Patron of the Arts

that the viewer put something of himself into it.

I walked around to the back. Madelon was no longer sitting on the throne. It was empty, and beyond it, stretching to the horizon, was an ocean and above the toppling waves, stars. New constellations glowed. A meteor flashed. I stepped back to the side. The throne was unchanged but Madelon was back. She sat there, a queen, waiting.

I walked around the cube. She was on the other side, waiting, breathing, being. But in back she was gone.

But to where?

I looked long into the eyes of the figure in the cube. She stared back at me, into me. I seemed to feel her thoughts. Her face changed, seemed about to smile, grew sad, drew back into queenliness. I drew back into myself. I went to Mike to congratulate him.

“I’m stunned. There are no words.”

He seemed relieved at my approval. “It’s yours,” he said. I nodded. There was nothing to say. It was the greatest work of art I knew. It was more than Madelon or the sum of all the Madelons that I knew existed. It was Woman as well as a specific woman. I felt humble in the presence of such great art. It was “mine” only in that I could house it. I could not contain it. It had to belong to the world. I looked at the two of them. There was something else. I sensed what it was and I died some more. A flicker of hate for both of them flashed across my mind and was gone, leaving only emptiness.

“Madelon is coming with me,” Mike said.

I looked at her. She made a slight nod, looking at me gravely, with deep concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Brian.”

I nodded, my throat constricted suddenly. It was almost a business deal: the greatest work of art for Madelon, even trade. I turned back to look at the sensatron again and this time the image-Madelon seemed sad, yet compassionate. My eyes were wet and the cube shimmered. I heard them leave and long after the throb of the copter had faded away I stood there, looking into the cube, into Madelon, into myself.

They went to Athens, I heard, then to Russia for awhile. When they went to India so that Mike might do his Holy Men series I called off the discreet monitors Control still had on them. I saw him on a talk show and he seemed withdrawn, and spoke of the pressures fame placed upon him. Madelon was not on the show, nor did he speak of her. As part of my technology updating I was given an article on Mike, from Science News, that spoke of his technical achievements rather than his artistic. It seemed the Full Scale Molecular System was a success and much of the credit was his. The rest of the article was on spinoffs of his basic research.

It all seemed remote from me, but the old habits died hard. My first thought on seeing the new Dolan exhibit was how Madelon would like it. I bought a complete sculptured powerjewel costume from Cartier’s before I remembered, and ended up giving it to my companion of a weekend in Mexico City just to get rid of it.

I bought companies. I made things. I commissioned art. I sold companies. I went places. I changed mistresses. I made money. I fought stock control fights. Some I lost. I ruined people. I made others happy and rich. I was alone a lot.

I return often to Battle Mountain. That is where the cube is. The greatness of it never bores me; it is different each time I see it, for I am different each time. But then Madelon never bored me either, unlike all other women, who sooner or later revealed either their shallowness or my inability to find anything deeper.

I look at the work of Michael Cilento, and I know that he is an artist of his time, yet like many artists, not of his time. He uses the technology of his time, the attitude of an alien, and the same basic subject matter that generations of fascinated artists have used. Michael Cilento is an artist of women. Many have said he is the artist who caught women as they were, as they wanted to be, and as he saw them, all in one work of art.

When I look at my sensatron cube, and at all the other Cilentos I have acquired, I am proud to have helped cause the creation of such art. But when I look at the Madelon that is in my favorite cube I sometimes wonder if the trade was worth it.

The cube is more than Madelon or the sum of the sum of all the Madelons who ever existed. But the reality of art is not the reality of reality.

After the showing of the Cilento retrospective at the Modern the social grapevine told me nothing about them for several months. Reluctantly, I asked Control to check.

The check revealed their occupancy of a studio in London, but enquiries in the neighborhood showed that they had not emerged in over a month and no one answered a knock. I authorized a discreet illegal entry. Within minutes they were back on the satellite line to me in Tokyo.

“You probably should see this yourself, sir,” the man said.

“Are they all right?” I asked, and it hurt to ask.