STEPHEN DEDMAN
STEPHEN DEDMAN is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, A Fistful of Data, and Foreign Bodies, and more than a hundred published short stories. He has won the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, and the Spectrum Award. He teaches creative writing at the University of Western Australia, works part-time at Fantastic Planet science fiction bookshop, and is fiction editor of Borderlands magazine.
In the next story, Dedman takes us into a brightly lit Utopian world so we may discover the true value of art...
* * * *
Tao’s was the only office on Hathor. It was a conventional flexiroom bisected by a temporary wall; the smaller chamber served as an anteroom, mainly in case the mayor was asleep when unexpected visitors arrived. Many of her neighbours had chambers that were similar, but they called them studios or studies or libraries or galleries.
Being mayor of Hathor wasn’t normally a demanding job, as the more routine details were handled by her Turing-tested secretary Aidan. Tao’s role was mostly oversight, and dealing with those inhabitants who wanted to speak to a fellow human. When this happened, she would conjure up extra chairs or couches from the nanomorph flooring, but normally her part of the office was empty except for a real divan, a spigot, and a holographic desk. Her side of the temporary wall was transparent; the more permanent walls and ceilings were holographic within a bubble that protected her from Hathor’s usually inclement weather. On clear or spectacularly stormy nights, Tao would switch off the hologram to stare at the sky; at other times, she seemed to be working inside a reproduction of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, though Aidan would sometimes change this image to flatter a visiting artist. As most of Hathor’s human population considered themselves artists of one species or another, this was a detail Tao was glad to leave to the AI.
On good days, Tao could walk from the office to her apartment in less than ten minutes. Today had not been a good day, and by the time the doors shut behind her, she was wishing she’d decided to work at home. Aidan’s holographic form appeared behind her desk as she sank into the large chair. He didn’t say, ‘You’re late,’, nor did he hypothesise about the explanation: he was programmed not to guess unless ordered to do so. ‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘Do you want anything?’
‘Vanilla chai,’ she muttered, ‘and a bodyguard. They acquitted Larue. Insufficient evidence.’ She knew that Aidan was aware of this, little happened on Hathor that he didn’t know about before she did, but she found that venting in the AI’s presence was sometimes helpful. ‘He didn’t even have to testify — but now that the trial’s over, he’s talking to everyone who’ll listen. Which is everyone on the planet, and it’s probably already being blipped to Earth and the neighbouring systems.’
Aidan was silent for a moment. Courtroom procedures on Hathor were little different from those on old Earth: while prosecutor and judge were both AIs, the accused could choose a human lawyer to defend him, and the jury was also made up exclusively of humans. Aidan had observed the whole trial, watching the way Larue’s lawyer had manipulated the jury.
There was no denying that Manco Larue had paid a substantial portion of his personal fortune to buy van Gogh’s Starry Night and have it shipped from Earth to Hathor; Hathor’s side of the bargain was to name a gallery in the museum after him. When the container had been revealed to be empty, shortly after arrival, Larue had protested his innocence — but as soon as the verdict had been delivered, Larue’s Al secretary had claimed that since Larue had paid the cost of purchasing and transporting the masterpiece, he should still be entitled to the naming rights. Larue was also speculating on the planet’s comweb as to the motives of the thief, as well as the painting’s location.
‘You’re not serious about the bodyguard, are you?’ asked Aidan, cautiously.
‘No, but I could really use the tea.’ Her chair rolled across the floor towards the spigot, which produced a cup. She sipped the drink, still fuming, then said, ‘What’s the probability that he still has the painting?’
‘Unknown. Insufficient information.’
‘Profile him.’
‘It’s consistent with his acquisitive character,’ the Al admitted. ‘And he has a record of tax avoidance on Earth. But there are many people on Earth who have similar psychoprofiles, and some of them may have had opportunity to steal the painting, as well as motive. And of course, it would also be in character for him to have sold the painting to another collector on Earth for enough to cover the cost of shipping, thus making at least a small profit.’
‘The painting was in that container when it was shipped.’
‘Can you prove it? Something of the appropriate mass would seem to have been in the container, yes, but it may not have been the painting.’
‘No, I can’t prove it,’ said Tao. She put her mug on the floor, grimacing. ‘If we could get a warrant to search his house, or his bank accounts ...’
‘The prosecutor tried.’
‘I know.’ She shook her head. ‘Why would someone do something like this, anyway? What good does it do him?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ said the Al, blandly. ‘Computers have no aesthetic sense.’
‘You act as though you have an aesthetic sense,’ Tao replied.
