The Painter - Uru short story

Prof Julian Lapin — Sat Mar 06, 2010 1:02 am

Author: Prof Julian Lapin

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 1:02 am

((This story is set just after the events of the MOUL episode Familiar Voices.))

THE PAINTER
By Andy Marshall and Eleri Hamilton

There has to be an easier way to collect these blasted things, thought Julian bitterly. One that doesn’t involve my untimely death would be nice.

The young academic sighed and wiped the perspiration from his brow. The refreshing breeze wafting along the Takotah Plaza was doing little to stifle the nervous anticipation he felt, perched on the edge of a crumbling pathway the sight of which would give most health and safety inspectors a triple coronary. He idly wondered what had happened to the cones that supposedly denoted this walkway as unsafe. Then again, it was likely that anyone needing warnings about the inherent dangers presented by a two thousand foot drop would be no great loss to the gene pool.

Of course, that didn’t change the fact he himself was kneeling on the edge of a structurally unsafe crevice with his arm stretched out, looking like he was undergoing the world’s most avant-garde attempt at suicide. Grimacing, he strained his arm until he could almost hear his tendons screaming in protest.

Just a bit further…

His efforts were rewarded by a sudden blinking from his wrist as his KI registered the presence of the hologramatic marker. Eyes burning with triumph, Julian reached forward and tapped the flashing button on the communication device, taking care not to lose his already unsteady balance. The marker instantly blinked out of existence, its co-ordinates now stored within the KI’s memory, ready to be uploaded into the Great Zero along with the rest of the marker data he had spent all day meticulously collecting.

Nodding in satisfaction, Julian pulled his arm back and instantly edged away from the precipice, nursing the sudden feeling of exhaustion that he had put to the back of his mind but now had finally caught up with him. The entire day had seen him stretching, dangling, crawling and even leaping, all so he could do his bit in the Great Zero’s calibration. And while it was certainly a change of pace from exploring the restored ages uncovered by the DRC and recording his own perceptions on what he found, he didn’t find the idea of risking life and limb an attractive one.

So much for getting away from it all, he thought wearily as he got to his feet and brushed a generous build-up of dust and traces of rubble from his shearling coat. Finally content that he no longer resembled a walking quarry, the junior professor began making a casual stroll along the side street and back into the main plaza.

It was definitely quieter in Ae’gura these days. Many explorers seemed to be taking solace in Jalek and Minkata, making the most of what a drastically understaffed DRC could offer for them in terms of new findings. But it was more than that. For months now, it felt as though a deep sense of bleakness had infiltrated the explorer community’s former optimism, something that was causing most of them to avoid the city.

The source was obvious. As Julian leaned against the grand staircase and looked down, he could see the wreath that had been left outside the entrance to the Kahlo pub in memory of Wheely and Rose. The sight of it bought back bad memories. He instinctively rubbed his fingers over the scars on his knuckles, self inflicted in a moment of frustrated rage after seeing the toll Wheely’s death had taken on her father in the Great Tree hood. Already rumours had started spreading, of destruction and death at the hands of the once enslaved Bahro who now sought vengeance for their centuries of captivity. The explorers had once taken it upon themselves to make the city into a new home. Such an endeavour seemed so far away now, tainted as it was with fear and uncertainty.

Which is why it surprised Julian when he turned around and saw the painter for the first time.

She sat overlooking the balcony area, gazing out over the canyon at the distant bridge. She wore a tight fitting turquoise jumper with dark jeans, both of which betrayed stray drops of her brush’s essence. Her eyes were unfocused and almost wild - as though she had surrendered her mind entirely to the brush gripped lightly between her fingers, and it was dictating her strokes and not vice-versa.

Julian crept closer in silence, masking his footsteps with the greatest of care. He saw that the painting was about two thirds of the way complete, and the painter was ready to commence adding the people. He noted with slight mirth the smudge of orangish-green paint on her nose, but held his tongue. He knew the difficulty of becoming totally immersed in something, and the frustration of being wrenched from it. He contented himself with standing in silence, transfixed by the arrangement of colours on the canvas.

The stillness of their surroundings were broken abruptly by the sight of an explorer on the distant bridge hurling himself towards the waters below. Julian shuddered, recalling several hours ago when he himself had to make this leap of faith in order to snatch yet another marker for his calibration task. He couldn’t help but notice the painter flinch at the sight and suppress what felt like an urge to cry out. As he watched, she dabbed a small traces of darker paint beneath the bridge and wiped what might have been a stray tear off of her cheek, leaving yet another smudge.

