The quantum curators and.., p.18
The Quantum Curators and the Missing Codex, page 18
‘That singer was bloody awful, wasn’t she? But God it felt so good to see and hear buskers again. I even tipped the mime artist.’
I couldn’t see what had been wrong with him, but Julius had shuddered and made a joke about hell freezing over. Grinning at each other, we discussed the merits of the buskers and the strange Beta habit of public expression and enjoyed our lunch. The day was going well, and everything was under control.
Which is why, three hours later, we were all sat in a prison cell in the bowels of the Louvre waiting for the police to haul us away.
Day Five – Clio
Clio stared at Grimaldi and reassessed the situation. In the past year, she had worked with Anansi, Stefan, and Mo. And now, in her ever-growing list of undesirable partners, it looked like she was going to have to add a murdering psychopath to the list. He waved his gun at her.
‘Follow. And please do not kill any more of mother’s birds along the way. That is my little game.’
Clio stood up and stretched, stepping away from the corpses of Mo and Stefan without a second glance.
‘And do not try to kill me,’ drawled Grimaldi, as he looked back over his shoulder. ‘I have a little surprise in store for you if you do.’
Clio followed him into the corridor. ‘Nah, I’ll pass. Let’s go look at this painting.’
As Clio took in her surroundings, she looked for exits and gradually mapped out the compound, trying to guess at the floor plan. If not for now, it might prove useful in the future.
‘So, that burn on your face and neck? How’d you get that? Looks old.’
Clio figured that despite its obviousness, no one ever mentioned his scarring. Hopefully, she might be able to annoy him. An angry man was more likely to make mistakes. Grimaldi turned and looked at her in surprise, then smiled.
‘Ah, no one ever asks me that. It was a gift from my mother. She was having one of her turns. I don’t know if she meant to hit me, or if it was wrong place, wrong time. It was always so hard to tell.’
Well, so much for throwing him off his stride. And now it was Clio that was drawn in. Burnt skin was so easily repaired, even fast-growing children’s skin. His mother must have been barbarous.
‘How old were you?’ asked Clio, appalled, despite herself. ‘Did she refuse treatment for you?’
‘I was eighteen years.’ He looked at Clio and leered, the red scar tissue pulling at his lower lip. ‘I had full autonomy and insisted that they didn’t repair it.’
‘But why?’
‘Can you not guess?’
‘Revenge?’
‘Indeed, yes. Every day, that deranged fool has to look at what she did. I laughed and it did have other benefits. People flinched when they saw me. Just my face created fear before I even made a move.’
Clio was thinking like a curator. ‘But you would have been so recognisable?’
‘Indeed. And so I learnt discretion. To make my moves out of sight. I suppose I should thank her for who I am today.’
He laughed and opened a door. The room beyond was well lit with ambient ceiling and wall lights. There were no windows and no shadows, and the walls were hung with a jumble of paintings. Sitting on a bench in front of the Mona Lisa was an old lady. She was twisting and turning, mimicking the posture and expression of the woman in the painting, tucking her long, white hair behind her ear and fiddling with her dress.
‘Out,’ said Grimaldi in an almost bored tone. A younger woman in the corner of the room jumped up at Grimaldi’s command and scurried over to the old lady. Clio hadn’t immediately noticed her and chided herself for being so transfixed by the older woman.
‘I’m not going.’ The old woman’s voice was distracted and a little bit lost. ‘I’m staying with my friends.’
‘You don’t have any friends, Mother. You are a mad old witch, and no one likes you. Oh, and one of your birds is dead.’
Tears welled up in her eyes and she staggered against her carer.
‘You killed another one of my birds? Bedrich, why do you torture me?’ Her voice was tremulous, and she was breathing heavily.
‘I will kill them all if you don’t get out of this room now,’ Grimaldi sneered, and she shuffled out of the room, leaning on the younger woman who had not said a word. Even now she refused to make eye contact with either Grimaldi or Clio, and Clio recognised utter terror when she saw it. She wondered how long she had been taking care of the older woman.
