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“It’s different, isn’t it?” Waden asked. The change was small and to the unfamiliar eye, deceptive. “It’s different.”
“It changes every moment that the sun touches it, with every season, every hour, with storm and morning and nightfall and every difference of the light ... it changes. Yes.”
Waden looked at it again, and at him, and reached and pressed his shoulder, standing beside him. “I chose you well. I chose you well, Artist.”
“A matter of dispute, who chose whom. I don’t grant you that point.”
“But how do I see it? How does anyone see it, in its entirety?”
Herrin smiled. “It’s for the city, First Citizen; for everyone who walks here and passes through it for years upon years, at varied hours in different seasons of his life, and for every person, different because of the schedule he keeps; different vision for anyone who cares to stand here for hours watching the changes progress. You’re a moving target, Waden Jenks, a subject that won’t hold still, and not the same to any two people. It’s time itself I’ve sculpted into it, and the sun and the planet cooperate. Done in one season it had to be. It’s unique, Waden Jenks.”
Waden had not ceased to look at the face, which grew steadily more sober, the illusion of light within it in the process of dying now. And the living face began to take on anxiety. “What does it become? What are the changes going toward?”
“Come at another hour and see.”
“I ask you, Artist. What does it become?”
“You’ve seen the Apollo; Dionysus is coming. It achieves that this afternoon.”
“This thing could become an obsession; I’d have to sit hour after hour to know this thing in all its shapes.”
“And, I suspect, season after season. Look at the time and the sun and the quality of the light, and wonder, First Citizen, what this face is. You don’t live only in the Residency any more: you’re here. In this form, in changing forms.”
“Would I likeall the faces?”
Herrin smiled guardedly. “No. In Dionysus ... are moments you might not like. I’ve sculpted possibilities, First Citizen, potential as well as truth. Come and see.”
Waden stared at him, and said nothing.
Whatever you see in it,” Herrin said, “will change.”
“I’m impressed with your talent,” Waden said. “I accept the gift, in both its faces.”
“No gift, First Citizen. You traded to get this, and you were right: it will give you duration. It’s going to live; and when later ages think of the begi
Waden sucked at his lips, as he had the habit of doing when pondering something. “Now time is my worry, is it?”
“It always was; it’s your deadliest enemy.”
The sober look stayed, and yielded to one of Waden’s quizzical smiles. “And your ally?”
“My medium,” Herrin said, and for a moment Waden’s smile utterly froze.
“We remain,” said Waden then, recovering the smile in all its brilliance, “complementary.”
There was Keye, frowning; and the invisibles, who stood with their hands tucked into their belts looking at the place and at the crowd, and the crew, who watched them. On the fringes of the crowd were the pair no one else might see, midnight-hued and tall and robed, skeletons at the feast—Herrin imagined wise and unhuman eyes, baffled—and Waden’s Outsiders watching them.
People did not make crowds in Kierkegaard; citizens were rational, cautious and conservative of their own Reality, avoided masses in which they could lose their own Selves. People gathered here, in this shell. And suddenly, when he looked at them in general and Waden did they began a polite applause, as people might, to express approval of something they had accepted as real and true—something they desired.
Strangers applauded, and the sound went up into the triple perforated dome, and echoed down again like rain. “Herrin ...” he heard amid it, “ Herrin,” “ Herrin Law,” as if his name had become their possession too. “Master Herrin Law.”
He smiled, sucked in the air as if sipping wine and nodded his head in appreciation of the offering. More, he spread his arms, seeing some of his chief apprentices near at hand, and invited them. “Carl Gytha,” he said, “Andrew Phelps. ...” He went on naming names, and the gathering applauded and faces gri
“It’s unprecedented,” said Keye, gazing with analytical eye on the chaos.
“Of course it is,” said Herrin.
Waden laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “ Youare unprecedented, Artist; nowit’s unveiled, not before. That’s the nature of your art, isn’t it? It’s not stone you shape—time, yes, and Realities. You’re dangerous, Artist. I always knew you were.”
“Complementary powers, Waden Jenks.” He lifted his arm toward the face, which had lost its i
“I chose you well. Dispute what you will, I chose you well.” Waden gri
Herrin hesitated; he had pla
At the first wall of the dome, Waden stopped and looked back, with awed reluctance, but Keye watched him, and Herrin watched him and Keye.
Then they parted the crowd and headed back the way they had come, changed, Herrin thought, as everyone who came inside that place must be changed.
No one followed them—no one would dare—but the invisibles stayed at their heels, silent as they had been from the begi
XX
Student: How does a person fit death into his reality, sir?
Master Law: Whose?
Student: How do you fit your own death into yours, sir?
Master Law: One has nothing to do with another.
Student: You deny the reality of death?
Master Law: (After reflection.) With all my reality.
It was a pleasant day, Waden in high spirits and prone to argue. “I find myself too tired for fine discussion,” Herrin confessed.
“You’ve grown thin,” Waden said. They sat at a table in Waden’s rooms in the Residency, with exquisite tableware, Waden’s ordinary set... “ Eatsomething, Herrin; you’ll waste away.”
“By my standards I have.” Herrin leaned back, drinking tea and comfortable with a full belly. “A supper last night, a lunch today ... gluttony. I plan to increase my tolerance.”
“You have to,” said Keye, third in their threesome at table. “I know your habits, Herrin, and they’re abominable.”
He gri
Waden shrugged. “Wherever you’re comfortable?”