Then he remembered the swamp slug. The thought so intrigued him that when he returned to Donov Metro he told his driver to take him to his office by way of Harnasharn Galleries.
And the galleries stood transformed by people. Two straggling lines of perspiring tourists stretched across the front of the building and converged at the main entrance. The amazed Wargen rushed toward the entrance, and then on an impulse he turned aside to ask a question of a waiting tourist.
The tourist shifted his feet and spoke with obvious embarrassment, as though he knew in advance that his answer would sound silly. “Well, we heard there’s these ten paintings by a Zrilund swamp slug, and, well, we wanted to see them.”
Wargen immediately confronted Harnasharn, who was exultant about the spectacular growth of interest in his permanent exhibit until Wargen deflated him in scathing tones. “Spread a rumor that you also have paintings by a Garffi wrranel and sculpture by a frost lizard, and they’ll tear down the doors to get in. What was that about ten slug paintings?”
“I have three new paintings. One of the original eight was sold.”
“Then the slug continues to paint?”
“But of course!”
Wargen hurried off to report to the World Manager. “It seems that neither our citizens nor our tourists have much feeling one way or the other about animaloid artists, except that if the animaloid is freakish enough they’d like to see its work.”
Ian Korak heaved a sigh. “Of course. We should have expected that. The tourists probably consider any artist to be at least slightly animaloid. What does this have to do with the Rinoly-Zrilund situation?”
“As far as I know, nothing at all.”
In a town on the Rinoly Peninsula, a merchant was heard remarking to a customer, “They’re having problems with the drinking water on Virrab Island. That poison and all those dead fish, you know. They’ll have to import pure water or close the resort.”
In a stylish little bistro on Tourist Row in Nor Harbor, one tourist was heard to say to another, “That talk about sabotage to the Zrilund boats is just a cover-up. The government closed the place because Zrilund’s drinking water is contaminated. That poison and all those dead fish, you know.”
Within the hour Wargen had been informed. of both conversations. He went to a conference in a thoughtful mood and listened passively while Bron Demron developed the thesis that the new resort association between Virrab and Zrilund had posed a threat to other resorts.
The World Manager heard him out and then turned inquiringly to Wargen.
“All I’m prepared to say,” Wargen announced, “is that someone has directed violence against both islands and now is making a devilishly clever attempt to exploit it.”
“The immediate question is whether they’re finished or whether we can expect more trouble,” Demron observed.
Wargen had no answer, which embarrassed him, and he was grateful when a special messenger called him away. Sarmin Lezt was at Port Metro and wanted help. Wargen’s duty officer had sent every available man and notified the regular police to stand by.
Wargen rushed off to the port. His men were still arriving, and Lezt had posted one of them to give directions and orders. Wargen found the agent in one of a long row of drinking places that marked the boundary between spaceport and seaport. Because spacers and seamen not infrequently chose to disagree, tables and benches were welded to the Boor, and the only containers permitted in the establishment were of lightweight, disposable plastic.
Lezt greeted Wargen with a grin, and Wargen said reproachfully, “Why didn’t you let us know?”
“I didn’t have a chance. They boarded ship just before blast off, and I only made it by a stroke of luck. I thought I’d better come along and point ’em out to you, descriptions are worthless for something like this, especially when some of the culprits are playing with disguises. Then one of them turned out to be a blood brother or something of the communications officer, and I decided not to call attention to myself by sending a message. If they’d suspected anything at all they could have dumped me easily before help arrived, but obviously they didn’t. They marched down here from the terminal as though they were on parade. They’re in the bistro across the street.”
“Who are they?”
“Four would-be thieves. From the way they’ve operated in the past, two teams.”
“Good work. With any luck at all they’ll lead us to their Donovian contact.”
“They’re meeting him now. This scheme has been working smoothly for so long that the principals are getting a mite careless. Ramsy Vorgt happened to have a directional detector in his pocket, and he’s over there pretending to get drunk while recording everything they say. They’ll split up when they leave, but the scans are ready for them.”
