There were many Monet originals there, but the canvases of the Rouen cathedral series were almost all reproductions, set in one long gallery. As Freya and I searched for Arnold we also viewed them.
“You see, they’re not just various moments of a single day,” Freya said.
“Not unless it was a very strange day for weather.” The three reproductions before us all depicted foggy days: two bluish and underwater-looking, the third a bright burning-off of yellow noontime fog. Obviously these were from a different day than the ones across the room, where a cool clear morning gave way to a midday that looked as if the sun was just a few feet above the cathedral. The museum had classified the series in color groups: “Blue Group,” “White Group,” “Yellow Group,” and so on. To my mind that system was stupid—it told you nothing you couldn’t immediately see. I myself classified them according to weather. There was a clear day that got very hot; a clear winter day, the air chill and pure; a foggy day; and a day when a rainstorm had grown and then broken. When I told Freya of my system she applauded it. “So Heidi’s painting goes from the king of the White Group to the hottest moment of the hot day.”
“Exactly. It’s the most extreme as far as sunlight blasting the stone into motes of color.”
“And thus the forger extends Monet’s own thinking, you see.” she said, a bit absently. “But I don’t see Arnold, and I think we have visited every room.”
“Could he be late?”
“We are already quite late ourselves. I wonder if he has gone back?”
“It seems unlikely,” I said.
Purposefully we toured the museum one more time, and I ignored the color-splashed canvases standing before the dark crater, to search closely in all the various turns of the galleries. No Arnold.
“Come along,” Freya said. “I suspect he stayed in Terminator, and now I want to speak with him more than ever.”
So we returned to the garage, got back in our car, and drove out onto Mercury’s bare, baked surface once again. Half an hour later we had Terminator’s tracks in sight. They stretched before us from horizon to horizon, twelve fat silvery cylinders set five meters above the ground on narrow pylons. To the east, rolling over the flank of Wang Wei Crater so slowly that we could not perceive its movement without close attention, came the city itself, a giant clear half-egg filled with the colors of rooftops, gardens, and the gray stone of the buildings crowding the terraced Dawn Wall.
“We’ll have to go west to the next station,” I said. Then I saw something, up on the city track nearest us: spread-eagled over the top of the big cylinder was a human form in a light green daysuit. I stopped the car. “Look!”
Freya peered out her window. “We’d better go investigate.”
We struggled quickly into the car’s emergency daysuits, clamped on the helmets, and slipped through the car’s lock onto the ground. A Ladder led us up the nearest cylinder pylon and through a tunnel in the cylinder itself. Once on top we could stand safely on the broad hump of the rail.
The figure we had seen was only ten meters away from us, and we hurried to it.
It was Arnold, spread in cruciform fashion over the cylinder’s top, secured in place by three large suction plates that had been cuffed to his wrists and ankles, and then stuck to the cylinder. Arnold turned from his contemplation of the slowly approaching city, and looked at us wide-eyed through his faceplate. Freya reached down and turned on his helmet intercom.
“—am I glad to see you!” Arnold cried, voice harsh.
“These plates won’t move!”
“Tied to the tracks, eh?” Freya said.
“Yes!”
“Who put you here?”
“I don’t know! I went out to meet you at the museum, and the last thing I remember I was in the garage there. When I came to, I was here.”
“Does your head hurt?” I inquired.
“Yes. Like I was gassed, though, not hit. But—the city—it just came over the horizon a short time ago. Perhaps we could dispense with discussion until I am freed?’
“Relax,” Freya said, nudging one of the plates with her boot. “Are you sure you don’t know who did this, Arnold?”
“Of course! That’s what I just said! Please, Freya, can’t we talk after I get loose?”
“In a hurry, Arnold?” Freya asked.
“But of course.”
“No need to be too worried,” I assured him. “If we cannot free you, the cowcatchers will be out to pry you loose.” I tried lifting a plate, but could not move it. “Surely they will find a way—it’s their job, after all.”
“True,” Arnold said.
“Usually true,” said Freya. “Arnold is probably not aware that the cowcatchers have become rather unreliable recently. Some weeks ago a murderer tied his victim to a track just as you have been, Arnold, and then somehow disengaged the cowcatchers’ sensors. The unfortunate victim was shaved into molecules by one of the sleeves of the city. It was kept quiet to avoid any attempted repetitions, but since then the cowcatchers’ sensors have continued to function erratically, and two or three suicides have been entirely too successful.”
“Perhaps this isn’t the best moment to tell us about this,” I suggested to Freya.
Arnold choked over what I took to be his agreement.
“Well,” Freya said, “I thought I should make the situation clear. Now listen, Arnold. We need to talk.”
“Please,” Arnold said. “Free me first, then talk”
“No, no—”
“But Terminator is only a kilometer away!”
“Your perspective from that angle is deceptive,” Freya told him. “The city is at least three kilometers away.”
“More like two,” I said, as I could now make out individual rooftops under the Dawn Wall. In fact the city glowed like a big glass lamp and illuminated the entire landscape with a faint green radiance.
“And at three point four kilometers an hour,” Freya said, “that gives us almost an hour, doesn’t it. So listen to me, Arnold. The Monet cathedral that you sold to Heidi is a fake.”
“What?” Arnold cried, “It certainly is not! And I insist this isn’t the time—”
“It is a fake. Now I want you to tell me the truth, or I will leave you here to test the cowcatchers.” She leaned over to stare down at Arnold face to face. “I know who painted the fake, as well.”
Helplessly Arnold stared up at her.
“He put you on the track here, didn’t he?”
Arnold squeezed his eyes shut, nodded slowly. “I think so.”
“So if you want to be let up, you must swear to me that you will abide by my plan for dealing with this forger. You will follow my instructions, understand?”
“I understand.”
“Do you agree?”
“I agree,” Arnold said, forcing the words out. “Now let me up!”
“All right.” Freya straightened.
“How are we going to do it?” I asked.
Freya shrugged. “I don’t know.”
At this Arnold howled, he shouted recriminations, he began to wax hysterical—
“Shut up!” Freya exclaimed. “You’re beginning to sound like a man who has made too many brightside crossings. These suction plates are little different from children’s darts.” She leaned down, grasped a plate, pulled up with all of her considerable strength. No movement. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully.
“Freya,” Arnold said.
“One moment,” she replied, and walked back down the hump of the cylinder to the ladder tunnel, there to disappear down it.