The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The trouble with the rooftop was that it was windy. They were nearly a kilometer above the ground, where the air was always blowing strong. Clever vanes deflected the worst of the gusts, but not all of them; Rafiel felt chilled and wished Mosay had chosen another workplace. Or that, at least, they hadn’t been instructed to show up in costume: there wasn’t much warmth in the short woolen tunic. The winds were stronger than usual that day, and there were thick black clouds rolling toward them over the arcologies to the west. Rafiel listened: had he heard the sound of distant thunder? Or just the wind?

  He shivered and joined the other performers as they walked around to get used to their costumes. Although the rooftop was the common property of all the hundred-and-sixty-odd-thousand people who lived or worked in that particular arcology, Mosay had managed to persuade the arcology council to set one grassy sward aside for rehearsals. The council didn’t object. They agreed that it would be a pleasing sort of entertainment for the tenants, and anyway Mosay was a first-rate persuader—after all, what other thing did a dramaturge really have to be?

  The proof of his persuasive powers was that, astonishingly, everyone in the cast was there, and on time: Mosay himself, back from his fruitless quest but looking fresh and undaunted, and Victorium, and Charlus, the choreographer—no, assistant choreographer, Rafiel corrected himself resolutely—and all the eleven principal performers in the show and the dozen members of the chorus. Rafiel had practiced with the sandals and the sword in his condo, while the watching kitten purred approvingly; by now he was easy enough in the costume. Not Andrev, the Creon, who kept getting his sword caught between his knees. There weren’t any costume problems for Sander, the Tiresias, since his costume was only a long featureless smock, and Sander, who was a tall, unkempt man with seal-colored hair that straggled down over his shoulders, wore the thing as though he was ignoring it, which was pretty much the way he wore all his clothes anyway. All the women wore simple white gowns, Docilia’s Jocasta with flowers in her hair, the daughters unembellished.

  But when Rafiel first saw Bruta, the Antigone, turn toward him his heart stopped for a moment, she was so like Alegretta. “Che cosa, Rafiel?” she asked in sudden worry at his expression, but he only shook his head. He kept watching her, though. Apart from the chance resemblance to his life’s lost love, Bruta struck him as a bit of puzzle. Bruta looked neither younger nor older than anyone else in the cast, of course—Rafiel himself always excepted—but it was obvious that she was a lot less experienced. That interested Rafiel. Mosay was not the kind who liked to bother with newcomers. He left the discovery of fresh talent to lesser dramaturges; he could afford to hire the best, who inevitably were also the ones who had long since made their reputations. Rafiel thought of asking Docilia, who would be sure to know everyone’s reasons for everything they did, but there wasn’t time. Mosay was already waving everyone to cluster around him.

  “Company,” said Mosay commandingly. “I’m glad to be back, but we’ve got a lot of work to do, so if I may have your attention?” He got it and said sunnily, “I do have one announcement before we begin. I’ve found our shooting location. Wunderbar, it has an existing set that we can use—oh, not exactly replicating old Thebes, in a technical sense, but close enough. And we’d better get on with it, so if you please.…” Rafiel concealed a grin at the way Mosay was making sure he looked every centimeter the staging genius as he played to the spectators behind the velvet ropes, and, of course, to the pointing cameras of the paparazzi. When he had everyone’s attention he went on.”We aren’t going to do the short fighting-the-Sphinx scene because we don’t have a sphinx”—well, of course they didn’t; there never would be a sphinx until the animation people put one in—”so we’ll start with the pas de quatre, where you kids”—nodding to the four “children” of Oedipus and Jocasta—”sing your little song about how after Oedipus saved Thebes from the Sphinx he married your maman, the widowed Jocasta, whose husband had been mysteriously murdered and thus Oedipus became koenig himself—”

  “Oh, hell, Mosay,” said Docilia warmly, “that’s a whole play right there. Bisogniamo say all that?”

  “We must. We’ll get it in, and anyway that’s not your problem, Docilia, is it? In fact, you’re not even in this scene, or the next scene either, except to stand around and look pretty, because this is where Creon makes his entrance and tells Oedipus what the oracle of Apollo said.”

