The Light That Never Was (2 page)

Behind them the sun had already dropped below the horizon, and Gwyll began to wonder anxiously how quickly darkness descended on this cursed place.

“There!” the boy said suddenly, pointing.

“Is that where Mr. Brance lives?”

“Ma says that’s Bottom Farm. It’s the last one on this road. Can I go now?”

Gwyll hesitated. The boy seemed honest, but even if he weren’t, or if he were mistaken, there wouldn’t be time to search farther before darkness fell, and the boy’s mother might worry about him. Solemnly he counted out the money.

“Are you gonna stay here?”

“Not if I can help it,” Gwyll said grimly.

“Well, I guess I could wait.”

Gwyll shook his head. “You run along home. I can find my way back. If Mr. Brance doesn’t live there I’ll just have to look again tomorrow.”

The boy grinned and hurried off, and Gwyll slopped his way toward Bottom Farm.

The muddy path had grown progressively worse, and when he passed the last farm before Bottom Farm it dwindled to nothing. A network of small streams lay before him. He made his way over the first on a flimsy bridge built of half a dozen slender logs. Four logs spanned the second stream, and the third had only two, as though the builder had grown tired of the job or—more likely—run out of wood. He halted aghast as soon as he was close enough for a good look at the house. It was a mound of sod with a tattered cloth hanging in the misshapen doorway. The one window he could see was overgrown with grass. Gwyll had never imagined such a primitive existence.

He approached the house and called out timidly, “Hello.”

The cloth jerked aside and a face framed with frowzy red hair and beard appeared in the opening. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Arnen Brance.”

“You certainly are if you walked all the way from town, and I guess you did. You’ve ruined your shoes, fellow.”

Gwyll looked down at his feet. His shoes were solidly coated with mud, and his legs were sloshed with mud almost to his trousers. He flushed, though he could not have said why he felt embarrassed. After that tramp through the swamp he couldn’t have looked otherwise.

“I’m Brance,” the bearded man said. He grinned. “I can’t remember the last time anyone wanted to see me that badly.”

“I’m Gerald Gwyll, of Harnasharn Galleries,” Gwyll said. “You recently sent a painting to Gof Milfro, and he—”

“
Harnasharn Galleries?
I don’t understand.”

“Milfro sent the painting to us.”

“The devil he did! The next time I see him I’ll flay him alive. I’ll do worse than that. I’ll—I’ll
paint
him alive!”

“Did you paint that picture, Mr. Brance?”

“No, I didn’t, and Milfro had no business sending it to you.”

“Who is the artist?”

Brance stepped from the hovel and confronted him belligerently.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to offer him a contract.”

“I see.” Brance’s eyes were deeply, coldly blue, and Gwyll had the sensation of being impaled and dissected. He managed to meet them firmly, though he took a step backward. “I can’t help you,” Brance said.

“Do you have a grudge against this artist? There are few painters who wouldn’t welcome an offer from Harnasharn.”

“Here,” Brance said suddenly. “Come in and have something to drink. Your feet are soaked, and the way back is just as long and muddy as the way out.”

“Longer than you know,” Gwyll said grimly. “If I don’t find that artist, I may be looking for another job.”

Brance held the cloth aside, and Gwyll resignedly took a cautious step into the dim interior.

“I’ve only got the one chair,” Brance said apologetically. “Sit down. I met L.H. once, a long time ago. He told me I was an art dealer’s nightmare. My craftsmanship was adequate and I had no notion of what to do with it.”

“L.H. says what he thinks.”

“He was right, too. I never sold a painting, but that was only because I refused to paint souvenirs. Drink this.”

Gwyll took the mug and sipped cautiously. The liquid was cool, fragrant, spicy-tasting.

“Our local product,” Brance explained. “Kruckul-root tea. The stuff also makes a very good bread. Here—I’ll cut you a slice.”

“Thank you. Do you grow it yourself?”

Brance nodded. “If we ever develop a strain that’ll give us a better yield, we’ll do very well with it.”

“It seems like an odd occupation for an artist.”

Brance laughed. “Ex-artist, you mean. Why odd? Ex-artists must eat. The old duffer who owned this place was a friend of mine, and when he got fed up with it and offered it to me I grabbed it without apologies. I’d given up painting, and I wanted to go to the most inartistic place imaginable.”

