Echo

THIRTY-FOUR

We found what had once been, as far as we could tell, a shoe store. We weren’t sure because there were no shoes anywhere. But there were some boxes, and their dimensions seemed right. And a shoehorn.

There was a food market, with empty shelves. And a shop that we couldn’t be sure about but which might have sold guns. Like the food store, it had been cleaned out. The same was true of a hardware store. “Whatever happened,” Alex said, “they saw it coming.”

Then there was the art gallery. The walls had been stripped, and the only reason we were able to identify it was that some printed leaflets were scattered across the floor. Everything else was gone.

“Maybe not everything,” said Alex, standing near a door in a back room. The door was locked. It was large, heavy, and still standing, though it had been shot full of holes. A dried-out corpse, with a gun in one hand, lay nearby. Maybe it had been the owner; maybe one of the looters. Alex walked past it and used his cutter to take the door down.

Behind it lay a storage area. Oil paintings—they could be nothing else—covered with cloth, were propped against the walls. We looked at each other, switched on our lamps, picked one at random, and removed the wrapping.

It was an abstract, blue and silver bands of varying dimensions curving across a field of disconnected branches and flowers. It was dark in the room, and the floor was damp. As was the painting, whose colors had been debased by large gray splotches.

“Pity,” said Alex.

We pulled the cloth from another.

A building that might have been a country church waited in double moonlight. A ghostly radiance emanated from it, and two deerlike animals stood off to one side.

It was lovely despite more damage from the damp environment.

Alex said nothing, but I could feel his frustration.

The next one was a portrait.

The subject was human. An elderly man, he wore a dark jacket and a white shirt open at the neck. His beard was trimmed, and he looked out at us with congenial green eyes and the hint of a smile. Odd that we should meet like this.

“Alex,” I said, “you think these are the people who put the polygon on Echo II? Their ancestors, that is?”

“Probably, Chase. Yes, I’d guess so. Sad that these later generations were reduced to using gas lamps.”

“I wonder what happened.”

The canvas was crumpled in places. Stained.

Alex stood silently, the beam from his lamp playing across the amiable features. I wondered who he had been. What had become of him.

One by one, we went through the entire stock, landscapes, abstracts, and more portraits. Young women laughing on a porch. A mother and child. A man standing with a large saddled animal that resembled an oversized bulldog. A house by a lake.

In each case, we reluctantly replaced the cover and set the painting back against the wall. Occasionally, Alex muttered something under his breath, now and then audible, more often not.

“The water got to this one, too.”

“Looks like a Brankowski, but this one’s also ruined.”

“Apparently they had a taste for abstracts.”

We were near the end when we found one that seemed not to have been damaged. It depicted a snowcapped mountain in a winter storm. Just visible on the lower slopes was something that resembled a dinosaur nibbling at a tree.

It was magnificent. Maybe it was just that it was unspoiled. In truth, everything in that place sent chills down my spine. Don’t ask me why. I’d have loved to put that last landscape, the one with the dinosaur, on my living-room wall. In that somber place, on that night, it came very close to bringing tears.

Alex simply stood for several minutes admiring it. Then, finally, he asked the question I knew he’d been thinking about: “Chase, do you think we can get this into the lander?”

“No,” I said. It was too big. We wouldn’t even be able to get it through the airlock.

He examined the wrapping. Then we re-covered it and took it into the adjoining room, where we set it on a table. “We need to find a way.”

“Alex—” I said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t feel right, taking it.”

“You think it makes more sense to leave it here?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s damp here, Chase. Leave it and lose it.”

“I know. I just—I can’t explain why. It feels like theft.”

“Chase, ask yourself what the artist”—he glanced around the empty room—“what he would want us to do? Leave the painting in that wet room? Or—”

I wanted to say why didn’t we go back and report the find? But if we did that, a bunch of treasure hunters would descend on the place and make off with everything. The painting would go. And the stone fish and the gaping serpents in the park. And probably the gas streetlights and anything else they could find. “If you insist,” I said.

“Come on, Chase. If we found the Pearl of Korainya, would we leave it on a bedroom table?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“What’s the difference?”

I didn’t know. “For one thing,” I said, “the Pearl of Korainya would fit through the hatch.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You have a point.” He touched the painting gently with his fingertips. “It’s not canvas. Not flexible at all.”

