by M. D. Cooper
It was too late to go to the pub now, so I decided to head straight to my digs, a tidy B&B run by a fantastic old lady with the most spectacular white-streaked beehive hairdo I’d ever seen. I’d see most of the rest of the cast on the train in the morning in any case, and at least I’d get some decent kip.
Within a few minutes, I was toiling uphill through Whitby’s labyrinthine alleyways and narrow streets. It was a tiring walk at the best of times, and I was even less in the mood than normal. As long as I got home the right side of midnight and had a few more glasses of water, I’d be fine for the first train.
As I stumbled through Arguments Yard, however, a huge shape shambled into view, blocking my way in the confined passage.
Hairs rose on the back of my neck at the sight of this intimidating figure, and I tried to remember how much cash was in my wallet. Luckily, my train ticket was still in my room at the B&B, but the cash I had on me was all my money in the world until the Macbeth producers ponied up my wages in a couple of weeks.
“You’re the actor, from the Pavilion tonight?” a deep voice rumbled from the shadowy shape, tinted by a very slight European accent.
“Ah. Yes,” I offered. I felt it was unlikely to be an autograph hunter, but this was a more promising opening line than most of the alternatives in this scenario. I was fairly confident I didn’t owe money to anyone in Whitby. Maybe it was just, God help me, a critic.
He stepped forward, into a dull puddle of light beneath a fitful lamp. I relaxed further. It was just a very fat man, dressed in black tie for some reason, with a ludicrously waxed moustache stretching across his florid cheeks.
“Shouldn’t you be in space about now?”
That threw me. I realised in the ten minutes or so that had passed since Puff’s flying saucer had taken back to the heavens, I’d been consciously consigning the whole episode to the recycling bin at the back of my memories. My guard went straight back up.
“I should be in the pub right now, but people keep bothering me tonight. What do you want?”
He smiled at me, and lamp light glinted from a single gold tooth. “Perhaps I want to buy you a drink? And have a chat?”
“Contrary to rumour, I really don’t swing that way.”
The fat man continued to smile, but I was a long way past finding that reassuring in any way whatsoever. “We know you met the old man. We know what he probably told you he was, and believe me, we know exactly who he is, so just tell us what he said, and let us take care of worrying which bits were reliable or even sane. We just want to know what he said, or rather where he’s going. He’s far away already, what difference could it possibly make to you?”
Which was a fair point. But in my usual fashion, I’d seized on a particular fragment of that speech which I felt needed clarifying.
“You’re saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ a lot. Who do you represent?” And can you give me a job, I just managed not to add to the end of that question.
The man laughed, in the key of E minor, disconcertingly, cementing his resemblance to the singer from the Go Compare advertisements. “Well, who indeed? In philosophical terms. But in the rather more prosaic sense, you could probably say that I represent the exceedingly toned chorus line creeping up behind you in this drizzle-drenched alley.”
I turned, only to receive a roundhouse kick to the face from a lithe woman in a sequin-festooned leotard. As I staggered back, I saw that she was flanked by a blond young man in a suspiciously baggy white sailor’s uniform, and an older woman in a basque who caught my eye and cracked her feather boa like a whip.
My head ringing from the impact, I put my hand to my suddenly numb lip, and was quietly unsurprised to see my fingers covered in blood when I inspected them.
“We’re quite insistent, by the way,” called Go Compare.
“Fabulouthly tho,” lisped the sailor.
“What did the old man want?” the courtesan snapped her boa again, but I was staring at her mouth. She’d blacked out some of her teeth, like proper Les Mis shit!
“No, really. Who are you guys?”
Behind him, Go Compare sighed. And sighed. The sigh just kept going until with horror I realised the bastard was actually drawing breath... for a musical number.
“We are the very model of a modern operatical
Company who put on shows considered practical
To entertain the rank and file with ditties quite satirical
With a style and verve reputed as inimitable.”
“Reputed as inimitable,” chorused Sailor, Courtesan, and Sequins, before breaking into a four bar jig. I scanned the street in desperation. This part of Whitby was a rabbit warren. There had to be a junction or something I could duck down. But no, I was trapped with just four singing muggers in a horrific Gilbert and Sullivan remix of the Village People.
