Harmony (52 page)

The actors sensed the change. Ule dropped a line and asked to start over. Liz made the crew reset and run the cue again. This time Ule and Cu kept the scene going gamely, but the tension had gone out of it. Howie stood up, shaking his head.

“Stop, please,” Liz intoned into her mike.

Howie bustled onstage, beaming encouragement.

Louisa sat back, flopped an arm over the back of her seat. “He made you add that monster, didn’t he?”

Micah shifted uneasily. “Anything you can do to help would be appreciated.”

“At least the entrance timing was nice,” I said.

“Perfect,” Micah agreed.

Howie turned from his conference with the actors. “Liz, can we get this damn thing onstage any faster?”

That set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. Every excuse for stopping was seized upon, every chance to go back and redo, to fuss with a prop, a costume, an entrance, an exit. After less than an hour, Reede Chamberlaine got up and left, quietly but for the noise his entourage made following him out. Cam Brigham let his seat close up behind him with a sharp report, causing a heartbeat of silence onstage. Mali froze in the middle of a line, Omea’s head whipped around, Tuli and Lucienne came to full alert upstage. When they’d relaxed and moved onward, Rachel Lamb watched a moment more, then slipped out after Brigham.

Over the headset, I heard Automation mutter, “It’s the tall one holding things up. Dragging his ass so he doesn’t have to try out the trick.”

* * *

Sam slid into the seat beside me during a break. “Any sign of Jane?”

“None.”

Micah said, “The usual practice is to inform the craftmaster of a termination at least a day ahead of time.”

“They didn’t tell Marie about Bela,” I pointed out.

“No. They didn’t.”

“Could the Admin be terminating people early without telling anyone?”

“Terminating,” Sam remarked. “What a way to put it.”

“That’s what it amounts to,” said Micah.

Sam did not dispute him. He twined his fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck, massaging gently. “How’re you? Stiff yet?”

“Not yet.” I could feel Micah’s interest even as he gazed pensively at the stage. How would he feel about his chief assistant learning self-defense with a knife? An Outsider’s knife. I pinched the starchy beige fabric of Sam’s sleeve between two fingers. “This sure needs some softening up.”

He laughed softly. “I don’t know. I’d hate to get too comfortable in the enemy’s clothing.” His lips brushed my ear, the tip of his tongue curling deftly around my earlobe. I clamped my mouth shut so as not to make a lustful spectacle of myself, then he was up and trotting down the aisle as Liz called places to resume.

“I
have
missed a few things lately,” Micah observed.

I laughed, embarrassed and delighted. I tried to mimic his ironic tone. “I’m afraid it’s all very sudden and hopeless.”

“It usually is,” he replied, and then the scene started.

“What is?” I whispered.

“Life,” said Micah. “Ssssh.”

When it came time to sequence the trap into the action, Howie stopped rehearsal and summoned the entire running crew to the stage.

I murmured to Micah, “Backstage they’re saying Mali’s afraid of the trap.”

Our crew was mostly young, entirely SecondGen. They eyed Howie with the dubious sort of respect that mellows with experience into the cheerful cynicism endemic to stagehands.

“The success of the whole play turns on this scene,” he lectured them. “This moment is the mystical core of the evening.”

“Why doesn’t he just let them get on with it?” muttered Louisa irritably.

“All right, then,” Liz intoned. “From the top of five.”

Act Two, scene five: Cu and Ule as the village elders began their ritual, calling on the spirits of the Ancestors to punish the revelation of tribal magic to an infidel planter.

Their conjuring isolated Mali downstage center in a diagonal shaft of light. His profile was edged in silver, his eyes were bright with tragic comprehension. He welcomed death as an end to the disillusionment and remorse he felt for his wasted sacrifice of the clan’s most precious secret. From the surrounding darkness the green and gold of the Matta shimmered into life. Indefinable shapes circled and hovered. A voice spoke, low and inexorable. The clansman knelt as the Matta flowed around to envelop him, seemingly of its own volition.

“Hold it, hold it,” Howie yelled. “Do it without the Matta first. I don’t want him strangling in the pit!”

Eighty feet of fabric rustled to the deck. Lucienne and Tuli marked through their winding dance without it. The voice—Sam’s, though I barely recognized it—chanted while Moussa beat a quiet fury on his lap drums.

