Harmony (7 page)

He leaned in closer, as if murmuring little seductions. “What the hell’s got Micah so worked up?”

He smelled of fresh sawdust and after-shave. I sympathized with Jane. Sean at forty was going soft around the edges, but he had what the Irish call laughing eyes and his body still remembered how to move with confidence and grace.

“It’s Howie,” I whispered.

“Ah. I know
that
problem.” He moved on to the Master’s corner. “Say, buddy, didn’t you invite a guy to lunch?”

“Invited yourself, as I recall,” Micah grumped. “And you’re early. The lunch hasn’t arrived yet.” But he offered up a weary grin and turned down the Wagner.

Sean nodded at the chaos on the drawing board. “So, Mi. Whatcha up to?”

Micah raked both hands through his bristly hair. “I’m trying to…” His shoulders sagged. “You don’t want to know.”

“Hey. Try me.” Through some kind of companionable magic, Sean inserted himself between Micah and the drafting board. “Hmm,” he said over the drawings. “Hah! Dragons! We could use a few o’ them at the Ark right now. Things have been pretty dull lately.”

Micah regarded him skeptically, then shrugged. “Well, since you’re here, there is one thing you might take a look at…”

But then the lunch arrived, and Micah never did have the chance to pick his favorite technician’s brain for free on the subject of the Marin project.

Lunch at Micah’s was a major event. Because the studio lacked a kitchen and the village restaurants were priced for tourists, too dear for the likes of us poor apprentices on any regular basis, and because Micah loved to eat but hated to eat badly, he had lunch catered every day and encouraged friends and colleagues to drop by. It was his homage to the social contract, his attempt to further communications within the field, his substitute for family dinners, his (and our) one moment of relaxation.

The mess hall was our little conference room. Often, Marie Bennett-Lloyd, the costume designer who had the other studio in the suite, joined us with her apprentices Mark and Bela, whom we called the Blond Twins. With guests and tall Josie who brought the food and the food itself and the bookcases and filing drawers lining three walls, it was quite a crowd and altogether the break one needed after a morning of intense concentration. The one thing it rarely was, was quiet.

Marie and the Twins were on location that day, so there was more room than usual. Sean canvassed the food avidly, grinning at Josie as she passed around tumblers of iced tea.

“You weren’t at Town Meeting last night,” he scolded. He wagged a stubby finger at Micah. “You either. Bet you didn’t even watch it on the vid. Christ, democracy in action.”

“I was working,” said Micah. Josie shrugged and smiled.

“It’s an election year, Mi! Don’t you care what’s happening? The population issue’s heating up again. Did you know it’s a fact we’ve been letting in some fifty people every year for the last forty just ’cause we like their looks?”

“Their talent,” Micah amended sternly. “Artists of world stature.”

“Yeah, and Cam Brigham says proven salability, but pal o’ mine, we got no more place to put ’em! And here’s the kind of solutions being offered: some asshole running for T.C. from Amadeus says, hey, start a program to encourage expatriation to other domes.” Sean eyed me slyly. “So, whadda ya say, let’s all move to Chicago!”

I laughed. “They could use you in Chicago, Sean.”

“Are all the women as sexy as you? I’ll go.” He threw himself into a folding chair and stretched his legs. “So. I hear Howie’s been exercising his particular neuroses around the premises.”

Jane’s look to me said I-told-you-so. I shrugged and watched Sean stir three heaping spoons of sugar into his tea. He did it with coffee, too. Every time, I wondered what he had left for teeth.

“Howard has a lot of damn nerve sometimes,” Micah grumbled.

Sean chuckled. “Told me he’s gonna direct this one himself.”

“Ummm.”

“Been awhile for Howie. Do him good to get back to it.”

“Umm-huh.”

“Tuatua, huh? You gonna do it?”

“Haven’t read it yet. He hasn’t seen fit to grace me with a script.”

“Me neither. They choose ’em without running ’em by me first, then they bitch when the damn shows go over budget!” Sean leaned in to grab a plate. “They’re talking the July slot in Theatre Two.”

“I know.”

“Max Eider’s
Crossroads
for the mainstage’ll be in the shop then. It’ll be tight. You know Max, always gotta be on the cutting edge of technology.”

Micah nodded without noticeable sympathy.

