“Oh, it was already here, rock rollers and all, fifteen years ago when I broke out that little section to crawl through.”
“Then it had to be here a very long time. That wall has formed since.”
“Nah, not very long,” the man said. “These limestone curtains form fast, what with all the moisture trickling down here. The thing could have been brought in here as recent as five hundred years ago. Sure, I’ll sell it. I’ll even break out a section so we can get it out. I have to make the passage big enough for people to walk in anyhow. Tourists don’t like to have to crawl on their bellies in caves. I don’t know why. I always liked to crawl on my belly in caves.”
This was one of the most expensive sections of the picture that Nation bought. It would have been even more expensive if he had shown any interest in certain things seen through trees in one sequence of the picture. Leo’s heart had come up into his mouth when he had noticed those things, and he’d had to swallow it again and maintain his wooden look. This was a section that had elephants on the Mississippi River.
The elephant (Mammut americanum) was really a mastoden, Leo had learned that much from Charles Longbank. Ah, but now he owned elephants; now he had one of the key pieces of the puzzle.
* * * *
You find a lot of them in Mexico. Everything drifts down to Mexico when it gets a little age on it. Leo Nation was talking with a rich Mexican man who was as Indian as himself.
“No, I don’t know where the Long Picture first came from,” the man said, “but it did come from the North, somewhere in the region of the River itself. In the time of De Soto (a little less than five hundred years ago) there was still Indian legend of the Long Picture, which he didn’t understand. Yourselves of the North, of course, are like children. Even the remembering tribes of you like the Caddos have memories no longer than five hundred years.
“We ourselves remember longer. But as to this, all that we remember is that each great family of us took a section of the Long Picture along when we came south to Mexico. That was, perhaps, eight hundred years ago that we came south as conquerors. These pictures are now like treasures to the old great Indian families, like hidden treasures, memories of one of our former homes. Others of the old families will not talk to you about them. They will even deny that they have them. I talk to you about it, I show it to you, I even give it to you because I am a dissident, a sour man, not like the others.”
“The early Indian legends, Don Caetano, did they say where the Long Picture first came from or who painted it?”
“Sure. They say it was painted by a very peculiar great being, and his name (hold onto your capelo) was Great River Shore Picture Painter. I’m sure that will help you. About the false or cheap-jack imitations for which you seem to have contempt, don’t. They are not what they seem to you, and they were not done for money. These cheap-jack imitations are of Mexican origin, just as the shining originals were born in the States. They were done for the new great families in their aping the old great families, in the hope of also sharing in ancient treasure and ancient luck. Having myself just left off aping great families of another sort, I have a bitter understanding of these imitations. Unfortunately they were done in a late age that lacked art, but the contrast would have been as great in any case: all art would seem insufficient beside that of the Great River Shore Picture Painter himself.
“The cheap-jack imitation pictures were looted by gringo soldiers of the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, as they seemed to be valued by certain Mexican families. From the looters they found their way to mid-century carnivals in the States.”
“Don Caetano, do you know that the picture segments stand up under great magnification, that there are details in them far too fine to be seen by the unaided eye?”
“I am glad you say so. I have always had this on faith but I’ve never had enough faith to put it to the test. Yes, we have always believed that the pictures contained depths within depths.”
“Why are there Mexican wild pigs in this view, Don Caetano? It’s as though this one had a peculiar Mexican slant to it.”
“No. The peccary was an all-American pig, Leo. It went all the way north to the ice. But it’s been replaced by the European pig everywhere but in our own wilds. You want the picture? I will have my man load it and ship it to your place.”
“Ah, I would give you something for it surely—”
“No, Leo, I give it freely. You are a man that I like. Receive it, and God be with you! Ah, Leo, in parting, and since you collect strange things, I have here a box of bright things that I think you might like. I believe they are no more than worthless garnets, but are they not pretty?”
Garnets? They were not garnets. Worthless? Then why did Leo Nation’s eyes dazzle and his heart come up in his throat? With trembling hands he turned the stones over and worshiped. And when Bon Caetano gave them to him for the token price of one thousand dollars, his heart rejoiced.
You know what? They really were worthless garnets. But what had Leo Nation thought that they were in that fateful moment? What spell had Don Caetano put on him to make him think that they were something else?
Oh well, you win here and you lose there. And Don Caetano really did ship the treasured picture to him free.
* * * *
Leo Nation came home after five months of wandering and collecting.
“I stand it without you for five months,” Ginger said. “I could not have stood it for six months, I sure could not have stood it for seven. I kidded. I didn’t really fool around with the fellows. I had the carpenter build another hay barn to hold all the pieces of picture you sent in. There were more than fifty of them.”
Leo Nation had his friend Charles Longbank come out.
