wanted to reach. Perhaps, if I excused myself to use the bathroom, I could call on one of Egyptia’s extensions upstairs, experimenting till I got the number right—no. A blue call-light came on in every other phone console when one was operational. Jason and Medea would see it. They’d be watching for it.
Chloe couldn’t be here tonight because Chloe had a virus. Why hadn’t I had a virus?
“Women of the palace,” said Egyptia, “my brother was a god to you. Yet to these beasts he is carrion. He is left for the kites to chew upon—”
“Oh my,” said Clovis, “now the play’s getting to sound like the chess game. Do you think my weak stomach is up to this drama?”
“Don’t mock me, Clovis,” shouted Egyptia in despair.
“It’s half past ten P.M.,” said Clovis. “I’m going to call the taxi.”
“Oh God,” cried Egyptia, “is it time to leave?”
“Getting that way. Jane, pour her another drink.”
I wasn’t sure about that, although she seemed incapable of drunkenness in her frenzy. She had dressed in her costume and put on her makeup here because of her emotional rift with the rest of the company. “They give me
Now I fetched her grey-blue fur cape coat, on the inside of which some of the body makeup was sure to rub off. She’d bought that coat the day I took Silver with me to Chez Stratos.
“Oh, Jane. Oh—Jane—”
“I’m here.” I sounded mature and patient. Concerned, kind. Just a touch compassionately amused. I sounded like Silver.
“Ja-aaaa-nnne—”
She stared at me. The guillotine awaited her, and soon the tumbrel would be at the door.
“You are going to be so good,” I said to her. “So good, the Asteroid will probably fall on the Theatra Concordacis.”
Clovis came in again in a little while.
“Months to get through,” he said. “It’ll be by the pier in half an hour.” He looked at me, and added, sotto voce, “The cab rank was the second call.”
“Clovis—” I said, realizing he’d put his unspecified plan into action.
“Later.” He glanced at Jason and Medea, who were thoughtfully watching us. “Better kill everyone else on the board off quickly, pets, we leave in ten minutes.”
“Oh. The awful play,” said Jason.
“You don’t have to come,” Clovis said.
“We do,” said Medea. “We want to be with Jane. We haven’t seen her for so long.”
“Christ, what a strange night,” Clovis said to it, as we stepped out into the enclosure before the lift shaft.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Jason.
“How should I know?” said Clovis.
The lift came, and Egyptia trembled in my arms. As we went down to the ferry, the night rose up the jewelry buildings. There was a great stillness, but that was only the coldness of the snow. The ferry was deserted, and the cab was waiting at the other side of the water.
We reached the Theatra about eleven-fifteen P.M., after walking up the Grand Stairway and by the tunnel foun-tain, which didn’t play in winter. But it was the exact spot where I had first seen Silver.
There were quite a lot of people about the main facade. We went around the side, and into the bleak backstage, and into Egyptia’s bleaker dressing room. When the reluctant wall heater had been activated, Egyptia stood shuddering.
“My father slain, my brother slaughtered. Death is the legacy of this House of the Peacock. Everyone go out. Everyone but Jane. Jane, don’t leave me.”
“We’ll wait outside,” said Medea. I knew they’d watch the door.
I had to stay, anyway, now, for Clovis’s news. Whatever it was. I was really past caring. Schizophrenic, as before, I existed here, and I existed in a sort of precognitive limbo of rushing home to the flat on Tolerance.
In the corridor, the young man I remembered was called Corinth clumped past in metal toeless boots and a metal scaled cloak, eating a chicken leg morosely.
The handsome thin man, who had directed the drama, looked in twenty minutes later, flustered and chilly.
“Oh, so you got here,” he said to Egyptia. Her eyes implored him, but he was finished with her. There would be no other productions for Egyptia here, despite her handy wealth. One could see that in his face. “Just a last piece of advice, dear,” he said. “Try to recall there are a couple of other people with you in the cast.”
She opened her lips, and he walked out, banging the door so it almost fell off. The place was not in good repair.
“They hate me,” she whispered, stunned. “I was generous to them, I shared my home with them, my love. I was part of them. And they hate me.”
It wasn’t the hour for truth. Or at least, for only one kind.
“They’re jealous,” I said. “They know they’ll be out-shone. Anyway, everyone was against Antektra, too, apparently. It might be helpful.”
“The screech of the peacock,” she said, “the bird of ill-omened and curse-laden death.”
I retouched her body makeup. I wondered if I could have done what she would have to do, and some part of me began to tell me I could, and to visualize I’d be just as scared as she was, and maybe more.
“Jane, you’ve changed so much,” she said, staring at me in the smeary mirror, seeing me for the first time. “You’re beautiful. And fey. And so calm. So wise.”
“It’s the company I keep,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Is it?” She was vague. She’d forgotten, just as Clovis reported. “Do you have a lover, Jane?”
Yes, Egyptia. A silver metal lover.
“Maybe.”
And then, startling me: “What happened with the robot, Jane?”
“Well.” I steeled myself. “He’s wonderful. Now and then.”
“Yes,” she said wistfully, “more beautiful and more clever than any man. And more gentle. Did you find that? And those songs. He sang me love songs. He knew how I needed love, that I live on love… Wonderful songs. And his touch—he could touch me, and—”
Just as I felt I could no longer bear it, shocked to find the old wound still raw, she was silenced. A dreadful siren squealed over our heads and we flew together in mindless fright.
A tinny laugh followed the siren. Patently it was a “joke” they’d rigged for her benefit. “Five minutes to curtain-up, Egypt.”
I thought she might have a fit. But instead, suddenly she was altered.
“Please go now, Jane,” she said. “I must be alone.”
Outside, Jason and Medea fell in beside me.
“We have seats in the third row. How bourgeois of Clovis to ask for those. You’ve got Chloe’s seat, which is the least good. Funny you didn’t have a seat of your own, if you knew you were coming here.”
But in fact, funnier still, for Clovis had done a juggling act and changed the seats around. To their consternation, the twins found they were in the first row; alone—not even seated together.
“What a shame,” said Clovis. “There’s been some kind of mix-up. Doubtless part of the theatre’s vendetta against all of us.”
The twins would now have to sit through the whole play getting cricked necks from turning to see if I was still there, two rows behind them.
As Clovis and I sat down on the end of the row, he said, “I suggest you leave after Egyptia’s first speech. I gather ten idiots rush down the aisles, and when they reach the stage, there’s a storm. The special effects are rather gruesome. Eyes and intestines unsurgically removed. I shall look the other way, but Jason and Medea will be riveted. I think you should go then. If they notice, it’ll take them half an hour to fight their way out, and with luck they’ll collide with the second relay down the aisle, which is a procession of some sort.” Jason and Medea had
