Read Online The Planet on the Table by Kim Stanley Robinson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kim Stanley Robinson
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of the crater defines the horizon in the murky distance. Shutters slid down to protect these windows from the heat of Mercury’s long day, but now they were open and the black wasteland of the planet formed a strange backdrop to the colorful paintings that filled the long rooms of the museum.
There were many Monet originals there, but the canvases of the Rouen cathedral series were almost all reproductions, set in one long gallery. As Freya and I searched for Arnold we also viewed them.
“You see, they’re not just various moments of a single day,” Freya said.
“Not unless it was a very strange day for weather.” The three reproductions before us all depicted foggy days: two bluish and underwater-looking, the third a bright burning-off of yellow noontime fog. Obviously these were from a different day than the ones across the room, where a cool clear morning gave way to a midday that looked as if the sun was just a few feet above the cathedral. The museum had classified the series in color groups: “Blue Group,” “White Group,” “Yellow Group,” and so on. To my mind that system was stupid—it told you nothing you couldn’t immediately see. I myself classified them according to weather. There was a clear day that got very hot; a clear winter day, the air chill and pure; a foggy day; and a day when a rainstorm had grown and then broken. When I told Freya of my system she applauded it. “So Heidi’s painting goes from the king of the White Group to the hottest moment of the hot day.”
“Exactly. It’s the most extreme as far as sunlight blasting the stone into motes of color.”
“And thus the forger extends Monet’s own thinking, you see.” she said, a bit absently. “But I don’t see Arnold, and I think we have visited every room.”
“Could he be late?”
“We are already quite late ourselves. I wonder if he has gone back?”
“It seems unlikely,” I said.
Purposefully we toured the museum one more time, and I ignored the color-splashed canvases standing before the dark crater, to search closely in all the various turns of the galleries. No Arnold.
“Come along,” Freya said. “I suspect he stayed in Terminator, and now I want to speak with him more than ever.”
So we returned to the garage, got back in our car, and drove out onto Mercury’s bare, baked surface once again. Half an hour later we had Terminator’s tracks in sight. They stretched before us from horizon to horizon, twelve fat silvery cylinders set five meters above the ground on narrow pylons. To the east, rolling over the flank of Wang Wei Crater so slowly that we could not perceive its movement without close attention, came the city itself, a giant clear half-egg filled with the colors of rooftops, gardens, and the gray stone of the buildings crowding the terraced Dawn Wall.
“We’ll have to go west to the next station,” I said. Then I saw something, up on the city track nearest us: spread-eagled over the top of the big cylinder was a human form in a light green daysuit. I stopped the car. “Look!”
Freya peered out her window. “We’d better go investigate.”
We struggled quickly into the car’s emergency daysuits, clamped on the helmets, and slipped through the car’s lock onto the ground. A Ladder led us up the nearest cylinder pylon and through a tunnel in the cylinder itself. Once on top we could stand safely on the broad hump of the rail.
The figure we had seen was only ten meters away from us, and we hurried to it.
It was Arnold, spread in cruciform fashion over the cylinder’s top, secured in place by three large suction plates that had been cuffed to his wrists and ankles, and then stuck to the cylinder. Arnold turned from his contemplation of the slowly approaching city, and looked at us wide-eyed through his faceplate. Freya reached down and turned on his helmet intercom.
“—am I glad to see you!” Arnold cried, voice harsh.
“These plates won’t move!”
“Tied to the tracks,
There were many Monet originals there, but the canvases of the Rouen cathedral series were almost all reproductions, set in one long gallery. As Freya and I searched for Arnold we also viewed them.
“You see, they’re not just various moments of a single day,” Freya said.
“Not unless it was a very strange day for weather.” The three reproductions before us all depicted foggy days: two bluish and underwater-looking, the third a bright burning-off of yellow noontime fog. Obviously these were from a different day than the ones across the room, where a cool clear morning gave way to a midday that looked as if the sun was just a few feet above the cathedral. The museum had classified the series in color groups: “Blue Group,” “White Group,” “Yellow Group,” and so on. To my mind that system was stupid—it told you nothing you couldn’t immediately see. I myself classified them according to weather. There was a clear day that got very hot; a clear winter day, the air chill and pure; a foggy day; and a day when a rainstorm had grown and then broken. When I told Freya of my system she applauded it. “So Heidi’s painting goes from the king of the White Group to the hottest moment of the hot day.”
“Exactly. It’s the most extreme as far as sunlight blasting the stone into motes of color.”
“And thus the forger extends Monet’s own thinking, you see.” she said, a bit absently. “But I don’t see Arnold, and I think we have visited every room.”
“Could he be late?”
“We are already quite late ourselves. I wonder if he has gone back?”
“It seems unlikely,” I said.
Purposefully we toured the museum one more time, and I ignored the color-splashed canvases standing before the dark crater, to search closely in all the various turns of the galleries. No Arnold.
“Come along,” Freya said. “I suspect he stayed in Terminator, and now I want to speak with him more than ever.”
So we returned to the garage, got back in our car, and drove out onto Mercury’s bare, baked surface once again. Half an hour later we had Terminator’s tracks in sight. They stretched before us from horizon to horizon, twelve fat silvery cylinders set five meters above the ground on narrow pylons. To the east, rolling over the flank of Wang Wei Crater so slowly that we could not perceive its movement without close attention, came the city itself, a giant clear half-egg filled with the colors of rooftops, gardens, and the gray stone of the buildings crowding the terraced Dawn Wall.
“We’ll have to go west to the next station,” I said. Then I saw something, up on the city track nearest us: spread-eagled over the top of the big cylinder was a human form in a light green daysuit. I stopped the car. “Look!”
Freya peered out her window. “We’d better go investigate.”
We struggled quickly into the car’s emergency daysuits, clamped on the helmets, and slipped through the car’s lock onto the ground. A Ladder led us up the nearest cylinder pylon and through a tunnel in the cylinder itself. Once on top we could stand safely on the broad hump of the rail.
The figure we had seen was only ten meters away from us, and we hurried to it.
It was Arnold, spread in cruciform fashion over the cylinder’s top, secured in place by three large suction plates that had been cuffed to his wrists and ankles, and then stuck to the cylinder. Arnold turned from his contemplation of the slowly approaching city, and looked at us wide-eyed through his faceplate. Freya reached down and turned on his helmet intercom.
“—am I glad to see you!” Arnold cried, voice harsh.
“These plates won’t move!”
“Tied to the tracks,
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