Elegy Perpetuum

By Eric Brown

It began one warm evening on the cantilevered, clover-leaf patio of the Oasis bar.

There were perhaps a dozen of us seated around the circular onyx table—fellow artists, agents and critics, enjoying wine and pleasant conversation. Beneath the polite chatter, however, there was the tacit understanding that this was the overture to the inevitable clash of opinions, not to say egos, of the two most distinguished artists present.

The artists’ domes, hanging from great arching scimitar supports, glowed with the pale lustre of opals in the quick Saharan twilight. The oasis itself caught the sunset and turned it into a million coruscating scales, like silver lamé made liquid.

This was my first stay at Sapphire Oasis, and I was still somewhat out of my depth. I feared being seen as an artist of little originality, who had gained admittance to the exclusive colony through the patronage of the celebrated Primitivist, Ralph Standish. I did not want to be known as an imitator—though admittedly my early work did show his influence—a novice riding on the coat-tails of genius.

I sat next to the white-haired, leonine figure of Standish, one of the last of the old romantics. As if to dissociate himself totally from the Modernists, he affected the aspect of a Bohemian artist of old. He wore a shirt splashed with oils, though he rarely worked in that medium, and the beret by which he was known.

Seated across from him was Perry Bartholomew.

The Modernist—he struck me more as a businessman than an artist—was suave in an impeccably cut grey suit. He lounged in his seat and twirled the stem of his wine glass. He seemed always to wear an expression of rather superior amusement, as if he found everything that everyone said fallacious but not worth his effort to correct.

I had lost interest in the conversation—two critics were airing their views on the forthcoming contest. I turned my attention to the spectacular oval, perhaps a kilometre in length, formed by the illuminated domes. I was wondering whether I might slip away unnoticed, before Ralph and Bartholomew began their inevitable sniping, when for the first time that night the latter spoke up.

He cleared his throat, and this seemed to be taken by all present as a signal for silence. “In my experience,” Bartholomew said, “contests and competitions to ascertain the merit of works of art can never be successful. Great art cannot be judged by consensus. Are you submitting anything, Standish?”

Ralph looked up, surprised that Bartholomew was addressing him. He suppressed a belch and stared into his tumbler of whisky. “I can’t. I’m ineligible. I’m on the contest’s organising committee.”

“Ah...” Bartholomew said. “So you are responsible?” His eyes twinkled.

Ralph appeared irritated. “The Sapphire Oasis Summer Contest is a long-standing event, Perry. I see nothing wrong in friendly competition. The publicity will help everyone. Anyway, if you’re so against the idea, why have you submitted a piece?”

The crowd around the table, swelled now by a party that had drifted up from the lawns below, watched the two men with the hushed anticipation of spectators at a duel.

“Why not?” Bartholomew asked. “Although I disagree in principle with the idea of the contest, I see no reason why I should not benefit by winning it.”

Ralph laughed. “Your optimism amazes me, sir.”

Bartholomew inclined his head in gracious acknowledgement.

The resident physician, a man called Roberts, asked the artist if he would be willing to discuss his latest creation.

“By all means,” Bartholomew said. “It is perhaps my finest accomplishment, and has also the distinction of being totally original in form.” Just when he was becoming interesting, if pompous, he damned himself by continuing, “It should make me millions—which might just satisfy the demands of my wife.”

There was a round of polite laughter.

Ralph exchanged a glance with me and shook his head, despairing.

Perry Bartholomew’s separation from his wife, also an artist of international repute, had made big news a couple of years ago. Their ten year marriage had been a constant feature in the gossip columns, fraught as it was with acrimony and recriminations before the final split. He had, it was reported, taken it badly—even an arch-cynic like Bartholomew had a heart which could be hurt—unless it was his ego that had suffered. For a year he had lived as a recluse, emerging only when he moved to the Oasis for an extended period of work.

Tonight Bartholomew looked far from well. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, with a tanned face and dark hair greying fashionably at the temples—but now he looked drawn, his dark eyes tired.

