New Title 2, page 15
“Why?”
“Why? Well, you have sad eyes. A sad kind of face.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“For a painting it is. Yeah.” She seemed to take him in and nodded approvingly, as if he were her living portrait and she was pleased with the end result. “I just get a vibration from you. I’ve got to run with it. An artist has to go with her instincts, you know.”
“Of course.”
“So you’ll model for me?”
“Sure.” Could she hear the clunk of his swallow? “When?”
“Um—right now?” As if to coax him—though of course it wasn’t necessary—she smiled.
««—»»
At first, she had him sitting on a stool as he watched the VT across the room so as to remain focused. But after an hour of this, Jessika seemed displeased with the result, or at least gripped with an intense new inspiration—he couldn’t be sure because only the back of the canvas was in his view. In any event, she had him stand instead, and from another room brought a blanket. She then draped it around him as she had worn this same blanket herself, earlier. It was soft and pastel blue and he drank in the warm scent of her from it…but after only a few minutes, her brow knitted in an expression he had never seen in her face before, she snatched the blanket off him and disappeared with it. Several moments later she returned with a yellow blanket, and robed him in this instead. This seemed to work, for she poured herself back into her painting with fresh vigor. Peripherally he watched the ferocious slashing of her arm as she lathered the canvas.
“What’s it going to be called?” he ventured out of the corner of his mouth, seeing as how she seemed to have settled on a particular vision.
“Shh,” she said. “I don’t know.” But a few beats later she stated, “Priest of the Imperial Dynasty.”
It meant nothing to him, so he tried to remain silent and priestly for her.
Nearly another hour passed, and then she called for a break. Rubbing his neck, he looked directly at her again, saw that a few speckles of red paint had been flicked across her white blouse, across the swell of her chest, from the bristles of her brush. He took a half step forward, hesitantly asked, “Can I see it?”
She seemed to hesitate herself, as if reluctant, but finally said, “All right…but it’s not done, of course.”
“If you rather I didn’t…”
“Well, I think maybe I’d rather you didn’t. Not just yet.”
“All right—no problem.”
She set down her brush. “Come on in the kitchen—I promised you tea.”
They sat at her diminutive table, and her mood slowly changed; her lowered brows unknotted and her intense pout became a smile again. She asked him about himself…where he was from, about his family. He shyly ventured the same. She laughed, got him to laugh. She made another pot of tea.
A knock at her door and Jessika let in two artist friends, a female and a male. Cribbage rose from the table as if caught in a lewd act. Jessika introduced them as Maria and Ben, and he was pleasantly greeted, but their eyes were drawn more to the canvas than to him.
“What is this, then?” the young woman asked. “This isn’t like anything you’ve done before.”
“Who is it?” asked the young man.
Cribbage didn’t approach the thing, respecting his earlier promise to wait. But it obviously didn’t resemble him, yet. He expected Jessika to tell them—to say, “It’s Ed.” But instead she said, in a dreamy perplexed voice, “I don’t know.”
He decided it was time to leave her with her friends. She would no doubt prefer their company. Perhaps the young man’s, especially; Cribbage couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. He wanted to tell Jessika to let him know when he was needed for another session, but couldn’t do so in front of the others. Instead, he thanked her for the tea and excused himself. She walked him past the easel to the door and put a small hand on his arm.
“Thanks, Ed,” she said quietly.
“If you need me again,” he whispered.
“I don’t think I will. I can finish it without you.”
“Oh, well…”
“But I’d like you to come see me again, okay?”
“Okay,” he replied—praying to his new god that she meant it.
