IGMS Issue 18 (11 page)

I reached out tentatively and took hold of the edge of the spectacles. Violix snapped open his grippers with a click.

They settled comfortably on my nose. Turning, with growing excitement, I looked into the next swirl of oil paint.

The colours pooled and formed shapes again, but I felt removed, distant . . .

". . . so what do you have to say for yourself?" my father asked.

He stood behind his heavy dragon-wood desk, his back to me, looking out his window at the distant storm clouds. Littered with scraps of paper and scruffy-looking novels, it looked nothing like the place to run a business empire from. But it was, and he did.

"I worked hard this year. I did."

"Your exam results say different. They say that no university will take you unless I build them a new library or something. Which I won't. I think you spent too much time with Valentina and not enough on your work."

I looked at the ground. It was true.

He continued. "Mmm. Well, I hope it was worth it. If you're not going to university, you can work your way up. They will expect you at the office on Monday morning. You may go."

I left with my head bowed and . . .

. . . turned back to the studio. It still made my stomach lurch as the one reality collapsed behind me and another bulged into being.

"That was your father?"

He nodded, his metal face unable to reveal any emotion, but his silence said it all. The pictures -- the experience, the emotional content of them -- wove me closer to Violix than I had possibly dreamed.

I saw a person behind all the machinery.

Violix lead me through the next few pictures. His marriage to Valentina, their deepening love.

I leaned eagerly towards the next picture, but Violix's gripper-hand gently stopped me.

"This one will h . . . hurt, Mr. Whistler." He removed his hand from my chest.

. . . The pulse rifle's butt struck me a glancing blow across my cheek and everything dimmed.

I was dazed, but able to re-focus after a moment. I saw the barrel of the rifle inches away from my right eye.

"Move an inch and my pal will kill your wife while you watch."

The man's face was covered in a layer of false skin. Close up he looked like a surgical disaster story, but over the low-res security holo, he'd looked like the janitor -- I'd let him in.

"Viol!" Valentina screamed as they manhandled her past me and out to a skim-car pulsing hard outside.

"Do what they say," I shouted. "Don't worry. I'll get you back."

The guy with the pulse rifle leaned over and grabbed my collar, while pressing the barrel of the gun one-handed against my cheek.

"If you want her back you'd better ask Daddy for a million sys-dollars or --"

He laughed, the false skin of his face twisting into a grotesque parody of a smile, "-- the only thing you'll get is her heart with my knife through it. Get me?"

I nodded.

"Play straight with me and everything will be fine, boy. I promise."

The butt of his rifle was a blur as it struck again . . .

. . . I spun away as a gout of blood erupted from my nose.

Violix's tentacles caught me before I fell. Blood dripped onto the floorboards in great drops. I lifted my head. A metal tentacle hovered near my face holding a tissue.

"Thanks." I took the tissue and dabbed my bruised nose.

"You don't need to see the other pictures, Mr. Whistler. I realise now that it would be a form of t . . . torture to inflict them all on you in such a short time."

He turned away and limped across the creaking wooden floor towards part of the studio still in shade.

"But --" I glanced at the picture and back to him. "What happened to her? I have to know."

Violix paused midway across the studio.

"Her fate was already decided." Violix half-turned. "I went to my father for the money. He said it was foolish to pay it, said that only thirty percent of victims were returned alive. Those that were had their minds ransacked by the security services, so those kidnappers were always caught. It was a strategy that effectively dissuaded the majority of kidnappers from keeping their word and returning victims alive."

"So he wouldn't pay?" I prayed I was wrong.

"No, he paid it in the end. But he suggested we hire a member of the Third-Eye Clan."

"The Third-Eye Clan?"

"An illegal group of intuition-enhanced operatives my father used for industrial espionage and the like. I turned him down. I thought he wanted to avoid paying the ransom -- I didn't believe him, and we argued. I trusted the kidnappers instead."

I felt my eyes fill and I tried to blink the tears away. "But they didn't, did they?"

"No. They killed her."

