“Actors don’t really count for much, do they?”
“I don’t know,” said Uranov slowly. “Sometimes I think they’re a bunch of built-up parasites, and yet— It’s like wondering if an individual counts for much when the World State is so perfect. You get into trouble— But come on. You’ve seen enough to make talk with S.B. Now let’s call on Doc Wojcek.”
They had apparently interrupted a scene when they entered the laboratory. There was dead silence. The bald but sturdy-looking scientist fiddled uncomfortably with the articles on his desk, and seemed loath to raise his eyes to the newcomers. At last the sharp-faced man with the brilliant ascot—unusually brilliant even for Sollywood— said, “Hi, Hesky.”
“Hi, Stag.” There was no friendliness in Uranov’s voice.
“S.B. wants to see you.”
“I know. Be there in a minute. Just showing Garrett here around the works.”
The sharp-faced man rose. His hand rested for a moment palm up on the table. “Well, Doc? All clear?”
“All clear,” said Dr. Wojcek hesitantly.
“Then I’ll be going. See you around, Hesky.”
Something stayed in the room after his departure, an almost physical aura of oppression. “Who was that?” Garrett asked.
“Stag Hartle,” Uranov explained. “One of our choicer jackals. Got his name because he started out in Sollywood bootlegging stag epics—you can see the possibilities in them? One of his actresses died of what he put her through—”
“And he never made a one-way trip?”
“Something happened. Strings— Nothing ever proved. Stag knows how to make himself useful. But he’s theoretically leading a reformed life now.”
Garrett could still see that hand palm up in the light of the laboratory. To the trained eye, the traces of paraderm on the fingers were clearly visible. Those who lead reformed lives do not usually need to conceal their fingerprints.
“I wonder—” said Dr. Wojcek.
“Sorry. I got sidetracked. Dr. Wojcek, this is Gan Garrett. New technical advisor on history. I’m showing him around the plant—thought he’d like to see your setup.”
Wojcek nodded. He shrugged his shoulders as though to cast off the burden of Atlas. “Of course,” he began, “we don’t do any interesting theoretical work here— all purely practical study of needed technical developments. But still we have some odd angles. For instance—” As he spoke, his depression lifted. His absorption in his work outweighed his cares, and he was a brilliant and charming guide through the wonders of the laboratory.
At last, “Do you do much work with lovestonite?” Garrett asked casually.
“Not to speak of,” said Dr. Wojcek.
Uranov made a curious gesture with two fingers.
Dr. Wojcek lifted one sparse eyebrow. “But a little,” he added. “In fact, I’ve been carrying on some rather interesting experiments lately. Do you know much about the properties of lovestonite?”
“Very little. I gathered that it had practically none worth speaking about.”
“From a commercial point of view, young man, that’s true enough. But it does have one interesting characteristic.” He led them over to a corner of the laboratory where a dark sheet of vitreous plastic, like the material of the swizard, stood in a frame. Wojcek stationed himself beside it like a lecturer in a class. “Now what, gentlemen, is the speed of light?”
“Three hundred thousand kilometers per second,” Garrett answered automatically.
“True, but not wholly true. Three hundred thousand kilometers per second—in what?”
“In what? Why, in air, I suppose.”
“To be precise, in a vacuum. For all practical purposes, it is the same in the ordinary atmosphere. And the speed of light is such a convenient constant in theory that we tend to think of it as a constant in fact. But in water, for instance, the speed of light is only two hundred thousand k.p.s., and in carbon disulphide, a mere hundred and twenty thousand.”
“And in lovestonite?” Garrett asked.
“In lovestonite, normal untampered-with lovestonite, the speed of light is only seventy-five thousand kilometers per second. Now the differences in these speeds are not noticeable to the naked eye.” He passed his arm behind the sheet of lovestonite. The plastic was dark but transparent, like smoked glass. “You perceive, of course, no difference between the parts of my arm behind and outside of this sheet, though actually you see one about one one-billionth of a second later than the other. The difference is large in theory, but negligible in fact.
