Part 2

There was a shrill whistle, a drumbeat of running feet on the cold sidewalk. Walther moved forward to help the young men to their feet. They shrank away from him, and then he was surrounded by three armed police officers, shouting a gibberish of commands.

Finally, Willy Fritsh made himself heard. He pointed to Walther's manual, and spoke a few patient words of explanation. When one of the officers still seemed unsatisfied, Willy turned to Walther with a twinkle in his eyes:

"They want to know if you are a professional pugilist?"

Walther felt immeasureably relieved at hearing these naturally spoken words.

"Good Lord, no!" he gasped.

He took out his entry permits, his identification certificate and his letters of credit, impressively drawn up on the stationery of the Inter-Galactic Exchange Union on Deneb II.

When the doubting officer saw the amount of the credits, his hands shook and he handed the papers back to Walther as if they were state documents. The officers helped the two young men to their feet, admonished them sharply, tipped their hats to Walther and hurried back to their posts.

Willy regarded Walther quizzically.

"Well, young man, you seem to have very persuasive ways!"

At home, it had been easy for Walther to slip from English to German. He did it now in the stress of the moment.

"Ich kann Ihnen nicht sagen wie leid es mir tut--"

He was in the middle of his apology before he realized he was talking German. He broke off in confusion. Willy's pink cheeks crinkled with amusement.

"Ist schon gut. Ich spreche auch das 'alte' Deutsch."

Willy went on to explain:

"As a young man I translated many of the German masters into our modern happy time presentations. Now, what is it you wanted to ask Miss Maria?"

Walther addressed his question to Willy, but he looked at Maria as he spoke:

"I ... I wanted to ask if she would ever consider singing Rigoletto in its original form. I would be happy to pay all expenses...."

"I'm sure you would," Willy said drily. "But Miss Maria sings only the pure happy time essence of Rigoletto. Not for more than a century has Verdi's original version been sung on Earth."

Maria looked puzzled during the interchange. Willy translated for her, and she nodded in vigorous endorsement of his words. There was a titter of laughter from the young couples who had crowded around them again.

Walther drew himself very erect.

"Thank you," he said.

He turned on his heel and walked into the darkness beyond the stage exit. He walked blindly into the snow flurries, not caring where his steps were taking him. But he had not gone two hundred yards before he realized he was being followed.

* * * * *

Walther stopped and waited.

The footsteps behind him drew closer. A slight shadow bulked out of the darkness, and Walther heard Willy Fritsh say in German:

"Don't be alarmed, young man."

Willy came up and linked his arm through Walther's.

"Keep on walking--It's a cold night."

The chill air rattled in Willy's throat as he panted from the pace of overtaking Walther. When he caught his breath, he asked:

"What sort of world do you come from? It's quite amazing that someone from the Andromeda galaxy should ask for the original Rigoletto!"

Walther told the old producer something of his home and family. Willy questioned him closely on several points, and finally seemed satisfied.

"When they come from the stars," he murmured.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is nothing--just the title of an old classic."

At the next corner, Willy stopped. "I leave you here."

He stepped closer to Walther and lowered his voice, even though there was nothing around them but darkness and drifting snow.

"Would you care to sample a bit of Bohemia, my boy?"

"Well--I guess so," Walther answered doubtfully.

"Tomorrow evening then, at eight. 1400 Avenue B, apartment 21. Can you remember that?"

"1400 Avenue B, apartment 21."

"I must emphasize the need for discretion on your part. There will be important people present."

"Why do you trust me?" Walther challenged.

"Because I am an old fool," chuckled Willy Fritsh.

The chuckle emboldened Walther to ask one more question:

"Will Maria be there?"

"Now you are a fool!"

Willy took a step away, then returned, flicked on his cigarette lighter and studied Walther thoughtfully.

"Or maybe not," he murmured. "Maybe not. Perhaps Maria could be there, this once...."

He snapped out the lighter.

With another chuckle, Willy disappeared into the darkness.

