Compleat collected sff w.., p.412
COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 412
"What's wrong with California?" I demanded, hearing disbelief and perhaps a little hysteria in my voice.
"Shut up," Nye said. "I don't want the whole country to get hysterical just because California gets out of line temporarily. With any luck, we'll have the whole thing patched up in a month——"
"What's wrong with California?" I demanded again, louder in spite of myself. "Out of line how? Patch up what?"
Nye got up, put his hand on my chest, and pushed me back into the slab. "Lie down and shut up," he said, wrapping his sheet tighter, as if the steaming-room were cold. He sat on the foot of my tombstone and scowled anxiously at me.
My mind was rushing out and around and back again in wild ellipses, like an excited pup. It had figurative ears laid back and streaming in the wind of its own speed. So California had got out of line. And Comus was taking steps. I was aware suddenly of that sneaking feeling of pleased excitement at bad news that most of us feel if the news doesn't hit us personally. Everybody at some time or other must have wondered just what would happen if Comus drew a blank someday.
"Now listen and keep quiet," Ted Nye said. "California is—well, hypersensitive right now. The story's too complex to explain, but we know what we're doing. Just say the state's a frustrated social area at this time. They—well, they react badly to Comus. Oh, food shipments go through, and utilities work, and all that. But anything obviously labeled Comus in the public mind is just not operating."
"No Prowlers?" I asked incredulously.
"No Prowlers. No check stations. No Comus uniforms. Our boys have gone into plain clothes and we've withdrawn all but a minimum. We're giving California its head."
I gazed up at him, wild suspicions circling in my mind. What wasn't he telling me?
"The Anti—what was it?" I said. "Anti-Com? Anti-Comus? What about that, Ted?"
His face got darker. "I don't know what about it. If I did, I wouldn't be—never mind. The thing is, there's a bunch of wild-eyed neurotics out there who want to overthrow the government. We stumbled across one of their big shots by accident, in a routine Prowler check, and he spilled enough to scare us—if it's true. He thinks they've got something doped out that can stop Comus cold."
I laughed. Nye glared at me.
"Shut up. It isn't funny."
"I didn't think it was. It's ridiculous, not funny."
"I hope so. I don't see how they could do it. We can't figure out any way a thing as big and complex as Comus could possibly be licked by any means we know of." He paused and rubbed his face with the old, anxious gesture. "Of course, new things turn up all the time. We've got to believe there's an Anti-Com and we've got to believe it could work until we can prove otherwise. One good thing—it isn't finished yet. They're building parts for it at little separate workshops all over the state, assembling it as they go along in some central spot we haven't located—yet. With any kind of luck, we'll pick up a thread before it's ready to blow. We're trying."
I said, "On one man's say-so you've pulled Comus out of a whole area? I don't believe it."
Nye shook his head irritably. "Don't be a fool, Howard. We keep picking up word about the Anti-Com all over the area. We add a bit here and a bit there until a picture starts to shape. And besides——" Here he stopped and glared at me.
"Damn you, Howard, stop picking my brains."
"Listen, Ted," I said suddenly, "if all this is true, then it isn't safe in California! I'm not going. I——"
"You're going." His voice was grim. "It's safe enough. And we need you."
"But why?"
"We want to keep the patient happy. Light entertainment."
"That's the phoniest story I ever heard. You know nobody out there gives a damn about stage performances. Who's going to watch a traveling theater perform when you've got movies in three dimensions and full-color, mass-tailored to the regional interests? We can't compete in the sticks and you know it."
Ted sighed. "You'll get your audiences. For one thing, they won't go into the Comus Centers any more, so they don't see movies. They won't watch the broadcast. They'll be starved for entertainment and you'll provide it. Arena performances right out in the middle of the street, so nobody will feel hemmed in. The living theater is an exotic to people like that. They'll come."
"What kind of plays are we doing?"
