Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [1]
Under them, beneath the marginally treacherous birches and oaks, pools of shadow, pools of light; and just there, in the shadow of an oak, but bright with a scrap of sunlight let down past a negligent branch, a little patch of brilliance caught hanging in the air: a butterfly. One of the brown woods butterflies with a broad white stripe, soaring down the glade between the trees. Nothing else stirring, no sense of wind in those trees, no movement, just the perfect still-mellowing heat of the very beginning of the time when the grapes would be ready: the perfect first moment of autumn, earth just beginning to calm to its rest for the year.
Picard stepped back and looked. The harsh blue of the summer south of France showed through the upper branches. Here and there, in the dim background, the feather of one of the windbreak pines showed through. Everything but the touch of light in the middle air, and the blue above the trees, was soft, indefinite: the ground, all littered with the brown of many years. He had been spending a lot of time on that ground, working to get it right. The wrong light, too much detail or too little, would make it all look false. He changed brushes, dabbed at the palette, scrubbed the brush drier, and touched a bit more light onto the butterfly’s wings, making it more golden, less white than it had been.
He stood away again and let his eyes go a little unfocused, the better to let his eyes evaluate the canvas. Light, warmth, a feeling of peace: the antithesis to everything out there at the moment.
His glance slid sideways. He thought of the great philosopher, there in his old home, all bounded by noisy streets, who looked out at the tram clanging by, and the bustle of the city in those days, and wrote, “The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me to death.” It took a man attuned to hear that silence, this silence, in such a place, through all the noise and clatter of civilization. Out here, it required no ear nearly so subtly attuned. Turn away from your work or play for a moment, and those clouds of stars reminded you just how small you were, and how far away from the things that you might love. Picard knew that the philosopher would equally have held that you’re no farther from those things than the vein of your neck: since you carry them within you, you and they are coterminous. Some might balk at the seeming contradiction. Picard merely smiled, knowing the ways of philosophers, and reached for another brush.
The door chimed. “Come,” he said.
Lieutenant Commander Data stepped in, paused. “I am not interrupting anything, am I, Captain?”
“Nothing of any weight.” Picard put the first brush he had selected down, chose another: narrowed, with the fanned edge. Data stepped around to look at the canvas, raising his eyebrows for permission. Picard nodded.
Data looked at it and said, “Ah. Ladoga camilla. Or Limenitis camilla, in the older Linnaean classification.”
Picard’s eyebrows went up, too, in surprise. “It’s that obvious?” There was barely a square centimeter of paint there, after all, and some only indifferent brushwork.
“The broken white stripe is a clear indicator, Captain.”
“Mr. Data,” Picard said, shaking his head, “I understand the delight of acquiring information. But you are in a unique position to agree with the detective that the mind is a closed room, with only so much space in which to store information. Whatever moved you to acquire information on Earth’s butterflies, when there might be information more important that required the same room?”
“”Man does not live by bread alone,”” Data said. “Or so Keiko O’Brien says. She recommends the butterfly as an excellent example of “the sound of one hand clapping.”“
Picard smiled slightly. “She’s probably right. At least, that’s one of the few responses