by Jack Dann
‘As for placing a monetary value on works of art, be they original or copy … that, we do not understand at all, though we accept that humans do so, and will accept that they consider such objects to be valuable and treat them accordingly. I might be able to estimate a value based on previous sales figures, or the shipping costs, as might any other Al, but I would not care to rely on it.’
Tao nodded. Spaceflight was expensive and frustratingly slow, and few material cargos were considered worth the cost of transporting between worlds now that nanotechnology had made them cheap. This had added to the mystique of Starry Night, because there was little on Hathor and similar worlds that could be bought or sold. Most human labour — be it farming, building, cooking, massage, sex, or other forms of artistry — was driven by enthusiasm, not need or greed. But Larue, and others like him, had brought their previously earned or inherited wealth with them when they had emigrated, and they were determined to increase it.
Just why Larue had emigrated rather than staying in luxury on Earth, Tao had never really understood. Some Hathorians had suggested it was the time dilation effects of the trip, which caused him to age less than six months over the nine-year voyage; others believed it was the opportunity to treat a whole planet as his personal fiefdom. Larue, however, had been allotted no more than the standard area of land and housing when he’d arrived, no greater quantity of food or privileges or luxuries, and Hathorian law maintained that these were not for sale: to each according to his needs, and Larue had not succeeded in demonstrating especial needs. Money had only been useful for importing luxuries from Earth, and few local artists had expressed any interest in paying the exorbitant freight charges, nor for waiting seventeen standard years for their goods to arrive.
Larue had set himself up as an art collector, and an agent for other collectors, and used this to have extra rooms built onto his quarters, turning it into a private gallery — and one of the largest and tallest buildings on the planet. None of the art originals he represented had ever been exported, but once he had bought a few and placed price tags on more, artists had begun competing. He had also used his considerable skills as a publicist to promote the work of some artists, getting them commissions to produce artistry on demand for buyers on nearby worlds — portraits in different media, designs for personalised hardware (including sex robots, of which Larue had a large collection), biographies and histories made to order. Tao didn’t know what percentage of these commissions Larue kept, but she rightly suspected it was substantial. The precedents had been set long before she became mayor, as had the arrangements to buy the van Gogh and ship it from Earth, so if he was attempting to defraud Hathor’s government, it wasn’t personal. It merely felt personal.
‘What would you have decided if you’d been on the jury?’ she asked.
‘I’m not permitted to serve on —’
‘Hypothetically.’
‘I would have voted to acquit,’ said Aidan. Tao thought she heard a faintly apologetic note in his voice, but that might merely have been her imagination. ‘The prosecutor had not provided sufficient evidence to prove Larue guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Had I been the prosecutor, I would have waited.’
‘How long?’
‘Until I had the evidence … but we can afford to be patient. Larue can not, and his lawyers stressed this to the judges.’
Tao nodded. Larue was 174 years old, by the calendar, though coldsleep and relativistic effects had slowed down his aging by more than a decade. Still, few people lived into their third century, and no man had ever reached the age of 205. In theory, anyone could have their minds replicated as an Al, but if they did so, they would legally be Turing-tested software rather than humans, with no rights to physical possessions. Tao had heard rumours that Larue was prepared to go into coldsleep indefinitely to defy his children and ex-wives, who were waiting for him to die so they could inherit his fortune. Whether or not this was true, she was certain that the old man would pay someone else to die for him if that was an option.
Tao spent the next few hours attempting to distract herself with other work, while Aidan’s holographic self dealt with the people who walked into the anteroom to protest the decision in the Larue case. When the Al reported that there seemed to be no one else waiting for her, not even lying in ambush between the office and her home, she rubbed her eyes and walked quickly back to her apartment.
The place was empty apart from her handicats; she walked in and checked that they hadn’t managed to outsmart the foodfax again. She collapsed into her favourite armchair, letting both of the animals climb into her lap, and wondered who had had the brilliant idea of genegineering Siamese cats with opposable thumbs and prehensile tails. It had probably been someone’s PhD thesis. At least they’d stopped short of giving the creatures human voiceboxes.
The handicats had theoretically belonged to her husband, and when he hadn’t taken them with him (his new boyfriend had objected), she’d been unable to give them away or bring herself to have them recycled. They weren’t especially annoying or destructive, as pets went — arguably less so than her husband had been — but she was glad that nothing in the apartment was breakable or irreplaceable. Tao closed her eyes, letting the cats compete for the most prestigious position, then began stroking them. She ordered meals for them and for herself from the foodfax, and considered calling for a masseur, preferably one who also did sex. She knew she had little to offer in return, but she did have some admirers, and not everyone on the planet had swallowed Larue’s philosophy that everything should be for sale …
The only answer to her call came from a couple in their thirties who she’d met at a launch, the man less than half her age and the woman only slightly older. She told the door to let them in, and put the handicats into the exercise machine with a holo of an Earthian mouse plague. The couple arrived as she emerged from the shower; they seemed overly respectful at first, almost awed, but once they’d got their fingers into her, all three of them began to relax. The next three hours passed very pleasantly, and when the couple finally drifted off to sleep, Tao let the cats out of the exercise machine and was heading back into the shower when Aidan coughed gently. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt you,’ he said, ‘but I think you should see this.’
