“Oh. Is that all?” Micah’s smile was grave. “I’m sure all this fits into the doming controversy somehow?”
“On the mark, as usual. Doming any part of the island will cut off access for the clans’ ritual circuit.”
“And the Eye is…?” asked Micah.
“From those clans.”
“But not on duty at the moment.”
“Apparently not.”
My creepy little chill was not going away, but I was beginning to like it. Suddenly, this minor fairy tale that had seemed as remote as an old morality play took on the weight of reality in Howie’s glowing, windowless office. Just what Micah had asked for: actors doing a play about politics they were actively involved with.
Howie stood, stretching legs. At his desk, he reached into a drawer. “When I thanked the old man, saying I thought I understood the play much better now, he gave me these. Said they’d help me with the Eye when they got here.”
He held a folded paper in one hand and a small dark sphere in the other. He waved the paper. “Kim, we’ll need copies. This was supposedly snatched from a heavily guarded planters’ meeting by the Conch. Now that someone’s actually circulating their secret minutes around town with the morning mail, the planters aren’t laughing so hard when the Conch’s name comes up.” He twisted the dark ball lightly in his fingers and tossed it to Micah. “Take this with you, too. For inspiration.”
I leaned in to look. A bit of wood, carved all around. Twelve facets carved with tiny birds and animals. My hand jerked reflexively to my throat. This was the exact match to the bead Cris had made me stop wearing.
Micah turned it round and round as if searching for operating instructions. Howie let out a cathartic breath and strode restlessly to the door. “Hey, what happened to that lunch?”
* * *
And as if enough had been said on the subject of Tuatua, the two of them spent the rest of our lunchtime discussing the latest standings in the men’s amateur soccer league. But Micah hurried home brimming with ideas, and I was left mystified.
“That was a useful meeting—I mean, beyond the research?”
Micah nodded, scribbling madly at his desk, the boredom of Marin behind him. The little wooden bead offered its multiple faces from the worktable. Micah had unearthed a dusty pad of rough paper he called newsprint. Its edges were cracking with age, but there he was, filling sheet after sheet with broad, dark strokes of charcoal, tossing each aside, on his worktable or on the floor. He often worked as one possessed by the beginnings of an idea, but this newsprint routine was unusual.
I’d missed something. Some essential aesthetic communion going on between Micah and Howie. My panic made me querulous. “But we didn’t even talk about design!”
“The best ideas,” the Master murmured, “always come indirectly.”
Indirectly? I’ll say. I decided right then that no magic that the Eye could come up with, real or imagined, could be more mysterious than the birth processes of Art.
HOWIE’S RESEARCH: FROM THE MINUTES OF THE APRIL MEETINGS OF THE TUATUAN PLANTERS’ ASSOCIATION
[Ms. Corso:]
The Chair recognizes Mr. Raul-Ortega.
[Mr. Raul-Ortega:]
Madame Chair, fellow members, apologies for speaking out of turn, but you know, we are just not facing facts here. This Conch business ain’t going to simply go away.
[Mr. Deeland:]
Now, Rafael—
[Mr. Raul-Ortega:]
No, I got to say this. Nobody believes us anymore when we say a guy who goes around spreading seditious paper broadsides like some French revolutionary and pulling off taped broadcasts on our own channels…
[Mr. Deeland:]
We’re working on that—
[Mr. Raul-Ortega:]
… we look like damn fools if we keep saying he doesn’t exist! Even the city police have a unit out looking for him.
[Mr. Deeland:]
Well, Rafael, what would you suggest? Perhaps you’d like to invite him to one of your Sunday lawn parties for a little chat?
[Mr. Raul-Ortega:]
There’s no call to talk like that, Imre.
[Ms. Corso:]
Gentlemen…
[Mr. Raul-Ortega:]
Yeah, yeah. Look, all I’m saying is, say whatever you want in public, but we got to do something real in private. Somebody’s responsible for all this stuff going on, probably some guy pretending to be a mythical hero. Don’t matter, it’s hurting us. It’s gone way beyond the Station Clans now. All my workers are in love with this guy, even the ones who never had a political thought in their lives. We got to find out what we can: who’s seen this Conch, what he looks like, you know, facts. You can’t do anything without facts!
