Space Opera (8 page)

Dyrus Boltzen took the group on a tour of the settlement, which consisted of little more than four concrete buildings surrounding a bleak compound. Two of the buildings were warehouses for trade-goods: one for imports, the other for articles to be exported — bowls, salvers, vases, goblets and dinner services polished from native stone: translucent obsidian, turquoise, jade, carnelian, a dense blue dumortierite, black basalt. There were jewels and crystals, chandeliers with pendants of diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, tourmaline wind-chimes. In the compound the group saw its first byzantaurs, a team of four equipped with brooms and water-sprays, sweeping the concrete expanse with great care and concentration. They were even more grotesque than their photographs had indicated: an impression furthered by the motion of their four arms and four legs, the working of the oddly placed features in the two heads, the texture of the skin, as rough and grey as rock.

Dame Isabel spoke to Dyrus Boltzen: “The creatures seem cooperative, even mild.”

Boltzen laughed. “Those four are what, for lack of a better word, we call elders. Every day, for some reason quite beyond my comprehension, they sweep the compound. Notice the shawl around the neck? That’s a fabric woven of rock fiber. The colors are significant by the way, almost like the old Scottish tartans. The brown and blue and black are characteristic of the Royal Giants, and the length of the fringe is a measure of prestige or rank.” He summoned one of the byzantaurs; it approached on thick stiff legs which clicked against the concrete. “Friend ’zant,” said Boltzen, “here are people from the sky. They come in big ship. They like to show all friend ’zants many pretty things. They like friend ’zants to come to ship. Okay?”

From somewhere deep inside the thorax came a rumbling voice. “Maybe okay. Friend ’zants scared.”

Dame Isabel stepped forward. “You need fear nothing. We are a legitimate grand opera company, we will perform a program we are sure you will enjoy.”

“Maybe okay, we go to look for yellow no-good ’zants. Maybe not scared.”

Boltzen explained. “He’s not literally afraid, it’s only that they dislike to come up from their tunnels any more than necessary; they feel that it’s demeaning.”

“Interesting! But why should this be?”

“It’s a matter of social standing. They eject their criminals and nonconformists upon the plain where they become either rogues or bands of what might be termed psychotics. So you see the plain represents an undesirable environment to the ’zants.”

“I understand fully,” said Dame Isabel. “Well, the performance will take place inside the ship, and they will be spared the indignity of watching from the plain.”

Boltzen turned to the elder. “You hear sky-talk? He show pretty things, pretty noise, not on plain, but inside ship. You and friend ’zants run over plain and go inside ship to look. Okay?”

“Okay. I go down, talk to friend ’zants.”

Bernard Bickel remained with Commandant Boltzen to talk over old times, while the rest of the group returned to the
Phoebus
. A transformation already had taken place. Under the guidance of Captain Gondar a tall pole had been erected in the center of the pentagonal space enclosed by the tubes and globes. Guy-wires were now strung, and over all were drawn sheets of a metalloid fabric, creating a tent. The stage had been opened, the orchestra pit extended, and when Dame Isabel came to make an inspection she found Madoc Roswyn carefully arranging the collapsible benches around the area. “Hmmf!” said Dame Isabel to herself. “Trying to make herself useful, so that I won’t put her ashore.” She chuckled grimly, and looked about for Roger, but he was nowhere in sight.

Bernard Bickel presently strolled up. “I’ve had an interesting chat with Commandant Boltzen, and I think I was able to put across our point of view. He still is a trifle dubious, but he agrees that no harm can be done and quite possibly some good.”

Dame Isabel snorted. “Indeed I should think so!”

“He also asks that you, I and Captain Gondar join him for dinner, when perhaps he’ll be able to give us more information regarding the byzantaurs.”

“That is exceedingly gracious of him,” said Dame Isabel. “I shall be glad to go.”

“I assumed as much and accepted the invitation for all of us.”

Three hours later Sirius hung close above the horizon, its lower edge touching a bank of soft white mist at the far edge of the plain. The company had gathered outside to watch the coming of twilight and a very impressive sight it was, as Sirius drifted into the clouds, which immediately became suffused with nacreous pinks and greens.

Dame Isabel, Captain Gondar and Bernard Bickel set off for their dinner engagement. Roger, who wandered morosely off across the plain, now returned to the ship where he became an unintentional eaves-dropper. He had stopped to watch the Sirius-set beside the off-ramp, unaware that Madoc Roswyn and Logan de Appling were sitting on the bottom step, with a canvas panel hiding Roger from their view.

Roger recognized Madoc Roswyn’s slightly husky voice and stood transfixed. “Logan, please don’t speak like that — you’re really quite wrong.”

“No, I’m not wrong!” De Appling’s voice quivered with the intensity of his emotion. “You don’t know him as I do!”

“Captain Gondar has been more than kind to me; he’s treated me with complete consideration, and never tried to force himself upon me, like that unmentionable Roger Wool.”

Roger’s ears burned and his skin felt crisp and brittle as if a chill wind were playing across his face.

“He’s just softening you up,” argued de Appling. “He’s a hard man, my darling —”

“Please don’t call me that, Logan.”

“— he’s self-centered and unprincipled. I know! I’ve seen him in action.”

“No, Logan, don’t say things like that. He’s helping me stay aboard the ship, he’s promised Dame Isabel won’t put me off. What more could he do for me?”

There was a short silence as de Appling mulled over what she had said. Roger did the same.

Logan de Appling spoke in a neutral voice: “Why is it so important that you make the trip?”

