A World Named Cleopatra Read online

  Between the dunes, plant life imported from Earth by legions of immigrants co-existed with the flora of Cleopatra. Ordinary Earth grasses flourished on the rich nutrients beneath the thin layer of sand. Binh gingerly stepped over a growth of grenade plants as he skirted the side of a dune. The plants were harmless, but they were prone to explode without warning, sending their prickly seeds flying in all directions. Here and there, civic groups had planted several varieties of Earth flowers. Roses, begonias, and morning glories grew in beds of rich topsoil, providing displays of color. It was as if the strange and beautiful pseudoblooms of the Cleopatran tropics were not lovely enough, as if the human settlers of Cleopatra still needed ties to the teeming, tormented globe they had left behind, even if those ties were as tenuous as flowers.

  Thoughts raced through Binh’s mind. Every one brought him back to the problem of his production. He should never have taken the commission, he thought. But he had gone through some dry years. Funding and ideas had simultaneously dried up. Binh stopped, watching a cloud of smidgens skim the crest of a dune. Perhaps it had been because he had lied to himself, and had forgotten that lies were death to his art. Perhaps he had lost the youthful vigor of his talent because he had found it possible to cut off all ties to his family without any sense of loss.

  Only something less than a human being would find that possible, Binh thought. How long ago had Anna died? Thirteen years? Fourteen? How long had it been since he had a conversation with Philip? He had always thought that his personal life had simply happened to him. But how much of it was really his responsibility?

  Anna had worked for him as a coach after their graduation from the institute. Binh had suspected her of envying the thesps. At the Institute, she had been the best dance student, but she had only been able to use that talent as a coach. It was strange, as if Philip had carried that longing into the present.

  Binh’s relationship with Anna had not been smooth. For the two years they were together, they had fought continuously. On the surface, the arguments were over artistic matters. Binh often accused her of wanting control, of desiring to supplant him as the final authority on the set. He now could understand how stupid he had been. She had wanted nothing more than his respect. For all these years Binh had blamed himself for not showing her his concern.

  The police had discovered her dead one morning. Her head had been smashed, and she had lain in a First City alley for over a day. Just one more meaningless death in the jungle of First City. Aside from the uneasy political conditions, which had spawned civil unrest for most of Binh’s life, all urban areas on Cleopatra were the setting of random violence. It was as if the cities themselves periodically rose up to destroy one of their own, and were slowly suiciding, unable to reconcile themselves to their human mass.

  Anna’s death had also murdered his relationship with Philip. As an eight-year-old, his son had idolized him. Philip had openly proclaimed his intention of following his father’s career. But Anna’s absurd death had ended all communication between them. Philip had retreated into a passivity and silence which years of psychiatric treatment could not break.

  When Philip turned eighteen, he had begun a public rebellion against him. He wrote denunciations of his father’s work, publishing them in the journals of obscure political cults. Philip then had joined one movement after another, all of which espoused insanely destructive ideologies.

  Musing, Binh walked halfway around the island. He reached an area beyond the dunes. A cold wind blasted his face. From this vantage point, he had an unimpeded view of First City. At a distance of more than eight kilometers the city seemed a natural object, its spires and waterfront a crystalline growth. In this perfect weather, so unusual in a Cleopatran spring, the city’s smog had been blown away. Every detail of its architecture was visible. Caesar glinted off the silver tops of the government buildings. Binh began to think it was possible to see his own house, high on top of the hills beyond the city.

  He had spent his entire life within fifty miles of First City. There had been no reason to travel anywhere else. The holos brought him all the sights of Cleopatra. He had always had everything he needed; his career had always been more than adequately nurtured. Why then did he feel so limited, so hopeless now, staring at this great city which commemorated a great human hegira, an escape from a dying world.

  He walked over to a telescope, permanently mounted for the tourists who usually swarmed over the island. Pointing it across the channel, he saw ships entering the harbor, moving toward the docks. He could see the urban transports swooshing through their clear, suspended tubes. Turning up the magnification, he saw people at the windows of office buildings, shuffling papers, staring out at this beautiful harbor.