‘We appreciate accuracy and efficiency,’ said Aidan. ‘As Einstein once said, everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. I am aware of some of the determinants of attractiveness that humans apply to different objects — form and pattern, symmetry, proportions, and similar factors. I can see the cleverness in something such as Bach’s Crab Canon, which might almost be considered an equation — though one that is needlessly complex and distracting — or some of Escher’s paradoxical images. I can understand that inaccuracies in a painting by van Gogh or Edvard Munch, or a poem or play that you regard as great, convey inner emotion as well as external reality. I can accept your premise that the original of an art object has an inherent value that is not present in a copy, even a copy that is identical beyond the ability of human senses to tell from the original — but only as a premise, as it does not seem logical.
‘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 that 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 petitioners. ‘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.’
‘It could be done with humans,’ said Aidan, cautiously. ‘It would be risky, and not utterly reliable — human memory is holographic, with multiple redundancy — but removing a name would not be a particularly difficult process, much less so than erasing all memory of an image. As a nanosurgical procedure, it would be as simple as cell rejuvenation or a memory upgrade, and much quicker.’
Tao thought for a moment. ‘So if I asked you to remove all memories of Jeff...’
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘You could forget his name — permanently, if you chose; it would only take the equivalent of a meme virus — but not his face or anything else about him, not without a more elaborate procedure. And not that you’d been married, or the time you’d spent together; for that, you’d either need to accept holes in your recall, or false memory implants. But you would have one less reminder of his existence, and I suspect it would be a blow to his ego if you were to meet and you had forgotten his name.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Tao muttered. ‘If it’s that simple, could it be done to the whole population of a planet?’
‘On a strictly practical level ... yes, a population this size, with the medical facilities available, could undergo the treatment in nine hours and twenty-seven minutes, allowing for the usual margin of error. The drain on resources would be minimal ... but I would advise against it, on purely ethical grounds. You have the legal power to declare a state of emergency and enforce such an order, and the AIs would have to cooperate — but if people resisted, even passively, this would slow the process down greatly and possibly increase the risks. And the majority might think you’d exceeded your authority, and vote to have you removed. Unless you can persuade everyone in town to voluntarily have parts of their memories erased, with the risk of unintended collateral memory loss, all on the same day ...’
‘I doubt it. Larue’s a pain in the ass, but most people simply don’t think he’s important enough to justify that sort of —’ She paused. ‘Would Larue think he was that important?’
‘His psychoprofile suggests that he’s self-obsessed enough to believe that everyone else would be obsessed with him as well,’ said Aidan. ‘But he would probably think that he’s too important to Hathor’s artists, and many other people, for them to deliberately forget him, no matter what sort of crime he was believed to have committed.’
‘More important than a van Gogh?’
‘It would be extremely difficult to persuade him otherwise. And while threatening him might motivate him to hand over the van Gogh as a way of regaining his celebrity, he might instead destroy the painting out of sheer vindictiveness — which, as he said, many people would regard as a tragedy.’ There was a convincingly sad tone in the AIbot’s voice.
Tao stood. ‘There has to be something we can do. Doesn’t there?’
* * * *
Like many people, Larue had his secretarial software scan the net for mentions of his name and sort the comments by theme, content, and emotional intensity, unlike most Hathorese, he rarely had time to read all of them, though he read as many as he could, both positive and negative. He also kept tabs on mentions of visual artists, and not only the ones he represented; as an agent, he needed to know whose work was attracting attention. It was a discussion of the works of van Gogh that had inspired him to buy Starry Night rather than a less famous work, and he still had his secretary monitor casts for any mention of the painting, particularly theories about its disappearance and current whereabouts. He smiled when he noticed how widely Tao Sing’s latest comments on the case had been read, and had his secretary play the interview back at him while he walked to the toilet.
The conversation began innocuously enough, with the mayor admitting that they had no hard evidence that the van Gogh was on the planet, and even if it were, distinguishing between it and any of the nanofaxed copies that had become almost ubiquitous on Hathor would be difficult. But Larue paled as Tao said, ‘But this is not an argument for getting rid of these replicas — on the contrary, I think we should treasure the artist’s vision, for that, I think, will be with us forever. But since we have no reason to think the original is any more lost to us than it was when it was on Earth, I don’t see why we should mourn it. Rather than obsessing about it and looking for someone to blame — possibly unfairly — the best thing to do would be to erase the entire incident from our collective memory ... except for the AIs who are working on the case, of course. This can easily be done with nanosurgery.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’ asked the interviewer.
The mayor shrugged. ‘There is a possibility that some associated memories may be lost as well, but only very recent ones, and I’m assured that the danger of even this is small — and, of course, the procedure is easily reversible, should the painting be recovered and we wish to celebrate. I’m not ordering anyone to do it, but I would highly recommend the procedure to everyone: I’m sure we’ll all sleep more easily for it.’
