The Celestial Blueprint
The great Vincelleo liked being an
artist. It gave him an excuse to
turn the universe topsy turvy.
Apocalyptical flights of fancy are not unusual in science fiction. But when a writer with Philip José Farmer’s gift of laughter embarks on one the outcome may be impossible to predict. He may turn your comfortable world of breakfast, lunch and dinner into some incredible rabbit warren in space, where you’ll be served vitamin pills by March hares which would have made Alice blush. Or you may simply meet the great Vincelleo himself.
The arrogance with which B. T. Revanche strode through the outer office of Bioid Electronic was enough to convince anyone that he was a V.V.I.P. His weasel eyes straying neither to left nor right, long fat cigar stabbed straight ahead, quill-like hair bristling in all directions, he was a stout little porcupine of a man. And like that spear-backed creature, he knew that no one would stop him. If they did, they’d regret it—so help them!
Very few people ever paced so fearlessly through the waiting rooms of Bioid. Most persons sat a long time on the “heel-cooling” chairs, and when they were summoned to enter the Sanctum Sanctorum, they were seldom escorted by a Bioid treacher.
But B. T. Revanche—contrary to rumor, the initials did not stand for Blood Thirsty—walked into the skyscraper that overlooked the free city of Messina, and did not bother to announce himself. Taking it for granted that he’d be recognized wherever he went, he did not even switch off his personal anti-espionage field.
Such a gesture of simple courtesy would have seemed to him an affront to his prestige.
He brushed aside those who looked as if they might get in his way, stepped into an anti-gravity elevator, and was whisked up fifty stories to the immense suit of Bioid’s GHQ. There a gold-plated treacher picked him up and preceded him, barking out his name with flattering precision.
“Make way for Signor Revanche! One side or a leg off, please! Lo, he cometh!”
Revanche frowned, and bit down on his cigar. He didn’t like the slightest suspicion of levity in regard to himself.
Despite a twinge of annoyance, however, he was impressed by the offices. Blazing slogans hung along the walls: Bioid is more than skin deep! Our trinity: Art & Science & Da Vincelleo! Perfect both inside and out! For the Gods—and Da Vincelleo!
Diagrams and sketches of the great Messinan’s works hung here and there—drawings of the human body in various positions, along with pictures of Bioid robots in corresponding postures.
Poised on plastiglass were germanium brains, startlingly life-like statues that breathed, and a mounted gorilla, last of his species, shot by the great Da Vincelleo himself. If you stepped on a plate set in the floor while admiring it, it would reach out for you—reach out and roar loud enough to scare the shorts off you.
B. T. Revanche paused for an instant before one of the statues, and manipulated a dial at its base. It was that of an attractive woman clothed in a simple tunic of green-gold gauze, her limbs gazelle-slender in the glare.
“Speak to me, baby,” he said, rather coarsely.
The plastiskin woman spoke, her lips arching in a seductive smile. “Good afternoon, man of culture. I am not alive, but there is grace and beauty in all of Da Vincelleo’s creations, and when you look at them you forget that you have come here to pass an idle hour.
“The veils of the artificial are stripped away, and for a moment you gaze upon beauty naked and unadorned. Would you not like to take me into your arms?”
“I sure would, baby!” Revanche whispered.
He knew, of course, that the statue could not hear him. But by timing his questions to correspond with its disk-recorded utterances an illusion of conversation could be maintained. To imagine even for a brief instant that he could bend so lovely a creature to his will brought out all of the latent sadism in his nature.
“I’m not interested in you as a work of art, baby,” he said. “I guess you know that.”
“Pass on, man of culture,” the statue said. “You linger too long here. If you look about you, you will find others more beautiful than I!”
Abruptly the illusion snapped. Scowling, feeling outrageously cheated, Revanche swung about, and resumed his arrogant stride.
There were many vivoil paintings of scenes that gave the illusion, if you looked at them obliquely, of leaves fluttering, birds flying, women walking, and water flowing. All were signed with the name of the famed poet-scientist-financier-engineer-architect-painter-sculptor-cyberneticist and lover of the Second Italian Renaissance—Benangelo Michelardo Da Vincelleo.
There was only one man on Earth who was more widely known, more powerful. It was a measure of B. T. Revanche’s importance that no practical jokes were played on him.
Da Vincelleo was famous for his complicated, rubegoldbergish, and sometimes morbid sense of humor. Visitors had to have strong nerves if they cared to see him—and survive.
It was not unusual for trap-doors to open beneath their feet and drop them, kicking and screaming, down a two-story shaft before they were eased by anti-grav to a slow stop. Or for a visitor to find the doorknob to the master’s office had turned into a shriveled plastic head. Or to step into what he thought was the office, and find himself neck-deep in water, or some less acceptable fluid.
If the enraged victim stalked off, Da Vincelleo howled with glee. And if a lawsuit followed, he had ways of scaring the unhappy wretch into withdrawing it.
The office help—including the thirty vice-presidents—earned big salaries largely because they boasted iron nerves and ulcer-resistant stomachs. After their initiation into Da Vincelleo’s extraordinary humor, many of them became quite sedate about the embarrassing noises and odors they seemingly made when they sat down on their chairs.
They even regarded with the classic calm of the clam’s eye the lightbulbs that exploded and flew apart, the mechanical mice, the cockroaches that jumped out of opened drawers, and the water-faucets that straightened out, and squirted them in the face. The few who couldn’t take it ceased drawing fabulous salaries, and retired to rest homes.
As it was, none of these disturbing things interfered with Revanche’s progress. He didn’t even pause on entering the Sanctum Sanctorum itself.