Harmony (50 page)

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.

Now’s when we need the magic, I sighed. Real magic. Would I ever be able to admit to Sam that he was right? I didn’t know it until he’d said it, but I wanted the magic to be real.

The only one satisfied with the day was Louisa. Stationed mid-house, oblivious to all of Howie’s fits and starts, she happily played with her lighting. Her console gave her control over the color, focus, and intensity of each individual lamp and effect. She played it like a concert synthesizer, improvising entire scenes as she went along. Lou played and the computer recorded. She would edit the program later and revise it during subsequent rehearsals until she had a show she was happy with.

When Liz called dinner break, Howie asked the company to stick around a moment. “Liz, get Sean out here.”

Micah joined Louisa and me at the console. “We’ll work the break, get some food in here and start doing some real painting. Is Jane back yet?”

I retrieved Louisa’s discarded headset and murmured, “Page Jane for Micah, will you?”

Sean showed up carrying a half-gulped sandwich and a beer. “Christ, a man can’t even eat around here.” He grinned at Liz and did not bother to disguise a soft belch.

“Can you get the trick working over dinner?” Howie demanded.

“Hey, hey, easy does it, eh?”

“Well, can you?”

“Not tonight. Come on, we’ve got a preview next door.”

Howie’s script slammed to the deck. “You know what? I don’t care about their preview! I’ve got to put this show in front of an audience in four days! Now, I’m running this theatre and I want equal service from the people being paid good money to get shows built on time! I can’t fucking work like this!”

The Eye watched impassively as if refereeing a tennis match. Micah, Lou, and I drifted closer together.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” murmured Lou, “place your bets.”

Sean jiggled his beer bottle against his thigh. “I didn’t make this schedule, pal.”

“I don’t care who made it! The actors are ready, I’m ready, everybody’s ready but you, Sean!” Howie turned, paced away, turned back, punctuating with sharp jabs of his finger. “This show needs its parts together before we know what we have, ‘cept we gotta wait for you to get your goddamn shit together! I don’t care what your problem is! You’re holding up the whole process! I want your men on it, and I want ’em there the minute we’re out of here!”

“No can do, even if I had all the men in the world.”

“All right! If I give you the damn stage tonight, will you have it up and running by tomorrow?”

“Could be. If you get the fuck outa here and let me work.”

For a moment the only sound in the theatre was Howie’s labored breathing. Then he bent, snatched up his script, and pivoted away. “Liz, release the company for the evening. The shop has the stage.” He swept past Micah on his way up the aisle. “See? You got me doing your goddamn job for you.”

I’d had it. When Sean headed back to the shop, I went after him. Sam blocked my way at the bottom of the aisle. “Come home with me.”

“I have to work.”

“For dinner, then. We’ll run back.”

“I have to talk to Sean.”

“Was I that bad this afternoon? Or maybe it was this morning…”

I grinned, even blushed a little. “This is something I really have to do.”

He stood close, not touching me. “Look, Rhys, we’re not going to have a lot of time together.”

My heart quickened. “I know.”

Sam sighed, backed off. “Being reliable again, eh? Damnable woman. I may just have to take you with me.” When I eyed him wistfully, he shifted, looked after Sean’s retreating back. “Hard case, that one.”

“He didn’t used to be.”

“No? What’s he so angry about?”

“You, among other things.”

“Yeah, I rub a lot of people the wrong way, until they get to know me—”

“I meant all of you.”

“Sure you did.” He leaned in, kissed my forehead, my neck, my throat. “Please. Come home with me…”

“Sam…”

“Go. Work. I’ll be back for you later when you’re too tired to resist.”

* * *

Sean was alone in his office with his feet up on his empty desk, staring at the wall.

The door was ajar. The only light was the desk lamp beside him. I knocked.

He didn’t look around. “Now what?”

I eased in, leaned against the wall by the door, hearing the dry crinkle of
Crossroads
plans behind my head. The office was chillingly tidy. Not even the odd beer empty lying comfortably about. “Nothing. I… um, this is none of my business, but are you okay?”

“Yah, I’m just great.” His feet, crossed on his desk, beat a jerky rhythm against each other. He had a crumpled sheet of paper in his lap. He was tearing off corners and wadding them up into little balls between his fingers, lining them up on the desktop. He already had a good number of them.

“Sean, you know how Howie gets when he’s nervous. What would we all do for comic material if Howie behaved himself?”

He didn’t seem to be listening. I perched on a corner of the desk, trying to fit commiseration, humor, and pleading into the same smile. I could see now what he was staring at: the season’s schedule, taped to the wall between drawings and other paperwork.

He tossed a little wad at it. “Ah yes, where’s our old Sean, that laugh-and-smile boyo? Micah send you up here?”

“No, he—”

“He’s taking this so fuckin’ serious.”

“He always does.”

“Well, he wants something, he can come up here himself.”

“Sean, Micah’s just as pissed at Howie as you are.”

“Yeah? And how pissed is he at me?”

Now I was wondering what demon of egotism had drawn me up here to negotiate in a war I didn’t understand the nature of. “He’s more hurt than anything.”

Sean spun upright, scattering the little paper balls, slamming the chair against the desk. “What the hell does he want from me? Haven’t I killed myself enough for him before?”

“You’re killing yourself now for Max Eider!”

“Fuck Eider! Eider’s a lunatic!” He circled the room like the walls were bars. “Look, Bill Rand is a friend of mine. We go back. We… our families know each other. You want me to throw in my friend for some guys from nowhere, some friggin’ weirdos I don’t even know?”

The wall behind me was prickly with the heads of pins holding up all the
Crossroads
drawings. “I thought Micah was your friend. He thought so, too.”

“Then he oughta see I got a lot of shit on my plate! He oughta give me a fuckin’ break!”

