Outnumbering the Dead

by Frederik Pohl

  But he was dealing with it. When they had finished the quick run-through he dispatched Charlus to start on the choreography of the first scene, where all the Thebans were reciting for the audience their opening misery under the Sphinx. Rafiel was reaching in his pocket for another look at the fax when Victorium came over. 'Sindsie okay, Rafiel?' he asked. 'I thought you seemed just a little absent-minded.'

  'Pas du tout,' Rafiel said, stuffing the letter away. Then, admitting it, 'Well, just a little, forse. I, ah, had a letter from an old friend.'

  'Yes,' Victorium said, nodding, 'Mosay said something about it. Alegretta, was that her name?'

  Rafiel shrugged, not letting his annoyance show. Of course Mosay had known all about Alegretta, because Mosay made it a point to know everything there was to know about every one of his artists; but to pry into private mail, and then to discuss it with others, was going too far.

  'Old lovers can still make the heart beat faster, can't they?' he said.

  'Yes?' Victorium said, not meaning to sound sceptical, but obviously not troubled with any such emotions himself. 'Has it been a long time? Will you be seeing her again?'

  'Oh' - startled by the thought, almost afraid of it - 'no, I don't think so. No, probably not - she's a long way away. She seems to be in one of the orbiters now. You know she used to be a doctor? But now she's given up medicine, doing some kind of science now.'

  'She sounds like a very interesting person,' Victorium said neutrally - a little absent-mindedly himself, too, because in the centre of the room Charlus had started showing the Thebans the dance parts, and Victorium had not failed to catch the sounds of his own music. Still looking at the Thebans, Victorium said, 'Mosay asked me to show you the rough simulation for the opening. Let's go over to the small screen - oh, hell,' he said, interrupting himself, 'can you pardonnez-moi a minute? Verdammt, Charlus has got them hopping when the music's obviously con vivace. I'll be right back.'

  Rafiel listened to the raised voices, giving them his full willed attention in order to avoid a repetition of the rush of feeling that Victorium's casual suggestion had provoked. Charlus seemed to be winning the argument, he thought, though the results would not be final until Mosay returned to ratify them. It was a fairly important scene. Antigone, Ismene, Polyneices and Eteocles - the four children of Oedipus and Jocasta - were doing a sort of pas de quatre in tap, arms linked like the cygnets in Swan Lake, while they sang a recapitulation of how Oedipus came and saved them from the horrid Sphinx. The chorus was being a real chorus, in fact a chorus line, tapping in the background and, one by one, speaking up - a potter, a weaver, a soldier, a household slave - saying yes, but things are going badly now and something must be done. Then Rafiel would make his entrance as Oedipus and the story would roll on ... but not today.

  Victorium was breathing hard when he rejoined Rafiel. 'You can ignore all that,' he said grimly, 'because I'm sure Mosay isn't going to let that dummkopf dance-teacher screw up the grand ensemble. Never mind.' He snapped on the prompter monitor to show what he and Mosay had programmed for the under-the-credits opening. 'Let's get down your part here. This is before the actual story begins, showing you and the Sphinx.'

  Rafiel gave it dutiful attention. Even in preliminary stickfigure simulation, he saw that the monster on the screen was particularly unpleasant-looking, like a winged reptile. 'Che the hell cosa is that?'

  'It's the Sphinx, of course. What else would it be?' Victorium said, stopping the computer simulation so Rafiel could study the creature.

  'It doesn't look like a sphinx to me. It looks like a crocodile.'

  'Mosay,' Victorium said with satisfaction, 'looked it up. Thebes was a city on the Nile, you know. The Nile is famous for crocodiles. They sacrificed people to them.'

  'But this one has wings.'

  'Perche no? You're probably thinking of that other Egyptian sphinx. The old one out of the desert? This one's different. It's a Theban sphinx, and it looks like whatever Mosay says it looks like.' Victorium gave him the look of someone who would like to chide an actor for wasting time with irrelevant details - if the actor hadn't happened to be the star of the show. 'The important thing is that it was terrorizing the whole city of Thebes, after their ancien roi, Laius, got murdered, until you came along and got rid of it for them. Which, of course, is why the Thebans let you marry Jocasta and be their nouveau roi.'' He thought for a moment. 'I'll have to write some new music for the Sphinx to sing the riddle, but,' he said wistfully, 'Mosay says we don't want too much song and dance here because, see, tutti qui is just a kind of prologue. It isn't in the Sophocles play. We'll just run it under the credits to mise the scene - oh, merde. What's that?'

