She stood and led the way out. She liked showing this particular artwork to people who hadn’t seen the original; no reproduction had ever done it justice. She had written the definitive monograph on it, and it had made her career, but she had never found out much about the people who created it. The legends surrounding the Atoka were so thick, and their symbolism so important, that the truth was elusive—even, in a sense, irrelevant.
The gallery was dark, but at the other end of the room the display lights on the artwork still glowed. It was a special installation, because this was the most famous work the museum owned, and people from all over the Twenty Planets came to see it. Usually there was a crowd around it, but now it hung alone.
Traversed stopped in the doorway, arrested by some strong emotion. “I feel like I shouldn’t be the one here,” he said. “It should be someone better than me.”
Gently, Rue said, “Wouldn’t your people be disappointed if you returned and said you hadn’t seen it?”
He looked at her as if seeking permission.
“They did choose to send you,” she pointed out.
With a visible effort he overcame his uncertainty and followed her across the darkened room.
People called it a painting, but it was actually an elaborate mosaic, made from pieces so small it took a magnifying glass to see them. Rue had commissioned a scientific analysis that had shown that the colors were not, strictly speaking, pigments; they were bits of bird feather, beetle carapace, butterfly wing—anything iridescent, arranged so as to form a picture. And what a picture it was: a young girl in an embroidered jacket and silver headdress, looking slightly to one side, lips parted as if about to speak. Operas had been written about her. Volumes of poetry had speculated on what she was about to say. Speeches invoked her, treatises analyzed her, children learned her story almost as soon as they learned to speak. She was the most loved woman on Sarona.
“We call her Aldry,” Rue said.
Traversed Bridge looked transfixed, as if he were falling in love. He whispered, “That is not her name.”
“What do you call her?” Rue asked.
“She is Even Glancing.”
Rue liked that name. It fit her.
The lights illuminating the portrait were mounted on a track, and they slowly moved from side to side, so that you could see it lit from different angles even as you stood still. Rue waited, watching Traversed Bridge’s face for a reaction, because the image changed. At one point in the cycle, the background, which was normally a dark indigo blue, erupted in a profusion of feathers. There were silver wings behind her, appearing then gone.
“Did you see the wings?” Rue finally asked.
“Yes,” Traversed said. “I can see them.”
“Many people can’t,” she said. “They are in a wavelength not everyone’s eyes can sense.”
“They are moving,” he said.
“Really?” Rue had never heard anyone say that before. But everyone’s experience of the portrait was slightly different.
“She is about to speak,” he said.
“Yes. Everyone wonders…”
She stopped, because his face had gone rigid, like a plastic mannequin, all animation gone. His body stiffened, then began to tremble. He fell with bruising force to the floor.
Rue knelt beside him, then came to her senses and used her wristband to call for help. But as she watched by the shifting light from the artwork, the humanity flowed back into his frozen face. He blinked, then focused on Rue, tried to say something.
“Lie still. Help is on the way,” she said.
“She spoke to me,” he whispered. He did not seem in pain, but full of wonder.
He looked around, saw he was on the floor, blushed in embarrassment, and sat up.
“Are you hurt?” Rue said.
“No, no. I am so sorry. Don’t worry. I am fine.”
“That was a nasty fall.”
“I am used to it. This happened all the time, when I was young. My spirit would leave my body, and I would fall down. I would hear voices no one else could hear.”
“Voices in your head?” Rue said, her amateur diagnosis changing.
“No, no. They were in my left hand.”
A guard looked in, then came over. “Should we call an ambulance?” he asked.
“No,” Traversed said, struggling to his feet again. “I am so sorry to put you to inconvenience. I am fine. It is over.”
Rue exchanged a glance with the guard, shrugged. “A little too much excitement, maybe. Come back to my office, Traversed, and you can sit down.”
By the time he slumped back into the chair, Traversed was looking sad and preoccupied. Rue had seen hundreds of reactions to the portrait of Aldry, but never that one, and she was curious.
“You said she spoke to you,” she said as she brewed tea for them both.
“Yes.” He stared at the floor. “I didn’t understand all she said.”
Rue waited, and after a pause he went on. “She is lonely. All this time we thought we were the ones in exile, and it turns out she is the banished one, even though she has never left Home. To us, Home was a place. To her, it is her people.”
Rue handed him tea. “That makes sense.”
He looked up at her pleadingly. “She says she wants to go back. She wants to see an Immolation.”
Rue didn’t like the sound of that. She tried to keep her voice even. “What is an Immolation?”
“I don’t know.” Traversed shook his head. “That was the part I didn’t understand.”
Rue was in a delicate position. There were strict laws covering repatriation of cultural artifacts, and there was a protocol to follow. If it had been any other artwork, she would have given an automatic set of responses. But Traversed Bridge had not yet made a formal claim. The half-crazed young man was here without credentials, without legal representation, carrying only an implausible story.
Besides, repatriating Aldry was unthinkable. The entire planet would rise up in arms.
If she said nothing, he might never find out that repatriation was an option. It would save a great deal of trouble. No one could accuse her of anything.
She sat down in a chair facing him and said, “There is a way for you to request the return of the portrait. It is called repatriation. You would have to file a formal request, and it would be a very difficult one to win. It would be challenged, because Aldry is deeply loved here, and she is part of our culture as well. You would have to prove beyond doubt that your people are the Atoka, and that she was illegally taken from you.”
He was looking at her like a starving man. “But there is hope?”
“A very little hope.”
“I want to bring her back. It is what she wants.”
Rue smiled and said, “Why don’t you sleep on it, and return tomorrow? Nothing can be done tonight anyway. Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to find someplace.”
Rue gave him directions to a budget hotel that was close to a transit line, and walked him to the main door of the museum.
“Thank you,” he said as he was about to step out into the driving rain. “They told me I would find helpers along the journey, and I have.”
Rue didn’t answer, because she wasn’t sure whether her role was to be helper or hindrance. “Have a good evening,” she said, then turned away, knowing she would have to do some explaining tomorrow.