THE PRICE OF FAME
by ardavenport
Picard shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"How now, spirit! Wither wander you?" Puck began. Act II showed every sign of being as bad ad Act I had been. The fairy in question waved it's artificial insectoid-like appendages. "Over hill, over dale..."
He sat back. A moment later he felt something brush the back of his head. Damn. He leaned forward in his seat again. He wasn't sure if it was the Planetary Minister of Agriculture or the Director of Orbital Traffic who was doing it. Maybe it was both of them. Picard resisted a powerful urge to turn and glare, and kept his eyes pointed straight ahead.
The two solitary fairies left the stage, to be immediately followed by a gaudily over-dressed Oberon trailing a pack of giant, winged ant-like creatures that moved en-masse behind him. The insect costumes were apparently the Sartris interpretation of an Earth fairy. A draped and huge Titania entered with her own ant-hill in her wake.
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," Oberon muttered.
"What, jealous Oberon!" she boomed back, at least ten decibels louder than anybody or thing that had been in the play so far. It was all excruciatingly bad. And Picard did the only rational thing possible; he ignored it and sat patiently in his seat, hands folded in his lap and went over in his mind how he would say his farewells to his Sartris hosts after the play.
He couldn't tell them what he really thought of his visit, but a few half-truths would go far.
He could thank them for their hospitality. Their obsequiousness had been positively stifling.
He could thank them for their gifts. Nearly every person he was introduced to had pressed upon him some small token of their appreciation. But multiplied by a few hundred it added up to quite a pile. What the hell was he going to do with all the stuff they'd given him? The volume of it alone could easily fill three times that of the shuttle he would be leaving in.
The production before him cut jarringly from Scene II to Scene III. Ordinarily the editing would have appalled him, but here it only meant that the play would be shorter and he could leave sooner. Even worse, the players, except for Titania, were constantly forgetting their lines. The prompter at the foot of the stage was very busy helping out the other actors while Titania and her train rumbled over it, bellowing out dialogue. Occasionally the insect-fairies would halt and throw out clouds of glitter before moving on.
He could express modesty, Picard thought. Twenty years ago, when he commanded the Stargazer he had lead a mission that had saved the planet Sartris from ecological collapse. Now, upon his return to this world he had discovered that, over the years, their gratitude to him for this act had taken almost cultish proportions. The people he met grotesquely fawned over him, making him very uneasy. His recitation of the old cliche "I was only doing my duty." just sent them to new depths of hero worship that made him sincerely hope that it came from the excitement of the moment and that these people didn't behave so strangely when he wasn't around. He did not feel like he'd done anything to merit such embarrassing adulation; he had only issued the orders; his science officer was the one who had discovered the solution to the Sartris problem.
With a squeal and scream from Hermia, Act II ended. The audience sat still and silent while a black-clad stage crew pushed and grunted over orange plastic trees and antigravs. There was no tradition for applause on Sartris. There was no tradition for theater on Sartris either.
The woman sitting next to Picard leaned toward him and spoke just loud enough for him to hear. "Horrible, isn't it?" she commented congenially.
He quickly glanced in her direction without moving his head. She bent toward him only close enough for him to hear. She made no move to brush up against him or casually touch, unlike the people sitting behind him. He did not recall seeing her before the play, but she did look like... "Athee?" he asked turning toward her.
She smiled an affirmative. In the twenty years since he had known her as a bright, young junior ecological engineer she had gained a lot of weight. Her arms were now large and muscular, her chest broadened. Her tusks were grown far beyond the immature stubs he remembered, well past their prime, and tiny wrinkles grooved the edges of the gill slits at her throat.
She astutely noticed his appraisal of her. "Your hair used to be a different color and your face smoother. And your patience has lengthened considerably." She nodded toward the stage where Act III was about to commence.
"It's interesting," he answered diplomatically. She sat back in her seat again and gracefully accepted his un-critical appraisal of a performance being held in his honor.
Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and Starveling marched on and began their parts like a debate team. They were all identical, in dress and physical characteristics.
Athee said nothing throughout a very violent and disjoint Act III during which Picard counted thirty-two places where the performers stammered into silence before the prompter bailed them out. But when the stage crew again returned to rearrange the sets she leaned toward him again.
"Should I assume that you might need some help in politely disposing of the bounty of your admirers' gratitude?"
He narrowed his eyes and let her answer her own question.
"You could donate your gifts to the 'future staff of Starbase 324'. Whether or not the starbase is approved, the other Starfleet representatives will have to deal with them for you."
"That wouldn't offend anybody?" he whispered back.
"Not as much as taking some things and leaving the rest would. Or were you planning on drinking two metric tons of earl grey tea?"
"Then you think that it's likely that the starbase will be approved?" The starbase negotiations were, after all, the only reason why Starfleet had decreed he be there and hopefully sway the decision in its favor.
"Not likely," she answered, turning back to the stage.
This surprised him. He wouldn't have guessed it from what he'd seen that day; cheering crowds, people embarrassingly competing with each other to be near him; three dignitaries had publicly argued over which of them would sit at his table for dinner. And everyone without exception had profusely praised both him and the notion of a Starbase on Sartris.
Act IV started up.
"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,..." Titania began, loud enough to wake the dead, but not loud enough to awaken Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena asleep in a heap at one end of the stage.
"What do you mean 'not likely'?" he asked under cover of Titania's thunderous delivery.
"Costs too much." Damn, he thought. That was what the preliminary reports had said about the proposed project. But the well-wishers who'd plagued him all day hadn't even hinted that this was any problem. They had filled the entire day with a busy, precisely planned tour, dragging him from place to place, giving him no chance to look up any of the people he remembered from that old mission. And at every turn he had been assured by the carefully selected people he was introduced to that all was well.
