Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Read online

  “His name was Durell Coll. He was an artist.”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t know anyone like that.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “About four years.” She looked closely to see whether I believed her.

  I did a quick calculation, converting to Rimway time. She’d arrived shortly after Durell had left for Rimway “Is the cup actually from the Ranger?”

  “Of course.”

  I bought it, though it took a sizable slice of my remaining finances. But it was a piece of history, worth considerably more than the price. At least, on Rimway. I hoped that, in addition, the purchase would have a soothing effect on the proprietor. “I would like very much,” I said, “to see the third floor. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t have a key.”

  “Maybe it’s not locked.”

  “The owner always keeps it locked,” she said stubbornly. “Nobody’s allowed up there.” Her face had paled, but she stood her ground, defying me to try to get past her.

  I sighed, thanked her, and strolled back into the sunlight.

  The room was cramped, and the walls intersected at angles that were never precisely ninety degrees. Portraits of grotesque young women hung on them. A delicate white table held a cup of steaming liquid and a few books. The books had no titles. Directly ahead of me, a broad slice of wall was missing, and outside, some distance away, a single cloud pelted a blue glass floor with big plashing raindrops. An overturned chair and a freshly made bed lay in the storm. Someone had thrown a checked jacket across the bed.

  I touched the control plate and the tableau dissolved. “It’s a bit heavy-handed, even for a holo,” I said. “My taste runs more to the traditional.”

  Halson Stiles bowed slightly. “We don’t sell many oils,” he said. “I’m sorry to admit it, but,”—spreading his thin hands—“people today are more interested in entertainment than in art.” He’d gained weight, and his hair had thinned considerably. Time had not treated Halson kindly: a pity, considering the service he’d rendered. “I have a few canvases in back that you might be interested in. No landscapes, though. Some still life, a few character studies, and three excellent impressionistic arts.” He held out his hands, palms up, a man who has conceded to the tide. “It’s a pity, but no one cares any longer about the spiritual values. Or subtlety. They want spectacle—” He exhaled loudly “Sometimes, when I see what has happened to the public taste, I suspect we’re heading into a dark age.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. I wonder if legends are always disappointing when they take flesh. It was Stiles who, according to tradition, had wrested a meat-knife from Durell, and thereby saved the Cordelet, gaining immortality in the process. His name was inextricably linked now with Durell’s, as mine would never be. But the strong brown eyes and composed dignity of the photos had given way to the unctuousness of a badly pressed salesman.

  His was the only gallery on Fishbowl. At least, the only one with a listing. It was anchored high off a second-floor ramp overlooking the wide lawns and vaguely topological designs of the Survey Cluster.

  “It’s fortunate,” I said, “that the Cordelet wasn’t done as a holo…”

  “Ah.” He beamed. “There is no way it could have been created on anything other than canvas. Yes: well, Durell was a serious artist.”

  “Halson, you handled some of his early work, didn’t you?”

  “Who are you?” he asked. He was looking closely at me, frowning because he could not place me.

  “I was a friend of his,” I said. “My name’s Tiel Chadwick.”

  He considered that, and smiled broadly, and extended his hand. “I didn’t think the dumb bastard would do so well.”

  “Thanks.” I returned the smile.

  “I was sorry to hear about his death. Terrible. Terrible accident.”

  We paused in front of a portrait of Harry Pellinor in heroic mode. “Durell’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “I don’t think I understand, Tiel.”

  “He killed himself. Probably not deliberately, but he didn’t much care whether he lived or died. It wasn’t hard to see it coming.” I was having trouble keeping my voice steady.

  “Why?” he asked. He looked genuinely shocked. “Durell wasn’t exactly a tower of stability, but he would never have taken his life.”

  “I’d hoped you might tell me why.”

  “I have no idea. He was the only person I know who actually succeeded in his life’s ambitions. Was he having health problems? No?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It makes no sense. What made you think I might know?”

  “It’s something that happened here. Something drove him. Your comment that he was no tower of stability: is there an actual tower anywhere on Fishbowl?”

  “No,” he said. “Not that I know of.”

  “Anyplace called the Tower? Or the Tower Room?”

  “No.” We’d been wandering among some local work, more craft than art. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason, really. Something he said once that I must have misunderstood. How well did you know him?”

  He stared at me a long time. “Not well. A couple of the other artists used to spend some time with him. They were all bone poor. Especially Coll.”

  “Can you tell me the names of the others?”

  “I could, but it wouldn’t do you much good. One’s dead, drank too much and fell off a ramp a couple years ago. The others are long gone. Left before Durell did.” He tilted his head. “I can tell you where you might find somebody who remembers him. Durell liked to play chess. He was a member of a club. The organization was still in existence, last I heard. They used to meet at Survey.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He pursed his lips. “You know, if I’d been smart enough to hang on to just one of his paintings, I could’ve retired. It’s frustrating. I knew how good he was. But I never thought anybody else would realize it. At least not before we were all dead.”

  “Halson, you said he was ‘bone poor.’”