Someone asked, “You said, ‘totally original in form’?” in a tone of incredulity which prompted a sharp response.

“Of course!” Bartholomew stared at the woman. “I am aware that this is a bold claim to make, but it is nevertheless true, as you will learn when I exhibit the piece. I have utilised a prototype continuum-frame to harness an electro-analogue of my psyche.”

There was an instant babble of comment. A critic said, “Can we have that again?” and scribbled it down when Bartholomew patiently repeated himself.

“But what exactly is it?” someone asked.

Bartholomew held up both hands. “You will find out tomorrow. I assure you that its originality of form will be more than matched by its content.”

Roberts, from where he was leaning against the balustrade, asked, “I take it that this is an example of a work of art which you would contend is worth a human life?” He smiled to himself with the knowledge of what he was doing.

Bartholomew calculated his response. He was aware that all eyes were on him, aware that his reply would re-open the old argument between him and Ralph Standish—which was exactly what the onlookers were anticipating.

Bartholomew gave the slightest of nods. “Yes, Doctor. In my opinion my latest piece is of sufficient merit to be worth the sacrifice.”

Ralph Standish frowned into his whisky, his lips pursed grimly. Bartholomew had made a similar declaration in the pages of a respected arts journal a couple of years ago, and Ralph had responded with a series of angry letters.

I willed him not to reply now, convinced that he would only be playing Bartholomew’s childish game if he did so. But all eyes were on him, and he could not let the comment pass.

“Your views sicken me, Perry—but you know that. We’ve had this out many times before. I see no need to cover old ground.”

“But why ever not, my friend? Surely you are able to defend your corner, or perhaps you fear losing the argument?”

Ralph made a sound that was part laugh, part grunt of indignation. “Losing it? I thought I’d won it years ago!”

Bartholomew smiled. “You merely stated your case with precision and eloquence, if I may say so. But you signally failed to convince me. Therefore you cannot claim victory.”

Ralph was shaking his head. “What will it take to convince you that your philosophy is morally objectionable?”

“My dear Ralph, I might ask you the very same question.” Perry Bartholomew smiled. He was enjoying himself. “So far as I am concerned, I occupy the moral high ground-”

“I cannot accept that art is more important that humanity,” Ralph began.

“You,” Bartholomew cut in, “are a traitor to your art.”

“And you, a traitor to humanity.”

“Ralph, Ralph,” Bartholomew laughed, condescending. “I consider my view the height of humanity. I merely contend that a supreme work of art, which will bring insight and enlightenment to generations, is worth the life of some peasant in Asia or wherever. What was that old moral dilemma? ‘Would you wish dead one Chinaman if by doing so you would gain unlimited wealth?’ Well, in this case the unlimited wealth is in the form of a work of art for all humanity to appreciate in perpetuity.”

Ralph was shaking his head. “I disagree,” he said. “But why don’t we throw the question open? What do you think? Anyone? Richard?”

I cleared my throat, nervous. I looked across at Bartholomew. “I side with Ralph,” I said. “I also think your example of ‘one Asian peasant’ is spurious and misleading.”

Bartholomew threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, you do, do you? But what should I expect from one of Ralph’s disciples?”

“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.”

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. The thing’s an abomination. I dread to think what it’s like now he’s completed it.” He directed a line of burgundy expertly into his mouth, pursed his lips around it and nodded. “To be honest, the whole episode’s a tragedy. Quite apart from poisoning the minds of all who enter it, its creation has made him quite ill both physically and mentally. Did you notice, Rich, that the figures within the frame were all female?”

I recalled the twisted travesties of the human form I had experienced in the blue light. “Now you come to mention it...” I said. “Yes, I think they were.”

Ralph nodded. “Did you also notice that they were all aspects of the same person—Electra Perpetuum, his wife?”

“They were? Christ, how he must hate her!”

