The Light That Never Was (17 page)

“What does Jorno get out of it—or is this another of his Good Works?”

“As far as the artists are concerned, it’s a Good Work. Accommodations are free, the food is at cost, and no souvenir painters need apply—the artists themselves will decide who is allowed to live and work there. Jorno is gambling that he can make the island as popular as Zrilund, and if he does that he’ll own the boat service and accommodations both on the island and on the mainland—he’s built another tourists’ village there. Also, he’ll control the sales of souvenirs and paintings, which is how he happened to be selling this one.”

“What do the artists think of that?”

“They like the idea. An artists’ committee decides what will be sold and sets the price. No artist has to offer anything, and if an artist doesn’t like the price the committee puts on his painting, he can recall it and offer it elsewhere. Jorno’s shops will display and sell the paintings for a small service charge. Each painting will have a certified, appraised value. The tourists can buy with confidence, and the artists will receive a fair price. The most important thing is that the serious artists won’t be competing with the painters of cheap souvenirs, which is partly what ruined Zrilund. Everyone is enthused.”

“It proves that Jorno is a first-class promoter, but I never doubted that,” Wargen said. “A new resort will be a splendid thing for the economy of that area, but it’s nothing you couldn’t have put in your next report. Why the trip back here to tell me about it?”

She held up the painting. “Guess who the artist is.”

“Should I be able to?”

“Not too long ago you and Grandpapa were wound up about some paintings allegedly done by a Zrilund swamp slug. Remember?”

“Vividly. Don’t tell me Virrab Island has swamp slugs.”

“Nope. At least, I didn’t hear of any, and it doesn’t have a swamp. But it does have animaloid artists.”

“Jorno’s meszs!” Wargen exclaimed.

“Three of them are temporarily in residence in the new artists’ village, and their paintings are good!”

Wargen said slowly, “Take three thousand highly intelligent creatures, all of whom have strong individual talents, and teach them to paint, and some are likely to be very good at it. I should have expected this. Anyway, Jorno mentioned that some of the meszs were enthused about painting.”

“I thought you’d like to know right away, since you were so wound up about that swamp slug. Now you can get wound up about the meszs. Come along and help me talk Grandpapa out of another quarter’s allowance.”

Wargen shook his head. “I have to clear my desk, because I have to be ready to leave as soon as you finish your talk.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Rinoly. When I was there last fall the Virrab resort was mentioned as a possible project for the remote future. I want to know how it got completed so suddenly, and I want to see it for myself.”

Jorno was not at home, but an assistant had instructions as to what to do with government officials, especially one named Wargen. He was received cordially and asked what he wanted to see, and when he answered, “Everything,” the young man neither winced nor looked surprised. He proceeded to show Wargen everything.

The mesz village was still unfinished, but the strange houses floated in a sea of early-blooming flowers. Clusters of young trees heralded another generation’s stately groves. It was already beautiful, and it would become more so.

There were few meszs about. Wargen strolled up the slope to the end of the gleaming white avenue, much farther into the island than he had gone before, and he was startled to see looming in the distance a long, white, moundlike building. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The factory.”

Wargen turned quickly. “Mr. Jorno assured me that the meszs would not compete with native labor.”

“That’s correct. This is a textile factory. As you know, Donov has no textile industry. Some years ago Mr. Jorno chanced to find a fiber plant that was excellently suited to this land and climate—it’s very poor agricultural land, you know, but this one plant thrives here.”

“I remember hearing the fiber mentioned.”

“It’s worked out well for the local farmers, even though they can’t compete with growers on worlds where the fiber is processed except at times of peak demand. Shipping charges are too high.”

“I heard that, too.”

“Our problem has been to find a way in which the meszs can support themselves without competing with natives, and Mr. Jorno suggested that we investigate this fiber. If the meszs are able to use it, it will provide a handsome market for the one product that thrives in Rinoly, and it will also provide inexpensive textiles for all of Donov. So we’ve put up an experimental factory and thus far the operation seems to be a success. Next winter we’ll triple the size of the factory, and by harvest time the following year we’ll be ready to take as much fiber as the farmers can grow. It’s work the meszs can do profitably, the Rinoly farmers will have an important cash crop for the first time in history, and the people of Donov will no longer have to pay import prices on textiles and textile goods.”