  “He missed a few meals in his time. I did what I could to help, but I didn’t have much money in those days either. Durell wanted to get away from Fishbowl. For two years it was all he talked about. He even took jobs from time to time to try to get the fare together, but he could never stay with them long enough. Then one day he walked in, picked up his paintings—I had three of them in inventory then—, gave me a hundred for my trouble, and the next thing I heard about him, he was on Rimway.”

  “I wonder where the money came from?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Halson, are there any paintings other than the ones generally known?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He pulled sympathetically at his right ear, shook his head no, and slipped through a set of curtains. He returned moments later with iced cordials. “He did some murals for Survey’s operations center. But don’t get interested: they tore the place down two years ago.”

  “Son of a bitch. He had his reputation by then. Didn’t anybody try to save them?”

  “I don’t think anyone thought of it. His name didn’t mean anything to the people at Survey, and I—I didn’t know the building was coming down until it was too late. Ironically, they recycled the permearth, and used it to build this mall.”

  “The world is full of philistines,” I sighed.

  He nodded. “They were digging up Belarius to look at an alien culture, and they don’t know very much about their own.” Three women paused outside on the ramp, and one by one stepped into the shop’s display case. I couldn’t see the holo itself, but the edge of a soft blue haze expanded into the doorway. “They’re on a ledge overlooking a waterfall,” Stiles said. “It’s our biggest seller.

  “The murals weren’t really that good anyhow. They were Belarian locales, sandstorms, broken columns in the desert, that sort of thing. Ozymandian stuff. Durell wasn’t interested in it, but it put food on the table.”

  “He died ri
ch,” I said.

  “I would think so.” Stiles’s eyes were half closed. “I hope he learned to enjoy it.”

  “Why did he want to destroy the Cordelet?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? He was proud of it. He invited me over to his studio the night he finished it. It’s the only time he ever did that. He met me at the door: you had to go in through a rear entrance. The studio was dark, but he’d placed a lamp just so, and when he turned it on, the light fell full on the Cordelet. Can you imagine that? Walking into a dark room and seeing the Cordelet for the first time? I knew immediately it was good: I told him it ranked with Delacroix, Matisse, anything I’d ever seen.

  “‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Who would have believed I could create this?’ We stood there, both of us, transfixed. And then, without any warning, he went after it. I never even saw where the meat cutter came from. He just had it in his hand, and he was stabbing away like a maniac. The look in his eyes: I knew he’d destroy it, and I couldn’t let him do that.”

  “You could have lost your life,” I said.

  “He let me take it away from him. The knife—”

  “I never saw him like that,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine. So out of character. I’ve seen him drunk and sober, up and down. Moods, yes. My God, he was moody. But I never knew him to do anything like that.

  “He left it with you. The Cordelet.”

  “He said he never wanted to see it again. I sold it to a collector a few months later and sent him the money. He was on Rimway by then. Later, the collector got five or six times as much for it from an art museum on Rimway. The Apollonian,”

  3.

  At night, the wandering ramps and walkways of Pellinor glitter beneath Fishbowl’s spectacular ring system. Its people stroll among softly illuminated parks and malls, which range over the downtown area at, or above, sea level. The trees are healthy here, providing shelter for colorful and noisy avians, most of which are pittacines, imported from Earth and Mogambo. Fishbowl, of course, has no native birds; nature has provided only the drifting gasbag quill to populate her skies.

  Pellinor was still a quiet, remote outpost in those days. There were, as yet, few tourists to watch the play of lights against the vertical sea. The Belarian excavations had been abandoned years before, but Survey retained its foothold on Fishbowl, converting the old support facility into an administrative headquarters.

  I can recall sitting on a bench that evening, after my conversation with Stiles. I was on the outer perimeter of the walkways, near the beaches. (They lower the outer ramps at night to create a high-tide effect.) On the inland side, occasional couples strolled through Survey’s geometrical grounds. Above, on the top level, a late party was spilling out of a club.

  I had never been so far from home. Delta Draconis was bright and gold in the north, just visible above the lip of the seawall. And directly overhead, in the wake of the moon, lay Belarius, cool and green and hostile. Home of the other civilization: the only nonhuman culture encountered during the long expansion from Earth.

  Also to the north, about a kilometer away, I could see the cluster of squat buildings that housed Durell’s old studio. I walked slowly in that direction, waiting for the lights to dim and the last stragglers to start home. If there were police about, they were not visible. Crime barely existed on Fishbowl. An incident in which several adolescents had stolen a skimmer and crashed at sea had set people talking for days about lawlessness and the general decline of social values.

  The smell of the sea was strong. Beyond the beach, it boomed and thundered with soothing effect against the Gantner light screens. I think I knew then that eventually the tourists would come, that the homes along the ridge would rise in value, and that Pellinor would lose her innocence. As things turned out, it happened more quickly than I could have expected. But that’s another story. The only thing that mattered now, as I got up from my bench and sauntered off to do some burgling, was that, on Fishbowl, locks were simple and witnesses few.

