“Or she was still alive.”
“Or both,” he said. “It’s a possibility.”
A story dated 576, three years after the disaster, described how Kane had paid his debts, closed out his accounts, said goodbye to his few friends, and watched the waters of the Severin close over his villa. That was when they took down the dam. He moved to Terminal City.
The flyer crossed the Takonda River, which more or less marked the middle of Equatoria. They ran into a rain storm at about the same time, and the afternoon turned cold. Solly was in a talkative mood, going on about Mount Hope, and how he hoped there would really turn out to be something there. She had mixed feelings, would have liked to solve the old mystery, would have done anything to find out what had happened to Emily. But on the other hand she knew she didn’t want to run into whatever had unnerved Sheyel.
They flew into the twilight. The countryside became progressively rougher. Mountains rose around them. The storm got worse and high winds began to buffet the aircraft. Solly went higher until they could look down on the turbulence.
Eventually the landscape opened out into cultivated areas and farm buildings, silos and lakes. They watched a train moving smoothly across the treetops through the approaching twilight. Then woodland again, broken by a lone house or, enigmatically, a tennis court or swimming pool. There were no roads, of course.
Over 75 percent of Greenway’s population was concentrated in its towns, which were scattered across her thousands of islands, or buried in Equatorian forests. The half-dozen or so major cities of the Republic were now the province of those who pursued active careers, or those who were looking for mates. The rest of the world was satisfied to live near trees and cardinals, watch the train come in once a day, and spend their afternoons fishing.
Eagle Point was by local standards a small metropolis. It straddled both banks of the Severin, thirty-three kilometers north of Mount Hope. Its two sections were connected by a pair of exquisitely designed bridges, which, according to the townspeople, visitors came to see from all over Greenway. Eagle Point also featured skiing on several world-class slopes, natural hot springs, a magnificent walkway seven hundred meters over Dead Man’s Gorge, seven major casinos, and the Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame.
They arrived in the gathering twilight, landed atop the Gateway Inn, checked in, and got directions to the Gould Art Gallery, which was located at ground level a block from the hotel. A man in a heavy black sweater was just finishing with a customer when they arrived. Although he bore no physical indication of advancing age, he moved with a deliberation that suggested he was well along in his second century. “Are you Mr. Gould?” Kim asked.
The man brightened and bowed slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Please call me Jorge. Would you like something hot to drink?”
They accepted some cider and Kim introduced herself and Solly. Gould had a print of Lisa Barton’s Evening on Lyra on display. It was an example of the empyrean school, those works which embodied off-world themes to achieve their effects. The Barton was a self-portrait, depicting the artist in an armchair on a clearly hostile moonscape, contemplating a globular cluster floating over a nearby ridge. Kim had read that the globular cluster in the painting was the one in Serpens, twenty-seven thousand light-years away, vastly outside the human bubble. The painting radiated nobility, solitude, and grandeur, of both the nebula and the woman.
The proprietor noted her interest. “There are only one hundred prints,” he said. “Signed by the artist herself. I can let you have this one at a very reasonable price.”
“Thank you, no,” she said. “But I am interested in Markis Kane. You have his Autumn, I understand?”
“Oh yes. One of his best.” He gazed at Kim, frowned, and sucked in his breath. “That’s remarkable,” he whispered. “Is it really you?” His voice trembled.
Kim had never seen the man before and she was momentarily at a loss to understand his reaction. “Emily,” he said. Solly moved closer to her.
The model for Autumn.
Kim smiled. “No,” she said. “It’s not me.”
Gould stood back to get a better view. He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’d thought the model had died. Before he did the painting.” He shook his head. “Nevertheless, you are a close match. Are you connected in some way?”
“I’m her sister.”
He pulled his sweater tightly around him, as if to protect from a sudden chill. “I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me.”
“It’s quite all right, Mr. Gould. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. Of course.” He studied her. “You’re as lovely as she.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
He paused and collected himself. “As I say, I do have the Autumn. But it’s not for sale.”
Solly glanced at her. He expects to hit us pretty hard.
“It’s for display only,” the proprietor continued. “It’s really quite valuable.”
“May we see it?” asked Kim.
“Of course.” He still did not move, still gazed at Kim’s features.
She wanted to break the paralysis. “Tell me about Markis Kane,” she said.
“We have five originals by him. Other than the Autumn. One of them, Glory, also uses Emily as the model.” He led the way through a door at the rear of the building and turned on the lights. Autumn was set in an exquisite, hand-carved wooden frame, mounted on an easel. More lights blinked on, designed to show the work to maximum effect.
Kim studied it. The woman in the window. The line of frost. The leaf-covered lawn. The ringed world just touching the tops of the trees. The planet was setting. There was no conscious way to make that determination, but she knew it to be true. A couple of crescent moons that she didn’t recall from the online image drifted through the gathering night.
Autumn radiated loss. The trees writhed in a dark wind, the giant planet was painted in October colors, and even its rings suggested dissolution.
Emily looked both beautiful and melancholy.
“He’s pretty good,” Solly commented, “for a pilot.”
“He’s one of the best we’ve had,” said Gould. “The world is just beginning to recognize it.”
Glory was named for the largest of Greenway’s satellites. Emily was posed dreamily against a track of moonlit water. Shoulders bare, one hand laid along her cheek, eyes luminous and thoughtful. It was dated three years before the flight.
Tora was a portrait of Kane’s daughter at about ten. In River Voyage, a handful of rafters try to hang on in rock-strewn white water. Night Passage depicted an interstellar liner passing a cobalt-blue gas giant.
Kim asked for the dates. All four preceded the Hunter incident. “Is it my imagination,” she asked Gould, “or is there a change in tone between his earlier and later work?”
“Oh,” he said, “there very certainly is.” He touched a keyboard. A screen lit up and they were looking at Bringing the Mail, a painting of a freighter crossing a nebula. The freighter was squat and gray, bleak, its running lights casting eerie shadows across the superstructure. The nebula silhouetted the starship, emitting a twilight glow. “This is his last known work.”
“Everything after Mount Hope seems kind of downbeat,” said Solly.
“Oh yes. Beginning with this one.” He brought up a landscape. “His work entered a dark period from which it never really emerged. This is Storm Warning, from 574.” They were looking at distorted trees, ruins in the distance silhouetted against summer lightning, churning clouds. “When he becomes recognized as a major figure, people will recognize this as the first major work of his gothic phase.”