Point of Impact

She allowed the system’s default scenario to play, and there was a small moment of disorientation as the virtual reality program took over and constructed a shopping mall in place of the small office that had been the guest bedroom. She found herself in front of a virtual elevator, the door of which opened. She stepped inside, along with other shoppers.

“Arts and Crafts, please,” she said.

Somebody tapped a button.

The sensation was of rising rather than falling. After a moment, a chime sounded and the door opened. Toni alighted from the elevator and looked at the sign a few feet away. YOU ARE HERE pulsed in a pale green light. No, I’m at home in my office with my shoes getting tighter.

But the suspension of disbelief that was VR was easy enough to accept. She found the place she was looking for listed: Hergert’s Scrimshaw. It was not far away — though it could have been if she wanted a long walk in VR — and she headed toward it.

When she and Alex had been on their honeymoon in Hawaii, they’d gone to an art gallery in Lahaini, on the island of Maui. There had been some world-class work in the gallery, in all kinds of media and materials — every — thing from pencil drawings to oil paintings to sculptures in wood or bronze or even glass. Seascapes and dolphins and whales were big, but what had impressed her the most was a small display of microscrimshaw. There were pictures engraved on small bits of fossilized ivory, old piano keys and billiard balls, even a couple of sperm whale teeth. Some of the images were smaller than her thumb-nail but, when viewed under magnification, showed a wealth of detail she would not have thought possible. There were sailing ships and whales, portraits, nudes, tigers, and several with fantasy elements. She had been particularly impressed by a tiny black-and-white rendering of a long-haired, naked woman sitting in a lotus position and gazing up at the heavens, but floating two feet above the ground. The image had been done on a pale ivory disk the size of a quarter.

“How do they do that?” she’d asked Alex.

He’d shaken his head. “I dunno. Let’s ask.”

The gallery manager was happy to explain: “There are different ways,” she said, “but in this case, what the artist did was to polish the ivory smooth, then use a very fine-pointed instrument, probably something like a sewing needle, to put thousands of tiny dots into the material, it’s a process called stippling. Then he rubbed the color onto it. This is a Bob Hergert piece, and he prefers oil paint to ink. I believe he uses a shade called lampblack.

“Once the piece was covered with paint, he wiped it clean, and the oil paint filled up the stipple marks but came off the polished part. It has to be done under magnification, of course, and it is, as you might suspect, rather painstaking work.”

“I can only imagine,” Toni said. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, Bob is one of the better artists working in the medium. We handle some other scrimshanders who are also very good — Karst, Benade, Stahl, Bellet, Dietrich, even Apple Stephens — but Bob’s work is not only beautiful, it’s still reasonably priced. He does a lot of custom commissions on things like knife handles and gun grips.”

“How much?” Alex asked.

“Eight hundred for this one.”

“We’ll take it,” he said.

“No, Alex, we can’t—”

“Yes, we can. It’ll be your wedding present.”

“But—”

“I made a good profit on my last car restoration. We can afford it.”

As she packaged the scrimshaw and ran Alex’s credit card, the manager said to Toni, “If you are ever interested in seeing how he does it, Bob teaches an on-line course.”

At the time, Toni had nodded and murmured something polite, not thinking such artwork would ever be something she’d have time for.

As she walked through the virtual mall, she smiled to herself. Well, she had time now. Plenty of time. She was supposed to sit around and twiddle her thumbs for the next four months, and even if she wanted to practice her silat, she was, for all practical purposes, a beached whale. She’d just flop around on the sand if she tried to do anything physical, she could already see that, and she was only five months along. At seven or eight months, dropping into a djuru turn was just not going to be in the cards. But sitting at a table and scratching on a piece of faux ivory with a pin? She could do that, and the idea of creating something anywhere close to as beautiful as that tiny scrimshaw Alex had bought for her was appealing. Of course, she didn’t really have much artistic talent, but maybe she could learn. It was worth a shot.

She arrived in front of a small shop. On the window it said, Bob Hergert, Microscrimshaw — www.scrimshander.com.

Toni took a deep breath, let it out, and walked into the shop.

Inside, the place was neat and well laid out. There were glass-topped cases with pieces of ivory on black velvet, everything from knife handles, gun grips, and billiard balls to larger framed pieces. Several magnifying glasses on little stands had been set up on the glass so that the smaller pieces under them were easier to see.

An electric guitar hung on the wall behind the longest counter. Toni didn’t know from guitars, but there was an ivory plate on the body of the instrument, and she recognized the man’s face lovingly engraved upon the plate.

A medium-sized man with a thick mustache came out of the back and smiled at Toni. “The King,” he said. “When he was in his prime. About 1970 or so, the television concert where he wore the black leather suit.”

Toni nodded. “I bought one of your pieces in Hawaii,” she said. “A naked woman sitting in a lotus pose, floating in the air.”

“Ah,” he said. “Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon. I enjoyed doing that one. How can I help you, Mrs…. ah…?”

“Michaels,” she said, still feeling somewhat strange about using Alex’s name that way. “Toni.”

“Toni. Nice to meet you.”

“I understand you give lessons in how to do this.” She waved, taking in the shop’s interior.

“Yes, ma’am, I surely do.”

“I’d like to sign up, if I could.”

“No problem at all, Toni.”

They smiled at each other.

2

New Acquisitions Warehouse, Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia

“You look like hell, Julio.”

“Thank you, General Howard, sir, for your astute observation.”

“What happened?”

“I was up half Sunday night feeding the baby. Your godson.”

“I thought Joanna was breast-feeding.”

“Yeah, she is. But somebody told her about a little pump that lets you take mama’s milk out of the original container and put it into little bottles. That way the father can be part of the suckling process.”

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t tell her.”

“No, it was Nadine, your lovely wife, who was the snake in the garden.”

Howard laughed. “Well, you know how women are. Never let a man spend too much time getting by with something.”

“Amen.”

“So, what are we looking at this fine morning, Sergeant Fernandez?”

“Three new items of field gear unrelated to weaponry, sir.”

Howard glanced around the inside of the small storage warehouse. There were crates, boxes, and items covered with tarps, the usual.