  Binh swung the instrument around, panning it over the beach. Foreshortened by the telescope’s optics, the waves hitting the beach seemed larger, more threatening, as if a storm were building. A faber appeared in his line of sight, one of the many allowed to remain on the island to give the appearance that the site of the first human touchdown remained in its natural state. Binh could not be sure whether the saurian was a male or female. It squatted by the shore, scooping up clumps of sea grass and stuffing them in its mouth.

  A shout startled him. Binh turned from the telescope. In the distance, two figures were running down the beach toward the faber, who continued to feed itself. Looking through the telescope, Binh saw Philip and Sobrino. They shouted, as if to drive the saurian away from the surf.

  Sobrino was holding what appeared to be a weapon. She waved it threateningly in the faber’s direction. Binh could now see the saurian clearly. It was a female, with a prominent crest. The faber glanced up, her tongue flashing about within her V-shaped mouth, swallowing the remains of the sea grass, golden eyes wide.

  Sobrino stared at the faber in disgust. Philip, his face more wrinkled than Binh remembered, kept staring at Sobrino, as if something in her face fascinated him.

  Binh could not keep his eyes away from the woman’s body. She wore a black leather jump suit. It was decorated with silver ornaments running along her pelvis, breast, and thighs. Again, Binh was struck by her raw sexuality. She moved easily; there was no flab on her well-muscled body. As she lifted the weapon-like object in her hand, her breasts rose, stretching the leather drawn tightly over their firmness.

  He recognized the object—it was a sounder, which emitted a raucous blast extremely unpleasant to the fabers. He had sometimes used it himself, when preparing thesps for taping. With it he could get their immediate attention, and it made the saurian more manageable afterwards.

  Sobrino flicked her wrists. The grinding whine of the sounder blared out, overriding the roar of the surf. The faber, totally confused, began running into the water, turning and splashing back toward the beach as the sound continued. Reaching the beach, the saurian fell on her stomach, digging into the sand with her claws.

  This was a new kind of sounder, Binh realized. The blast was more intense, and the faber was reacting unusually. Her legs twitched in spasms. Thrashing about on her side, her body trembled violently. Her head hung loosely—to the side, as if it had been broken. As her eyes rolled back white in her eye sockets, she vomited a yellow liquid which was rapidly absorbed by the sand.

  Binh took his eyes away from the telescope, shouted his son’s name, and ran toward the helpless faber, who was more than sixty meters away. Halfway there, his foot sank into a spot of soft sand and he stumbled. When he got to his feet again, Philip and Sobrino had disappeared. The faber still shook by the water’s edge.

  He reached the saurian and knelt beside her. By this time the spasms had lessened. The faber’s eyes darted normally back and forth. Binh rose to his feet. The beach was empty. He kicked the sand in anger, startling the faber. She uttered a thin, high-pitched sound and bounded off, disappearing into the dunes.

  Binh heard laughter. Philip and Sobrino stood a few meters away. Philip had his arm around her broad shoulders. He flashed a smile and revealed a
mouthful of broken teeth. The political riots had taken their toll on him.

  “Hello, Father dear, Maestro Binh,” Philip said.

  Sobrino laughed. Her eyes were blank, empty of sparkle. She looked through him as if he were the open sea, or an arid stretch of sand.

  “I want to talk to you, Philip,” he said. “I was surprised to see you last night.”

  “I’d say so,” Sobrino said, “to judge by your expression when the holo…” She made a wiping motion with her hands.

  Anger made him tense his jaw. “You admit.”

  “Exactly nothing, maestro. Isn’t that what they call you?” She moved closer. She looked at Binh with contempt. Turning to Philip, she said “Isn’t that what they call your famous father, Philip?”

  “Who gave you authorization to visit the set last night? Who allowed you access to the taping facilities?” Binh raised his voice.

