The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rafiel said absently, slipping into his tap shoes.

  “It does to me! You know how I am about authenticity.” Seeing what Rafiel was doing Mosay hastily turned to touch the control keys again. Victorium’s overture began to tinkle from the hidden sound system. “C’est beau, le son? It’s just a synthesizer arrangement so far.”

  “It’s fine,” said Rafiel.

  “Are you sure? Well, bon. Now, bitte, do you want to think about how you want to do the first big scene? That’s the one where you’re onstage with all the townspeople. They’ll be the chorus. You’re waiting to find out what news your brother-in-law, Creon, has brought back from the Delphic oracle; he went to find out what you had to do to get things straightened out in Thebes . . .”

  “I’ve read the script, of course,” said Rafiel, who had in fact finished scrolling through it at breakfast.

  “Of course you have,” said Mosay, rebuked. “So I’ll let you alone while you try working out the scene, shall I? Because I want to start checking out shooting locations tomorrow, and so I’ve got a million things to do today.”

  “Go and do them,” Rafiel bade him. When the dramaturge was gone Rafiel lifted his voice and commanded, “Display text, scene one, from the top. With music.”

  The tinkling began again at once, and so did the display of the lines. The words marched along the upper parts of the walls, all four walls at once so that wherever Rafiel turned he saw them. He didn’t want to dance at this point, he thought. Perhaps just march back and forth – yes, remembering that the character was lame – yes, and a king too, all the same . . . He began to pantomime the action and whisper the words of his part:

  CHORUS: Ecco Creon, crowned with laurels.

  “He’s going to say,” Rafiel half-sang in his turn, “what’s wrong’s our morals.”

  [ENTER CREON]

  CREON: D’accord, but I’ve still worse to follow.

  It’s not me speaking. It’s Apollo.

  Rafiel stopped the crawl there and thought for a second. There were some doubts in his mind. How well was that superstitious mumbo-jumbo going to work? You couldn’t expect a modern audience to take seriously some mumble from a priestess. On the other hand, and equally of course, Oedipus had not been a modern figure. Would he have taken it seriously? Yes, Rafiel decided, he had to, or else the story made no sense to begin with. In playing Oedipus, then, the most he could do was to show a little tolerant exasperation at the oracle’s nagging. So he started the accompaniment again, and mimed a touch of amused patience at Creon’s line, turning his head away –

  And caught a glimpse of an intruder watching him rehearse from the doorway.

  It was a small, unkempt-looking young man in a lavender kilt. He was definitely not anyone Rafiel had seen as a member of Mosay’s troupe and therefore no one who had a right to be here. Rafiel gave him a cold stare and decided to ignore him.

  He realized he’d missed a couple of Creon’s lines, and his own response was coming up. He sang:

  OEDIPUS: We’ll take care of this hubble-bubble as

  Soon as you tell us what the real trouble is.

  But his concentration was gone. He clapped his hands to stop the music and turned to scowl at the intruder.

  Who advanced to meet him, saying seriously, “I hope I’m not interfering. But on that line—”

  Rafiel held up a forbidding hand. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry, I’m Charlus, your choreographer. Mosay said—”

  “I do my own choreography!”

  “Of course you do, Rafiel,” the man said patiently. “You’re Rafiel. I shouldn’t have said choreographer, when all Mosay asked me to do was be your assistant. Do you remember me? From when you did Make Mine Mars, twenty years ago it must have been, and I tried out for the chorus line?”

  Then Rafiel did identify him, but not from twenty years ago. “You sired Docilia’s little one.”

  Charlus looked proud. “She told you, then? Evvero. We’re both so happy – but, look, maestro, let me make a suggestion on that bubble-as, trouble-is bit. Suppose . . .”

  And the man became Oedipus on the spot, as he performed a simultaneous obscene gesture and courtly bow, ending on one knee.

  Rafiel pursed his lips, considering. It was an okay step. No, he admitted justly, it was more than that. It wasn’t just an okay step, it was an okay Rafiel step, with just a little of Rafiel’s well-known off-balance stagger as the right knee bumped the floor.

