‘They aren’t as good as they could be,’ he said with a slight wisp of a demoralised smile.
‘They’re unusable,’ she said correcting him. He probably thinks I’m blaming him, she realised. Something else that can’t be helped. ‘Right,’ she said, remembering the others with a sudden jerk of her head, looking up. Her mind went blank. Where had they left off yesterday? Her viruses rose up in a disordered flurry, jittery with nerves. I can’t remember what scene we were doing. I can’t do my job.
Thrawn was winning.
‘Cilia, where did we finish last night?’ She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly, but it was wan, near tears.
‘Um. Is that your line?’ Milena’s two fists were clenched together, shaking up and down as if rattling dice.
‘I haven’t managed to do any singing yet, Milena. I don’t sing until Virgil enters. I’m playing Virgil, remember?’
They were only thirty-seven lines into the narrative text, which was left unsung, intimated by the music and depicted in the visuals. The poor actors had not yet had a chance to sing. They had only posed for the imagery, over and over. They must think it such a waste of their time.
I will still do this, thought Milena the director. She reached across Toll, punched buttons, coordinates. She closed her eyes altogether. The light from the hall came into her mind for Reformation, and with her eyes closed, she saw Peterpaul and Cilia look at each other and shake their heads.
‘It really would be so much easier if you took those things out of your eyes,’ said Toll Barrett. He meant the mirror lenses.
‘I can’t Toll, and I can’t explain why,’ said Milena. She had to work with her eyes closed. Otherwise she would have to work rocking back and forth to escape the blurring of her vision.
I will do this anyway. I can still make this work. Milena had learned how to work with her eyes firmly closed.
Controlled by Milena’s mind came the images. She was so familiar with the images by now. She saw the dark wood, its polished dead branches, its black twigs like claws. She almost felt the soil, black with centuries of good, natural decay, overlaid with generations of fallen leaves and bark. Beyond the branches, she could feel the distance to the high, volcanic slopes. There was the brush of an early breeze, moving the branches in waves. She could feel the air scudding up the high slopes over the rocks, moving the clouds, as dawn light slowly broke with a pale tint of sunrise. It was the end of a terrible night, lost in a dark wood. Imagine, thought Milena, when this is all over.
The leopard entered, prowling, bright skinned, with a Cheshire cat smile. The music transcribed the words into sounds.
‘Uh,’ said Toll Barrett. ‘Maybe you could make that leopard look a little less human. Unless that’s what you want.’
Milena forced the face back to animal form. ‘OK,’ she said.
Peterpaul, in ordinary dress, an ordinary man, thick-necked in a short-sleeved shirt began to limp along the mountainside. The sun mounted up into the stars of morning. Milena placed him in the landscape. He walked on its ground, as the leopard prowled, to be joined by a lion.
Toll Barrett tapped her hand.
‘Milena, look at what you’re doing,’ he said.
Milena opened her eyes. All along the bottom of the lion’s feet, her beautifully imagined lion, there was a searing, crackling line of light: bad composite work. She closed her eyes. It was not there in what she was piecing together in her head. It shouldn’t be there. Milena knew how to build up an image! Damn. Damn. Damn.
Milena found that she had slammed the console three times. Cilia, Peterpaul, Toll all looked at her in shock.
Thrawn had found the way to truly ruin her. Oh the elegance of it, oh the technique! Thrawn was placing perfectly recreated, common, amateurish flaws right into the heart of the Reformation image. In exactly the right place. Who else could do that? Who would ever believe she was?
‘Lets just stop,’ said Toll.
Milena opened her eyes again. She opened her eyes again, and that meant she had to start rocking again, back and forth, from side to side, like an autistic child.
Cilia looked stricken. She walked forward, playing with the rings on her fingers. She leaned over the counter and looked into Milena’s eyes, or rather tried to. The exchange was cut off by the mirror.
‘Milena. Is all of this too much for you?’
‘No,’ said Milena, hard, determined.
‘It’s a huge project and needs professional imaging. There’s no shame in admitting that.’
‘You’ve done your best and it hasn’t worked.’ Toll Barrett was less sympathetic. Peterpaul was a Singer and refused to speak if it meant a choice between stammering and sounding absurd. He said nothing, but his eyes were heavy on her.
Milena went very still and quiet, closing her eyes. ‘We’re going to try again,’ she said, her face taut. She would not give in. The others sighed.
‘Hello everyone,’ said a familiar voice, ‘Having a good time I hope.’
The voice was strained, like a violin string tuned too tightly. Milena felt everything in her pull tight. There was a kind of ache, all along her scalp. She opened her eyes and looked around.
Thrawn was in the room. Thrawn was wearing a bright autumnal print, but it couldn’t disguise the depredations that had been made in her face. The mouth was sagging to one side. The mouth tried to smile, and failed, as if pulled down by weights hung from wires on her face. Her hair had not been combed for weeks. It was in clumps, lumpy uneven strands that fell into her eyes, or stood up at angles. This is how Thrawn is really looking. This is what this is doing to her. Milena found she could not speak.
‘Anyone mind if I watch?’ Thrawn asked. ‘I just thought I’d pop in and see how it’s going. You must be nearly finished by now. How long has it been since you started? Over two months, isn’t it?’
Milena still said nothing. Silence.
‘Right,’ said Toll Barrett. ‘See what you think of this.’
He replayed what had just been recorded.
The mountain, the pass, the leopard, the lion, the music again, gone over so often it had become almost nauseatingly dull, Rolfa’s beautiful music made unpalatable by long hours of failure. And there it was again, the unreal, mottled flare of light around the lion’s feet. The stars were bleary overhead.
‘Don’t look at the composite,’ said Milena, to Toll. ‘Look at Thrawn. Just keep looking at Thrawn.’
Toll turned. Milena reached down into her bag for the flask.
‘If you’re having trouble,’ said Thrawn, in wary voice, offering genuine help. ‘I could come in, brush these up for you.’ Her eyes were round and sad.
‘Just watch her, Toll.’ Milena unscrewed the cup from the top of the flask. She filled the cup full of water.
I fling water at the light of the image and it is distorted, and she is shown to be a hologram. What a waste of water. Milena sipped it thirstily and looked at Thrawn. Milena saw the worn face and the wild hair. Each hair was visible, individual, out of place, and the wrinkles about the mouth did not float about the face but were embedded in its flesh.
Is that a hologram? Could that possibly be a hologram? What if Thrawn is really here? If I throw water over her and she is really here, that will simply help convince everyone that I’m the one who has gone crazy.
Milena scanned Thrawn, looking at her for some flaw, some line of light. It was perfect. There was even a
