The Light That Never Was

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

“I remember hearing the fiber mentioned.”

  “It’s worked out well for the local farmers, even though they can’t compete with growers on worlds where the fiber is processed except at times of peak demand. Shipping charges are too high.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “Our problem has been to find a way in which the meszs can support themselves without competing with natives, and Mr. Jorno suggested that we investigate this fiber. If the meszs are able to use it, it will provide a handsome market for the one product that thrives in Rinoly, and it will also provide inexpensive textiles for all of Donov. So we’ve put up an experimental factory and thus far the operation seems to be a success. Next winter we’ll triple the size of the factory, and by harvest time the following year we’ll be ready to take as much fiber as the farmers can grow. It’s work the meszs can do profitably, the Rinoly farmers will have an important cash crop for the first time in history, and the people of Donov will no longer have to pay import prices on textiles and textile goods.”

  “It sounds like a magnificent arrangement,” Wargen murmured.

  “We think so, too.”

  “I’m wondering why someone didn’t try it sooner.”

  “Mr. Jorno sees potentialities where no one else sees them, and he has the courage to invest large sums in what really is a frightful gamble. The worlds where this fiber is being processed aren’t about to send us free technical assistance. They won’t even sell machines to us. The meszs had to formulate their own manufacturing procedures and design and build their own machines. Would you like to visit the factory?”

  Wargen shook his head. “Several governmental departments will be immensely interested. I’ll inform them, and doubtless they’ll send competent people to see what you’re doing. I wouldn’t understand it. Tell me about the art colony and tourist resort.”

  “Ah!” the assistant said brightly. “We’ll have to go back to the mainland, then.”

  “Certainly. I take it that the art colony is your own special project.”

  “Mr. Jorno has entrusted me—” He paused. “How did you know that?”

  “Sometimes I have flashes. Carry on.”

  They stood on one of Virrab Island’s steep bluffs with the tourist village spread out below them in the jewel-like precision of a masterfully crafted miniature. It was completed; the tourist village on the mainland was also completed, as was the artists’ village. It had had been a crash building project for three thousand meszs, and they had performed brilliantly. They were now partners with Jorno in the resort business—they had furnished the labor, he the land and capital.

  “Will the meszs work in the resorts?” Wargen asked.

  The assistant was shocked. The meszs had no contact at all with any humans except Jorno’s employees. Not only would the resorts’ workers be people, but they would be local people. Jorno insisted on that. They would have to be trained, a few at a time, which meant that the resorts could not operate at capacity for at least a year.

  “What about the mesz artists?”

  “That’s different,” the assistant said. “That’s entirely up to the artists. Serious artists judge other artists only on the basis of how well they paint, and if they choose to work with meszs, or nonors, or whatever, that’s their affair.” He encompassed the wild landscape with a gesture. “It’s a new and superlative art subject, and we’ll have a new kind of resort. Beaches, sea cruises, and spectacular vistas of unspoiled nature with only Donov’s greatest artists at work painting them. We’ll have the unique architecture of the meszs—and that’s only the beginning. In less than a year Zrilund will be forgotten.”

  “I suppose all those great paintings of Zrilund will be forgotten, too,” Wargen murmured politely. He thought untamed nature a rather gloomy art subject, hut he could understand the artists’ enthusiasm over such striking new scenes to paint.

  Back at the mainland tourists’ village, the assistant took Wargen to see a seaside park that the meszs had laid out and shaped with loving care. “Deeded and dedicated to the public,” the assistant said with a smile.

  And so it was. The low hill at the center of the park was dominated by a massive sculpture of a mesz and a human touching wrists. The plaque read, “This park was created for the people of Donov and their visitors by Donov’s guests, the meszs. In friendship and gratitude.”

  “Perfect!” Wargen exclaimed.

  Everything was perfect, and to a skeptical Chief of Secret Police, that could only mean that something was very, very wrong.

  He wished he knew what it was.

