by Fritz Leiber
VII
I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits, and 'tis found They go on such strange geometrical hinges, You may open them both ways. --The Duchess
There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but hecan't _look_ at them, unless he's a narrator or some sort of comic. Iwasn't the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of becomingthe second as Siddy walked me out of the wings onto the stage, overthe groundcloth that felt so much like ground, with a sort ofinterweaving policeman-grip on my left arm.
Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, hishead so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn't see his face at all.
My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart waspounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung,yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants.
I heard as if from two million miles, "When was it she last walked?"and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply--I guess it had tobe my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: "Since hismajesty went into the field--" and so on, until Martin had come onstage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his longblack wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his righthand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack'ssleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan andBanquo and Lady Macduff.
So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene thatfloats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against abackground of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think,or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid's hand hard on mywrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearan language out of somelightless storehouse of memory I'd never known was there to belong tome.
* * * * *
There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-nakedblack branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, earlyevening.
The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side andgoing off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them,almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled.
Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumpedtwo dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves.They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks.Somehow I assumed that these men must be the "rude fellows from theCity" I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. AlthoughI couldn't see them very well, and didn't spend much time on them,there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed wayback, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the consciousimpression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar.
In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozenhorses, with grooms holding tight every two of them, but throwingtheir heads back now and then as they strained against the reins, andstamping their front hooves restlessly. Oh, they frightened me, Itell you, that line of two-foot-long glossy-haired faces, writhingback their upper lips from teeth wide as piano keys, every horse ofthem looking as wild-eyed and evil as Fuseli's steed sticking its headthrough the drapes in his picture "The Nightmare."
To the center the trees came close to the stage. Just in front of themwas Queen Elizabeth sitting on the chair on the spread carpet, just asI'd seen her out there before; only now I could see that the brazierswere glowing and redly high-lighting her pale cheeks and dark red hairand the silver in her dress and cloak. She was looking at Martin--LadyMack--most intently, her mouth grimaced tight, twisting her fingerstogether.
Standing rather close around her were a half dozen men with fancierhats and ruffs and wide-flaring riding gauntlets.
Then, through the trees and tall leafless bushes just behindElizabeth, I saw an identical Elizabeth-face floating, only this onewas smiling a demonic smile. The eyes were open very wide. Now andthen the pupils darted rapid glances from side to side.
* * * * *
There was a sharp pain in my left wrist and Sid whisper-snarling atme, "Accustomed action!" out of the corner of his shadowed mouth.
I tolled on obediently, "It is an accustomed action with her, to seemthus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter ofan hour."
Martin had set down the candle, which still flared and guttered, on alittle high table so firm its thin legs must have been stabbed intothe ground. And he was rubbing his hands together slowly, continually,tormentedly, trying to get rid of Duncan's blood which Mrs. Mack knowsin her sleep is still there. And all the while as he did it, theagitation of the seated Elizabeth grew, the eyes flicking from side toside, hands writhing.
He got to the lines, "Here's the smell of blood still: all theperfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!"
As he wrung out those soft, tortured sighs, Elizabeth stood up fromher chair and took a step forward. The courtiers moved toward herquickly, but not touching her, and she said loudly, "Tis the blood ofMary Stuart whereof she speaks--the pails of blood that will gush fromher chopped neck. Oh, I cannot endure it!" And as she said that last,she suddenly turned about and strode back toward the trees, kickingout her ash-colored skirt. One of the courtiers turned with her andstooped toward her closely, whispering something. But although shepaused a moment, all she said was, "Nay, Eyes, stop not the play, butfollow me not! Nay, I say leave me, Leicester!" And she walked intothe trees, he looking after her.
Then Sid was kicking my ankle and I was reciting something and Martinwas taking up his candle again without looking at it saying with adrugged agitation, "To bed; to bed; there's knocking at the gate."
Elizabeth came walking out of the trees again, her head bowed. Shecouldn't have been in them ten seconds. Leicester hurried toward her,hand anxiously outstretched.
Martin moved offstage, torturedly yet softly wailing, "What's donecannot be undone."
Just then Elizabeth flicked aside Leicester's hand with playfulcontempt and looked up and she was smiling the devil-smile. A horsewhinnied like a trumpeted snicker.
As Sid and I started our last few lines together I intonedmechanically, letting words free-fall from my mind to my tongue. Allthis time I had been answering Lady Mack in my thoughts, _That's whatyou think, sister._
VIII
God cannot effect that anything which is past should not have been. It is more impossible than rising the dead. --Summa Theologica
The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sidand ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw,my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed out. Itwasn't a mind-wavery fit. Just normal faint.
I couldn't have been there long--well, not very long, though thebattle-rattle and alarums of the last scene were echoing tinnily fromthe stage--when Bruce and Beau and Mark (who was playing Malcolm,Martin's usual main part) came in wearing their last-act stage-armorand carrying between them Queen Elizabeth flaccid as a sack. Martincame after them, stripping off his white wool nightgown so fast thatbuttons flew. I thought automatically, _I'll have to sew those._
They laid her down on three chairs set side by side and hurried out.Unpinning the folded towel, which had fallen around his waist, Martinwalked over and looked down at her. He yanked off his wig by a braidand tossed it at me.
I let it hit me and fall on the floor. I was looking at that whitequeenly face, eyes open and staring sightless at the ceiling, mouthopen a little too with a thread of foam trailing from the corner, andat that ice-cream-cone bodice that never stirred. The blue fly camebuzzing over my head and circled down toward her face.
"Martin," I said with difficulty, "I don't think I'm going to likewhat we're doing."
He turned on me, his short hair elfed, his fists planted high on hiships at the edge of his black tights, which now were all his clothes.