Ralph perched himself on the arm of a chesterfield, watching me closely. “Do you want my honest opinion, Richard?” There was a light in his eyes, enthusiasm in his attitude.

I smiled. “Do I have any choice?”

Ralph was too occupied with his own thoughts to notice my affectionate sarcasm. “I think that although Perry might want to hate her, in fact he still loves her.”

I snorted. “I’m not sure he knows the meaning of the word.”

“Of course he does! He’s human, dammit! He might have experienced tragedy and hardship over the years, which have no doubt hardened him, but in here-” Ralph thumped his chest “-in here he’s like all the rest of us. He’s a fallible human being.”

“What makes you think he still loves Perpetuum?”

Ralph hesitated. “I was with him when he first met Electra,” he told me. “That was ten years ago—at the time he was just getting over his disastrous relationship with the vid-star Bo Ventura. We were still quite close friends, back then. He was not quite the cynic he is now, but he was getting that way—I could see that from his criticism of my work, his views on art and life in general. When he started seeing Electra, I thought perhaps she might be good for him. She was—still is—his total opposite: warm, loving, generous to a fault. She lived life at a pace which honestly frightened me. I thought that Perry might be good for her, too—might slow her down a little, provide a calming influence... I saw them at intervals of perhaps a year over the next six or seven years. I was still on socialising terms with Perry, though things were getting pretty heated between us at the end. For the first few years, everything was fine between him and Electra...”

“And then?”

“Perry became ever more distant, withdrawn into himself and his thoughts. He alienated her with his philosophy, reducing everything to basic animal responses, where emotions like love had no place. Life to him became a vast, meaningless farce. When he published the articles attacking me and my work, Electra could stand no more.”

Ralph paused briefly, then went on, “Anyway, she met someone else. I know it wasn’t serious. She used this man as a means to escape from Perry. That was two years ago. I saw him shortly after the separation, and on the surface it was as if nothing at all had happened. He was still working hard, turning out his empty, minimalist sculptures. But about a month after Electra left, Perry went into hiding, became a recluse for a year. He saw no one, and I guessed that he didn’t want to admit to the people who knew him that he’d been affected. He turned up here a year ago, and that... that thing is his first response to the end of his relationship with Electra.”

“But it’s a monument of his hate for Perpetuum,” I said. “How can you possibly claim he still loves her?”

Ralph shook his head, emphatic. “I know the man, Richard. He’s torn apart by a great contradiction at the heart of his life. He intellectually believes that such things as love, friendship, altruism do not exist. And yet he loves Electra, he loves his daughter, even though these feelings don’t fit in with his reductionism. That work he calls Experience is, in my opinion, a response to the anguish of his separation from his wife. The only way he can overcome what he sees as the aberration of his feelings for Electra is by creating a work which he hopes will at once validate his cynicism and exorcise her from his mind.”

“You almost sound sorry for him,” I commented.

“Oh, I am, Richard. The man needs saving from himself.”

I recalled the holo-cube of his daughter. As much as I found it hard to believe that Perry Bartholomew did indeed, as Ralph suggested, harbour human feelings in his heart, there was the memento of Elegy he kept on display in his lounge. I mentioned this. “I assumed it was merely to remind him of her intellect,” I said.

“He purposefully gives that impression,” Ralph said. “But believe me, he loves her. Why else would he agree to having her stay with him over her birthday?”

I was not totally convinced. “Because he wants to impress everyone with her genius?” I suggested.

Ralph smiled to himself. “We’ll see,” he said. “It should be quite an interesting few days.”

He climbed from the chesterfield and moved to the balcony. I joined him. Across the sparkling expanse of the water, the concourse was thronged with a crowd of artists, Bartholomew’s continuum-frame was the centre of attention. Ralph smiled to himself. “Will they ever learn?” he said.

I glanced at my watch. The sight of all the work arranged on the concourse reminded me that I had yet to exhibit my own piece. I would put the finishing touches to it that afternoon. “What are you doing this evening, Ralph?”

