Vaguely remembering that San Francisco had once had special ethnic sections, I did ask Library Central. It screened a fleet of stuff about a district known as Chinatown. Probably contemporaries found that area picturesque. (Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!) The inhabitants had celebrated a Lunar New Year with fireworks and a parade. I couldn't make out details—the photographs had been time-blurred when their information was recoded—and was too disheartened to plow through the accompanying text.
For me, dinner was a refueling stop. I mumbled something to my parents, who mean well but can't understand why I must leave the nice safe Commonwealth, and flitted off to the Riefenstahl place.
The trip calmed me a little. I was reminded that, to outworlders like Adzel, the miracle was here. Light glimmered in a million earthbound stars across the hills, far out over the great sheen of Bay and ocean; often it fountained upward in a many-armed tower, often gave way to the sweet darkness of a park or ecocenter. A murmur of machines beat endlessly through cool, slightly foggy air. Traffic Control passed me so near a bus that I looked in its canopy and saw the passengers were from the whole globe and beyond—a dandified Lunarian, a stocky blueskin of Alfzar, a spacehand identified by his Brotherhood badge, a journeyman merchant of the Polesotechnic League who didn't bother with any identification except the skin weathered beneath strange suns, the go-to-hell independence in his face, which turned me sick with envy.
The Riefenstahls' apartment overlooked the Golden Gate. I saw lights twinkle and flare, heard distant clangor and hissing, where crews worked around the clock to replicate an ancient bridge. Betty met me at the door. She's slim and blonde and usually cheerful. Tonight she looked so tired and troubled that I myself paid scant attention to the briefness of her tunic.
"Sh!" she cautioned. "Let's don't say hello to Dad right now. He's in his study, and it's very brown." I knew that her mother was away from home, helping develop the tape of a modern musical composition. Her father conducted the San Francisco Opera.
She led me to the living room, sat me down, and punched for coffee. A full-wall transparency framed her where she continued standing, in city glitter and shimmer, a sickle moon with a couple of pinpoint cities visible on its dark side, a few of the brightest stars. "I'm glad you came, Jimmy," she said. "I need a shoulder to cry on."
"Like me," I answered. "You first, however."
"Well, it's Dad. He's ghastly worried. This stupid Festival—"
"Huh?" I searched my mind and found nothing except the obvious. "Won't he be putting on a, uh, Terrestrial piece?"
"He's expected to. He's been researching till every hour of the mornings, poor dear. I've been helping him go through playbacks—hundreds and hundreds of years' worth—and prepare synopses and excerpts to show the directors. We only finished yesterday, and I had to catch up on sleep. That's why I couldn't let you come earlier."
"But what's the problem?" I asked. "Okay, you've been forced to scan those tapes. But once you've picked your show, you just project it, don't you? At most, you may need to update the language. And you've got your mother to handle reprogramming."
Betty sighed. "It's not that simple. You see, they—his board of directors, plus the officials in charge of San Francisco's participation—they insist on a live performance."
Partly I knew what she was talking about, partly she explained further. Freeman Riefenstahl had pioneered the revival of in-the-flesh opera. Yes, he said, we have holographic records of the greatest artists; yes, we can use computers to generate original works and productions which no mortal being could possibly match. Yet neither approach will bring forth new artists with new concepts of a part, nor do they give individual brains a chance to create—and, when a million fresh ideas are flowing in to us from the galaxy, natural-born genius must create or else revolt.
"Let us by all means use technical tricks where they are indicated, as for special effects," Freeman Riefenstahl said. "But let us never forget that music is only alive in a living performer." While I don't claim to be very esthetic, I tuned in his shows whenever I could. They did have an excitement which no tape and no calculated stimulus interplay—no matter how excellent—can duplicate.
"His case is like yours," Betty told me near the start of our acquaintance. "We could send robots to space. Nevertheless men go, at whatever risk." That was when I stopped thinking of her as merely pretty.
Tonight, her voice gone bleak, she said: "Dad succeeded too well. He's been doing contemporary things, you know, letting the archives handle the archaic. Now they insist he won't be showing sufficient respect, as a representative of the Integrate, for the Human Ethos—unless he puts on a historic item, live, as the Opera Company's share of the Festival."
"Well, can't he?" I asked. "Sure, it's kind of short notice, same as for me. Still, given modern training methods for his cast—"
"Of course, of course," she said irritably. "But don't you see, a routine performance isn't good enough either? People today are conditioned to visual spectacles. At least, the directors claim so. And—Jimmy, the Festival is important, if only because of the publicity. If Dad's part in it falls flat, his contract may not be renewed. Certainly his effort would be hurt, to educate the public back to real music." Her tone and her head drooped. "And that'd hurt him."
She drew a breath, straightened, even coaxed a smile into existence. "Well, we've made our précis of suggestions," she said. "We're waiting to hear what the board decides, which may take days. Meanwhile, you need to tell me your woes." Sitting down opposite me: "Do."
