Engineman (66 page)

"That's unfair, Perry," Ralph cut in. "Richard has a valid point."

"Perhaps," I said, "you might be less willing to expend a human life if that life was one closer to home. Your own, for instance?"

Bartholomew regarded me with startlingly blue eyes, unflinching. "I state categorically that my life is worth nothing beside the existence of a truly fine work of art."

"That," Ralph said, taking over the argument, "is letting Perry off the hook too easily." He swirled the contents of his tumbler, regarding Bartholomew across the table. "Would you be as willing to lay down the life of someone you loved?"

I was suddenly aware of a charged silence on the patio.

Everyone was watching Perry Bartholomew as he considered his wine glass, a slight smile of amusement playing on his lips. "Perhaps we should first of all conduct a semantic analysis of what you mean by the word 'love'?"

Ralph was red in the face by now. "You know damn well what I mean. But to counter your cynicism, I'll rephrase the question: would you lay down the life of someone close to you for a work of art?"

Bartholomew thought about this, a consummate performer playing the cynosure. "Would I?" he said at last. "That is a very interesting question. If I were to be true to my ideals, then by all means I should. Perhaps though, in my weakness, I would not..." He paused there, and I thought we had him. Then he continued, "But if I did not, if I chose the life of someone close to me over the existence of a work of art - then I would be morally wrong in doing so, prey to temporary and sentimental aberration."

Ralph massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger in a weary gesture of despair. He looked up suddenly. "I pity you, Perry. I really do. Don't you realise, it's the thing that you call the 'sentimental aberration' that is at the very heart of each of us - that thing called love, which you claim not to know?"

Bartholomew merely stared at him, that superior smile on his lips. "I think we should have that semantic debate, after all."

"You can't apply your reductionist sciences to human emotion, damn you!"

"I think perhaps I could, and disprove for good the notion of love."

"You don't convince me, Perry - for all your cynicism." Ralph got to his feet. "But I can see that I'm wasting my time. If you'll excuse me, I'll bid you good night." He nodded at Bartholomew and left the patio with a quiet dignity that won the respect of everyone present.

Bartholomew gave a listless wave and watched him go, a twist of sardonic amusement in his expression. "Romantics!" he said with venom when Ralph was out of earshot.

The party broke up soon after that and I retired to my dome.

I woke late the following morning, breakfasted on the balcony of my dome overlooking the lawns, and then strolled around the oasis towards Ralph's dome. A couple of days earlier I'd finished the sculpture I had been working on, and I was still in that phase of contented self-satisfaction which follows creation.

I was passing beneath the pendant globe of Perry Bartholomew's dome when I heard his summons.

"Ah, Richard... Just the man. Do you think I might borrow your body for a minute or two?" He was leaning from an upper balcony, attired in a green silk dressing gown. "I require a little assistance in moving my exhibit."

After his arrogance last night, I was tempted to ignore him. The Oasis had attendants to do the manual labour, but at the moment they were busy with other artists' work on the concourse beside the water, ready for the judging of the competition tomorrow. I was about to call up to him that he'd have to wait until the attendants were free, when I recalled his overblown claims concerning his latest work of art. My curiosity was piqued.

"I'll be right up," I said.

I passed beneath the globe and entered the escalator shaft which carried me up to the central lounge. The door slid open and I paused on the threshold. "Enter, dear boy," Bartholomew called from another room. "I'm dressing. I'll be with you in a minute."

I stepped into a large, circular room covered with a luxurious, cream carpet more like a pelt, and equipped with sunken sofa-bunkers. Several of Bartholomew's abstract sculptures occupied prominent positions - hard, angular designs in grey metals, striking in their ugliness.

Bartholomew emerged on the far side of the room. "Good of you to help me, dear boy. The attendants are never around when one needs them."

He wore a white suit with a pink cravat, and seen at close quarters I was struck by how seedy, how ill the man appeared. He liked to project an image of foppish sophistication, but such a display from someone so evidently unwell seemed merely pathetic.

"I hope Ralph hasn't taken the huff over our disagreement last night?"

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't seen him today."

Bartholomew chuckled. "The man is a silly old goat," he said. "When will he learn?"

I was stung. I was about to respond that Ralph was a fine artist and a good man, then paused. "Learn what?" I asked, suspicious.

Bartholomew crossed to a pedestal arrayed with bottles and glasses. "Would you care for a drink, Richard?"

I told him that it was a little too early for me, frustrated by his calculated reticence. He was clearly playing another of his infuriating mind games. He poured himself a large brandy, turned and considered me.

"Learn," he said, "not to take so seriously my little digs. Our differences of opinion hardly matter."

"They matter to Ralph," I said. "He objects strongly to your philosophy. What should he do? Sit back and let your comments go unopposed?"

"But my dear boy, don't you think that I object to his philosophy? I assure you, I find his sentimentality just as sickening as he evidently finds my... my realism." He sighed. "It's a pity we can't still be friends. We were once very close, you know?"

I hesitated. Ralph rarely spoke of his friendship with Bartholomew. "What happened?"

"Oh, we encountered different circumstances, experienced divergent phenomena, and adopted our own philosophies to deal with them. Ralph was always an idealist, a romantic at heart. I was a realist, and the more I experienced, the more I came to see that my view of the world was the right one. Ralph has always had it too easy." He shrugged. "We've reached the stage now where our respective views are irreconcilable. I think he's a woolly-minded bleeding heart, and he no doubt thinks me a hard-nosed neo-fascist. But you know this - you probably think of me in the same way." He smiled, challengingly, across at me.

I murmured something to the contrary and avoided his gaze, wishing I had the strength to tell him what I really thought.

