Ben-Ami had no idea what the wares had been, but the air and floor and very beams of the place were pervaded with some scent, spicy and sour, that suggested long-degraded alcohol molecules. The extravagant electricity supply might have originally been to maintain temperature and humidity. Now it powered lighting and sound, holograms and engines. Rehearsals of songs, dances, and dialogues, and workings through of stage and prop business, had been going on for a week. Denied for the first time in his career a performance permit for the Jardin des Étoiles by a flagrantly spurious fire-safety objection from the municipality of the Seventy-Ninth Arondissement, Ben-Ami had instructed his MEA to contest it and had provisionally transferred Rebels and Returners to this marginal locale. In interviews he had called it the Theatre in Exile. The name was now in lights above the doors. Today was his first attempt to run the first act—or the prelude, depending on how it went.
