Wave Without A Shore

XI

And on the morrow the shuttle was down and Camden McWilliams was in the Residency.

Herrin wore Student's Black; it was stark and sufficiently dramatic for confrontations. He sat in the corner of Waden's office, refusing to be amazed at the splendor of the decoration, much of the best of the University culled for the private ownership of the First Citizen. He knew the individual styles: the desk with the carved legs, definitely Genovese; the delicate chair which bore Waden's healthy weight, Martin's; the paintings, Disa Welby; the very rugs on the floor, work of Zad Pirela, meant as wall hangings, and here trod upon as carpet.

He was offended. Vastly offended. He observed, catalogued, refused to react. It was Waden's prerogative to treat such things with casual abuse, since Waden had the power to do so; he recovered his humor and smiled to himself, thinking that there was one work Waden could not swallow, but which engulfed him.

Meanwhile he sketched, idly, and looked up with cool disinterest when functionaries showed in captain Camden McWilliams.

A black man of outlandish dress, bright colors, a big man who assumed the space about him and who had probably given the functionaries difficulty. Waden greeted McWilliams coldly, and Herrin simply smiled and flipped the page of his sketchbook to begin again.

"McWilliams of the irregular merchanter Singularity," Waden Jenks said, failing to hold out his hand. "Herrin Law, Master of Arts."

"McWilliams," Herrin said cooly.

McWilliams took him in with a glance and frowned at Waden. "Wanted to see," he began without preamble, "what kind of authority we have here. You're old Jenks's son, are you?"

"You've been informed," Waden said. "Come the rest of the way to your point, McWilliams of Singularity"

"Just looking you over." McWilliams studiously spat on the Pirela carpet. "Figure the same policies apply."

"I follow old policies where pleasant and convenient to me. That I see you at all is more remarkable than you know, for reasons that you won't understand. Outsiders don't. You'll accept the same goods at the same rate and we'll accept no nonsense. Trade here is not necessary."

"We," said McWilliams, "have the ability to level this city."

"Good. I trust you also have the ability to harvest grain and to wait about while the new crop grows. Perhaps the military will assist with the next harvest."

McWilliams chuckled softly and spat a second time. "Good enough, Jenks. Go on about your business. We're loading at port. You know my face now and I know yours."

"Sufficient exchange, McWilliams."

"What's this—thing—in the city?"

"Thing, McWilliams?"

"This thing in the middle of town. Scan doesn't lie. What are you doing out there?"

"Art. A decorative program."

McWilliams's eyes rested coldly on him. "Nothing military, would it be?"

"Nothing military." For once Waden Jenks looked mildly surprised. "Take the tour, McWilliams. There's no restriction in Kierkegaard. Wander our streets as you will."

"This city? Hell, sooner."

"The driver will take you to the port." Waden made a temple of his hands and smiled past them. "A safe trip, McWilliams."

"Huh," McWilliams said, and turned and walked out.

Herrin filled in a line, shadowed an ear, languidly looked up into Waden's waiting eyes. "Barbarian," he judged. "Limited in formal debate but abundantly intelligent. Can he level the city?"

"Undoubtedly."

Herrin's insouciance failed him. For a moment he almost credited Waden with humor at his expense, and then revised his opinion.

"Freedom," said Waden Jenks, "navigates a black and perilous sea, Herrin. And I guide it. And I see the directions of it. And I shape things beyond this city, beyond Sartre, beyond Freedom itself. I am a power in wider affairs, and when they come calling . . . I deal with them. This much you should see, when you portray me, Herrin Law."

For a moment Herrin was taken aback. "My art will encompass you," he said. "And comprehend you in all senses of the word. The man saw my work, did he not? From that great height, he saw it."

"That pleases you."

"It's an intriguing thought."

"Their vision is considerably augmented to be able to do it Kierkegaard is a very small city, by what I know."

"We are at our beginning."

"Indeed. So am I. Freedom is my beginning, not my limit."

"We once talked of hubris."

"And discounted it. Shape your stones, Artist. My way is scope. We talked about that too. You'll never see the posterity you work toward. You'll only hope it exists . . . someday. But I'll see the breadth I aim for."

"But not the duration."

The words came from his mouth unchecked, unthought, uncautious. For a moment Waden's smile looked deathly, and a very real fear came into his eyes.

"You serve my interests. Go on. Pursue your logic."

"You'll carry my reputation with yours." Herrin followed the argument like a beast to the kill, savoring the moment, hating the role in which perpetual caution had cast him with this man. "Mutual advantage."

Waden smiled. That was always a good answer. It was effective, because he had then to wonder if Waden conceived of an answer. It was possible that Waden did; his wit was not easily overcome.

And Herrin smiled, because it was a good answer for him to return.

So henceforth alone, he thought firmly. Each to his own interests. He was linked to Waden in one way and severed from him irrevocably in another, because the war was in the open.

"You've seen," Waden said, "all that could interest you. I won't keep you from your important work."

Herrin slowly completed a line, shaded one, sealing the image of the foreigner in all his dark force. Flipped the notebook shut and rose, left without even an acknowledgment that there was anyone else in the room but himself.

