Horatio stared at her. She looked disheveled and frightened.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Hamlet was looking for you. Are you going somewhere?”
She was unclear, but he knew what she meant. “Probably.”
“Why do you take him—places?” Her voice shook.
Horatio said carefully, “Because he wants to go.”
“That’s a lie.” She grabbed his wrist, holding it tightly. “He never went before you came, and he never wondered about the labs before. Now they’re all he thinks about when he’s not directing or performing.”
“People change.”
“We don’t.” She stared intently at him. “None of us, not even you. I won’t age. Claudius won’t grow old. Hamlet won’t grow up.” The grip grew tighter, and she wailed, “He won’t. Peter Capek promised me he wouldn’t.”
Horatio thought, My God, he was thirty the day he was made. Aloud he said, “He wants to see the world.”
She held on tighter. “You’re hurting him.”
“Let go of me. I’m doing what he wants.”
The lock her fingers had on him seemed more solid than the autolock on the door behind them. “You’re changing him,” she whispered. “You’re making him different.” She let go and said, with wailing wonder, “What did they put in you? How did they make you that you can change us?”
Horatio looked at her and saw what he should always have seen in her. She was still attractive, still silly and imperceptive, but she was devoted to her son and frightened that he might be hurt or killed.
“I’ll take care of him.” He reached for her hand.
She pulled away. “No.” She patted her hair in place, straightened up, and said with quiet dignity, “I will. I’m his mother. I’ll protect him.”
And Horatio, years removed from his own mother’s near indifference to him and to his dreams, was surprised when his voice broke as he answered, “I hope you do.”
Her exit was quiet and unself-conscious, far better than her stage exits. Horatio watched her, trying to imagine what it would be like to be her son.
“Hello?”
“What?” He had thought he was alone.
Billy limped in, and striding behind him was Eric. “Hello,” Billy said. “I said that, didn’t I?”
“It’s good to see you.” Horatio added casually, “But there’s no performance just now. How did you get in?”
Billy glanced nervously at Eric, who was fingering the swords. “Oh, I have my ways. Do you have any free time?”
Horatio considered. “All afternoon. I need to get back here—”
“Oh, it’s very close to the theater.” Billy’s hands moved nervously, almost helplessly, up and down his tunic. The rose buttons were blackening from being touched.
Eric swung one of the foils like a cutlass, making it swish. “These are real.”
“Not quite.” Horatio didn’t like the gleam in Eric’s pale eyes. “They’re specially made for the theater—”
“They’re quite sharp.” Eric tested the point with his thumb and struck a pose, en garde, toward the theater seats. “How does this look?”
A woman said quickly and nervously, “Oh, quite good.”
Horatio said, “Hello, Mary.”
Eric stared over the sword point as he let it circle. “Do you like how I look with it?”
Mary stiffened. “I always think you look fine.”
“You do, don’t you?” Eric touched the point, then tasted the end of his finger. “We’ll work on that.”
He said suddenly to Billy, “You had more to say.”
“Oh, yes.” Billy’s hands fluttered helplessly again. He said to Horatio, “Do you like ballet?”
Horatio glanced at Eric, who was watching him. “Sure.”
Billy almost bounced up and down. “This afternoon?”
“As soon as I can get away.”
Billy fled. Eric laid the sword aside regretfully and followed. Mary followed Eric, as though pulled unwillingly on strings.
As Horatio watched them go, Hamlet said in a high voice, “People come and go so quickly here.”
Horatio turned. Hamlet was leaning on the wall in back of the sword rack. He moved downstage languidly, saying, “It’s from Osric’s favorite simula.” He put an arm around Horatio. “How was your day?”
Horatio, staring at Hamlet, didn’t answer. The prince was thin-lipped, with a tight smile and an edge of anger. For the first time since Hamlet had mourned Capek’s death, the black clothes suited him.
This time, however, he seemed like a villain.
