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He slept, on a moderately full stomach, in his own bed and without the wine.
And he wakened with the sense of a presence leaning over him, stared up startled into the face of Waden Jenks.
“Good morning, Artist. What a day to oversleep, eh?”
He blinked, gathering his wits, decided no one just wakened was capable of matching words with Waden, and rolled out of bed in silence, stalked off to the bath and showered and shaved while Waden waited.
“Hardly conversational,” Waden complained from the other room.
“What shall I say?” He negotiated the razor past his moving lips. “People who break into rooms shouldn’t expect coherent responses. What time is it?”
“Nine. I didn’t want to go without you.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure I’d go. After all, mypart’s done.”
“You’re incredible.”
“Meaning you don’t believe me?”
“Meaning I don’t.”
Herrin smiled at the mirror, ducked his bead, washed off and dried his face. He walked out where Waden was standing, searched the closet for clean clothes, nothing splendid, but rather his ordinary Student’s Black. Waden was resplendent in gray, expensive, elegant; but he usually was.
“You know,” Waden said, watching him, “that you could havebetter than that.”
“I don’t take care of things like that. I forget. I start to work and ruin clothes. I’m afraid I’ll never achieve elegance.” He pulled on trousers and pulled on his shirt and fastened the collar and the cuffs, sat down and put on socks and boots, all sober black.
“You really mean to wear that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Incredible.”
“I’m simply not ostentatious.” He finished, stood up, and combed his hair in the room mirror ... paused there, recalling the invisible brooch which was his private absurdity, his only ornament. He found Waden’s presence intimidating in that regard, and for a moment entertained the thought that thisday at least he should not play the joke.
No. On those terms he had to, or Waden did intimidate him.
He hunted out the clothes he had dropped the night before, unclipped the brooch and stood up, smiled at Waden, clipping it to his collar. “I’m ready to go if you are. Will Keye come?”
“She’s waiting outside.”
“ That’sremarkable. She’s always refused. Possibly a taste for the finished and not the inchoate.”
“Do you suggest so?”
“Ah, I was speaking of art.”
Waden smiled tautly. “Such deprecation isn’t like you. Areyou hesitant?”
“What, to offend you? Never. You thrive on it. But we’re both finished now, while before, you’d achieved and I’d done nothing. Somethingstands out there now.”
“Not to win Keye’s attention.”
Herrin laughed. “Hardly. Keye’s attentions are to herself and always have been.” He opened the door, stopped because there were Outsiders there. Blue-uniformed Outsiders.
“Something wrong?” Waden asked.
Half a heartbeat he hesitated, seeing the game and still finding it early in the morning for maneuvers like this. Invisibles. He wore a brooch. Waden Jenks had attendants. He stepped aside to let Waden out and closed the door. Keye was there, sitting in a chair a little distance down the hall, reading, legs crossed and nonchalant.
“Keye,” he said, and she looked up, folded the book and tucked it into her pocket, rising with every evidence of delight in the day.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.” He looked back at Waden. The escort was still with them. He smiled, oblivious to it all, and the three of them and their invisible companions trooped down the several turns of the stairs to the main level and out, into the pleasant sunlight.
“The light is an advantage, he said.
“I should think,” said Waden.
They walked across Port Street and the escort kept with them, dogging their steps. Notice them, Waden defied him; Herrin drew a deep breath and strode along briskly with Keye and Waden on either side of him, but in his heart he wasdisturbed, angered that Waden had found a way to anger him, a means which he had not anticipated to try to make this day less for him than it might be. Waden was Waden and there was no forgetting that. This troublesome fragment of his own reality existed to vex him—and that Waden took such pains to vex him—was in itself amusing.
Through the archway in the hedge and onto Main itself, the escort stayed; he heard them, a rustle and a crunching step on gravel and on paving. Looking down Main even from this far away he could see an unaccustomed gathering, where the dome filled the square at the heart of Kierkegaard.
His own people would be there, of course, and by the look of it, a good many citizens ... an amazing number of citizens. The street was virtually deserted until they reached the vicinity of the dome, and then some of the bystanders outside saw them, and the murmur went through the crowd like a breath of wind.
People moved for them, clearing them a path, and the main gateway of the dome emptied of people, as the crowd moved aside to let them pass; people flowed back again like air into a vacuum, with a little murmur of voices, but before them was quiet, such quiet that only the footfalls of those retreating echoed within the dome.
“Master Law,” some whispered, and “Waden Jenks,” said others; but Keye’s name they did not whisper, because the ethicist was not so public; the whispers died, and left the echoes of their own steps, which slowed ... even Herrin looked, as the others did.
Sun ... entered here; shafts transfixed the dark and flowed over curtain-walls and marble folds, touched high surfaces and faded in low, touched the clustered heads of the crowd which hovered about the edges, the first ring, the second....
And the third, where the central pillar formed itself out of the textured stone and dominated the eye. The face, sunlit, glowed, gazed into upward infinities; there was little of shadow on it. It seemed to have force in it, from inside the stone; it was hero and hope and a longing which drew at the throat and quickened the heart.
It was not Waden as he was; it was possibility. And for the first time Herrin himself saw it by daylight without the metal scaffolding which had shrouded it and let him see only a portion of it at a time. It lived, the best that Waden might be ... and for a moment, looking on it, Waden’s face took on that look, a beauty not ordinarily his; others, looking on it, had such a look—it was on Keye’s face, but quickly became a frown, defensive and rejecting.
Herrin smiled, and drew in the breath he had only half taken. Smiled when Waden looked at him.
And Waden’s face became Keye’s, doubting. “It’s remarkable, Artist.”
“Walk the interior, listento it, it has other dimensions, First Citizen.”
Waden hesitated, then walked, walked in full circuit of the pillar, and looked at the work of the walls, let himself be drawn off into the stone curtains of the other supports and of the ring-walls. Herrin stood, and cast occasional looks at Keye, who once stared back at him, frowning uncertainly, and at the invisible escort, who had also entered here. He knewthat they saw something remarkable, and for a moment had lost themselves in it. Waden walked temporarily unescorted; and if the escort was supposed to watch him, that failed too. Herrin looked beyond them, smiled in pleasure, because he saw members of his own crew, who gri
Walking the circuit of the place, appreciating the folds and complications of it, took time. Herrin clasped his hands behind his back and waited, in the center and under everyone’s eyes, until at last Waden Jenks finished his tour and came back.
Waden nodded. “Fine, very fine, Artist. But I expected that of you.”
Herrin made a move of his hand toward the central pillar, the sculpted face, on which sun and time had now passed. Waden looked, for a moment surprised: the stone face had changed, acquired the smallest hint of a more somber look to come.