"I'm so glad you've come. Welcome to Flex Gallery, and to Malvir."
"My name is Jessie Kreist," the woman said. The name sounded familiar to Hirata. Of course, it did; this fabulous woman couldn't be a mere assistant. "And you of course recognize my associate, Darling."
There was a brief pause, but it seemed in no way awkward. The company of this marvelous creature could never be uncomfortable. Kreist filled such moments with her numinous presence.
"I'm Beatrix," the child said, her high voice sundering the silent bond that had formed between Hirata and Jessie.
"My daughter," Hirata offered by way of apology. Jessie smiled to show that she understood the travails of a mother, appreciated Hirata's motives in having allowed the child to be present. Her glance was conspiratorial, supportive, warm as the sun.
Darling extended his hand to Beatrix, a questioning look on his face, as if he wasn't sure which of her several limbs might be offered in return. The girl took his giant hand with her primary arm, and they repeated their names to each other.
Then he spoke to Hirata. "I believe you have a Vaddum to show us?"
Hirata ushered them toward the main room of the gallery through a hall that contained her prized discoveries among local artists, hoping that one might catch their eye. But, of course, they couldn't be expected to favor any lesser pieces with their attention until their thirst for the Vaddum had been quenched. Hirata had cleared the main room for it, fiddled with its orientation for hours. Even Beatrix had given her mother advice, a proxy for the taciturn sculptor himself. The sun—muted to a carefully chosen degree by the glassene walls—struck it beautifully, making its petals radiant. Perhaps it wasn't such a bad Vaddum, after all. The glinting sculpture even drew Hirata's eyes from Jessie Kreist for a few seconds.
Darling knelt by the work, leaning forward until his eyes were almost touching the closest branch. Then he stood and moved around it slowly, at places tilting forward again, bringing his eyes as close as a microscope's lenses again and again.
"With your permission," he said.
Hirata wasn't sure what he meant, but nodded.
A nest of snakes seemed to emerge from the sleeves of his robes. They reached out to the piece, caressing it so lightly that even the bright foil leaves didn't move (and they shuddered when you walked near the sculpture). Beatrix gasped with the innocence of a child, and reached out her own secondary arm to touch one of the giant's tendrils.
At that moment, Hirata felt the warmth of Jessie Kreist's hand upon her shoulder.
Jessie's face was very close, intimately so. Hirata held her composure; she knew that in many cultures a closer personal distance was appropriate for important discussions. Nevertheless, the brush of Jessie's breath upon her neck forced her to suppress an unbusinesslike reaction.
"Having received your data, we're almost sure of the piece's authenticity," Jessie said, nodding as if to confirm her trust.
Hirata could only bow once slowly in return.
"Even a single new Vaddum is of considerable importance," the woman said, her hand increasing its pressure on Hirata's shoulder. "Such a discovery would be too immense a revelation to sit in a gallery alongside the works of lesser artists."
Hirata nodded agreement, speechless with the praise, if unsure where this was going.
"But all alone?" Jessie asked. The hand on Hirata's shoulder shifted slightly, the thumb now against the bare flesh of her neck. A tingling sensation started there, as if the woman's skin were charged with the barest of voltages.
Hirata blinked away a blurriness that had crept into her vision. Behind Jessie's near and perfect face, Darling and Beatrix were examining the Vaddum together, speaking in low tones to each other.
"Perhaps some other scraps were discovered with the piece?" Jessie asked. Her thumb moved up Hirata's neck, leaving a trail of tactile glitter in its wake. Hirata found the woman's physical intimacy refreshing after the prudish distance of the locals. Jessie's touch was so sincere, so direct, so sophisticated in its presumption; they were both adults, both professionals, both lovers of the arts, why not this bodily bond to reflect their commonality?
"Notes? Sketches? Personal effects?" Jessie whispered. "Perhaps even another piece? Incomplete, perhaps, so that you failed to mention its existence out of due respect for the artist?"
Hirata felt herself nodding again. But no, she couldn't admit that there was another Vaddum. It was reserved for Zimivic.
"Something more. Isn't there?" The woman's lips were at her ear, which buzzed with a faint echo of the words. Hirata kept her eyes on the sleeve of Jessie's dress, its shifting pattern as alive as the tremors running through her own body.
"Yes. Another piece," she heard herself say.
And it was a great relief.
The child's body was an extraordinary piece of work. In the ritual introductions, she identified herself as Beatrix, using a voice in which the markers of sub-Turing status were encoded. Darling allowed himself the rude pleasure of scanning Beatrix across a wide band of EM, an intrusion to which she responded with a frothy giggle of random direct interface packets. They shook hands, and Darling enjoyed the cantileverage between her single, main arm and a dedicated torque that extended on her opposite side. She was charming, an elegant arrangement of balances and countervailing motions, like some ancient Calder come to life.
Flex lead them inside, through the inescapable hall of amateur desert scenes and overliteral plastiform dunescapes. But the unpleasant passage was enlivened by watching Beatrix walk her strange walk, negotiating the pull of gravity with her spindly legs like some aquatic bird stepping gingerly onto land.
And then they came to the Vaddum.
It was real.
Darling leaned forward to bring his full sensory spectra to bear on it, to capture the minute scent of metal atoms escaping its leaves, to breathe of it. He mumbled an apology as his sensory strands moved to touch it, flexing themselves across the warp and weave of its surface, caressing the searingly perfect craft of it.
It was real. He could no longer doubt his decision.
He placed an arm on Beatrix to steady himself, felt her shift to compensate for his weight.
While Mira played her game with Flex, Darling and Beatrix exchanged words both whispered and interfaced, pointed together at the work, traced its vital shapes in the air… enlightened each other.
He found that he was kneeling, the better to share an angle of vision with Beatrix, supplicant before the sculpture. He widened his vision to compare child and artwork. And found himself certain…
She was a Vaddum.
Beatrix.
Her body didn't fit the sculptor's rigid protocols of discarded parts and obsolete materials; that would have been inhumane. Some lower SPCAI limit of bodily usability had been met, but also subverted, extrapolated, made beautiful. And the aesthetic wasn't merely sculpturaclass="underline" Vaddum had made Beatrix's frame a machine for living in, its subtle balances informing her wit, her cleverness. The body shaping the soul.
He knelt there for a long time, talking with the child, admiring the resonances between her elegant body and the sculpture. Mira and Hirata Flex disappeared together into a back office; Mira's seduction of the woman seemed to be working.
But it was essential that Darling succeed first. As he had thought it would, his eye had led him to the right place.
"I want to meet him," he whispered to Beatrix.
"Whom?" she responded innocently.
"The sculptor."
A few of Beatrix's eyes spun, as if scanning the empty room.
"But that's a secret]"