Many Moons

by Scott Azmus

  Snapping back to the present, Vasari buys a few diverse items. My register twitters. Digits scroll. As he departs, I angle the portrait under a bank of miniature klieg lights. Shadows cut across the working surface to reveal nuances and small variations. Under magnification, hidden detail emerges. The brushstrokes had been rapid, yet highly structured. Working with diluted paint, the artist had established the overall composition with barely tangible strokes. Slashes of color indicate the main planes of Corina’s face. Loose strokes over graduated shadow impart a three-dimensional look. Deft brushstrokes, working fat-over-lean, brought out the full substance of Corina’s reticent expression.

  Finally, after inserting the background, the artist had risked everything with a burst of aggressive strokes across the portrait’s full width. An inspired technique: the final brushstrokes enlivened Corina and, for the first time, attuned her with her surroundings.

  The flaw almost escapes me. Approaching the limb of Corina’s brow, the brushstrokes become...mechanical.

  Long studied.

  Overly precise.

  Jerking my head back, not quite gasping, a heavy breathless feeling pushing into my belly, I reposition for a better view. The strokes, over an area of perhaps twenty square centimeters, had become utterly contrived. What could have caused such abrupt linearity? Fatigue? A change in lighting?

  I bring a more powerful lens to bear. Fighting disorientation, I realize that I am not looking at an error. The artist had planned this shift from the first kiss of her brush.

  But why?

  Why display absolute confidence only to deliberately include such discord?

  What was the artist trying to say?

  I am about to turn in when Vasari’s promised parcels arrive by courier. Were these works indeed the product of the same hand? What similarities might I find, one work to the next? Like a child at Christmas, I spend a moment nursing my anxiety before tearing into each package.

  In the earliest image, light floods Corina’s face from the right. The cut of the hairline, with its hint of widow’s peak, seems inordinately severe. While indirect, her gaze narrows as if quietly admonishing the viewer. Her rosebud lips have set an unforgiving line. In the second image, a year removed, she has cast her hair in strings of subtle ringlets. Although her expression has softened, her gaze still evades the viewer. Her chin, tilted in line with her shoulders, conveys a mix of nobility and sorrow. In both pieces, the artist’s use of near-transparent highlights is identical.

  Examining the last portrait with renewed awareness, I find the series further united by a mood of pervasive sadness. Despite the life-size scale, Corina never relates directly with the viewer. She is looking beyond me. Beyond Vasari. Something...tentative about each image keeps her self-contained and aloof.

  I apply magnification. There. In each work. Along her left temple. The same inconsistencies. The same intentional betrayal of technique and skill.

  I draw the sculpture from its rosewood box and inset, velvet niche. Carved from a chunk of marbled lapis lazuli, the bust masses something on the order of five kilos. The lack of visible tool marks suggests a practiced hand. Turning it in the light, I check adjectives on the order of “breathtaking,” “organic” and “lyric” before they spring from my lips. I ignore the sensitive modeling. I avoid the figure’s beckoning gaze. I do not allow the flat, yet somehow pliant coiffure to entice movement around the work.

  While Corina’s right side remains tangibly animate, the left seems distorted, compressed and ill-composed. Again, I am forced to wonder why the artist had deliberately compromised her work.

  Why invest stone with such overt animation only to corrupt the final image? In a fit of frustration, I collect minute samples of canvas, pigment, and stone. When I’ve shipped each package to the proper lab, I place the sculpture on a pedestal, cut the lights and—exiting before the riddle can draw me back in—lock my door.

  I do not know how far I walk. I can’t so much as consider sleep.

  Next day, awaiting test results, I find myself drawn to Corina’s earliest portrait. I prefer it, not despite the image’s comparative crudity, but because of it. The imperfections make Corina and, more importantly, the artist, seem all the more accessible. What would I do if she were to walk through my doors? Would I know her? How might she react upon finding her work on display? Or, worse, what if I were to stand at my register and ring her purchases unaware?

  Suit creased in all the wrong places, Vasari shuffles in. He has scuffed his boots. His eyes are red-rimmed and vacant.

  No, I haven’t discovered the artist.

