Free The Light That Never Was by Jr. Lloyd Biggle Page A

tourists became jaded with the glories of Donovian art.
    The world prospered on the lavish exchange provided by tourists and vacationers, millionaires came in droves to establish vacation homes, natives left their impoverished agricultural holdings and received fantastic salaries as servants, cooks, chauffeurs, and guides. Many saved their money and established their own resorts or devised a flood of novel attractions to please the tourists and enable them to spend their money. To the native Donovians, the only blight on all of this prosperity was the presence of the untidy, undisciplined artists whose predecessors had started it all, but as long as Donov had perfect light and Ian Korak as world manager, it would have great art colonies.
    Korak’s only regrets were that the afflictions of age denied him enjoyment of the new generation of artists, and that he could no longer experience the pulse-quickening pleasure of gazing at Donov’s glowing landscapes and seascapes under a perfect artists’ light.
    Wargen brought the costumes—hats with huge flopping brims and half-length cloaks, all in a melange of gaudy colors. Donovian peasants had once worn hats and cloaks vaguely like them for field work on sunny days. For reasons never fathomed, the tourists made the costume their own, with the inevitable result that the peasants indignantly discarded it. Artists had satirized and caricatured cloaked and hatted tourists mercilessly, but the first act of many tourists was to envelop themselves in this monstrous clothing. It was an excellent costume for long periods of exertion in the sun—which was, of course, the last use to which any tourist would subject it.
    A successful tourist trade was not without its price, and some of the expressions once applied to artists—pollution, epidemic, seizure, and so on—were now directed at tourists.
    Wargen inspected Korak, gave the wide brim of his hat a crease that concealed his face, and nodded approval. Korak took his arm for support, and they moved toward the private elevator.
    The exhibit, Eight Paintings by an Anonymous Artist, had received only the routine publicity announcements and as yet no critical comment, and it was attracting a very modest attendance. Korak found this disappointing. The eight widely spaced paintings held no interest at all for him—he saw them only as blurs in bright ovals of illumination. He wanted to study the reactions of those viewing them.
    “Nine,” Wargen whispered, looking about the room. “Hualt, the art critic, and his wife. I don’t recognize any of the others.”
    It was a solemn, introspective group of art viewers whom they passed, one or two at a time, as they circled the room. The critic completed his own circuit and started another. Passing him, Korak remarked in subdued tremolo, “It’s something, but surely they don’t call it art!” Hualt paid no attention. They continued to circle the room, spectators came and went, and except for a newly arrived woman in tourist costume who asked her companion what possible value a painting could have if it had no people in it, Korak perceived no reaction that he could get a grip on.
    “Harnasharn just looked in,” Wargen whispered. “He recognized us—he winked at me.”
    “Let’s go see him,” Korak said.
    Harnasharn had disappeared, but Wargen solemnly informed the receptionist that they wanted to arrange for an appraisal of an early work of Zornillo’s, and a moment later the art dealer strode quickly into the room. He stopped short when he saw them, and said, a note of disappointment in his voice, “Come this way, please.”
    A genuine art dealer, Korak reflected. The owner of a Zornillo was more welcome in his galleries than a world manager.
    He led them to his private office, placed a chair for Korak, and proffered another to Wargen, who shook his head and remained standing.
    “This is an unexpected honor, Excellency,” Harnasharn said.
    Korak said wryly, “You mean that the