Analog SFF, June 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Vermeer had his back to them when they entered. He did not turn around, but went on working. When he finally turned to face them, Peter could see that the picture of Leeuwenhoek had been removed. It had been replaced by a blank canvas, and Vermeer had been applying a chalky ground.

  There had been other changes in the studio too. The celestial glove was gone, replaced by a decanter and two wine glasses. So Kimberly was going to be the kind of woman who was plied with wine by a man with questionable intentions—the theme of a couple of the paintings in Elphinstone's art books. There was a lute on the table. So she was going to have artistic inclinations. There was an inkwell, paper, and a couple of quills. So she was romantic—Elphinstone had explained that letter writing or letter receiving was a synonym for romantic intentions.

  Or maybe not. Maybe Vermeer was just trying out his props.

  There was another addition to the room. A curved mirror in a gold frame hung on the wall in line of sight of the easel. Vermeer explained that he was going to paint a distorted image of Harry in the mirror. It would look like a mere smear of color, and only become recognizable as Harry when viewed in another curved mirror. The idea was to show that the woman in the portrait was looking directly at her lover or seducer. It was the sort of virtuoso trick to be expected of a master painter like Vermeer.

  Peter translated what Vermeer had said, and Harry was delighted by the idea. “That'll show the snobs and Doubting Thomases!” he chortled. “It's as good as a signature and a certificate of authenticity.”

  “You're getting your money's worth, all right, Harry,” Kimberly said dryly.

  After that, Vermeer ignored Harry and Peter and spoke directly to Kimberly, using Peter only to translate.

  “You will find a yellow garment trimmed with ermine in the next room,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if he were giving instructions to a child. “Go and put it on. And you will have to remove your English jewelry. I will give you my wife's pearl earrings to wear.”

  Kimberly left with eyes flashing, but came back wearing the garment in question hanging defiantly open. “If he thinks I'm going to cover up my best assets, he's crazy,” she said. She handed her jewelry over to Peter and said, “Take good care of them, darling. That's a million bucks worth there.”

  Vermeer went to the cabinet and took out a pair of pearl earrings and a modest pearl necklace. Kimberly tossed her head to show her displeasure, but put them on.

  Vermeer said patiently, “Half turn your body to the light. Another bit. Just so. Now turn your head directly toward me, as if I were Mijnheer Brock. Pick up the lute. No, put it down. Pick up one of the wine glasses.”

  After a half hour of this, Harry was bored. “I'm going for a walk,” he said. “Does he need me?”

  “No, he'll get your face later,” Peter said.

  “Do what the man says,” Harry told Kimberly. To Peter, he said, “I'll meet you back at the house.”

  * * * *

  A month later, Harry was even more bored. His likeness in the curved mirror, reduced to a blur after endless geometric calculations, had been committed to canvas, and Vermeer had no further use for him. Now Vermeer was concentrating totally on Kimberly, working with exasperating slowness, sometimes taking days to paint a single fold in the nanofabric dress that now peeped out from under the yellow coat, or to refine a reflected patch of light in the wineglass she held. It was excruciating to watch.

  “What do you think, Pete?” he said. “How long is it gonna take him?”

  “I don't know,” Peter said. “It could be months.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said glumly, staring at his beer. “That's what I figured. I'm not doing much good hanging around here, am I?”

  “Don't say that, Harry. Kimberly needs your support.”

  “Baloney. Sometimes I think she doesn't even need you to interpret. Somehow she knows what he wants her to do without a lot of talk.”

  “Relax, Harry. I'll get us another beer.” He signaled the innkeeper.

  “I'd give anything for a decent martini,” Harry said. “I thought Dutch gin was supposed to be good.”

  “No ice, Harry. That's the problem.”

  “I'm going crazy. There's nothing to do here. I'll go bonkers-poo if I have to admire one more canal or go to the countryside and look at windmills on one of your little field trips.”

  “I'm sorry, Harry. It was the best I could do. No nightlife here.”