  Sorry, I’ve yet to find a means of significantly reducing his search area.

  Yes, of course, I’m still trying!

  He grimaces. His arms jerk through an array of irregular semaphore. “Dammit, Saynes; I need answers! Can’t you tell me anything new before I die?” I feel his hot breath upon my face. I have no difficulty imagining his trembling hands at my throat.

  Indicating the earliest work, I say, “So far, I can tell you that the artist rendered each image from roughly the same stance. Judging by variations in stroke length, the artist stands between 155 and 170 centimeters tall. There’s also a definite stylistic progression from one image to the next. While Corina never ages, the artist continues to mature. If I were a betting man, I’d guess that some periodic muscular rigidity influences—”

  Grinding his teeth, Vasari growls, “Not good enough!” The tendons in his neck snap taut. A big vein or artery throbs. “Not good enough! Not good enough by far!”

  He grabs the sculpture in one hand, a portrait in the other. Though I am reluctant to admit it, I feel a pang of envy. Then, on impulse, I ask: “You were a working artist. Did your daughter...did Corina ever sit for you?”

  He locks up. He absolutely locks up. For several seconds he simply stares, mouth gaping open and closed, silently perplexed. I ask if the artist in question might be copying his work. Some early rendering of his daughter.

  He exhales. Focuses. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have thought it proper.”

  As he staggers out the door, I log online. Without Vasari’s full account information, I might have run into a dead end. As it is, I wish I had.

  Paukner’s dyskinesia is a degenerative nerve disorder. One that disrupts the part of the brain responsible for regulating voluntary movement. Advanced symptoms include paranoia, loss of balance and dementia. I scan his medical profile and find a lot of muscle control drugs. Haloperidol. Chlorpromazine. Texadrine. There does not appear to be any treatment regime prescribed for the affirmed mental deterioration. When his account’s last firewall gives way, an archive folder scrolls into view. One by one, thumbnail images skew into place.

  Corina had been Vasari’s favorite subject. And, after a short while, his only subject. He had painted her more than a hundred times. Frame by frame, I scroll through one Corina after another. Corina at the beach. Corina sidesaddle on a pony. Corina in red chiffon, in pale silk and in the nude.

  The murky, solid masses of paint are incongruous and weak. The images I had come to know as examples of genius had become mathematical, cold and unemotional. I find a number of different styles in each portrait. The eyes, one. Lips, another. Overlapping perspectives sometimes fought to position the viewer on several different planes at once.

  When the last file snaps into view, I pause. Though muddled and packed with tiny hesitations, the image shows promise. Vasari had reworked his customary harsh lines. Softened the geometric highlights. Porous flesh had become supple skin. Overworked lips had compressed to a shrewd smile.

  I am printing copies as the comm tones. It’s one of the test labs. The supervising technician wants to apologize for the delay. She has gone to great lengths to pin down several inconsistencies.

  “What inconsistencies?”

  “Well, for one, your pigment samples contain an odd variety of embedded pollen.”

  “Pollen? From flowers?”

  “Trees, actua
lly. A mix of—”

  “Wait a sec. I need to record this.”

  After thanking the technician, I call the Naxos Library’s reference office. The grounds of the Tyre Ariadne ice station hold a number of Jovian record trees, including white fir, yellowwood and both European and fernleaf beech. They also had a Japanese pagodatree and something called a “littleleaf linden.”

  My workstation highlights a MATCH. Several similar trees, this time occasionally displayed as decorative bonsai, are said to grow near “Project Wellspring.” When I check my customer database, I find an address near Ariadne station and Kairatos Linea.

  Less than an hour’s run east, all I have to do is follow Rhad beacon across the Fractured Plain. As I crank the throttle, Jupiter climbs steadily overhead.

  The sign reads: “Project Wellspring. Entry Restricted.” Even so, no one stops me as the ring of mallet on steel draws me through a mixed grove of beech and white fir. I note little undergrowth. Someone has manicured the imported turf to uniform stature. My catalog mailing list had revealed the artist’s name as “Lynn Cutwasser.” I remember her as an older woman. Gnarled hands. Sparse white hair. She had always presented a detailed supply list. What I didn’t stock, she had me order. As artists went, she’d never been particularly chatty. She always paid with cash. But she couldn’t distinguish natural brush fiber from synthetic. And I recalled one awkward moment when she had mistaken phthalo blue for ultramarine.

