Harmony (6 page)

I was less certain of success and, lacking Crispin’s rich and powerful father, less assured that I’d never have to play the game for real.

Jane was from Providence, one of the strict Calvinist communities in what used to be Switzerland. I’d heard it mocked in Harmony as a god-dome. Like me, she had sacrificed her citizenship to come to Harmony. Often I wondered why. Only her obsessive dedication to the hands-on craft of design gave any inkling. Jane refused to play the Survival Game at all. Concerned about causing offense if she actually voiced her loathing, she’d go cold silent if the subject even came up. Cris said she was more of a drag on our fun than if she simply left the room.

“Audiences like a little adventure,” I assured her. “Besides, even if Howie went too far, no one would blame you.”

What “too far” might be, I wasn’t sure. I’d seen some pretty outrageous performances during my time in Harmony, though admittedly not at the Arkadie. “Nobody blamed the designer’s apprentice for the twelve nudes painting each other last season at Interaction. They didn’t even blame the designer.”

“Should have blamed somebody,” Cris put in.

“Jane, if Howie flops, it’s not going to affect your review.”

She flinched at my comforting touch, then accepted it with schooled tolerance. She was so tense and thin, as if there was no skin softening the bones beneath the blouse of her coverall. “If the Council censored Micah, it could.”

“Oh, Jane,” Crispin scoffed, “this is Art. That’s Politics!”

“The Town Council’s authority is civil, not artistic,” I reminded her. “No one legislates aesthetics in Harmony.”

“Except the gallery owners,” murmured Cris.

But Jane was in her terrier mode. “If Howie got them mad enough, they might decide Micah doesn’t deserve four apprentices.” Her arms rose and fell in suppressed panic. “Oh, I wish I were Songh!”

Crispin’s laugh got an edge to it. “You want to be SecondGen? So you could run home to Mommy and Daddy every night?”

“Like you could if they threw you Out?”

“That’s not true!”

Jane’s eyes raked him unbelievingly, then slid away. “At least if I were SecondGen, I wouldn’t have to worry all the time!”

Around the curve, the sprawling three-story brick and timber bulk of our dormitory appeared from among its surrounding oaks. The BardClyffe dorm was one of the smaller ones, housing only three hundred apprentices. The exterior was modeled on ancient university residence halls like the few surviving in the Oxford dome. Inside, it was a rabbit warren. I didn’t want Jane storming in there in one of her hysterias. I had to stop and grab her for a little shake. “No one’s going to throw you Out! You know Micah couldn’t do without you. You’re carrying your weight just fine!”

But even as I said it, I wondered.

We left Jane at the dining room door, while Crispin deciphered the menu. Most domers’d be content with nice, legible computer readout. In Harmony, it had to be hand-lettered, in calligraphic pen and ink. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d used a goose quill.

“Too healthy,” Cris announced, groping me there in the hall like some dirty old man. Fool that I was, I loved it. I thought that’s what sex was all about. “Your palace or mine, princess?”

“Mine.” It hardly mattered. All our rooms were the same. But I had sudden interest in searching up that piece of jewelry I’d stashed away three years ago and forgotten about, until now.

* * *

Bedtime with Crispin was athletic and speedy, as if pleasure was just another thing to be accomplished. For me, it rarely was. We never talked feelings afterward, we talked careers. His career, mostly, though occasionally we’d spend time trashing other people’s, those Crispin saw as his particular rivals.

“You think Jane’s got reason to worry?” I mused between rounds. I’d found the braided necklace and fastened it around my neck. “That could have come from anywhere,” he’d said.

Now he stretched as luxuriantly as he could in my narrow bed. I thought he looked very beautiful, all smooth and golden in the dusk light that squeezed through the single window, heating the beige walls to salmon. He ran his fingers negligently through his hair, letting the ends coil along his collarbone. “If Jane didn’t have stuff to worry about, she’d invent it. If she gets thrown Out, it’s not going to be because of Howie Marr’s politics. I mean, c’mon—this isn’t some proto-marxist enclave like Chicago.”

I let that pass. “Micah does need her. That’s got to be some kind of insurance. She’s the ideal studio assistant. She’s earnest and diligent, she’s a skilled and experienced draftsman, and a total obsessive crazy when it comes to details. She has patience with stuff that drives me up the walls. She’s passed four reviews so far just fine. No reason why she shouldn’t make the next one.”