“However, we have discovered one practical use for this difference. A lens made partly of normal glass and partly of lovestonite produces a very curious photographic effect. The result does not seem out of focus, but somehow just the least bit—how shall I put it—perturbing, wrong. We spent months on the exact structure of such a lens, and I think the results have been most satisfactory. You recall the supernatural scenes in ‘The Thing from the Past’? Well, their incomparable eeriness which the critics praised so, was due to the use of part-lovestonite lenses.” He paused.
“And that’s all you know about lovestonite?”
Dr. Wojcek hesitated, and again Uranov gestured. “Well, I . . . I did make an interesting discovery quite by accident. My assistant was carrying on some other work near the lovestonite while I was engaged in some measurements, and we found that an electromagnetic field exerts a startling effect. It varies, of course, with the density of the field and the direction of the lines of force, and we have by no means exhausted our experiments as yet—” He stopped, with a sudden shock of realization.
“Go on.”
“Yes— Yes—We have been able to increase the speed of light through lovestonite almost to the normal three hundred thousand, and to reduce it to as low as five thousand. The possibilities are—” He broke off again.
Garrett put his reaction together with the scene they had just interrupted. “So Stag Hartle has given you orders to lay off the lovestonite experiments?”
Dr. Wojcek did not reply with a direct yes or no. “What can I do?” he asked, expecting no answer. “Hartle has influence. My business here is to do what I am told, not to pursue promising lines of experimental theory.”
Garrett frowned, thinking over this newest fact on lovestonite, and toyed with his swizard. “It still doesn’t help,” he thought aloud. “Not obviously. What do you think about these lovestonite mirrors?”
“I’ve heard they’re being manufactured. I can’t imagine why; the idea’s ridiculous.”
“Thanks,” said Garrett. “Thanks a lot. This has been a most interesting—well, we’ll say visitor’s tour.”
“And now,” said Uranov, “we’ll pay our respects to S.B., or he’ll be wanting to know how we think we’re earning our credits.”
“Ah, boys,” Sacheverell Breakstone greeted them. “Glad to see you. Getting acquainted with the place, Garrett? Coming to understand how we do things here? Fine,” he went on before Garrett could answer. “Glad to hear it. And now to business. You may have heard I’m going away for a while next week. We’re shooting the big scenes in ‘Lurazar’ on location on the Moon. I think they need my personal supervision. Astra finishes her current epic today, and as soon as we can get under way— But what I wanted to say: I expect to see a shooting script when I get back. Stick close to him, Garrett. Don’t let him idle. And I don’t want either of you leaving Metropolis until then. You, Uranov, pay special attention to that suggestion of Garrett’s about working in a woman—rather Astra’s type as he described her. Maybe she could motivate him. Supposing—I’m just groping with words, you understand—she might be a Siberian general who—”
Hesketh Uranov listened patiently while S.B. twisted some of the most stirring events in history into a vehicle for Astra Ardless. Garrett frowned to himself. If his orders were to confine himself to the Metropolis lot, and he was bound to subordinate his real job to his apparent one, though he hardly needed to avoid suspicion any longe
r when knife throwers and practitioners with secret weapons—
“That’ll be all,” S.B. concluded. “I always find these conferences stimulating. You understand? Free interchange of minds. And I’ll want that script when Astra and I get back from the Moon. Meanwhile, you stick here. Both of you.”
“Mr. Breakstone,” Garrett asked with academic diffidence, “who is designing the sets for the Devarupa epic?”
“Tentatively Benson.” S.B. did not sound contented.
“If I may offer technical advice, it seems to me that Emigdio Valentinez’s knowledge of the period and great artistic ability—”
“I know. I know. I’d mortgage half the studio to get Valentinez for the job. But he’s gone hermit on us. He won’t listen to—”
“He might listen to me,” Garrett lied quietly. “We’re old friends. Don’t you think it might be worth our while for me to run down to his place? Uranov can drive me, and we can work on the way?”
