[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
March 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _All the world's a stage, so there was room even for this bad
actor ... only he intended to direct it!_]
As Paul Lambrequin was clambering up the stairs of his rooming house, he
met a man whose face was all wrong. "Good evening," Paul said politely
and was about to continue on his way when the man stopped him.
"You are the first person I have encountered in this place who has not
shuttered at the sight of me," he said in a toneless voice with an
accent that was outside the standard repertoire.
"Am I?" Paul asked, bringing himself back from one of the roseate dreams
with which he kept himself insulated from a not-too-kind reality. "I
daresay that's because I'm a bit near-sighted." He peered vaguely at
the stranger. Then he recoiled.
"What is incorrect about me, then?" the stranger demanded. "Do I not
have two eyes, one nose and one mouth, the identical as other people?"
Paul studied the other man. "Yes, but somehow they seem to be put
together all wrong. Not that you can help it, of course," he added
apologetically, for, when he thought of it, he hated to hurt people's
feelings.
"Yes, I can, for, of a truth, 'twas I who put myself together. What did
I do amiss?"
Paul looked consideringly at him. "I can't quite put my finger on it,
but there are certain subtle nuances you just don't seem to have caught.
If you want my professional advice, you'll model yourself directly on
some real person until you've got the knack of improvisation."
"Like unto this?" The stranger's outline shimmered and blurred into an
amorphous cloud, which then coalesced into the shape of a tall,
beautiful young man with the face of an ingenuous demon. "Behold, is
that superior?"
"Oh, far superior!" Paul reached up to adjust a stray lock of hair, then
realized he was not looking into a mirror. "Trouble is--well, I'd rather
you chose someone else to model yourself on. You see, in my profession,
it's important to look as unique as possible; helps people remember you.
I'm an actor, you know. Currently I happen to be at liberty, but the
year before last--"
"Well, whom should I appear like? Should I perhaps pick some fine
upstanding figure from your public prints to emulate? Like your
President, perhaply?"
"I--hardly think so. It wouldn't do to model yourself on someone well
known--or even someone obscure whom you might just happen to run into
someday." Being a kind-hearted young man, Paul added, "Come up to my
room. I have some British film magazines and there are lots of
relatively obscure English actors who are very decent-looking chaps."
* * * * *
So they climbed up to Paul's hot little room under the eaves and, after
leafing through several magazines, Paul chose one Ivo Darcy as a likely
candidate. Whereupon the stranger deliquesced and reformed into the
personable simulacrum of young Mr. Darcy.
"That's quite a trick," Paul observed as it finally got through to him
what the other had done. "It would come in handy in the profession--for
character parts, you know."
"I fear you would never be able to acquisition it," the stranger said,
surveying his new self in the mirror complacently. "It is not a trick
but a racial ableness. You see, I feel I can trust you--"
"--Of course I'm not really a character actor; I'm a leading man, but I
believe one should be versatile, because there are times when a really
good character part comes along--"
"--I am not a human being. I am a native of the fifth planet circulating
around the star you call Sirius, and we Sirians have the ableness to
change ourselves into the apparition of any other livid form--"
"I thought that might be a near-Eastern accent!" Paul exclaimed,
diverted. "Is Lebanese anything like it? Because I understand there's a
really juicy part coming up in--"
"I said _Sirian_, not _Syrian_; I do not come from Minor Asia but from
outer space, from an other-where solar system. I am an outworlder, an
extraterrestrial."
"I hope you had a nice trip," Paul said politely. "From Sirius, did you
say? What's the state of the theater there?"
"In its infanticide," the stranger told him, "but--"
"Let's face it," Paul muttered bitterly, "it's in its infancy here, too.
No over-all planning. No appreciation of the fact that all the
components that go to make up a production should be a continuing
totality, instead of a tenuous coalition of separate forces which
disintegrate--"
"You, I comprehend, are disemployed at current. I should--"
"You won't find that situation in Russia!" Paul went on, pleased to
discover a sympathetic audience in this intelligent foreigner. "Mind
you," he added quickly, "I disapprove entirely of their politics. In
fact, I disapprove of all politics. But when it comes to the theater, in
many respects the Russians--"
"--Like to make a proposal to our mutual advanceage--"
"--You wouldn't find an actor there playing a lead role one season and
then not be able to get any parts except summer stock and odd bits for
the next two years. All right, so the show I had the lead in folded
after two weeks, but the critics all raved about my performance. It was
the play that stank!"
