Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“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.”

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.