Several landscapes in various styles appear and disappear on the screen. Some portraits. More hideous abstracts. Tulia, the Project’s best forger, works hard, and quickly. A bunch of still lifes, with and without fruit. And then—
“Stop catalogue!”
There it is. Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet, by Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer, 1664. What a mundane name for such perfection. Cran knows this woman, knows her from the sad tilt of her head, the bonnet she sews for her unborn child, the broken toy at her feet, the pearl necklace she has flung off. He is sure that her unseen eyes are filled with tears. She is deeply unhappy; her life has not turned out as she hoped. Cran knows her. He is her.
How many pills did he take?
No matter. This is his painting, meant for him. And Tulia, who is 32 percent his genes, has completed a superb forgery. That, too, proves that what he is going to do was meant to be.
Yes.
He does not bother with clearances. Actually, he cannot. There must be no traces. Clean and quick. The universe, which has denied him so much, owes him this.
The Vermeer hangs on the silk-covered wall of what looks in the Square like a private house, although it’s hard to be certain. Vermeer’s house? A patron? It doesn’t matter. Cran works quickly, calling for a ‘bot to bring Tulia’s painting from storage, erasing the bot’s memory record, hoisting the forgery into the Square. Setting the controls. His hands fumble in their eagerness. It all must be done manually, to leave no record.
He makes the Transfer.
Tulia’s forgery vanishes. Nothing appears in Square Two.
Nothing.
“No!”
Data flashes on the console below the Square. A mechanical voice says calmly, “Error. Error. Transfer malfunction.”
And then, “Danger. Deactivate this Square.”
“No!” Cran gasps, unable to breathe. The Square blinks on and off, as he has never seen a Square blink before. But he knows what this means; spacetime is being affected in what could be a permanent way if the Square is not deactivated immediately. Fingers trembling, he enters and speaks the commands.
The Square goes dark.
The console data still glows. Cran stares at it. He shakes his head.
TRANSFER 653
Transfer Date: Saturday, Decade 28, 2270
Transfer to Past:
Planned Transfer: From present to March 16, 1668
Achieved Transfer: From present to March 16, 1668
Status: Transfer Successful
Transfer to Present:
Planned Transfer: From March 16, 1668 to present
Achieved Transfer: From March 16, 1668 to Unknown Time
Status: Transfer failed
Reason for Failure: Incomplete Data Entry (Clearances 60–75)
Cran wills the data holo to change, to say something else. It does not. Because he did not complete the clearances, which were not merely the stupid bureaucracy he had assumed, the Transfer has failed. Tulia’s forgery has gone to 1668, replacing the original on some silk-covered wall. The real Vermeer has not come all the way forward in time. Where is it? Cran doesn’t know. All he knows is that Transfers send forgeries to where there is a similar article, which always before has meant the original being brought forward to 2270. That’s how the strange attractors formed by the mathematics of chaos theory work—they attract. Only, due to Cran’s haste—or possibly his intoxicated fumbling—Tulia’s forgery has gone to some other attractor of Vermeers. Are there now two of the paintings on that silk-covered wall in 1668? Or has the original stopped somewhere else in time, snagged on a strange attractor someplace/sometime?
He doesn’t know. And it doesn’t matter where the original has gone—he cannot retrieve it.
Cran slumps to the floor. But after a few minutes, he staggers again to his feet. Why did he panic so? No one knows what happened. No one knows why the Square malfunctioned. All he has to do is erase the record—a task well within his skills—and report a malfunction. The Squares are a machine; machines break. No one ever has to know. All he has to say is that it spontaneously broke before he made any Transfer. That way, no one will blame him for an anomaly loose somewhere in the past.
Unless someone discovers that Tulia’s forgery is missing from storage.
But why would they look? The only reason to call up a forgery is if the original appears in a Square. Only—
He can’t think. He is afraid of what he has set loose in the timestream. He needs to get out of here. But he can’t, not yet. At his console, he carefully composes a report of spontaneous Square malfunction while not engaged in Transfer operations.
In his mind, he can still see the glowing light of his lost Vermeer.
2018
The two paintings sat on easels at the front of the room. Guards stood outside. All cell phones had been collected and stored in a lockbox. Everyone had been scanned for cameras and voice recorders, a procedure that at least half of those present found insulting. A few said so, loudly. But no one was protesting now. They were too enraptured.
Side by side, the two paintings of Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet looked identical to anyone but a trained observer. Half the people in the room were trained observers, art historians. The other half were forensic scientists.
Glenwood listened to one of the scientists’ summary of his long-winded analysis. He’d barely looked at the paintings, consulting only his notes. “This painting,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Vermeer that had hung in the National since being privately donated sixteen years ago, “shows aging commensurate with having come from the mid-1600’s. As I explained, carbon dating is not particularly accurate when applied to time spans as short as a few hundred years. But the frame, canvas, and pigments in the paint are aged appropriately, and nearly all of them
