EIGHT

Massive, slow-spoken Admiral Granstad and family invited the passengers to dinner in their suite.

Yvonne Canter was introduced as 'Yolanda Cohen'. Skip didn't contradict. Poor thing, she looked altogether empty, save for a ghost behind her eyes.

'Are you a student, Mr Wayburn?' He could barely hear her routine-polite inquiry,

'No,' he said. 'I'm kind of looking around.'

'Oh,' she said. For the rest of the evening she spoke little, mostly when spoken to. He didn't see her in the next three days, except briefly and distantly. Though they were the only two outsiders, seclusion wasn't hard to manage. Ortnen den Lange was enormous. Besides command posts and offices, it housed in ample quarters four thousand men, women, and children, schools, hospital, cultural and recreational facilities, and an astounding variety of small private enterprises.

Skip no longer minded biding his time. It brimmed with fun and fascination. His bachelor cabin, however comfortable and charmingly decorated, was simply to wash and sleep in. Otherwise he was exploring the ship and its half-dozen companions. The latter were more interesting technically; they did the work, whereas Ormen was like a floating conurb, linked to the rest of the planet in standard electronic ways.

But the flagship had the sports and games, the delightful informal restaurants and taverns and live theatre, the people.

These Vikings might exalt honest toil (well, actually, competent and conscientious use of the machines that did the toiling) and self-reliance. However, they weren't dour about it. Instead, they were as jolly a lot as Skip had ever encountered. The average upper-class Orthian was doubtless more hard-driving, well informed, thoroughly trained, including in the new mental disciplines which could evoke effective genius from ordinary cerebral endowment; but he was also anomic, chronically anxious, inwardly alone: a sane and realistic logician, emotionally crazy as a hoot owl.

The oldest Vikings kept youthful spirits. And the younger adults immediately swarmed over Skip. They spoke excellent English. He was the first sigaroon most of them had encountered. They revelled in what he could offer, and vied to interest and divert him in return. His first three nights after the Granstads'

stiffish dinner, he was carousing till implausible hours. On the morning of the fourth day, a stunning blonde nurse he'd met in the course of this invited him to eat at her place after she got off work. She made it clear that that wasn't all she was inviting him for.

Sure, let sunshine and sea air draw La Canter out of her shell. First she has to satisfy herself I can't possibly be a G-man. Dunno why she objects so violently to being guarded— touch-me-not personality reinforced to an unreasonable degree by her nervous condition, I suppose— but if it's a fact that the U.S. government had to accommodate to, I can do the same. Next she has to get acquainted with me. Well, okay. We don't reach port for quite a spell.

Intending to be properly rested for the evening ahead, Skip took his sketchbook and coloured pencils on to a promenade deck. He was alone there; the population was at its jobs or in its schools. My chance to try drawing waves, not making them.

The scene cried for a thousand different pictures. Below the bleached mahogany and ropework safety rails of this high place, the superstructure fell down, fore and aft, occasionally rearing back aloft, in a many-shadowed intricacy not unlike a pastel-and-white, streamlined Grand Canyon. Often its severity was relieved by miniature parks or hanging gardens. Beyond, the remaining fleet was strewn across kilometres. The lean-hulled service vessel paced closest; a hum from one of its machine shops drifted to him. Farther out, a squat factory ship processed kelp harvested elsewhere; water roiled white at the intake and exhaust pipes of a mineral-extractor craft; the trawler was more distant, almost on the gigantic circumference of vision. The sea surges were wrinkled, foam-laced, royal blue shading to clear green under the crests and soft almost-black in the troughs, forever moving, alive with change, like the blood in a man's heart. Diamond dust gleamed and danced, cast by the sun out of a gentle sky where two or three bright clouds drifted.

Stabilized, Ormen was free from roll, and its nuclear engine made neither smoke nor noise. A low vibration did pervade the hull, again reminding Skip of the pulse inside himself. The ocean rushed, boomed, hissed, laughed, beneath a lulling cool wind that carried odours of salt, iodine, ozone. The wind rumpled Skip's hair and tried to play with his sketchbook. He swore at it cheerfully because he liked the song it blew, of the leagues upon leagues it had fared and the wanderings still to come.

'Good morning, Mr Wayburn.'

He turned, caught off guard by the soprano voice. TJh, good morning, Dr Can—Miss Cohen.' Damn! I was supposed to play along unless/until she admits who she is.

She regarded him fairly calmly. 'Canter, were you about to say? You're not the first. I do resemble her.

