In the Beginning (35 page)

“Sure. Come on. Talk it all out, Howard.”

I led the gaunt old actor into the red-walled cubicle I laughingly call my office, and dialed two filtered rums, Terran style. Howard gulped his drink greedily, pushed away the empty glass, burped. He transfixed me with his long gray beard and glittering eye and said, “I need eleven hundred credits to get back to Earth. The one-way fare’s five thousand. I’ve saved thirty-nine hundred.”

“And you’re going to toss your life’s savings into one trip?” I shook my head emphatically. “Snap out of it, Howard! You’re not on stage now. You aren’t Lear—not a doddering old man ready to die.”

“I know that. I’m still young—
inside.
Erik, I want to play Hamlet in New York. I want it more than anything else there is. So I’ve decided to go back to New York, to play Hamlet.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “Oh, I see.”

Draining my glass, I stared reflectively at Howard Brian. I understood for the first time what had happened to the old actor. Howard was obviously insane.

The last time anyone had played Hamlet in New York, I knew, it had been the late Dover Hollis, at the climax of his magnificent career. Hollis had played the gloomy prince at the Odeon on February 21, 2167. Thirty-one years ago. The next day, the Neopuritan majority in Congress succeeded in ramming through its anti-sin legislation, and as part of the omnibus bill the theaters were closed. Play-producing became a felonious act. Members of the histrionic professions overnight lost what minute respectability they had managed to attain. We were all scamps and scoundrels once again, as in the earliest days of the theater.

I remembered Dover Hollis’ 2167
Hamlet
vividly, because I had been in it. I was eighteen, and I played Marcellus. Not too well, mind you; I never was much of an actor.

Howard Brian had been in that company too, and a more villainous Claudius had never been seen on America’s shores. Howard had been signed on to do Hamlet, but when Dover Hollis requested a chance to play the part Howard had graciously moved aside. And thereby lost his only chance to play the Dane. He was to have reclaimed his role a week later, when Hollis returned to London—but, a week later, the padlocks were on the theater doors.

I said to Howard, “You can’t go back to Earth. You know that, don’t you?”

He shook his head obstinately. “They’re casting for
Hamlet
at the Odeon again. I’m not too old, Erik. Bernhard played it, and she was an old
woman,
with a wooden leg, yet. I want to go.”

I sighed. “Howard, listen to me: you accepted free transportation from the Neopuritan government, like all the rest of us, on the condition that you didn’t try to return. They shipped you to the outworlds. You can’t go back.”

“Maybe they’re out of power. Maybe the Supreme Court overthrew the legislation. Maybe—”

“Maybe nothing. You read
Outworld Variety,
the same as the rest of us. You know how things stand on Earth. The Supreme Court is twelve to three Neopuritan, and the three old holdouts are at death’s door. Congress is Neopuritan. A whole new generation of solemn little idiots has grown up under a Neopuritan president. It’s the same all over the world.” I shook my head. “There isn’t any going back. The time is out of joint, Howard. Earth doesn’t want actors or dancers or singers or other sinful people. Until the pendulum swings back again, Earth just wants to atone. They’re having a gloom orgy.”

“Give me another drink, Erik,” Howard said hollowly. I dialed it for him. He slurped half of it down and said, “I didn’t ask you for a sermon. I just want eleven hundred credits. You can spare it.”

“That’s questionable. But the money’s irrelevant, anyway. You couldn’t get back to Earth.”

“Will you let me try?”

His dry cheeks were quivering, and tears were forming in his eyes. I saw he was in the grip of an obsession that could have only one possible end, and I knew then that I had lost my best actor. I said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Guarantee me the money. Then get me a visa and book passage for me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

I was silent.

He said, “We’ve been together thirty years, Erik. I remember when you were a kid actor who didn’t know blank verse from a blank check. But you grew up into the best director I ever worked with.”

“Thanks, Howard.”

“No. No thanks needed. I did my best for you, even on this rotten backwater. Remember my Prince Hal? And I did Falstaff too, ten years later. And Willy Loman, and Mark Diamond, and the whole Ibsen cycle.”

“You were great,” I said. “You still are.”

“We never did
Hamlet,
though. You said you couldn’t bear to condense it for the Greenies. Well, now’s my chance. Send me to Earth. Lend me the dough, see the Consul for me, fix things up. Will you do that for me, Erik?”