  12

  M’Don sent a new report to Wargen. On the world of Skuron, malfunctioning control devices had permitted tons of poisonous industrial wastes to pollute the drinking water of a major city. Several hundred thousand people became ill, several hundred died, and the world’s animaloids were virtually exterminated. Wargen consulted his chart and was not surprised to find that the rioting had occurred on schedule.

  He was searching for patterns within patterns, but poisoned drinking water on Skuron was not the same thing as Cuque’s poison alga; nor did Skuron’s tragedy with a contaminated reservoir show any similarity to the reservoir tragedy on Mestil, where almost one hundred thousand people had drowned.

  The meszs had opposed this reclamation project because they thought the dam site and the terrain surrounding it geologically unstable. Unfortunately, their acknowledged scientific brilliance weighed less than their misfortune of looking almost human and the fact that the proposed new lake would inundate half of their largest reservation. The Mestillians ignored them.

  It happened precisely as the meszs had predicted. Seismic tremors dumped tons of rock and soil into the reservoir, and the huge waves that resulted smashed the dam, perhaps weakened by those same tremors. It was the worst tragedy in Mestillian history, and through some perversion of reasoning the meszs were blamed for it because they had said it could happen. The rioting started immediately.

  Precisely on schedule.

  Wargen reluctantly pushed the files aside. One of his agents was waiting to see him.

  Sarmin Lezt was a brilliant young investigator with a flair for disguises. For months he had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to link Ronony Gynth’s employees to the thefts by phony artists.

  “I’m giving you a change of scene,” Wargen told him. “Of the thieves we’ve caught, natives of Rubron outnumber those of any other world five to one. All of them have come to Donov by way of Rubron. Obviously they’re being hired there. The inducement is a well-paid vacation on a vacation world and virtually no risk, since the articles they steal have so little value that a small fine and expulsion is the worst penalty an arbiter could impose.”

  “Someone is in charge here on Donov,” Lezt observed. “They work one area just long enough to stir things up, and then they switch operations across the continent. Someone is telling them when to switch and where.”

  “True. But we don’t know who the thieves are until we catch them, and the one thing we can absolutely count on is that they’ll have no further contact with that local control once they’re caught.”

  “You’re sending me to Rubron?”

  Wargen nodded. “Demron just caught four more. They’ll he returned to the world they came from, which is Rubron. Pick as many men as you think you’ll need, travel on the same ship, and once you reach Rubron keep a scan on them just in case they report back to their employer.”

  “I’d rather not take everyone on the same ship. I’d rather have someone there waiting for them.”

  “Make your own plans and let me know what you’ll need. You may be there for a long time. If the thieves don’t lead you to the person responsible, I want you to try to find him yourself.”

  Lezt departed, and Wargen turned over his mail and found a note from Eritha Korak. Artists at Garffi had been solicited for contributions to a fund for Franff. The old nonor and Anna were in acute financial need. Eritha made a donation, and a short time later it
had been returned to her. Franff had refused to accept the artists’ money.

  “Can’t you do something?” Eritha asked.

  Wargen spoke with the World Manager, who suggested use of an obscure loophole in the administrative regulations for a supplemental retirement fund for elderly citizens. Wargen had no difficulty in arranging a small pension for Franff, and then he had to return to Korak a few days later with the news that Franff had declined it.

  “He’ll accept hospitality,” Wargen said. “He’s grateful for Donov’s hospitality and for that of the friend who loaned him the house in Zrilund. Charity he doesn’t want.”

  “Did we find out for certain whether he can paint? I’d be glad to commission a painting.”

  “It’s certain that he hasn’t painted for years. If he’s not able to, a commission would do more harm than good.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing more that we can do.”

  Wargen smiled mischievously. “Fortunately there’s more than one loophole in those administrative regulations. Since Anna now has an old friend to look after, I figured that made her ‘head of a household.’ The director agreed not to look too closely at the application when I explained the circumstances, so Anna will receive a modest increase in her pension. Franff won’t be able to decline that.”