Not surprising. We're second cousins.'

'Oh. Well, I will be unique and not bug you for details about your famous relative,' answered Skip, giving thanks to any gods who might expect it. I'll bet you've scarcely met her.'

'You'd win your bet.'

That she could lie thus easily indicated she was making a fast recovery. Furthermore, while her tunic and slacks formed a prim contrast to the sloppiness of his coverall, their buttercup colour must reflect a degree of cheerfulness. Her lost weight had just begun coming back; high cheekbones and arched nose stood forth hatchetlike. Yet the ponytailed hair shone ebony, the tilted and really rather lovely eyes were no longer dark-rimmed, the lips— their remaining paleness not hidden by cosmetics—curved in a smile that was small, a wee bit frightened, nevertheless a genuine smile.

'I didn't want to avoid you,' Skip said, 'nor bother you either. The admiral's wife told me you need a rest.'

'I hate to… seem rude,' she said hesitantly. 'Mrs Granstad told you aright. Finding you when I came up here—' She groped out a cigarette from her beltpurse and struck it.

'Please don't think you have to make conversation. In fact, I can leave. I've plenty else to keep me out of mischief, or in it as the case may be.'

Her smile revived, a little larger. 'Yes, I noticed you off and on. Cutting quite a social swath, no? And I see you're an artist.'

'Gnawing away at it. I'm afraid these billows of mine won't give Hokusai much competition.'

'May I see?' she asked. He handed her the book. She studied his sketch with what he believed was appreciation. 'Why, that's excellent. The way you catch the interference patterns— Have you more? May I look through?'

'If you want. Mainly they're doodles. Or cartoons. I drew this, for instance, on the chopper that brought me here.'

A laugh, weak but a laugh, broke from her. The picture showed two real Vikings, in horned helmets and ring-mail, who stood on a fjord shore watching a longship sail past. One said to the other: 'He's a pretty peaceable fellow, you know.' The figurehead on the ship and the tail on the stern-post were those of a mouse.

'You could sell such things, I'm sure,' she said.

Skip shrugged. 'Sometimes I do, like to a small-town paper. The big periodicals take too long to reply.

Chances are I'd be elsewhere when they did, leaving no forwarding address.'

'Indeed?' She returned his book and inhaled slowly of her cigarette, studying him edgewise. 'How come?'

'I'm a sigaroon. Migratory jack-of-miscellaneous-trades, entertainer, you name it and I'll tell you what to feed it.'

'Pardon me, you look too voung for that.'

'Younger'n I am. I turned officially adult four years back. That's when I went on the wing.'

He had tried it almost two years earlier, but had been caught. The officer who made the arrest took him for a ratpack type and administered a skilful beating. Because his restlessness had brought ever more friction into familial relationships, his parents consented to his three months' commitment to a juvenile rehabilitation centre. There the authorities weren't cruel, but he was soon ready to vomit with boredom.

Why mention it? What embitterment had been in him was long since blown out by the many winds he had felt.

'And you're obviously well educated,' Yvonne Canter said.

'A lot of us are.' Skip explained the background and philosophy of his part of the Byworld. She was a good listener. 'I've lots of respectable friends,' he finished, 'including the man who arranged for me to visit here.'

He could guess her thought: An influential friend, to arrange his passage simultaneously with mine.

Not that the Vikings are bound to obey directives from the American government. They find its goodwill useful, though.... Well, he seems pleasant and harmless. I won't complain.

Skip's task was to make himself more than 'pleasant and harmless' in her eyes. An awkwardness had descended. She said lamely, 'I wonder where their submarine is today.'

'They collect manganese nodules off the bottom,' he replied. 'I was told it's scouting for new territory, like the farmer's cat.'

'What?'

'Nothing,' he said in haste. She might find the joke a trifle too earthy. 'You know, Miss Cohen, I'd be glad to do your portrait if you'd sit. At your convenience, naturally, and you could keep the result. You have an exotic look that challenges me.'

'Oh? How?' Pinkness crept into the ivory cheeks, and the lashes fluttered. She was not so far off the human female norm that she didn't enjoy a compliment.

'Hold still a minute, please, and I'll try to show you.' He flipped to a fresh page. Clutching book and pencil box in the left hand, he circled back and forth around her, crouched, cocked his head, finally settled on an angle of view and started drawing. Though she had finished her smoke, and perhaps wished for another, she held her pose, stiffly and self-consciously.

His pencil flew, leaving a trail of curves and shadings. He had intended to glamourize as much as he guessed he could without insulting her intelligence. But as the picture grew, the concept did likewise.

