“This can’t… help you.” The man in the chair got out these words with great effort.
“Oh, but it has already. You’re listening to me. You don’t like me, but you’re listening. And you didn’t like me before, either, so what’s the loss?”
The Bermudas he was wearing were uncomfortable. He rarely wore so much, and especially not in a climate so hot. It just went to show him what you get for overdressing for the occasion.
After a few seconds of quiet meditation, Wanbli gave a sigh. “I think I’ve figured out your language. I could be wrong, and you could be just a nasty kind of flyer with a bad liver or something, but I suspect it’s just a ranking problem.
“I’m going to give you a list of names, and you nod—no, not nod, just gurgle or something when you hear one you really like. All right? Now: Reynaldo Errenthorp—remember the flyer that introduced us? Remember him? Do you like that name?”
The man stared ahead, looking as blank and angry as a bird.
“Not Reynaldo. Not a big enough gun, I guess. Too bad. How about Mother Blanding. Does the name Blanding spark your eyes at all?” The mad-hawk eyes swiveled distrustfully. Wanbli was unsure, but he had another idea.
“How about this one, Popo: the Elmira Ducelet?”
The hawk eyes turned human and the great digestive chair squeaked and sucked beneath him. “You know the Elmira? Personally?”
“Very personally,” answered Wanbli, and slowly, carefully, he let the man go.
“Let’s talk about my career.”
* * *
As a child reads his history spools and imagines the battle of Joveritz taking place by the back veranda swing, or Pyramus and Thisbe exchanging notes through the home airlock, so Wanbli’s early imaginations took place on scenes constructed by Myronics or UAT—that is, when not on the aureate dust of Tawlin. For that reason, this day was a waking dream to him, doing endless interviews and exercises under the green canopy that concealed so much of New Benares.
“You can’t see where the sun is,” said Audry Hish in his ear. Audry was the staff manager of one particular branch of the Myronics tree. She had been leading him around. She was a graceful woman who appeared to be only a few years older than he was. Though her skin was a very rich brown, her eyes were light and flecked with green. Her face and manner were cool, and Wanbli thought her very exotic.
“I saw you looking up,” she explained. “For shimmers, it’s easier to film without direct sun, and as I said, it hides the passing of time.”
She led him along the pavement among the smooth boles of the trees, some silver, some dark as her skin, some speckled rufous, like him. He stroked each tree wonderingly as they passed. Audry shot him a sharp look or two, but he decided to wait until she actually told him to stop.
The buildings were low and not much different from those of his home, except that the roofs were sharply pitched. Couldn’t do much on a roof like that. They shone gray-black, like slate. Some of the buildings seemed to be made entirely of wood and Wanbli had to stare at these too. Such ostentation was almost embarrassing.
“You like the trees?” Audry’s voice was as cool as the rest of her. She spoke slowly and with a definite accent, as though Hindi were not her native tongue. She seemed amused by him. Wanbli would have played for that amusement, if he had known what it was about him that amused her. As it was, he answered simply.
“They inspire awe, of course. But they also… clutter up the landscape.”
“C… lutter?” Now he could laugh at her expression.
“ Yes. I’m used to being able to see right to the edge, you know? To the horizon? Whereas anybody could be hiding behind these.”
She looked long at him, as though he had said much more than he had said. She came up to his nose only, and had long, straight black hair. She turned again and walked before him, the ivory drape that covered her legs breathing in and out with her step. “I am from the forest. I find hiding places very useful. I don’t think there are enough of them here.”
He stood staring and then sprinted after her, her words echoing and echoing in his head. “I am from the forest. I find hiding places very useful. I am from the forest.”
Someday he would understand what she meant by that. Someday he would know why that was so important.
It was easy to lose the dark of her skin and the pale of her wrap amid the dark and pale of the light spattered on the paving stones. She moved almost barefoot-quiet.
A car drove by from behind him, only a few inches above the ground. It was silent except for its whining turbine and it was moving fast. Wanbli got out of its way and then watched to be sure Audry Hish would also. She didn’t miss a step. He caught up to her.