1400 Avenue B, apartment 21. Eight o'clock tomorrow evening. The directions whirled all night through Walther's fitful sleep. They intermingled with a strange company of servo-robots, unintelligible phrases, the dry chuckle of Willy Fritsh and the haunting voice of Maria Piavi, beginning an aria she would never finish.

The next day, Walther determined to find out how the cult of brevity had changed other fields of Earth's culture. He went first to the library, where foreboding hardened into bitter reality. Classic after classic was cut to its essence. Hamlet was reduced to a total reading time of seven minutes. But the old librarian seemed embarrassed about this.

By mutual reference to the Manual, she managed to convey to him that a new edition would be out soon, and that it would be edited down to five minutes reading time. Did he want to sign up for a copy?

Walther gave her a stricken look, and silently shook his head.

Puzzled, she led him to the other classics on his list. Each was a new blow. "Great Expectations" was cut to twenty pages, all of Thoreau to one thin pamphlet, Henry James to a pocket-size digest of less than ten pages; "Leaves of Grass" to a few lines of verse.

Walther's sense of loss became more than personal. He saw uncounted generations of boys who would never know Whitman, who might never have time for the open road in the Spring, the sweet springtime of life. The road and the poem, they were part of each other. Without one, the other could not live.

The fire of Walther's dream flamed up fiercely within him. There was yet time for beauty in Andromeda. Time for quiet and thinking and true leisure. Somehow, he must rescue the treasures of the ages from the tomb of Earth and let them live again, three-quarters of a million light years away.

He beckoned to the old librarian, and laboriously communicated his question:

"The originals of these classics--where are they?"

She frowned in bewilderment. He pointed to the proper words again, and gestured with his hands to indicate a large book.

A smile of understanding replaced her frown. She consulted a larger edition of his own Manual, and wrote:

Digester's Vaults--lower six levels.

He wrote back:

Can I go down there?

After some delay, she encoded the answer:

Only authorized happy time Digesters are permitted in the vaults.

Walther thanked her glumly. His spirits were so depressed that not even the digested version of the Bible shocked him too greatly. The Old Testament amounted to eleven pages, in rather large type; the Gospel of St. Mark was three paragraphs; the Acts of the Apostles spanned less than half a page.

Walther left the library, and the icy wind roused him from depression. It lashed him to anger, to a desperate, unreasoning anger that drove him to find, somewhere on Earth, an ember of the old culture. Somewhere he had to find such an ember and bring it back to Neustadt, where it would flame again.

He managed to get directions to the Vienna stratowaycar. Surely in Vienna he would find some trace of the spirit left by Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Strauss.

Ten minutes later, when he left the stratoway in the Platz terminal near the Vienna Ring, his heart beat a little faster. This was indeed the old Vienna, as he had envisaged it from the few pictures he had seen and the many stories he had been told. The buildings on the Ring were in good repair, and not substantially altered. There was the Burg Theatre, the Art and History Museum, the buttressed facade of the ancient Opera House, the soaring twin spires of the Votive Church. It was like seeing an old woodcut come to life.

But, for Walther, that was all that came to life in Vienna. The Burg Theatre was currently presenting Faust, in what was billed as a brilliant new production scaled down to seventeen minutes. Walther sadly recalled Goethe's prophetic line: _Mein Lied ertont der unbekaten Menge_.... My song sounds to the unknown multitude.

Wandering outside the city itself, into the footpaths of the Wienerwald, Walther tried to lose himself among the gentle slopes and the old trees that cut latticework into the sky. He came suddenly upon the village of Tullnerzing, where, from a tiny sidewalk cafe, music of a stringed ensemble came in short, quick bursts. It was scherzo speeded up a hundredfold, with not three but an infinite number of quarter notes blurred into what sounded like a single beat.

These were the Vienna woods! How could he ever tell his mother and father? Heartsick, he returned to the Platz and found the Berlin stratoway.

In Berlin, his bitterness grew. He had known the Unter den Linden must have changed through the centuries, but he was not prepared for such a pace of life, such a frenzy of leisure. Better not to have left Andromeda. Better always to have lived with a dream.

