"HEARST NEWS SERVICES UPDATE!" cried the bright electronic voice, as, in a million wells of dark air below holoprojectors, a million clouds of light formed and focused into the image of a reporter. She smiled and told the world:

"Really important discovery! Look! Old paintings by Vermeer found!"

She vanished, and in her place appeared a five-second clip of footage showing first the entrance to a salt mine somewhere, then a bemused-looking miner poking his torch into what was evidently the newly-made entrance to a previously-hidden cave, and a closer shot of rows of flat stacked bundles.

The footage ended abruptly and the woman reappeared. "Some old salt mine in Europe! How'd they get there? Maybe it was Hitler! Who's Vermeer? He painted this!"

Behind her appeared an enlargement of the Girl Pouring Water. In a million homes and public gathering places, viewers grunted in recognition.

"See? So this is really important. Lots of paintings found that nobody knew about!" The woman's eyes widened significantly. "Experts speak!"

Another clip of footage appeared, showing a man in a white lab coat saying: "They're real Vermeers, all right—"

The footage ended. The woman reappeared, crying: "Buried treasure for the art world!" Then she vanished, briefly replaced by the logo of Hearst News Services before it too vanished, leaving viewers blinking at the darkness.

This had been an extraordinarily long and in-depth piece of coverage; but, of course, it wasn't every day that lost masterpieces were found. This was big news. The art world of the twenty-fourth century, what there was of it, was all agog. Even the ordinary citizens were impressed. On the public transports, many a commuter turned hesitantly to his or her fellow passenger and ventured some remark like:

"Isn't that something, about those lost paintings?"

And the fellow passenger, instead of shrinking away and ringing for a Public Health Monitor, would actually nod in agreement and might even venture to reply something like:

"Really amazing!"

Even the transport's assigned Public Health Monitor, watching them narrowly, would silently agree: this was really amazing.

The world's moneyed elite had much more to say about it, of course, because they knew more big words.

"How much?" Catchpenny barked into his communicator.

"They'll be auctioned," replied Ealing. "But it'll run into the billions, I can tell you that right now. You've got until autumn to raise the money."

"This autumn? I thought there'd be lawsuits! Don't tell me the Bohemians have settled ownership that fast."

"Actually, they have. There was documentation with them. The whole collection was taken from some old family by Goering's art people. Just stolen; no money changed hands. There's a living descendant with proof. All the Bohemians are doing is fining her for back inheritance taxes."

"But what about verification? They might be more, what was the man's name? Van Meegerens? Forgeries."

"They're in the labs. Five have already been pronounced authentic. X-rays, all the chemical tests. The rest are expected to pass too. Seventy canvases, Catchpenny!"

Catchpenny caught his breath. "There isn't that much money in the world." But he felt gleeful, lightheaded.

"I've already made your bid for the print rights. Sell your house."

"Yes!" Catchpenny ordered up a list of realtors' commcodes and eye-circled three of them. "Find out who else is bidding, and make the usual arrangements."

"That will run into money too," said Ealing cautiously, after a momentary pause during which she had ordered up a private list of commcodes for certain persons who did necessary, if unsavory, things at a price.

"Doesn't matter!"

"Agreed." Ealing signed out. The less discussion now, the better.

One week later, Hearst News Services featured a ten-second newsdab mentioning that exclusive print rights for the new Vermeers had gone to a prestigious gallery in London, but did not mention the name.

"It's wonderful," said Mevrouw van Drouten. "But I can only give you a hundred guilders for it."

"But it's worth more than that!" Catharina cried. "Look at all the detail!" She tilted The Lens Grinder forward. "You know how long it took to set up that scene? We had to borrow all the lens-grinding tools. My poor brother had to be dressed and made to sit still, which is miserably hard, let me tell you. And it's a big canvas!"

"My dear, I know. I think it's worth a couple of hundred at least, but what can I do?" Mevrouw van Drouten opened her wide blue eyes in a frank stare. "It's not my money. The Doctor gives me a hundred and tells me to bring home a painting. It's not my fault he's a wretched old miser. At least he buys from you, eh? Cash instead of trade to the grocer."

Catharina, knowing she was defeated, pursed her lips and set The Lens Grinder on a piece of sacking, preparing to wrap it for transport. A dismal screaming erupted from the next room, and a tempest burst in at knee level: fat Beatrix running from little Jan, clutching a mug of soapy water that slopped as she fled.

