Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (3 page)

“Thirteen minutes,” Eva Bar Nahum said,
walking briskly into the room. “Plenty of time. Hello, how are you,
I’m fine, it’s none of your business where I was last night, where
did you put my costume oh there it is, how’s the house?” She didn’t
even wait for answers before starting to strip off her clothes.

“Packed, as usual,” Judah said. “Listen,
we’ve got to talk—”

“Fine, just
kvetch
sitting down. If
you keep walking back and forth you’ll get in my way and make me
late. There’s a wonderful semi-comfortable chair over there. Park
your
tuchis
and enjoy the view.” Backstage etiquette was
naturally in force; everyone was considered fully dressed no matter
what they were or were not wearing.

Judah sat down, but hardly relaxed. He seemed
to be vibrating on some undetectable frequency. “Why can’t you be
on time once in a while? You’re endangering the show.”

“We’ve had this talk before. I’ve never
missed a cue and I don’t intend to—unless, God forbid, I should
die, in which case I may be a few minutes late.” She was already
out of her clothes and starting to wriggle into her costume.

“I suppose you were out somewhere drapping
around again.”

Eva paused a second to turn and give her
cousin a big grin. “Of course. It’s fun. You should try it
sometime.” And, as Judah opened his moth to respond, she added
quickly, “I know, you’re saving yourself for Vida—and she hasn’t
even asked you to. Even Ilya Uzi sleeps around.” She turned back to
the mirror and finished getting her costume on.

“He isn’t engaged,” Judah defended. “Well he
was, once, in
Red Star of Treason
, but he wasn’t unfaithful
until after she died. But we’re not talking about my reading
habits—”

“Of course not. We’re talking about hobbies.
You like reading spy thrillers, I like sex.” She finished getting
the costume on and sat down in front of the mirror to apply her
makeup.

“We’re talking about punctuality. I don’t
care if you
shtup
half the Imperial Navy, but do you have to
take so long?”

“When you’re as good as I am,” Eva said,
concentrating on penciling her eyebrows, “you get curtain
calls.”

Judah let out a long sigh. “Eva, you’re going
to drive me crazy.”

Eva finished her eyebrows and started on her
lips. “Don’t worry,
bubbe
,” she said, careful not to move
the lips too much. “As Shar would say, it’s just a day trip. You’ll
be back before you know it.”

“You take too much for granted. You should at
least answer your pages. What if David broke his leg or Isaac got
laryngitis and we had to rearrange the schedule?”

“You think that would keep those hams off the
stage? I trust my colleagues. Besides, what does Ilya Uzi always
say? ‘Improvise.’ You’d think of something brilliant. I have
faith.”

“I know I’d think of something. I have faith,
too. But faith comes a lot easier when your partner’s there with
you.”

Her makeup done, Eva stood up from the makeup
table and walked over to her cousin. She took his chin in her right
hand and raised it so he was looking directly into her eyes. “Look
at me, Jude. I’ll always be there, just as I always have. We’re a
team, and a damn fine one. The show will go on.”

There was a sharp rap on the door just as
they heard their cue music starting. Eva let go of Judah’s chin and
grabbed both of his hands with hers. “And speaking of which, it’s
showtime. Come on.” She pulled him up out of the seat. “You don’t
want to miss your entrance, do you?”

* * *

Le Vaudeville Galactique was a highly
unusual, if not unique, institution within the Empire. Most
theatrical companies remained planetbound; the sheer expense of
traveling between worlds precluded most of them from touring,
particularly when there were other, cheaper methods of promulgating
their performances. If a company developed a reputation for
excellence, it was far easier and less expensive to record a
performance for tridee than to pack up costumes, props, sets, cast
and crew and go hopping from planet to planet.

Some tours happened, of course. A renowned
company might travel to nearby worlds to show off their wares. The
best of the best always traveled to Earth, the center of the
Empire. But the distances were too vast and there were too many
local theater companies to make long interstellar tours
economically feasible.

