Entanglements

by Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families

  Teenagers on their hoverboards. Parents with jogging strollers filled with toddlers. People clutching their robotic service animals in one hand staggered toward the building. One broad-shouldered pair carried a woman slung between their arms, her robot cat flanking them with stability handle extended as if trying to help.

  “This way!” Gail waved all of them past her, to the rear of the gallery. “Meter-thick walls! Solid concrete. Y’all will be safe. It’s like a bunker in here.”

  Aside from the glass panels in the ceiling, of course. But that was upstairs and they were down here.

  The train got louder and on her HUD it was nearly on top of them. Keisha, the boy from outside, sprinted in. His violet locs were storm-tossed as he careened through the open door. A pair of women separated from the crowd and ran to him. One woman carried a little girl; the other wrapped Keisha in her arms.

  “Keisha. This way!” Gail called to the boy, and gestured for him and his family to head into the gallery, away from the doors.

  As they hurried past her, the wind roared down the tunnel, gusting around the gallery with dirt and leaves mixed into the air. Slim was braced against the bronze door at the end of the tunnel. Their feet slid on the smooth floor as they tried to move the door against the oncoming gale.

  The door had been designed to shut, but had been decorative for years. The active doors were glass and would do nothing to protect anyone.

  Their feet moved and slipped and did nothing. Gail squinted against the grit in the air. A visible wall of churning air filled the end of the tunnel. From the side stairs, Barnum vaulted down, running toward the gallery. Gail pointed. “Door!”

  He skidded and changed direction, then pelted down the hall and threw his shoulder against the door next to Slim. Adrenalin seemed to fuel their collective strength. They forced it shut. Slim dropped to their knees and drove the giant old security bolt into its socket on the floor.

  With the four-inch-thick bronze doors locked in place, the room seemed almost quiet. The relative silence gave Gail space to hear the people around her. Ragged breaths as if they were still running. Someone was trying not to cry. More than one person was muttering to their phone.

  Gail turned from the outer door to face the room full of people. Her feet moved smoothly, as if she were just an old lady with a robot dog. “All right everyone. We’re okay. I know that was frightening, but the building is over a hundred and—”

  The room plunged into darkness. Upstairs, glass shattered. More than one person screamed, their voices sucked into the wind that kicked around them. Gail froze, but it had nothing to do with Parkinson’s. Her heart felt as if it were trying to squeeze out through her pores. The map of the tornado was frozen with it just over the Parthenon and in the corner of the image, an off-line icon flashed.

  She swallowed, reaching for her eDawg’s handle, and he was right where he was supposed to be. “Wilbur, light, please.”

  Light glowed from his eyes and in violet racing stripes along his sides and legs. It gave the room the eerie look of a nightclub suspended between songs.

  A moment later, an older voice matched her own. “Bilbo, light please.” Across the room, another robot dog glowed into shimmering blue existence.

  “Isis, light please.” A golden emu emerged from the dark.

  One after another, service robots lit the dark with a full spectrum. The people that the lights illuminated huddled with their hands laced over the backs of their necks or with a hoodie drawn protectively over their face and eyes. Some of them rocked in place. Others held perfectly still as if they might attract the notice of the storm overhead.

  How many people had not made it to the Parthenon?

  Gail shook herself away from that thought. A child was crying in the back room, and it sounded as if more than one adult was too. Even with the door shut, the roaring above them made it seem as if the tornado were a monster trying to reach down into the belly of the Parthenon. Gusts buffeted the room.

  Slim and Barnum leaned against the walls in the tunnel. Barnum was bent double as if he might throw up. But they were both safe. Although Gail would feel better if they were farther from the doors.

  She walked a little ways toward them with Wilbur keeping pace. “Come up here and rest while we wait this out.”

  Barnum nodded and straightened. “We have water in the gift shop. I’ll—”

  The doors thudded as if a giant had slammed a fist against them. Gail jumped, letting out a squeak that would have embarrassed her, if everyone else in the room hadn’t made a similar sound.

