No one is here. Constant attendance isn’t required; when a Square glows, it keeps on glowing until someone makes a Transfer. One of the Squares is glowing now. Inside is the image of Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet.
Cran is not really surprised. Previously, the Square had found, through the obscure mathematics of chaos, a strange attractor linked to this Vermeer. Once found, there was a strong chance it would find it again. But which picture is this—the original or Tulia’s forgery?
It is the original. He knows. The judgment isn’t reasoned; it doesn’t have to be. Cran knows, and he is prepared.
From a closet he takes one of his own pictures. The same size and shape as the Vermeer, it’s a portrait of Tulia, painted from memory and so bad that no one else has ever seen it. The Vermeer in the Square is surrounded by a wooden crate in darkness. Someone has, for whatever reason, boxed it up and stored it. Maybe it will be missed, maybe not. It no longer matters to him. All his movements are frenzied, almost spastic. Some small part of his mind thinks I am not sane. That doesn’t matter either.
Only once before has he felt like this, when he was very young and in love for the first and only time. He thought then, If I don’t touch her, I will die. He doesn’t think that now, but he feels it deeper than thought, in his very viscera. This must be what Vermeer felt when he painted the picture, alone in his studio, consumed from the inside.
It is the link between them.
Cran makes the Transfer. His dreadful painting disappears. Cran lifts Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet—not an image, the real thing—from the Square. For a long time he just holds it, drinking it in, until the painting grows too heavy and his eyes too dimmed with tears.
His plan is to box it into the same container in which he brought in his own painting. Cran has done research in the library database. He was careful to have a printer create four of Vermeer’s signature pigments—natural ultramarine, verdigris, yellow ochre, lead white—and that is what the security scanner will identify and match with the package he brought in. He will have the Vermeer in his own room, where no one ever goes, not even Tulia.
He has done it.
The door opens and the Director comes in.
“Cran! You couldn’t sleep either? Such a wonderful presentation of Tulia’s Life in Starlight. It made me want to come over and see what else the Project might have—Good Lord, is that a Vermeer?”
The Director, whose specialty is Tang Dynasty pottery but of course has a broad knowledge of art history, squints at the painting. All the frenzy has left Cran. He is cold as the lunar surface.
The data screen behind him says:
TRANSFER 655
Transfer Date Tuesday, Decade 29, 2270
Transfer to Past:
Planned Transfer: From present to March 31, 2018
Achieved Transfer: From present to March 31, 2018
Status: Transfer Successful
Transfer to Present:
Planned Transfer: From March 31, 2018 to present
Achieved Transfer: From March 31, 2018 to present
Status: Transfer successfully completed
“Yes,” he says, “a Vermeer. It just came through, from the twentieth century. I sent back a forgery. But I think this one is a forgery, too. Look—does it appear aged enough to you?”
A commission is assembled. They examine the painting, but not for very long. Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet was painted, the database says, in 1664. If it had come naturally through time to 2018, it would be 354 years old. Scientific examination shows it to be less than ten years old.
Yes, Cran thinks. Four years from 1664 to 1668, plus a few weeks spent in 2018. Yes.
On the scientific evidence, the painting is declared a forgery. A skillful copy, but a copy nonetheless. It isn’t the first time the Project scanners have targeted a forgery. Previously, however, that had only happened with sculptures, particularly Greek and Roman.
“We already tried once for the original,” says the Director, “and got this. It would be too dangerous to the timestream to try again, I think, even if the original turns up in a Square. Given the math, that might happen.”
The head physicist stares hard at Cran. Cran has already been removed from the Project for failing to file clearances, which he has explained with “the memory lapses of age—I’m getting them more frequently now.” He will never be allowed near a Square again.
A handler says, “What shall I do with this forgery?”
The Director is bleak with disappointment. “It’s useless to us now.”
Cran says humbly, “May I have it?”
“Oh, why not. Take it, if you like fakery.”
“Thank you,” Cran says.
He hangs the Vermeer on the wall of his room. The sad lady sewing a bonnet, disappointed in her life—the broken toy, flung-aside pearls, drooping head, of course she is disappointed—glows in unearthly beauty. Cran spends an entire hour just gazing at the painting. When there is a knock on his door, he doesn’t jump. The picture is legitimately his.
It is Tulia. “Cran, I heard that—”
She stops cold.
Cran turns slowly.
Tulia is staring at the picture, and she knows. Cran understands that. He understands—too late—that she is the one person who would know. Why didn’t he think of this? He says, “Tulia …”
“That’s not a forgery.”
“Yes, it is. A skillful one, but … they did forensic tests, it’s not even ten years old, not aged enough to—”
“I don’t care. That’s not a copy, not even one by a forger better than I am. That’s the original Vermeer.”
“No,” Cran says desperately. But Tulia has stepped closer to the painting and is examining every detail. Seeing things he cannot, could never learn to