‘See what?’
A hologram appeared ahead of her: Larue, being interviewed by one of his pet human journalists, with a copy of Starry Night behind them. ‘This is only speculation, of course,’ the old man said, ‘and guessing at the motives of whoever might have stolen this masterpiece is a matter for forensic profilers, not someone like me …’
The interviewer nodded encouragingly.
‘It could be a personal attack,’ Larue continued. ‘Somebody who simply didn’t want me to have it, because I must admit, I have made some enemies in my time, competitors who bore a grudge. Or it could be chauvinistic, an act by somebody who doesn’t think that the painting should leave Earth. But I think it’s more likely that it was engineered by another collector who wanted the van Gogh for himself.’
The interviewer leaned forwards slightly. ‘But why would a collector want a painting like this if he couldn’t display it, for fear of it being reported and recovered?’
Larue smiled. ‘Do you collect art, Andre?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Originals?’
‘No …’
‘That’s the difference. A … there are collectors who would be happy to have a unique and valuable item such as the van Gogh even if they couldn’t tell anybody else about it, even if they had to hide it away and rarely even look at it. Knowing would be enough — knowing that you had something that nobody else could have. Do you know van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet?’
Before the interviewer could reply, the studio’s Al replaced the image of Starry Night with one of the portrait of a melancholy-looking physician leaning on a table. ‘This and Renoir’s Bal au Moulin de la Galette, Montmartra were bought in auction by a millionaire who announced tha
t he intended both paintings to be cremated with him when he died. When he did die, a few years later, the paintings disappeared — forever.’
The interviewer blinked, then smiled. ‘So you can take it with you.’ Larue matched his smile, though the look in his eyes was sharper. ‘That may have been his intention. It’s an old idea, of course: Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Norse kings and many others, were buried or cremated with their grave goods. Whether they really believed this would make their afterlife more comfortable, or whether it was more the feeling that they could make sure that they would be the last owner of these things …’ The smile became even wider and uglier. ‘But I’m only speculating.’
Aidan froze the image, and Tao stared at it for a moment. What remained of her afterglow had been replaced by a feeling of cold fury and seething hatred. Okay, she thought. Now it’s personal.
Larue was still smiling when Tao visited him the next morning, and his gallery was bright with sculpted sunlight, as well as the glow from what seemed to be a genuine old-fashioned fireplace. Incongruously, he wore an opaque grey Earthian suit that might have been fashionable when he was a teenager, and sat in a huge ugly armchair that placed his head higher than hers. ‘And what service can I perform for you today?’ he asked, then ordered one of his scantily clad sex dolls to bring them both coffee.
Tao thought the phrase made him sound like a twenty-second century non-denominational undertaker, as well as looking like one, but she kept her tone and expression pleasant. ‘I watched your interview last night,’ she said.
The smile widened. ‘I thought you might have done,’ he said. ‘Seventy-six percent of the population already has, and I’m sure the rest will catch up. Are you any closer to catching the thief?’
‘I think I might be,’ she said, ‘and I’m sure you can help. As a fellow collector, you may have a much better understanding of the thief’s … motives, and actions, than our psychoprofiling software. AIbots have no aesthetic sense, and can’t really appreciate the … passion that can come from having one, and this handicaps them in a case such as this. And, of course, we have no humans who are trained as detectives … it’s almost a lost art.’
Larue nodded sagely. ‘One of the many things that we’ve lost with the creation of nanofaxes — especially out here, on the frontier. When everybody has access to almost everything they want, what would be worth the effort of stealing something which you can legally reproduce? Unless, of course, you appreciate the value of an original over a copy.’ He beamed at the feminoid as she brought him his coffee, but there was a hint of sourness as well as nostalgia in his tone. ‘Values have changed so much since those damn machines were … anyway, I see your point. I was never a policeman, of course, but I do remember them. And I can certainly remember when art theft and forgery were real problems. How long ago did you leave Earth? Earth time.’
‘About forty years ago.’
‘Crime is little more than a historical curiosity to you, then. It’s rather sad, in a funny sort of way, to think that when my generation is gone, there’ll be nobody left who can really appreciate the motives behind so many Shakespearean tragedies, or even Agatha Christie mysteries. When nothing is worth killing or dying for …’ He shrugged, and Tao suddenly understood why the old man had been nicknamed La Rue Morgue and Larue-garou: he actually missed the bloodier years of Earthian history. Violent crime hadn’t entirely disappeared along with property crime, but it had certainly been on the decline even on Earth; on Hathor, anyone who felt the urge to do violence could find plenty of harmless ways to divert their anger, and none of them felt poorer for it … except maybe the bald old man sitting before her.
