Harmony Read online

  I was moved by the murder of the tribesman, an innocent caught in the cross-cultural vise, but the dramaturgy was awkward here and there. It had the patchwork quality of a communally written work, and somehow, the ending didn’t quite happen.

  “But with all this talk of new and daring…”

  “Yeah. You expected something more… exotic.” Cris dropped a hand to the discarded script, thoughtfully riffling the pages. “But you know, there’s more to it than it seems right off. I wonder if even Howie knows. Tuatua’s Enclosure crisis is barely covered by WorldNet. I really had to dig for it.” He rose to his elbows. “What Micah didn’t let me explain today is that the real issues in the dispute are magic and religion. There’s a group of tribes still keeping the ancient practices who claim that doming will interfere with their rituals. They say Tuatua’s survival has nothing to do with geography, that it’s their magic keeps it pure and alive.” He lay back, pensive again. “Got to check up on actual climate conditions there.”

  “Must be some reason the others want to Enclose.”

  “Money, what else? With their limited landmass, agriculture can get them only so far. They want to expand their tourist trade beyond the few who think it’s macho to spend a week Outside.”

  With Jane’s worries in mind, I was not eager to discover a political motive to this play. “You blame everything on tourism lately.”

  “I know,” he agreed, as if that proved his point.

  The play did not leave my mind as quickly as I’d expected. “Odd how this script reads like a straightforward play, realistic dialogue and everything, despite all the weird shit going on: visions at the shrine and all the totems and talismans, the magic and the ancestor gods and the singing of the curse.”

  “That stuff is realistic to the Eye. All the research says these tribal guys really believe their magic. I mean, really.”

  Magic. I pulled the thin sheet up around me, my eyes tracing the rational geometry of the cubicle’s four walls. No one talked about magic in Chicago. Even in church, miracles were seen as feats of the human spirit. Without training in the irrational, I found it scary but fascinating. Micah often used magic as a metaphor in his work, but The Gift’s nonchalant mixing of magic with the everyday was an entirely new concept. Magic offered as reality either turned your world upside down or forced a retreat into skepticism, where the whole idea could be dismissed as primitive ignorance.

  Was the Eye going to arrive expecting us to believe? I recalled at last my jewelry peddler’s words: Wear it honestly, child. There is power in it. What power did she mean? As gullible as he was, the tribesman in the play seemed to have some wonderful secret. You wanted to share it with him.

  Cris flopped over restlessly. “It’s very sad, this play.”

  I laughed. “I thought you were a progress-at-all-costs man.”

  He gave me a withering look. “One more coffee orchard is hardly my idea of progress. Progress can also be expressed in the evolution of ideas. What’s sad is that the planter can’t see.”

  “In Harmony, the shrine would have been preserved.”

  “Yeah. Like the town house in the square.”

  “Well, it may be yet.”

  Cris laughed at what he called my “pop-optimism.” I wasn’t really optimistic—I just needed to believe in things that showed some sign of being good and true. Harmony was one of those things. But I was used to his laugh, and to allowing (if not forgiving) it. The artist mustn’t temper his opinions, he’d declare. They are his daily bread! I rolled over and snuggled in next to him. “What will they be like, the Eye?”

  “Like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

  His tone made me shiver deliciously. “I can’t wait to meet them!”

  And we lay there quite happily, wondering what Micah would make of The Gift.

  CRISPIN’S RESEARCH: EXCERPT FROM A SOCIAL HISTORY

  (A Far Island, Pacific Books, 1963)

  … now, I been workin’ coffee for a lotta years out here an’ I’ve hadda come to an understandin’. It ain’t that these bozos isn’t smart, ya see—they just got different ideas about what workin’ means. I mean, they’ll come in right on time, say, even early one mornin’, the next they’re three hours late and not understandin’ why I’m yellin’ at ’em for it. Or one day, they’ll work steady fer the full eight, better’n any white man, even in the heat o’ the day, then next they’ll take off mid-afternoon without so much as a by-yer-leave. Just walk off with a wave and a smile, even as yer standin’ there.