The sight of two elderly burghers drinking beer reminded him of his own great grandfather, and gave him a heartening twinge of nostalgia. But as he stepped close to their table, he saw that as they sipped from their miniature steins the fingers of their free hands beat out a rhythmic accompaniment to the convolutions of an adagio team imaged on the table-top television screen.

The final irony came to him when he read the lines of Schiller, carved over the entrance to a museum near the Brandenburg Gate. Because they were cut deep into the old stone, they could not be erased or condensed. They were there to give their ironic message to a world that could no longer read them:

Only through the morning gateway of the beautiful did you enter the land of knowledge.

And beneath them was Schiller's immortal warning to the artist:

_Der Menschheit Wurde ist in eure Hand gegeben_,

_Bewahret sie...._

Walther copied the entire passage on the back of his Manual. This, at least, he could take back with him. These words he could preserve for the artists who would someday create their works of beauty on the frontier of Andromeda. As he copied them, Walther felt that the words were also a personal message from Schiller to himself:

_The dignity of Mankind is placed in your hands_,

_Preserve it!_

_Whether it sinks or rises depends on you._

_The holy spell of poetry_

_Serves a wise world order;_

_May it guide man to that great sea_

_Where harmony prevails._

The words sustained Walther's spirits until he left the stratoway in Paris and went to the Louvre. He had told himself that by this time nothing could shock him, that he could take any blow. But the Louvre was a new shock all over again.

Translating a title with the help of his Manual and the servo-robot guide, Walther found that the thin, wavering line, about two inches long, against a background of misty blue, was the Mona Lisa.

The servo-robot explained, after much searching among its tapes for words:

"This is the spirit of the famous Mona Lisa smile. The Happy Time artist has cleverly removed all non-essential detail so that you can get the meaning of the picture in the minimum amount of time."

Walther studied the thin, wavering line. This, then, was Da Vinci's eternal enigma of womanhood. Perhaps it explained why he felt there were two Marias. Could there be one whole woman in a culture of fragmented lives?

The portraits of Holbein were reduced to a few sprinkles of geometric designs shot through with a single brilliant color. The nudes of Watteau, Rubens and Velazquez were little more than shadow curves.

In the east wing of the Louvre, the servo-robot pointed to a series of larger paintings. Each of these, Walther learned, summarized the entire life work of a single artist. Here it was possible to see all of Titian or Michaelangelo or Van Gogh on one simplified canvas.

Where were the originals of these classics? In the cultural vaults at Uniport, the servo-robot explained. Only authorized Happy Time artists could work with them.

Afterwards, Walther was never quite certain what happened to the rest of his day. Distraught, he wandered around the Earth, changing from stratoway to stratoway, scarcely paying any heed to his next destination. Rome, Athens, Moscow, Jerusalem. Everywhere the pace of leisure was the same. Capetown, New Delhi, Tibet, Tokyo, San Francisco. Everywhere he saw something that crumbled his dream a little more: The Buddhist monk pausing for ten seconds of meditation while he counted his beads, not one by one but in groups of twenty; the World Government Chamber where the Senator from the United States filibustered a proposal to death by speaking for the unprecedented period of four minutes; the cafe near the school where teenage boys and girls, immense numbers of them, danced, snapped their fingers and shrieked ecstatically as the latest popular record exploded in a wild three-note burst of sound.

It was seven o'clock in the evening before Walther became aware of the time. He was half the Earth and just one hour away from his meeting with Willy Fritsh.

1400 Avenue B, apartment 21.

A bit of Bohemia, Willy had promised him. The words disturbed Walther. He had been disappointed so often in his twenty-four hours on Earth that he didn't feel like bracing himself for another let-down. Nor did he feel in the mood for a gay evening, if that was what Willy had meant.

Would Maria be there?

Walther shook his head angrily. He was indeed a fool if he expected anything after this day.

* * * * *

1400 Avenue B was only a few moments by monorail from the Hotel Altair. A gentle-faced woman who reminded Walther of his own mother answered his knock on the door of Apartment 21.

"Kdftc?" she inquired politely.

