heard about the incident you were involved in here. You'll have to come to trial, of course, but it will be before a legitimate magistrate, not a mob. If you need help or a reference, after what you've done, I'm sure that I can arrange . . .'
He grinned at her and moved to the tent exit. Outside, atop the nearby hill whose volcanic convolutions protruded above the Veldt grasses, he knew Breang and the others would be waiting.
'Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I'm ready to stand trial. Not just yet, anyway. See, I've been running all my life. That's what I told them.' He gestured toward the distant, beckoning hill. 'They misinterpreted what I said. Misinterpretation in this case led to mutual understanding. What I didn't realize at the time was that it worked both ways.
'See, when nobody's chasing me-' He left his last words behind him as he fled through the portal, advancing in long, steady, free strides toward the far hilltop. '-I've discovered that I like running.'
UNAMUSING
Readers are always asking what this or that writer artist or composer is really dike, how he or she functions, how, as Vaughn Bode said, they 'do the trick. ' Creative inspiration takes many forms, and motivation arises not always in the head.
After ideas, readers usually ask how a writer comes up with his characters. Sometimes they can be based on real people, but more often they're wholly imagined. Frequently they're a composite of many people or many individual traits drawn from real life, spiced up by the author's imagination.
Most of my characters are entirely imagined for a very good reason. Just as I write science fiction and fantasy in order to see places 1'd never otherwise be able to visit, so I populate these far reaches of the mind with individuals 1'd like to meet. Or in the case of the bad guys, with people I wouldn't like to meet. Just for variety, I once wrote a book where I flip-flopped completely and based every character in the story on someone I'd actually met (the book was Caehalot).
Never did I have the audacity to base a character on a colleague. But as I mentioned previously, there are times when a story forces itself on the writer. There's nothing tougher to banish from your mind than a story that insists on being written, even if it doesn't take long to tell it.
The character trait I saw in this colleague that so intrigued me I also saw in other creative individuals to a greater or lesser degree. I could not, would not make the character in the resultant story a straightforward portrait of my colleague. My work is fiction. That does not prohibit a real person from serving as the springboard.
I first encountered Nevis Grampion at the one-man show of his work the Met put on last winter. Or maybe I should say the show he put on for the Met. Never was an artist greater than the sum of his aesthetic parts than Grampion. He was his own best canvas, utilizing words with the same skill as he did his palette. His paintings were bold, shocking, sometimes outrageous, never dull. He'd perfected his technique through twenty years of arduous practice in his barn-loft studio. Arizona is full of old barns and new artists. The longevity of the barns usually exceeds that of the artists.
His work ranged from the competent to the brilliant. Not that the critics cared. Grampion was good copy, and they delighted in provoking him to comment on the state of art today, the position of critics, the power of the large museums and galleries. Grampion's response rarely disappointed them.
What attracted me to him, however, was neither his skill with the brush nor his calculatedly abrasive personality but rather the demon squatting on his right shoulder.
He was not an easy man to isolate. People clustered about him like cat hair on an angora sweater. He both attracted and repelled. Nevis Grampion, the Elephant' Man of art. I watched the people watching him and was reminded of witnesses to an auto accident.
Eventually I managed to get him alone by dint of following him through the gallery hall until the novelty that was himself had begun to wear off. He was polite to me, indeed, cordial. I think he sensed something of a kindred artistic spirit. Besides, I didn't want something from him. Only to chat. I think that made me unique among those attending the show.
We discussed respective influences, I alluding to Wyeth and Bierstadt and Lindsay, he to Goya and Klee and Dali. We debated the relative merits of acrylic and airbrush, which I prefer, to his choice of oil. He bawled me out for employing the easier media, and I suffered his well-meant criticisms patiently.
Eventually I could stand it no longer. I gestured toward his right shoulder, said, 'Nevis, maybe I'm crazy-'
'Ain't we all?' he put in. He was unable to resist a chance to be clever. A congenital condition, I believe, that did not endear him to his public. The moreso because he usually was.
'-but is there or is there not what appears to be a small gargoyle perched on your shoulder?'
For the first time that day some of the slick veneer he wore for his fans slid away, and I had a rare glimpse of the real Nevis Grampion.
'I'll be damned. You can see him?'
'Quite clearly.' I moved close to study the apparition, which was ignoring me completely. I believe it was asleep at the time. It was quite solid, with nothing of the aspect of a dream about it.
'It is bright red, with splotches of orange, about a foot high in its squatting position, and has four horns projecting from its bald skull.'
Grampion nodded slowly, watching me closely. 'You see him, all right. You're the first . . . no, the second one, ever. Maxwell was the other.'
I thought of Jarod Maxwell, Grampion's close friend and an exquisite portraitist in his own right.
'What,' I asked, 'is it doing there?'
Grampion made that funny half-pleased, half-angry grin that was featured so prominently in the papers. 'His name's Clamad. He's my artistic muse.'
Having already accepted the presence of this strange creature, it was easy to accept this new revelation. 'Your artistic muse? You mean he inspires you?' In truth, upon close inspection I thought I could see certain qualities in the creature's face that had been reproduced numerous times in Grampion's paintings.
'You could say that. Clamad's been with me a long time. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be a painter.'
'Really? What would you be?'
He shrugged. 'Something more relaxing, less demanding of the mind. A long-haul trucker, maybe, or s librarian. But not a painter. Too painful. But I determined to be one long ago. I worked and worked at it, and one day, whammo, there he was. He's been with me ever since.'
Of all of us, I'd always thought of Grampion as a born painter. To learn otherwise was something of a letdown, though it in no way detracted from the brilliance of his work.
'Can't you get rid of him?'
He smiled sadly. 'Don't you think I've tried? He helped me master my technique, bring to the fore everything I always wanted to say in my work. But once I'd accomplished that, he refused to leave. He drives me to keep topping myself, to hunt for perfection. Won't even let me sleep unless I at least begin a new study every day.' His eyes were growing slightly wild as his voice dropped to a whisper.
'Look, you can see him. That means you must understand, at least a little, even if your own work is still too facile, too untested. What if I could persuade him to switch places? Would you have him?'
The offer took me aback. Around our little corner the party continued to seethe. Conversation, cookies, dried-out little sandwiches, liquor, and carbonated waters, and in the middle of it Grampion, the demon, myself.
Clamad the muse shifted slightly on his clawed crimson feet, grunting in his sleep. I shivered and even so was tempted.
'If I agree, what will happen to me?'
'Not much,' said Grampion a little too eagerly. 'He'll sharpen your style immediately, fasten on what natural