  An’ drink? Oh, ya gotta keep ’em away from the sauce. Most right places won’t sell ta ’em anymore when they come ‘round. Even their own folks is gettin’ after fer it now. Seems they ain’t gettin’ the work done at home neither.

  But they do got some good stories in ’em. Yah, we’ll take lunch in the shade o’ some big ole tree ‘longside the field, and one a them’ll get goin’ with what happened to his cousin the very last night, an’ before ya know, he’s got ya on the edge a yer seat and the hair standin’ up with some wildass tale o’ spells an’ spirits walkin’ an’ people turnin’ inta dogs, all kinda craziness, and you believin’ him every minute!

  Like all them taboos they keep. Serious, ya know? I’m always gettin’ the long eye from one a them ’cause I ask about somethin’ I oughtn’t. An just let some woman come roun’! Man, there’s not hardly anythin’ they’s allowed to know about, don’ matter what color she is! An’ that’s one place me an’ them bozos see eye to eye…

  SONGH:

  Jane and Songh lay in wait for us the next morning, slouched like co-conspirators on the long neo-Gothic bench outside the dining hall. Songh’s smooth, round face, rarely clouded, showed signs of trouble.

  “What? Here on a Saturday? They stop feeding you at home?” Crispin patted the boy’s dark head as if he were a dog. “C’mon in, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Songh scuffed his feet on the polished slates, his hands tucked under his knees. He was nearly twenty but looked fifteen, with the body of an adolescent, not gangly but slight and flat-muscled, the sort that wouldn’t thicken until well past middle age. He had a bad case of hero worship where Crispin was concerned. Cris enjoyed and encouraged it, then made rank fun of him behind his back.

  “I’m not allowed in your dining room,” Songh reminded him without complaint. “What did you think of the play, Crispin?”

  “That it’s a play like any other play. What, is it a morning emergency what I think? Ask me after I’ve had some breakfast!” Cris turned on his heel and shouldered through the oak-planked double doors into the dining hall. Laughter and the rattle of plates escaped in a rush as the doors swung home behind him.

  Songh turned his puppy eagerness on me. I was second best but would have to do. “Jane says Micah’s gonna get in trouble if he does this play.”

  When I frowned at Jane, she looked away. I noted how tightly her curls hugged the back of her head, and wondered idly if fear could actually curl your hair. “Oh, Jane’s probably worried about Tuamatutetuamatu’s Enclosure dispute. But The Gift has nothing to do with Enclosure.”

  “Jane says when the farmer wants to plant on the native’s land, it’s a metaphor for Enclosure.”

  Typical. While I had struggled with magic and religion, Jane had read purely for the politics. “Why should that bother anybody? There’s no Enclosure dispute in Harmony. Never has been.”

  “I know. But there’s this… what about…” Songh ground to a halt, then shrugged. “Never mind.”

  “Come on, Songh.” Jane turned from her intense scrutiny of the notice board. “What about the Closed Door League? That’s what he was going to say.”

  “The what?”

  “When you live at home,” said Jane, “you hear things we don’t in the dorms. Or at work.”

  Crispin stuck his head between the doors as a crowd descended on the dining hall. The morning rush was on. “You coming or not?”

  “In a minute. Go stand in line.” I turned b
ack to Songh, who was pressed against the tiled wall by inbound traffic, looking like he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “The Closed Door what?”

  “League,” Jane prompted. “He overheard his parents talking about it.”

  Songh nodded miserably. “Awhile ago, after a party when they came home late. They didn’t know I heard. It wasn’t about the theatre or anything, but they were real secretive, like they were worried or a little shocked, and then when I read this play…”

  “And you were talking to Jane…” It was hard not to lay all of this in her lap: in the eight months Songh had been with Micah, there’d been little indication that he ever cross-referenced his life at home with the work he did in the studio.

  “Even before,” Songh insisted with some pride. “I mean, doesn’t this play say everyone should have the right to decide the use of the land, not just the owner?”

  “You could see it that way.”