Breakstone grunted. “Fine. Fine. But remember the deadline on that script.”
Uranov’s two-seater copter was laden with swank gadgetry, most of which served to indicate his position in Sollywood rather than any practical need. It rode well, however, and made the trip to Valentinez’s beach retreat in about ten minutes.
“I hate to drop in on Mig announced,” said Uranov, “but he hasn’t a televisor or even a blind phone, and he won’t open mail. He said he was coming out here to solve a problem—artistic, I think, rather than personal—and the hell with all the complications of progress. That was a month or two ago and nobody’s heard a word from him since. Neat trick of yours, by the way, to get S.B. to turn us loose.”
“We might bring it up at that,” said Garrett. “Valentinez would be ideal to design that epic.”
“Bring up your lovestonite problem first. If you mention S.B., he’s apt to walk out on you flat. Temperamental, I suppose, but still a nice guy. I think Astra’s still carrying a torch for him.”
“So? That’s a bit of Sollywood gossip that never got on the telecasts.”
“Which reminds me: I haven’t forgotten about your swizard girl. We’re having dinner with her tonight, if we get through here in time.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me. I’ll be thinking about that dinner instead of lovestonite. But what do you think Valentinez can tell us?”
“I don’t know. I only know that it seemed to tie in somehow with this problem of his. And any lead that you can get—”
The copter dropped straight down onto the rolling dunes. It might have been a time machine that had carried them out of the reach of all signs of progress. Nothing but the ramshackle studio indicated the presence of man, and even that might have come bodily out of some far earlier century.
“Mig!” Uranov shouted. “Hi, Mig! Get out the glasses! Company!”
No answer came from the wind-worn wooden studio. Garrett and Uranov plowed up the hillock to the door and paused to empty sand from their shoes. Uranov beat a rhythmic tattoo on the weather-beaten door. There was still no answer.
Garrett pushed at the door, and old-fashioned hinged affair. It swung open. The only trace of progress inside the studio was the hundreds of microbooks and their projector. There were shelves upon shelves of the older paper books, too, and canvases and an easel and brushes and paint pots and rags and everything but Emigdio Valentinez.
He heard Uranov’s puzzled voice from behind his shoulder. “We’d have heard about it if he’d come back to town. The man’s news.”
“He’s probably out painting someplace. You’re the one that knows him; you go scout around. I’ll wait here in case you miss him and he comes back.”
Uranov nodded. “I’ll be glad to. I can see how Mig feels about this stretch of coast. You see nothing but sand and ocean and your soul begins to come back inside you. Maybe with a shack like this I could write the—” He shook himself and said, “See you later.”
Garrett was glad to be rid of a witness. Even the cynical Uranov might not appreciate the ethics of W.B.I. work. To find what has to be found, that is the important thing. The moral problem involved in the guest’s right to search his host’s belongings is secondary. Supposing Valentinez, when he did appear, declined to talk of lovestonite? Best to forestall that by learning what one could to start with.
It was a distracting search. Valentinez’s library was a great temptation, and his own canvases were an absolute barrier to serious detective work. In no gallery had Garrett ever seen a Valentinez exhibit like this, and everything from the hastiest sketches to a magnificent and carefully finished sandscape bore the complete authority of the master.
Two things especially Garrett could gladly have spent long hours contemplating. One was a very rough crayon sketch for a self-portrait; there was no mistaking the gentle melancholy of that smiling face. The other was a half-finished composition of sun and sea and rock and algae, which even in its imperfect state seemed to sum up all the beauty of a world without man’s refinements—and yet a beauty that existed only because a great man could understand and perfect it.
But Garrett resolutely tore his eyes from these two fragmentary masterpieces and went on with his search. He had covered the whole studio when he realized what was wrong—terribly wrong. There was not the slightest hint of anything concerned with lovestonite.
