Harmony (31 page)

SPECULATION:

Crispin didn’t press the issue that night. After the rest of the Eye came home and we’d restored Cora Lee’s great hall to its former magnificence, he celebrated with the rest of us. But later he could talk of nothing else, convincing himself gradually that the Eye was indeed sheltering his hero, the Conch.

In the morning, he visited my new paint shop, actually Theatre Two’s chorus dressing room, commandeered by Hickey the minute
Double-Take
closed.

“Gotta go send out Marin for the rebid.” But he prowled about as we worked and picked up a brush anyway. Props and paint paraphernalia sprawled across the plastic drop cloths protecting the white counters lining both sides of the narrow room. Since there were no actors in residence, the air was off. We’d suffocate if we didn’t leave the door open. The whine and buzz of the
Double-Take
strike wafted in from down the hall and we kept our voices low.

“I bet he came in as a tourist and never left.”

“And they’re hiding him at Cora Lee’s house?” whispered Jane.

I had a private image of the Conch now, tall and dark-skinned and laughing. He wore bright colors and an aura of power. But I couldn’t make out his face, or rather, it was changeable. Brash, wise, male, female, human and more than, shifting with each new tale I heard.

“If sneaking into Harmony was that easy, everybody’d be doing it.” But I recalled my jewelry peddler’s entry on an innocent apprentice’s arm. Cora’s castle would make a perfect hideout. “You think Cora knows?”

“Oh yes.” Cris laughed excitedly. “Can you see it on HarmoNet? ‘Town Council Rep Hides Fugitive Revolutionary!’ I love it!”

I mused over the section of cross-hatching I’d just completed, cool white against a rich sienna background. I’d chosen to paint the Gorrehma because I liked its sensuous shape, but the application of millions of tiny parallel lines on its curved surfaces was painstaking in the extreme. It required a steady, patient hand and what we liked to call a two-hair brush. The muscles between my shoulder blades were knotting up in protest.

“He doesn’t have to be hiding. He could be one of them.” Jane was painting perfect concentric circles of yellow and red on the smooth side of the Burinda. Her voice was flat and scared. I was glad she hadn’t been at Cora’s the night before.

Cris snapped his fingers. “Damn! Wish I’d thought of that!”

“The Eye spends half their life on tour,” I countered. “You can’t manage a revolution long-distance!”

“So he wasn’t always with them. New to the company, like Tua. Their publicity’s never mentioned individuals since that guy who died—you wouldn’t notice a switch. Things got too hot for him at home, the Eye passed through Tuatua on their way here, dropped somebody off and picked up”—he beat a drum roll on the counter with his fists—“the Conch!”

“Shhh!” said Jane, glancing at the open door.

“Cris, you can’t just stick an untrained somebody into a company of professional actors and expect him to blend right in.”

“Any old somebody, yeah, but we’re talking about the Conch! The elusive Latooea, master of illusion and disguise!” He tossed away the brush he’d been dawdling with. “You guys just don’t want him to be here! She’s too scared and you can’t imagine it!” He began to pace up and down the narrow room. “Now, which one? Mali talks politics, so that’s too obvious. The Mule’s too wacko. Moussa?”

“I notice you don’t even consider the women.”

“Sam!” Cris did his little victory dance. “It’s gotta be. He’s so, you know, cool. Staying in the background, playing the supporting roles, but you saw how he took right over in a crisis?” He crowed delightedly. “A magician! The perfect cover!”

Jane began to look interested. “Well, it certainly isn’t that Pen person.”

“Or Te-Cucularit,” I added disgustedly, leafing through the archivist’s many pages in search of something new and different among the officially sanctioned motifs. “Too anal.”

“I wouldn’t rule him out,” mused Crispin. “That could be an act.”

“So could Pen’s drunken bully be an act.”

“Draws too much attention.”

“What about the women?” I insisted. “Maybe the Conch isn’t some great romantic hero. Maybe he is magic. Maybe he’s your friend Tua.”

Cris scoffed. “Sam’s the best bet so far.”

I wasn’t sure. If it had to be one of them, I’d have said only Mali had the required charisma. But I couldn’t imagine Mali ever being inconspicuous enough to suit the Conch’s elusive habit. I preferred the notion of an eleventh, perhaps truly magical Tuatuan living invisibly in the towers of Cora Lee’s fairy castle.

“It’s not right.” Jane’s head bent low over her work. “Bringing someone like that into Harmony. I mean, if they did.”

“Someone like what?” Cris challenged.

Jane turned on him. “You and your stupid kiddie games! Revolutionaries kill people! You think your precious Conch wouldn’t walk right over you if you got in his way?”

Cris smiled smugly. “But I wouldn’t.”

“How would you know ahead of time?”

“No one’s accused the Conch of killing anyone,” I reminded her.

“He’s a convicted criminal!”

“Political crimes!” Cris shouted. “Crimes of expression! He was tried and convicted in absentia!”

“Time for a coffee break.” I lanced my long-handled brush into the water bucket and looked at Cris. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to the studio?”

* * *

I crossed through Theatre Two on my way to the crew room. The stage was nearly cleared. A few stacks of platforming waiting on dollies, a few piles of scrap left about, a few crewmen pulling stray fasteners out of the floor, and a new load of pipe and lumber sitting in the open loading door. Was Sean finally going to start building
The Gift?

Raised voices drifted in from the shop, Howie’s voice, very loud, and somebody whose responses I couldn’t distinguish. Cris joined me as I sidled up to the doorway.

Howie had cornered Sean by the water cooler, explaining with great animation something Sean apparently didn’t want to hear. Howie’s big hands scythed the air in parallel blades. Sean shook his head and slapped his hard hat against the side of his thigh. The shop crew was giving them room.

Howie spotted us trying to slip past.