  He was looking at the tel window on the screen, where Rafiel's name had begun to flash.

  'Somebody's calling me, I guess,' Rafiel said.

  'You shouldn't be getting personal calls during rehearsal, should you?' he chided. Then he shrugged. 'Sanferian. See who it is, will you?'

  But when Rafiel tapped out his acceptance no picture appeared on the screen, just a voice. It wasn't even the voice of a 'who'. It was the serene, impersonal voice of his household server, and it said:

  'A living organism has been delivered for you. It is a gift. I have no program for caring for living creatures. Please instruct me.'

  'Now who in the world,' Rafiel marvelled, 'would be sending me a pet?'

  It wasn't anyone in the world - not the planet Earth, anyway; as soon as Rafiel saw the note pinned to the cage, where the snow-white kitten purred contentedly inside, he knew who it was from.

  This is my favourite cat's best kitten, dear Rafiel. I hope you'll love it as much as I do.

  Rafiel found himself laughing out loud. How strange of Alegretta. How dear, too! Imagine anyone keeping a pet. It was not the kind of thing immortals were likely to do. Who wanted to get attached to some living thing that was sure to die in only a few years - only a moment, in the long lifetime of people now alive? (Most of them, anyway.) But it was a sweet thought, and a sweet little kitten, he found as he uneasily picked it up out of the cage and set it on his lap. The pretty little thing seemed comfortable there, still purring as it looked up at him out of sleepy blue eyes.

  Most important, it was a gift from Alegretta. He was smiling as, careful not to disturb the little animal, he began searching his data for instructions on the care and feeding of kittens.

  7

  Rafiel has decided not to make love to Docilia again. He isn't sure why. He suspects it has something to do with the fact that the sire of her child is always nearby, which makes him uncomfortable. It isn't just that they've collaborated on creating a foetus that makes him shy off, it is more the fact that they intend to be a family. It is only later that he realizes that that means he can't bed any of the other members of the troupe, either. Not the Antigone, the little girl named Bruta, though she has asked him to - not even though she happens to have interested him at first, since she has auburn hair and her nose is not perfectly straight. (Perhaps it is because she looks a little bit like Alegretta that he especially doesn't want to make love to her.) Not any of them, in spite of the fact that, all through his performing life, Rafiel has seldom failed to make lave in person to every female he was required to make love to in the performance, on the principle that it added realism to his art. (He wasn't particularly attracted to most of those women, either, only prepared to make sacrifices for his art.) This time, no. The only sensible reason he can give himself for this decision is that Docilia would surely find out, and it would hurt her feelings to be passed over for the others.

  None of this inordinate chastity was because he didn't desire sexual intercourse. On the contrary. He didn't need to program designer dreams of love-making. His subconscious did all the programming he needed. Almost every morning he woke from dreams of hot and sweaty quick encounters and dreamily long-drawn-out ones. The root of the problem was that, although he wanted to do it, he didn't want to do it with anyone he knew. (One possible exception
always noted, but always inaccessible.) So he slept alone. When, one morning, some slight noise woke him with the scent of perfumed woman in his nose he supposed it was a lingering dream. Then he opened his eyes. A woman was there, in his room, standing by a chair and just stepping out of the last of her clothing. 'Who the hell are you?' he shouted as he sat up.

  The woman was quite naked and entirely composed. She sat on the edge of his bed and said, 'I'm Hillaree. You looked so sexy there, I thought I might as well just climb in.'

  'How the hell did you get into my condo?'

  'I'm a dramaturge,' she said simply. 'How much would you respect me if I let your door-warden keep me out?'

  Rafiel turned in the bed to look at her better. She was a curly-headed little thing, with a wide, serious mouth, and he was quite sure he had never seen her before.

  But he had heard her name, he realized. 'Oh, that dramaturge,' he said, faintly remembering a long-ago message.

