Holy Fire

by Bruce Sterling

  “You’re very kind. Really, this is enormously helpful. Dekuji.”

  Mrs. Najadova removed a gilt-embossed gilt smartcard from her jacket pocket. “These are church services. You’re a religious girl?”

  “Well, no, not actually. I’m always pretty careful about drugs.”

  “Poor girl, you are missing the true fine part of life.” Mrs. Najadova shook her head mournfully. She set her valise down, and deftly removed a telescoping dust-mop handle and a sterile packet of adhesive sponges. “I must sample the room now. You understand?”

  Maya put the documents on the new bedspread. “You mean for contagion sampling. Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. Do you have some tailored subtilis or maybe some coli? Something I can spread around to knock back any pathogens. That corner under the sink smells kind of yeasty.”

  “From the medical support,” said Mrs. Najadova, visibly pleased. “You report for official checkup. They will give you what you need to keep good house.”

  “Isn’t there another way to get those microbe cultures? I’m not really due for a checkup just yet.”

  “But it’s free checkup! Gift by the city! It’s all written on the documents. Where to go. How to report.”

  “I see. Okay. Thanks a lot.”

  Mrs. Najadova assembled her mop and began methodically creeping about the studio, scraping and dabbing. “The potter has wild mouses.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “He has bad hygiene. He leaves food and insects come.”

  “I’ll watch for that.”

  Mrs. Najadova, having reached a decision, looked up. “Girl, you must know this. The girlfriends of this crazy man, they are not happy. Maybe at first a few days. In the end they always cry.”

  “It’s very sweet of you to be so considerate. Please don’t worry, I promise you I’m not going to marry him.”

  The door opened. A neatly hair-cut Emil came in with a shopping bag. A violent argument erupted at once, in blistering Czestina. There was shouting and stomping and vile condemnation, charge and countercharge. It seemed to last forever. At last Mrs. Najadova retreated from the studio, with a shake of her mop and a final volley of vitriolic threats. Emil slammed the door.

  “Emil, really. Was all that necessary?”

  “That woman is a cow!”

  “I’m surprised you could even remember her name.”

  Emil glowered. “To forget a lover is very sad. A tragedy. But to forget an enemy is fatal stupidity! She is a cop! And a spy! And a health inspector! And a gerontocrat! She is a bourgeoise, a philistine! A fat rich rentier! And on top of all that she is my landlord! How could she be worse?”

  “It’s true that combining landlady with all those other social functions does seem excessive.”

  “She spies on me! She reports me to hygiene authorities. She poisons the minds of my friends against me.” His brows knotted. “Did she talk to you? What did she say?”

  “We didn’t really talk. She just gave me all these free coupons. Look, I can rent a bicycle with this one. And this chipcard here has a Praha net directory in English. I wonder what it says about photography studios.”

  “It’s all rubbish. Worthless! A commercial snare!”

  “When was the last time you actually paid the rent here? I mean, how do you remember to pay the rent?”

  “Oh, I pay. Of course I pay! You think Najadova runs a charity? I’m sure she reminds me.”

  She cooked. They ate. Emil was upset. The loss of his morning and the quarrel with the landlady had put him off his feed. His hair looked much nicer now, but Emil was a congenital challenge to grooming. He spent the evening paging through his catalog of works. This was not a good sign.

  She seemed unable to shrug off the argument—the fight had shredded her nerves. As the night advanced she grew ever more irritable. She was jumpy, short-tempered. She felt bad—a strange internal tightness.

  Her breasts grew swollen and achy. Then she realized the truth. It had been such a long time that it almost felt like an illness. But it was womanhood. She was about to have her first period in forty years.

  They went to bed. Sex chased his bad mood away, but left her feeling as if she’d been sandpapered. The night wore on. She began to realize that she was in for a very hard time. No mere lighthearted hiatus in the month’s erotic festivities. The event stealing over her body was something vengeful and postwomanly and medical. Her eyelids were swollen, her face felt waxed and puffy, and an ominous intimate ache was building deep within the pelvic girdle. Her mood was profoundly unstable. It seemed to rocket up and crash down with every other breath.