  “I already know all the Creon lines,” Andrev said proudly. He had the reputation of being a slow study.

  “I certainly hope so, Andrev. Places, everybody? And now if we’ll just take it from the last bars of Victorium’s opening.…”

  * * *

  It wasn’t a big scene for Rafiel. He didn’t even get to make a real entrance, just ambled onstage to wait for Creon to show up. The scene belonged to the Creon. Victorium had written the music accordingly, with a background score full of dark and mystical dissonances—right enough for an oracle’s pronouncements, Rafiel supposed.

  What Creon brought was bad news, so Rafiel’s responses had to be equally somber. Not just somber, though. Rafiel made sure all his gestures were, well, a trifle less portentous than the Creon’s—after all, Rafiel was not merely playing an old, doomed Theban king, he was playing himself playing the king. That was what being a star was all about.

  Rafiel flinched at a boom from the sky. Thunder was crashing somewhere in the distance, and Mosay agitatedly demanded of a watching arcology worker that they erect the dome. Just in time; rain was slashing down on the big transparent hood over the roof before the petaled sections had quite closed over them. Rafiel shuddered again. He found that he was feeling quite tired. He wondered if it was showing up in his performance … though of course it was only a dress rehearsal.

  All the same, Rafiel didn’t like the feeling that his dancing was not as lively—as bumptiously clumsy—as his audiences expected of him. He forced himself into the emotions of the part—easily enough, because Rafiel had all the ambiguity of any actor in his beliefs. Whatever he privately thought or felt, he could throw himself into the thoughts and feelings of the character he was playing; and if that character took silly oracular conundrums seriously, then for the duration of that role so would Rafiel. He worked so hard at it that at the end of the third run-through he was sweating as he finished his meditative pas de seul. So was the Creon, although he had no dancing to do. But it was Rafiel Mosay was watching, with a peculiar expression of concern on his face, and it was Rafiel he was looking at when he declared a twenty-minute break.

  * * *

  “Comment ça va?” Docilia asked, taking Rafiel’s elbow.

  He blinked at her.”Fine, fine,” he assured her, though he didn’t think he really was. Was it that obvious? He hadn’t missed Mosay’s watchful eyes, though now the dramaturge had forgotten him in the press of making quick calls on the communications monitor at the edge of the meadow. Rafiel made an effort and pressed Docilia’s arm against his side amatively—well, maybe there was his problem right there, he thought. Deprivation. After all, why should any healthy person deliberately stop having sex, thus very possibly endangering not only his performance, but even his health?

  “You don’t look all right,” Docilia told him, steering him through the park to a formal garden. “Except when you’re looking at that Bruta.”

  “Oh, now really,” Rafiel laughed—actually laughing, because the thought really amused him. “She’s just so young.”

  “So amateurish, you mean.”

  “That too,” he acknowledged, slipping his arm around her waist in a friendly way. “I’m surprised Mosay took her on.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?” Rafiel asked, proving that he did not.

  “She’s his latest daughter,” Docilia informed him with pleasure. “So if you’re shtupping her you’re going to be part of the family.”

  Rafiel opened his mouth to deny that he was making love to Bruta, or indeed to anyone else since the
last time with Docilia herself, but he closed it again. That, after all, was none of Docilia’s business, not to mention that it did not comport well with the image of a lusty, healthy, youthful idol of every audience.

  But she might have been reading his mind. “Oh, poor Rafiel,” she said, tightening her grip on his waist. “You’re just not getting enough, are you?” She looked around. There was hardly anyone near them, the casual spectators mostly still watching the performers in the rehearsal area. And they were near the maze.

  “I have an idea,” she murmured. “Can we go in the maze for a while?”

  After all, why not? Rafiel surrendered. “I’d like nothing better,” he said gallantly, knowing as well as she did that the best thing one did in the isolation of a maze was to do a little friendly fooling around with one’s companion—on whom, in any case, Rafiel was beginning to feel he might as well be beginning to have sexual designs again, after all. They had no trouble finding a quiet dead end and, without discussion, Rafiel unhesitatingly put his hand on her.