  The doors shuddered, rattling against the brass safety bolt. The pair in the tunnel turned and ran as if they had the same mind. Slim vaulted the stairs, reaching back to steady Barnum as he slipped on the top step. Dust-smeared and panting, they sprinted into the gallery.

  Barnum stopped by Gail, glancing at the ceiling. So far, none of the thumps had come from above, only a terrifying roaring. “It can’t stay over us that much longer.”

  In the back room, a voice rose from the crowd. “It’s okay, love. Shh. Hey. Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

  Without thought, Gail moved. She grabbed Wilbur’s handle and walked to the back gallery. An adult had a fan in their hands and was waving it in the face of someone who had gone whey-faced with fear. Sweat beaded on their forehead and they were panting. That was a panic attack if she had ever seen one.

  The person with the fan glanced around as Wilbur’s blue light entered the back gallery. “He’ll be okay. I’m his wife—we’re fine.”

  Gail nodded with a smile as if this were part of her normal day. “The tornado is passing, so we should be able to go out soon.” She turned to Barnum, who had followed her. “Would you get the case? It’s by the wall.”

  “You didn’t put it somewhere safe?” He shook his head. “I told you to—”

  “Barnum. We’ll talk about this later.” She was old enough to be his literal mother. Gail had met her and they were, in fact, the same age. “Would you be a dear and get it for me?”

  He huffed, but went to fetch it.

  “Really, we’re fine.” The woman’s smile was strained, and she kept fanning her husband who looked as if he would be happier if he actually passed out.

  Gail smiled again. “I know you are.” She turned and found Keisha, who stood on one foot looking as if he wanted to be useful. “I just promised Keisha here that I’d show him the art for the next installation. Isn’t that right, Keisha?”

  The teenager’s eyes widened for a moment and then he nodded. “Right. Art. I absolutely adore art.”

  Barnum walked back to Gail and handed her the case. “We are absolutely going to have a talk about this.”

  “I look forward to it.” She gave him her best Bless Your Heart smile and turned back to the room. The air still gusted, but it wasn’t as forceful as it had been a moment ago. “Now . . . while we bide our time. My name is Gail Krishnasami, she/her, and I’m the curator here at the Parthenon art gallery. Would anyone else like to see the art for the next exhibit here at the Parthenon?”

  Slim raised their hand. “I would.”

  The golden emu’s owner raised their hand. “Me too.”

  Someone appeared next to Gail and unfolded a chair for her. Her foot stuck as she tried to step in front of the chair and she teetered for a moment, clenching her eDawg’s support handle as her right heel raised and lowered in a stutter. She could feel everyone staring at her. A moment later, it unstuck and she dropped into the chair.

  Drawing the case onto her lap, Gail peered into the room. “The art that I’m about to show you is eight hundred years old. These are not prints, but the originals. The Parthenon is the home to a recreation of the Pallas Athena that stood in the original Parthenon. She was built back in the 1980s and stands twelve and a half meters high. Who here got upstairs to see her?”

  Over half the people raised their hands. The only ones who didn’t were the people who had run in from the park. Keisha peere
d upward as if he could see the massive statue.

  “Athena is the Greco-Roman goddess of wisdom.” Gail pulled out the tiny portrait in its protective sleeve. “This is Anahita. She’s the Persian goddess of wisdom. She’s tiny, right? She was painted in the fourteenth century during the Timurid era.”

  Overhead, winds roared, but below people leaned toward her, squinting through the rainbow of artificial light at the miniature in Gail’s hand.

  “Now, I’m going to send her around.” She ignored Barnum’s sudden intake of breath and handed the painting to Keisha. “Keisha will hold her up so you can see. She’s painted with egg tempera using single hair brushes.”

  The teen studied the painting and then very slowly walked down the room, pausing so that people could look at the painting. He waited for people to nod before he moved on.