Grief took away my breath and tears ran down my face. I'd known Valentina -- I'd spoken to her, loved her, and held her. I had memories of her stretching back for years -- memories that lived in me, like my own.

I wiped away my tears.

"After the payment had been made, I received her heart in a parcel. It was carefully connected to a micro-life support system. There was a note." Violix paused. "It read, 'As agreed, her heart in perfect condition.' I guess they thought it was a big joke."

"What did you do?"

"We hired a Third-Eye operative who found the kidnappers within twelve hours and killed them. We recovered her body and laid her to rest. Then I left. I'd trusted a snake -- a murderer. I hated myself."

His words resonated terribly with me and I thought of the trust I placed in the serpentine Mr. Long. I knew I was being incredibly naive.

Violix continued. "I left and wandered the world, fought in wars; gambled, but always searched."

"What for? Redemption?" I felt his agony and guilt.

"I suppose. I wanted her to never be forgotten. Then I met the creature who altered me -- living in the Southern Wastelands in a cave. He showed me how to immortalise her." He lifted his tentacles and snapped them together like a whip. "It was my way out."

"So you painted the pictures?"

"Yes, it's the story of her through my eyes -- my only way of telling it, I suppose." He turned and his optical sensors twitched as though he was peering first into one of my eyes, then into the other. "But I needed you. I told Mr. Long you could make me famous and then I could repay him. He got you to come to me."

"Why?"

"The pictures need to be shown -- you own the b . . . best gallery in Chola. Valentina will live in the hearts of all that see these paintings -- like she lives in you. They will be changed by knowing her. Of course," he laughed, "you will need to manufacture more spectacles." He turned and limped to the darkness in the corner. A spotlight glowed into life, revealing a huge canvas leaning against the wall.

"I have just a single picture to complete."

"A final picture?"

I walked towards him, my eye immediately drawn to it. The picture swirled with crimsons and oranges -- splatters of green. The effect of the twisting colours reminded me of the Gova's
Sensate --
messier, but similar.

"Please." He held out his grippers. "Come no further. It is too dangerous. This is my most powerful piece. Within it lies my death. It's taken me ten years and multiple s . . . surgeries to survive what I have thus far painted. Still, the neurological damage has been extensive. I have waited to paint the final few strokes -- and tonight I can. You must destroy this picture after I am dead." He pointed with a tentacle to a can of solvent on the floor.

"You were the last piece of the jigsaw, Mr. Whistler."

"You're not serious? You can't do this." I started forward.

"Stop," he said. "It's not safe to be near me while I paint."

From under his cloak, tentacles snaked out and grasped the edge of the canvas. His gripper hand extruded smoothly and a set of pincers picked up a fine brush, which he delicately dipped into some crimson paint from a palette on the floor.

He turned and looked at me.

"It is the right way for me to die. In this picture, I fight back when the k . . . kidnappers come; I defend her." He looked at the floor. "It's a fiction, of course. But it's the one I want to believe as I die."

He turned back to the picture and beams erupted from his eyes. Metal flaps across his head opened and lasers folded out and traced flickering patterns across the surface of the picture. He began to move the brush, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. Energies swirled and coalesced; strange three-dimensional shapes spun into being. Shadows from other realities pushed through in rainbow-like nimbuses, bulging from the surface of the picture. The gripper arm blurred as it spun across the canvas.

Then everything stopped, like a switch was turned off.

Violix's tentacles retracted, the devices slipped away into his head, and for a few heartbeats he just stood there. Then he slowly toppled sideways in the silence.

I leaped towards him and caught him, lowering him gently to the floor.

I wept for them both.

For how long I didn't know.

The lights from the night market below marked the passing of time with their multi-coloured tattoo across the ceiling.

Mixed with the tears was a dawning realisation that I couldn't dare trust Mr. Long.

I had to call him, to tell him what happened, but I didn't dare trust him.

Glancing at the deadly painting, I pulled out my satcom from my pocket and inserted Hei Long's white card.

"You finished, Mr. Whistler? Already?"

I nodded at the small holo. "You'd better come over."

