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for two dollars and a measure of the past.  I m afraid there s a vault waiting
for you.
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Lhayne wanted to beg him, Put me in the vault beside her there s one about to
be
;
emptied right beside Ahna.
But the Supervisor was already making a sign in the air. Lhayne s body began
to bubble and scintillate. Then it was gone.
The shoppe was silent.
Pressure from outside came through the walls. Cancerous darkness lapped at the
stasis field.
The Supervisor sighed. It was never easy. But neither was survival.
The grubby young man had taken only one more step when he heard the voice
behind him.  Hey! You!
He turned. The shoppe that had been gone a moment before, was back again.
Appear, disappear, appear again...
He stopped. The young woman with the long blonde hair was standing in the open
doorway, motioning to him urgently.  Hey, come on back. He sold you the wrong
stone.
He hesitated. The powerstone was warm in his hand. Unnaturally warm. It was
beginning to be uncomfortable.
He turned and walked back. She was extraordinarily beautiful. She held out the
octagonal stone he had wanted to select before the old man made him buy the
diamond-
shaped one.  Better take this one, she said, smiling up at him with
affection. Then a shadow came over her face, her eyes seemed to darken as
though she saw something disturbing, and then the smile was strong again.
 This is the one you want.
 Where s the old man? he asked.
 He was just minding the place for me; just a replacement. He s always making
some kind of stupid mistake. We want our customers to be satisfied; better
take this one.
He handed her the diamond-shaped stone, now almost unbearably hot. He took the
octagonal stone. It was cool and seemed to radiate power. Yes, this was the
right one.
 I still want to know, he said,  what do you get out of this? Who are you,
how do you make a living in a place like this?
 Just serving the community and the commonweal, that s the only reward we get.
A
force for good in your time. Her smile was fixed, implacable, eternally
sincere.
Caveat emptor.
She held the diamond-shaped stone that would have killed him the first time he
tried to use it, and she stared at him with her alabaster smile, and she knew
what forces had been set in motion by his ownership of the stone that would
make people do what he wanted them to do. And she thought of the thousand in
their vaults, now one thousand and one. She thought of friend Lhayne and his
Ahna who would remain in their vaults perhaps until the universe was reborn,
because there was no one who had the spare time to buy them their time.
And she wanted the young man to go away and begin fulfilling the destiny that
would produce antientropic energy by hastening the onrush of the Infinite Dark
Mass.
 Is there anything else? she asked.
 He wrote down my name.
 Yes. That s just company policy. So we have a record.
 Who sees that record?
 No one, Mr. Manson. That s just for our files.
 He wrote Charles. That s not right. It s Charlie. Can you change it?
 We won t have to. It s all right.
He started to walk away.  It s Charlie; don t forget.
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There was Art, and there was survival, and sometimes they were mutually
exclusive.
The voice came from a swirling matrix of white mist that twisted inside the
shoppe.
We won t forget.
And the door slammed. And the shoppe was gone. And the grubby young man turned
once more onto Jamshyd Avenue; and was, in a moment, a part of the crowd, and
a part of the Infinite Dark Mass.
With a grateful nod to the writings of Michael Moorcock.
All the Lies That Are My Life
INTRODUCTION
Art, someone said, is meant to clarify and elucidate complex experience.
This story is intended as clarification and elucidation. The topic under
discussion is friendship. As I warned earlier in these pages, this is the long
one that forms the core of the collection. It is 22,300 words in length, and
it has taken me about twelve years to write it. No, I don t mean I ve spent
the last twelve years working on this piece to the exclusion of all others... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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