I obeyed. At the end I grinned on one side of my face and remarked: "Ironic, huh? Here your father has to stage an ultraethnic production—I'll bet they'll turn handsprings for him if he can make it German, given a name like his—only he's not supposed to use technology for much except backdrops. And here I have to do likewise, in Chinese style, the flashier the better, only I really haven't time to apply the technology for making a firework fountain or whatever. Maybe he and I should pool our efforts."
"How?"
"I dunno." I shifted in the chair. "Let's get out of here, go someplace where we can forget this mess."
What I had in mind was a flit over the ocean or down to the swimmably warm waters off Baja, followed maybe by a snack in a restaurant featuring outsystem food. Betty gave me no chance. She nodded and said quickly, "Yes, I've been wanting to. A serene environment—Do you think Adzel might be at home?"
The League scholarship he'd wangled back on his planet didn't reach far on Earth, especially when he had about a ton of warmblooded mass to keep fed. He couldn't afford special quarters, or anything near the Clement Institute of Planetology. Instead, he paid exorbitant rent for a shack 'way down in the San Jose district. The sole public transportation he could fit into was a rickety old twice-a-day gyrotrain, which meant he lost hours commuting to his laboratory and live-lecture classes, waiting for them to begin and waiting around after they were finished. Also, I strongly suspected he was undernourished. I'd fretted about him ever since we met, in the course of a course in micrometrics.
He always dismissed my fears: "Once, Jimmy, I might well have chafed, when I was a prairie-galloping hunter. Now, having gained a minute measure of enlightenment, I see that these annoyances of the flesh are no more significant than we allow them to be. Indeed, we can turn them to good use. Austerities are valuable. As for long delays, why, they are opportunities for study or, better yet, meditation. I have even learned to ignore spectators, and am grateful for the discipline which that forced me to acquire."
We may be used to extraterrestrials these days. Nevertheless, he was the one Wodenite on this planet. And you take a being like that: four hoofed legs supporting a spike-backed, green-scaled, golden-bellied body and tail; torso, with arms in proportion, rising two meters to a crocodilian face, fangs, rubbery lips, bony ears, wistful brown eyes—you take that fellow and set him
on a campus, in his equivalent of the lotus position, droning "Om mani padme hum" in a rich basso profundo, and see if you don't draw a crowd.
Serious though he was, Adzel never became a prig. He enjoyed good food and drink when he could get them, being especially fond of rye whiskey consumed out of beer tankards. He played murderous chess and poker. He sang, and sang well, everything from his native chants through human folk ballads on to the very latest spinnies. (A few things, such as Eskimo Nell, he refused to render in Betty's presence. From his avid reading of human history, he'd picked up anachronistic inhibitions.) I imagine his jokes often escaped me by being too subtle.
All in all, I was tremendously fond of him, hated the thought of his poverty, and had failed to hit on any way of helping him out.
I set my car down on the strip before his hut. A moldering conurb, black against feverish reflections off thickening fog, cast it into deep and sulfurous shadow. Unmuffled industrial traffic brawled around. I took a stun pistol from a drawer before escorting Betty outside.
Adzel's doorplate was kaput, but he opened at our knock. "Do come in, do come in," he greeted. Fluorolight shimmered gorgeous along his scales and scutes. Incense puffed outward. He noticed my gun. "Why are you armed, Jimmy?"
"The night's dark here," I said. "In a crime area like this—"
"Is it?" He was surprised. "Why, I have never been molested."
We entered. He waved us to mats on the floor. Those, and a couple of cheap tables, and bookshelves cobbled together from scrap and crammed with codexes as well as reels, were his furniture. An Old Japanese screen—repro, of course—hid that end of the single room which contained a miniature cooker and some complicated specially installed plumbing. Two scrolls hung on the walls, one showing a landscape and one the Compassionate Buddha.
Adzel bustled about, making tea for us. He hadn't quite been able to adjust to these narrow surroundings. Twice I had to duck fast before his tail clonked me. (I said nothing, lest he spend the next half-hour in apologies.) "I am delighted to see you," he boomed. "I gathered, however, from your call, that the occasion is not altogether happy."
"We hoped you'd help us relax," Betty replied. I myself felt a bit disgruntled. Sure, Adzel was fine people; but couldn't Betty and I relax in each other's company? I had seen too little of her these past weeks.
He served us. His pot held five liters, but—thanks maybe to that course in micrometrics—he could handle the tiniest cups and put on an expert tea ceremony. Appropriate silence passed. I fumed. Charming the custom might be; still, hadn't Oriental traditions caused me ample woe?
At last he dialled for pipa music, settled down before us on hocks and front knees, and invited: "Share your troubles, dear friends."
"Oh, we've been over them and over them," Betty said. "I came here for peace."
"Why, certainly," Adzel answered. "I am glad to try to oblige. Would you like to join me in a spot of transcendental meditation?"
That tore my patience apart. "No!" I yelled. They both stared at me. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. "But . . . chaos, everything's gone bad and—"
A gigantic four-digited hand squeezed my shoulder, gently as my mother might have done. "Tell, Jimmy," Adzel said low.
It flooded from me, the whole sad, ludicrous situation. "Freeman Snyder can't understand," I finished. "He thinks I can learn those equations, those facts, in a few days at most."