"What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?" Titania nearly prostrated her great bulk before Bottom. Bottom stumbled over his lines and needed help from the prompter.
"O say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat?" Titania responded threateningly. She wasn't an actor, but she seemed to be the only one who knew her part and she was now openly irked by her co-stars' poor memories. And she was much bigger than Bottom.
"I'd like to speak with you later." In part, he wanted to hear an objective view of what was really happening on Sartris; he wasn't even a member of the negotiating team, who had hoped that his presence would work in their favor, but he dutifully cared about the outcome. And partly he just wanted to talk with somebody who did not preface her words with an overinflated compliment for him.
"You're leaving after the play," Athee reminded him, she had to speak up a little to be heard over Titania. "And I wouldn't recommend staying. They'd never leave you alone long enough for us to discuss anything. You should have told them where to sit as soon as you landed."
They had been speaking as discretely as possible, but even sitting in a crowd Picard was still the center of attention and curious people were beginning to turn their way. Picard sat back, unwilling to drag Athee into the spotlight he occupied.
Athee was right. He should have put his foot down right away, but in the interests of diplomacy he hadn't. At first he had been flattered as well as a little disturbed by the lavish praise heaped upon him. Now, he could barely stand it. His status with these people had reduced him to the level of admired object. He'd had not the slightest bit of privacy in the past ten hours; people even followed him to the lavatory. And because he had thought that he would spoil Starfleet's potentially successfully negotiations he had put up with it. The Sartrians took everything he said extremely seriously and he simply was not going to be there long enough to straighten out any misunderstandings or offenses that honesty might create. But now it was blatantly apparent to him that one of the niceties bestowed upon him had been outright lying to curry his favor.
Something brushed the back of his head.
He gritted his teeth and inched forward in his seat again. Now he was really angry. All through Act IV while the lovers lamely made peace and Bottom reunited with his troupe he sat there fuming over the indignities he had suffered all day. And about his own utter stupidity to put up with it for so long. And now it was much too late to do anything about it, not when he would be leaving so soon.
During the break between acts Athee glanced in his direction, but the expression for anger for Humans was close enough to that for Sartrians that she correctly read his mood and didn't say anything to him. That made him angrier, discovering that his Sartris handlers and their tightly-knitted itinerary prevented him from having a decent conversation with somebody he had not seen in twenty years.
Hippolyta moved to center stage and stood there nervously blowing air out her gills.
"'Tis strange, my Theseus...," went the prompter. Hippolyta immediately grabbed the line and finished it.
"I'll send a message when I get back to my ship," he said to Athee, keeping his voice low and neutral. It would have been unforgivable, showing his anger towards her of all people. He felt fortunate that he had been able to talk to her at all.
"Send it through Starfleet. If anybody else around here gets hold of it I might not see it," she whispered back. He nodded and turned back to the final act.
Theseus had a lot of lines to forget. Not one bit of dialogue went by without him needing to be helped by the prompter, who was herself slow about her job. Somehow they managed to cut out the entire play-within-a-play part. Scene I went by very quickly.
Scene II, the very last scene of the play, commenced and Picard inwardly sighed; soon he would be free and he could return to his ship to the company of normal people and find some avenue for his rage without worrying about upsetting somebody's negotiations. Puck slowly pronounced his lines and Picard sat back, impatiently waiting it out. Oberon and Titania entered, their insectoid fairies, shuffling in their weighty costumes and puffing glitter, close behind.
Oberon stepped forward, opened his mouth and stood there, waiting to be bailed out.
"Through the house give glimmering light," went the prompter.
Oberon repeated it.
"By the dead and drowsy fire." Oberon repeated that one, too.
"Every elf and fairy sprite," said the prompter.
"Every elf and fairy sprite," said Oberon obediently. He was even using the same intonation and phrasing as the prompter. It was like listening to a very late echo.
"Hop as light as bird from brier," the prompter read.
"Hop as light..."
Titania kicked him. And since she was twice as big as he was he went flying off the stage. All the fairies backed away from her and Puck, not waiting for her rebuke, dove off without her help. He had been a chronic line-forgetter, too.
A murmur of approval came from the crowd, the first response they had shown at all during the entire performance.
"First rehearse your song by ROTE!" she recited angrily. "To each word a warbling NOTE! Hand in hand with fairy GRACE!" She cast a poisonous look at her cringing fairies. "We will sing and bless this PLACE!" she finished mightily.
And now she was stuck. She had just booted her fairy king out of the play and he had the next lines.
Something grazed the back of Picard's head, again.
"Now, until the break of day!" Picard answered, leaping to his feet. "Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessed be!"
Everybody stared at him. It didn't affect him a bit; they had been staring at him all day.
"And the issue there create, ever shall be fortunate!"
Picard didn't actually know all the words to Oberon's last speech, but he knew better than to show it.
"Trip away; make no stay; meet me all by break of day!" he finished, skipping more than a dozen lines.
"If we shadows have offended!" Titania took Puck's last lines gratefully. Smiling, arms wide, she yelled them at him and Picard suspected that he had just acquired another follower. He graciously smiled back and nodded towards her, the merest suggestion of a bow, when she finished, her eyes glowing with admiration. For the first time that day it did not embarrass him. He supposed that this time it was honestly given and accepted.
^^^^^ END ^^^^^
Note: This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in 1991 in Stargazer 13, back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days of fanfiction.
Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to Paramount; I'm just playing in that sandbox.