  “What I thought, I'd take a little break. Go uptime for a few days, and come back a coupla months later when the painting's finished. You can signal Roy on your little gizmo and he'll send me back at the right moment in time.”

  “It would be hideously expensive, Harry. It would count as another round trip.”

  “What the bleep do I care? I can afford it.”

  “And it would leave your registered timeline wide open for an incursion.”

  “So what? So some arty snoop comes back here for a look? What could he do? I've got Vermeer tied up. In fact, if he saw what was going on with the painting, it would only add to the authentification.”

  “I don't know, Harry. It doesn't seem fair to leave Kimberly alone here for all that time.”

  “Kimberly's a tough broad. She can take care of herself.”

  Peter had no answer for that. Harry was already caught up in his vision.

  “I'm going to throw myself a party at La Mode. I'll invite the cream of society. Hollywood, Bollywood, Wall Street, Washington, the Art Mafia—even Elphinstone, the little twerp. The Times guy and all the big enchiladas who looked down their noses at me when I was juggling my way to the top. It'll be first class all the way—champagne, caviar, lobster burritos, La Mode's pheasant piroshki.”

  Peter waited it out. There was no way to stem the flood.

  Harry drained his glass. “Let's go. Mrs. Coornhert's in bed. I'll wait outside while you tell Kimberly.”

  * * * *

  Roy Hendricks frowned in puzzlement as Harry stepped out of the booth alone, the programmed five seconds after the three of them had disappeared. “What's going on, Harry?” he said. “Where are Peter and Kimberly? And the painting? The program was set to pick you all up when Peter's signal specified the new coordinates.”

  “Change of plans, Roy,” Harry said. “I'm taking a little break. Coupla days. You're sending me back a little further up the timeline. A few more months. Peter will send—has sent—another signal to give you the new coordinates.”

  “Harry, what have you done? You've screwed up your mass allowance for starters. And I don't know if I can send you back in a couple of days. I've got to reprogram, and we've got to get the capacitors up to speed again.”

  “You'll find a way, Roy. Money still talks.”

  * * * *

  Peter peered through the lens at a swarming profusion of microscopic creatures, wriggling their way through the universe contained in a drop of water. Beside him, Leeuwenhoek could barely contain himself.

  “Well then, Mijnheer, what do you say now?” Leeuwenhoek said.

  “Astonishing,” Peter said diplomatically. He had seen paramecia and other protozoans under greater magnification in his high school biology class.

  “Well then, when you return to England you will tell the Royal Society that you have seen my animalcules with your own eyes. In their latest letter to me, they stressed the importance of having my observations verified by a testis ocularis, not that I understand their infernal Latin.”

  “I will be happy to tell the Royal Society what I have seen,” Peter said.

  Leeuwenhoek sighed. “It is marvelous, is it not, that philosophy and science have not been constrained between our two nations despite our naval battles.”

  The man Vermeer had painted both as an astronomer and a geographer was as impressive as his pictures. He was a big, burly fellow with a no-nonsense air about him. Still ahead of him, Peter remembered with a pang of pity, was the sad duty of serving as executor for his friend's bankrupt estate.
r />   “Yes, marvelous indeed,” Peter said. “It gives us hope for the future.”

  Leeuwenhoek had more to show him, but Peter remembered that he had left Kimberly alone too long with Vermeer. Harry's departure had emboldened him to sneak off more and more frequently. He had no misgivings though. There was a book in Leeuwenhoek, maybe a best seller. It would be his next project after he finished his book about the Dutch East India Company and their war with the English East India Company.

  “I regret that I cannot stay longer, Mijnheer,” he said. “But may I come and see you tomorrow? I would like to learn more about your life and work.”

  * * * *

  “It's about time, Peter,” Kimberly said. She was in a snit. “You didn't even make it back for dinner. I had to sit alone in that dining room while the kitchen maid paraded in and out with one indigestible course after another. I'll scream if I see another turnip.”

  “I'm sorry,” Peter said.

  “I have no one to talk to. My so-called maid, Little Miss Frozen Face, is no help. At least Harry was good for a laugh once in a while.”

