We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2

by Christopher Stasheff

  “Please lie down,” Susanne entreated.

  Charlie said, “We really should have the robo-doc give you an X ray and a diagnosis, just to be on the safe side, Ramou.”

  Ramou’s face tightened with annoyance. “Hey, I really appreciate the thought, Charlie, but I’ve had a lot of experience with injuries, and believe me, if there were anything broken, I’d know it. I might have a sprain, though.”

  “Please,” Susanne entreated, “Just for my peace of mind.”

  “And mine, Ramou.” Barry stepped forward.

  I was right behind him. “Yes, Ramou, please.”

  “Oh, all right,” Ramou grumbled, “but you make me feel like a baby.” He was looking decidedly less annoyed, though. “What happened, anyway?”

  Susanne started to answer, but Charlie held up a hand again. “What do you remember?”

  Larry stepped up with the drink just then, white showing all around his eyes, tense as he waited for the answer. Ramou took the glass from him. “Thanks, Larry.” He sipped, then said to Charlie, “I remember jumping out and grabbing Larry. He struggled, just the way Barry had said to, while I pantomimed putting a knife across his throat…” He looked up at Larry, frowning. “How the hell did you ever manage to give me a rabbit punch with your elbow?”

  “I don’t know!” Larry said, almost in a panic. “I was just struggling, Ramou, and all of a sudden, I felt this shock in my elbow, and you collapsed!”

  Ramou’s frown turned to a scowl of concern. “How’s your elbow?”

  “Well, it does hurt a little, but … Oh, that’s ridiculous! How’s your neck?”

  “About like your elbow, I expect,” Ramou returned. “Right on the funny bone, huh?”

  Larry gulped and nodded..

  “Musta hurt,” Ramou said sympathetically. “I’ve had it done to me—but deliberately. This was just an accident.”

  “Yes, surely.” Barry nodded. “It was just an accident. It could have happened at any time.”

  Especially in this play. The unspoken thought hung there in the air between us, not needing voice to carry it to everyone’s mind. We all exchanged glances, then looked away.

  Ramou pushed himself up, but Susanne and Charlie were there to help him, protesting every inch of the way. “Ramou, we’ll bring a stretcher—”

  “You really shouldn’t move until—”

  “Hey, I really appreciate it.” Ramou seemed rather be mused by their solicitousness. “But I’m okay, really. If I had a broken neck, it would sure as hell hurt too much to move.”

  Susanne clung to his arm as if to hold him up, completely missing Lacey’s glare. “Mr. Wellesley, if you could move to a chair and let Ramou take your floater …”

  “Of course, my dear.” Ogden steered himself over to an armchair, but Ramou said firmly, “No! I can walk! I damn well better be able to walk, or Merlo will try to finish the set by himself, and you know what’ll happen then!”

  “I promise,” Merlo said instantly.

  “We can all turn to and help, Ramou,” I added. “Union rules allow for emergencies.”

  ‘They don’t have to.” Ramou started to shake his head, then winced and clapped the sore spot. “Ow! I can walk just fine—I just can’t turn my head!”

  Susanne started massaging again. “All right, all right, we’ll let you walk! But walk to the sick bay, will you, Ramou?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ramou muttered as he headed for the door. “You sure your scene isn’t coming up, Charlie? I don’t want you to stop rehearsal just because of me.”

  “All things considered, I think it’s just as well we adjourn for the day.” Barry was looking rather unsettled himself. “We’ll begin again tomorrow.”

  But we didn’t.

  7

  It hadn’t exactly been an exuberant afternoon, but by dinnertime, everyone seemed to have shrugged off the effects of my accident. So even the evening was cheerful enough, with talking, and singing around the keyboard as people took turns playing. I indulged in a little light flirtation with Lacey, and a little heavier flirtation with Susanne, and everyone had a very pleasant evening. Even Larry didn’t manage to get anyone mad, so we all retired to bed at a more or less respectable hour—somewhere between midnight and two A.M., everyone remembering the 9:00 call Barry had announced. So everyone was awake and in the lounge on time, and I did a bonanza business in coffee and doughnuts, but almost none in Gran’ma Horrhee’s syrup. We were all in rather good spirits, too—which was why Barry’s announcement really took us by surprise.

