Universe 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  So they went off together. To Malagasy, off the African coast. To Capri. To New York. Then I heard they were in Algiers. I had my Control keep an extra special eye on them, even more than the usual protective surveillance I kept on Madelon. But I didn’t check myself. It was their business.

  A vidreport had them on Station One, dancing in the null gravity of the big ballroom balloon. Even without Control I was kept abreast of their actions and whereabouts by that host of people who found delight in telling me where my wife and her lover were. And what they were doing. How they looked. What they said. And so forth.

  Somehow none of it surprised me. I knew Madelon and what she liked. I knew beautiful women. I knew that Mike’s sensatron cubes were passports to immortality for many women.

  Mike was not the only artist working in the medium, of course, for Leeward and Miflin were both exhibiting and Coe had already done his great “Family.” But it was Mike the women wanted. Presidents and kings sought out Cinardo and Lisa Araminta. Vidstars thought Hampton fashionable. But Mike was the first choice for all the great beauties.

  I was determined that Mike have the time and privacy to do a sensatron cube of Madelon and I made it mandatory at all my homes, offices, and branches that Mike and Madelon be isolated from the vidhacks and nuts and time wasters as much as possible.

  It was the purest ego on my part, that lusting toward a sensatron portrait of Madelon. I suppose I wanted the world to know that she was “mine” as much as she could belong to anyone. I realized that all my commissioning of art was, at the bottom, ego.

  Make no mistake—I enjoyed the art I helped make possible, with a few mistakes that kept me alert. But I enjoyed many kinds and levels and degrees of art. I did not go by present popularity but preferred to find and encourage new artists.

  You see, I am a businessman. A very rich one, a very talented one, a very famous one, but no one will remember me beyond the memory of my few good friends. I would not even be a footnote in history, except for my association with the arts.

  But the art I help create will make me live on. I am not unique in that. Some people endow colleges, or create scholarships or build stadiums. Some build great houses, or even cause laws to be passed. These are not always acts of pure egotism, but the ego often enters into it, I’m certain, and especially if it is tax deductible.

  Over the years I have commissioned Vardi to do the Fates for the Terrace Garden of the General Anomaly complex, my financial base and main corporation. I pressed for Darrin to do the Rocky Mountain sculptures for United Motors. I talked Willoughby into doing his golden beast series at my home in Arizona. Caruthers did his “Man” series of cubes because of a commission from my Manpower company. The panels that are now in the Metropolitan were done for my Tahiti estate by Elinor Ellington. I gave the University of Pennsylvania the money to impregnate those hundreds of sandstone slab carvings on Mars and get them safely to Earth. I subsidized Eklundy for five years before he wrote his Martian Symphony. I sponsored the first air music concert at Sydney.

  My ego has had a good working out.

  I received a tape from Madelon the same day I had a call from the Pope, who wanted me to help him convince Mike to do his tomb sculptures. The new Reformed Church was once again involved in art patronage, a 2,500-year-old tradition.

  But getting a tape from Madelon, instead of a call, where I could reply, hurt me. I suspected I had lost Madelon.

  My armored layers of sophistication told me glibly that I had asked for it, even had intrigued to achieve it. But my beast-gut told me that I had been a fool. This time I had outsmarted myself.

  I dropped the tape in the playback. She was recording from a grove of rainbow trees in Trumpet Valley. I had given Tashura the grant that had made the transplants from Mars possible and the feathery splendor of the trees behind her seemed a suitable background for her beauty.

  “Brian, he’s fantastic. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

  I died a little and was sad. Others had amused her, or pleased her golden body, or were momentarily mysterious to her, but this time . . . this time I knew it was different.

  “He’s going to start the cube next week. In Rome. I’m very excited.” I punched out the tape and got my secretary to track her down. She was in Rome, looking radiant.

  “How much does he want to do it?” I asked. Sometimes my businessman’s brain likes to keep things orderly and out front, before confusion and misunderstanding sets in. But this time I was abrupt, crass and rather brutal, though my words were delivered in a normal, light tone. But all I had to offer was the wherewithal that could pay for the sensatron cube.

  “Nothing,” she said. “He’s doing it for nothing. Because he wants to, Brian.”

  “Nonsense. I commissioned him. Cubes cost money to make. He’s not that rich.”

  “He told me to tell you he wants to do it without any money. He’s out now, getting new cilli nets.”

  I felt cheated. I had caused the series of events that would end in the creation of a sensatron portrait of Madelon, but I was going to be cheated of my only contribution, my only connection. I had to salvage something.

  “It . . . it should be an extraordinary cube. Would Mike object if I built a structure just for it?”

  “I thought you wanted to put it in the new house on Battle Mountain.”