“Working, unfortunately. I have a few things I want to get ready for tomorrow.”

We made arrangements to meet for breakfast the next day and I left for my dome. I took the long way around the oasis, so as to avoid the crowd and the malign aura that surrounded Perry Bartholomew’s latest work of art.

* * * *

Ralph was in good humour the following morning as we breakfasted on the patio overlooking the oasis. He buttered his toast lavishly, as if it were a palette, and gestured with it as he told me about a group of new artists whose work he admired. He was prone to mood swings, depending on how his work was progressing, and I could only assume that all was going well now.

Below us, on the concourse, a cover had been erected to protect the exhibits from the effects of the sun. People strolled down the aisles formed by the works, pausing occasionally to admire a piece more closely. Bartholomew’s continuum-frame, huge and ungainly, looked out of place among the smaller crystals, sculptures and mobiles.

I was about to comment that the piece would be more at home in a breaker’s yard when the artist himself rode up the escalator and crossed the patio. As he passed our table he inclined his head. “Gentlemen.” He appeared rather frail this morning, his white suit hanging on his tall frame.

Ralph gestured, swallowed a bite of toast. “Perry, why not join us?”

Bartholomew paused, raised an eyebrow. “I think perhaps I might,” he said. “Very kind of you.”

He seated himself at the table and ordered breakfast—a single cup of black coffee. I felt uneasy in his presence. I recalled what Ralph had said yesterday about saving Bartholomew from himself, but wished that Ralph had waited until I was elsewhere to indulge his missionary streak.

Bartholomew nodded towards the exhibition. “When does the fun begin, Ralph?”

“This afternoon, when the judges arrive.”

Bartholomew nodded. He had the ability to make his every gesture regal. “And who might they be?”

“Ah... can’t tell you that. Utmost secrecy. Competition rules...”

Bartholomew smiled and sipped his coffee. His attitude suggested that he thought the result of the contest a foregone conclusion. “I see Delgardo’s showing a crystal. I rather like his work.”

Ralph didn’t, and was usually vocal about the fact. “He has a certain technical expertise,” he said.

They continued with this vein of light banter, and I ceased to listen. I moved my chair back and propped my feet on the balustrade, enjoying the sun.

I was the first to notice them—two small figures hurrying around the oasis towards the patio. They almost ran up the escalator, and this exertion, in an environment where a leisurely stroll was de rigueur, caused me to sit up. The two men stepped from the escalator and crossed the patio. I recognised Roberts, the resident physician, and with him was a man in the uniform of a chauffeur: he walked with a limp and his jacket was scuffed and ripped.

They paused at our table.

Roberts cleared his throat. “Mr Bartholomew...” .

The artist looked up, irritated at the interruption. “Yes? What is it?” His gaze took in the unlikely pair without any sign of consternation. At the sight of Roberts’ diffidence and the chauffeur’s bruised face, my stomach turned sickeningly.

“Mr Bartholomew... I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

“Elegy?” Bartholomew’s face was expressionless. “Where is she?”

“If you’d care to come with me,” Roberts said.

Ralph took Bartholomew’s elbow and we followed the doctor down the descending escalator, across the concourse and through the main gates of the Oasis.

“What happened?” Bartholomew demanded.

Beside us, the chauffeur was tearful, shaking from the delayed effects of shock. “I took the bend too fast... There was nothing I could do. I tried to...”

Outside the gates stood the open-top, two-seater Mercedes, its flanks buckled and scraped, the windshield mangled as if it had taken a roll. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end. I expected to find Elegy—the small, sun-browned girl I’d first seen yesterday in the holo-cube—lying dead or injured on the front seat.

To my relief the Mercedes was empty.

Bartholomew cleared his throat. “Where is she?” he asked.

“I’ll drive this car back to the scene of the accident,” Roberts said. He beckoned the chauffeur. “You’ll have to direct me. Standish, you bring Perry in my pick-up.” He indicated a small truck in the parking lot.

