by Fritz Leiber
V
Even little things are turning out to be great things and becoming intensely interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers? --The Maiden
Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from apink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tinydoll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yellow thread.Really they weren't covering up much of anything. A ghostly hole aninch and a half across seemed to char itself in the program. As if myeye were right up against it, I saw in vivid memory what I'd seen thetwo times I'd dared a peek through the hole in the curtain: a bevy ofladies in masks and Nell Gwyn dresses and men in King Charlesknee-breeches and long curled hair, and the second time a bunch ofpeople and creatures just wild: all sorts and colors of clothes,humans with hoofs for feet and antennae springing from theirforeheads, furry and feathery things that had more arms than two andin one case that many heads--as if they were dressed up in our_Tempest_, _Peer Gynt_ and _Insect People_ costumes and some morebesides.
Naturally I'd had mind-wavery fits both times. Afterwards Sid hadwagged a finger at me and explained that on those two nights we'd beengiving performances for people who'd arranged a costume theater-partyand been going to attend a masquerade ball, and 'zounds, when would Ilearn to guard my half-patched pate?
_I don't know, I guess never_, I answered now, quick looking at aGiants pennant, a Korvette ad, a map of Central Park, my Willie Maysbaseball and a Radio City tour ticket. That was eight items I'd lookedat this trip without feeling any inward improvement. They weren'treassuring me at all.
The blue fly came slowly buzzing down over my screen and I asked it,"What are you looking for? A spider?" when what should I hear comingback through the dressing room straight toward my sleeping closet butMiss Nefer's footsteps. No one else walks that way.
_She's going to do something to you, Greta_, I thought. _She's themaniac in the company. She's the one who terrorized you with theboning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you atthe dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and theothers are covering up for. She's going to smile the devil-smile andweave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And BirnamWood'll come to Dunsinane and you'll be burnt at the stake by men inarmor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or tornapart by wild centaurs or whirled through the roof to the moon withoutbeing dressed for it or sent burrowing into the past to stifle in Iowa1948 or Egypt 4,008 B.C. The screen won't keep her out._
* * * * *
Then a head of hair pushed over the screen. But it wasblack-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martinwas giving me one of his rare smiles.
I said, "Marty, do something for me. Don't ever use Miss Nefer'sfootsteps again. Her voice, okay, if you have to. But not thefootsteps. Don't ask me why, just don't."
Martin came around and sat on the foot of my cot. My legs were alreadydoubled up. He straightened out his blue-and-gold skirt and rested ahand on my black sneakers.
"Feeling a little wonky, Greta?" he asked. "Don't worry about me.Banquo's dead and so's his ghost. We've finished the Banquet Scene.I've got lots of time."
I just looked at him, queerly I guess. Then without lifting my head Iasked him, "Martin, tell me the truth. Does the dressing room movearound?"
I was talking so low that he hitched a little closer, not touching meanywhere else though.
"The Earth's whipping around the sun at 20 miles a second," hereplied, "and the dressing room goes with it."
I shook my head, my cheek scrubbing the pillow, "I mean ... shifting,"I said. "By itself."
"How?" he asked.
"Well," I told him, "I've had this idea--it's just a sort of fancy,remember--that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, youcould hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing room andsort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actorscan fit in anywhere. They're used to learning new parts and wearingstrange costumes. Heck, they're even used to traveling a lot. And ifan actor's a bit strange nobody thinks anything of it--he's almostexpected to be foreign, it's an asset to him."
"And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere andnobody ask questions, except the zoning authorities and such and theycan always be squared. Theaters come and go. It happens all the time.They're transitory. Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meetingplaces, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go.And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you mightwant to do something to. Caesar was stabbed in a theater. Lincoln wasshot in one. And...."
My voice trailed off. "A cute idea," he commented.
I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middlefinger as a baby might.
"Yeah," I said, "But Martin, is it true?"
He asked me gravely, "What do you think?"
I didn't say anything.
"How would you like to work in a company like that?" he askedspeculatively.
"I don't really know," I said.
* * * * *
He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk. "Well, all fantasyaside, how'd you like to work in this company?" He asked, lightlyslapping my ankle. "On the stage, I mean. Sid thinks you're ready forsome of the smaller parts. In fact, he asked me to put it to you. Hethinks you never take him seriously."
"Pardon me while I gasp and glow," I said. Then, "Oh Marty, I can'treally imagine myself doing the tiniest part."
"Me neither, eight months ago," he said. "Now, look. Lady Macbeth."
"But Marty," I said, reaching for his finger again, "you haven'tanswered my question. About whether it's true."
"Oh that!" he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side."Ask me something else."
"Okay," I said, "why am I bugged on the number eight? Because I'mpermanently behind a private 8-ball?"
"Eight's a number with many properties," he said, suddenly as intentlyserious as he usually is. "The corners of a cube."
"You mean I'm a square?" I said. "Or just a brick? You know, 'She's abrick.'"
"But eight's most curious property," he continued with a frown, "isthat lying on its side it signifies infinity. So eight erect isreally--" and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a greatglow of inspiration and devotion--"Infinity Arisen!"
Well, I don't know. You meet quite a few people in the theater whoare bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd neverhave guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the skeptical,cynical type.
"I had another idea about eight," I said hesitatingly. "Spiders. That8-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer's forehead--" I suppressed a shudder.
"You don't like her, do you?" he stated.
"I'm afraid of her," I said.
"You shouldn't be. She's a very great woman and tonight she's playingan infinitely more difficult part than I am. No, Greta," he went on asI started to protest, "believe me, you don't understand anything aboutit at this moment. Just as you don't understand about spiders, fearingthem. They're the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too.They're the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva andKali united in love. They're the double mandala, the beginning and theend, infinity mustered and on the march--"
"They're also on my New York screen!" I squeaked, shrinking backacross the cot a little and pointing at a tiny glintingsilver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball.
Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very closeto his face. "Eight eyes too," he told me. Then, "Poor little god," hesaid and put it back.
"Marty? Marty?" Sid's desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of thedressing room.
Martin stood up. "Yes, Sid?"
Sid's voice stayed a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious."You villainous elf-skin! Know you not the Cauldron Scene's beenplaying a hundred heartbeats? 'Tis 'most my entrance and we st
illmustering only two witches out of three! Oh, you nott-patedstarveling!"
Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slippedaround the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I'dheard a lusty thwack as he went out the door. I couldn't helpgrinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over hisfirst time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping hismind that he was still doubling Second Witch.