“It sounds like a magnificent arrangement,” Wargen murmured.

“We think so, too.”

“I’m wondering why someone didn’t try it sooner.”

“Mr. Jorno sees potentialities where no one else sees them, and he has the courage to invest large sums in what really is a frightful gamble. The worlds where this fiber is being processed aren’t about to send us free technical assistance. They won’t even sell machines to us. The meszs had to formulate their own manufacturing procedures and design and build their own machines. Would you like to visit the factory?”

Wargen shook his head. “Several governmental departments will be immensely interested. I’ll inform them, and doubtless they’ll send competent people to see what you’re doing. I wouldn’t understand it. Tell me about the art colony and tourist resort.”

“Ah!” the assistant said brightly. “We’ll have to go back to the mainland, then.”

“Certainly. I take it that the art colony is your own special project.”

“Mr. Jorno has entrusted me—” He paused. “How did you know that?”

“Sometimes I have flashes. Carry on.”

They stood on one of Virrab Island’s steep bluffs with the tourist village spread out below them in the jewel-like precision of a masterfully crafted miniature. It was completed; the tourist village on the mainland was also completed, as was the artists’ village. It had had been a crash building project for three thousand meszs, and they had performed brilliantly. They were now partners with Jorno in the resort business—they had furnished the labor, he the land and capital.

“Will the meszs work in the resorts?” Wargen asked.

The assistant was shocked. The meszs had no contact at all with any humans except Jorno’s employees. Not only would the resorts’ workers be people, but they would be local people. Jorno insisted on that. They would have to be trained, a few at a time, which meant that the resorts could not operate at capacity for at least a year.

“What about the mesz artists?”

“That’s different,” the assistant said. “That’s entirely up to the artists. Serious artists judge other artists only on the basis of how well they paint, and if they choose to work with meszs, or nonors, or whatever, that’s their affair.” He encompassed the wild landscape with a gesture. “It’s a new and superlative art subject, and we’ll have a new kind of resort. Beaches, sea cruises, and spectacular vistas of unspoiled nature with only Donov’s greatest artists at work painting them. We’ll have the unique architecture of the meszs—and that’s only the beginning. In less than a year Zrilund will be forgotten.”

“I suppose all those great paintings of Zrilund will be forgotten, too,” Wargen murmured politely. He thought untamed nature a rather gloomy art subject, hut he could understand the artists’ enthusiasm over such striking new scenes to paint.

Back at the mainland tourists’ village, the assistant took Wargen to see a seaside park that the meszs had laid out and shaped with loving care. “Deeded and dedicated to the public,” the assistant said with a smile.

And so it was. The low hill at the center of the park was dominated by a massive sculpture of a mesz and a human touching wrists. The plaque read, “This park was created for the people of Donov and their visitors by Donov’s guests, the meszs. In friendship and gratitude.”

“Perfect!” Wargen exclaimed.

Everything was perfect, and to a skeptical Chief of Secret Police, that could only mean that something was very, very wrong.

He wished he knew what it was.

M’Don sent a new report to Wargen. On the world of Skuron, malfunctioning control devices had permitted tons of poisonous industrial wastes to pollute the drinking water of a major city. Several hundred thousand people became ill, several hundred died, and the world’s animaloids were virtually exterminated. Wargen consulted his chart and was not surprised to find that the rioting had occurred on schedule.

He was searching for patterns within patterns, but poisoned drinking water on Skuron was not the same thing as Cuque’s poison alga; nor did Skuron’s tragedy with a contaminated reservoir show any similarity to the reservoir tragedy on Mestil, where almost one hundred thousand people had drowned.

The meszs had opposed this reclamation project because they thought the dam site and the terrain surrounding it geologically unstable. Unfortunately, their acknowledged scientific brilliance weighed less than their misfortune of looking almost human and the fact that the proposed new lake would inundate half of their largest reservation. The Mestillians ignored them.

