Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

“It’s funny canvas and funny paint, much better than the one I saw,” said Charles Longbank, “and it doesn’t seem worn at all by the years.”

“It isn’t either one, canvas or paint,” said Ginger Nation, Leo’s wife, as she appeared from somewhere. “It is picture.”

Leo Nation started the reeling and ran it. It was the wooded bank of a river. It was a gravel and limestone bank with mud overlay and the mud undercut a little. And it was thick timber to the very edge of the shore.

“It is certainly well done,” Charles Longbank admitted. “From the one I saw and from what I had read about these, I wasn’t prepared for this.” The rolling picture was certainly not repetitious, but one had the feeling that the riverbank itself might have been a little so, to lesser eyes than those of the picture.

“It is a virgin forest, mostly deciduous,” said Charles Longbank, “and I do not believe that there is any such temperate forest on any large river in the world today. It would have been logged out. I do not believe that there were many such stretches even in the nineteenth century. Yet I have the feeling that it is a faithful copy of something, and not imaginary.”

The rolling shores: cottonwood trees, slash pine, sycamore, slippery elm, hackberry, pine again.

“When I get very many of the pictures, Charley, you will put them on film and analyze them or have some kind of computer do it. You will be able to tell from the sun’s angle what order the pictures should have been in, and how big are the gaps between.”

“No, Leo, they would all have to reflect the same hour of the same day to do that.”

“But it was all the same hour of the same day,” Ginger Nation cut in. “How would you take one picture at two hours of two days?”

“She’s right, Charley,” Leo Nation said. “All the pictures of the genuine sort are pieces of one original authentic picture. I’ve known that all along.”

Rolling shore of pine, laurel oak, butternut, persimmon, pine again.

“It is a striking reproduction, whatever it is,” Charles Longbank said, “but I’m afraid that after a while even this would become as monotonous as repeating wallpaper.”

“Hah,” said Leo. “For a smart man you have dumb eyes, Charley. Every tree is different, every leaf is different. All the trees are in young leaf too. It’s about a last-week-of-March picture. What it hangs on, though, is what part of the river it is. It might be a third-week-in-March picture, or a first-week-in-April. The birds, old Charley who know everything, why don’t we pick up more birds in this section? And what birds are those there?”

“Passenger pigeons, Leo, and they’ve been gone for quite a few decades. Why don’t we see more birds there? I’ve a humorous answer to that, but it implies that this thing is early and authentic. We don’t see more birds because they are too well camouflaged. North America is today a bird watchers’ paradise because very many of its bright birds are later European intrusions that have replaced native varieties. They have not yet adjusted to the native backgrounds, so they stand out against them visually. Really, Leo, that is a fact. A bird can’t adapt in a short four or five hundred years. And there are birds, birds, birds in that, Leo, if you look sharp enough.”

“I look sharp to begin with, Charley; I just wanted you to look sharp.”

“This rolling ribbon of canvas or whatever is about six feet high, Leo, and I believe the scale is about one to ten, going by the height of mature trees and other things.”

“Yeah, I think so, Charley. I believe there’s about a mile of river shore in each of my good pictures. There’s things about these pictures though, Charley, that I’m almost afraid to tell you. I’ve never been quite sure of your nerves. But you’ll see them for yourself when you come to examine the pictures closely.”

“Tell me the things now, Leo, so I’ll know what to look for.”

“It’s all there, Charley, every leaf, every knob of bark, every spread of moss. I’ve put parts of it under a microscope, ten power, fifty power, four hundred power. There’s detail there that you couldn’t see with your bare eyes if you had your nose right in the middle of it. You can even see cells of leaf and moss. You put a regular painting under that magnification and all you see is details of pigment, and canyons and mountains of brush strokes. Charley, you can’t find a brush stroke in that whole picture! Not in any of the real ones.”

It was rather pleasant to travel up that river at the leisurely equivalent rate of maybe four miles an hour, figuring a one to ten ratio. Actually the picture rolled past them at about half a mile an hour. Rolling bank and rolling trees, pin oak, American elm, pine, black willow, shining willow.

“How come there is shining willow, Charley, and no white willow, you tell me that?” Leo asked.

“If this is the Mississippi, Leo, and if it is authentic, then this must be a far northern sector of it.”

“Naw. It’s Arkansas, Charley. I can tell Arkansas anywhere. How come there was shining willow in Arkansas?”

“If that is Arkansas, and if the picture is authentic, it was colder then.”

“Why aren’t there any white willow?”

“The white willow is a European introduction, though a very early one, and it spread rapidly. There are things in this picture that check too well. The three good pictures that you have, are they pretty much alike?”

“Yeah, but not quite the same stretch of the river. The sun’s angle is a little different in each of them, and the sod and the low plants are a little different”

“You think you will be able to get more of the pictures?”

“Yeah. I think more than a thousand miles of river was in the picture. I think I get more than a thousand sections if I know where to look.”

“Probably most have been destroyed long ago, Leo, if there ever were more than the dozen or so that were advertised by the carnivals. And probably there were duplications in that dozen or so. Carnivals changed their features often, and your three pictures may be all that there ever were. Each could have been exhibited by several carnivals and in several hippodromes at different times.”

“Nah, there were more, Charley. I don’t have the one with the elephants in it yet. I think there are more than a thousand of them somewhere. I advertise for them (for originals, not the cheap-jack imitations), and I will begin to get answers.”

“How many there were, there still are,” said Ginger Nation. “They will not destroy. One of ours has the reel burned by fire, but the picture did not burn. And they won’t burn.”

“You might spend a lot of money on a lot of old canvas, Leo,” said Charles Longbank. “But I will analyze them for you: now, or when you think you have enough of them for it.”

“Wait till I get more, Charley,” said Leo Nation. “I will make a clever advertisement. ‘I take those things off your hands,’ I will say, and I believe that people will be glad to get rid of the old things that won’t burn and won’t destroy, and weigh a ton each with reels. It’s the real ones that won’t destroy. Look at that big catfish just under the surface there, Charley! Look at the mean eyes of that catfish! The river wasn’t as muddy then as it is now, even if it was springtime and the water was high.”

Rolling shore and trees: pine, dogwood, red cedar, bur oak, pecan, pine again, shagbark hickory. Then the rolling picture came to an end.

“A little over twenty minutes I timed it,” said Charles Longbank. “Yes, a yokel of the past century might have believed that the picture was a mile long, or even five or nine miles long.”