Time Travel Omnibus, page 1031
Alex methodically worked his way through the paintings, seeing some he recognized as masterpieces that would in future centuries hang with honor in a dozen different museums. But when his flashlight began to dim, he shook it as if that would bring the batteries back to life.
All he accomplished was smashing the lens against the edge of a desk. The LEDs were knocked askew when the lens broke and then the flashlight went dark. He started to fling it angrily, and then remembered his instructions. If Timeshares had logged this in his possession—and they undoubtedly had—he had to return with it, broken or not. He carefully picked up the broken plastic lens and tucked it away into his satchel. Feeling around in the closed room was like returning to the womb. The air was close and almost liquid in his nostrils and no light—what little of it there was—penetrated from the outer world. This was not a time of light pollution.
As he reached out, his fingers found the edge of the table that had broken his flashlight. Dust swept under his hand as he quickly examined the surface. A smile blossomed into full, delighted laughter when he found a candle. Returning to his satchel, he fumbled about until he found the small lighter he had brought. It had served him well as he had been forced to camp on the way to Clos Lucé. Now the tiny blue-white flame touched the candle wick and bathed the room in smoky, pale dancing light.
He coughed from the cloud of rising fumes, then stopped and stared. On the table next to the candle lay a stack of sketches he eagerly grabbed and held up.
“My Gioconda!” Alex riffled through the drawings, lingering with every succeeding one that showed more detail, greater care in composition, the changes, everything that made the full painting so accomplished. He had the preliminary sketches Leonardo had done for the Mona Lisa.
He went through the drawings again, studying each more closely. He reached out so his fingertip lightly brushed her lovely face—only a sketch but more than his memory of her. The cheap paper crackled at his touch. His finger came away sooty from the charcoal on the top one. Subsequent ones were done in quick, sure strokes—pen and ink. The years showed in the style and how Leonardo had progressed as a painter, almost hesitant about his ability at the beginning to a confident, bold painter totally in control of his work. These sketches would bring a fortune at auction.
But Alex could never part with them. They were glimpses of his lover. He carefully placed them in his satchel’s hidden compartment. They were a windfall but he still needed to . . .
He looked up to a frame leaning against the wall. He yanked a cover free and his eyes went wide. The poplar backing facing him was familiar. With shaking hands he turned the painting around and stared into La Gioconda’s eyes. Her smile was for him alone.
He had found it.
For long minutes he was transfixed. Transfigured. He returned to the days—the nights!—he had spent in her embrace, every loving kiss remembered, the fleeting touch, the shared intimacy of one soul mate with another.
At first his hands trembled too much for him to properly take the painting and replace his fake with the original. Alex settled himself with a deep breath, and then began the substitution. The wood backing felt identical to him. In the shifting candlelight, he saw how closely the brush strokes had been computer duplicated.
He tucked the original safely in the large, flat satchel. Working with more assurance now, he turned the fake toward the wall and placed the cloth covering over it. No one would ever know the substitution had been made. Through the years, down the centuries, his fake would be authenticated. And why not? The provenance was complete. No one could possibly know or expect a duplicate of such painstaking skill had replaced the irreplaceable.
Alex reached inside his blouse for the time controller. He had been in France long enough. He experienced a moment of regret that he had not been able to speak with Leonardo on his deathbed to record the history’s greatest painter’s last words, but this was nothing compared with the trophy he carried back. He started to press the red button that would signal Timeshares when he heard noises.
Fumbling, he ripped his blouse. He spun around, sure he had been caught as the studio door slammed open and crashed into the wall. A gust of wind from the storm outside blew him back a step, causing him to knock over the candle.
In a flash of heat that scorched his back, the cloth over the bogus Mona Lisa exploded into flame. Alex grabbed for it, but a new explosion of fire drove him back. He watched in horror as fire devoured the bogus painting he had just placed so carefully. He staggered away as new waves of heat scorched his arm. Clutching the satchel holding the real painting, he made his way through the conflagration to the open door.
“What is this? What has happened?” Salai grabbed him in both arms, arms like matchsticks and yet strong and protective, as he was pulled out into the stormy night.
At his back he felt the heat from Leonardo’s studio going up in flames. Against his blistered face hammered fat, cold raindrops.
“You saved my painting,” Salai said. “But why this one? This is not what I would have risked my life to save.”
Alex looked over his shoulder and saw that Salai had discovered the original Mona Lisa. It had tumbled from the satchel to the street.
“No,” he croaked. “Mine.” He wasn’t going to allow Salai to keep what he had risked so much to obtain. His lover’s picture!
Then he sucked cleansing air into his lungs and blood rushed back to his brain. He could not take the painting from Salai. History would change if the Mona Lisa were absent from the world of art and culture. Careers would never be made detailing the smile, the background, renovating it and hanging it in the foremost museum in the world. Salai had to keep the original now that the fake had been destroyed in the raging fire.
In the distance fire bells rang and horses’ hooves clattered on the cobblestone as volunteer firefighters rushed to quell the blaze. Alex knew he had only seconds. He stood, ripped open his blouse to expose the time controller with its mocking red button, then he lunged for the painting. To hell with history! He had to possess her!
