Well, maybe it was amusing, but dance was her life, her only love. In her head it was a continuous stream, with eddies and falls and high, sparkling splashes. Certainly it shouldn’t ever just glug, glug, glug, like a plugged up pipe! Her dream of herself, the dream she’d had since a child, had no glugs in it. When it was right, her body moved without herself being aware of her body, as though she were dissolved in the music.
She walked back across the stage while various backscenes flicked into and out of existence in the rearstage matrix: fields where the strawman was found; the forest where the metalman appeared; the line of stone where the beastman appeared roaring in the red glow of the sunset, dark against a burning sky. The backscenes used in History House shows were among the best ones anywhere because they were based on tapes of actual landscapes, as they had appeared before all the atectonic land areas were leveled and domed. Somehow computer-generated scenery never looked as real.
She reached the wings just as the tornado flicked into being behind her, first far off, then coming closer and closer while Dorothy and her little dog ran for the house … Then off and away, the house flying, Dorothy and Toto in it.
Sometimes children were brought backstage to meet the dancers. They always wanted to meet Toto, too, but of course he was only a holo. There were no dogs anymore.
“That twisty wind is great,” one candy-smeared small boy had exulted to Ellin—or rather, to Dorothy. “Why don’t they let tornadoes happen for real?”
Ellin had told him why, but the boy had seemed unconvinced. Later, Ellin had thought maybe he was right to be so. There was something terrifying about the tornado, even here on stage, but oh, it lent wings to the dancing! Many old books had dangers and excitements in them, but all natural violence was controlled now. Everything was domed over. If there were excitements, they were out on the frontier, which is where, she told herself firmly, she was going to go as soon as her contract was paid off. She was going to find a primitive planet way out there, where the people had no dancers, where she could teach them all about it until she was too old to move.
No one on Earth worked very late in life. History House never kept anyone after they were forty, but Ellin would not quit at forty and spend the rest of her life on her pension, in a cubicle somewhere! Not even if she had to save up and save up and skimp on disposables and serve her whole twenty years to use her money for a ticket out! She dreamed about it all the time, finding a place with real trees, real grass, real creatures. A place that lasted.
Warmup was short, a kind of abbreviated class. Out in the lobby, people were already lined up as Ellin and the others took their places in the wings. The orchestra was tuning up. All History Houses used real people, keeping the various talents alive. A man’s voice spoke her name from behind her, and for a moment it sounded like Par’s voice, but when she turned, it was a stranger, one of two, both dressed in management blue. That meant they had a right to be here. Or anywhere.
Her mind raced over recent days’ activities, searching for something, anything she might have done, might have said. Had someone heard her complaining about the restrictions or the food? Maybe someone had seen her take that cup …
One of the men returned her panicky look with the fractional upturn of lips allowed government functionaries. Since he’d smiled, it probably wasn’t anything she’d done. Snow? Par? Who? Then she noticed their lapels and insignias: red-and-gold instead of the green-and-white of the civility monitors. They were from Planetary Compliance!
“Ellin?” one of them asked. “Ellin Nordic-Quota, 2980-4653?”
She nodded, afraid to trust her voice. Planetary Compliance. You couldn’t get any more threatening than that.
He smiled again. “Will you call your substitute, please. We have a requisition for you.”