“Hey, c’mon!” Sean spread his arms, plate in one hand, fork in the other. “You know I’m the first one to jump on a problem that wants a new solution. That’s where the fun comes in. But sometimes a thing’s best done tried and true, instead of wasting your time tryin’ to reinvent the friggin’ wheel!”

“I thought Howard sent you over to be encouraging.”

“Hell, no. I’m just here for the free lunch.” Sean took a bear-sized bite of chicken in basil cream. “Bringing in real Tuatuans, eh? That oughta be something. Some pretty weird stuff got aired when that place was rediscovered. Hoodoo, and magic…”

Micah laid squares of cheese on dark brown bread. “Crispin might be able to offer us more than rumor and conjecture, after three days in the library files.”

Cris swallowed eagerly. “Yeah! Don’t have much on the Eye yet, but there’s great stuff on the island. Its real name is Tuamatutetuamatu.”

Yes, I thought. That’s what she called it.
Tuamatutetuamatu
.

“That a name or a mouthful?” snorted Sean, with his mouth full.

“It’s east of the Fiji Domes, just about where it starts to look like open ocean on the maps. It’s a caldera, what’s left of a big volcano that blew up a hundred thousand years ago, so the island’s actually a ring eighteen miles in diameter with a nice lagoon in the middle.” He looked to Micah. “I could show you if…”

Micah nodded. “Anyone mind eating in the dark?”

Cris rescued the conference table’s remote keypad from between the avocado salads and the cheese plates. The walls of the room disappeared, replaced with a vista of turquoise water, black sand beaches lined in palm, and toothy green mountains behind. Rolling surf sighed beneath the sharp cries of seabirds. Salt tang mixed with smells of heat and vegetation. A breeze ruffled the soft fall of hair across Sean’s forehead.

A soft “But…” escaped me. No smoke? No gray? No ruins? This couldn’t be Outside.

“Welcome to Tuatua,” Cris announced smugly.

“Why would they ever leave home?” remarked Micah, though he knew better. No eighteen-mile atoll could provide a big enough audience to support a theatre company. The Eye, whoever they were, had to tour in order to make a living.

“There’s more,” said Crispin. A roar of water shuddered the room, silver strands falling out of darkness into leaf-ringed pools. Rain forest trees clung to green cliffs wreathed in fog. I shivered in the sudden damp. The violent death of its volcano had bequeathed Tuamatutetuamatu a rugged siren beauty that quite belied the island’s diminutive size. I’d seen pictures like this, in books about Before, but it was hard to believe this existed undomed,
now
.

A flight of rainbowed birds shot past to dazzle our ears and eyes.

“Kinda empty, isn’t it?” murmured Sean.

“Before Dissolution,” Cris continued, “nobody much bothered with the place but missionaries. Development wasn’t cost-effective. The world just sort of lost track of it for forty years or so, during the worst of things. But now…”

The mists cleared and we sat in neatly tended fields on a terraced hillside, acres of shiny-leafed shrubs bright with clusters of red and green berries.

“Coffee plantations. Also tea and banana, some rubber, pineapple and avocado, papaya and cardamom. The climate is ideal for agriculture, and the ground remarkably fertile.”

In the brighter light of the open fields, Sean reached for and opened a beer. “But no good eating it, growing out there like that.”

Micah sectioned an apple into eighths. “We might be eating it now, if they’re exporting what they grow.”

Sean frowned at his plate. “We wouldn’t import Outside fruit.”

“It’s not Outside, officially.”

“I don’t care what those scientists say, the sea ain’t gonna keep out the airborne crap. It was the whole system broke down. You believe the Pacific could get clean out there all of a sudden?”

“I live in hope,” said Micah mildly. “They do appear to be managing marvelously well without a dome.”

“Voodoo,” I suggested. “Isn’t that what the legends say?”

“Yeah, right,” Sean snorted.

Songh giggled, and I grinned at him. “You probably believe there is such a thing.”

