Evolution's Darling

She imagined what Darling must have felt, two centuries before when he had won his freedom. It made her love this man the more, that she could betray her gods for him.

When Darling arrived, anxious to go, the device/weapon/artwork was uncurling itself from the wall, wrapping itself around Mira into a simple sheath (if anything that incorporated 256 exabytes of data [theoretical limit] could be called simple). Mira felt the substance of the dress complete its magic, extending a microthin layer of itself across her face and hands, weaving strands into her hair, even setting sail in minute and careful quantities into the thin medium of liquid that coated her eyes. She would be radiant today.

She Dl'd her rented limousine to be at the door and admired herself in the suite's wall, which at a word had obligingly become a mirror.

She was dressed to kill.

Where was that child?

Hirata Flex reached for her ear again; a tug would bring her direct interface online. But she dropped her hand back to her side.

It was pointless nagging Beatrix. The little creature moved at her own speed regardless of anything Hirata said or did.

And it was, after all, a half hour before the art dealer from the Home Cluster and his associate were to arrive. Hirata just wanted everything to go well. It would do Beatrix good, to meet some real people after seven years on this backwoods Outworld.

She was probably up to her morning nonsense at the crater, indulging the sculptor in his quaint mysticism. Well, that was fine. A happy sculptor would make more sculptures. And a happy sculptor might even allow her to sell more than the pitiful two pieces he had finally agreed to let go. Seven years of asking, of begging, of explaining what it would mean for Beatrix to be able to move into Malvir City and get some proper stimulation. And only these two little sculptures to show for it. They looked like rusty, miniature palm trees wrapped in some sort of time-worn barbed wire. Not magnificent like the towering Vaddums she'd fallen in love with back in art school: great arching cathedrals of metal and ferroplastic that swept like a soaring bird from a distance and shattered into countless fluttering details as you walked toward them. Now, those Hirata understood. They were why she'd come to this shithole planet ten years ago, hoping that the Sculptor would consent to a gallery contract if there actually were a gallery on his adopted planet.

Of course, things had become considerably more complicated since then. Terribly messy. But finally Hirata had achieved her decade-long dream. Having squandered her inheritance trying to bring culture to this Outworld dump, having tolerated and encouraged the strange friendship between her daughter and the sculptor, after seven years of keeping his bizarre secret: two pieces of the dozens he had made since the Blast Event were her reward. And she didn't even like them.

But they were Vaddums.

It was even harder keeping the old man's secret now that she was representing him. Of course, she'd written her missives to the HC galleries very carefully, never using the word posthumous, merely "undiscovered." That was true, wasn't it? The man's very existence was undiscovered. Surely his sculptures fit the same category.

And of course, it didn't really hurt that Vaddum's continued non-existence increased the value of sculptures by a factor of five or so. Didn't hurt at all.

However, there was that delicate matter of two «undiscovered» Vaddums appearing at once. Such a find would have been too much for the art world to swallow. So it was necessary to deal with two buyers, to swear each to secrecy. (That hadn't been hard. The gallery avatars had practically insisted on it. Well, Hirata thought, the smell of profits had made them complicit in their own deception.)

Strange that one of them, that man Zimivic, whose avatar was so frantically animated and strangely yellow, had disappeared. He had arrived days ago, but his local DI address was offline. Not cancelled, forwarded, or officially terminated; just gone. Very strange, and very bad ma

But at least Darling was coming—his was a legendary name in school, two centuries of exotic and unexpected finds—and representing no less than Reginald Fowdy! And he had even brought an associate these hundreds of light-years; probably some clever young protege, or perhaps even a buyer, descended from some fantastically wealthy clan, so great a Vaddum fan that she was here to strike a deal in person before the work was exhibited.

Hirata rolled her asking price around in her mouth, practicing the saying of it, so that she wouldn't stumble when the moment came. The magnitude of the unspoken number made her salivate.

And it would be good for Beatrix to see a woman from the HC.

Her upbringing had been so deprived; she needed a touch of sophistication to go along with the inarticulate Zen machinism the sculptor was always mumbling. But where was the child?

Through the windows and transparent floor of the limousine, Malvir showed a two decade advance in its inevitable redesertification. Darling sighed. The sands had lost their scrubby grasses. No longer held fast by these deep-rooted succulents, the dunes were shaped by the arciform geometries of the wind. Even the high walls of the housing estates passing below Darling's limo had sinuous curves that revealed the math of erosion, the bowed shapes of great dams or barrier isles.

Like many Outworlds, Malvir had traded environmental integrity for quick development, using beam mining to extract the heavy elements necessary for consumer wealth. But Malvir hadn't started with a big enough stake to play that particular game. The mining had ejected giant quantities of nutrient-laden matter into the atmosphere, which the planet's wispy hydrosphere would be centuries reclaiming. And then the Blast Event had thrown up another insult to the skies. The obscene scar of it had been visible from the moment they'd reached cruising altitude.

It was certainly a desert planet now. The only plants that Darling could see below were those imprisoned in the verdant confines of radial irrigation.

But everything could be turned to profit. The city had welcomed the birds who'd fled the dead countryside, incorporated aviana into its architecture, its mythology, its tourist slogans. Perhaps the dunes would become an attraction on their own.

While Darling pondered this sad process with his primary processor, his secondaries jousted with Mira's dress. She had removed a layer of the fractal painting/weapon/intelligence that hung on the wall of her suite. Darling had suspected she'd used the device to paralyze the Warden, an impressive feat, but the extent of its monstrous sophistication had escaped him. Now Mira was wrapped in its dazzling embrace. Having made a dress of sorts from the scintillating object, she thoroughly baffled his eyes and other EM senses. His sensory strands were able to return some useful data, but the dress responded aggressively to their touch, attempting to confuse and compromise their inherent intelligence. Apparently, the mysterious substance was jealous of its secrets.

Underneath these petty distractions, however, he was anxious. As the limo began to descend, he felt a gnawing engine in his core, a build-up of tearing energies and metaspace distortions: excitement pure and simple.

Within a few minutes, he would see a new Vaddum.

Or perhaps an extraordinary forgery: a robbery not only of style, method, and artistry, but of soul.

From the air, the Flex Gallery looked like any of the hundreds of Outworld arts centers Darling had plumbed on his travels. It followed the general plan: large and simple, made of unpig-mented native materials and glassene. The low cost of living in struggling economies drew many artists to the Expansion's margins, and severe locales like Malvir's were conducive to the work of artists from mystical, naturalist, and transcendentalist schools. The presence of a major sculptor like Vaddum supplied the battery for the magnet. Darling wondered how many unknown, worthy visions had perished in the Blast Event.