“Oh — I don’t know.” And Roger could visualize the charming little twist of shoulder, the tilt of head and curve of mouth. “I just want to, I suppose. Would you like me to get off?”

“You know better than that. But tell me, tell me, please, that you won’t —”

“Won’t what, Logan?” asked Madoc Roswyn sweetly.

“Won’t let Adolph Gondar take advantage of you!” de Appling exclaimed fiercely. “The thought gives me the cold shudders. I think I’d kill him, or myself, or do something terrible … Wreck the whole ghastly ship …”

“Now, Logan, don’t be impulsive. Let’s just watch the lovely Sirius-set. Isn’t it magnificent? And so strange and eerie! I’d never imagined that one sunset could be so different from another!”

Roger took a deep breath, walked quietly away, around the entire circumference of the ship.

Dyrus Boltzen provided an unexpectedly good dinner, due, he admitted, to the fact that the supply ship had departed Sirius Settlement only about three weeks previously. “We’re close to Earth here — relatively of course — yet this is a lonely planet. Very few casuals like yourself put in. None of them, naturally, with an ambitious program like yours.”

“Do you think that we can make ourselves comprehensible to the byzantaurs?” asked Dame Isabel. “They seem completely non-human in their attitudes.”

“In certain ways, yes, in other, no. Sometimes I wonder at how closely our judgments mesh. Other times I’m just as astonished that we could view the same simple act from such different angles. I’ll say this much: if you want to present a program that the byzantaurs can relate to their own existence, you’re going to have to take them on their own terms.”

“Naturally,” said Bernard Bickel. “We are prepared to do so. Can you offer us suggestions?”

Boltzen poured wine all around. “I believe I can. Let me see. An obvious matter is color, to which they are highly sensitive. Yellow is the color of rogues and outcasts, so the unsympathetic characters should wear yellow, the hero and heroine blue or black, and those in supporting roles gray and green. There is the matter of sex: love, romance, whatever you want to call it. The ’zants have peculiar reproductive habits; in fact there are three sex processes, and each of the ’zants is capable of performing two of them, so you can see that an untold number of misunderstandings might ensue unless a certain allowance were made for this fact. They do not demonstrate affection by hugging or kissing; their sex play is a matter of spraying the intended mate with a viscous liquid. I doubt if you wish to carry similitude to quite this extent.”

“Probably not,” agreed Bernard Bickel.

“Well, let’s think further … as I recall
Fidelio
— are not certain scenes played in a dungeon?”

“Quite correct,” said Dame Isabel. “Almost the whole of Act Two.”

“You must remember that a dungeon is a cherished home to the ’zants. The deranged, the troublemakers are expelled to the plain, where they roam in bands: incidentally, warn your company not to wander off by themselves. The rogues are not automatically savage, but are highly unpredictable, especially when they carry their flints.”

“Well, well, well,” said Dame Isabel slowly. “I suppose we can make scene changes easily enough: perhaps play Act One in the dungeon and the first scene of Act Two in the open.”

“If you’re trying to get your point across, I suggest something on this order.”

“Oh indeed we are,” declared Dame Isabel. “Why come all this way merely to confuse our audience?”

“Why indeed?” echoed Bernard Bickel.

“Then there’s also costuming. Do you know what the ’zants call us in their own language? Sky-lice. Exactly. Their feelings toward us are, as closely as I can gather, amiable contempt. We are a race to be exploited, a set of eccentrics who will trade intricate metal devices for fragments of polished rock!”

Dame Isabel looked rather helplessly toward Bernard Bickel, who fingered his mustache. “I hope,” she said uncertainly, “that the performance will do something to alter their view.”

“Again — and I don’t know if you care to go this far — but from the standpoint of your audience the production would make more sense if they could identify themselves and their own lives with the actors and the course of action.”

“We can’t rewrite the opera,” complained Dame Isabel. “We wouldn’t be presenting
Fidelio
, which of course is our intent.”

“I appreciate this; I am making no recommendations, only supplying information on which you may or may not choose to act. For instance, if you costumed your ‘sky-lice’ players to resemble byzantaurs, you’d command a much higher degree of attention.”

“This is all very well,” protested Dame Isabel, “but where in the world would we scrape up such complicated costumes? Impossible!”

“I could help to some extent,” said Dyrus Boltzen. He poured more wine and ruminated, while Dame Isabel and Bernard Bickel watched him attentively. “I have in the warehouse,” he said at last, “a number of tanned byzantaur pelts which are destined for the British Museum. They would serve quite well as costumes, or so I would think. If you like I’ll have them brought to your ship. All I ask is that you take good care of them.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Dame Isabel. “Mr. Bickel, what is your opinion?”

Bernard Bickel blinked. “Well — I certainly agree that if our object is to interest the non-Earthly folk of the cosmos in music — specifically, our Earthly music — then we’re going to have to make very earnest and whole-hearted efforts.”

Dame Isabel nodded decisively. “Yes. That certainly is what we must do.”

“I’ll send the skins over to your ship,” said Dyrus Boltzen.

“One more matter,” Dame Isabel put forward. “I have set curtain-time for tomorrow at three hours after noon, whatever this is called by your local time.”

“Three o’clock,” said Dyrus Boltzen. “Our day is twenty hours and twelve minutes long, so noon and midnight both come at six minutes after ten. Three o’clock should do very nicely.”

“I trust that you will do your best to see that the byzantaurs come to the performance?”

“I will do my best, indeed I will. And I’ll get the ’zant skins over to your ship first thing in the morning.” And Dyrus Boltzen raised his glass. “To a successful performance!”