“He has, Sean. He didn’t dispute
Crossroads
getting precedence. He found you extra men, more money, gave you all the benefit of the doubt, but now they’re talking of canceling performances and Micah’s still trying to see what he’s got up there!”

“I got men on it, dammit.”

“It’s you he needs, Sean. Your special energy. Your expertise. Your valued advice and support. He needs the crew to know you’re behind him. This show is very important to him!”

“This piece of crap?
Crossroads
is big, but at least it looks like something! You don’t mind busting your balls for something you can believe in. What’s Micah, crazy? Putting his name on the line for the likes of them? What am I supposed to think, either he’s a fool or he agrees with them?”

“Why not ask Micah? Talk to him, Sean. Accuse him, fight with him if you have to, but talk to him!”

“Don’t see him going out of his way to talk to me.” He moved around fitfully, his hands clenched. “Why’s this one so friggin’ important, anyway? Those guys don’t care about Art, they come here to proselytize. Bunch of friggin’ trouble-makers!”

“They’re not!”

“Yeah? Look at all the shit’s been stirred up since they got here!”

That propelled me off the desk. “You don’t know anything about them! You haven’t tried! You haven’t even been around!”

“I hear, I hear. I hear from Ruth, I hear from Liz. I see ’em walking around here barefoot like they owned the place, making their own rules, jamming their mystical bullshit down our throats, spreading their Open Sky sedition around the place. They don’t like domes, let ’em go home! Plenty of people born here need the jobs. We don’t need importing subversives in from Outside!”

“The Open Sky aren’t subversives or anarchists.” I was now on shaky ground, only parroting what I’d heard from the Eye. “They’re domer citizens who happen to think the world’s wealth should be spread around a little. That’s not unreasonable.”

Sean pounced. “So you admit these guys are Open Sky?”

“It’s no secret the Station Clans are sympathetic to certain Open Sky ideas. Jeez, Sean, you make it sound like some kind of conspiracy.”

“What the hell else do you think it is? It’s the biggest there is! Christ, it’s people like you make us need to take things into our own hands now and then!” My stunned silence must have worried him. “Come on, don’t take it like that. We know they’re just using you kids, like they’re using Micah.”

“We?”

His eyes shifted away irritably. “Don’t give me that. I know you’ve been poking around, asking questions.” He sighed, rubbed his face viciously. “Aw, Christ, I don’t hold with all this secrecy stuff either. Always put my vote in against it, always get overruled. Lot of paranoia building in this town. That’s why this petition thing of yours is good, like I said. Gets things out in the open. Things gotta change in Harmony and change is never easy but we need it to survive. Once we get this all ironed out, you’ll know we did right. And you’ll see we take care of our friends.”

“Do you, Sean? Look around. Some people who thought they were your friends are getting fucked, and you’re the one doing it!”

Wanting to slam doors, wanting to run, I did neither. I turned and walked out, wishing I had somewhere safe to go, besides the very temporary refuge of Sam’s arms. Wading through the shop as through a jungle, I made myself smile cheerily at all the SecondGen carpenters who’d closed me out in the crew room earlier. I thought I had it under control until I reached the theatre and strode unblinking past Micah on my way to begin mixing paint.

“We still can’t find Jane,” he complained. “Have you seen her?”

I kept walking. “The crew says she went home.”

“Gwinn?” he called after me. “Is everything all right?”

I slowed, turned on him. “No!” I yelled. “I just had the fight with Sean you should be having!”

Micah’s jaw sagged as if I’d hit him, and I burst into tears.

* * *

Micah forgave my outburst readily enough. He said he must be getting old—he couldn’t make sense of what was happening anymore.

Later, Sam made me repeat everything Sean had said, word for word.

Mali smiled pensively. “I’d say we aren’t quite orderly enough for Mr. Reilly. The specter of chaos haunts so many domer dreams.”

“Not turning my back on him,” Sam declared. “Probably a major CDL organizer. Could be him hiring the thugs.”

Cora’s legs were neatly curled up beneath her on a green velvet chaise in her sitting room. “No, Sean Reilly hates the Outside and is very conservative and no brilliant intellect, but he comes to Town Meeting regularly, speaks his mind. He’s an honest man who believes in the democratic process. The secrecy was bound to eat away at him sooner or later. I think we’re seeing factionalism within the CDL.”

I wondered what Cora knew about the Outside. The Eye had made themselves so easily at home in her castle. A medieval madrigal floated up from the music room, as sweet as birdsong. Moussa was running the rest of the company through their nightly vocal exercises.

“Factionalism can always be used to advantage,” said Mali.

Cora pursed carefully crimsoned lips. “I wonder if I should have a little chat with Sean… ?”

Omea stuck her head in. “Hello. Is Jane with you, Gwinn dear?”

“I think she went back to the dorm.”

Omea frowned gently. “Did anybody check?”

“Urn, no. We thought maybe she needed some space.”

“Perhaps. Well, good night.”

Cora said, “In another world, my Sam-uel, you and Sean would be drinking buddies. You’d rely on him and he’d serve you well. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Sean being used, by his CDL.”

“I’m still not turning my back on him,” Sam muttered.

“Talk to Sean, Cora,” I begged.

* * *

Sam rolled away from me in the bed. “I want you to do something for me.”

I stretched languorously. “Didn’t I just do that?”

“Reality time, love.” He rolled back, placed his hand between us, palm down on the sheet. “I want Ule to teach you how to use this.”

He uncovered a thin, flat-bladed knife. The whole of it was six inches long at most, and I could tell it was very old. The handle was ebony chased with delicate rings of silver, smoothed to satin by many hands. It could have been a prop out of
Crossroads
, a
marquesa
’s graceful letter opener, but for its keen-honed edge. It was very beautiful and it made me more nervous than I could say.