I drew in my breath sharply. I realized I had no choice. From this night on, Howard would be no good to me as an actor; I might just as well try to let him die happy.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“You’re a prince, Erik! An ace among men and the director of directors. You—”

I cut him off. “It’s time for the cast party. We don’t want to miss out on that sweet burbling
kethii.”

***

As usual, we were very very gay that night, with the desperate gaiety of a bunch of actors stranded in a dismal alien world where we were appreciated for the way we did things but not for what we did. We were just another act in Goznor’s Circus, and there wasn’t one of us who didn’t know it.

I woke the next morning with a
kethii
head, which is one way of saying that my eyeballs were popping. The odor of slops got me up. My flat is in the Dillborr quarter of Salvor City, and Dillborr is the rough Salvori equivalent for Pigtown. But Earthmen actors are severely restricted as to living quarters on worlds like Salvor.

I dressed and ran myself through the reassembler until my molecules were suitably vitalized and I felt able to greet the morning. Ordinarily I’d have slept till noon, getting up just in time to make the afternoon rehearsal, but this day I was up early. And I had told the cast that I was so pleased with
Lear
I was cancelling the regular daytime runthrough, and would see them all at the usual evening check-in time of 1900.

I had plenty of work to do this day.

I knew it was a futile cause; Howard had as much chance of getting back to Earth as he did of riding a sled through a supernova and coming out uncooked. But I had promised him I’d see what I could do, and I was damned well going to try.

First thing, I phoned the office of Transgalactic Spacelines, downtown in the plusher section of Salvor City. A Neopuritan gal appeared on the screen, her face painted chalk-white, her lips black, her eyes frowning in the zombie way considered so virtuous on Earth. She recognized me immediately, and I could almost hear the wheels in her brain grinding out the label:
Sinful actor person.

I said, “Good morning, sweetheart. Is Mr. Dudley in the office yet?”

“Mr. Dudley is here,” she said in a voice as warm as stalactites and about as soft. “Do you have an appointment to talk to him?”

“Do I
need
one?”

“Mr. Dudley is very busy this morning.”

“Look,” I said, “tell him Erik Smit wants to talk to him. That’s your job, and it’s sinful of you to try to act as a screen for him.” I saw the retort corning, and quickly added, “It’s also sinful to make nasty remarks to possible customers. Put Dudley on, will you?”

Dudley was the manager of the local branch of the spaceline. I knew him well; he was a staunch Neopuritan with secret longings, and more than once he had crept into our theater in disguise to watch the show. I knew about it and kept quiet. I wondered what Miss Iceberg would say if she knew some of the things her boss had done—and some he would like to do, if he dared.

The screen imploded swoopingly and Dudley appeared. He was a heavy-set man with pink ruddy cheeks; the Neopuritan pallor did not set well on him. “Good morning, Mr. Smit,” he said formally.

“Morning, Walter. Can you give me some information?”

“Maybe. What kind, Erik?”

“Travel information. When’s the next scheduled Salvor-Earth voyage?”

He frowned curiously. “The
Oliver Cromwell
’s booking in here on the First of Ninemonth—that’s next Twoday—and is pulling out on the Third. Why?”

“Never mind that” I said. “Second-class fare to Earth is still five thousand credits, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you have a vacancy on the Earthbound leg of the journey?”

He said nothing for a moment: Then: “Yes, yes, we have some openings. But—this can’t be for
you,
Erik. You know the law. And—”

“It isn’t for me,” I said. “It’s for Howard Brian. He wants to play Hamlet in New York.”

A smile appeared on Dudley’s pudgy face. “He’s a little out of date for that, unless there’s been a revolution I haven’t heard about.”

“He’s gone a little soft in the head. But he wants to die on Earth, and I’m going do my best to get him there. Five thousand credits, you say?” I paused. “Could I get him aboard that ship for seventy-five hundred?”

Anger flickered momentarily in Dudley’s eyes as his Neopuritan streak came to life. Controlling himself, he said, “It’s pointless to offer bribes, Erik. I understand the problem, but there’s absolutely nothing you or I or anyone can do. Earth’s closed to anyone who signed the Amnesty of 2168.”

“Eight thousand,” I said. “Eighty-five hundred.”