  Emil tumbled into sleep. After an hour she began to quietly weep with bewilderment and pain. Crying usually helped her a lot nowadays, it came easily and would wash any sadness away like clear water over clean sand. But weeping wasn’t working that way tonight. When the tears gave out, she felt very sane, and very lucid, and very, very low.

  She shook Emil awake as he lay peacefully slumbering.

  “Darling, wake up, I have to tell you something.”

  Emil woke up, coughed, sat up in bed, and visibly reassembled his command of English. “What is it? It’s late.”

  “You remember who I am, don’t you?”

  “You’re Maya, but if you tell me anything this late at night, I won’t remember tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want you to remember it, Emil. I just want to tell it to you. I have to tell it to you. Now.”

  Emil grew alert. He tucked the heavy curtain behind the headboard of the bed and a turbid mix of moonlight and streetlight entered the studio. He looked into her eyes. “You’ve been crying.”

  “Yes …”

  “And you have to confess something? Yes, I can see.… I already know it. I can see the truth there in your eyes.… You’ve been unfaithful to me!”

  Amazed, she shook her head.

  “No, no,” he insisted, raising one hand. “You don’t have to tell me a word! It’s all too obvious! A beautiful young girl, with a poor shattered crackpot—no man in the world could be easier to deceive! I know—I offer nothing to command a woman’s loyalty. My arms, my lips—what do those matter? When Emil himself is a ghost! A man who scarcely exists!”

  “Emil, listen to me now.”

  “Did I ever ask you to be faithful to me? I never asked for that! All I asked was that you not humiliate me. I gave you freedom to do as you please—take a dozen lovers, take a hundred! Just don’t let me know. And yet you have to let me know, don’t you? You have to shatter my illusions with this … this last vile confidence.”

  “Emil, stop it! You’re acting like a child.”

  “Don’t call me your child, you tramp! I’m twice your age!”

  “No, you’re not, Emil. Be quiet now. I am much, much older than you. I’m not a young girl named Maya. I’m old, I’m an old woman. My name is Mia Ziemann and I’m almost a hundred years old.” She began to weep.

  Emil was stunned. A ghastly silence passed. Slowly, Emil withdrew by inches to his edge of the bed.

  “You’re not joking?”

  “No, I’m not joking. I’m ninety-four—ninety-five, something like that—and in my own way, I’m a lot like you. I underwent a very powerful upgrade. Just a few months ago. It made me this way, and it broke me into pieces, it put me on the far side of everything. ”

  “You weren’t unfaithful to me?”

  “No! Emil, no, that has nothing to do with reality! I’m telling you the truth here. Get it through your head.”

  “You’re telling me you’re a hundred years old. Even though you’re very obviously about twenty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’re not an old woman. I know old women. I’ve even had old women. You may be a lot of things, my dear, but you’re not an old woman.” He sighed. “You’ve taken something. You’re tight.”

  “The only thing I’m tight on is Neo-Telomeric Dissipative Cellular Detoxification, and believe me, compared to the harmless tincture dope
you little kids like to mess with, this stuff is voodoo.”

  “You’re telling me you’re a female gerontocrat? Why aren’t you snug in your penthouse with a hundred monitors on you?”

  “Because I tore them all off and I skipped town, that’s why. I signed all their papers for very advanced treatment and then I broke every law in the book. I hitched a plane to Europe. I’m on the lam. I’m an illegal alien and a fugitive from a research program. And Emil, someday they’re going to catch me. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” She began sobbing bitterly.

  He waited a while, and when he spoke again his voice had changed. Bewildered, quizzical. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She choked on her tears, too wracked with anguish to go on.

  He waited another while, and then spoke in yet another tone. Speculative, stunned. “What am I supposed to do with you now?”

  She wailed aloud.

