well-honed today, and the intellectual biathlon that is fencing—half broad-jumping, half brain surgery—was exactly the workout it demanded.
Ivan was not as good with a sword as the Pretender, and I could experiment with him. For weeks I’d been trying to remember a sequence of moves I’d worked out back in college and had planned to bequest to the fencing world, with more wishful thinking than humility, as the Larkspur Pass. This morning it all came back to me, and after a few preliminary engagements, I sprang it on Ivan.
He found himself forcing me back, extending himself to take advantage of a series of unbalanced moves, only to be hopelessly out of defensive line when I corkscrewed past his counter-parry to score a solid hit over the heart. The look of surprise on my victim’s face was immensely satisfying, though as an adult I could admit what the undergraduate Larkspur had concealed from himself—no Olympic-class adversary would ever fall for this.
Fencing is a form of walking zen, Summerisle used to say, and it was true: the intensity and focus of concentration on point and wrist, the necessity of staying in the moment, the closing out of everything else—all resemble a meditation. I finished more refreshed than I’d started, the colors and textures of the world crashing back over me in a wave.
There was no rehearsal; tonight would be the premiere. But on my way out of the theater after my shower and shave, I found Julia West leading her mother and a stranger through a tour of the stage set and stopped to say hello. Domina nodded politely if distantly to my Christopher Sly face. Her male companion, always a respectful step behind, was a middle-aged man of my own height, broad-shouldered, lean, and athletic. His hair was iron-gray, his face rather bland and slack, but his eyes were piercing and intelligent. Julia provided the introduction: Captain Marius, one of the West family’s most trusted pilots, who’d arrived with their yacht Raven the night before.
Marius seemed more interested in me than I was in him, asking a number of questions on subjects I wouldn’t trouble an actor with: politics, literature. I wondered what he was sizing me up for—whether he and his mistress had the wrong idea of which man Julia was sleeping with.
Julia was no help there, taking my arm and “reminding” me of an imaginary lunch date. “Then we’ll see you at dinner, dear,” Domina told
her. “Captain Marius wants to see the city, and I want to shop.”
“Oh, Captain,” Julia said as they turned to go, “I wanted to stop by my stateroom this afternoon and pick up something. Will there be anyone there?”
“I’ve given the crew liberty for the day, but you know the access codes.”
“Okay, thanks.”
As soon as they left, I told her I’d planned to have lunch with someone else. She said fine; she was in the same situation. Her eyes shone.
“I don’t have to ask whom you’re meeting,” I said.
Her face fell for a moment, but only a moment. “I can see you’ve guessed everything. Be happy for me! He’s an extraordinary man. You wouldn’t want me to be a child forever.”
“Does your mother know?”
“I think it best she doesn’t, don’t you?” she said, but looked surprised at the intensity of my agreement.
“And watch out for that Captain Marius,” I added. “He has sharp eyes, and he suspects something. Is he really just the family pilot?”
“Kind of a family adviser, too. Mother needed someone to lean on as Father…withdrew. He doesn’t say much, but he’s a good listener. He always took me to and from school. I like him—but I don’t intend to tell him all my secrets.”
“Good. I don’t know what else to tell you, and I’m probably just wasting my breath anyway. But remember this: when the Boss begins to behave excessively, stand up to him. He wants you to. The rest of the world will not set the limits he needs to stay sane.”
“You are his friend! I knew it.” She kissed my cheek and was gone.
I met Foyle at a cafe for lunch.
“Doesn’t it make you nervous at all, the premiere tonight?” she asked.
“Naah. With any luck, I’ll be cut down by sniper fire before then anyway.”
Foyle laughed like a man. It had jarred me at first, but I’d come to like it. But when she spoke again, it was in a low tone. “I’ve heard from Arn again. I’m going to meet him this afternoon; I think it’s important news.”
“Be careful,” I said. “By now Malatesta must know he’s lost Sturm. He may have only one or two agents left, but he’ll be inclined to use them.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, but who’d take care of me?”
And her laugh rang out again.
◆◆◆
Funny, though. A few hours after that, working with the Pretender and Renfrew on the lighting plan, I did indeed forget about her danger and my own, and began to fret about my performance as Manfred. Sufficient unto the hour is the evil thereof; unto the minute, sometimes.
After the Pretender left I found myself pacing the set, feeling my way back into the part for twenty or thirty minutes before I was distracted by the sound of an argument.
The current disposition of the turntable part of the stage left Manfred’s Jungfrau perch stage-center. I walked around it to the far wall, where Renfrew was standing in front of the glass-walled elevator shaft. One of the men in the elevator car arguing with him turned out to be Lew Malatesta.
“You don’t understand,” Renfrew was saying. “I’m taking the elevator out of use until after the performance. And there’s no other way up with the staircases blocked.”
“I do understand, cretin,” Malatesta replied. “And I have no intention of interrupting the Boss’s play. We’re going to be happily occupied until eleven. Then maybe we’ll come up and put on a show of our own.” Possibly this bravado was for the benefit of his companion—Gregor, the room-checker of two nights before—whose shoulders were hunched nervously as he propped up the third man, who looked drunk.
Much as Renfrew didn’t want them below us during the performance, his strangled introvert’s voice was no match for Malatesta’s parade-ground self-assurance. As I reached them, the glass-faced car had already begun to descend. The third man’s head twitched away from Gregor’s supporting shoulder.
It was Van Damm, pale-faced, sweaty, and not conscious enough to recognize me. I froze.
