Free The Golden Fleece by Brian Stableford

he had to make every possible effort not to cause any difficulty. He took a step toward the door, hoping that they could simply go back to the dining room, where he could tell Jason Jarndyke once again what a magnificent artist his wife was, and how grateful he was to have seen her work.
     
    Medea wouldn’t let him. She didn’t do anything as crude as blocking his way, but she stopped him in his tracks with a glance. Beautiful women could do that Adrian knew, but he couldn’t help a slight superstitious shudder.
     
    “Why?” she said. “You think you understand—so why?”
     
    “I thought the trial was over,” Adrian countered.
     
    “I believe that you see it. You’ve yet to convince me that you understand it.”
     
    Adrian thought about it, and then said: “I can’t, Mrs. Jarndyke. I know that there’s been a misunderstanding here—that your reaction to discovering that I can see your paintings wasn’t at all what your husband expected, and still isn’t. I know that, in a sense, I’ve let him down. He wanted to make you a gift of my eyes, of my special sight, because he thinks that you’ve been yearning for an audience for all the fifteen years that you’ve been married, and maybe longer. I think I do understand why you’re disappointed...but I couldn’t even attempt to convince you of it without stirring up trouble, and that’s the last thing I want to do. Please let me go, Mrs. Jarndyke. You have no use for me; it was very kind of you to let me see your paintings, and I’m truly grateful, but I’d like to return to my own work now.”
     
    He had been trying to smooth things over, to worm his way out of his predicament, but he could see in Angelica Jarndyke’s marvelously beautiful face that he’d only made things worse. He cursed himself for having been a fool, for not having known what to say and not having the sense simply to keep quiet.
     
    “What would you have done?” she asked, in a deadly whisper.
     
    That, Adrian realized, was what she really wanted to know. She was only a Yorkshirewoman by marriage, he knew, but he didn’t think she’d have much patience for beating around the bush, so he stopped trying.
     
    “I’ve asked myself that, once or twice, since I saw your Inferno ,” he admitted. “What would I have done if, as well as being able to see the full color spectrum, and teach myself to identify and analyze a significant fraction of its psychological effects, I’d also been able to paint? For a little while, it seemed like a conundrum, but then I realized that I already had the answer. I’d have done what I am doing, with my own particular talent. Instead of studying genetics, in order to generate as many of the spectrum’s gradations of color in different organic pigments, I’d have done what you initially did, and gone to art school to learn technique. And when I’d learned the tricks of the trade, I’d have looked for an opportunity to apply them—but I’d have looked for a way to apply them in such a way that people could see what I was doing, perhaps not entirely consciously, but nevertheless visibly.
     
    “I’d have done what other painters with our particular talent have done in the past, using all the colors of the palette in individual paintings. I’d have painted images that even people like Mr. Jarndyce could see without effort: portraits, flowers, foliage...maybe even sirens, fauns and witches. I’d have used my additional powers of discrimination to build in extra levels of suggestion, tantalizingly beyond the easy reach of commonplace consciousness, but I wouldn’t have tried to hide what I was representing; I wouldn’t have created an entire occult art that, so far as I knew, nobody else would ever be able to see...something for myself alone. Maybe that makes me less than a true artist. Maybe it makes me into a commercial hack, just looking for a way to market my talent. But that’s what I do—and that’s what I would have done, if