by Al
But Oort was still stuffing his face, and shrugged again, so I let it drop.
When he left later I felt like we were real friends, and said, “I really wish there was something I could do for you at school.”
Again he shrugged and said, “That’s what being the new kid’s all about. There’s nothing you can do about it. Want to come over my house tomorrow after school?”
“Sure,” I said, and when Oort was gone I knew I’d made a real friend.
~ * ~
Friday
It seemed like school would never end today, and, since it was Friday, and the bullies wouldn’t see Oort again till Monday, they really let him have it at lunch.
But he seemed to take it really well, and after we’d found all his clothes, even both of his socks, all he did was ask me if I was still coming over after school.
“You bet,” I said, “and I’ll even bring a bag of potato chips!”
“Great!” he said, giving me directions to his house, and then staggered off as Stinky headed his way to get in one more pop.
They got Oort again at his bus, but he managed to wave to me as he stumbled out of the crowd.
“Don’t forget the potato chips!” he shouted, before they were on him again.
~ * ~
I had a heck of a time finding his house. It’s not that Oort’s directions were bad, but the house was in a place I’d never been before. There was a street I knew pretty well, and at the end of it there was a right turn I didn’t remember, which led to a dead end I’d never seen.
But there was the house at the end, just like Oort said it would be.
A strange place. It was house-shaped, but seemed to have too many corners. Also, it was way too tall. The porch was narrow, and all the windows had boards over them. The shingles were strange, some of them round and some of them square at the bottom; the same thing for the shingles on the roof. But it all seemed to fit together in a weird type of way, except that the whole house seemed to vibrate slightly, and glow in a faint greenish light.
It looked weird enough that I was about to turn around and go home when the front door opened and there was Oort, waving to me and smiling. He was wearing clothes different from his school clothes: really bright green, narrow pants and a thin-collared shirt in blinding yellow.
“Come on in!” he said.
I held up the potato chips.
“Great!” Oort said.
I stepped up onto the porch, feeling the boards give way slightly under my feet as if they were rotten inside.
I was about to say something to Oort when he laughed and said, “Uh…old house!” and brought me inside. He took the potato chips from me, popped open the bag, and began to shove big handfuls of them into his mouth.
“I love these things!” he said.
It was just as weird inside the house as outside. We were in a hallway, and as we went down it each room to either side seemed to be too narrow and had too many walls and glowed faintly. There were paintings on some of the walls, but the pictures were long and narrow. They looked like landscapes, but the trees in them were tall and thin with blue bark and the ground was covered with orange grass.
“What—” I asked, but Oort was still moving down the hallway so I rushed to catch up.
“Want to play video games?” I asked.
“Forget it—I’ve got something better to do!” he said.
We were in something like a kitchen, and on the table, which had different-lengthed legs and was taller than it was wide, was a jar of peanut butter and a half a loaf of bread.
“Not too much time to shop,” Oort explained. He tossed the potato chip bag on the table, and I saw with amazement that it was empty.
“Those were great!” he said.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“They’re…close,” Oort said.
He moved to the back door, which had no windows in it and was barely wide enough to get through.
“Like I said, I’ve got something better than video games!” he laughed, throwing it open.
The doorway was filled with bright light. When my eyes adjusted I said, “Wow!” and stepped toward it.
Instead of the backyard of the house there was a whole other world, just like the one in the landscape painting, with orange grass leading up a rolling hill, brown flowers and blue trees, and a bright green sky.
“That’s where I live!” Oort said.
I looked carefully through the doorway. “It looks like another planet!”
“It is!” Oort laughed.
“Can we…go there?”
“Just step through the door!”
“Wow!” I said again, and stepped through with Oort.
Suddenly I was on another world!
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
Oort pointed to the top of the hill. “On the other side is a valley, with a whole city in it. But just over the hill is what I really want to show you. Come on!”
I followed him, still wide-eyed at the world around me.
Orange grass!
Green sky!
Blue trees!
