STARSHIP TROUPERS IV: THE UNKNOWN GUEST
Chapter Seven: Audience Participation
by
Christopher
Stasheff
Copyright © 2011
Fortunately, the skull was ceramic, not real. Even so, if it had been me, I would have dropped it like a hot rock. Larry, to his credit, said, “Another of his infinite jests!”
“Jests, my foot!”
“You don’t have a foot,” Larry said, “not even a neck. Besides, if I give you a foot, you’ll take a metre.”
“And where would you want me to meet ’er?” the skull demanded. “And what for? Watch what you say, doublet-boy—this is a family audience.”
Larry said, “They seem to like it well enough. In fact, they’re doublet over with laughter.” He waited for the groan to crest, then spoke into it and over it as it died. “Trying to live up to your reputation as a jester?”
“You’re the one who’s trying,” the skull said. “Besides, you got the line wrong—I’m a fellow of infinite jest, not mirth.”
“Jest as I thought,” Larry said, “a fellow of infinite girth. Really overweight, aren’t you?”
“Who, me? I’m the original strip-teaser who overdid it.”
“That joke is older than you are.”
“Tough claim. I’m older than the hills—in fact, on this planet, even the hills have ghosts. I’m just one among many. You’re holding the original hardware, buddy—ceramic, glazed by nature and fired by enthusiasm.”
“Only enthusiasm? You’re not so hot. Besides, even I know that hardware is useless without software.”
“The hills supply the hardware, humans supply the software.”
“Don’t you dare say the hills are alive with the sound of music!”
“Okay, I won’t—but stopping the union won’t stop the suit.”
Larry frowned. “A union suit? Who’s going to press it?”
“Anybody with a steam iron. Anything else, I’m not saying. I know enough not to commit slander. Look for directions.”
“You’re not the first one to have fear of commitment.” Larry handed the skull to me. “See what you can do with it.” With that, he stood up and made his escape.
I glared at the skull. “See what you’ve done now? I’ll have to bury you full fathom five again.”
“Wrong play,” the skull said. “That line is from The Tempest.”
“No, that’s ‘Full fathom five thy father lies.’”
“Maybe he’ll tell the truth instead.”
“He’ll still be down a fathom or so. I was talking about burying.”
“The only thing that gets buried around here,” said the disembodied voice in my ear, “are code monkeys.”
I was an old trouper, though, and had the presence of mind not to repeat the line. “So you used to jest for the king, eh?”
“A lot funnier than you are, stoneface. Who’s getting buried today, anyway?”
Again, I declined to repeat the answer I heard in my earpiece and said instead, “You are, at this rate.”
“Oh, yeah? This is the only Shakespearean scene I’ve ever seen die on stage.”
“Then I’ll let you die offstage.” I handed the skull down into the grave, where Lacey was waiting for the coffin with the removable bottom to be placed over her. “Anybody down there?” I asked.
“Nobody but us chickens.” The skull’s voice kept going. “No, there’s a girl, too. Hey, sweetheart, watch where you’re putting that hand! Hold it, gravedigger…”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Well, someone else is, and she’s a lot prettier than you. Who’re you, beautiful? Don’t say ‘Ophelia’—that’s too old a straight line. Besides, you’re not a walk-on, you’re a carry-on.”
I looked down into the grave and saluted him. “Yes indeed. Carry on!”
“Why not? If I’m dead, I’m carrion anyway.”
“Then I’ll carry you off.” I made one of the quickest exits of my career. “Do you know what gaffer’s tape is?”
“Sounds pretty sticky.”
“You’re right.” I handed the skull to Ramou. “Somebody show him.”
“Hey, you can’t do that!” the skull protested. If it said anything else, the words got lost in the mumbling as Ramou held out the skull to Charles, who was waiting with the gaffer’s tape. He fastened the jawbone shut and the skull subsided.
With a sigh of relief, Larry and I got back to Shakespeare’s lines.
We weren’t the only ones who were relieved.
As Larry came offstage, I slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Great ad libs! I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist.”
“Neither did I.” He looked as pale as the skull.
A minute later, Horace came off. I figured I’d try again. “Great ad libs! I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist.”
“I’m not,” Horace said, “but those are the worst jokes I’ve heard since 1912.”
“Why 1912?”