  As he did, Gail pulled another painting from the case and handed it to another person. “This is a painting of dancing dervishes from around 1480 or 1490. It’s from the school of Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād who headed the royal atelier. Slim? Would you take them around?”

  They nodded and took the painting, holding the protective sleeve at arm’s length so people could see it.

  “Now, dervishes were holy people. They tried to approach God by virtue and individual experience. You’ve probably heard of ‘whirling dervishes,’ but that was really only something they did during spiritual ceremonies. Other times, depending on region, they were fishermen or mendicants. You can see in this painting, even at the tiny scale, how some of them have been overcome by religious ecstasy.”

  She pulled out another painting.

  Barnum muttered next to her. “Are you going to let people handle every painting?”

  Through teeth clenched in a smile, she murmured. “If it helps them stay calm, yes.”

  From deep in the room, someone said, “Why are they so small?”

  Beside her, Barnum made a satisfied snort, and she was honestly surprised that he didn’t say, “I told you so.”

  “Miniatures were intended to be viewed by individuals as part of private contemplation. The idea was that you could keep them in a small book, bound with prayer or poetry, to have readily available in a pocket.”

  Keisha looked down the room. “Like watching a movie on a smartphone?”

  “Y—yes.” Gail nodded. “Or seeing it on a HUD. When you are close, it can appear to take up your whole field of vision.”

  “I can’t get over the detail.”

  “Did you see the golden flowers?”

  “Look at the horses!”

  The conversation rose and twirled around them like wind. People leaned together, staring at the tiny paintings as they paused in front of them. While they waited for the “all clear” signal to sound, Gail showed all fourteen miniatures that she had prepared for the collection. She answered questions.

  At some point, her dyskinesia kicked in, making her right shoulder move in annoying rhythmic pulses. By that point, the paintings were all out of the case, being carried by volunteers in a mobile living gallery. Behzad’s Advice of the Ascetic had made everyone gasp in wonder at the heavily illuminated border, with its dense field of gold leaf animals cavorting on a deep blue background.

  She’d asked Barnum to carry that one.

  The man who had the panic attack had stared at a scene from Attar’s Conference of the Birds as if the hill and the brook running down it were a lifeline. The person carrying that one had paused in front of him and waited as patiently as a statue.

  Slim carried the painting of Anahita back to Gail and paused, looking out the gallery doors. “Is it . . . It’s quiet.”

  Gail closed her eyes and all she could hear were conversations about art.

  “The egret has a fish!”

  “Look at the expression on her face.”

  “So this one was from the Tabriz style?”

  The roaring train had faded. Only a faint breeze stirred the air. Gail opened her eyes and looked for Barnum. He was holding the Behzad carefully. “Right, so during this period they prized heavily decorated borders.”

  Keeping her voice low, Gail asked Slim, “Do you want to go up and check?”

  They handed her the Anahita. “I’ll be right back.”

  Gail held the painting in the blue light from Wilbur. It would have been nice if she had somehow seen a hidden feature that could only be viewed in the precise spectrum her robot dog emitted. But the reality was that the single blue source washed out the painting so it was nearly grayscale. Even so, the precision of the lines in the tiny painting was captivating.

  Slim clattered down the stairs outside the gallery. “The sun is out! It’s passed!”

  A moment of shocked silence stopped all conversation, and then a cheer went up. Gail sagged against the chair back with relief. The tornado had probably passed them before she’d gotten the first painting out of the case.

  She slid the Anahita back into the case as people stood, stretching from the floor. Barnum hastily handed her the Behzad, and jogged across the gallery to the tunnel. People stirred and began to follow him, eager to get out of the building.

  The next paintings were harder to get back into the case, as her body decided to move randomly with dyskinesia. Gail gritted her teeth, trying to slow down enough to have control as she put each protective sleeve back in place. By the time she had retrieved the last one and stowed it in the box, she became aware of a general restless murmuring.

