The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  “Is that fatal?”

  She turned blood-shot eyes on him. “Not to Ruy.”

  The man’s expression twinkled. “He’s your patient, isn’t he? It’s your duty to make a house call.”

  “I certainly shall. I was going to call him on the visor to make an appointment.”

  “He doesn’t have a visor. Everybody just walks in. There’s something doing in his studio nearly every night. If you’re bashful, I’ll be glad to take you.”

  “No thanks. I’ll go alone – early.”

  Bell chuckled. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Chapter Ten

  Number 98 was a sad, ramshackled, four-storey, plaster-front affair, evidently thrown up during the materials shortage of the late forties.

  Anna took a deep breath, ignored the unsteadiness of her knees, and climbed the half dozen steps of the front stoop.

  There seemed to be no exterior bell. Perhaps it was inside. She pushed the door in and the waning evening light followed her into the hall. From somewhere came a frantic barking, which was immediately silenced.

  Anna peered uneasily up the rickety stairs, then whirled as a door opened behind her.

  A fuzzy canine muzzle thrust itself out of the crack in the doorway and growled cautiously. And in the same crack, farther up, a dark wrinkled face looked out at her suspiciously. “Whaddaya want?”

  Anna retreated half a step. “Does he bite?”

  “Who, Mozart? Nah, he couldn’t dent a banana.” The creature added with anile irrelevance, “Ruy gave him to me because Mozart’s dog followed him to the grave.

  “Then this is where Mr. Jacques lives?”

  “Sure, fourth floor, but you’re early.” The door opened wider. “Say, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  Recognition was simultaneous. It was that animated stack of purple dresses, the ancient vendress of love philters.

  “Come in, dearie,” purred the old one, “and I’ll mix you up something special.”

  “Never mind,” said Anna hurriedly. “I’ve got to see Mr. Jacques.” She turned and ran toward the stairway.

  A horrid floating cackle whipped and goaded her flight, until she stumbled out on the final landing and set up an insensate skirling on the first door she came to.

  From within an irritated voice called: “Aren’t you getting a little tired of that? Why don’t you come in and rest your knuckles?”

  “Oh.” She felt faintly foolish. “It’s me – Anna van Tuyl.”

  “Shall I take the door off its hinges, doctor?”

  Anna turned the knob and stepped inside.

  Ruy Jacques stood with his back to her, palette in hand, facing an easel bathed in the slanting shafts of the setting sun. He was apparently blocking in a caricature of a nude model lying, face averted, on a couch beyond the easel.

  Anna felt a sharp pang of disappointment. She’d wanted him to herself a little while. Her glance flicked about the studio.

  Framed canvases obscured by dust were stacked willy-nilly about the walls of the big room. Here and there were bits of statuary. Behind a nearby screen the disarray of a cot peeped out at her. Beyond the screen was a wire-phono. In the opposite wall was a door that evidently opened into the model’s dressing alcove. In the opposite corner stood a battered electronic piano which she recognized as the Fourier audiosynthesizer type.

  She gave an involuntary gasp as the figure of a man suddenly separated from the piano and bowed to her.

  Colonel Grade.

  So the lovely model with the invisible face must be – Martha Jacques.

  There was no possibility of mistake, for now the model had turned her face a little, and acknowledged Anna’s faltering stare with complacent mockery.

  Of all evenings, why did Martha Jacques have to pick this one?

  The artist faced the easel again. His harsh jeer floated back to the psychiatrist:

  “Behold the perfect female body!”

  Perhaps it was the way he said this that saved her. She had a fleeting suspicion that he had recognized her disappointment, had anticipated the depths of her gathering despair, and had deliberately shaken her back into reality.

  In a few words he had borne upon her the idea that his enormously complex mind contained neither love nor hate, even for his wife, and that while he found in her a physical perfection suitable for transference to canvas or marble, nevertheless he writhed in a secret torment over this very perfection, as though in essence the woman’s physical beauty simply stated a lack he could not name, and might never know.