"I want bubbles," little Jan was roaring. Now in close pursuit came Maria, burdened by the infant she lugged in its long gown, too late to prevent Jan from slipping in the spill and falling flat, really roaring now.

"Oh, look what you did—" she wailed, and her eyes widened in horror as she saw the adults. "Mama's working," she told the little ones, grabbing Jan by the back of his skirts with one fist and bending double as she strained to haul him backward out of the room. Catharina turned a basilisk stare on Beatrix, who gulped and exited swiftly. Maria paused in her dragging to smile frantically at van Drouten.

"How nice to see you again, Mevrouw," she panted. "Wasn't that a nice picture Daddy did this time? I knew you'd like it, and we really need the money—"

"Jannekin, get up this instant," said Catharina, and the little boy left off yelling and scrambled out of the room on hands and knees.

"I must be going, please excuse me," said Maria in an attempt at adult gentility, and curtsied, nearly dropping the baby. "I'm sorry, Mama, but he wanted to drink the bubble stuff and—"

"Not now," said Catharina.

"Yes, Mama. God go with you, Mevrouw van Drouten."

Mevrouw van Drouten bit her lip.

"I'll tell you what," she said to Catharina. "I'll give you a hundred and fifty for it, if you'll throw in this little one for fifty." She held up a head-and-shoulders portrait of Maria. Catharina glanced at it.

"Done," she said at once. It had been nothing more than a test shot on a cloudy day, to see if there was enough light for a serious portrait. Maria had obligingly donned the yellow bodice and posed with a loaf of bread, offering it out to the viewer with an eager expression on her little pale face. There hadn't been enough light, so the shot hadn't really worked, but Jan had gone ahead and wasted paint and time on it anyway: ghost child smiling hopefully in a dark room. Catharina took the little canvas and tossed it down on the larger one, nesting it behind the wooden stretchers, and tied the sacking over them with string knotted tight.

"And here," van Drouten said, remembering the paper parcel and drawing it forth from her basket. "Here's a dozen almond biscuits, enough for two each, eh? So they don't fight over them."

"You must have had children of your own," said Catharina.

"Hundreds," said van Drouten absently. "I'd like to buy more of the pictures, you know. I love them. If the Doctor gave me a bigger budget, I'd take everything Jan cranked out."

"He's an old fool, your Doctor," Catharina said. Mevrouw van Drouten shrugged.

"Maybe, but he knows what he likes, and he has money," she replied.

"And that's what counts," said Catharina, smiling as van Drouten opened her purse.

In the studio upstairs, Jan paced and wondered if Catharina was presenting his complaints as he'd asked her to do.

For the first year or so, he'd enjoyed the work: the endless experiments with lighting, the race to capture the evanescent gray images in color by painting directly over them, the thrill of seeing perspective effortlessly perfect on canvas after canvas. Canvas after canvas after canvas …

But the novelty wore off, especially with the limit in his choice of subjects. All Mevrouw van Drouten's client wanted to see was the same subject, repeated in endless variation: a calm woman standing under a window, doing something industrious. Sometimes even that subject failed to please. The painting of Catharina's sister pouring milk in the kitchen, what had been wrong with that? But van Drouten had shaken her head regretfully, said it was fine but declined to buy. Likewise the painting of Maria with the lute. And why did everything have to be in tones of ultramarine blue and yellow?

Though van Drouten had explained about that: it seemed her client, the mysterious Doctor, had a lot of his furniture upholstered in blue and yellow, and so he wanted paintings hanging in his rooms to match. Jan hadn't mixed a good warm red in years now. It was all he could do to sneak a few terracotta jugs into a background.

He got occasional relief when the Doctor decided to order what Mevrouw van Drouten referred to as a scientific picture, which involved a man under a window with the trappings of a particular field of study. Even though it meant coaxing Willem into costume and persuading him to sit still, and then rushing to catch the shot before he broke the tools in his hands, at least it was different. Even so, Jan could not for the life of him understand why Mevrouw van Drouten had passed on the Surveyor, or the Astronomer. But she had; again, that regretful head-shake, and the inexplicable remark that some paintings had to make it into the history-books.

