The Light That Never Was Read Online Free PDF Page B

Finally I told Mr. Milfro about the trouble I was having, and he spoke to the caterer, and the caterer let me come in after closing.”
    “Best caterer in the universe,” Milfro murmured. “What’d you think of the mural?”
    “It’s charming! I haven’t seen so many portraits in one place since I arrived on Donov. I had the impression that Donovian artists don’t know how to paint portraits. Several of your tourists are priceless, and of course the whole concept is absolutely ingenious. Unfortunately, all of that wall space, and all of that paint, and the tremendous amount of effort and skill involved in applying it, are aimed at showing pictorially the two types that among all the people of Donov are the most utterly lacking in pictorial qualities—artists and tourists.”
    She thanked Milfro again, delivered a smile of farewell that embraced everyone in the room, and rushed away. Milfro resumed his chair. “An artist can’t even have a joke,” he announced disgustedly, “without some stupid critic trying to take it seriously.”
    Jharge Roln had come in and seated himself at the far end of the table. He called to Milfro, “About Franff—”
    “What about him?”
    “Know an artist named Om Evar?”
    Milfro nodded.
    “I hear he has some kind of a connection with one of the riot worlds. don’t know which one, but it might be Sornor.”
    “Thanks,” Milfro said. “I’ll go see him now.”
    The ramshackle dwelling where Evar lived was the spiritual sibling or every other ramshackle dwelling in the colony. Milfro clumped up three flights of creaking stairs to the attic, where Evar enjoyed the unusual luxury of private quarters and even had a weatherproof skylight improvised out of a hole in the roof.
    The door was ajar. Evar sat morosely in front of an easel, tears streaking his face. Milfro stepped into the room and stared at the painting on the easel.
    “What’s that? ”
    “A fvronut ,” Evar blubbered.
    “Of course it is. What’s a fvronut?”
    “Animaloid on Stovii.”
    “Oh.” Milfro regarded the painting with interest. “Really, that’s nicely done. That’s quite the best thing you’ve ever done. You might he very good at portraits. I doubt that there’s a market for this one, though—not many tourists would want a painting of a hideous, earless, long-snouted, toothless, leather-skinned—”
    “It’s not hideous!” Evar shouted hotly.
    “It’s not? Excuse me, of course it’s not. Beauty in the eye of the beholder, ugliness likewise. It really is the best thing you’re done.”
    “It’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever known,” Evar said, blubbering again. “It’s more than my equal, or yours, and it saved my life. If it’s ugly in the painting that’s my fault. I wasn’t—” He sniffed. “I wasn’t equal to the subject. Now it’s dead. The riots. I just heard.”
    “But it isn’t,” Milfro said. “You have the painting, you have your memories—”
    “No. It’s dead.”
    “Look. I have an animaloid friend on Sornor. Franff. The best friend any young artist ever had and a great artist himself. The situation on Stovii couldn’t be worse than that on Sornor. I’m afraid Franff has been killed, but he’s not dead. He’ll live as long as he’s remembered, and no one who knew him will ever forget him.”
    Evar sniffed again. “If you don’t mind—”
    “Sure thing,” Milfro said. “Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll close the door.”
    He did, and then he opened it. “Say—if that fvronut was better than either of us, and beautiful besides, and saved your life—why do you keep calling it ‘it?’ ”
    He closed the door again, very gently, leaving Evar staring after him.
    A sheaf of riot reports arrived from M’Don, and Neal Wargen, the World Manager’s First Secretary, had planned on devoting a full day to them. Instead he found himself sourly contemplating a call for help from a precinct police commander. A smuggler was leaving a