Harmony (12 page)

“Good!” Howie cheered. “He’s costing me an arm and a leg on
Crossroads
. Maybe you can teach him a thing or two.”

“Maybe
we
can.”

Howie blinked at him. “Whew. That sounded a bit pointed. Getting cold feet, are you, Mi?”

“No, no.” Micah crossed and uncrossed his legs on the padded chair. “Just feeling a little… exposed. You do know not everyone will understand what we’re trying to do.”

“If they understood it, we wouldn’t have to do it for them.”

Micah nodded. “Fine. So how’s Reede treating you?”

“
Now
I’m getting heartburn,” Howie groaned. “Nah, ole Reede’ll be here for first rehearsal and opening night, and if we’re lucky, we won’t see much of him in between.”

“Is he putting in any money?”

“As little as he can get away with.”

“What a surprise.”

“Hey, we need him. He’s booking the Eye’s tour after the run here. The new Immigration guy won’t let them in without a ticket home.”

Micah frowned. “Unusually letter-of-the-law, isn’t it?”

“And I’d like to know who’s at the bottom of it. Cora Lee from my Board tells me he’s got the backing of a majority of the Town Council.” Howie’s eyes slid wearily across his poster-covered walls. “Great reviews aren’t enough anymore. And I quote: ‘This troupe’s aesthetic value has not been sufficiently proven…’

“What happened to artistic autonomy?”

“Exactly. Never had this problem with imports before. Cora says it because Tuatua’s undomed. The T.C. is sure the Eye will want to stay once they get here. They don’t know how wrong they are!” Howie grabbed a bulging folder, then dumped Micah’s feet off the extra chair, and dropped into it with a smug, boyish grin. “I went there this weekend.”

“There?”

“Tuamatutetuamatu!” He upended the folder. Glossy brochures, picture postcards, and pamphlets spilled across the table onto the floor. “Goddamn Immigration gave me every shot in the book.”

“No quarantine?” asked Micah.

“Hey, I’m a citizen.” Howie laughed. “But they were worried.”

“Did you meet the Eye?” I asked eagerly.

“No such luck. They’re playing some dance festival in Stockholm. They’ll swing home before they come here, we’ll get a glimpse, then quarantine for three goddamn weeks.” Howie threw up his hands. “Elusive little buggers, aren’t they? But Christ, those planters want to open that little place up, they got to make it easier to get to! A cool hour to Sydney, then two puddle-jumpers and a seaplane, five more goddamn hours in the air, never mind the ground wait. A seaplane, for chrissakes! The whole place is like watching some revival at the Film Archive!”

Micah rescued a handful of candy-hued cards from the rug and pored over them hungrily. “Should I go?”

“Yeah, if you want to absorb the cost yourself. Bloody expensive. And my general manager doesn’t believe in research trips for second stage productions. She even cut the effects engineer from the budget. But we don’t need all that shit this time!” Howie laughed delightedly. “God, Mi, how many shows have we done together?”

“Too many. What did you do on Tuatua?”

Howie leaned back. “Went around staring through the locked gates of infuckingcredible plantations and asking about native shrines. The whole island was on edge with this Enclosure dispute. Rallies and protests breaking out, leaflets blowing all over the streets. Get this: the day before, the police raided this dive where somebody claimed they’d spotted this native legend called the Conch. Seven feet high, covered in blue feathers, debating domer policies with some plantation foreman who’d just dropped in for a quick one.” Howie grinned. “Wonder what
he
was drinking.”

“And when the police arrived?” asked Micah.

“Not a sign of the Conch, since, as we know, he’s invisible… Cops beat up on a few people, went home. Even with that going on, folks were friendly enough when they heard I was from Harmony—they’re building a tourist industry and they wanted to pick my brain about how we do it. However, they had nothing to offer about native shrines, and things cooled off pretty fast if I pushed it.”

Kim bustled into the office. “Lunch is on its way.”

Howie ignored her. “So I searched around for someone who looked like they might know that sort of thing firsthand. I finally fastened on this old waiter at the hotel, obviously a local.”

“How did you know?” asked Micah. Kim settled like a cat in Howie’s chair to listen.

“Well, he was, you know, not white.”

“Are all the planters white?”

“White or mixed, at least all the ones I met. I mean, this guy was really
not white
.”

Micah laughed. “Howard, your own general manager is not white.”

“Take my word for it.”

Kim looked at me deadpan. “The bone in his nose was the real giveaway.”

“Anyway, the guy was kinda grumpy and closemouthed, until I mentioned the Eye. All of a sudden he was interested. I told him who I was and about the play, and finally he says if I really understood this play, I would understand why he couldn’t tell me where the shrines were—story places, he called them.”

Micah chuckled. “Had you there, didn’t he.”

“But he said there were places he could take me that weren’t so secret, to help me understand the play, and I realize he’s talking about things in the play I hadn’t even mentioned. Well, turns out he’s seen it. The Eye already performed it there a few years back. He says it caused a big noise and everyone on the island saw it at least once, even all those rich planters who’d told me they’d never heard of the Eye.”

“Interesting,” Micah remarked, “how entire groups of people can become simultaneously forgetful.”

Howie developed a sly grin. “The official line is the play didn’t exist. The media were told not to review it, but everyone went anyway. Even the Conch, my guy tells me. Seems he quotes the play sometimes in his underground messages to the people.”

“Invite him to the opening,” said Micah, uncharacteristically glib. I’ve always wanted to say I felt a premonition stirring. Mostly I felt a little creepy.