  “But that’s it! The Closed Door people think…” He glanced at Jane, then blurted, “… only people born in the dome should have that right.”

  “Second-generation types,” supplied Jane. “Not even people like Howie or Micah. People like…”

  “Me,” murmured Songh.

  “And people in the League,” I said.

  He offered his hangdog nod.

  This was not an original notion. In many domes it was policy. But not in Harmony, where one in every three citizens had been born elsewhere. “Who are these people?”

  He shrugged. “It’s secret. Even my parents didn’t know.”

  “Why keep it secret? Anyone can say what they like in Town Meeting. That’s what it’s for.”

  “I’m only telling what I heard.”

  “Oh, great. An underground movement in Harmony.” Perfect fuel for Jane’s paranoid fantasies. I wondered if Micah had any notion of it. “But, Songh, if this mysterious organization identifies with anyone in the play, it’ll have to be the tribesman, the real native. The planter wasn’t born on his land. He’s the newcomer and the bad guy. The Gift should be very popular with these Closed Door folks.”

  Songh frowned and looked to Jane. I’d guessed right. With skewed logic, Jane had equated her own sense of disenfranchisement with the native’s martyrdom, without exploring the question of usurpers and property rights.

  “Besides, our audience will focus on the universal human tragedy, not on the obscure domestic politics of some island in the Pacific.” I glared at Jane before she could object. “Even a famous one. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Songh’s face smoothed. “I want them to come anyway. They’re magic!” Perhaps his real worry had been that somebody might prevent them. “What do you think they’ll be like?”

  I echoed Crispin. “Like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

  Mark and Bela clattered by, late for breakfast.

  “Be nothing left!” warned Mark, careening through the doors.

  “Pan scrapings!” Bela seconded gleefully. “Burnt toast!”

  The dining room doors at breakfast were not the best spot for serious debate. “Have we put this to rest?” I asked. “I’m hungry.”

  Songh shrugged. “Sure. I’ll see you guys Monday.”

  “Oh, come in and sit with us,” I urged. If he were with us, he wouldn’t be brooding about the script. “Nobody’ll toss you out. You can have my second cup of coffee.”

  He smiled, beatific in his gratitude.

  “You see,” said Jane, but sadly, not in malice, “Songh can get in anywhere he wants.”

  WORLDNET/NEWS

  05/17/46

  JOHANNESBURG, 05/16/46

  Rescue operations were called off today after a twenty-four-hour air and ground search failed to provide any sign of two OutCare workers who vanished after leaving their dome on a charity mission Wednesday. Extensive questioning of Outside residents turned up no clues to the disappearance.

  STOCKHOLM, 05/16/46 Special to WorldNet/News

  Avowed Open Sky spokeswoman Ingrid Hibberd was taken into custody today and remanded to the Civic Hospital for psychiatric testing. Ms. Hibberd’s organization has been increasingly vocal in its criticism of Stockholm’s policy for dealing with the local Outsider population. The name “Open Sky” refers to the members’ conviction that doming is unnatural and should be considered a temporary measure to be done away with as soon as Outside conditions permit.

  MARSEILLE, 05/17/46

  Representatives from thirty domes worldwide are meeting with business leaders to discuss the proposed turnover of inter-dome vacuum transport to private management. The ten-dome consortium that has administered the Tubes since their completion in 2019 has been operating at a deficit for the last two years under the cloud of charges of corruption and incompetence, due to the increasingly frequent loss of materials sent through the Tubes.

  Megacorps Taido, CONPLEX, Francotel, and Bunicorp have tendered bids to assume operation of the service. A spokesman for CONPLEX, the mining supergiant, was heard to remark, “We built the damn tunnels. We ought to know how to run them.”

  TUAMATUTETUAMATU, 05/15/46

  Planters’ Association President Imre Deeland, while attending a wedding reception Tuesday, was overheard by an alert press when he admitted to his host’s five-year-old daughter that he had indeed heard stories about the Conch, the mythical hero adopted by local tribes as a symbol of their resistance to the proposed doming of the island. Mr. Deeland has previously denied all knowledge of the colorful folk hero, despite tribal claims that the Conch actually exists and that his magical powers are being employed in the service of their cause.