  Frowning, Gail patted her left thigh. “Wilbur, heel.”

  He was at her side before she finished the final L in the command. Gail stood, peering past the people clogging the exit from the gallery. From the front of the group, someone said, “Well, damn.”

  “What?” She stood on her toes, trying to see past the crowd.

  “Door won’t open.”

  Whatever had thumped against it had warped it so it wouldn’t open. Setting the case against the wall, Gail chewed her lower lip. There were two additional exits upstairs. Two massive sets of bronzed doors that had been shut for as long as the ones down here had been open.

  Before Barnum had started working here at any rate. Gail worked her way through the crowd. Past them, she had a good view of Barnum and Slim trying to force the brass security bolts up from the ground.

  “I’m going to try the upstairs doors.”

  A guest turned, startled. “Those open?”

  “It was the main entrance until the 1980s.” Gail walked toward the stairs, her feet moving more smoothly now that the rescue dose was thoroughly in her system. Her shoulder jerked in syncopated time, but she didn’t need her shoulder to climb stairs.

  Oddly, stairs were always the easy part for her. She and Wilbur walked up the stairs into daylight. Most of the roof was gone. Water covered the polished concrete floor of the Naos. Gail kept her gaze down, biting her lip, and did not want to look at the dais at the far end. All she really needed was to find out if the doors worked. And yet . . .

  Athena was still there.

  Gail’s knees went weak. Water dripped down the gilded skirts of the massive stature. Leaves and paper were plastered against her, but she stood.

  “Whoa.” Keisha had followed Gail up the stairs. “Whoa.”

  He was not the only one, either. Gail had acquired a retinue of visitors to the Naos. The mother with the children. The woman and her husband, no longer panicking. A dozen other people that she hadn’t spoken with downstairs.

  She gestured to the giant statue. “For scale, the figure of Nike in her palm is a little over two meters tall.”

  “Whoa.” Keisha said again.

  Gail smiled at the teen. “I did tell you that she was worth seeing.”

  Even with dirt coating her gilding—or maybe because the ceiling was open above her, maybe because Athena had come through the tornado miraculously unscathed, she seemed more radiant than ever. Although, considering that she had rebar going through the Parthenon and into the bedrock below, maybe it was less mira
cle and more engineering.

  Keisha looked back toward the stairs. “Do you think we could bring Anahita up into the light?”

  “Not with the water.” Gail shook her head and walked with Wilbur to the massive doors. “But these are the largest matched bronze doors in the world, if you’re interested.”

  “Whoa.”

  Gail slid a panel aside in the door to reveal the small handhold hidden behind a lion’s face. Gripping it, she disengaged the lock and pulled back on the door.

  For a moment, she thought it wouldn’t move either, but the door slowly opened on the brass support arc embedded in the floor. As it swung open, her HUD suddenly pinged.

  Connection!

  Messages downloaded in a storm of alerts and pings. Behind her, the conversations died away again as other people got the same sudden influx of communication.

  Bobbi had left two full screens worth of messages. Her wife’s texts got shorter and more frantic as—

  “Gail!” Barnum jogged up to her, tilting his head back to stare at the massive opened door. “Wow . . . I don’t think I’ve actually seen this open before. Good thought.”

  “Any luck downstairs?”

  He shook his head, turning to face back into the Naos. “All right, everyone! We’ve got the exit open here. If I could have some volunteers to help the people with strollers or mobility challenges come up the stairs, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  People applauded.

  Gail clenched the support handle on her eDawg so hard her knuckles turned white. It was fine. People were getting to leave and they were safe. Her shoulder twitched faster and harder. The onboard AI sent a notice about adjusting the dose of Cyphrenine to control the dyskinesia. It would leave her nauseous and constipated later, but she OK’d it because anything was better than twitching.

  As people filed out though, they slowed, looking at Gail. “Thank you for the art history!”

  “You were wonderful downstairs.”

  “I can’t wait to come back when the exhibit is open!”