"Just one. Very carefully written, too, by experts. Cross-roads, it's called. A fine job of writing. Oh, it'll pull, all right. And don't underestimate your own drawing power, Howard. People haven't forgotten Howard Rohan."
I said, "Is that why you've been releasing our old films?"
He made a nervous grimace. "I have a lot of reasons for everything I do. You know how your films were built. They happen to put over some ideas we need to circulate around country right now. Loyalty to old friends. The value of tried and true experience. Stuff like that. In case of——" He glanced at me. "Raleigh can't live forever. We expect trouble when he dies. That's what your job is, Howard. Helping block the trouble before it starts."
"How?" I asked bluntly.
"Follow orders. Put on the play exactly as written. No revising. It's very simple."
"Too simple. What's behind it, Ted?"
"Don't be too sharp, Howard. Just say I need a large-scale diversion in California. The people have to be distracted while some big things get done. Let me do the worrying, Howard."
I said, "You always liked grabbing tigers by the tail. But I'm not a tiger-grabber by choice. If California's that far gone toward real trouble, what am I getting into?"
"You want to back out, Howard?" he asked quietly.
For just an instant I remember very clearly the canary in its cage diving vigorously into its feathers for mites. A ghostly tremor of the old itching went over me. No, I couldn't go back into the magic room. It was no refuge now. I shook my head.
"Suppose there is a little trouble," Nye said. "Couldn't you handle it? Seems to me you had a reputation for an iron hand in the old days. That's another reason I wanted you for the job."
I ran a palm over my head in a gesture I couldn't remember making since I hit the skids. It felt good. My hair was short again, cut to a whisper, a thin cap over my skull. For an instant I stood outside myself as I used to stand, seeing myself as a tool to use on the stage. I remembered how it felt to hold a whole play in my hand, all the people on stage and behind it, all the people in the audience. The whole world, I thought. Yes, I could handle trouble. I can do it again, if I have to.
Ted Nye was watching me. "Well, that's that, then," he said in a brisk voice. "We'll fix you up with a troupe and get things rolling."
"Who's available?" I asked. "Do I hold readings?"
"There isn't time. I've got several troupes lined up and on the spot, or on their way. You'll have to take what's ready. Do you know anything about the Rosemeyer Players? Or the Circle Guild? Or the Swann Company?"
"Swann Company?" I echoed stupidly.
"Paul Swann and his players. You know them?"
"Swann?" I heard myself repeat, as if he hadn't spoken. And to myself I was saying, "It has to be coincidence, it has to be. Because I never had prescient dreams before, but now it's happened again. The man in the dream did say Anti-Com, not antic. He was going to kill Comus with an Anti-Com. And he told me to collect swans ..."
"Yes, I know the Swann Players," I heard myself go on, fairly smoothly, considering how I felt. "Give me the Swann people, Ted." I was probably looking at him now, but all I could see were the letters of fire spiraling down into darkness while a voice told me the fate of the nation depended on me and a flock of swans. Pure coincidence. It had to be. I thought, Maybe I should tell Ted——But when I tried to my mind went blank. I couldn't even speak.
"All right, then," Ted Nye said. He stood up and wrapped the toga tighter around him, looking like Caesar's ghost in the haze. "I'll see what I can do. Get some rest now, Howard. You leave tomorrow, and remember; I'm depending on you."
I said, "Yes, I know," in a disinterested voice, hardly hearing. I was trying to read what those letters had said and feeling a strange, unwilling panic as I tried. The steam thickened and swirled. I heard Ted's bare feet thud on the floor, and then a door closed softly between us.
-
CHAPTER V
THE WIND BLEW through the redwoods, smelling of pine. I slid down farther in the jolting truck with every bump, until the back of my head rested on the upholstery and I was looking up at an angle through the redwoods at the sky. Under us I could feel the road climb, and a river somewhere beyond the trees made brawling noises.
