'Company,' said Mosay commandingly. Tm glad to be back, but we've got a lot of work to do, so if I may have your attention?' He got it and said sunnily, 'I do have one announcement before we begin. I've found our shooting location. Wunderbar, it has an existing set that we can use - oh, not exactly replicating old Thebes, in a technical sense, but close enough. And we'd better get on with it, so if you please… ' Rafiel concealed a grin at the way Mosay was making sure he looked every centimetre the staging genius as he played to the spectators behind the velvet ropes, and, of course, to the pointing cameras of the paparazzi. When he had everyone's attention he went on. 'We aren't going to do the short fighting-the-Sphinx scene because we don't have a sphinx' - well, of course they didn't; there never would be a sphinx until the animation people put one in 'so we'll start with the pas de quatre, where you kids' nodding to the four 'children' of Oedipus and Jocasta 'sing your little song about how after Oedipus saved Thebes from the Sphinx he married your maman, the widowed Jocasta, whose husband had been mysteriously murdered and thus Oedipus became koenig himself-'
'Oh, hell, Mosay,' said Docilia warmly, 'that's a whole play right there. Bisogniamo say all that?'
'We must. We'll get it in, and anyway that's not your problem, Docilia, is it? In fact, you're not even in this scene, or the next scene either, except to stand around and look pretty, because this is where Creon makes his entrance and tells Oedipus what the oracle of Apollo said.'
'I already know all the Creon lines,' Andrev said proudly. He had the reputation of being a slow study.
'I certainly hope so, Andrev. Places, everybody? And now if we'll just take it from the last bars of Victorium's opening...'
It wasn't a big scene for Rafiel. He didn't even get to make a real entrance, just ambled onstage to wait for Creon to show up. The scene belonged to the Creon. Victorium had written the music accordingly, with a background score full of dark and mystical dissonances - right enough for an oracle's pronouncements, Rafiel supposed.
What Creon brought was bad news, so Rafiel's responses had to be equally sombre. Not just sombre, though. Rafiel made sure all his gestures were, well, a trifle less portentous than the Creon's - after all, Rafiel was not merely playing an old, doomed Theban king, he was playing himself playing the king. That was what being a star was all about.
Rafiel flinched at a boom from the sky. Thunder was crashing somewhere in the distance, and Mosay agitatedly demanded of a watching arcology worker that they erect the dome. Just in time; rain was slashing down on the big transparent hood over the roof before the petalled sections had quite closed over them. Rafiel shuddered again. He found that he was feeling quite tired. He wondered if it was showing up in his performance ... though of course it was only a dress rehearsal.
All the same, Rafiel didn't like the feeling that his dancing was not as lively - as bumptiously clumsy - as his audiences expected of him. He forced himself into the emotions of the part - easily enough, because Rafiel had all the ambiguity of any actor in his beliefs. Whatever he privately thought or felt, he could throw himself into the thoughts and feelings of the character he was playing; and if that character took silly oracular conundrums seriously, then for the duration of that role so would Rafiel. He worked so hard at it that at the end of the third run-through he was sweating as he finished his meditative pas de seul. So was the Creon, although he had no dancing to do. But it was Rafiel Mosay was watching, with a peculiar expression of concern on his face, and it was Rafiel he was looking at when he declared a twenty-minute break.
'Comment ca va?' Docilia asked, taking Rafiel's elbow.
He blinked at her. 'Fine, fine,' he assured her, though he didn't think he really was. Was it that obvious? He hadn't missed Mosay's watchful eyes, though now the dramaturge had forgotten him in the press of making quick calls on the communications monitor at the edge of the meadow. Rafiel made an effort and pressed Docilia's arm against his side amatively - well, maybe there was his problem right there, he thought. Deprivation. After all, why should any healthy person deliberately stop having sex, thus very possibly endangering not only his performance but even his health?
'You don't look all right,' Docilia told him, steering him through the park to a formal garden. 'Except when you're looking at that Bruta.'
'Oh, now really,' Rafiel laughed - actually laughing, because the thought really amused him. 'She's just so young.'
'So amateurish, you mean.'
'That too,' he acknowledged, slipping his arm around her waist in a friendly way. Tm surprised Mosay took her on.'
'You don't know?'
'Know what?' Rafiel asked, proving that he did not.
'She's his latest daughter,' Docilia informed him with pleasure. 'So if you're shtupping her you're going to be part of the family.'
Rafiel opened his mouth to deny that he was making love to Bruta, or indeed to anyone else since the last time with Docilia herself, but he closed it again. That, after all, was none of Docilia's business, not to mention that it did not comport well with the image of a lusty, healthy, youthful idol of every audience.
But she might have been reading his own. 'Oh, poor Rafiel,' she said, tightening her grip on his waist. 'You're just not getting enough, are you?' She looked around. There was hardly anyone near them, the casual spectators mostly still watching the performers in the rehearsal area. And they were near the maze.
'I have an idea,' she murmured. 'Can we go in the maze for a while?'
After all, why not? Rafiel surrendered. 'I'd like nothing better,' he said gallantly, knowing as well as she did that the best thing one did in the isolation of a maze was to do a little friendly fooling around with one's companion - on whom, in any case, Rafiel was beginning to feel he might as well be beginning to have sexual designs again, after all. They had no trouble finding a quiet dead end and, without discussion, Rafiel unhesitatingly put his hand on her.
'Are you sure you aren't too tired?' she asked, but turning toward him as she spoke; and, of course, that imposed on him the duty to prove that he wasn't tired at all. He realized he didn't have much time to demonstrate it in, so they wasted none. They were horizontal on the warm, grassy ground in a minute.
It was strange, he reflected, pumping away, that something you wanted to do could also be a wearisome chore. He was glad enough when they had finished. ... And almost at that very moment, as though taking a quick cue, a voice from an unseen person, somewhere else in the maze, was thundering at them.
It was Mosay's voice. What he was saying - bawling was: 'Rafiel! Is that you I hear in there with Docilia? Come out this minute! We need to talk.'
Rafiel was breathing hard, but he managed to grin at his partner and help her to her feet. 'Can't it wait, Mosay?' he called, carefully conserving his breath.
'It can not,' the dramaturge roared. 'Expliquez yourself. Who's this woman who's claiming she's got you signed up for a new production?'
Rafiel groaned. Mosay had in fact found out. Docilia put an alarmed hand on his forearm.
'Oh, paura. You'd better pull yourself together,' she whispered, doing the same for herself. 'He's really furioso about something.'
Rafiel gave in, tugging his underpants back on. 'Well,' he called to the featureless hedge, 'we did talk a little bit, she and I-'