Holy Fire (29 page)

“It’s very rare to be married for an entire century. You must be very proud.”

“It can be done. If you forgive one another that awesome vulgarity of intimate desire—well, Milena and I are both collectors, we hate to throw things away.” Novak reached one-handed to his collar and detached his netlink. He thumbed a net-address.

“Hello?” he barked. “Oh, voice mail, eh?” Novak slipped into angry Czestina. “[Still avoiding me? Well, listen to this, you drone! It’s unthinkable—it’s impossible!—that an aged invalid, missing his right arm, forgotten by the world, with no proper studio, and no professional help, could have a turnover of thirty thousand marks in a year! That assessment is preposterous! Especially for the year 2095, a year very poor in commissions! And what’s this needless claptrap about the ’92 extensions? Still demanding your late fees? And even penalties? After you bled us dry? An Artist of Merit of the Czech Republic! A five-time winner of the Praha Municipal Prize! Brought to his knees through your crazy persecutions! It’s an open
scandal! You haven’t heard the last from me, you shiftless dodger.]” He shut the link.

“You tell them again and again,” he mourned. “You pile up attestations, applications, documents, years and years of legal correspondence! Oh, they’re senseless. They’re like Capek’s robots.” He shook his head, then smiled grimly. “But I don’t worry! Because I am very patient, so I will outlast them.”

A private business plane was waiting for them at the Praha tarmac, a vision of aviation elegance in white, silver, and peacock blue. “Look at this,” Novak fretted, at the foot of the hinged and perforated entry stairs. “Giancarlo should have sent a steward for me. He knows my grave state of decline.”

“I’m here, Josef, I’ll be your steward.” She opened the trunk and gathered their luggage.

“He’s such a creature
di moda
, Giancarlo. You should see his château in Gstaad, it’s infested with those Stuttgart lobsters. You know, if they go haywire those crazy machines can murder you. Clip your throat clean through with pincers while you sleep.” Novak stepped aside as Maya lugged the heavy baggage into the plane. Then he hopped spryly up the steps.

There were no beanbags. Maya paused, puzzled. Novak crouched where he stood, and a chair leapt into existence beneath him with silent blinding speed. The plane’s flooring resembled fine Italian marble, but when presented with a lowering human rump its tricky surface puffed up a translucent airtight chair like a supersonic blister. Maya sat at random and a new chair leapt up instantly and caught her. “What a lovely plane this is,” Maya said, patting the ductile arms of her chair.

“Thank you, madame,” said the plane. “Are we ready for departure?”

“I suppose we are,” Novak grumbled. The long slender wings underwent a silent high-speed vibration. The plane ascended vertically.

Novak gazed out the window with silent concentration until the last of his beloved Praha was out of sight. Then he turned to her.

“Do you model? Surely you must,” he said.

“Sometimes.”

“Do you have an agency?”

“No. I’ve never modeled for real money.” She paused. “I don’t
want
to do it for money. But I’ll model for you, if you want me to.”

“Can you show clothes? Do you know how to walk?”

“I’ve seen models walking.… But no, I don’t know how.”

“Then I’ll teach you,” Novak said. “Watch carefully, and see how I place my feet.” They stood and their chairs vanished instantly, like silent burst balloons. Without the clutter of chairs around, there was lots of room to learn.

I
n 2065, Innocent XIV had become the first pope to undergo life extension. The exact nature of the pope’s treatment was shrouded in mystery, a rare and very diplomatic exception to the usual political practice of full medical disclosure. The pope’s decision, with its profound violation of the natural God-given life span and its grave challenge to the normal processes of papal succession, had caused a crisis in the Church.

The College of Cardinals, meeting in council to discuss the implications of the pope’s action, had experienced an episode of divine possession. Their frenzied spiritual exaltation, ecstatic dancing, and babbling in tongues had looked to skeptics like chemically propelled hallucination. But those who had directly experienced the descent of holy fire had no doubt of its sacred origin. The Church had always survived the uncharitable speculations of skeptics.

After this divine intervention, formal Church approval of certain processes of posthumanization had swiftly followed.
The Church now recommended its own designated series of life-extension techniques. These approved medical procedures, along with modern entheogenic tincture communions and various spiritual disciplines, were formally known as the “New Emulation of Christ.”

The humble and metabolically tireless Holy Father, with his long white beard now grown out black for half its length, had become a central, iconic figure of European modernity. Many had once considered Innocent a mere careerist, the genial caretaker of an ancient faith in decline. After the holy fire, it became clear to all that the reborn pope possessed genuinely superhuman qualities. The pope’s astonishing eloquence, his sincerity and his manifest goodwill, shook even the most cynical.

As his chemically amplified Church reconquered the lost ground of ancient Christendom, the vicar of Christ began to manifest miracles unknown since the days of the apostles. The pope had cured the lame and the halt with a word and a touch. He had cast out devils from the minds of the mentally ill. Furthermore, their recovery was often permanent.

He could also prophesy—in detail, and often rather accurately. Many people believed that the pope could read minds. This paranormal claim was attested not merely by credulous Catholics, but by diplomats and statespeople, scientists and lawyers. His uncanny insight into the souls of others had often been demonstrated on the world political stage. Hardened warlords and career criminals, brought into private audience with the pontiff, had emerged as shattered men, confessing their sins to the world in an agony of regret.