“Because they sank so hard they took the Titanic down with them.”
Then it was time for my entrance, so I missed what else went on backstage. I figured it involved a couple of shots of whiskey, some feminine consolation, and a quick pep talk, because Larry came into the wings right behind me and swerved around to be in front, so he could already be there for Ophelia’s entrance in her coffin.
Okay, so that’s where Larry and I got into it. Well, not really—just a stage fight. But sometimes it’s tough to keep your temper when someone’s hitting you, and even though Merlo had just that afternoon rehearsed us on it, I had to work at steadying my breathing, especially because Larry made it look as though he was really out for blood. We’d been getting on each others’ nerves for a few months now, so he could have been channeling a very real emotion—but that’s just good acting.
What worried me was that word “channeling.” After all, if a ghost could invade Ogden so that he didn’t remember what he’d said, it could certainly give me that extra push that would make a stage punch turn real.
“I’ll see your ten and raise you twenty!”
“Thirty credits on Hamlet!”
Well. I’d heard of audience participation and was glad to see them getting into the spirit of the thing—but how would they react if Laertes won? I had a notion it wouldn’t help much to remind them that they should have read the script. They were making so much noise we couldn’t hear each other up on stage.
“Well, if they want to see a fight,” Marnie called out, “let us finish the play and they’ll see all the bloodletting they want!”
“They certainly will!” Larry stepped up beside her, hand on the hilt of his stage sword.
Now, that made the audience nervous. “Boxing,” somebody called, “not a swordfight.”
“Yeah,” somebody else called. “The blood works better inside our bodies.”
The crowd fell silent, and everyone knew what everyone else was thinking—they’d just had their first murder, and they didn’t particularly want another.
“Right, then.” Larry leaped into center stage. “Time for the duel. Laertes?”
“Right here.” I stepped back and tried to remember my lines, wary of the autoprompter.
I didn’t have to be. Winston fed me my cue. “Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.” He took my hand and Larry’s and forced them together for a shake. For an old guy, his grip had surprising strength.
“Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong,” Larry/Hamlet said.
The audience booed and shouted; they’d been promised a fight, and they wanted to see it—so as Laertes, I replied, “In my terms of honour I stand aloof; and will have no reconcilement.”
The audience cheered, and another round of betting ensued. Larry and I waited it out. I let the experienced guy take the lead, and he waited until the betting had started to ebb before he called, “Give us the foils. Come on.”
As Laerties, I called out, “Come, one for me.”
“Give them the foils, young Osric,” Winston/Claudius said.
Suzanne, suitably corseted, stepped up with two fake swords.
“Cousin Hamlet,” Claudius said. “You know the wager?”
The audience roared, thinking the actors had bets going, too.
“I know it very well, my lord,” I said. “Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.”
Half of the audience roared; the other half jeered. I began to wonder if I was hearing software developers against hardware engineers.
Claudius projected his voice over theirs. “I do not fear it; I have seen you both: but since he is better'd, we have therefore odds.”
A roar of approval answered him. The audience was out for blood—well, blood money.
Hamlet told Suzanne/Osric, “Give us the foils. Come on.”
I took my flexible oversized toothpick and struggled to remember my lines.
It was a good stage fight; Merlo deserved his master’s certificate. Trouble was, as the fight went on, Larry’s eyes became brighter and brighter, and first thing I knew, I was really fighting to keep my skin whole—not quite successfully; according to the script and to Merlo, I was supposed to lose, but not for real. Larry grinned; he was actually enjoying himself, and was having a tough time aiming at the pouch of fake blood under the cloth of my sleeve. The more he missed, the more the light in his eyes turned crazy. We managed the exchange of swords without cutting into each other, though. Hamlet kept refusing the king’s wine; Gertrude took a sip, right on cue. Hamlet hit the blood-pouch in my sleeve just right—well, maybe not quite; I felt a stab of pain—and Larry was on me again, chopping and slashing like a maniac, and I had to parry my fastest. Then Laertes/me gave the game away, told Hamlet that the wine and the swords had both been poisoned, but not to worry, I/Laertes and Larry/Hamlet had both been wounded by the same sword, so we were both going to die, and Larry proceeded to pour the wine down Winston’s throat while I, as Laertes, explained how Claudius had managed to poison all four of us—Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes. Then it was all over except the death speeches; Barry came in as Fortinbras, took over the government, and decreed that Hamlet be buried with full military honors. We all trooped off to follow the corpse.