Cris yawned. “Except that after nine years, she’s still not so hot when the shit hits the fan in the theatre or if Micah’s not around to make decisions, and the only show she’s ever done on her own was that little workshop Gitanne got her at Images.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “ ‘The applicant’s potential as an independent artist remains undeveloped’…”

“They do say ten years is the cutoff point. If you’re not made journeyman by then…”

Cris grinned and drew his forefinger across my throat.

“Jane’s afraid Howie’s show might tip the balance against her.”

“Do we have to talk about Jane?” Crispin did not feel responsible for Jane as I did, or had come to, upon my elevation to the position of her superior.

“But it’s not fair! There should be a place for skilled technicians.”

“Who do you think builds our scenery? You just got to make citizen first.”

“Or be born here.”

Cris shook his head impatiently. “If Jane can’t accept the risk, she shouldn’t have come to Harmony. Not everyone can make it here.” He sat up, dragging the sheet away. “What’ve you got to eat?”

“You should have thought of that before you turned your nose up at dinner.”

Jane’s worry had dampened my mood. Even in the flush of victory from my recent promotion, my own sense of vulnerability was easily awakened. Not all the rumors I’d heard in Chicago had been true. Harmony was indeed proud of its unique Outside Adoption Policy, but even Micah had once remarked that the intent of the OAP had never been to add to the day labor pool. As I learned soon after arrival, there were plenty of ungifted sons and daughters of Harmonic citizens to fill those posts. SecondGen, we called them. Like Songh. A sweet kid, but not exactly on the ball. As an experiment in eugenics, Harmony had not totally succeeded. As a result, an odd double standard prevailed. Songh, a native son, did not have to earn his citizenship as we did. He’d have to commit a very serious crime to be put Outside.

And there were more and more of him every year. Citizens in Harmony were law-abiding and there were few unlicensed births. But in the newly healthy environment of the dome, there were far fewer deaths than the Founders had counted on. And many applicants for residence who were already too famous and successful to pass up.

So Jane did have cause for worry. Many did, whose birth-domes would not take them back. If we didn’t measure up as artists who could add appropriately to the GNP, Harmony didn’t need us hanging around. I pictured Jane, bone thin in rags, stirring a stew pot in the perimeter slums. In the dorms, Jane made sure never to miss a meal and still she was as thin as a fever victim. Outside, starvation and disease would fell her within a month.

Cris slid down beside me, ready for another round of fun and games. “Now me, I’m going to be famous
before
I’m a journeyman. You too, if you let me send your file out.” He tugged at the braid and bead around my neck. “This thing’s really in my way.”

I nudged him warningly. “Pride goeth before…”

“Pride is exactly what Jane is lacking,” he replied seriously. And I could not disagree.

VTH/TOWN HALL REPORT

ATTENDANCE: 43%

TOWN COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT: Addison [Amadeus], Topa [BardClyffe], Lazarevna, Kata [Eden], Aftuk [Fetching], Lee [Lorien], Morales [Silvertree].

SPEAKERS: Healey, T. Boeck, Yoshimura, Valkenberg, C. Brigham, Ho, Chiovaro, Roskelly, S. Reilly, Stulir, V. Gogolen, Beadle, Rand.

MOTIONS PASSED: 3

MOTIONS TABLED: 2

MOTIONS DEFEATED: 2

MAYOR’S AGENDA: Proposal to increase appropriation for OutCare due to falloff in private and corporate donations. Her Honor singled out recent reports of unrest Outside other domes as reason enough to keep OutCare afloat.

TOWN COUNCIL AGENDA: Counterproposal re: last week’s motion to extend Friday visiting hours. Mr. Addison suggests: “Open the Gate at ten in the morning instead. Save energy not having to light the damn place up all night.”

DISCUSSION:

19:35 Mr. Rand spoke in favor of the extension of Friday visitor hours until 21:00. Projected figures estimated increased box office revenues and gallery sales.

19:52. Ms. Roskelly expressed the concern of the Crafts Merchants Association about the apparent increase in unlicensed peddling in the village markets by foreigners gaining entry via day-visitor visas. A more thorough screening of visa applications was suggested.

