Universe 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  “Lindy?” Jill said. She’d moved to the bed and seemed a softer woman than she had just a few moments ago. She looked at me expectantly.

  —Tell her I’m all right,— Lindy said.

  . . . And then he’d have at me. No, not word thoughts: Fringe stuff leaking. So small only my hyper-fear sensed it. —Go to hell!— I said. —You still need me.—

  Lindy’s denial flared, reflexively.

  —If you won’t recognize your need you can spend your convalescence listening to Jill’s lament. She’ll pity you until you scream ... until you can scream again.—

  He flung the vision I’d conjured from his mind. — What do you want from me, David? A pat on the back? All right, well done. Your deception was very clever.—

  —I’m sorry,— I said. I meant it, but so what. I’d been willing to sacrifice his existence for mine. Yet at least he was talking, not striking.

  —Jill’s very anxious. Please tell her...—

  —No, not yet,— I said. But I didn’t know what to say next. I still felt as if I’d attempted murder. Why was this guilt mine? I was nothing more than a circumstantial receptacle for his awareness.

  —You didn’t wait to see if I would attempt the transference.— Surrounded with a violent boiling over of feeling.

  —It would have been too late.— But doubt nagged and Lindy seized it.

  —You underestimated my restraint.—

  Would he have died willingly to spare me? I deliberately used all my abilities to fathom the truth from his mind. —You would have possessed me had I been near enough. You’d have clung to me for life as a fetus clings to the womb. You would have left your body to the surgeon’s mercy, left it without spirit, without will to live. I would be we.—

  Then, for the first time, something he’d desperately been suppressing surfaced. I’d seen the veils and thought hatred would come from that place, but it was his culpability. —I would have been a parasite in your body,— Lindy said. He hated admitting it.

  I nodded. —I was the only human in the universe able to host you, but I was too cowardly to accept the obligation.— And I didn’t like admitting that. Confession, it seemed, was also good for anger; our tempers subsided. Shaking my head, reaching out to him with my mind, I said, —Lindy, when the parasite is human, is it homicide to eliminate it?— Begging for exoneration.

  I felt his mental sigh. —If only you could have hosted me willingly. Not by my forcing you, not through your fear of consequences . . .— He did not form the rest of his thought, but I understood. I’d repudiated a fraternal duty.

  —Damn it, Lindy, I’m not a cow who doesn’t understand the consequences of getting mounted!— I said, outraged. —It wasn’t my duty. It was my right!— And when I said it, the words cut through my guilt and made mush of the fragments. —The choice was mine, not yours, not God’s, and not mankind’s.—

  Lindy blinked. (A mind can do that.) —One day, it may be I who is faced with exercising my rights ... or not, for you.— A warning implied? Perhaps, but his comprehension was complete and his wrath as shattered as my guilt.

  —If you choose differently than I, my friend, it will be because you are prepared to accept the consequences.— I breathed deeply. More than ever I eagerly anticipated sharing a universe with my telepathic friend; now we appreciated that with rights go burdens and with honors go privileges. I turned to Jill. “He’s all right. He’s sending and receiving, loud and clear.”

  She looked at me sharply. “Truly all right?”

  —Tell her that though the doctors don’t know it yet, I know that I will walk again.—

  And that the coma, already less deep, would pass, soon. I detected that he’d learned something about our bodies during the surgery, during that moment when he would have abandoned his but found he could not. Something he was willing to share with me, but not now. Not while he was eager to be with Jill. I was pleased, and I liked knowing I could be happy for him again. —Tell her yourself, Lindy,— I said.

  He needed no second invitation; he quickly caught my body and went to Jill, explaining in my voice, brushing away her happy tears with my hands. Soon they/we left the clinic.

  I really did work state vectors—after things calmed down, and I think I even went to sleep when they did. What the heck, I could spare a shift to sleep with my friends. But suddenly I was startled. Jill was nuzzling my cheek, blowing in my ear.

  “Don’t go to sleep on me now,” she whispered. “You’ll be in the cast for months and David won’t be here.”