The applause thundered louder than the death-salute cannon; cries of “Encore!” “I won! Pay up, Dan!” and more shouts celebrating their wins or losses on the duel.
I rounded on Larry. “What the hell did you think you were doing, slasher? You almost ran me through a couple of times there. I had to parry like a madman!”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Ramou,” Larry said. “I don’t know what came over me. I certainly didn’t intend to lose my head like that.”
But his first sentence paralyzed me. “Came over you? Like, took over your sword hand?”
“Not quite that badly—just stirred up emotions, probably very old and deeply buried ones.”
“Like Yorick?” I asked.
“Well, as a metaphor. I certainly didn’t realize what I was doing.”
“Sounds familiar,” I muttered; then, louder, “I’m sorry, too. Didn’t mean to jump on you like that.”
Merlo’s hand slapped Larry’s shoulder. “Will you two get out there? It’s curtain call!”
“I’ve missed applause?” Larry asked, eyes huge, and bolted out onstage.
“Line up for bows!” Barry called, and we all formed into a rough arc. The lights came up again, and we bowed.
The applause rose to a roar, applause mixed with cries of “Usurper!” “Bloody murder!” “Treachery!”
We bowed again—then again—and again and again, until the lights went down and stayed down and the house lights came up. The audience started toward the outside doors, people talking in excitement—but there was a dark undertone that I didn’t like, and the cries of “Anarchist!” “Reactionary!” “Toady to the bosses!” and “Bootlicker!” never stopped.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Horace. “They already knew everybody dies. Didn’t they read the script?”
“Why bother?” Horace asked. “No doubt they enjoyed it more with a few surprises.”
I turned to Larry. “Way to go, slasher! We’ll make a fighter out of you yet—and you can make an actor out of me.”
Larry gave his head a shake as though clearing it, and smiled. “I’d say we both have our work cut out for us.”
“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “were you trying to kill me for real? Or was there madness in your Method?”
“Did I?” Larry’s eyes came back into focus. “I—I’m, sorry, Ramou. I don’t remember.”
I started a withering rejoinder, then remembered the channeling I’d been worried about and swallowed my anger. “S’okay. What do you remember?”
“Why, entering to see the ghost onstage, saying my first few lines…” His eyes lost focus again as he rotated to look at me. “That’s it. Beyond that, all I remember is the lights in my eyes and a voice in my ear feeding me my lines.”
My stomach sank. “The digital prompter. I think I’d better check out its program before the next performance.”
“I don’t think there will be another performance,” Horace said beside me. “Listen to the crowd.”
I realized that the monitor speaker, faithfully bringing us every noise from the stage, was also picking up the house, fading slowly as the audience filed out off the theater—but some others, who were apparently planning to stay, were making a lot of noise. In fact, they were managing a dull roar, enough so that it was growing as more people in the audience stayed to protest—or to wait and see what happened. An impromptu demonstration might be more entertaining than Hamlet. After a minute, I realized there were two sets of shouters, one calling “Down with Morgan!” and the other calling “Keep Morgan! Keep the Board!” I glanced at the 3DT surveillance screen and saw that the stay-arounds had separated into two camps, facing one another and shaking fists and playbills. Horace definitely looked worried. “Riots have grown out of moments like this.”
“Riots? Over a stage-play performance?”
“Oh, yes. The worst was the Astor Place Riot in New York City—the fans of two famous actors brawled over their idols. Twenty-odd rioters were killed. There was also a riot at the opening of The Playboy of the Western World in 1907’s Dublin… and those are only two of many.”
“Call the record books—you may be adding one tonight.” I went over to the prop table, picked up my halberd from the opening scene, and was heading for the stage when Horace stopped me. “No, Ramou! You’ll only make it worse.”
“Maybe.” I grinned. “But it’ll be a lot of fun.”
“You will not!” Horace clapped a hand on my shoulder. “They’ll keep us here as witnesses! We’ll never get off this planet if one of us is involved!”
“Aw, you spoilsport! But I guess you’re right.” I stood the halberd up against the wall.
“May I have a try?”