  POLITICS:

  Monday, we played the Survival Game at breakfast, while Bela convinced us that not only did he know all there was to know about jungle survival, but it could be uproariously funny as well. When Cris and I slunk into the studio ten minutes late, we found Micah leaning wearily against his drawing board with his arms folded.

  “Quarantine!” Howie’s voice blared from the speakerphone. “Can you believe it? Immigration’s gonna make me shut ’em up for three weeks soon as they get here! For chrissakes, this troupe’s been in Paris, London, Stockholm, all over the damn world without infecting anybody!”

  Micah nodded to us absently as we settled onto our stools. “Odd for the mayor’s office to take an interest in such matters.”

  “It’s that new immigration chief the T.C. jammed down her throat. He’s keeping a tight rein on work visas all of a sudden. They’ll let in every tourist asshole in the goddamn world, but when it comes to genuine artists…” A sound like a shrug rattled through the speaker. “Well, I’ll play it their way. Maybe I can turn it to some advantage on the publicity front.”

  “No doubt,” agreed Micah dryly.

  “See you at one, then?” Howie boomed, his cheer restored.

  “One o’clock.” Micah switched off, then looked up to four pairs of inquiring eyes. He smiled back guilelessly.

  “So I guess we’re doing it?” ventured Crispin.

  Micah pushed briskly away from his desk. “Irresponsible not to.”

  Jane stood rigid at the cutting table. I wished she’d admit her worries to Micah, but she’d never risk his disapproval. He could at least ease her fears about the security of her position in the studio. On the other hand, in the first flush of his enthusiasm for the new piece, Micah might steam right over her without even noticing. He often said that committing to a play is like falling in love, and we all know how blind love is. So for Jane’s sake, I said nothing, and regretted it later.

  “Irresponsible?” Crispin always wanted the why as well as the what of Micah’s decisions. He claimed the artist’s take on the material mattered more than the material itself. Crispin’s precociously clear image of himself as Artist was another thing I envied and admired.

  “Irresponsible,” Micah confirmed, his fists balled up tight for emphasis, those clever badger paws that worked such wonders. Micah wore his nails rather long, in the way of Latin
men, and sometimes, in pursuit of an idea, when the sketch paper flew around his desk like leaves in a wind, I pictured him digging into the fertile earth of his imagination with sharp, sure strokes. “This play’s about what we do for a living! It’s about communication. And cultural context. Howie says betrayal, but the communication gap caused by massive cultural misunderstanding makes that betrayal inevitable.”

  He turned back to his corner and began methodically stripping the sketches from the walls around his desk. “We have an odd view of culture here in Harmony. We don’t live it so much as use it. New apprentices arrive every year from domes all over the world, and the first thing we teach them is to assimilate, to defuse their personal history by converting it into a tool.”

  The pile of Micah’s personal history built on his worktable. Some of the drawings had been on the wall so long that the tape was gummy and the paper gray and brittle.

  “Sure, we do plays about the importance of culture, but most of them were written two hundred years ago, and the actors, however well intentioned, dredge up their character and motivation from the research files. The Eye was born knowing what their play’s about! Do we ever do plays about Harmony? Not since Domers. We should be doing them all the time! It’s the only thing we know about, I mean, really know, like the Eye knows The Gift.”

  He took down the last sketch, and the wall that faced him was as blank as I had ever seen it. Smudge marks and tape gum formed faint square outlines, the ghosts of all that work lying on the table. A silence settled into the studio, all of us transfixed by that blank wall. Fill me, fill me, it demanded.

  “Howard’s right about his audience.” Micah’s hands swung empty at his sides. “They are smug and complacent. We all are. We think we’ve got it right, here in Harmony. We are so busy preserving the Enlightenment against the anarchy Outside. But the Planter in the play’s no different—a liberal thinker, not a bad guy. His problem isn’t his intentions, it’s his lack of vision. He just cannot see that there are other values as valid as his own.”