  'The dramaturge who has a wonderful part for you,' she confirmed, 'if you have intelligence enough to accept it.' She patted his head in a friendly way, and stood up.

  'If you want me for a part, you should talk to my agent,' he called after her.

  'Oh, I did that, Rafiel. She threw me out.' Hillaree was rummaging through the heap of her discarded clothing on the bedside chair. She emerged with a lapcase, which she carried back to the bed. 'I admit this isn't going to be a big show,' she told him, squatting cross-legged on his bed as she opened the screen from the case. 'I'm not Mosay. I don't do spectacoli. But people are travelling out to the stars, Rafiel. The newest one is a habitat called Hakluyt. The whole population has voted to convert their habitat into an interstellar space vehicle-'

  'I know about that!' he snapped, more or less truthfully. 'Habitat people have done that before - last year, wasn't it? Or a couple of years ago? I think one was going to Alpha Centauri or somewhere.'

  'You see? You don't even remember. No one else does, either, and yet it's a grand, heroic story! These people are doing something hard and dangerous. No, Rafiel,' she finished, wagging her pretty head, 'it's the greatest story of our time and it needs to be told dramatically, so people will comprehend it. And I'm the one to tell it, and you're the one to play it. Oh, it won't be like a Mosay production, I'll give you that. But you'll never again see anything as right for you as the part of the captain of the kosmojet Hakluyt.'

  'I don't know anything about kosmojets, do I? Anyway, I can't. Mosay already had one cacafuega attack when he heard a rumour about it.'

  'Fichtig Mosay. He and I don't do the same kind of thing. This one will be intimate, and personal. Pas music, pas dancing, pas songs. It will be a whole new departure for your career.'

  'But a song-and-dance man is what I am!'

  She sniffed at him. 'You're a short-timer, Rafiel. You're going to get old. Listen to me. This is where you need to go. I've watched you. I'm willing to bet my reputation-'

  'Your reputation!'

  She ignored the interruption, '-that you're just as good an actor as you are a dancer and singer... and, just to make you understand what's involved here, you can have five points on the gross receipts, which you know you'll jamais get from Mosay.'

  'Five per cent of not very much is still very little,' Rafiel said at once, grinning at her to show that he meant no hard feelings.

  She nodded as though she had expected that. She opened her bag and fingered the keypad for her screen. 'May I?' she said perfunctorily, not waiting for an answer. A scroll of legal papers began to roll up the screen. 'This is the deal for the first broadcast,' she said. 'That's twenty million dollars from right here on Earth, plus another twenty million for the first-run remotes. Syndication: that's a contract with a guarantee of another forty million over a ten-year period. And all that's a minimum, Rafiel; I'd bet anything that it'll double that. And there are the contracts for the sub rights - the merchandising, the music. Add it all up, and you'll see that the guarantee comes pretty close to a hundred million dollars. What's five per cent of that, Rafiel?'

  The question was rhetorical. She wasn't waiting for an answer. She was already scrolling to the next display, not giving Rafiel a chance to order her out of his condo. 'La!' she said. 'Voici!'

  What they were looking at on the screen was a habitat. It was not an impressive object to the casual view. As in all pictures from space, there was no good indication of size, and the thing might have been a beverage can, floating in orbit.

  'There's where our story is,' she said. 'What you see there is habitat Hakluyt. It starts with a population of twenty thousand people, with room to expand to five times that. It's a whole small town, Rafiel. The kind of town they used to have in the old days before the arcologies, you know? A place with everybody knowing everybody else, interacting, loving, hating, dreaming - and totally cut off from everyone else. It's a microcosm of humanity, right there on Hakluyt, and we're going to tell its story.'

  Although Rafiel was looking at the woman's pictures, he didn't think them very interesting. As far as Rafiel could tell, Hakluyt was a perfectly ordinary habitat, a stubby cylinder with the ribs for the pion tracks circling its outer shell. What he could tell wasn't actually very much. He hadn't spent much time on habitats, only one two-week visit, once, with - with...? No, he had long since forgotten the name of the companion of that trip, and indeed everything about the trip itself except that habitats were not particularly luxurious places to spend one's time.