We both looked up, startled. Morgan came striding toward us. “Mind if I take the stage for a few minutes?”
“Uh—no, of course not!” Horace said. “It’s your auditorium, after all. But is it entirely advisable?
“I’ve had some experience with a riot, back on old Earth.”
“Well, if you must.”
“So kind.” Morgan stepped past us, out onto the stage. “A bit louder, please,” his voice said from the public-address speaker.
I cranked the gain all the way up. A feedback whistle stabbed through the house, rising to a screech. On the screen, I saw everybody clap their hands over their ears. A dozen of them went rolling in the aisles—not the way we’d prefer, but you take what you can get.
“Enough, Ramou,” Horace said, tight-lipped.
I turned the volume down until the only sound was Morgan’s voice.
“I understand your distress,” Morgan told the rioters, “and be sure that I share it. We have never had anyone murdered here before, and even though there’s some doubt that it was not a suicide, I am deeply chagrined that it happened on my watch.”
“Then stop watching!” someone shouted.
Morgan nodded. “If that is what you all prefer, of course I shall step down.”
“Safe promise,” Horace grunted. “How often do all the people involved agree on anything?”
“However, there is a more urgent issue pressing us tonight,” Morgan said. “The murder of a young man, and the waste of all his talents for a lifetime that might have been, is surely tragic. We must find his killer before we do any thing else.”
“Safe bet,” someone called. “If you don’t find out who done it, you get to keep office forever!”
“I don’t really have any power,” Morgan said. “That resides in you, and in the Council that represents you.”
“Who do what you say!” a voice shouted.
“I do have a gift for persuasion,” Morgan admitted, “and I have as much right to be heard as anyone. But when you boil it down, that is all I have—persuasion.”
“You must be damn persuasive, then,” the voice said. “The council always does what you want.”
Morgan nodded as though accepting a tribute. “Generally, I do as much of what they want as they do of mine. The compromises and trade-offs generally aren’t discussed in public. They happen, though, believe me.”
“Not until you find Harry’s murderer.”
There was a rumble of agreement from everyone else.
Morgan nodded. “Fair enough. Did you see one another’s reactions when the mummer assassin poured the poison into mummer king’s ear?”
Everybody went quiet. Everybody looked at everybody else.
“I take it the answer is ‘no,’” Morgan said with a smile. “I shall congratulate the actors on their performances. They held your attention so well that no one was watching anyone else.”
“Well, what was there to see?” someone demanded.
“A double image,” Morgan said, “a superimposure, as it was termed in the early days of video—and one of the actors heard a voice over the private frequency.”
“Couldn’t be!” someone yelled. “How could that work?”
“For that, I’ll have to ask the young man who put together their automatic prompting system.”
“Why?” the voice demanded. “You’re as good an engineer as any of us, Morgan! Explain it yourself!”
Morgan nodded. “I could—but the young man, having done the work himself, would have more credibility than I.”
“Charles is the one who invented it,” I protested offstage.
“Yes, but you know how shy and retiring he is,” Horace said. “I’m afraid the task is yours, Ramou.”
I gritted my teeth and walked out onto the stage. “Uh—Hi, folks. I’m the one who gave the system the last finishing touches.”
“Laertes!” someone shouted.
“We want an engineer, not an actor!”
I nodded. “Fair enough. I don’t want to be an actor.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because we were long on parts and short on actors,” I said. “I had to fill in.”
“We’ll see about that,” another voice answered. “How does the prompter work?”
“Optical character recognition and text-to-speech conversion,” I said.
They were quiet, waiting. Then someone called out, “That’s all?”
“Well, almost,” I said. “I had to build in a circuit that discriminates between the actors, so it won’t be prompting, say, Polonius with Horatio’s line. While I was at it, I put in a time-delay that waits thirty seconds for the actor’s memory to kick in before it gives the prompt.”
“And the voice comes in through the mastoid?”
I nodded. “Phone patch right behind the ear.”
They were getting more interested in the gadget than the murder or the rebellion—of course. After all, they were engineers. Morgan leaned back against the stage wall, arms folded and smiling, amused.
The rabble-rouser saw he was losing his audience. His face reddened, and he said, “Giles could have whipped up a gadget like that in an hour!”
One of the other engineers, though, called out, “How did you build the discrimination chip?”