A short time later the newly arrived thieves emerged in pairs and went off in opposite directions, each pair trailing a smoothly functioning scan. Finally the contact stepped through the door, pondered the street gravely, and strolled away. Bristling black whiskers hid his face, and he wore the long trousers and tight-fitting jacket of a seaman on shore leave.
“Recognize him?” Lezt asked.
Wargen shook his head.
“He and the one on Rubron got their whiskers from the same wrranel.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“No, but on the basis of what’s happening on Rubron, I could guess what he is.”
They followed him at a distance until he vanished into a large hostel. Two of Wargen’s men were dose behind him. “This is the critical moment,” Lezt said. “He’ll change his clothes and disguise and leave by another exit. It’s what stumped us for so long on Rubron. If they can stay close enough to see what room he’s using and what he looks like when he comes out, we’ll have him.”
They took a front table in a bistro across the street from the hostel, and before they’d got around to sampling their adde a scruffy-looking, brown-whiskered workman in dirty clothing came out of the hostel and walked away. One of Wargen’s men followed, glanced about to make certain that others were picking up the scan, and turned in the opposite direction. The workman took his place in line at the first T-stop with two of Wargen’s men directly behind him, and the three of them boarded the next airbus.
Lezt signaled to a waiting police transport. “He’ll get off in the neighborhood of Embassy Row. We might as well wait there.”
“Do you know where he’s going?”
“I can guess. Sornorian embassy. He’ll be one of the undersecretaries. At least, that’s what the contact was on Rubron.”
Wargen took a deep breath. “So it is Sornor. But what could Sornor possibly expect to accomplish with such a stupid harassment?”
“I figure maybe they’d hoped to stir up a huge amount of trouble in a hurry and then quietly agree to call it off in return for Franff’s extradition. It didn’t work out, but they kept trying. Now it’s dragged on for so long that Franff is pretty much forgotten on Sornor and everywhere else. I was wondering if maybe the idiot who thought this up has forgotten to turn it off, and it just keeps going.”
“What I have to decide now is whether Sornor thought the thefts were taking too long and decided to speed things up by dumping poison.”
Lezt turned quickly. “What’s that about poison?”
Wargen told him. “Even knowing that Sornor is responsible may not help,” he added. “We’d never be able to prove it unless they foolishly kept on dumping it until we caught them.”
“Do we have to prove it? The instant we catch one of these new teams stealing we’ll have a complete and fully documented case, with sound recordings and photographs. The earlier attempt to abduct Franff is obviously a part of the same plot, and so is the poison. Beyond that we don’t need proof. Nothing Sornor said in rebuttal would be believed.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Wargen mused. “We can perform our own blackmail and offer Sornor a choice between overwhelming diplomatic humiliation and a quiet arbitrat
ion settlement on the damages Donov has suffered. Very well. You wind the case up and assemble the documents. I’ll report to the World Manager. He can have the novel experience of ending a day on a brighter note than the one it started on.”
16
The art colony at Garffi was unique because it belonged to the artists. Those who discovered the place considered what an avalanche of artists and tourists would do to that charming village and its spectacularly beautiful surroundings, and, thinking of Zrilund, were horrified. They passed the problem to the Artists’ Council, which took it up with the Donovian government, and the government arranged a long-term lease on the entire district with the object of keeping it the way it was.
The villagers continued to live in their homes, farm the valleys, and pasture their herds. A few of them found employment in the artists’ village, which was built out of sight in a lateral valley. The artists were serious, hard-working craftsmen, given to painting all of their waking hours, and if one wanted to raise hell he went off and did it at Port Ornal, where hell had so many more interesting variations than it did in a sleepy rural village. Villagers and artists got on famously, and there were no tourists. Because of the remote location only the most passionate of art enthusiasts could have made his way there, and if he did so uninvited he found no accommodations.