‘So,’ said Larue, emerging from his misty-eyed reverie, ‘how do you think I can help? Surely the crime was committed on Earth, and Earth still has police, even if most of them are robots.’
‘If the painting hasn’t been discovered, then no one on Earth knows it’s been stolen,’ said Tao, ‘and they won’t know for eight years, when the message reaches them. It will be at least another eight years before we learn anything here. But since it’s possible that the theft occurred here, we have to eliminate that possibility. You’ve speculated about the thief’s motives. Now, it might be possible to re-sell the painting on Earth, but here, the profit motive seems much less likely. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Larue clicked his cloned teeth while he considered this. ‘Yes … unless the thief wants to ransom the painting. I assume you’ve not received any demands?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Would you pay it, if you had?’
Larue looked sharply at her. ‘This long after the robbery, I think it unlikely that it was the motive … unless the thief has lost his nerve. But if I were you, I would be very cautious about trying to investigate. If the thief is worried about being caught, he might decide the safest option was to destroy the evidence — destroy the painting.’ He stared into the fire in the grate for a long moment. ‘And that would be a tragedy.’
‘It would,’ said Tao softly, after absorbing this. ‘Of course, if we found evidence that this had happened, the punishment would be much more harsh — intensive therapy, even a possible period of isolation, rather than just a fine. And you would be entitled to sue for a much greater amount than if the painting had been recovered.’
Larue sat back in his chair, turning away from the fireplace. ‘Isolation?’ he said, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
‘House arrest, and restricted communication. Incoming communications would be allowed, of course — we’re not monsters — but not outgoing. The duration and other terms would be up to a judge.’ She finished her coffee, and put the mug on the table beside her uncomfortable low chair. ‘Anyway, any advice you can give us would be greatly appreciated. Please contact my secretary any time you think of something, no matter how minor it may seem. You know how AIs love raw data.’
There was no one waiting in her anteroom, and since Tao had had a long walk back from Larue’s gallery, she didn’t wait until she was in her private office before exploding. ‘He threatened to destroy the painting!’ she snarled. ‘A van Gogh, and he threatened to …’
‘Only the original,’ said Aidan, his tone smooth and reassuring. ‘The image would have remained. Are you sure he has it?’
‘Ninety percent sure. I wish I could have taken you in there.’
‘If you had, his psychoprofile suggests that he would be even more likely to have destroyed it,’ said Aidan. ‘I can monitor his home environment systems, and make sure that his nanofax recycler won’t accept the painting.’
‘He has a fireplace. I saw it. You can check the environmental controls for his house.’
‘I see … well, we’re monitoring the gases produced by the fire, of course, we’ll know it he tries to burn the painting …’
‘The painting, or a painting?’
‘A painting,’ Aidan conceded. ‘And I’m not sure that would be admitted as evidence, if it came to trial — which it could, in theory; destroying a van Gogh is a much more serious crime than merely stealing one, so double jeopardy wouldn’t protect him. Beyond that, I’m not sure what more I can do. I can’t stop him painting over it, for example.’
‘I don’t think he paints — at least, I’ve never seen anything he’s painted. I don’t know that he’s ever produced anything.’
‘It’s probable that he would disagree. He produces publicity. Celebrity. Fame. Gossip, if you prefer, or what was once called “spin”. Whether or not you consider it an art, he’s undeniably made a fortune from it, which he would consider sufficient proof of a talent.’
Tao grimaced as she considered this. ‘Could someone restore the painting, if he did paint over it?’
‘Possibly, but if he were to cut it into pieces first, that would pose more of a problem. We might have to ship it back to Earth.’
‘I wish it had stayed there,’ said Tao glumly, slumping into one of the chairs meant for pet
itioners. ‘If it had, we’d never have needed to worry about whether or not the original still existed; if anything had happened to it, we wouldn’t have known for years. But we’d still have the memories, and the copies …’
Aidan subtly changed the lighting and colour scheme in the room in an attempt to brighten her mood, but Tao didn’t react. ‘If it’s not money, why would someone — anyone — do something like this?’ she groaned.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Guess.’
‘It might be to show that he is wealthy enough not to miss the money, a form of potlatch. It might be to deny that wealth to his heirs. But the most probable explanation would seem to be herostratic fame.’
Tao blinked. ‘What?’
‘Herostratus was the man who destroyed the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world at the time. According to Valerius Maximus, he did it so that his name would be known worldwide. The Ephesians responded by proclaiming that his name would be erased from history.’
‘Well, that obviously didn’t work.’
‘No. It was recorded by the historian Strabo. Much of Strabo’s work has been lost, but that fragment has survived. Is this what you would regard as irony?’
‘It’ll do, until something better comes along.’ She stared at the pastel ceiling. ‘I suppose you’d need to be able to erase human memories for that to be able to work. Sometimes I envy you AIs that ability. With us, the harder you try to forget something, the more it sticks in your memory; I can vouch for that.’