Creative ethics, Keye called it.

But in fact the visit did shake him; and when he walked out under the sky, leaving the Residency, he could not but think of a vast machine orbiting over their heads, observing what passed in Kierkegaard from an unassailable height . . . that there was a force above them which had a certain power over their existence.

He did not look up, because of course there was nothing of it to be seen; and he shrugged off the feeling of it. Laughed softly, at the thought that Freedom ignored outside forces as they ignored the invisibles; that in effect he had just spent a time talking to an invisible.

The man had spat on the Pirela weavings, had spat to contemn Waden Jenks and all Freedom, and Waden had treated that affront as invisible too, but it did not remove the spittle from the priceless artwork.

That man, the thought kept insinuating itself into his peace of mind, that man despised the greatest political power on Freedom, and the work of one of Freedom's great artists, and walked out, because there had been nothing to do.

Waden Jenks might have had him killed on the spot. Might have, potentially. But that ship was still up there with the power to level Freedom. Camden McWilliams had refused the rare chance for a closer sight of Kierkegaard, from fear? from distrust?... or further contempt?

He refused to think more on such matters. The man was an invisible. Meditating on invisibles was unproductive. Invisibles had nothing to do with reality, having rejected their own.

The anology was incomplete: the ship and Camden McWilliams possessed power.

Herrin shivered in the daylight and walked on the way that the outsider had rejected, into the town.

The work progressed. He reached the Square, where the eighth course of stone was being moved into place, and even while that work progressed, apprentices were at work on the lowermost courses, some mapping the places to cut, some actually cutting with rapid precision, so that already the three shells, the touchpoints of the interior curtain-walls, and the foot of the central support, showed some indication of shaping, troughs, folds, incisions.

A further portion of the view which had existed on this site since the initial layout of Kierkegaard—was gone. He refused to look up toward Keye's apartment. She might be there, might be at the University. She would spend her evenings at least contemplating what went on below. The noise would intrude on her sleep, impossible for her to ignore. He wondered how she reasoned with that.

He walked round the structure, actually inside it with a palpable feeling of enclosure. The art of it began. Other walkers, ordinary citizens, had ventured into it cautiously, because it sat in the main intersection of Kierkegaard. They gawked about them in spite of their personal dignity, avoiding the ominous machinery, touching the stone in furtive curiosity. This satisfied him. He found himself immensely excited when he watched a stray child, more outward than her elders, stand with mouth open and then run the patterns of the curving walls until a stern parent collected her.

And for the second time, he saw one of the Others.

The workers saw nothing, nor did the walkers, who continued without attention to it, perfectly in command of their realities at least as regarded invisibles.

But Herrin saw it, midnight-robed, walking through the structure, lingering to examine it as the child had, walking the patterns.

And that did not satisfy him. He turned from the sight, trying to pretend to others that he had noticed nothing, and perhaps their own concentration on their own reality was so intense that they could not notice his action in connection with the apparition.

Suddenly he suffered a further vision. Having seen the one midnight robe, he saw others on the outskirts, standing there, outside one of the half-built gateways. Three figures. He was not aware whether he noticed them now because he had seen the one and the shock of the night encounter was still powerful, or perhaps it was in fact the Work which drew them, and they had never been there before.

He wiped them from his mind, turned to his own work, which was the central column. Leona Pace was not at hand, presumably being off about some important business. He interrupted an apprentice to look at diagrams, found everything in order, bestowed no compliments. They were not expected to exercise their own inspirations, but to execute his, and they were all doing so with absolute precision: had any failed, that one would have been discharged with prejudice. He pushed the apprentice aside, made a minor change, sketching with black on the stone itself, and the apprentice obediently altered the computer-generated sheet which was the master plan.

So doing, he put himself back to work and put the external from his mind. He worked until suppertime, and involuntarily thought of Keye, looked from the incomplete hemisphere of the dome, and saw the warmth of her window light in the dusk. He recalled sweet scents and a meticulous order, and the servant's excellent taste, and suffered a spasm of regret for their continued separation. His mind flashed back to Law's Valley, and to other such warm comforts, now lost. He prepared to make his solitary way back to University, and left the work in the capable charge of Leona Pace, who had returned from the shipping terminal and her own selection of the stone, a zeal he silently approved. Pace looked shadowed, hungry, exhausted; she kept at the work nonetheless, for her reasons, probably having to do with insecurity in her subordinates. He did not blame her: Pace was extraordinary, and anyone of lesser ability had to be a frustration and a worry to her.

He valued Pace, might have made closer acquaintance with her, with the thought of filling some of that solitude; there were looks he received from her which hinted a desire for his approval, which might lead to dependency on it, which might in turn lead to a relationship different and more controllable than he had known.

But no, experience of Keye and Waden argued caution was in order. Pace was zealous. Ambitious. He was at the moment too weary to deal with someone of ability and possible labyrinthine motive. Such entanglements with apprentices were all potential hazard.

Dinner, he told himself, at the Fellows' Hall; he still wore his black, and he would be inconspicuous as Herrin Law could ever be. A solitary dinner. Solitary tea. Solitary bed.