He bit his nails, now, looking at his half-finished work ranged around the room. There were the two studies of Girl Wearing a Turban, the lighting dummy he'd set up with Maria in costume and the real painting, for which he'd used pretty Isabella from next door. Catharina wearing the blue bodice and slicing bread: Catharina wearing the yellow bodice and picking out tunes on the virginal. Catharina waving angrily at a moth, in the tatty jacket with its once-elegant fur …

He heard the relentlessly pleasant voice flowing out into the street, bidding Catharina Good-day at last, and he stepped swiftly to the door of his studio. He listened for the slam of the front door before emerging onto the landing, and as Catharina mounted toward him he demanded:

"Well? What did she say?"

Catharina looked him in the eye, and he looked away.

"You didn't tell her," he muttered.

"No, I didn't tell her! For the love of God, Jan, what am I supposed to do?" she cried. "Do you want to eat? Do you want your children to eat? It's the only money we've got coming in, and you want to lose even that much because you're bored? Lord Jesus!"

"It isn't that it's boring," he shouted back. "My art's been killed, do you understand at all? She gave me an eye that could see like God and then shut me up in a room where there was nothing, almost nothing to look at, so the gift is useless! It's wrecked my soul!"

"Then go dig ditches for a living," Catharina told him. "Better still, send me out to dig ditches, eh? With the girls? And you can paint whatever your heart desires, then. Get your womenfolk earning your bread and waiting on you hand and foot, just so long as your painting goes well. Who needs a rich patron? Not us."

She said it wearily, almost without bitterness nowadays, and turned away and went back down the stairs.

"It isn't art," he shouted after her.

"I know that," she replied. "But it's money."

He drew breath to shout a retort, and went into a coughing fit instead. That was another problem with the damned picture-business; the fumes from the magic developing fluid were eating into his lungs. He retreated into his studio and collapsed into one of the lion-headed chairs, staring at the camera obscura with loathing.

But he could never really manage to loathe the canvases, dull as they were. Within the hour he was on his feet again, back at the easel, clouding the lead-tin yellow with white and making the fall of sunlight ever more softly luminous, ever more subtly the light of Eden before sin arose in the garden to ruin everything … and pale Maria, backlit by yesterday's sun, stood in yesterday's room and offered for inspection the white apple, her young face solemn. The long pared curl of peel at her foot suggested the Old Serpent, trampled and crushed at last perhaps, the secret allegory doubled upon itself, sin and redemption in one …

The sigh of the brush became the only sound, drowned out bells that marked the passing hours. He didn't need food. He didn't need drink. All he really needed was this room, wasn't that so?

And the light.

"Look! Hearst 'sclusive interview! This is the lady who owns the old paintings! Auction today! Liz van Drouten, what do you think?"

"Well, I hope that some of them will go to museums here in Euro—"

"Hearst News Services making a bid for holomuseum rights!" Calvin announced. "Hoping to bring the art of Jim Vermeer to you, the public!"

"Jan Vermeer," said the woman, quietly, but the cyber-enhanced kameramen Heard her.

"So! Wasn't it really amazing about your ancestors having all these in some castle or something? And nobody knew? It sure was different back then!"

"Yes, it was," van Drouten agreed.

"Think maybe Jim was a friend of your family? Maybe hiding from Hitler?"

"No," van Drouten explained, "You're getting your history mixed up, my dear. Jan Vermeer and Hitler lived two centuries apart."

"Wow! That is so much old stuff!" Calvin winked knowingly at the kameramen. He sang a snatch of that week's popular tune: "Can't get it into my pooor little heaaad! Pretty but dumb, folks, what can I tell you? Here's another look at the paintings on auction today!"

The kameramen relaxed, turning away as the prerecorded montage of paintings ran. Calvin Sharpey dropped his flashy smile and shouted for a glass of water, ignoring van Drouten, who remained on her mark. She merely adjusted the drape of the gray gown that had been cut to make her look as dull as possible, a nonentity the audience would forget thirty seconds after her interview had ended, especially when contrasted with Calvin Sharpey's rhinestones.

Now the montage was ending, to judge from the way the kameramen stiffened and swung their blank avid faces back to center stage. Immediately on again, Calvin Sharpey grabbed the pasteboard sheet his PA handed him. He held it up—it was a color copy of the Girl with Pearl Earring, with the face cut away to an oval hole—and thrust his face through, mugging as the kameramen focused on him again.