A sudden beeping from his KI interrupted Julian’s revelries, and he hastily bought his arm up to silence the shrill noise of the ancient device. It lasted only for a second, but it was enough to break the painter’s illusion of privacy. She shook her head as though she were clearing cobwebs from her mind and looked around, registering for the first time that she was not alone on the balcony.

Julian suddenly felt embarrassed, realising that he had been watching the artist unannounced for at least five minutes. The notion of him striking up a conversation with her had not even crossed his mind, and now that politeness required it of him he had no idea what to say.

‘A fascinating interpretation’ he settled on, nodding towards the easel. The painter smiled slightly, unaware of what to make of this man and struggling to bring herself back from whatever mental plane she had been previously occupying. She didn’t seem to be bothered by his sudden intrusion, so he felt safe to continue.

‘Oh no, please, don’t let me stop you’, he added hurriedly, trying to break any lingering tension his arrival may have caused. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by artists. Well, enviable, I should really say.’

When she spoke, her voice was gentle, almost serene.

‘Do you paint?’

‘Oh good lord no’ said Julian, relieved for a chance of self-depreciation. ‘How does that old saying go? Art is a series of accidents-‘

‘- artists know which ones to keep’ said the painter, finishing the quotation almost instinctively.

Julian grinned, genuinely impressed. ‘That’s the one! Well, put it this way, I’ve got the first part nailed down. If by ‘accidents’ you mean ‘misshapen eyesores that should be immediately burned in the name of good taste.’’

He realised he was blithering, trying to stall to make less awkward of a departure, but to his surprise the painter broke into a laugh. It was a gentle laugh, one without scorn or malice.

‘I suppose I’ll keep this one,’ said the painter, beckoning to her easel, ‘although I don’t think I’m much of an artist. It’s just…. a reminder.’

There was something about the tone of that last word that piqued Julian’s interest. ‘It’s the bridge, isn’t it?’ he asked. He instantly regretted coming out with such a redundant comment. Of course it’s the bridge. What a damn foolish thing to say. Master of the obvious as ever, Jules.

‘Yes. It’s what the bridge was,’ she stated, turning once again to her easel.

‘You mean, when it was still in one piece?’ said Julian.

This innocent question provoked an unexpected response from the artist. She seemed to stare straight ahead at her collection of painted strokes, as though she were looking beyond the canvas and into the very depths of the picture. ‘No’, she said, and this time her voice was as soft as a leaf falling to rest upon grass.

There was a moment’s silence, and Julian shifted uncomfortably from one sole to another. Had he said something wrong? Was there something obvious he had missed? Or was this the painter’s way of wishing to be left alone? That was most likely it. He idly brushed his hands to the Relto book at his waist and prepared to make a quiet exit.

‘Does D’ni seem empty to you?’

The question was sudden, almost hurried, as though the painter had been keeping it within her for some time and could not wait any longer. Julian’s hand jerked away from his Relto just as she turned once again to face him.

‘Empty? I suppose you could say that. Apart from us lot, of course. Having said that, there doesn’t seem to be many of us about...’

It was true. Aside from the group of half a dozen or so explorers sitting on the top steps of the Great Stairs, and the tiny clustering of the more braver of the marker hunters congregating on one side of the bridge in the distance, the city was quiet. More alive than it had been in recent months, but still a far cry from what it had once been barely two centuries ago.

As if his thoughts were being read, she continued. ‘People don’t see what it used to be, how it ended. I thought maybe if I painted it...it would be easier to see. For me, at least.’

At that moment the distant chattering from the direction of the bridge ceased. As the two watched, another explorer (this one clad in goggles and a pith helmet several sizes too big for him) took a flying leap from the edge of the bridge and plummeted downwards. But before his body could be dashed by the rocks below, he had vanished into the welcoming pages of his Relto, joining the ranks of the hundreds of other explorers who had succeeded in this almost suicidal element of the calibration procedure.

Julian shook his head in disbelief, amazed at the lengths some of his fellow explorers would go to just to make Laxman sleep a little easier at night. But he was surprised by the response of the painter. She seemed to visibly sigh, and suddenly found the urge to add a dab of dark paint underneath the bridge.

‘And has it?’ he asked. ‘Made it easier to see, I mean.’

‘It makes it easier for me to look at, somewhat’ she replied cryptically. ‘Tell me, Mr…?’

‘Professor. Professor Julian Lapin,’ he smiled, glad to be on more familiar ground.

