It was a room like Alfred’s room, like Lawrence’s, like Sam’s, indeed like some dozen others he had lived in on one world and three moons; a comforting room; a room like ten thousand times ten thousand others.
At four twenty-seven in the morning, Bron woke suddenly, wondering why. After five minutes in the dark, an idea occurred—though he was not sure if it was the idea that had startled him from sleep. He got up, went out into the hall, and down to the console room.
Left over on the screen, from the last person to use it, were two lists. (Usually it was something from Freddie’s, or Flossie’s, home-study course.) Absently
Bron ran his eye down the one on the right: after half a dozen entries, he realized he was reading down names of former Presidents of Mars. His eye caught at Brian Sanders, the second of Mars’s two (out of twenty-four male) women presidents. It was under Brian Sanders, the old firebrand and roaring-girl, that, fifty years ago, male prostitution had been made legal in Bellona; also, ran the story, she had single-handedly driven the term “man-made” from most languages of Earth (where her speeches had of course been televised) and Mars, by insistantly referring to all objects of war, as well as most creations of Earth culture, as “boy-made.”
The list on the left (male and female names mixed equally and at random) was—it was obvious just from the groupings into seven—names of the various governing boards of the Outer Satellite Federation. Yes, the last group were the ones in power now, during the War Alliance: their names were all over the public channels. (Male and female names out here, of course, didn’t mean too much. Anyone might have just about any name—like Freddie and Flossie—especially among second, third, and fourth generation citizens.) Bron wondered what political bet or argument the information had been summoned up to resolve; and, without even sitting, cleared the current program. A medical program was still set underneath it—but it wasn’t Alfred’s.
Bron punched out General Information.
He was expecting ten minutes of cross-reference and general General Info run-around when he dialed “The Spike: actress (occupation)”—how would you file information on someone like that? The screen flickered for a second, then blinked out:
“The Spike—working name of Gene Trimbell, producer, director, playwright, actress, general manager of a shifting personnel theatrical commune, which see. Confirm? : : biographical : : critical : : descriptive : : public record9’
Bron frowned. He certainly wasn’t interested in her biography. He pressed Biography anyway.
“Biography withheld on request.”
That made him smile.
He knew what she looked like:
“Description” wasn’t necessary.
He pressed Critical and the screen filled with print: “The Spike is the working name of Gene Trimbell, by common concensus the most striking of the young playwright/director/producers to emerge at the beginning of the current decade, many of whom were associated with the Circle (which see) at Lux on Iapetus. She attracted early attention with her stunning productions of such classics as Britannicus, The Great God Brown, Vatzlav, and A.C./D.C, as well as a one-woman videotape production of Les Paravents, in which she took all ninety-eight roles. While still in her early twenties, she directed the now legendary (and still controversial) twenty-nine-hour opera cycle by George Otuola, Eridani (which see), that involved coordinating over three hundred actors, dancers, singers, two eagles, a camel, and the hundred-foot, flaming geyser of the title role. If her directorial work in traditional forms has tended toward the ambitious and monumental, her own creative pieces are characterized by great compression and brevity. She is, today, most widely known for her work in micro-theater, for which she formed her own fluid company three years ago. Frequently, her brief, elliptical, and intense works have been compared to the music of the twentieth-century composer Webern. Elsewhere, another critic has said: ‘Her works do not so much begin and end; rather, they suddenly push familiar objects, emotions, and actions, for often as little as a minute or less, into dazzling, surreal luminescence, by means of a consortment of music, movement, speech, lights, drugs, dance, and decor.’ Her articles on the theater (collected under the title Primal Scenes and represented as a series of exhaustive readings of the now famous epigraph from Lacan which heads each piece: The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pit—aside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience:—in other words, nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without, dare we say, the twilighting which the narration in each scene casts on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it?’), have given many people the impression that she is a very cerebral worker; yet the emotional power of her own work is what the most recent leg of her reputation stands on. Even so, many young actors and playwrights (most of whom have, admittedly, never seen, or seen little of, her work) have taken the Scenes as something of a manifesto, and her influence on the current and living art of drama has been compared with that of Maria Irene Fornes, Antonin Artaud, Malina, or Col-ton. Despite this, her company remains small, her performances intimate—though seldom confined in a formal theatrical space. Her pieces have been performed throughout the Satellites, dazzling many a passer-by who, a moment before, did not even know of their existence.”
The index down the side of the screen listed a double-dozen more critical pieces. He read a random three and, in the middle of a fourth, switched the console off.
He pulled the door of the room to behind him—it wouldn’t close all the way. Frowning, he turned to examine it. The lintel across the top had strained a millimeter or so from the wall. The evening’s gravity ‘wobble’? He looked at the console through the door’s now permanent crack. How could you ask General Information about ihaft
Barefoot, he padded up the hall, suddenly tired.
Climbing naked into bed, he thought: Artists ... ? Well, not quite so bad as craftsmen. Especially when they were successful. Still ... of course he would go and fixate on someone practically famous; though, in spite of Lawrence, he’d never heard of her. Depressed, and wondering if he’d ever see her again, he fell asleep.
3. Avoiding Kangaroos
Philosophers who favor propositions have said that propositions are needed because truth is intelligible only of propositions, not of sentences. An unsympathetic answer is that we can explain the truth of sentences to the propositionalist in his own terms: sentences are true whose meanings are true propositions. Any failure of intelligibility here is already his own fault.
Audri, the boss he did like, put a hand on each of the cubicle’s doorjambs and, standing at all sorts of Audri-like angles, said (with an expression he didn’t like at all): “This is Miriamne—Bron, do something with her,” then left.