“You don’t understand, Erik. Or you
won’t
understand. Look here: Howard would need an entrance visa to get onto Earth. No visa, no landing. You know that, I know that, he knows it. Sure, I could put him aboard that ship, if you could find a spaceport man who’d take a bribe—and I doubt that you could. But he’d never get off the ship at the other end.”

“At least he’d be closer to Earth than he is now.”

“It won’t work. You know what side I’m on personally, Erik. But it’s impossible to board a Transgalactic Line ship without proper papers, and Howard can’t ever get those papers. He
can’t
go back, Erik. Sorry.”

I looked at the face framed in the screen and narrowly avoided bashing in the glass. It would only have netted me some bloody knuckles and a hundred credit repair bill, but I would have felt better about things. Instead I said, “You know, your own behavior hasn’t been strictly Neopuritan. I might write some notes—”

It was a low blow, but he ducked. He looked sad as he said, “You couldn’t prove anything, Erik. And blackmail isn’t becoming on you.”

He was right. “Okay, Walter. Hope I didn’t take up valuable time.”

“Not at all. I only wish—”

“I know. Drop around to the circus some time soon. Howard’s playing
Lear.
You’d better see it now, while you have the chance.”

I blanked the screen.

I sat on the edge of my hammock and cursed the fact that we’d all been born a century too late—or maybe too early. 21st Century Earth had been a glorious larking place, or so I had heard. Games and gaiety and champagne, no international tensions, no ulcers. But I had been born in the 22nd Century, when the boom came swinging back the other way. A reaction took place; people woke from a pleasant dream and turned real life into a straight-laced nightmare.

Which was why we had chosen between going to prison, entering mundane professions, and accepting the new Neopuritan government’s free offer to take ourselves far from Earth and never come back. We’d been on Salvor thirty years now. The youngest of us was middle-aged. But makeup does wonders, and anyway the Salvori didn’t care if Romeo happened to be fifty-seven and slightly paunchy.

I clenched my hands. I had been a wide-eyed kid when the Neopuritans lowered the boom, and I jumped at the chance to see the outworlds free. Now I was forty-nine, balding, a permanent exile. I vowed I was going to work like the deuce to help Howard Brian. It was a small rebellion, but a heartfelt one.

I called my bank and had them flash my bankbook on the screen. It showed a balance of Cr. 13,586—not a devil of a lot for thirty years’ work. I scribbled a draft for six thousand in cash, dropped it in the similarizer plate, and waited. They verified, and moments later a nice wad of Interstellar Galactic Credits landed in the receiving slot.

I got dressed in my Sevenday best, locked up the place, and caught a transport downtown to the spaceport terminal. As an Earthman, of course, I rode in the back of the transport, and stood.

A coach was just leaving the terminal for the spaceport. By noon I found myself forty miles outside Salvor City, standing at the edge of the sprawling maze of buildings and landing-areas that is Salvor Spaceport. I hadn’t been out here since that day in 2168 when the liner
John Calvin
deposited me and eighty-seven other Terran actors, dancers, strippers, and miscellaneous deported sinners, and a bleak-faced official advised us to behave ourselves, for we were now subject to the laws of Salvor.

I made my way through the confusing network of port buildings to the customs shed. My 6000-credit wad felt pleasantly thick in my pocket. Customs was crowded with aliens of various hues and shapes who were departing on a Mullinor-bound liner and who were getting a routine check-through. Since Mullinor is under Terran administration, not only were the Salvori officials running the check but a few black-uniformed employees of Transgalactic Spacelines were on hand as well. I picked out the least hostile-looking of those, and, palming a twenty-credit piece, sidled up to him.

He was checking through the passports of the departing travellers. I tapped him on the shoulder and slipped the bright; round double stellar into his hand at the same time.

“Pardon me, friend. Might I have a minute’s conversation with you in privacy?”

He glanced at me with contempt in his Neopuritan eyes and handed me back the big coin. “I’ll be through with this job in fifteen minutes. Wait for me in Depot A, if there’s any information you want.”

Now, it might have been that one of his superiors was watching, and that he didn’t want to be seen taking a gratuity in public. But I knew that was a mighty shaky theory for explaining his refusal. I didn’t have much hope, but I hied myself to Depot A and waited there for half an hour.