The Light That Never Was

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  Ian Korak signaled. “They’re here,” he announced.

  “All right,” Wargen said.

  The thing that disquieted him most was that so much good could result from Jorno’s evil. Rinoly would prosper as soon as the meszs rebuilt their factory, Donov would have its low-priced textiles, the meszs, despite their shattering experience, were much better off than their brethren on Mestil and possessed an incomparably brighter future; and Zrilund, which Jorno had utterly destroyed, would benefit most of all.

  On Wargen’s suggestion, the arbiter had ordered the Zrilunders to help rebuild the mesz village. For several days an awkward silence prevailed on Mestil Island, the meszs being unwilling to believe that Jorno was a villain, and the Zrilunders being unwilling to believe that the meszs weren’t. Now friendships were developing, and the meszs had become interested in Zrilund’s problems. They’d resumed their crash program on the underwater ferries, they’d taken charge of Zrilund’s massive cleanup, and they were planning new attractions to make the town more interesting to tourists. The Zrilunders needed all the help they could get, and more than anything else the meszs desperately needed to be needed. It looked like a promising partnership.

  But in an objective report on Jorno’s iniquity, how could one balance in that paradoxical good?

  Ian Korak signaled again. “We’re waiting.”

  Wargen took a final look at the star chart before he resignedly turned away.

  The World Manager’s lair had the appearance of an art shop. Nine easels stood in a semicircle about him, with a painting on each. Korak was resentfully ignoring them.

  “They’re the slug paintings!” Wargen exclaimed.

  He touched wrists with Harnasharn, bowed deeply to Eritha, who made a face at him, and then he stepped forward for a closer look He had forgotten what they were like: The strange, woven texture, the unreal shapes, the dazzling melange of light and color.

  “I was just explaining to the World Manager,” Harnasharn said. “Arnen Brance left a will, and I’m his executor. Under its terms I was awarded one of these paintings. I have made my selection, and nine remain. These nine I am to offer as gifts to nine worthy individuals. I consider the World Manager an eminently worthy individual, and I’m offering him first choice.”

  “And I’ve been explaining that they all look alike to me,” Korak grumbled.

  “That’s one reason I brought Eritha,” Harnasharn said brightly.

  “She can made the selection for you. The other reason I brought her is that I want her to have one of the paintings for herself. And you, sir—” He turned to Wargen. “I want you to have one.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  Harnasharn smiled. “Kind, and also crafty. I’m hoping that all of these paintings will eventually find their ways into the Institute, they constitute a unique collection, and frankly I’m giving them to the people who are most likely to make that happen—though of course those receiving them are under no obligation whatsoever.”

  “Did you find out anything more about the slug?” Wargen asked.

  “Yes and no. A few days before Brance left Zrilund he hired a boy to care for it, and then because there was so much bitterness against the artists for leaving Zrilund, the boy’s parents wouldn’t let him. The boy has now confessed. A couple of days after Brance left, he and some of his friends smashed the slug’s pen. They spread the mud around the garden, but they found no slug.”

  “Then Brance made other arrangements?”

  “It seems so. The day before he left he drove a hired wrranel cart down to his farm. There he borrowed swamp shoes from a neighbor—they’re special shoes the kruckul farmers wear, they’re like having a boat on each foot, and those who know how to use them can travel about a swamp with remarkable speed. The neighbor paid no attention to where Brance went with them, but the implication is obvious: He took the slug into the most remote part of the swamp and released it.”

  “Good!” Eritha exclaimed.

  “Yes, though of course we’re left with the same mystery we started with.”

  “But you have an opinion,” Wargen suggested.

  “I have an opinion, yes. I find it suggestive that when Brance went to Rinoly and resumed painting he was a very fine artist indeed and perhaps even a great one. I think that during those dreary years when he was running his kruckul farm he was also painting as much as he could, experimenting and practicing. I’ve found evidence that he purchased enormous quantities of art supplies. I think the slug paintings were one of his experiments. He was so embittered by his previous lack of success that he obtained a measure of sardonic satisfaction in attributing them to a Zrilund swamp slug.”

  “It seems logical,” Wargen agreed. “Still—you said you’d actually seen the slug painting.”