Micah was as still as a rock.

Over the headset, I heard Liz cue the booth, a little nervous, a little loud.

A hum, a snap-flash in the reflector field, then nothing. Mali was still there, kneeling on solid ground.

Muttering over the headset. “What happened?” demanded Liz.

Mali stood up, shading his eyes and squinting out into the house.

“Stand back from there, Mal,” ordered Sam from the darkness.

“Where the hell’s Sean?” Howie complained.

The running crew drifted into view around the edges of the stage. The show carpenter padded down to the trap area, talking to the booth over her headset. “Yeah, try it again.” She tested the deck with her boot. “Looks like it’s not getting power. Must have jogged a connector loose somewhere.” She turned to Howie. “You want to stop and fix it now?”

Howie grumbled and paced. “Liz, how long ‘til dinner?”

“Thirty minutes.” She handed him a folded paper.

“Fuck it, we’ll break early. Everybody back at seven.” He unfolded the note, made a face at it. “Reede wants a meeting? Fine. Get him in here.”

Chamberlaine arrived with Cam Brigham still in tow. Trustees rarely hung around so much unless they were worried about something. Rachel Lamb followed, nearly hidden among the Londoner’s entourage.

Chamberlaine got right to the point. “All the technical delays have taken their toll, Howard. This cast is not ready. Time you thought seriously of canceling previews.”

“All our preview performances are sold,” said Rachel. “With the extra money we’ve put into this, we can’t really afford to cancel.”

“Postpone, then. Reschedule the opening.”

“We’re on a subscription season,” she reminded him. Her hands were tightly clasped in front of her as if she felt herself on the brink of terrible danger. “We’re locked into our schedule.”

The producer smiled patiently. “If you go before you’re ready, you risk bad reviews and your box office will suffer anyway.”

“Better not to open it at all than risk bad reviews,” put in Brigham.

“And bad reviews could hamper the tour,” Chamberlaine added.

“We’re not going to get bad reviews,” said Howie impatiently, “and we’re not going to cancel. We’ll be ready. Don’t worry.”

Chamberlaine smiled again. “Well, let’s give it another day.”

From our remove at the production table, Louisa muttered, “Where’s Sean when he should be listening to all this?”

The running crew opened up the trap with a manual override, then left it gaping while they went to hunt up Sean and grab a quick bite from the machines. Crossing the stage to Sam’s dressing room, I heard knocking and puttering down in the hole. I peered in. Peter was nosing around underneath with a flashlight. His tool belt clinked as he moved among the forest of deck supports.

“Don’t you ever go home?” I called.

He glanced up, startled, then grinned like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Oh, hi. Pretty amazing down here. I’m gonna give Sean some mean competition when the time comes.”

“You working tonight?”

“Nah, we’re on a day schedule starting tomorrow, to finish up.” He thumbed off his light. “Well, I’m off. Hope Sean can get this working okay. It’s a great idea.” He waved and ducked away under the deck and down the escape stairs into the below-stage trap room.

I knocked at the dressing room Sam shared with Ule and Cu, and stuck my head in. Green jungle air invaded my lungs. Clouds of steam from the shower billowed through the bathroom door, settling in a fine mist on thick rubbery leaves, lacy ferns, and drooping palm fronds. Ivies scaled the mirrors. Purple and green orchids bloomed around the light fixtures. An astonishing amount of plant life had been crammed into the narrow space. Te-Cucularit sat out of makeup at his mirror, writing in his notebook with such concentration that I felt guilty for disturbing him.

“He’s in the shower,” Cu said without looking up.

Ule was stretched out on the cot, buck-naked and asleep. I leaned against the doorframe. “I love the way it smells in here.” Though Cu gave no sign of listening, I told him about my grandfather’s “green” room. “I knew he was crazy, but I loved being in there with him anyway. It was like a refuge.”

“For him, it was,” Cu said quietly.

“Yes. If only I could have understood that then.” In the bathroom, the shower shut off with a lingering hiss. “You were amazing in the opening ritual today. I felt like Akeua was in the theatre.”

“She was.” He flicked me a cool smile in the mirror and bent back to his writing.

“You’re not allowed to give the Preacher compliments, didn’t you know that?” Sam came in toweling off. “Nobody who looks like that should be allowed compliments.”