  He made up his mind. “Khorashaw,” he said. “I don’t usually work with anybody else, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

  “Spasibo, Rafiel,” the man said humbly.

  “De nada. Have you got any ideas about the next line?”

  Charlus looked embarrassed. “Hai, sure, but est-ce possible to go back a little bit, to where you come in?”

  “My first entrance, at the beginning of the scene?”

  Charlus nodded eagerly. “Right there, pensez-vous we might try something real macho? You are a king, after all – and you can enter like . . .”

  He turned and repeated Oedipus’s entrance to the hall, but slowly, s-1-o-w-l-y, with his head rocking and a ritualistic, high-stepping strut and turn before he descended sedately to a knee again. It was the same finish as the other step, but a world different in style and meaning.

  Rafiel pursed his lips. “I like it,” he said, meditating, “but do you think it really looks, well, Theban? I’d say it’s peut-être basically Asian – maybe Thai?”

  Charlus looked at him with new respect. “Close enough. It’s meno o mino the Javanese’ patjak-kulu movement. Am I getting too eclectic for you?”

  Rafiel acknowledged, “Well, I guess I’m pretty eclectic myself.”

  “I know,” said Charlus, smiling.

  While Charlus was showing the mincing little gedruk step he thought would be good for Jocasta, Mosay looked in, eyebrows elevated in the obvious question.

  Charlus was tactful. “I’ve got to make a trip to the benjo,” he said, and Rafiel answered the unspoken question as soon as the choreographer was gone.

  “Mind his helping out? No, I don’t mind, Mosay. He’s no performer himself, but as a choreographer, hai, he’s good.” Rafiel was just. The man was not only good, he was bursting with ideas. Better still, it was evident that he had watched every show Rafiel had ever done, and knew Rafiel’s style better than Rafiel did himself.

  “Bene, bene,” Mosay said with absent-minded satisfaction. “When you hire the best people you get the best results. Oh, and senti, Rafiel” – remembering, as he was already moving toward the door – “those messages you forwarded to me? A couple of them were personal, so I routed them back to your machine. They’ll be waiting for you. Continuez, mes enfants.” And a pat on the head for the returning Charlus and the dramaturge was gone, and they started again.

  It was hard work, good work, with Rafiel happy with the way it was going, but long work, too; they barely stopped to eat a couple of sandwiches for lunch, and even then, though not actually dancing, Rafiel and Charlus were working with the formatting screen, moving computer-generated stick figures about in steps and groupings for the dance numbers of the show, Rafiel getting up every now and then to try a step, Charlus showing an arm gesture or a bob of the head to finish off a point.

  By late afternoon Rafiel could see that Charlus was getting tired, but he himself was going strong. He had forgotten his hospital stay and was beginning to remember the satisfactions of collaboration. Having a second person help him find insights into the character and action was a great pleasure, particularly when that person was as unthreatening as the eager and submissive Charlus. “So now,” Rafiel said, toweling some sweat away, “we’re up to where we’ve found out that Thebes won’t get straight until the assassin of the old king is found and punished, right? And this is where I sing my vow to the gods—”

  “Permesso?” Charlus said politely. And took up a self-important strut, half tap, almost
cakewalk, swinging his lavender kilt as he sang the lines: “I swear, without deceit or bias, We’ll croak the rat who croaked King Laius.”

  “Yes?” said Rafiel, reserving judgment.

  “And then Creon gives you the bad news. He tells you that, corpo di bacco, things are bad. The oracle says that the murderer is here in Thebes. I think right there is when you register the first suspicion that there’s something funny going on. You know? Like . . .” miming someone suddenly struck by an unwanted thought.

  “You don’t think that’s too early?”

  “It’s what you think that counts, Rafiel,” Charlus said submissively, and looked up toward the door.