Another deep breath from the fat man.
“In this spiral arm we give hands down the greatest musicals,
Alas others favour entertainments not so whimsical.
We’re at quite dreary loggerheads with companies dramatical
We wish they’d all just bugger off upon sabbatical.”
“Bugger off on upon sabbatical,” the trio chorused dutifully, and I waited for their jig so I could hoof the sailor in the nuts and make a break for it.
Instead Courtesan grabbed my throat and slammed me against the wall of the nearest house, her fingers locked in a vice-like grip that set my eyes watering.
“Puff’s our oldest rival,” hissed Sailor. “He’s poached dozens of our bookings, he’s got some hold or contact with the Arts Council that gets his tedious Ayckbourn shit in front of the troops while we cool our heels doing voice workshops with drill sergeants. What. Did. He. Tell. You?”
I took a whooping gulp of air as the woman’s grip on my throat eased a fraction to enable me to speak. I protested. “He didn’t tell me anything, Popeye! He tried to offer me an acting gig. In space, or some bollocks.”
“Yes, we know that,” said Sequins. “But where? Which planet is that dull dramatist aiming to stultify with some fucking Eugene O’Neill nine hour slog?”
“I don’t know, he was mental and I pretty much stopped listening. In a warzone, right?”
Sequins rolled her eyes. “Great, he’s a moron. Let’s waste him and deal with the degenerates the old-fashioned way. They can’t have made warp yet, we blast them in the deep past, ten thousand years away from the Arts Council and any reinforcements.”
She somehow pulled a set of nunchaku from her leotard, and began twirling them. I looked desperately to the fat man, who was watching me carefully, his head cocked to one side, stroking his moustache. Then he shrugged his expansive shoulders.
“I was hoping to steal a march and set up stage before they arrived. I’ve heard rumours, and I’d prefer not to engage the STI head-on, but it seems events are conspiring against us. You’re probably right. Kill the whelp cleanly, though, we’re under oath that any overt actions must be in keeping with the epoch.”
The conversation seemed to be done, so I grabbed the nunchaku’s chain mid-twirl, and dragged Sequins off her feet. As she sprawled on the alley’s cold flagstones, I drove the carved wooden handle hard into Sailor’s groin.
He doubled over with a gratifying whimper of agony and I turned to face Courtesan’s boa, which was now crackling with ribbons of vivid pink energy.
She lashed out once and the nunchaku flashed into flame in my hands. I dropped the useless weapon immediately, but before I could move, Go Compare’s heavy hand was on my shoulder, and spinning me round, and he was holding the largest knife I’d ever seen.
As Sailor and Sequins cursed on the floor around me, Go Compare raised his blade high over his head and brought it flashing down towards my unprotected chest!
Chapter 2: Tech Rehearsal
I raised my arm to cover my face in an instinctive and futile gesture to try and ward off the killing stroke, only to be dazzled by a sudden blaze of light and, inexplicably,
a round of applause.
After a few seconds had passed and I still hadn’t been skewered horribly, I finally lowered my arm. I found myself standing on a raised platform in a white-walled room about the size of a decent pub. Before me stood Puff, crystal-topped cane tucked under his arm, his silver hair tied back in a tight ponytail, and flanked by several amused… people. They all looked human, more or less, but whether it was the six inch fingers of the woman dressed in a motion capture catsuit covered in light bulbs, or the gentle greenish skin of the immensely muscular man standing behind her in a pantomime dame frock, or the cybernetic arm on the slender pale man opposite them wearing a really bad Sir Laurence Olivier Hamlet wig and doublet, they all had a hint of otherness.
“Oh, very good,” bellowed Puff, with one emphatically final clap of his meaty hands before he retrieved his cane from under his arm, “then, fall, Caesar! Yes, capital! Ladies and gentlemen, meet James Fanning. James, we’ve already met of course. The lady is Grizabella, while the big lad dressed as a lady is known as Kraal. He thinks that’s funny, but we’ve still not worked out why. And the one-armed gentleman is Gielgud.”
