Dark Benediction

The playwright returned with her Scotch mist and gave Thornier a hostilely curious glance.

“Bless your heart, Bernie,” she said, the round vowels returning, then to Thornier: “Thorny, would you do me a favor? I’ve been trying to corner D’Uccia, but he’s tied up with a servo salesman somewhere. Somebody’s got to run and pick up a mannequin from the depot. The shipment was delivered, but the trucker missed a doll crate. We’ll need it for the runthrough. Could you—”

“Sure, Miss Ferne. Do I need a requisition order?”

“No, just sign the delivery ticket. And Thorny, see if the new part for the Maestro’s been flown in yet. Oh, and one other thing—the Maestro chewed up the Peltier tape. We’ve got a duplicate, but we should have two, just to be safe.”

“I’ll see if they have one in stock,” he murmured, and turned to go.

D’Uccia stood in the lobby with the salesman when he passed through. The theater manager saw him and smirked happily.

“…Certain special features, of course,” the salesman was saying. “It’s an old building, and it wasn’t designed with autojanitor systems in mind, like buildings are now. But we’ll tailor the installation to fit your place, Mr. D’Uccia. We want to do the job right, and a packaged unit wouldn’t do it.”

“Yah, you gimme da price, hah?”

“We’ll have an estimate for you by tomorrow. I’ll have an engineer over this afternoon to make the survey, and he’ll work up a layout tonight.”

“Whatsa ‘bout the demonstration, uh? Whatsa ‘bout you show how da swhip-op machine go?”

The salesman hesitated, eying the janitor who waited nearby. “Well, the floor-cleaning robot is only a small part of the complete service, but… I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll bring a packaged char—all over this afternoon, and let you have a look at it.”

“Fine. Datsa fine. You bring her, den we see.”

They shook hands. Thornier stood with his arms folded, haughtily inspecting a bug that crawled across the frond of a potted palm, and waiting for a chance to ask D’Uccia for the keys to the truck. He felt the theater manager’s triumphant gaze, but gave no indication that he heard.

“We can do the job for you all right, Mr. D’Uccia. Cut your worries in half. And that’ll cut your doctor bills in half, too, like you say. Yes, sir! A man in your position gets ground down with just plain human inefficiency—other people’s inefficiency. You’ll never have to worry about that, once you get the building autojanitored, no sir!”

“T’ank you kindly.”

“Thank you, Mr. D’Uccia, and I’ll see you later this afternoon.”

The salesman left.

“Well, bom?” D’Uccia grunted to the janitor.

“The keys to the truck. Miss Ferne wants a pickup from the depot.”

D’Uccia tossed them to him. “You hear what the man say? Letsa machines do alla work, hah? Always you wantsa day off. O.K., you takka da day off, ever’day pretty soon. Nice for you, hah, ragazzo?”

Thornier turned away quickly to avoid displaying the surge of unwanted anger. “Be back in an hour,” he grunted, and hurried away on his errand, his jaw working in sullen resentment. Why wait around for two humiliating weeks? Why not just walk out? Let D’Uccia do his own chores until the autojan was installed. He’d never be able to get another job around the theater anyhow, so D’Uccia’s reaction wouldn’t matter.

I’ll walk out now, he thought—and immediately knew that he wouldn’t. It was hard to explain to himself, but when he thought of the final moment when he would be free to look for a decent job and a comfortable living—he felt a twinge of fear that was hard to understand.

The janitor’s job had paid him only enough to keep him alive in a fourth floor room where he cooked his own meager meals and wrote memoirs of the old days, but it had kept him close to the lingering remnants of something he loved.

“Theater,” they called it. Not the theater—as it was to the scalper’s victim, the matinee housewife, or the awestruck hick—but just “theater.” It wasn’t a place, wasn’t a business, wasn’t the name of an art. “Theater” was a condition of the human heart and soul. Jade Ferne was theater. So was Ian Feria. So was Mela, poor kid, before her deal with Smithfield. Some had it, others didn’t. In the old days, the ones that didn’t have it soon got out. But the ones that had it, still had it, even after the theater was gobbled up by technological change. And they hung around. Some of them, like Jade and Ian and Mela, adapted to the change, profited by the prostitution of the stage, and developed ulcers and a guilty conscience. Still, they were theater, and because they were, he, Thornier, hung around, too, scrubbing the floors they walked on, and feeling somehow that he was still in theater. Now he was leaving. And now he felt the old bitterness boiling up inside again. The bitterness had been chronic and passive, and now it threatened to become active and acute.

If I could only give them one last performance! he thought. One last great role.

But that thought led to the fantasy-plan for revenge, the plan that came to him often as he wandered about the empty theater. Revenge was no good. And the plan was only a daydream. And yet—he wasn’t going to get another chance.

He set his jaw grimly and drove on to the Smithfield depot.

The depot clerk had hauled the crated mannequin to the fore, and it was waiting for Thornier when he entered the stockroom. He rolled it out from the wall on a dolly, and the janitor helped him wrestle the coffin-sized packing case onto the counter.

“Don’t take it to the truck yet,” the clerk grunted around the fat stub of a cigar. “It ain’t a new doll, and you gotta sign a release.”

“What kind of a release?”

“Liability for malfunction. If the doll breaks down during the show, you can’t sue Smithfield. It’s standard prack for used-doll rentals.”

“Why didn’t they send a new one, then?”

“Discontinued production on this model. You want it, you take a used one, and sign the release.”

“Suppose I don’t sign?”

“No siggy, no dolly.”

“Oh.” He thought for a moment. Obviously, the clerk had mistaken him for production personnel. His signature wouldn’t mean anything—but it was getting late, and Jade was rushed. Since the release wouldn’t be valid anyhow he reached for the form.

“Wait,” said the clerk. “You better look at what you’re signing for.” He reached for a wrecking claw and slipped it under a metal binding strap. The strap broke with a screechy snap. “It’s been overhauled,” the clerk continued. “New solenoid fluid injected, new cosmetic job. Nothing really wrong. A few fatigue spots in the padding, and one toe missing. But you oughta have a look, anyhow.”

He finished breaking the lid-fastenings loose and turned to a wall-control board. “We don’t have a complete Maestro here,” he said as he closed a knife switch, “but we got the control transmitters, and some taped sequences. It’s enough to pre-flight a doll.”

Equipment hummed to life somewhere behind the panel. The clerk adjusted several dials while Thornier waited impatiently.

“Let’s see—” muttered the cleric. “Guess we’ll start off with the Frankenstein sequence.” He flipped a switch.

A purring sound came faintly from within the coffin-like box. Thornier watched nervously. The lid stirred, began to rise. A woman’s hands came into view, pushing the lid up from within. The purring increased. The lid clattered aside to hang by the metal straps.

The woman sat up and smiled at the janitor.

Thornier went white. “Mela!” he hissed.

“Ain’t that a chiller?” chuckled the clerk. “Now for the hoochy-coochy sequence—”

“No—”

The clerk flipped another switch. The doll stood up slowly, chastely nude as a window-dummy. Still smiling at Thorny, the doll did a bump and a grind.