Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

“We ourselves remember longer. But as to this, all that we remember is that each great family of us took a section of the Long Picture along when we came south to Mexico. That was, perhaps, eight hundred years ago that we came south as conquerors. These pictures are now like treasures to the old great Indian families, like hidden treasures, memories of one of our former homes. Others of the old families will not talk to you about them. They will even deny that they have them. I talk to you about it, I show it to you, I even give it to you because I am a dissident, a sour man, not like the others.”

“The early Indian legends, Don Caetano, did they say where the Long Picture first came from or who painted it?”

“Sure. They say it was painted by a very peculiar great being, and his name (hold onto your capelo) was Great River Shore Picture Painter. I’m sure that will help you. About the false or cheap-jack imitations for which you seem to have contempt, don’t. They are not what they seem to you, and they were not done for money. These cheap-jack imitations are of Mexican origin, just as the shining originals were born in the States. They were done for the new great families in their aping the old great families, in the hope of also sharing in ancient treasure and ancient luck. Having myself just left off aping great families of another sort, I have a bitter understanding of these imitations. Unfortunately they were done in a late age that lacked art, but the contrast would have been as great in any case: all art would seem insufficient beside that of the Great River Shore Picture Painter himself.

“The cheap-jack imitation pictures were looted by gringo soldiers of the U.S. Army during the Mexican War, as they seemed to be valued by certain Mexican families. From the looters they found their way to mid-century carnivals in the States.”

“Don Caetano, do you know that the picture segments stand up under great magnification, that there are details in them far too fine to be seen by the unaided eye?”

“I am glad you say so. I have always had this on faith but I’ve never had enough faith to put it to the test. Yes, we have always believed that the pictures contained depths within depths.”

“Why are there Mexican wild pigs in this view, Don Caetano? It’s as though this one had a peculiar Mexican slant to it.”

“No. The peccary was an all-American pig, Leo. It went all the way north to the ice. But it’s been replaced by the European pig everywhere but in our own wilds. You want the picture? I will have my man load it and ship it to your place.”

“Ah, I would give you something for it surely—”

“No, Leo, I give it freely. You are a man that I like. Receive it, and God be with you! Ah, Leo, in parting, and since you collect strange things, I have here a box of bright things that I think you might like. I believe they are no more than worthless garnets, but are they not pretty?”

Garnets? They were not garnets. Worthless? Then why did Leo Nation’s eyes dazzle and his heart come up in his throat? With trembling hands he turned the stones over and worshiped. And when Bon Caetano gave them to him for the token price of one thousand dollars, his heart rejoiced.

You know what? They really were worthless garnets. But what had Leo Nation thought that they were in that fateful moment? What spell had Don Caetano put on him to make him think that they were something else?

Oh well, you win here and you lose there. And Don Caetano really did ship the treasured picture to him free.

Leo Nation came home after five months of wandering and collecting.

“I stand it without you for five months,” Ginger said. “I could not have stood it for six months, I sure could not have stood it for seven. I kidded. I didn’t really fool around with the fellows. I had the carpenter build another hay barn to hold all the pieces of picture you sent in. There were more than fifty of them.”

Leo Nation had his friend Charles Longbank come out.

“Fifty-seven new ones, Charley,” Leo said. “That makes sixty with what I had before. Sixty miles of river shore I have now, I think. Analyze them, Charley. Get the data out of them somehow and feed it to your computers. First I want to know what order they go in, south to north, and how big the gaps between them are.”

“Leo, I tried to explain before, that would require (besides the presumption of authenticity) that they were all done at the same hour of the same day.”

“Presume it all, Charley. They were all done at the same time, or we will assume that they were. We will work on that presumption.”

“Leo, ah—I had hoped that you would fail in your collecting. I still believe we should drop it all.”

“Me, I hoped I would succeed, Charley, and I hoped harder. Why are you afraid of spooks? Me, I meet them every hour of my life. They’re what keeps the air fresh.”

“I’m afraid of it, Leo. All right, I’ll get some equipment out here tomorrow, but I’m afraid of it. Damn it, Leo, who was here?”

“Wasn’t anybody here,” Ginger said. “I tell you like I tell Charley, I was only kidding, I don’t really fool around with the fellows.”

Charles Longbank got some equipment out there the next day. Charles himself was looking bad, maybe whiskeyed up a little bit, jerky, and looking over his shoulder all the time as though he had an owl perched on the back of his neck. But he did work several days running the picture segments and got them all down on scan film. Then he would program his computer and feed the data from the scan films to it.

“There’s like a shadow, like a thin cloud on several of the pictures,” Leo Nation said. “You any idea what it is, Charley?”

“Leo, I got out of bed late last night and ran two miles up and down that rocky back road of yours to shake myself up. I was afraid I was getting an idea of what those thin clouds were. Lord, Leo, who was here?”

Charles Longbank took the data in to town and fed it to his computers.

He was back in several days with the answers.

“Leo, this spooks me more than ever,” he said, and he looked as if the spooks had chewed him from end to end. “Let’s drop the whole thing. I’ll even give you back your retainer fee.”

“No, man, no. You took the retainer fee and you are retained. Have you the order they go in, Charley, south to north?”

“Yes, here it is. But don’t do it, Leo, don’t do it.”

“Charley, I only shuffle them around with my lift fork and put them in order. I’ll have it done in an hour.”

And in an hour he had it done.

“Now, let’s look at the south one first, and then the north one, Charley.”

“No, Leo, no, no! Don’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it scares me. They really do fall into an order. They really could have been done all at the same hour of the same day. Who was here, Leo? Who is the giant looking over my shoulder?”

“Yeah, he’s a big one, isn’t he, Charley? But he was a good artist and artists have the right to be a little peculiar. He looks over my shoulder a lot too.”

Leo Nation ran the southernmost segment of the Long Picture. It was mixed land and water, island, bayou and swamp, estuary and ocean mixed with muddy river.

“It’s pretty, but it isn’t the Mississippi,” said Leo as it ran. “It’s that other river down there. I’d know it after all these years too.”

“Yes,” Charles Longbank gulped. “It’s the Atchafalaya River. By the comparative sun angle of the pieces that had been closely identified, the computer was able to give close bearings on all the segments. This is the mouth of the Atchafalaya River which has several times in the geological past been the main mouth of the Mississippi. But how did he know it if he wasn’t here? Gah, the ogre is looking over my shoulder again. It scares me, Leo.”