  There had been a skylight. Though he’d never drawn it, its effects were visible in some of his sketches, in the curious double shadow of the latticework, and occasionally of people or pieces of furniture, cast by the twin suns. I reached a strategic location over the rooftops in the commercial district, and looked down on the street in which I’d stood that morning. The rear entrance to Durell’s studio, by which Stiles had entered, no longer existed.

  I’ve never been comfortable with heights. The angle at which the ramp crossed the rooftops left only a small corner on which to descend. The pavement was a long way down, and the wind was gusting sharply off the sea.

  I clipped a line to the safety rail and, with some misgivings, climbed over the side. Far below, a streetlamp threw light across a truck docked at the depot. Two men sat off to one side. Their voices drifted up to me.

  The wind gave me a bad few minutes, pushing me away from the rooftop and out over the street. But I got down all right, finally, and made for the skylight.

  I switched on my handlamp.

  Any interior walls that might have existed during Durell’s time had been removed. The entire upper floor consisted of a single large room. I could see a toilet, a sink, and a shower stall toward the rear. Other plumbing fixtures were scattered about. Cartons had been stacked randomly, and a couple of hand trucks were in the middle of the floor.

  The skylight was latched. I broke it open without much trouble and dropped a line.

  Why had the wedge-faced woman seemed so frightened? Was there something in this room?

  It occurred to me that I was about to break the law. My first criminal act. Well, I didn’t mind, as long as I didn’t get caught. But the potential for real trouble existed, and I wondered whether I shouldn’t just forget the whole thing and go home.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to see: a few plastic-wrapped canvases, maybe, forgotten in a dusty corner. Or a record. Something.

  A rickety table with one drawer held a computer. The drawer was empty. I wandered around, looking at floors and walls. The cartons contained shelving and packing material and crockery I could find nothing, and eventually I wandered over to the arched front windows. The two men at the depot dock were gone.

  I’m not sure what drew my attention to the walls. At the front, where Durell’s working studio had been, they were covered with several sheets of bright cheap pastel mosaics. The design was not unattractive, but I knew that Durell could not have lived with it.

  That meant the panels had been put up after he’d left. But it seemed unlikely that there’d been another tenant before the area was converted for storage. Why then had anyone bothered to decorate the walls?

  The sheets were thick with dust. I peeled off a long strip of trim, removed the baseboard, and released the magnets. (I heard the whine of a set of gyros, and the truck rose past the windows. Its lights fell across the glass, and then were gone.) The panel was wedged at the top and on one side. I pried it forward and tried to get the lamp behind it.

  Light fell on the outline of an ear. My pulse picked up: the lines were the quick, precise strokes of Durell Coll. I put the light down, braced my back against the wall, and broke the panel. It went with a bang.

  I snapped off the lamp, and waited to see if I’d attracted anyone’s notice. But there were no footsteps in the building, and none in the street. It was. a delicious moment.

  The sea was loud. It was easy to understand why Durell, working on this world, amid the endless tidal roar, would have found his meanings ultimately in the natural world. To my knowledge, he had never done a portrait.

  I lifted the lamp to get a good look—

  If Durell Coll’s reputation was built on gloomy perceptions of a hostile universe, the man himself, at least during his early years on Rimway, had always enjoyed a good party. He was usually surrounded by women, and loved to spend the long winter evenings (we lived high in the northern hemisphere) talking and drinking with old friends.

  He laughed easily; and no
thing amused him more than suggestions by people who should have known better that his work needed cheering up. More vitality, they used to say. More life.

  It was only toward the end that the shadows that had been lengthening across his art began, finally, to darken his features. And a Durell Coll that I did not know appeared, a man who took solitary strolls through snow-filled streets, who endured intense nightmares of which he would not speak, and who ultimately withdrew into a world not unlike that of the Cordelet.

  It was the early Durell that I preferred to remember, and whom I’d hoped to find in the old studio.

  What I found instead was something dredged out of the soul of a madman: a face barely human, rendered in Durell’s painfully realistic fashion. It was of a man in middle age, with a full beard and commanding features. But his terror-ridden eyes gaped out of deep black sockets. The mouth was twisted in a frightful snarl, and flecks of saliva flew from the beard.

  I stumbled backward over a hand truck. The light went out, and I was not at all anxious to put it back on. Instead, I lay in the dark, listening to the sound of my own breathing, feeling the palpable presence of the thing on the wall, trying to understand how a young Durell Coll, my Durell, could have created the monstrosity.

  There was no doubt: it was his work. Despite the lurid nature of the subject, tone and texture were clearly his.

  I’d bruised an elbow, and the pain began to intrude itself. I rubbed it, grateful for the distraction.

  Who was the bearded man? I wondered whether he’d actually existed, or whether the tortured image had been constructed from whole cloth. In a sense, I supposed I had what I’d come for: an unknown work by Durell, a previously unsuspected creation. It would be worth a lot of money.

  But not to me.

  The image appeared, at first, to be badly faded, until I realized someone had painted over it. And then, not satisfied, had covered the result with panels. But over the years, the paint had faded, and only the image remained.