“Fifty-seven new ones, Charley,” Leo said. “That makes sixty with what I had before. Sixty miles of river shore I have now, I think. Analyze them, Charley. Get the data out of them somehow and feed it to your computers. First I want to know what order they go in, south to north, and how big the gaps between them are.”
“Leo, I tried to explain before, that would require (besides the presumption of authenticity) that they were all done at the same hour of the same day.”
“Presume it all, Charley. Theywere all done at the same time, or we will assume that they were. We will work on that presumption.”
“Leo, ah—I had hoped that you would fail in your collecting. I still believe we should drop it all.”
“Me, I hoped I would succeed, Charley, and I hoped harder. Why are you afraid of spooks? Me, I meet them every hour of my life. They’re what keeps the air fresh.”
“I’m afraid of it, Leo. All right, I’ll get some equipment out here tomorrow, but I’m afraid of it. Damn it, Leo, who was here?”
“Wasn’t anybody here,” Ginger said. “I tell you like I tell Charley, I was only kidding, I don’t really fool around with the fellows.”
Charles Longbank got some equipment out there the next day. Charles himself was looking bad, maybe whiskeyed up a little bit, jerky, and looking over his shoulder all the time as though he had an owl perched on the back of his neck. But he did work several days running the picture segments and got them all down on scan film. Then he would program his computer and feed the data from the scan films to it.
“There’s like a shadow, like a thin cloud on several of the pictures,” Leo Nation said. “You any idea what it is, Charley?”
“Leo, I got out of bed late last night and ran two miles up and down that rocky back road of yours to shake myself up. I was afraid I was getting an idea of what those thin clouds were. Lord, Leo, who was here?”
Charles Longbank took the data in to town and fed it to his computers.
He was back in several days with the answers.
“Leo, this spooks me more than ever,” he said, and he looked as if the spooks had chewed him from end to end. “Let’s drop the whole thing. I’ll even give you back your retainer fee.”
“No, man, no. You took the retainer fee a
nd you are retained. Have you the order they go in, Charley, south to north?”
“Yes, here it is. But don’t do it, Leo, don’t do it.”
“Charley, I only shuffle them around with my lift fork and put them in order. I’ll have it done in an hour.”
And in an hour he had it done.
“Now, let’s look at the south one first, and then the north one, Charley.”
“No, Leo, no, no! Don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it scares me. They really do fall into an order. They really could have been done all at the same hour of the same day. Who was here, Leo? Who is the giant looking over my shoulder?”
“Yeah, he’s a big one, isn’t he, Charley? But he was a good artist and artists have the right to be a little peculiar. He looks over my shoulder a lot too.”
Leo Nation ran the southernmost segment of the Long Picture. It was mixed land and water, island, bayou and swamp, estuary and ocean mixed with muddy river.
“It’s pretty, but it isn’t the Mississippi,” said Leo as it ran. “It’s that other river down there. I’d know it after all these years too.”
“Yes,” Charles Longbank gulped. “It’s the Atchafalaya River. By the comparative sun angle of the pieces that had been closely identified, the computer was able to give close bearings on all the segments. This is the mouth of the Atchafalaya River which has several times in the geological past been the main mouth of the Mississippi. But how did he know it if he wasn’t here? Gah, the ogre is looking over my shoulder again. It scares me, Leo.”
“Yeah, Charley, I say a man ought to be really scared at least once a day so he can sleep that night. Me, I’m scared for at least a week now, and I like the big guy. Well, that’s one end of it, or mighty close to it. Now we take the north end.
“Yes, Charley, yes. The only thing that scares you is that they’re real. I don’t know why he has to look over our shoulders when we run them, though. If he’s who I think he is he’s already seen it all.”
Leo Nation began to run the northernmost segment of the river that he had.
“How far north are we in this, Charley?” he asked. “Along about where the Cedar River and the Iowa River later came in.”
“That all the farther north? Then I don’t have any segments of the north third of the river?”
“Yes, this is the farthest north it went, Leo. Oh God, this is the last one.”
“A cloud on this segment too, Charley? What are they anyhow? Say, this is a pretty crisp scene for springtime on the Mississippi.”
“You look sick, Long-Charley-Bank,” Ginger Nation said. “You think a little whiskey with possum’s blood would help you?”
“Could I have the one without the other? Oh, yes, both together, that may be what I need. Hurry, Ginger.”
“It bedevils me still how any painting could be so wonderful,” Leo wondered.
“Haven’t you caught on yet, Leo?” Charles shivered. “It isn’t a painting.”
“I tell you that at the beginning if you only listen to me,” Ginger Nation said. “I tell you it isn’t either one, canvas or paint, it is only picture. And Leo said the same thing once, but then he forgets. Drink this, old Charley.”
Charles Longbank drank the healing mixture of good whiskey and possum’s blood, and the northernmost segment of the river rolled on.
“Another cloud on the picture, Charley,” Leo said. “It’s like a big smudge in the air between us and the shore.”