‘Right,’ said Grimaldi, ‘let us have a look at this painting.’
Clio watched as his mother took one last look at the paintings, as her carer slowly pulled the door closed. Obviously, kidnapping the mother to exploit Grimaldi wasn’t an option. Although maybe he would be cross that someone other than himself was torturing her? Maybe she could free the mother and really piss him off?
‘Now. Before we start, you need to understand my level of protection. I am biometrically linked to this collection. Yes? You understand? If I am damaged or, what a tragedy, I’m killed, the nanites in the frames of these artworks will start to dissolve the paint.’
‘What about the statues?’
‘They are all hot-wired, goes one goes all. You Egyptians don’t have a monopoly on clever engineers you know.’
Half an hour later, the pair of them sat on the bench with the painting between them. They had examined it from the back, the sides, the wooden panel itself and found nothing untoward. No hidden message, no code, no X-marks-the-spot.
‘We need better equipment. My visor isn’t picking anything up. We need to go to Alexandria.’
Grimaldi looked at Clio and began to pick at his fingernails. ‘I do not think I would be very comfortable there.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, you’d be surrounded by thieves and murderers. You’ll fit in like a cuckoo in the nest.’
He looked at her, frowning, but shrugged with a tight smile.
‘Very well. I’ll get the plane ready.’
Grimaldi stood up and headed towards the doors. Clio watched his back, trying to work out how best to hide the interference of the gods from Grimaldi. If he came to Alexandria, he would discover what had been occurring. But, for as long as possible, she wanted to have the upper hand. On the other hand, if she had to spend more time than was necessary in his company, she thought she might kill him and balls to the paintings. She decided to make him someone else’s problem.
‘No need. I have an alternative method.’
‘Faster than my plane?’ He chuckled as he looked her over. ‘I do not think so. Do not worry, I will be leaving Mother behind. Won’t that be nice, you and I can become friends.’ He licked his lips and winked at her. ‘Yes?’
Clio gritted her teeth. Absolutely not. She had to get away from here as quickly as possible before she accidentally on purpose killed Russia’s greatest crime lord.
‘No.’ She started whispering to Anansi. ‘We don’t need your plane. Just you, me, and the Mona Lisa. Our engineers have a few tricks up their sleeves as well. Now, are you ready?’
She smiled to herself. For a man who liked to be in full control, he was about to be very cross indeed, and she called into the air.
‘Let’s go.’
Day Five - Neith
We sat on a hard bench in the cell in the basement of the Louvre and looked at the floor in dismay.
‘You didn’t have to break the board with your foot,’ I said morosely.
‘Come on, Neith. I was trying to put out the flames,’ said Julius, equally fed up.
‘And how did that work?’
‘How was I to know the guard’s phone charger was going to ignite?’
It had all been going so well. We’d got into the vaults. First Engineer had given us new proto-suits to wear for this mission. Bit of an upgrade, she said, and they were dynamite. The cloth, for want of a better word, sat under our day clothes like a one-piece undergarment. As required, the fabric simply glided down our limbs, covering our skin, and emitting a perception filter of the attire we wished it to represent. In effect, we walked into the Louvre in the correct security uniform, and the brace took care of all biometric security protocols.
Again, using the wrist brace, we opened the lock on cabinet X456 and slid out the Mona Lisa. A small dull picture of a bored housewife that inexplicably had become Beta Earth’s most treasured painting. Having secured the image, we called on the gods to get us out and tapped the recall button. Nothing happened.
‘Maybe we’re not meant to steal it? Maybe we’re meant to uncover the clue here,’ suggested Julius, and honestly, Ramin and I were both relieved with that idea.
We’d got the painting up on a workbench in one of the many pristine labs and began to study the back of the poplar wooden board the Mona Lisa was painted on. It had been reframed so many times that we dismissed that immediately. That was when it all went wrong very quickly.
