by John Barnes
He began to tell stories of his old times with Bruce and Charlie. He kept going back to something that did seem a little surprising—Bruce had been the real hell-raiser and toszet des donzelhas among the three friends.
"Well, it doesn't sound like the Bruce I know," I said, after about the fifth story of his escapades I'd heard, "but it was a long time ago."
"I suppose it's really on my mind because ... well, maybe I'm a complete idiot. It bothers me that Bieris is with him all the time."
I poured myself another glass and waited for Aimeric to look up and talk again; there was a hot little fire at the base of my spine as I felt drama coming back into my life.
"Well," he said finally. "I suppose you can see what runs through my mind." But instead of continuing on, and confiding, he shook his head, stood up, and shook off crumbs. With the exaggerated care of the truly drunk, he then straightened his clothing. "Must not practice mere utility in front of these natives," he said gravely. "Have to keep up appearances, most especially style."
That made me itch, so I had to do it too. As I finished, Aimeric said, "More than anything else about my leaving, I regret the fact that it may have contributed to Bruce ending up as a Reverend."
I stood there, not moving, not sitting down, unsure what I could say.
"We'd best get over to this Cabaret if we want to get any sort of seats," Aimeric said, and it seemed clear the subject was dropped. Yet as we ran through the snow and wind to our trakcar, he suddenly said, "You know, if Bruce got a free springer ticket to Nou Occitan, he'd probably deplore everything he saw for six months, then suddenly move up to the North Coast and join a Neohedonist commune. And two years after he got there, he and I would look the same age."
With Second Dark, a storm had come howling in off the sea. I waited till we were in the trakcar and the door had dogged closed before I raised my facemask and asked, "Why aren't there trakcar stops underground, under the buildings? Why do we all have to run through the wet and sleet to get to them?"
"Because the distance between the building and the trakcar is short enough not to be truly dangerous, and merely being unpleasant is something a good Caledon should ignore."
I had realized it was a foolish question as soon as I had asked it.
The trakcar pulled up in front of a big multiuse building. The Occasional Mobile Cabaret turned out to be in a "utility space," a big room that anyone could rent for a short period of time for any legal purpose. A young man whom I didn't know was collecting admission with a thumbprint reader. It took a moment to authorize me, probably first checking the whole Caledon and St. Michaelian populations before looking through the file of resident aliens.
"How's the crowd look tonight?" I asked.
"Hard to say. It's the first time we've done it," he said. "But we've broken even, already, so pretty clearly we're not seriously irrational." He said it with just the mixture of enthusiasm and carefully pushed sincerity that means the person talking to you thinks you're a cop. "Hope you enjoy the show."
I nodded, and at that moment my thumbprint cleared, so he let me in. Aimeric only took a moment. "The i.d. system must have been smart enough to look for you in the same place—or does it still know you as Ambrose Carruthers?" I asked, as we strolled into the room and looked around.
He grinned. "I offered the doorkeeper a small tip. Often works wonders."
I still had not caught on to the idea that for some services, but not others, you paid additional to the person doing the service. Probably he had assumed I was a cop because they were the only people rude enough, by Caledon standards, to not tip. I felt angry at Aimeric for not telling me and angrier at myself for not knowing.
It was the first room I had seen in Caledony where lights weren't either full on or completely off. There were a few dozen standard industrial chairs and a square portable stage; it looked much like a poverty-stricken community theatre back home.
There were a couple of dozen people milling around, forming brief excited conversations and then moving on, too restless to settle into conversational partnerships yet. Somebody shouted "Mister Leones!"
I turned around to see Thorwald and Paul approaching. "Glad to see you," Paul said. "I hoped you would get the invitation."
"Obviously I did," I said. "I assume this is the Occasional Mobile Cabaret."
"The one and very much the only," Thorwald said. "And possibly the only one ever to be. It's a limited partnership, and Paul and I have to show a big enough profit to prove that it was rational to go into this business."
"You're the owners?"
"Well, it seemed like if Caledony needs more excitement and art—and Paul and I agree that it does—then maybe someone can turn a profit providing it Of course, once we do turn a profit, then they have to decide whether it's a morally rational profit, but I guess we can fall off that bridge when we get to it."
Paul grinned. "If nothing else, it will give us the opportunity to have been illegal traders—not too many people have managed to do that in Caledon history."
I had just taken my seat next to Aimeric when Thorwald bounded up onto the stage; since it was Caledony it would never have occurred to anyone to start late, even though people were still filtering in, finding seats, and stopping to buy food and drink at the table in the back. "Hello everyone. Thank you for coming to the Occasional Mobile Cabaret. We have four performances for you tonight—that's down from scheduled six, I know, but the management takes no responsibility for last-minute cowardice—"
There was an uproar at the back of the room. Apparently one of the people who had backed out was there, and his friends were noisily calling attention to the fact. I glanced at Aimeric, and he was grinning. "Never thought I'd see a rowdy crowd in Caledony. Maybe there's hope for the old place yet," he said.
"The performance in the back of the room, on the other hand, is unscheduled and so comes to you at no extra charge," Thorwald said. "And it's worth what you paid for it."