“Yes, and there will be another,” Charles moaned. “It means we’re getting near the end. Who were they, Leo? How long ago was it? Ah—I’m afraid I know that part pretty close—but they couldn’t have been human then, could they? Leo, if this was just an inferior throwaway, why are they still hanging in the air?”
“Easy, old Charley, easy. Man, that river gets chalky and foamy! Charley, couldn’t you transfer all this to microfilm and feed it into your computers for all sorts of answers?”
“Oh, God, Leo, it already is!”
“Already is what? Hey, what’s the fog, what’s the mist? What is it that bulks up behind the mist? Man, what kind of blue fog-mountain—?”
“The glacier, you dummy, the glacier,” Charles Longbank groaned. And the northernmost segment of the river came to an end.
“Mix up a little more of that good whiskey and possum’s blood, Ginger,” Leo Nation said. “I think we’re all going to need it.”
* * * *
“That old, is it?” Leo asked a little later as they were all strangling on the very strong stuff.
“Yes, that old,” Charles Longbank jittered. “Oh, who was here, Leo?”
“And, Charley, it already iswhat?”
“It already is microfilm, Leo, to them. A rejected strip, I believe.”
“Ah, I can understand why whiskey and possum’s blood never caught on as a drink,” Leo said. “Was old possum here then?”
“Old possum was, we weren’t.” Charles Longbank shivered. “But it seems to me that something older than possum is snuffing around again, and with a bigger snufter.”
Charles Longbank was shaking badly. One more thing and he would crack.
“The clouds on the—ah—film, Charley, what are they?” Leo Nation asked.
And Charles Longbank cracked.
“God over my head,” he moaned out of a shivering face, “I wish they were clouds on the film. Ah, Leo, Leo, who were they here, who were they?”
“I’m cold, Charley,” said Leo Nation. “There’s bone-chill draft from somewhere.”
The marks ... too exactly like something, and too big to be: the loops and whorls that were eighteen feet long...
<
* * * *
GENE WOLFE
SONYA, CRANE WESSLEMAN, AND KITTEE
The relation between Sonya and Crane Wessleman was an odd one, and might perhaps have been best described as a sort of suspended courtship, the courtship of a poor girl by a wealthy boy, if they had not both been quite old. I do not mean to say that they are old now. Now Sonya is about your age and Crane Wessleman is only a few years older, but they do not know one another. If they had, or so Sonya often thought, things might have been much different.
At the time I am speaking of every citizen of the United States received a certain guaranteed income, supplemented if there were children, and augmented somewhat if he or she worked in certain underpaid but necessary professions. It was a very large income indeed in the mouths of conservative politicians and insufficient to maintain life according to liberal politicians, but Sonya gave them both the lie. Sonya without children or augmentation lived upon this income, cleanly but not well. She was able to do this because she did not smoke, or attend any public entertainment that was not free, or use drugs, or drink except when Crane Wessleman poured her a small glass of one of his liqueurs. Then she would hold it up to the light to see if it were yellow or red or brown, and sniff it in a delicate and ladylike way, and roll a half teaspoon on her tongue until it was well mixed with her saliva, and then swallow it. She would go on exactly like this, over and over, until she had finished the glass, and when she had swallowed it all it would make her feel somewhat younger; not a great deal younger, say about two years, but somewhat younger; she enjoyed that. She had been a very attractive girl, and a very attractive woman. If you can imagine how Debbie Reynolds will look when she attends the inauguration of John-John Kennedy, you will about have her. With her income she rented two rooms in a converted garage and kept them very clean.
Crane Wessleman met Sonya during that time when he still used, occasionally, to leave his house. His former partner had asked him to play bridge, and when he accepted had called a friend, or (to be truthful) had his wife call the friend’s wife, to beg the name of an unattached woman of the correct age who might make a fourth. A name had been given, a mistake made, Sonya had been called instead, and by the time the partner’s wife realized what had occurred Sonya had been nibbling her petits fours and
asking for sherry instead of tea. The partner did not learn of his wife’s error until both Crane Wessleman and Sonya were gone, and Crane Wessleman never learned of it. If he had, he would not have believed it. The next time the former partner called, Crane Wessleman asked rather pointedly if Sonya would be present.
She played well with him, perhaps because she was what Harlan Ellison would call an empath—Harlan meaning she gut-dug whether or not Crane Wessleman was going to make the trick—or perhaps only because she had what is known as card sense and the ability to make entertaining inconsequential talk. The partner’s wife said she was cute, and she was quite skillful at flattery.
Then the partner’s wife died of a brain malignancy; and the partner, who had only remained where he was because of her, retired to Bermuda; and Crane Wessleman stopped going out at all and after a very short time seldom changed from his pajamas and dressing gown. Sonya thought that she had lost him altogether.
Orbit 8 - [Anthology] Page 9