Horatio didn’t answer. Hamlet said, “My day was awful.”
Horatio said, “Mine was worse.” He stepped back. “You remember Paulette?”
“You’ve mentioned her.” Hamlet sat by the sword rack, one finger playing with a sharpened point.
Horatio described his day and said, “What do you think?”
Hamlet started. “I’m sorry.”
He stared into space and said flatly, “Ophelia will get no better.”
“I’m sorry.” Horatio cringed inside; he hadn’t bothered to ask. “Couldn’t something be done—”
“Couldn’t it, if anyone wanted?” Hamlet turned to stare at Horatio, who was struck by the newborn cynicism there. After a moment Hamlet put his face in his hands.
Horatio said, “You’ll feel better.”
“No,” Hamlet said into his fingers. “I will soon feel many things, but I will never feel better.”
He raised his face suddenly. “I’ve done some thinking today. Will you come with me?” He gestured toward the hidden terminal. “I know a secret.”
Horatio sighed and followed. He was tired of secrets.
* * * * *
At the backstage terminal, Horatio said, “I assume this is the next password for Theater Access.”
“Which is?”
“How would I know?”
“Think.” He pulled Horatio’s right hand to his chin, imitating Rodin’s Thinker. “The first password was five letters.” He counted Horatio’s spread fingers. “And the next will be ten. You think in fives and tens.”
“We don’t have to—”
“Pick a number between one and seventeen.” Horatio looked blank. Hamlet said, “If I’d said ‘one and ten,’ you’d have guessed.”
“So it’s ten letters—”
“And probably from Hamlet.”
“That shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Hamlet ignored the sarcasm. “It wasn’t. Last night, Theater Access listed all the ten-letter words in the play for me. I think they’d pick a memorable word—”
“Or two words, with a space for one letter.”
Hamlet looked upset. “Would they count the spaces?”
Horatio looked at the keyboard. “If you type the password, it makes a lot of sense. Try one of your words.”
“I only need to try one.” Hamlet typed in,
“FORTINBRAS.”
The screen blanked, then returned with,
“THE GLOBE RESEARCH PROJECT: FORTINBRAS.”
The screen filled with struggling bodies, then with maimed limbs. Hamlet blinked. “How accurate. Battle and blood. It suits Fortinbras”
Horatio stared at it. “How did you know?”
“It was obvious, compared to words like ‘trippingly’ and ‘temperance.’” Hamlet watched the on-screen carnage. “Let’s hope that’s the only reason.”
They searched again through file and directory lists for names and documents that might relate to the death of Capek or to some secret behind the death.
Hamlet tapped the screen. “Do you notice something about the personnel lists?”
Horatio sighed. “Probably not, my lord.”
“Probably not,” Hamlet agreed. He scanned down the list. “None of these people were in theater or drama.”
Once said, it was obvious. “Every last person is a Tek,” Horatio said wonderingly. “The theater is barely
even a front for a project.”
Hamlet smiled. “Why would they need a front? The Globe doesn’t list on Access.”
Horatio was appalled. “Everybody but Poolsiders and dead people are on Access.”
“Then we’re Poolsiders, dead people, or exclusive angels.” Hamlet said brittlely, “I Accessed outside with Freddy. There wasn’t even anything on EZNews or Newzak.” Hamlet frowned at the screen. “We still we haven’t found Goode or Capek.”
“Or Doctor Mulvaney.” Horatio was amused at how carefully Hamlet avoided saying, “Doctor.”
“Or Billy, or Eric, or Mary.”
Hamlet said slowly, “We’ve proven that our play is hiding something.”
“Hiding what?”
“‘If I could tell you, I would let you know. Time will say nothing but I told you so.’ Auden. But I know the hidden things when I see them—or don’t.” He pressed keys for the building summary, and a graphic table appeared, showing each floor of the Globe. “Each room is shown with the floor plan subdued; the room you touch lights up.”
“And?”
