Harmony (21 page)

Yuck
, I thought, but I smiled for both Howie’s and Micah’s sakes, and did everything but curtsy.

“So what’d you move around?” asked Howie casually.

Brigham laid an inflated hand on Howie’s shoulder. “We were thinking we should leave more space for the color shots of the finished production, and actually, I thought you might want to put all the materials for your show downstairs nearer the entrance to Theatre Minor.”

It was thought clever, among certain of the staff, to refer to the two stages as Theatre Major and Theatre Minor, but I knew Howie did not encourage this.

Howie considered a moment, or pretended to. “Yeah, might be. Only problem is there’s not much room down there, and it’s really too poorly lit for display.”

Brigham gave this an equal split-second’s consideration, then gestured at the impressive photo in front of them. “But you know, How, the contrast won’t do either any good.”

I moved away, out of the firing line, and perused the
Crossroads
pictures. The show was a richly costumed period epic, the sort that photographed well even in rehearsal clothes, with actors in long skirts and elegant poses. The historical material was stunning, and the final production shots, taken with the set finished and the actors in full costume, would be huge, lush, and gorgeous. Boards of trustees loved displays like that: they made the theatre appear lively and prosperous. I could sort of see Brigham’s point, especially when I came upon the pile he’d discarded.

I recognized a lot of the stuff from our own research. Alongside the tall, bare-shouldered actresses of
Crossroads
, in their powdered wigs and acres of silk and jewels, the Tuatuans in their beads and T-shirts put on a poor showing indeed.

But Howie smiled, offering up intellectual conspiracy as a prize. “Cam, contrast is exactly the point.”

Brigham laughed broadly. “Your point. But maybe not Bill Rand’s point. No fair weighing down one show with the exotica of another, eh? Let our audience come to both and draw their own conclusions. Especially now we’re considering those new tourist matinees.”

“I didn’t give the okay on those, Cam.”

“Not yet.”

Howie looked ready to do battle, but Brigham headed him off. “Howie, Howie, let’s go easy here. I’ve had enough flak from the other trustees for letting you do this little play of yours in the first place.”

“
Letting
me…!”

“And bringing these Outsiders right into our own theatre. Now I hear Liz wants to put them up in somebody’s house!”

Howie flushed. “They’re not Outsiders!”

“Excuse me. UnEnclosed. Same thing.”

“No, Cám. These guys are
legal
. For chrissakes!”

Brigham patted his arm. “There’s things going on in the world, Howie. All I’m telling you is the Board’s not happy with it.”

“First I’ve heard of it! I’ve consulted the Board every step on this. Prill and Jim and Cora have been behind me all the way.”

“Well, Cora always was a little radical. As for the others…” Brigham shifted his weight from one thick leg to the other, smiling apologetically. “You know how people are.”

“What, they’ve changed their minds?”

The fat man shrugged, still smiling. “People don’t always know their minds right off, you know how it is.”

“No, I don’t!” Howie jammed his big hands on his hips and glared around at the <
Crossroads
photographs as if all this was their fault. I wanted him to leap to the Eye’s defense, but instead he let out an explosive breath and said, “I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it.

Brigham looked hugely satisfied. “Atta boy. Don’t pout, now. You’ll see I’m right.”

* * *

Howie fumed the whole way to the shop. “It’s him, damn it! Fucking stick-his-fingers-into-everything Cam! He never liked the idea of bringing in the Eye, and now the sonofabitch is working on everyone else! He says, why go so far away and to so much trouble? Perfectly good plays being written here at home. I said, yeah? Show ’em to me! They’re all fucking boring!” His usual bearish stride lengthened. The narrow concrete corridor echoed with his steady clomping and my clattering to keep up. “Have to get to the others right away. Go to work on damage control. Cora will help.”

I was silent. I wanted to know why he’d let Brigham push him around the way the fat man was pushing around the rest of the Board members, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you come right out and ask somebody. Howie probably deserved it, after leaving Micah high and dry at first rehearsal, but I was trying to learn from Micah’s compassionate example.

So I grunted the appropriate agreements and pondered something else: that Brigham had referred to the Eye as Outsiders. It reminded me of the graffiti.

Our failure to turn up any solid information about the Closed Door League was somehow more threatening than if they’d been haranguing right under our noses. Exactly what were these policies they were keeping so secret? If they wanted the home-bred to be running Harmony, that wasn’t so scary, but what did they think about the Outside Adoption Policy? Were they Exclusionists? Would they, given the chance, try to throw all non-natives out?

I wasn’t too happy to find myself suddenly thinking like Jane.

* * *

Sean’s irreverent boisterousness was a relief, and Howie was soothed by the respect automatically accorded by the shop personnel to the man who signed their paychecks. As we threaded a crooked path among the crowded worktables, I saw a lot of
Crossroads
being built and nothing at all that I could recognize as part of
The Gift
. I was surprised the show hadn’t been started yet, but figured that Sean knew his own schedule better than I did.

“Cam’s up there taking my pictures down!” Howie complained to the plans and elevations lining Sean’s office walls.

Sean’s T-shirt read:
Don’t start with me. You know how I get
. He handed each of us a beer. “Cam’s a jerk. He’s a fat man. He’d put up his family album if you gave him the chance.”

They laughed, and the creases in Howie’s brow softened.

“Ah, I gave in to him, the asshole.” Howie took a manly slug of his beer. “Keeps him outa my hair. He’s only on the Board ’cause he’s rich as Croesus. Let him run around taking his petty victories, so I can get on with the real work, like directing my play!”

“A world-class jerk,” Sean agreed. But I was pretty sure Brigham’s victory had not been so petty.

