Harmony (19 page)

Hickey pulled Crispin’s research over and thumbed through it. “Let’s see, ah… the first source says, ‘The object called a Matta was too sacred to be revealed to the uninitiated.’ ”

“Typical,” said Liz.

“Now, wait… okay. Here he quotes some obscure anthropological journal. The author was allowed to view a matta that had been ‘desanctified’ for repair.” Hickey regarded me over the considerable length of his nose. “And I quote: ‘A very long strip of coarsely woven cloth, painted with the history of the Ancestor it is dedicated to, and its own history as well. Many Mattas are reputed to be several hundred years old.’ ” He handed me the paper. “The guy wasn’t much of a draftsman but here, take a look.”

He was right. The writer was mostly interested in recording the Matta’s storytelling pictographs, but he did think to include an estimate of its length.

“Eighty-five feet?” I exclaimed. I hoped we didn’t have to vanish all eighty-five along with the actor playing the tribesman.

Liz glanced at the drawing and let her tongue loll. “Eighty-five feet of tiny little drawings.”

“Time-consuming,” said Hickey.

“Expensive,” I agreed. “Thank god they’ve brought it with them.”

“Well…” Hickey drawled, “there’s a problem about that…”

* * *

There were tourists in the studio by the time we’d finished our meeting. A scholarly looking couple muttered appreciatively beside the model display shelves behind Songh’s desk. I wished all the tourists were like them. Another pair, white-haired and wheezy, fanned themselves in the chairs beneath the window. At the cutting table, Jane patiently explained the uses of the scale rule to an earnestly pigtailed ten-year-old.

“Here’s the thing,” I reported to Micah. “The matta they brought is from one of their dance dramas, so it’s dedicated to the wrong ancestor and we can’t use it. They forgot the right one, they don’t like the Burinda they had from the old production, and a few other things got lost between then and now, no explanations and no apologies.”

Micah nodded slowly, intent on the prints mounded on his drawing board. Crispin stood by with the Marin spec file in one hand and a thick stack of bid sheets in the other. Hip-slung in a pose of self-conscious grace, he was pretending to ignore the pretty teenage girl who lurked at his elbow munching an apple.

The Marin bids had come back high and in a very wide range. The lowest bids were from shops Micah had advised against even inviting to bid, shops he considered unreliable or downright dishonest. He always warned producers that the difference between low- and medium-range bids would be made up in additional charges: any detail that wasn’t precisely noted on the drawings or spec sheets would be termed an “extra,” sometimes even the glue and fasteners.

So Micah was searching for cuts that would not sacrifice the look or function of the project. He’d suggest them to the shops he trusted, to help them bring their prices within range. I used to think this was sneaky, unworthy of him, until I realized the survival of quality work depended upon it.

Right now I wasn’t even sure he was listening to me. “The Eye will supply exact specifications, so Hickey can build replacements, and they’ll do all the painting.”

Micah studied the drawings for the Sorcerer’s secret library, shook his head, and slid them aside to his worktable. “Nothing there I can see doing without.”

Cris checked his papers. “I thought maybe that full wall of old books might become windows.”

“Windows in a hidden room?”

“Well, how ’bout cabinets that are always locked?”

The tourist girl smiled up at him. I could see she liked his looks. Cris flicked her a conspiratorial grin. Had-I-but-world-enough-and-time, and all that.

“The Eye will do all the painting,” I persisted. I refused to be made jealous by a tourist teeny. “It’d be taboo for us to do it, even though they’re going to fake the symbols anyway, because it would be taboo for us to see the real ones. Oh, and Hickey’s a little worried about time.”

“Already? Well, if there’s a problem, I’ll send one of you over to help him finish up.”

“I hope it won’t come to that.” We always fell way behind when one of us had to spend time out of the studio. We were already late on Willow Street’s
Doubting
, now retitled as
Fire!
, and
Don Pasquale
was developing very slowly. Micah was never easily satisfied, but ever since
The Gift
and our boss’s obsessive policing of his own process, even the paint he used was subject to special scrutiny.

“So, Liz’ll send along their little sketches, and I’ll draw them up properly and—”

Micah laid another drawing aside. “Nothing here, either. Why don’t you go over and talk to the Eye yourself? The less lost in translation, the better.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

The teenager finally got bored and sulked off. Micah regarded me dryly across the pile of Marin. “You are welcome to make a suggestion when you think it’s the right one.”

Don’t forget about
The Gift
, I wanted to say. “Okay. Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can offer after three years of excellent service.” Then his mind was instantly back on Marin.

“I want to know,” said Cris over Micah’s bent back, “what they think will happen if we violate a taboo.”

“They’ll be pissed as hell, of course.”

He made an impatient face. “I mean, what will
happen
?”

“You mean, actual events?”

“Yeah. Will the sky fall in? Will lightning strike us?”

I shrugged, too glibly. “Maybe they’d be supposed to sacrifice us, like the tribesman in the play.”

“I’m going to ask them when I see them.”

Micah raised a bristly amused brow. “Best way to find out, after all. But I wouldn’t expect a direct answer if I were you.”

