Timeshares Part 12

"Linear time does not apply in this process, darling. You know that. I told Rolf that when you came looking for me, 1494 was the earliest that he could let you through."

"But an artist studio?" Marguerite asked. "You're a scientist."

Genevieve smiled. "They're not such different disciplines. Especially not here, not now. I'm happy here. The others think I am a n.o.blewoman's daughter who became an abbess and decided to retire from the church. They're a little scandalized by that, but it made them accept me as a scholar, if not a good Catholic. I have formed warm friendships with wonderful women, and a few men, too. This is a marvelous place. I hope you'll come to love it as much as I do. I bought an annual timeshare of two weeks from Rolf for you to use. If If you two can behave yourselves in my home." you two can behave yourselves in my home."

Lorraine surveyed the room. A layer of dust stood on the windowsills and anywhere there were not piles of parchments heaped upon trestle tables, stools, and rolled up in cylinders on shelves. Mother had always been so neat. The furnishings, too, were rough and broad in design.

"This is a man's room," she said.

"Yes," Genevieve said, with a broad smirk. "I found the man of my dreams. This is his studio."

"A man?" Lorraine felt her heart constrict with fury. "Time's not linear, but you couldn't spend a single day to tell us your plans before you disappeared?"

Genevieve tucked her arms into her sleeves, an unconscious gesture, but a new one to Lorraine. It must have been something she had adopted in her pose as a former religieuse. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry. My duties were done. You two were well on your way. You are both grown up, with your own careers and families. I couldn't wait to get back here. To him. To the life we had together. It was all I could think about."

Marguerite's face had gone red, too. "Mother, that's ridiculous. You're in your sixties!"

"Hardly doddering old age. Nothing's stopped working yet except for my childbearing equipment, and frankly, I'm glad to be done with that. What is it you want of me?" Genevieve asked, with a frown. "Did you expect to find me warehoused somewhere, slowly moldering away, pining for you as you seem to be pining for me?"

"No!" Lorraine protested immediately, but she was too much of a scientist herself not to a.n.a.lyze her mother's words for the germ of truth. "I suppose I thought you would always be there. For us. For me. I thought that once you retired you might be able to spend more time with us."

Genevieve raised an eyebrow. "Did I say you were grown up?"

Lorraine felt her cheeks burn. "I am! But it feels as if all the time we ever had from you was stolen from your other projects."

Her hurt words won a contrite look from Genevieve. "For that I am sorry. I do love you both with all my heart. I knew I didn't hack it well as a wife. I must not have been much of a mother, either. When the five-year contract with your father was up, we just let it lapse. You know we never held any rancor for one another. I was just not good at being married. Well, to your father," she added with a shrug. "I tried to give you happy childhoods. You had all my love and attention."

"Bull. That went to your cla.s.sified programs," Marguerite snapped. "Those got all your attention."

"They were profitable enough to put you through college and graduate school," Genevieve said, defensively. "You didn't reject the benefits. My technological research enriched the lives of thousands of students and will continue to benefit humanity for a long time." She fought visibly for control and smiled at them. "I haven't stopped working. Come and see what we have been doing."

She took a heap of the parchments from the table and set them on the floor. From the collection on the shelves, she took one that was bound with a ring of bronze and spread it out. A pair of spindles topped with spheres shot lightning at one another around a filigree cage in which rotated a cosmos of stars. Fine, delicate handwriting surrounded the images. Formulae that Lorraine, a biologist, did not recognize, were written in neat blocks. To her surprise, she realized the letters and numbers were all backward.

"This is the original design for the Timeshares generator," Genevieve said. "I believe it is elegant in its simplicity, to clone a phrase. It uses far less power than the first time-travel engines, and is far more accurate, thanks to quantum entanglement." She paused to regard the perfection of the fine lines. "It looks so primitive now, but it has pa.s.sed through over three hundred modifications to get to the final design. This one." She took another huge sheet from the pile and placed it next to the first on the sanded board. "I had thirty-nine physicists working on the project over twelve years, but the final design came from here. How delighted we were when the beta tests came back perfect eighty-three out of a hundred tries. You cannot ask for better results. Oh, here's something new we've been working on. It's a geothermal storage facility for residential complexes."

"How beautiful," Lorraine said, examining the plans. "The rendering is perfect. They look almost like drawings by Leonardo da Vinci."

"Of course they look like Leonardo drawings, my dear," Genevieve said. "He drew them."

Before either of them could sputter out a two-syllable expletive of disbelief, the door opened.

