The State Of The Art Read Online Free PDF

upside down. I selected a magazine as well, so arrived back at Linter's clutching my copy of Stern and expecting to have to drive away. I'd already made tentative plans; going to Berlin via the First World War graves and the old battle grounds, following the theme of war, death and memorials all the way to the riven capital of the Third Reich itself.
    But Linter's car was there in the courtyard, parked beside the Volvo. His auto was a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud; the ship believed in indulging us. Anyway, it claimed that making a show was better cover than trying to stay inconspicuous; Western capitalism in particular allowed the rich just about the right amount of behavioural leeway to account for the oddities our alienness might produce.
    I went up the steps and pressed the bell. I waited for a short while, hearing noises within the flat. A small notice on the far side of the courtyard caught my attention, and brought a sour smile to my face.
    Linter appeared, unsmiling, at the door; he held it open for me, bowing a little.
    'Ms Sma. The ship told me you'd be coming.'
    'Hello.' I entered.
    The apartment was much larger than I'd anticipated. It smelled of leather and new wood; it was light and airy and well decorated and full of books and records, tapes and magazines, paintings and objets d'art, and it didn't look one little bit like the place I'd had in Kensington. It felt lived in.
    Linter waved me towards a black leather chair at one end of a Persian carpet covering a teak floor and went over to a drinks cabinet, turning his back to me. 'Do you drink?'
    'Whisky,' I said, in English. 'With or without the “e”.' I didn't sit down, but wandered around the room, looking.
    'I have Johnny Walker Black Label.'
    'Fine.'
    I watched him clamp one hand round the square bottle and pour. Dervley Linter was taller than me, and quite muscular. To an experienced eye there was something not quite right - in Earth human terms - about the set of his shoulders. He leaned over the bottles and glasses like a threat, as though he wanted to bully the drink from one to the other.
    'Anything in it?'
    'No thanks.'
    He handed me the glass, bent to a small fridge, extracted a bottle and poured himself a Budweiser (the real stuff, from Czechoslovakia). Finally, this little ceremony over, he sat down. Bahaus chair, and it looked original.
    His face was calm, serious. Each feature seemed to demand separate attention; the large, mobile mouth, the flared nose, the bright but deep-set eyes, the stage-villain brows and surprisingly lined forehead. I tried to recall what he'd looked like before, but could only remember vaguely, so it was impossible to tell how much of the way he looked now had been carried over from what would be classed as his 'normal' appearance. He rolled the beer glass around in his large hands.
    'The ship seems to think we should talk,' he said. He drank about half the beer in one gulp and placed the glass on a small table made of polished granite. I adjusted my brooch. 'You don't think we should though, no?'
    He spread his hands wide, then folded them over his chest. He was dressed in two pieces of an expensive looking black suit; trousers and waistcoat. 'I think it might be pointless.'
    'Well ... I don't know ... does there have to be a point to everything? I thought ... the ship suggested we might have a talk, that's -'
    'Did it?'
    '- all. Yes.' I coughed. 'I don't ... it didn't tell me what's going on.'
    Linter looked steadily at me, then down at his feet. Black brogues. I looked around the room as I sipped my whisky, looking for signs of female habitation, or for anything that might indicate there were two people living here. I couldn't tell. The room was crowded with stuff; prints and oils on the walls, most of the former either Breughels or Lowrys; Tiffany lampshades, a Bang and Olafsen Hifi unit, several antique clocks, what looked like a dozen or so Dresden figurines, a Chinese cabinet of black lacquer, a large four-fold screen