“You found it,” Gwyll said fervently, resisting the impulse to stomp the drying mud from his shoes and legs. In the dim light he could see little of the hovel’s interior. He slowly munched the bread, which, like the drink, had a strong, spicy flavor. Brance hovered nearby, almost invisible in the gloom, recounting the nutritional virtues of kruckul roots.

Gwyll swallowed the last of the bread and drained the mug. “Thanks. I suppose I’d better get through the worst of the mud before it’s completely dark.”

“You won’t,” Brance said. “Both moons will be up in another hour or two. Better wait.”

Gwyll shrugged resignedly. “I’m in no hurry. I probably won’t be able to get back to Nor Harbor before morning. Why won’t you tell me who the artist is?”

“Because I can’t,” Brance said slowly. “Because I don’t dare. Did you mean that about looking for a new job?”

“You said you’d met L.H.”

“He was being nice at the time, but I can easily imagine—look here. You seem like a decent enough person. Will you swear to keep this between yourself and L.H. and make him swear to that before you tell him?”

“Yes—”

“Come along, then.”

He led Gwyll from the hovel. A smaller mound, a sort of outbuilding, stood a few paces to the rear, and there Gwyll blinked in a sudden flash of light as Brance lit a candle. He brought out a crude palette and a piece of art fabric stretched over a thick frame.

“You take the candle,” he said.

In the candlelight Brance’s eyes gleamed wildly, and it occurred to Gwyll that the man had behaved somewhat irrationally from the beginning. “You asked for it,” Brance said. He laughed gleefully. “Follow me.”

Carrying the candle awkwardly—he had never seen one before except in paintings—Gwyll stumbled after him into the thickening darkness. They halted beside a stone-walled enclosure, a square that measured three or four strides across. Gwyll’s candle revealed nothing within it but creamy mud.

Brance leaned over and wedged the art fabric between the wall and a protruding rock. He placed the palette on another rock and slowly backed away.

“Don’t hold the light so close!” he hissed. “Here—let me have it.”

The mud stirred. What looked like a quivering puddle of slime spread slowly across its surface and reared up suddenly. It assumed a shape, became a bloated oval of pulsating, mud-encrusted jelly, and flowed toward the palette.

A sudden wave of revulsion left Gwyll trembling. His stomach revolted against the nauseating stench, and his mind utterly rejected the disgusting, blotched, shimmering mucosity of the creature’s body. The mere thought that such a slimy mass was alive appalled and horrified. He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached, but he continued to watch.

It reached the palette and reared itself above it, a froth of foul scum through which the lips of the paint cups seemed dimly visible.

And then it began to paint. A multitude of fine filaments darted to and fro, and on the fabric a speck of paint appeared, and then another… five minutes passed, ten minutes, the picture grew with infinite slowness. When finally Brance blew out the candle a mere square inch had been covered. The colors were only dimly distinguishable in the feeble, flickering light, but already Gwyll could recognize the
texture
.

He did not want to believe. He said, “You mean—that
thing
—painted—”

“It won’t work long when there’s a light,” Brance said.

Gwyll repeated weakly, “That
thing
painted—”

“The painting Milfro sent to you. Yes.”

He tugged gently at Gwyll’s arm and led him away.

“I can’t believe it,” Gwyll muttered. “It paints in the dark?”

“It doesn’t see as we see. Obviously. It must perceive some light that’s invisible to us. Certainly it paints things that never were—that couldn’t be, in the universe we know. I’ve never been able to identify anything in its paintings, and yet I’ve felt from the beginning that it must be painting what it sees. I suppose my human prejudices won’t let me credit it with the imagination of genius.”

“What is it?”

“Scientists have a thoroughly unpronounceable name for it, but to the natives it’s just a swamp slug. It’s never been found anywhere except on this island, which is probably why so little is known about it. I took photographs to the zoology professors at Nor University and none of them had ever seen one. They offered to buy it. Said they’d like to study it.” He laughed harshly. “They offered me ten dons for it, which seems like a rather low price to pay for a great artist—but of course they didn’t know about the paintings. They thought they were making a very generous offer for a rare but inconsequential kind of gastropod, and they seemed offended when I told them to come over and catch their own. Maybe it’s just as well that they didn’t try. The natives tell me the things used to be common, but these days you almost never see one, what with more and more of the swamp being drained and cultivated. This is the only one I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you have other paintings?”

