Engineman - Eric Brown [215]
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."
For the next thirty minutes we edged the frame onto a wheeled trolley and rolled it into the elevator. "We must handle it with the utmost care!" Bartholomew warned. "I know through bitter experience that the slightest jolt might eliminate the imprinted analogues. The aspects of my psyche programmed within it exist tremulously. If we should drop it now..."
We emerged into the sunlight, and I had never been so thankful to experience fresh air. We gingerly trolleyed the great frame along a tiled path to the concourse, Bartholomew flinching at the slightest jolt or wobble on the way. Part of me wanted nothing more than to topple the frame, but the moralist in me - or the coward - overruled the urge. At journey's end a couple of attendants helped us ease the frame to the ground. "Careful!" Bartholomew shouted. "It should be treated with the greatest respect. The slightest mishandling..."
By now, word was out that Perry Bartholomew was exhibiting his magnum opus, and a crowd had gathered before the frame like supplicants at the portals of a cathedral.
I took the opportunity, as Bartholomew prepared to make a speech, to slip away. Filled with a residuum of unease from my experience of Experience, I made my way around the oasis to Ralph Standish's dome.
I entered without knocking and made my way to the studio. I paused on the gallery that encircled the sunken working area. Ralph was standing in the centre of the room, holding his chin and contemplating the small figures playing out a drama of his own devising below me. The figures were perhaps half life-sized, at this distance very realistic, though seen at close quarters, as I had on earlier occasions, they were slightly blurred and ill-defined. I had been surprised to find Ralph dabbling in graphics when I joined him here last year - he usually spurned computer-generated art - but he had reassured me that though the method might be modern, the resultant work would be traditional.
He looked up and saw me. "Rich, come on down." He pressed a foot-pedal to kill the projectors hidden in the walls. The strutting figures flickered briefly and winked out of existence.
I descended the steps. "How are you this morning?" I asked. I was a little concerned about him after last night's run in with Bartholomew.
"Never better!" He beamed at me. He wore his old paint-stained shirt, splashed with the wine he squirted from a goat-skin at frequent intervals. "Last night did me the world of good."
"It did? I must admit, I was surprised when you invited Bartholomew to join us."
"I'd been avoiding him for the better part of the year," Ralph said. "Last night I thought I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, see if he was still as eager to expound his odious views."
"Well, you certainly found out."
"It made me feel wonderful, Rich. Made me even more convinced that my ideas are right. Not that I was ever in any doubt." He peered closely at me. "Talking about feeling wonderful, you're looking terrible."
I was surprised that it showed. "Well... Bartholomew just called me in to help him move his latest work of genius."
"You didn't actually enter the thing?"
"So you know about it?"
"He invited me across last month, before you arrived. I stepped into it then, though at the time it was still in its early stages."
"What did you think?"
"I was appalled, of course.