««—»»
Edwin Cribbage clung to an overhead strap, his bag of tools resting by his feet. Like so many men—and women—in Punktown, he wore a gun beneath his winter coat. His was a Fucile 3.5, legally licensed, though of course that was not usually the case. He was aware of everyone around him on the hovertrain as it smoothly sped above its repulsor tracks; a Tikkihotto man gazed out a tinted window, his ocular tendrils swimming in the air as if they felt at the particles of light which made up his sight. A middle-aged black woman sobbed quietly in her seat. Four tough-looking boys with implants that stretched and tented their faces into hideous, threatening shapes leered at the other passengers, imitating the Tikkihotto with fingers waving in front of their eye sockets, imitating the sobbing of the black woman, finally turning their pointless hatred toward Cribbage to see what was ripe for mockery there. Cribbage nearly lowered his eyes, but instead glared back at them defiantly. The boys began to smile, to summon up their poisonous wit, but instead turned their eyes elsewhere, their smiles faltering. Cribbage was rather surprised. Had they caught a glimpse of his gun, holstered under his cloned-leather jacket? He glanced under his arm. No. He imagined it was something in his eyes, then. Not sad now, he imagined. Grim, determined, perhaps—after all, he had been summoned on a grave errand.
Less than a half hour ago, he had received a call at home. When his vidscreen came on, he saw the face of his employer, Mr. Ythill, gazing into his apartment.
Ythill had a not unattractive face which might have passed for human, as Jessika Inkster had discussed only several days earlier, but for its unnatural paper-white pallor. Also, even when he spoke, his features remained all but immobile, as if he were afraid to crack a layer of paint on his skin. Or as if his face were a mask.
“Hello, Edwin. I’m afraid I must send you to the Collaborative straight away. The authorities have already been notified, and will be expecting your help, whatever that might be.”
“What happened?” he asked the man, who must at this moment be on his far world of Carcosa, Cribbage thought, pending the trip here with some companions a little more than a week from now.
“Another suicide, I’m afraid—a woman named Maria Ang. Unfortunately these artistic types seem prone to harmful dramatics.”
Maria Ang. Cribbage remembered her—Jessika’s friend, to whom he had been introduced only a few days ago. A pretty girl with brown skin and slanted eyes and a boyishly short haircut. She had been one of the three artists, he also recalled, who had created the Collaborative’s banners.
“I’ll get right there,” Cribbage said distractedly.
“There’s a good man. And I’ll be seeing you on the eighteenth.”
“Yes sir,” he replied, and watched the pale mask dissolve.
Now, he saw his stop gliding toward him, the huge white letters on the station building that announced FORGE PARK.
As he walked toward the great row of mostly derelict factories, a wind as sharp as the blue winter sky slashed across his face, rippling his short dark hair. He leaned his slender frame into it. Under that stark cold dome which hid its burden of stars, he felt tiny, vulnerable. The one yellow star did not warm him.
The Collaborative was ahead—its banners cracking like whips. He remembered Mr. Ythill’s mocking words regarding the artists. Did he think they were all fools, then? Pathetic? If so, what inspired him to work with the government on the Collaborative? Surely there were more profitable ventures in Punktown. Wasn’t he the art lover, the patron of the arts, Cribbage had always taken him to be?
He thought also of Jessika. He had been waiting for a call, but one hadn’t come. He had hoped to see her in the hallways, and had found some reason to visit the fifth floor every day, but he hadn’t seen her. He had even once poised outside her door, and imagined he smelled her paints behind it. But he hadn’t wanted to disturb her, and hadn’t knocked.
There were indeed enforcer vehicles, and a medevac craft had lighted in the front lot. When he reached the door he asked a uniformed man to direct him to the detectives in charge of the investigation. He then proceeded to the third floor.
The door to Maria Ang’s flat was open, and another uniform outside it let him pass. As he entered, he immediately caught sight of the girl.
She sat propped up before one of the front windows, as if to gaze out at the city. Had he bothered to look up at her window from outside, Cribbage might have seen her face at the pane. Since he had last seen her, she had changed her appearance in three ways: she had shaven her head bald, painted a strange symbol on her forehead in yellow pigment, and choked herself to death by shoving both her fists, impossibly, into her mouth and halfway down her throat. Her jaw had come unhinged like that of a snake to accomplish this feat. Her face was nearly black, her eyes ballooned in their sockets, spittle and vomit dried on her chin and shirt front. How she had killed herself in this way was almost a secondary consideration—Cribbage couldn’t imagine how she had remained seated in her chair in front of the window throughout the spasms that surely must have wracked her body as it resisted such treatment.