"Yes? Okay, I am nearby. Five minutes."

I paced the far side of the studio as it dawned on me that I was contemplating murdering a man. But once the painting was destroyed no one would ever know.

I looked again at Violix's crumpled body.

He'd suffered for years because he'd lost Valentina and blamed himself -- he'd had a way out, but hadn't the courage at the time to take it.

I clenched my jaw; that wasn't going to happen to me.

Something scraped behind me and I spun round.

"So, are you making plans, Mr. Whistler?"

Hei Long and the black, panther-like beast, Mr. Chasin, stood by the entrance to the studio.

"What . . . I . . . What do you mean?"

Hei Long pointed to the pictures as he walked across the wooden floor towards me. "Plans for the show for the paintings, of course. What else? You like them? Where is the painter? Violix?"

I had to be very careful. "The paintings are unique, Mr. Long. They will command a high dollar value and will only go up over time. Especially now --" I pointed to the far side of the gallery, to the dark shape on the ground by the easel. "-- that the artist is dead."

Hei Long turned back, his eyes narrowing. "What did you say? Dead? This isn't true, he --"

"He killed himself. He wanted to be with his wife, Val --"

Hei Long waved his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. I know all about Valentina. He was obsessed with her. Never let her go. Fool." Hei Long turned and looked at the body. He stood there for a moment.

"He owed me much money. Did you help him?"

"No, I didn't. I --"

"But you didn't try stop him, did you?" Hei Long looked sharply at me, as though weighing something up. "His debt transfers to you. Now it is your debt, Mr. Whistler."

My heart accelerated. "But what about our deal?"

"New deal now." Hei Long pursed his lips and arched a scarred eyebrow. "Is this a problem for you? Perhaps I should speak to Justin?"

Why didn't he just take the paintings and be done with it? Every fibre of my being wanted him to take back those words, but it was too late. He wasn't going to just let me go. Not now, not ever. He would own and use me the way he owned and used Mr. Chasin.

Any doubts I'd had about what I needed to do vanished.

I shook my head. "No, no. Leave him out of this."

"Sensible." Hei Long glanced back at the body. "How did he do it, then?"

"I don't know." I lied. "He just toppled over and stopped moving. He had a last message for you." I felt like an assassin loading a weapon. "Something he asked me to tell you."

Hei Long snapped his head round, his sparkling eyes narrowed as they searched mine. "A message for me? Yes? What did he say? What was the message?"

His glinting eyes seemed to see through me.

I cleared my throat and ploughed on. "He said to tell you that his final painting was for you -- to clear all debts between you. His greatest masterpiece, he said. It's the one there." I lifted my hand.

I could have been pulling a trigger, not pointing a finger.

"To clear all his debts? He actually said this to you?" Hei Long turned and looked across to the picture.

"Yes, that's what he said."

"Then, I look." Hei Long walked a few step across studio before stopping. He stood there looking at the distant picture for what seemed like minutes. Then he glanced at the body on the floor.

"Powerful picture, I think."

I willed him to walk closer, but instead he spun on his heel and looked at me, a smile curling his lips. He tapped his toe a few times on the floorboards.

"You know what my name means, Mr. Whistler?"

I shook my head, and swallowed.

"It means Black Dragon." He shook his head. "Not my real name, but people have called me that for years. The Chinese think dragons can become a man, if they want to. They think I'm a dragon. Know why?"

"No," I mumbled.

He smiled slowly. "It is impossible to trick a dragon, Mr. Whistler. You stink of lies."

I stepped away. "I haven't tried to trick you, Mr --"

Hei Long's eyes blazed. "Shut up."

An electro-knife mysteriously appeared in his hand. The glistening re-curved blade slid out, buzzing like a muted bee.

"I think you look in picture instead, Mr. Whistler."

I shook my head, my heart hammering. "I can't." I had nothing to lose. "You have to believe me. Violix said the painting was just for you." I waved at the other pictures. "I . . . I . . . I've only just looked at five of the pictures. My heart can't handle any more. It would kill me."