Chapter 39

I'd pretty much forgotten about the two Homeland Security guys. We hadn't heard from them again, and the week was being both busy and an unalloyed delight for me.

The next two Traviatas went off without a hitch. Camilla's performances were as glorious as her first; every note she sang was like a little jewel floating through the house. Forgeron continued to complement her well, and even got a little stronger for his aria early in Act II that's supposed to delineate his character more fully. As for me, I couldn't get enough of hearing either the beautiful sounds I was making or the applause they generated, and my duet with Camilla just got better and better as we settled into our roles (or as I settled into mine; she was a veteran at it).

Adler's newspaper piece on Wednesday was more than I could have hoped. Not just once, not twice, but three times he wrote how great my Germont was, flatteringly comparing me to Warren, who'd recorded the role, and Milnes, whom he'd actually heard sing it years before. The way he described it my voice had "matured" from my days as a comprimario, and I was now fully ready to take on "the mantle of stardom." As I told Camilla, the whole thing sounded like I ought to be wearing a cape on my shoulders and a big red S on my chest.

I could see, though, the point that Marilyn had made. Adler did comment about Camilla's and my relationship, but it was only that, a comment, something tossed off as part of his article and no big deal. As Marilyn and Camilla both had said, it's something between opera stars and nothing of importance to the public at large. But I could see how, if I'd dragged Marko into the discussion, the focus could have changed altogether; not only did I take over his roles but I was Camilla's evident boyfriend, etc., etc. It would have made both of us look bad. She was right, I wasn't yet ready to meet the news media without a chaperone.

With performances scheduled Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday again and finally Monday—every other day, regular as clockwork—our social outings were sharply reined in. We'd go out for a late dinner after each show, Marilyn usually accompanying us, but it was ordinarily a fairly short one and we were back in our suite by midnight or a little after. Days off mostly we didn't stir from the hotel, and Cam—I was falling into Marilyn's habit of foreshortening her name—pretty much avoided the crush of fans she'd actually been courting during our first week. "Take care of the voice," she told me, "and it'll take care of you." Taking care of it, to her, didn't include a mix of performing and socializing.

Asmedogh was clearly pleased about our homebody lives, since it gave him a great deal more time with us. Cam was now also able to pick him up without physical contact, so we could all three chat even from different parts of the suite. The connection wasn't nearly as strong, as I'd discovered for myself, so serious or extended discussions usually found us grouped together on the couch; but for casual conversation distance was no longer an obstacle.

Most of our talk focused on the human world, of course. It was, after all, where we were, learning as much as he could about it was Asmedogh's purpose in staying, and explaining human motivations and activities gave both Cam and me insights into our own species' behavior.

But the dialogue also not infrequently strayed to Asmedogh's own race and world, about which we both had a lot of natural curiosity. His ... Asmedogh's name for his people was something as unpronounceable as his own, but Cam and I rendered it as Akulla ... had evolved quite differently from homo sapiens. When you're that size on a planet as replete with larger creatures as is Earth, you have to adjust your conduct accordingly. In his people's pre-history they'd developed their ability to influence and work with the living beings around them, and had relied primarily on that for their survival and development in a collaborative, not an adversarial, vein.

It was on that basis that the Akulla had become primarily herbivores; although they were omnivorous, like humans, killing other creatures for food was distasteful to them. They also partnered primarily with other plant-eaters on their home world. There was one period in their history that Asmedogh didn't like to talk about much, but I gathered that for a while population pressure had given rise to some pretty sharp conflict among the Akulla, some of it as nastily overt as human warfare. It had, however, proved too destructive; the species was almost wiped out completely, and the survivors had adopted more pacifistic ways.

Which was, of course, why his bosses were so shit-scared of us. We were fighters, the Akulla weren't. When they'd first found Earth, after they'd developed the technology for interstellar travel, they'd initially been overjoyed to have come across another sentient race with whom they could, as they saw it, share discourse. They landed, though, to what was apparently a pretty hostile reception, and they'd observed the battling that went on more or less constantly between humans. At the time they'd figured we were just going through our own violent phase and would settle down sooner or later.

We hadn't, of course, and they were still trying to figure out how to develop some sort of peaceful relationship with us. Leaving us alone wasn't an option; Asmedogh couldn't tell us where his planet was, but it was apparently near enough as such things go that we'd inevitably reach it pretty early on once we'd matched their spaceflight capabilities. And they were appalled at how rapidly our conflict-driven technological development was progressing; they felt they needed an answer soon.