"You knew!" he said impatiently. "You k
new you were signing up formore than acting when you said, 'Count me in the company.'"
Like a legged sapphire the blue fly walked across her upper lip andstopped by the thread of foam.
"But Martin ... changing the past ... dipping back and killing thereal queen ... replacing her with a double--"
His dark brows shot up. "The real--You think this is the real QueenElizabeth?" He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nearesttable, gushed some on a towel stained with grease-paint and, holdingthe dead head by its red hair (no, wig--the real one wore a wig too)scrubbed the forehead.
The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a fainttattoo in the form of an "S" styled like a yin-yang symbol left alittle open.
* * * * *
"Snake!" he hissed. "Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent!God knows how many times people like Queen Elizabeth have been dug outof the past, first by Snakes, then by Spiders, and kidnapped or killedand replaced in the course of our war. This is the first big operationI've been on, Greta. But I know that much."
My head began to ache. I asked, "If she's an enemy double, why didn'tshe know a performance of Macbeth in her lifetime was an anachronism?"
"Foxholed in the past, only trying to hold a position, they getdulled. They turn half zombie. Even the Snakes. Even our people.Besides, she almost did catch on, twice when she spoke to Leicester."
"Martin," I said dully, "if there've been all these replacements,first by them, then by us, what's happened to the _real_ Elizabeth?"
He shrugged. "God knows."
I asked softly, "But does He, Martin? Can He?"
He hugged his shoulders in, as if to contain a shudder. "Look, Greta,"he said, "it's the Snakes who are the warpers and destroyers. We'rerestoring the past. The Spiders are trying to keep things as firstcreated. We only kill when we must."
_I_ shuddered then, for bursting out of my memory came the glittering,knife-flashing, night-shrouded, bloody image of my lover, the Spidersoldier-of-change Erich von Hohenwald, dying in the grip of a giantsilver spider, or spider-shaped entity large as he, as they rolled ina tangled ball down a flight of rocks in Central Park.
But the memory-burst didn't blow up my mind, as it had done a yearago, no more than snapping the black thread from my sweater had endedthe world. I asked Martin, "Is that what the Snakes say?"
"Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta,you have to _trust_." He put out the middle finger of his hand.
I didn't take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against histhumb.
"You're still grieving for that carrion there!" he accused me. Hejerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over thestiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled,imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly inthe black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursingone lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Onlyto make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that allthe other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to theGreat Lakes and New Scandinavia."
Once more he put out his middle finger.
* * * * *
"All right, all right," I said, barely touching it. "You've convincedme."
"Great!" he said. "'By for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set."
"That's good," I said. He loped out.
I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to thedeath of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in theempty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snowtiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed forinsubordination that _I_ had reported ... but really grieving for agirl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with awhole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more thansubway bogies and Park and Village monsters.
As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fellacross my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young manin worn dark clothes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-three. Hewas a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyesthat saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemedfamiliar to me in the knot of City fellows.
He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on thereserve makeup box by Siddy's mirror. And I began to tremble.
He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began totremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine.
The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witchesfaintly wailing, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair--" Sid has them echothat line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled.
Then Sid came pounding up. He's the first finished, since the fightends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache headof him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.
Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid.He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at thesame time in breathy little rushes.
* * * * *
Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling upbehind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so noneof them could get past. Their faces peered around him.
And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Cansuch things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by somehell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak!You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Haveyou disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts?Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are younot my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King's Lynn ... singed bytime's fiery wand ... sifted over with the ashes of thirty years?Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth... aye, and perchance hell too ... Speak, I charge you!"
And with that he put his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him,I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time Iever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.
He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then,with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out ofthe way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around thestranger's narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room,himself following.
The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth's head toMartin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Markdumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as sheskittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting mytemple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid'sdressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reservemakeup box.
"The lights, Martin!" he called.
Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him andstanding for a moment with his back against it, panting.
I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before itcould get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy,you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't care how much heshakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes--Siddy, thatwas Shakespeare!"
"Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "Theycan't find dolls to double men like that--or such is my main hope." Abig sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with whatwords do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?"
I asked him, "Sid, were we _ever_ in Central Park?"
He answered, "Once--twelve months back. A one-night stand. They camefor Erich. You flipped."
He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.
* * * * *
Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, coveredwith dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid'sreserve makeup box. The
strongest green glow showed his intent face,still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as hekneeled before the thing--Major Maintainer, I remembered it wascalled.
"When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.
"The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answeredinstantly. "Rome!"
Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or asafe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.
"There's a storm in that vector of the Void."
"Circle it," Sid ordered.
"There are dark mists every way."
"Then pick the likeliest dark path!"
I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh,Siddy?"
"Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!"
--FRITZ LEIBER
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+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 155: 'and and' replaced with 'and' | | Page 159: Eliabeth replaced with Elizabeth | | Page 160: automotically replaced with automatically | | Page 162: 'the the' replaced with 'the' | | Page 166: 'performances mixed in something else again.' | | replaced with | | 'performances mixed is something else again.' | | Page 167: Gerta replaced with Greta | | Page 174: rythms replaced with rhythms | | Page 175: 'exists and entrances' replaced with | | 'exits and entrances' | | Page 175: terrif replaced with terrific | | Page 176: grudigingly replaced with grudgingly | | Page 177: 'to hid his Banquo beard.' replaced with | | 'to hide his Banquo beard.' | | Page 184: quick replaced with quickly | | Page 186: Sdiney replaced with Sidney | | Page 187: 'tolling the the reply' replaced with | | 'tolling the reply' | | Page 187: 'hight hand' replaced with 'right hand' | | Page 188: swisting replaced with twisting | | Page 190: saphire replaced with sapphire | | Page 191: kidnaped replaced with kidnapped | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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