“Well… uh… I didn’t,” I admitted. “I cannibalized it.”
“From what?” she demanded, confused.
“The, uh… coffee dispenser.” I blushed, shame-faced. “It has to recognize each actor or techie and match the person’s profile with the beverage.”
She stared. Then she started laughing. One by one, the others caught the ridiculousness of the situation and joined in. In a minute, the whole house was laughing their heads off—and my face was flaming.
“Giles’s not here!” the rouser called.
“Oh, yes he is,” the loudspeakers said.
Everyone went quiet. Then the girl said tentatively, “Giles?”
There was no answer.
“Did I imagine that?” she asked, in almost a whisper.
“If you did,” said the man in back of her, “so did I.”
“Me, too.”
“I did.”
“That was Giles, all right—I recognized his voice.”
The hairs on the back of my neck were trying very hard to rise. The barber would have a real easy time trimming me on my next visit. I walked to the edge of the stage, looked down, and asked, “How could that happen?”
“A ghost,” someone said, as though those two words dismissed the issue.
I looked to Morgan for help. He smiled and explained, “We’re so used to specters here that no one thinks very much about them anymore, Mr. Lazarian. For the record, though, we have so much silicon that circuits form naturally, and human minds emit a great deal of energy. That energy can transduce into current flow in a semiconductor…”
“…and it’s just a matter of connecting the chips in whatever configuration that gives you the effect you want.” I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“You’re quick,” one of the women said.
I shrugged. “Better than being dead.”
That got a laugh—a small one, but a laugh. It felt good—I mean, really good. With a shock, I realized I was catching the actor’s disease—applause addiction.
“All right—let’s do the sensible thing.” Morgan
unfolded his arms and stepped forward. “Who killed you, Giles?”
No answer.
“Giles?”
“He doesn’t know,” someone said.
“That’s right,” someone else said. “He was stabbed in the back.”
“But the odds are that the killer left a trace in the video system,” I said.
All heads turned to me. “We’ve already checked the memories in the surveillance cameras in the villa,” Morgan objected.
“The defective memories are yours!” the chief would-be rebel called out. “Do you really want to be ruled by a man who’s so incompetent he doesn’t know how to find a killer?”
“Oh, we know who the killer is,” I said. “The problem is proving it.”
The crowd went silent. Then Morgan said, in a hollow voice, “Who?”
“Well, it has to be someone who knows programming, also hardware maintenance.”
“Hey, that’s me!” called someone in the audience.
“And me!” called another one.
“And me!”
“And me!
“Peace, my friends.” Morgan held up a hand toward the audience, but he still looked at me. “You see the problem, Mr. Lazarian. You have described nine out of ten of our population.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s only the beginning,” I said. “It also had to be someone who wanted you to step down.”
“Better.” Morgan nodded. “You’ve cut it down to fifty percent.”
“Make that thirty!” someone called out. “There’s a lot of us who think you’re doing just fine.”
The other thirty percent roared in anger. Then the audience members started yelling at each other and shaking fists.
Now, I’ve been in plenty of tense situations that turned into fights, so I know that assault can easily and quickly turn into battery, sometimes with a full charge ready to fire. I stepped down to the front of the stage area and bellowed, “Hey! Listen up!”
Might as well have shouted into a tornado. The sound waves rolled around and around the auditorium, louder and louder with each circuit. I turned to Horace, calling, “Help!”
The old trouper nodded, stepped up beside me, took a deep breath, and projected his voice—not shouting, but even louder than if he had—and was heard through every inch of the house. “WHAT DID YOU SAY, MR. LAZARIAN?”
The audience was so amazed at being shouted down without an amplifier that they shut up for at least a moment, enough for me to yell, “Anybody who really wants a fight, come up here and try it on me!”
The audience stared. So did the cast. Horace stepped up to me and said, “Uh… Ramou…”
But somebody in the audience shouted, “Why you? We’ve got no beef with you!”
“That’s why,” I answered. “I’m completely neutral—never been here before in my life. You want to get it out of your systems, at least pick a fight with somebody who isn’t going to start a feud.”
That got home. Most of them looked puzzled. Some of them actually looked embarrassed.
I started to relax, feeling the tension unwind—until some would-be hero shouted, “I’ll take you up on that!”