‘A Professor? How interesting.’ And for once, someone seemed to say those words without any hint of irony at all. ‘Pleased to meet you, Professor Lapin.’

‘And likewise, Ms…?’

‘Echo,’ the painter said with a smile. ‘Echo McKenzie. Tell me, Julian…’

She gestured with her brush over the canyon.

‘When you look out there, what do you see?’

Julian adjusted his glasses and looked out over the balcony, thinking long and hard about his answer.

‘I see a bridge,’ he finally decided. ‘Connecting the Hall of Kings with the pathway leading around to the Concert Hall. Broken in the middle, either due to decay or more likelier as a result of the tremors that occurred during the Fall… possibly structurally dubious as a result, although what remains of it seems to be secure enough. And I see people around on top,’ he added, eager to not miss any of the more obvious details. ‘Congratulating the latest daredevil who threw himself off, more likely.’

Echo leaned against the railing, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, they were unfocused, almost dreamy.

‘The bridge, it's a grand construction, the only path to the Great Library. Thousands of people crossing it every day. They think nothing of it. It, like D'ni is set in stone. When the earthquakes start, it is only natural that people flee for the Library, to the safety of the ages.’

‘But the gas… the gas is there too. It is crawling across the lake, a malevolent, seeking death. People are crowded on the bridge, pushing, shoving, the panic in the mob increasing… they can hear the cries of the dying as the poison cloud reaches the ferry terminal. The press of bodies on the bridge as people race for the Library grows.’

She paused, closing her eyes. An expression of pain crossed her face, making it difficult for her to speak.

‘Another tremor comes. The bridge shakes, twists...it's not made to handle weight and torque. It begins to crumble. So, so many fall... and the poison cloud reaches up seeking tendrils to meet them... they die before they even hit the water. Some try to cling to the ruin, the gas reaches up and takes them, too. Others try to flee back, to the Hall of Kings, but it is too crowded…

Tears began running quietly down her face, despite the tightness of her clenched eyelids. And yet, she continued her story.

‘There is a woman... she is just at the edge when the bridge cracks...she starts to fall, and in desperation, throws her little daughter upwards to the crowd. She is caught, held close; people are running for the library holding her...she is reaching back screaming for her mother.’

Her voice was close to breaking, each word almost a sob that seemed to rise up from the very depths of a soul.

‘They don't know...they can't know...that even the Ages won't save them. There's too many...just too many...’

She sunk to her knees, head resting against the railing, face in her hands. She seemed exhausted, as though she had been through the most horrific physical ordeal that could be subjected upon a person. In between her laboured breaths she softly whispered the words: ‘Yahvo, rehzuh kehnehn fahsh’.

Throughout her story, Julian had found himself enraptured by the words that this mysterious young woman had conjured up. But now the powerful imagery of her words was gone, and he felt he should say or do something, anything to ease her obvious distress. Not for the first time, he wished he was the sort of person who knew the right thing to say at moments like these.

‘… I wish I could see the things you do,’ he said finally.

Echo opened her eyes and looked up at him. ‘No. No you don’t, Julian.’ She was still clearly distressed, but her breathing had become more even, slowed to a less frantic pace.

‘But I do!’ he insisted. ‘People look around at this ancient stone and see just that. Buildings, masonry, walkways, everything that time hasn’t managed to tear down. It’s certainly all I was able to see just by looking at that bridge.’

‘Not like this. It’s like watching a murder, over and over again’ she sighed, forcing herself to stand before her painting again. She brushed her fingers against the now dried canvas. ‘And when people go jumping after that marker under the bridge… I see new bodies with the old.’

‘I don’t claim to know everything about history’, said Julian, standing beside Echo. ‘But I know that there’s more to it than dates, disasters and death. What you’ve seen is a reminder that this city was once filled with millions of people, most likely no different from you or me. People with their own lives, their own desires, ambitions and dreams… I think it’s something many of us can forget if we spend too much time focusing on what’s left as opposed to what was lost.’

‘Take those people you saw. Any one of them. The mother, the daughter, the people in the crowd who caught her… each and every one of them has their own story to tell. It could be something trivial, something grand, something that changes the life of everyone from then on or just something that changed them. But it’s those stories that truly reveal how a person lived, not just how they died. If I had the ability to see those, I’d be one of the luckiest people who ever lived.’

Echo stared ahead thoughtfully, absent mindedly rubbing at a speck of dry paint on her face.