Cu’s perfect body was an abstraction to me now, obsessed as I was with the thicker, more compact body in front of me. “Even if they did something right?”

“He’s always right, aren’t you, TeCu? Hasn’t been wrong since… well, I’d hate to give away clan secrets.”

Te-Cucularit raised barely tolerant eyes to the mirror. I offered him sympathy and got again the brief, careful smile.

Ule stirred on the cot, turned over. “Oh hullo, ladykins.”

Sam tossed his towel at him. “Cover up, man.”

Ule winked at me, wrapped the towel slowly around his waist. “Ver-ree possessive, our Sammy. How’s the leg feel?”

The sheath on my calf. “Forgotten all about it,” I admitted.

“Good, good.” Ule rubbed his face. Slumped on the edge of the cot, without his dancer’s energy enlivening his body, he looked thin and worn, more like the fifty-three years he claimed and I found hard to believe. “Time to add a little weight, then.”

The little knife appeared in front of me, on Sam’s palm.

I sighed, took it from him, and knelt to slip it into its sheath. “I have to tell you, this feels really silly—”

“No,” said Te-Cucularit. “You must be protected.”

Ule and Sam looked at him in surprise.

Cu rose, folding his notebook under his arm. I stood aside to let him pass. In the doorway he turned back to me. “He was not crazy, your grandfather. He was preserving what he thought was right in the only way left to him. Gwinn-Rhys, listen to the voice of your ancestor.”

“Uh-oh,” said Sam when he’d gone, “Preacher’s looking for a convert.”

* * *

Coming back from dinner and other things, Sam and I met Micah at the stage door.

“The Administration denies terminating Jane,” he reported. We slowed behind a clot of
Crossroads
actors blocking the alley with their effusive greetings to one another. Tonight was their press night. “I’ve alerted Security.”

My body was still languid with the pleasure I’d had with Sam. I felt the guilt sharply. “All day long I’ve been thinking we should be out looking for her instead of…”

“Instead of inside doing a play?” Micah held the door, nodded us through brusquely. “They promised an immediate search. We’d only get in their way. The secretary at Admin did ask if Jane had been out after curfew or involved ‘in this petition thing.’ ”

Sam murmured beside me, “Nowhere outside this building without me, you understand? Nowhere.”

* * *

In the theatre, Sean was lecturing Cris about the trap. Cris was in pirate mode, with his bandanna knotted around his head and his long hair pulled back. He’d stayed to work through the dinner break with Automation.

Micah moved past them, across the stage. “I’ll be in the house.”

“They’ve got to sync the drop with bringing the field to full power,” Sean was insisting.

“I’d like to edit out the delay,” said Cris.

“Nah, let ’em practice. Can’t get these timings right the first time, you know.”

Sean signaled and the crew ran the sequence. Cris rode the trap. It worked, it was quieter, but it was still not magic. I wanted never to hear how much this device had cost. I wasn’t going to think it was worth it.

Howie appeared, Howie who could smile at a man who’d just spat on him if the need was great enough. He hovered at Sean’s shoulder. “How’s it going?”

Sean dusted his palms together. “Got the sucker licked.”

“How about sticking around for the rehearsal?”

“I’ll be in and out. A man’s gotta eat.”

“Eat here. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Howie? Need you a minute.” Kim Levin stood downstage with one of the Chamberlaine entourage, a thin, young man failing in his efforts to mimic Reede’s London elegance.

“Mr. C. sends his apologies,” he breathed.

“He’s not coming tonight?”

“Since he’s leaving tomorrow evening, Mr. C. thought he should take advantage of the chance to see the performance next door. But Mr. Rand has invited your company to be his guests at the press reception in the lobby afterward.”

“
His
guests?” Howie roared. “This is
my
goddamn theatre!”

“Yessir, I know, of course, sir.” The young man’s last shred of polish vanished.

Howie waved him away and threw himself into a seat in the front row, muttering, “Cam Brigham at work again. When this is over, I’m getting myself a new chairman of the board.”

He didn’t let the cast in on Reede Chamberlaine’s desertion to
Crossroads
, but he was edgy all evening. Having decreed a proper dress run-through in full costume and makeup, he then stopped the action every five minutes to dispute a line reading or rework some blocking. It took two and a half hours to get through the first act.