Death Match - Diane Duane [21]
“Wow,” she said, and sat down in the pine needles to just look around her and appreciate it all. “When do you think it’ll be ready?”
“When it’s done,” Noreen said, and sat down beside her, chuckling. Catie grinned, too, at Michelangelo’s old answer to the question. “But seriously, I’ve got about another month at least to work on the background stuff—the subliminals and so on. And I’m still not sure I’m happy with the fractal generator for the pine needles. Too many of them are too much alike.”
Catie let out an amused breath. Noreen had been rewriting the “pine needle” routine about once a week ever since she started this piece. “You’re going to wind up making every one of them different,” she said, “like nature.”
“I don’t know if that’d be a bad thing, necessarily,” Noreen said, “but it’d mean I’d miss this year’s submission deadline….”
Catie shook her head, looking around her again. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “One thing’s for sure, you’ve got the subliminal stuff handled. I can’t feel anything except the shivers.”
“Yeah, well, I still hate it. The great artists don’t need the subliminals, they do it all with paint and electrons,” Noreen said, rubbing her eyes again, “and if it weren’t for the fact that I know my assessment board is going to have at least three commercial artists on it, I wouldn’t bother. But if you don’t put at least something subby in it, they won’t think you understand the medium at all….” She made a face. “Never mind them, the philistines. How’s your new one coming?”
“Want to see? Come on through.”
“No, it’s okay, the Forest’s saved and frozen for the moment…you can display in here.”
“Sure. Space, bring the Appian Way in here, would you?”
“Are you sure the world is ready for this?” her workspace manager said.
Noreen gave Catie an amused glance. “I’m gonna kill him,” Catie said.
“Your brother?”
“Him, too, possibly. But not in this case. I let a friend tinker with my manager. Never again! Now, listen, you,” Catie said in the direction of the frame of the drawing of Noreen, through which her own workspace could still be dimly seen, “just unfold that piece in here, and make it snappy, before I call NASA and see if they need a spare management system for the Styx probe. See how you like a one-way cruise to Pluto this summer.”
There was no comment from her space management program, but a moment later the dark woods were all hidden away “behind” an image of a long, pillared street, paved in white travertine marble and leading down into a cityscape sprawling and glowing in mellow creams and golds. It was Rome, not the city of the year 2025 but of the year 80, lying spread out in a long summer afternoon, the faint din of half a million people dimmed down under the twin effects of distance and the mist beginning to rise from the Tiber as the day cooled lazily down. Here and there the glint of real gold highlighted the composition, gleaming from the dome of the Pantheon and the crown of the “miniature” version of the Colossus of Rhodes outside the Flavian Amphitheater, the statue that gave the neighboring building the nickname “Colosseum,” and gold also shone from the tops of the masts around the great arena’s circumference, from which the huge translucent “sunroof” was hung. The roof was down at the moment, the Colosseum being “dark” today, and the city lay in something like peace, the roars of the crowds silent for once. A little arrowhead of ducks flew low between two of the Seven Hills, making for a landing in the Tiber. Their passage was saluted from beneath by the screeching of the sacred geese on the Capitoline.
Noreen sat and looked it over for a few moments. “It’s gorgeous,” she said at last.
“I’m glad you think so,” Catie muttered. “I spent all last week hammering on the textures, but I’m still not happy.