• 3 •
There were three bottles of Slaumot and Clovis, Egyptia and I sat and drank them in the fire and candlelight. Jason and Medea drank coffipop, which, when I was fifteen, always gave me instant hiccups. The twins sat on the floor across the big room from us, playing a macabre version of chess Jason had invented. They might steal some of the pieces, but Egyptia wouldn’t care. She knew she wouldn’t live beyond this night. She had two visions of her death. One was when she first entered on the stage. Her heart would burst. Or she might die at the end, the strain having been too much for her. It wasn’t at all funny. She meant it, and she was scared. But, more than all else, she was scared of the fact that she was to dramatize Antektra before an audience. It wasn’t an enormous theatre, and it might not fill. A couple of critics might be there, and a visual crew would film a shot or so, as a matter of course, and then probably not show it. But to Egyptia, it was more than all this—which, if it had been me, would have terrified me sufficiently—although, far less than it would have done before my debut in the streets. It was her fear of failing herself that gnawed on Egyptia. Or, as she put it, of failing Antektra. She would say portions of her lines, pace about the salon, sink on the couch, laugh madly, weep—her dramatic makeup was genuinely tear-proof, fortunately. She sipped the Slaumot, and left butterfly wings of gilt from her lips on the glass.
“She’s a virgin. Her sexual electricity has turned in on itself. She is driven by grief, anguish and fury. She is haunted by the demons of her fury.” How odd she should sound so cognizant of these emotions which truly I don’t think she’d ever felt. And the descriptions of Antektra’s state, obviously footnotes, learnt off like her lines—“A whirlwind of passion. Am I capable of doing this? Sometimes I’ve felt that the power of this part is inside me, like a volcano. But now… Have I the strength?”
“Yes,” said Clovis.
“Yes,” I said.
“My rook tortures your rook to death,” said Jason across the room.
“The power,” said Egyptia, prowling like a leopardess between the candles, “may consume me. I don’t mind, I truly don’t mind if I die, if it kills me. So long as I can die with this task accomplished—Oh, Jane. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, Egyptia.”
Clovis yawned, hiding in his longer hair as he did so, and I thought of Silver. Not that I’d stopped thinking of Silver. When I was twelve, I had a psychosomatic toothache for months in one of my back teeth. I took painkillers every three hours, which dulled the pain but didn’t get rid of it. The nag of it went on and on, and so I got used to it, and only thought about it at the end of each three-hour unit when it would flare up to new violence. This was how I felt now. My awareness of danger and distress, my concern for Silver’s concern at my absence, the hopeless trap I was in and apparently couldn’t move out of—these were the dull pain. The wine, the familiarity, Egyptia’s fear were the painkillers. The pain was slight and bearable and I could almost put it from my mind. But then the light moved on Clovis’s hair—red—and the pain flared. I almost rushed, each time, from the apartment and away into the night. Clovis could surely contain the twins. But they would know they’d been right. And Clovis’s unspecified help would be lost to me.
He wore an embroidered shirt, too, under the silk and velour jacket. He was so rational about Silver, yet the copied influence was there. Could I trust Clovis? Well, I had trusted Clovis, if not with my address, with everything else.
“My queen buys her freedom by allowing your knight to cut off her left hand,” said Medea.
“I do hope,” said Clovis, “they’re not actually inflicting these injuries on your chess set, Egyptia.”
“The world’s a chess set,” said Egyptia. (A quote?) “Oh, bow your neck to the bloody dust. Kneel to the yoke, humiliated land. This is not the world. The gods are dead. Kneel, for you must. Relinquish pride, and kneel.”
“My knight castrates your knight.”
“He can’t. My knight’s in full armor.”
“Well. There’s a weak link.”
“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 foun-tain, which didn’t play in winter. But it was the exact spot where I had first seen Silver.