David wanted to thank them for providing some much needed artistic input. He especially liked the plays of Tyuvoldt and remembered some of the off-Broadway productions he’d attended as a young man in Alphabet City. Corrag held Hera’s hand and waited. He circled around to them last. His eyes had gold flecks in green irises, and the pupils almost swallowed her.
“And this is the child I have been looking forward so much to meet,” said David.
“This is Hera,” said Corrag.
“And you are the mother,” he said.
“Yes. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Corrag, I know your father is looking forward to seeing you.”
“My father?"
"Yes. Richard Lyons. As a matter of fact, he will be at tonight’s performance.”
Corrag didn’t have any response. David continued:
“And when and if you choose, if Hera is interested, we have a program for girls like her. She can join it if you want. But only if and when you and Hera are ready.”
Corrag had never been asked for consent in the Repho anytime there had been a question of testing.
“We have learned that the most successful programs for the gifted involve the parents. You must participate,” said David. And then he was gone along with his retinue of minders and hangers-on.
Corrag walked Hera back to their room in the Hostel de Gandhi. Hera was thoughtful, walking silently by her side. She was thinking about David.
“What do you think, Hera?”
“He seems nice.”
“Yes, I liked him,” agreed Corrag.
“He took time for everyone in the room.”
“And I liked the way he didn’t ignore anyone. He knew something about everybody. And if he didn’t, he asked questions. He wasn’t afraid to admit he didn’t know something.”
“I liked him,” said Hera.
They rested in their rooms and rehearsed the lines via transponder that afternoon. Hera played with the cat. It was a large calico she’d found in the alleyway. The alleyway was an abandoned hall that looked like it had been intended as a shortcut between floors, but it had been walled off so that you could only access it from windows in some of their rooms. There must have been vents that the feral cat had climbed in and out from. Hera had tried to find the vents by following the cat. There was an empty room with an open door. The cat had climbed through the room’s window and disappeared. At that point, Corrag had called her back.
That afternoon Hera was playing again with the cat in the foyer of their apartment. There was a large framed print of Boticelli’s Venus de Milo on the wall by the door. It appeared to be watching no matter where you were in the apartment. Corrag watched Hera play with the cat from the bedroom. The cat pretended Hera was not there but kept circling back to watch her face intently. Behind them, Ben mouthed lines on his back in bed and listened through the earbuds. It was the scene where Harper played his father. That was the scene they were working on. Corrag only had a few lines at the beginning and end of the scene.
“Are you nervous, Mom?” Hera looked up from where she sat on the floor, her legs splayed out to one side.
“A little,” said Corrag.
“Will you get more nervous later?”
“Yes, probably.”
“What is that like?”
“Nervous? Just stage fright. You learn to manage it. Have you never been nervous?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t feel, like, out of control or anything. Sometimes I wish I did. Only once, that time back in Altos by the river, when I saw something in the water. Remember?”
Corrag did remember. Hera’s vision of her death. She didn’t want to discuss it. But she was curious about her daughter’s lack of ordinary human fear.
“How about when the snake bit you?” she asked.
“No, not really,” said Hera.
Hera had that in common with the augmented, although she had never given up autonomy. There was just her force of mind that prevented ordinary fear or the rush of adrenaline that people identified as fear. That was why she blundered into situations from which she might have ordinarily kept clear. She lacked fear. Instead she had an unusually high sensitivity to patterns of stimulus that most humans could not sense. It cut both ways in a world like theirs. In another world, or perhaps another dimension, it would have been a distinct advantage. Sometimes Corrag worried about her, but then at other times Hera’s mode of thought was infectious, as if it was leading to some existence they could not imagine.
That night the auditorium had filled to capacity. Corrag scanned the audience, but she couldn’t make out her father. Then it was the beginning of the last scene, and she came off stage. It was Ben now giving his dream soliloquy:
Eustace: I’m alone now. Is this a dream or is it real, you ask? It’s my favorite place. My home. The night. It never grows old. The night sky, fresh as eternity and me alone in contemplation with the stillness. The foreverness of it. The stars that looked down on Nebuchadnezzar and King Richard and Joan of Arc and Ramanujan and look down on everything that has unfolded and will unfold with the same countenance of distance. That distance that erases hopes and dreams as child’s play. But what are hopes, what are dreams? They must burn with the stars as everything burns. Hearts and minds and stars. There is no other realm, no other dimension.
Plato: (Enters stage right limping, with a cane. His long beard and scraggly clothes identify him as a survivor.) Friend. I hear your doubts. You could use a helping hand. Can you help an old man?
Eustace: I’ve been waiting for a survivor like you. We're going home to Fat City. Is that where you have come from by any chance?
Plato: I’m from there. Let me show you how close you are to your destination. Your dream has come true. Even though you are not a believer, in the night everything is possible.
