Ghosts of Punktown Read online

  She had awoken with her heart sprinting, and for some reason had almost called out for the lights to come on. But the lights in her condo were not voice activated. It was not an interactive structure in that way. As a child, she hadn’t appreciated that not everyone lived in such a building, and for months after they’d moved to Miniosis – into an apartment that was upscale but not interactive, either – it was difficult for her not to ask for the bath to fill itself, or for her bowl of morning luul to magically appear. When her parents were out and she caught herself talking aloud, it was only to herself. No one answered back.

  * * *

  “Synthia, will you please just call me? At least come to the apartment and get the things you forgot when you packed...”

  Synthia. It was what Simon had always called her, for no apparent reason except to be witty, subtly mocking for his own secret amusement. Cynth had discovered the text message from her ex-fiancé on her work computer that morning, and so she supposed she came across as stiff or distant to the man seated opposite her now.

  She was a client service representative for Jango Auctioneers and Appraisals, and among her duties she accepted consignments for auction after Jango’s evaluation and consideration people, more experienced than herself in the actual appraisal end of things, had had a look at the items. Cynth would then draw up the selling contract and reserve price, the terms of payment for seller and Jango both. The consignors paid Jango a selling commission that was deducted along with any agreed upon expenses from the so-called “hammer price.”

  But she also helped bidders register for a numbered paddle, which would be collected for use the day of the auction. The registration process was usually handled over the net, but this man had wanted to do so in person. He had introduced himself as Richard Colores, the curator for antiquities at Punktown’s Hill Way Galleries. He’d asked her to call him Chard. He was of Earth heritage, of course – though his family had likely lived in Punktown for several generations, as was usually the case – small, trim, neatly attractive, with dark hair and a dark suit of Ramon silk.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” he said as he watched Cynth work at her terminal. “Are you new?”

  “Relatively. A couple of months. Do you bid at the auctions often?”

  “As often as my budget allows. Which isn’t enough, of course, to prevent me from wincing when I see the treasures that get snapped up by private collectors.”

  “Well, private collectors also sell off their collections, which helps museums like yours have a shot at acquiring them.” She glanced up at him between the holographic screens and displays that had unfolded and overlapped in the air between them. From the way the man was looking at her, it seemed that he was the one doing the appraising. “Is there a particular item from our next auction that you had an interest in bidding on?”

  “There is, and I was planning on having a look at it next. Would you accompany me, Cynthia? Maybe you can answer any questions I might have about it. The catalogs only give so much information.”

  She smiled politely. “Please call me Cynth.” It wasn’t that she was trying to 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 five hundred years after they were created, but obviously this one isn’t. Do you know if the gears are inoperative, or is it just that no one has set the mechanism? It has to be reset about every four days.”

  “I’m told it’s rusted and seized up inside.”

  “A pity. But that can be cleaned up and repaired. Otherwise, she looks to be in incredible condition! It’s not easy to find one of them intact. As you can see, our lovely lady here is fully disrobed and anatomically correct. This offended followers of the more prevalent Choom religions, who persecuted Raloom’s followers – they hated Lupool more than they hated Raloom himself. So they went around razing the temples and smashing most of these columns. Some were hidden away, thank Raloom.” He grinned at his joke.

  Cynth knew enough about the Raloom faith to know it had become obsolete, all but extinguished, and that Raloom himself was always portrayed simply as a head and shoulders, these busts often rendered in metal and sometimes so large they served as temples themselves. Cynth found it telling, and typical, that the male deity should be portrayed as a head, focusing on his mental attributes, while his wife should be celebrated for her sensuality.

  “What I’ve been wanting to do at the Hill Way Galleries,” Colores told her, “is frame the entrance to the antiquities ha
ll with the facade of a temple to Lupool, sort of like a dolmen with the two sides upheld by these caryatids. We already have one of these on display individually, and I’ve acquired the lintel for the top, but I’ve been looking for a matching figure. And to get both of them into a state where they can raise and lower their arms, turn their heads and open their eyes according to the time of day –” he clapped his hands together “– sublime!”

  “That would be impressive,” Cynth conceded.

  “Better than having the figure hidden away in some private collector’s home, huh? Used as a coat rack or something?” He chuckled. “The public should be able to appreciate this lady.”

  “Well, I wish you the best at the auction, then.” Cynth’s wrist comp beeped. “Sorry, I should take this.”

  “By all means.”

  She drifted away to leave Chard Colores admiring the seductive nude figure, leaned against the sill of a large window and raised her arm with dread. To her relief, it was not Simon, but a consignor she had been working with. She accepted the call and his face appeared on the device’s tiny screen. As she conversed with the client, however, she found her eyes lifting to the window, drawn to the scene beyond.

  It had been twenty years, yes, but it still surprised her that Tower 1 of the complex formerly known as the Triplex should have gone from its original brass color to a uniform shade of pale green verdigris. The building that contained Jango Auctioneers and Appraisals, formerly called Tower 3, had been kept in a much better state, shone as brightly as when it had faced her own building in her childhood – but then, the property had been sold off and divided over a decade ago. While Tower 3 had been converted into business offices, Tower 1 had remained an apartment building, though its clientele was apparently no longer as upscale as when Cynth had lived there. Sitting at her desk, gazing outside idly, Cynth often took note of the people who came and went through the building’s front doors. Their shabby coats, their furtive or dispirited movements, the sometimes misshapen forms inside the shabby coats that hinted at mutation. The battered vehicles in the lot, making it look more like a junkyard than the shiny showroom it had resembled in her day. Amazingly, there were even parasitic vines growing upon the face of the building that caught the most sun, so thickly that they obscured some of the windows, though these hardy city weeds had turned brown and brittle over the winter, like veins drained of their blood.

