In truth, he was painting for himself, and for no one else. For the first time in his life he had come into direct contact with a great work of classic art, and it had swept him off his feet. Until now he had been a dilettante; he might never be more than this, but at least he would make the effort.
He worked steadily all through the day, and the sheer concentration of his labors brought him a certain peace of mind. By evening he had sketched in the palace walls and battlements, and was about to start on the portrait itself. That night, he slept well.
He lost most of his optimism the next morning. His food supply was running low, and perhaps the thought that he was working against time had unsettled him. Everything seemed to be going wrong; the colors would not match, and the painting, which had shown such promise the day before, was becoming less and less satisfactory every minute.
To make matters worse, the light was failing, though it was barely noon, and Brant guessed that the sky outside had become overcast. He rested for a while in the hope that it might clear again, but since it showed no signs of doing so, he recommenced work. It was now or nothing; unless he could get that hair right he would abandon the whole project. . . .
The afternoon waned rapidly, but in his fury of concentration Brant scarcely noticed the passage of time. Once or twice he thought he noticed distant sounds and wondered if a storm was coming up, for the sky was still very dark.
There is no experience more chilling than the sudden, the utterly unexpected knowledge that one is no longer alone. It would be hard to say what impulse made Brant slowly lay down his brush and turn, even more slowly, toward the great doorway forty feet behind him. The man standing there must have entered almost soundlessly, and how long he had been watching him Brant had no way of guessing. A moment later he was joined by two companions, who also made no attempt to pass the doorway.
Brant rose slowly to his feet, his brain whirling. For a moment he almost imagined that ghosts from Shastar’s past had come back to haunt him. Then reason reasserted itself. After all, why should he not meet other vistors here, when he was one himself?
He took a few paces forward, and one of the strangers did likewise. When they were a few yards apart, the other said in a very clear voice, speaking rather slowly: “I hope we haven’t disturbed you.”
It was not a very dramatic conversational opening, and Brant was somewhat puzzled by the man’s accent—or, more accurately, by the exceedingly careful way he was pronouncing his words. It almost seemed that he did not expect Brant to understand him otherwise.
“That’s quite all right,” Brant replied, speaking equally slowly. “But you gave me a surprise—I hardly expected to meet anyone here.”
“Neither did we,” said the other with a slight smile. “We had no idea that anyone still lived in Shastar.”
“But I don’t,” explained Brant. “I’m just a visitor like you.”
The three exchanged glances, as if sharing some secret joke. Then one of them lifted a small metal object from his belt and spoke a few words into it, too softly for Brant to overhear. He assumed that other members of the party were on the way, and felt annoyed that his solitude was to be so completely shattered.
Two of the strangers had walked over to the great mural and begun to examine it critically. Brant wondered what they were thinking; somehow he resented sharing his treasure with those who would not feel the same reverence toward it—those to whom it would be nothing more than a pretty picture. The third man remained by his side comparing, as unobtrusively as possible, Brant’s copy with the original. All three seemed to be deliberately avoiding further conversation. There was a long and embarrassing silence: then the other two men rejoined them.
“Well, Erlyn, what do you think of it?” said one, waving his hand toward the painting. They seemed for the moment to have lost all interest in Brant.
“It’s a very fine late third-millennium primitive, as good as anything we have. Don’t you agree, Latvar?”
“Not exactly. I wouldn’t say it’s late third. For one thing, the subject . . .”
“Oh, you and your theories! But perhaps you’re right. It’s too good for the last period. On second thoughts I’d date it around 2500. What do you say, Trescon?”
“I agree. Probably Aroon or one of his pupils.”
“Rubbish!” said Latvar.
“Nonsense!” snorted Erlyn.
“Oh, very well,” replied Trescon good-naturedly. “I’ve only studied this period for thirty years, while you’ve just looked it up since we started. So I bow to your superior knowledge.”
Brant had followed this conversation with growing surprise and a rapidly mounting sense of bafflement.
“Are all three of you artists?” he blurted out at last.
“Of course,” replied Trescon grandly. “Why else would we be here?”
“Don’t be a damned liar,” said Erlyn, without even raising his voice. “You won’t be an artist if you live a thousand years. You’re merely an expert, and you know it. Those who can—do: those who can’t—criticize.”
“Where have you come from?” asked Brant, a little faintly. He had never met anyone quite like these extraordinary men. They were in late middle age, yet seemed to have an almost boyish gusto and enthusiasm. All their movements and gestures were just a little larger than life, and when they were talking to each other they spoke so quickly that Brant found it difficult to follow them.
Before anyone could reply, there was a further interruption. A dozen men appeared in the doorway—and were brought to a momentary halt by their first sight of the great painting. Then they hurried to join the little group around Brant, who now found himself the center of a small crowd.
“Here you are, Kondar,” said Trescon, pointing to Brant. “We’ve found someone who can answer your questions.”
The man who had been addressed looked at Brant closely for a moment, glanced at his unfinished painting, and smiled a little. Then he turned to Trescon and lifted his eyebrows in interrogation.