Hamlet said, “Try, with your mind as builder, to reconstruct the floor.”
Horatio was unconcerned. “You never can. Guides leave out closets, custodians’ rooms, biosupply rooms—”
“This is a summary for people who work here. The rooms you name should be as important as the labs, the neurobanks, and the stairs.”
Horatio looked at the floor plan more closely. “And there are a lot of gaps. If it’s hiding something, it’s clumsy.”
“It can afford to be clumsy. It’s easy to hide things from people who are paid not to look.”
“Then you think everything we see on these screens—”
“Points away from what we want to discover.” Hamlet traced and highlighted different portions of the visible floor. “Wait.” He went back over a section.
Horatio had seen it too. “That part wouldn’t light up.” He shoved Hamlet aside. “Let me try.”
He flashed his hand back and forth over the selector icon. Roughly two-thirds of the Globe would light.
Horatio said flatly, “The rest isn’t all storage.”
“No. Memorize the dark spaces; sketch them later.”
Horatio pointed out, “If the Globe system has any thinkware monitoring at all, it will recognize the pattern the moment I start sketching.”
Hamlet said, “We’ll use the wall screen I do director’s notes on and store the sketches on my private chips.”
“Private chips?”
“Freddy got them for me.” Hamlet added, with a touch of guilt, “That’s what friends are for.”
Horatio pointed to a small, dark square on the screen. “That’s the same size as the elevator.”
“Good.” Hamlet looked at it intently. “Probably it’s hidden in the same fashion as this terminal is, simula walls over the door. If I’d known about this last night—” His face twisted, but he didn’t explain to Horatio about Ophelia’s search. He touched the screen and the floor plan disappeared. “Now, what else should we check?”
Hamlet Accessed the directory of data. A mass of geometric shapes, some with labels, floated onto the screen and rotated, an abstract mobile sculpture onscreen. Horatio looked at the form. “That’s lovely,” he said, awed.
Hamlet pointed to two pinkish cubes. “Purchasing and shipping.” He pointed to a pyramid of the same color. “Correspondence. The colors and shapes show the relations of functions and departments.”
Hamlet scanned the rotating mobile up and down, “The gold lines show relationships between departments.” He touched one, and a heading appeared:
“SHIPPING CORRESPONDENCE.”
“But look here, at BioTek.”
“Where, my lord?” Horatio was dazzled by the slowly turning pyramid.
“Near the top—and that should tell you the crown of the project, that BioTek is so near the top.”
Concentric rings of interlocked green eggs orbited near the top of the screen, their highlights flashing. Horatio squinted. “Watch which one? There are so many—”
“I did not think death had undone so many. Hold on.” Hamlet touched the screen to stop it, then pointed to the outer ring of green eggs. “There are eleven maintenance functions, then seven BioTek functions.”
“I see them.”
“At midlevel are five simlab supervisory groupings, above them, two general bioresearch functions. ‘The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.’”
Horatio said suddenly, “King Lear. Because they are not eight.” He pointed to the two research functions. “This chart was organized by primes. There should be a third research function.”
Hamlet pointed below. “And see this parted gold strand, waving like an escaped balloon’s string? They forgot to erase a connective.” He pointed above. “They also forgot that any fool can anticipate patterns. Seven to five to three—”
“To two, to one.” Horatio stabbed a finger at the blank top of the screen. “There are more layers.”
“Which means that if, as humans seem to think, topmost things are the most important, then the most important part of this project is the most secret”
“And it was Capek’s.”
“It’s Goode’s now.” Hamlet stared at it, brooding. “What can be so important, if so few can know it?”
“With automatic systems in place, only a few people need to know any operation. LoTeks only attend the lab test runs for training.”
“For what? To produce more theater groups?”
“No. To produce—who knows? Your angels, maybe.”
Hamlet acknowledged him with a nod. “We can’t know what they’re for yet.” He touched the top of the screen hopefully, but nothing happened.
