Carnival

Convenient. Andindicative of even more societal differences that would be positively treacherous to navigate. As if the openly armed women hadn’t been enough of a hint.

“…this seems like a very fine facility,” Vincent said. He moved casually, his hands in his pockets as he leaned down to Miss Pretoria, diminishing her disadvantage in height. “Controlled humidity and temperature, of course.”

“Yes. These are the galleries that were emptied by the OECC robbers in the Six‑Weeks‑War,” she said. Her body language gave no hint that she considered any potential to offend in her phrasing. It was matter‑of‑fact, impersonal.

And this is a diplomat,Kusanagi‑Jones thought. He trailed one hand along the wall; the texture was soapy, almost soft. He imagined a faint vibration again, as before, but when he tuned to it, he thought it might just be the wind swaying the fluted towers so far overhead. They’ve been alone out here a very long time. Long enough that awareness of ethnocentrism is a historical curiosity.

He stroked the wall again, trying to identify the material. It didn’t come off on his fingers, but it felt like it should. Like graphite or soapstone–slick without actually being greasy. There was a geologist’s term, but he couldn’t remember it.

“These galleries?” Vincent said. “This is where the Coalition troops…”

“Were killed, yes.” Thissubject, Miss Pretoria seemed to understand might be touchy. “The ones who came to repatriate the art. And New Amazonia. Seven hundred. Give or take.”

“A ship’s complement of marines.”

“We warned them to withdraw. They attempted to disarm us.”

Kusanagi‑Jones glanced over in time to catch that predatory flash of her teeth once more. Vincent was watching her, his hands still in his pockets, his face calm.

“There’s been a lot of practical experiment on what happens after the occupiers disarm the locals. Just because we’ve disavowed Old Earth history doesn’t mean we fail to study it. You can file that one with sense of humor,if you like.”

Kusanagi‑Jones felt the thrum between them, Vincent and Pretoria. Her chin was up, defiant. Vincent stood there, breathing, smiling, for her to bash herself against. For a moment, Kusanagi‑Jones pitied her; she didn’t stand a chance. Vincent’s silences were even more devastating than his sarcasm.

He ended this one with a soft, beckoning gesture, something that invited Miss Pretoria into the circle of his confidences. “I don’t suppose you’d consent to tell me how you managed to herd or lure an entire ship’s complement into these chambers, Miss Pretoria? Just as a goodwill gesture, something to get negotiations off on a congenial foot?”

She tilted her head. “You never know when we might need it again. And speaking of goodwill gestures, do you have a list of the art treasures you’re returning?”

“One wasn’t sent ahead?”

“One was,” she answered. She started walking again. Vincent accompanied her and Kusanagi‑Jones fell in closer to the security detail. “But since we’ve pla

Her tone made it plain she knew they weren’t, but was willing to play the game. Kusanagi‑Jones found himself admiring her a little. More than a little; she had sangfroid, an old‑fashioned haggler’s nerve. Maybe she’d known exactly what she was doing with that too‑sharp word robbers.

Her next comment clinched it. “If you’ll follow me,” she said, “I’ll show you some things that weren’tstolen.”

Vincent, surprising everyone except Kusanagi‑Jones, laughed like it was the fu

She gri

Vincent shot him a look; Kusanagi‑Jones answered with a shrug. They passed through three chambers, each one with soft full‑spectrum light and stairs ascending to a gallery, each with white walls bare and smooth as the walls of a chalk cave.

“How much did they take?” Vincent asked. Even hushed, his voice echoed into many‑layered resonance. “All this?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know what we brought. The lists I transferred.”

She smiled. “That’s maybe a twentieth of it–”

“The Christ.”

“Mmm. These vaults were on the surface then, public galleries. A museum. We brought what we could from Old Earth–”

“Women’s art,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, but he was thinking On the surface? All this?

She stopped and turned, her shoulders square and her chin lifted. She folded her hands behind her back. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I wondered why your ancestors limited the collection.”

She gave him that smile again, the toothy one. “Somebody else was taking care of the rest.”

“You’re content with the bias?”

She turned and kept walking. Another half of one of the big rooms in silence, until she paused beside a wall like any other. She lifted her hand and pressed the palm against the surface. “Are you content with yours?”

Before he could answer, the wall scrolled open and a door created itself where there hadn’t been a door a moment before. She stepped through before the edges had finished collapsing seamlessly into themselves, and Kusanagi‑Jones had an awful moment of clarity. It came to him, lead‑crystal sharp, that he needed to be thinking of this city not as static structures, but as the biggest damned fog this side of a starship. But Vincent didn’t look worried, so Kusanagi‑Jones made sure he didn’t look worried either and followed Pretoria through the gap. He stopped so fast that Vincent ran into him.

The contents of this room were intact. It was a hundred meters long, with three galleried levels of well‑hung walls, plinths and stands scattered about the floor. He had taken three steps forward, sliding out from under Vincent’s steadying hand on his shoulder, before he even thought to turn and ask their warden for permission. Still smiling, she waved him forward. Vincent dogged him, and he couldn’t even be bothered to be offended when Pretoria called after him, “Don’t touch!” although he did growl something about being housebroken, under his breath.

He folded his hands ostentatiously in the small of his back, and tried to remember not to hold his breath. There were pieces here Michelangelo couldn’t even name, although he had–many years since–taken a class in the treasures that had been lost during Diaspora, and he’d chipped all the relevant records before he left Earth.

Vincent leaned over his shoulder, breath warm on his ear, resting a hand on his shoulder where the skin of his fingers could brush Michelangelo’s neck. It was scarcely a distraction. He paused in front of a case with a long, chain‑linked silver necklace, as much sculpture as it was jewelry, hung on a display rack like a barren branch. His chip told him the name.

“Matthesen,” he said, pointing with his chin so as not to give Pretoria an excuse to shoot him. “ Fear Death by Water. Supposed to be lost.” He knew the white marble miniature of a nude and pensive woman beside it without help. “Vi

Vincent didn’t even comment on the power required to keep the lights that shimmered words in archaic English burning across the wirework form. “That’s art?”

“Heathen,” Michelangelo said, more fondly than he intended. “Yes, it’s art. And oh…”

It caught his eye from across the room, a swirl of colors that seemed at first an amorphous form on a starry field, a nebula in dank earthen green and mahogany. A heavy tentacled brown arm reached from the upper left‑hand corner of the canvas, shoving at the sky like an oppressive hand. Michelangelo gasped with the power of it, the vault, the weight, the mass. Just paint on canvas, and after he practically ran across the room to it, it shoved him back a step.