Black Madonna s-20

by Carl Sargent

  There was just the lightest hesitation on the American’s part. Though sensing it immediately, Michael hid it behind the act of spooning more food onto his plate.

  “There’s been a monetary demand. There was also an icon left within the system. A signature, if you will. Someone’s ego getting oversized,” Kryzinski said contemptuously. He handed over a chromalin, glossy and almost wet in appearance. The Englishman’s eyes narrowed at the peculiar, strangely familiar image lying on the silk tablecloth before him.

  “This is a rum do,” he said finally.

  “Unfortunately it’s the only lead we have,” Kryzinski said miserably.

  “What?” Michael jerked his head up. “There must be more. Surely you must have gained something from system traces. No one could have gotten into and out of the system and promulgated a CPU crash, even at second level within your system, without something more than this.”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Kryzinski said, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice.

  “Fine. That’s wonderful,” Michael said through gritted teeth. Liar, he thought; you have more than this. You’ve got to. All those billions and a staff second only to Fuchi and you can’t trace a crash? Bull.

  His elegant fingers turned over the chromalin, and he gazed intently at the image. The body was naked hands crossed over the genitals, the right hand gripping the left wrist; a man’s body, lean and gaunt. The image was monochrome, and it looked odd, like a photographic negative. Startingly, atop the body was the image of a face that was not in negative, or so it appeared at first sight. Then Michael realized that the oddly smiling face gazing out at him was that of a black woman. She seemed to have some kind of headdress or crown, and there were dark streaks on the forehead. Likewise, there were dark streaks, droplets, on wrists and feet and what appeared to be a ragged tear on one side of the chest of the torso, low down and near the hip bones.

  “You must already have some data on this,” he said.

  “Not much. The crash was only twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Then give me what you have so far.”

  Kryzinski hesitated. “We want you to work up a report on what you can ascertain from it.” he said slowly.

  “Don’t play games,” Michael said angrily.

  “I’m not,” Kryzinski shot back. “It’s simply that I have to be able to demonstrate to certain other parties that you have the investigative skills that are vouched for elsewhere in the company. Please bear with me. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you not to show this to anyone.”

  It sounded weak, but Michael was intrigued. His reputation was good with Renraku. They’d paid him nearly three and a half million nuyen over the last four years, and if someone was suddenly having doubts, it had to be up there at the highest levels. That told him he wasn’t being given everything the corp knew, and that didn’t mean just about the iconic image he was staring at. Second-level CPU systems? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m out of here to do some checking on my employer, he thought.

  “Do we have a time limit?”

  “The demand for payment specified the second of May,” Kryzinski told him. “We need whatever you can get as fast as possible.”

  “Well, then, bugger lunch,” Michael said amiably. “I’m sure they’ll put it in a doggie bag for me. I’ll eat on the hoof.” He was about to get up from the table when he realized there was still a glass worth of champagne remaining. He fastened the silver stopper over the neck of the bottle and slipped it into his pocket, and then deposited the chromalin into his briefcase.

  “I’ll arrange it,” Kryzinski said at once.

  He’s glad to see the back of me, Michael thought. This is a man under extreme duress. How interesting.

  “Oh, and the advance on expenses, please. If you would be so kind,” Michael said smoothly as he carefully flicked some imaginary crumbs from his lap as he stood up. The American reached into his briefcase and handed over the credstick without a word.

  “Ivory-handled, now that is tasteful,” Michael said appreciatively. “I shall run out of pockets to store your largesse, Mr. Kryzinski.” With the boyish smile that still somehow disarmed any irritation people might sometimes feel toward him. Michael Sutherland turned on his Italian-shod heel and headed for the exit.

  Within thirty minutes, he’d checked into a coffin hotel and slipped the seemingly featureless gray disk into the vidphone, canceling the vidlink and scrambling the signal and its origin hopelessly.