Erase this line, that shadow, damnation, they're wrong! She is beautiful— austere beauty, half abstract, like Death Valley or a Monterey cypress bent and strained by a century of storms.

'Excuse me, I've had a misfire, would you hang on for an extra two-three minutes?' Better not make those comparisons aloud. She'd doubtless misunderstand. 'There! Thanks a googolplex. It's rough, but maybe you can see what I saw.'

He ripped off the sheet and gave it to her. She made a low noise of astonishment. Colour mounted and sank in her face. Her index finger searched along his perspectives. He had done more than subtly emphasize her best features, he had captured a quality of bowstring tautness. The slightly Oriental cast of countenance remained, but the clothes flowed back around bosom and leg in a manner to recall Nike of Samothrace, and the rail behind her was shown from a point which made it clear that she was looking into the sky.

'I never… Remarkable,' she breathed. 'You make me appear more strenuous than I am—'

Oh, no, Yvonne.

'—or am I reading something in that nobody else would? What a souvenir!' Her glance dropped. 'If it's for me,' she said uncertainly.

'Why, sure, if you want,' Skip told her.' 'S nothing more than a cartoon, in the original sense of the word.'

Outrageous, the idea bounced through his mind of adding the Sigman and a caption. ('Now what did it mean by that}' Or. 'Does its language consist entirely of smut?' Or—) 'I'm really trying to sell you on letting me paint you,' he reminded her. Your portrait, I should say, though you know, when you've put on a few more kilos I could have fun— Whoa, horsie.

'I'll have to think about it. Your offer is most kind, of course.' She struck a fresh cigarette. Hastily, as if to steer conversation from herself: 'You must have earned by your talent occasionally, Mr Wayburn.

Besides casual sales of drawings, that is.'

'Call me Skip, will you? Everybody else does. Complicates matters here, it meaning "ship" in Norwegian though pronounced about the same as the English word___Yeah, I have got commissions here and there. I've grown a tad cautious about accepting them, after some trouble one landed me in, a couple years back.'

'What happened?'

'Longish story.'

'I've nothing to hurry for.'

Good! That means she's enjoying this chatter of mine. Keep it up, boy.

'Well, you see,' he began, 'I chanced through a tiny Southern town, not Byworld exactly, but more fundamentalist than is easy to believe in this day and age. In fact, everything there was half a century or worse out of date. They even had a jukebox in the diner—ever seen one? The Sigman, by being rude enough to exist, had upset the faithful like a tornado. They had a reaction going that would've put a Colossus rocket in Lunar orbit. I fell talking with the owner of that diner. He meant to close for a week and call on his relatives elsewhere. I suggested he let me brighten his bleak little place while he was away.

We settled on a price for a Bible scene.

'I didn't let anybody in before the grand unveiling, and I cooked and slept there when the fever had really grabbed me. I did patronize my friendly neighbourhood moonshiner. First time I came back from him, I looked at what I'd begun, and realized what a noble opportunity I was missing. All that space, and I planned to do the Sermon on the Mount? Ridiculous! Not that Jesus lacks possibilities, but I haven't clarified them for myself and see no sense in copying someone else's ideas.

'When I woke next morning the zeal was still in me, proving that however drunk she was last night and hung over today, my Muse was authentic. I laid in a supply of jugs and for the rest of that week, half out of my head from lack of proper food and sleep, plus superabundance of corn squeezin's, I painted the best tning I'd ever done, maybe the best I'll ever do, the Revelation of St John the Divine.

'Angels in the four corners, ceiling high, emptied vials of wrath upon the jukebox, the television set, and the doors of the ladies' and gents' rooms. God the Father burned with glory on that ceiling; his long white hair and beard tossed in the storm of destruction, like his robes, and his face was half human, half lion.

The Son on his right hand was less successful—I wanted to show that he pitied the damned he was helping cast into eternal fire— well, he came out more like a grimly satisfied revivalist saying, "I told you so." The flames around the thrones— not hellflames, mind you; modelled on solar prominences

—reached up around the Holy Ghost, whose wings carried their leap farther. Gabriel I modelled on a film I'd once seen, a trumpeter 'way back in the jazz era, Bix Beider-becke; he was obviously blowing riffs, syncopating, having the time of his immortal life. The rest of the angels, the elders, the whole divine crew, were distracted by his concert. Some were annoyed, trying to concentrate on their work, but a couple were listening in totally goofed-out ecstasy. Me, I had the time of my life with the zoo around the throne___I'm babbling.'