"Belladonna," said the tall man. He removed a dark blue rolled velvet hat and cast it aside. He rumpled up the linen cap underneath, tousling locks of lank red hair. His beard was sandier in hue than his hair, shot full of silver threads, especially at the corners of his mouth. Genevieve held out her hands to him, and he embraced her warmly. "His grace sends to you his compliments, for what they are worth. Somehow he has heard of the new cannon I designed, and wants it for himself. His wish, of course, is my command, though I must warn my lord de Medici such a thing may be done." He bowed to the sisters. "My ladies, I am remiss in not greeting such distinguished visitors. I am Leonardo. I welcome you to my home and workshop."

"My love, these are my daughters," Genevieve said. "Marguerite and Lorraine."

Lorraine wondered if she should curtsey. All her briefings on the culture of the time fled from her mind like the vestiges of grade school Latin. His eyes, deep blue, fixed upon hers. She was caught in their infinite depths, and she nearly gasped. The power of his intelligence and personality were in that gaze.

"I should have seen by the echo of her beauty in your visages," he said, his eyes twinkling at them. Lorraine knew that she would never forget that moment.

Genevieve helped settle him in the broad chair at the table and rearranged the big parchment sheets, rolling up the old plans and putting them away. Her business-like movements snapped Lorraine out of her entrancement. "I'll leave you to your work, my love. I will have Casperina bring you wine and food. The girls have traveled far and need to rest." She took their hands firmly. Lorraine snapped out of her trance. "I will show you to your rooms. They're on the third floor. I hope you won't mind, but the house is full at the moment."

The girls followed her up a flight of stairs. Even the beauty of the carving of the newel posts and stair risers couldn't conceal how narrow they were. At the top of the last flight, a slim corridor led to paneled doors of golden wood.

"Mother, how could you involve someone from the past in your cla.s.sified work?" Marguerite hissed. "He knows about the Timeshares project! What about the noninterference pact that we had to sign?"

"That you you had to sign," Genevieve corrected her. "Leonardo helped me design the system. I had run into walls again and again, where I just could not make the process work. I needed someone who was not confined to modern thinking about the technology. I read the letter he wrote to the Duke of Milan, and realized that Leonardo was the one I needed. I came here to watch him, and discovered he was watching me. His powers of observation surpa.s.s those of anyone else I have ever met, anywhere." She blushed. Lorraine was shocked. "As your great-grandmother used to say so colorfully, 'chicks dig smart guys.' We fell in love. He has other women here and there, but he comes back to me. We bond over science, and that I share with no other woman. I am satisfied." had to sign," Genevieve corrected her. "Leonardo helped me design the system. I had run into walls again and again, where I just could not make the process work. I needed someone who was not confined to modern thinking about the technology. I read the letter he wrote to the Duke of Milan, and realized that Leonardo was the one I needed. I came here to watch him, and discovered he was watching me. His powers of observation surpa.s.s those of anyone else I have ever met, anywhere." She blushed. Lorraine was shocked. "As your great-grandmother used to say so colorfully, 'chicks dig smart guys.' We fell in love. He has other women here and there, but he comes back to me. We bond over science, and that I share with no other woman. I am satisfied."

"But, he's an old man," Marguerite said.

"And I'm an old woman. But he's only forty-two. That's the way people age here in the Renaissance. He looks much older, and I come from a time in which nutrition and better care make me fortunate enough to look younger. But we weren't always old. And," she added with a wicked twinkle in her eyes, "for some things it really doesn't matter."

"Mother!" Lorraine exclaimed, aghast.

Genevieve laughed. She opened two doors. The sun fell on a bed, washstand, and chair in each room. "I'll have to lend you clean clothes, since you didn't bring luggage, but we're all close to the same size. Thank heavens for strong genetics. The timeshare is only for two weeks, but I have so much to show you. His grace has asked to meet you. It's a great honor. Dinner is in two hours. Iskander will take you on a tour of the city."

Once Marguerite had closed the door, Lorraine tried to draw Genevieve into her guest room. "Mother, please, can't we talk?"

Genevieve gently took her fingers from her sleeve and patted them with her other hand. "Later, darling. We'll talk more at dinner."

But dinner provided no time for private conversation. The son of the duke of Padua was present in the place of honor at the head of the long table, along with his wife and young sons, who waited on their parents. The other seats were filled by several prosperous merchants of the town. Most of the conversation was about trade, but in the middle of a fish course, a pike served with leeks and tarragon, it turned to Leonardo's work.

"So, I hear you are building a machine that flies?" the n.o.bleman asked.

"Alas, it does not fly, except in my dreams," Leonardo said, with a smile.

"What is the problem?"