[Ms. Corso:]
Perfectly reasonable, Mr. Raul-Ortega. Do I have volunteers for a fact-finding committee to research the true-life identity of the Conch? Goodness now, don’t all speak at once, Mr. Deeland.
AT THE BRIM:
I thought a lot about Art after that, as we settled into the early stages of designing The Gift. I pondered the relationship of Art and Politics. I hadn’t really thought there was one. I mean, wasn’t Art about history and romance and philosophy, the Big Topics? Everyday politics didn’t seem… well, elevated enough.
I thought a lot about the Eye as well. I wore my Tuatuan necklace despite Crispin’s satirical glances. I devoured his research and picked his brain mercilessly, even borrowed the few books on Tuatua still extant in the Town Square library. Me, a child of Chicago, reading actual books on paper. And it wasn’t just me: we were all Tuatua-crazy. Even Jane couldn’t resist.
There was more available about the Eye’s beginnings than about their recent history. The troupe had formed about the time of Tuamatutetuamatu’s rediscovery. They performed traditional dances and dramas based on local legends, and were very popular on the island until they lost their founding director to a plantation accident. After this setback, the data files dried up. Crispin pursued the Conch into obscure anthropological monographs that seemed to confirm a savior figure out of ancient clan legend, whose last appearances had been in the 1950s when the European colonists were dividing the island into plantations with total disregard for tribal claims and boundaries.
“Just came in with their guns and moved the people off the land,” Chris complained, as if this was something new in the history of the world.
Weekly, Howie would call to say the show was all off, he couldn’t get the work visas or the Eye had refused to submit to the long quarantine. An hour later, it was full speed ahead again. In the studio, there was a burst of productivity while Micah struggled with his muse. We delivered the Marin drawings to twenty bidders eager for the profit to be made on such a mammoth project. We sent Deo Gratias off to the Paris Opera shop and Cymbeline over to the New Avon in Eden Village. I even got Micah thinking about the next two projects on his calendar, when I could pry him loose from Howie and The Gift.
On our off-time, the Eye beat out the Survival Game as our favorite topic. “So what do you think they’ll be like?” we’d ask in the fraternal privacy of the Brim. Howie had called them primitive, but it turned out we each had our own idea of what that might mean. The conflicting and colorful mythos stirred something deep and different within each of us.
Songh admitted he was afraid of them, but he ate up stories of the real power of their tribal magic. Jane identified them with the martyred tribesman in the play and therefore with herself, arguing any political point in their favor with the iron-jawed insistence of the self-consciously disenfranchised. Cris went on a lot about the parallel freedoms of the “natural” man and the artist.
I don’t know what I did. I tried for objectivity, but it’s tricky recognizing your own delusions, and each newly uncovered fact or legend was like dry wind to the wild sparks of imagining that Howie had lit in all of us.
My image of the Eye and their culture was a confusing one. I’d find picturesque photos of cylindrical huts r
oofed in palm fronds, of toothless old men squatting in the dirt among dark, naked children, of ceremonial dancers submerged in feathers, raffia, and cowrie shells. But in the next shot: neat rows of students in the Mission classrooms or business-suited tribal elders at Planters’ Association barbecues. Or T-shirted women with their wrist calculators, selling beads and baskets in the tourist bazaars, looking nowhere as exotic as my mysterious jewelry peddler. Then always, there were the fantastical deeds of the Conch, weaving the brightest threads through the tapestry. The mix of ancient and modern, real and magical, was impossible to correlate. Where in all of this should I place the Eye?
We sat one afternoon under the Brim’s rain canopy. A random downpour had cleared the market square as quickly as a bomb scare. Giant drops fell like pebbles, bouncing off the cobbled pavement in sheets of spray. While Crispin lectured Songh about respecting the Eye’s taboos, I mused about magic and the Eye and Marin.
