The audience were now stomping the floor and shouting.
“I’ve seen Williams speak,” I said. “That semblance moves and sounds just like him.”
“Not just a semblance,” said Church. “Rumor is Brach has developed some kind of projection technology and trained highly specialized seamsters in the art of using film to craft perfect replicas known as mummers. I’ve never seen one . . . until now.”
The semblances on the theater floor stopped shouting and started cheering as the force of Williams’s speech overtook them—his words hypnotic.
“Damn it all,” Lady muttered. “Jack, most of these semblances were Iron Horse folk on this Stratum. Good people. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have stayed inside the ward. They’re exposed now.”
Cassius leaned close and whispered in my ear.“No, Jack, they are converted.” Propaganda. Brach was showing people how the topside world was abusing the Strata, and using perfect replicas of significant public figures to speak out against topside tyranny. It was recruitment. It would grow his influence and army. And here, close to the ward, it had also wooed away Horse patrons whose light now would no longer help keep that ward strong.
Things were spiraling fast toward Brach’s revolution.
The mummer whipped the crowd into a frenzy. They cheered and hooted and clapped so loud I could barely hear myself think.
“The projection room,” I said, and dashed back toward the lobby. I’m not sure my friends heard me, but they followed.
We rushed up the long, winding steps and circled past the balcony to the upper level. I stepped out onto a broad mezzanine. Dim floor lights illuminated worn red carpetingleading to the door of the projection booth. Behind it the reels of spooling film rattled on their spindles.
We were ten feet from the booth when the door opened, and three vestiges emerged. No sign of Madam.
“You’re tresspassin’, mate,” said one with a mohawk and pierced nose as he unraveled an iron-corded net. “But no worries. We’ll teach you where to piss.”
Cassius, Chuey, and Lady formed a line in front of me. Church hung back by my side. The two lines crashed together. Chuey got in a wicked blow with his macuahuitl, dropping Mr. Mohawk to the carpet. Cassius overwhelmed the hulking vestige who came at him, with a quick parry and a slash across the throat.
A short, muscular woman snared Lady in an iron net, then dove at her with a knife. I grabbed the net and yanked it back, just before Lady took a blade to the head. As Church pulled Lady free, the muscular woman ducked back inside the projection room. The sound of a bolt being thrown came muffled through the door.
I rushed the door and drop-kicked it. Wood splinters exploded from the doorframe, and the door swung open. Cassius followed me in.
The muscular woman dropped the phone she was holding and crouched into a fighting stance. The projectionist behind her, a gangly young man with long hair, slowly turned to look at me. A cigarette stub moldered in his lips, smoke wafting up into his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in fifty years, but raised some kind of thin rod and pressed a button—blue lightning crackled at its tip.
“Nothing stops the show, eh?” the man drawled in a Cockney accent. From the house speakers, the newsreel voice of Minister Williams proclaimed in strident tones, “Art and music and theater must fulfill their moral obligation to depictour progenitors not to the mortal world’s advantage, but to our eternal reality.”
Cassius disarmed the woman and slammed her to the ground. I charged the cigarette man, pulling my leather bag and whipping it at the electric prod, knocking it aside. Then I dove for the projector table, shoved the machine, and toppled the table for good measure. It all crashed down, bulbs popping and reels spooling out over the floor. An electric scent filled the suddenly silent booth.
The theatergoers below us booed. A second later, the theater filled with a warm red light, and a low metallic hum filled the air. I scrambled up to the projection window and peered down into the theater. Madam stood stage left, slowly bowing her lantern. She wore her broad-cuffed coat, her infinity scarf, and her tricornered hat. But her hair was down—she looked “show-ready.”
Her lamplight pulsed on every surface of the large venue. Then the lighting rigs came on in cool blues and violets, and a swing band appeared onstage playing a Tommy Dorsey tune. No load-in. No soundcheck. Just there. paul rutherford’s swing kings, a banner behind them read.
The bandleader started to rip some crazy licks with his trombone. Semblances shot to their feet, crowded down to the stage, and danced in the aisles. Madam ceased playing her lantern and smiled up at me through the theater haze.
Then a gentleman with greased-back hair took the stage and began crooning a flag song to the tune of “O Christmas Tree,” in counterpoint to the Swing Kings. The two pieces of music rose like voices in disagreement—the sound of dissent. The cacophony riled the crowd into gyrating and fist-pumping.
I’d never heard such a combination of traditional folk melodies overlaid with stately rhythms like parade marches. It was more than just sound. It got inside me, carrying me along. Istared out the projection window, suddenly wondering whether the Iron Horse was really worth this much fighting and bad blood.
“Jack?” Cassius’s deep voice rang at my ear, disrupting the music’s flow, snapping me from its pull.
I rushed to the wall, picked up the house phone, and hit the PA button. Then, I unleashed the heaviest metal scream I could muster and beat the phone against the wall in a furious rhythm: “Why are you so shameless!” Slam. Slam. Slam. Slam. “Why are you so shameless!”
The theater crowd began to scream and shout. The Swing Kings stopped swinging.
Madam was still smiling up the side aisle at me, as the mob began to point my way and started to shout, “Get him!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The barrier between the waking world and the Asphodel Meadows is, for a thanatist, a sheer veil, which may, as a matter of perception, be drawn aside.
—Marcel Gerbau, Eminent Wayfinder, St. Paul’s
