“Where do you think I got it? They’ve even questioned him about it. He claims he was preaching in front of a thousand people at the time of the attack. Some flimsy alibi like that.”
“Then how did his account number get attached to the rental?”
“He has a whole staff of adoring followers running his organization. He says there are something like thirty people authorized to use his account. From what I gather, the police haven’t checked more thoroughly than that.”
“So we’ve just added thirty suspects. What good does this do me?”
“Maybe you can try to introduce some reasonable doubt. At any rate, it might give you something to zero in on.”
“The trial is tomorrow morning. The only thing I’ll zero in on is your head if you’re not out of here in thirty seconds.”
Hoy smiled. “I go, I go; look how I go.”
She stared, bemused, as the door closed behind him. “The boy’s learning something. I may civilize him yet.”
The recording arrived two hours later. She had asked F’tim to send her a holo of K’anal’orb in action, and F’tim had assured her such recordings were readily available. Although she had no way to know for certain whether K’anal’orb would attend the trial, it seemed a pretty safe bet he’d want to milk this for everything it was worth. And since the verdict was by majority vote, he’d pack the courtroom with as many of his followers as possible to guarantee the outcome he wanted: death to the alien subverter.
Rabinowitz sat behind her desk, lowered the lights in her office, closed her eyes and meditated for a couple of minutes. Finally, as ready as she’d ever be, she started playing the holo to look into the lace of the enemy.
The scene was a circular outdoor arena at night. Blazing torches ringed the perimeter, but spotlights lit the stage in the center. It cheered her slightly to note that the crowd was barely half the arena’s capacity; K’anal’orb might be popular, but he couldn’t automatically pack an entire house. Rabinowitz gauged the attendance at less than a thousand, but was willing to bet they made up in intensity what they lacked in numbers.
Clothing seemed optional, serving mostly to keep out the nighttime chill; some people wore cloaks, some had small bands of cloth on their shells, and other hardier souls had only painted patterns or jewelry. There was no seating and everyone was in constant motion. It was apparently expected that the audience would mill about and talk to their neighbors, at least before the show. It reminded her of the groundlings at the old Globe, except that this audience was above the stage on the sloping sides of the bowl. “I guess this restores the meaning of the word ‘stands,’ ” she muttered.
There was a bustle of activity around the stage. Rabinowitz’s trained eyes could spot a small army of stagehands moving purposefully in the shadows, tending to the million and one details a live show of this sort required. Each helper was easily identified by an aqua-colored sash worn diagonally across the shell. As she looked more closely, Rabinowitz could see more of the helpers moving through the audience and talking with people, probably encouraging their enthusiasm.
There was a rising sense of anticipation swelling within the crowd, so when loudspeakers blared a six-note fanfare and the lights on the stage dimmed, then rose, the people turned all their attention to the center. On stage stood a K’tolu’tano Rabinowitz would have been unable to tell apart from the others except that his somber gray robes wrapped with dignity around his body. He stood stock still, waiting for the new tension to build. The audience continued to mill about silently, a backhanded tribute to Brownian motion, but they moved much more slowly now, their eyestalks all fixed on the one individual.
Rabinowitz watched K’anal’orb move around the platform. The speaker would turn his attention in different directions as he spoke, managing to face each section of the audience around him at least once every couple of minutes—classic theater-in-the-round staging. She watched his body rhythm, saw how his movements followed a silent three-beat melody that started slowly and increased gradually to a breathless pace; then, with one dramatic gesture, he would wave an arm and bring the tempo to a flashing halt that left the audience panting before he started slowly to build the pattern again. She listened to his voice, both the modulation and the cadence, perfectly synchronized to his movements around the stage—again carefully calculated to carry his audience on an emotional roller coaster.
“Too repetitive a pattern,” she muttered. “He’d lose a human audience after a while. But if the K’tolu’tanou evolved along a shore with strong wave action, it might hit some primordial instinct. Yeah, it probably works for them.”
The show lasted less than an hour; then the spotlights went out briefly and came back on to brighten an empty stage. The audience was screaming its approval, its hunger for more—a hunger K’anal’orb would not satisfy until his next performance. He knew how to keep his fish on the hook.
Rabinowitz watched the holo the first two times without turning on the translator. She didn’t have to know the words K’anal’orb was saying to understand what he meant, any more than she needed to speak German to hear the message of Triumph of the Will. When she did finally turn the translator on, she knew she was right; the speech itself was little more than vague generalizations. The delivery was what sold it.
She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “A consummate performer,” she said. “Kwame could match him for eloquence and passion, but he doesn’t improvise well and we can’t expect K’anal’orb to stick to our script. Besides, I doubt Kwame’s ever teeped in his life, certainly not into an alien body. It wouldn’t help his performance to be floundering out of control around the stage.”
She sighed. “Might as well face it. As an actress, Ms. Rabinowitz, you may only be a mediocre understudy—but for this one show, you’ll have to give the performance of your life.”
Everything was falling apart, yet still he chose to face the world bravely. Villain though he might be, he had a vestige of manhood and pride.
“…And now a wood/Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!/If this which he avouches does appear/There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here./I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,/And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone./Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!/At least we’ll die with harness on our back.”
Yet even as he mentioned his back, it began to change, to shift, and Mac leaned forward, unable to keep upright. The gray stone battlements vanished, to be replaced by the charred beams of the burned-out Globe Theatre, and she found herself staring into the leering face of Gloucester just as he learned that Richmond had put upon the sea seeking to topple his throne. His eyes burned with passion as they glared unwaveringly into hers.
“Is the chair empty? is the sword unswayed?/Is the king dead? the empire unpossess’d?/Wbat heir of York is there alive but we?/And who is England’s king but great York’s heir?”
The alarm chimed and Rabinowitz woke in a cold sweat, still feeling the glare of those cold, mad eyes. “Why did he look at me like that?” she muttered. “That’s not the way I directed it. Was he trying to tell me something?”
She yawned despite her tension and rubbed her eyes. “Yeah, right, I’m getting omens in my dreams. He’s probably warning me I’m facing as big a disaster as his. Why couldn’t I have gotten Caesar’s soothsayer? At least he said exactly what he meant. Of course, not being as evil as Richard may mean I have some justice on my side.
“But,” she reminded herself, “in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy—Oh damn, what’s the rest of it? I’d better know that one by heart. And who cares if I’m giving away precious literary assets? It’s fair use, and it’ll just whet their appetite for more.”