20:18. Arguments were heard for the proposed construction of a Francotel-financed luxury hotel in BardClyffe Village. Arguments against were scheduled for next week. A complaint was filed citing the BardClyffe Chamber of Commerce for opening negotiations with Francotel without making their intentions known at Town Meeting.

21:50. The issue of population pressure was raised again. Because so many citizens spoke over their allotted three minutes, this topic will be taken up early in next week’s meeting.

SEAN:

The morning after Howie’s paean to “elegant simplicity,” Micah hated everything he’d done for the Marin project. Even the ideas the writers and director had creamed themselves over the afternoon before.

Disquiet reigned in the Badger’s den. Mutters of “over-complication” and “the essential purity of the line” accompanied the sound of X’s being hand-drawn through vast portions of my neatly drafted and freshly printed-out ground plans. I finally saved the third-floor plan I’d been revising, closed the Marin file, and called up the full-scale details for
Deo Gratias
. No point bothering with Marin until the Master’s malaise had run its course.

This went on for three days. Somewhere around mid-morning Friday, Micah emerged from his storm cloud. “Sean’s coming to lunch.”

“Thank god,” I whispered to Jane. “Sean’ll calm him down if anyone can.”

“Mr. Marr’s sending him over to convince Micah to do the play.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, though Micah had been unavailable to several of Howie’s phone calls, and she was probably right.

The Master punched Wagner into the sound system, rolled his sleeves higher, and returned hell-bent to his destruction. Crispin by manly effort concentrated on the Tuatua research Micah had requested while two weeks of preliminary Marin programming went down the drain in megabyte-sized pieces.

Micah’s agent had convinced him to take the Marin job to make up for the financial losses on his higher-minded projects. Such a client could not normally hope to lure Micah Cervantes. The concept was a multilevel, walk-in environmental entertainment for the Marin sea dome, grand and gaudy on a medieval fantasy theme, without even pretensions to being art. Its greatest challenges were technical, such as involving the audience in the action without seeming to control their movement or their responses. The producers were young and greedy, the writers were laughing up their sleeves: the design process should have been fun and breezy. But the director was still trying to convince herself that there were reasons other than money to do the piece, encouraging Micah to indulge himself likewise.

And now with Howie’s bee in the Master’s bonnet, the Marin job lay on his desk in a shambles.

I longed for lunchtime as if it were the Second Coming.

Sean could tell something was up the minute he walked in, with the Wagner blaring before noon and Micah not favoring him with an immediate greeting. He browsed quietly among the tables, leaned over Jane’s shoulder to peer at the
Deo Gratias
model. She was building the triple-arched facade of a Romanesque cathedral, with carved portal figures of stern and saintly glance, and a detailed Last Judgment frieze on the tympanum. It was beautiful. You could practically hear the grim monks chanting in the background.

“Ah, Janie, me gerl. You do one hell of a model.” Sean eyed it with an exaggerated squint. “Too bad I’m not building the show.”

“We wish you were.” Jane gave him a shy smile. She was quite taken with Sean, but hoped that no one noticed. She wouldn’t want anyone to think she’d look twice at a married man.

Sean Reilly was Master Carpenter at the Arkadie. He was a native son of Harmony, but one of that first generation born beneath the dome, when Harmony’s survival was still a question. “Fourth kid born after they raised the lid,” he’d remind you proudly. Sean was no wimpy SecondGen. His very special kind of genius lay in being midwife to the genius of others.

His father was a sculptor who had favored Art over Religion, and left Dublin in disgust when it Enclosed as a Catholic theocracy. Sean had been born with a cutting torch in his hand, and had all the other usual shop qualifications as well: an organizational mind, an attention to detail, an encyclopedic knowledge of materials, the stamina to work long hours, and the incipient beer gut of a onetime athlete spending too much time at a desk. Micah had brought him to the Arkadie and thought him a treasure, a standard to which all others in his profession should aspire, and a well of sanity in an increasingly irrational business. We all agreed, mainly because he had such a good effect on Micah.

Sean winked at Jane, tossed a jaunty nod to Crispin and Songh, and wandered over to lean into the faint glow of my desktop. His forefinger traced the bowed outline of a flying buttress with absentminded sensuality. “Hell of a crowd out there today.”

“Every day,” said I, like the old hand I was beginning to feel.