“I’m Detective Amart,” a stocky, rumpled Choom husked, his ear-to-ear mouth down-turned in a vast scowl. Had Maria Ang been a Choom, native to this world, her feat might not seem so remarkable. “We’ve already notified the cleaning service you people used last time; Mr. Ythill asked us to give them a beep.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Cribbage asked blankly, unable to take his eyes from the dead woman for long. He had the strange impression that she was a—composition. A final, desperate artwork she had devised.
“You can work with the cleaning crew if they need it. We’ve just finished recording and going over the scene and we’re ready to remove the body.”
“Oh my God, Maria, oh God!” Cribbage heard a woman cry out behind him.
He whirled to see the uniformed enforcer in the doorway struggling to restrain a small woman with long brown hair. Cribbage rushed to her, and guided her out of the enforcer’s hands, into the hallway. There, to his surprise—and to his ashamed gratification—she fell into his awkward embrace, and sobbed against his chest.
Forsaking whatever meager duties might be required of him, he walked Jessika upstairs, to her own apartment.
««—»»
He made Jessika sit on her sofa while he fixed her some tea, and it wasn’t until he had handed her the cup that he realized the painting he had modeled for was covered by a tarp to hide it, as if she had expected his company.
“I don’t understand it,” the young artist said more to herself than to him, her voice a fragmented gasp. “People who do that—they show some signs first, don’t they? You can see it in their mood, don’t you think? But just like Hector…out of the blue.” She threw up her hand and let it drop back to her thigh in a frustrated slap. “She was working on a new series of quilts…the first one was so amazing. She was so excited. She wanted to do three of them. It was her best work…it was all she talked about. Summoning the King, she was going to call them.”
“Was there anything in that, in her art, that might give you a hint about where her mind was at?”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. It was gold stars and a great golden…I don’t know, bird or spirit or something…against a blue background. Unless that meant heaven to her, and she wanted to…oh, it just doesn’t make any sense, Ed! How can a person do something like that?”
“She worked on those flags with that Hector kid. Does that connection make any sense to you?”
“I don’t see why it would. But if it did, I should keep my eye on Amie—she was the third one who worked on them.”
“I don’t know if you saw it, but there was a funny symbol painted on Maria’s head. It was the same design embroidered on one of the flags.”
Jessika stared up at him. “That’s strange—but I don’t know what they mean. Like I said, Hector saw those designs in his dreams. Even he didn’t seem to give them any meaning.”
Cribbage nodded thoughtfully.
When Jessika had dozed off on her sofa, and he had covered her with her blue blanket, Cribbage rose from the chair he had settled in and stole to her computer, which she had left running. As he got into the net, he glanced guiltily over his shoulder, saw a troubled look on Jessika’s face that reminded him of her expression while she had worked on his portrait. Had she been dreaming while she painted, or was she now painting in her dreams?
On a scrap of paper he drew a crude version of the design as he remembered it from Maria’s forehead. He then placed it in Jessika’s scanner. After fumbling a bit, he scanned the image, and then asked the computer to identify it.
Several minutes passed, and he had given up hope when at last a screen came up which showed a much cleaner rendition of the symbol, and the caption:
“‘The Yellow Sign.’ A symbol worn by Carcosians (Aldebaran System) by which members of the Imperial Dynasty recognize one another. Also, some vague use in Carcosian folklore.”
The Imperial Dynasty. Hadn’t Jessika dubbed her portrait of him Priest of the Imperial Dynasty? Was she familiar with Carcosa’s culture?
Carcosa. Mr. Ythill was Carcosian.