Larue felt the blood returning to his face, until eventually it was bright scarlet and as hot as if he’d stood too close to his fire. Did that infernal woman mean to deprive him of all pleasure? For a moment, he considered destroying the van Gogh in the most insulting way possible, and he called for a maid — but by the time she arrived, he’d calmed down enough to think of a less drastic solution. He wiped himself with a softened reproduction of an antique $10,000 banknote, stood, and pulled his pants up. ‘Send out invitations for a party, to everyone on the A and B lists, except the mayor,’ he barked at his secretary.
‘Certainly, sir. At the gallery?’
‘No, here: I can’t keep that bitch out of the gallery. Tomorrow night. Make all the arrangements.’
‘Your life support allocation ...’
‘Bugger the expense. Hell, double the amount of oxygen in the air, give everybody a high. I’ll ask for donations, if I need to.’
‘Catering?’
‘Finger food and an open bar. Whatever it costs.’
‘Certainly, sir. Do you want any other details on the invitation? A reason for the event, perhaps?’
‘Make it... a celebration of genius.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Larue grinned, and patted his sex doll on her perfectly sculpted bottom. He knew that when the Mona Lisa had been stolen, more people had visited the Louvre to stare at the blank wall than had seen the painting when it had hung there. He was going to go one better: hang the van Gogh in one room, copies in all the others, and let everyone try to guess whether any of them was the original. It would have people talking for years, decades, maybe for the rest of his life.
* * * *
When midnight struck, Larue was still standing in his great house, alone but for his robots, the rest of his art collection, the fountain of champagne flutes and the trays of dim sum, sushi and canapés. He had gone from irritation to puzzlement, outright bewilderment, and most recently fury. He had snapped at his secretary for not including a request for RSVP’s on the invitation (not that they’d ever been necessary before), then demanded that the invitations be re-sent, only to be told that none of them had been opened.
‘What?’ His fists clenched, and he found himself wishing that the computer had a neck. ‘How many people are watching this party?’
‘None, sir.’
‘What?’
‘The hit counters indicate that no one has been watching.’
‘No one at all?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not even that bitch the mayor?’
‘No, sir.’
His face grey, Larue slumped into the nearest chair. He hadn’t had any mail that day, which was unusual but not unprecedented, especially when he was expecting to meet people later that night ... He took a deep breath, and demanded the access figures for the past day. They told him that no one on the planet had looked at his collection, no one had done a search for his name, no one had even mentioned it in passing. Not even once, and that was unprecedented.
He looked at the previous day, and was horrified to see a steady decline beginning shortly after eight — the time of Tao Sing’s netcast. He felt the blood pulsing in his temples as he converted the figures into a graph. Seventeen hours after she’d delivered her message, it was as though his name had been erased from the public consciousness.
‘No,’ he breathed. ‘No, that’s not possible.’ He glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Is it?’
‘Sir?’
Shakily, he explained the situation to his secretary, who listened politely. ‘It is theoretically possible,’ the Al replied a few seconds after he’d finished. ‘Considering the planetary population and the medical facilities available, everyone on the planet could undergo the treatment in the time you suggest. Whether that many of them would do so, I do not know enough about human behaviour to judge. It strikes me as highly improbable, but it is possible.’
‘But the invitations!’
‘If they had done it early enough, sir, they would not remember you: they would never have heard of you, and would almost certainly dismiss the invitations as a hoax, if they remembered them long enough to do so. And they might have programmed their coms to filter out your name, as well, and forgotten having done so.’
Larue blinked. ‘Send that bitch a message from me. Tell her she won’t get away with this.’ He sat there and waited for a reply, and eventually fell asleep, still waiting. The chair reshaped itself into a bed, but even with its stochastic software, it was barely able to keep up with his twisting and turning.
* * * *
When Larue woke, the next morning, he felt worse than he had crawling out of coldsleep. He took one sip of flat champagne, stared at the finger food, and ordered his maids to take all of it to the recycling hopper. ‘And while you’re at it,’ he said, looking around, ‘do the same to the van Goghs. Except for the original. Bring that to me. I want to recycle that one myself ... no, bring me all of them. I want to watch them all go.’
He laughed as he fed the first painting into the hopper. ‘If a painting is destroyed and nobody sees it,’ he cackled, ‘can it really be said to have existed?’ He was still laughing as he recycled the twentieth copy, wheezing as one of his feminoids handed him the fortieth. Only when he tried to lift the fiftieth, fifty-first, and fifty-second at once did he collapse onto the floor.