“So we can’t roll it up?”

“No.”

“Can we take it out of the frame?”

“I don’t think so. Not without damaging it.”

We’d need Belle to help. So I checked to make sure she was in range. She was.

The painting would have been heavy enough on Rimway. But on Echo III, its weight was not only substantially more, but so was ours. We were by then about a fifteen-minute walk from the lander. Hauling the thing to the vehicle would have been a serious struggle. So we decided to go the other way: bring the lander in and put it outside the front door. It would be a squeeze, but it was manageable. So we picked up the landscape and staggered out into the shop and set it down again.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“You get the lander. I’ll wait here.”

“Alex, there’s nobody here to make off with it.”

“I know,” he said. “But old habits die hard.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

I know it sounds crazy. But I understood what he was feeling. It was more than simply a painting that, should we choose to sell it, would bring an enormous sum from a collector. It also provided us with a sense of who had lived on that world. Alex wasn’t going to take even the remotest chance of letting it get away.

I dug some cable out of one of the storage lockers, lifted off, and squeezed down into the street just outside the art gallery. Alex came out of the display area and focused his attention on the hatch.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not going to fit in there, is it?” Even if we could get it through the airlock, it would be too big for the cabin.

“We’ll have to secure it to the hull,” I said.

“Take it up on the outside?” He was horrified.

“It’s the only way.”

“Do you think we can get it back to the Belle-Marie undamaged?”

“Probably not.”

“What are the chances?”

“I don’t know, Alex. But I suggest we leave it here. Come back for it later. With a bigger carrier.”

“I’m tempted to try. But I hate to just walk away from it.”

I waited for him to change his mind. He didn’t.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do.”

We dragged a table into the street and set it beside the lander. Then we carried the painting out and lifted it onto the table. Carefully.

We checked the wrapping again. When we were satisfied, we looped the cable around the entire package. “We’ll have to secure it to the treads,” I said. “There’s nowhere else.”

“Okay. Whatever it takes, Chase.”

I explained how we’d do it. He agreed, and I went into the lander and sat down at the controls. “Ready, Alex,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

I turned the antigravs on and lifted just off the ground. About two meters.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Belle,” I said, “can you hold us right where we are?”

“I’ve got it.” Her voice was in its warning mode. “But be advised that remaining aloft in a stationary position in this gravity is a severe drain on the fuel.”

“Okay.”

“I suggest you proceed with dispatch.”

I got out of the seat, went back to the airlock, and climbed down the ladder. Alex gave me a hand and grunted. “Need to watch what you eat,” he said.

Ha-ha.

Part of the package lay within the antigrav containment field, so it didn’t weigh as much as it had. But it was still heavy enough, and in any case it was awkward to handle. We began tying it to the underside of the treads, front down. It was tricky, and the situation wasn’t helped by an approaching storm that started kicking up some wind. Suddenly, Alex was telling me to look out and don’t drop it and he almost lost it himself once, which somehow made him even more convinced that it was just a matter of time before the thing got blown away.

A couple of times, he looked at the sky. Lightning rippled through the clouds. “Chase,” he said, “when we’re in the air, can you keep clear of the bad weather?”

“I don’t know. You want my honest opinion?”

“Of course.”

“The smart thing to do would be to take the painting back inside and wait the storm out.”

I heard him sigh. Then he was on the circuit. “Belle, can you give us a reading on the storm? How long’s it going to be in the area?”

“Probably all night, Alex. It looks like a major system.”

He turned a withering eye on the art gallery. “Let’s clear out,” he said. “We’ll just be careful.”

We walked around the package, tugging on it, tightening it, assuring ourselves it was secure.

Belle gave me a second warning: “We are burning excessive amounts of fuel.”

“Okay,” Alex said, signaling he was ready to board. But the lander was floating too high.

“Belle,” I said, “come down one meter. Carefully.”

She brought the vehicle down. There was a bad moment when the wind caught us, and I thought it was going to drive us into the buildings. But Belle reacted superbly and held it steady while we scrambled up the ladder and through the airlock. Alex closed the hatch, and I fell into my seat. “Up, Belle,” I told her. “Let’s go.”