“Seven,” Brance said. “Seven plus the one I sent to Milfro. It was a long time before it got the idea that the whole fabric could be one composition, and even now it doesn’t often produce a large painting. With four of the eight I had to cut the fabric down to fit the part that it painted.”

“Does it work all night?”

“On a dark night. Tonight it’ll stop when the moons come up. It paints slowly, as you saw, and the next night it won’t always start where it left off. It took me four years to get those eight paintings. Drat Milfro—I just wanted an opinion, not a visitation. Anyway, L.H. can’t fire you for not putting this artist under contract. Sorry I can’t offer you a bed, but the only one I have you wouldn’t like. I can’t even lend you a light to walk back with, but I’ll go as far as my neighbor’s with you and see if you can borrow his.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“And remember your oath!” Brance’s voice cut savagely through the darkness. “If a word of this leaks out, I’ll kill the person responsible.”

Gwyll started back to Zrilund Town with the feeble beam of the neighbor’s small handlight picking out the uncertain borders of the road. His memory was still replete with what he had seen and smelled, and after a couple of miles he finally lost control, and along with it the scant lunch he had eaten on the ferry and the nutritious products of the kruckul root.

At Zrilund Town he did something he wouldn’t have had the courage for as recently as that afternoon. He pried the fat com agent from his dinner to open the Zrilund Communications Center, and he kept him waiting—and fuming—until he got a clear channel to Donov Metro and routed Lester Harnasharn from his bed.

Harnasharn, looking ludicrous with a night covering perched jauntily on his bald head, did not even seem perturbed. “Did you get him?” he demanded.

Gwyll hesitated. The com agent stood looking on, and there were possibly dozens of people listening in. “There’s a very substantial matter of ethics involved,” he said.

“I understand. He’s already committed himself elsewhere.”

“Not that kind of ethics. I think it’s a matter that you’d want to handle yourself.”

“I’ll leave at once.”

“There’s no hurry. The only boat scheduled from the mainland operates at eight in the morning—which is afternoon to you.”

“Then why did you get me out of bed?”

“Because I haven’t been to bed, and once I get there, if I can find one, I’m not getting up in the middle of the night to send a message. Anyway, I thought you’d like to know.”

Harnasharn chuckled. “Thanks. What happened to you? Is it raining mud on Zrilund?”

“That’s as good a way to describe it as any.”

“I’ll dress for it.” He chuckled again. “Before you look for that bed I suggest you find a bath.” He cut the connection.

“I’d suggest the Zrilund Town Hostel,” the com agent said dryly. “Fourth right from the corner. Hylat’ll let you have the bath and bed and maybe a bit of supper, which you look as though you could use.”

Gwyll thanked him and paid for the call. The bath and bed would be welcome, but his stomach wasn’t yet in condition to tolerate any thought of food.

Twenty-one hours later, Lester Harnasharn perched on the edge of Brance’s pen peering in fascination as the slug hung over the art fabric, filaments tirelessly in motion.

“If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes—” he muttered.

Brance said nothing. Gwyll, holding the candle, was too preoccupied with his nausea to speak.

“Are those things
tongues?
” Harnasharn demanded.

“They could be,” Brance admitted. “I’ve never been able to locate its head, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one. I guess
tongues
is as apt a description as any.”

“It dips each one into the paint, and then—where does it mix the colors? On its tongues, or right on the fabric?”

“I don’t know. It may mix in some secretion of its own, which would account for the unusual texture. I do know it won’t use any kind of paint that doesn’t have a vegetable base.”

“Vegetable? Did you give those paintings a spray set?”

“Of course.”

“And it sees something that never was,” Harnasharn mused. “That must be it—I think. Those paintings certainly give me the impression of looking at something I’ve never seen before, or of looking at something familiar in a way that makes it seem like looking into another dimension.” He turned angrily. “But they’re
art
, confound it! Splendid art! I don’t care if the being that created them is human, or a slimy worm, or a hunk of rock. Harnasharn Galleries has never demanded an artist’s pedigree. Of course I’ll exhibit those paintings, and I’ll be proud to do it.”