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Authors: Jeffrey Thomas
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become familiar with him, but no one had called her Cynthia for a long time.
* * *
Jango not only held their auctions in the same building their offices were located in, but also provided an area in which the consignments were exhibited for one week prior to each auction. Like the auctions themselves, this pre-sale exhibition was open free to the public.
Once this area had been someone’s apartment, but the walls had been torn out, replaced with occasional metal support beams with oversized rows of bolts. Jango would arrange tables, pedestals, showcases – often locked and weapon-proof – in which to display its current array of items. Cynth, smartly attired and a little taller than Colores, strolled with him between the displays, stopping often as he studied and remarked upon them. Was he really all that interested, or just stalling to spend more time in her company? A security guard in a bulky, rubbery black jacket and matching rubbery cap scowled at them both as if ready to shoot even Cynth should she lean too hard on a showcase.
“Would you look at this,” Colores exclaimed, having come upon an article Cynth had found extremely repellant. It was a globular glass lamp filled with a red, gelatinous oil, in which was suspended a fetus of the gray-skinned Kalian race. It held a wick in one tiny fist, protruding through the surface of the gelatin.
“Yes,” Cynth said, much less enthused than he. “Some Kalians preserve the bodies of children born to unwed mothers in these lamps, and burn them to ward off demons.”
“I wouldn’t mind having that on my desk. Quite the conversation piece. Might ward off a couple of demons I work with, too.” They moved on to take in other rarities.
Colores turned from his examination of a stone tablet carved with a tentacle-faced divinity of the Irezk Island Tribe, once native to Oasis but now extinct, and for the first time seemed to spot the object he had come for, though Cynth suspected he’d seen it from the first moment he’d entered the room. “Oh!” he remarked, going to it, with Cynth trailing a little behind.
It would have been easy to spot right away. One might first assume the figure was merely a statue wearing an odd, flat-topped hat atop its lovingly carven hair, but the information sheet posted beside the sculpture identified it as a caryatid – a supporting column in the shape of a person. In this case, as the sheet explained, that person was Lupool, the wife of Raloom, a god worshiped by an ancient sect of Oasis’s native Choom people. Like her husband and the Choom themselves, Lupool might have passed for an Earth human were it not for her mouth, the corners of which ran back to her ears in a smile as serene as a dolphin’s.
When she’d first viewed the statue, Cynth had thought the arms and head had broken off and been reattached, because of the gaps that separated these pieces from the rest of the white stone body. But then she had learned that these were more like the jointed appendages of a mannequin, and the figure had been hollowed inside, the cavity filled with clockwork internal organs.
Colores had said he might need to ask Cynth questions about the item, but he seemed well enough informed already, as he explained, “There’d be two of these framing the temple door, and they’d be aligned to face the sunrise. Their arms would be lowered by night –” the figure’s smooth arms hung at its sides now “– but they were timed to lift above their heads with the rising of the sun.” He demonstrated with his own arms. “And they’d turn their heads gradually over the course of the day to follow the sun as it arced across the sky. Their eyelids would even open at dawn, revealing beautifully painted glass eyes. Just remarkable, isn’t it? Some of these statues are still going through their motions, four or
* * *
Jango not only held their auctions in the same building their offices were located in, but also provided an area in which the consignments were exhibited for one week prior to each auction. Like the auctions themselves, this pre-sale exhibition was open free to the public.
Once this area had been someone’s apartment, but the walls had been torn out, replaced with occasional metal support beams with oversized rows of bolts. Jango would arrange tables, pedestals, showcases – often locked and weapon-proof – in which to display its current array of items. Cynth, smartly attired and a little taller than Colores, strolled with him between the displays, stopping often as he studied and remarked upon them. Was he really all that interested, or just stalling to spend more time in her company? A security guard in a bulky, rubbery black jacket and matching rubbery cap scowled at them both as if ready to shoot even Cynth should she lean too hard on a showcase.
“Would you look at this,” Colores exclaimed, having come upon an article Cynth had found extremely repellant. It was a globular glass lamp filled with a red, gelatinous oil, in which was suspended a fetus of the gray-skinned Kalian race. It held a wick in one tiny fist, protruding through the surface of the gelatin.
“Yes,” Cynth said, much less enthused than he. “Some Kalians preserve the bodies of children born to unwed mothers in these lamps, and burn them to ward off demons.”
“I wouldn’t mind having that on my desk. Quite the conversation piece. Might ward off a couple of demons I work with, too.” They moved on to take in other rarities.
Colores turned from his examination of a stone tablet carved with a tentacle-faced divinity of the Irezk Island Tribe, once native to Oasis but now extinct, and for the first time seemed to spot the object he had come for, though Cynth suspected he’d seen it from the first moment he’d entered the room. “Oh!” he remarked, going to it, with Cynth trailing a little behind.
It would have been easy to spot right away. One might first assume the figure was merely a statue wearing an odd, flat-topped hat atop its lovingly carven hair, but the information sheet posted beside the sculpture identified it as a caryatid – a supporting column in the shape of a person. In this case, as the sheet explained, that person was Lupool, the wife of Raloom, a god worshiped by an ancient sect of Oasis’s native Choom people. Like her husband and the Choom themselves, Lupool might have passed for an Earth human were it not for her mouth, the corners of which ran back to her ears in a smile as serene as a dolphin’s.
When she’d first viewed the statue, Cynth had thought the arms and head had broken off and been reattached, because of the gaps that separated these pieces from the rest of the white stone body. But then she had learned that these were more like the jointed appendages of a mannequin, and the figure had been hollowed inside, the cavity filled with clockwork internal organs.
Colores had said he might need to ask Cynth questions about the item, but he seemed well enough informed already, as he explained, “There’d be two of these framing the temple door, and they’d be aligned to face the sunrise. Their arms would be lowered by night –” the figure’s smooth arms hung at its sides now “– but they were timed to lift above their heads with the rising of the sun.” He demonstrated with his own arms. “And they’d turn their heads gradually over the course of the day to follow the sun as it arced across the sky. Their eyelids would even open at dawn, revealing beautifully painted glass eyes. Just remarkable, isn’t it? Some of these statues are still going through their motions, four or
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