  —Lindy, what the hell is going on? Why’d you leave me here?—

  —Damn doctor... sedative.—

  I saw the lazy circle of sleep idly wandering in Lindy’s satiated mind. —Fight it!— I said, and he said “sure” just before he snored.

  I couldn’t feign sleep and Lindy was content to nap, as was his habit. Damn, who’d have guessed Jill came around for seconds? She’d be mortified if I told her who she was lavishing her attentions on. She’d bolt upright in the bed and scream her fool head off. So, I thought, what the hell. He’d do it for me.

  <>

  * * * *

  We’re all artists in some sense, whether we paint pictures or plant gardens, cook meals or sing in the shower: every one of us has a natural urge to transform and create. Few are great artists, however, and those who aren’t regard the talented with wonder. If you had the chance to see exactly how Vermeer painted his masterpieces, wouldn’t you jump at it? What if you could become Vermeer?

  The protagonist of this story had that opportunity, and he paid a great deal for it. He learned surprising things about art . . . especially about its ambiguities.

  Gordon Eklund is the author of many science fiction stories and novels, including If the Stars Are Gods, a collaboration with Gregory Benford based on their Nebula Award winning novelette from Universe 4.

  * * * *

  VERMEER’S WINDOW

  Gordon Eklund

  The painting emerges like a risen bird from the burnt substance of light alone. The artist draws no firm lines—either upon or beneath the painting. The colors—blue and gold predominate—flow automatically. As, over the course of many days, the face and shoulder of a wide-eyed young woman appear upon his easel, the artist reacts with excitement. This is the painting commonly identified as “Girl in a Turban,” and it is, he believes, the most profound achievement of Vermeer’s brief career—a painting as subtle, ambiguous, mysterious, and still as the play of sunlight through a half-open window. The swirl of a pearl earring is created in the sudden, swift motion of his brush. The artist is stricken with awe as the woman’s cape, a green, magical garment, appears beneath his hand. He tries to paint with his eyes shut tightly, unable to bear the magnificent sight so near, but, only human, he soon must peek.

  * * * *

  Jan Vermeer (1632-75) is the most enigmatic of great artists. Not only do his works defy precise interpretation, but little or nothing is known of his beliefs, influences, theories, or life. Born in Delph, Holland, Vermeer apparently achieved some degree of local fame, if not wealth, during his own lifetime, but it wasn’t until the early years of the twentieth century that his fewer than forty works were rediscovered and hailed as the creations of fluent genius that they most undoubtedly are. With few exceptions, Vermeer’s paintings depict a few figures—often only one—against the space of a single room. The faces of women predominate, and some critics have seen in these recurring individuals possibly autobiographical figures. Vermeer’s work is further marked by a fascination with the shadings of natural sunlight. Some observers have asserted that the quality of the light in Delph must have been different from that found elsewhere in the world. More likely, the difference is in the painter, not his light.

  * * * *

  The artist as a young boy is burdened by no ambition except to become a great painter. Born in New York City in 1988, he embarks upon his first pilgrimage to the Old World at the age of fourteen, only a few months subsequ
ent to the untimely deaths of both parents. While in Europe, the artist does little but visit one museum after another, where he sits for hours and hours beneath the glorious creations of the old masters. It has been remarked that few individuals are capable of viewing a single painting for longer than it takes to peel and eat an orange. The artist, even as a youth, is one of these few individuals. At eighteen, his inherited fortune now secure, he revisits Europe to enroll as a student at the most famous of Paris’s great art schools. Within two weeks he has left. According to his instructors, the young artist stands totally devoid of profound talent. His hands shake at the easel; he fails to control his brush stroke. His sense of color and paint are acknowledged to be masterful, but he has failed to indicate any ability to transform the gorgeous visions of his mind into a completed canvas. He is called a great critic, a poor painter.