  If Renraku tries to trace this, he thought with a grin, the decaying Strontium-90-based random switches will tell them I’m in Bogota one instant and Johannesburg a millionth of a second later. And while I was calling my Aunt Agatha in Peru to start with, it was my financial adviser in St. Petersburg that same split-second afterward.

  The signal engaged and he heard the familiar rich Welsh voice of an old acquaintance. a member of the British House of Nobles; a politically powerful man, and one with financial interests pretty much everywhere in the world.

  “Geraint, hello,” Michael said affably. “How’s Laura?”

  “I have no idea. Don’t you mean Dinah?”

  “I can’t keep up with your affairs,” Michael lamented. “Look, I think I’m into something extremely interesting. Crashed Matrix systems. Big-time. I think we should talk.”

  “Where are you now?” The voice had just an edge of Concern to it.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael reassured his friend. “In Chiba right now, but I’ll be back in Manhattan before you can say, ‘Renraku hired me’. I’ll call you from there. Oh,” he added as if in afterthought, turning the chromalin over in his fingers, “Do we know someone who knows weird drek?”

  “What type of weird drek, exactly, did ‘we’ have in mind?”

  “Occult stuff. Obscure religions, hermetic. Who can we trust?”

  “Well, there’s Serrin,” Geraint, otherwise known as Lord Llanfrechfa. “Of course. Where is he?”

  “Just emerging from wintering in a castle I own in Shetland,” Geraint told him. “With his wife.”

  “Ah, yes,” Michael said, chuckling gently. “My own ex, I do recall. That was a most peculiar business. Still, it all got sorted out in tke end.”

  “I don't think I wish to know the intimate details,” Geraint said dryly. “Anyway, that’s enough for now. Call me when you get back. No, leave it until tomorrow. It’s the early hours of the morning here, you troublesome wretch.”

  “I’ll leave you to get back to Dinah. Another blond, I presume?” Michael cut the connection before the Welshman could hurl an insult of his own. Grinning, pocketing the quantum scrambler, he called for a cab and began to make plans.

  Money’s good, he thought. When I get back I’ll dial up that code Kryzinski gave me and collect the hundred thou deposit. They’re buying me for the next couple of weeks, almost, and I’m worth it.

  But it’s a lot upfront.

  Second-level CPUs?

  Yeah, right.

  2

  Michael’s body protested at the alarm call. Two suborbitals in a day were too much provocation for flesh that still had to cope with the effects of a long-term injury, and a sharp stab of pain in his lower back made him wince. He lay quite still for a few seconds and then negotiated his way off the futon, slipping off sideways and getting upright gingerly and with no little care. He rubbed his eyes, scratched at his disordered hair and took a long gulp from the steely mineral water with the chunk of fresh lime on the bedside table. The bitterness of the citrus made him shake his head like a dog emerging from a river, and he headed for the bathroom and the pleasant ritual of the morning shave.

  The smart frames he’d set to work upon returning to New York had disgorged their usual mass of data. The icon left for Renraku had been matched very swiftly, and a two-version printout, one with keywords and a short summary and the other a lengthy document with references and appendices, were awaiting his attention. He picked up the precis as he waited for the squeezer to mangle the oranges and
deliver his breakfast.

  The torso was the Shroud of Turin, the summary told him. Allegedly the shroud that covered the body of Christ in Joseph’s tomb, it had been established as a fake late last century by radiocarbon dating, which had placed the date of the cloth as somewhere between 700 and 850 years of age. The precis directed him to a technical detail regarding three-dimensional image-depth data in the longer printout.

  Hmmm, he mused. I thought I recognized it, vaguely. There was a heap of controversy about it sixty, seventy years ago, but ever since the scientists had proved incontrovertibly that the Shroud was a fake, it had lapsed into obscurity. Yet the image was still compelling and powerful, even to a man with no devotion to the absurdities of religion.

  By the time the orange juice was drained, leaving only an untidy tide-mark of fruit flesh lingering around the edges of the glass, Michael had found the referenced detail and was frowning over it.