  Mosay and Docilia were looking in, the dramaturge with a benign smile, Docilia with a quick kiss for Rafiel and another for Charlus. Although their appearance was a distraction, the kiss turned it into the kind of distraction that starts a new and pleasing line of thought; Docilia was in white again, but a minimum of white: a short white wrap-around skirt, a short wrap-around bolero on top, with bare flesh between and evidently nothing at all underneath. “Everything going all right?” the dramaturge asked, and answered himself: “Of course it is; it’s going to be a merveille du monde. Dear ones, I just stopped by to tell you that I’m leaving you for a few days; I’m off to scout out some locations for shooting.”

  Rafiel took his eyes off Docilia and blinked at him. “We’re going to make Oedipus on location?”

  “I insist,” said Mosay firmly. “No faux backgrounds; I want the real thing for Oedipus! We’re going to have a Thebes that even the Thebans would admire, if there were any of them left.”

  Charlus cleared his throat. “Is Docilia going with you?” he asked.

  That question had not occurred to Rafiel to ask, but once it was asked he wanted to know the answer, too. Mosay was looking thoughtfully at the choreographer. “Well,” he said, “I thought she might have some ideas . . . Why do you want to know that?”

  Charlus had an answer ready. “Because we’ve started to work out some of the pas de deux routines, and Docilia ought to have a chance to try them out.” Rafiel did not think it was a truthful one.

  Evidently Mosay didn’t either. He pursed his lips, considering, but Docilia answered for him. “Of course I should,” she said. “You go on without me, Mosay. Have a nice trip; I’ll see you when you get back. Only please, dear, try to find a place that isn’t too hot. I sweat so when I’m dancing, you know.”

  Whatever plans Charlus had for Docilia, they were postponed. When at last they were through rehearsing, Docilia kissed the choreographer absently and pulled Rafiel along with her out of the room before Charlus could speak. “J’ai molto faim, dear,” she said – but only to Rafiel, “and I’ve booked a table for us.”

  In the elevator, Rafiel looked at her thoughtfully. “Didn’t Charlus want to see you?”

  She smiled up at him, shrugging. “But he acted as though he didn’t want you to go off with Mosay,” Rafiel persisted. “Or with me either, for that matter. Is he, well, jealous?”

  “Oh, Rafiel! What a terrible word that is, ‘jealous.’ Are you thinking of, what, the Othello thing?”

  “He’s the father of your child,” Rafiel pointed out uncomfortably.

  “Mais oui, but why should he be jealous if I’m shtupping you or Mosay, Liebling? I shtup him too, whenever he likes – when I don’t have another date, of course. Come and eat a nice dinner, and stop worrying.”

  They walked together to their table – not on a balcony this time, but on a kind of elevated dais at the side of the room, so they could be well seen. It was the kind of place where theater people gathered, at the bottom of the atrium. Tables in the open surrounded the fiftieth-floor rooftop lake. There was a net overhead to catch any carelessly dropped objects, and from time to time they could hear the whine of the magnets pulling some bit of trash away. But nothing ever struck the diners. The place was full of children, and Docilia smiled at every one of them, practicing her upcoming motherhood. And swans floated in the lake, and stars were woven into the net overhead.

  When the servers were bringing their monkey-orange juice Rafiel remembered. “Speaking of Charlus. He had an idea for your scene at the end. You know? Just before you go to hang yourself? As you’re going out . . .”

  He looked around to see who was looking at them, then decided to give the fans a treat. He stood up, and in the little cleared space between their table and the railing, did the step Charlus had called “gedruk,” mincing and swaying his hips. It was not unnoticed. Soft chuckles sounded from around the dining room. “Oh, maybe yes,” Docilia said, nodding, pleased. “It gets a laugh, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Rafiel, “but that’s the thing. Do we want comedy here? I mean, you’re just about to die . . .”

  “Exactly, dear,” she said, not understanding. “That’s why it will be twice as funny in the performance.”

  “Aber a morceau incongruous, don’t you think? Comedy and death?”

  She was more puzzled than ever. “Hai, that’s what’s funny, isn’t it? I mean, dying. That’s such a bizarre thing, it always makes the audience laugh.” And then, when she saw his face, she bit her lip. “Pas all that funny for everybody, is it?” she said remorsefully. “You’re so normal, dear Rafiel. Sometimes I just forget.”

