He started to edge away from her. Goodbye. Ahna.
This beggar of time had blighted his moment with Ahna. He hated her. But could do nothing to get even with her.
And why should he bother? Her misery was far greater than any he could impose. Goodbye. Ahna. Goodbye.
He ran away from the screaming beggar, with her voice echoing foulnesses down the crystal corridors.
When he returned to the shoppe, one of the Supervisors was waiting for him.
“I’ve been looking through your ledger,” the Supervisor said. Lhayne had no idea which one this was; it might have been Dorell or Keys or even Kathrhn with her atoms rearranged to form a blank mask without features. “Your last trip produced some variations in the megaflow that could not be ignored. Why did you do it? You certainly couldn’t have thought you’d get away with it?”
“I read his mind. He was a filthy little scum.”
“Nonetheless!”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“This isn’t a game, friend Lhayne. This is survival.”
“It’s always survival. But not necessarily Art.”
“Oh yes. I’d forgotten. You’re still calling yourself an artist, aren’t you?”
“That’s what I am. It’s the correct word.”
The Supervisor snickered. There were no features to the mask, so it was impossible to tell how much of a sneer accompanied the sound. “Correct? Perhaps operable is what you mean. An Artist who is himself the Art. Standing in a public place and letting rain wash over you, and calling it ‘Rebirth.’ Crawling through broken glass till your. body is torn and calling it ‘The Eternal Apollonian-Dionysian Conflict.’ I suppose that’s Art.”
“I don’t tell you how to supervise.”
“Art criticism is as old as Art.”
“I rearrange the universe. That is the nature of my Art.”
“No, friend Lhayne. We all rearrange the universe. What’s left of it. The ten thousand of us, here at the end of time. That is the nature of survival.”
“My personal universe, then. I rearrange that.”
The Supervisor picked up the ledger. “But you may not rearrange it for the rest of us. We are all precariously balanced; we each pay our way; there is no room for self-indulgence.”
“No room for freedom, you mean.”
“There is no freedom in oblivion.” The Supervisor shoved the ledger toward Lhayne. “These gave us our freedom.”
The ledger was filled, page after page. Deals. Sales. Time bought with toys. The ability to mold a bear out of clay, the artistic eye, and the basis of god-worship… sold to a nameless australopithecene in South Africa. The “way of seeing” that turned a pointed stick used for scratching in the earth into the first spear… sold to a bright-eyed Neanderthaler in Pleistocene Prussia. The ultimate weapon, gunpowder, sold to a mandarin warlord in Choukoutien village. Godsight, sold to Joan of Arc. The concept of the assembly-line, sold to Henry Ford. Page after page, line after filled line, each one signed with a smeared name or illiterate mark of identification. Signed as if the quill had been dipped in some watery, vital fluid more binding than blood, some fluid that might serve as an energy conductor. Michelangelo, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pasteur, Méliès, Freud, Jefferson, Roger Williams, Confucius. Names, thousands of names that meant nothing against the pull of the Infinite Dark Mass save as moments of rearranged time that bought survival.
Lhayne stared numbly at the ledger and knew he had been wrong. The madness he had seen in the beggar of time in the corridor of the vaults had possessed him, might soon possess them all. And then what point was there to survival?
He wanted to say I’m sorry. but the artist in him would not let the words emerge. It was stronger than the frail human being that contained the artistic spirit. It knew there was only one thing that stood between humanity and the engorgement of the Infinite Dark Mass. And it was not merely the frantic need to survive. There was survival… and there was something finer, greater beyond survival. What was existence without Art? Empty as the Infinite Dark Mass that gnawed at the perimeters of Rubble Point.
“Your trips are ended,” the Supervisor said.
It was said without feeling, but a tone crept through from behind the mask.
“I’ll find another way of buying her freedom. She deserves to live.”
“No doubt.”
“I’ll find another way.”
“I think not, friend Lhayne. Your own account will be overdrawn because of this.” He pointed to the last entry… the young man who had bought the powerstone for two dollars and a measure of the past. “I’m afraid there’s a vault waiting for you.”
Lhayne wanted to beg him, Put me in the vault beside her ; there’s one about to be emptied right beside Ahna. But the Supervisor was already making a sign in the air. Lhayne’s body began to bubble and scintillate. Then it was gone.
The shoppe was silent.
Pressure from outside came through the walls. Cancerous darkness lapped at the stasis field.
The Supervisor sighed. It was never easy. But neither was survival.
The grubby young man had taken only one more step when he heard the voice behind him. “Hey! You!”
He turned. The shoppe that had been gone a moment before, was back again. Appear, disappear, appear again…
He stopped. The young woman with the long blonde hair was standing in the open doorway, motioning to him urgently. “Hey, come on back. He sold you the wrong stone.”
He hesitated. The powerstone was warm in his hand. Unnaturally warm. It was beginning to be uncomfortable.
He turned and walked back. She was extraordinarily beautiful. She held out the octagonal stone he had wanted to select before the old man made him buy the diamond-shaped one. “Better take this one,” she said, smiling up at him with affection. Then a shadow came over her face, her eyes seemed to darken as though she saw something disturbing, and then the smile was strong again. “This is the one you want.”
“Where’s the old man?” he asked.
“He was just minding the place for me; just a replacement. He’s always making some kind of stupid mistake. We want our customers to be satisfied; better take this one.”
He handed her the diamond-shaped stone, now almost unbearably hot. He took the octagonal stone. It was cool and seemed to radiate power. Yes, this was the right one.
“I still want to know,” he said, “what do you get out of this? Who are you, how do you make a living in a place like this?”
“Just serving the community and the commonweal, that’s the only reward we get. A force for good in your time.” Her smile was fixed, implacable, eternally sincere. Caveat emptor.
She held the diamond-shaped stone that would have killed him the first time he tried to use it, and she stared at him with her alabaster smile, and she knew what forces had been set in motion by his ownership of the stone that would make people do what he wanted them to do. And she thought of the thousand in their vaults, now one thousand and one. She thought of friend Lhayne and his Ahna who would remain in their vaults perhaps until the universe was reborn, because there was no one who had the spare time to buy them their time. And she wanted the young man to go away and begin fulfilling the destiny that would produce antientropic energy by hastening the onrush of the Infinite Dark Mass.
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“He wrote down my name.”
“Yes. That’s just company policy. So we have a record.”
“Who sees that record?”
“No one, Mr. Manson. That’s just for our files.”
“He wrote Charles. That’s not right. It’s Charlie. Can you change it?”