We got to the top of the hill, and suddenly I was looking down on the most amazing thing I’d every seen. There in the distance, in the wide valley at the bottom of the hill, was a huge city made up of the same kind of buildings as Oort’s house—a sprawling cluster of strange, tall, narrow, many-angled structures in wild colors—bright pink, red and purple.
“Unbelievable!”
“And look at that!” Oort said, pointing to what lay just below us.
I was speechless.
Sitting on a wide plateau was a tall, narrow, weird-cornered place with square and oval windows of different sizes. It was multi-colored—yellow, tangerine, the color like the bottom of a swimming pool. Off to the side was a play field surrounded by a strange, zigzagging fence and filled with things that sort of looked like swings and crooked monkey bars. The play field was filled with kids dressed in bright clothing just like Oort—and a group of them, big and mean looking, was climbing the fence and marching up the hill toward us.
“Hey, Oort!” I said, suddenly alarmed. I looked behind us—but Oort’s house was gone, replaced only by orange fields and blue trees.
The gang of kids reached us, brushing Oort aside as they surrounded me. The biggest of them smiled a green, gap-toothed smile at me and said, “Hey, I wonder who this is?”
He turned to Oort and his evil smile softened. “Guess you’re one of us now, loser!”
“Sorry, Bud,” Oort said to me, as I went down, and felt someone tugging at my shoes and socks, felt someone else shoving orange grass down my pants, and felt something really sticky and bright blue being rubbed into my hair, “It was the only way I could stop being the new kid in my school.”
Ahead of the Joneses
January 12
Today I’m a happy man, because the deliverymen installed my new abstract lawn sculpture. I had it set up on the property line, and I could swear that Harry Jones’s eyes bugged out when he saw it facing his front porch. The bastard’ll have to look at it every day as he leaves for work.
~ * ~
January 30
When Jones called me over to see his new lawn sculpture today I had to hold myself back from strangling him in front of it. It’s a silver-plated job, twice the size of mine and with twice as many artsy features. And on top of the fact that he had the nerve to buy the thing, the son-of-a-bitch had it mounted on his side of the property line, looming over my lawn sculpture. I put on an appreciative grin as he showed it to me, but we both knew what I was thinking…
~ * ~
February 16
Today I called one of Harry’s kids over to take a picture of him and his friends with my brand-new holo-camera. Gave little Robby an instant print (gave each of his friends one too!) and I just know the kid ran home to show Harry and ask how come they don’t have a holo-camera. I could just visualize Harry yelling at the little lout and telling him to s
hut his mouth about holo-cameras. Made me feel warm inside all day.
~ * ~
February 21
Harry called this afternoon to tell me about the great buy he got on a holo-moviecamera and to invite Sheila and me and the kids over to help them make their first full-length film. Of course I told him we couldn’t make it, but the bastard had little Robby run over later with a print. An hour’s worth of color film, with sound—self-projecting cartridge too. Just need an empty space to project it in. I projected it into the garbage, of course; it burns hell out of me that a jerk like that who can’t be making any more money than me could afford something like that. Of course there have been a lot of sales on holo-moviecameras lately, and the prices have come down a bit. It’s the fact that he just has to do me one better that makes me feel so rotten…
~ * ~
June 17
Eat your heart out, Harry Jones! The workmen turned on the juice today and left, and I must admit they did quite a job. There can’t be anyone in the whole county, never mind this block, with a complete amusement arcade like mine in his backyard. And I mean complete. Everything from high-reality-level ride simulator to holographic clowns (4-color, yet!) to a changeable-program fireworks grid to close out the evening light spectacle. The guy at the department store started to give me his whole spiel about how I was getting in on the ground floor of a new revolution in home entertainment and how the prices would never be this low again (I don’t see how they could get much higher; luckily, I did have a few dollars put away for my kids’ college educations) but I didn’t let him finish, I just signed the contract and slapped down the advance payment. He threw in the rifle range, no charge, but if he hadn’t I would have ordered one anyway. I know how much Harry likes to target shoot on weekends.