A novice such as Eritha Korak should not have been permitted at Garffi, where assignments were in such high demand that the Artists’ Council maintained a carefully screened waiting list; but Eritha was only occupying the quarters of an artist who had returned to his home world for a short visit. Since the arrangement was temporary, the local committee first satisfied itself that she really was there to study and then quietly ignored her. The Artists’ Council was not even informed.
The village of Garffi stood at the head of a deep bay where a mountain river cascaded into the sea. The entire region was a scenic wonderland, with the river rushing through verdant, steep-sloped valleys, with a multitude of tinkling, leaping streams seeking it, with the steady pounding of rapids and falls sounding a dull background for the shrill coughing of fluffed-out wrranels on the high mountain pastures. In the background were formidable, oranged mountains, their jagged peaks softened with an encrustment of white. Along the arms of the bay, the quiet, warm sea lapped enormous boulders and fantastically shaped monoliths deposited there in some long-forgotten natural convulsion.
The unspoiled beauty and fascinating diversity of the setting offered an endless variety of art subjects, and the light on the beaches of Garffi rivaled that of Zrilund. Many artists painted nothing but the massive chunks of rock that were scattered there. One monolith could inspire months of steady painting. The artist shifted his easel slowly, in a circle, and with each move the rock’s shape changed, its facets reflected light differently, its shadows altered, its hues varied, and its background shifted from the open sea to other curiously shaped monoliths to the village framed by looming mountains—and back again.
The artists tolerated Eritha good-naturedly, and they quickly settled on an unspoken working arrangement with her. Mornings she painted, and the artists patiently answered all of her questions and gave her as much help as she wanted. Afternoons she modeled for them.
Those artists interested in life studies had been bored to desperation with painting Garffi’s peasants. Eritha sent for the latest fashions in rev dresses, and she passed each afternoon posing as the artists requested, with the sea breezes whipping her frilly costumes. She stood on boulders, she waded in the surf, she lounged, she ran lightly along the beach, she stood pensive in the dusk, head lowered, in an attitude that was supposed to signify that the rev was over.
She was being immortalized—for some of these paintings were very good indeed and would certainly find their varied ways into important collections—on fifty different fabrics. During an occasional rest period she liked to wander from easel to easel and see how the different artists were portraying her. The strangest paintings were those by artists whose home worlds possessed raging, foaming seas. They liked to paint the monoliths with gigantic waves breaking over them, their sleek sides wet and glistening, all of which was a flagrant libel on Donov’s quiet ocean. Their paintings showed Eritha in heroically defiant poses, doggedly facing adversity while treacherous fingers of water snatched at her.
While she examined the paintings, she listened to the artists talk. As at Zrilund, they talked incessantly, and if Neal Wargen wanted to know what they talked about she could tell him with one word: art.
The first news of the Virrab and Zrilund tragedies was brought to Garffi by one of its rare visitors, an art critic on sabbatical named Mora Seerl, from the world of Kurnu. Eritha, whose work was not such as to inspire visiting critics to seek her out, did not meet the woman until late in the day, when several of the artists were escorting her through the sepulcher—the display and storage room that in art colonies possessed an importance second only to that of the dining hall.
She was a dark, good-looking, vivacious woman in tourist costume—considerably older than she tried to look, Eritha concluded matter-of-factly—and like most critics she exuded conversation about art. Midway through her tour she pounced upon a group of paintings that Eritha had modeled for.
“This,” she proclaimed, “dramatically typifies what is wrong with Donov’s art. It’s an art of things, and things have no feelings, no emotions. The emotion must come from the artist, and Donov’s artists simply are unable to imbue Donov’s outworn art subjects with emotion. The only thing that could save Donovian art is people, which is the sole art subject that has its own intrinsic feeling, but no Donovian artist has found any people worth painting except tourists, and he paints tourists only to mock them. These are the only paintings in this room that include a human figure, and look what the figure is—one of your fellow artists! Donovian art is dying.”
Eritha said sweetly, “In your studies at the Institute, have you happened onto any portraits of Anna Lango?”