  “Are you sure you aren’t too tired?” she asked, but turning toward him as she spoke; and, of course, that imposed on him the duty to prove that he wasn’t tired at all. He realized he didn’t have much time to demonstrate it in, so they wasted none. They were horizontal on the warm, grassy ground in a minute.

  It was strange, he reflected, pumping away, that something you wanted to do could also be a wearisome chore. He was glad enough when they had finished.… And almost at that very moment, as though taking a quick cue, a voice from an unseen person, somewhere else in the maze, was thundering at them.

  It was Mosay’s voice. What he was saying—bawling—was: “Rafiel! Is that you I hear in there with Docilia? Come out this minute! We need to talk.”

  Rafiel was breathing hard, but he managed to grin at his partner and help her to her feet. “Can’t it wait, Mosay?” he called, carefully conserving his breath.

  “It can not,” the dramaturge roared. “Expliquez yourself. Who’s this woman who’s claiming she’s got you signed up for a new production?”

  Rafiel groaned. Mosay had in fact found out. Docilia put an alarmed hand on his forearm.

  “Oh, paura. You’d better pull yourself together,” she whispered, doing the same for herself. “He’s really furioso about something.”

  Rafiel gave in, tugging his underpants back on. “Well,” he called to the featureless hedge, “we did talk a little bit, she and I—”

  “She says you agreed!” snapped the invisible Mosay. “She’s got a story about it in all the media, and I won’t have it! Rafiel, you’re making me look like a Dummkopf.”

  “I never actually agreed—”

  “But you didn’t say no, either, did you? That’s not cosi buono. I won’t have you making any commitments after this one,” Mosay roared. “Now vieni qui and talk to me!”

  His muttering died in the distance. Docilia turned to look into Rafiel’s face. “What in the world have you done?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said positively, and then, thinking it over, “But I guess enough.” He could have thrown the woman out of his home without any discussion at all, he thought. He hadn’t. Resigned, he braced himself for the vituperation that was sure to come.

  It came, all right, but not as pure vituperation. Mosay had switched to another mode.”Oh, pauvre petit Rafiel,” he said sorrowfully,”haven’t I always done everything I can for you? And now you’re conspiring behind my back with some sleazeball for a cheap-and-dirty exploitation show?”

  “It isn’t really that cheap, Mosay, it’s a hundred mil—”

  “Cheap isn’t just money, Rafiel. Cheap is cheap people. Second-raters. Do you want to wind up your career with the has-beens and never-wases? No, Rafiel,” he said, shaking his head, “Non credo you want that. And, anyway, I’ve talked to your agent, and Jeftha says the deal’s already kaput.” He allowed himself a forgiving smile, then turned away briskly.

  “Now let’s get some work done here, company,” he called, clapping his hands. “One more time, from Creon’s story about the oracle.…”

  But they didn’t actually get that far, and it was Rafiel’s fault.

  Rafiel started out well enough, rising in wrath to sing his attack on Creon’s message from the oracle. Then something funny happened. Rafiel felt the ground sliding away underneath him. He didn’t feel the impact of his head on the grassy lawn. He didn’t know he had lost consciousness. He was only aware of beginning to come to, half dazed, as someone was—someones were—loading him on to a high-wheeled cart and hurrying him to an elevator, and walking beside him were people who were agitatedly talking about him as though he couldn’t hear.

  “You’ll have to tell him, Mosay,” said Docilia’s voice, fuzzily registering in Rafiel’s ears.

  Then there was a mumble, of which all Rafiel could distinguish was when, at the end, someone raised his voice to say, “Pas me!”

  “Allora who?” in Docilia’s voice again, and a longer mumble mumble, and then once more Docilia: “I think it’d be better from la donna…”

  And then he felt the quick chill spray of an anesthetic on the side of his neck. Rafiel fell asleep as the shot did its job. Deeply asleep. So deep that there was no need to worry about anything … and no desire to wonder just what it was that his friends had been talking about.

  * * *

  “Just fatigue,” the doctor said reassuringly when Rafiel was conscious again.”You collapsed. Probabilmente you’ve just been working too hard.”

