“The floor over there must be strewn with severed members,” said Clovis.
I couldn’t even call Silver. There was the phone in the foyer, which the caretaker might answer, but I couldn’t remember the number. And even if I did, to call would be, again, to reveal there was somebody at home I wanted to reach. Perhaps, if I excused myself to use the bathroom, I could call on one of Egyptia’s extensions upstairs, experimenting till I got the number right—no. A blue call-light came on in every other phone console when one was operational. Jason and Medea would see it. They’d be watching for it.
Chloe couldn’t be here tonight because Chloe had a virus. Why hadn’t I had a virus?
“Women of the palace,” said Egyptia, “my brother was a god to you. Yet to these beasts he is carrion. He is left for the kites to chew upon—”
“Oh my,” said Clovis, “now the play’s getting to sound like the chess game. Do you think my weak stomach is up to this drama?”
“Don’t mock me, Clovis,” shouted Egyptia in despair.
“It’s half past ten P.M.,” said Clovis. “I’m going to call the taxi.”
“Oh God,” cried Egyptia, “is it time to leave?”
“Getting that way. Jane, pour her another drink.”
I wasn’t sure about that, although she seemed incapable of drunkenness in her frenzy. She had dressed in her costume and put on her makeup here because of her emotional rift with the rest of the company. “They give me nothing!” she said. To Egyptia, of course, the rest of the cast were the support mechanism to carry her, and sadly they hadn’t realized it. Or else they had.
Now I fetched her grey-blue fur cape coat, on the inside of which some of the body makeup was sure to rub off. She’d bought that coat the day I took Silver with me to Chez Stratos.
“Oh, Jane. Oh—Jane—”
“I’m here.” I sounded mature and patient. Concerned, kind. Just a touch compassionately amused. I sounded like Silver.
“Ja-aaaa-nnne—”
She stared at me. The guillotine awaited her, and soon the tumbrel would be at the door.
“You are going to be so good,” I said to her. “So good, the Asteroid will probably fall on the Theatra Concordacis.”
Clovis came in again in a little while.
“Months to get through,” he said. “It’ll be by the pier in half an hour.” He looked at me, and added, sotto voce, “The cab rank was the second call.”
“Clovis—” I said, realizing he’d put his unspecified plan into action.
“Later.” He glanced at Jason and Medea, who were thoughtfully watching us. “Better kill everyone else on the board off quickly, pets, we leave in ten minutes.”
“Oh. The awful play,” said Jason.
“You don’t have to come,” Clovis said.
“We do,” said Medea. “We want to be with Jane. We haven’t seen her for so long.”
“Christ, what a strange night,” Clovis said to it, as we stepped out into the enclosure before the lift shaft.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Jason.
“How should I know?” said Clovis.
The lift came, and Egyptia trembled in my arms. As we went down to the ferry, the night rose up the jewelry buildings. There was a great stillness, but that was only the coldness of the snow. The ferry was deserted, and the cab was waiting at the other side of the water.
We reached the Theatra about eleven-fifteen P.M., after walking up the Grand Stairway and by the tunnel fountain, which didn’t play in winter. But it was the exact spot where I had first seen Silver.
There were quite a lot of people about the main facade. We went around the side, and into the bleak backstage, and into Egyptia’s bleaker dressing room. When the reluctant wall heater had been activated, Egyptia stood shuddering.
“My father slain, my brother slaughtered. Death is the legacy of this House of the Peacock. Everyone go out. Everyone but Jane. Jane, don’t leave me.”
“We’ll wait outside,” said Medea. I knew they’d watch the door.
I had to stay, anyway, now, for Clovis’s news. Whatever it was. I was really past caring. Schizophrenic, as before, I existed here, and I existed in a sort of precognitive limbo of rushing home to the flat on Tolerance.
In the corridor, the young man I remembered was called Corinth clumped past in metal toeless boots and a metal scaled cloak, eating a chicken leg morosely.
The handsome thin man, who had directed the drama, looked in twenty minutes later, flustered and chilly.
“Oh, so you got here,” he said to Egyptia. Her eyes implored him, but he was finished with her. There would be no other productions for Egyptia here, despite her handy wealth. One could see that in his face. “Just a last piece of advice, dear,” he said. “Try to recall there are a couple of other people with you in the cast.”
She opened her lips, and he walked out, banging the door so it almost fell off. The place was not in good repair.
“They hate me,” she whispered, stunned. “I was generous to them, I shared my home with them, my love. I was part of them. And they hate me.”
It wasn’t the hour for truth. Or at least, for only one kind.
“They’re jealous,” I said. “They know they’ll be outshone. Anyway, everyone was against Antektra, too, apparently. It might be helpful.”
“The screech of the peacock,” she said, “the bird of ill-omened and curse-laden death.”
I retouched her body makeup. I wondered if I could have done what she would have to do, and some part of me began to tell me I could, and to visualize I’d be just as scared as she was, and maybe more.
“Jane, you’ve changed so much,” she said, staring at me in the smeary mirror, seeing me for the first time. “You’re beautiful. And fey. And so calm. So wise.”
“It’s the company I keep,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Is it?” She was vague. She’d forgotten, just as Clovis reported. “Do you have a lover, Jane?”
Yes, Egyptia. A silver metal lover.
“Maybe.”
And then, startling me: “What happened with the robot, Jane?”