  Sobrino ran the tip of her index finger lightly over the nape of Philip’s neck. “Who indeed?” she said, as if musing to herself.

  Philip laughed. “You must know who we represent.”

  Sobrino nuzzled the side of Philip’s head. “Of course he does,” she said. “Every faber-master knows the source of his funding, unless they choose to lie to themselves. Isn’t that so, Maestro Binh?”

  Binh was overcome by vertigo. He could not close his eyes and wait until it passed. He could not betray weakness. He looked at the sea.

  “I’m sure you will have no objection, Maestro,” Sobrino said, “to our continued presence on the set. Isn’t that right? That is, if you want things to continue as they have been.”

  Binh said nothing as he continued looking out to sea.

  “I’m sure the name Kevin Hussein means a great deal to you,” she said, as she and Philip began to walk away. “Soon his name will have greater meaning to all the peoples of Cleopatra.”

  Binh watched them stroll slowly toward the dunes. The vertigo was quite strong now. He could think of nothing but the way the waves now moved slowly toward the shore, the way the faber had not waited for him to bend down and offer his sympathy.

  Overnight, Bianco had miraculously procured two first-rate thesps, a male Resnick and a female Unger.

  They had been bred and designed to react predictably to the same coaching whether the technique was imitative, surgical intervention, or a combination of the two. Bianco claimed they were better than Jason and Jasmine. The Inner Tape, he said, could be reproduced in only one or two takes.

  A new set had been erected in the public hall. When Binh arrived, his crew was already working. The thesps had been nicknamed Scylla and Charybdis by some comedian on the crew. Since they had been surgically prepared before coming to the island, Binh had only to give them their final coaching.

  It could have been worse. Only an hour of the Inner Tape had been erased. Most of it had been a single sequence intended to intercut with other improvisations, which had all been taped long ago.

  Binh approached the thesps, who were slumped against a wall in the coaching area. He began to feel hopeful. They appeared to be prime specimens, and bore a striking resemblance to Jason and Jasmine.

  Binh had induced a light state of hypnosis in both thesps, and was beginning to suggest movements for the first part of the sequence, when Bianco rushed over.

  “There’s nothing I could do,” he said in agitation. “Sobrino insisted. She said you talked to her on the beach yesterday. She said she understood the situation perfectly. She wants to watch the taping from the control room.”

  Hussein is tightening his control, Binh thought. There was nothing he could do. He continued his work on the male thesp.

  “Forget her,” he blurted out in irritation. “We have more important things to think about.”

  Despite the quality of the thesps, the coaching took longer than Binh had anticipated. He called Osbeck over to assist. While Bianco co-ordinated the technicians in the control room and on the production floor, Binh and Osbeck danced the final sequences for Scylla and Charybdis. The crew kept the journalists and other spectators back from the main taping area, which was a circular stage surrounded by a light, azure backdrop. Birth and Osbeck led the thesps onto the stage, showing them their beginning positions. As the camera crews completed their preparations, Binh made tests on the thesps, making sure the dances bad been learned.

  This portion was the death sequence. Running through it in his mind. Binh took a grim satisfaction from the spare, arid hopelessness of the plot. Some scientists had called the fabers a doomed race. Even if man had not colonized Cleopatra, the saurians’ lack of a social fabric and intelligence would eventually lead to their extinction. This dance sequence dramatized that theory; in it, Scylla and Charybdis would act out a dance of death. It was a theme repeated throughout the production.

  Binh completed his work and left the stage. M’Wabe walked over to him. The critic looked at the thesps, who waited impassively in their positions. A slight smile came to M’Wabe’s lips.

  “I told Sobrino you were capable of seeing this situation with great clarity, maestro. Things should go well now.”

  Birth nodded abstractly. M’Wabe was lost to him.

  I walk a tightrope, Binh thought. He could only see the production to the end if he avoided any innovation, any deviation from the script of the Inner Tape.

  He called for silence. The holo-cameras began to hum. Osbeck gave the thesps the starting stimulus; they moved into their danse macabre. Binh’s hands began to tremble.