  The World Manager nodded his approval.

  “It only amounts to token assistance, though. The proper solution would be to find a way for Franff to earn money. I have this friend who gives revs. Lilya Vaan, her name is, and Lilya is always on the prowl for unusual entertainment for her guests. She pays extremely well, and if she were to hire Franff—”

  “To do what?” Korak demanded. “Franff is no entertainer. He wouldn’t accept payment unless he believed he could give full value for it, and what could he possibly do to entertain guests at a rev?”

  “Talk,” Wargen said.

  “About what?”

  “Art. Except for the present generation of younger artists, Franff has been a personal friend of virtually every great artist who’s ever worked on Donov, He’s painted and played and exchanged advice with a host of immortals. I’ve heard that Chord wiped out half of his ‘Fountain Lights’ and repainted it because Franff told him he had the perspective wrong. Any art historian in the galaxy would place his filmstrip collection in hock for a few hours of the anecdotes Franff could tell about the great artists and the origins of some of their great paintings. In addition to his remarkable experiences, he has a really quaint sense of humor. He should make a wonderful lecturer and earn a good income from it. What do you think?”

  “There can’t be any harm in giving him an opportunity, I suppose. All the same—” Korak chuckled dryly. “I don’t think I’d care to attend that rev.”

  For the tenth time in an hour Lilya Vaan listened to Neal Wargen’s reassurances and remained unassured. The rev was going well in spite of the odd guest list, and the motley crowd of art critics and scholars at least had the good sense not to mingle too familiarly with the other guests; but Lilya had never before offered a speaker as her featured entertainment, and this speaker was a remarkably dubious choice for such a risky experiment. For one thing, Franff’s voice was a croaking whisper. The amplification system would carry his words perfectly to all parts of the room, but Franff’s voice amplified could be nothing more than a loud croaking whisper. Even though her guests might find the notion of a talking beast amusing, this would be unlikely to sustain their interest through the hour lecture that she had paid for.

  And then there was this human relic who accompanied Franff and who seemed every bit as peculiar as the animaloid. Wargen claimed that her portraits hung in every worthwhile art collection in the galaxy, and that she had known the greatest artists of the past century and had been the mistress of several, and this weighed not at all with Lilya Vaan. She was not a moralist, she didn’t care how many lovers a woman had as long as none of them ranked lower than baron. A nobleman was, after all, a nobleman, but an artist was only a decorator. What particularly outraged Lilya was that this dubious female had appeared uninvited and could not be summarily evicted because she accompanied the guest speaker.

  The two of them remained together at the far end of the room: Anna, clothed in a drab, shapeless wrapper, sat on a low chair with one hand resting caressingly on Franff’s gleaming shoulder, and Franff perched on his haunches with forelegs stiff in front of him, eyes closed, and seemed to sleep. Guests normally gathered about Lilya’s entertainers and familiarly asked questions, but they avoided this pair as though the end of the room were under quarantine.

  Finally Lilya sought out Wargen. “I’d rather not,” she said. “I’ve already paid him, so he shouldn’t mind if I just let the rev run until it’s too late for entertainment.”

  Wargen smiled. “Lilya, I never thought you would take a coward’s leap. Do you want me to announce him?”

  “I don’t want anyone to announce him. I just want him to go away. All right, you do it. Then maybe they’ll blame you for what happens.”

  Wargen stepped to the center of the room and said loudly and firmly, “May I have your attention…?”

  The guests found chairs; the servants withdrew except for one charged with the manipulation of lighting effects. As Franff waited for the room to become silent, this servant slowly moved a lever, and Franff’s fur changed from gleaming gold to emerald green. Part of the audience—Lilya’s part—burst into applause, but Wargen’s stormy scowl quite spoiled her elation. Regretfully she signaled the servant to desist and thereby abandoned her only opportunity to add something of interest to this alleged entertainment.