(Plato twirls around in a circle, making a space with his cane. As he does, the stage lights go off and come on again, revealing the back room of the Fat City City Hall on a Tuesday. It is the ordinary night of constituent’s open house. Eustace Senior is at the mayor’s desk with a bottle of whiskey, some of which has been poured in a lowball glass neat, and a newspaper.)
Eustace: (To Plato in a whisper.) That’s my old man. I’d recognize him anywhere. But here. This is where he was alive.
Plato: And is, my young man. And is. (To the audience.) How much of learning is unlearning what we have been taught. The counterfeit authority of the age needs to be sorted by the experience of dreams.
Eustace Senior: (Putting down the newspaper and taking a gulp from the whiskey glass.) Can I help you? What’s the problem? Nothing we cain’t fix one way or other.
Eustace: Dad. It’s me.
Eustace Senior: Truer words never spoken. I always said you had brains. There were doubters. Look at this. In the papers. Saying lies about me and you. Our family’s been in Fat City for generations. How dare they call that there into question?
Eustace: Dad. You died. All this… stuff in the papers. Not important. Look at me.
Eustace Senior: Many times he died. Many times rose again. Man has created death, my son.
She had to admit it. Harper was good as Eustace Senior. Hera watched with Corrag from a spot off stage. The make-up on Ben and Harper gave their faces an obscure mystery, as if they were in fact brothers. The audience seemed to be following the main thrust of the plot, which was that Eustace and Elizabeth never found their way anywhere and died in a gully between Fat City and the sea. Maybe there was more to it. The playwright Tyuvoldt was someone she remembered from her youth. Not many of the teachers in school had liked him. Ben had been an early reader. The bleak vision with which he had assaulted Democravian audiences of the 2040s was an acquired taste. Corrag imagined Ricky and her mother watching the play during its original run in Edmundstown. As a tenured professor at the University of the Upper West, Ricky would have been expected to attend, and Alana had always relished the social accouterments of the role of professor’s wife
. Tyuvoldt had died an outcast in the desert. Was it a false memory or had Ricky once said his father Al had taken him in?
(Eustace and Plato are walking through some thin woods, the product of natural reforestation after the end of the last war and the collapse of the market system.)
Eustace: Maybe it was a mistake to think there could be a breakthrough with my old man. Maybe that’s the basic flaw in the software, Plato.
Plato: No. Experience will burn away what is transient. You and your father are just players. Just players scrambling in the twilight like all of the people. It is the citizen’s duty to make their way in the poor light of our dying sun. Sons become fathers who become sons.
Eustace: Well it was nice to go home again.
Plato: I will leave you now. If you need me again just call.
Eustace: No, I don’t think that will be necessary. I’m good. I’ve got what it takes: my zip gun, a few tent stakes. We can get over the river up ahead. It’s on the map here. (He takes out his map from the back pocket and begins unfolding it. Plato walks ahead and disappears in the mist.)
The map was Corrag’s cue She took a deep breath and pinched Hera’s shoulder
“Good luck,” whispered Hera.
“The final scene,” said Corrag.
(Elizabeth enters from off stage to find Eustace alone with the map stretched out on a rock, He seems to have forgotten which way is up on the map.)
Elizabeth: Where are we, mister?
Eustace: Do I look like I know?
Elizabeth: You do, actually. Compared to everyone else around here.
Eustace: There will be more people soon. And then there will be a sign. We’ll recognize it.
Elizabeth: When we get to the sea.
Eustace: Right.
Elizabeth: Survivors like us. A sign.
Eustace: Yes, bound to be a sign.
Elizabeth: Until then we just keep walking.
Eustace: That’s what I said.
Elizabeth: But I’m tired. It’s inhumane to just keep walking without a good reason.
Eustace: (Stands straight and folds up the map.) It’s the most humane thing there is. Walk a mile in your own shoes. Feel what that is.
Elizabeth: I guess I’m with you.
Eustace: Yes. E pluribus unum. If you’re not with us you must be the sin in us.
Elizabeth: What did you just say? No foreign tongues, please. You can’t make me believe that. My companionship does not signal my ascent.
Eustace: (In an aside to nobody.) God tries all men.
Elizabeth: What?
(They have come to the edge of a gaping hole center stage. Elizabeth is the first to see it. They both tiptoe warily around it.)
Eustace: (Excitedly.) What’s this?
Elizabeth: A hole. Looks deep. Interesting.
Eustace: Look, it’s a trap. (Aside.) I wish Plato was here. He’d know what to do.
Elizabeth: It’s interesting. Intriguing. I’m tired of just walking. I can’t go on. I’m… going in the hole.
Eustace: But you don’t know. It might be bottomless.
Elizabeth: Come with me. Ditch your map. There are no more destinations. Let’s take the leap together.
Eustace: I don’t like deep. You ought to know that. I thought it was cool just to keep going until we reach the sea. Then you do whatever you want. I understand. You’re tired. Believe me. Of course. Everyone is tired. But this hole. Elizabeth. Please. Don’t do it.