Visitors to the Marin Sea Dome would have a sophisticatedly complex relationship to magic. They would demand to be mystified and astonished, but their suspension of disbelief would be an almost conscious mechanism. They’d never really question the basic assumption that a clever technical explanation existed for each and every wonder.
Suddenly this seemed pitifully cynical. What about real wonder? What about willing submission to genuine awe?
The religious connotations of this embarrassed me, which kept my musings private, but imagine sitting in a theatre believing that what you see is real. Or if that’s too much to swallow, then imagine asking yourself just for a moment if it might be. To be given in the theatre the gift of that doubting, of the possibility of miracle! Once a possibility is admitted, the reality hardly matters. To be able to give such a gift…
Mark stopped by the table, balancing carry-out plates of Gitanne’s infamous sacher torte and Black Forest cake. He didn’t sit. “Bela’s ill,” he announced.
Jane hovered between solicitude and caution. “What’s he got?”
Mark smiled. “Vapors. I’m taking him treats.”
“Take him the latest from WorldNet/News,” offered Cris. “The Port City police on Tuatua have offered a nice fat reward for information leading to the capture of the Conch.”
“They’re admitting he’s real?” Mark set the plates down and squeezed onto the edge of my chair. “I’ll let him sleep awhile longer. What else have you heard?”
Later I mourned, “What will we ever have in common with the Eye? What will we talk about when they get here?”
Crispin replied, “What actors always talk about. Themselves.”
But I thought, we all thought, even Cris for all his outward cynicism thought: no, these actors will be different.
Anticipation flared in me. I tingled with the promise of their strangeness. I could not wait for them to come.
And then one Monday morning late in June, the mail board was flashing “URGENT” when we trouped into the still-empty studio.
Crispin cued up the message, then let out a victory yell.
“What?” I demanded.
“What?” echoed Micah, entering behind us, frowning in concern.
“They’re coming!” Cris did a mini war dance of exultation, pointing at the screen. “Howie says be at the Gate at five forty-five, ‘no later, no fail.’ It’s gotta be them!”
Micah allowed a small private smile. “Well, well. Good for Howard. He got them in after all.”
THE ARRIVAL:
The crowds at the Gate were naturally the worst just before six o’clock closing. At noon, the traffic flowed steadily inward toward the Tube and the villages, intent on restaurant guides and lengthy shopping lists, but by five-thirty folks were lingering in the broad, café-lined Gateway Plaza, nibbling at sweets from the vendors’ carts, gulping a last espresso or Campari, refusing to end their precious day in Harmony until Security descended en masse to politely but firmly throw them out.
Harmony’s Gates really look like old-fashioned gates, if you ignore the air-lock mechanisms. The towering arched facade was designed with frank reference to the Roman Coliseum. The bottom tier of arches is fitted with wrought-iron grilles, the work of a local metal sculptor. The grilles are for show, of course. They’re impressive, but they wouldn’t hold back a determined Outsider mob for long—the air locks do that, plus a secondary force field, invisible but impenetrable, activated outside the Gate when Harmony closes for the night. Even a prominent citizen couldn’t get in (or out) after six o’clock closing.
It was hot in the plaza that afternoon, with all those homebound tourists sucking up the air. The public address, dubbed the Voice of Harmony, was announcing the final departure of the airport-bound hover fleet. Howie, Kim, and the general manager Rachel Lamb had secured a table in the café nearest the west end of the Gate. Howie’s grin was an unsettling mix of exhilaration and worry. Rachel gave us her quick, cool smile, her attention fixed on the arrivals and departures board flashing above the second tier of arches.
“Should be in any minute now,” said Howie brightly. He had twisted the napkin under his espresso into damp shreds.
Micah pulled up a chair and glanced around for a waiter before surveying the tight-packed plaza. “Whose idea was it to bring them in at Closing Time? I’d want a better idea of what’s arriving if I’d arranged a triumphal entry.”
“Word of mouth is the best publicity,” returned Howie smugly.
Micah nodded. “The circus is coming to town.”
“And,” Rachel murmured, “Reede Chamberlaine is coming with it.”
