“True; there are nonconforming nations. But almost all nations require self-employed artists to report quarterly. I can’t prove there are no exceptions, yet, but I’d bet money. The pattern is clear.”
She powered her chair back away from her desk until it hit the wall. “Isn’t this the damndest thing?”
“Have you anything new to report?”
It took her a few moments to respond. “Null results, mostly. I tried to do further breakdowns and correlations, to see if I could get a clue regarding motive. Which artists are getting money? Why them? How much? That sort of thing.”
“And?”
“Nothing helpful. Some of them are starving-in-a-garret types, but some are major stars or companies, and some are in between. No geographical, financial, political, religious or even aesthetic connections I can find. Competing schools of theory, some of them. The one steady correlation I’ve identified tells me nothing useful.”
“And that is—?”
“The amount. Apparently, each lucky beneficiary—from the poorest poet to the richest director, from barbershop quartet to symphony orchestra—had his or her or its annual budget approximately quadrupled. In a few cases, that comes to megabucks.”
The Undersecretary nodded grimly. “That accords with what I’ve been able to learn.”
The assistant director paled. “Good God, George—there are less than a half dozen fiscal entities on or off Terra who are in a position to disburse that kind of money—”
“I know.”
She got a grip on herself. “So you went to the Secretary.”
“I deemed it necessary, yes. This is too big for a bureaucrat like me; I needed a statesman.”
“And he said—?”
“He said that an anonymous donation is an anonymous donation, regardless of size. He said no law requires a philanthropist to take a tax deduction. He said support for the arts is not a crime. He said it is the policy of the United Nations to respect the right of privacy. He said, with emphasis, that anyone who violates privacy with respect to support for the arts will be broken back to a G-7 clerk.”
She was staring at him in growing disbelief. “He said to forget it. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“He said nothing of the sort. Forget what?”
She opened her mouth. Thirty seconds later, words came out. In the interval, she examined her life, for the first time in decades. “I forget,” she said at last.
He nodded. “Elephants never look happy.”
She powered her chair back to her desk, looked at it, drummed her fingers on it. “The story will come out,” she said finally. “Artists always talk to cronkites. Sooner or later one will listen, and realize he has actual news on his hands. The data are public information.”
“They will be when we release them,” the Undersecretary agreed carefully.
She did mental arithmetic, checking a few figures with her desk. “George, this is scary. Whoever is doing this, they’re spending themselves broke. At the present rate of outlay, any conceivable candidate donor will be bankrupt in about five years.”
George nodded. “That’s the figure I arrived at. But there are signs that the rate is increasing.”
“My God! George, you know better than I: a fluctuation of this magnitude in the global economy simply has to translate into suffering and misery, sooner or later. Doesn’t the Secretary see—?”
“I’ll tell you what I wish,” he said.
“What?”
His voice was wistful. “I wish I had kept up the guitar.”
PART SEVEN
19
Provincetown, Massachusetts
24 February 2065
Rhea opened the front door wide. “Goodnight, Tommy,” she said politely, and hurled him through the door and clear off the front porch. Tom Cunha landed well, and turned back to her with a baffled expression. She tossed the plastic bag of fresh codfish he had brought her after him, scoring a direct hit on his head. “Not tonight,” she said. “I have a haddock.” She cackled with laughter and slammed the door on him.
The laugh didn’t last long; she was too angry. And then the anger too failed her, and she was back to sad. Her shoulders slumped; she turned and headed wearily for the kitchen.
Two weeks to the day since Rand had gone back up to the Shimizu—for good, he said, and she believed him. Fourteen days since her marriage had officially ended. Half a moon of loneliness and celibacy. Provincetown was a small town, its jungle drums especially efficient in winter; the unaffiliated were already beginning to sniff around. P-town being P-town, no more than half of them were male, Rhea’s own preference. But God dammit, couldn’t one of the oafs approach the business with any class? She wasn’t asking for love, or even strong affection. Given the least salve for her pride, she might have relished a chance to lose herself in simple sweaty exercise. Instead she got fresh codfish and jovial offers to “take her off the hook.”
Soon the global literary grapevine would catch up… and then the offers would be even more offensive.
A whole planet of men to choose from, and she didn’t know one she’d swap for another night with Rand.
Or Duncan, for that matter. As she passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen, her eye fell on Driftglass, tumbling slowly end over end beside the bay window, balanced on an air-jet at head height. She had placed the vacuum sculpture there, defiantly, the day after Rand had gone back to orbit—right beside the spot where the family-portrait holo of the three of them stood. She stopped and contemplated it now. It seemed to belong there, next to the bay view, among all the old photos and mementos of Paixao history, looked to be a true part of Provincetown.
And all at once that irritated her. It was not of Provincetown. It was of space. It did not belong in that living room. The symbolism was wrong, it clashed. Things in Provincetown did not turn end over end in mid-air, defying gravity. Nothing in Provincetown was formed by vacuum except the town government. Space had not only taken her husband and her marriage, it had sent a tentacle down into her very own living room here on Earth. And made her like it. It had seduced her the same way it had Rand… with beauty. She could never, would never, go back… but she would never again fully leave space behind. A piece of her heart was caught there.
All right: if even her childhood home wasn’t safe, there was always the shore. There was nothing of space there. She reversed direction and headed for the door. No sense going to the kitchen anyway; she hadn’t been able to choke down a bite in days.
She paused on the porch, to make sure both that Tommy was gone and that she had smart clothes on, and then summoned the car. The bayside beach was less than a block away by foot… but the ocean beach on the north side of town would be windier, and thus less populated now that the sunset was long over.
As the seat harness enfolded her, she noticed that the passenger seat beside her was still set to Rand’s dimensions. With a sharp gesture, she randomized it again. On second thought, she adjusted it to Colly’s shape, and randomized the back seat. Time for the kid to start sitting up front. “Herring Cove, public lot, via Commercial Street,” she said, and the car moved forward at the local maximum of 20 KPH.
The four days of Rand’s visit had been agony. The first day was Colly’s birthday, and both parents were invincibly cheerful, maintaining the truce even when Colly wasn’t around for fear of shattering it. That was bad, but it was worse when they began talking on the second day. It took them two more days, progressively worse through exhaustion, before both were willing to concede that there was nothing to say, nothing to be done. Rand was staying in space; she was staying on Terra; no compromise existed. Once they had admitted that, they’d made love one last time, ceremonially. Rhea had never made love in despair before. She did not quite regret it in retrospect… but she wished she could stop remembering it for a while.