  With a wary, futile motion he lay aside his brushes and palette. “Yes, Martha is perfect, physically and mentally, and knows it.” He laughed brutally. “What she doesn’t know, is that frozen beauty admits of no plastic play of meaning. There’s nothing behind perfection, because it has no meaning but itself.”

  There was a clamour on the stairs. “Hah!” cried Jacques. “More early-comers. The word must have got around that Martha brought the liquor. School’s out, Mart. Better hop into the alcove and get dressed.”

  Matthew Bell was among the early arrivals. His face lighted up when he saw Anna, then clouded when he picked out Grade and Martha Jacques.

  Anna noticed that his mouth was twitching worriedly as he motioned to her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing – yet. But I wouldn’t have let you come if I’d known they’d be here. Has Martha given you any trouble?”

  “No. Why should she? I’m here ostensibly to observe Ruy in my professional capacity.”

  “You don’t believe that, and if you get careless, she won’t either. So watch your step with Ruy while Martha’s around. And even when she’s not around. Too many eyes here – Security men – Grade’s crew. Just don’t let Ruy involve you in anything that might attract attention. So much for that. Been here long?”

  “I was the first guest – except for her and Grade.”

  “Hmm. I should have escorted you. Even though you’re his psychiatrist, this sort of thing sets her to thinking.”

  “I can’t see the harm of coming alone. It isn’t as though Ruy were going to try to make love to me in front of all these people.”

  “That’s exactly what it is as though!” He shook his head and looked about him. “Believe me, I know him better than you. The man is insane . . . unpredictable.”

  Anna felt a tingle of anticipation . . . or was it of apprehension? “I’ll be careful,” she said.

  “Then come on. If I can get Martha and Ruy into one of their eternal Science-versus-Art arguments, I believe they’ll forget about you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I repeat,” said Bell, “we are watching the germination of another Renaissance. The signs are unmistakable, and should be of great interest to practicing sociologists and policemen.” He turned from the little group beginning to gather about him and beamed artlessly at the passing fate of Colonel Grade.

  Grade paused. “And just what are the signs of a renaissance?” he demanded.

  “Mainly climatic change and enormously increased leisure, Colonel. Either alone can make a big difference, combined, the result is multiplicative rather than additive.”

  Anna watched Bell’s eyes rove the room and join with those of Martha Jacques, as he continued: “Take temperature. In seven thousand B.C. homo sapiens, even in the Mediterranean area, was a shivering nomad; fifteen or twenty centuries later a climatic upheaval had turned Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Yangste valley into garden spots, and the first civilizations were born. Another warm period extending over several centuries and ending about twelve hundred A.D. launched the Italian Renaissance and the great Ottoman culture, before the temperature started falling again. Since the middle of the seventeenth century the mean temperature of New York City has been increasing at the rate of about one-tenth of a degree per year. In another century palm trees will be commonplace on Fifth Avenue.” He broke off and bowed benignantly. “Hello, Mrs. Jacques. I was just menti
oning that in past renaissances, mild climates and bounteous crops gave man leisure to think, and to create.”

  When the woman shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture as though to walk on, Bell continued hurriedly: “Yes, those renaissances gave us the Parthenon, The Last Supper, the Taj Mahal. Then, the artist was supreme. But this time it might not happen that way, because we face a simultaneous technologic and climatic optimum. Atomic energy has virtually abolished labor as such, but without the international leavening of common art that united the first Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese and Greek cities. Without pausing to consolidate his gains, the scientist rushes on to greater things, to Sciomnia, and to a Sciomnic power source” – he exchanged a sidelong look with the woman scientist – “a machine which, we are informed, may overnight fling man toward the nearer stars. When that day comes, the artist is through . . . unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” asked Martha Jacques coldly.