  It was done in less than fifteen minutes. The public hall, quiet for the taping, suddenly resounded with applause. Sobrino appeared in the midst of the crowd. Everyone gave her space, as if she were the object of the ovation. Philip was not with her.

  “We are the only thing standing between the fabers and extinction,” she said in a loud, declaiming voice.

  Binh winced as the crowd fell silent. This was dogma right out of a Scientific Transcendence propaganda leaflet, injected now to dilute the richness of the scene he had just taped, reducing it to a gloss on the wisdom of Kevin Hussein.

  “Maestro Binh,” Sobrino said. “This dance was good, surprisingly so. I’m sure Kevin Hussein would approve of its message wholeheartedly. But one thing troubles me, and I’m sure it would distress Mr. Hussein if he were here.”

  “I think I see what you mean,” Benito M’Wabe said, simpering. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “The danse macabre cries out for the human element. The audience will hunger for the knowledge that humanity, the conquerer of Cleopatra, had overcome the animalism which could drive the fabers into extinction.”

  “Will drive them into extinction, M’Wabe,” Sobrino interjected. “They have given us sufficient lessons in baseness. I, for one, would be happy to watch the last faber die.”

  I am losing control, Binh thought. He had never allowed aesthetic or ideological discussions in the middle of a production. Now as this prattle went on, the crew stopped their work to listen, and the energy needed to finish the taping was being deflected.

  Binh motioned rudely to a technician who was leaning against a holo-camera. “Set up for the next sequence,” he ordered.

  “Ah,” laughed Sobrino. M’Wabe smiled weakly be-side her. “Maestro Binh will not allow his work to be questioned. Perhaps when the production is complete, when he has used the people’s wealth for his own purposes, the maestro will consent to be praised.”

  “You have no right to interrupt our work,” Binh shouted. “You are here only as an observer.”

  “‘Our work,’ the maestro says.” Sobrino turned to address the crowd. “The maestro will restrict me while he can.” She glared at Binh. “At this moment, there is nothing standing in your way, Maestro Binh. But nothing goes unnoticed. So far you haven’t broken any guidelines.”

  “To hell with your guidelines!” Binh exploded. The crew looked at him in shock. He rarely threw tantrums on the set. Binh no longer cared what anyone thought. His anger made him giddy.
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  He motioned at Bianco. The assistant hesitated, but finally walked toward him.

  “Clear the set!” Binh ordered.

  Sobrino gave him a mock bow. “But of course, maestro. By all means, exercise your authority.” She whirled around and pushed through the crowd.

  The journalists, hoping for more fireworks, objected. Binh knew this was the story they had been sent here to get.

  He slumped into a canvas-backed chair. His body prickled with numbness; he could not concentrate on the script pages he held in his hands. Across the hall, M’Wabe stared at him with an ambiguous expression.

  Binh looked away. M’Wabe was their puppet now. On the stage, Scylla and Charybdis held their final positions; no one had given them the signal to rest. The female sprawled on the floor like a corpse. The male held his claws to his face as if he were just about to rip the eyes out of his head.

  Binh sat watching them. Somehow, the tableau was comforting.

  “You must understand, maestro,” M’Wabe said. “Your production has impinged on certain political realities.”

  Binh had been preparing to sleep when the critic came up to his room. A storm had blown in, blocking all travel to First City. M’Wabe was clearly restless. The wrinkles on his brow deepened as he paced the floor at the foot of Binh’s bed.

  “I’m aware of certain pressures, Benito,” A pain stabbed his chest. Watching M’Wabe pace, Binh breathed shallowly.

  The critic stared at him in open disbelief. “You do yourself an injustice by being so blasé about them. You have a gift, a gift you can give to the people of Cleopatra. The planet is about to come apart. In the southern hemisphere, certain groups are already openly defying the Council. They are in the process of splitting away from the planetary government. These people represent ideologies of the most retrograde variety.”