"Will you terminate the monologue and hearken unto me!" the alien
shouted.
Paul stopped talking. His feelings were hurt. He had thought Ivo liked
him; now he saw all the outworlder wanted to do was talk about his own
problems.
"I desire to extend to you a position," said Ivo.
"I can't take a regular job," Paul said sulkily. "I have to be available
for interviews. Fellow I knew took a job in a store and, when he was
called to read for a part, he couldn't get away. The fellow who did get
that part became a big star, and maybe the other fellow could have been
a star, too, but now all he is is a lousy chairman of the board of some
department store chain--"
"This work can be undergone at your convention between readings and
interviews, whenever you have the timing. I shall pay you beautifully,
being abundant with U.S.A. currency. I want you to teach me how to act."
"Teach you how to act," Paul repeated, rather intrigued. "Well, I'm not
a dramatic coach, you know; however, I do happen to have some ideas on
the subject. I feel that most acting teachers nowadays fail to give
their students a really thorough grounding in all aspects of the
dramatic art. All they talk about is method, method, method. But what
about technique?"
"I have observed your species with great diligence and I thought I had
acquisitioned your habits and speakings to perfectness. But I fear that,
like my initial face, I have got them awry. I want you to teach me to
act like a human being, to talk like a human being, to think like a
human being."
Paul's attention was really caught. "Well, that _is_ a challenge! I
don't suppose Stanislavsky ever had to teach an extraterrestrial, or
even Strasberg--"
"Then we are in accordance," Ivo said. "You will instruction me?" He
essayed a smile.
Paul shuddered. "Very well," he said. "We'll start now. And I think the
first thing we'd better start with is lessons in smiling."
Ivo proved to be a quick study. He not only learned to smile, but to
frown and to express surprise, pleasure, horror--whatever the occasion
demanded. He learned the knack of counterfeiting humanity with such
skill that, Paul was moved to remark one afternoon when they were
leaving Brooks Brothers after a fitting, "Sometimes you seem even more
human than I do, Ivo. I wish you'd watch out for that tendency to rant,
though. You're supposed to speak, not make speeches."
"I try not to," Ivo said, "but I keep getting carried away by
enthusiasm."
"Apparently I have a real flair for teaching," Paul went on as, expertly
camouflaged by Brooks, the two young men melted into the dense
charcoal-gray underbrush of Madison Avenue. "I seem to be even more
versatile than I thought. Perhaps I have been--well, not wasting but
limiting my talents."
"That may be because your talents have not been sufficiently
appreciated," his star pupil suggested, "or given enough scope."
Ivo was so perceptive! "As a matter of fact," Paul agreed, "it has often
seemed to me that if some really gifted individual, equally adept at
acting, directing, producing, playwriting, teaching, et al., were to
undertake a thorough synthesis of the theater--ah, but that would cost
money," he interrupted himself, "and who would underwrite such a
project? Certainly not the government of the United States." He gave a
bitter laugh.
"Perhaps, under a new regime, conditions might be more favorable for the
artist--"
"Shhh!" Paul looked nervously over his shoulder. "There are Senators
everywhere. Besides, I never said things were _good_ in Russia, just
_better_--for the actor, that is. Of course the plays are atrocious
propaganda--"
"I was not referring to another human regime. The human being is, at
best, save for certain choice spirits, unsympathetic to the arts. We
outworlders have a far greater respect for things of the mind."
Paul opened his mouth; Ivo continued without giving him a chance to
speak, "No doubt you have often wondered just what I am doing here on
Earth?"
The question had never crossed Paul's mind. Feeling vaguely guilty, he
murmured, "Some people have funny ideas of where to go for a vacation."
"I am here on business," Ivo told him. "The situation on Sirius is
serious."
"You know, that's catchy! 'The situation on Sirius is serious'," Paul
repeated, tapping his foot. "I've often thought of trying my hand at a
musical com--"
"I mean we have had a ser--grave population problem for the last couple
of centuries, hence our government has sent out scouts to look for other
planets with similar atmosphere, climate, gravity and so on, where we
can ship our excess population. So far, we have found very few."
When Paul's attention was focused, he could be as quick as anybody to
put two and two together. "But Earth is already occupied. In fact, when
I was in school, I heard something about our having a population problem
ourselves."