“The Ville,” as its members called it, was
unique because its people were unique. All were from the heavy-grav
world of New Zion, with genetically-engineered strength, stamina
and reflexes far beyond those of the normal Imperial citizen. As a
result, its performers could not be replaced or imitated by any
low-grav native; what they offered could not be seen outside the
realm of this specific show.

Avram Bar Nahum, the company manager,
compounded this uniqueness by carrying on the tradition of refusing
to record the Ville’s performances. Some called this arrogant,
others called it short-sighted—but the only way to see Le
Vaudeville Galactique was to attend a show in person.

It had taken years to build up a reputation,
years of expensive traveling and small audiences, years of hardship
and adversity. But, as the first manager had explained, the
hardship and adversity were as nothing compared to what the
Zionians had already experienced. Poverty and humiliation seemed
insignificant after the years of degradation, slavery and torture
that were the hallmarks of “the Metamorphosis.”

The little show grew and thrived. No one had
ever seen anything like it, and no one could imitate it. The show
emphasized entertainment, with no message or ideology beyond that.
It was sophisticated enough for the most intellectual tastes while
still being accessible to any child’s delight at the beautiful and
unusual. Le Vaudeville Galactique now played to packed houses
wherever it went, and tickets were always at a premium.

As was the case with its twentieth-century
predecessor, the Ville was a collection of variety acts, each
spellbinding in its own way. Unlike the earlier version, however,
the show was not modular, but carefully scripted and tied together
as a unified whole. The bill did not change because a given act was
shuffled in or out of the lineup. Nor did the entertainment ever
stop to announce a new act. Acts melted into one another with a
stylish grace that was the signature of this special event.

Comedy merged into acrobatics merged into
magical illusion merged into song merged into animal acts merged
into dance, and the flow of entertainment never ceased. No
particular act ever exactly ended; instead, it melded and morphed
into the act that followed, often with small mini-acts bridging the
gap. The entire spectacle presented a theme that carried over from
one act to the next.

The major act before the Dance Masters of
Space—Judah and Eva Bar Nahum—was primarily a performance of
strength and agility, including tumblers, human pyramids and
juggling volunteer members of the audience. Even before the act was
over, a chorus of singers was wandering across the stage from left
to right while a trio of fire-eaters crossed from right to left. As
the acrobats disappeared, Sharona Leibowitz—the show’s premier
comic/clown/mime—re-emerged with a pay-off to the major routine
she’d performed half an hour before. Sharona, too, had almost left
the stage when the lights dimmed except for her follow spot and the
music rose to cue the Dance Masters. Sharona did a sudden back flip
and walked on her hands the rest of the way off, stage right.

The instant her spotlight went out a new one
came on, stage left, and the pair of dancers entered. Both were in
costumes that hugged their bodies without confining them. Judah
wore a shirt with an open vee neckline down to his breastbone; the
sleeves were just full enough not to exaggerate the well-developed
musculature of his arms. His pants were tight at the waist and
thighs, but flared gracefully from the calves downward—again,
barely hinting at the muscles hidden within. The costume was white
and red—the right side gleaming with purest white satin, the left
side swirling with crimson material set with thousands of tiny
rhinestones that glittered and flashed under the spotlight. His
shoes were also red, and sparkled like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

Eva’s costume was a trifle more subdued, but
no less impressive. The colors were pastels, blue and gold, with
gold shoes. None of it sparkled, but none of it needed to—her
vibrancy sparkled enough for the entire ensemble. Her dark hair,
barely shoulder-length, framed her lovely face. Her powder blue
leotard with the gold swirls emphasized the luscious curves of her
torso, while her full, floor-length skirt—gold with blue
highlights—seemed to flow around her with a liquid grace as she
moved. Even from the back of the balcony without opera glasses,
anyone could see she was breathtakingly beautiful. Only Judah’s
consummate skill and grace prevented her from eclipsing him.