~ * ~
June 28
God help me, and I’m a religious man, but I almost went over and murdered him today. I’m calmer now, but the initial shock of coming home from a short business trip to find the finishing touches being put to Jones’s outdoor 3-D theater, set on top of his domed vapor-pool, and all of that resting on top of his automated midget racer track and micro golf course (combined with a good-sized arcade and target-shoot in one corner, floating six feet above the ground) was just a bit much. After a couple of hours I stopped trembling. I thought I could cheer myself up tonight by programming a light show, but Jones’s heat-lightning extravaganza left the blinking lights in my backyard about a thousand feet below.
I’m desperate.
~ * ~
November 11
Every last penny I’ve got is gone; Sheila’s run away with the kids—but none of that matters. After five months I’ve finally found a research assistant in one of the large consumer appliance companies who could be bought, and I know—I’m positive, because I checked everything out thoroughly—that what I now hold in my hands is absolutely the only one (and therefore the best!) of its kind in the world. The guy I bribed (he wouldn’t even tell me his name, the weasel—he looked like he needed the money, though) said this thing’s the ultimate consumer device—that it can make all kinds of alterations in the space/time fabric of the universe, that it can do almost anything! He almost chickened out at the last minute, claiming the thing was dangerous and hadn’t really been tested (it was under lock and key when he took it); he also mumbled something about it “blowing a fuse and throwing the Earth back into the Paleozoic Era.” I think he was worried about getting caught; anyway, when he saw the amount of money I had for him, and the gun in my hand, he shut up and took the bribe fast enough; so much for his scruples. I‘m standing here on my front lawn now, facing Jones’s house, and as soon as the son-of-a-bitch (I know he’s in there now with his Yellow Pages viewscreen, putting in hologram calls to every store in the state, trying to order a better model of what I’ve got—or at least to find out what it is) shows his face I’m going to throw the switch. I don’t know what will happen, but whatever it is, no one can outdo it! I’ve beat you, Jones! Is that his face at the window? Yes! And now—
~ * ~
November 14, 400,000,000 B.C.
I move rock. Big rock. Slimy hands mine, and have dirt in mouth. Crawl up from sea. Wet sea. Now on dirt. Hard work to breathe, but I work. I stay on dirt now, for good.
Move rock. Nice rock, smooth on one side, flat on other side. Cool under rock, hide from Sun. Live under rock, on cool dirt. Nice.
I happy.
Other me crawl up from sea to dirt. I watch. He work breath, hard, for long time, and almost turn back to sea, but he stay. He look at me, under rock.
Now he move rock, other rock, bigger, more smooth on one side. Is bigger under, more cool. He move rock next to mine and crawl under, out of Sun. He look at me for a long time.
I mad.
THE ARTIST IN THE SMALL ROOM ABOVE
By Al Sarrantonio
I wait for Bates to make me create again.
He sits in the small circular room above me, resting. I hear him tap at the keys of the console with his fingers, making dissonant, unformed sounds, but he does not continue. I am restless to finish; he has been working almost constantly for two days and I know he has deadlines to meet. The cable pads pulse warmly at my temples.
Finally I feel the urging through the pads.
The console in the room above hums contentedly as Bates urges me on at the usual setting. Impatient, tired, I want to finish; I close my eyes and shout up to him through the ceiling, telling him to increase the setting. I have never done this before and he is surprised; but he does so. He turns it up too high. The console’s hum increases to a modulated whine.
Suddenly pain bursts throughout my body. My hands clutch at the arm rests of my chair; my eyelids snap tightly closed; my throat convulses.
I begin to scream, hoarsely. Life surges through and out of me. My body jumps and tosses crazily in my chair. The console above drones loudly, and above it I hear the music…
Then abruptly it is over. The work is completed. I sink back, exhausted. Above, the console shuts angrily down and I hear Bates give a small cry of astonishment; he is breathing heavily.
