Dark Benediction

Old ham, he thought, you’ve been flickering into mad warps and staggering into dimensions of infrasanity. You took unreality by the hand and led her gallantly through peril and confusion and finally married her before you noticed that she was dead. Now the only decent thing to do was bury her, but her interment would do nothing to get him back through the peril and confusion and on the road again. He’d have to hike. Maybe it was too late to do anything with the rest of a lifetime. But there was only one way to find out. And the first step was to put some mileage between himself and the stage.

If a little black box took over my job, Rick had said, I’d go to work making little black boxes.

Thorny realized with a slight start that the technician had meant it. Mela had done it, in a sense. So had Jade. Especially Jade. But that wasn’t the answer for him, not now. He’d hung around too long mourning the dead, and he needed a clean, sharp break. Tomorrow he’d fade out of sight, move away, pretend he was twenty-one again, and start groping for something to do with a lifetime. How to keep eating until he found it—that would be the pressing problem. Unskilled laborers were hard to find these days, but so were unskilled jobs. Selling his acting talent for commercial purposes would work only if he could find a commercial purpose he could believe in and live for, since his talent was not the surface talent of a schauspieler. It would be a grueling search, for he had never bothered to believe in anything but theater.

Mela stirred suddenly. “Did I hear somebody call me?” she muttered. “This racket—I” She sat up to look around.

He grunted doubtfully. “How long till curtain?” he asked.

She arose suddenly and said, “Jade’s waving me over. See you in the act, Thorny.”

He watched Mela hurry away, he glanced across the floor at Jade who waited for her in the midst of a small conference, he felt a guilty twinge. He’d cost them money, trouble, and nervous sweat, and maybe the performance endangered the run of the show. It was a rotten thing to do, and he was sorry, but it couldn’t be undone, and the only possible compensation was to deliver a best—possible Act III and then get out. Fast. Before Jade found him out and organized a lynch mob.

After staring absently at the small conference for a few moments, he closed his eyes and drowsed again.

Suddenly he opened them. Something about the conference group—something peculiar. He sat up and frowned at them again. Jade, Mela, Rick, and Feria, and three strangers. Nothing peculiar about that. Except… let’s see… the thin one with the scholarly look—that would be the programming engineer, probably. The beefy, healthy fellow with the dark business suit and the wandering glance—Thorny couldn’t place him—he looked out of place backstage. The third one seemed familiar somehow, but he, too, looked out of place—a chubby little man with no necktie and a fat cigar, he seemed more interested in the backstage rush than in the proceedings of the group. The beefy gent kept asking him questions, and he muttered brief answers around his cigar while watching the stagehands’ parade.

Once when answering he took his cigar out of his mouth and glanced quickly across the floor in Thorny’s direction. Thorny stiffened, felt bristles rise along his spine. The chubby little gent was—

The depot clerk!

Who had issued him the extra tape and the splices. Who could put the finger on the trouble right away, and was undoubtedly doing it.

Got to get out. Got to get out fast. The beefy fellow was either a cop or a private investigator, one of several hired by Smithfield. Got to run, got to hide, got to—Lynch mob.

“Not through that door, buddy, that’s the stage; what’re you— Oh, Thorny! It’s not time to go on.”

“Sorry,” he grunted at the prop man and turned away. The light flashed, the buzzer sounded faintly.

“Now it’s time,” the prop man called after him. Where was he going? And what good would it do? “Hey, Thorny! The buzzer. Come back. It’s line-up. You’re on when the curtain lifts… hey!”

He paused, then turned around and went back. He went on-stage and took his place. She was already there, staring at him strangely as he approached.

“You didn’t do it, did you, Thorny?” she whispered. He gazed at her in tight-lipped silence, then nodded. She looked puzzled. She looked at him as if he were no longer a person, but a peculiar object to be studied.

Not scornful, nor angry, nor righteous—just puzzled. “Guess I was nuts,” he said lamely.

“Guess you were.”

“Not too much harm done, though,” he said hopefully. “The wrong people saw the first act, Thorny. They walked out.”

“Wrong people?”

“Two backers and a critic.”

“Oh?”