Paul Stoner woke Lukas up around nine o'clock, and offered him a badly made sandwich. "Do you go through this every time?" he asked.
"Yes." They were downstairs in his bedroom.
"She got what she wanted, you know. She worked over that thing you made. She got that statue to float. It's completely insensitive to gravity." Stoner had his jacket off, was looking paunchy, tired, ready to go home.
Overhead, Lukas could hear the tank humming, cooling off, and an occasional footstep. He sighed, got up. "Let's go see."
Cidi was sitting in his chair. She had not used the microphone or vocoder, but had substituted her own keyboard. It lay on the floor beside her now. Floating in the middle of the room, tethered by a piece of clothesline, was a solid nickel statue. It was the same that Lukas had left.
But it was better.
The thing was esthetically blinding. It wasn't anything as crude as a Madonna embracing a void, but it was that idea, distilled, quantified, purified.
She waved him over with her notebook, nodding to the half-filled page where she'd been working. In her absorption she had forgotten who Lukas was, or how he'd feel. "Start with any basic contour," she said, "and take successive derivatives of all points on its surface until it resembles a Steininger Series. Any point that doesn't fit—well, just remove it. See? That's what you were doing, Lukas, only you didn't know it, by paring away. Your instincts must be mathematical."
But he ignored the notebook, her voice, herself. He walked slowly around the statue. There was simply nothing else to do, she'd said the last word. It was perfect. No one who disagreed could be right: beauty was no longer in the eyes of the beholder. The most elusive thing in the world had been quantified.
He said, I suppose you could start with anything else, and make it perfect too. Nereid even."
"Perfect?"
"Esthetically."
"Oh." A shrug. "I could null it to gravity, yes. And, as a side effect I suppose—"
"Side effect," Lukas murmured.
Cidi bit a lip. After all, she wasn't completely insensitive. "It's a high price to pay," she said slowly, "even for an interstellar drive."
Peter Lukas shuffled out of the studio like a tired old man. No, not the studio, the laboratory. There weren't any studios, anymore. He went down to the kitchen, opened a beer, leaned against the sink.
When every new idea is born an old one dies. But dies hard.
As they came down past the kitchen, Paul Stoner saw him there, staring at the floor. He said goodbye but Lukas didn't look up. Paul shrugged and went on. He'd have been more sympathetic if it wasn't so late. He felt a little foolish as he loaded Cidi, her statue, and all four of his agents into the Plymouth. Four professional protectors. He should have known better than to expect Lukas to react with his usual violence. Shattered men aren't violent.
"Everybody in?" A mumbled chorus of assent. He poked the engine to life and they started down the mountain.
They were almost out to Eighty-seven when one of the German Shepherd types in the back seat said, "Paul?"
"What?" He was irritated, busy, trying to keep the bulky sedan somewhere near the center of Lukas' impossible drive.
"I think he's coming after us."
In the rearview mirror a single light came charging. Paul Stoner tried to stop. The brakes weren't equal to it; not on this grade, not with this load. Paul licked his lips. What was that maniac going to do, ram them? The slightest nudge would put the underpowered sedan over the edge. But on a bike? He'd kill himself. No. They'd killed him already; he wouldn't care. So Paul said, "Shoot him!"
They tried. But the cycle leaped down at them like a wild animal, and was just as hard to hit. There were one or two shots at first, carefully aimed. As the avenging headlight grew brighter the shooting deteriorated into a panicked volley. The car filled with the stink and sound of pistols.
Ahead was the final turn. Behind was Lukas. In the back seat, hugging the weightless, Christless Madonna in her lap, Cidi Osborn began to laugh.
Afterword
If you want to build something really nice, what blocks do you use; dreams or facts? Could genuine effort with either lead you to the same place? It's certain that no living painter has escaped the influence of the photograph; nor any sculptor the handiness of power tools or the pervasive rectangularity of the machine age. But could someone like Cidi actually work the thing backwards and discover something of the universe in a statue?
Yes, I think it's going to happen. For a while the romantics among us will run these people over cliffs and such, but how long can you hold something like weightlessness down?
Introduction to
MOTH RACE
With pants legs rolled up, I was standing calf-deep in shark-dotted waters off the coast of Florida watching a pre-Armageddon electrical storm ripping apart the horizon where the Gulf of Mexico met the night sky.
Madeira Beach, 1969.
Somewhere off to my left I could see the vague shapes of Damon, Ejler, Ben and Joanna—still bathing-suited from the day—standing in the slowly rising tide. The indistinct shadowy sounds of their conversation came blurred through the darkness. Lightning cracked the window of the sky.
I realized someone was standing near my right side, had been for some time. "It's the death of the sky," he said. I turned to look at him but he was in darkness. "Damned thing about it is, every morning it gets born again; and there aren't even any scars."