My mind drifts off into blackness.
II
Later, Bates descends the curving staircase to my room and wakes me. He helps me remove the electrodes and pads. He helps me to my feet and says he must take me for a drink. I nod weakly and follow.
It is night, and a low-lying, yellow mist has descended. This world is perpetually covered with thin shifting clouds and sickly fog. As we step into the dark street I turn to look at our working place, a two-room two-floor silo capped with a black dome. The part above the fog resembles an ugly, rimless derby. Other derbys rest on the fog on this street and the streets adjacent—this is the area where most artists live. Bates motions impatiently and we move along.
It is dark and smoky in the drinking place. Bates orders two drinks—tall, slender goblets filled with roiling liquid as yellow as the fog outside—and steers me away from the somber bar to the back room. We find a booth and sit down facing one another.
Bates looks at me queerly across the table. “You’ve never done what you did today before,” he says. “I didn’t know you could.” His eyes are two white questioning orbs in the darkness.
“I was tired,” I respond quietly; “I thought you could finish the work faster if you increased the setting. But you set it too high.”
“But do you know what you did?” he says, raising his voice. “Do you know what I composed?” He pulls a recording chip from his pocket and pushes it across the table at me. “Listen.”
“No,” I say tiredly, pushing it back at him, but he says again, “Listen.”
I bring the chip up to my ear and it activates. It is set near the end of the composition. At first there are only the standard, bland sounds that characterize most of Bates’s work. Then suddenly I detect a change, and the music becomes more stately. A theme, low, insistent, tragic, begins to weave itself around and through the blandness, enfol
ding it and gradually overcoming it. Now the theme begins to fold around itself, the high notes beginning to fight the basses head-on, building in intensity, crashing against itself and climbing—
I pull the chip from my ear and place it before Bates. My stomach has tightened itself into a small knot. “I won’t do that again.”
He gives me a measuring look. “I…don’t know,” he says. “You’ve been contracted to me for three months now, and I never realized you could do this sort of thing. I’m going to have to think about this.”
“Let me remind you,” I say firmly, “that the contract you have with me states that you will compose only popular forms of music. There’s no provision in it for other forms of work.”
He looks hard into my eyes. “I’m aware of that,” he says, “but don’t forget that it was you who deviated from the contract today. I didn’t expect to have the end of that piece turned into…well, serious music. There was something there that I may want to explore. If you read the contract carefully, there isn’t really any provision restricting me on what type of music I can compose. There’s no clear restriction on what I can do.”
I look at him coldly. “I wouldn’t tamper with the contract. And besides, you know that money lies in what you’re doing now.”
“I know that,” he says, “but there are a few people willing to pay for this sort of thing. There might be money in it. I couldn’t afford to abandon the other composing, but it just might be worth my while to make use of your other talents.” He smiles across the table; it is an empty smile. “And remember,” he says, “I still control the cables and you’re still my Muse.” His smile widens into a sharp, white grin. “For ten years.”
We finish our liquor and leave the drinking place in silence.
III
He is right; I am his Muse. I was brought here from my home planet and, like many of my fellow beings, I contracted myself to an artist. The artists on this world are little more than machines. These creatures have somehow lost the ability to transfer their feelings and experiences. It is as if their fingers have somehow been disconnected from their souls. They seem the most selfish of beings: they possess emotions, but those emotions are land-locked. Each being of this world is an island, a world unto himself, and it is nearly impossible for one of them to even touch another. The only social contact they effect takes place on a formal, businesslike plane; even their meeting places are cheerless, murky and cold. But though these people are alienated they are not dead; each lone mind craves nourishment and pleasure. That is where we, the so-called Muses, come in. We supply the machine-like artisans to which we are contracted with transmutable creative energy for their work. In return we are supported by the writers. There are Muses contracted to painters, writers, sculptors, as well as musicians and other artists. Our contracts range from one to twenty years and can be renewed.