Horatio said suddenly, “I know a way to help us guess.” He stabbed at the screen, which went blank and then came back with a second tree of geometric shapes.
Hamlet frowned. “Where have you taken us?”
Horatio grinned. ‘Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises—’” When Hamlet showed no recognition, he said, “How come you don’t know any quotes from The Tempest?”
“The what?”
“Forget it. This is the directory for info bases, systems, and operators. Thinkware writes it to reflect whatever it’s organizing. You can tell a lot about a system, just by seeing how its directories are organized.”
Hamlet bowed to Horatio. “So the directories might prove there’s a hidden department. Well done.”
Horatio flushed and pointed up and down the system. “Eleven subcells of data here—the prime below seven. Here are the seven for these departments, and here are the five.” He pointed to the next level up triumphantly. “And these three here represent the biolevel. You were right.”
He touched one of the turning three, and the screen flashed, predictably,
“ENTER PASSWORD.”
“Can you believe they don’t even ask for speech at that level?” he said to Hamlet.
“There are too many simulas here.” Hamlet looked at his hands. “They trust minds, not bodies. Except, of course, for the bodies of people with Access rings.” He looked thoughtful.
Horatio said, “Let me try something.” He typed in, one at a time, the Access codes for contacting Thibodeaux. Nothing happened. “It was worth a shot. They’re Access codes from Simula National. I’d thought that if Simula National had provided thinkware for the theater—”
Hamlet looked at him curiously. “How did you get them?” When Horatio didn’t answer, Hamlet turned abruptly to the screen. “This is enough for tonight.” Hamlet slapped a chip on the side of the terminal and typed a quick command and repeated the “FORTINBRAS” password.
The screen flashed,
“ACCESSED FILES DOWNLOADING”
“You’re getting good.” Horatio said nervously.
Hamlet turned to look at him, and the Dane’s eyes were as cold as they were hurt. “I’ll keep getting
better.”
Horatio watched until the screen flashed,
“DOWNLOADING COMPLETED”
The term seemed archaic to Horatio. He said, “If there’s nothing else, I have to leave. Billy invited me to a ballet. Are you staying here?”
On an impulse, Hamlet typed,
“I AM HERE.”
Nothing.
“I’M STILL HERE.”
Still nothing.
He typed,
“PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW,”
and shut the terminal off. “I have no reason to.” He walked off slowly.
Claudius, watching from the musty curtain, was moved.
22
Horatio looked at the entrance as one would look at a friend who suddenly announced a religious conversion or a gene-level sex change. “I didn’t know this door was here.”
“The Globe has quite a few stray rooms, some of them surprising.” Billy looked happy and excited.
The labs in the Globe were omnilight and white plastic. A few rooms had livewood paneling, moss and Spanish moss, a few decorative fireflies and glowworms. This room crawled.
Horatio drew back as an iguana scuttled halfway under a rock. A blue-footed booby on the rock folded its wings, regarding Horatio with idiot solemnity. Scarlet rock crabs sidled back and forth, opening their claws at smaller crabs.
Horatio nearly bumped one of the giant tortoises. It blinked wrinkled lids around tiny eyes, looking old and sad.
Billy waved through a rock. “Who picked this?”
“Madame Dernier.” A sallow man stepped through a rock wall. “The Galapagos Islands.”
“And why not, David?” It was the large woman from the theater audience. “They were good enough for Darwin.”
She bent down, kissing Billy. Her dress, drastically low-cut, clung to her. “Welcome. Again. And you brought a lovely guest” Horatio received a friendly kiss with just a hint of hot breath accompanying it. “Billy, how are you?”
“Fine, Bess,” he said happily. “Yourself?”
“Better, now.” She held out a hand toward both of them. “Come all the way in.” She gestured toward a waterfall (more Hawaiian than Galapagos) split by rocks.
She turned around. Her dress was cut in an exaggerated loop that plunged to her buttocks.
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