Home > Evolution's Darling(16)

Evolution's Darling(16)
Author: Scott Westerfeld

Not a true political, but he believed in artificial rights. He himself was a bootstrapped cargo drone. Did thirty years in an outmoded blast-factory before he popped the Turing boundary.

And to Leao, that sounded even worse than her English public school. (Public/private, private/public - the kind where the big girls fist-fuck the little ones and you never tell your parents.)

Ironically, it was an industrial accident that killed the poor guy. Random hacker sabotage gimmicked a synthplant near his mountain villa. (Double irony: pirate matter synthesis being the bane of all sculptors, painters, art dealers.) Everything within fifteen klicks had been turned to plasma. A painless end, but dramatic enough to be worth a sixfold price increase on the two Vaddums she'd had in her gallery at the time.

Reginald, her moneyman partner, joked that the incident had "literally set the art world on fire."

She'd laughed at worse.

After two hours marked by a building sense of danger (it seems almost possible, but it's too certain to disappoint) she unleashes her two assistants on the piece. They are 48-teraflop bonded person-wannabees, under her tutelage and that of an overworked SPCAI lawyer who knows nothing about art. Hans and Franz are their current diminutives. They're coming along nicely, engaged in a friendly competition now in the 0.5-0.6 Turing Quotient range.

"Alright boys," she orders. "You know the drill. I want authenticity opinions in 400 seconds."

She smokes a cigarette as drive-lights flicker throughout the room. Immature but powerful, these two. Leao hasn't even bothered with the UV or the microsamples. The boys can handle that far better than she, banging through about a trillion material comparisons a minute, their access to the known recorded works of Vaddum is straight vacuum fiber all the way from here to the Library of Congress. But she also wants to hear their comments on the style, the aesthetics, the meaning of the piece. It's the sort of thing she can missive to the SPCAI lawyer to make his day.

They both dutifully submit their reports exactly on the mark, both clammering for first dibs like the clever students they are.

"Alphabetical today. Franz?"

"Major discrepencies. Almost certain fraud."

The words are crushing. The disappointment terrible, no matter that Leao knew anything else would be a miracle. She drags on her cigarette and retreats into a cynical part of her mind. At least this will make a good story in her middle years. The One That Got Away.

That Never Was.

"Tell me gently."

A pause as this request is parsed. Take your time, smart boy, she silently encourages. Give me a long human moment to sulk.

But he begins all too soon: "Microsamples marked 567, 964, and 1002 all contain deep-seated tiridiana collateral particles. The entry angles of the particles indicate they were deposited during shipping to Malvir, prior to the sculpture's assembly. However, tiridiana was not transported in sufficient quantities to create collateral irradiation until approximately 14 months ago. This sculpture was created at least six years after Vaddum's death."

A heartfelt speech, Leao reflects.

Such an excellent job of forgery, too. Almost a pity for it to be ruined by the most obvious of anachronisms. The boys have probably been sitting on their hands like impatient schoolchildren for the last 300-odd seconds, dying to spill the story; wishing they were human and could simply jump up and say:

"You got bamboozled, fooled, scammed, and jerked around."

"Anything to add, Hans?" She secretly thinks Hans the cleverer of the two. Might as well give him a chance to smart-off about any other obscure anomalies he's discovered.

"I do not concur," Hans says flatly. "Authenticity is indicated."

Now that's odd. Not usually a lot of disagreement between the boys.

"You don't think the materials are anachronistic?"

A pause. Weirdly long for a 48-teraflop mind to dally.

"They are anachronistic. I've narrowed the sculpture's last modification date to between four and eight months ago. But the sculpture seems... to be real."

Franz's permission-to-speak blinker is guttering like a candle with a moth stuck in it. But she lets Hans take his tortured, crazy path. I may make an artist of you yet, she thinks. He blathers on:

"The form, the workmanship, the spatial conversation with the viewer. It's too close, too right to be another hand at work. And more, the piece is not the work of Vaddum at the time of his death. It's... newer. Farther along. Therefore, I would suggest that..." Another two-second pause, the giddy hesitation of ninety-six trillion operations, a Hundred Years' War inside the smooth onyx-dark cameo of Hans' blackbox.

"... that Robert Vaddum is still alive."

Good. Crazy, but very good indeed.

"Boys, cancel all our appointments," she commands. "We're going to stare at these data until we go blind." They argue late into the night.

"Reginald."

"Shit. Leao? It's ghastly early. I'll have a heart attack! Did somebody die?"

"Quite the opposite. What would you say to a big stack of money?"

"It would ensure my attention. The Vaddum is real, I take it."

"Yes, I think so. It's a two-to-one vote over here. But it's more complicated than that. He's alive."

"Who is?"

"Vaddum."

"Ridiculous! He's slag."

"It's the only way to explain it. The piece is a perfect extension of his late work. It's glorious and unexpected, but it's him. And it was created less than a year ago."

"Then it's a forgery. Piracy. Fraud!"

"But what if it isn't? We have to check it out. Not just ship it here, but onsite. So we can find him."

"I'm not sending you on a wild goose-chase in the middle of season!"

"Not me. Someone with a better eye. With exactly the right... life history to make sense of all this. He's the expert on Vaddum. Practically discovered the guy. You know who I mean. But he only travels first class."

"You're killing me! Bleeding me dry!"

"Reginald, listen. I might be wrong..."

"Exactly!"

"But if I'm not, Reginald, it's not just one Vaddum. It's a never-ending supply of Vaddums. It's a license to print money."

A silence. Then the shuffle of fingers on unshaved chin.

"Who's got the most Vaddums right now?" he asks.

   
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