The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - MEISJE (Part 2)
(Chapter 13, Part 2)
“You can imagine the level of excitement, then,” he went on after a thoughtful moment. The pipe smoke was sweet, and I itched to roll a cigarette. Barsina coughed. “We walked carefully among all the treasures piled and stacked and leaned there, the beams from our torches shining on precious metals and gems and strings of pearls. And there—there, speaking of pearls … she was.”
“Meisje.”
He nodded. “Someone fifteen hundred years dead, Miss Fenek, but with the most riveting eyes. What I would not give to find someone with her genetics!”
“My girl thinks she was tank-bred.”
He snorted contemptuously, giving Barsina a disdainful look. “No, no, that was too early for cloning. They were barely doing organ transplants then, I don’t think. They probably hadn’t been to orbit.”
I turned to the plate in the brown book with her face. The riveting look, the glow from inside the skin. I shivered, thinking of a citizen greedy for that look, that expression, thirsty enough for the touch of her to have her made.
“The genetics … long gone. But!” He raised a finger. “But! She could be designed. A visual template, an aesthetic provided. Unmistakeable. Desirable.”
The light came on in my head. “Miss Scyros was a backer … she wanted this image—”
“The very original image.”
“But this could be gotten from pictures of the picture,” I said.
“It could be,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be copied from the original—an original all the best people had seen. With their own eyes. In an exhibit in the State Gallery. That matters, you see.”
“Miss Scyros wanted Meisje for herself, to pay someone to design her?”
He nodded. “You understand, then?”
“So all the toffs … the aristoi go see the exhibit, are captivated by her … and Miss Scyros’ contacts have a series of her already being raised in crèche … right now?”
“Right now. The oldest test sample is three years old. There are two others. I presume the intent is to sell orders for contracts even before the girls are made.”
I have no body hair below my neck to tingle, but that on top of my head did. I’d never done a lot of thinking about girls in crèche … their genes were printed out from a machine and a terminal, rolled in a hollow gel bead, popped in a tank, and there you were ten months later. But someone had to design them?
“The research would be … expensive,” I said.
“Miss Scyros is very wealthy, and she has very good contacts.” He smiled, and gestured broadly. “With her wealth and her talents, and her friends among aristoi—really, this is like a bank printing notes, for her.”
I stirred uneasily. “I’d never considered any that,” I said.
“Most people don’t. They think contracts like your girl there are just copies of women who lived hundreds of years ago, or copies of particularly attractive or useful persons born since. And many are. Many are. Most, I suppose. But others are, or have been, specially designed with particular looks and traits, and instead of ten a year of each model being created, one or two very special ones are made, licensed at select birthing centers. Instead of—er, what is your girl?”
“She’s a Barsina.”
“Instead of five hundred uninteresting Barsinas running around the world at any time, there might just be forty or fifty precious Meisjes, whose contracts would go at a premium twenty or thirty times higher than your ordinary tank-girl, much less some erratic former citizen.—This disturbs you?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. You say Miss Scyros knew—or thought—or had heard the painting would be there.”
“I don’t know how,” he said, “But she knew. She knows lots of things.”
“And she could make a fortune off this?”
“Herme Scyros is an artist in her own right,” the academic said. “The queen of the labor-brokers. She can make a courtesan out of a skivvy if she’s inclined, so imagine what she can do with,” he gestured at the book, “that. The fortune? Surely, yes, but the influence she would gain is even more important. I doubt there’s a more influential woman in Aulis than Herme Scyros.”
I closed and returned the volume, imagining the Miss’s private prison and school training Meisjes. “She mentioned something to me about influence when I spoke to her about it.”
Mullinax squinted at me with suspicion but asked nothing.
“So she got you to give the painting to her.”
“The Gallery wanted it,” he said. “The Academy wanted it. Kaleva and Ornan offered a premium. But Miss Scyros had the right coin. She offered me a Meisje, which was a great temptation—if I cared to wait almost twenty years until I was almost eighty. But … ”
“Your assistant. She saw you watching your assistant.” I struggled to conceal my distaste.
He reddened and looked at his hands. “Nothing illegal occurred,” he said. “She was … persuaded to sell her contract to Miss Scyros, and Miss Scyros exchanged it to me for the painting. Quite legal. It’s been proven, Miss Fenek, in court.”
I shrugged. “I don’t care about her civil rights. If she’s been deprived of citizenship because of her choice, that’s her problem. I simply want to understand the chain of events.” I wasn’t lying. I’m pretty indifferent about what becomes of citizens, just as indifferent as they are of what becomes of indentureds. But in my personal experience, old men are not what a young woman wants, especially if they are having to slavey away for them, too, instead of at least getting some gems and nice clothes out of them.
He looked relieved. “Good of you,” he muttered. “My department head wouldn’t let me hear the end of it for months, since she was a student and an employee, and her family tried—and failed, Miss Fenek!—at legal action.”
I shook my head. “As I said. You should hear some of the stories I’ve heard. This one is nothing.—So she gives you your assistant with your signature on her paperwork. She has the painting. Some clone crèche has the painting to follow, and they design a copy, a mimic, of this dead ancient girl?”
“Exactly.”
“Which crèche?”
“The State Center for Labor in Helioshad.”
Barsina, going scritch scritch in her notebook, paused at the name, then, having writ, the scritching moved on.
“Why Helioshad?” I wondered as I carefully traced the scrollwork on the arms of my chair repeatedly.
“She’s from Helioshad, you know. Scyros.”
I always thought of labor-brokers being ready-sprung from the lowest hell, myself. But why not Helioshad? It was close enough, in my experience. Still …
“The State Center for Labor in Helioshad,” I repeated thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
In my memory, I smelled pine oil, disinfectant, and floor wax. Crayons, paper, flowers. “And the infants—”
“An infant. Two, well, toddlers. Of the three early models designed and created there, Herme—Miss Scyros—tells me the oldest already shows every indication of developing correctly. Temperament as well as looks. She will be a complete success.”
“Let me see if I follow.” I sat back in my chair. “Having the design, she offers the painting to the State Gallery. She gets acclaim for contributing it. She gets increased … notoriety for her generosity. Happily timed! Everyone streams to this exhibition. And then, as they all make a fuss at the reception, she announces, ‘If you want to wait a few years and pay me a couple thousand drachms—you can have one of your very own.’”
He nodded, pleased I understood. “Yes, yes, that’s how it works,” he agreed.
I swear, these citizens.
“Now,” I said, “if I told you that Mist’ Fortunato had a key to the case with the picture in it? An extra key? In his pocket the night he was murdered?”
He blinked at the sudden change in topic. “Well, he might have that, I guess,” he said doubtfully.
“At home?”
“Well, he is—was the Director … ”
“And it was stolen when he was murdered?”
He looked dubious.
“And if a file folder on his desk was labeled Meisje, and it was empty when discovered?”
“I’m not sure … are these things that happened?”
“They are. Who would benefit?”
( … This way to Chapter Thirteen part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Thirteen part 3 … )