He crashed to the ground as Salai stepped back and beckoned, “Night watch! Here, come here! This man is a thief! An arsonist! He tries to steal my artwork!”
A half dozen armed men rushed toward them. His chance at gaining the painting had passed.
“He stole my painting. He . . . he started the fire to cover his theft!” Salai pointed accusingly at Alex.
With a wild grab, Alex pulled the satchel close. Masses had to balance. Then his finger crushed down on the red emergency recall button. For a ghastly instant, Alex thought nothing was happening. The night watchmen grabbed his arms and pulled him upright—and he kept rising. He rose and tumbled and fell hard to a cold floor amid a cascade of fiery sparks, ashes and dirt.
“Goddamn,” came the angry outburst. “You didn’t come back with the same mass you left with. Now I have to clean up all the dirt.”
Stunned, Alex sat up on the floor and look around him. Tiny fires consumed bits of wood from Leonardo’s studio. The dirt and ash came from his surroundings. Panicked, he looked around, worrying that a watchman might have lost a hand in the temporal translation. He sank back, clinging to his satchel.
“I failed,” he sobbed. Then he gained control of himself. He had failed to retrieve the painting but he had the sketches. In his satchel were all of Leonardo’s sketches of his precious La Gioconda. It wasn’t the same but it would have to do.
He huddled on the floor, barely aware of Timeshares technicians standing around him.
“Get the camera rolling, Billy Ray. Is it rolling? Good.”
“Camera?” Alex looked up into stern faces. “There’s no reason for that. You saved me. I panicked and hit the button and didn’t have the proper mass and—”
“It’s just part of the return debriefing Jacob and I do,” Billy Ray said. Alex wasn’t so sure from the tone. “You look a mess. We need to find out what happened.”
“I didn’t mean to unbalance the mass. I . . . I panicked and hit the button.”
“That’s why we call it a panic button,” the other tech said, his tone friendlier. “What happened?”
Alex stumbled through a story he made up as he spoke. He tried to keep to the truth as much as possible but he couldn’t tell them he had tried to steal the Mona Lisa and had started a fire that might have burned down an entire town. He forced himself to keep from looking at his satchel with the sketches in it. Those were all he had.
“Why are you asking me all these questions? You didn’t before. I time traveled before and you didn’t debrief me.”
“It’s like this, Dr. Carrington,” Billy Ray said. “The bond you posted for the excursion turned out to be . . . irregular.”
“We’re sure that it’s only a mistake,” Jacob cut in, “but we need to get the financing squared away as quickly as possible.”
“The grant money—”
“Nonexistent. You made it all up and somehow got it past our financial department.”
“I’ll make it right. I have resources.”
“We’re checking on that.”
Alex sat cross-legged on the floor in the stainless steel chamber. In his current present only minutes had passed. He had been returned to a time only slightly removed from when he had left to prevent more time anomalies. That meant Timeshares hadn’t yet plumbed the depths of his financial legerdemain. When they did, he would go to jail for fraud. Forgery. A lot of other crimes he only vaguely understood that had been listed in the contract he had signed.
If they found the sketches, he was in real trouble.
“I need to rest. We can straighten out the misunderstanding tomorrow. I’m a tenured professor and the university will back me on the research project, even if there is some glitch with the grant authorization.” He found refuge in academic bureaucratese and this easy professional sounding spiel caused the time techs to look at one another and back off.
“Jacob,” Billy Ray said, indicating they should leave Alex. The instant they left, he was on his feet and out an emergency door leading into the depths of the building. Within minutes after he found the main lobby, he was summoning a cab in front of the glass-fronted Timeshares laboratory. He gripped the satchel fiercely.
He wanted to paw through the contents to open the false bottom but waited until he caught a cab and was a block from the company office. One clause had been specific and he had gone back in time with the intent to violate it—no artifact gathering. He might tell them they were his sketches. They were idiots. How would they know he hadn’t done the finely wrought preliminary sketches from the world’s most famous work of art?
“Take me to Sotheby’s,” he called to the driver. The quicker he got the money situation settled, the less likely they were to inquire about his trip. It would be a relief for Timeshares, collecting their money. He was buying their silence. That was it, but he needed money now to stifle inquiry.
It was best that he sold the sketches immediately, all except one or two for his own collection. If fate denied him the painting, then he could take some solace in the sketches made early in the sittings, the ones closest to the Lisa he loved so well.
The cab squealed to a halt in front of the auction house on York at Seventy-second Street. He paid with the handful of coins left from his excursion before the cabbie could protest. Alex knew he was a mess, dressed in torn, sooty sixteenth-century clothing, but time was of the essence. He was certain any one of Leonardo’s sketches would more than pay for his trip. Perhaps he only had to sell one and could keep the rest.
“To commemorate my love,” he said, getting an odd look from the guard at the door as the cabbie shouted at him from the street. The guard took a step forward but Alex seized the upper hand, saying, “I have just recovered sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci that I wish to sell.”