It happened precisely as the meszs had predicted. Seismic tremors dumped tons of rock and soil into the reservoir, and the huge waves that resulted smashed the dam, perhaps weakened by those same tremors. It was the worst tragedy in Mestillian history, and through some perversion of reasoning the meszs were blamed for it because they had said it could happen. The rioting started immediately.

Precisely on schedule.

Wargen reluctantly pushed the files aside. One of his agents was waiting to see him.

Sarmin Lezt was a brilliant young investigator with a flair for disguises. For months he had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to link Ronony Gynth’s employees to the thefts by phony artists.

“I’m giving you a change of scene,” Wargen told him. “Of the thieves we’ve caught, natives of Rubron outnumber those of any other world five to one. All of them have come to Donov by way of Rubron. Obviously they’re being hired there. The inducement is a well-paid vacation on a vacation world and virtually no risk, since the articles they steal have so little value that a small fine and expulsion is the worst penalty an arbiter could impose.”

“Someone is in charge here on Donov,” Lezt observed. “They work one area just long enough to stir things up, and then they switch operations across the continent. Someone is telling them when to switch and where.”

“True. But we don’t know who the thieves are until we catch them, and the one thing we can absolutely count on is that they’ll have no further contact with that local control once they’re caught.”

“You’re sending me to Rubron?”

Wargen nodded. “Demron just caught four more. They’ll he returned to the world they came from, which is Rubron. Pick as many men as you think you’ll need, travel on the same ship, and once you reach Rubron keep a scan on them just in case they report back to their employer.”

“I’d rather not take everyone on the same ship. I’d rather have someone there waiting for them.”

“Make your own plans and let me know what you’ll need. You may be there for a long time. If the thieves don’t lead you to the person responsible, I want you to try to find him yourself.”

Lezt departed, and Wargen turned over his mail and found a note from Eritha Korak. Artists at Garffi had been solicited for contributions to a fund for Franff. The old nonor and Anna were in acute financial need. Eritha made a donation, and a short time later it had been returned to her. Franff had refused to accept the artists’ money.

“Can’t you do something?” Eritha asked.

Wargen spoke with the World Manager, who suggested use of an obscure loophole in the administrative regulations for a supplemental retirement fund for elderly citizens. Wargen had no difficulty in arranging a small pension for Franff, and then he had to return to Korak a few days later with the news that Franff had declined it.

“He’ll accept hospitality,” Wargen said. “He’s grateful for Donov’s hospitality and for that of the friend who loaned him the house in Zrilund. Charity he doesn’t want.”

“Did we find out for certain whether he can paint? I’d be glad to commission a painting.”

“It’s certain that he hasn’t painted for years. If he’s not able to, a commission would do more harm than good.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing more that we can do.”

Wargen smiled mischievously. “Fortunately there’s more than one loophole in those administrative regulations. Since Anna now has an old friend to look after, I figured that made her ‘head of a household.’ The director agreed not to look too closely at the application when I explained the circumstances, so Anna will receive a modest increase in her pension. Franff won’t be able to decline that.”

The World Manager nodded his approval.

“It only amounts to token assistance, though. The proper solution would be to find a way for Franff to earn money. I have this friend who gives revs. Lilya Vaan, her name is, and Lilya is always on the prowl for unusual entertainment for her guests. She pays extremely well, and if she were to hire Franff—”

“To do what?” Korak demanded. “Franff is no entertainer. He wouldn’t accept payment unless he believed he could give full value for it, and what could he possibly do to entertain guests at a rev?”

“Talk,” Wargen said.

“About what?”

“Art. Except for the present generation of younger artists, Franff has been a personal friend of virtually every great artist who’s ever worked on Donov, He’s painted and played and exchanged advice with a host of immortals. I’ve heard that Chord wiped out half of his ‘Fountain Lights’ and repainted it because Franff told him he had the perspective wrong. Any art historian in the galaxy would place his filmstrip collection in hock for a few hours of the anecdotes Franff could tell about the great artists and the origins of some of their great paintings. In addition to his remarkable experiences, he has a really quaint sense of humor. He should make a wonderful lecturer and earn a good income from it. What do you think?”