The Light That Never Was by Lloyd Biggle Jr

Author:Lloyd Biggle Jr. [Biggle, Lloyd Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

As Neal Wargen moved about both continents on official business, he began to see harbingers of the changing year: The peregrinating artists were moving south—toward the warmer regions of the northern continent and toward the cooler regions of the southern. Such wanderers could be found anywhere on Donov in season, and their movements heralded an approaching winter or summer.

Many went on foot, with bulky packs or rolls of possessions on their backs and the inevitable artists’ bundles under their arms. The more affluent traveled by wrranel and cart, with the cart modified to serve as living quarters. All of them drifted about leisurely in search of interesting scenes to paint, of picturesque old buildings, of quaint, isolated villages. Some of their treks lasted for years and covered an entire continent. Occasionally one would even emulate the great naturalist painter Ebbel Throy and dedicate a brief northern summer to travel by boat among the polar islands, climbing ice cliffs to paint the snowbirds and frost lizards in their natural habitat. Most artists were less venturesome; as one of them once remarked to Wargen, there was hardship enough just in wandering about rural Donov.

Their dress varied from full artist regalia to ordinary work clothing, but all wore the artist’s turban. No one knew why this colorful headpiece had become the profession’s official insignia, but the fad began on Donov and spread so quickly that from the tall grasses of Dworn, at one end of the galaxy, to the clotted vines of Nimfra, at the other, these bobbing, colorful folds of cloth meant artist at work.

Wargen contemplated these wandering artists and worried. This year he fancied that there were fewer of them, and he wondered if they would be the first casualties of the distrust maliciously sowed by the masquerading thieves. Demron had caught and deported more than a dozen, and the thefts continued and threatened to destroy something priceless.

Unlike almost any other world similarly situated, Donov had fostered no folk tales of fowls, fruit, and vegetables vanishing in the wake of a passing artist. The fact was that no rural Donovian would withhold food from anyone asking for it, and the artists were neither thieves nor beggars. They offered a fair exchange for what they ate, and the marks of their passing were not thefts, but paintings.

A meal bought a carefully executed drawing of a farmer’s homestead. Sometimes an artist would do an elaborate painting for no payment other than food and lodging while he worked. The most remote and isolated Donovian farmhouse had original paintings and drawings on display, and some of these were genuine treasures. An art dealer, acting on a none too credible rumor, called at a shabby farm near Vaszlin and found early works by Ghord, Morvert, and Vasque, all executed on long-forgotten walking tours and all worth substantial sums at any art auction.

This brought a plague of art dealers to rural Donov, but those who thought to swindle ignorant peasants were foredoomed to failure. The thrifty Donovians were not selling their paintings.

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