Herrin sipped at his beer; his mouth was dry. "You recognize what I am and confess you mean to warp me to your purposes."
"What, so little confidence? From you; I'd expect you to say that you were satisfied to know that you could bend me. After all, I'll be the State. And shall I not be one of the subjects you mean to influence? Teach me art, Herrin. Isn't that what you want, after all? Here I reveal to you all my defenses and you refuse the entry."
"Oh, of course, I shall trust you immediately and implicitly."
Waden's brows lifted, and then he laughed. "Of course you will. That's the trouble with my field; every amateur feels entitled to practice my art, but who would have the temerity to walk into your studio and pick up a chisel, eh?"
"You have a sobering manner of expression, Waden Jenks."
"My art has the disadvantage that no one who sees it can trust the shape of it. I can lay hands on the beautiful marble flesh, and find the outlines."
"But if you believe it's flesh, you've been taken in."
Waden grinned, and then went sober, his brown eyes and thin face most serious. "I like talking to you. And that's a motive. There's a feeling of finding someone at home when I'm talking to you, Herrin. And that is rare. It's very rare. You know what I mean. Keye is possibly the third greatest mind and talent at the University, on all of Freedom, most probably, because previous graduates don't rival the two of us. Keye's mind is amazing. And yet, can you talk to her—except where it regards ethics? And even then, don't you see things which she would not be able to take into her reality?"
Herrin turned the mug in a circle, until the handle was facing his hand again, studying the amber and crystal patterns on the wooden table.
"Are you never lonely, Herrin? Even with Keye—are you never lonely?"
He looked into Waden's eyes.
"I am," Waden said. "Loneliness on a scale you understand. Keye—has you. And me. Keye has two living minds greater than her own, two walls off which to reflect her thoughts. But our scope is more than hers. There are thoughts you think she can't comprehend, connections you perceive she can't grasp, because you have explained all the pieces of them, haven't you, and she still doesn't see? No one does. Not the way you do. But I guess them. I can talk to you, and you to me. Do you know what frightens me most in the world, Herrin? Not dying. Discovering that I'm solitary, that my mind is the greatest one, and that I'm damned to think things beyond expression, that I can never explain to any living being. Have you ever entertained such thoughts, Herrin?"
Herrin found nothing to say, not readily.
"I think you have, Herrin. And how do you answer them?"
"By crowds. By crowds. Three or four pitted against me—can entertain."
"But satisfy?"
"I have my art. You're right, that I can lay hands on it, that it gives . . . presence and substance. Yours, on the other hand, is far more solitary. Whoever sees it will not admire. They fear."
"Unless there were one to complement me. One who could take my art and put it in breathing marble and bronze, who could make me monuments, Herrin, who could provide something that would not be feared, but treasured, who would make my works visible. Complementary, Artist. I provide you subject and you provide me substance. And we talk to each other. We communicate, as neither of us can communicate with others, in our own language."
"How can there be trust?"
"That too, I leave you to discover. Solve my dilemmas, Artist. Lend me vision and I lend you power to spread that vision."
"You don't yet have that power."
"But shall."
"And is power shared?"
"Dionysus." Waden chuckled and drank deeply of his beer. "And Apollo. You are Dionysian and I Apollonian, urge and logic, creativity and rationality, chaos and order. We function in complement. Adopt your protégés. I have my own. We are opposite faces of one object; a balance of forces. Beware me, Dionysus, as I am wary of you. But cooperate we can—and must. The alternative is sterile solitude. We shall beget ideas upon each other. We shall contend without contending, by being."
"I reject your analogy. They're old gods, and we are both of us half and half. Our contending is potentially more direct."
"But the manifestation, the manifestation, Herrin, isn't that the important thing, because there's no way my Apollonian art can have dominance over your Dionysian one save by inspiration; and yours similarly with mine. Inspire me. I defy you to do more."
"When I defy you to do more, I fear you can."
"Then have you not, Herrin, met your master?"
"Then have you not met the thing you say you fear most?"
Waden stared at him a moment, then all his expression dissolved in humor and he poured more beer from the pitcher, poured for Herrin as well. "See, I'm your servant. I must be, because I have a need, and you are that need. Without Dionysus, I become stasis, and the world stops."
"We are both Dionysian, and drunk."
"Drunk, we are soberer than most will ever be. No, we are still in complement, because our opposite natures are on the expressive side, and our internal realities are therefore opposite. We are a doubled square of dark and light, complete pattern."
"Then, my complement, give me Jenks Square."
"That is your ambition."
"That is a step toward it."
"But I'm only a student." Waden held outward his empty hands. "Who am I to give gifts?"
"Waden Jenks."
"That I am." His laugh at this was different, sober, conscious. "I shall give you the Square, Artist, and you will make me visible to all of time. Visible. You're right that I live like the invisibles, and I don't savor it. Give me substance. Whatever you need, that I'll give . . . . Ah, Herrin, respect me."
"Fear me, if I'm your outlet to the world; your substance flows through my hands."
"I've told you what I fear. What do you fear, Artist?"
Herrin frowned, and looked him in the eyes and grinned, lifting his glass. "Your art can't function until you know that, can it? You open your mind to me, that's one thing, but to open mine to you, ah, that's another."
"Marvelous. O Artist, I tell you I find no pleasure greater than this, to find a mind to answer mine, a recognition passing all other pleasures. I ask you no more questions. What you want—is possible. Indeed, you'll find it's possible. Begin your work in your mind; I'll give you the stone."
Herrin's heart beat very fast. He was drunk, perhaps, but only half with the beer. It was Waden's intoxication which infected him. He believed, and that night in his own bed, alone, for Keye had other business, he still believed, and began to build the plans he had already made—bigger, and finer, and more far-reaching.
He had his means. Waden Jenks frightened him, for he knew himself, how dangerous he was in his own power, and he believed that Waden Jenks was at least second to him, in a way that Keye could never be, for Keye was tunneled in on a| very narrow reality and Waden Jenks—had scope. And intelligence.
And worked in different ways.
There was nowhere in the University or in the Residency that one was likely to discover the handiwork of Waden Jenks; Waden's work was silence, was subtlety, the warping of a purpose; was kinetic and impossible to freeze. Herrin thought of capturing this in stone, and began to despair.
More and more it became his obsessive concern, the thought that this Man, this potentiality against which all Freedom was measured, had an essence which defied him.