That quieted them down, in a burst of good-natured grumbling.
"He has a way with a crowd," I said to Aimeric.
"Yap. He'd make a politician or an art critic in Occitan."
I nodded—it was true—and since Thorwald seemed to be taking his time about getting any of the acts up on the stage, headed back to the food table to get wine for both of us.
Valerie and Margaret turned out to be the hosts of the table. I grinned at them both. "So they've dragged you into this as well."
Margaret smiled. "I'm just getting paid to sell food and drink. The tip bowl is right there, by the way. Val's the real violent case here—she's actually going to perform later on."
I ordered the wine, and then gave Valerie my most winning smile—after all, if Paul wanted to learn Occitan ways, he might as well learn to watch out for them. "I'm really looking forward to your performance. Are you going to play?"
"Yes, and sing." Her eyes did not meet mine, and I detected a very pretty blush.
"I'm sure you'll be the best act of the night." I collected the glasses of wine from Margaret, threw a tip into the bowl, and grinned at Valerie again.
She was deeply flushed now, and looking down at the table; Margaret seemed baffled.
As I rejoined Aimeric, Thorwald was just explaining to the crowd that the other missing act was held up by having to come in through the Babylon Gap. Higher and colder than Sodom Gap, that pass was unsafe perhaps three days out of ten, even for a fully equipped cat.
"One more reason they're going to appreciate the springer when they get it," I said.
Aimeric shook his head. "If they cared about ease and practicality there would already be automated roads running through tunnels under the mountains. That used to be Dad's pet project."
From the stage, Thorwald's voice rose a little with excitement. "And that's all I'm going to say about what you won't see tonight. Lights please!" The house lights dimmed. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. "And now, for the first time on any stage—and with a little luck not
the last!—we proudly present Anna K. Terwilliger, for a reading of her poetry." He turned and left the stage, a little limply—obviously he'd never thought of the problem of making an exit before now.
A plump woman of about twenty-five stanyears, pale, weak-chinned, and acne-scarred, but with rather nice thick, frizzy auburn hair and big blue eyes, came out on the stage. In her hands she held a thick, old-fashioned book, the kind with paper pages that have to be turned, and she opened it with the sort of assumed importance that the priests always had on Festival Days back home.
"My first poem was written while I was in a trakcar," she said. "It doesn't really have anything to do with trakcars, though. It's just that that's where I wrote it." There was a sympathetic, amused rumble from the audience. "I guess what I was really thinking about when I wrote it was just that you get older, you know, and then you're eventually older than you ever had any plans to be, so you don't know what to do. It's called 'Getting Older: A Trakcar Poem.' "
She lifted the book and read:
"The ending is not yet, and yet the beginning has already been.
No one understands that until they do. Too late And well beyond the time for which you wait You find you cannot do the same again. So all grow old, and die, and fall, and rot And everything degrades or else it breaks And nothing ever is found by him who seeks Except the thing beyond which he seeks not. So abstract reason unaided by the soul Cannot push back the curtains dark of death Nor taste the air before the tasting breath And so we face forever to the hole, Which blackly draws our eyes, our face, within Denying all. So do we not begin."
She read all that solemnly, with that strange upward turn at the end of each line and the heavy intonation that pounds into the audience that by-god-this-is-poetry. They all sat there quietly as each dreadful, monotonous, awkward line thudded into them; I bit my tongue to prevent giggles, and felt Aimeric silently shaking beside me. Clearly Anna K. Terwilliger was going to achieve note as the first Caledon poet, not as its best... unless she was also its only.
She finished and looked up, blinking, with all the hopeful shyness of any first time on stage. I liked that about her, and hoped the audience would not be excessively cruel.
First two or three, then a dozen, and then all sixty or so people in the room burst out in wild applause, some rising to their feet. The air was rich with cheers and excitement.
She beamed at them all, her eyes wet.
I glanced at Aimeric. "I've been away a long time," he whispered in my ear. "I really don't know how I'd have reacted to it as a kid. It's awful in technique, sure. But these folks don't know that. Taste later—experience first, Giraut."
I sighed. "I guess so. Maybe I just envy their excitement."
The room was quieting now. Anna K. Terwilliger brushed back her flying hair and read another work, the point of which was that everything that dies has its constituents recycled. Broken out of verse it might have made a suitable introduction to a child's ecology textbook. It got more applause, if anything, than the first one did.
Then something about god and reason and numbers that I couldn't follow at all brought the house down; then some very simple descriptive poems, at least not completely incompetent, about her family and where they lived ... none of it would have gotten a passing mark in any class in Noupeitau. No three lines of any of it would have escaped a shower of nuts and beer at any Occitan reading club. I just hoped we were going to be more successful in exporting our culture than they were in exporting theirs.
At last Anna K. Terwilliger was off the stage, to thunderous applause, and Thorwald came back up. "And another first—I'm going to have to think up some other line if we ever do it again—here's Taney Peterborough."
He sat down, and again there was no applause. I was about to ask Aimeric if this was any relation to Clarity, but when he came on stage there was no question at all—it was obviously her brother or cousin.