The guard hesitated. He was probably no art lover but had heard of Leonardo. He motioned for Alex to stay where he was and then spoke softly into a microphone pinned to his left epaulet. A second discussion took place, a long one.
“I’ll come back,” Alex said uneasily. The cabbie yammered into a radio, telling his supervisor a fare had stiffed him.
“That’s okay, sir. I got permission to escort you to an interview room. What do you have to sell?”
“I’ll discuss that with an art expert.”
“Painting?”
“Charcoal sketches. Pen and ink.” Alex frowned as this information was relayed. He waited long seconds and was on the point of bolting and running when the guard punched in the cipher code and escorted him in.
He started to enter the main lobby, but the guard directed him down a corridor leading parallel to the outer wall. The guard strode briskly, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to be certain Alex was following.
“In here, sir.”
Alex stepped in. The guard closed the door behind him. The click of the lock made him jump, but he was in the room with two well-dressed men. One stood in the right rear corner and the other was already seated at a long polished cherrywood conference table.
“We are most anxious to see what you have brought us,” the elder of the pair said without preamble.
Alex dropped his satchel on the floor beside him, then worked open the secret compartment cradling the precious sketches. He placed them on the table in a long line. Thirteen sketches. He hadn’t known how many there were until now. He realized he ought to have held back the best of the lot, but it wouldn’t hurt to get an appraisal. Simply showing the sketches did not oblige him to sell.
“What are these?” The man drew out a jeweler’s loupe and bent over to examine the sketch closest.
“You tell me,” Alex said, “what the original sketches for the Mona Lisa are worth.”
“This is extraordinary. Period paper, assured lines mimicking da Vinci, well-crafted forgeries.”
“Forgery?” Alex shot to his feet and leaned forward. “These are the original sketches.” He held his temper in check or he would have blurted that he knew they were authentic.
“It is a crime to attempt to sell art forgeries. I assure you, Sotheby’s will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”
“These are legitimate. Leonardo did them himself!”
“Not of the Mona Lisa. Even a first year art history student knows there were no sketches of his masterpiece.”
Alex started to protest, then clamped his mouth shut. There weren’t any because he had stolen them. Salai had little interest in the painting or the work that had gone into it, so he would never mention the sketches, thinking they were lost in the fire.
“A word of advice. If you attempt art fraud, age the paper. This is new. Well, only a few years old.”
“Fifteen. Less,” Alex said, realizing another flaw in his scheme. Actual sketches would have aged over centuries, not years.
“Sir.” The man at the corner of the room stepped forward and held out a PDA. The appraiser dropped his loupe into his jacket pocket and sighed.
“There’s another arrest warrant out for you, Dr. Carrington.”
“How’d—” He felt faint and collapsed into the chair. Cameras had recorded him from every angle. Even if he had come dressed in proper business attire, they would have run facial recognitions on him. Somewhere, in some database, his picture would pop up. He had never tried to live as an anonymous hermit.
“It seems you swindled some company or other out of a considerable amount of money in return for their services.”
“Timeshares,” he said. “That proves these are real. I didn’t pay Timeshares and they’re—”
“Dr. Carrington, be quiet. Every word is being recorded and can be used against you. Art fraud and simple swindling will only get you a few years in jail. Relic temporal relocation is a crime with a twenty-year mandatory sentence.”
The man with the PDA punched in a few numbers and said, “The police have arrived.”
The outer door unlatched and two uniformed officers crowded in to arrest him. Alex gathered the sketches of the lovely La Gioconda and smiled ruefully. At least he would have them to put on the wall of his jail cell—if they allowed him to keep the evidence against him.
TIME SHARING
Jody Lynn Nye
Milan, 1494
Lorraine couldn’t decide which was worse, the terrible vinegar taste or the stew of odors that assailed her nose as she struggled to get into the heavy robelike dress and velvet cloak. They had been too hot to wear in the departure lounge of the Timeshares Travel Agency,in between the giant crackling spheres that owed their heritage to Tesla coils, whatever the name the corporation called them to make them more palatable to the unschooled yet moneyed class they wanted to attract. Well, she was no ordinary customer!
Mother was here, in Milan. It had taken some very specific information, threats, and bribes to get the correct information from Rolf Jacobsen, the president of Timeshares. She had based her hunch upon notes her mother had left on a pad of paper in the study of her empty apartment in San Francisco. It was not until she had insisted she would go to the police that Jacobsen allowed that perhaps, yes, he did know Genevieve Corvana and her whenabouts, as well as her whereabouts. Lorraine was proud to know that she was right. She could not, however, place the odd look on Jacobsen’s face when she told him the rest of what she wanted. But she was here now, Marguerite wasn’t, and nothing was more important!
She straightened her ornate lace and jeweled veil. Her thick brown hair was scraped back into a silk net beneath. Somehow, the exposure of her face and neck made her feel vulnerable, all the more since preparation for the trip had involved removal of her eyebrows and eyelashes. Randa Cuddy, Jacobsen’s head of Esthetics, had assured her that the depilation was temporary but necessary in light of the fashions of the day. She straightened her back and marched toward the door. Suddenly a hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled backward.