Micah noticed us waiting faithfully beside his chair. “The view might be better from above…”
“Awrright!” Crispin dodged away through the throng, yanking me with him. Songh sprang after us, eager as a pup. Jane looked like she’d prefer the safety of the café to a press of tourists chattering like patrons at a gallery opening. The Voice was now urging visitors through the Gate, and I wasn’t sure Jane had followed until we reached the steep stone stairs that led to the observation deck along the second tier. But there she was, bumping cross-stream through the crowd, apologizing left and right and looking pained. Poor Jane, I thought. Life is so difficult for you.
The observation deck was empty.
“Mark’s going to be sorry he missed this,” I said. Bela was still mysteriously ill and Mark was still nursing him.
From the rail, we could see the bustle at the Gates below and stretching out along the wide boulevard to the paved landing field. The leaden sky was abuzz with aircraft. A thick haze hung over the Outsider slum that pushed against both sides of the boulevard. Every stick, every scrap of brush out there had been burned for fuel, every blade of grass trampled into the flat gray earth. The stream of departing tourists was a thick slash of color across a dull, dusty landscape.
On the outskirts of the camp, I spotted the retrofitted hulk of an ancient ground car, its boiler coughing steam alongside the cracked and weed-choked road that led off into the hills. Strong-arm Outsider gangs were said to rule those hills. I nudged Crispin to point out the ragged men in conversation beside the vehicle. One of them, tall and dark-skinned, moved with supple grace and was wearing a respirator. It was unusual for Outsiders to bother. When one did, it was supposedly an emblem of power. I glanced below. The Outside Security guards, their own noses safely buried in state-of-the-art breathers, had their heads together and their eyes on the steaming, shuddering car.
Cris pounded the marble rail and then my arm. “There! It’s gotta be that one!”
The hover fleet was boarding its final round of passengers. A bit apart from the rest, a single hover settled on the tarmac, rotors slowing, its fans kicking up whirlwinds of dust and debris.
A blue-clad, air-masked loading crew trotted forward to unfold the fore and aft gangways. Any morning, the opening doors would have disgorged an immediate, eager torrent of humanity. Now they opened into darkness, the shadowed empty interior of the cabin. The loaders hesitated at the foot of the ga
ngway, holding back the long, restless line waiting to board. A delay in boarding was sure to catch the interest of departing visitors, and just as every eye had fastened impatiently on the gangway, a tall, silver-haired man appeared in the forward door. Impeccably tailored in pearl gray, he stood straight and unsmiling. He gazed majestically over the muttering crowd, then nodded into the shadows behind him, and started down the gangway.
“Reede Chamberlaine,” I guessed.
Crispin’s nod was unsure. “I expected bald and fat.”
“And greasy.”
The crowd stilled. They knew an Entrance when they saw one.
The empty doorway filled suddenly with a swirl of black. One, two, five, ten veiled and hooded figures detached themselves from the inner dark and swept down the stairs onto the tarmac.
Without a glance behind him, the silver-haired man set off across the landing area toward the Gates. The faceless ten whirled after him like a flock of giant blackbirds swooping to the attack, wings of fabric and glittering feathers twisting, rising around them in the gusts from the hover fans.
“Weee-ooh!” breathed Crispin.
They could have been male, they could have been female. They were mystery incarnate. Nothing about them was definitive except their blackness and their constant, almost floating movement. I was conscious of my mouth hanging open. I shut it before Songh could notice that I looked exactly like he did.
Chamberlaine reached the head of the crowded boulevard and chose a path straight down the middle. The throng parted like the Red Sea before Moses.
“They think he’s royalty or something,” Crispin hissed. “After all that’s gone on, the damn fools are still in love with royalty.”
“No, it’s what’s following him.” But privately I admitted that if there had to be such a thing as royalty, Reede Scott Chamberlaine was what it should look like. But no chance, from what we were told, of him acting like royalty, except for the high-handed part.
“But they’re not following him,” Cris exclaimed.
The Eye had collectively strayed from the center of the boulevard, deserting the “safe” aisle Chamberlaine had so ostentatiously opened for them.
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