  “In view of the situation,” he said, “I think any further rehearsal of the Scottish play is somewhat premature—so let us begin with Vagrants from Vega. We have already blocked the first act; let us commence with the second.”

  There were murmurs of surprise, but no one really objected. Larry wore a look of scorn for everyone else’s superstitious fear—but I noticed he didn’t complain any, either.

  There was a rustle as everybody put away their Mac … excuse me, Scottish play scripts, and riffled through the stack to find Vagrants. They must have been hoping he’d change his mind. Only Larry said, “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Tallendar, I left my Vagrants script in my stateroom.”

  “Of course; this isn’t as scheduled. But do be quick, Mr. Rash.” Barry didn’t look as gracious as he sounded, though, and Larry left looking sulky. “Now, then,” Barry went on, “beginning with Act II …”

  “Ah well, if we must, we must.” Ogden set his hands on the arms of his floater and began to rise.

  “ … with you seated, of course, Ogden,” Barry said quickly. “I am sure you will be hale and hearty by opening night—”

  “I am now,” Ogden grumbled.

  “—but I’d just as soon have you save your energy for that felicitous occasion,” Barry finished. “Now, let me refresh your minds as to the first scene. As the second act begins, Brinker the Thinker is leading our doughty crew to his village. It is a small city, actually, filling the air with spires of crystal—Merlo has shown me a preliminary sketch, and I really think it will be quite lovely.”

  “That hammer-handed grease monkey?” Mamie must have been feeling well this morning, too—back to her old self, in fact. “Merlo couldn’t draw a poker hand!”

  My gaze snapped over to her, and I frowned. I felt as if an attack on my immediate boss was an attack on me. Irrational, I know—he hadn’t chosen me, Horace had—but I respected him and was trying to learn everything he could teach me.

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to keep personal opinions out of the discussion, Mamie,” Barry said, “or we’ll never get beyond the first line.”

  “Neither can Merlo!” she snapped.

  “We’ll try to keep you as far from the set as we can.” Barry sighed.

  “You know you won’t go near the upstage wall anyway,” Winston reminded her.

  “Not unless she’s talking to someone else who’s in danger of attracting attention,’’ Ogden muttered to me.

  “Yes, but I’ll have to be seen against it!’’

  “Against it? You certainly are,” Winston rejoined.

  “It isn’t as if you knew anything about beauty, Winston Carlton!” Mamie turned on him. “If you had any taste at all, you wouldn’t perform in those horrible 3DT soggies!”

  For a moment, I thought she meant “sagas”; then I realized she was talking about Winston’s five-year stint as resident heavy on a soap opera.

  “If I had taste,” Winston retorted, “you certainly wouldn’t be able to perceive it. In fact, come to think of it, I have—and you don’t!”

  “Company, please!” Barry cried.

  Barry looked faintly shocked. I didn’t blame him; I had scarcely ever heard Winston say an unkind word, myself. Of course, the one occasion on which I had, certainly had been memorable; I still winced at the recollection. I put this morning’s lapse down to the remnants of his condition; he was the only one who had needed Gran’ma Horrhee’s remedy this morning.


  Mamie, unfortunately, lacked such perspective. She was just drawing breath for another blast, when Barry said, loudly and firmly, “Now! They discover Blinker’s home city and immediately fall to arguing among themselves as to whether or not they should proceed into the town.”

  “I think we can manage that,” Winston said. Mamie glared at him.

  “Blinker resolves the question,” Barry said hastily, “by pointing out that the city is abandoned. He then sings a delightful little ditty explaining why.” He keyed the recorder beside him, and a synthesizer rippled out a light, amusing tune, doing a fair imitation of a full orchestra; then the voice of Arbuthnot, the composer and lyricist, came in over it, explaining, with interior rhyme and amusingly erratic meter, how Blinker’s race had virtually killed itself off, due to an excessive fondness for material goods and artificially induced states of ecstasy, combined with a growing distaste for children, resulting in an expanding and eventually total use of birth control.

