Dark Benediction

“Andreyev,” he breathed. “The lead.”

“Please, Thorny, will you try?”

He looked around the theater, nodded slowly. “I’ll go study my lines,” he said quietly, inclining his head with what he hoped was just the proper expression of humble bravery.

I’ve got to make it good, I’ve got to make it great. The last chance, the last great role—

Glaring footlights, a faint whisper in his ear, and the cold panic of the first entrance. It came and passed quickly. Then the stage was a closed room, and the audience—of technicians and production personnel—was only the fourth wall, somewhere beyond the lights. He was Andreyev, commissioner of police, party whip, loyal servant of the regime, now tottering in the revolutionary storm of the Eighties. The last Bolshevik, no longer a rebel, no longer a radical, but now the loyalist, the conservatist, the defender of the status quo, champion of the Marxist ruling classes. No longer conscious of a self apart from that of the role, he lived the role. And the others, the people he lived it with, the people whose feet crackled faintly as they stepped across the floor, he acted and reacted with them and against them as if they, too, shared life, and while the play progressed he forgot their lifelessness for a little time.

Caught up by the magic, enfolded in scheme of the inevitable, borne along by the tide of the drama, he felt once again the sense of belonging as a part in a whole, a known and predictable whole that moved as surely from scene i to the final curtain as man from womb to tomb, and there were no lost years, no lapse or sense of defeated purpose between the rehearsals of those many years ago and this the fulfillment of opening night. Only when at last he muffed a line, and Rick’s correction whispered in his ear did the spell that was gathered about him briefly break—and he found himself unaccountably frightened, frightened by the sudden return of realization that all about him was Machine, and frightened, too, that he had forgotten. He had been conforming to the flighty mechanical grace of the others, reflexively imitating the characteristic lightness of the mannequins’ movements, the dancelike qualities of their playing. To know suddenly, having forgotten it, that the mouth he had just kissed was not a woman’s, but the rubber mouth of a doll, and that dancing patterns of high frequency waves from the Maestro had controlled the solenoid currents that turned her face lovingly up toward his, had lifted the cold soft hands to touch his face. The faint rubbery smell-taste hung about his mouth.

When his first exit came, he went off trembling. He saw Jade coming toward him, and for an instant, he felt a horrifying certainty that she would say, “Thorny, you were almost as good as a mannequin!” Instead, she said nothing, but only held out her hand to him.

“Was it too bad, Jade?”

“Thorny, you’re in! Keep it up, and you might have more than a one-night stand. Even Ian’s convinced. He squealed at the idea, but now he’s sold.”

“No kicks? How about the lines with Piotr.”

“Wonderful. Keep it up. Darling, you were marvelous.”

“It’s settled, then?”

“Darling, it’s never settled until the curtain comes up. You know that.” She giggled. “We had one kick all right—or maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”

He stiffened slightly. “Oh? Who from?”

“Mela Stone. She saw you come on, turned white as a sheet, and walked out. I can’t imagine!”

He sank slowly on a haggard looking couch and stared at her. “The hell you can’t,” he grated softly.

“She’s here on a personal appearance contract, you know. To give an opening and an intermission commentary on the author and the play.” Jade smirked at him gleefully. “Five minutes ago she called back, tried to cancel her appearance. Of course, she can’t pull a stunt like that. Not while Smithfield owns her.”

Jade winked, patted his arm, tossed an uncoded copy of the script at him, then headed back toward the orchestra. Briefly he wondered what Jade had against Mela. Nothing serious, probably. Both had been actresses. Mela got a Smithfield contract; Jade didn’t get one. It was enough.

By the time he had reread the scene to follow, his second cue was approaching, and he moved back toward the stage.

Things went smoothly. Only three times during the first act did he stumble over lines he had not rehearsed in ten years. Rick’s prompting was in his ear, and the Maestro could compensate to some extent for his minor deviations from the script. This time he avoided losing himself so completely in the play; and this time the weird realization that he had become one with the machine-set pattern did not disturb him. This time he remembered, but when the first break came—

“Not quite so good, Thorny,” Ian Feria called. “Whatever you were doing in the first scene, do it again. That was a little wooden. Go through that last bit again, and play it down. Andreyev’s no mad bear from the Urals. It’s Marka’s moment, anyhow. Hold in.”

He nodded slowly and looked around at the frozen dolls. He had to forget the machinery. He had to lose himself in it and live it, even if it meant being a replacement link in the mechanism. It disturbed him somehow, even though he was accustomed to subordinating himself to the total gestalt of the scene as in other days. For no apparent reason, he found himself listening for laughter from the production people, but none came.

“All right,” Feria called. “Bring ‘em alive again.”

He went on with it, but the uneasy feeling nagged at him. There was self-mockery in it, and the expectation of ridicule from those who watched. He could not understand why, and yet—

There was an ancient movie—one of the classics—in which a man named Chaplin had been strapped into a seat on a production line where he performed a perfectly mechanical task in a perfectly mechanical fashion, a task that could obviously have been done by a few cams and a linkage or two, and it was one of the funniest comedies of all times—yet tragic. A task that made him a part in an over-all machine.

He sweated through the second and third acts in a state of compromise with himself-overplaying it for purposes of self-preparation, yet trying to convince Feria and Jade that he could handle it and handle it well. Overacting was necessary in spots, as a learning technique. Deliberately ham up the rehearsal to impress lines on memory, then underplay it for the real performance—it was an old trick of troupers who had to do a new show each night and had only a few hours in which to rehearse and learn lines. But would they know why he was doing it?

When it was finished, there was no time for another run-through, and scarcely time for a nap and a bite to eat before dressing for the show.

“It was terrible, Jade,” he groaned. “I muffed it. I know I did.”

“Nonsense. You’ll be in tune tonight, Thorny. I knew what you were doing, and I can see past it.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to pull in.”

“About the final scene, the shooting—”

He shot her a wary glance. “What about it?”

“The gun’ll be loaded tonight, blanks, of course. And this time you’ll have to fall.”

“So?”

“So be careful where you fall. Don’t go down on the copper bus-lugs. A hundred and twenty volts mightn’t kill you, but we don’t want a dying Andreyev bouncing up and spitting blue sparks. The stagehands’ll chalk out a safe section for you. And one other thing—”

“Yes?”

“Marka fires from close range. Don’t get burned.”

“I’ll watch it.”

She started away, then paused to frown back at him steadily for several seconds. “Thorny, I’ve got a queer feeling about you. I can’t place it exactly.”

He stared at her evenly, waiting.

“Thorny, are you going to wreck the show?”

His face showed nothing, but something twisted inside him. She looked beseeching, trusting, but worried. She was counting on him, placing faith in him—

“Why should I botch up the performance, Jade? Why should I do a thing like that?”

“I’m asking you.”