"Welcome baa—aack!" he said. "It's Calvin Sharpey! Weren't those paintings really something?"

In a high, dark, and distant room, someone stopped pacing and regarded the floating image of Calvin Sharpey's magnified smirk.

"Fire that dumb son of a bitch," said a cold soft voice.

"Right away, Mr. Hearst," said somebody else, running to a communications console, and, five minutes later on the other side of the globe, van Drouten watched with interest as Calvin Sharpey was hustled off between two men in gray suits, protesting loudly, but the kameramen had done with him, and with her too; they were turning away, closing like glassy-eyed wolves to See the media event of the year: the auction of the lost Vermeers.

Unnecessary now, van Drouten faded into the sidelines, unnoticed behind the kameramen and the security forces. To be perfectly honest, she had no mystic powers of invisibility whatsoever: just fifteen centuries' worth of experience at letting mortals see only what she intended them to see. Liz van Drouten had been an interesting role, but there wasn't much left of her. Two or three publicity shots, perhaps, before she could drop from sight, and a brief post-auction interview, when she would mention that she had decided to donate to charity whatever fabulous sum the auction had raised.

This was a lie, of course. All the proceeds were going straight into the coffers of her masters in the Company, and seven centuries of careful planning would pay off at last. But the words charity and donation tended to deflect an audience's interest.

Van Drouten sighed, looking out over the faces of the crowd that waited to bid. Some watched the podium with fixed stares, willing the clock to speed up; some whispered together behind their bidding fans, or peered around at the competition to assess them. To a man and woman, they might have stepped out of one of Daumier's engravings, might have been models for Rapacity personified, Desire, Obsession, whole-hearted Need. Van Drouten thought they were sad, and rather endearing. But then, she had always liked mortals and their passions.

There were so few passions left in this day and age.

So she savored the murmur that ran through the crowd, the audible pounding of seventy mortal hearts, the hissed or caught breath as the Auctioneer stepped up to the podium at last. Intent as lovers, the kameramen dove close, Saw his rising hammer and Heard him as he drew breath and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen! May I draw your attention to Lot Number One?"

And it lit on the black screen behind him, the projected image of Vermeer's Girl with Peeled Apple. Van Drouten smiled involuntarily: there was young Maria again, greeting her across the dead centuries.

"Jan Vermeer's original oil on canvas, signed, circa 1668. Includes all rights of reproduction worldwide. Bidding starts at twenty-two million pounds, ladies and gentlemen, twenty-two million—"

Before he could even repeat the phrase, bidding paddles had sprung up like flat flowers in a garden of greed.

"See?" Mevrouw van Drouten was telling him gleefully, pointing to the easel. "You don't even have to think any more. All you have to do is paint them in!"

He tried to reply but the words stuck in his dry mouth. He could only moan in horror at the endless line of little gray canvases stretching to the horizon, as many as the days of his life; and they were numbered. He couldn't breathe.

"See?" Mevrouw van Drouten put a brush in his hand, a house-painter's brush of all things. "All the spaces marked with a One you paint in blue. All the spaces marked with a Two, you paint in yellow. What could be easier? And look, here, the paint is already mixed for you. But you have to crank them out quickly, or you'll lose the light!"

And with revulsion he felt himself drawn to the canvases, because she was right: he only had so much time before he lost the light. He slapped on the thin color over the meaningless black and white images, and Mevrouw van Drouten watched, grinning, but looked constantly over at the clock, the enormous clock, saying: "Not much time. Not much time," but somehow he could never paint fast enough, and meanwhile the house was getting shabbier and more bare, the children thinner, his cough was getting worse, and Catharina was staring at him, crying "Soup!"

"… nice soup the lady next door sent, won't you even try?"

"I don't have time, I'll lose the light!" he told her, but she slipped the spoon into his mouth and he realized with a start that he was in bed. Catharina was leaning over him, looking sadly into his eyes. She gave him another spoonful of soup and felt his forehead, felt his stubbled cheeks. Her palm was cool.

"The fever broke, anyway. Did you think you were painting again?" she asked, and gave him another spoonful of soup before he could reply.

"Has she been here?" he demanded, wheezing.

"Who?"

"Mevrouw van Drouten!"