"The other planets we already--ah--took over were in a similar state,"
Ivo explained. "We managed to surmount that difficulty."
"How?" Paul asked, though he already suspected the answer.
"Oh, we didn't dispose of _all_ of the inhabitants. We merely weeded out
the undesirables--who, by fortunate chance, happened to be in the
majority--and achieved a happy and peaceful coexistence with the rest."
"But, look," Paul protested. "I mean to say----"
"For instance," Ivo said suavely, "take the vast body of people who
watch television and who have never seen a legitimate play in their
lives and, indeed, rarely go to the motion pictures. Surely they are
expendable."
"Well, yes, of course. But even among them there might be--oh, say, a
playwright's mother--"
"One of the first measures our regime would take would be to establish a
vast network of community theaters throughout the world. And you, Paul,
would receive first choice of starring roles."
"Now wait a minute!" Paul cried hotly. He seldom allowed himself to lose
his temper, but when he did ... he got _angry_! "I pride myself that
I've gotten this far wholly on my own merits. I don't believe in using
influence to--"
"But, my dear fellow, all I meant was that, with an intelligently
coordinated theater and an intellectually adult audience, your abilities
would be recognized automatically."
"Oh," said Paul.
He was not unaware that he was being flattered, but it was so seldom
that anyone bothered to pay him any attention when he was not playing a
role that it was difficult not to succumb. "Are--are you figuring on
taking over the planet single-handed?" he asked curiously.
"Heavens, no! Talented as I am, there are limits. I don't do
the--ah--dirty work myself. I just conduct the preliminary investigation
to determine how powerful the local defenses are."
"We have hydrogen bombs," Paul said, trying to remember details of a
newspaper article he had once read in a producer's ante-room, "and
plutonium bombs and--"
"Oh, I know about all those," Ivo smiled expertly. "My job is checking
to make sure you don't have anything really dangerous."
All that night, Paul wrestled with his conscience. He knew he shouldn't
just let Ivo go on. Yet what else could he do? Go to the proper
authorities? But which authorities were the proper ones? And even if he
found them, who would believe an actor offstage, delivering such
improbable lines? He would either be laughed at or accused of being part
of a subversive plot. It might result in a lot of bad publicity which
could ruin his career.
So Paul did nothing about Ivo. He went back to the usual rounds of
agents' and producers' offices, and the knowledge of why Ivo was on
Earth got pushed farther into the back of his mind as he trudged from
interview to reading to interview.
[Illustration]
It was an exceptionally hot October--the kind of weather when sometimes
he almost lost his faith and began to wonder why he was batting his head
against a stone wall, why he didn't get a job in a department store
somewhere or teaching school. And then he thought of the applause, the
curtain calls, the dream of some day seeing his name in lights above the
title of the play--and he knew he would never give up. Quitting the
theater would be like committing suicide, for off the stage he was alive
only technically. He was good; he knew he was good, so some day, he
assured himself, he was bound to get his big break.
Toward the end of that month, it came. After the maximum three readings,
between which his hopes alternately waxed and waned, he was cast as the
male lead in _The Holiday Tree_. The producers were more interested,
they said, in getting someone who fitted the role of Eric Everard than
in a big name--especially since the female star preferred to have her
luster undimmed by competition.
Rehearsals took up so much of his time that he saw very little of Ivo
for the next five weeks--but by then Ivo didn't need him any more.
Actually, they were no longer teacher and pupil now but companions,
drawn together by the fact that they both belonged to different worlds
from the one in which they were living. Insofar as he could like anyone
who existed outside of his imagination, Paul had grown rather fond of
Ivo. And he rather thought Ivo liked him, too--but, because he couldn't
ever be quite sure of ordinary people's reactions toward him, how could
he be sure of an outworlder's?
Ivo came around to rehearsals sometimes, but naturally it would be
boring for him, since he wasn't in the profession, and, after a while,
he didn't come around very often. At first, Paul felt a twinge of guilt;
then he remembered that he need not worry. Ivo had his own work.
* * * * *
The whole _Holiday Tree_ troupe went out of town for the tryouts, and
Paul didn't see Ivo at all for six weeks. Busy, happy weeks they were,
for the play was a smash hit from the start. It played to packed houses
in New Haven and Boston, and the box office in New York was sold out for
months in advance before they even opened.
