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Ke
John Valentine put his hand on Ke
"Who says dreams can't come true? Right, son?"
"That's right, Dad."
They were standing in the almost-finished park across from the dream. The park was three acres in area and ten levels high. The ground was bare soil, with sprinklers and electrical outlets naked. Soon they would be covered with sod. But a fountain was bubbling off to their left, and a white gazebo to their right sported electric flags that snapped in the nonexistent wind. In a few hours the orange fences would come down and people would begin using the paths, sitting on the benches. Children would climb in the small playground and splash in the pond with golden koi and the park's resident pair of otters.
John Valentine barely noticed any of this. The park had been part of his specifications for the project—and he would never know how many headaches this had caused-—but it had really been no more important to him than the color of the ushers' uniforms. A thing he would notice if it were done wrong, never see if it was right. He had said the theater should be across from a park. Here was the park. Enough said.
His attention was fixed firmly on the edifice across the wide pedway.
The Valentine. His dream. Well, Ke
"You remember that day at the spaceport, Ke
"I remember it, Father."
"It's fu
"Yes, Father."
"Can't think why we'd want to go to Mars. Brutal gravity on Mars. Anyway, we'd had this offer, and we didn't know what to do with it. Television. A series. The money sounded good, but... television! Remember?"
"Oh, yes," Ke
"And that's where the dream was born. The Valentine." He waved his arm grandly at the marquee. "Shakespearean repertory. We never knew it would take this long. This many years, you laboring with the kiddie schlock, me languishing in the sticks. But we got the money, and now we have the time."
Ke
The facade was wood, recalling what the exterior of the Globe Theater might have looked like. It stretched for half a city block, facing the park. The actual entrance took up half that much of the frontage: four sets of wood-and-glass doors, a small box office off to one side. Above it was a tasteful marquee, brightly lit, but with nothing that flashed or moved. "This ain't a casino," Valentine had said. On all three sides it advertised:
ROMEO AND JULIET
Ke
Maya Chang
John Valentine
with the tasteful logo featuring a rose and a sword that had come from the top graphic-design firm in King City. And not cheaply. Above that was a two-story tower with THE VALENTINE spelled vertically, THE floating over the v, in a type style called BROADWAY.
It had once been the Roxy Theater. Even in its heyday the Roxy had not been a premiere venue. Located on a seldom-traveled side street just off the Rialto, it had struggled along for almost twenty years presenting the sort of experimental works beloved of acting students and practically nobody else, playing to audiences composed mostly of relatives of those students. It was far too large a house for that. The balcony had been walled off early on, but even then the four hundred main-floor seats were usually half-empty. Sometimes nine-tenths empty. The theater had been owned by a man with some money, a man almost as eccentric as John Valentine. He was content to lose small sums yearly, until a change in the tax situation made it impossible to continue. And it sat there, dark, boarded up, for fifteen years until Sparky's real-estate scouts discovered it. Valentine didn't give a hoot about the bad location: "They'll come to us; you wait and see."
Renovation had kept Valentine busy for the better part of six months, and now it was ready.
Father and son crossed the pedway and entered their theater. The lobby was dark wood and thick maroon carpet. Heavy curtains covered the back walls, pulled away from the four entrances. They could be raised entirely so standees could look through wide openings in the rear wall. Valentine fully expected standees, at every performance.
They walked down the sloping aisle between the left and the center sections of seats, which were wide, and plushly upholstered in the same shade as the carpet. They reached the orchestra and turned around.
Six hundred seats. A steeply raked balcony. Retractable chandeliers. Three elevated boxes on each side. An arched ceiling, gentle acoustic curves built into the walls. It was old-fashioned without making a big point of it.
"Perfect," Valentine breathed. "I couldn't ask for more."
"You did a great job," Ke
Valentine accepted this in silence. Then he gri
"Rehearsals begin tomorrow," he said. "Are you ready, Romeo?"
"I think I know my lines," Ke
"I'm jealous," Valentine said, with an affectionate smile. "Part of me says, 'John, you're not too old to play Romeo. You could still show that little upstart a thing or two.' "
"I'll bet you could."
"And I will, Ke
"You directed a lot of things on Neptune," Ke
"Ah, yes, but this feels like a new begi
"I'll sure try, Father."
"Count on it. You will be the best."
And Ke
Back aboard Hal...
You'd think a guy who is seldom at a loss for words, a guy who could cover umpty-ump pages with a description of a trip from Pluto to Oberon where, basically, nothing happened except I got hungry... you'd think I'd have something useful to say about a close encounter with the sun.
Hmmm. Well, how about... it got hot.
It did, a little. Up to about ninety-five or ninety-six. Not so impressive until you realize that any variation from a desired temperature is cause for worry aboard a spaceship. Such things are supposed to be under control. That should give you some idea how close Hal was cutting things.
Not too impressed? Well, neither was I. How about, it was fast. Over in less time than it takes to talk about it.
It was grand. It was beautiful. It was awe-inspiring.
Ho-hum, right?
It was dangerous. But the trouble was, I just couldn't get too excited about it. If something happened, it would all be over too quick for me to notice it, Hal assured me.
I think that, in the end, after all my adventures on my way from one of humanity's most distant outposts to within the orbit of mankind's closest, I just got sort of burned out. You should excuse the expression. And we had done a mighty close skim of Jupiter, a place I feared a lot more. I guess once you've seen one giant ball of gas up close, seeing another just doesn't pack the wallop you might expect it to. Even if it is on fire.