  Approaching an outbuilding that looks to date from Europa’s pioneering days, I press my fingertips to an ancient pane. Under my body heat, the thin sheen of frost retreats. One centimeter dilates to two. Three opens to four. I gaze through the rippled, pollen-strewn glass. The studio dome is eight meters in diameter. Narrow-gage maglev track runs from a workbench to a recessed airlock in the far wall. A variety of tools litters the workbench. Rasps, mallets, punches and any number of gleaming chisels. A dwarf pear tree shields half the room from view.

  A mallet arcs. I hear the impact an instant before I sense it through the glass.

  Pacing around a large block of suspended ice, she wears a heavy apron and a protective face mask. Spotlights throw a blush of red across every surface. As I watch, she drives a heavy punch bar through the block’s nether corner. Her mallet lifts and falls. Lifts higher. Falls. A severed corner drops with a dull thud. When she bends to recover the punch bar, I recognize the preliminary cuts that will eventually draw the perfect swell of Corina’s brow from the ice.

  As I strain for a better view, the glass squeals under my fingertips. I freeze and, oh-so-gingerly, withdraw. Leaves jostle. Electric motors whirr. Flex mirrors hum as tiny servos angle sunlight at the surrounding foliage.

  The door bursts open. Chill air floods the grass. I catch the scent of turpentine and wet leather an instant before the business end of a diamond-tipped punch bar commands my attention. Behind it: the artist in her protective mask.

  “This is a restricted area. What do you want?”

  A tingle sweeps up the back of my neck and across my face. Fiddling with my shirtsleeve, I say, “My name is Saynes. Paul Saynes. I’m looking for one of your subjects. A young woman named Corina.”

  The bar traces my left pectoral. “There is no ‘Corina’ here. Who sent you?”

  “Her father. You’re carving her face in the ice. Believe me; I can’t help recognizing it.”

  “Father?” She snorts behind the mask. “Is that what he told you?”

  “He wants to see her one last time. He’s dying.”

  Another snort of derision. “Dying? I’m not sure how I should feel about that.”

  Her tone lifts my mind to fresh alertness. “Corina?”

  She scans the arboretum as if trying to come to a decision. Jerking the bar at the gaping door, she orders, “Quick. Inside. Sit.”

  I brush scarlet ice from a bench and shiver in the ambient cold. Two sculptures flank the pear tree. Both show Corina in much the same pose as in Vasari’s lapis bust. Suspended by nylon straps as well as heavy block and tackle, a thousand-kilo chunk of raw, red ice dangles from the dome’s central arch. How could I have been so blind? So stupid? With my mind’s eye, I compare Vasari’s treasures to these new sculptures.

  “Self-portraits,” I observe. “What’s going on here?”

  Corina sinks to a graceful lotus. Without removing her mask, she says, “I always knew this moment would come. And because you probably don’t know Julius as well as you should, I suppose you deserve the truth.”

  Taking in her tone, I say, “Not if it’s … difficult.”

  She toys with a shard of ice. “I went to Mars on a student visa. At the time, Julius was one of Syrtis University’s main attractions. We met in one of his seminars. He asked if he might paint my portrait. I’d seen his work. I suppose I was too naive to see anything disturbing. At any rate, I eventually let him seduce me. It was a mistake. I knew it. He knew it. In public, given our difference in age, he thereafter referred to me as one of his children. His daughter. Afterward he could not paint me with any degree of conviction. Each attempt became a greater failure than the last. He stopped buying me gifts. Stopped showing me off. After a few weeks, he began treating me like some kind of fallen woman. Not that the sex stopped, mind you.

  “One day, some last minute crisis called him away and I got a chance to view his latest work in progress. It was awful. I’d had no idea.”

  “I’ve seen some of those works.”