  Alone and despondent in twenty-first century Europe, the young artist falls in with a decadent crowd. Kapp, one of this group, tells the artist of a rare process which makes use of computer fine analyses and brain tapping facilities in order to transform selected people into individuals other than themselves. By means of this process, it is possible for anyone to become nearly anyone he wishes, as long as sufficient data exist concerning the projected new identity. Kapp wished to take advantage of the process himself but was coldly rejected for possible transformation by the corporation marketing the process because of a personal deficiency in funding. The young artist, who is incredibly rich, obtains the name of the corporation from Kapp and immediately books passage to the relevant Eastern European capital. There, a representative of the corporation explains the transformation process in somewhat more detail. “The philosophical foundation which makes our process work,” says the representative, “is the concept of character determinism. In other words, given the facts concerning any man—and I mean all the facts, about his life, his friends, his family, his world—then that man must nearly always be what he will be. The matter of implanting preselected data within the brain is a simple one indeed—we’ve been doing it for years, beginning with computers and working up to flesh-and-blood people. Our corporation, through this transformation process, has taken this old technique and applied it to its fullest extent. All we ask you to do is give us a name. Who do you want to be? It may be any man or woman you wish, real and imaginary, though the former is generally preferred, both by us and our usual clientele. Once we have the name, then we set to work. The key factor here is our membership in the International Data Network, which as you probably know links up nearly all the world’s largest and most sophisticated computers, including several whose very existence is a closely guarded state secret. What the Data Network is then able to provide us—at an immense cost, I can assure you—is a socio-historical collage of the individual chosen. This collage is put together—no human being or finite group of human beings could ever hope to duplicate the process—from all the data available from any conceivable source concerning the individual and his world. Once this collage is implanted within the memory circuits of your brain, you will then be, I can assure you, that very individual. What is more, as a bonus, because no memory erasure is required, you will be simultaneously aware of your past identity and thus fully able to appreciate the nuances of being two people at once. The process, I admit this candidly, does fail perhaps once in fifty tries. Should that happen in your case, a full refund will gladly be rendered.” When the artist, after carefully considering all he has heard, tentatively suggests the name of Jan Vermeer, the representative is at first anxious. He agrees to consult with the corporate engineers, who are equally doubtful but also willing to try. So little is known of the life of the so-called Enigma of Delph that the challenge facing the Data Network is undoubtedly immense. Still, the engineers insist that the possibilities of success remain distinctly high. Vermeer was very much a product of a particular time and place—seventeenth-century Holland—a fact which may prove more consequential to his development as an artist than mere boyhood memories. The artist’s own expectations of success do not run high and yet, returning to Western Europe after the completion of the operation, he is willing to accept that he is now Vermeer. His brain insists upon telling him this is so, and he does not choose, for the moment, to doubt it.

  He settles in Amsterdam, a city that lies spiritually distant from the sleepy, silent Delph of Vermeer’s one known cityscape but which is, the artist believes, as close as he might hope to come in twenty-first-century terms to that magical vista from the past. He retains, as guaranteed, all his old memories, but it is his identity as Vermeer which quickly comes to dominate his every conscious act. With his few remaining funds, he rents a small room in an old house and sets up his easel beside the single meshed window. He begins to paint, but the results are at first disastrous, as far from the art of Vermeer as the scribbled splashings of any talentless youth. Full of bitterness, he contemplates a demand for the immediate return of his own identity but then recalls that Vermeer’s earliest accepted work, the Venetian-influenced “Diana and the Nymphs” was not produced until after Vermeer had turned twenty-two. The artist realizes that he must therefore wait for his own dawning moment of inspiration, and so each day until the last smog-bitten rays of the yellow sun vanish from view, he sits motionlessly in front of his barren easel. He sleeps long hours but eats only infrequently. At last, two months subsequent to his own twenty-second birthday, his fingers begin to move of their own accord. Soon enough, he is actually painting. At the bottom center of the canvas there appears quite magically a small white napkin which resembles in shape the image of a dove about to drink. The artist recognizes this as a crucial element in Vermeer’s “Diana.” He continues to paint, his fingers moving at a speed quite exclusive of his own free will. After many weeks, the finished work stands before him. Overcome by excitement, he rides his motorbike to The Hague, where he is able to view the original work by the first Vermeer. As far as his sharp eye can deduce, nothing—not even a single casual brush stroke—diverges in the slightest detail from his own recently completed work. Back in Amsterdam, he changes lodgings. With money borrowed from a family lawyer, he purchases a small store, which he opens as an art gallery. The first work that he hangs for sale is his own “Diana and the Nymphs.” Soon, in his adjoining studio, his hands are at work creating “The Procuress.”