  “There's Vermeer. You seem to be getting along all right with him.”

  “Oh sure. The conversation is scintillating. ‘Move your head a little to the right. Part your lips just a shade. Don't look at the wine glass, look at me.’ I know every single boring word in his vocabulary. I don't need a translator.”

  “Kimberly...”

  “I don't need a translator. I need a goddam human being.”

  Her voice had softened. Peter involuntarily took a step closer. Kimberly's lips parted moistly.

  Oh no, Peter thought. He stopped himself, took a step backward. “I better go now. Sleep tight.”

  The look in her eyes was one of unmitigated fury. “Don't bother to come to the studio tomorrow, Peter,” she spat. “Go and have your silly fling with whatever little juffer you seem to have found for yourself.”

  He fled. He did not stop to wonder where she had picked up the word.

  * * * *

  The other directors were absent. There was only Nelson and Marietta waiting in the darkened conference room when Ziggy arrived.

  “You saw the media circus at La Mode, I suppose?” Marietta said.

  Ziggy nodded. “It just makes it easier. I don't know why Brock decided to return to the present for a few days, but I've got a tracer planted in the Alternatives Associates system. As soon as Brock reenters his Vermeer timeline, it'll pinpoint the exact date the painting is finished. I'll be right behind him. In point of fact, I can arrange to be a little ahead of him. When he arrives, he'll find the painting slashed to ribbons and the Vermeer household trying to put out a fire.”

  “Plan A?” Marietta asked.

  Ziggy nodded again. “Timing is everything.”

  * * * *

  Harry popped up in the bedroom just as Peter arrived to get Kimberly. “I got your signal,” he said. “This is the day, huh?”

  “You're just in time for the unveiling,” Peter said. “Vermeer put the finishing touches on the painting last night. We're supposed to meet him in the studio this morning.”

  “What did you tell him about why I was gone these last months?”

  “I said you had to go back to England on diplomatic business. He wasn't much interested. Mevrouw Coornhert might wonder how you got back in the house without her seeing you.”

  Harry grinned and turned to Kimberly. “You should have seen the bash at La Mode, doll,” he said. “'Everybody that mattered and everybody that nattered’ was the way the Post columnist put it. And remember, it was only a day, running time, after the splash our send-off press conference made. And when we get back with the Vermeer, it will be only one more day later. Three splashes in a row. You can't beat that for publicity.”

  “Thanks, Harry,” Kimberly said dryly. “That's a lovely thought.”

  “Don't be like that, doll. I'll make it up to you.”

  “Goody. With what? A press party at The Waldorf?”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Peter said, “but we better get going. Vermeer's waiting for us.”

  It was a gray overcast day in Delft, but it was a market day, so the street along the canal was crowded with people flowing toward the market square. The canal was crowded too, with boats and barges of every description riding low in the water with cargos of fish, produce, and household goods. A koff and a gaff-rigged barge collided, and the pole men were having an argument. Some of the passers-by stopped to watch, and the three time-travelers had to push their way through the knot of people who were collecting.

  When they reached Vermeer's house, the door was open but no one was in evidence. The housemaid would have gone to do the shopping, and perhaps the children had gone with her, but it was odd not to se Maria Thins at her usual post.

  Peter struck his head inside the door, and the problem was solved when he saw Vermeer coming down the corridor toward him, while Maria Thins stood in the doorway to the great hall with her arms folded. They must have been conferring, no doubt about the money they were going to get from the Englishmen.

  "Goedemorgen, Mijnheer, please come with me,” Vermeer said to Peter, and they followed him up the stairs to the studio.

  The door to the studio was locked, as it usually was, and that was what made it odd. Peter could hear sounds coming from inside, noises that sounded as if someone were tossing furniture around, and glass crashing to the floor.

  Vermeer heard it, too, and he hurried to unlock the door and push it open. "Nee, nee!" he screamed as he burst through the doorway with Peter and Harry close behind him.

