"You no longer have to flatter, First Citizen. Do you merely flex your unpracticed talents?"
"Oh, excellent. Still barbed. What of that masterwork of yours? Shall I come to see it?"
"Not yet. When it's done."
"What, afraid of my reaction?"
"When it's done."
"When will that be?"
Herrin shrugged. "Possibly a week."
"So soon?"
"Before deadline. I have had outstanding cooperation."
"I've heard you plan a tribute to the workers."
"Out of my account."
"No, no, the State will fund it."
"Will you? That's quite generous."
"A gesture seems in order. An inspiration to the city. I'm really impressed, Herrin, truly I am. I have administrators accustomed to such tasks of coordinating workers and supply who find less success. You have a certain talent there too, by no means minor."
"I should not care to exercise it. My sculpture is the important thing. I credit my choice of supervisors."
"One lost. Most unfortunate."
Herrin fidgeted and recrossed his ankles, feet extended before him. The reference was in total bad taste.
"An invisible."
"One supposes," Herrin said. "I'm sure I don't know."
"You're a disturbance," Waden said.
"Do I disturb you?"
Waden tossed off the rest of his drink, set the glass down, still smiling. "I shall expect to see this wonder of yours next week. Dare I?"
"Barring rain. I don't fancy working in the wet."
"Ah, you're admirably restrained. You're dying for me to see it, and probably a little apprehensive."
"Not in the least apprehensive."
"But anxious."
"I should imagine the same of you."
"True," Waden said. "True. I'll leave you to your rest. I see you were on the verge." He tapped the decanter with his fingernail. "You ought not to indulge so much. I hate to see a great mind corrupted."
"Only on occasions. I've reformed since my Student days."
"Have you?" Waden rose, and Herrin did. Waden brushed his clothes into order. "A pleasant rest to you."
"Thank you."
Waden started out Stopped, halfway to the door, looked back. "Keye's well. Thought I'd tell you."
"My regards to her."
Waden registered mild surprise. "Bastard! Did you know?"
"She is with you, then."
"Ah, she visits. Says you've gone strange."
Herrin shrugged. "A matter of indifference to me."
"Do you know, I think she prefers you."
"Again a matter of indifference. Beware of Keye."
"Do you think so?"
"Creative ethics, Waden. She'll create yours for you; doubtless she's doing so at the moment. But that's your problem."
"Ah, you are offended."
"I'm not offended." He folded his arms to take the weight off his shoulders. His eyes were growing heavy from the drink. "I'm far too weary to cope with Keye, and she'll drift back again. Or back and forth. I'm quite surprised you two haven't reached an arrangement long before this. Evidently she feels herself in one of her stronger periods; she avoided you once; now she avoids me. I've always thought you underestimated her." A thought came to him and he penetrated his lethargy with a more direct look. "Ah! you've talked to Keye about this—plan, this ambition of yours. And lo, Keye is with you."
"Worth considering."
"Indeed it is."
Waden gnawed his lip, laughed softly. Nodded. "Warning taken, Herrin. Warning assuredly taken."
He left. Herrin walked to the bed and sat down, utterly weary, disturbed in his concentration. He had not asked for disturbances. What had been contentment deserted him.
He tried to put it all from his mind, revise the time, wipe it all out and start over. He failed. He was muddled, vaguely and irrationally, knowing Keye was not sitting in her apartment over the Square waiting for his attention. He was hurt Of course she would not wait. Of course there was no reason that she should. He would have had no objection had she
taken a horde of others to her bed. She had done so, in fact, while taking him on convenient days.
But Waden. Waden, who rivaled him. He took that maneuver seriously. The three greatest minds in all Freedom . . . and always Keye had maintained at least neutrality, with the balance tipped toward him. Waden conceived ambition and the Ethicist went to him like iron to a magnet.
When his great work was almost complete.
That desertion hurt, and the news of it had to come when he was tired, when his maintenance of his reality could be shaken. There was a cure for that. He got up, walked to the table and poured his abandoned glass full of wine. He sat down and he drank, and when he could no longer navigate Steadily, he headed for bed, to lie with the lights on because he was too muddled to turn them out, with a confusion of anger in hin that was not going to accept things as they were and an exhaustion too great to think his way out of it.
He slept, more a plummet into oblivion than a sinking into rest. And he waked, leaden-limbed and with a blinding headache. He lay abed until he could no longer ignore the day, then rolled out gingerly, bathed, which diminished the headache and finally cured it.
Thinking . . . was in abeyance. He toweled off, dressed, held out his hands to see if they were steady, and they were.
Possibly, he thought—because his mind was most brilliant—the restlessness at night would get worse. He thought of what Waden feared—the same perspective, to have no one equal, anywhere. To be throwing out thoughts and ideas which no one could criticize because there was no one competent to comprehend.
Life without walls. With endless, endless outpouring of ideas, and nothing coming back, being at the center of everything, and radiating like a star ... into void.
To be cursed with increasing intellect, and increasing comprehension of one's reality, and increasing grasp....
You'll swallow, he recalled saying to Waden Jenks, until you burst.
That was not, he thought, what Waden feared. It was rather expansion . . . until expansion became attenuation, became dissipation . . . until Waden had never been.
A wave with no shore.
The thought began to occur to him as well. As it might have occurred to Keye. He had left Keye alone, without a shore to break the wave, and she had gone to Waden; as Waden went to him when Keye did not suffice.
And where now did Herrin Law go?
To deaden his mind every night because the thoughts were too vivid and the brain too powerful, so powerful that the only way to deal with it was to anesthetize it, to get null, for a few precious hours?
Until the machine tore itself apart?
The hands were steady at the moment He had that confidence, at least.
XVIII
Waden Jenks: Your hubris surpasses mine.
Master Law: Philosophy argues that hubris doesn't exist.
Waden Jenks: But it does. There are offenses against the State.
Master Law: I purpose nothing against the State.
Waden Jenks: No, your ambition is far greater.
He decided on breakfast, to be kind to his abused body, to guard his health, food was a good cure for such moods. Well-being generally restored his confidence. He left for the University dining hall rather than order breakfast up from Residency kitchens, which could take far longer than it was worth, which was why he had given up on breakfasts, when he thought about it. He considered his physical condition, which was approaching excessive attrition; hours of physical labor on small intake and limited sleep. Food at regular hours had to help.