And Rafiel fell asleep thinking about what 'plenty of time' meant. It meant, among other things, that when you had forever to get around to important things, it gave you a good reason to postpone them - forever.
The shooting went faster than Rafiel had imagined, and suddenly they were at an end to it. As he waited in full make-up for his last scene, his face a ruin, himself unable to see through the wreck the make-up people had made of his eyes, Docilia came over. 'You've been wonderful,' she told him lovingly. 'I'm glad it's over, though. I promise you I won't be sorry to leave here.'
Rafiel nodded and said, more wistfully than not, 'Still it's kind of nice to have a little solitude sometimes.'
She gave him a perplexed look. 'Solitude,' she said, as though she'd never heard the word before.
Then Mosay was calling for him on the set... and then, before he had expected it, his part was done. Old Oedipus, blinded and helpless, was cast out of the city where he had reigned, and all that was left for the cast to shoot was the little come-on Mosay had prepared for the audiences, when the children and chorus got together to set up the sequel.
They didn't need Rafiel for that, but he lingered to watch, sweltering or not. A part of him was glad the ordeal was over. Another part was sombrely wondering what would happen next in his life. Back to the hospital for more tinkering, most likely, he thought, but there was no pleasure in that. He decided not to think about it and watched the shooting of the final scene. One after another the minor actors were telling the audience they hoped they'd liked the show, and then, all together:
If so, we'll sure do more of these
Jazzy old soaps by Mr Sophocles.
And that was it. They left the servers to strike the set. They got on the blessedly cool cast bus that took them back to the condo. Everyone was chattering, getting ready for the farewells. And Mosay came stumbling down the aisle to Rafiel, holding on to the seats. He leaned over, looking at Rafiel carefully. 'Docilia says you wanted to stay here for a bit,' he said.
That made Rafiel blink. What had she told him that for? 'Well, I only said I kind of liked being alone here....'
The dramaturge was shaking his head masterfully. 'No, no'. It's quite all right, there's nothing left but the technical stuff. I insist. You stay here. Rest. Take a few days here. I think you'll agree it's worth it, and - and - anyway, ese, after all, there's no real reason why you have to go back with us, is there?'
And, on thinking it over, Rafiel realized that there actually wasn't.
The trouble was that there wasn't any real reason to stay in the Sonora arcology, either. As far as Rafiel could see, there wasn't any reason for him to be anywhere at all, because - for the first time in how long? - he didn't have anything he had to do.
Since he'd had no practice at doing nothing, he made up things to do. He called people on the tel screen. Called old acquaintances - all of them proving to be kind, and solicitous, and quite unprecedentedly remote - called colleagues, even called a few paparazzi, though only to thank them for things they had already publicized for him and smilingly secretive about any future plans.
Future plans reminded him to call his agent. Jeftha, at least, seemed to feel no particular need to be kind. 'I had the idea you were pretty sick,' she said, studying him with care, and no more than half accepting his protestations that he was actually entirely well and ready for more work quite soon.
She shook her head at that. 'I've called off all your appearances,' she said. 'Let them get hungry, then when you're ready to get back-'
'I'm ready now!'
The black and usually cheerful face froze. 'No,' she said.
It was the first time his agent had ever said a flat 'no' to her best client. 'Ay Jesus,' he said, getting angry, 'who the hell do you think you're talking to? I don't need you.'
The expression on Jeftha's face became contrite. 'I know you don't, caro mio, but I need you. I need you to be well. I - care about you, dear Rafiel.'
That stopped the flooding anger in its tracks. He studied her suspiciously but, almost for the first time, she seemed to be entirely sincere. It was not a quality he had associated with agents.
'Anyway,' she went on, the tone becoming more the one he was used to, 'I can't let you make deals by yourself, piccina. You'll get involved with people like that stupid Hillaree and her dumb story ideas. Who wants to hear about real things like kosmojets going off to other stars? People don't care about now. They want the good old stories with lots of pain and torture and dying - excuse me, carissimo,' she finished, flushing.
But she was right. Rafiel thought that he really ought to think about that: was that the true. function of art, to provide suffering for people who were incapable of having any?
He probably would think seriously about that, he decided, but not just yet. So he did very little. He made his calls, and between calls he dozed, and loafed, and pulled a string across the carpeted floor to amuse the kitten, and now and then remembered to eat.
He began to think about an almost forgotten word that kept popping up in his mind. The word was 'retirement'.
It was a strange concept. He had never known anyone who had 'retired'. Still, he knew that people used to do it in the old days. It might be an interesting novelty. There was no practical obstacle in the way; he had long since accumulated all the money he could possibly need to last him out... for whatever time he had left to live. (After all, it wasn't as though he were going to live forever). Immortals had to worry about eternities, yes, but the cold fact was that no untreated human lasted much more than a hundred and twenty years, and Rafiel had already used up ninety of them.
He could even, he mused, be like an immortal in these declining years of his life. Just like an immortal, he could, if he liked, make a midcourse change. He could take up a new career and thus change what remained of his life entirely. He could be a writer, maybe; he was quite confident that any decent performer could do that. Or he could be a politician. Certainly enough people knew the name of the famous Rafiel to give him an edge over almost any other candidate for almost any office. In short, there was absolutely nothing to prevent him from trying something completely different with the rest of his life. He might fail at whatever he tried, of course. But what difference did that make, when he would be dead in a couple of decades anyway?
When the doorwarden rang he was annoyed at the interruption, since his train of thought had been getting interesting. He lifted his head in anger to the machine. 'Ho detto positively, no calls!'
The doorwarden was unperturbed. 'There is always an exception,' it informed him, right out of its basic programming, 'in the case of visitors with special urgency, and I am informed this is one. The woman says she is from Hakluyt and she states that she is certain you will wish to see her.'
'Hakluyt? Is it that fou dramaturge woman again? Well, she's wrong about that, I don't want to talk about her stupid show-'
But then the voice from the speaker changed. It wasn't the doorwarden's any more. It was a human voice, and a familiar, female human voice at that. 'Rafiel,' she said fondly, 'what is this crap about a show? It's me, Alegretta. I came to visit you all the way from my ship Hakluyt, and I don't know anything about any stupid shows. Won't you please tell your doorwarden to let me in?'
10
Rafiel knows that Alegretta has come from somewhere near Mars, and he knows pretty well how far away Mars is from the Earth: many millions of kilometres. He knows how long even a steady-thrust spacecraft takes to cross that immense void between planets, and then how long it takes for a passenger to descend to a spaceport and get to this remote outpost on the edge of the Sonoran desert. And he is well able to count back the days and see that Alegretta must have started this trip to his side - at the very least - ten days or two weeks before, which is to say right around the time when he collapsed into the hospital back in Indiana. He knows all that, and understands its unpleasing implications. He just doesn't want to think about any of those implications at that moment.