  There is an estimated discontinuity in image depth relating to the body and head, the text read. Image integrity is not sufficient for further analysis.

  Well, big deal, he thought. The head is obviously a separate image anyway, and the whole damn thing is a collage. So what if there’s different image depth on the head and body? At the back of his mind, though, was a vague apprehension, a feeling that he knew something intuitively that stubbornly refused to rise into his conscious mind. Then he spotted two key words lower down the page.

  Mona Lisa.

  The image of the face is a transformed image based on the template of the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonando da Vinci, the text stated simply.

  He extracted the chromalin from the scanning peripherals and studied it closely. It was by no means apparent to him. But the familiar, indeed over-familiar, image of the Mona Lisa was so well-known in its normal form that his brain refused to perceive the same face as a photographic negative, which was how the black woman’s face appeared. The confusion was even greater given that the image of the man’s body was itself rendered in a photographic negative, just as Shroudman had been by his creator.

  Then he jolted back for an instant. Wait a minute. How do I know this is the face of a black woman? If this face is in negative, like the torso, it would be the face of a white woman, wouldn’t it? Yet I know that she’s black. How do I know that?

  He looked again at the impassive smile and for a moment indulged a flight of fancy, musing over how many millions of men had fantasized and wondered about the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic almost-smile. Dissatisfied with himself, he replaced the chromalin and keyed in instructions for enlargements, enhancements, and various image transformations. While the system began its work, he made a swift decision and initiated some archival work by his frames.

  Crossref Shroud/Leonardo, he instructed, It took the intelligent analytical program barely five seconds to flash the answer up on the screen.

  One theory of the creation of the Shroud is that it was manufactured by Leonardo da Vinci in the first half of the 1490s at the probable behest of Pope innocent Vii. The process of manufacture employed a primitive, quasi-photographic technique using the principle of the camera obscura and light-sensitive pigments available to Leonardo at the time. Recreations of the suggested technique by British and South African researchers have been regarded by critical authorities as lending support to this theory, initially suggested in 1994. Consult the following references…

  Michael skipped the listing that followed. So I have a decker with a Leonardo fixation, he thought. Well, he’s only the latest in a very long line. There must be more viruses named after da Vinci than anyone or anything else, and I’ve lost track of the number of deckers I’ve seen masquerading as him in the Matrix.

  One final hunch made him key in a final query.

  Crossref 2 May/Leonardo da Vinci.

  Leonardo da Vinci died on 2 May 1518.

  Well, there we are, he thought with a grin. Now, let’s get the frames to work on every Leonardo-wannabee documented by sysops, deckers, and corporate sources in the last five years. Then we can start sorting the wheat from the chaff and offer Renraku a list of possibles. They almost certainly have the same list themselves by now, or will have shortly. This is elementary stuff, but I have to jump through the right hoops to get to the next stage and some serious money.

  His thoughts turned to more difficult tasks. The next step was to jack into the Renraku system and find out exactly how much damage had been done to them. There was an element of real cat-and-mouse about this; he guessed that Renraku night well expect him to do precisely this. What he didn’t know was whether they would treat his intrusion as acceptable-and evidence of his skill and ability to define his own goals for himself-or whether they’d be seriously slotted off.

  Well, stuff it, he thought. I’m going to get right down deep into their data stores and see just how heavy this drek is. And I’m going to need some help.

  He called the London number. Within an hour, he had a reservation for another suborbital flight, and his body was already groaning at the prospect.

  * * *

  Big Ben was chiming ten when the limo delivered Michael to the House of Nobles in the Westminster District of London. He stepped out of one limo and straight into another, this one upholstered with ermine-trimmed crimson silk and satin, and with the crest of His Majesty on all available surfaces, or so it appeared.

  He gave his friend a grin. “How’s tricks at the Foreign Office?”