  When it was finished, Lacey asked, “Isn’t he editorializing a bit there?”

  “Thoroughly,” I replied, “and has every right to. He is not a journalist, after all, but a playwright, and has no obligation to be objective. He makes no pretense at fairness or lack of bias; he is stating his opinion. He is doing so in a very entertaining way, but is nonetheless very definitely stating his opinion.”

  Lacey frowned. “I don’t know if I can endorse that.”

  “You have no need to,” I assured her. “You need only deliver your lines well.”

  “But that’s an implied endorsement!”

  Barry sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Ms. Lark, you had the opportunity to read the play before we left Terra, and you had the opportunity to resign from the company without contract penalty before our ship lifted off. Now, however, if you refuse the part in which you are cast—”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean anything like that!” she said quickly. “I just meant …” She floundered, at a loss for words.

  “I assure you,” I said with some asperity, “Arbuthnot has as much of a right to freedom of expression as you do, and has perhaps earned considerably more. Not every play we do will agree with your own convictions.”

  Ramou was staring at me, and I really couldn’t blame him; it was not like me to be so testy. I was rather surprised at myself, but I had become somewhat tired of the young folks’ presumption, and felt the need to correct some of the misapprehensions their professors had imbued in them.

  “Some may grate on your sensibilities,” Barry agreed, “though many will be quite acceptable to you. This company will not be restricted by ideology. Our only requirements for a play are that it be good theater and affordable to produce.”

  “Precisely,” I agreed, “but if we are not to be bound by any particular ideological viewpoint, we each must occasionally appear in a play that contradicts our own opinions. In this instance, we are extremely fortunate that so renowned a playwright team as Cant and Arbuthnot should have allowed us to produce the out-of-town tryouts for one of their new works. If the whole play were detestable, or even its overall theme, you would be in a crisis of conscience and would have been wrong to join a company that planned on producing it. But if only this one barbed comment in this one scene is deplorable to you, I would say that your attitude is highly unprofessional.”

  Lacey was red-faced by this time, whether with anger or embarrassment, I could not tell. “Are you saying that just because I’m an actress, I don’t have any right to my own opinions?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “It is merely that the time for acting on those opinions is past—and that your freedom of expression must not eliminate Mr. Arbuthnot’s. If the play was not so abhorrent to you as to make you leave the company before we lifted ship, then it should not be so abhorrent as to induce you to comment now.”

  “I see,” she said bitterly. “So by joining the company, I committed myself to expressing whatever opinions our scripts present.”

  “Quite so.” Really, the poor child was learning in a very rude fashion that the real world was not like college. Though I’m certain I did her an injustice—Lacey was usually so very careful about currying favor, that she must have felt sure of support that had not materialized. I glanced at Mamie out of the corner of my eye, but she was only looking interested in the exchange, not partisan.

  It was quite unlike me to take so hard a line with a child—but I had lost patience with the spoiled brat that had begun to emerge as soon as she had set foot upon the deck of this ship. She had thought, no doubt, that once in space, we could not replace her and were committed to suffering her whims. I wondered if Barry had a budget for tickets home.

  “It really is quite unprofessional,” he said quietly. “But Ms. Lark is not the only one to react strongly to Brinker’s words; Mr. Malfeasance is instantly suspicious, and demands to know why Brinker has brought them to an empty village.”

  That easily and that smoothly, he had moved us away from the quarrel and back to the rehearsal. I subsided, feeling ashamed.

  “Brinker replies that he has brought them here to give them an abundance of shelter,” Barry explained, “but Mr. Malfeasance demands to know the ulterior motive. Brinker reveals that he has recorded the personalities of his dearest friends, dead now for centuries, but able to come alive again if transferred into the minds of sentient creatures with sufficient brain capacity. Mr. Malfeasance is of course shocked, and commands his troops to turn away and return to the ship—but Brinker calls out a command, and gun turrets open in the rocks about them, covering the whole group.”