“Anna Lango was a professional model,” Mora Seerl snapped. “Professional models aren’t ‘people’—they’re artists’ props.”
“And that,” a fellow artist murmured to Eritha, “puts you in your place.”
Eritha nodded. “There’s something to what she says, though. Why don’t we paint people?”
“Here at Garffi, everything is on too grand a scale. Look what an insignificant thing you are among all those enormous boulders. What could a person, or a whole group of persons, add to a painting of a mountain? When people are dwarfed to insignificance, isn’t it better to omit them? And if the artist tries to make them significant, then there’s no room for the mountain. We aren’t here to paint people, we’re here to paint Garffi’s special scenery—the mountains, the amazing seashore, and so on, just as the Virrab artists are there to paint Virrab’s special scenery. If we wanted to paint people we’d go somewhere else.”
“Where?” Eritha demanded.
“Anywhere people are.”
Eritha said nothing more. She knew only too well why she didn’t paint people—it was because things were so much easier to paint. Now, abruptly, she was tired of painting things, and since people were utterly beyond her it was time she went home.
She also was tired of conversation about art. There was stark tragedy at Virrab Island and at Zrilund, and in the sepulcher at Garffi, six artists and a critic were debating whether there was a place in Donovian art for the human figure.
Wes Alof’s little coterie of Zrilund artists was already assembled when Arnen Brance entered the room. Alof waved to him and pointed to a chair. “We’re talking about Jaward Jorno,” he said.
Brance filled a mug and drank deeply, the appropriate response of any artist offered a choice between drinking and talking about Jaward Jorno. He was experiencing an unfamiliar weight of responsibility. He no longer was a volunteer spy for Jorno, or even for the mysterious police officer Karlus Gair. He was a confidential agent of the World Manager’s First Secretary, app
ointed that very afternoon, and he’d noticed the difference the moment he accepted the position. Jorno and Gair made polite requests. Wargen issued orders.
“What about Jorno?” Brance asked.
“Reports say that the poison was spread around his islands and also that his boats were wrecked.”
“So?”
“The reports lied.”
Alof’s plump face carried its usual flush of anger. The other artists seemed in varying degrees overwhelmed by Zrilund’s catastrophe and disposed to listen at least as long as the adde lasted.
“Those were official reports issued by the Donovian government,” Brance objected. “This business is highly embarrassing to Donov, and if the government wanted to lie it could have avoided no end of unpleasantness by not mentioning Jorno’s resort at all.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Maybe you’d better explain that,” Brance said perplexedly.
“Virrab Island and the Rinoly mainland are Jorno’s private properly. Right? And he could have cleaned the place up and fixed his boats without any outsiders knowing what had happened. Right? Under the circumstances that would have been the smart thing to do. So why did he call in the police and make the matter public and scare away no one knows how many resort customers?”
“I give up. Why?”
“It was much more to his advantage to make it public. Otherwise he wouldn’t have done it.”
Brance said doubtfully, “I still don’t understand—”
“I’m explaining it. Have you seen any tourists on Zrilund today?”
“The ferries and the boat aren’t running yet.”
“It’ll take weeks to repair the boat. Government inspectors have just certified the ferries unrepairable. They’ll never run again. Even if both were ready tomorrow we wouldn’t have any tourists because tourists don’t enjoy looking at a poisoned sea filled with dead fish. The authorities aren’t even guessing about how long it’ll take to fix that. Zrilund is ruined. Just by comparison, did you know that Jorno’s resort didn’t close at all? By some incredible coincidence, the poison was dumped in the wrong place and most of it got carried out to sea. The poison dumpers didn’t know the Rinoly currents. They knew the Zrilund currents perfectly, and they’d have known the Rinoly currents if they’d thought to look at their steering chart, but they didn’t. Jorno’s boats were wrecked—he says—but by another incredible coincidence he was able to replace them tile following day. Zrilund is ruined. Jorno’s resort wasn’t even inconvenienced.”
The Light That Never Was Page 18
