A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad (Analog, January 1973) opens with a very wealthy Japanese businessman called Mr Ito arriving in the office of Mr Harris, an American antiquities dealer in a near future USA. We find out in their subsequent conversation, after Mr Ito has gifted Harris a priceless and antique Grateful Dead poster, that Mr Ito is looking to purchase a “major American artefact” for his Kyoto estate (this is to impress his culturally superior and snobbish in-laws). Harris’s eyes light up (“This was the dream of a lifetime! A sucker with a bottomless bank account placing himself trustingly in my tender hands!”), and they are soon in a jumper touring New York.
The first exhibit that Harris shows Mr Ito confirms earlier hints about this future America’s decline:
I took her down to three hundred and brought her in toward the Statue of Liberty at a slow drift, losing altitude imperceptibly as we crept up on the Headless Lady, so that by the time we were just off shore, we were right down on the deck. It was a nice touch to make the goods look more impressive—manipulating the perspectives so that the huge, green, headless statue, with its patina of firebomb soot, seemed to rise up out of the bay like a ruined colossus as we floated toward it.
Mr. Ito betrayed no sign of emotion. He stared straight ahead out the bubble without so much as a word or a flicker of gesture.
“As you are no doubt aware, this is the famous Statue of Liberty,” I said. “Like most such artifacts, it is available to any buyer who will display it with proper dignity. Of course, I would have no trouble convincing the Bureau of National Antiquities that your intentions are exemplary in this regard.”
We learn that insurrectionists are responsible for the damage before Mr Ito declines to purchase it (“The symbolism of this broken statue is quite saddening, representing as it does a decline from your nation’s past greatness.”) Mr Ito concludes that it would be an insult for him to display it at his home.
We see more of this ravaged future America as they fly over a large area razed by bombing en route to their second stop. On reaching their destination (the Yankees stadium, Mr Ito is a keen baseball fan) they go inside:
[I took] the jumper out of its circling pattern and floating it gently up over the lip of the old ballpark, putting it on hover at roof-level over what had once been short center field. Very slowly, I brought the jumper down toward the tangle of tall grass, shrubbery, and occasional stunted trees that covered what had once been the playing field.
It was like descending into some immense, ruined, roofless cathedral. As we dropped, the cavernous triple-decked grandstands—rotten wooden seats rich with moss and fungi, great overhanging rafters concealing flocks of chattering birds in their deep glowering shadows—rose to encircle the jumper in a weird, lost grandeur.
By the time we touched down, Ito seemed to be floating in his seat with rapture. “So beautiful!” he sighed. “Such a sense of history and venerability. Ah, Mr. Harris, what noble deeds were done in this Yankee Stadium in bygone days! May we set foot on this historic playing field?”
“Of course, Mr. Ito.” It was beautiful. I didn’t have to say a word; he was doing a better job of selling the moldy, useless heap of junk to himself than I ever could.
Mr Ito leads Mr Harris on a two hour guided tour of the stadium but, at the end of their time, and much to Harris’s concealed frustration, Ito again declines, this time because his in-laws regard baseball as an imported American barbarity. The pair’s final stop, the now-disused UN building, then goes badly wrong for Harris when a visibly angry Mr Ito tells him bluntly what he thinks of the UN (“I remind you that the United Nations was born as an alliance of the nations which humiliated Japan in a most unfortunate war, etc.”). Mr Ito demands to be taken back to the office but, as Harris is contemplating the loss of a multi-million yen sale on the way back, Mr Ito excitedly sees a dilapidated Brooklyn Bridge below them. With the thought of the old joke about con-men in mind Harris can’t resist asking Mr Ito, “You want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?” When Mr Ito answers in the affirmative, Harris replies, with completely sincerity, “I can think of no one more worthy of that honor than your esteemed self, Mr. Ito”.
The last part of the story, which takes place four months later (spoiler), sees the tables turned on Harris when Mr Ito sends him a video of the relocated bridge:
Before me was a heavily wooded mountain which rose into twin peaks of austere, dark-gray rock. A tall waterfall plunged gracefully down the long gorge between the two pinnacles to a shallow lake at the foot of the mountain, where it smashed onto a table of flat rock, generating perpetual billows of soft mist which turned the landscape into something straight out of a Chinese painting. Spanning the gorge between the two peaks like a spiderweb directly over the great falls, its stone towers anchored to islands of rock on the very lip of the precipice, was the Brooklyn Bridge, its ponderous bulk rendered slim and graceful by the massive scale of the landscape. The stone had been cleaned and glistened with moisture, the cables and roadbed were overgrown with lush green ivy. The holo had been taken just as the sun was setting between the towers of the bridge, outlining it in rich orange fire, turning the rising mists coppery, and sparkling in brilliant sheets off the falling water.
It was very beautiful.
Mr Ito has also sent what Harris thinks is a single gold-painted brick from the bridge—but he soon realises that it isn’t a gold-painted brick but a solid gold one. Harris is left wondering if Mr Ito is trying to tell him something.
This story’s culture clash interactions, cynical observation, and interesting setting makes for an entertaining tale, and the ending makes it more than that. The one weakness the piece has developed with age is its idea of an ascendant Japan—nowadays Mr Ito would probably have to be replaced with a Chinese character. Who knows what the situation will be in another fifty years.
**** (Very Good). 6,150 words. Story link.