While Roberts and the chauffeur climbed into the Mercedes, we shepherded Bartholomew across the tarmac towards the truck. Outside the air-conditioned confines of the complex, the heat was merciless.

Ralph took the wheel and Bartholomew sat between us. We lurched from the car-park and along the straight, raised road after the battered Mercedes.

Bartholomew sat with his hands on his knees, staring into the shimmering heat haze ahead of us. I wanted to yell at him that he could show some sign of emotion, that we would fully understand.

“Why didn’t the driver bring her back?” he said at last, as we bucketed over the uneven surface. “Even if she were dead, he should have returned with her body...”

In the driver’s seat, Ralph gripped the wheel and stared grimly ahead. I said, “Roberts wouldn’t be coming out here if she’d died...” I felt faint at the thought of what injuries Elegy might have sustained.

Ten minutes later the road began to climb into a range of low hills, no more than an outcropping of rocks and boulders, the only feature on the face of the flat, wind-sculpted desert. The surface of the road deteriorated and the truck lurched drunkenly from rut to pot hole and back again.

We rounded a bend. Ahead, the Mercedes had pulled into the side of the road. As Ralph eased the truck to a halt behind it, Roberts and the chauffeur climbed out, crossed the road and walked out onto a flat slab of rock. The chauffeur pointed to something below him.

“Christ,” I said, unable to stop myself. “She’s down there.”

I jumped from the cab and ran across the road. The result of the Mercedes’ prolonged skid was imprinted on the tarmac like double exclamation marks. Crystallised glass and flakes of paint littered the great anvil of rock across which the car had rolled.

Roberts was kneeling over a narrow fissure. The rock, perhaps the size of an Oasis dome, had split into two uneven sections. One section comprised the greater part, while the other was no more than a sliver, perhaps a metre thick.

I joined Roberts and the African and stared into the crevice. Ten metres down, wedged upright and illuminated by a bright shaft of sunlight, was Elegy Perpetuum. Her head was turned at an unnatural angle, clamped between the two great slabs. She was staring up at us with an expression that comprised both terror and entreaty.

Ralph and Bartholomew joined us.

Ralph, in a gesture of support, was gripping Bartholomew’s arm just above the elbow. The latter stared into the fissure and, at the sight of his daughter, winced. It was his only concession to anguish, and seemed suitably in character.

Roberts was attempting to squirm down after the girl, and there was something faintly ludicrous, and at the same time terribly touching, about his futile efforts. He gave up at last and knelt, panting and staring down helplessly.

As my gaze adjusted to the sunlight and shadow in the well of the crevice, I made out greater detail. Elegy was wearing a red dress, and I saw that what I had at first taken to be torn strips of material hanging down her arms were in fact rivulets of blood. There was more blood on the slab of rock near the surface, splashed like patches of alien lichen.

“Elegy,” Roberts called. “Can you hear me? Take deep breaths and try not to panic. We’ll have you out in no time.”

The girl stared up at us, blinked. If she’d heard, she gave no sign. She began to cry, a thin, pitiful whimpering reaching us from the depths.

Bartholomew knelt and peered down. He looked at Roberts. “Is there nothing you can do?” To his credit, there was a tremor in his voice.

“I contacted emergency services in Timbuktu as soon as I found out what had happened. They won’t be here for another two, three hours.” Roberts shook his head, went on under his breath, “But she might not last that long. She’s bleeding badly and God knows what internal injuries she’s received.”

Bartholomew, down on one hand and knee like a dishevelled, ageing sprinter, just closed his eyes and kept them closed, in a gesture more demonstrative of despair than any amount of vocal bewailing.

Suddenly I could no longer bear to watch—either the little girl in agony, or Bartholomew in his own mental anguish. My redundancy, my utter inability to do a thing to help, only emphasised my fear that Bartholomew might resent my presence.

I strode over to the edge of the rock, taking measured breaths and trying to quell my shaking. Elegy’s continual, plaintive whimpering, echoing eerily in the chasm, cut its way through the hot air and into our hearts.