The others smiled encouragingly, but I had other things on my mind. “What the fuck just happened?”
Grizabella rolled her eyes. “The fuck you think happened? Matter transporter, obviously.”
Icy fingers of dread clutched at my stomach. “I’m on a spaceship?”
“Even better,” said Gielgud. “Look behind you.”
With a confused shrug, and half-turned. My ensuing double-take elicited a fresh round of applause. But the fourth wall of the room I’d been teleported into… was a window on the cosmos.
I stared in awe at the purple planet whose curved horizon filled a good quarter of my view. Then I raised my gaze and began gawping at the majesty of tens of thousands of pinpoints of light, stretching away into infinity.
“I’m in space?” I breathed, hoarsely. Then I turned with a frown, hearing a distinct snigger somewhere behind me.
Grizabella coughed. “Well, erm, yes, you are. But Gielgud meant more specifically. You’re on stage. We transported you to our rehearsal space, and you’re kind of staring at the backcloth. It was getting weird.”
I turned back as the sniggers grew louder, my cheeks prickling with vague embarrassment. I contemplated the vista a little while longer. “Now that you mention it… I do now notice that someone appears to have painted a cock and balls on this planet’s ice caps.”
“Yur,” rumbled Kraal, “it’s the North Pole. Hur, hur.”
“I mean, we can show you actual space in a bit,” said Gielgud, “we’ve got the odd porthole dotted around for aesthetic reasons, and of course a bloody great holographic display up on the bridge.”
Puff stepped up on the stage, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Best stick with this though, lad. Actual space is duller than voiceover work. Imagine a screen full of tiny white pricks that never move. Ever.”
I smiled, I couldn’t help myself. “Where I come from, we call that Eddie Redmayne. So, I’ve been press ganged into your troupe after all, have I? You couldn’t just call my agent, like a normal psychotic director, you actually abducted me from Earth and - fuck, are you going to bum me?”
Everyone in the room raised their eyebrows at that, which was something of a relief, to be honest. “That came well out of left-field,” said Kraal eventually, “do you want us to?”
Puff waved the ensuing sniggering into silence, and then looked at me seriously. “Would that it were all that simple, bummery aside. But the transporter plays merry hell with one’s vocal cords. You won’t be up to any serious or sustained acting for weeks.”
That’s a kick in the nuts for any performer, though now he mentioned it, my throat did feel weirdly dry and scratchy. “So why did you abduct me?”
The old man frowned. “Apart from saving your singularly ungrateful life from the ILO?”
I didn’t even have a chance to ask who the ILO were before he raised a hand. “Interplanetary Light Opera. We’re their sworn enemies, though we’ve honestly no idea why. The whole business would be faintly amusing if they didn’t occasionally choose to viciously attack people we’ve spoken to.”
I thought about Dram Soc and Music Soc at my old Student Union, and it did make a certain measure of sense. “Yes, thanks for that, but even so...”
“Just because you can’t act for the time being, that doesn’t mean you can’t be of service to our company.”
Kraal saluted. “I’m ready and willing to be a slightly shit Romeo in your absence, Fanning.”
I frowned deeper than the old man. I really needed a gin and tonic and a lie down, but this stuff seemed important. “So what do you need me to do? You’ve not pulled me across space just to shift a bit of scenery?”
With a melodramatic sigh, Puff pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. “Wow. Uptake not rapid. James, I lead entertainers from warzone to warzone across the galaxy, in a company subsidised by the Galactic Arts Council. Now, I’m a great producer, but what does that suggest to you is really going on here?”
It was so obvious, really, when someone spelled it out like that, but the condescending bugger looked like the kind of person who wouldn’t ease off until I just said it. “So you’re spies.”
They all beamed at that. Grizabella was the first to pipe up. “Oh yes. Best touring company in the quadrant, it goes without saying, but the best spies in four galaxies.”