Cribbage didn’t know how long it was proper to remain as a guest in Jessika’s apartment while she slept. Her watched her chest rise and fall like gentle waves beneath the blue blanket. At last he departed, but first he left a message on her monitor which read, “If you need me, beep,” and gave the number of his pocket phone.
He found the trauma clean-up crew finishing up in Maria Ang’s flat. They had been quick. “Not much to clean,” one woman cheerily announced. “No blood.”
They left him alone, and in no time he found the quilt that Jessika had alluded to.
Not a bird, he decided. More like a wraith, in gold thread. And upon its insubstantial head were spikes as if it wore a crown.
««—»»
When Jessika Inkster did not call him for two days, Edwin Cribbage called her. When she did not answer his calls, he took the train from his Punktown neighborhood to Forge Park.
Today the sky was a luminous gray like the inside of a great sea shell, and snow had begun to drift like volcanic ash. Cribbage hunched his neck between his shoulders and quickened his stride toward the yellow factory.
In the foyer he found an apparently drugged or drunken young woman with a henna-tattooed face sitting in a ratty armchair and muttering to herself between sobs. Her tears had blurred the black ink on her face somewhat. Cribbage threw her only a glance as he made his way to the elevator. It wasn’t working again; something else to fix. If his boss would let him. He took the stairs two at a time instead. His heart seemed to charge up the stairs even quicker, leaving him in its wake.
Fifth floor. Gloomy carpeted corridor. And when he reached Jessika’s door and put his hand to it, it creaked slightly open. He thrust it open the rest of the way.
Jessika stood before her painting, with her back to him. She was nude. The painting was unveiled.
The contrast between that desirable flesh and the menacing painted form made a blank of Cribbage’s mind; he faltered for several beats before moving deeper into the gray light of the room.
“Jessika,” he said, taking his eyes from the painting and placing a hand on her bare shoulder.
At his touch, she toppled stiffly backward and thudded to the floor, her slender frame seemingly as heavy as carven marble.
Her fingers, extended to the air as claws, were caked in dried paint. No, of course not paint. And from her empty eye sockets, more of that dark fluid had run down her cheeks, down her graceful sweeping neck, around and between her once soft breasts, which now glowed pallid and cold as alabaster.
“Oh God…oh,” Cribbage sobbed in a whisper. “Jessika…oh my God…”
He wheeled about, as if accusingly, to confront the portrait again. The face and figure that had started out as his own, before further inspiration had gripped the artist.
The portrait—far more realistic and accomplished than Jessika had seemed capable of—was of a man in robes of shimmering yellow silk, torn and ripped in places. A clasp that held the robe closed bore the symbol he had seen on Maria’s head, and on the flag. The Yellow Sign.
The face still resembled his own, in general form, but the eyes were not sad. They seemed cruelly wise, almost amused. And the skin was more white than even that of a corpse drained of its blood. Smooth as a mask.
It was her masterpiece.
Cribbage lowered himself to a crouch beside the young woman, and rested a hand gingerly on her chilly forearm as he wept soundlessly over her. But only moments later, he shot to his feet abruptly.
He opened her windows. Drew in the two banners he could reach. One of them bore the Yellow Sign. In the hall, he opened the window at its end to gather in that banner as well.
Minutes later, he had the bundled flags under one arm and his portrait hoisted in the other. It banged the stairs as he took it down into his basement workshop—where he slashed the canvas and shattered its framework before feeding the remnants and the bundled flags into the trash zapper to be broken down to their barest, poisoned atoms.
««—»»
FORGE PARK, the huge white letters read on the flank of the low structure. Edwin Cribbage smirked at it, as he huddled within his cloned-leather jacket against the bitter sting of a fresh blizzard. It had always seemed such a yin and yang name to him. Like Work/Play. Life/Death.
The train whispered into dock; the sift of falling snow was louder. Through its billowing veils, the disembarking passengers looked mistily like a boat-load of souls freshly delivered to the underworld. Cribbage started forward. It was the eighteenth.