  “Then you know he was having problems. He wasn’t selling. The university was beginning to think he’d lost his luster.”

  “So you touched up his work.”

  Under the mask, she raises a lump of ice to her lips. Nibbling, she allows, “At first, I was extremely cautious. I barely changed a thing and was thrilled when he failed to notice. Eventually, I managed to get to the canvas before the oils set. I learned to work swiftly. Learned to trust my instincts. By the end of a month or so, I could complete my touch-ups in less time than it took Julius to establish his lighting.

  “Finally, bit by bit, our secret collaborations began to sell. The reviews improved. Prices climbed. Looking back, I’m certain he fooled himself into believing his creativity had returned. Students fought to attend his seminars. The university invited him to more faculty functions. They offered him the department chair.”

  “When did he catch on?”

  Her mask rattles a single nod. “A grad student congratulated Julius on his transformation of style from one period to another. I’m afraid the distinction came as a shock. My visits to his studio suddenly made an ugly kind of sense.

  “Julius destroyed everything I’d touched and took to beating me. I confessed everything the moment he shattered that first rib. He took a knife to my face, crushed the side of my skull and dumped me in the Martian outback. He’s quite good with a knife.”

  As Corina presses her palms to the ice, light glistens through her skin. “You don’t need to know how I got here. My rehab includes painting and sculpting. I’ve retrained my hands. Re-educated my mind.” She strokes the ice. “Ironically, the brain damage that Julius caused effectively killed what he always called my inner critic. As my strength returned, I found my painting freer. I didn’t have to work as hard to let my creative side take reign.”

  “The woman who makes your purchases? Where does she fit in?”

  Her voice brightens. “That’s right! You’ve met Lynn. She’s been a savior. She helped outfit this studio and markets my work. I keep a percentage of the profits. The rest goes to help her project. She’s an exobiologist.”

  Somehow, that doesn’t set off any alarm bells for me. “Her project?” I ask. “This arboretum?”

  Turning to the pear tree, Corina plucks a leaf. It curls in her palm. “Project Wellspring is her baby. Lynn has modified all sorts of things for life on Europa. Animals. Plants. You saw her trees. Some of their roots thrust all the way to the Buried Sea.”

  “Impossible. What about the cold? The surface temperatur
e alone is minus 150 Celsius.”

  “Her Trists take care of that. They take care of everything.”

  “Trists? Are you serious? Mothers use stories about Trists to keep their kids in line. Trists are—”

  “Real,” finishes Corina. “Trists are real. The first ice miners knew it. That’s why they lived so long. Why their missions never once experienced anything close to a fatality.”

  She offers me the leaf. The instant she lets go its contours blur. It crumbles in my hand. Fragments drift through my fingers.

  “The tree,” Corina urges. “Watch the tree.”

  The narrow trunk phosphoresces. Each upraised limb takes on a subtle glow. The leaf’s separation point glimmers like a jewel. A new central rib writhes outward. A network of fine, scarlet veins fan against the light.

  “Lynn believes we share a similar genesis. That, eons ago, something seeded our stellar neighborhood with all the ingredients for life. The Trists find most of our various components quite simple to mimic. They can rearrange our genetics as if by hand, and can very nearly recreate us. A symbiosis of sorts.”

  A freshly formed pear leaf flexes toward Corina’s work lamp. A waxy coating glazes its surface. When it has fully restored itself, I realize that Corina has removed her mask.

  “Please don’t be afraid.”

  Scars zigzag her left temple. They move, replicate and redefine themselves moment-to-moment. I barely notice. Her eyes are some subtle shade between deep cinnamon and ebony. Though broken by the traces of Vasari’s fury, her lips are at once chaste and sensuous in the extreme. I like the defiant tilt of her chin. I enjoy the brazen resolve in her gaze. I think the delicate flush of her cheeks, the way her nostrils flare under my gaze, magnificent.

  When I smile, her expression softens. It is the first time I view artist and subject, artisan and woman, as one.

  “The Trists only mimic basic structures. They can’t replicate nerve tissue or repair the areas of my mind which Julius destroyed. I’ve been working the ice and painting as a means of showing them what I want.”