That was how 1 met Richard Hill.
We became friends, then he went away, then he came back and we were friends again, then he went away again and when he returned the next time we were not friends. Now it's on the mend. These things take time. Rationality doesn't help.
But all through it, there was never any doubt: it was as Damon said, "Richard Hill is a fine writer."
A brief autobiography of Richard Hill, touching high spots, reads:
"I am twenty-nine years old, divorced, father of two sons. I was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, and live now in Los Angeles.
"I have been variously employed, as bus boy, shoe salesman, lake cleaner, lawn mower mechanic, pop corn concessionaire, ambulance driver, bread truck driver, Navy journalist, radio announcer, pizza cook, television newsman, Coast Guard reserve officer, teacher of English and humanities in high school and college, and swimming pool manager. I regret very much never having been a lumberjack or merchant seaman—those staples of writers' biographies—but it just never worked out that way. I am presently earning a meager living as a substitute teacher and free lance writer.
"I've sold two novels, the first of which, Ghost Story, appeared as a Live-right hardcover in September of 1971. The second, Brave Salt, will attempt to predict the future of Haiti. I'm also working on an autobiographical novel to be entitled Flight of the Bolo-Bat. I've sold stories to several sf anthologies, such as Orbit, Quark, Worlds of Tomorrow, and this one; to little magazines like New Campus Review, Florida Quarterly, and South Florida Review; to men's magazines including Knight, Adam, and Swank; and some places I'd rather not mention. One of my stories appeared in a freshman English text and my M.A. thesis on John Dos Passes was published in the University Bookman and is being distributed by the USIA. I've published a couple of poems in magazines nobody ever heard of, and I've done a lot of journalism for periodicals ranging from Sunday magazines to the L.A. Free Press and Rolling Stone. I'd like eventually to write some screenplays.
"I've spent the last year or so trucking from Florida to New Orleans to California to Florida, etc., in a series of escape attempts from some unpleasant realities. I'm weary of that now. If I have any control over what happens next, I'm going to grow here in California like a barnacle."
MOTH RACE
Richard Hill
Most of them came early, flowing smoothly into the stadium and finding their seats as if by some miracle, then blinking at each other as they thought, I'm really here at last, and it's so easy. It was unheard-of to sit in the direct sunlight this way and the
y marveled at the look, feel, and smell of perspiration on themselves. There was no weather control here and some of them were actually uncomfortable for the first time in their lives. Of course they had all experienced some of the heat and smell and crowd noise through the medium in past years, but it was not the same as being here.
Although the Race would not begin for an hour or more, the stadium was nearly full. John Van Dorn had ridden the pedwalk from the transporter platform outside almost directly to his seat. He was not certain just how he had managed it and was still amazed at his accomplishment. The few people he knew who had been outside Johannesburg had told him how easy it was and now he had to admit they were right—Johannesburg to Chicago in thirty minutes. A ticket to the Race was the only way a man like John could travel, unless, of course, he won the Race. And only one man had ever done that.
More people together than he had ever seen before, and John felt the excitement they generated, at once stimulated and disturbed by it. He saw medium cameras perched around the stadium ring and around the track below, and he knew that dwellings all over the world were full of the recreated sensations of the stadium. Even those who could not go, he knew, were synched-in, hours before the Race, waiting. Those who had been before knew they could never go again. Those who hadn't hoped for a ticket next year, wondered what they could do to improve their chances. Only They—The Government—understood why some got tickets and others didn't. This year there had been a ticket for John; he did not know why.
It was the one day of the year that nobody used easypills, and John loved the unaccustomed wildness he felt in his blood. Probably They knew this would not work as well if you used easypills. But because nobody used them, there was anxiety—in dwellings where screens glowed and people sat and in the stadium itself where the lucky ones gathered. There were even a few fights; impossible any other day of the year. They were brief, chiefly because the men fighting were not used to it and were frightened by their own violence. John saw one such fight. When one man's nose began to bleed both men stopped, stared at each other in surprise for a moment, then sat down.
There was also the wine—something you could only get in the stadium—and everyone took advantage of the chance to drink it. Synthetic, of course; only the Champion, as far as John knew, got to drink real wine. It came from dispensers at the end of each row and people passed it down to others with comradely cheer. John raised his pouch and shot a stream of the delicious red stuff into his mouth. He was at the end of the row, next to the dispenser, and had only to reach for more. He was also almost directly below the dignitaries' box and would be able to see what went on there. He filled his mouth again and thought, as he slowly swallowed, about those outside, watching him drink and wondering how it tasted; or watching him and knowing they would never taste it again. He didn't know why, but the taste and effect of the wine was never broadcast over the medium.