  Cynth had had no prior experience with auction houses while living in Miniosis, city of unfaithful fiancés. She supposed she had pursued this job as much out of a sense of nostalgia as anything else. At least, knowing that Jango was situated in the Triplex had cemented her interest when she’d learned about the job.

  She’d even briefly, wildly considered backing out of her condo and taking an apartment in Tower 1 instead, until she’d come to her first interview at Jango and seen the condition her former home was in.

  She concluded her business on the wrist comp, and then with Colores. He let her go ahead of him as they slipped between two of the displays, placing one hand on the small of her back while making an ushering gesture with the other. There was a crash behind them at that moment, and both spun to look, startled.

  Cynth hadn’t taken much notice of the robot before; there was a small fleet of them, of various types, that saw to the building’s upkeep. This was one of several Jango used to move the consignments from storage to the exhibition room, to the auction room and eventually out of the building when it was time for the winning bidders to gather their prizes. The robot had bumped the base of a pedestal, causing the Kalian lamp to fall and shatter. The gelatin had broken into quivering chunks, out of which the fetus’s limbs reached. It looked like a miscarriage lying there, or perhaps an unexpected birth.

  Cynth switched her gaze to the robot, which had already begun gathering up the broken shards of glass in delicate brass claws. Its box-like body was scuffed and dinged, but she didn’t know whether it might actually be two decades old.

  “Hey,” she called to it.

  The sweeping arms paused for one or two moments, as if the machine had become befuddled, and then slowly resumed their work.

  * * *

  “Excuse me – do you work here?”

  Cynth turned from watching the snow fall outside the exhibition room’s largest window. “Yes?” She was a little unsettled, not having heard the man approach, but then she was distracted from having found a new message on one of her work computer’s virtual screens. It had read, in large letters: “You abandoned me, Cynthia. I am empty without you.”

  The man was a Choom, youngish, and because Cynth had lived all her life in Punktown, and a minority of Chooms had even attended her private schools, she was able to consider him attractive. His face had strong cheekbones and a broad jaw to accommodate the rows of molars hidden behind his ear-to-ear mouth, his eyes gray and his hair cut short and spiky as most Choom males wore it. He looked disheveled in his snow-dampened raincoat over a comfortable-looking old sweater over a T-shirt. He clutched the latest glossy Jango catalog. “My name is Mendeni. I’m a professor of anthropology at Paxton University. I had some questions about item number twenty-eight?”

  “Ah,” Cynth said. “Our statue of Lupool.” She stepped closer to the man, who stood several paces from the stone automaton, which still slumbered though it was well past noon. Maybe the snow had lulled her? “A very popular item, I guess.”

  The Choom looked wary. “How so?”

  “There was a curator from the Hill Way Galleries in to see it yesterday, though it’s actually not very professional of me to talk about that.”

  Mendeni looked warier, or more nervous, by the moment. “No, please, please tell me – it was Richard Colores, wasn’t it? I was going to ask you about that.”

  “Yes. Mr. Colores was here, and expressed a great deal of interest in item twenty-eight.”

  “Damn him,” Mendeni hissed, flicking his hot gaze toward the caryatid as if Colores might have vandalized it somehow. “I was hoping his budget would be exhausted. Well, maybe it is...maybe he’s hoping to get it for a song. But then he’d know better, wouldn’t he? He knows her value.”

  “He did mention what a rare and important piece it is.”

  Mendeni turned to her again. “Can you tell me what the reserve price is?” This was a consignment’s minimum selling price, agreed upon with the consignor, the so-called “floor price” below which no bid would be accepted.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t; the reserve price is a confidential matter between Jango and the seller. And I can’t reveal the seller to you, either, as he wishes to remain anonymous.”

  “You don’t have to,” Mendeni said. “He’s a Kalian businessman named Darik Stuul, who found himself in a lot of hot water with the controversy over Alvine Products and the crazy cult that was behind it, him being one of the owners and the cultists. He wants off Oasis and he’s had to sell off his very impressive collection.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I have some connections. I know about Richard Colores, too. He was appointed as Hill Way’s curator of antiquities recently, though he’s been with them for over ten years, and he wants to shake things up to put the spotlight on himself.”

  “He seemed to me to have an enthusiasm for your people’s history, and a desire to restore the facade of a temple for his museum.”

  “Restore?” Mendeni practically screeched. “He’s raped major archeological sites and broken up valuable collections to assemble displays like what he has in mind! He’d chop the head off Michelangelo’s David and put it on a rotating pole outside the museum’s front door if he thought that would increase ticket sales! I’m the one who wants to reconstruct a temple devoted to Lupool – in its entirety, and on its original site! Colores knows this all too well. If he had a true love of history he’d be supporting our project, but instead he’s been discrediting us to whoever will listen.”

  “It could just be that you actually want the same thing, to rest
ore a valuable piece of history, but there’s only so much material to go around. Isn’t it just possible you resent his efforts because he’s not a native to your world?” Cynth regretted this speculation the moment it was uttered. Very unprofessional of her. But then, she excused herself as still being disturbed by Simon’s latest message.

  Mendeni drew in a long breath. “Did you ever see Hill Way’s art exhibit called ‘Through the Eyes of Raloom’? A lot of contemporary artists were invited to paint very iconoclastic, one might say very blasphemous images of Raloom. It was a nice bit of controversy that sold a good number of tickets. Well, Colores was the chief organizer of that exhibition. He has no love of history, Choom or otherwise, only of creating his own grand history.” In an increasingly shaky voice, Mendeni went on, “My paternal grandfather belonged to the Raloom faith; it was a tradition carried down for generations in our family, and it ended with him. If he had ever gone into that ‘Through the Eyes of Raloom’ exhibition...”