Holy Fire (12 page)

Up on the tower’s steeple, dangling by their heels high above the platz, were three naked Catholics with their arms folded in prayer. They were doing a penitential performance ritual. Not calling any outrageous attention to themselves or anything, in fact it was pretty hard to notice the Catholics up there, dangling naked by the ridged teeth of the stone Gothic spire. They were exposing the flesh to the wind and the cold, very pious and dedicated, and obviously higher than kites.

Someone spoke to her, right at her elbow. She turned, looking away from the steeple penitents. “What?” she said.

And there stood a young good-looking guy in a sheepskin
jacket and sheepskin pants—basically, in fact, the guy was wearing an entire sheep, included the tanned and eyeless head, which was part of his jacket lapel. He was white and woolly-curly all over. But he had black slicked-back hair, which went well with his rather slicked-back forehead and his sloping black eyebrows. “Ah, English,” he said. “No problem, I speak English.”

“You do? Good. Hi!”

“Hi. From where are you coming?”

“California.”

“Just come to Munchen today?”

“
Ja
.”

He smiled. “What’s your name?”

“Maya.”

“I’m Ulrich. Welcome to my beautiful city. So you’re all alone, no parents, no boyfriend? You are standing here in the Marienplatz two hours, you don’t meet anybody, you don’t do anything.” He laughed. “Are you lost?”

“I don’t have to go anywhere in particular, I’m just passing through.”

“You
are
lost.”

“Well,” Maya said, “maybe I am a little lost. But at least I haven’t been spying on other people for two whole hours, like you have.”

Ulrich smiled slowly, swung a big brown backpack off his shoulders, and set it at his feet. “How could I help but to watch such a beautiful woman?”

Maya felt her eyes widen. “You really think so? Oh, dear …”

“Yes, yes! I can’t be the first man to tell you this news! You’re lovely. You’re beautiful! You’re cute like a big rabbit.”

“I bet that sounds really nice in Deutsch, Ulrich, but …”

“I’m sure I can help you. Where’s your hotel?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Well, where’s your luggage, then?”

She lifted her handbag.

“No luggage. No hotel. No place to go. No parents, no boyfriend. You got any money?”

“No.”

“How about an ID? I hope you have your ID.”

“Especially no ID.”

“So. Then you are a runaway.” Ulrich thought this over, with evident glee. “Well, I have good news for you, Miss Maya the Runaway. You’re not the only runaway to come to Munchen.”

“I was kind of thinking of taking the train back to Frankfurt tonight, actually.”

“Frankfurt! What a waste! Frankfurt is a tomb. A grave! Come with me and I’ll take you to the most famous pub in the world!”

“Why should I go anywhere with some guy who’s so terribly mean to sheep?”

Ulrich touched his sheepskin coat with a look of wounded shock. “You’re making funny! I’m not mean! I killed this sheep myself in single combat. He wanted to take my life! Come with me and I’ll take you to the famous Hofbrauhaus. They’re eating meat! And drinking beer!”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s not far.” Ulrich crossed his fleecy white arms. “You want to see, or don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do want to see. Okay.”

He took her to the Hofbrauhaus, just as he had promised. There were massive stone arches outside and big brass-bound doors and uniformed civil-support people. Ulrich shrugged out of his coat, and quite neatly, in a matter of seconds, stepped deftly out of his pants. He stuffed the sheepskins into his capacious backpack. Beneath the skins he was wearing brightly patterned leotards.

Inside, the Hofbrauhaus had a vaulted ceiling with murals and ironwork and lanterns. It was wonderfully warm and smelled very powerfully of burning and stewing animal meat.
A veteran brass band in odd hats and thick suspenders was playing two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old polkas, the kind of folk music that was so well worn that it slipped through your ears like pebbles down a stream. Strangers were crammed together at long polished wooden benches and tables, getting full of alcoholic bonhomie. Maya was relieved to see that most of them weren’t actually drinking the alcohol. Instead, they were drinking big cold malts and inhaling the alcohol on the side through little lipid-tagged nose snifters. This much reduced the dosage and kept the poison away from the liver.

It was loud inside. “You want to eat something?” Ulrich shouted.

Maya looked at a passing platter. Chunks of animal flesh swimming in brown juices, shredded kraut, potato dumplings. “I’m not hungry!”

“You want to drink some beer?”

“Ick!”

“What do you want, then?”