The couple entered the stage to the applause
for Sharona and the strains of a lively polka, spinning about as
they took large, energetic steps. The music increased its pace as
they danced, and Judah whirled his cousin around so decisively that
her feet only touched the ground once every other revolution.
Although she didn’t appear to be making any effort to jump, Eva was
pushing off the ground each time she touched it, launching herself
in a controlled leap guided only by Judah’s powerful arms. The
music increased faster and faster, and Eva’s contact with the
ground grew less and less frequent.

Before the audience realized it, the rapid
polka had evolved into a flamenco rhythm, and Judah was now using
his cousin as much like a prop as like a partner. He twirled her
behind him and around his shoulders the way a flashy matador might
twirl his cape. Eva let go of Judah’s left hand with her right,
leaving him to twirl her one-handed. She, meanwhile, reached down
to her waist and detached her skirt, twirling the gold and blue
cloth around her body even as Judah twirled her around his. The
stage lights came up slowly and the spotlight faded as the audience
gasped at this breathtaking display of color, strength and
grace.

The whirling fabric of the skirt eventually
seemed to take off on its own, fluttering up into the flies like a
beautiful mammoth butterfly. As it did, the music slowed
dramatically and Judah took both his partner’s hands and gave her
one last spin that brought her down to the ground and facing
him.

Now the music was slow, stately, romantic as
the couple began a balletic pas de deux. Eva went en pointe on her
right foot, and Judah took her by the waist and lifted her straight
into the air over his head. He held her there for three heartbeats,
then, to a collective gasp from the audience, he casually tossed
her in a high arc halfway across the stage. As she flew through the
air Eva remained perfectly rigid, perfectly composed; meanwhile
Judah made two extended leaps across the stage to the spot where
her arc descended. His foot touched the floor from the second leap
at the same instant she came within his reach, and he caught her in
the same exact pose as when he’d thrown her. To the wild applause
of the crowd he pulled her in towards his body as she put her arms
about his neck and slid slowly against him to stand on the
floor.

The music changed again, this time to a
sultry tango. The cousins slithered together across the stage,
moving as though they were a single body with eight limbs.
Sometimes they would move slightly apart, but they never broke
contact. Their eyes were locked to one another’s; Eva might do a
precise spin, but her head and eyes always came back to the
original position, focused solely on Judah. The atmosphere in the
theater seemed to heat up as the steamy, seductive movements of the
tango caught the audience’s rapt attention.

The tango evolved into a French-style apache
dance, but with a unique twist. It was Eva who assumed the
traditional male role of the aggressor, flinging Judah over her
shoulder or dragging him along the ground. Despite her apparent
diminutive stature, she had no trouble carrying and flinging her
partner’s slightly larger frame through the acrobatic maneuvers the
dance required.

For a full ten minutes they held the stage
alone. The audience’s attention never wavered, and they broke into
applause over and over again at each new and sometimes seemingly
impossible move the dancers made. Some members of the audience were
flabbergasted that any human bodies could do the feats they’d seen
here today. The more knowledgeable of the spectators knew the
truth, for Le Vaudeville Galactique, while never hiding the fact,
made no attempt to advertise that all its members were
Zionians.

The settlement of New Zion arose out of the
darkest chapter in Imperial history. One of only a small handful of
high gravity worlds that could even remotely be called habitable,
the planet possessed a wealth of heavy elements in high demand
throughout the Empire. But mining these assets was a near
impossible task. Human beings were not adapted to the two point six
gee gravitational field the world—called Goliath at the time—had to
offer. Lungs strained at the higher atmospheric pressure; hearts
and other muscles aged rapidly fighting against the gravity.
Because objects fell faster, even a slight stumble could be fatal,
and human reflexes could not compensate adequately.

Other methods were tried. Heavy machinery was
sent down to the planet’s surface, to be guided by
telepresence—remote controlled instruments—from people in
satellites orbiting the world. But there were problems making the
machines flexible enough to perform the necessary tasks yet sturdy
enough to withstand Goliath’s harsh conditions. Equipment was
constantly breaking down, and the crews who manned the satellites
were in a perpetual state of discouragement.