From the costume and expression, I knew at once this was someone who was going to try the ancient art of statzsursum, and my heart sank—to do it well takes years of training, to do it badly just a few moments of near-thought, and since there was no place here to get the training (maybe I should offer a course at the Center? But there was no one to teach it) I knew pretty well what I was going to see.
Taney Peterborough had a fairly engaging stage personality, and the crowd warmed to him right away. This was not a positive thing, because it encouraged him. His jokes were unconnected, merely a random collection arranged loosely by topic, and old besides—especially the political ones, which must have dated back a thousand years or more, and been told in every authoritarian regime, especially those with puritanical streaks. There were the obligatory ones about Aimeric's father and the Reverend Saltini, and about the system in general.
"Things must be looser than I thought they were," I said to Aimeric.
"He's got a free pass," Aimeric whispered. "It's rational for him to want his sister to succeed politically, so he can prove it's rational for him to disparage the opposition. So they can't get him for irrationality or commit him to therapy—and that's how all political crimes are handled."
"Is it rational for everyone else to be listening, laughing, or applauding?" I asked.
"That's a good question, which I have no doubt Saltini is working on at this very moment."
That didn't leave much to say, so I sat there and watched through all the excruciating jokes, and was amazed that so many people were brave enough to laugh without thinking first.
Finally it was over, and the applauses was respectable if not quite so thunderous as Anna K. Terwilliger's. Thorwald popped back onto the stage, a certain tension on his face, and said only "There will be fifteen minutes' intermission—then we'll be back with two more acts."
Aimeric shrugged at me. "Don't make too much of it. It may be nothing, or even an opportunity for the Pastorate of Public Projects to signal some loosening up. Or they may just not care what goes on among these folks, anyway."
He knew Caledony, and I didn't. I still had a feeling he was just trying to reassure me.
On my way back to the food table—to get a little more wine and perhaps a little more Valerie—someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around to find myself face-to-face with Bruce and Bieris.
"Hello! How'd you get here?"
"Someone left a message for me at the Center, after painting class," Bieris explained. "I gave Bruce a call, and he had time to come in with the cat, so he joined me. We saw you come in but there wasn't time to get over and say hello before the show started."
I doubted that somehow, and certainly the place was informal enough anyway that there would not have been any problem with them moving around. And had it been my imagination, or had Bruce dropped Bieris's hand just as I turned to speak to them? I felt the delightful shiver, deep inside, that said that everything was about to get tragic and complicated any day now. Perhaps I would be lucky and Aimeric would ask me to be his Secundo ... but then, they didn't duel here, so did they have Secundos? And if they did, was he simply the go-between, or was there some role in settling the matter of honor?
The idea of being Secundo between friends—well, I had always envied Raimbaut the occasion. The first time I saw him die he was my Secundo against Marcabru, back when we were teenagers and I caught Marcabru in flagrante delicto with my entendedora.
Bieris had been talking of a couple of students she was teaching in her painting classes at the Center that she thought had promise. "And of course Anna is in my class. She has a real feel for Occitan."
"She does?" I spoke without thinking—fortunately it looked like no one had overheard.
Bruce chuckled. "You weren't much thrilled by the poetry either."
Bieris glared at him and I realized there was a difference of opinion about to erupt, but before I could make a move to get out of the way, Bruce had excused himself to go get wine for all of us—which also, unfortunately, put Valerie out of reach for the time being. I turned back to Bie
ris, who was smiling more nicely than necessary, always a bad sign.
"You can't mean you actually liked that performance," I said. "I could understand all the sympathy Aimeric was giving to it, because he grew up here and he was impressed that it was happening at all, but when you consider the actual con- ' tent and quality—"
Bieris's mouth curled up a little at the corner. "Giraut, I know perfectly well that if I argue now you'll put it down to my loyalty to my student. And no, it certainly wasn't the rhetoric, perception, technique, or performance that impressed me."
"Which is to say, it wasn't the poetry. What else is there?"
She bit her lower lip. "Two things, Giraut, and you're going to make fun of both of them. First of all, the event. These people care so much more about art than we do. They really put us to shame. And secondly, the woman herself. The fact that someone who looks like that is allowed to be a poet here impresses me a lot more than you can imagine."
"I can tell that you're serious, but I don't understand how you can argue that people who make no art care about it more than people who do nothing but make art. And as for the other—well, I must admit you're right. The writings of an ugly woman can never reach the level of poetry, any more than the writings of an ugly man can. What will her descendants think, if she ever makes a reading tape, and they see it?"
Bieris whirled away from me and went after Bruce. I stood there for a moment, realizing that the Caledons had really gotten to her. She no longer made any more sense than they did.
Before I could go after her, a voice spoke in my ear. "Quite an occasion. Is this your influence?"
I turned and found I was facing Ambassador Shan.
"I'd like to claim credit—a lot of these people are my students—but it's their ideas and their courage." Perhaps Bieris had managed to make me a little ashamed of what I thought of their crudity. Besides, now that I thought of it, there was something a little brave, and gallant, and foolish about the Occasional Mobile Cabaret, and I would not have been Occitan if that had not won my heart, at least a little.