A security guard doing his rounds saw us working and stopped for a chat. He had popped in to retrieve his phone that he’d been recharging on the sly. Ramin had been taking a full reading of the painting using the scanners in the brace, and Julius had some white spirit on a cloth to dab onto the back of the wood.
The guard reached for his phone but as he wiggled the charger, a signal from Ramin’s brace shorted the charging unit and it suddenly ignited. In horror, the guard grabbed the open bottle of white spirit thinking it was water and threw it over the tiny flames. The phone was an instant inferno.
The flames ran to the painting and, within seconds, the Mona Lisa was on fire. Julius tried to pick it up but yelled as the flames set fire to the white spirit on his hands. Now the Mona Lisa fell to the floor, her frame breaking as its corner smashed on the ground. Julius’ suit instantly activated and extended down to smother his skin. Clamping his hands instinctively under his armpits he now stamped on the flames instead. The wood appeared to be ablaze from within, the fire was spreading in two directions as the oil paint crackled and charred. The guard watched as the flames burnt through the face of the Mona Lisa. That’s when he realised that the Louvre’s greatest treasure was on fire and that’s when he started to scream.
Things began to move very quickly. Ramin punched him hard enough to knock him out, grabbed the painting off the floor, and we all ran to the exit. Which is when the fire alarm sounded, the doors locked, masks dropped out of the ceiling, and all the air was sucked out of the room.
This is a great feature for extinguishing flames, but it’s also pretty good at extinguishing humans. The proto-suits now came into their own. The fabric slid down, covering all extremities, and the hood section engulfed my head, pumping fresh air into the mask. I took a grateful gulp, then noticed that Ramin’s suit hadn’t fully deployed. He was having to use a face mask dangling from the ceiling, while Julius was holding a face mask over the fallen security guard.
Loki appeared. ‘Time to go?’
A lack of air in the room didn’t bother him as he smiled at the havoc. I could have killed him. ‘Not now. If we go now, the guard dies.’
‘So?’ He looked amused. ‘Are you saying you want to stay?’
‘No. Of course I don’t want to stay. Can you save him?’
‘Why?’ Loki peered at him closely. ‘Is he important?’
‘Yes, he’s important. He’s alive! He’s a human being. He deserves his place in society.’
Loki yawned. ‘So, not important. Now, do you want to go home?’
I ground my teeth and shook my head, watching in disbelief as Loki shrugged and disappeared. Which is how, ten minutes later, the air in the room was stabilised, and we were escorted at gunpoint into a holding cell.
***
‘Now what?’ said Ramin.
‘Now we come to terms with destroying one of the world’s greatest treasures,’ said Julius despairingly. A tad melodramatic, but, honestly, he wasn’t wrong.
‘Ach-y-vy!’ I jumped up and started to pace. ‘I don’t know what to do next. We’ve lost our clue, lost our ride, and destroyed a priceless artefact.’
‘We might not have lost the clue, Neith,’ said Ramin.
His brace buzzed. It had finished processing its analysis of the painting. I tapped my foot. He couldn’t throw up the holo-screen, as that might alarm the locals. Instead, I had to stand and wait as I saw his eyes flick back and forth across the screen.
‘Is there any—?’
‘Hang on.’
He tapped the brace, read some more, then tapped it again.
‘Are you kidding me?’ he muttered to himself. I tried to ask him again what he had found, but he just held a hand up, returning to the screen. With each tap, his expression got more and more incredulous. Finally, he stopped reading and sighing deeply, looked up at the ceiling.
‘Well, the good news is we haven’t destroyed the world’s greatest treasure. It’s a fake.’
I didn’t know whether to weep or laugh. These Betas with their constant fakery.
‘Does that mean that the one upstairs is the actual original?’ asked Julius.
I began thinking. Admittedly, we had announced our presence rather noisily, but we should still be able to get out of this. I started to think of a plan. Getting out wasn’t an issue. We were only sat here to play nice and regroup. The minute we wanted to leave, we would. We’d just pick the locks and use some whizzbangs to create confusion. Once we’d gone, I’d erase any digital records of us. However, they would now be on high alert. Getting a closer look at the painting upstairs would be tricky.