  'How much spin does this thing have?' he asked, out of technical curiosity. 'I'm not used to dancing in light-G.'

  'When it's en route pas spin at all. The gravity effect will be along the line of thrust. But you're forgetting, Rafiel,' she chided him. 'There won't be any dancing anyway. That's why this is such a breakthrough for you. This is a dramatic story, and you'll act it!'

  'Hum,' said Rafiel, not pleased with this woman's continuing reminders that, in his special case, becoming older meant that it would become harder and harder for him to keep in dancer's kind of shape. 'Why do you say they're cut off from the rest of the world? Habitats are a lot easier to get to than, per esempio. Mars. There's always a stream of ships going back and forth.'

  'Not to this habitat,' Hillaree told him confidently. 'You're missing the point, and that's the whole drama of our story. You see that cluster of motors on the base? Hakluyt isn't just going to stay in orbit. Hakluyt will be going all the way to the star Tau Ceti. They'll be cut off, all right. They aren't coming back to the Earth, ever.'

  As soon as the woman was out of his condo, unbedded but also unrejected, or at least not finally rejected in the way that most mattered to her, Rafiel was calling his agent to complain. Fruitlessly. It was a lot too early in the morning for Jeftha to be answering her tel. He tried again when he got to the rehearsal hall, with the same 'No Incoming' icon appearing on the screen. 'Bitch,' he said to the screen, though without any real resentment - Jeftha was as good a talent agent as he had ever had - and joined the rest of the cast.

  They had started without him. Charlus was drilling the chorus all over again and Victorium, with Docilia standing by, was impatiently waiting for Rafiel himself. 'Now,' he said, 'if you're quite ready to go to work? Here's where we come to a tricky kind of place in Oedipus. You've ordered Creon banished, in spite of the fact that he's your brother-in-law. You think he lied to you about the prophecy from Apollo's priests, and you've just found out that your wife, Jocasta, is also your mother-'

  'Victorium dear,' Docilia began, 'that's something I wanted to talk about. I don't have enough lines there, do I? Since it's per certo as big a shock to me too?'

  'You'd have to talk to Mosay about that when he gets back, Docilia dear,' Victorium said. 'Can't we stick to the point? Besides the incest thing, Rafiel, you're the one who murdered her husband, who is also your real father-'

  'I've read the script,' Rafiel told him.

  'Of course you have, Rafiel dear,' Victorium said, sounding much less than confident of it. 'Then we follo
w you into Jocasta's room, and you see that she hung herself, out of shame.'

  'Can't I do that on-screen, Vie?' Docilia asked. 'I mean, committing suicide's a really dramatic moment.'

  'I don't think so, dear, but that's another thing you'd have to talk to Mosay about. Anyway, it's not the point right now, is it? I'm talking about what Rafiel does when he sees you've committed suicide.'

  'I take the pins out of her hair and blind myself with them,' said Rafiel, nodding.

  'Right. You jab the gold hairpins into your eyes. That's what I'm thinking about. What's the best way for us to handle that?'

  'How do you mean?' Rafiel asked, blinking at him.

  'Well, we want it to look real, don't we?'

  'Sure,' Rafiel said, surprised, not understanding the point. That sort of thing was up to the computer synthesizers, which would produce any kind of effect anybody wanted.

  Victorium was thoughtfully silent. Docilia cleared her throat. 'On second thought,' she said, 'maybe it's better if I hang myself offstage after all.'

  Victorium stirred and gave her a serious look. Then he surrendered. 'We'll talk about all this stuff later,' he said. 'Let me get Charlus off everybody's back and we'll try putting the scene after that together.'

  Rafiel was surprised to see Docilia give him a serious wink, but whatever she had on her mind had to wait. Victorium was calling them all together.

  'All right,' he said, 'let's run it through. All the bad stuff is out in the open now. Rafiel knows what he's done, and all four of you kids are onstage now in the forgiveness scene. Ket, you're the Polyneices, take it from the top.'

  Obediently the quartet formed and the boy began to sing:

  POLYNEICES: We forgive you. If you doubt it,

  ask that zany Antigone, or Eteocles, or sweet Ismene.

  ETEOCLES: You can't be all that bad.

  ISMENE: After all, vous etes our dad.