  “I do, but I thought I might make a special small dome of spraystone. On the point, perhaps. Something extra nice for a Cilento masterpiece.”

  “It sounds like a shrine.” Her face was quiet, her eyes looking into me.

  “Yes,” I answered slowly, “perhaps it is.” Maybe people shouldn’t get to know you so well that they can read your mind where you cannot. I changed the subject and we talked for a few minutes of various friends. Steve on the Venus probe. A fashionable couturier who was showing a line based on the new Martian tablet finds. A new sculptor working in magnaplastics. Blake Mason’s designs for the Gardens of Babylon. A festival in Rio that Jules and Gina had invited us to. The Pope’s desire for Mike to do his tomb. In short, all the gossip, trivia, and things of importance between friends.

  I talked of everything except what I wanted to talk about.

  When we parted Madelon told me with a sad, proud smile that she had never been so happy. I nodded and punched out, then stared sightlessly at the skyline. For a long moment I hated Michael Cilento and he was probably never so near death. But I loved Madelon and she loved Mike, so he must live and be protected. I knew that she loved me, too, but it was and had always been a different kind of love.

  I went to a science board meeting at Tycho Base and looked at the green-brown-blue white-streaked Earth “overhead” and only paid minimal attention to the speakers. I came down to a petroleum meeting at Hargesisa, in Somalia. I visited a mistress of mine in Samarkand, sold a company, bought an electrosnake for the Louvre, visited Armand in Nardonne, bought a company, commissioned a concerto from a new composer I liked in Ceylon, and donated an early Caruthers to the Prado.

  I came, I went. I thought about Madelon. I thought about Mike. Then I went back to what I did best: making money, making work, getting things done, making time pass.

  I had just come from a policy meeting of the North American Continent Ecology Council when Madelon called to say the cube was finished and would be installed in the Battle Mountain house by the end of the week.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  She smiled. “See for yourself.”

  “Smug bitch,” I grinned.

  “It’s his best one, Brian. The best sensatron in the world.”

  “I’ll see you Saturday.” I punched out and took the rest of the day off and had an early dinner with two Swedish blondes and did a little fleshly purging. It did not really help very much.

  On Saturday I could see the two tiny figures waving at me from the causeway bridging the house with the tip of the spire of rock where the copter pad was. They were holding hands.

  Madelon was tanned, fit, glowing
, dressed in white with a necklace of Cartier Tempoimplant tattoos across her shoulders and breasts in glowing facets of liquid fire. She waved at Bowie as she came to me, squinting against the dust the copter blades were still swirling about

  Mike was there, dressed in black, looking haunted.

  Getting to you, boy? I thought. There was a vicious thrill in thinking it and I shamed myself.

  Madelon hugged me and we walked together back over the high causeway and directly to the new spray-stone dome in the garden, at the edge of a five hundred foot cliff.

  The cube was magnificent. There hadn’t been anything like it, ever. Not ever.

  It was the largest cube I’d seen. There have been bigger ones since but at the time it was quite large. None have been better. Its impact was stunning.

  Madelon sat like a queen on what has come to be known as the Jewel Throne, a great solid thronelike block that seemed to be part temple, part jewel, part dream. It was immensely complex, set with faceted electronic patterns that gave it the effect of a superbly cut jewel that was somehow also liquid. Michael Cilento would have made his place in art history with that throne alone.

  But on it sat Madelon. Nude. Her waist long hair fell in a simple cascade. She looked right out at you, sitting erect, almost primly, with an almost triumphant expression.

  It drew me from the doorway. Everyone, everything was forgotten, including the original and the creator with me. There was only the cube. The vibrations were getting to me and my pulse increased. Even knowing that pulse generators were working on my alpha waves and broadcast projectors were doing this and sonics were doing that and my own alpha wave was being synchronized and reprojected did not affect me. Only the cube affected me. All else was forgotten.

  There was just the cube and me, with Madelon in it, more real than the reality.

  I walked to stand before it. The cube was slightly raised so that she sat well above the floor, as a queen should. Behind her, beyond the dark violet eyes, beyond the incrediblepresence of the woman, there was a dark, misty background that may or may not have been moving and changing.

  I stood there a long time, just looking, experiencing. “It’s incredible,” I whispered.

  “Walk around it,” Madelon said. I felt the note of pride in her voice. I moved to the right and it was as if Madelon followed me with her eyes without moving them, following me by sensing me, alert, alive, ready for me. Already, the electronic image within the cilli nets was real.

  The figure of Madelon sat there, proudly naked, breathing normally with that fantastically lifelike movement possible to the skilled molecular constructors. The figure had none of the flamboyance that Caruthers or Raeburn brought to their figures, so delighted in their ability to bring “life” to their work that they saw nothing else.