  He shrugged and forgave her. “You know more about that than I do,” he admitted, knowing that he sounded still grumpy – glad when a famous news comic came over to chat. Being the kind of place it was, table-hopping was, of course, compulsory. As pleased as Rafiel at the interruption, Docilia showed her tomographs of the baby to the comic and got the required words of praise.

  Then it was Rafiel’s turn to blunder. “What sort of surrogate are you using?” he asked, to make conversation, and she gave him a sharp look.

  “Did somebody tell you? No? Well, it’s cow,” she said, and waited to see what his response would be. She seemed aggrieved. When all he did was nod non-comittally, she said, “Charlus wanted to use something fancier. Do you think I did the right thing, Rafiel? Insisting on an ordinary cow surrogate, I mean? So many people are using water buffalo now . . .”

  He laughed at her. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I’ve never been a parent.”

  “Well, I have, and believe me, Rafiel, it isn’t easy. What difference does it make, really, what kind of animal incubates your child for you? But Charlus says it’s important and, oh, Rafiel, we had such a battle over it!”

  She shook her head, mourning the obstinacy and foolishness of men. Then she decided to forgive. “It isn’t altogether his fault, I suppose. He’s worried. Especially now. Especially because it’s almost fin the second trimester and that means it’s time—”

  She came to a quick halt, once more biting her lip. Rafiel knew why: it was more suddenly remembered tact. The end of the second trimester was when they had to do the procedure to make the child immortal, because at that point the fetal immune system wasn’t developed yet and they could manipulate it in the ways that would make it live essentially for ever.

  “That’s a scary time, I know,” said Rafiel, to be comforting, but of course he did know. Everyone knew he knew, and why he knew. The operation was serious for a little fetus. A lot of them died, when the procedure didn’t work – or managed to survive, but with their natural immune systems mortally intact. Like Rafiel.

  “Oh, mon cher,” she said, “you know I didn’t mean anything personal by that!”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he said reassuringly; but all the same, the happy buzz of the day’s good rehearsing was lost, the evening’s edge was gone, and long before they had finished their leisurely supper, he had abandoned any plan of inviting her back to his condo for the night.

  It did spoil the evening for him. Too early for sleep, too late to make any other arrangements, he wandered alone through his condo. He tried reading, but it seemed like a lot of effort. He glanced toward the barre, but his muscles were sore enough already from the day’s wo
rk-out. He switched on the vid, roaming the channels to see if there was anything new and good, but there wasn’t. A football series coming to its end in Katmandu, an election in Uruguay – who cared about such things? He paused over a story about a habitat now being fitted out with engines to leave the solar system: it was the one named Hakluyt and it held his interest for a moment because of that silly woman, Hillaree, with her script. It would be interesting, he thought, to take that final outward leap to another star . . . Of course, not for him, who would be long dead before the expedition could hope to arrive. He switched to the obituaries – his favorite kind of news – but the sparse list held no names that interested him. He switched again to the entertainment channels. There was a new situation comedy that he had heard about. The name was Dachau, and he remembered that one of the parts was played by a woman he had slept with a few times, years ago. Now she was playing a – a what? – a concentration-camp guard in Germany in World War II, it seemed. It was a comic part; she was a figure of fun as the Jews and Gypsies and political enemies who were inmates constantly mocked and outwitted her. It did have its funny bits. Rafiel laughed as one of the inmates, having escaped to perform some heroic espionage feat for the Allies, was sneaked back into the camp under the very eyes of the commandant. Still, he wondered if things had really ever been that jolly in the real concentration camps of the time, where the real death ovens burned all day and all night.

  It all depended on whether you were personally involved, he thought.

  And then he switched it off, thinking of Docilia. He shouldn’t have been so curt with her. She couldn’t help being what she was. If death seemed comical to the deathless, was that her fault? Hadn’t most of the world, for centuries on end, found fun in the antics of the dwarves and the deformed, even making them jesters at their courts? Perhaps the hunchbacks themselves hadn’t found anything to laugh at – but that was their point of view.

  As his attitude toward dying was his own.