“That was Gregor Myronics,” she told him.
“I thought Myronics was dead years ago. Or is it his nephew or son or something? Drives like to kill someone.”
She nodded, still cool as cool. “There are many of them.”
It looked like an obelisk toppling behind the trees: a tall, stiff, shining thing. It rose and toppled again.
“I thought they’d be finished spooling by now,” she said, passing through a grove that waved lightly. The trees were whiter than her wrap.
It was a cheap spooling: only three cameras, set at 120 degree angles around a clearing in the woods. In that clearing seven people scuffled, danced and waved lances ineffectually through the air around the bulk and the high-raised head of a diplodocus. That was the obelisk thing.
“Another diplodocus attack,” said Wanbli without thinking.
“Diplo movies are always change-ringers,” answered Audry blandly. “And they’re inexpensive as long as the hoomies remain star-struck.”
One of the frantic cavemen (they were probably supposed to be time travelers, but at this point in the shimmer they looked like any cavemen) stumbled and fell under the descending foot of the dinosaur. A portly gentleman seated under the shadow of a birch made the ancient sign called “cutting the action” and the diplodocus shuffled backward, its foot extended in the air like that of a dancing elephant. The human bounced up and away, and by the motions of his mouth, Wanbli assumed he was apologizing.
The diplodocus pulled off his pachyderm feet—left, then right—exposing double-pawed legs: one hand, one hoof apiece. Carefully it removed its reptile head, revealing a face of great size and sensitivity. It kicked off its diplodocus feet. Otherwise, the hoomie was not in costume.
“They should write roles for them as they are,” said Audry, as she led Wanbli down a mossy slope toward the crew. “What’s wrong with a hoomie as hero?”
“Too big,” answered Wanbli out of recent memory. “Not average enough. What could a hoomie play but itself?”
“I didn’t expect it would play romance against Alo Baker.” Audry sounded slightly aggrieved. She led him not to the director, but to a round, small man who sat on the grass and weeds of the far side of the dell, telling off the man who had stumbled. Not content with denigrating his coordination, he was enlarging upon the twin themes of the man’s ancestry and probable descendants. Respectfully, Audry and Wanbli waited for the speaker’s attention.
“Red, this is Pylos, our AR controller and technical authority. Pylos, this is Red, just in from Neunacht. He is the one about whom we called this morning.”
The little man was bald. He had wrinkles and even scars, about which nothing had been done. Wanbli seemed to make a bad taste in his mouth. “So. You’ve come here to tell us how we ought to do things.”
Wanbli opened his eyes wide and denied he had come with any such intent. Audry Hish seconded him in her very collected manner. “I think he seriously wants to be an actor.”
The old man stood up. His head reached Wanbli’s Adam’s apple. “An actor, boy? Here we have fall guys, bad guys, bloody fatalities flailing in burning cars and the hundred soldiers swinging swords behind the hero. No actors. What do you want with us?”
“A chance to work.” Wanbli bowed very low to the techn
ical authority, not taking his eyes from the small, withered face. Pylos struck out while Wanbli’s head hung before him, but Wanbli evaded without using a block. It was all very fast.
Pylos grunted. “One of those painted warriors, I see.”
“I’m a Paint,” Wanbli agreed and stood again in all his glory. Pylos regarded him for three seconds.
“Makeup!” he called.
It seemed all very fortunate that the stuntman had stumbled and twisted his ankle at the very moment Wanbli walked onto the set. It was like a scene from a shimmer itself: the new fellow being given his moment in the sun and saving the situation. Only Wanbli did not exactly save the situation. He was moving with great clumsiness, or at least the technical authority thought so, for he shouted corrections without end. Wanbli was either too far stage left or right or (most likely) downstage, allowing his body to obstruct the view of either the two speaking roles or the hoomie itself. He found the glimmer of his own limbs (which had been sprayed a neutral brown-beige much lighter than his own coloring) very distracting and the blank nakedness of his chest and abdomen was a shame and an embarrassment. But though the TA shouted and cursed he did not call “cut” and so perhaps Wanbli was not doing so badly.