‘It’s not empty here, you know’ she said finally. ‘Everything the D’ni ever was is here with us. I have to remember that. I shouldn’t focus on the death, any more than people focusing on the empty. I just have to learn to see past this.’

As if to punctuate her words, she swiped her brush along the painting. Leaning back, she stared at it for several seconds, then finally nodded.

‘Done.’

‘And nicely so,’ said Julian, glad for the change in her tone.

‘That’s all it needs to be now,’ she added. ‘A reminder.’ She turned to Julian and looked at him fully, as if seeing him for the first time.

‘Thank you.’

Julian’s expression was one of bewilderment, one which came naturally to him and he tended to find himself using a lot in recent years. ‘I… did something?’

Echo nodded. ‘You listened. You didn’t laugh.’

‘Should I have?’ he asked. The tone was innocent, but there was something behind it that Echo picked up on. Something which suggested that what he had witnessed was not as surprising as it ought to have been.

‘I’m not sure what’s happened to me,’ was all she could say.

‘Is this the first time something like... this… has happened?’

She nodded, and looked down at the ground. ‘I've never had anything like this, until I came here.’

‘Does it frighten you?’

The painter trembled, and softly mouthed one word. ‘Yes.’

Julian walked towards the wall and leant against it, facing her.

‘Don’t let it.’

Her trembling stopped, but there was still a hint of reservation in her next question: ‘have I gone mad?’

‘I highly doubt that,’ said the junior professor, and suddenly his tone had taken an abrupt about turn from one of sincerity to good natured banter. ‘I should know. I’ve met plenty of madmen in my time. The fact you ask yourself is pretty sound proof in itself. In fact, I happen to ask myself that exact same question every time I wake up in the morning. Just as a precaution, mind you’ he added, with a grin.

Echo bought her hand to her mouth, suppressing a quiet giggle.

‘That was a chuckle…’ Julian remarked, giving her a knowing look.

Echo made a show of looking innocent. ‘Yes. Yes it was,’ she smiled. She blinked, and then seemed to cross her eyes. ‘I have paint on my nose, don’t I?'

Julian was stone-faced. ‘I… didn’t want to say anything.’ The side of his mouth twitched upward.

She rolled her eyes and began rubbing the smear with her finger. ‘Some first impression. “Hi, I’m Echo, and I paint with my nose and hallucinate dead people!”’ This caused Julian’s attempt to restrain himself to fail miserably as he doubled up in hoots of hilarity.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing’ he struggled to blurt out with gasping breaths. Echo tried to look stern, but failed as equally and ended up laughing alongside him in what several passing explorers considered to be a very bewildering piece of impromptu cavern expression.

Finally the two of them had calmed down enough to form complete sentences. ‘Ms McKenzie’, said Julian, ‘you are by far the most interesting person I’ve met down here in a long while.’

‘Why thank you. I think!’ she snorted, winkling her nose at him. She sighed happily, and as she did so the faintest traces of a shadow returned to her face. ‘I...should go rest. I always feel a bit off after it happens.’

‘Same here’, nodded Julian as Echo knelt down to gather up her paints. ‘I’ve an experiment of mine running back in Relto. I’ve scavenged some of the boilers from the desert Eder in an attempt to ferment my own sherry. Complications have arisen, however.’

‘Ah. Doesn’t taste good?’

‘Well, that. And the mixture keeps exploding.’

Echo blinked. ‘I don’t claim to be a wine critic’, she said, ‘but I’m pretty sure that it’s not supposed to do that.’

‘Certainly puts a damper on social occasions, I can tell you.’

‘I think I’ll wait for the finished product then’ she chuckled, packing away the last of her paints and collecting her canvas and easel. Finally she stood, and held out her hand. ‘Until then, Professor Lapin.’

‘Ms McKenzie,’ he said with as much charm as he could muster, taking her hand and kissing her fingers lightly. Expecting only a handshake, Echo’s eyes widened, and she blushed. She was still blushing as she touched the panel of her Relto book and faded away.

‘Will I-‘ Julian began, but was cut off by the sound of her linking book. He ended with a feeble ‘… see you again?’

But the painter had already gone, leaving Julian alone in the plaza once again.

Turning to walk away, Julian’s shoe came into contact with something on the ground, causing it to slide away with a clatter. Bending down to retrieve the item, he held it in gloved hand. It was the mysterious artist’s paintbrush, abandoned where she had left it upon completing her work. He stared at it, then past it, peering into the distance at the bridge where another reckless explorer prepared to leap into the abyss below.

Maybe this city had more to tell him than he realised.

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The Painter - Uru short story