“I dunno. Just to watch everybody act weird, I guess. Is there some quiet place here where we can sit down and talk?”

Ulrich’s long brows knotted, in impatience with her, she thought, and then he methodically scanned the crowd. “Do something for me, all right? You see that old tourist lady there with the notebook?”

“Yes?”

“Go ask her if she has a tourist map. Talk to her for one minute, sixty seconds, nothing more. Ask her … ask if she can tell you where is the Chinese Tower. Then come outside the Hofbrauhaus and meet with me again. In the street.”

“Why?” She looked searchingly into his face. “You want me to do something bad.”

“A little bad maybe. But very useful for us. Go and talk to her. There’s no harm in talking.”

Maya went to stand by the old woman. The old woman was methodically and neatly eating noodles with a fork and a spoon. She was drinking a bottle of something called Fruchtlimo and was very nicely dressed. “Excuse me, ma’am, do you speak English?”

“Yes, I do, young lady.”

“Do you have a map of Munchen? In English? I’m looking for a certain place.”

“Of course I do. Glad to help.” The woman opened her notebook and deftly shuffled screens. “What do they call this place you want to go?”

“The Chinese Tower.”

“Oh, yes. I know that place. Here we go.… ” She pointed. “It’s located in the English Gardens. A park designed by Count von Rumford in the 1790s. The Count von Rumford was Benjamin Thompson, an American emigré.” She looked up brightly. “Isn’t it funny to think of a town this ancient being redesigned by one of our fellow Americans!”

“Almost as funny as Indianapolis being redesigned by an Indonesian.”

“Well,” said the woman, frowning, “that all happened long before you were born. But I happen to be from Indiana, and I was there when the Indonesians bought the city, and believe me, when that happened we didn’t think it was very funny.”

“Thanks a lot for your help, ma’am.”

“Would you like me to print you a map? I have a scroller in my purse.”

“That’s okay. I have to meet someone, I have to go now.”

“But it’s quite a long way to the tower, you might get lost. Let me just …” She paused, surprised. “My purse is gone.”

“You lost your purse?”

“No, I didn’t lose it. It was right here, right below the bench.” She glanced around, then up at Maya. She lowered
her voice. “I’m afraid someone’s taken my purse. Stolen it. Oh, dear. This is very sad.”

“I’m sorry,” Maya said, inadequately.

“Now I’m afraid I’ll have to talk with the authorities.” The old woman sighed. “This is very distressing. They’ll be so embarrassed, poor things.… It’s dreadful when things like this happen to guests.”

“It’s very nice of you to think of their feelings.”

“Well, of course it’s not my loss of a few possessions, it’s the violation of civility that hurts.”

“I know that,” Maya said, “and I’m truly sorry. I wish you could take my purse instead.” She put her own bag on the table. “There’s not much in here, but I wish you could have it.”

The old woman looked at her for the first time, directly, eye to eye. Something quite strange happened between them then. The woman’s eyes widened and she turned pale. “Didn’t you say that you had an appointment,” she said at last in a tentative voice, “that you had an appointment, ma’am? Please don’t let me keep you.”

“Yes, okay,” Maya said, “good-bye,
wiedersehen
.” She left the Hofbrauhaus.

Ulrich was waiting for her outside in the street. He had put his woolly suit back on. “You take much too long,” he chided, turning. “Come with me.” He began walking up the street, to a tubestation.

On the way down the escalator Ulrich opened his brown backpack and began rooting in its depths. “Ah-hah! Yes, I knew it.” He pulled up a little featherlight earclamp. “Here, wear this on.”

Maya put the earclamp onto her right ear. Ulrich began speaking to her in Deutsch. A stream of Deutsch gibberish emerged from his lips, and the earclamp began translating on the fly.

“[This will be much better,]” the earclamp repeated, in dulcet mid-Atlantic English. “[Now we’ll be able to converse in something like intellectual parity.]”

“What?” Maya said.

“The translator works, isn’t it?” Ulrich spoke English and patted his ear anxiously.

“Oh.” Maya touched the earclamp. “Yes, it’s working.”

Ulrich slipped happily back into Deutsch. “[Well, then! Now I can demonstrate to you that I’m rather a more clever and resourceful fellow than my limited skills in English irregular grammar might indicate.]”

“You just stole that woman’s purse.”

