Dryly Jato said, "Insulting it won’t help."
She smiled. "The nanomeds in my saliva may be able to make antibodies if there’s a virus loose in my biomech web."
"Are you getting anything?"
"Nothing." Several moments later she said, "Yes. A notice about a ballet." Her concentration had turned inward again. "I still can’t link to the city system… but I think I can get into the node in that console over there."
Jato stared at her. "Not a chance. That’s Crankenshaft’s private node. Everyone knows his security is unbreakable."
A cold smile touched her lips. "Security is my game."
A moment later she said, "I can call up his holosculpture of you if you want."
Jato swallowed. She might as well have hit him with that ancient proverbial ton of bricks. "Yes. I want."
She indicated the center of the studio. "That’s it."
He turned-and almost gasped.
The air above the pool was glowing with a rainbow-hued mist. It drifted across the glistening white cones that stood in the water, like shadows made on outcroppings of rock by clouds obscuring a sun. This, from a man who had lived his entire life in the night. Holos of Jato appeared on every cone. On the tallest, the one with the circular cross-section, he sat with knees to his chest, shivering, his clothes and hair dripping. He was younger, eight years younger, only a husky teenager. His face cycled through emotions: rage, confusion, resentment.
An older Jato stood on the next cone, the one with its top cut off at a slant, giving it an elliptical cross-section. He remembered when he had modelled for it, how he stood for hours on a narrow shelf protruding from the surface. Crankenshaft had since removed the shelf and erased it in the image, so the Jato holo simply floated in the air, with red and blue clouds scudding across his face. He was shouting, fists clenched at his sides. No sound: just his mouth moving. With the play of light, it was hard to make out words, but he knew what they were. He had been cursing Crankenshaft in his native tongue.
The Jato by the parabolic cone was sitting, submerged to his hips in the pool. He trailed his hands back and forth in the water, a habit he had developed to cope with the boredom. He was kneeling by the hyperbolic cone, up to his waist in water. Crankenshaft had doctored the holo to make him look old. Ancient. His face was a map of age untouched by the biosculpting the rich used to sustain youth during their prolonged lives. Gusts blew brittle white hair around his head. Stooped, gnarled, decrepit: it was a portrait of his mortality.
That tableau remained frozen for a few seconds. Then all the Jatos stood up and began stepping from cone to cone, passing through each other while multi-colored clouds flowed across their bodies. Some raged, others shivered, others moved like machines.
Each figure split, becoming two Jatos, all continuing their strange march. They split again, the original of each quartet stepping from cone to cone while the others kept pace in the air. New images appeared like shadows, all different by just a small amount, creating a feathered effect. A younger one was crying. He remembered that day; he had told Crankenshaft about his family, how he loved them, how they must think he had died. Another Jato image was laughing. Laughing. Yet there were times he had laughed-even had civil conversations with Crankenshaft.
Holos of water augmented the pool, overlaid on the real water like multiple exposures: waves in impossibly sharp points, or serrated like a saw, glowing phosphorescence in red, purple, green, blue-green, gold, and silver. Gusts in the studio whipped the true water into peaks that added random accents to the holos.
The Jatos split again, along with their shadows. They all stopped and raised their hands, the motion feathered among the images, as if it portrayed multiple quantum universes, each projecting a future that diverged from the original. The image of a rainbow-hued waterfall sprayed over the figures, making them shimmer. But no blurring could hide the fury on those faces.
"Saints almighty," Soz said. "It’s spectacular."
Jato tried not to grit his teeth. "That’s why he’s so famous."
"I can see why he wanted you for his model."
"You can?"
She motioned at the holos. "You couldn’t get that purity of emotion-that fury-from a Dreamer. From most anyone. But from you, it’s perfect. Pure passion unadulterated by civilization."
"Am I supposed to be flattered by that?"
Soz winced. "I didn’t mean-" She stopped, staring at the sculpture. "Jato, look at your eyes."
"That would be a feat." But he knew what she meant. He studied the images-and when he saw it, he nearly choked. Crimson. Ruby hard and ruby cold. The eyes on each image had turned red. The hair was changing too, going from dark brown to crystalline black. He couldn’t believe it. Crankenshaft was making him look like a Trader.
He stood up, his fists clenching at his sides. "I’ll kill him."
"It’s guilt," Soz said. "And catharsis."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It’s all there," she said. "The guilt the Dreamers feel, knowing the brutality their disowned kin have inflicted on a thousand peoples. And catharsis. Realizing the monster isn’t in them anymore. They’ve freed themselves, become Dreamers instead of Traders."
"Then it’s a lie." Jato was so angry he could barely get the words out. "For this ‘catharsis,’ Crankenshaft made himself into the very thing this is supposed to free him from. He’s made me look like what he hates in himself, what he can never get rid-" Jato stopped cold. Then he sat down again. "Oh, hell."
Soz was watching his face. "What?"
"His greatest work. Face his demons and exorcise them. I’m the substrate." It was suddenly all too obvious. "Get rid of me and he loses his inner devils." Jato swallowed. "He’s going to kill me as part of the sculpture. It’s what he’s always intended."
She stared at him. "That’s sick."
Jato wished he had never pulled her into this. "If we had died on the Promenade, he would have worked with that footage. Now you’re onto him, so he has nothing to lose by bringing us here where he can tailor the work to his needs."
"Actually," a voice said. "You’re the one who is going to kill her."
He looked up with a jerk. Crankenshaft was standing across the studio, by the console in the corner where the two holo-walls met. In one hand he held Jato’s bird sculpture; in the other, he had a laser carbine.
"A tragedy," Crankenshaft continued, in the voice he used when he wanted to bait Jato, to drive his rage. "She came to the greatest artist alive hoping to inspire a dream. A beautiful woman, after all, has certain advantages. Unfortunately she arrived while you were here." He sighed. "I should never have left you two alone. But who would have thought an Imperial Messenger would be in danger? Besides, Jato, we thought we had cured you." He shook his head. "She was overconfident. An unguarded moment and you were able to bind her." Lifting the bird, he said, "A blunt instrument you stole from me brought about her death. I was forced to kill you in self-defense."
Jato stood up, an explosion working up inside of him. But before it let loose, Soz spoke in a mild voice. "You’re Granite Crankenshaft."
Unease showed on their captor’s face. "You should have never pried into his records, Messenger."
"Why would you claim Jato stole that bird from you?" she asked. "He made it."
The tic under Crankenshaft’s eye gave a violent twitch. He shifted the sculpture, his hand gripped around it as if he held a weapon. "No one would ever believe he created a work as stunning as this, with that fugue. Only his exposure to me enabled him to do it. Me. He could never have done it by himself. So the credit belongs to me."
Jato knew he should be infuriated that Crankenshaft would claim credit for his work. But the implication in his captor’s words so staggered him that the arrogance of the statement rolled off his back. He could hardly believe it. The great Granite Crankenshaft was threatened by his work.