Howie nodded. “Somebody in that Opposition sure knows how to exploit a legend. But wait.” He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Next morning, I meet my friend at this little café that the hotel desk has never heard of but a native cabdriver has no trouble taking me to. My man has a new guy with him, his cousin-with-the-Land Rover, and in we pile and off we go.”

The intercom on Howie’s desk beeped discreetly.

Kim hopped up. “Lunch. I’ll get it.”

“It takes the rest of the day, and I’d had other visits planned for the afternoon. But once he got going, there was no way I was going to stop him, ’cause what he’s doing is driving us the full circuit of the island, which is a ring with water in the middle.

“Mostly we’re driving past planted fields and terraces, and the plantations with their fancy gates and big shiny billboards pushing the advantages of doming. But every so often, we take a turn down some dirt track and the driver pulls over and we get out into some totally breathtaking piece of nature, and my guy says, ‘This is Station Two,’ or three or five or eight, whichever, up to twelve by the end of the day, for the twelve months of the year.”

“Stations?” I pictured concrete arches and magnetic rails.

But Latin-born Micah got it immediately. “Like the Stations of the Cross.”

Howie was crestfallen. “How’d you know? That’s exactly what he said to me. One of the native clans—he didn’t call them tribes—has the duty of walking these ‘Stations’ all year long. The next year, another clan takes over. Twelve Stations, twelve clans, an endless cycle. Between moves to the next station, they live at the one they’re at and maintain it—you know, clean it up and repair any damage caused by storms… or other visitors.”

“Vandalism?” asked Micah.

Howie nodded. “Increasingly.”

“Who?”

“My guy was reluctant to say. I figure the same casual tourist damage we have—taking home a piece of the rock—or it could be—”

“More organized,” Micah supplied. “Burning churches has always been a favorite strategy of oppression.”

“Why do the clans go to all this trouble?” Kim asked.

Howie wound up for a big finish. “Because they believe that if they don’t keep ‘walking the Stations,’ the Ancestors will decide that humanity can’t be trusted to care for the world anymore. Then they’ll do us all in and find somebody else to do the job.”

“Oh. Is that all?” Micah’s smile was grave. “I’m sure all this fits into the doming controversy somehow?”

“On the mark, as usual. Doming any part of the island will cut off access for the clans’ ritual circuit.”

“And the Eye is…?” asked Micah.

“From those clans.”

“But not on duty at the moment.”

“Apparently not.”

My creepy little chill was not going away, but I was beginning to like it. Suddenly, this minor fairy tale that had seemed as remote as an old morality play took on the weight of reality in Howie’s glowing, windowless office. Just what Micah had asked for: actors doing a play about politics they were actively involved with.

Howie stood, stretching legs. At his desk, he reached into a drawer. “When I thanked the old man, saying I thought I understood the play much better now, he gave me these. Said they’d help me with the Eye when they got here.”

He held a folded paper in one hand and a small dark sphere in the other. He waved the paper. “Kim, we’ll need copies. This was supposedly snatched from a heavily guarded planters’ meeting by the Conch. Now that someone’s actually circulating their secret minutes around town with the morning mail, the planters aren’t laughing so hard when the Conch’s name comes up.” He twisted the dark ball lightly in his fingers and tossed it to Micah. “Take this with you, too. For inspiration.”

I leaned in to look. A bit of wood, carved all around. Twelve facets carved with tiny birds and animals. My hand jerked reflexively to my throat. This was the exact match to the bead Cris had made me stop wearing.

Micah turned it round and round as if searching for operating instructions. Howie let out a cathartic breath and strode restlessly to the door. “Hey, what happened to that lunch?”

* * *

And as if enough had been said on the subject of Tuatua, the two of them spent the rest of our lunchtime discussing the latest standings in the men’s amateur soccer league. But Micah hurried home brimming with ideas, and I was left mystified.

“That was a useful meeting—I mean, beyond the research?”

Micah nodded, scribbling madly at his desk, the boredom of Marin behind him. The little wooden bead offered its multiple faces from the worktable. Micah had unearthed a dusty pad of rough paper he called newsprint. Its edges were cracking with age, but there he was, filling sheet after sheet with broad, dark strokes of charcoal, tossing each aside, on his worktable or on the floor. He often worked as one possessed by the beginnings of an idea, but this newsprint routine was unusual.

I’d missed something. Some essential aesthetic communion going on between Micah and Howie. My panic made me querulous. “But we didn’t even talk about design!”

“The best ideas,” the Master murmured, “always come indirectly.”

Indirectly? I’ll say. I decided right then that no magic that the Eye could come up with, real or imagined, could be more mysterious than the birth processes of Art.

HOWIE’S RESEARCH: FROM THE MINUTES OF THE APRIL MEETINGS OF THE TUATUAN PLANTERS’ ASSOCIATION

AT THE BRIM:

I thought a lot about Art after that, as we settled into the early stages of designing
The Gift
. I pondered the relationship of Art and Politics. I hadn’t really thought there was one. I mean, wasn’t Art about history and romance and philosophy, the Big Topics? Everyday politics didn’t seem… well, elevated enough.

I thought a lot about the Eye as well. I wore my Tuatuan necklace despite Crispin’s satirical glances. I devoured his research and picked his brain mercilessly, even borrowed the few books on Tuatua still extant in the Town Square library. Me, a child of Chicago, reading actual books on paper. And it wasn’t just me: we were all Tuatua-crazy. Even Jane couldn’t resist.