  “Much as usual,” Geraint said laconically. “The wars are small and the sterling deposits are stable, and the French aren’t any more or any less a pain in the rear than they are all the time.” He sank back into his seat, wrapping his luxurious Burberry coat around him as if warding off the cold. He looked tired, and had the beginning of gray circles beneath his eyes.

  “Thank you for your help,” Michael said ingratiatingly. “I haven’t actually agreed to help,” Geraint pointed out. “I’m just putting you up for the night, as I recall.”

  “I think you’ll be rather intrigued by the whole thing,” Michael coaxed.

  “Sounds like a crock to me,” Geraint said in a rare lapse from King’s English. “Some barmy nutter with a Leonardo obsession.”

  “A nutter with a Leonardo obsession who managed to paralyze Renraku’s CPU cores twice inside two hours,” Michael said as if it were of no more consequence than the usual British observations about the weather. Geraint startled, his sharp eyes turned on to Michael like those of a predatory sea eagle from one of his own estates.

  “Did I hear that correctly?”

  “You did,” Michael said. “I rather thought the details might be of some interest to you, given your business connections. Of course, I trust you to treat what I tell you with absolute discretion.” He didn’t wait for the deprecatory hand gesture with which Geraint reassured him. “But given your many business concerns, which even I am hard-pressed to keep track of, I thought it would be only fair to let an old friend in on the secrets.”

  The Welshman grinned and let out a low, ironic chuckle.

  “You cunning bastard,” he said approvingly. “You always were a manipulative devil.”

  “I took lessons from observing you,” Michael responded coolly.

  “So you want some help in return for letting me in on the deal,” Geraint mused. “Sounds fair enough. Actually, it’ll be a relief. Life’s been as dull as ditchwater here lately. Manchester’s been away touring the colonies, I mean the Commonwealth Nations, for what seems like forever, and absolutely nothing of any consequence has turned up during his absence. It’s been just the usual round of endless paperwork.”

  Michael had not met the legendarily crusty Earl of Manchester. Geraint's superior at the Foreign Office, but from Geraint’s descriptions of him the man’s absence wasn’t cause for any great sense of loss. He looked down at the faded, scratched red box briefcase that Geraint’s chauffeur had lugged into the back of the Phaeton and considered that it could probably hold a very great deal of paperwork inde
ed, and said so.

  “You’d think they could buy you a new one sometime,” he said.

  “What?” Geraint sounded almost shocked. “This has been the property of the unfortunate junior minister in my position for the best part of seventy years. Its tradition, how can you say such a thing?”

  “A more modern and comfortable one might not hold quite so much paperwork,” Michael observed dryly.

  “Well, I think I’ll let Jenkins do it,” Geraint said dryly. “Little bugger needs some drudgework to keep him quiet. Naked ambition in an underling is such a lack of style, don’t you think?”

  They laughed gently. The limo prowled its way toward the heart of Mayfair.

  * * *

  “This is very beautiful,” Michael said approvingly.

  He was being honest. The Mayfair apartment must have cost several million to decorate and yet the total effect was modest and self-effacing in its classic simplicity. After years in New York Michael found the contrast striking. Geraint said nothing just shrugged off his coat and switched on the OC player. As he headed, almost in the same movement for the huge kitchen, the first few quiet voices filled the spacious room and the polyphony began to spiral around the first phrase.

  Magnificat anima mea Dominium my spirit doth magnify the Lord…

  * * *

  Michael sat down wearily in the plushly upholstered sofa and let the timeless music build slowly around him, waiting for the exultant in Deo salutari meo of the introduction. He closed his eyes and smiled, peaceful and quiet.

  He had just re-opened his eyes and was taking in some of the fine art on the walls by the time Geraint reappeared with a silver tray and coffee service.

  “This is very good,” Geraint said as he poured the fragrant brew into the perfect porcelain cups. “Jamaican blue mountain. Costs the earth and they don’t produce much of it these days after that damn hurricane two years ago.”