His own swizard was the only bit of lovestonite in the room. The random notes and scribbled jottings filed haphazardly among canvases and furniture dealt with formulas for paint, possible new developments in epic sets, an essay on the problems of peace, the possibilities of revival of old-style cookery, the latest discoveries in radioactivity, revisions in the orbit calculations of the doomed Martian spaceships— everything under and around the sun—for Valentinez had the da Vinci type of creative mind—save lovestonite. Even the all-embracing library seemed to contain no books on the newer plastics, the clays of Australia, or the varying transmission speeds of light.
Yet Valentinez was said to have been working on lovestonite. And working where? There were no laboratory facilities here.
Then Garrett looked out of the rear window and noticed the blackening of the sand there. It had all been carefully raked over, but some large structure had been burned to the ground. A laboratory? A laboratory where Emigdio Valentinez had discovered—what?
His mind whirling with a half-resolved hypothesis, Garrett returned to contemplation of his two favorites among the pictures. That self-portrait was extraordinary. Partly in that it did not portray the artist as artist, no brush and palette to label it, partly in that it seemed so much freer, more unconstrained than a self-portrait generally managed to be.
He picked it up. On the reverse was marked in red crayon capitals LVSTITE.
Garrett clicked his tongue against his teeth. He went over to a pile of other sketches and found what he thought hed remembered seeing—another self-portrait. Good—could a Valentinez help being good?—but far inferior—conventional in pose and somewhat stilted in treatment. He turned it over. On its reverse was crayoned MIRROR.
He sat down. With one flash, the whole business clicked into place. Everything fitted—for a start at least. Valentinez had come here to work on a problem and had thought to solve it with lovestonite. The speed of light in lovestonite is variable; Dr. Wojcek hoped eventually to reduce it almost to zero at will.
Suppose the problem was that of self-portraiture. Artist have previously worked with mirror arrangements. That has disadvantages. One, you have to paint yourself working; you model and paint the model at once. Two, either you see a mirror-image of yourself, which is not as others see you; or you use a complex arrangement of mirrors which gives you a direct as-seen-by-others image, but confuses your movements terribly. When you move your right hand, say, and your mirror image moves, not its left, but its own right, you grow so confused that it affects your muscular co-ordination.
But suppose you can at will vary the speed of light through lovestonite. You reduce the speed almost to zero.
You stand in front of the lovestonite. Your image enters it, but is not visible yet on the other side; will not be visible for some indefinite length of time. Then reverse the slab of lovestonite. Control it with an electromagnet. Let that light, which is your image, come through to you under your control—
A brilliant solution of a technical problem of painting. Fully worthy of the great Valentinez. But it did not explain the sudden increase in lovestonite manufacture. It did not explain why Valentinez’s laboratory had been burned down and all traces of his researches destroyed. It did not explain why someone wished to wipe out Gan Garrett, nor why Uranov was so long finding the painter. Garrett began to feel a terrible conviction that no one would ever find Emigdio Valentinez alive. He began to fear the report that Uranov would bring back.
The door creaked open on its metal hinges. Garrett looked up reluctantly. “You didn’t find him,” he started to say, but the words stopped short. For the man in the doorway was not Uranov, but that notable jackal Stag Hartle.
A faint rising hum told of the departure of Uranov’s copter.
“Nice of you to bring yourself down here,” said Stag Hartle. In his hand was what looked like a prop pistol. “It’s been kind of difficult getting at you in Sollywood. It’s quiet and uninterrupted here since your friend cleared out.”
“Friend,” Garrett repeated bitterly. It hurt. In the past twenty-four hours he had come to like the multiracial epic writer.
“He has good sense,” said Hartle. “I gave him a hint of what we’d planned for you and wondered did he want to be included in. He was a bright boy; he decided no.” Garrett let his hand rest in his pocket. The popgun which the girl had so derided was reassuringly capable of putting this jackal instantly out of action. But there were things to find out first. “So you’re going to kill me, just as you killed Emigdio Valentinez?”
The Compleat Boucher Page 38