We Open on Venus - Starship Troupers 2 Read online

  “As to the reason for close surveillance,” Barry went on, “none but Elector Rudders can know for sure. However, I surmise that we were only the latest, and most defenseless, of his targets for public indignation, allowing him to curry the favor of the masses.”

  “That scarcely seems adequate cause for such concentrated venom,” Ogden wheezed, and Susanne obligingly repeated it for him.

  Barry shrugged. “If he had any ulterior motive, I have no knowledge of it—not even enough for an educated guess. As to the real reason the LORDS party did not wish us to take theater to the colony planets, I can only point out that Elector Rudders is one of their leaders, and the move may have been completely his own.”

  “But they are such hidebound reactionaries, Barry!” Mamie protested. “Isn’t such a move in keeping with their policies?”

  “To cut the newer colony planets off from Terra, in order to save the expense of their maintenance?” Barry nodded. “Yes, we could be regarded as a tie to the mother planet, and the Latter Order of Republican Democracy would surely wish to sever that umbilicus.”

  “They should be apprehensive about the fate of the negligent parent when the child grows up,” Ogden rumbled, and Susanne did not have to repeat it for him. Everyone laughed—except Ramou. I remembered that his father had left his mother before he had been born, and that his resulting attitudes might most mildly be termed “bitter.” It sent a chill down my spine, thinking what the colony planets might do to Terra one day, if they reacted with the same intensity as Ramou did. Fortunately, he had no idea where to find his errant parent—but the colony planets would know where to find theirs.

  Charles Publican finally spoke up. “I might add that the LORDS have shown a great desire to control the flow of information to the colonies.”

  “The colonies!” Mamie exclaimed with indignation.

  “Why stop there? They want total censorship on Terra itself!”

  “I wouldn’t debate the notion for a moment.” Publican inclined his head in acknowledgement of the validity of Mamie’s view. “However, since they haven’t said so, we can only surmise.”

  “And while we surmise, they take over,” Marty added.

  Publican chuckled along with the rest, then continued. “We are certainly a channel for the flow of information, and one they can’t control once we’re off-planet. I submit that they would see us as a wild card, an unpredictable force that might be turned against them.”

  “Only if we get the chance,” Merlo muttered.

  Publican smiled equably. He was an odd one—had no professional experience at all, but was obviously well acquainted with the theater and quite adept at character roles. Besides, he was willing to work for a scandalously low wage. Barry thought him an aspiring actor who had been aspiring for twenty years, one of the dogged few who keep auditioning and auditioning even though they are never cast; his employment record as a weekend bartender seemed to corroborate this. Myself, I placed him as a professor in midlife crisis, trying to make a change to the life of adventure and romance from which he had turned away in his youth. We were both probably wrong.

  “As to the question from Ms. Lark, that every performance on a colony planet might violate a law passed on Terra in our absence,” Barry resumed, “I can only reply that we cannot know that, since the fastest way to take news from one planet to another is by spaceship and, for some reason I can’t understand, there is no way for any ship to travel faster than any other, in H-space.”

  He glanced at Captain McLeod, who nodded and explained, “Everything travels at maximum there—all, or none. Of course, there’s a chance that a courier ship might drop out of H-space a week behind us, but still overhaul us in normal space. I wouldn’t put money on it, but it’s possible.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Barry was obviously no wiser than he had been before the captain spoke. “For that reason, I expect that we will stay ahead of the news throughout our tour—so that we may find out at the end of the season, when we return to Terra, but not until.”

  “A convenient fiction,” Winston said. “What if Elector Rudders decides to confront us with reality?”

  The company was very quiet, each one of us picturing a homecoming resulting in arrest and prosecution.