Occasionally the speech director, a small woman dressed in the usual Myronics green, called for monologue, in which case one of the two “speaking roles” would say something. Jaime Lepp, the lead, had a poem he liked to repeat, which concerned a stately pleasure dome. It was always the same four lines, ending with “caverns measureless to man” but it was still poetry and ancient besides. It didn’t much matter what he said, as all the dialogue would be inserted at the local distributors’ level, in appropriate language and idiom. Certain shimmer-buffers, however, made it a point to know what the actors were mouthing, so it was not Myronics policy to allow obscene language. This made things difficult, local standards of obscenity being so various, and certain studios had published lists of safe orations and poems for the use of the mouth-moving actor. (Very little of Mother Goose had made it onto the list.) Myronics, however, left it up to the discretion of the actors and allowed them to defend their own obscenity lawsuits as well. This was known as artistic license.
The second lead, Cauppie (single names for romantic actresses were very in-fashion these last few years), did advertisements for wine and phercolognes, with which she brought in a tidy addition to her income. Pumping products under the dialogue was not considered such high art as Coleridge, but it gave one big backing in case of a suit.
Wanbli did not have a speaking role, so it would have been bad form for him to so much as breathe through his mouth. The afternoon passed quickly, with the three cameras darting around the circle, striking sparks from their polished rails. The cameraman herself sat on a small tower outside the dell, her hands waldoed into the scale model in her lap, pressing in and drawing back as though she worked bread dough. He felt her ghostly fingers moving over him, now including his spear and now his whole body (which was hop-hop-hopping and brandishing the silly weapon; what a farce), and now pulling in so that the entire arena would be filled with the gaping, peg-toothed mouth of the diplodocus. It looked so natural to the viewer. Surely Reynaldo was wrong about 3-D work being the death of art in theater.
They canned the death of the dinosaur and then they did the scene were it was first discovered and it picks up a spear carrier and chews him into bloody pulp. Wanbli hoped he would get chosen for that scene, but it was too much to ask, his first day on the set. It was a very pretty young time traveler-cavewoman who got to be crushed, and she seemed as conscious of the importance of her position as Mr. Myronics could have wished. She was killed twice, once with clothes on and once with them coming off.
The diplodocus head was not built for crushing anything, of course. There was a metal frame inside strong enough to support an average-sized human and the hoomie had no difficulty lifting her forty kilograms. The blood sacks were actually built into the diplodocus head, so that every time the hoomie worked the monster mouth the red ran out. Very clever, thought Wanbli, but the blood also made things slippery, so that the hoomie lost his grip and let her slide out sideways. She fell five feet and landed on her tailbone, cursing explosively, but her face was blocked by the shoulder of the diplodocus, so they got a “take.”
Everyone seemed exhausted after all this running around except Wanbli, who was not even winded. He was a bit depressed, however, knowing he had not pleased Pylos. He had done his best, too.
The hoomie seemed as weary as anyone, and small wonder. He lay on his belly, his four legs curled lamb-fashion under him. The long arms which extended from his front elbows were busy lighting a large cigar. His large-eyed face bore the pressure marks of the diplodocus mask as he puffed the cigar alight.
Wanbli leaned back against the hoomie’s haunch, along with two or three of the other stuntmen. The smell of burning leaves reminded him of Hovart Clan sweathouse, though there they had never used tobacco. He had heard somewhere that the herb was poisonous. Maybe not to an alien.
Audry Hish was still there, looking impossibly cool and uninvolved. Perhaps watching the shooting was part of her job. Perhaps it was also her job to smile at the new recruits and ask them if they liked their first day’s work. He hoped it was’not just part of her job.
“Aren’t you a little nervous about Estamp here?” She waved behind him, at the thirty-meter-long shape of the hoomie.
