Dark Benediction

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.”