“No,” said Trescon succinctly.
Brant was getting annoyed. Something was going on that he didn’t understand, and he resented it.
“Would you mind telling me what this is all about?” he said plaintively.
Kondar looked at him with an unfathomable expression. Then he said quietly: “Perhaps I could explain things better if you came outside.”
He spoke as if he never had to ask twice for a thing to be done; and Brant followed him without a word, the others crowding close behind him. At the outer entrance Kondar stood aside and waved Brant to pass.
It was still unnaturally dark, as if a thundercloud had blotted out the sun; but the shadow that lay the full length of Shastar was not that of any cloud.
A dozen pairs of eyes were watching Brant as he stood staring at the sky, trying to gauge the true size of the ship floating above the city. It was so close that the sense of perspective was lost; one was conscious only of sweeping metal curves that dwindled away to the horizon. There should have been some sound, some indication of the energies holding that stupendous mass at rest above Shastar; but there was only a silence deeper than any that Brant had ever known. Even the crying of the sea gulls had ceased, as if they, too, were overawed by the intruder who had usurped their skies.
At last Brant turned toward the men gathered behind him. They were waiting, he knew, for his reactions; and the reason for their curiously aloof yet not unfriendly behavior became suddenly clear. To these men, rejoicing in the powers of gods, he was little more than a savage who happened to speak the same language—a survival from their own half-forgotten past, reminding them of the days when their ancestors had shared the Earth with his.
“Do you understand, now, who we are?” asked Kondar.
Brant nodded. “You have been gone a long time,” he said. “We had almost forgotten you.”
He looked up again at the great metal arch spanning the sky, and thought how strange it was that the first contact after
so many centuries should be here, in this lost city of mankind. But it seemed that Shastar was well remembered among the stars, for certainly Trescon and his friends had appeared perfectly familiar with it.
And then, far to the north, Brant’s eye was caught by a sudden flash of reflected sunlight. Moving purposefully across the band of sky framed beneath the ship was another metal giant that might have been its twin, dwarfed though it was by distance. It passed swiftly across the horizon and within seconds was gone from sight.
So this was not the only ship; and how many more might there be? Somehow the thought reminded Brant of the great painting he had just left, and of the invading fleet moving with such deadly purpose toward the doomed city. And with that thought there came into his soul, creeping out from the hidden caves of racial memory, the fear of strangers that once had been the curse of all mankind. He turned to Kondar and cried accusingly:
“You’re invading Earth!”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Trescon said, with a slight touch of malice in his voice:
“Go ahead, Commander—you’ve got to explain it sooner or later. Now’s a good time to practice.”
Commander Kondar gave a worried little smile that first reassured Brant, then filled him with yet deeper forebodings.
“You do us an injustice, young man,” he said gravely. “We’re not invading Earth. We’re evacuating it.”
“I hope,” said Trescon, who had taken a patronizing interest in Brant, “that this time the scientists have learned a lesson —though I doubt it. They just say, ‘Accidents will happen,’ and when they’ve cleaned up one mess, they go on to make another. The Sigma Field is certainly their most spectacular failure so far, but progress never ceases.”
“And if it does hit Earth—what will happen?”
“The same thing that happened to the control apparatus when the Field got loose—it will be scattered uniformly throughout the cosmos. And so will you be, unless we get you out in time.”
“Why?” asked Brant.
“You don’t really expect a technical answer, do you? It’s something to do with Uncertainty. The Ancient Greeks — or perhaps it was the Egyptians—discovered that you can’t define the position of any atom with absolute accuracy; it has a small but finite probability of being anywhere in the universe. The people who set up the Field hoped to use it for propulsion. It would change the atomic odds, as it were, so that a spaceship orbiting Vega would suddenly decide that it really ought to be circling Betelgeuse.
“Well, it seems that the Sigma Field does only half the job. It merely multiplies probabilities—it doesn’t organize them. And now it’s wandering at random through the stars, feeding on interstellar dust and the occasional sun. No one’s been able to devise a way of neutralizing it—though there’s a horrible suggestion that a twin should be created and a collision arranged. If they try that, I know just what will happen.”
“I don’t see why we should worry,” said Brant. “It’s still ten light-years away.”
“Ten light-years is much too close for a thing like the Sigma Field. It’s zigzagging at random, in what the mathematicians call the Drunkard’s Walk. If we’re unlucky, it’ll be here tomorrow. But the chances are twenty to one that the Earth will be untouched; in a few years, you’ll be able to go home again, just as if nothing had ever happened.”
“As if nothing had ever happened!” Whatever the future brought, the old way of life was gone forever. What was taking place in Shastar must now be occurring in one form or another, over all the world. Brant watched wide-eyed as strange machines rolled down the splendid streets, clearing away the rubble of ages and making the city fit for habitation again. As an almost extinct star may suddenly blaze up in one last hour of glory, so for a few months Shastar would be one of the capitals of the world, housing the army of scientists, technicians, and administrators that had descended upon it from space.