There was a drop of perhaps ten metres to the shale-covered slope of the hillside. Elegy, pinned between the two planes, was positioned a little way above the surface of the hill. It occurred to me that if only we had the right tools to cut through the flake of rock...

I returned to the small group gathered around the dark crevice. “Are you sure there’s nothing back at the Oasis? Drills, cutting tools—even a sledge hammer? The rock down there can’t be more than a metre thick.”

Roberts shook his head. “Don’t you think I’ve considered that? We might have hammers, but we’d never smash through the rock before the emergency team arrives.”

From down below, a pathetic voice called out, “Daddy!”

“Elegy, I’m here. We’ll get you out soon. Try not to cry.”

“I’m all bleeding!” she wailed. “My leg hurts.”

As we watched, she choked, coughed, and blood bubbled over her lips and down her chin.

“Elegy...” Bartholomew pleaded, tears appearing in his eyes.

“We’ve got to do something,” I said. “We can’t just-”

Ralph was squatting beside Bartholomew, holding him. He looked up at me then and stared, and it was as if the idea occurred to both of us at the same time.

“Christ,” he said, “the continuum-frame...”

I felt suddenly dizzy at the thought.

Ralph looked from me to Bartholomew. “It might just work, Perry...”

“We could position it down there on the hillside,” I went on. “If we took the truck we could have it back here in twenty minutes.”

I knelt beside Bartholomew, who was staring down at his daughter, his expression frozen as if he had heard not a word we had said. I said, “It’s the only way to save her. We need the frame!”

He slowly turned his head and stared at me, stricken. Some subconscious part of me might have been aware of the incredible irony of what I was asking Bartholomew to sanction, but all I could think of at the time was the salvation of Elegy Perpetuum.

“It would never survive the journey,” he said in almost a whisper. “Everything would be lost.”

Roberts exploded. “Jesus! That’s your daughter down there. If we don’t get her out of that bloody hole she won’t survive much longer!”

Bartholomew peered down the crevice at Elegy, who stared up at him mutely with massive, beseeching eyes and blood bubbling from between her lips. “You don’t know what it cost me to create the piece,” he said. “It’s unique, irreplaceable. I could never do another quite like it...”

In rage I gripped his arm and shook him. “Elegy’s unique, for chrissake! She’s irreplaceable. Are you going to let her bleed to death?”

Something snapped within him, and his face registered a terrible capitulation. He closed his eyes and nodded. “Very well...” he said. “Very well, use the frame.”

I hauled him to his feet and we hurried across the road. With Ralph’s help I assisted Bartholomew into the back of the truck, where we stood side by side clutching the bulkhead. Roberts and the chauffeur climbed into the cab and started the vehicle, and we rumbled off down the road at breakneck speed, Bartholomew rocking impassively from side to side between us. He stared into the never-ending sky and said not a word as the desert sped by.

Ten minutes later we roared through the gates of the Oasis, manoeuvred through the concourse and backed up to the continuum-frame. We enlisted the aid of-two attendants and for the next five minutes, with Bartholomew looking on and pleading with us to be careful, jacked the frame level with the back of the truck and dragged it aboard. Bartholomew insisted on travelling with it, as if his presence might ease its passage, and Ralph and I joined him in the back. We accelerated from the concourse and through the gates, leaving a posse of on-lookers gaping in amazement.

As the truck raced along the desert road and into the hills, Bartholomew clung to the great rusting frame and gazed into the radiance at its centre, its veined depths reflecting in his bright blue eyes. We lurched over pot-holes and the frame rocked back and forth. Bartholomew stared at me, mute appeal in his eyes. “It’s going!” he called out. “I’m losing it!”

I stared into the swirling cobalt glow. As I watched, the marmoreal threads of white luminance began to fade. I could only assume that these threads were the physical manifestation of Bartholomew’s sick, psychic contribution to the piece, the phenomena I had experienced as tortured flesh and acute mental anguish. Over a period of minutes the white light dissolved and the bright glow waned to sky blue, and Bartholomew simply closed his eyes as he had at the plight of his daughter.

