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The young Freeman made a mock grimace of pain. "Hmmm," he murmured. "I should
have thought of that,"
"What's a blue girl?"
"Same as in your outside world. You see, the showgirls are all outsiders. Red
means a
5-Daygirl. Green a four, blue a three. Obviously they don't wear their
uniforms while they're performing."
Hendley smiled absently. He wished that he had had a clearer view of the
eleventh girl.
Even in the distance of the stage, and in the strangely erotic distortion of
the colored spotlight, she seemed familiar. But whom could she remind him of?
There was only . . .
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"What's wrong?" Nik asked. "Feeling dizzy again?"
"No," Hendley said hoarsely. "It's not that."
As if to prove his statement he reached for his glass, only to find it empty.
The resemblance was superficial, he assured himself. That was all it could be.
Ann could not be here. But the nagging impression that the girl on the stage
was enough like her to be a double unnerved him. He was chagrined to realize
how seldom he had thought about her since his arrival in the Freeman Camp.
Perhaps that was understandable enough-the clockless hours had been full-but
this defense did not dispel twinge of guilt. Forgetful-ness a argued a
shallow emotion, undermining the importance he attached to his hours with
ABC-331.
"Ah, here come the greens," Nik said. "And I've ordered us a couple refills on
the drinks.
Don't take it if you don't think you can handle it."
Hendley didn't answer. He wanted the drink, and he had a feeling that he would
need it.
The pattern of presenting the showgirls was repeated, except that the second
set were washed with a startling green light. And each girl wore an identical
male face-mask. The slow but insistent beat of the background music quickened
slightly, acquiring a harsher, more driving rhythm. A perceptible tension of
excitement quivered in the air of the auditorium.
There were twelve girls in green. "They're the males," Nik said unnecessarily.
"You'll be surprised how you get to think of them that way, the obvious
physical evidence to the contrary."
Hendley started to ask what all this was leading up to, but before he could
speak the
tempo of the music changed. The twenty-four girls formed a wide circle near
the apron of the stage. Their spotlights faded until they were only dimly
visible. Attention shifted to the center of the stage. Light panels dropped
into place, figuring suggestively the setting of a pre-Organization city. The
technique and the scene were immediately familiar to Hendley.
They were traditional in the presentation of a Freedom Play.
Quietly a cast of characters appeared. The play was presented in pantomime,
its drama heightened by music and dance. Every move and pose had its
traditional meaning. The all-female cast was also a tradition. Only the nudity
of the performers was different, and that one fact subtly altered the effect
of the play.
Through it all-the early scenes of man's frustrations and drudging labor, the
spectacular fireworks and sound effects of the great war which climaxed the
third act, the final scenes which depicted man's building of a new world
under-
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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ground and the gradual emergence of his dream of freedom from something
unattainable to an immediate goal-Hend-ley's attention kept going back to the
line of showgirls ringing the stage, specifically searching for the one who
had seemed so familiar.
He thought he saw her but in the dimmed spotlight could not be sure. Only in
the triumphant dance number climaxing the play did these showgirls
participate, functioning as a dancing chorus in the background. In the
confusion of movement Hendley could not find the one he sought.
Applause greeted the end of the play. It was loud and warm, but Hendley had
the feeling the audience's enthusiasm was as much for what it knew was coming
as for the performance it had just seen. A steady buzz of excited comment
continued long after the freedom players had exited, leaving only the original
chorus of showgirls on the stage.
"What now?" Hendley asked.
"You'll see," Nik said with a grin. And he added, shoving a glass toward
Hendley, "Here's that refill."
The murmur from the audience grew louder. A computer band, simulating the
sounds of old-fashioned man-played instruments, raised a triumphant peal.
Abruptly a single spotlight speared the center of the stage. A section of the
floor slowly folded back, and into the spotlight rose a naked woman,
aggressively feminine, her legs spread wide, her magnificent bosom high, her
head thrown back to let long hair stream down over her shoulders. The light
turned swiftly to blue, and the spontaneous audience applause turned into a
roar.
Above the noise Nik cried, "Remarkable woman! I won her once! Tremendous!"
Startled, Hendley stared at him. "You won her?"
Nik waited until the crowd's uproar had begun to subside. "In the drawing," he
said then.
"That's what those little white tags they wear are for. There's a filter over
the tags, by the way-that's what screens out the colored rays. You have that
ticket you got when we came into the theater? Well, there'll be a drawing.
Winning tickets are matched to the girls. All of them. Red ones go first, then
the green, the blue last." He grinned reminiscently. "That's really the part
of the show that's special. Oh, the dancing and the rest are all right, and
the thought-screen is interesting-that'll be starting up soon-but wait till
the drawing!"
Hendley felt sick. His stomach stirred uneasily. He swallowed hard. A sad,
enigmatic statement kept running through his head: "That's what I'm supposed
to be." Beautiful, he thought. Selected because she was beautiful. Trained to
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please with her beauty. Trained, too, to simulate passion.
No, it was impossible! What he feared couldn't be true! He had drunk too much,
and his mind was as unsettled as his body. The resemblance was superficial,
deceptive, a trick of lighting.
But the sick fear could not be reasoned away.
A group dance number began. The woman painted in blue light was taller than
the
others, more blatantly sexual, dominant. Now she raised one arm, holding up a
slender metal rod. Her wrist flicked. A string of white light danced across
the stage like the lash of a whip. Where it snapped off a red dancer cringed,
cowering, pantomiming fear. Or was she acting? Was the whiplash real?
Using her sting of light the blue woman drove the dancers robed in red and
green light through their routine. Each girl stayed within her narrow frame of
light-or rather, the cones of color nimbly followed the girls as if attached
to them. Hendley tried to single out the girl tagged number 11. He kept losing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]