A Night Out in White River

The play was performed in the open air, with benches surrounding a semicircular stage. The performances were not just plays. They combined community news, sermons, singing, and entertainment into one reasonably well-run package. Vilinitiz made his observations of both the subject matter of the play and the audience.

First, Glider fashion, such as it was, was very peculiar. There would be all sorts of odd hues in their clothing, and sometimes there were some rather strange patterns. Vilinitiz had discovered the Glider's little problem with blue and purple light. Gliders were also a very plain people. It appeared to him that no Glider wore jewelry or gold or silver. Their clothing was either linen or leather, and even the richest among them would patch their old clothing. The Gliders were not getting rich from hunting and gathering. They did have silver coins to help keep accounts, but he would just as often see the Gliders barter goods and services as pay for them in coins. A question as to how a hoard of Dolomite coins made it to his lair crossed his mind, but Vilinitiz was distracted before he could think about this further.

Before the play a cadre of Gliders were publicly rewarded with a tiny bag of coffee beans and a silver coin for exceptional ingenuity in guarding the fruit-bearing trees. The play was a comedy. The "hero" was a Glider officer who was very much not like the way the Gliders he saw presented themselves. Gerge was fat (for a Glider), boastful, and given to extravagance speech and gestures. Throughout the play, Gerge's vices get him into trouble. Gerge is about to be reduced to the ranks for his scandalous behaviour when the "outsiders" invade the Glider hunting grounds. The outsiders are portrayed as gigantic brutes, who for some reason wish to exterminate the colony and market Glider hides. The brutes, having failed to conquer the Gliders in the past, hire an fearsome, but stupid, dragon. Minestus, disguised as Vilinitiz, felt the conflicting emotions of involuntary mirth at the poor dragon costume, with six Gliders trying to move across the stage unsuccessfully, and the outrageous portrayal of the dragon as a dumb tool of the humans. Gerge overcomes the dragon through guile, his training, and "natural" courage that he had not displayed earlier. As is the fashion in these sort of plays, good triumphs over evil, and the dragon is forced to flee, and made to look very silly in doing so.

After the play came a Glider hymn, where the entire assembly sang some song in Modern Dolomite. Vilinitiz did not understand the words, but he felt as if something profound were happening. He did not think much of the Glider's plainness, comtempt for himself (as the dragon), and moralizing in their production, but he greatly admired their singing, in spite of himself.

Vilinitiz and Cronici have a good-natured argument about the merits of the play afterward. Vilinitiz maintains that the shift from a scheming coward to courageous hero is too sudden, and not true-to-life. Cronici, while admitting that Vilinitiz has a good argument, maintains that it is not unlikely that Gerge could rise to the occasion when faced with a crisis. Cronici is of the opinion that the emphasis on the training is the key point - Gerge, despite his faults, can never become too bad of both his training and his fellow Gliders disapproval of his vices. Besides, Cronici declared, it is a comedy. Gerge is funny because he is so outrageous. No Glider would ever have a publicly emotional outburst, get that far out of shape, or shirk his duties in quite that way. That is what made the play so funny, and Cronici approved the play because it was well-done, even if the material had been covered in dozens of plays like this.

1. Vilinitiz talks to Vimini, Cronici's wife.

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