Walther stared at her. Was this all a cruel joke played by Willy Fritsh? Certainly this elderly woman, this quiet building, contained no Bohemia to be spoken of with discretion.

"Excuse me," he muttered, not even bothering to consult his Manual. He bowed and backed away. "I'm afraid I've made a mistake--"

She stayed him with a small gesture of her delicate fingers. Glancing swiftly up and down the hall, she beckoned him inside. When the door was closed, she smiled a bright welcome, and spoke in the old tongue:

"You're the young man from Andromeda!"

Walther felt the tension inside him beginning to relax. He nodded, and she took his arm.

"Willy told us--we've been expecting you."

She led him from the small foyer into a large, tastefully furnished living room. Walther glanced around uncertainly, but his first impression proved correct. There was no one else here.

The woman urged him forward with a light touch of her fingertips.

"We must be so careful," she murmured.

She guided him through the living room, past the kitchen and one bedroom, and then opened the door of what appeared to be the entrance to a second bedroom.

This room was unexpectedly large, and contained many people. They were talking with great animation, but hushed abruptly as he entered.

"The young man from Andromeda," his hostess announced.

The dry voice of Willy Fritsh came through the haze of cigarette smoke.

"Over here, boy! Come and sit down!"

He saw Willy and Maria sitting on a long cushion against the far wall. They moved over to make room for him. Maria smiled rather hesitantly. He sensed she was very ill at ease.

"I'll introduce you around later," said Willy. "Everybody's too keyed up right now. We've just had an unexpected surprise--really quite startling."

The conversation had bubbled up again, and there was an electric feeling of excitement in the air. Everyone was trying to talk at the same time. Cheeks were flushed, eyes sparkled.

While everyone was talking to those nearest, the most constantly recurring focal point of attention was the thin, balding man seated just across the room from Walther, on the arm of the sofa. He was riffling the pages of a pocket-size notebook and smiling with self-conscious pride.

Willy nodded toward the man.

"There's the gentleman who furnished our surprise--He brought shorthand notes on an entire chapter from Don Quixote!"

After the day he had just been through, Walther could appreciate this. He asked wonderingly,

"Where did he get them?"

"He's a Happy Time Digester."

Walther studied the little man. So this was one of the comparative few on Earth who could get into the deep vaults of the Uniport library! What wonders he must have explored! What beauty and adventure, what mind-stretching thoughts he must encounter in those underground catacombs. How deep into the past he could explore, how far into the future! Why, he could range the universe faster than the warp drive, out even beyond the Andromeda galaxy!

Willy cut into his thoughts.

"He's going to read the entire chapter!"

Walther turned to Maria to see if she shared his excitement. It was the aloof, controlled Maria who smiled faintly at him. It was obvious she had come against her will, and was trying to be gracious about it.

A middle-aged couple arrived.

"Dr. and Mrs. Althuss," Willy whispered. "He's the famous heart surgeon...."

The next arrival was a distinguished looking man whose fingers shook with nervousness.

"That's the World Government alternate delegate from England," Willy whispered again. "It wouldn't do his reputation any good for word to get out that he spent an evening in this Bohemian crowd...."

Their hostess moved to the center of the room, raised her hand and announced:

"We're all here now. Please go ahead, Lorne."

The room quieted instantly. The thin little man proudly began in the old English:

"Don Cervante at the Castle...."

His reading was painfully slow, and he stumbled over the pronunciation of many words. The people in the room watched him so intensely, with such absolute concentration, that they gave the impression of reading his lips rather than listening to his words. Frequently, he would have to translate a word or phrase into the new language, and there would be nods of understanding and relief.

Willy's bright blue eyes sparkled more brightly than ever. He ran his fingers constantly through his thin bristle of white hair. The elderly woman on the sofa beside the Digester was so flushed and breathing so rapidly that Walther feared she was on the verge of a stroke. Even the urbane heart surgeon showed the emotional impact of this experience. His long, tapered fingers were clenched together, and he ran his under lip constantly over the edge of his greying mustache.

