Wyst: Alastor 1716 Read Online Free Page B

must
define the course of his future: specialized study at the lyceum, or perhaps
apprenticeship as a technical draftsman. It seemed that youth, with all its
joyful vagaries, lay definitely behind! In a morose mood Jantiff happened to
pick up the old treatise on the depiction of landscapes, and there he
encountered a tantalizing passage:
    For certain craftsmen, the depiction of landscapes becomes a lifelong
occupation. Many interesting examples of the craft exist. Remember: the
depiction reflects not only the scene itself but the craftsman’s private point
of view!
    Another aspect to the craft must at least be mentioned: sunlight.
The basic adjunct to the visual process varies from world to world, from a
murky red glow to a crackling purple-white glare. Each of these lights makes
necessary a different adjustment of the subjective-objective tension. Travel,
especially trans-planetary travel, is a most valuable training for the
depictive craftsman. He learns to look with a dispassionate eye; he clears away
films of illusion and sees objects as they are.
    There is one world where sun and atmosphere cooperate to produce
an absolutely glorious light, where every surface quivers with its true and
just color. The sun is the white star Dwan and the fortunate world is Wyst, Alastor 1716.
    Juille and Ferfan decided to cure Jantiff of his wayward
moods. They diagnosed his problem as shyness, and introduced him to a
succession of bold and sometimes boisterous girls, in the hope of enhancing his
social life. The girls quickly became either bored, puzzled or uneasy. Jantiff
was neither ill-favored, with his black hair, blue-green eyes and almost
aquiline profile, nor shy; nevertheless he lacked talent for small talk, and,
he suspected, justly enough, that his unconventional yearnings would only
excite derision were he rash enough to discuss them.
    To avoid a fashionable social function, Jantiff, without informing
his sisters, took himself off to the family houseboat, which was moored at a
pier on the Shard Sea. Fearful that either Juille or Ferfan or both might come
out to fetch him, Jantiff immediately cast off the mooring lines and drove
across Pallas Bay to the shallows, where he anchored his boat among the reeds.
    Solitude the peace at last, thought Jantiff. He boiled up a
pot of tea, then settled into a chair on the foredeck and watched the orange
sun Mur settle toward the horizon. Late-afternoon breeze rippled the water; a
million orange coruscations twinkled among the slender black reeds. Jantiff’s
mood loosened; the quiet, wide sky, the play of sunlight on the water were balm
to his uncertain soul. If only he could capture the peace of this moment and
maintain it forever! Sadly he shook his head: life and time were inexorable;
the moment must pass. A photograph was useless, and pigment could never
reproduce such space, such glitter and glow. Here in fact was the very essence
of his yearnings: he wanted to control that magic linkage between the real and
the unreal, the felt and the seen. He wanted to pervade himself with the secret
meaning of things and use this lore as the mood took him. These “secret
meanings” were not necessarily profound or subtle; they simply were what they
were. Like the present circumstances for instance: the mood of late afternoon,
the boat among the reeds, with—perhaps most important of all—the lonely figure
on the deck. In his mind Jantiff composed a depiction, and went so far as to
select pigments… He sighed and shook his head. An impractical idea. Even
were he able to achieve such a representation, what could he do with it? Hang
it on a wall? Absurd. Successive viewings would neutralize the effect as fast
as repetition of a joke.
    The sun sank; water moths fluttered among the reeds. From
seaward came the sound of quiet voices in measured discussion. Jantiff listened
intently, eerie twinges co along his skin. No one could explain the sea-voices.
If a person tried to drift stealthily near in a