Sharif did a creditable job of sitting on a chair without sinking halfway through. "Well, I was hoping we could just talk." He thought a moment. "I mean, we might continue with my questions about your Secrets of the Ages"
Still no action downstairs. "… Very well. Ask." So who is this ? True-Sharif? Stranger-Sharif? SciFi-Sharif? Or some ungodly combination? Whatever, it was too much coincidence that he showed up just now. Robert sat back to watch and listen.
"um… I don't know." Miserably forgetful? But then Sharif abruptly perked up. "Ah! One thing I'm hoping to get at in my thesis is the balance of worth between the beauty of expression and the beauty of underlying truth. Are they separate?"
A question to be answered in cryptic depth . Robert paused significantly and then launched into flimflam. "You should know by now, Zulfi, even if you can't create poetry yourself, that the issues can't be separated. Beauty captures truth. Read my essay in the Carolingian . …" blah blahblah
Sharif nodded earnestly. "Then do you ever expect an end to one and therefore the other? Beauty and truth, I mean?"
Huh ? Now, that was sufficiently bizarre to derail him. Robert parsed and reparsed the stupidity. Will you run out of beauty? And the answer for me is yes; I cant create beauty anymore . So maybe this was just Stranger-Sharif jerking him around while they both waited for the little gray box to do its thing.
"I suppose… there could be an end." And then he thought about the other half of the question. "Hell, Sharif, truth — new truth — ended long ago. We artists sit atop a midden ten thousand years deep. The diligent ones of us know everything of significance that's ever been done. We churn and churn, and some of us do it brilliantly, but it's just a glittering rehash." Did I just say that ?
"And if they're linked, then beauty is gone too?" Sharif had leaned forward his elbows on his legs, his chin cupped in his hands. His eyes were large and serious.
Robert looked away. Finally, he choked out, "There is still beauty. I will bring it back." I will regain it .
Sharif smiled, mistaking Robert's assertion for some general faith in humankind in the future? "That's wonderful, Professor. This goes beyond your essay in the Carolingian ."
"Indeed." Robert sat back, wondering just what in heaven's name was going on.
Sharif hesitated a moment, as if uncertain where to go next. "At the UCSD library, how has your project there progressed?"
Still no action downstairs. Robert said, "You see some connection between my art and… the Librareome?"
"Well, yes. I don't want to intrude, but ultimately what you do at UCSD seems to be very much a statement about the position of art and literature in the modern world."
Maybe this was SciFi-Sharif, trying to figure out what Stranger-Sharif was up to. If only I could use one against the other . He gave his visitor a judicious nod. "I'll talk to my friends about this. Maybe we can arrange something."
That seemed to satisfy whoever-it-was. They set a time for another chat, and then the visitor was gone.
Robert turned off circle-of-friends access. No more surprise visitations tonight.
And downstairs, there was still no action. He watched through the walls for almost fifteen minutes. That was certainly a productive use of time. Think about something else, damn it .
He blew off the top of the house and looked across West Fallbrook. Un-enhanced, the place was very dark, more like an abandoned town than a living suburb. The real San Diego had less skyglow than he remembered from the 1970s. But behind that real view were unending alternatives, all the cyberspace fun Bob's generation could have ever imagined. Hundreds of millions were playing out there tonight. Robert could feel — Epiphany could make him feel — the thrum of it, beckoning. Instead he tapped out a command Chumlig had mentioned; here and there across North County, tiny lights glowed. Those were the other students in his classes, at least the ones who were studying tonight and had any interest in what the others were doing. Twenty little lights. That was more than two-thirds of the class, a special kind of belief circle, one dedicated to pushing up their cooperation scores as far as possible. He hadn't appreciated how hard these little third-raters were working.
Robert ghosted over the suburbs, toward the nearest of the lights. He hadn't tried Epiphany's "out of body" feature before. There was no feeling of air flowing past, or motion. It was just his synthetic viewpoint slewing across the landscape. He could still feel his butt on the chair in his bedroom. And yet he understood why the directions said to do this sitting down. The viewpoint swooped down into a valley with a speed that was dizzying.
He drifted into a welcoming window. Juan Orozco and Mahmoud Kwon and a couple of others were gathered in a family room, marking out possibilities for tomorrow's exchange with Capetown. They looked up and said hi, but Robert could tell they weren't seeing much more than his icon hovering in the room. He could be present virtually, perhaps even look as "real" as Sharif usually did. But Robert just hung in the air, listening to the talk for a few moments and —
Alarm notification!
He cut the connection and was back in his bedroom.
Downstairs, Bob had wandered out of the living room. He stood by Alice's door and knocked gently. As far as Robert could tell there was no answer. After a moment, Bob tucked his chin in and turned away. Robert tracked him up the stairs. The sounds of footsteps came down the hall. Bob knocked on Miri's door, the way he did most evenings. There was mumbled conversation, and Miri's voice saying, "G'night, Daddy." It was the first Robert had heard her call Bob that.
Bob's footsteps came nearer; he paused at Robert's door, but he didn't say anything. Robert watched him through the wall as Bob turned and was swallowed up by the privacy of the master bedroom.
Robert hunched over his desk and stared into the downstairs. Alice hardly ever stayed up much beyond Bob. Of course, tonight was not your usual night. Damn. You screw your courage up to an act of family betrayal — and then fate dumps problems all over your dishonorable intent. But even if Alice camped out in the den, eventually she'd have to use the bathroom. Right?
Twenty minutes passed.
Alice's door opened. She stepped out, turned toward the stairs. Use the ground-floor bathroom, damn you . She turned again and paced angrily around the living room. Paced? There was precision and power in every motion, like a dancer or a martial-arts nut. Not like dumpy frumpy Alice Gong Gu, she of the mild round face and the shapeless dress. And yet this was the real view. It was her real face, even if it was tense with pain, and drenched in sweat. Huh? Robert tried to follow her gliding dance in close-up. The woman was dripping sweat. Her dress was soaked, as if she had just finished a long, frantic run.
Like Carlos Rivera.
It couldn't be. Alice never got stuck in a foreign language, or in a particular specialty. In any one particular specialty. But he remembered the web discussion of JITT. What about the few strange people who could "train" more than once, who became ever more multitalented, until the side effects finally destroyed them? Where would such wretches get "stuck" if there were dozens of imprints to fall into?
Alice's gliding dance slowed, stopped. She stood for a moment with her head bowed, her shoulders heaving. Then she turned and walked slowly into the front bathroom.
Finally, finally. And now I should he overcome with relief . Instead, revelation bounced back and forth in his mind. This explained so many little mysteries. It contradicted several certainties. Maybe Alice hadn't been gunning for him. Maybe she was no more his enemy than anyone in this house.