They used fast-drying paints. There was no display of artistic temperament. Each one of them was a professional artist who could work to a deadline, and each had already figured out exactly how he or she would proceed. They had agreed on a consistent style, more Diego Rivera than Michelangelo, and each artist had a pre-drawn overlay for his or her particular panel plus “character studies” of the main characters, so they’d be consistent from panel to panel. A great deal of attention had been paid to the figure of Canthorel, and great trouble was taken everywhere it appeared. Canthorel became three-dimensional, individual, recognizable. Since every painter had a fortune in spray cans and mini-rollers and a huge selection of sponges and brushes, large sections of the surfaces were covered quickly. Meantime, the group of puppeteers put together their apparatus and began rehearsing.
When the four nonartists/nonactors got tired of poker (the Big SA was the big winner, fourteen dollars and twenty cents, and the president accused him of having had help), they watched, fascinated, as weapons disappeared from the Fresco to be replaced by symbols of peaceful progress, as Mengantowhai became a sage and guide instead of a bloodthirsty oppressor, and as the Pokoti race was differentiated from the Jaupati race. Since both races were extinct, it didn’t really matter what they’d looked like so long as they were different from one another. Kasiwees was murdered all over again, this time by a vengeful Pokoti. Mengantowhai passed on his virtue and power to Canthorel, who now had a very high-caste blue aura painted around him. The wine jars that had turned into assaulted Jaupati turned back into wine jars being virtuously fractured by abstemious Pistach.
The level of artistry exhibited that night was very, very high, a little slick, Chad murmured, but very high. Chiddy had been quite right when he said humans excel in artistry. There was simply no comparison between these painters and the original painter of the Fresco. The earlier panels had had no composition, no perspective, they were deficient in color, and no Pistach had ever heard of chiaroscuro. Perhaps it was the way the Pistach eyes interpreted their world, or perhaps representational art just wasn’t their thing. Whatever talent the Pistach lacked, human people had had it from their infancy. Benita found herself imagining all those old Cro Magnons sitting around the fire talking about Ugh’s lampsoot technique with mastodons, and how beautifully Glub used ocher to shade the flanks of the horse.
She also wondered what Chiddy would say when he saw it, as he eventually would. The president asked, “Will they understand what they see, or are their eyes too different?”
“They’ll understand,” Benita murmured. “They’ve been raving about the Sistine Chapel ever since they arrived.”
Along a couple of hours before sunrise, the artists finished up their panels and began circulating, critiquing one another’s work, catching little bits of this and that, symbols that weren’t clear, and so forth. Oddly enough, the Inkleozese did a fair bit of this too, suggesting a change here, an emphasis there. Benita watched them closely, and if she had had to say what they were thinking, she would have guessed they were amused, interested, and approving.
When everyone was finished, anyone would swear the Fresco had always been that way. Panel number sixteen, where Canthorel leaves Jaupat, had been considerably modified. He still left Jaupat, but with him went a winged symbol of the future, fluttering at his shoulder, and from the winged figure’s mouth came a ribbon lettered with the Pistach words that meant, In time I will return.There were also ideograms for the name Glumshalak, which Chiddy had included in his journal. As foreshadowing, it was neatly done.
It was, all in all, an excellent job, one so far above the original that its divine inspiration could hardly be doubted, particularly by Pistach who had never seen Earthly art. There was still a final step, however. When all the supplies had been put away, Chad unpacked a sprayer that contained a mix of soot, grease, and odds and ends of other pollutants mixed with a chemical dispersant. Standing well back, he went from panel to panel, spraying goop into the air until they were all just slightly hazed, nothing completely veiled, but nothing looking new, either, about the way they would have been in a few more weeks of candle smoke. A second spray gun contained pifion smoke mist, to eliminate any lingering paint smells. Benita had suggested pifion smoke, because it was one totally unfamiliar to the Pistach, or so Chiddy had told her.