  “I think I understand now,” Emil concluded at last, loudly and finally. “You’re something truly freakish, aren’t you? You’re like a little vampire! Feeding on me! Feeding on my life and my youth! You’re like a little lamia from the storybooks. A little … bloodsucking … posthuman … demon-lover … incubus!”

  “Stop! Stop it! Don’t go on, I’m going to kill myself!”

  “Something like this could only happen in Praha,” Emil declared slowly, and with increasingly obvious satisfaction. “Only here in the Golden City. The City of Alchemists. That’s a very, very odd story that you just told me. It’s almost too odd to think about! To have heard such a story! In a very strange way, it makes me feel very proud to be Czech.”

  She wiped her streaming eyes with the edge of the sheet. “What’s all that?”

  “I’m the victim in this tale, aren’t I? I’m the sacrificial victim. I’m the toy for a sexual golem. Why, it’s the most amazing thing … the most amazing, mystical … It’s so dark and strange and erotic.” He looked at her. “Why did you ever choose me?”

  “I just … I just really liked your hands.”

  “It’s too astonishing.” Emil adjusted his pillow. “You can stop crying now. Go ahead, stop it.” He leaned back and interlaced his fingers on his hairy chest. “I won’t tell a soul. Your terrible secrets are completely safe with me. No one would believe me anyway.”

  The extent of his egotism stunned her so much that she almost forgot her despair. “You don’t think I should … kill myself?” she said in a small voice.

  “My goodness, woman, what’s the point? There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re no criminal, you just defrauded the gerontocrats of a few of their lab-rat studies. What are they supposed to do to you—make you old again? Shrivel you up in daylight like an apple in a cellar? They can’t do that. They think they rule the world, but they’re all doomed, a gang of sick centenarians with their ridiculous technologies.… Trifling and tinkering with human flesh, when they have no concept of the power of imagination … And all to send me you! You! Like a little pink beach crab just pulled out of her shell!”

  “I’m not a little beach crab. And I’m not an incubus.” She drew a harsh breath. “I’m an outlaw.”

  He laughed.

  “I am! I used to pretend that I was someone else, really someone else, so that I didn’t have to face up to what I really wanted. But I was lying, because I was Mia all along, I’ve always been Mia, and I’m Mia right now, and I hate them! They don’t want me to live! They only want me to exist and wear out the days and the years, just like they do! I could walk into the street right now—well, if I put on some clothes—and I could call the lab in the Bay, and I could say, ‘Hello everybody in California, it’s me, it’s Mia Ziemann, I just had a bad reaction to the treatment, I’m sorry, I’m in Europe, I lost my head for a while, please take me back, put all your things inside me and up me and on me, I’m all right now, I’ll be really good.’ And they would! They’d send a plane and probably a reporter, and they’d give me my job back and put a cold towel on my forehead. They’re so stupid, they should all die! I’ll never go back to that life, I’d rather be killed, I’d rather jump out the window.” She was trembling.

  Emil touched her hand, and said nothing for a long time. Finally he got up and fetched her a glass of water. She drank it thirstily, and wiped at her eyes.

  “That’s what you had to tell me, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all of it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Did you ever tell it to me before?”

  “No, Emil, never. I’ve never told it to you or to anyone else. You’re the first one, truly.”

  “Do you think you’ll have to tell it to me again?” She paused, considering. “Do you think that you’ll remember it?”

  “I don’t know. I might remember it. I don’t often remember things that I’m told this late at night. I might not remember it with some other woman, either, but there’s something very deep about the two of us. You and me. I think … I think we were fated to meet.”

  “Well … Maybe we … No. No, I can’t believe that, Emil. I’m not religious, I’m not superstitious, I’m not even mystical, I’m just posthuman. I’m posthuman, I made a moral choice to go beyond the limits. I made that choice with my eyes open, and now I have to learn how to survive in my own private nightmare.”