All the way from the landing field I'd had that unreal feeling you get when you've come too far too fast. Part of me was still back in New York among the tall buildings, part of me jolted along the highway through the redwoods. Somewhere in between, the rest of me, maybe the essential part, felt drawn out thin and long like a thread between east and west, not sure yet which end of the line was the real Rohan. Maybe neither.
You could smell the difference in the air out here on the edge of the Pacific. Something was stirring. There was trouble in the wind. Old tags of history floated through my mind. No law west of the Pecos. No Comus west of Blythe ... It gave me a strangely naked feeling.
Under us the broad black highway twelve lanes wide swept in climbing curves, every lane veined with its faintly singing automatic drive line, living arteries pulsing with the lifeblood of Comus. That felt a little reassuring. The broad hand of Comus was still stretched out under us. But above us no red helicopters monitored the air, and I had not seen a single Prowler or a single red Comus coat anywhere since we landed. I kept giving my driver quick glances, wondering what he made of things. I didn't even know if he was Comus or civilian. And there wasn't any use of asking. I'd tried.
We whipped past a sign that said SAN ANDREAS 5 MILES. The driver switched off automatic and pulled over to the left, crossed the highway, and swung into a big paved clearing where half a dozen trucks were lined up like parked behemoths in front of a low concrete building. Luminous script on the front windows said LUNCH COUNTER, but the building was so big it was probably also a dormitory for the truckers. I saw one driver swabbing at the flank of his trailer where somebody had chalked the outlines of a human head very crudely, just an oval with dots for features. Around the head was a band with a padlock and the padlock was labeled Comus.
While I was thinking about that the man moved a little and I saw lower down on the trailer a chalked blue star with a red 93 inside it. It didn't mean anything as far as I could tell, but it looked subversive. The driver was wiping that off too, so it probably was. I wondered what would happen to anybody caught with red and blue chalk in his pocket, and with a little shock realized what the answer was. Nothing. There wasn't any Comus in California.
My driver nodded at me. "This is it. Your outfit's back in there at the camp ground. Get your stuff."
I lifted out the light travel case that held my belongings, all new. It didn't weigh much. I walked around the side of the building, seeing men at the lunch counter inside watch me warily. This must be one of the regular Comus-operated stations, I thought, that feeds and sleeps the drivers who spell each other around the clock and keep the supplies of the country rolling. Ted Nye hadn't cut off California's food or other necessities then. Because he didn't dare? Because he was afraid of the men and women who were rushing that mysterious thing called an Anti-Com toward completion?
"He's stalling for time," I told myself with sudden realization. He could crack down on the whole area any time he felt like it. I'd never heard before of a whole area in revolt, but I thought Comus could handle it if it had to. There must have been some good reason why it hadn't happened here. Ted Nye was waiting for something.
The death of Raleigh?
I walked past the back of the building with its line of laundry and big trash cans. The woods closed up to the edge of the pavement here, deep and quiet and incredibly high. A hillside sloped off toward the sound of water and a path led off among the wide-spaced trees, a little sign informing me half legibly that this was Public Camp Number Something. It was an old sign. I thought how strange it must have been a long time ago, people traveling just for the hell of it, in the days before the Five Day's War.
The silence was something I hadn't expected. It pressed the eardrums. I could almost feel it. Underfoot a thick cushioning of needles made a bouncy carpet, and with every breath I drew in deep the fragrance of pine. The enormous redwoods, too broad to seem like trees at all, went up and up until the sky stopped them. The quiet and the gloom were restful and a little oppressive.
I paused at the entrance of the camp to admire an enormous slab of redwood which some civic body must have set up a long while ago. It was a cross section mounted on edge, taller than I am. Metal labels nailed into the wood pointed out the growth ring the year Socrates died, the year Rome was founded, the year Columbus discovered America. This had been an old, old tree when it gave up its arboreal ghost. A special plate with red lettering pointed out the last ring of all, laid down the year Andrew Raleigh saved the nation.