  Merlo looked up at McLeod, and the captain nodded. Merlo rose and turned to the rest of us. “United Space-ways v. Biederman et al, 2356. A package-tour ship was returning to Terra. They were holed by a meteor shower as they were dropping out of H-space to visit Haldane IV. The passengers all survived, but they had to sleep in shifts and go on short rations because the ship only had one lifeboat for every forty people. When they were returned to Terra, they found out that a law had been passed requiring one lifeboat for every twenty people. They sued. United Spaceways won, because the law hadn’t even been proposed when the ship left Terra.” He sat down again.

  “Precedent,” Publican murmured.

  “Yes, a legal precedent.” Barry nodded. “Even if they pass the law today, we won’t be bound by it. They will not be able to imprison us.”

  “They could try,” Marty pointed out.

  “They could,” Barry admitted, “but they would fail. The company would, of course, assume the cost of your bail, and of your legal defense.”

  Everyone relaxed, ever so slightly. They knew that “the company,” in this case, was Valdor Tallendar, who quite possibly had more money than all the colony planets combined.

  “Of course, it would be excellent publicity for us,” I pointed out. “ ‘The Star Company returns from its triumphal first season. All members arrested for the high crime of entertaining the pioneers! Indicted for the offense of playing to packed houses!’ Oh, yes, we would have an immensely successful Broadway run!”

  “An excellent point, Horace,” Barry said, with a grateful glance.

  But Mamie countered, “If we play to packed houses. You’re assuming these barbarians even know we exist.”

  “Publius Promo will assure that for us,” Barry replied. “I don’t believe you’ve met the man …”

  “He ran the box office at the theater where I played my first summer season,” Mamie said, her voice hard. “Surely you haven’t hired that inept flack as our advance man, Barry!”

  “He was available.” Barry sighed. “And he has a successful, if modest, employment record. He was scheduled to meet us on New Venus for a single day, before he departed for Haldane IV—but we are arriving almost a month ahead of schedule, now, so our stays will overlap for a longer term. I will tell him of Elector Rudders’ attempts to silence us, and of our courageous insistence on bringing the benefits of sophistication and culture to the hinterworlds. He will leave as soon as he has seen to the local publicity, so that when we land on Falstaff, we will find the populace already agog.”

  “A nine-days’ wonder,” Mamie said sourly.

  “True,” Barry agreed. “On the tenth day, we’ll have to manage on the quality of our production.”

  Mamie glared at him, and I spoke up again. “As to New Venus, we can plant a few rumors ourselves. It should only take a day or two before the population knows that the government of the Interstellar Dominion Electorates attempted to silence us, and that in itself will guarantee a large house. Nothing is quite so appealing as forbidden fruit.”

  “I didn’t know we had any in this company,” Mamie said acidly, and Marty glanced up in surprise.

  “Of course,” Barry said, “once they have sampled the fruit, they will not come for a second helping if they do not find it tasty. Ultimately, it is the quality of our performance, and the appeal of the plays we choose, that will determine the size of our audience.”

  “Not that we’ve much choice about the plays,” Mamie said. “You’ve chosen the first season!”

  “True,” Barry agreed, “but we could make additions to the bill, if we find enough audience demand.”

  “Demand!” Ramou snorted, and I looked up in alarm—as the most junior member of the company, his wisest mo
ve was silence. He realized it, too; he had clapped a hand over his mouth and was staring in horror.

  He had reason to; Barry had begun to gain a substantial opinion of him. No wonder—Ramou had proved himself quite capable and thoroughly reliable.

  Before this, that is. Now, though, Barry had heard his exclamation. “You question the choice of plays, Mr. Lazarian?”

  “Uh … no, sir!” Ramou swallowed, and seized a metaphorical shovel to attempt to dig himself out of his own figurative hole. “Just the audiences!”

  Larry’s eyes were glinting as he followed the exchange; nothing delighted him so much as someone else’s discomfiture—especially Ramou’s.

  “In what way?” Barry asked, as gently as possible.

  “Well—from what I hear about these frontiersmen, then-taste isn’t exactly highbrow,” Ramou explained.

  “Surely you don’t mean we should lower ourselves to their level!” Mamie said, with massive indignation.