  “I know a way out for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll have to be brave. But I can mold you all into one piece. No doubts, no secrets, no pains, just one whole new woman. If you wanted me to.”

  “Oh, Emil …” She stared at him. “Not the amnesiac.”

  “Of course the amnesiac. You wouldn’t think I could misplace a valuable thing like that, I hope. This Ziemann person you talk about, this old woman, this incubus that you have … We could brush her away from you. Clean away, just like a witch’s broom.”

  “How would that help us? I’d still be an illegal alien.”

  “No you wouldn’t. We’d brush that away too. You’d be my wife. You’d be young. And new. And fresh. And you’d love me. And I’d love you.” He sat up in bed, waving his hands. “We’d write it all down tonight. We’d explain to ourselves just how to go about it, so we could see it together in the morning. We’d get Paul to help us. Paul is good, he’s clever, he has friends and influence, he likes me. We’ll marry, we’ll leave the city, we’ll go into Bohemia. We’ll plant a garden and work clay. We’ll be two new creatures together in the countryside, and we’ll live outside bourgeois reality, forever!”

  He was full of passionate excited inspiration and conviction, and she was trying to respond to him, when the black lightning of suspicion hit her and she knew, with a deep uneasy lurch, that he had made this offer to other women before.

  When she woke in the morning there was no sign of Emil. The room reeked of blood. She’d bled all over the sheets. She crawled out of bed, stuffed a makeshift pad into her underwear, put on a robe, and made herself a pain tincture. She drank it, she stripped the sheets, she turned over the stained mattress, and then collapsed into bed exhausted.

  Around noon there was a knock on the door. “Go away,” she moaned.

  A key rattled in the lock and the door opened. It was Paul.

  “Oh it’s you,” she blurted. “Ciao Paul.”

  “Good afternoon. May I come in?” Paul stepped into the studio. “I see that you’re alive. That’s excellent news. Are you ill?”

  “No. Yes. No. How can I put this delicately? I’m not at my feminine best.”

  “And that’s all? That’s it? Well.” Paul smiled briefly. “I understand.”

  “Where is Emil?”

  “Yes,” Paul hedged. “Let’s discuss that, shall we? Your name is Maya, am I right? We met very briefly at last month’s session at the Tête. Your friend was the couturiere who got very tight and had the shoving match with Niko.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about that.”

  “Have you eaten?” said
Paul, slinging his backpack onto the floor beside the kiln. He smoothed his dark hair back with both hands. “I haven’t eaten today. Let me make us something. This kitchen seems nicely stocked. How about a goulash?”

  “Oh goodness no.”

  “A little kasha. Something very light and restorative.” Paul began running water. “How long have you known our good friend Emil?”

  “I’ve been living with him ever since that night at the Tête.”

  “Three weeks with Emil! You’re a brave woman.”

  “I’m not the first.”

  “You’ve made changes here,” Paul said, gazing alertly about the studio. “I admire your sense of devotion. Emil requires a lot of looking after. He called me this morning. Very agitated. I took the express from Stuttgart.”

  “I see.” She found the bedspread and pulled it up over her knees. “He said you were close friends. He always speaks very highly of you.”

  “Does he? That’s touching. Of course, it was natural of Emil to call me. I have my net-address tattooed onto his forearm.”

  She blinked. “I never noticed any such tattoo.”

  “It’s rather subtle. The tattoo only becomes visible on his skin when he is very upset.”

  “Was Emil very upset this morning?”

  Paul sifted yellow powder into a saucepan. “He woke me this morning and told me that a strange woman was dying in his bed. Dying, or possibly dead. An incubus. A golem. He was very confused.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s relaxing, he’s having a sauna. Schwartz is looking after him. I’ll have to call them now. Just a moment.” Paul undipped the netlink from his collar and began speaking in Deutsch as he delicately stirred the pan. Paul was soothing, then funny, then authoritative, then lightly satirical. When Paul had restored sense and order to the universe, he clipped the phone back to his shirt collar.