‘Are you even listening to me, Neith?’
I looked up. I had been so lost in the plan that I had missed what Ramin had said. Julius was sat with his arms folded and was scowling off into space.
‘What have I missed?’
‘I said that this fake shows evidence of an actual man on a boat, under the paint.’
‘So, the Louvre knew it was a fake?’ I muttered out loud, trying to make sense of it. ‘No, that makes no sense. Why would a forger go to the effort of painting on top of another painting? It would be spotted instantly. Unless someone swapped this painting and knew what the dummy title of this piece was? That’s it isn’t it? This thief left a fake with a joke wrapped inside.’
‘Hilarious,’ muttered Julius.
‘But this is good news,’ I said, beginning to pace again. ‘We’ll dial into their security system and get Tiresias to analyse the security footage. They obviously managed to mask their entry and exit, but they’ll have been no match for our technology. We’ll find out who took it, then play chase the lady.’
Neither of the men was smiling.
‘Neith, the paint analysis is modern. I’ve checked, double-checked, and triple-checked. This painting, both the man and boat underneath and the Mona Lisa on top, were painted in the last ten years.’
I didn’t understand their expressions. This was great news. The trail wasn’t completely cold.
‘The problem is the carbon dating is wrong.’
‘In what way?’
‘There’s no spike. There’s no evidence of the nuclear tests.’
I looked at him in horror. Carbon dating was an extremely accurate way to measure the age of something. On Beta Earth, all the nuclear test explosions in the fifties had left a thumbprint on every single item on the planet. If this fake showed no evidence of the carbon-14 spike, then there was only one conclusion. I squeezed my fingers into my eyes and attempted not to scream at the top of my head. Now I understood Julius’ fury.
‘The original’s back home isn’t it? Some snivelling curator came in and stole it!’ I was bouncing on the spot. I would hunt down whoever had stolen it, find the clue, find the codex, and return the Mona Lisa to her rightful home. But first, I needed to get to mine.
‘Loki,’ I snapped. The cell remained empty. I turned on Julius. ‘Well, where is he?’
Julius looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and I quickly apologised.
‘Sorry. I’m just mad. This isn’t what curators do.’
He stared at me and unfolded his arms. ‘It’s what they’ve been doing for years. But look, that’s not the issue right now. We need to get back and find the original, so you are going to have to apologise.’
‘I just did.’
He shook his head. ‘Not to me. To Loki. He told you the security guard wasn’t important, and you told him he was wrong.’
‘But he was wrong.’
‘He’s a god. They are never wrong.’
‘Actually, Julius,’ said Ramin, ‘I’ve been doing a lot of research on gods lately, and from what I can see they are often wrong. In fact, they are deeply flawed, mostly to a psychotic level.’
‘Alright. First things first, you can’t judge them as humans. Secondly, you need to understand them against the social context in which they were created.’
I interrupted. ‘Julius, we don’t have time for a lecture. I mean, clearly, we do need to study this, but maybe not right now?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, sorry.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Bit of a hobby horse of mine. My point, that I should have made better, is that gods are not wrong, in their opinion. You criticised Loki, now you have to apologise. Call his name. I imagine he’s listening or will be when you call him.’
I looked at Julius in disgust, but his reasoning was sound. I needed to look a god in the eye, who I didn’t believe in, and lie to his face. I took a deep breath.
‘Hello, Loki? Clever and smart, Loki.’ I glanced across at Julius who was grinning broadly and signalling me to carry on. Ramin was shaking his head. I continued talking into the air. ‘I was wrong. You were right. The guard was not important within the parameters of our brief.’ Julius scrunched his face up, but it was the best I could manage. The guard was important. Hopefully, Loki would accept this. ‘I should have listened to you and not argued. You were right.’ I looked around. There was still no sign of our ride home, but Julius was gesturing at me to carry on. I was at a loss. I had said all that needed to be said. I tried again.
