in my hand, he shut up and took the bribe fast enough; so much for his scruples. I‘m standing here on my front lawn now, facing Jones’s house, and as soon as the son-of-a-bitch (I know he’s in there now with his Yellow Pages viewscreen, putting in hologram calls to every store in the state, trying to order a better model of what I’ve got—or at least to find out what it
~ * ~
November 14, 400,000,000 B.C.
I move rock. Big rock. Slimy hands mine, and have dirt in mouth. Crawl up from sea. Wet sea. Now on dirt. Hard work to breathe, but I work. I stay on dirt now, for good.
Move rock. Nice rock, smooth on one side, flat on other side. Cool under rock, hide from Sun. Live under rock, on cool dirt. Nice.
I happy.
Other me crawl up from sea to dirt. I watch. He work breath, hard, for long time, and almost turn back to sea, but he stay. He look at me, under rock.
Now he move rock, other rock, bigger, more smooth on one side. Is bigger under, more cool. He move rock next to mine and crawl under, out of Sun. He look at me for a long time.
I mad.
THE ARTIST IN THE SMALL ROOM ABOVE
By Al Sarrantonio
I wait for Bates to make me create again.
He sits in the small circular room above me, resting. I hear him tap at the keys of the console with his fingers, making dissonant, unformed sounds, but he does not continue. I am restless to finish; he has been working almost constantly for two days and I know he has deadlines to meet. The cable pads pulse warmly at my temples.
Finally I feel the urging through the pads.
The console in the room above hums contentedly as Bates urges me on at the usual setting. Impatient, tired, I want to finish; I close my eyes and shout up to him through the ceiling, telling him to increase the setting. I have never done this before and he is surprised; but he does so. He turns it up too high. The console’s hum increases to a modulated whine.
Suddenly pain bursts throughout my body. My hands clutch at the arm rests of my chair; my eyelids snap tightly closed; my throat convulses.
I begin to scream, hoarsely. Life surges through and out of me. My body jumps and tosses crazily in my chair. The console above drones loudly, and above it I hear the music…
Then abruptly it is over. The work is completed. I sink back, exhausted. Above, the console shuts angrily down and I hear Bates give a small cry of astonishment; he is breathing heavily.
My mind drifts off into blackness.
II
Later, Bates descends the curving staircase to my room and wakes me. He helps me remove the electrodes and pads. He helps me to my feet and says he must take me for a drink. I nod weakly and follow.
It is night, and a low-lying, yellow mist has descended. This world is perpetually covered with thin shifting clouds and sickly fog. As we step into the dark street I turn to look at our working place, a two-room two-floor silo capped with a black dome. The part above the fog resembles an ugly, rimless derby. Other derbys rest on the fog on this street and the streets adjacent—this is the area where most artists live. Bates motions impatiently and we move along.
It is dark and smoky in the drinking place. Bates orders two drinks—tall, slender goblets filled with roiling liquid as yellow as the fog outside—and steers me away from the somber bar to the back room. We find a booth and sit down facing one another.
Bates looks at me queerly across the table. “You’ve never done what you did today before,” he says. “I didn’t know you could.” His eyes are two white questioning orbs in the darkness.
“I was tired,” I respond quietly; “I thought you could finish the work faster if you increased the setting. But you set it too high.”
“But do you know what you did?” he says, raising his voice. “Do you know what I composed?” He pulls a recording chip from his pocket and pushes it across the table at me. “Listen.”
“No,” I say tiredly, pushing it back at him, but he says again, “Listen.”
I bring the chip up to my ear and it activates. It is set near the end of the composition. At first there are only the standard, bland sounds that characterize most of Bates’s work. Then suddenly I detect a change, and the music becomes more stately. A theme, low, insistent, tragic, begins to weave itself around and through the blandness, enfolding it and gradually overcoming it. Now the theme begins to fold around itself, the high notes beginning to fight the basses head-on, building in intensity, crashing against itself and climbing—
I pull the chip from my ear and place it before Bates. My stomach has tightened itself into a small knot. “I won’t do that again.”
He gives me a measuring look. “I…don’t know,” he says. “You’ve been contracted to me for three months now, and I never realized you could do this sort of thing. I’m going to have to think about this.”
“Let me remind you,” I say firmly, “that the contract you have with me states that you will compose only popular forms of music. There’s no provision in it for other forms of work.”
He looks hard into my eyes. “I’m aware of that,” he says, “but don’t forget that it was you who deviated from the contract today. I didn’t expect to have the end of that piece turned into…well, serious music. There was something there that I may want to explore. If you read the contract carefully, there isn’t really any provision restricting me on what type of music I can compose. There’s no clear restriction on what I can do.”
I look at him coldly. “I wouldn’t tamper with the contract. And besides, you know that money lies in what you’re doing now.”
“I know that,” he says, “but there are a few people willing to pay for this sort of thing. There might be money in it. I couldn’t afford to abandon the other composing, but it just might be worth my while to make use of your other talents.” He smiles across the table; it is an empty smile. “And remember,” he says, “I still control the cables and you’re still my Muse.” His smile widens into a sharp, white grin. “For ten years.”
We finish our liquor and leave the drinking place in silence.
III
He is right; I am his Muse. I was brought here from my home planet and, like many of my fellow beings, I contracted myself to an artist. The artists on this world are little more than machines. These creatures have somehow lost the ability to transfer their feelings and experiences. It is as if their fingers have somehow been disconnected from their souls. They seem the most selfish of beings: they possess emotions, but those emotions are land-locked. Each being of this world is an island, a world unto himself, and it is nearly impossible for one of them to even touch another. The only social contact they effect takes place on a formal, businesslike plane; even