"Mainly that no means of driving its wings exists, at least at present. It is a problem I cannot yet solve, but rest a.s.sured I continue to try."

"You have created nothing that can press the air into it, as a bird's wing?" the man asked. "I have seen your drawings of anatomy. Something that would cause it to flap and rise from the ground? A gigantic bellows, perhaps?"

Marguerite, an aeronautical engineer, hastily swallowed a bite. "This is not a machine that flaps, your grace, but that spins, like a child's top, and can lift that way. Or should."

"Ah." The young lord's shining dark eyes lit on her in amus.e.m.e.nt. "So, are you a woman woman of science? Where did you learn the terms? They come easily to you, I see." of science? Where did you learn the terms? They come easily to you, I see."

Lorraine, beside her, was horrified. They were supposed to be n.o.blewomen, visiting their mother for the first time. They were not to speak out in this very masculine society. The unique niche that their mother had carved with care over these last few years was not theirs to occupy.

"Forgive my sister," Lorraine said, hastily. "My mother writes to us of these things. I feel we know them as well as we know scripture. Ser Leonardo is so well regarded, even in our faraway homes." She punctuated the sentence with a stomp on her sister's foot. Marguerite gasped.

"Oh, and where do you live?" the lordling asked.

"Spain," Lorraine said, falling back upon the cover story prepared for them by Timeshares. "My husband is a merchant in Barcelona."

"You have not fallen prey to their ghastly accent," he said. "I compliment you. And you, madonna?"

After one angry glare at Lorraine, Marguerite collected herself. "England, sir. My husband has estates in the Midlands."

"And have you children?" asked the wife.

"Two sons. One is in college. Oxford."

"Only two children, but one to the priesthood?" the lady at his left asked.

d.a.m.n! Both of them had forgotten that the universities were founded mainly to train priests.

"He has a calling," Marguerite said simply.

Such things evidently did not interest the son of the duke of Padua. "When you make your whirlybird fly, Ser Leonardo, I wish to be present."

"You shall be notified, my lord," the inventor promised.

Leonardo and Genevieve exchanged amused glances. Lorraine noticed it, and felt herself flush. So now she understood why there had always been books about Leonardo all over Mother's apartment. The oil portrait in profile of her on the wall Mother said had been done for her by a friend was in his style. Now Lorraine was sure it was an original painted by Leonardo.

The party retired to a room hung with rich, incense-scented tapestries where Leonardo played tunes for them upon a lyre of his own design. Mother hung on his every word like a lovestruck teenager. Lorraine resented not being able to talk with her privately or even make eye contact. All her attention was on that man.

Lorraine was horrified to realize she was jealous of Leonardo da Vinci. She was appalled at her overwhelming gall. It was ridiculous but it was true. She glanced at Marguerite. Her sister was just as jealous. She obtained some small satisfaction from that.

She felt eyes upon her. She looked up to see the deep-set blue gaze meeting hers frankly. She blushed. Thank goodness he could not read her thoughts.

Genevieve permitted the sisters to stay with her in the atelier, as she called it in the French style, but only if they sat quietly in a corner or if they helped with the day's work. If not, they could go out and see the city of Milan with Iskander. They tried, but since even the smallest apprentice knew more than they did, and the heavy skirts of their mother's formal court dresses got underneath everyone's feet, Lorraine and Marguerite had no choice but to sit silently side by side.

"You can go out on a tour if you wish," Marguerite said, peering out of the corner of her eye at Lorraine.

"You're interested in fashion. Except Fashion Week won't be invented for five hundred more years."

"Ha ha," Lorraine said. "Why don't you you go out for a walk? Those men in the market certainly found you attractive enough to follow around." go out for a walk? Those men in the market certainly found you attractive enough to follow around."

"Shut up," Marguerite snapped.

The easels had been pushed aside for the sake of the gun commissioned by Duke Ludovico, and the metalworking equipment brought into the center of the workshop. Leonardo consulted with his workers over the plans. Prototype barrels made of soft bra.s.s were cast then cut in half to measure thickness and tolerance. From what glimpses Lorraine could catch, the internal workings of the weapon were complex. It was meant to shoot several b.a.l.l.s in succession, like the Gatling gun, still centuries in the future. Big, swarthy blacksmiths huddled shoulder to shoulder with goldsmiths and clockmakers, who would create the fine mechanism that would operate the gun. Mother took rejected design doc.u.ments to the office and returned with "updated" plans that Leonardo claimed he had waiting. The ink stains on her fingers told the sisters that she was making the changes on the plans herself, something the master guildsmen must not know, or pretended they did not. The look of concentration on Genevieve's face was so familiar to Lorraine that she almost felt as though she was a little girl again, watching her mother work at home.