  “I think what happened was that Brance chanced to place his paints and fabric in the slug’s pen. The slug found something attractive in the vegetable paints and also found the art fabric a very convenient place to clean its filaments. As a result it ‘painted.’ Probably it produced a mishmash, but the texture was so unique that it intrigued Brance into experimenting to see if he could reproduce it. And I think he succeeded. He showed the paintings to two of his artist friends, telling them that the slug was the artist, and doubtless these friends were responsible for the rumors. Both saw the slug ‘paint,’ but in each instance Brance placed an untouched fabric in the pen. That’s very significant, it suggests that the slug never produced more than small disconnected areas. The sight of a slug painting anything at all was so startling that neither the friends nor I thought to question Brance’s assertion that the slug was an artist.

  “So I think Brance used the texture produced by the slug and did eleven paintings showing the universe as he thought the slug could have seen it. I also think he would have destroyed them if he hadn’t needed money for Franff.”

  “I suppose we’ll never know for sure,” Wargen said.

  “No. I’m positive of that. I’ve searched all of his possessions, and he didn’t leave a clue. We’ll never know.” He smiled. “But we have the paintings, and they’re great art. Would you make your choices, Eritha?”

  “I insist that she report to me first,” Ian Korak said.

  The three of them faced him. “Report what?” Harnasharn asked.

  “The Countess Wargen informed me an hour ago that I’m about to experience the supreme good fortune of having a Wargen as a grandson-in-law. I congratulated her on her superlative luck in acquiring a Korak as a daughter-in-law, and to my intense surprise she agreed with me. There are days when a man doesn’t know his own granddaughter.”

  His voice droned on, but the beaming Harnasharn was inundating Wargen and Eritha with congratulations. “Then the paintings will be a wedding present!” he exclaimed. “I think that would have pleased Arnen. He had a terribly difficult life, but he never lost his perspective—he realized that he’d chosen that life himself, it was the price of doing what he wanted to do, and he never begrudged happiness to others. In fact, he gave whenever he could, as much as he could. Look what he did for Franff and the meszs. Would you make your choices, Eritha?”

  Eritha turned to the paintings and said thoughtfully, “If you don’t mind, I’ll send mine to the institute at once.”

  “You’re of course free to do what you like with it. I would have thought, though, that you’d prefer to enjoy it yourself.”

  She shook her head. “Ever since I first saw these paintings, I’ve been puzzled as to what gives them their unique quality. Now I think I know. It’s purity. Innocence. Goodness. Those virtues alone shine there like a radiant light, and I don’t think there are intelligent beings anywhere in the universe that can face it without flinching. Not even the meszs. Not even Franff. Not after what has happened. I used to think that everyone, human or animaloid, had an inextinguishable spark of that light within him. I don’t want to be reminded of how wrong I was.”

  Her grandfather said dryly, “If you want
to think that, go ahead. I’ve lived a few years longer than you, and I’ve found no definite evidence to the contrary. I think it’s probably true. Look at Jaward Jorno. He spitefully ruined the island of Zrilund, but the moment it was ruined it needed help, and there her was, pushing his meszs to devise a means of disposing of the dead fish and removing the poison, and starting them building new ferryboats, and if he’d lived he would have personally restored the island and made it prosperous. You can count on it—the spark exists.”

  Eritha shook her head again. “A spark, perhaps, but not that spark.” She faced her grandfather resentfully. “I thought my understanding that meant that I was growing up. It seems to me that only a mature person can face the fact of what he really is.”

  “She can have it any way she likes,” the World Manager said, “but she needn’t assume responsibility for all the evil in the universe.”

  “I wouldn’t think of trying,” Eritha said. “I’m just assuming responsibility for my own. The appalling thing isn’t that a good man—I think Jorno was a good man—was capable of such horrendous evil, but because so many men, on so many worlds, had sufficient evil in them to make Jorno’s evil possible. Great evils are only chance combinations of lesser evils, I think, and if the lesser evils weren’t so universal, no great evil would be possible. So I won’t keep the painting. It’s a beautiful, a magnificent light, but I won’t keep it.”

  Wargen took her hands and smiled down at her. She said nothing more, but their eyes met, and he understood. She was not disturbed by the possibility that the light had never been, but by the fear that it could never be.