Rafiel gave it dutiful attention. Even in preliminary stickfigure simulation, he saw that the monster on the screen was particularly unpleasant-looking, like a winged reptile. 'Che the hell cosa is that?'
'It's the Sphinx, of course. What else would it be?' Victorium said, stopping the computer simulation so Rafiel could study the creature.
'It doesn't look like a sphinx to me. It looks like a crocodile.'
'Mosay,' Victorium said with satisfaction, 'looked it up. Thebes was a city on the Nile, you know. The Nile is famous for crocodiles. They sacrificed people to them.'
'But this one has wings.'
'Perche no? You're probably thinking of that other Egyptian sphinx. The old one out of the desert? This one's different. It's a Theban sphinx, and it looks like whatever Mosay says it looks like.' Victorium gave him the look of someone who would like to chide an actor for wasting time with irrelevant details - if the actor hadn't happened to be the star of the show. 'The important thing is that it was terrorizing the whole city of Thebes, after their ancien roi, Laius, got murdered, until you came along and got rid of it for them. Which, of course, is why the Thebans let you marry Jocasta and be their nouveau roi.'' He thought for a moment. 'I'll have to write some new music for the Sphinx to sing the riddle, but,' he said wistfully, 'Mosay says we don't want too much song and dance here because, see, tutti qui is just a kind of prologue. It isn't in the Sophocles play. We'll just run it under the credits to mise the scene - oh, merde. What's that?'
He was looking at the tel window on the screen, where Rafiel's name had begun to flash.
'Somebody's calling me, I guess,' Rafiel said.
'You shouldn't be getting personal calls during rehearsal, should you?' he chided. Then he shrugged. 'Sanferian. See who it is, will you?'
But when Rafiel tapped out his acceptance no picture appeared on the screen, just a voice. It wasn't even the voice of a 'who'. It was the serene, impersonal voice of his household server, and it said:
'A living organism has been delivered for you. It is a gift. I have no program for caring for living creatures. Please instruct me.'
'Now who in the world,' Rafiel marvelled, 'would be sending me a pet?'
It wasn't anyone in the world - not the planet Earth, anyway; as soon as Rafiel saw the note pinned to the cage, where the snow-white kitten purred contentedly inside, he knew who it was from.
This is my favourite cat's best kitten, dear Rafiel. I hope you'll love it as much as I do.
Rafiel found himself laughing out loud. How strange of Alegretta. How dear, too! Imagine anyone keeping a pet. It was not the kind of thing immortals were likely to do. Who wanted to get attached to some living thing that was sure to die in only a few years - only a moment, in the long lifetime of people now alive? (Most of them, anyway.) But it was a sweet thought, and a sweet little kitten, he found as he uneasily picked it up out of the cage and set it on his lap. The pretty little thing seemed comfortable there, still purring as it looked up at him out of sleepy blue eyes.
Most important, it was a gift from Alegretta. He was smiling as, careful not to disturb the little animal, he began searching his data for instructions on the care and feeding of kittens.
7
Rafiel has decided not to make love to Docilia again. He isn't sure why. He suspects it has something to do with the fact that the sire of her child is always nearby, which makes him uncomfortable. It isn't just that they've collaborated on creating a foetus that makes him shy off, it is more the fact that they intend to be a family. It is only later that he realizes that that means he can't bed any of the other members of the troupe, either. Not the Antigone, the little girl named Bruta, though she has asked him to - not even though she happens to have interested him at first, since she has auburn hair and her nose is not perfectly straight. (Perhaps it is because she looks a little bit like Alegretta that he especially doesn't want to make love to her.) Not any of them, in spite of the fact that, all through his performing life, Rafiel has seldom failed to make lave in person to every female he was required to make love to in the performance, on the principle that it added realism to his art. (He wasn't particularly attracted to most of those women, either, only prepared to make sacrifices for his art.) This time, no. The only sensible reason he can give himself for this decision is that Docilia would surely find out, and it would hurt her feelings to be passed over for the others.
None of this inordinate chastity was because he didn't desire sexual intercourse. On the contrary. He didn't need to program designer dreams of love-making. His subconscious did all the programming he needed. Almost every morning he woke from dreams of hot and sweaty quick encounters and dreamily long-drawn-out ones. The root of the problem was that, although he wanted to do it, he didn't want to do it with anyone he knew. (One possible exception always noted, but always inaccessible.) So he slept alone. When, one morning, some slight noise woke him with the scent of perfumed woman in his nose he supposed it was a lingering dream. Then he opened his eyes. A woman was there, in his room, standing by a chair and just stepping out of the last of her clothing. 'Who the hell are you?' he shouted as he sat up.
The woman was quite naked and entirely composed. She sat on the edge of his bed and said, 'I'm Hillaree. You looked so sexy there, I thought I might as well just climb in.'
'How the hell did you get into my condo?'
'I'm a dramaturge,' she said simply. 'How much would you respect me if I let your door-warden keep me out?'
Rafiel turned in the bed to look at her better. She was a curly-headed little thing, with a wide, serious mouth, and he was quite sure he had never seen her before.
But he had heard her name, he realized. 'Oh, that dramaturge,' he said, faintly remembering a long-ago message.
'The dramaturge who has a wonderful part for you,' she confirmed, 'if you have intelligence enough to accept it.' She patted his head in a friendly way, and stood up.
'If you want me for a part, you should talk to my agent,' he called after her.
'Oh, I did that, Rafiel. She threw me out.' Hillaree was rummaging through the heap of her discarded clothing on the bedside chair. She emerged with a lapcase, which she carried back to the bed. 'I admit this isn't going to be a big show,' she told him, squatting cross-legged on his bed as she opened the screen from the case. 'I'm not Mosay. I don't do spectacoli. But people are travelling out to the stars, Rafiel. The newest one is a habitat called Hakluyt. The whole population has voted to convert their habitat into an interstellar space vehicle-'
'I know about that!' he snapped, more or less truthfully. 'Habitat people have done that before - last year, wasn't it? Or a couple of years ago? I think one was going to Alpha Centauri or somewhere.'
'You see? You don't even remember. No one else does, either, and yet it's a grand, heroic story! These people are doing something hard and dangerous. No, Rafiel,' she finished, wagging her pretty head, 'it's the greatest story of our time and it needs to be told dramatically, so people will comprehend it. And I'm the one to tell it, and you're the one to play it. Oh, it won't be like a Mosay production, I'll give you that. But you'll never again see anything as right for you as the part of the captain of the kosmojet Hakluyt.'
'I don't know anything about kosmojets, do I? Anyway, I can't. Mosay already had one cacafuega attack when he heard a rumour about it.'