  “Unless this Renaissance, sharpened and intensified as it has been by its double maxima of climate and science, is able to force a response comparable to that of the Aurignacean Renaissance of twenty-five thousand B.C., to wit, the flowering of the Cro-Magnon, the first of the modern men. Wouldn’t it be ironic if our greatest scientist solved Sciomnia, only to come a cropper at the hands of what may prove to be one of the first primitive specimens of homo superior – her husband?”

  Anna watched with interest as the psychogeneticist smiled engagingly at Martha Jacques’ frowning face, while at the same time he looked beyond her to catch the eye of Ruy Jacques, who was plinking in apparent aimlessness at the keyboard of the Fourier piano.

  Martha Jacques said curtly: “I’m afraid, Dr. Bell, that I can’t get too excited about your Renaissance. When you come right down to it, local humanity, whether dominated by art or science, is nothing but a temporary surface scum on a primitive backwoods planet.”

  Bell nodded blandly. “To most scientists Earth is admittedly commonplace. Psychogeneticists, on the other hand, consider this planet and its people one of the wonders of the universe.”

  “Really?” asked Grade. “And just what have we got here that they don’t have on Betelgeuse?”

  “Three things,” replied Bell. “One – Earth’s atmosphere has enough carbon dioxide to grow the forest-spawning grounds of man’s primate ancestors, thereby ensuring an unspecialized, quasi-erect, manually-activated species capable of indefinite psychophysical development. It might take the saurian life of a desert planet another billion years to evolve an equal physical and mental structure. Two – that same atmosphere had a surface pressure of 760 mm. of mercury and a mean temperature of about 25 degrees Centigrade – excellent conditions for the transmission of sound, speech, and song; and those early men took to it like a duck to water. Compare the difficulty of communication by direct touching of antennae, as the arthropodic pseudohomindal citizens of certain airless worlds must do. Three – the solar spectrum within its very short frequency range of 760 to 390 millimicrons offers seven colors of remarkable variety and contrast, which our ancestors quickly made their own. From the beginning, they could see that they moved in multichrome beauty. Consider the ultra-sophisticate dwelling in a dying sun system – and pity him for he can see only red and a little infra red.”

  “If that’s the only difference,” snorted Grade, “I’d say you psycho-geneticists were getting worked up over nothing.”

  Bell smiled past him at the approaching figure of Ruy Jacques. “You may be right, of course, Colonel, but I think you’re missing the point. To the psychogeneticist it appears that terrestrial environment is promoting the evolution of a most extraordinary being – a type of homo whose energies beyond the barest necessities are devoted to strange, unproductive activities. And to what end? We don’t know – yet. But we can guess. Give a psychogeneticist Eohippus and the grassy plains, and he’d predict the modern horse. Give him archeopteryx and a dense atmosphere, and he could imagine the swan. Give him h. sapiens and a two-day work week, or better yet, Ruy Jacques and a no-day work week, and what will he predict?”

  “The poorhouse?” asked Jacques, sorrowfully.

  Bell laughed. “Not quite. An evolutionary spurt, rather. As sapiens turns more and more into his abstract world of the arts, music in particular, the psychogeneticist foresees increased communication in terms of music. This might require certain cerebral realignments in sapiens, and perhaps the development of special membranous neural organs – which in turn might lead to completely new mental and physical abilities, and the conquest of new dimensions – just as the human tongue eventually developed from a tasting organ into a means of long distance vocal communication.”

  “Not even in Ruy’s Science/Art diatribes,” said Mrs. Jacques, “have I heard greater nonsense. If this planet is to have any future worthy of the name, you can be sure it will be through the leadership of her scientists.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure,” countered Bell. “The artist’s place in society has advanced tremendously in the past half-century. And I mean the minor artist – who is identified simply by his profession and not by any exceptional reputation. In our own time we have seen the financier forced to extend social equality to the scientist. And today the palette and musical sketch pad are gradually toppling the test tube and the cyclotron from their pedestals. In the first Renaissance the merchant and soldier inherited the ruins of church and feudal empire: in this one we peer through the crumbling walls of capitalism and nationalism and see the artist . . . or the scientist . . . ready to emerge as the cream of society. The question is, which one?”

