Holy Fire (23 page)

“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.

W
hen 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.

“You should keep your fluids up,” he said. “How about a nice mineralka? With maybe two hundred micrograms targeted enkephalin and a bit of diuretic and relaxant.
That should put you to rights.” He fetched his backpack, opened it, and pulled out a clear zippered bag. It held an arsenal of stickered foils and airtight capsules.

“Did you think I’d be dead when you walked in here, Paul?”

“The world is full of possibilities.” Paul opened a cabinet, retrieving spoons and bowls. “I thought it best to be here first, that’s all.”

“To put the proper cast on the situation before the authorities showed up?”

“If you like.” He brought her a fine ceramic bowl of steaming mush and a tapered china vase of mineral water. “You’ll feel less distraught if you eat this.” He went back and fetched his own bowl.

She sipped at her fizzing mineralka. “
Merci beaucoup.
”

“English is fine, Maya. I’m a programmer, I’m a conquered subject of the global argot of technique. We might as well collaborate with English. It’s silly to fight it now.”

They sliced a yellow stick of lipid and stirred white cubes of sucrose into their kasha, and they ate together on the bed. The cozy little ritual made her feel five years old. She was very weak and had a viperish temper. It was not a good idea to fight with Paul.

“I’m not easy to get along with when I’m this way,” she said. “We had an argument last night and I upset him. It’s not good to tell him things late at night, it affects his sleep.” She sighed. “Besides, this morning I do look half-dead.”

“Not at all,” said Paul. “In your own hair and without cosmetics your face has great character. Less conventionally pretty perhaps, but far more compelling. There’s an element of melancholy remoteness, a Weltschmerz. It’s a face that is almost iconic.”