"Can't you? Operant conditioning, for example—"
"You know better. I can learn to parrot, sure. But I won't get the knowledge down in my bones where it belongs. And they'll set me problems which require original thinking. They must. How else can they tell if I'll be able to handle an emergency in space?"
"Or on a new planet." The long head nodded. "Yes-s-s."
"That's not for me," I said flatly. "I'll never be tagged by the merchant adventurers." Betty squeezed my hand. "Even freighters can run into grief, though."
He regarded me for a while, most steadily, until at last he rumbled: "A word to the right men—that does appear to be how your Technic civilization operates, no? Zothkh. Have you prospects for a quick performance of this task, that will allow you to get back soon to your proper work?"
"No. Freeman Snyder mentioned a float or display. Well, I'll have to soak up cultural background, and develop a scheme, and clear it with a local committee, and design the thing—which had better be spectacular as well as ethnic—and build it, and test it, and find the bugs in the design, and rebuild it, and—And I'm no artist anyhow. No matter how clever a machine I make, it won't look like much."
Suddenly Betty exclaimed: "Adzel, you know more about Old Oriental things than he does! Can't you make a suggestion?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps." The Wodenite rubbed his jaw, a sandpaper noise. "The motifs—Let me see." He hooked a book off a shelf and started leafing through it. "They are generally of pagan origin in Buddhistic, or for that matter Christian art. . . . Gr-r-rrr'm. . . . Betty, my sweet, while I search, won't you unburden yourself too?"
She twisted her fingers and gazed at the floor. I figured she'd rather not be distracted. Rising from my mat, I went to look over his shoulder—no, his elbow.
"My problem is my father's, actually," she began. "And maybe he and I already have solved it. That depends on whether or not one of the possibilities we've found is acceptable. If not—how much further can we research? Time's getting so short. He needs time to assemble a cast, rehearse, handle the physical details—" She noticed Adzel's puzzlement and managed a sort of chuckle. "Excuse me. I got ahead of my story. We—"
"Hoy!" I interrupted. My hand slapped down on a page. "What's that? . . . . Uh, sorry, Betty."
Her smile forgave me. "Have you found something?" She sprang to her feet.
"I don't know," I stammered, "b-b-but, Adzel, that thing in this picture could almost be you. What is it?"
He squinted at the ideograms. "The lung," he said.
"A dragon?"
"Western writers miscalled it thus." Adzel settled happily down to lecture us. "The dragon proper was a creature of European and Near Eastern mythology, almost always a destructive monster. In Chinese and related societies, contrariwise, these herpetoids represented beneficent powers. The lung inhabited the sky, the li the ocean, the chiao the marshes and mountains. Various other entities are named elsewhere. The lung was the principal type, the one which was mimed on ceremonial occasions—"
The phone warbled. "Would you please take that, Betty?" Adzel asked, reluctant to break off. "I daresay it's a notification I am expecting of a change in class schedules. Now, Jimmy, observe the claws on hind and forefeet Their exact number is a distinguishing characteristic of—"
"Dad!" Betty cried. Glancing sideways, I saw John Riefenstahl's mild features in the screen, altogether woebegone.
"I was hoping I'd find you, dear," he said wearily. I knew that these days she seldom left the place without recording a list of numbers where she could probably be reached.
"I've just finished a three-hour conference with the board chairman," her father's voice plodded. "They've vetoed every one of our proposals."
"Already?" she whispered. "In God's name, why?"
"Various reasons. They feel Carmen is too parochial in time and space; hardly anybody today would understand what motivates the characters. Alpha of the Centaur is about space travel, which is precisely what we're supposed to get away from. La Traviata isn't visual enough. G. . .tterdämmerung, they agree, has the Mythic Significance they want, but it's too visual. A modern audience wouldn't accept it unless we supply a realism of effects which would draw attention away from the live performers on whom it ought to center in a production that emphasizes Man. Et cetera, et cetera."
"They're full of nonsense!"
"They're also full of power, dear. Can you bear to run through more tapes?"
"I'd better."
"I beg your pardon, Freeman Riefenstahl," Adzel put in. "We haven't met but I have long admired your work. May I ask if you have considere
d Chinese opera?"
"The Chinese themselves will be doing that, Freeman—er—" The conductor hesitated.
"Adzel." My friend moved into scanner range. His teeth gleamed alarmingly sharp. "Honored to make your acquaintance, sir . . . ah . . . sir?"
John Riefenstahl, who had gasped and gone bloodless, wiped his forehead. "Eh-eh-excuse me," he stuttered. "I didn't realize you—That is, here I had Wagner on my mind, and then Fafner himself confronted me—"
I didn't know those names, but the context was obvious. All at once Betty and I met each other's eyes and let out a yell.
Knowing how Simon Snyder would react, I insisted on a live interview. He sat behind his desk, surrounded by his computers, communicators, and information retrievers, and gave me a tight smile.
"Well," he said. "You have an idea, Jim? Overnight seems a small time for a matter this important."
The Van Rijn Method Page 18