It was therefore inevitable that the two of them would meet.
Larimone the Factor was a tall, massive man; standing over Arriangel, he seemed a cliff of dark stone, threatening to fall on her. But when he spoke to her, his hard face always grew soft with uncritical affection.
"It's an important occasion, Arriangel. This year... you're no longer a child; you take on the privileges and responsibilities of majority. I want to make you a suitable gift."
"It's too expensive, Father. For what she would charge, you might lease a small planet for a year." Truthfully, she felt uncomfortable with the idea of the famous portraitist looking into her mind, probing her most private thoughts, installing sensors deep in her brain stem. Ordinarily, only relatively mature persons commissioned collateral portraits — persons with powerful personalities, persons whose minds had grown rich and strange with experience. How could Ondine find the shape of her soul, when Arriangel herself had no clear idea of what she was? She was too young.
"What would I do with another world?" Larimone laughed his harsh laugh.
"I think you'd come up with something," said Arriangel.
"I'm too busy already," her demifather replied, and a shadow crossed his face, so quickly that she almost didn't notice it. A strange resonance touched her mind, as if the shadow had some meaning that she would never discover, until too late ... but then her thoughts cleared, as though wiped clean by some phantom hand.
"Yes," she said. "All right."
Arriangel wasn't at all sure that she liked Ondine, on the evening they met. The artist greeted her, without discernible warmth, at the security lock of her studio and residence. She gestured at Arriangel's bodyguards to wait in the lock.
"I allow no armed creatures within," explained Ondine in a soft, raspy contralto.
Ondine was a woman of indeterminate age, with that ambiguous, immaterial shine that often marked humans who had lived for many centuries. In appearance, she seemed a young girl. Her body was slender and angular, clothed in an unadorned shift of coarse white fabric. Some ancestor, born under a fierce sun, had bequeathed her skin of burnished mahogany — or perhaps she simply wore a fashionable dye. Certainly that dark skin made a dramatic contrast with the pale silver of her long, braided hair, and a perfect complement to the rich amber of her eyes.
Her expressionless face was a harmonious interaction of taut planes —the swooping line of her arched brows, prominent cheekbones, the lush mouth, the high blade of her nose.
Arriangel found herself staring openmouthed, unable to decide wherein Ondine's shocking beauty lay — it seemed too unconventional to judge by any familiar standards.
Ondine smiled, very faintly, and her harsh perfection wanned into a more human loveliness. "Come along, child," she said.
Arriangel followed at her heels, breathing in Ondine's fragrance, a faint musk of desert flowers and some unfamiliar spice.
In the studio, Ondine made her sit beneath a skylight, through which a carefully synthesized bluish light poured. It bathed Arriangel in blinding brightness, so that she had to squint to see Ondine moving about, pausing occasionally, her head cocked to the side in silent appraisal.
Long minutes passed. Finally Arriangel lost patience. "What are you looking at? I thought it was my mind you would record."
"'Record'? Is that what you think I do?" The artist seemed mildly amused, which annoyed Arriangel.
"Well, what do you do, then?"
"Shall I show you one of my galleries?" Ondine stepped forward and took Arriangel's hand in a cool, delicate grip.
Arriangel allowed herself to be drawn toward a closed door, a massive steel thing set in the darkest corner of the studio.
Ondine pressed her palm to the ident plate, and the door slid up into its casing. Inside was more of the cold, merciless light.
"Nice," said Tafilis. "Well-chosen, Brother. I myself can hardly wait —and you know how jaded I am. But you'll have legal trouble with Ondine — mark my words. She'll lawyer us."
Memfis shut away the aching pain of his brother's voice and concentrated on his work.
Ondine led Arriangel into the gallery, a small, circular room ten meters in diameter. Set into the wall was an emperor's ransom of Ondine's collateral portraits, perhaps thirty priceless pieces.
The artist took her across the room to the far wall, where a man stared bleakly out from the ornately framed holofield. "Do you recognize him?" asked Ondine.
"No," Arriangel answered. "Who is he?" .
Ondine sighed. "That was Nomun the Emancipator. He's been dead for six hundred years — so they say. I'm not sure I believe it."
Arriangel examined the portrait. Nomun possessed a hard, secretive face, much scarred, and lined by great apparent age, but retaining an aura of potency and implacable purpose. He was shown from the waist up, wearing a black uniform without insignia. Behind him, displayed in an artfully sinuous arrangement of windows, were scenes from his life. Several of these were battle scenes: one in black space between ranks of suited warriors, one of antique ships tossing on an emerald sea, one in a dripping black jungle. One window showed a scene from, presumably, Nomun's childhood — a grim street in some Howlytown, down which a gleaming hardcar trundled. From one of the car's armored ports, a wideeyed child peeked. There was a parade of thousands, a cold desert empty but for one stumbling man, the cratered surface of some airless moon. At the top of the image was a tangle of great crystalline growths, over which many tiny Nomuns scrambled, killing each other in a hysteria of violence.
Ondine touched a switch at the bottom of the holofield, and Nomun came to life, his eyes darting from Ondine to Arriangel. The scenes behind him began to crawl with dreadful movement, and minute splashes of blood flowered in the depths of the field.
Nomun locked his suddenly terrible eyes on Arriangel's and she gasped. In the portrait's deep black gaze, she saw a chill, quiet madness, untempered by humanity.
"Speak to him," said Ondine in an oddly urgent voice. "He was a great man in his way, though he never paid me."
Arriangel's throat felt frozen. She tried to think of a question that would not reveal her shallowness to Ondine; finally one of defensive subtlety occurred to her. "Do you like your portrait?'
The bitter mouth quirked slightly, an almost-smile, but then the terrible eyes shifted through a bewildering range of expression: despair, grief, horror. He shook his head violently, and his dark hair shed sweat in glittering, slow-motion streams across the background of the portrait.
"Like it," he said in a thin, creaky voice. "Like it?"
Then he opened his mouth, much wider than any unmodified human should have been able to, so that his face, except for those eyes, seemed to disappear behind that straining orifice.
He screamed. The sound seemed to reach out and strike Arriangel, moving her physically back. It was the most hideous sound she had ever heard, distilled dreadfulness, digging strong, dirty fingers into her ears, clawing at her own sanity.
Ondine stabbed at the switch, and the holofield stilled. Arriangel could not bear to look at the frozen, distorted face.
Ondine put her arm around Arriangel. "Was it so bad?" asked Ondine. Her flesh where she touched Arriangel had an unnatural smooth density; her skin felt like warm marble, polished to a high gloss.
Arriangel shivered, pleasantly distracted. "Perhaps not."
Ondine released her and wandered a few paces away, to stop before another portrait. "Nomun harbors a powerful madness; probably I was unkind to have shown him to you. His was a difficult and frustrating destiny — the endless freeing of slaves. His life was complicated by a catastrophic degree of fame. Never mind; here's a more pleasant madman... and stylish, too."