(Elizabeth jumps and disappears down the hole.)
Eustace: (In deep shock) Elizabeth! Nooo!
(The house lights go dim as the echo of Eustace’s shout dies down. A strange music of static and staccato beeps emerges from the hole and slowly grows louder. The lights go slowly on. Eustace is a lot older.)
Eustace: I pledge allegiance to the (words are mumbled and unintelligible.) One nation under... Indefensibly... Consubstantial with the visible and invisible. Little pink houses from sea to shining sea. For you and me. The way to be in the land of the freaking free. The majority are without morality. I can’t fucking see. (He pauses, walks to the front edge of the stage and looks deeply at the audience in an expression of contrition and regret.) Father, forgive me. I voted for the free. Look at me. (He backs slowly up to the edge of the hole.) It’s no use. I don’t see. That music, that hellish noise. What if that’s all that’s left? I’ve got to go. I’ve got to follow. Forgive me, earth. (He jumps. Plato emerges stage right. The house goes dark again.)
Plato: Thus the Anthropocene gave way to the age of Antimatter. And that was the end of the matter as far as we can be concerned at all with the events of this night. The hole continues to give out its keening message, untranslatable, more than meaningless, less than significant, And once in an eternity we see it give rise to the forms of the original inhabitants, predating and postdating our ability to respond.
(A bagpipe plays a single long note. Players emerge from the hole and stand at the edge of the stage. The lights come slowly back on. With heads lowered they bow.)
The applause was long. Buzzing and conversing, audience members began to flow into the aisles and down the steps towards the stage. A crowd formed, and then Fisher and Harper stepped forward. Several people wanted to hug Corrag. She looked behind her for Hera. She was there, coming out from behind the curtain.
“That was great, Mom.”
What was wrong? Hera’s face betrayed concern. The audience seemed open-minded, a lighthearted crowd up for something new that didn’t feed into the known, that opened into new vistas and possibilities. That was all they could ever ask for. Hera must be wrong. Then she saw him. It was her father, but with his face drawn and quartered by age and sadness. He stepped carefully by the group blocking the aisle and came up, lifting his head and meeting Corrag’s eyes. The look he gave was long-standing, full of caring. There was concern weighed down and obscured by the responsibilities of the present moment. Fisher was being interviewed by a woman who seemed to be with some official news organization. She had him talking into an old-fashioned transponder while somebody filmed the entire proceeding. Corrag wondered if they had the performance taped as well. It would be nice if they could transmit it for the Yavapais in Altos.
“Corrag.”
“Dad.”
She fell into his arms. Despite his frail condition he managed to hold her up the way he always had, even at his most vulnerable, after the Augment removal. He had always tried to put up the physical front of protection for his child. She felt the pull of his heartbeat, and even the smell of his leathery old coat was deeply familiar. It brought back flooding memories of her childhood in Edmundstown. All other thoughts were cancelled out.
Ben and Hera took turns hugging the old man. Hera could have hardly remembered him, but she somehow did.
“Come with me,” was all Ricky said. He slipped through the crowd with the three of them in his wake. Nobody seemed to mind, caught up in the usual socializing that took place after a show. There were well-dressed people from the audience of artistic elites trickling out of the auditorium and towards the public escalators that wound up and down in the core of the tower.
Ricky turned to Corrag.
“Have you been outside?” he asked.
“No, not since we arrived,” she said.
“Not surprising.”
“Dad what are you doing here?” asked Corrag.
“Looking for Al’s book,” he mumbled. “Look you guys. Let’s get outside. It’s too dangerous,” he said. Corrag noticed his eyes darting left and right in a wary scan of the dimly lit passage they were in.
“Okay,” said Corrag. “We’re going outside,” she told Ben and Hera.
“About time,” said Ben. “I need a drink. Any chance of a drink, Ricky?” he asked. But there was no answer. They rode the escalator down into the main entrance. It was late and people were mulling in all directions on the floor, making their way to the doors that led to the avenues and the nightlife of the city, the de facto capital o
f free men and women in the world.
Once outside, Corrag explained to Ricky as he walked ahead of her that it was the first time they’d left the building, not because they’d been prevented, but because there had never been a need. Everything was provided for them in the tower.
He nodded.
“Of course,” he said. “That’s what they would like you to believe.”
For an old man he still kept a brisk pace.
“Do you do a lot of walking, Dad?”
“Every day. I like to walk.”
“Where are we?” asked Hera.
“I don’t know,” said Ben.
“This is the Avenida de los Inocentes. The innocent are all of us who have been drawn to the city. Now you guys, too. Innocent in Spanish also has the meaning of naive or foolish,” said Ricky.
“But what’s so dangerous?” asked Corrag, with the exasperation of her teenage years. She felt again what it had been like as a child listening to the barely understood prattling of her father and mother, before her time as an emissary to the Repho.
The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3) Page 23