Brant was growing to know the invaders very well. Their vigor, the lavishness of everything they did, and the almost childlike delight they took in their superhuman powers never ceased to astonish him. These, his cousins, were the heirs to all the universe; and they had not yet begun to exhaust its wonders or to tire of its mystery. For all their knowledge, there was still a feeling of experimentation, even of cheerful irresponsibility, about many of the things they did. The Sigma Field itself was an example of this; they had made a mistake, they did not seem to mind in the least, and they were quite sure that sooner or later they would put things right.
Despite the tumult that had been loosed upon Shastar, as indeed upon the entire planet, Brant had remained stubbornly at his task. It gave him something fixed and stable in a world of shifting values, and as such he clung to it desperately. From time to time Trescon or his colleagues would visit him and proffer advice—usually excellent advice, though he did not always take it. And occasionally, when he was tired and wished to rest his eyes or brain, he would leave the great empty galleries and go out into the transformed streets of the city. It was typical of its new inhabitants that, though they would be here for no more than a few months, they had spared no efforts to make Shastar clean and efficient, and to impose upon it a certain stark beauty that would have surprised its first builders.
At the end of four days—the longest time he had ever devoted to a single work—Brant slowed to a halt. He could go on tinkering indefinitely, but if he did he would only make things worse. Not at all displeased with his efforts, he went in search of Trescon.
He found the critic, as usual, arguing with his colleagues over what should be saved from the accumulated art of mankind. Latvar and Erlyn had threatened violence if one more Picasso was taken aboard, or another Fra Angelico thrown out. Not having heard of either, Brant had no compunction in pressing his own claim.
Trescon stood in silence before the painting, glancing at the original from time to time. His first remark was quite unexpected.
“Who’s the girl?” he said.
“You told me she was called Helen—” Brant started to answer.
“I mean the one you’ve really painted.”
Brant looked at his canvas, then back at the original. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed those differences before, but there were undoubtedly traces of Yradne in the woman he had shown on the fortress walls. This was not the straightforward copy he had set out to make. His own mind and heart had spoken through his fingers.
“I see what you mean,” he said slowly. “There’s a girl back in my village; I really came here to find a present for her—something that would impress her.”
“Then you’ve been wasting your time,” Trescon answered bluntly. “If she really loves you, she’ll tell you soon enough. If she doesn’t, you can’t make her. It’s as simple as that.”
Brant did not consider that at all simple, but decided not to argue the point.
“You haven’t told me what you think about it,” he complained.
“It shows promise,” Trescon answered cautiously. “In another thirty—well, twenty—years you may get somewhere, if you keep at it. Of course the brushwork is pretty crude, and that hand looks like a bunch of bananas. But you have a nice bold line, and I think more of you for not making a carbon copy. Any fool can do that—this shows you’ve some originality. What you need now is more practice—and above all, more experience. Well, I think we can provide you with that.”
“If you mean going away from Earth,” said Brant, “that’s not the sort of experience I want.”
“It will do you good. Doesn’t the thought of traveling out to the stars arouse any feelings of excitement in your mind?”
“No; only dismay. But I can’t take it seriously because I don’t believe you’ll be able to make us go.”
Trescon smiled, a little grimly.
“You’ll move quickly enough when the Sigma Field sucks the starlight from the sky. And it may be a good thing when it comes; I have a feeling we were just in time. Though I’ve often made fun of the scientists, they’ve
freed us forever from the stagnation that was overtaking your race.
“You have to get away from Earth, Brant: no man who has lived all his life on the surface of a planet has ever seen the stars, only their feeble ghosts. Can you imagine what it means to hang in space amid one of the great multiple systems, with colored suns blazing all around you? I’ve done that; and I’ve seen stars floating in rings of crimson fire, like your planet Saturn, but a thousand times greater. And can you imagine night on a world near the heart of the Galaxy, where the whole sky is luminous with star mist that has not yet given birth to suns? Your Milky Way is only a scattered handful of third-rate suns; wait until you see the Central Nebula!
“These are the great things, but the small ones are just as wonderful. Drink your fill of all that the universe can offer; and if you wish, return to Earth with your memories. Then you can begin to work; then, and no sooner, you’ll know if you are an artist.”
Brant was impressed, but not convinced.
“According to that argument,” he said “real art couldn’t have existed before space travel.”
“There’s a whole school of criticism based on that thesis; certainly space travel was one of the best things that ever happened to art. Travel, exploration, contact with other cultures—that’s the great stimulus for all intellectual activity.” Trescon waved at the mural blazing on the wall behind them. “The people who created that legend were seafarers, and the traffic of half a world came through their ports. But after a few thousand years, the sea was too small for inspiration or adventure, and it was time to go into space. Well, the time’s come for you, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t like it. I want to settle down with Yradne.”
“The things that people want and the things that are good for them are very different. I wish you luck with your painting; I don’t know whether to wish you luck in your other endeavor. Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make your choice.”