While he was speaking, I noticed a holo-cube on a polished wooden table in the centre of the room. It was large, perhaps half a metre square, and depicted a brown-limbed little girl in a bright blue dress, with masses of black hair and big eyes of lustrous obsidian. The contradiction between Bartholomew's ideals, and the display of such a romantic work of art, was not lost on me.

I crossed the room and paused beside the table. "It's quite beautiful," I said.

"I'm glad you like it. She is my daughter, Elegy."

"Your daughter?" I was taken aback, surprised first of all that he had a daughter, and then that he should choose to display her image in a holo-cube for all to see.

"The child," he said, "is incredibly intelligent. Precocious, in fact. She will go far." And, with that, any notion that Bartholomew had succumbed to paternal sentiment was erased. For him, the holo-cube of his daughter was merely a reminder of her intelligence quotient.

"She celebrates her eighth birthday tomorrow," he went on. "She is visiting me directly from her boarding school in Rome. You'll be able to debate world affairs with her, Richard."

I ignored the sarcasm. "I look forward to meeting her."

Bartholomew smiled. "But come, I'm keeping you. Please, this way."

We took a spiral staircase down to his studio. I recalled that he had described his work last night as utilising a continuum-frame, and I wondered what to expect. The large, circular chamber was filled with sunlight and the machinery of his art: large power tools, computers, slabs of steel and other raw materials.

He gestured across the room to his latest creation, standing against the far wall. It was a heavy, industrial-looking metal frame, hexagonal and perhaps three metres high - for all the world like the nut of a giant nut and bolt. It was not the dull, rusting frame, however, that was the work of art, but what the frame contained: an eerie, cobalt glow, shot through with white light, like fireworks exploding in slow motion. As I stared at it I convinced myself that I could make out vague shapes and forms, human figures and faces, surfacing from within the glow. But the images never remained long enough, or appeared with sufficient definition, for me to be sure. I might merely have been imagining the forms. The piece did, however, fill me with unease.

"The frame is an early prototype of the Keilor-Vincicoff interface," Bartholomew said. "I bought it for an absolute fortune when I realised it could be put to artistic use. What you see at its centre is a section of the
nada
-continuum, the timeless, spaceless form that underpins reality. Enginemen posit that the
nada
-continuum is Nirvana." He laughed. "I contend that it is nothing but a blank canvas, if you like, upon which we can project the contents of our psyches."

He indicated a computer keyboard set into the frame. "I programmed it directly from here-" tapping his head "-and it was the gruelling work of almost a year. It is totally original in form and content, and well worth the agony of creation."

"Is it titled?" I asked.

Bartholomew nodded. "
Experience
," he said.

I looked from what might have been a woman's face, screaming in terror, to the artist. "I'm impressed," I said.

He barked a laugh. "You Romantics! Unlike your work, this is not merely visual. It was created with the express intention of being participated in. Go ahead, pass through."

I stared again into its pulsing cobalt depths, veined with coruscating light, and stepped onto the plinth.

I glanced back at Bartholomew. "Are you quite sure?"

"Of course, my dear boy! Don't be afraid. I'll follow you in, if you wish."

I nodded uncertainly, wondering if I was doing the right thing. With reluctance, and not a little fear, I took one hesitant pace into the blue light. I was immediately enveloped in the glow, and without points of reference to guide my senses I experienced instant disorientation and nausea. I felt as though I were weightless and spinning out of control, head over heel.

More disconcerting than the physical discomfort, however, was the psychological. Whereas seen from outside the images in the glow were fleeting, nebulous, now they assailed me, or rather appeared in my mind's eye, full-blown and frightening. I beheld human forms bent and twisted in horrifying torques of torture - limbs elasticating to breaking-point, torsos wound like springs of flesh, faces stretched into caricatures of agony. These depredations were merely the physical counterpart of a prevailing mental anguish which permeated, at Bartholomew's perverted behest, this nightmare continuum. And beyond this, as the intellectual sub-text to the work of art, there invaded my head the ethos that humanity is driven by the subconscious devil of rapacity, power and reward - to the total exclusion of the attributes of selflessness, altruism and love.

Then, one pace later - though I seemed to have suffered the nightmare for hours - I was out of the frame and in the blessed sanity of the real world. As the horror of the experience gradually diminished, I took in my surroundings. I had assumed I would come out in the narrow gap between the frame and the wall - but to my amazement I found myself in the adjacent room. I turned and stared. Projecting from the wall - through which I had passed - was a horizontal column of blue light, extending perhaps halfway into the room. As I watched, Bartholomew stepped from the glowing bar of light - the artist
emerging
from his work - and smiled at me. "Well, Richard, what do you think?" He regarded me intently, a torturer's gleam in his eye.

To my shame I said, "It's incredible," when I should have had the courage to say, "If that's the state of your psyche, then I pity you." I only hoped that the agony I had experienced within the frame was a partial, or exaggerated, reflection of Bartholomew's state of mind.

"The depth of the beam can be increased from one metre to around fifteen. The devices are still used in shipyards and factories to transport heavy goods over short distances. I'll show you..." He stepped through the frame into the next room, and while he was gone I marvelled at how he could prattle on so matter-of-factly about the mechanics of something so monstrous.

Then I reminded myself that Bartholomew believed he had created here a work of lasting art.

Before me, the beam extended even further into the room, almost touching the far wall. Then it decreased in length to just one metre. He shortened it even further and, as if by magic, the wall suddenly appeared.

I returned to the studio, walking through the door this time rather than taking the malignant shortcut through the frame.

"We'll leave it at its original setting," Bartholomew said. "It's easier to move that way."