"No, she hasn't. Don't worry, Jan. We can get by the next month or two, if we don't see her."

He lay still a moment, thinking that over, as she fed him soup. "You sold some of the stock," he guessed, noting the bare places on the walls. "You found another buyer!"

She smiled at him, and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. With the light full on her face, as it was, he was struck by how much silver was in her hair, and felt a pang at what she'd endured with him. And still another baby on the way, Jesus God … If only they hadn't loved each other.

"A gentleman came to see your stuff," Catharina told him, determinedly cheerful. "I explained we didn't have anything of yours for sale right now, you know, I played up how fast your stuff sells, and I think I've almost got him talked into commissioning something. And he did buy a couple of the old canvases. So, you see? You don't have to depend on the little witch-paintings. You're good enough to paint your own work too."

"As long as it sells."

"It'll sell, my heart."

He pushed himself up on the pillows, took the soup from her in his shaky hands and tilted the bowl to drink. Handing it back to her, he gasped: "If I can talk him into an allegory—say a nice big canvas, maybe three or four figures on it, eh, that we can get a good price for? Maybe a heroic theme!—Lord God, if only I can stretch my muscles for a little with some reds and violets, won't that be something?"

"I had an idea about going to the priests, too," Catharina told him seriously. "They've got the money for paintings, and they know what's good."

"That's right, they do." He turned and considered his studio. "Can we afford a good sized canvas? Or even paper and charcoal. I'll get ideas, Catsi, I want to be able to block out a study."

"I'll see what I can do," she said, and bent to kiss him. "You sleep some more, now. Think about your allegory. We'll manage this somehow."

Jan lay still listening to her descend the stairs, and tried to close his eyes and sleep again; but the light in the room was too strong. He looked at the beautifully empty spots where the old paintings had been, and his eye filled them with new canvases. Should he rework Diana and her Nymphs? With each figure in a different-colored gown, pink, green, purple! Or something else classical, one of the Muses maybe? Pull out all the stops, lots of little emblematic detail, a painting the viewer could mull over for hours! Or a religious one the priests would be sure to like, yes, say a risen Christ with a robe scarlet as the blood of martyrs …

He glanced over at the cabinet resentfully, the black void that had swallowed up so much of his strength, so much of his time. What a devil's bargain! And what a paradox, to spend his days in darkness to preserve the light.

When the idea hit him, it seemed to shake him physically, it was so powerful. He gaped at the blank wall, seeing the allegory there in all its detail. It wasn't Diana and her Nymphs he'd rework, no. Another allegory entirely. It would be his revenge.

Sliding his skinny legs from under the blanket, he staggered upright and found a stick of charcoal. He lurched across the room and braced himself at the wall, blocking in the cartoon in a few quick swipes on the plaster, just far enough to see that his initial instinct for the composition had been correct. The charcoal dust was making him choke; but everything made him choke these days. Dropping the charcoal, he wiped his hands on his nightshirt and looked around for his breeches. This couldn't wait. He needed pen and ink.

Here was the parlor where Spinoza had embraced her, before leaving for Rijnsburg; in this chamber, she still had the chair in which Rembrandt had sat when he'd come to supper. Upstairs was the bed in which Casanova, nasty fellow, had romped with her mortal maid. The kitchen had long since been modernized, but still around the baseboard ran the painted tiles at which van Gogh had stared unseeing, gaunt young man with such good intentions, while he'd wolfed down the hot meal she'd offered him along with advice: that he might serve God best by painting His light.

And here was the broom closet hiding the so-narrow passage leading up to the attic rooms where she'd sheltered so many Jewish children from the Nazis, too many to count as they'd been smuggled through, but she could still summon each little frightened face before her mind's eye.

It was a quiet house, now, in this last age of the world, and her work was nearly over. There were only a handful of Company operatives left on duty in Amsterdam, where once they had come and gone like bees in a hive. Van Drouten sighed as she climbed the stair to her room. She had always liked a noisy house. She liked life. Some immortals grew weary and sick of humanity after a few millennia, but she never had.

Her private quarters, at least, were still comfortable and cluttered. She edged past centuries' worth of souvenirs on her way to the clothes closet, where she slipped out of her gray gown. This time she remembered to take off the little cloisonné pin before she hung it up, the emblem of a clock face without hands, and when she had slipped into denim coveralls she refastened it on the front pocket.