  “Constrained against their will,” Lacey said bitterly.

  “Quite so.” Barry let it breeze by him.

  “Otto Hand to the rescue, of course,” Ogden rumbled.

  “Of course.” Barry looked up at the sound of a footstep and saw Larry coming into the room with the correct script loosely in hand. Barry rose. “Let’s just try that much, shall we?” The subtext was: I’ve stalled long enough. He walked over to the side of the lounge, where the keyboard sat in remembrance of song-filled nights and the intoxicating atmosphere of bygone days, when our ship had been a luxury cruiser, and the lounge’s main purpose had been that of helping affluent individuals while away the ennui of enforced idleness and confinement during the weeks between stars. I had shipped as an entertainer on such a vessel during my salad days and could attest to the intoxicating atmosphere—indeed, stepping in the door and drawing breath had almost been enough to make one heady. There had been nights when it had been all I could do to remain sober long enough to perform my act.

  No longer. The dance floor by the keyboard was small, but large enough to represent the inadequate staging space we would probably have to deal with in a colonial theater—if we found any theaters at all.

  “Are we supposed to block this play on that?” Mamie demanded. “It’s scarcely large enough for a tete a tete!”

  She exaggerated—it was easily large enough for six singing waiters, side by side.

  “Future rehearsals will take place in the ballroom,” Barry said, “but I thought that for these few, we would do better with easy chairs.”

  “I’ve had a look at the ballroom.” Winston frowned. “I’d scarcely call it capacious.”

  “Alas, no. Merlo and Ramou are cobbling together a rehearsal space in the cargo hold, which will be adequate for an extravaganza—but until it’s ready, the ballroom will have to suffice. Even at that, we may have to condense our action to its size—or expand it to the playing space in the hold. I’m afraid we will have to be very flexible, since our playing spaces are apt to vary considerably. Now, you’ll come filing on from stage left, along the upper platforms, then down the stage-right steps, and you will see the city through a sort of archway under a natural bridge.”

  “Under?” Ogden frowned. “How are we to come walking in on platforms that have no supports under … Oh. The light rails will project the scene in front of the wall.”

  The
dear old chap had already spent ten years as a professional before light rails and holographic staging came in; he was still accustomed to thinking in terms of scenery as coming from video projectors and actual sculpted units.

  “Quite so. Now, Mr. Publican, if you will lead the party in? And the rest of you line up behind him in the usual straggling formation, or lack thereof … Good. Very well, enter, please.”

  Charles Publican led them in, capering in a flex-kneed step that managed to convey a comic alien who was absurdly pompous. Really, the chap’s ability amazed me; he must have toiled long in the groves of academe, for me not to have encountered him in the profession. Winston, Lacey, Susanne, Larry, and all the rest followed him, with myself between Marty and Ogden, who was bringing up the rear on his floater. We curved around down to the edge of the dance floor, Charles chattering,

  “Come, my city will delight you!

  Nothing there would ever fright you;

  Many chambers there will house you!

  Lilting music will arouse you!

  All will seem

  A splendid dream!”

  “And nothing will be what it seems,” Otto Hand muttered.

  “There she stands!” Brinker stopped, bent-kneed, leaning back against the direction he was pointing—upstage right. “Towers of light, that dazzle sight! Spires of hue, inspiring you!”

  I half expected to see the city glow into existence right there.

  “Splendid!” Mamie exclaimed.

  “Fantastic!” Marty echoed.

  “Beautiful!” Lacey breathed.

  “Majestic!” Ogden rumbled.

  “It is our humble abode,” Brinker said modestly.

  “ ‘Our’?” Winston peered at it, frowning. “I see no other beings moving among those towers . . He turned to Barry. “What does this man have for eyes—binoculars? If the city’s far enough distant to be seen as a whole, how could he possibly make out individuals?”

  “A salient point.” Barry punched a note on his noteboard. “Presumably it’s the lack of traffic he’s noticing, or the movements of large masses of aliens. I’ll send a list of these discrepancies to Cant and Arbuthnot.”