Wanbli put his hand on the warm leather leg. “This flyer? No, funny to say, I’m not. And when I first met a Dayflower—and they’re only two meters and a bit—I was panicked. I think it’s just that our friend here is too big to be thought of as a danger. It would be like… like being afraid of a mesa, or a promontory.”
Estamp’s talking end had been conversing with a group consisting of Lepp, Cauppie and the speech director. He must have had magnificent hearing, because Wanbli found himself in a spreading cloud of tobacco smoke, looking up at two large eyes in a puckery face that hung above his own. “If this”—and he tapped his thigh with his chin—“is a promontory, then I supposed this end must be the headland. Eh?”
“Don’t drive him away, Stampie, we just got him,” said Audry. To Wanbli she added, “Hoomies have two brains, Wanbli. The one in their middles and the one they keep specially for punning.”
Limping down the dell came the man whose accident had brought Wanbli unexpectedly into the action. He was livid with anger and Wanbli rose from his seat on Estamp’s foothill, adopting a loose but ready stance. It was not Wanbli that was the focus of the man’s rage.
“Lookit. Audry, lookit, right there. In front of everyone. I told you there would be trouble if they were allowed to burn incense before a shooting. And look what happened to me. How can you doubt now?”
Wanbli saw Audry wince and draw her composure more firmly over her. “There wasn’t any incense burned, Jermonico. Not anywhere near the set. I made sure of that especially, after our talk yesterday.”
“Then what do you call that?” Jermonico pointed a quivering finger at Estamp’s beautifully shaped but very large lips, where the smoking tube of tobacco was almost hidden.
“I call that a cigar,” said Audry resignedly. “A very stinky one. And besides, this is after the shooting, not before.”
“The principle remains the same,” said Jermonico. “It’s a form of incense, and incense on a set means a death.”
“But you’re not dead,” interjected Wanbli. He was very interested.
“That’s because it’s only a form of incense.” Jermonico was grinding his jaws out of resentment.
“‘Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar,’“ said Estamp, puffing away.
“See? He’s still doing it!” The human stuntman pointed at the hoomie stuntman and hopped in rage on his single good leg.
“Well, why not, Jerry? Your ankle is already sprained. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Want a cigar?”
Audry shot the hoomie a withering glance as two
other actors joined in the conversation. One of them was the young woman who had been crushed by the diplodocus. It was she who spoke. “I hate to be an I-told-you-so, Audry darling, but if you had just let us cleanse and dedicate this set in the normal way with our smudge sticks this morning, accidents of this nature would not be so likely to happen. Not to mention what I’ve done to my coccyx. Unconfined energies need to be tuned.”
Jermonico almost climbed up Wanbli in an effort to be seen. “You are playing with demons, Kate, and you will all wind up the worse for it. If you call spirits, don’t you think they’ll come?”
“Anyone for a little fire and brimstone?” Estamp blew a more-than-mortal-sized cloud of smoke that set everyone in the argument to coughing.
Wanbli whispered into Audry’s ear, “Maybe I can help you find a hiding place in the forest.”
It seemed impossible to Wanbli that he had ever made his living killing people on command, or at least being ready to kill people. This mockery of violence that was his new occupation put it all into an alien perspective. At the same time, his exile put his home and people into an impossible sweetness of memory.
How could he go back to that? How could he not return home, and immediately?
But of course, he couldn’t return. He was an outlaw, a traitor, and now out of money besides.
* * *
Audry made absentminded music with her spoon against the side of her tall glass. “No, he’s not like that with everyone. With most new arrivals he’s more the benevolent-uncle sort. I’d have to say he doesn’t like you.”
Wanbli’s stomach sank. He scraped his uncomfortable beaded shirt against the back of the ornate restaurant chair. “I suppose he knows I got the referral through influence.”
Audry glanced up at him, cool and distant. Cool and distant, but at the same time not uncaring. “Everyone here got her job through influence. Except me, of course. No one with influence would want my job. And it wasn’t anything you said—I was there. It seemed to me that Pylos just didn’t like your looks, Wanbli. Perhaps it’s racial antipathy.”
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