Chapter 26: Another Show

After we finished feeding our children, Mickey, Cleo and I took them back to the cribs before we each grabbed some lunch. During our meal we talked a bit about the music we were playing.

"I knew music like this existed, but this is more fun than I ever imagined," Mickey said. "And last night was ... wow! I could feel the way the audience reacted."

Cleo nodded. "It is powerful. We need to be feeding that by playing our best."

I blew out a raspberry. "More practice."

The others giggled and reached out to tickle me. I dodged away and finished the fruit cocktail I was nibbling as dessert. Once it was gone I headed to the stairs to return to the orchestra pit.

Cleo and Mickey joined me a moment later. "You like to be first," Mickey grumbled good-naturedly.

"I'm never first at home," I said. "But I just like to get things done." I sat there thinking for a moment. "Much like James does. I guess I learned it from him."

Cleo laughed. "He isn't a bad man to emulate. Now are we ready for tonight?"

"Never," Mickey said. "We can always do better. But we'll do fine."

We began practicing again. This time the AI appeared to want us to work on specific passages and interludes. Instead of full pieces, the displayed music would be just a few bars. I watched as we repeated one section and discovered that the AI was subtly changing the music. The changes consisted of notes being lengthened or shortened. Mickey and Cleo also noticed the change and we started trying to anticipate the AI, often ignoring the music to experiment with a passage after the third or fourth time we played it.

We got so into our play, that we were surprised when the lights in the hall dimmed. I glanced up to see Janice kneeling on the stage and looking down at us. "The crew of Cancun should start arriving in a few minutes," she informed us.

"Are they excited?" Cleo asked as I took advantage of the break to check on Madoka. My daughter was sleeping peacefully in the crib. Earlier she had been awake and watching me as I practiced.

"They definitely talked about it," Janice said. "From what I could understand they are almost all recently extracted from Earth, and the excitement of being a citizen is wearing off."

"Their captain isn't new," I said.

Janice laughed. "No, she isn't. No one has heard her say much about her time in DECO, but her concubine hinted that Jennifer has been around long enough to go through three sets of concubines."

"What?" Mickey hissed. "How do you go through a set of concubines?"

"Well, Chastity wasn't clear about that. From what I could piece together, Jennifer put her concubines into training designed to raise their CAP scores. When they retested and scored high enough to become citizens they'd leave her of course, and she'd pick up replacements," Janice said.

I shivered. "I don't want to retest."

Cleo laughed. "No one said we have to. But that isn't an issue anyway. I just wanted to know if we'll have a good audience."

Janice laughed. "Oh, they'll all be here. But remember that Patricians have small crews. Even with the concubines there aren't going to be forty people."

Mickey shrugged. "I just have fun. Performing like this is a blast. Are we going to start working on a new show after this?"

Janice laughed. "Several. Claire wants to do musical versions of all the classic Grimm's Fairy Tales, but make them a lot more adult than most other versions."

Cleo shook her head. "I can just imagine."

Janice nodded. "Marilyn mentioned that Tamara and Tiffany were musing about performing in a version of Alice in Wonderland. I guess they both wanted to do that back on Earth and never got the chance."

"Citizens performing in one of our plays? What is Ishtar coming to?" I barked out. The others turned towards me in shock, but I spoiled the effect by giggling.

Janice shook her head as I covered my mouth. "Good one, Meiko. We'll probably come up with more ideas as time goes on. I definitely want to keep our current play going though. Bethany said the version on Earth was called Beach Blanket Babylon. We don't have any beaches on Ishtar, and Ice Igloo Ishtar sounds a bit too silly, but we should come up with a name for this play."

Janice looked up staring past the orchestra pit and towards the entrance to the hall. She froze for a second and then waved back. "Oops, Maggie is signaling that people are arriving. I need to get back and into my genie costume. Play well."

"Break a leg," Mickey said as the lights dimmed a bit more.

I looked at the music stand to see it light up. Music appeared. I brought my flute to my lips to see Cleo mentally marking off the beats. When I was ready she counted out four bars and started playing.

Cleo's part was very soft. I found that my flute was carrying the melody. As we reached the end of the first verse I realized that the song was "Fly Me To the Moon." Mickey appeared to pick up on this at the same time because she whispered to both of us as we finished. "We're playing elevator music."

The next song proved Mickey right. We found ourselves playing "Mister Monotony." Mickey played the simple bass line as the AI had me play notes to match the vocals. As we played Cleo pretended to be falling asleep at her drums due to the slow beat of the song.

We expected another simple piece, but the AI chose to have us play "Baby Elephant Walk." Earlier in the day the AI had pressed us to practice this song, and I found myself elaborating many of the trills.

"This is fun!" Cleo hissed at us as the song finished.

I nodded as I watched the music in front of me. It took a moment, but then I recognized the heavy, almost epic piece we had practiced earlier.

"Ouch!" Mickey said. "Time for the serious music. Shall we play Cleo?"

"Certainly," Cleo replied. "Ready Meiko?"

I lifted the flute to my lips. "Give us the beat," I said.

"We need ourselves a director," Cleo said with a giggle as she started lightly tapping her drumsticks together. She counted the beats and we began playing.

The practice from earlier gave me considerable confidence in my playing. There was no way I was going to glance away from the music, but I was able to listen to the music. From the volume of the music, it was clear that the AI was mixing in additional sounds. It made the music sound much richer than our little trio could manage, but I could still easily identify the parts played by Mickey, Cleo or me.

We played the epic piece for several minutes. As it continued, I noticed a light buzz of conversation that grew slightly as we got closer to the end. The voices were tinged with excitement.

Finally, the piece wound down. As we played the last notes the stands went dark. The house lights came up in the hall. I took a moment to glance down at Madoka, but she slept on.

"I need that soundproofing in the pod," Mickey said. "Bruce and his brother can get loud at times. Now, it's like nothing will disturb him."

Cleo shook her head. "What's Michelle's son's name?"

Mickey looked down and blushed. "Bruce."

I shook my head at that, but the theater lights dimmed again. I glanced down at Madoka one last time to confirm that she was sleeping before looking up at the stage.