“The local tribes don’t call it voodoo,” said Crispin. “They say it’s the power of the Ancestors.” He fingered the keypad, and around us the neat plantations flared into the glaring, bustling streets of a city, tall and white. Squinting into the Pacific sun, Cris resumed his lecture voice: “But maybe their power’s not working so well anymore, because the big news about Tuamatutetuamatu, besides gourmet coffee and pineapples, is that there’s practically a civil war over whether or not to Enclose.” He glanced at Jane and flapped his eyebrows wickedly. “Oh-oh. Politics…”

Sean nodded. “Yah, well, there’s always someone thinks they’re against a doming, but they get used to the idea soon enough.”

“This debate’s gone on for twelve years,” said Cris.

“Why dome now,” I asked, “if they’ve been okay without one?”

“The pro-domers claim being undomed isolates them from the world community. They say—”

“I don’t think we need to go into the sociology right now,” said Micah. “You can print it out for me later.”

“There’s just this last,” Cris insisted, and we were perched on a parapet, looking across at steep hillsides encrusted with lavish single-family estates. Gardens, pools, the heart-stopping works.

Sean let out an admiring whistle. “Somebody’s done all right by themselves on this little rock.”

“Somebody sure has. Descendants of settlers from Before. Tuatua’s new entrepreneurs. But I’m not supposed to bore you with that.” Cris shoved his keypad aside. The white room re-formed around us.

Micah ignored Crispin’s sulk. “Thank you. Excellent work on such short notice.”

It was. Cris had exploited a minor research project into an affecting design exercise. I was only mildly jealous.

“You didn’t show us any Tuatuans,” I complained.

“Oh, right.” An array of flat pix flashed up on our one blank wall. Dark faces, naked bodies, flowers and feathers, and a child with a braided necklace strung with a large carved bead. I shot Cris a look and sat back satisfied. He killed the pix and tucked into his lunch without comment. Cris hated being proved wrong.

Sean drained his beer. “So what’s this play about?”

“Misunderstanding and betrayal, Howie says. Among other things.”

“Sounds right, for Howie.” Sean rocked back in his chair with a deep, and deliberate belch. “You gonna do it, Mi? Be good to have you back in my shop. Take the show. I’ll put the beer on ice.”

“I told Howard I’d read it and let him know.”

Sean laughed, shaking his head. “C’mon, you’re gonna do it. Tuatua! How can you resist? Now, if we stay together on it, we might just keep the Howie beast under control. You got all my best, you know that. When d’you think you can get me drawings?”

“I haven’t said I’d do it.”

“Sure, Mi, I know.” Sean grinned at him. “So when can you get me drawings?”

* * *

That afternoon, Howie faxed over the script. We all clamored so loudly that Micah had Songh make up four copies and sent us home to read it. Jane was still working on the castle revolve for
Deo Gratias
at the Paris Opera. It wasn’t due for another month, but she was convinced that Songh should stay to help her finish it. Songh pressed his bundle of still-warm pages to his chest and jittered like a six-year-old until Micah shooed all four of us into the courtyard. We ran off whooping and laughing, just as a clutch of black-veiled Arab women arrived at the gate for open studio hours.

I slowed, listening for the music of metal and glass beneath the dark flowing robes. But these women were short and wide and moved like toadstools. I felt only vaguely guilty that we’d left Micah to deal with them alone.

CRISPIN’S RESEARCH: A LETTER AT RANDOM

April 2, 1957

And time, I fear, has somewhat dampened the euphoria that possessed us upon our arrival. You must not think that we are disheartened, but so often the things that one expects should be easy turn out to be the hardest to accomplish.

For instance, the issue of agriculture. Though the ground is prodigiously fertile, the native diet is sadly limited and starchy. Though they do not complain, they cannot be expected to know any better. I felt from the first that we must put serious effort into improving nutrition if we want the human ground to be equally fertile to our Mission here.

Well, Father, I promise you we did our best to introduce some of the excellent European varieties we brought with us, such as the improved legumes and grains, and resistant vegetable strains, ones that we were sure would thrive in this happy climate and provide for a wealth of nourishment and a more various diet.

We grew test plots right in the Mission yard, using the new intensive methods, and at harvest time, invited the chiefs in with their advisers to view the results, which were fruitful beyond even our own expectations.

Ivar and I loaded giant baskets with squash and sweet melons, tomatoes and beans, together with packets of seed for each. The chiefs smiled and thanked us, then each lugged a basket home to his village and set it up in front of the Men’s House like a battle prize, where of course the produce soon rotted in the sun.