  A short, wide, bald-headed man in a cheap twenty-first century business suit was standing in front of the easel with a wicked-looking knife in his hand. He had vandalized the studio, to judge from the overturned chairs and the smashed jars of pigment, and he was preparing to slash Kimberly's portrait.

  Vermeer flung himself on the intruder and tried to wrest the knife from him. The man tossed him aside as easily as if he were a sack of feathers.

  Peter jumped on the bald man next and tried to get hold of his wrist. But the man, though at least a head shorter than Peter, was surprisingly strong. He broke Peter's grip easily and pushed him violently aside. Peter landed painfully in the litter of broken glass and pottery. The man turned again toward the canvas, his knife raised.

  “Oh no you don't, you son of a bitch!” Harry yelled, and jumped him. His luck was no better. The bald man whirled and plunged the knife into Harry's midsection.

  Before he could withdraw the knife, Peter was on his feet with a heavy pitcher in his hand—one of the few unbroken pieces of crockery he had found on the floor next to him. Possibly it had been too heavy to break easily.

  But it broke now. He swung wildly and smashed the pitcher squarely on the intruder's bald dome. The man dropped to the floor like a fallen tree.

  Only later would Peter realize that his weapon had been the pitcher that Vermeer had used for a prop in his painting of the milkmaid.

  Vermeer's first thought was for the painting. He checked it over to make sure it had not been scratched. Then, with a somber shake of his head, he turned to where Harry was lying on the floor, with Kimberly bending over him.

  “Your friend Brock,” Vermeer said to Peter in a shaken voice, “is he...”

  “He's dead as a mackerel,” Kimberly said. Tears were running down her face. “Poor Harry,” she said. “Who would have thought that he'd give his live for art?”

  * * * *

  Maria Thins sent the maid to fetch the hound beaters, as the watch were called in Delft. They arrived in a matter of minutes, four beefy men armed with truncheons, a little annoyed at having been dragged away from their duties in the market square. They expressed no particular surprise at the bald man's unusual clothes, and led him away, his hands bound behind his back.

  “What will happen to him?” Peter asked Maria Thins.

  “Oh, he'll be hanged for murder. Or it may not be as simple as that.
Sorcery may be involved. In that case he'll be burned at the stake.”

  She pried a distraught Kimberly away from Harry with the help of the maid, and sat down in one of the chairs. The maid ran off to fetch a glass of wine. Maria Thins turned to Peter.

  “What do you wish to be done about your friend?” she asked.

  Peter looked at Kimberly, but she was in no shape to deal with anything. “We must leave for England today, unfortunately,” he said. “Mijnheer Brock would have wished to be buried here in Delft. He has expressed affection for the place many times.”

  “The Old Church or the New?”

  Peter knew that she belonged to the Oude Kerk and chose the path of least resistance. “The Old Church,” he said.

  “I will see to it,” Maria Thins said.

  * * * *

  A waiter went by with a tray full of cocktails and Peter snagged one for himself. He took a sip. It was an impeccable martini, crisp, dry, and ice cold.

  “Dutch gin,” he decided.

  Beside him, Elphinstone was still working on his first drink. “Harry served nothing but champagne at his bash last night,” he said.

  “Kimberly's a little more imaginative. Have you been to the buffet table? It's all Dutch treats. Poffertjes, rolmops, bite-size uitsmijters. And the décor. She's got her portrait displayed in a little alcove that replicates the room in the painting itself. I don't know how her decorator came up with all the props so fast.”

  “Gimmickry, pure gimmickry. Or I should say impure gimmickry. That's why the art world won't take the painting seriously.”

  “Kimberly doesn't care,” Peter said. “The commercial world takes it very seriously. Christie's wanted to put it up for auction. Their estimate was astronomical. But she turned them down. She's going to hang onto it. It's worth more to her in publicity. She told me she's going to leave it to the Met in her will.”

  “The Met won't take it. Not when my colleagues have taken the line that a Vermeer from an alternate timeline isn't an authentic Vermeer. I'm a bit of a pariah in the art world, you know.”