"Mother," Lorraine whispered as she went by with rolls of paper in her arms. "Can we talk alone? Please?"

"Not now, darlings," Genevieve said, impatiently.

"Stop it," Marguerite hissed. "She said we had to sit and be quiet. Can't you even do that? You're trying to take up her time right in front of me!"

Lorraine fumed. She was growing bored, and the wooden stool was uncomfortable under her less than well padded bottom. Why had she traveled back over six hundred years and across an ocean to sit and watch her mother work? If she wanted that, she would have stayed home and looked at all the videos she had of her mother in the cla.s.sroom and the lab. She was wasting the opportunity of a lifetime. She ought to feel appreciative of her situation, to take advantage of it, but she could not bring herself to go out to explore Milan and leave her sister triumphantly alone on the field. And now there was that man that man.

Time crawled by until the one- handed clock touched twelve. They dined with the masters at a trestle table set up in the workshop. The workmen were polite, but their minds were focused on the project at hand. Their attempts at small talk dropped away as they recalled details they needed to draw to their employer's attention. Lorraine, who had made an effort not to sit next to her sister, ended up among a group of men who talked across her as if she was not there. Beseeching glances she sent to her mother went unmet, let alone unacknowledged.

The afternoon seemed to stretch out endlessly. Lorraine was not a physicist, but she came to understand the dilation of time at the point of perception. No hours could have pa.s.sed more slowly. Marguerite snapped every time she moved a foot or shifted on the stool.

"Stop fidgeting!"

"I'm not a statue!" Lorraine said, raising her voice so it was audible over the grinding and pounding of the machines. "Don't pick on me! I don't like this anymore than you do!"

Suddenly, all the noise stopped. Lorraine looked up guiltily to see that everyone in the room was looking at them, especially Leonardo himself. His brows were drawn down like a ruddy thundercloud over his prominent nose. Mother's face had paled. From their childhood, the sisters knew that she was really angry. She glided over to them and stood, her back rigid, her hands hidden inside her sleeves, giving nothing away.

"Go up and change into your own clothes. You leave tonight. I will call Iskander to escort you back."

"Mother, I'm so sorry," Lorraine said.

"Not another word," Genevieve snapped. "Go. I refuse to act as if I am dead so you two can learn to get along. Go away."

She turned her back on them. Lorraine was too stricken to protest. She had gone back six centuries to Milan to see her mother, and she was being sent home. Marguerite shot her a look of mixed anger and smugness.

It took only a moment for the workers to go back to their tasks and forget about the sisters as if they were not there. Lorraine rose and gathered her skirts with what dignity she could muster, and swept out of the room. Marguerite came behind her like the Roman slave with the laurel wreath to remind her she was mortal.

Undoing all the laces and ties took more time than it should have, but her fingers fumbled on them. Frustrated, Lorraine sank down on the small bed and had a good cry, but not for sorrow. She only cried that hard when she was furious. She hated Marguerite, but she almost felt as if she hated her mother, too.

A soft tap came at the door. Lorraine wiped her face with her linen undersleeve before she answered it.

The maidservant stood there. "Signora, will you come with me now? You are summoned to the dining room."

Probably Mother wanted to give her one more solid drubbing down before she left. Marguerite was already waiting in the hall.

"What is this about?" Lorraine asked.

"I don't know."

The girl stood by the door to usher them into the painted chamber.

Mother was not there. Leonardo sat at the head of the long table. They began automatically to back out of the room, but he beckoned them forward.

"Come, we must talk," he said, gesturing to the chairs on either side of him. "Please, sit. Would you like wine?"

"No." Lorraine stood at the foot of the table, keeping as great a distance between her and Leonardo as possible. Marguerite slid into one of the straight-backed chairs and yanked Lorraine's arm.

"Sit down," she hissed. "Do you want Mother angrier than she is?"

With ill grace, Lorraine seated herself. The inventor placed his long hands on the table and leaned forward over them.

"Now, what is all this about? I see how unhappy you are. You dislike each other, you dislike even me, and I am a stranger."

"Not really," Marguerite said. "I feel almost as though I know you. Mother always had books about you, copies of your work, around our house."

His face lit up. Lorraine felt her heart twist. She did not want to be attracted to him. "Did she? Then she knows how dearly I missed her as well. As you do. Tell me. Signora Lorraine?"

Lorraine pressed her lips together. She didn't want to talk to him, but he and her sister were looking at her. She shook her head.