“And by trying to do a runner from your contract, you’ve volunteered yourself for our next little caper.” Puff was all seriousness now, the hammy boom of his voice dialled right down. “Happily it’s pretty simple stuff. Under cover of entertaining the Jargroth Revolutionary Army with a superlative production of Romeo and Juliet, you’re going to break into their command post and secure any and all intelligence which could give the imperial forces the edge they need to put down the insurrection.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of this, on so many levels. For one thing, I’ve spent enough resting periods working behind bars that I’m instinctively a bit of a lefty. All this talk of ‘imperials’ sounded a bit Star Wars and fascist. “So the rebels don’t have a genuine cause?” I heard myself saying.
Kraal blew air from his cheeks in a low whistle, but Puff took the question in good spirits. “Really not our call to make, dear boy. The rebels may well have a point, but they sure as blighted badger buggery don’t have a budget. The imperial army are bankrolling this operation, and we have a wider obligation to the GAC to help settle this local nonsense. The outer worlds need to be unified, and looking… outwards. Forces are stirring. Forces that would sweep all of humanity into a black hole without a second thought. Worlds like Jargroth will be the first line of defence and they must be united, and prepared to fight these forces. Forces that will not…”
“... not be distracted by a spontaneous production of Run For Your Wife, I get it,” I replied. “So instead of playing Romeo, you basically want me to do some spying. Me. The closest I’ve ever been to a spy was raising an eyebrow as an extra in a restaurant, after Daniel Craig ran through shooting people in the face. I needed three takes to get even that right. I’m going to be shot!”
Puff twirled his cane between his fingers for a moment, the crystal reflecting coloured lights across the ceiling, while the rest of the troupe had the decency to look at least a little concerned. Then the utter bastard had the cheek to actually smile.
“No, you’ll be fine. This job’s a proverbial piece of piss, dear boy. We’re bribing a good proportion of our audience to come to the show, so key positions will be left unguarded. But I feel you’d be more reassured about the whole business if we put a pin in the field operation, and instead discussed the acting. I can’t have someone make planetfall who’s not making a clear contribution to the production. It looks suspicious, as far as these military types are concerned. Subsidised theatre, you know. All has to be accountable, to the nth paperclip. And they know it. So you’ll
be giving the Prologue, which I’ve doubled up with Friar Lawrence. So you’ll have from the end of Act 3, Scene 3 until the beginning of Act 4, plus the interval, so you’ll have more than enough time to nip out, do the other part of the job, and be back safely in time to give Juliet her sleeping drugs in Act 4.”
“But Friar Lawrence is a wanker! An old wanker!” I protested.
Puff snorted. “That’s all in the playing of it, young man! Is Lawrence a noble broker of peace? The Montagues’ pimp? A voyeuristic sexual predator covering his tracks? A simple churchman trying to avoid incurring the wrath of those murderous nobles? I’ve seen ‘em all, and played most of ‘em myself. Pick an interpretation you like, and own it, dear boy.”
“This still seems like…” I tried to object gamely, but the old man waved me into silence.
“And once you’ve swiped the data we need to swipe, and we’ve finished the show, had a few beers, and then warped the hell out of the Jargroth system, we head straight to a great little studio space I know on an orbital weapons platform near the Murgaltoyd Nebula, and you can play Romeo for four nights straight.”
I knew it was ridiculous. I knew it shouldn’t make any difference, that I was being cajoled into writing my own suicide note, that Puff’s offer should in no way have made me feel better about any aspect of my situation. But the truth is, I was a 30 year old jobbing actor who worked in a call centre, so it did impress me. A bit.
“Will it be… papered?” I asked, pathetically.
He smiled, seeing he’d already won. “The quadrant’s most reviled critics will be there, and offered suitable blandishments and incentives on your behalf, such that you’ll never need to zip yourself up again this side of Galactic Centre.”
I allowed my shoulders to slump in defeat. “Damn you, but you have yourself a deal.”
The others cheered a bit, but Puff just stared through me.
“I know. Now, Grizabella will handle your training. Try not to break him, dear.” And with that, the old ham turned with a swish of his absurd cloak, and swept from the theatre, the rest of his company falling in behind him like particularly slovenly stormtroopers.