“They were there!” He waved us over. “The whole place upside down, isn’t that right, kids?”

We both got real still.

“It’s okay,” Howie urged. “Omea called me first thing.”

Cris stared back at him. “Cora told us to keep it quiet.”

Howie’s cheeks puffed up. “Yeah, well, come on. We’re all in this together. It won’t go outside the theatre.”

Sure it won’t, I thought.

“It’s a security problem! I’ve got actors at risk!” Howie had finally realized the e-mails were not some young media artist’s journeyman project. I wondered how his blood pressure was doing.

Sean turned tired eyes to me. “He wants to move his rehearsal into the theatre.”

Our expressions were identical and eloquent. Sean turned back to Howie. “See? They don’t like it much, either.”

“Nobody likes it!” Howie’s hands chopped away again. “But I can’t have my actors’ concentration disturbed by some asshole’s harassment campaign! They need a secure place to work!”

Sean jammed his hat on his head and regarded Howie from under its neon yellow brim. “So where am I supposed to build your goddamn set?”

“We only rehearse eight hours—the rest of the time, it’s yours.”

“Graveyard shift? Jesus, Howie, my men are exhausted!”

“Then hire some more!”

I nudged Cris. “Er, we’re on coffee break…?”

Cris led the retreat.

“This coffee’s weird.” I stared into the mug I’d borrowed.

“Pedro puts salt in it,” said Flick, my friend the mold maker.

“Salt, huh? That’s novel.”

Flick’s short dark hair was like a glossy bowl upended on her head. She had a ready smile and an equally ready tongue. She’d staggered comically into the crew room when the official break horn sounded to gulp her coffee as if it were water in the desert.

The low concrete room was furnished with props Hickey couldn’t be bothered to store anymore. A dozen or so crew-folk lounged around in the broken-down assortment of chairs, benches, and stools, castoffs from past shows. In the rickety sofas at the far end of the room, several spent bodies sprawled in sleep. The rest of the crew was working through their break.

Flick stirred a cube of soup into hot water without rinsing her mug. “I hear Hickey’s getting it on with one of your dancers.”

“Hickey?” This was interesting news.

“Yeah, of all people!” Flick guffawed. “Never seen someone look so soppy in all my life!”

“Lucienne,” said Cris. “She’s been singing him all week.”

So. He’d been keeping things from me. “Yeah. You want to know about the Eye, ask Cris. He’s real close with their sexy ingenue.”

As soon as I’d said it, it sounded mean-spirited. Flick’s glance was shifting back and forth between us when the door slammed open and Sean stormed in.

“There better be coffee in here or you’re all fired.”

Flick tossed her head. “Big Chief. On the warpath.”

“Asshole,” declared Sean to nobody in particular. He steamed over to the coffee table and snatched up a mug. “Stupid fucker.”

“Howie,” I guessed.

“Yes, Howie. Bad enough he has Hickey turning the joint into a goddamn greenhouse! The Barn’s been good enough for every other cast that’s worked in it. Who do these people think they are?”

“It’s not them, it’s this security issue…”

Sean dumped sugar into his coffee. “I just got started building. How’d Micah feel if I stopped?”

I nodded. He looked too tired to argue with.

“Well, fuck ‘im. I told him he couldn’t have it.”

“The theatre.”

“Yes, the theatre! I told him he could bring his goddamn actors where he goddamn liked, but I’d be in there with my hammers and saws and there’d be fuck-all he could do about it.”

“I guess that told him,” said Flick.

Stirring angrily, Sean spilled hot coffee on his hand and swore.

“Asshole,” Flick observed.

Sean chuckled, caught her eye, and started to laugh.

MICAH’S VERSION:

The e-mail bulletin naming the Eye waited until Sunday morning.

“More people bother to read their public mail on Sunday,” Micah pointed out when we raced in with newsfax in hand. We stayed to work on our projects, but concentration came hard.

We told Micah about Gitanne at the Brim. He said the face of Harmony was changing and he had to admit he wasn’t happy about it.

We told him about Sean and Howie. Micah insisted that Sean was imperturbable, and that he himself would talk Howie out of needing the theatre.

Finally we unburdened ourselves of our theories about the e-mails. Cris reeled off his process of deduction concerning the identity of the Conch.

“A hero in hiding. What a charming conceit. I wonder what the Eye wants us to believe.”

“They said no.”

Micah nodded. “But they act yes.”

“You mean they might want us to think they’re hiding the Conch even if they’re not?”

“What, for the publicity value?” Crispin looked as if he needed to spit. “They wrecked Cora Lee’s for the publicity value?

“No, no. Just took good advantage of what happened.” Micah stood back to squint at his
Don Pasquale
sketch. “I like this troupe more and more. They’re as brilliant offstage as they are on.”

“Micah, that’s cynical.”

He shook his badger head. “It’s the greatest compliment I could pay them. Mali said it right here in the studio: reality can be manipulated. It’s… ‘Maliable.’ Did we ever get a clear answer on the shooting incident? No. The challenge is to play as many versions of reality as you can at once, not only to prove that no single version holds precedence but to get as close as you can to portraying reality’s true complexity.” He set the sketch aside and laid down a fresh sheet. His hands worked at the paper long after the last wrinkle was pressed away, enjoying the sensual pleasure of the smooth whiteness against his palm. “A performance is not always an act. At its best, it’s a direct expression of an ideology. Remember, these Tuatuans are genuinely mystical. Their T-shirts and tantrums can lead you to forget that.”

I recalled the total conviction with which Mali had announced that his father was a Rock. “Yes. They can.”

Crispin eyed Micah suspiciously. “I supposed you’d say they intend that confusion as well.”

Micah tilted his head at the blank stretch of paper. “Encourage it, rather. As a diversion, as an expression of their worldview.”