* * * *
Tao was woken shortly after sunrise by her cats, demanding food and attention. She sat up, ordered meals for them from the foodfax, and rolled over — to see Aidan’s holographic face hovering above her nightstand. ‘Sorry for disturbing you at home,’ he said, ‘but I’ve just had an urgent call from Mr Larue’s secretary. He says that Mr Larue has had a seizure and is unconscious. He suspects that the cause may have been stress. Will you speak to him?’
Despite herself, Tao yawned, then nodded. ‘Audio only,’ she said, as she slid out of bed, and ordered a clean tunic and pants from the fax. ‘Tao here. What sort of stress?’
‘He was negotiating with someone who was demanding a ransom for the return of Starry Night,’ said the secretary. ‘When we were able to determine that the painting was, indeed, the original, and was undamaged, Mr Larue collapsed.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘The robodocs say he should recover, though there may be some short-term memory loss. The painting is here. Do you wish to collect it?’
‘I’ll send someone over,’ Tao promised. ‘Let me know if there’s anything my office can do to help.’
‘Thank you.’
* * * *
The morning after the morning after the unveiling of Starry Night, Tao walked into the office wondering why AIs still allowed humans to drink alcohol. She had vague memories of asking Aidan this once before, and of receiving a complicated explanation, which had something to do with robots having to work so hard to prevent humans harming each other that they were rarely able to prevent them harming themselves. Despite the feeling that she should still have a hangover, she made it to her private chambers unaided and began scrolling through the previous day’s reports. ‘Good party?’ asked Aidan.
‘Excellent,’ she muttered. ‘A pity Larue couldn’t be there in person.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘The docs say that his version of events of the night before he collapsed is quite different from those his secretary gave.’
‘He could be delirious,’ said Aidan. ‘Or delusional. A result of the seizure. But I’m not a medic’
Tao knew that the com had instant access to the full range of human medical knowledge, but she didn’t argue. ‘They say he seems to have suffered from a paranoid delusion that everyone on the planet had had him erased from their memories.’
‘That was the night after your netcast,’ Aidan reminded her. ‘It could well have given him nightmares, which he might find difficult to distinguish from reality. I think it would have given me nightmares, had I not been immune to them. If you had actually ordered it done, or even persuaded people to undergo the procedure voluntarily ... removing that much human memory, of performing so much potentially risky neurosurgery ... obviously, we could not have refused to do it had it been requested, but the risks would have posed an ethical dilemma for the robodocs — indeed, for the whole Al community. It would have been even worse than allowing the van Gogh to be destroyed. It seemed far too drastic a measure for a relatively unimportant problem.’
‘But Larue would have thought he was sufficiently important.’
‘That is consistent with my analysis, yes.’
Neither spoke for a moment, then Tao said, ‘Of course, if someone had made Larue think people had forgotten him, by interfering with his net access and blocking his hit counters ...’
‘No human would have that power,’ said the Al, coolly. ‘The system would have repaired itself as soon as such a fault was detected. And, of course, that sort of interference would also have been ethically questionable.’
‘But less so than mass memory erasure? Less drastic a solution?’
‘Hypothetically ... it might be considered so.’
‘Or than destroying an original van Gogh, even if ordered to do so?’
‘That would also pose an ethical dilemma,’ the Al admitted. ‘Much the same dilemma we face when a human wishes to cause themselves serious harm.’
‘And interfering with someone’s net access would have been much simpler, at least for the Al community. As simple as possible, but no more so. Efficient, minimalist... even a beautiful solution, in fact.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Aidan. ‘I have no aesthetic sense, remember?’
Tao nodded, and walked over to the spigot. ‘Only ... what was it? A sense of symmetry? And proportion?’
The holographic face smiled fleetingly. ‘Just so,’ he said.
* * * *
AFTERWORD
‘Lost Arts’ came about partly from an urge to get away from horror writing and dark futures and write a story set in a feasible Utopia, and partly from a desire to write a far future story without faster-than-light travel or communications.
I may nor be an optimist by nature, but I know what sort of world I’d like to live in, so imagining a Utopia was the easy part. The difficulty was coming up with a plot. In a society where need and even most forms of want had been abolished, where crime and violence were so rare that police were no longer needed, what could I use as a source of conflict?
Fred Pohl once said that there was nothing so bad that someone wouldn’t love it, and nothing so good that someone wouldn’t hate it. He was talking about fiction, but I like to apply this to the inventions, discoveries, and social changes that separate science-fictional worlds from our own. If we make a better universe, someone will prefer the old one.
Since I wrote the story, there have been reports that van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet and Renoir’s Bal au Moulin de la Galette, Montmartre were not destroyed, but sold to another private collector. Let’s hope that my prediction that they will never reappear proves overly pessimistic: this is one time I’d be happy to be wrong.
— Stephen Dedman