Free Space Opera by Jack Vance Page A

fit them to those persons taking part in today’s performance.”
    Roger, grimacing fastidiously, approached the pelts. Hermilda Warn heaved an outraged sigh. “I have never known such outrageous circumstances!”
    Dame Isabel ignored her and walked over to confer with Dyrus Boltzen.
    Herman Scantling asked, “Has there ever been anything so fantastic?”
    Otto von Scheerup shook his head in a surly fashion. “Wait till we report this to the Guild! All I can say is, just wait! Fur will fly!”
    “But — in the meantime?” asked Ramona Thoxted, who sang Marcellina. “Must we wear the odious things?”
    Herman Scantling gave a sour grunt. “She’d put us off on this God-forsaken ball of rocks, without salary, without tickets home, without anything.”
    “We could sue,” asserted Julia Biancolelli, somewhat feebly.
    Neither Herman Scantling, Hermilda Warn, nor Otto von Scheerup made reply, and Ramona Thoxted said, “I suppose that on a tour of this sort we must be ready for almost anything.”
    The morning passed, and at six minutes after ten became afternoon. At one-thirty Dyrus Boltzen and his aide flew down in a platform flyer. Dyrus Boltzen wore whipcord breeches, heavy boots, a hooded jacket. At his belt hung a weapon. He went to where Dame Isabel sat making last minute alterations in the libretto: “Sorry, but I’ll have to miss the performance. We’ve got to look to some unpleasant business. A band of very uncertain rogues has been seen heading this way, and we have to turn them aside before they make trouble on the terraces.”
    “That’s a shame!” declared Dame Isabel. “After you’ve done so much to help! You did arrange that the local folk should come to the performance?”
    “Oh yes. They know all about it, and at three o’clock they’ll be here. With luck I’ll be back to catch the last act!” He returned to the flyer, which slid off to the north.
    “A shame he must miss the opera, but I suppose there’s no help for it,” said Dame Isabel. “Now then, everyone. The word ‘dungeon’ is not to be used. We substitute the word ‘desert’!”
    “What difference does it make?” inquired Herman Scantling. “We sing in German which the local beasts can’t understand in the first place.”
    Dame Isabel spoke with the mildness that warned the more knowing of her associates. “Our aim, Mr. Scantling, is for faithfulness, for a basic intensity. If the scene represents a desert, as it now does, then a falsity is committed in referring to this desert as a dungeon, even in German. Do I make myself clear?”
    “The meter is changed,” growled Otto von Scheerup. “‘ Die Wüste’ , ‘ das Burgverlies’ .”
    “You must do your best.”
    Three o’clock approached. The musicians assembled in the orchestra pit, Sir Henry Rixon appeared, glanced briefly through the score. Back-stage, amid objurgations, muttered obscenities, exclamations of distress, the byzantaur pelts were donned and costumes fitted as well as possible.
    At five minutes to three Dame Isabel went to look across the plain. “Our audience certainly should be on its way,” she told Bernard Bickel. “I do hope there hasn’t been some misunderstanding as to time.”
    “Damned nuisance that Boltzen was called away,” said Bickel. “Maybe the ’zants are waiting for someone to bring them over, or something of the sort. They’re a bit dubious of the open ground, if you recall what Boltzen told us.”
    “Quite true. Perhaps, Bernard, you had best stroll over to the caves and see what may be the matter.”
    Bickel frowned, sucked at his mustache, but was able to evolve no counter-proposal. He set off toward the station, and Dame Isabel went back-stage to make sure that all was proceeding properly. She shook her head in dismay. Where was the dignity, the easy elegance she had envisioned? Certainly not here among these angry tenors, sopranos and basses. Some wore caps on one of the heads, others had thrust two of the four