producer’s mold as she prepared to return to her crowd. “The only thing wrong with autodrama is that it’s scaled down to the moron-level—but show business always has been, and probably should be. Even if it gives us kids a pain.” She smiled and patted his cheek. “Sorry I shocked you. Au ‘voir, Thorny. And luck.”
When she was gone, he sat fingering the cartridges in his pocket and staring at nothing. Didn’t any of them have any sensibilities? Jade too, a seller of principle. And he had always thought of her as having merely compromised with necessity, against her real wishes. The idea that she could really believe autodrama capable of rendering a better-than-human performance—
But she didn’t. Of course she needed to rationalize, to excuse what she was doing—
He sighed and went to lock the door, then to recover the old “March” script from the trunk. His hands were trembling slightly. Had he planted enough of an idea in Jade’s mind; would she remember it later? Or perhaps remember it too clearly, and suspect it?
He shook himself sternly. No apprehensions allowed. When Rick rang the bell for the second run-through, it would be his entrance-cue, and he must be in-character by then. Too bad he was no schauspieler, too bad he couldn’t switch himself on-and-off the way Jade could do, but the necessity for much inward preparation was the burden of the darfsteller. He could not change into role without first changing himself, and letting the revision seep surfaceward as it might, reflecting the inner state of the man.
Strains of Moussorgsky pervaded the walls. He closed his eyes to listen and feel. Music for empire. Music at once brutal and majestic. It was the time of upheaval, of vengeance, of overthrow. Two times, superimposed. It was the time of opening night, with Ryan Thornier—ten years ago—cast in the starring role.
He fell into a kind of trance as he listened and clocked the pulse of his psyche and remembered. He scarcely noticed when the music stopped, and the first few lines of the play came through the walls.
It had begun.
Thornier took a deep breath and seemed to come awake. When he opened his eyes and stood up, the janitor was gone. The janitor had been a nightmare role, nothing more.
And Ryan Thornier, star of “Walkaway,” favored of the critics, confident of a bright future, walked out of the storage room with a strange lightness in his step. He carried a broom, he still wore the dirty coveralls, but now as if to a masquerade.
The Peltier mannequin lay sprawled on the stage in a grotesque heap. Ryan Thornier stared at it calmly from behind the set and listened intently to the babble of stage hands and technicians that milled about him:
“Don’t know. Can’t tell yet. It came out staggering and gibbering-like it was drunk. It reached for a table, then it fell on its face—”
“Acted like the trouble might be a mismatched tape, but Rick rechecked it. Really Peltier’s tape—”
“Can’t figure it out. Miss Ferne’s having kittens.”
Thornier paused to size up his audience. Jade, Ian, and their staff milled about in the orchestra section. The stage was empty, except for the sprawled mannequin. Too much frantic conversation, all around. His entrance would go unnoticed. He walked slowly onstage and stood over the fallen doll with his hands in his pockets and his face pulled down in a somber expression. After a moment, he nudged the doll with his toe, paused, nudged it again. A faint giggle came from the orchestra. The corner of his eye caught Jade’s quick glance toward the stage. She paused in the middle of a sentence.
Assured that she watched, he played to an imaginary audience-friend standing just off stage. He glanced toward the friend, lifted his brows questioningly. The friend apparently gave him the nod. He looked around warily, then knelt over the fallen doll. He took its pulse, nodded eagerly to the offstage friend. Another giggle came from orchestra. He lifted the doll’s head, sniffed its breath, made a face. Then, gingerly, he rolled it.
He reached deep into the mannequin’s pocket, having palmed his own pocket watch beforehand. His hand paused there, and he smiled to his offstage accomplice and nodded eagerly. He withdrew the watch and held it up by its chain for his accomplice’s approval.
A light burst of laughter came from the production personnel. The laughter frightened the thief. He shot an apprehensive glance around the stage, hastily returned the watch to the fallen dummy, felt its pulse again. He traded a swift glance with his confederate, whispered “Aha!” and smiled mysteriously. Then he helped the doll to its feet and staggered away with it—a friend leading a drunk home to its family. In the doorway, he paused to frame his exit with a wary backward glance that said he was taking it to a dark alley where he could rob it in safety.
Jade was gaping at him.
Three technicians had been watching from just off the set, and they laughed heartily and clapped his shoulder as he passed, providing the offstage audience to which he had seemed to be playing.
Good-natured applause came from Jade’s people out front, and as Thorny carried the doll away to storage, he was humming softly to himself.
At five minutes till six, Rick Thomas and a man from the Smithfield depot climbed down out of the booth, and Jade pressed forward through the crowd to question him with her eyes.
“The tape,” he said. “Defective”
“But it’s too late to get another!” she squawked.
“Well, it’s the tape, anyway.”
“How do you
“Well-trouble’s bound to be in one of three places. The doll, the tape, or the analogue tank where the tape- data gets stored. We cleared the tank and tried it with another actor. Worked O.K. And the doll works O.K. on an uninterpreted run. So, by elimination, the tape.”
She groaned and slumped into a seat, covering her face with her hands.
“No way at
“We called every depot within five hundred miles. They’d have to cut one from a master. Take too long.”
“So we call off the show!” Ian Feria called out resignedly, throwing up his hands in disgust. “Refund on tickets, open tomorrow.”
“Wait!” snapped the producer, looking up suddenly. “Dooch—the house is sold out, isn’t it?”
“Yah,” D’Uccia grunted irritably. “She’sa filled op. Wassa matter with you pipple, you don’getsa Maestro fix? Wassa matter? We lose the money, hah?”
“Oh, shut up. Change curtain time to nine, offer refunds if they won’t wait. Ian, keep at it. Get things set up for tonight.” She spoke with weary determination, glancing around at them. “There may be a slim chance. Keep at it. I’m going to try something.” She turned and started away.
“Hey!” Feria called.
“Explain later,” she muttered over her shoulder.
She found Thornier replacing burned-out bulbs in the wall fixtures. He smiled down at her while he reset the clamps of an amber glass panel. “Need me for something, Miss Ferne?” he called pleasantly from the stepladder.
“I might,” she said tersely. “Did you mean that offer about standing in for dud mannequins?”
A bulb exploded at her feet after it slipped from his hand. He came down slowly, gaping at her.
“You’re not serious!”
“Think you could try a run-through as Andreyev?” He shot a quick glance toward the stage, wet his lips, stared at her dumbly.
“Well
“It’s been ten years, Jade… I—”
“You can read over the script, and you can wear an earplug radio—so Rick can prompt you from the booth.”
She made the offer crisply and matter-of-factly, and it made Thorny smile inwardly. It was theater-calmly asking the outrageously impossible, gambling on it, and getting it.
“The customers—they’re expecting Peltier.”
“Right now I’m only asking you to try a runthrough, Thorny. After that, we’ll see. But remember it’s our only chance of going on tonight.”