  * * * *

  In time the artist takes in marriage a wife, who will eventually bear him eleven children. The appearance neither of the wife nor the children surprises him, for he is aware that one of the few known biographical facts concerning Vermeer is that he was married and had nearly a dozen children. Like Catherina Vermeer, Bonnie, his new wife, is one year older than her husband. She explains how, at twelve, she left the home of her father, an accountant in America, and first came to Europe at the age of sixteen. She admits to two previous marriages and he often suspects that, prior to their marriage, Bonnie lived as a common street prostitute. Little in her manner or bearing has the least resemblance to the wealthy and respectable Catherina, but the artist bears in mind that it is he who is Vermeer and not Bonnie who is Catherina. She remains loyal to him and he feels an often fervent love and devotion toward her. His children, even though he remains uncertain of their actual names or identities, are equally dear to him. He can never be sure whether this love is being excited in his heart or in Vermeer’s. Frequently, on quiet evenings, he sits beside Bonnie, who is experiencing tri-dee television, and studies the contours of her ripe, plump, cowish face. Before his staring eyes, her visage will then transform itself into an image far deeper and more ethereal than her own slack, pink flesh. He is convinced that what he is witnessing at these moments is nothing less than the true face of Vermeer’s Catherina. Some of the features he glimpses seem similar to those he will eventually paint as “Girl with a Flute” and “Girl in a Red Hat,” but the vision is never sufficiently specific for him to claim to have solved this particular biographical mystery.

  The artist’s studio con
sists of a single cramped cockroach-infested room adjacent to his gallery. In truth, the original purpose of the room was to serve as an automotive garage. There is only one window, which faces north and is heavily meshed against possible late night burglars, and little room for furnishings of any kind. In spite of this, he has no trouble at all from the time of “Young Woman Asleep” onward in painting the sun-bathed room, with its two-paneled window, that serves as a common setting for so much of Vermeer’s mature art. It is neither his mind nor his eye which does the actual painting for him; it is his fingers alone that do the work. The muscles twitch ecstatically as the vision of the artist courses wildly through them. He could no more refuse to paint what they demand than he could willingly cease to make his heart pump blood.

  * * * *

  His art dealership does not prosper. Because of his refusal to deal in works dated later than the seventeenth century, only art of modest quality comes into his hands. He stocks his own works too, of course, but the prices he chooses to ask for them are not severe. (Neither were those asked by the first Vermeer.) His patrons are often amused at discovering a work such as “Soldier and Smiling Girl” decorating a tiny corner of the gallery. A few, those most knowledgeable about painting, are more amazed than amused. They will stand staring for minutes at a time before finally turning away with a startled laugh. “Why, that replica is so good it might be the original.” He replies honestly, “It is not the original.” (It is, of course, an original.) In his spare time, while Bonnie or one of the children mind the gallery, he walks the streets of Amsterdam. The stark contrast between this exterior world of the twenty-first century and that interior seventeenth-century world which, as Vermeer, he paints constantly astonishes him. His favorite days are those in which the actual orb of the sun can be glimpsed past the dank yellow cloud which hovers continually above. Crime is, of course, rampant in Amsterdam as elsewhere and the artist is frequently robbed, mugged, and assaulted. On one occasion, he is stripped of his clothes by young thugs and forced to return home naked. Because of a severe pollution alert, only a few small children wander outside to observe his passage. These soon turn their heads aside in apparent shame and disgust. His dignity as an adult has been shattered in their eyes. Only the knowledge of his true identity—he is Vermeer, one of the half-dozen greatest painters in the history of the world—sustains him. Despite such agonies, the only parts of the city he takes special care to avoid are those housing the city’s few remaining museums, even though four of Vermeer’s most masterful paintings are hung there, including one, “Woman Pouring Milk,” that he has only recently completed. At home in his studio, he keeps detailed notes on all his work. The exact chronology of Vermeer’s career has long been a subject of critical dispute and he hopes to solve this mystery along with many others.