'She says you agreed? snapped the invisible Mosay. 'She's got a story about it in all the media, and I won't have it! Rafiel, you're making me look like a dummkopf.'
'I never actually agreed-'
'But you didn't say no, either, did you? That's not cosi buono. I won't have you making any commitments after this one,' Mosay roared. 'Now vieni qui and talk to me!'
His muttering died in the distance. Docilia turned to look into Rafiel's face. 'What in the world have you done?' she asked.
'Nothing,' he said positively, and then, thinking it over, 'But I guess enough.' He could have thrown the woman out of his home without any discussion at all, he thought. He hadn't. Resigned, he braced himself for the vituperation that was sure to come.
It came, all right, but not as pure vituperation. Mosay had switched to another mode. 'Oh, pauvre petit Rafiel,' he said sorrowfully, 'haven't I always done everything I can for you? And now you're conspiring behind my back with some sleazeball for a cheap-and-dirty exploitation show?'
'It isn't really that cheap, Mosay, it's a hundred mil-'
'Cheap isn't just money, Rafiel. Cheap is cheap people. Second-raters. Do you want to wind up your career with the has-beens and never-wases? No, Rafiel,' he said, shaking his head, 'Non credo you want that. And, anyway, I've talked to your agent, and Jeftha says the deal's already kaput.' He allowed himself a forgiving smile, then turned away briskly.
'Now let's get some work done here, company,' he called, clapping his hands. 'One more time, from Creon's story about the oracle....'
But they didn't actually get that far, and it was Rafiel's fault.
Rafiel started out well enough, rising in wrath to sing his attack on Creon's message from the oracle. Then something funny happened. Rafiel felt the ground sliding away underneath him. He didn't feel the impact of his head on the grassy lawn. He didn't know he had lost consciousness. He was only aware of beginning to come to, half dazed, as someone was - someones were - loading him on to a highwheeled cart and hurrying him to an elevator, and walking beside him were people who were agitatedly talking about him as though he couldn't hear.
'You'll have to tell him, Mosay,' said Docilia's voice, fuzzily registering in Rafiel's ears.
Then there was a mumble, of which all Rafiel could distinguish was when, at the end, someone raised his voice to say, 'Pas me!'
'Allora who?' in Docilia's voice again, and a longer mumble mumble, and then once more Docilia: 'I think it'd be better from la donna.... '
And then he felt the quick chill spray of an anaesthetic on the side of his neck. Rafiel fell asleep as the shot did its job. Deeply asleep. So deep that there was no need to worry about anything ... and no desire to wonder just what it was that his friends had been talking about.
'Just fatigue,' the doctor said reassuringly when Rafiel was conscious again. 'You collapsed. Probabilmente you've just been working too hard.'
'Probably?' Rafiel asked, challenging the woman, but she only shrugged.
'You're just as good as you were when you left here, basically,' she said. 'Your ami's here to take you home.'
The ami was Mosay, full of concern and sweetness. Rafiel was glad to see him.
'I'm sorry about being so silly, but I'll be ready to get back to work in the morning,' Rafiel promised, leaning on the hard, strong form of the nurser.
'Sans doute you will,' Mosay said worriedly. 'Here, sit in the chaise, let the nurser give you a ride to the cars.' And at the elevator, taking over the wheelchair himself: 'Still,' he added, 'if you're at all tired, why shouldn't you take another day or two to rest? I've picked a location spot in Texas....'
That roused Rafiel. 'Texas? Pas Turkey?'
'Of course not Turkey,' Mosay said severely. 'There's just the right place out in the desert, hardly built up at all. Now, here we are at your place, and they've got your nice bed all ready for you - gesu cristo!' he interrupted himself, staring. 'What's that?'
Weak as he was, Rafiel laughed out loud. His server was coming toward him welcomingly, and padding regally after, tail stiff in the air, was the kitten.
'It's just my cat, Mosay. A present from a friend.'
'Does it bite?' When reassured, the dramaturge gave it a hostile look anyway, as though suspecting an attack or, worse, an excretion. 'If that's what you like, Rafiel, why should I criticize? Anyway, I'll leave you now. You can join us when you're ready. We'll work around you for a bit. No, don't argue, it's no trouble. Just give me your word that you won't come out until you're absolutely ready...'
'I promise,' said Rafiel, wondering why it felt so good to be undertaking to do nothing for a while. It never had before.
9
Rafiel, who loves to travel, seldom has time to do much of it. That seems a bit strange, since he is a famous presence in all the places where human beings live, on planet and off, but of course his presence in almost all of those places is only electronic. He is looking forward eagerly to the ride in the magnetrain, with no one for company but the little white kitten. When he finally embarks, after the obligate few days of loafing around his condo, it really is as great a pleasure for him as he had hoped - well, would have been, anyway, if he weren't continuing to be so unreasonably tired. Still, he enjoys watching the scenery flash by at six hundred kilometres an hour - arcologies, fields, woods, rivers - and he enjoys doing nothing. He especially enjoys being alone. With his presence on the train unknown to the fans who might otherwise besiege him, with only the servers to bring his meals and make up his bed and tend to the kitten, he thinks he almost would not mind if the trip went on for ever. When they reach their destination at the edge of the Sonora Desert he is reluctant to get off.
Rafiel arrived at the Sonora arcology just in time to catch a few hour's sleep in a rented condo, not nearly as nice as his own, in an arcology an order of magnitude tinier. When he reported for work in the morning even Turkey began to seem more desirable. This desert was hot.
Mosay was there to greet him solicitously - proudly, too, as he waved around the set he had discovered. 'Wunderbar, isn't it? And such bonne chance it was available. Of course, it's not an exact copy of the actual old Thebes, but I think it's quite interessante, don't you? And there's no sense casting great talents, is there, if you're going to ask them to play in front of a background of dried mud huts.'
Wilting in the heat, Rafiel gazed around at Mosay's idea of an 'interesting' Thebes. He was pretty sure that Thebes-in-Sonora didn't much resemble the old Thebes-in-Boeotia. So much marble! So much artfully concealed lighting inside the buildings - did the Greeks have artificial lighting at all? Would the Greeks have put that heroic-seized statue of Oedipus (actually, of Rafiel himself in his Oedipus suit) in the central courtyard? And, if they had, would they have surrounded it with banked white and yellow roses? Did they have moats around their castles? Well, did they have castles at all? Questions like that took Rafiel's mind off the merciless sun, but not enough.
'It's you and Docilia now, please,' Mosay said - commanded, really. 'Places!' And on cue Docilia began Jocasta's complaint about childbirth. Rafiel reacted as the part called for as, shoulders swaying, head accusingly erect, she sang:
Che sapete, husband? I did all the borning,
Carrying those devils and puking every morning.