Beatrix is only a few weeks from clearing 0.8, a great accomplishment for an entity only seven years old.
The gallery and its attached house become visible above the cheap row apartments that begin a kilometer from the crater's edge. If the Home Cluster man buys the piece (one of the two the sculptor has decided that mother can sell) they can buy a bigger house in a more sophisticated neighborhood. Beatrix has made her mother promise that the new house will be close to the crater and the sculptor. Being reminded of this makes her mother frown, but a promise is a promise.
When Beatrix reaches the flat pathway that winds among the apartment buildings, her pace quickens. Her motive system of spindly legs and counterweights keeps her from walking quickly, and on rough terrain her progress is even more plodding than that of her out-of-shape biological mother. The strange apparatus is also undependable, requiring the sculptor's constant tinkering.
But this is another of Beatrix's artistries: the complex mechanism of her legs requires her to watch the ground carefully, a lens and a measure of attention always fixed downward. This dance of walking constantly exercises her mind, a modest version of the crater ritual. The Sculptor says that's another word for wisdom, being grounded.
As she nears the door to the gallery (her pacing mother revealed in a resplendant UHF silhouette; yes, Beatrix was right about the dress) she feels a tug on her consciousness again. A watching-through-her-eyes that shadows, augments, and interrogates her thoughts. Her twin has followed her here, far off the broken hill from which it rarely ventures.
Beatrix smiles to herself; her twin wants to see the people from the Home Cluster. Perhaps some sophistication will do them both good.
Chapter 20
SEDUCTION
The morning had come too quickly for her body, but that was soon cleared up. Mira's medical endoframe knew she was at highest mission status, and had filled her bloodstream with chemicals of intense excitement, of a clear sense of purpose, of joy.
Her augmentations had been working while she slept, cleaning the blood and ichor of her torture session, repairing the contusions and abrasions of her lovemaking. Even the dust from her journey to visit the forgetful Oscar Vale was gone, meticulously cleaned from her flesh by nanos to whom each speck was a boulder.
Mira looked briefly at the work her demi-godly avatar had done for her: a profile of one Hirata Flex, the owner of the gallery representing Vaddum. The avatar informed Mira that Flex had also been part-owner of a certain Prometheus Body Works. Flex had been in on this from the start.
Darling didn't want another corpse on the pile, but this Flex woman would be an easy nut to crack. The profile was an embarrassment of riches: Flex had undergone psych therapy with an avatar of the dutiful Planetary Medical AI (a would-be god). Mira fed the psych data into the painting that graced her wall, which assimilated it like a thimbleful of dye spread to colorlessness on an ocean. The painting created a precis and sent it back to her through DI:
Flex had been to the best art schools, her wealth had ensured that, and had even been represented briefly by a decent gallery in the HC. But her luminous watercolors (pigments from Paris, heavy water from gTerr), which were meant to be simultaneously both quaint and daringly retro, had never sold. Not one.
When that dream slipped away, Flex had squandered her inheritance on the next stage of her career: rustic gallery owner here on Malvir. When Vaddum, the father of Malvirian art, had at least nominally died seven years ago, that mean ambition had also turned to dust.
After the Blast, she'd adopted an artificial daughter, who sported some sort of artsy novelty body. Another sad attempt at finding herself, Mira supposed. But now Flex had something concrete to show for her years in the wilderness, a real Vaddum to sell.
Hirata Flex must be desperate for this meeting that would change her life, would open her to the long-awaited rewards of money, prestige, even a measure of collateral fame. Darling and Mira were her saviors, here at last.
Mira felt up to the job of savior. She felt transcendent and devious.
It was because of her decision to save Vaddum from the gods. If possible, to seize the old man's blackbox before sweeping all evidence of this outrage away. The decision had come stealthily to her over the last twelve hours. Even now, Mira thought about it only tangentally, lest any suspicious movements or brainwaves alert the gods' servants here in the hotel. She would have to be very careful within Their sight. But Flex's gallery was far outside the densely machined city; Mira's masters would be almost blind there.
And she would not tell Darling until the deed was done. A surprise. Another extraordinary gift. The wickedness of her plan gave an edge to the morning, a dazzling brightness to the suite's lofty view. The sky seemed sharp and close to her, as if she could reach out and cut a piece from it, a hole to look through…
She imagined what Darling must have felt, two centuries before when he had won his freedom. It made her love this man the more, that she could betray her gods for him.
When Darling arrived, anxious to go, the device/weapon/artwork was uncurling itself from the wall, wrapping itself around Mira into a simple sheath (if anything that incorporated 256 exabytes of data [theoretical limit] could be called simple). Mira felt the substance of the dress complete its magic, extending a microthin layer of itself across her face and hands, weaving strands into her hair, even setting sail in minute and careful quantities into the thin medium of liquid that coated her eyes. She would be radiant today.
She Dl'd her rented limousine to be at the door and admired herself in the suite's wall, which at a word had obligingly become a mirror.
She was dressed to kill.
Where was that child?
Hirata Flex reached for her ear again; a tug would bring her direct interface online. But she dropped her hand back to her side.
It was pointless nagging Beatrix. The little creature moved at her own speed regardless of anything Hirata said or did.
And it was, after all, a half hour before the art dealer from the Home Cluster and his associate were to arrive. Hirata just wanted everything to go well. It would do Beatrix good, to meet some real people after seven years on this backwoods Outworld.
She was probably up to her morning nonsense at the crater, indulging the sculptor in his quaint mysticism. Well, that was fine. A happy sculptor would make more sculptures. And a happy sculptor might even allow her to sell more than the pitiful two pieces he had finally agreed to let go. Seven years of asking, of begging, of explaining what it would mean for Beatrix to be able to move into Malvir City and get some proper stimulation. And only these two little sculptures to show for it. They looked like rusty, miniature palm trees wrapped in some sort of time-worn barbed wire. Not magnificent like the towering Vaddums she'd fallen in love with back in art schooclass="underline" great arching cathedrals of metal and ferroplastic that swept like a soaring bird from a distance and shattered into countless fluttering details as you walked toward them. Now, those Hirata understood. They were why she'd come to this shithole planet ten years ago, hoping that the Sculptor would consent to a gallery contract if there actually were a gallery on his adopted planet.
Of course, things had become considerably more complicated since then. Terribly messy. But finally Hirata had achieved her decade-long dream. Having squandered her inheritance trying to bring culture to this Outworld dump, having tolerated and encouraged the strange friendship between her daughter and the sculptor, after seven years of keeping his bizarre secret: two pieces of the dozens he had made since the Blast Event were her reward. And she didn't even like them.