CRISPIN’S RESEARCH: FROM THE MINUTES OF THE JUNE MEETING OF THE TUATUAN PLANTERS’ ASSOCIATION

REHEARSAL:

I didn’t really believe the Eye would consider human sacrifice.

I’d said it mostly to show Cris I could be provocative, too. What I really expected from taboo violation was disdain and ostracism, sort of like you’d farted in public, but to tell the truth, this worried me just as much. I didn’t want the Eye to think I was some jerk who’d run roughshod over their social customs. I wanted them to be bizarre and magnificent and mystical, but I also wanted them to like me.

Still, now that I’d seen them, I kept thinking, they’re only actors. Isn’t there something a little egomaniacal about claiming the world will end if you don’t perform a certain religious ritual?

But I was excited as I gathered up my lists and hopped on my bike, already formulating questions for the Eye that wouldn’t sound too ignorant. It was prime tourist rush hour, so I took the High Road, always less crowded because it looped up around the Perimeter. I stopped along the rim for a breather and a look at the view.

Though it was July and probably sweltering Outside, the weather computer had blessed us Inside with an afternoon chill. Harmony spread soft and green below me like a fairy kingdom. The whitewashed walls shone like witches’ sugar-ice cottages. The village markets bustled with commerce and color. The twin towers of Town Hall rose tall and proud, the magic crystal castle.

With my heart full of my good fortune, I remembered Bela and turned my gaze to the Perimeter slums. The Outsiders had stripped down to their innermost rags. The fierce heat Out There lent a false air of repose. Sunburned women fanned themselves lazily in the shade of patched and stained tarpaulins. The children fought their dusty battles in slow motion. No overt signs of sickness or deformity. Not thirty yards from me, a group of sweating men played cards on a stack of crates drawn into the shadow of the moat. The crates were stamped “O
ut
C
are
,” identifying the huge inter-dome charity organization, and they were still sealed. Either these men were powerful enough to be hoarding, or there’d been a recent donation and this particular enclave was well fed enough to relax for a while. It seemed almost, well, normal. The men were enjoying their cards, laughing, gesticulating. I imagined I could hear them hurling amiable insults back and forth. We always said Outsiders had time only for survival, but now I found myself wondering what else they did for amusement.

What would they think about a play, for instance? Some may even have been born in domes and attended plays before committing the crime that had lost them their citizenship.

Of course, you could never let them
in
, to get to the theatres. Especially if they were going to go around taking potshots at visiting actors.

I considered the standard nightmare the bogeyman of my childhood: visions of disease-ridden Outsider mobs ravaging the city like a swarm of ravenous locusts. Rape, pillage, and worse. I heard again my mother’s voice: that’s why we must keep the laws and follow the rules. That’s what could happen to us.

But Tuatua survived without a dome. Did magic protect it from Outsiders as well as the natural horrors? Or were there places Outside that were safer than others? OutCare workers went Outside all the time, and nobody shot at them, though they sometimes came back with scary stories which the Chat spread gleefully. And then there were those who didn’t come back at all.

The cardplayers discovered me watching them. For once, they chose to stare back. They elbowed each other, leering, and showed their yellowed teeth. When one pulled out his pale penis and shook it at me, I shrugged and turned away. I had enjoyed them enjoying their cards. That might have been something positive we could share across the distance. At very least, I had hoped for more imagination than a cheap obscenity.

With a sigh I descended back into my magic kingdom, and arrived at the Barn in Fetching just before rehearsal was due to end.

* * *

I tried to slip in unnoticed. I still felt like an intruder when I walked into a rehearsal hall, like a guest arriving too early and surprising his hosts in a private act. Liz motioned me in, putting a finger to her lips as she drew out the chair beside her at the table. But the room was not quiet.

Howie straddled a folding chair in the middle of the hall, listening intently as Omea and the girl Lucienne ran through a scene at a volume inaudible even from the stage managers’ table. I guessed it was the moment where the clansman’s wife frightens the planter’s overprotected daughter with tales about the magic of the ancestors.

The rest of the company lounged in a corner with their bare feet up on the prop tables, chatting and joking as if nothing else were going on in the room. The dancers rehearsed with Ule. The dark one, Tuli, wore long sleeves but no sling. Moussa, the musical director, worked out a noisy percussion riff on the arm of his chair. In front of a long mirror leaning against the wall, Sam the magician rehearsed a complicated sequence of hand movements over and over with tireless patience. And up in the Barn’s cathedral ceiling, chirpings and rustlings echoed through the rafters.

I nudged Liz. “How can anyone concentrate in here?”

She made a don’t-come-to-me face. “This is the way they work.”

“Howie doesn’t mind?”

“He’s adjusting.”

“And how’s the housing problem?”

Liz sighed. “Reede had an emergency in London, so it’s back in my lap. Is Micah coming?”

“Not today. He sent me over for the prop info.”

She registered official disappointment, then softened it with a smile. “Try to get him down here, okay? Howie really wants to talk. There’s a few things about the set he’s not sure about.”

“Things the model can’t tell him?”