The pin was not a favorite piece of jewelry. Its supposed intent was to honor those who had the job of traveling through time, effectively defeating time's ravages; that was why the clock had no hands. Company policy, however, had recently tightened to require all operatives of her class to wear the badge at all times, to enable them to be readily identified by Company security techs on Company property.

Van Drouten avoided her own gaze in the mirror, steadfastly refusing to think as she made certain the pin was securely fastened and visible. There were just things you couldn't think about. Hadn't that always been so? The brevity of mortal life, for example. You had to keep yourself distracted from the sad things. You had to have an escape.

She glimpsed over her shoulder the painting in its alcove, and turned to regard it with a certain pleasurable nostalgia. It had cost her a lot, good hard cash out of her own household budget, because the Company had abandoned Vermeer once they'd got what they wanted; but she had never been sorry she'd spent the money. The picture gave her an escape, always. For a little while.

Catharina, red-eyed with weeping and a little drunk, had looked up at her as she'd stepped into the chilly parlor.

"You're out of luck, my dear," she'd told van Drouten. "No more paintings for your damned cheap doctor. Jan's dead."

"I heard," she said, as gently as she could. "I am so sorry. How are the children?"

"Scared. They're at Maria's."

"They'll be all right, I'm certain," said van Drouten, wishing she could say more. Clearing her throat, she continued: "That was van Leeuwenhoek I passed outside, wasn't it? The microscopist? Was he able to help you at all?"

"Oh, no." Catharina gave a sour laugh. "Respectable Mynheer van Leeuwenhoek is going to be appointed executor of the estate, if you must know. He's only interested in seeing that all the debts get paid. So if you're looking for a bargain, you'd better hurry. They're coming in to do the inventory this afternoon. And you'd better pay cash!"

"I have cash," said van Drouten, hefting the small chest she'd brought. Catharina looked at her sidelong.

"How much?"

"Seven hundred guilders."

Catharina put her hands to her face. "Jesus God," she said. "All right; come on upstairs with me now, quick! I'll show you something.

"Maybe you'll think it's funny," she continued, as they hurried together up the echoing stair. "It was his little joke, you see? Maybe you'll want it. Maybe you'll be angry. I don't give a damn either way any more, to tell you the truth, but it'll be yours for seven hundred guilders. Here."

She pushed open a door and van Drouten followed her into the studio. It had the reek of a sickroom and was bone-chilling cold, and canvases were stacked against the walls. The easel was bare; the paints were nowhere to be seen, and the sheets and blanket had already been stripped from the narrow cot. There was no sign of the camera obscura.

"Looking for the magic cabinet?" Catharina grunted, rummaging through the stacks. "You're too late for that; we sold it a year ago. Even a dying man has to eat, eh? Here. Look at this." She pulled out a painting, held it up with a defiant smile. "It's called The Visit of the Holy Women to the Tomb of Christ."

Van Drouten caught her breath.

"Oh, it's wonderful! How clever!"

"But your pissy doctor won't want it, will he?" Catharina said fiercely. "Not enough blue and yellow!"

"This isn't for him," said van Drouten. "This is for me. I liked Jan, Catharina. I liked you both."

"Then much good may this do you," Catharina replied, and tossed it at her. Van Drouten dropped the chest, putting up both hands to seize the painting. The chest burst open when it hit the floor, and guilders flooded out in a torrent of bright coin, ran and rolled into the four corners of the room.

Catharina, looking down at it, just laughed and shook her head.

There were the three women. Little Maria was at the left, peeping from the angle of the olive tree, her face bright with anticipation; Catharina was in the center of the canvas, her hands lifted in elaborate astonishment, her face haggard with bitter experience. There was the tomb of Christ, but it was not a stone rolled back that disclosed the interior. It was a cabinet door standing wide, hinges and all, with a lens-tube in its center.

And the third woman, van Drouten herself, was highlighted against the sooty blackness of the tomb's walls. She smiled out at the viewer and offered forth in her hands the linen cloth on which the miracle was printed, in tones of gray and black: the trick, the joke, the alchemical cheat, the negative image of the man. It wasn't art; but there on the treated cloth his light had been captured for all time, a bargain at thirty pieces of good hard silver.