Nova 4

EDWARD WELLEN Too Long at the Fair

Edward Wellen, with time out for World War II and laboring as a mechanic's helper, oil company dispatcher, stamp dealer and copy writer, has worked only as a free-lance writer.

"Who?"

He said his name too softly.

"Who?"

He said his name too loudly.

"Oh, of course. Come right in, darling."

The door opened: purring, the mat slid him inside. He stepped off and it slid back. The door closed. And there he was, alone in simulated candlelight with Gvathryl.

Her hand swam toward him at the end of a swan's-neck arm.

"Darling, I'm so glad your press service asked for the interview and that I was able to squeeze you in."

The way he understood it Gvathryl had done the asking He smiled and took her hand and bowed over it.

"I'm grateful for this chance to meet you, Mrs. Gvathryl."

"Just plain Gvathryl, please."

There was nothing plain about Gvathryl. Not Gvathryl herself or her surroundings. Gvathryl was Gvathryl and she was staying in the grandest hotel's grandest suite.

She took him by the arm and, pressing herself to him, led him to a chair. And indeed without that playful aid he might have lost his way in the luxurious clutter. He did lose his last bit of objectivity.

The warmth of her presence, the firm pressure of her fragile-seeming hand, the look of her startlingly blue eyes, the throatiness of her voice, the perfume of her hair, all worked on him like an elixir. He had feared letdown but found himself high on the dream come true. Gvathryl in the flesh was even more overpowering than the Gvathryl on the screen he had known from his childhood.

Gvathryl enthroned him, then arched a flame-tipped finger above a button.

"Can I get you anything, darling?"

He got hold of his vocal reins.

"No, thanks. I've just had lunch."

She pouted forgivingly.

"Maybe something later then."

She settled sinuously onto a cushion on the floor beside him and looked up at him soulfully.

"Comfy, darling?"

His pulse quickened. Comfy was the one thing he was not.

"Yes, thanks."

"Fine. Now what would you like to ask me, dear? Fire away. Anything at all."

"Gvathryl, I . . ." He tried wildly to sort out his mental list of questions.

"You might begin by asking me when and where I'm appearing next."

He seized on that.but gave it a twist.

"Gvathryl, I thought you had gone into retirement."

Her eyes flashed.

"Never!" The expressive hands conjured up a sacrificial lamb lying devotedly on the altar. "Oh, now and then I may withdraw from view for a time, to let the creative juices well up again, as it were; but as long as my public wants me, Gvathryl goes on."

The aura of awe was wearing away and his reportorial eye probed Gvathryl. Just how old was Gvathryl? A spinal coldness vibrated to the thought. Gvathryl must be older than his mother's mother. He dimly remembered what time had done to his grandmother. But time had merely sandblasted Gvathryl into renewal.

Yet now that he looked, he saw the signs: very clear now the numberless fine lines as of a canvas backgrounding the bold paint. Gvathryl, trying to cling to her vanishing—vanished —youth instead of retiring gracefully to live on her memories of glory. Gvathryl, staying too long at the fair. Gvathryl the all-besought, now doing the asking.

"Would you like to see the new dance I've worked out for the personal-appearance tour I'm planning?"

She spoke eagerly and gaily but rose stiffly and belatedly: woefully behind her own cue. He winced for Gvathryl. Her supple form had rigidified, her reflexes had slowed. She was watching his face anxiously.

"Don't move, darling. Stay right where you are."

She seemed to shake herself into limberness as she walked to the wall. She pressed a button and the room cleared a space. A curtain hung across one end of the room. Its shimmer and sheen suggested one-way glass fibers. It rustled in the currents of sweet-and -pungent air. He wondered if someone stood behind it looking and listening. That possibility made him feel embarrassed for Gvathryl.

He saw her tremble and pull herself together before she turned to face him. The great Gvathryl, playing to an audience of one unimportant reporter, nervous? Did so much ride on this one performance? Now he felt nervous. That the great Gvathryl should worry about what he might think or write! Yet it was understandable. He personified the press and the public it serviced. He leaned back and touched the starter of his wrist audiovisual taper.

And almost at once the awkwardness passed. This was still the great Gvathryl.

"I call this 'The Dance of the Seven Worlds' "

Her voice was sure, her poise was pure. One palm went to her heart, the other palm went out toward him. And without any effects she fashioned an ambience and without any music she established rhythm and melody. With a frisson of delight he gave himself up to her artistry. He forgot the gallons of rehearsal sweat it must have taken to make the devilishly hard look angelically easy, the dervishly wild look anglicanly cool.

Now she floated mysteriously in a limbo of her own making, now she created a solar system to carom in. She danced the inspiring centripetal of her soul, she danced the outspiraling centrifugal of her love. Always she remained defiant in the face of doom.

On one level she was the psyche striving to free itself from the bonds of flesh; on another level she was the human being breaking free of a life-denying puritanism and a spirit-denying depersonalization; on another, the artist emancipating herself from the tyranny of time; on yet another, earthbound humanity struggling to throw off the last fetters of gravity and flash out to the stars.

His nails had bitten into his palms. He came aware of that now when the spell broke.

Her turns and whirls and leaps and spins had grown hectic, even desperate. From being the greatest performance he had ever seen, Gvathryl's or anyone's, it became a travesty of a beginning dancer.

Worse. Before his eyes she grew feeble, haggard, weighed down. The creeping ravages of time had caught up with her; they danced a shadowy and shuffling danse macabre together, Gvathryl and time.

Worst of all, she would not stop. The persistence of motion gave her a zombielike air. It was chilling to watch her drive herself to exhaustion or death to celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit.

He was an artist in his own way. A journalist, a good one and an honest one. He would have to show and tell it the way he saw it. But he would be as kind as he could.

Then all at once she became again the same enchanting Gvathryl; no, an even more enchanting Gvathryl. He could almost see her throw off all bonds. For one dazzling moment he had the feeling she would escape on all levels into an eternal freedom.

In one burst of grace she broke the bonds of flesh, of society, of time, of space. She was not the dancer or the dance, she was freedom itself.

It was a brief moment. Thrashing sounds came from behind the curtain but he ignored them in the collapse of Gvathryl at his feet.

He knelt beside her.

"Are you . . . ? Can I . . . ?"

Gvathryl waved him away with an arm articulating like a broken wing. She spoke and he could hardly hear her.

"Go. Please go. Leave me."

As the door began to close after him he burned with shame. So quick to go when Gvathryl might be dying.

He turned, caught the door, wedged himself in the opening: he almost lost his footing in the confused to and fro of the mat. He put his weight into a savage thrust that overcame the door's whining to close and squeezed inside.

The curtain had torn away.

There were two Gvathryls. One was the Gvathryl he had seen dancing, a worn-out simulacrum of the true Gvathryl. The other Gvathryl, lying tangled in a remote-control harness she wore, was a network of tiny wrinkles that had held together a mound of flab and now held together a kindle of broken bones as well. This, the true Gvathryl, had caught at the curtain to pull herself up and had only brought it down.

"It isn't your fault, my dear."

She wasn't talking to him. She did not see him. She was looking at the simulacrum and talking to it.

"I'm still not sure what happened when I tired and it all began going wrong and I saw we were losing that nice young man. Did I reverse the torque converter myself or did you take over? Either way, I'm afraid the feedback has quite torn me apart."

She laughed, and the blood came.

"No matter, my dear. You did beautifully there at the end, with your learning memories of all our rehearsals. I was proud of you."

He wiped the tape as he stole out.