Before we arrived at the scene of the accident, the truck turned off the road, crossed the desert and backed up to the great slab in which Elegy was imprisoned. We halted a metre away from the face of the rock and Bartholomew, like a man in a trance, touched the controls and extended the blue beam into the boulder.

Then we jumped from the truck and scrambled up the hillside. We gathered around the crevice, peering down to judge how near the beam was to the girl. I stood beside Bartholomew as he stared at his daughter, his expression of compassion tempered by terrible regret, and I felt an inexpressible pity for the man.

“We’ll have you out in no time!” I called down to her.

She was staring up at us, blinking bravely. We were not so far off with the beam. It penetrated the rock one metre to her left; all that was required was for the beam to be shifted a little closer to the girl.

When I looked up, Ralph, Roberts and the chauffeur were no longer with us. I assumed they had returned to the frame. I took Bartholomew’s arm in reassurance and turned my attention to the girl.

I stared down into the crevice...

I thought at first that my eyesight was at fault. I seemed to be looking through Elegy’s crimson dress, through her round brown face and appealing eyes. As I watched, the girl became ever more indistinct, insubstantial—she seemed to be dematerialising before our very eyes. And then, along with all the blood, her image flickered briefly like a defective fluorescent and winked out of existence.

I had seen an identical vanishing act somewhere before—in Ralph’s studio, just yesterday.

I looked at Bartholomew, and saw his face register at first shock, and then sudden understanding.

He stood and turned. “Standish...” he cried, more in despair than rage at the deception. “Standish!”

But by this time Ralph, along with the other flesh-and-blood actors in his little drama, had taken the Mercedes and were speeding along the road towards Sapphire Oasis.

Which was not quite the end of the affair.

* * * *

I drove Bartholomew back in the truck, and we unloaded the continuum-frame and set it among the other works of art on the concourse. Evidently word had got back that something had happened in the desert. A crowd had gathered, and artists watched from the balconies of the domes overlooking the concourse.

Bartholomew noticed nothing. He busied himself with the keyboard set into the frame. “There still might be something in there I can salvage,” he told me. “Something I can build on...”

I just smiled at him and began to walk away.

I was stopped in my tracks by a cry from a nearby dome.

“Daddy!”

Bartholomew turned and stared. Elegy Perpetuum, radiant in a bright blue dress and ribbons, walked quickly across the concourse towards her father, as upright as a little soldier. She ran the rest of the way and launched herself into his arms, and Bartholomew lifted her off the ground and hugged her to his chest.

She was followed by a tall, olive-skinned woman in a red trouser-suit. I recognised her face from a hundred art programmes and magazines—the burning eyes, the strong Berber features: Electra Perpetuum.

I was aware of someone at my side.

“Ralph!” I hissed. “How the hell did she get here?”

“I invited her, of course—to judge the contest.” He smiled at me. “I’ve told her about everything that happened out there.”

Electra paused at the centre of the concourse, three metres from Bartholomew. He lowered his daughter to the ground and the little girl ran back to her mother’s side.

“I know what you did, Perry,” Electra said in a voice choked with emotion. “But what I want to know is, do you think you made the right decision?”

I realised, as I watched Perry Bartholomew regard Electra and his daughter for what seemed like minutes, that what Ralph Standish had created before us was either the last act of a drama in the finest of romantic traditions—or a tragedy.

It seemed that everyone in the Oasis was willing Bartholomew to give the right reply. Beside me, Ralph clenched his fist and cursed him under his breath.’

Bartholomew stared at Electra, seemingly seeing through her, as he considered his past and contemplated his future.

And then, with a dignity and courage I never expect to witness again, Perry Bartholomew stepped forward, took the hands of his wife and daughter and, between Electra and Elegy, moved from the concourse and left behind him the destitute monument of his continuum-frame.