  “For the sake of law and order,” declared Colonel Grade, “it must be the scientist, working in the defence of his country. Think of the military insecurity of an art-dominated society. If – ”

  Ruy Jacques broke in: “There is only one point on which I must disagree with you.” He turned a disarming smile on his wife. “I really don’t see how the scientist fits into the picture at all. Do you, Martha? For the artist is already supreme. He dominates the scientist, and if he likes, he is perfectly able to draw upon his more sensitive intuition for those various restatements of artistic principles that the scientists are forever trying to fob off on a decreasingly gullible public under the guise of novel scientific laws. I say that the artist is aware of those ‘new’ laws long before the scientist, and has the option of presenting them to the public in a pleasing art form or as a dry, abstruse equation. He may, like da Vinci, express his discovery of a beautiful curve in the form of a breathtaking spiral staircase in a château at Blois, or, like Dürer, he may analyze the curve mathematically and announce its logarithmic formula. In either event he anticipates Descartes, who was the first mathematician to rediscover the logarithmic spiral.”

  The woman laughed grimly. “All right. You’re an artist. Just what scientific law have you discovered?”

  “I have discovered,” answered the artist with calm pride, “what will go down in history as ‘Jacques’ Law of Stellar Radiation’.”

  Anna and Bell exchanged glances. The older man’s look of relief said plainly: “The battle is joined, they’ll forget you.”

  Martha Jacques peered at the artist suspiciously. Anna could see that the woman was genuinely curious but caught between her desire to crush, to damn any such amateurish “discovery” and her fear that she was being led into a trap. Anna herself, after studying the exaggerated innocence of the man’s wide, unblinking eyes knew immediately that he was subtly enticing the woman out on the rotten limb of her own dry perfection.

  In near-hypnosis Anna watched the man draw a sheet of paper from his pocket. She marvelled at the superb blend of diffidence and braggadocio with which he unfolded it and handed it to the woman scientist.

  “Since I can’t write, I had one of the fellows write it down for me, but I think he got it right,” he explained. “As you see, it boils down to seven prime equations.”

  Anna watched a puzzled frown steal over the woman’s brow. “But eac
h of these equations expands into hundreds more, especially the seventh, which is the longest of them all.” The frown deepened. “Very interesting. Already I see hints of the Russell diagram . . .”

  The man started. “What! H. N. Russell, who classified stars into spectral classes? You mean he scooped me?”

  “Only if your work is accurate, which I doubt.”

  The artist stammered: “But – ”

  “And here,” she continued in crisp condemnation, “is nothing more than a restatement of the law of light-pencil wavering, which explains why stars twinkle and planets don’t, and which has been known for two hundred years.”

  Ruy Jacques’ face lengthened lugubriously.

  The woman smiled grimly and pointed. “These parameters are just a poor approximation of the Be the law of nuclear fission in stars – old since the thirties.”

  The man stared at the scathing finger. “Old . . . ?”

  “I fear so. But still not bad for an amateur. If you kept at this sort of thing all your life, you might eventually develop something novel. But this is a mere hodge-podge, a rehash of material any real scientist learned in his teens.”

  “But Martha,” pleaded the artist, “surely it isn’t all old?”

  “I can’t say with certainty, of course,” returned the woman with malice-edged pleasure, “until I examine every sub-equation. I can only say that, fundamentally, scientists long ago anticipated the artist, represented by the great Ruy Jacques. In the aggregate, your amazing Law of Stellar Radiation has been known for two hundred years or more.”

  Even as the man stood there, as though momentarily stunned by the enormity of his defeat, Anna began to pity his wife.

  The artist shrugged his shoulders wistfully. “Science versus Art. So the artist has given his all, and lost. Jacques’ Law must sing its swan song, then be forever forgotten.” He lifted a resigned face toward the scientist. “Would you, my dear, administer the coup de grâce by setting up the proper co-ordinates in the Fourier audiosynthesizer?”