Some had cameras. Some had wheelbarrows. Many, mostly shirtless, wandered through carefully pegged trenches, examining the walls. Somewhere in all that sky, the gray had torn apart, showing great flakes of blue and letting down a wash of mustard light.
Sam paused at the ropes. Bron stopped beside him.
A woman carrying a carton came by. Bron glanced in—she stopped, grinned, and tilted the box to let him see: skulls and skull pieces stared this way and that. Bits of marked tape were stuck here and there.
“All,” the woman confided, nodding to her right, “from that part there, just in, or just under, Dwelling M-3 ... if it was a dwelling. Brian has been wrong, by his own admission, three times on that one.” She hefted the carton. “Maybe we’ll see you here tomorrow? Everyone’s knocking off now.” As she turned away, a clutch of diggers broke around her, stepping over the ropes, moving around Sam and Bron.
“Man,” one said, “if you don’t lay off me about that piece of tile, I’m going to small-find your headl”
Diggers ambled away down the bright, black road in the late, surprising sun, while Bron again mulled on images of the Taj.
On one of the heaps, a woman, bare back to them, sat on a crate playing a guitar. In the lulls between rushing grass and voices, the music reached them, slow and expert, lazily hauled from seventh to archaic sev—
enth. Her singing voice sounded as familiar as the music sounded strange.
Bron frowned.
He started to say something. But it wouldn’t mean anything to Sam anyway. Because he was so tired, it took him a full minute to decide: but suddenly he swung a leg over the ropes, started across the rubbly ground, almost collided with another group of diggers: One put a hand on his shoulder and, smiling through a dusty beard, said: “Come on ... on that side of the chalk line if you’re gonna walk around in here—which you shouldn’t be doing anyway!”
“Sorry—” Bron hurried across the loose earth; dirt was in his sandals. He came around the pile.
Small-breasted Charo sang, dreamily, looking down at her fingers, under the white and gold sky:
Hear the city’s singin’ like a siren choir. Some fool’s tried to set the sun on fire. TV preacher screamin’, “Come on along!” I feel like Fay Wray face-to-face with King Kong. But Momma just wants to barrelhouse all night long ...
Charo looked up from the strings, frowned at Bron’s frown, suddenly raised her head, laughed, nodded to him; and still played.
Behind him, a man said: “Is that you?”
Bron turned.
“That is you!” Scraggly-bearded Windy, dusty from labor, came up the pile, a pail with things in it held out from his thigh, his other arm waving for balance. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“I was ... I was just walking by. And I ... What are ... ?”
“The last time I seen you is on some damn moon two hundred and fifty million kilometers away. And he’s just walking by, he says!”
“What are you all doing?” Bron asked. “On Earth?”
“The usual. Micro-theater for small or unique audiences. Government endowment. Just what it says in the contract that brought us here.”
Bron looked around. “Is this one of her ... ?”
“Huh? Oh, Christ, no! A bunch of us from the company just decided to volunteer a hand with the diggings. They’re into some very exciting things.” Windy laughed. “Today’s biggest find, would you believe it, is a whole set of ancient digging implements. Apparently someone in the immemorial past was also trying to excavate the place.”
Behind Bron, Charo’s tempo brightened, quickened.
Windy went on: “Brian’s been trying to figure out if they found anything, or whether they just gave up and went away—not to mention just how long ago it was.”
Charo sang:
Yve been down to Parliament; I’ve been in school;
I’ve been in jail and learned the Golden Rule;
Yve been in the workhouse—served my time in those hallowed halls. The only thing 1 know is the blues got the world by the balls.
“But what are you doing here?” Bron asked again. Because it suddenly all seemed too preposterous. Flickering at the edge of thought were all sorts of Sam-engineered, arcane, and mysterious schemes, of which this was some tiny fragment in a pattern whose range and scope he would never know—on threat of execution or incarceration.
“Very highbrow program, actually. Very classicaclass="underline" a series from the Jackson MacLow Asymetries. The man wrote hundreds of the things. We’re performing from the whole range, and the final cycle of seven. The Sixties—that’s the Nineteen-Sixties—are very in around here. Given our head, you know, we’re much more into the contemporary. But—” Windy glanced about—“really, this planet must have the most conservative audience in the system. It’s incredible!”
Charo was singing:
Yve been in the Tundra and the mountain too;
Yve been in Paris, doin’ what the Frenchmen do.
I’ve been in Boston where the buildings grow so tall.
And everywhere you look the blues got the world by the balls.
“Is the ... the Spike here?” Bron asked, which seemed a very silly and, at once a desperately important, question. “I mean herel” meaning the dig, which was not what he meant at alclass="underline" he hadn’t seen her.
“On site? Oh, she puttered around for a couple of hours yesterday. But those MacLows are a bitch, man. Besides, I think she’s working up another of her double-whammy-zowie-pow! specials—gotta show the locals what it’s all about.” Windy set his pail down. “That’ll probably be a unique audience number.” He smiled. “And you’ve had yours, I’m afraid. But if you’re around for a few more hours, maybe you can catch us in the evening performance of the MacLows. That’s open to whoever’s wandering by. You know—” Windy looked around again, picked up his pail—“Brian says that a millon years ago—I think it was a million—this place was all desert. Imagine, nothing but sand!”
You can catch ’em from the preacher, or from the pool shark, find ’em in the grammar of the socialite’s remark; or down in the washroom you can read it on the walls:
Everywhere you look the blues got the world by the balls.
The tempo changed again, slowing to the melody he’d first heard:
Sometimes I wonder what I am.
Feels like I’m living in a hologram.
It doesn’t seem to matter what’s right or wrong.
Everybody’s grabbin’ and comin’ on strong.
But Momma just wants to barrelhouse all night long.
The playing stopped, Charo stood, crab-walked down toward Bron, holding the guitar by the neck. “Do you have any idea where Boston is?”
“I don’t think there is a Boston any more,” Windy said. “I remember once, hitchhiking somewhere on this damn planet and someone saying, ‘We’re right near where Boston used to be.’ At least I think it was Boston.” Windy shrugged. “Hey, look. We’ve got to get going. We still have a performance to put on—” He did a little dance step; red hair and the pail swung; a breeze, and the hair blew; the pail rattled. “Sing a few songs, turn a few backflips: always happy and bright.” He ducked his head, grinned, as Charo took his arm, the guitar swinging from her other hand. They walked away.