"Must be kinda fun--acting," Ivo told Paul the morning after the New
York opening, as Paul weltered contentedly on his bed--he had the best
room in the house now--amid a pile of rave notices. At long last, he had
arrived. Everybody loved him. He was a success.
And now that he had read the reviews and they were all favorable, he
could pay attention to the strange things that had happened to his
friend. Raising himself up on an elbow, Paul cried, "Ivo, you're
_mumbling_! After all I taught you about articulation!"
"I got t'hanging 'round with this here buncha actors while y'were gone,"
Ivo said. "They say mumbling's the comin' thing. 'Sides, y'kept yapping
that I declaimed, so--"
"But you don't have to go to the opposite extreme and--_Ivo_!"
Incredulously, Paul took in the full details of the other's appearance.
"What happened to your Brooks Brothers' suits?"
"Hung 'em inna closet," Ivo replied, looking abashed. "I did wear one
las' night, though," he went on defensively. "Wooden come dressed like
this to y'opening. But all the other fellas wear blue jeans 'n leather
jackets. I mean, hell, I gotta conform more'n anybody. Y'know that,
Paul."
"And--" Paul sat bolt upright; this was the supreme outrage--"you've
changed yourself! You've gotten _younger_!"
"This is an age of yout'," Ivo mumbled. "An' I figured I was 'bout ready
for improvisation, like you said."
"Look, Ivo, if you really want to go on the stage----"
"Hell, I don' wanna be no actor!" Ivo protested, far too vehemently.
"Y'know damn' well I'm a--a spy, scoutin' 'round t'see if y'have any
secret defenses before I make m'report."
"I don't feel I'm giving away any government secrets," Paul said, "when
I tell you that the bastions of our defenses are not erected at the
Actors' Studio."
"Listen, pal, you lemme spy the way I wanna an' I'll letcha act the way
you wanna."
Paul was disturbed by this change in Ivo because, although he had
always tried to steer clear of social involvement, he could not
help feeling that the young alien had become in a measure his
responsibility--particularly now that he was a teen-ager. Paul would
even have worried about Ivo, if there hadn't been so many other things
to occupy his mind. First of all, the producers of _The Holiday Tree_
could not resist the pressure of an adoring public; although the
original star sulked, three months after the play had opened in New
York, Paul's name went up in lights next to hers, _over the title of the
play. He was a star._
That was good. But then there was Gregory. And that was bad. Gregory was
Paul's understudy--a handsome, sullen youth who had, on numerous
occasions, been heard to utter words to the effect of: "It's the part
that's so good, not him. If I had the chance to play Eric Everard just
once, they'd give Lambrequin back to the Indians."
Sometimes he had said the words in Paul's hearing; sometimes the remarks
had been lovingly passed on by fellow members of the cast who felt that
Paul ought to know.
* * * * *
"I don't like that Gregory," Paul told Ivo one Monday evening as they
were enjoying a quiet smoke together, for there was no performance that
night. "He used to be a juvenile delinquent, got sent to one of those
reform schools where they use acting as therapy and it turned out to be
his _metier_. But you never know when that kind'll hear the call of the
wild again."
"Aaaah, he's a good kid," Ivo said. "He just never had a chanct."
"Trouble is, I'm afraid he's going to _make_ himself a chanct--chance,
that is."
"Aaaah," retorted Ivo, with prideful inarticulateness.
However, when at six-thirty that Friday, Paul fell over a wire stretched
between the jambs of the doorway leading to his private bathroom and
broke a leg, even Ivo was forced to admit that this did not look like an
accident.
"Ivo," Paul wailed when the doctor had left, "what am I going to do? I
refuse to let Gregory go on in my place tonight!"
"Y'gonna hafta," Ivo said, shifting his gum to the other side of his
mouth. "He's y'unnastudy."
"But the doctor said it would be weeks before I can get around again.
Either Gregory'll take over the part completely with his interpretation
and I'll be left out in the cold, or more likely, he'll louse up the
play and it'll fold before I'm on my feet."
"Y'gotta have more confidence in y'self, kid. The public ain't gonna
forgetcha in a few weeks."
But Paul knew far better than the idealistic Ivo how fickle the public
can be. However, he chose an argument that would appeal to the boy.
"Don't forget, he booby-trapped me!"
"Cert'ny looks like it," Ivo was forced to concede. "But watcha gonna
do? Y'can't prove it. 'Sides, the curtain's gonna gwup in a li'l over a
nour--"