  “No, ma’am!” Ramou said. “I just mean we’ll have to settle for small audiences—at least, at first. The only way we’ll pull a big audience out there is if we do plays that are damn near pornographic.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, little man.” Mamie’s lip curled in scorn. “By frontier standards, our plays are quite pornographic indeed. To be any worse, we’d have to do Shakespeare.”

  Ramou stared. “Shakespeare is pornographic?”

  “Let us say, ‘earthy,’ ” Ogden rumbled.

  “Earthy indeed!” Mamie said, with savage amusement. “Read The Taming of the Shrew, young man—Act II, Scene I. That will please your frontiersmen almost as much as a striptease.”

  “You’re not suggesting we do Shrewd Lacey cried, then bit her tongue, eyes huge.

  Mamie turned to the sweet young thing with a smile that fairly dripped venom. “And why not, dear?”

  Lacey swallowed, but she was in it now. “It has to be the most sexist work in the English language!”

  “It does offer a massive rationalization for the oppression of women,” Susanne agreed.

  “It does that,” Mamie admitted, much against her will, “though I can think of a novel or two that might be worse.”

  “On a frontier planet,” Barry said, “the Shakespearean play that will draw the largest audience is the one they teach most often in their schools.”

  I had to admire the man. Somehow, he had turned a protest meeting into a debate over the season’s bill.

  “Schools?” Larry Rash looked up indignantly. “Are we going to let secondary school teachers determine our repertory?”

  “Of course we are, you idiot,” Mamie said with contempt.

  Larry went rigid, but didn’t dare talk back to the leading lady.

  “It’s a better standard than the prurient interests of middle-aged men,” Lacey agreed.

  Winston looked up, interested.

  “Oh, the old dears are perfectly harmless,” Susanne said with airy disregard. I was considering whether or not to take offense when she added, “If you handle them right.”

  “I’d rather not handle them at all!” Lacey snapped.

  “I do agree that soft-core sadism is not in the best of taste,” Barry said, “though I can imagine a production of Shrew which would be a virtual parody of itself.”

  “So can I,” I said, “but I would rather write that parody myself than twist Shakespeare’s words to a purpose he didn’t intend. He, too, has a right to be heard, after all.”

  “He has been heard,” Marnie said dryly, “for a millennium and more.”

  “All things considered …” Ogden began, but his statement ended in a groan.

  “Just rest, Mr. Wellesley,” Susanne said, and bent over to put her ear near his lips. “Whisper it to me and I’ll repeat it.”

  Lacey was giving her a very stony look, and Ramou’s eyes were riveted to her—no doubt because of the angle of his view; he was standing across from her—as Ogden whispered hoarsely in her ear.

  Susanne nodded, lifting her head. “He says he thinks we had better go with the English teachers. He said something about ‘ruffled feathers,’ too, whatever that means.”

  “He means that we should toady to the local powers,” Mamie said.

  Ogden frowned, but Barry said, “We must deal with realities, my friends. If we wish to be welcome for a second season …”

  “… or even be allowed to finish out our stay,” Winston qualified.

  “Even so,” Barry agreed. “If we don’t wish to be run out of town on a rail and poured back into our ship in a stream of tar, well coated with feathers, we must consider local taboos.”

  “But I thought being run out of town was a mark of distinction,” Mamie said sweetly.

  “Only when Elector Rudders is the power source,” Marty said.

  Mamie turned to him. “Young man, your career could be very short indeed.”

  “I thought you only said that to your lovers,” Marty shot back.

  Mamie’s eyes narrowed. “Your career may not be all that is short.”

  Marty slapped his jaw, snapping his head to the side. “Score one for the champ! I shouldn’ta led with my chin.”

  “And your chin isn’t what you led with,” Mamie said sweetly.

  Marty snorted. “Lady, if I were an elephant with you around, the only thing I’d pack would be my trunk.”