I was relieved to discover the prints of
The Gift
laid out on Sean’s drawing board. I leafed through them absently while he and Howie did their fraternal number. Reassuring notes were jotted here and there, measurements and materials specifications, little sketches showing a crosscut detail or how to make up a certain joint. At least some work was getting done on the show.

“How’s it going, Sean?” I asked eventually.

“Good, me gerl.” He put on his father’s thick brogue. “Sure ‘n we’ve got our hands full, but we’re allus on top of it. How’s me auld boyo up there in Bardycliff?”

I sighed. “Still struggling to cut Marin.”

Sean mimed scissors as long as his arm. “It’s the only way, you know.” He smiled my way, his soft blond and gray hair falling in front of come-on eyes. Sean’s sexy clowning usually inspired teenish giggles, much as I wished to appear professional and mature. But at the moment I was thinking,
Sean’s SecondGen. Ask
him
about the Closed Door League
. But not in front of Howie. Howie had enough problems.

“We’re wondering how’s the magic trick,” announced Howie genially.

“Coming, it’s coming.” Sean shuffled some papers on his desk.

“Yeah? And how do you figure it?”

Sean moved over to the drawing board. He hauled the ground plan out from under the pile of prints and smoothed it flat with splayed hands. “Show me exactly where you need this guy to disappear.”

Howie stabbed a forefinger at a spot downstage center.

“Right,” said Sean. “Well, what I’m thinking is maybe a light curtain, a one-man elevator, and a small reflecting force field around it, set into the deck.”

Howie whistled. “Small enough for one man?”

“Yup.” Sean was still not meeting Howie’s eyes.

“You ever seen one that small?”

“No, but me and my mechanic are working up some modifications to the smallest one we can order. It’s expensive, but it’ll be just the thing.”

“Invisible?”

“I’d rather say
transparent
. Totally new look. Not effectsy, y’know?”

“And it’s safe?”

“Hey, have I killed any of your actors so far?”

Howie chuckled. “Hell, go for it. The business is crucial, so don’t worry about the expense. If we have to, we’ll take it out of something else.”

“What else?” I worried. But I was delighted to have at least one bit of good news to carry back to my boss.

“Just so long as we don’t bankrupt the entire organization,” laughed Howie.

“Oh no,” said Sean, “
Crossroads
is going to do that.”

This reminded Howie of Cam Brigham again, and he frowned into his empty beer. “Sean, my man, who do I talk to about getting some better lighting down in the lower lobby?” He turned to me with a wolfish grin. “I’ll show that s.o.b. I’ll turn that piss-poor lobby into the best damn gallery in Harmony!”

WORLDNET/NEWS

07/23/46

BANGKOK, 07/22/46

MARK:

“It
sounds
feasible,” allowed Micah the next morning when I told him about Sean’s force-field idea. “Have Cris look into it.”

Cris was running a test of some Marin reprogramming in the conference room. Through the open doorway, I saw little red and purple holographic dragons squaring off over the white tabletop.

“Sean said it would be expensive,” I told Micah. “I got the feeling it was still very much in the planning stages.” With non-computer-generated special effects, we usually knew what was possible in theory, but were at the mercy of the “outside experts” when it came to the mechanical details. This was one of the things that made a thinking, innovative builder like Sean so valuable.

“Well, he’s got time, if he moves along with it.” Micah went back to his sketch for Willow Street’s
Fire!
Sean didn’t have a lot of time, just under four weeks before the set was due in the theatre. Micah’s confidence in him soothed any real anxiety, but I’d have felt easier if the build had at least been started.

It was after that, really, that the problems began.

With Bela gone, we had expected a new face in the studio next door. But Marie reported that the Apprentice Administration had finally suggested she make do with one assistant for a while.

“Sure, I’ll manage,” she allowed, “but really!”

Mark sat further down the cluttered lunch table, empty chairs to either side of him. After three weeks his sad, angry manner still asked for space to mourn. Songh sat opposite, shy but solicitous as a nursemaid, honoring Mark’s vigil with his own soulful silence.

“Perhaps some form of formal protest…” Micah offered.

Marie fluttered her hands. “Not worth it. Plenty of SecondGen kids working in the costume shops—I’ll groom one of them.”

Micah looked thoughtful. “Attrition,” he murmured.

“Beg pardon?”

“Attrition. That’s how they’ll do it.”

They exchanged sober glances over the lunch table, then Marie changed the subject abruptly. “The stitchers are saying the Eye’s laid a curse on the costume shop.”

The perfect intro for a shop tale, but shop tales had always been Bela’s province. We’d suffered through some sober lunches lately without him.

“Well, not the whole shop,” Marie explained. “One of the sewing machines, actually. The one that’s been biting people a lot because the shop’s too busy to retire it for repair. Now nobody’ll use it.”

“Why do they say it’s Eye?” I asked.

“Because it’s more fun than the real reason. Haven’t you been hearing the voodoo rumors running around the theatre?”

“The Eye does not practice voodoo,” said Crispin.

“Well, whatever you call it. Plus all these threats about what happens if you violate a taboo. One of Liz’s assistants fell off his bike the other day, and now he’s saying it was Te-Cucularit getting even because this kid scolded him for being late to rehearsal. That got the girls in a state.” Marie smiled, leaning over her plate. “Or how about this? We had a fitting with two of the men the other day—they showed up an hour late, which for them is almost on time, but all the tailors had gone home. Jorgen said go ahead anyway, then was called to the phone. Ah, the look on little Sarah’s face when those two hunks, Moussa like some oiled ebony god and our young holo-hero Pen, dropped trow right there in front of her!”