Those works which had somehow passed muster and been shown to a few friends—those poems Vilar now regarded as tainted, though he kept them. Each seemed stained by the muddle-headed criticism it had inspired.
“A wonderful thing, Emil—but isn’t it a shade too long?”
“Marvelous imagery, Emil. But when you bring in Dido, I think you’re reaching too far for effect—”
“Splendid, but—”
“Magnificent, but—”
“Why all these tensions, Vilar? Why not relax the texture a trifle? If you had only—”
“Am I being too blunt in saying that I feel your work lately has been tending towards a dead end, a geometrical stasis that can only damage your standing? The failure of sensibility—”
He had listened patiently to each of them, digested their often conflicting critical views with dignity, and, finally, turned his back on the lot of them. They were chatterers. They made knowing noises, but what they really wanted to tell him was that his lines did not jingle enough. Retreating to Rigel Seven was the easiest solution. There had been no other way. Had he remained on Earth, he would have spent the rest of his days unchangingly, plagued by the cultists, the centre of a tiny, well-meaning circle of admirers who longed to share his gift, though they had no notion of the anguish they brought to its possessor. Better to be ignored, as he was by most of the world, than to have such a claque. So he had gone away.
He continued unpacking. He drew out two reams of paper: all he would need for the rest of his life. His pen. His notebook. He looked around. Everything was as it should be. The room was complete.
Vilar sat down at his desk and reached for a book. His hand lingered momentarily over his own little volume, quivered a bit, and moved on. He drew forth Yeats, then reconsidered and put him back. Fugitive lines from Eliot, whom he had long since memorized and so had not needed to bring with him, flickered through his mind:
He worked, for most of the night, on a free fantasy based on the opening lines of The Revenger’s Tragedy. Towards dawn, he rose, tore up the sheet, and blotted what he had written from his mind. He went outside on his tiny porch to watch the strange sun creep above the horizon of Rigel Seven. At this distance, bloated Rigel looked far smaller than Sol—but the savage blaze of its hot blue-white light betrayed the alien star’s true power.
Shortly after sunrise, Melbourne Hadley Carpenter returned.
“Have a good night?”
Vilar, rumpled-looking and red-eyed, nodded. “Excellent.”
“Glad to hear it. Suppose you come up to the house now. My father’s waiting to meet you, and so are all the others.”
Vilar frowned suspiciously. “Why do they want to meet me?”
“Oh, just curiosity, I guess. You’re the only one here who’s not one of the Families, you know.”
“I know,” Vilar said, relieved. “You’re sure you’ve never heard of me then?”
Carpenter shrugged. “How would we ever hear of you? We’re completely out of touch with things, you know.”
“True.” One major worry was thereby avoided—he would be a complete stranger here, as he had hoped. A fresh start would be possible. The old man’s brain was not dry; here in this sleepy corner, he could scale the greatest heights without attracting the clumsy attention that was so fatal to artistic endeavour.
He followed the tall young man up the hill and into the domed house. The lines of the building were clear and simple; in his amateur’s way, Vilar approved of the architecture wholeheartedly. It had none of the falseness of Earth’s current pseudo-archaism.
In the spacious central hall, an immense table had been set and at least fifty people sat around it. A tall man looking much like Melbourne Hadley Carpenter, but much older, with iron-grey hair and faintly stooping shoulders, rose from his seat at the head of the table.
“You’re Emil Vilar,” he said ringingly. “We’re very happy to see you. I’m Theodore Hadley Carpenter, and this is my family.”
Awed, Vilar nodded hesitantly. With a sweeping gesture of his hand, Theodore Hadley Carpenter indicated six almost identical younger men sitting to his right.
“My sons,” he said.
Farther down the table were still younger men—this was the generation of Melbourne Hadley Carpenter, Vilar decided. “My grandsons,” the patriarch said, confirming this.
“You have a very fine family, Mr Carpenter,” Vilar said.
“One of the best, sir,” Carpenter replied blandly. “Will you join us now for breakfast? We can talk afterwards.”
Vilar had no objections, and took a vacant seat at the table. Breakfast proceeded—served, he noted, by pretty young girls who were probably Carpenter’s granddaughters. There were no outsiders on this planet, no servants, no one who was not part of a Family.
Except me, he thought with wry amusement. Always the outsider.
Breakfast had been as efficiently Terraformed as the planet itself. Bacon and eggs, warm rolls, coffee—why, it was ludicrous to travel—what was it, five hundred and forty-five light years, untold trillions of miles?—and have warm rolls and coffee for breakfast. But people tend to cling, Vilar thought. What was the entire Terraforming project but a mighty whimper, a galaxy-shaking yawp of puny defiance (barbaric yawp, his well-stocked mind footnoted automatically)? Man was progressively carving the worlds of space into the image of Earth, and eating rolls for breakfast.
Vilar considered the thought. Later, he knew, it would emerge concealed in the webwork of one of his poems, and still later he would see it there, and destroy the poem as a silly timebound polemic.
He sat back in his chair when he had finished eating. The table was cleared. Then, to his astonishment, old Carpenter clapped his hands and one of his look-alike sons fetched a musical instrument. It was stringed, the strings stretched tight over a graven sounding board. A dulcimer, Vilar thought in wonderment as the patriarch began to play, striking the strings with two carved ivory sticks.
The melody was a strange and complex one; the poet, who had a sound but far from detailed knowledge of musical theory, listened carefully. The short piece ended plaintively in the minor, coming to an abrupt halt with three descending thirds.
“My own composition,” the old man said, in the silence that followed. “It’s sometimes hard to get used to our music at first, but—”
“I thought it was fine,” Vilar said shortly. He was anxious to finish this meal and return to work, and hoped there would be no further talk of performing.
He rose from his chair.
“Leaving so soon?” the old man asked. “Why, we haven’t even talked.”
“Talked? About what?”
Carpenter knotted his fingers together. “About your contribution to our group, of course. We can’t happily let you stay with us and eat our food if you’re not going to offer us anything, stranger. Come now—what do you do?”
“I’m a poet,” Vilar said uneasily.
The old man chuckled. “A poet? Indeed, yes—but what do you do?”