  “An elephant?” Mamie’s eyes gleamed, and with a shock, I realized she was enjoying the exchange. “Don’t be conceited, young man. Possibly a tapir …”

  “Tapering off is exactly what this exchange should do,” Barry said firmly. “Could we return to the curriculum?”

  Marty pointed to the little door at the side of the room and opened his mouth, but Barry said quickly, “Thank you, Mr. Kemp. Now, there are two plays that are studied by almost every English-speaking secondary school—”

  “Not Julius Caesar!” Mamie was horrified, quite properly—there are only two women’s roles in the saga of Caesar’s assassination, and neither is terribly long. Winston looked gratified, though—Cassius is a fascinating role for the resident villain.

  “I’m afraid so.” Barry strove for a sympathetic tone. “But there is another.”

  Ogden paled to the color of parchment and gasped, “Not … the Scottish play!”

  The hall was deathly silent.

  “I fear we must consider it,” Barry said.

  Mamie wore a small smile, and her eyes were glowing.

  “I beg your understanding, friends,” Barry pleaded. “If we perform a standard from the secondary school curriculum, every English teacher on the planet will send his students to see it. Their parents and guardians will be dragged along, of course—so we are virtually guaranteed a viable box office.”

  “Censorship by English teachers!” Ogden groaned. “And who will I be—the ghost?”

  “Yes—you really will be, if you don’t relax,” Susanne said. “Please, Mr. Wellesley—won’t you let us take you to the sick bay now?”

  “Not before the issue is decided, child,” the huge old actor rasped. Then his voice ran out, and he crooked a forefinger.

  Susanne bent down to listen, and Ramou caught his breath. Then she straightened up and called, “He asks for the courtesy of a vote.”

  “This really falls within the province of the managing director.” Barry sighed. “But no prince can rule without the consent of his people. Which will it be, my friends—Julius Caesar, or the Scottish play?”

  There was a silence.

  “All in favor of Julius Caesar,” Barry said.

  Marty raised a hand. Mamie glared daggers at him, and he yanked it down.

  “None,” Barry said. “The alternative is to rehearse both Julius Caesar and the Scottish play, then to perform whichever is taught in the local curriculum. All in favor?”

  There was a long pause, then reluctant hands began to rise.

  “A majority.” Barry nodded. “We will rehearse both, then, as well as Vagrants from Vega, and
perhaps one or two others. Blocking tomorrow—think positively, friends. But for this afternoon and evening, I think we deserve to celebrate—by your leave, of course, Captain,” he added as a too-obvious afterthought.

  But McLeod nodded. “A lift-off party is traditional aboard a passenger ship, Director. Proceed.”

  “Meeting adjourned,” Barry said quickly, just barely managing to get it in before the massed cheer broke loose. Then he turned to the captain and began to converse in a low tone.

  The actors were on their feet and heading for the beverage dispensers, laughing and clapping one another on the back, and debating the merits of the various plays as they moved toward the food and drink synthesizers. None of them seemed to notice that Barry had totally ignored Shakespeare’s other thirty-three plays. I was sure they would eventually, but the only one who was likely to cause difficulties was Mamie, and she seemed quite happy with the results.

  3

  “All right, my dear,” Ogden rumbled, “if you insist.”

  “I’m afraid I really do, Mr. Wellesley,” Susanne said firmly. “You’ve run out of excuses—the meeting’s over.” She looked up at me. “Would you give me a hand, Ramou?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was about to ask her where she wanted it, but caught myself in time. I also managed to hold back the offer to let her have any other part of my body that she wanted. Instead, as we maneuvered the stretcher toward the door, I asked, “What’s this business about ‘the Scottish play’?”

  “It is bad luck,” Ogden wheezed, and Susanne nodded. “Such very bad luck that actors don’t even mention the title when they’re in a theater. That’s why they call it ‘the Scottish play.’ ”

  “But what’s so bad about Brigadoon?”

  “No, dear.” Susanne shot me an affectionate smile.

  Ogden wheezed, “The one with the man who meets three witches.”

  “Macbeth?” I stared.