John turned and looked at the dignitaries' box and saw the Champion. He must have just come and, as the murmur of acknowledgement passed through the crowd, John thought, How close he is, 1 could walk five feet and touch him.
Gray-haired and imposing, with lined face, the Champion looked fixedly at the track, ignoring the chatter of the unknown dignitaries seated around him. Some complained he was an unsatisfactory Champion—too quiet or egotistical and reluctant to talk about himself. After all, they argued, was it not part of a Champion's duties to share his experiences with others? At least that was the theory; but since there had never been another Champion, comparisons were impossible.
John could remember when there was no Champion at all and, very dimly, the times before the Races. The Race had been held for five years before there was a Champion, and people whispered that They were thinking of stopping them because it appeared no one could win. Then the Champion came and the rumors stopped.
Like everyone else in the world, John had followed him on the medium. For seven years now they had watched him hunt lions, fish for marlin, climb mountains—all in off-limits areas where none of them could go. They had shared his romance with Rita Landers, the medium star and the only one in the world whose fame approached his. Of course there were Government officials, some of them in the dignitaries' box with him now, but nobody knew or cared about them. They were not the real Government anyway, only its physical representatives. Or so, at least, John suspected, though he never spoke of it with anyone. He had once seen the Champion on an iceberg, and thought the Government must be like that—mostly out of sight and different from what it appeared.
There was a rumor that Rita Landers—every man's idea of perfect beauty—was the result of an experiment in genetics which They had abandoned after creating her. Since They had her, the rumor went, They decided to make her the only medium star, a receptacle of men's desires. It was shortly after her rise to fame that the Champion won.
The people had all seen the Champion make love to other women—an endless string of them chosen from all over the world. They were not Rita Landers, but they were the best that accidental breeding could produce. And the people had experienced as well as seen the Champion's conquests through the medium. They had sex themselves, but never with such variety. And they had dined, through him, on food none of them could ever have. They took their vitamin-enriched yeast and algaepills three times a day and waited to experience his meals—shiny red lobsters with plump, white meat, succulent roasts and steaks, chickens with shiny brown crusts from roasting, and much more. All this was only part of the winner's prize. It was one of the reasons men raced.
John would never race, although as a member of the audience he was eligible. Probably some of the men around him would try, lured by the possibility of a life like the Champion's. Some always did.
"What do you think?" a man beside him asked.
"About what?"
"About the race. What do you think I'm talking about?"
His accent was difficult to identify. There were still many dialects of English, despite the influence of the medium. Remnants, John guessed, of the days before Language Unification, influence of the original tongue on English. John hadn't heard many other dialects; he didn't think of his own speech as dialect.
"Of course it's exciting," he said.
"Will you race?"
"Not me, I'm on the list to be married."
"Who isn't?" the man laughed. "But we got about as much chance of marrying as we do of winning this race." The man jabbed him in the ribs as he laughed. A local custom, maybe, but that was how the fights started.
"I still have hope," John said. "I want a child."
"The world has enough children," said the man, looking up, "but we could use another champion."
"Don't you like him?"
"Sure I admire him," said the man, "but why can't he loosen up? Hell, it's undemocratic. What's a champion for if not to tell us what it's like to stick it in old Rita Landers and those other chunks, huh?"
"But we all had it on the medium," John said, remembering how aroused he and Betty had been afterward.
"Okay, good but not good enough. You remember what he said afterward when reporters asked him? 'You saw for yourselves.' If that isn't arrogance for you! I want to hear him talk about it."
"He did seem excited about that African girl," John said, remembering how strangely the Champion had behaved in that interview. "She must have been something. Sometimes it doesn't come across on the medium."
"Yeah, yeah, true love. Too bad they wouldn't let him stay with her. Poor, poor man. But how about the rest? Imagine having all the ass in the world, being moved from one choice cunt to another and having nothing more to say than that." He glanced, almost fearfully, at the Champion again. "Besides, I don't like the idea of him preferring that black."
"Did you take your pills today?" John asked him.
"Of course not. Damn you, nobody does on the day of the . . . ." He realized what John was asking him and looked embarrassed. It was the first prejudice John had seen in years. The easypills usu
ally took care of that.
"I wouldn't be that way," said a voice to John's left. He was younger than John, really only a boy. "I'd be a good champion."
"Hah," said the other man. "You wouldn't know what to do with Rita Landers."
The boy was on his feet. "Take that back," he said, trembling.
The man hesitated, then dropped his eyes. "What the hell," he said finally, "you won't race anyway."
"But I will," said the boy, as if he'd just made up his mind. "I'm going now."
The boy began walking down the ramp. John had an impulse to stop him, but didn't. After all, without racers there could be no Race. Perhaps he would make it. After all, the Champion had.
"Well, what do you think of that?" asked the man. "He's really going to do it."
John looked away and didn't answer.
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 76