havoc with my sinuses. I think the doctor has forgotten us.'
'Go home then,' said Hyacinth haughtily.
'As if I could. I don't want to anyway. Do you?'
'What? I haven't even slept through a tenth of the camp yet. I've decided that when we get back to Earth I'm going to get a grant to produce an interactive holie called, Thrust In Among The Savages or Discretion is the Better Part of Amour.'
'You're disgusting,' said Hal, laughing.
Diana snorted. 'Sure to go down in the annals of literature with that awful holie Quinn acted in two years ago, that historical romance about the early computer industry-'
'What?' asked Hyacinth. 'Access To Love? That wasn't so bad. At least they researched it accurately. Hal, could you stop laughing and come help me?'
'Hyacinth, how can you say so?' Diana helped them hoist the last segment of floor. 'The dialogue was atrocious, and the acting was worse. Quinn was the only decent actor in the piece, except for that man who played her secretary.' They dropped the floor into place and slid the pegs in.
Yomi jogged up. 'Curtain in two hours. Owen wants as much of the light as possible. Eat your dinner first. Wait, first slide that screen one meter to the right…'
When all was settled to Yomi's satisfaction, they returned to their encampment. Diana ate sparingly and then layered her clothing for her double role: a skirt and blouse for the sister of the heroine of the folktale-Anahita took the role of the heroine Mekhala, of course-and a shift underneath for Grusha in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. She paced out her entrances and exits and some of her scenes on the ground, walking her stage directions, pausing to murmur the lines under her breath, and walking on. After a bit, Owen gathered up the Company and led them over together.
Somehow Owen had arranged on such short notice to give a command performance. The house was huge, seated in precise disorder out from the platform. People stood farther back, too far, really, to hear anything, and the open air would in any case suck the volume from the actors' voices, although Joseph had cunningly constructed the screens with chambered skeins that deflected the sound out into the audience.
Owen did not introduce them. Phillippe came out in stiff red and gold robes and struck first a bell, then a pattern on his drums, and then the bell again. The tone rang loudly and held long-but Diana knew it was augmented by a few tricky electronics built into a strip wound around the inside lip of the cup. The house stilled. Seshat led the women in-all but Quinn, who played one of the wind demons-mourning for their servitude to the khaja. This was the story of the girl Mekhala, who brought freedom to the jaran by trading her own freedom for the gift of horses.
The house talked all the way through it. Buzzed, more like, an intent, aggravating buzz that niggled at Diana's concentration through the entire piece. Anahita once dropped out of character and directed an angry glare toward the wings, as if expecting Owen to fix the problem. At last they finished.
Phillippe rang the bell again and retreated. As soon as he came through the screens he pulled a face. 'What a disaster!''
'I said it would be.' Anahita tossed her hair back over her shoulder. All the actors turned and listened: the buzz had increased to a dull roar. 'But Owen wouldn't listen to me.'
Owen appeared. He had a strange expression on his face. 'Listen up. They want us to do it again.'
'Again! And put up with that! You must be-'
'Anahita, shut up. Phillippe, on your cue.' Owen retreated. They shrugged at each other and began again.
This time the house was dead silent. It took Diana two scenes into the pastiche to understand: This time they understood what was being told to them. Last time they had been busy figuring it out. The audience absorbed the piece, like a sponge sucking moisture, and the longer it went on, the more exhausted Diana felt, even though her part was only a secondary one. Gwyn sweated buckets again. His wind spirit clothes were damp with it. When they finished, the house gave them silence, as they had that very first time, but this had reverence in it that was above the simple respect for their craft.
Owen was delirious with satisfaction. 'We reached them! We reached them!' he said over and over as if all other words had been erased from his memory.
'Go on,' said Yomi. 'We're canceling the Brecht for tonight. Get back to camp and get clean.'
'No. No.' Owen intervened before any of the actors could straggle away. 'En masse. We go as a troupe. Let no one see us as who we really are. Let them think we have brought the tale to life, that who they saw were the real participants and we only the channel through which they manifested. Let them think there is magic in our craft.'
'He's crazy,' muttered Hal to Diana as they cut out behind the platform with Owen and Ginny and Yomi and Joseph as escorts. 'I think it's dangerous to play with people's superstitions.''
Most of the jaran who had watched the performance remained in the area in front of the stage, and because they were well within the camp, no troops of horsemen impeded their progress, although the children raced to see them, providing an additional escort. Soon it would be twilight. A thick plume of smoke rose up on the western horizon, obscuring the sun, reddening the sky.
'We're under Soerensen's protection, Hal,' said Diana. 'Don't forget that. What do you think that smoke is?'
Hal shook his head, making a wry face. 'What do you think it is, Diana? Or are you really that naive?'
But the answer was obvious, if ugly. Something burned, something large, like a town or a city. And the jaran camp celebrated. What else would they be celebrating but a victory? She shuddered. How easily they walked and feasted and watched the strange khaja art called theater. There three young men, two blond, one dark, walked along parallel to the actors, and they laughed and made jokes and recounted stories among themselves. She could imagine it: and how about those ten soldiers I killed? What, only ten? I killed twenty.
What of the wounded? Where were they? Had Dr. Hierakis seen the performance or had she been too busy patching up torn bodies? And the poor city folk, those who were still alive, had no such medical recourse. They could only suffer, or die.
The dissonance felt so strong that it was physical, a stone in her stomach, bile in her throat. These jaran soldiers could avidly watch a performance and think nothing of the battle-or had it been a massacre? — fought only a day, an hour, before. And they could laugh.
One of the blond men made an expansive gesture and turned his head so far to the side that she could see him full in the face. She stopped stock-still, and first Quinn, then Dejhuti, bumped into her.
'Diana!'
She pushed past Hal and ran, heedless of Yomi calling after her, toward the three jaran men. 'Anatoly!' she cried.
He halted and stared at her. A second later he averted his gaze. Even when she halted in front of him, he did not recognize her. He glanced at his companions, but they simply shrugged and looked bewildered.
'Anatoly! It's Diana.'
He drew back. His double take was so theatrical that she almost laughed, except she could not, because he still did not understand who she was. Exasperated, she grabbed his right hand and pulled his fingers across her left cheek, smearing her makeup. He stared at the residue on his fingers, hesitated, and, more gently, rubbed more makeup from her face. He looked astounded. He was also drunk.
'Go,' he said to his companions. 'Get.' They excused themselves unsteadily and stumbled off.
Diana looked back over her shoulder to the company, but Owen had already herded them on, acquiescing to her defection. She turned back to Anatoly. 'When did you get back?' she demanded in Rhuian. 'I didn't even know you were in camp, damn you!' He didn't look as if he had just been in a battle. His clothes were clean and his face newly shaved. She ran a hand along his jawline, but he captured it and drew it away.
'Not here,' he said slowly in khush. 'We go to our tent. I missed you, Diana.' Then he grinned his wonderful, captivating grin, and gestured to himself, to his face, his clothes, the gleam of his saber hilt in the fading light. 'This…' He considered, using his hands to emphasize his words. 'My grandmother-she washed me. She told me to wash.'
'Before you came to see me,' said Diana, bemused, and repeated it haltingly in khush.
'You speak khush!' He looked delighted. He took her by the elbow and pulled her along with him, toward their camp. 'You were-' The sentence was difficult for her to understand, except for the name of the character she had
