Show Business
according to Fritz Leiber

From "No Great Magic" (1960) Part V:

Even little things are
turning out to be great things
and becoming intensely interesting.
Have you ever thought about
the properties of numbers?
-- The Maiden

.........................................................

"I've had this idea-- it's just a sort of fancy, remember-- that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing-room and a sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actors can fit in anywhere.  They're used to learning new parts and wearing strange costumes.  Heck, they're even used to traveling a lot.  And if an actor's a bit strange nobody thinks anything of it-- he's almost expected to be foreign, it's an asset to him.

And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere and nobody asks questions, except the zoning authorities and such and they can always be squared.  Theaters come and go. It happens all the time.  They're transitory.  Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meeting places, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go. And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you might want to do something to.  Caesar was stabbed in a theater.  Lincoln was shot in one.  And..."

My voice trailed off.  "A cute idea," he commented.

I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middle finger as a baby might.

"Yeah," I said.  "But Martin, is it true?"

He asked me gravely, "What do you think?"

I didn't say anything.

"How would you like to work in a company like that?" he asked speculatively.

"I don't really know," I said.

He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk.  "Well, all fantasy aside, how'd you like to work in this company?" he asked, lightly slapping my ankle.  "On the stage, I mean.  Sid thinks you're ready for some of the smaller parts.  In fact, he asked me to put it to you.  He thinks you never take him seriously."

"Pardon me while I gasp and glow," I said.  Then, "Oh Marty, I can't really imagine myself doing the tiniest part."

"Me neither, eight months ago," he said.  "Now, look, Lady Macbeth."

"But Marty," I said, reaching for his finger again, "you haven't answered my question.  About whether it's true"

"Oh that!" he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side.  "Ask me something else."

"Okay," I said, "why am I bugged on the number eight?  Because I'm permanently behind a private eight-ball?"

"Eight's a number with many properties," he said, suddenly as intently serious as he usually is.  "The corners of a cube."

"You mean I'm a square?" I said.  "Or just a brick?  You know, 'She's a brick.' "

"But eight's most curious property," he continued with a frown, "is that lying on its side it signifies infinity.  So eight erect is really--" and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a great glow of inspiration and devotion-- "Infinity Arisen!"

Well, I don't know.  You meet quite a few people in the theater who are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names.  But I'd never have guessed it of Martin.  He always struck me as the skeptical, cynical type.

"I had another idea about eight," I said hesitatingly.  "Spiders.  That eight-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer's forehead--"  I suppressed a shudder.

"You don't like her, do you?" he stated.

"I'm afraid of her," I said.

"You shouldn't be.  She's a very great woman and tonight she's playing an infinitely more difficult part than I am.  No, Greta," he went on as I started to protest, "believe me, you don't understand anything about it at this moment.  Just as you don't understand about spiders, fearing them. They're the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too.  They're the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva and Kali united in love.  They're the double mandala, the beginning and the end, infinity mustered and on the march--"

"They're also on my New York screen!" I squeaked, shrinking back across the cot a little and and pointing at a tiny glinting silver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball.

Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very close to his face.  "Eight eyes too," he told me.  Then, "Poor little god," he said and put it back.

"Marty? Marty?"  Sid's desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of the dressing room.

Martin stood up.  "Yes, Sid?"

Sid's voice stayed in a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious.  "You villainous elf-skin!  Know you not the Cauldron Scene's been playing a hundred heartbeats?  'Tis 'most my entrance and we still mustering only two witches out of three!  Oh, you nott-pated starveling!"

Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slipped around the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I'd heard a lusty thwack as he went out the door.  I couldn't help grinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over his first time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping his mind that he was still doubling Second Witch.

Page created October 13, 2004.