None of the puppets spoke.
Wissa was slipping into clothes.
The prince fingered his sword.
And when Sebastian looked again, Bitty Belina was watching him. Her face held an expression of utter contempt and loathing. It was not pretty at all, and it seemed to accuse him.
“I didn’t do any . . . anything,” Sebastian said.
“Exactly,” Bitty Belina said.
“What will you do to us?” Wissa asked, fully clothed now, addressing herself to the puppet master.
Pertos looked at Bitty Belina. “There will be two shows tonight and a matinee this afternoon. But you will work an extra show. And if you don’t work it, I’ll never call any of you out of the Furnace again.”
“What extra show?” Bitty Belina asked, her fisted hands on her hips, looking fierce-and just a bit frightened.
“You’ll see,” Pertos said. The smile returned, but it was a grim one. “It’s sort of a command performance, you might say. For an audience of one. I’ll see you later:”
He closed the door.
Sebastian thought how much older Pertos looked, how much he seemed to have aged in only the last few moments.
When Pertos Godelhausser climbed the stairs to the lightman’s perch for the second performance of the evening, Trimkin was waiting for him. The League President was dressed in the softest of brown, imitation buckskin, with long fringe on the arms and around the hem of the jacket. He smiled and spread his hands as the puppeteer displayed the handgun he had not had time to use the previous night.
“I come unarmed,” Trimkin said.
“And I should take advantage of that.”
“You’d never leave the theater alive, then”
“Perhaps.”
“Most certainly.”
Then they stood there, facing each other, being men and playing the games of courage and self-possession which are supposed to be those rituals which separate men from boys, though they seemed more in the Neanderthal spirit than in the tradition of civilization.
“So why are you here?” Pertos asked at last.
“You even had an afternoon performance today.” He pulled out one of the handbills that had been circulated about the city. “And you have another scheduled every afternoon this week:”
“Standard:”
“Maybe you didn’t understand, Mister Godelhausser.”
“I understood.”
“Then it’s stubbornness.”
“No. It’s just that I have a strong sense of self-preservation,” Pertos said. “That’s the sum of it.” He smiled, too warmly to mean it
Trimkin looked nonplussed. “Self-preservation?”
“Tonight, I’ll sell my soul to a merchant, just as he predicted I would. The only thing I’ll have left, then, is pride and the future. Without money, I’ll never see the stars, I’ll die on Earth; there must be, then, many performances in Springsun. For if I die on Earth, there is no future to look forward to. And without any future, there can be no pride; a fly trapped in amber isn’t proud. You understand?”
Trimkin did not speak.
“It’s very difficult playing God,” Pertos Said. “Maybe when you and your Heritage Leaguers have established a little divinity for yourselves, you’ll find that having the power of life and death over others is not really worth the agony.”
“No one forced you to be a puppeteer”
“No one forces the soldier to kill. He could throw down his gun and accept the stockade. But there’s something inside him somewhere that makes him like killing.”
“And you think I like power?”
“Are fond of it”
“And the sin?”
“One can either love power, or people. But the two do not mix.”
“And I suppose you love that idiot of yours. And those puppets which aren’t even real.”
“No. I made the mistake of loving power, in a small way. I’ve been trying to reeducate myself, but perhaps I’m too old.”
“Too old to suffer,” Trimkin said, steering things back to more familiar ground. “We’ll give you a final chance. If your announcements are circulated tomorrow, if you still insist on performing then, your beating will seem slight. We’d burn down the theater with you inside, if necessary.”
Pertos did not reply.
Trimkin shrugged, then walked by the old man, thumped down the steps and was gone around the corner, brown against white. The swish of his buckskin fringe whispered along the cold walls for long seconds, then faded like a dream surrendering to consciousness.