As they sank into the stage floor, Malatesta made no attempt to conceal his prisoner. He just watched my face, and slowly smiled.
◆◆◆
Foyle found me sitting at the edge of the stage. She had to shake my shoulder to get my attention. We spoke in whispers.
“Thank God you were still here,” she said. “I’ve got bad news.”
“What?” I said, thinking I knew. I was wrong.
“The Scandia raid is on—for tonight! And the Boss is supposed to lead it himself. He’ll have his moment of glory at the premiere tonight, then leave with the special training team immediately afterward. From one triumph to another, I guess. He must be crazy.”
“He never let me hear even a hint about it,” I said. “He knows it’s crazy, doesn’t want me to talk him out of it.”
“Well, you know now. You’ve got to get hold of him—”
“Not likely. He said he’d be hotel-hopping right up to the curtain, greeting the offworld politicians who’ve shown up for the premiere.”
“Right after the performance, then,” she said urgently; she probably didn’t understand my attitude. “You’ve got to use your influence on him.”
“After the performance, I won’t have any influence. Malatesta will be able to shoot me personally and talk his way out of it. He’s got Van Damm.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how. Maybe Van Damm got careless disposing of Sturm’s body. But Malatesta has him, and he’s got nearly seven hours to work on him, right downstairs. Long enough to prove that I’m an agent of the Tribunal. Which will also prove Malatesta’s loyalty and good judgment, and keep our glorious leader following him to whatever trap the Few have rigged up on Scandia.”
“You could tell the truth about yourself,” Foyle suggested.
“To someone whose sanity depends on believing he’s the real me? Under no circumstances, Summerisle said. And if I just disappear, that’s an admission of guilt, and the Scandia raid is still on.”
She sat next to me on the edge of the stage. “Arn smells the trap on Scandia,” she said. “He’s going to desert anyway. Suppose I could talk him into joining me in an attack? The subway stop the palace clerks use is closed at night, but we could walk down the tracks from the next stop and break in. It’s the only way into those offices now.”
“Malatesta knows I know,” I said. “So that’s where Gregor will be waiting for you. But I’ve been thinking about it. And there is another way to rescue Van Damm before the end of the performance—I can do it myself. But I need your help.”
“Of course.”
“I need you to go to a magic shop, now, quickly, and buy a magician’s cape. There’s a special kind, it’s got a wire frame inside that can hold things while the cloth drapes smoothly on the outside.”
“What are you—”
“And I need a life-sized bust of Evan Larkspur, the lightest you can find—plastic would be perfect.”
She was staring at me. “Anything else?”
“Any sort of handgun you can get from Arn, the smaller the better. Oh, and one last little thing. But I’ll have to take care of that myself—it’s kind of strange.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Opening night for Manfred of Otranto.
I met Foyle back at the theater shortly after five. She handed over a large canvas shopping bag and reluctantly left again, with nothing to do before the performance but dine. I could see she didn’t understand my state of mind, which was serene. The wisdom of Taoist and Stoic, by way of Kanalism and Summerisle, is always there to draw upon; often I fail to find it, but tonight it was mine. I had made my preparations. What I feared lay in the future, which is just a fantasy; in the only real moment, the present, there is always just one thing to do, and no reason not to do it well, taking each cue as it comes.
They started seating the audience at seven. I took my turn with the other players at sneaking peeks from the wings.
The Doge had desired a good mix of average citizen and influential offworlder, and his two-tiered ticket-price policy had obtained it. Venezians looked colorful enough on workdays; the resplendent dress clothes in the cheap seats tonight would have been worth a separate admission. In one of the private boxes, I was able to make out Domina and Captain Marius and—to my surprise—Foyle. A special invitation awarded for her services to Kanalism, no doubt.
The percolating buzz and murmur of the crowd, never quite rising to intelligible speech, took me back to a hundred other occasions, the years I’d hidden my identity in traveling companies, sometimes performing my own plays—sometimes even happy.
At seven-thirty, the Doge and the Pretender appeared on stage together. The audience gave them a five-minute ovation. The Doge delivered a brief and graceful speech reminding the human sphere that Venezia was now a Free City, and that it was only in freedom that the arts of self-expression really thrive.
The Pretender, in his white and gold gondolier outfit, used his minute to hark back to old Europe’s Romantic Era, the age of artistic individualism and self-discovery, often tinged with fantasy, which had also seen the death of kingship, the birth of industrial technology, and the triumph of all our modern notions of freedom, from free thought to free markets. Lord Byron, he went on, had in his life displayed all the contradictions of his age. Byron had been a revolutionary and romantic and sentimentalizer of the past who was also an aristocrat and classicist and satirist of the present for the future’s sake. In trying to adapt this play’s expression of that personality to a different millennium, the Pretender admitted to taking many liberties. But he claimed that most of the added plot elements had been borrowed from a work, Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, that Byron had cited as the inspiration for his Manfred. And if other differences were a reflection of the Pretender’s personal life, at least this showed the same spirit of shameless self-dramatization in which Byron had exposed even his crime of incest to the world.
A hell of a showman, no doubt about it. In less than a minute, he had provided enough context and titillation to prime the audience for what might otherwise have seemed the most obscure of works. Not that the play could have failed in any case. The even longer—and standing—ovation the Pretender received for his little speech showed that clearly enough. This was a social and political occasion: the anti-Column revolution had gathered to applaud its own daring and ideals—and why not?