Maria seemed the only one in the room who was not affected by the reading. Only a slight tightening of her lips marred her careful composure.

Soon Walther lost himself in the tingling excitement of the room, and he forgot about watching the others. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the Digester led them along with Don Cervante.

The reading, with its many pauses for translation, took almost two hours. When it was over, everyone was emotionally and physically exhausted. The little Digester was so pale he looked ill; his high forehead dripped with perspiration.

Walther drew a long breath, and brought himself reluctantly back to reality.

Willy asked quietly:

"What do you think of our intellectual underworld?"

An outbreak of almost hysterical conversation made it useless for Walther to answer. Maria, with a look of reproach at Willy, moved across the room to speak to their hostess. Willy lit one of his cigars and leaned closer to Walther. There was a gleam of amusement in his twinkling blue eyes.

"You look more worn out than Don Cervante!" he chuckled.

The contrast between this evening and the disillusionment of the day made it hard for Walther to put his gratitude into words.

"I can't thank you enough--" he began.

"Don't try," said Willy. "I may have had my own devious reasons for inviting you." He glanced toward Maria, who was making an effort at polite conversation with the hostess. "I'm afraid our young diva isn't an ardent admirer of the unexpurgated Don Quixote."

There were many questions Walther wanted to ask about Maria, but he tactfully inquired, instead:

"How often does this group meet?"

"Whenever there is something to share--a chapter of literature--a copy of an old painting--a recording. It all depends on what our few Digester friends can manage--They don't have an easy time of it, you know."

"Is it difficult for them to take things out of the vaults?"

"Difficult ... and dangerous," Willy answered grimly.

"But why...?"

"For reasons that make good sense, officially at least. A culture founded on brevity cannot be expected to encourage its own demise through the acts of its civil servants! Think what could happen: A total work of art, whatever its form, takes time to appreciate! But if people spend too long at an opera, the legitimate theatre or the television industry would be slighted! If they paused too long in contemplation of a painting, newspapers might not be purchased! If they dawdled over the old-style newspaper, the digest magazines, the popular recordings, the minute movies, the spectator sports--the thousand and one forms of mass recreation offered the public--each in turn would suffer from unrestrained competition!"

"It's inconceivable," Walther protested, "that entertainment interests could be strong enough to shape a culture! Surely the productive basis of Earth's economy...."

Willy snorted.

"My boy, work as such may still be important in Andromeda, but how could it possibly be so here on Earth? Generations ago, automation, the control of the atom, the harnessing of the sun's energy--all combined with many other factors to make work a negligible part of Man's existence! Thus, with four-fifths of his waking hours devoted to leisure-time pursuits, the balance of power shifted inevitably to the purveyors of mass entertainment. Great monopolies, operating under the Happy Time, Ltd. cartel, seized upon the digest trend in the old culture and made brevity the basis of the new order. The briefer you make a piece of entertainment, the more pieces you can sell the public in a given number of leisure hours! It's just good business," Willy concluded drily.

Walther was silent a moment, trying to frame this picture in his thoughts. But there were so many missing elements.

"Your artists and writers," he demanded, "all your creative people--don't they have anything to say about it?"

"Damn little. You see, the successful artist--whatever his field--is well paid by his particular monopoly. Besides, he's been trained in the new form! I doubt if Maria has ever seen the original score of an opera--let alone tried to sing an entire aria!"

Willy took a glass of wine from a tray offered by the hostess's servo-robot. He motioned to Walther to help himself, but Walther shook his head. Another question was troubling him.

"Why do the monopolies even bother with Digesters and the classics? Why not let modern artists create in the new form?"

Willy's voice grew hard.

"Because," he snapped, "there have been no creative artists on Earth for over a century! Why create when your creation is only fed into the maw of the Digesters? That which is not wanted dies--in a culture as well as in the human body! That--my young friend from Andromeda--is the bitter tragedy of it all!"

Maria rejoined them, and whispered something to Willy. The old producer sighed and turned to Walther.

"Maria would like to leave now. Will you take her back to our hotel? There are some people here I must see...."

"Of course!"