“[Yes, I did that. It was expedient. It was too frustrating to speak to you otherwise. I was sure that a woman of her age and class would have a tourist’s translator. And who knows, perhaps there are other interesting things in the purse.]”

“What if they catch you? Catch us?”

“[They won’t catch us. When I took the purse I was in my leotards, and there was no one in brightly colored leotards recorded entering or leaving the building. There are certain techniques by which one does these appropriations safely. The craft is difficult to explain to a neophyte.]” Ulrich brushed briskly at the woolly sleeves of his jacket. “[But back to the point. I’m rather good at understanding English, not so good at speaking it.]” Ulrich laughed. “[So you can speak to me in English, and I will speak to your earpiece in Deutsch, and we’ll get on very well.]”

They reached the bottom of the escalator and began working their way through the maze of potted plants: cy-cads, ferns, gingkos. “[When someone speaks a pidgin version of your language,]” Ulrich told her, “[it’s hard not to underestimate their intellect. They always seem like such a fool. I wouldn’t care to have you underestimate me. That misapprehension would put us on entirely the wrong footing.]”

“Okay. I understand you. You can speak beautifully. But you’re a thief.”

“[Yes, we European purse-snatchers have traditionally
benefited by an exquisite education.]” She could hear the tone of sarcasm in Ulrich’s Deutsch even as she heard the running translation in English. The translator had a way of punching bits of English, with just the right pitch and timbre, through the blocky syllables inside the Deutsch. This was going to take some getting used to.

They stepped aboard a tube train, and sat together in the back of the car. Ulrich didn’t bother to pay. “[It’s better to leave the scene of the crime in short order,]” he murmured. He took her handbag from her, opened it, and emptied the entire contents of the stolen purse into it, deftly hiding the operation in the cavernous depths of his own backpack. “[Here,]” he said, giving her back her own handbag. “[That’s all yours now. See what you can find that’s of use to you.]”

“This is very dishonest.”

“[Maya, you are dishonest. You are an illegal alien traveling without ID,]” Ulrich said. “[Are you ready to be honest and to go home? Do you want to honestly face the people that you ran away from?]”

“No. No, definitely, I don’t want that.”

“[Then you’re breaking the rules already. You will have to break a lot more such silly rules. You can’t get a real job without ID. You can’t get health checks, you can’t get insurance. If the police ever bother to formally question you, they will take one little sniff of your DNA and they will find out who you are. No matter where you came from in the whole wide world, no matter who you are. The polity’s medical databanks are very good.]” Ulrich rubbed his chin. “[Maya, do you know what an ‘Information Society’ is?]”

“Sure. I guess so.”

“[Europe is a true Information Society. A true Information Society is a society made of informers.]” Ulrich’s dark eyes narrowed. “[A society of ‘rats.’ ‘Sneaks.’ ‘Snitches.’ ‘Judases.’ ‘Stool pigeons.’ Is my rhetorical point penetrating that translator?]”

“Yes, it is.”

“[Then that’s a fine translator! What an excellent grasp of the Deutsch vernacular!]” Ulrich laughed cheerfully, and lowered his voice. “[München is a good place to hide, because the police here move slowly. If you’re smart and you have good friends, then you can survive in München as a runaway. But if they ever take real notice of you, then the bulls will come to arrest you. You can count on that.]”

“Are you an illegal, Ulrich?”

“[Not at all, I’m a legal Deutschlander. Twenty-three years old.]” He stretched, putting his arm behind her shoulders. “[I simply enjoy pursuing the life of a petty criminal for reasons of pleasure and ideology. Too much honesty is bad for people.]”

Maya looked inside her handbag. She felt a vague urge to complain further, but she decided to shut up when she saw what a fine haul he’d made. The minibank was useless away from its proper owner, of course, but there were a couple of cashcards in there with pin money already slotted in them. Also a Munchen tubeticket. Sunglasses. Brush and comb set. Hair lacquer. Lipstick (not her color), night cream (hydrolyzer compound), internal pH chalk (peppermint flavored). Mineral tabs for tinctures. A hypo set. Tissues. A handsome little netlink. A scroller. And a camera.

Maya fished out the camera. A little digital tourist job. It fit her hand with lovely smoothness. She peered experimentally through the lens, then turned and framed Ulrich’s face. He flinched away, and quickly shook his head.

Maya examined the camera’s readout and cleared the internal disk of photos. “You really want me to keep all this stuff?”