'No, no, do continue,' she said, her gaze never leaving him.

'M-m, well, etymology aside, why should murals not include floors, considering how tough the modern paints are? This floor became Earth. The dead were rising out of it. You saw tombstones falling, graves opening, the whole scene chaotic, since I guessed that by Judgment Day every spot on the planet will've been used a thousand times for burials. I doubted the resurrection of the flesh would be instantaneous so I showed different stages—a recent corpse still half rotten, a skull rolling to rejoin its vertebrae, two skeletons squabbling over a shinbone, ancient dust starting to whirl into the first ghostly outlines— And the completed cases! I didn't try for tragic dignity, like the Orpheus Fountain in Stockholm. Revelations is a wild book, utter lunacy. The weaker among the resurrected were painfully trying to haul themselves upright with the help of the counter stools. A couple of lovers were crying for joy in each other's arms, yes, but they were old when they died. Remembering that in heaven there is no marriage, a young couple was trying to sneak a quick—ah— well, a cowboy and an Indian were kicking and gouging, and you can imagine the rest.

'Along the lower part of the front wall I put a distant view of burning cities, floods, earthquakes, and similar calamities, including a lightning bolt that struck a fundamentalist church. On the right wall, the saved were whirling upward like dry leaves in a cyclonic wind. Most I modelled on happy drunks, happy potheads, et cetera, but some looked dubious, some bewildered, one was thoroughly airsick. Naturally, everyone was naked. Scripture says nothing about restoring shrouds. On the left wall, the damned were similarly tumbling downward. Hellflames were roaring aloft to greet them, and the first few had begun to sizzle, oh, that was not nice. Nor were the devils who hurried them along. I'll spare you details. Satan himself was better-looking, in an ophidian way. One hand reached out to rake the sinners in, the other made a fist at God; middle finger extended.

'Behind the counter, for the delectation of the trade, was a further view of the opposition, the Great Whore of Babylon on her beast. I wrote the number of the beast in binary. She was glad-eyeing the Antichrist, and I made it perfectly obvious what he had in mind___No, sorry, I don't want to offend you.'

Skip's apology was pro forma. She was giggling. 'Oh, my, oh, my,' she said. 'How did the town react?'

'A-wing and awash as I was, it never occurred to me they mightn't appreciate my masterpiece.' Skip sighed. 'I had to justify my nickname for sure, that day.' Not the first or last time I was glad to be good at karate and kendo. 'No doubt the owner repainted.'

She sobered. He realized that the verve of his account had been due to more than gusto, and that she noticed this. 'Odd,' she said slowly. 'I never met anybody before who had art in the blood.'

'Takes the strangest forms,' he tried to quip. His reference escaped her.

'Competent illustrators, of course,' she went on. Her gaze moved from him to the water and back. 'Two or three who bragged about their dedication and were not competent. None were real artists, the way I've known several bone-real musicians and scientists. Until you today.'

Dare I take the opening? Yes— carefully, carefully. Jet back the microsecond she registers distaste for the subject. 'I thank you,' he drawled. 'Me, however, I suspect no person alive, no human who ever lived short of maybe a Rembrandt or a Bach, compares in… artistness?… to Earth's distinguished guest.'

Did she flinch? He couldn't quite tell. But raised brows questioned him.

'The Sigman.' Skip pointed skyward at random.

'Well, m-m, Canter—' she couldn't help blushing— 'Canter does, you know, appear to have proved the being insists an aesthetic standard be met. Like, say, a Heian period Japanese nobleman.'

'Not what I'm getting at, though Dr Canter's work does suggest my notion may not be too skewed.'

'What is your idea? Now she was merely being courteous, he assumed; yet she didn't sound resigned.

He was reminded of how you played a game fish on a thin line. 'Aw, nothing much.' He turned, leaned on the rail, stared out across the waves. 'A sigaroon-type idea.'

She moved to stand beside him. 'Go on, Skip. Do.'

He struggled to sound calm. 'Maybe I'm dead wrong,' he said. 'I think I know what the Sigman came for, what it's doing, why it's hardly paid attention to us, how we can make it sit up and wag the tail it hasn't got and declare that nothing is too good for the human race. Extravagant of me, no?'

He risked a sidelong glance. The profile that intrigued him was turned seaward, the ponytail fluttering back in a strengthened breeze. He hadn't scared her off. She did grip the rail tightly, and her voice was a trifle strained: 'Tell me.'