  But Mike had restraint. He hadpower in his work, understatement, demanding that the viewer put something of himself into it.

  I walked around to the back. Madelon was no longer sitting on the throne. It was empty, and beyond it, stretching to the horizon, was an ocean and above the toppling waves, stars. New constellations glowed. A meteor flashed. I stepped back to the side. The throne was unchanged but Madelon was back. She sat there, a queen, waiting.

  I walked around the cube. She was on the other side, waiting, breathing, being. But in back she was gone.

  But to where?

  I looked long into the eyes of the figure in the cube. She stared back at me, into me. I seemed to feel her thoughts. Her face changed, seemed about to smile, grew sad, drew back into queenliness.

  I drew back into myself. I went to Mike to congratulate him. “I’m stunned. There are no words.”

  He seemed relieved at my approval. “It’s yours,” he said. I nodded. There was nothing to say. It was the greatest work of art I knew. It was more than Madelon or the sum of all the Madelons that I knew existed. It was Woman as well as a specific woman. I felt humble in the presence of such great art. It was “mine” only in that I could house it. I could not contain it. It had to belong to the world.

  I looked at the two of them. There was something else. I sensed what it was and I died some more. A flicker of hate for both of them flashed across my mind and was gone, leaving only emptiness.

  “Madelon is coming with me,” Mike said.

  I looked at her. She made a slight nod, looking at me gravely, with deep concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Brian.”

  I nodded, my throat constricted suddenly. It was almost a business deal: the greatest work of art for Madelon, even trade. I turned back to look at the sensatron again and this time the image-Madelon seemed sad, yet compassionate. My eyes were wet and the cube shimmered. I heard them leave and long after the throb of the copter had faded away I stood there, looking into the cube, into Madelon, into myself.

  They went to Athens, I heard, then to Russia for awhile. When they went to India so that Mike might do his Holy Men series I called off the discreet monitors Control had put on them.

  I bought companies. I made things. I commissioned art. I sold companies. I went places. I changed mistresses. I made money. I fought stock control fights. Some I lost. I ruined people. I made others happy and rich. I was alone a lot.

  I return often to Battle Mountain. That is where the cube is.

  The greatness of it never bores me; it is different each time I see it, for I am different each time. But then Madelon never bored me either, unlike all other women, who sooner or later revealed either their shallowness or my inability to find anything deeper.

  I look at the work of Michael Cilento and I know that he is an artist of his time, yet like many artists,not of his time. He uses the technology of his time, the attitude of an alien, and the same basic subject matter that generations of fascinated artists have used.

  Michael Cilento is an artist of women. Many have said he is the artist who caught women as they were, as they wanted to be, and as he saw them, all in one work of art

  When I look at my sensatron cube, and at all the other Cilentos I have acquired, I am proud to have helped cause the creation of such art. But when I look at the Madelon that is in my favorite cube I sometimes wonder if the trade was worth it.

  The cube is more than Madelon or the sum of the sum of all the Madelons who ever existed. But the reality of art is not the reality of reality.

  <>

  * * * *

  * * * *

  I don’t know anything about the Locrine and its inhabitants except what’s revealed in Joanna Russ’s compendium of handy phrases to know if you’re planning to visit there. Compiled with help from the eighteen members of the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop, this guide for the tourist of other planets will give you some idea of what real culture shock is like. Joanna Russ recently declined an opportunity to visit England with all expenses paid: “I am dead tired at the moment and the idea of going anywhere looks pretty rotten,” she said. No wonder.

  USEFUL PHRASES FOR THE TOURIST

  by Joanna Russ

  THE LOCRINE: peninsula and surrounding regions.

  High Lokrinnen.

  X 437894 = II

  Reasonably Earthlike (see companion audio tapes and transliterations)

  For physiology, ecology, religion and customs, Wu and Fabricant, Prague, 2355, Vol. 2 The Locrine, Useful Knowledge for the Tourist, q.v.

  * * * *

  AT THE HOTEL:

  That is my companion. It is not intended as a tip.

  I will call the manager.

  This cannot be my room because I cannot breathe ammonia.

  I will be most comfortable between temperatures of 290 and 303 degrees Kelvin.

  Waitress, this meal is still alive.

  * * * *

  AT THE PARTY:

  Is that you?

  Is that all of you? How much (many) of you is (are) there?

  I am happy to meet your clone.

  Interstellar amity demands that we make some physical display at this point, but I beg to be excused.
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  Are you toxic?

  Are you edible? I am not edible.

  We humans do not regenerate.

  My companion is not edible.

  That is my ear.

  I am toxic.

  Is that how you copulate?

  Is this intended to be erotic?

  Thank you very much.

  Please explain.