  Then Franff spoke, and the amplifier did carry his whispered words perfectly to all parts of the room. He said, “We are all guilty.”

  Lilya turned blankly to Wargen, but Wargen was gazing just as blankly at Franff, as were the other guests.

  “Every life is a monument to all life,” Franff continued slowly. “Every life is a destroyer of life. Each race, each species, must answer to those it has tormented before it accuses its own tormentors. Look about you, see the manifold miraculous forms and guises assumed by that malleable stuff you call humanity. And yet you had, somewhere, a common ancestor. The differences between your species and mine are only in degree more striking than the ways in which you differ from one another. If, as the saying suggests, all men are brothers, are not men and nonors at least cousins? The more so because they hold their one priceless quality in common: Life. Each of their lives is a monument to all lives, and all are guilty because all have destroyed life. How many priceless sparks were extinguished to place before this gathering the servings of meat that I saw you eating? How many priceless sparks destroyed along the way when your relentless vehicles brought you to this place? And afterward, when you leave, will it be possible to step on the grass without crushing the countless lives the night conceals there, will it be possible to discourage the biting night insect without committing murder, without destroying the irreplaceable? For every life, no matter how minute, how humble, how loathsome in appearance or habits, every life is a monument to all life.”

  Wargen nudged Lilya. “What’d you ask him to talk about?” he muttered.

  “A subject of his own choice.”

  “Damnation!”

  The guests, all of them, were still stranded in the backwash of the stunned silence that had greeted Franff’s first pronouncement. Franff had paused briefly to ruminate, and before he could speak again, Wargen leaped to his feet.

  “Franff,” he called desperately, “why is it that artists achieve more of this cousinhood of life, this brotherhood, than do other people?”

  Franff weighed the question and responded with whispered deliberation. “Artists create, and those who devote their lives to creation are slower to destroy.”

  Wargen had remained on his feet. “Between the really great artists, was there much of enmity or jealousy?”

  “The most generous, selfless men I have ever known h
ave been artists,” Franff said slowly, “but not all of them were great or even good artists. Not all of the great artists I have known were generous and selfless, I was guilty of a dangerous generalization and I apologize. Surely there are generous and selfless men in all professions and occupations, and if those I have known have been artists, that is only because most of the men I have known well have been artists.”

  One of the art critics had caught Wargen’s game and was ready with a question of his own. “You were a close friend of Ghord’s. Is it true that he achieved his unique texture with a secret formula for mixing oils with vegetable colors?”

  “I saw Ghord paint many pictures,” Franff said. “I never saw him use oil paints in any form.”

  Anna spoke up. “He never used anything but vegetable paints. It wasn’t oils that made the texture, it was how much he spit into each color while he was mixing it.”

  Lilya had too much presence of mind, was too poised, to reveal her horror, but she was not too horrified to act. Her every instinct as a hostess told her that this had continued long enough. She got to her feet and politely thanked her guest speaker. The audience applauded generously, and Wargen, watching Franff’s courteous acknowledgment, thought it just as well that the old nonor would never realize that the appreciation was not for what he’d said but because it seemed likely that he had stopped.

  “It was a peculiar experience,” Wargen told Korak later. “I’ve never had an idea that failed so utterly, in every respect. Even the moralizing effect of Franff’s lecture failed. In spite of his talk about the brotherhood of man and every life being a monument to all life, Lilya was ready to exterminate me with no more compunction than she’d use on those biting insects that Franff mentioned. However, I made a little speech, explaining that the old artist refused to accept charity and their kind and generous hostess had hit upon this ingenious scheme as an excuse to let him earn money for his simple living expenses, and I thanked them for their most kind co-operation and their patient indulgence of a great creative spirit who had suffered more than his share of the evil in the universe. The guests gave Lilya a standing ovation, and eventually she forgave me, or at least she said she did. Are you listening?”