Patron of the Arts

“They’re not here, sir. Clothes, papers, effects, but no trace.”

“You checked with customs? You checked the building?”

“Yes, sir, first thing. No one knows anything, but . . .”

“Yes?”

“There’s something here you should see.”

The studio was large, a combination of junk yard, machine shop, mad scientist’s laboratory and art gallery, much as every other sensatron artist’s studio I had ever been in. Later, I was to see the details—the flowerwine bottles painted with gay faces, the tiny sensatron cubes that made you happy just to hold them and watch them change, the art books with new drawings done over the old reproductions, the crates and charts and diagrams.

Later, I would wander through the rubble and litter and museum quality art and see a few primitive daubs on canvo that were undoubtedly Madelon’s. I’d find the barbaric jewelry, the laughing triphotos, the tapes, the Persian helmet stuck with dead flowers, the painted rock wrapped in aluminum foil in the refrigerator, the butterfly in permaplastic, the unfinished sandwich.

But all I saw when I walked in were the cubes.

I bought the building and had certain structural changes made. I didn’t want to move one of the cubes a millimeter. The one that all the vidtabs and reviewers called “The Lovers” I took. I couldn’t keep it from the world, even though it hurt me to show it.

The other cube was more of a tool, a piece of equipment, rough-finished but complete, not really a work of art, and I didn’t want it moved.

Once it was seen people wanted “The Lovers” in a curiously avid way. Museums bid, cajoled, pleaded, compromised, regrouped into phalanxes asking for tours, betrayed each other, regrouped to try again. In a way it’s all I have left of them. I pursued the lines of obvious investigation but I found no trace of them, not on Earth, not on the Moon, not on Mars. I ordered Control to stop looking when it became obvious they did not want to be found. Or could not be. But in a way they are still here. Alive. In the Cube.

They are standing facing each other. Nude. Looking into each other’s eyes, hand in hand. There is rich new grass under their feet and tiny flowers growing. In Mike’s free hand he is holding out to Madelon something glowing. A starpoint of energy. A small shining universe. He is offering it to her.

Behind them is the sky. Great beautiful spring clouds move majestically across the blue. Far down, far away are worn ancient rocks, much like Monument Valley in Arizona, or the Crown of Mars, near Burroughs. That’s the first side I saw.

I walked around to the right, slowly. They did not change. They still stared into each other’s eyes, a slight and knowing smile on their lips. But the background was stars. A wall of stars beyond the grass at their feet. Space. Deep space filled with incredible red dwarfs, monstrous blue giants, ice points of glitter, millions upon millions of suns making a starry mist that wandered across the blackness.

The third side was another landscape, seen from a hilltop, with a red-violet sea in the distance and two moons.

The fourth side was darkness. A sort of darkness. Something was back in there beyond them. Vague figures formed, disappeared, reformed slightly differently, changed . . .

Then I appeared. I think it’s me. I don’t know why I think it is me. I have never told anyone I think one of the dim faces is me, but I believe it is.

The vibrations were subtle, almost unnoticed until you had looked at the cube a long time. They were peaceful vibrations, yet somehow exciting, as if the brainwave recordings upon which they were based were anticipating something marvelously different. There have been books written about this one cube and each writer has his interpretation.

But none of them saw the other cube.

It’s a scenic view and it’s the same as the third face of “The Lovers.” If you walk around it it’s a 360- degree view from a low hillock. In one direction you can see the shore curving around a bay of red-violet water and beyond, dimly seen, are what might be spires or rocks or possibly towers. In the other direction the blue-green waves in the gentle breezes towards the distant mountains. The cycle is long, several times longer than any present sensatron, some thirty hours. But nothing happens. The sun rises and sets and there are two moons, one large and one small. The wind blows, the grass undulates, the tides come and go. A hot G-type sun. Moonlight on the water. Peaceful vibrations. Quiet. Alone in that studio I touched the smooth glassite surface and it was unyielding, yet an alien world seemed within reach. Or was it? Had Mike’s particle research opened some new door for him? I was afraid to have the cube moved for perhaps, in some way, it was aligned. You see, there are footsteps on the ground.

Two sets, and they start at the cube and go away, toward the distant spires.