He thought of historical sollies and the great convenience of knives and pistols. But no matter how Devarupian the world, a man could still kill if he had strong hands and no fear of a one-way trip.
Emigdio Valentinez added one more flick of his deft brush and then realized that the perfect moment had passed. Only one sixth of an hour out of the twenty-four when the light in this spot was exactly as it had been that day when he had halted transfixed and felt that strange gripping of his bowels which meant “This is it!”
He could fill the rest of his time satisfactorily enough. There had been the weeks of delightfully restful research on the lovestonite mirror, and now there lay ahead of him many more weeks, by no means restful, to be devoted to the object for which he had contrived the gadget—a perfect self-portrait.
He smiled, and smiled at himself for smiling. How fortunate, in all due modesty, is the artist who is a worthy subject of his own brush! He knew that in a way he was beautiful. He knew, and found a bitter sort of pleasure in the knowledge, that a girl’s bedroom was far more apt to be adorned by a color photo of himself than by a reprolith of one of his paintings.
Well, this would combine the two apeals—his magnum opus. Though if ever he could finish this composition of rock and algae and water and sun—
Where he stood he could see nothing that was not part of nature save himself, his palette and his easel. It might have been a scene out of the long-dead past. Cezanne, say, or some other old master might have stood thus in the sun back in those dim days when the advance of science was beginning with its little creeps. Painting is something apart from progress. He knew that he could never catch the sun as Cezanne had. He knew that not he, nor any other man living, could approach the clarity of Vermeer or the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt. He could make an overnight jaunt to the Moon if he wished, but he could not capture in paint the soul of Devarupa as El Greco had captured that of St. Francis. Art did not necessarily progress with progress.
And yet the lovestonite mirror might be the first true contribution of science to painting. He smiled, that smile that was not intentionally either melancholy or wisful, and started across the sand to his death.
I.
A tiny five-meter rocket flashed past the window of the stratoliner.
“Poor devil,” the girl sighed.
Gan Garrett blessed the poor devil, whoever he was and whatever he’d done. For an hour he had been trying to think of some way of opening a conversation with his black-haired, blue-eyed traveling companion.
“I know,” he agreed sympathetically.
“Living death,” the girl went on. “Premature burial, like that funny obsession of horror you get in nineteenth-century writers. That rocket shooting out, headed no place forever—”
“But what other solution is there?” Garrett asked. “If no one may kill, certainly the State may not. We have abandoned the collective mania of capital punishment as thoroughly as that of war. How else would Devarupa have had us treat those who were formerly thought fit to be executed?”
“Segregation?” the girl ventured hesitantly.
“If you recall your history classes, that didn’t work so well. Remember the Revolt of the Segregated in ’73? When you mass together all those who are undeveloped enough to wish to kill—”
The girl’s eyes stared out into space, following the now invisible course of the one-way trip. “You’re right, of course. It’s the only way. But I still say, ‘Poor devil.’ You’re headed for Sollywood?”
Garrett nodded.
“Actor?”
“Hardly. Technical expert for Mr. Breakstone’s epic on Devarupa. I’m an historian, not unknown in my field, I must confess. You may have read my little work on ‘The Guilt for the War of the Twentieth Century’?” His voice was arid and his bearing purely academic; despite his disclaimer, he had never done a more convincing job of acting.
There had been nothing dry or academic about Gan Garrett the day before when he breezed into the office of the Secretary of Allocation. “The post office is going to raise the devil about your requisitioning me,” he announced. “I was just getting on the track of the highjackers that’ve been operating on the lunar mail rockets.”
“That’s all right,” the secretary said dryly. “I’ve been over your reports with the postmaster and he agrees with me that a subordinate can carry on from there. And we can’t all have the services of Gan Garrett at once.”
Garrett grinned. “Look,” he interposed. “Don’t tell me how good I am. I couldn’t take it. But what’s the new job?”
The secretary leafed through the dossier before him. “According to this, Garrett, you made the highest rating in the adaptability classes that the W.B.I. school has ever seen. You also displayed a marked aptitude for pre-Devarupian history.”
Garrett nodded. “I liked those old times. I know how true Devarupa’s ideas are, and yet there’s something about the wanton recklessness of the old armed days—”
“Very well. You are going to Sollywood as a technical adviser on an epic now being prepared. No one outside of this secretariat will have the least idea that your job is not authentic; and you’d better be good at it.”
“I’ll run over my library tonight and take forty or fifty microbooks along. My visual memory’ll see me through. But what’s the real job?”
The secretary paused. “Garrett, do you know anything about lovestonite?”
Gan Garrett probed in his memory. “Let’s see—