  “Probably?” Rafiel asked, challenging the woman, but she only shrugged.

  “You’re just as good as you were when you left here, basically,” she said. “Your ami’s here to take you home.”

  The ami was Mosay, full of concern and sweetness. Rafiel was glad to see him.

  “I’m sorry about being so silly, but I’ll be ready to get back to work in the morning,” Rafiel promised, leaning on the hard, strong form of the nurser.

  “Sans doute you will,” Mosay said worriedly. “Here, sit in the chaise, let the nurser give you a ride to the cars.” And at the elevator, taking over the wheelchair himself: “Still,” he added,”if you’re at all tired, why shouldn’t you take another day or two to rest? I’ve picked a location spot in Texas.…”

  That roused Rafiel. “Texas? Pas Turkey?”

  “Of course not Turkey,” Mosay said severely. “There’s just the right place out in the desert, hardly built up at all. Now, here we are at your place, and they’ve got your nice bed all ready for you—Gesù Cristo!” he interrupted himself, staring. “What’s that?”

  Weak as he was, Rafiel laughed out loud. His server was coming toward him welcomingly, and padding regally after, tail stiff in the air, was the kitten.

  “It’s just my cat, Mosay. A present from a friend.”

  “Does it bite?” When reassured, the dramaturge gave it a hostile look anyway, as though suspecting an attack or, worse, an excretion. “If that’s what you like, Rafiel, why should I criticize? Anyway, I’ll leave you now. You can join us when you’re ready. We’ll work around you for a bit. No, don’t argue, it’s no trouble. Just give me your word that you won’t come out until you’re absolutely ready…”

  “I promise,” said Rafiel, wondering why it felt so good to be undertaking to do nothing for a while. It never had before.

  9

  Rafiel, who loves to travel, seldom has time to do much of it. That seems a bit strange, since he is a famous presence in all the places where human beings live, on planet and off, but of course his presence in almost all of those places is only electronic. He is looking forward eagerly to the ride in the magnetrain, with no one for company but the little white kitten. When he finally embarks, after the obligate few days of loafing around his condo, it really is as great a pleasure for him as he had hoped—well, would have been, anyway, if he weren’t continuing to be so unreasonably tired. Still he enjoys watching the scenery flash by at six hundred kilometers an hour
—arcologies, fields, woods, rivers—and he enjoys doing nothing. He especially enjoys being alone. With his presence on the train unknown to the fans who might otherwise besiege him, with only the servers to bring his meals and make up his bed and tend to the kitten, he thinks he almost would not mind if the trip went on for ever. When they reach their destination at the edge of the Sonora Desert he is reluctant to get off.

  * * *

  Rafiel arrived at the Sonora arcology just in time to catch a few hours’ sleep in a rented condo, not nearly as nice as his own, in an arcology an order of magnitude tinier. When he reported for work in the morning even Turkey began to seem more desirable. This desert was hot.

  Mosay was there to greet him solicitously—proudly, too, as he waved around the set he had discovered. “Wunderbar, isn’t it? And such bonne chance it was available. Of course, it’s not an exact copy of the actual old Thebes, but I think it’s quite interessante, don’t you? And there’s no sense casting great talents, is there, if you’re going to ask them to play in front of a background of dried mud huts.”

  Wilting in the heat, Rafiel gazed around at Mosay’s idea of an “interesting” Thebes. He was pretty sure that Thebes-in-Sonora didn’t much resemble the old Thebes-in-Boeotia. So much marble! So much artfully concealed lighting inside the buildings—did the Greeks have artificial lighting at all? Would the Greeks have put that heroic-seized statue of Oedipus (actually, of Rafiel himself in his Oedipus suit) in the central courtyard? And, if they had, would they have surrounded it with banked white and yellow roses? Did they have moats around their castles? Well, did they have castles at all? Questions like that took Rafiel’s mind off the merciless sun, but not enough.

  “It’s you and Docilia now, please,” Mosay said—commanded, really. “Places!” And on cue Docilia began Jocasta’s complaint about childbirth Rafiel reacted as the part called for as, shoulders swaying, head accusingly erect, she sang: