boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

One-Way Trip 241
“Mig!” Uranov shouted. “Hi, Mig! Get out the glasses! Company!”
No answer came from the wind-worn wooden studio. Garrett and Uranov plowed
up the hillock to the door and paused to empty sand from their shoes. Uranov beat
a rhythmic tattoo on the weather-beaten door. There was still no answer.
Garrett pushed at the door, and old-fashioned hinged affair. It swung open. The
only trace of progress inside the studio was the hundreds of microbooks and their
projector. There were shelves upon shelves of the older paper books, too, and canvases
and an easel and brushes and paint pots and rags and everything but Emigdio
Valentinez.
He heard Uranov’s puzzled voice from behind his shoulder. “We’d have heard
about it if he’d come back to town. The man’s news.”
“He’s probably out painting someplace. You’re the one that knows him; you go
scout around. I’ll wait here in case you miss him and he comes back.”
Uranov nodded. “I’ll be glad to. I can see how Mig feels about this stretch of
coast. You see nothing but sand and ocean and your soul begins to come back inside
you. Maybe with a shack like this I could write the—” He shook himself and said,
“See you later.”
Garrett was glad to be rid of a witness. Even the cynical Uranov might not appreciate
the ethics of W.B.I. work. To find what has to be found, that is the important
thing. The moral problem involved in the guest’s right to search his host’s belongings is
secondary. Supposing Valentinez, when he did appear, declined to talk of lovestonite?
Best to forestall that by learning what one could to start with.
It was a distracting search. Valentinez’s library was a great temptation, and his
own canvases were an absolute barrier to serious detective work. In no gallery had
Garrett ever seen a Valentinez exhibit like this, and everything from the hastiest
sketches to a magnificent and carefully finished sandscape bore the complete authority
of the master.
Two things especially Garrett could gladly have spent long hours contemplating.
One was a very rough crayon sketch for a self-portrait; there was no mistaking the
gentle melancholy of that smiling face. The other was a half-finished composition of
sun and sea and rock and algae, which even in its imperfect state seemed to sum up
all the beauty of a world without man’s refinements—and yet a beauty that existed
only because a great man could understand and perfect it.
But Garrett resolutely tore his eyes from these two fragmentary masterpieces and
went on with his search. He had covered the whole studio when he realized what
was wrong—terribly wrong. There was not the slightest hint of anything concerned
with lovestonite.
His own swizard was the only bit of lovestonite in the room. The random notes
and scribbled jottings filed haphazardly among canvases and furniture dealt with
formulas for paint, possible new developments in epic sets, an essay on the problems
of peace, the possibilities of revival of old-style cookery, the latest discoveries in
radioactivity, revisions in the orbit calculations of the doomed Martian spaceships—
everything under and around the sun—for Valentinez had the da Vinci type of
creative mind—save lovestonite. Even the all-embracing library seemed to contain
no books on the newer plastics, the clays of Australia, or the varying transmission
speeds of light.