Black Madonna

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 indeed, 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.”

“Always wanted to visit Jamaica,” Michael mused.

“I wouldn’t,” Geraint said sharply. “Murder rate ten times higher than New Orleans and an average life expectancy of thirty-four for indigenous males. Go to the Leewards or the Windwards if you want a Caribbean holiday.”

“It isn’t exactly a pressing concern right now,” Michael said with a smile as he lifted the cup to his lips. “Crikey, you’re right. This is good.”

“Well, here we are,” Geraint said. “Enough of that to get us through the night and I have nearly sixty opticals of Palestrina and Josquin, which should keep you happy.”

“Thank you,” Michael said again. The Welshman had an excellent memory for the likes and tastes of others and was an unfailingly generous host. “What about Dinah?”

“In Paris for another collection,” Geraint said slightly dismissively. “She’s a fashion writer.” His tone said one of them was probably a fashion accessory for the other; more likely both were. Michael did not press the point further.

“And Serrin?”

“I’m hoping he’ll be here tomorrow,” Geraint said. “The weather’s appalling on Lewis, but the forecast for tomorrow is better and he should be able to fly down. I thought we could have dinner here.”

“Sounds good to me,” Michael replied. “I may be sending him off on a wild goose chase, but I’ve got a whole caseful of arcane drek and he might be able to give me enough leads to come up with a psychological profile of our nutter. Our very talented nutter, I should probably add.”

Geraint smiled and sank an ivory-handled knife into the blue-veined Stilton cheese, extracting sufficient crumbly chunks to liberally coat one of the thin wafers just before the Magnificat reached its final Amen. There were a few moments of silence before the Kyrie of the following Mass rose gently from the small but powerful speakers secreted around the room.

“Port?” Suddenly Geraint’s look was different. There was an element of mischief on his angular, handsome face, a look that said, in effect, “I haven’t seen you in years. We may have work to do, and time may be pressing, and these may be very elegant surroundings, but we’re going to get smashed anyway, horribly hog-whimperingly smashed.” There was also the undercurrent of That way you’ll tell me everything I might be interested in.

“Which vintages are you currently recommending?”

“I thought we might start with the 2002 and work our way forward, although we could always start with the agreeably nutty 2033 tawny and work backward,” Gerajnt suggested.

Michael bit into the cheese-smeared cracker, wiped a crumb from the side of his mouth, and smiled back at his host. “Mix them all in a bucket and bring me a plastic straw,” he said.

“Peasant,” His Lordship laughed and set off for the mahogany cabinets on the far side of the apartment, “So, tell me what happened to Renraku.”

Michael waited for Geraint to return with the first bottle, the lead-foiled cork crusted into the neck, before giving him a copy of the chromalin.

“What the frag is this?” Geraint said.

“That’s our nutter’s signature. Now I’ll tell you what Renraku said he did, and then we should consider how we’re going to go about finding out what he actually did.” Michael got up and unlocked the first of the small steel cases he’d brought in with his suitcase. Geraint’s eyes widened at what he saw when Michael threw back the lid.

“Very, very nice,” he said approvingly.

“Modular Fairlight,” Michael said. The cyberdeck was worth well over a million nuyen, and it had taken him some months to modify it to accept the vicissitudes of travel. The cases had traveled on their own first-class seat during the flight. The idea of putting them in a cargo hold simply never entered his head.

“It’ll take me an hour or so to set up” Michael said. “Then we should go a-prowling.”

“Oh, thank you so very much,” Geraint said dryly. “So that your work can be traced from here. What an ungrateful guest I have.”

“Come on, you know me better than that,” Michael said swiftly. “We’ll be operating from a different location every thousandth of a second, unless there’s someone specific you’d like to be nasty to. so that I can leave a traceable signal from their location instead.”

“Now that is tempting,” Geraint said with a clear intake of breath. “Perhaps young Jenkins…”

Michael laughed, the cork was drawn, and the deck components began to take shape on the teak table white the light port was decanted and left to stand for a while. The Englishman and Welshman began to talk, of old times, college days, drunken sorties, shared acquaintances, and all the things friends say when they haven’t seen each other in many years.

Midnight approached. Outside, in a car bearing diplomatic plates and therefore not subject to the irksome parking restrictions of the ultra-exclusive neighborhood, an Italian took his first sip from a flask of a coffee far humbler than that his Lordship could offer, and settled back to keep an eye on the place. He was understandably nervous, as all in his organization were tonight, and he didn’t know what to expect.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to be shot by the Inquisition before the week was out, but then, as any Englishman with a sense of humor and history could have told him, nobody ever expects the Inquisition.