And somebody had seen fit to thumbtack to the thick bark at the edge of the slab a little notice that said, "Charlie Starr licked Comus at San Diego—1993." I stood there looking at it and wondering. This was something new. Back in '93 when Miranda and I were in full swing, what had we heard about a man named Starr and trouble in San Diego? Nothing at all. Suddenly I remembered that chalked star on the truck trailer with '93 scrawled inside it.
I shrugged. It was just barely possible, I told myself with some irony, that things had happened in San Diego in '93 that Comus hadn't cared to publicize. Whatever it was, I felt excitement waking in me uncertainly. Even that long ago, then, trouble had been brewing out here. A little scuttling sound in the needles startled me and I looked down to see a chipmunk dart along the path, twitching his skimpy tail convulsively. I put San Diego neatly away in the back of my mind and followed the chipmunk down the path. Off among the trees somebody was laughing.
At the edge of the trees I stopped. This would make a good stage-set for some still unwritten play. I thought, Call it Howard Rohan, His Fall and Rise. Rohan stands at the edge of the clearing and gazes into his own future.
The firelight was the first thing you saw, flickering pale in the gloom and the quiet. It burned in a low stone stove with an iron plate for a cover. Beside the stove were two plank tables spotted with grease. Somebody a long time ago had made benches by splitting big redwood logs in half lengthwise and nailing one of the halves up vertically for a back rest. Beyond the benches three trucks stood, with SWANN COMPANY PLAYERS very ornate in luminous pink paint along the sides.
The trucks were good-sized but they looked small under the towering columns of the trees. The whole encampment looked small. There were six people in the camp, and they looked small too. They were talking and laughing a little among themselves, but even their voices sounded small, hushed and dwarfed by the enormous silence of the redwoods.
I stood there quietly, looking them over. I knew I was scared. I could feel the disquiet shiver in me because of all the times in the past that I'd tried a comeback and failed. But here it was, the raw material of my last chance, waiting to be shaped.
Six people. The six Swann Players the man in my dream had told me about—if that was what he told me. Maybe it's a far cry from collecting swans to joining the Swann Players. Maybe it isn't. I looked from face to face wondering which of them I'd come on the strength of a dream to see. But it had been only a dream, after all. The letters of fire circled unreadably before me for an instant and then faded. Whatever that dream had tried to say to me would have to stay unsaid so far as I could tell. I drew a deep breath, ran my palm over my head with the old gesture, and braced myself. This wouldn't be easy. But if anybody got hurt this time it wasn't going to be Howard Rohan.
Six faces rose to look at me as I walked toward them over the dust and the pine needles. All expression faded from every one of them. They had been laughing a moment ago, but now nobody even smiled. They looked at me coldly and waited.
"Hello," I said. There was a stony silence.
I said again, "Hello." Then I added, "Oh, for God's sake. The name is Howard Rohan. Weren't you expecting me?"
Nobody spoke.
A man in a checkered shirt sitting on one of the benches laid down the screwdriver he'd been using to probe the innards of a flat sleep-teach box. The wooden handle of it thumped on the bench. He reached under his collar, scratched, gave me a quick, furtive grin, and went dead-pan again. I glanced around the circle. Nobody else flickered an eye. It was the freeze-out.
"I see you've heard of me," I said.
Still silence. The whole clearing pulsed with it. Somewhere off stage the river made its brawling noises. A bird chirped, a pine cone fell with a soft, decisive thump. Nobody moved. They were a closed group, close-knit, shutting me out. For just an instant the only thing I felt was an intense and terrible loneliness. In the instant it seemed to me I smelled not woodsmoke and pine, but the exciting, musty, indescribable smell of the theater backstage, sweat and dust and old wood, make-up, tobacco smoke. I saw not this group alone, but every cast I'd ever worked with, and somewhere on the fringe of them, just out of sight, I had the strange impression that Miranda stood in the wings, one foot poised to step forward and join me.