Pope Innocent had succored the poor, sheltered the homeless, shamed recalcitrant governments into new and more humane social policies. He had founded mighty hospitals and teaching orders, libraries, netsites, museums, and universities. He had dotted Europe with shelters and amenities for the mendicant and pilgrim. He had rebuilt
the Vatican, and had turned ancient cathedrals and churches worldwide into ecstatic centers of Christian spirituality, vibrant with the awesome celestial virtualities of the modern Mass. He was certainly the greatest pope of the twenty-first century, probably the greatest pope of the last ten centuries, perhaps the greatest pope of all time. His sainthood was a certainty, if he could ever find the time and opportunity to die.

Maya found Roma a mess. There had been a miracle the day before. Miracles had become relative commonplaces since the advent of entheogens; it now took very unusual circumstances to attract public attention to sightings of supernatural entities. This latest miracle had raised the ante on the supernatural: the Virgin Mary had manifested herself to two children, a dog, and a Public Telepresence Point.

Children did not normally take entheogens. Even postcanine dogs were rarely given to spiritual revelations. And the recordings in Public Telepresence Points were supposed to be beyond alteration; they were certainly not supposed to show pillowcaselike glowing blurs levitating over the Viale Guglielmo Marconi.

The Romans were not particularly impressed by miracles. Goings-on at the Vatican rarely impressed native Romans. Nevertheless, the devout had poured into Roma from all over Europe to pray, do penance, to seek out relics, to enjoy the media coverage. The traffic—buses, bikes, trailers, sacred tourist groups in the robes of Franciscan mendicants—was dense, loud, incredible, festive, beyond sane management, primal Italian. It was also raining.

Maya gazed through the rain-streaked window of their latest limo. “Josef, are you religious?”

“There are many worlds. There is a world here which perceives in darkness,” said Novak, tapping his wrinkled forehead. “There is a material world, the world lit by the sun. There is also virtuality, our modern immateriality
pretending to exist. Religion is a virtuality of sorts. A very old one.”

“But are you a believer?”

“I believe a few very modest things. I believe that if you take an object, and make it come to life through light, and carry that perception of life into a virtual representation, then you have achieved what they call ‘lyricism.’ Some people have a great irrational need for religion. I have a great irrational need for lyricism. I can’t help myself, and I’m not interested in debate about it. So I won’t trouble the faithful, if they don’t trouble me.”

“But there must be half a million people here today! All because of some dog and a computer and a couple of kids. What do you think about that?”

“I think Giancarlo will be piqued to be upstaged.”

The limo, sparring gamely with the Roman traffic, carried them to their hotel, which, of course, was badly overbooked. Novak engaged in a vicious multilingual fight with the concierge, and won them separate rooms, to the considerable discomfiture of everyone in the lobby. Maya bathed and sent her clothes out.

When her clothes returned, an evening gown came with them. Novak’s idea of feminine formal wear looked touchingly old-fashioned, but it was freshly instantiated and it seemed to fit very well, a credit to Novak’s photographic eye for proportion.

Giancarlo Vietti, the master couturier of Emporio Vietti, was presenting his seventy-fifth spring collection. An event of this magnitude required a proper setting. Vietti had hired the Kio Amphitheater, an arched colossus in exquisite pastiche, built by an eccentric Nipponese billionaire after an earthquake had devastated much of Roma’s Flaminio district.

They pulled up in front of the roseate columnar Kio and departed their taxi amid a sidewalk jostle of spex-clad Roman paparazzi. Novak did not seem particularly well
known in Roma, but with his single arm he was certainly easy to spot. He ignored the clamoring paparazzi, but he ignored them very slowly.

They worked their way up the stairs. Novak examined the towering faux-marble facade with a feral eye. “Living proof that the past is a finite resource,” he muttered. “It would have been better to mimic Indianapolis than to try to out-fascist Mussolini—with cheap materials.”

Maya found herself admiring the place. It lacked the weed-eaten stony authenticity of Roma’s many actual ruins, but it seemed transcendantly functional and had all the unconscious grace of a well-designed photocopier.

They entered the building, logged in, and discovered three hundred people preparing to eat, attended by crabs.

So many old people. She was struck by their corporate air of monumental gravity, by the striking fact that this chattering tonnage of well-manicured and brilliantly dressed flesh was so much older than the building that housed it.

These were Europe’s shiny set. A people who had beaten time into submission, and with their spex-hooded, prescient eyes they looked as though they could stare through solid rock. Veterans of European couture, they had taken the essence of neophiliac evanescence and had frozen it around themselves like a shroud. They were as glamorous as pharaonic tomb paintings.

Novak slipped on his own pair of spex, then made his way deftly to his appointed place, following some social cue narrowcast to the lenses. Novak and Maya sat together at a small round table set with silver, draped in cream-colored linen, and surrounded by upholstered stools. “Good evening, Josef,” said the man across the table.

“Hello, Daizaburo, dear old colleague. It’s been a long time.”

Daizaburo examined Maya over the rim of his elaborate spex with the remote and chilly interest of a lepidopterist. “She’s lovely. Where on earth did you find that gown?”

“The first Vietti original I ever shot,” said Novak.

“I’m astonished that particular Vietti is still on file.”

“Giancarlo may have purged it from his own files. Mine are high capacity.”

“Giancarlo was so young then,” Daizaburo said. “Juvenilia suits your little friend so well. We’re taking waters. Would you like a water?”

“Why not?” said Novak.

Daizaburo signaled a crab. It began speaking Nihongo. “English, please,” said Daizaburo.

“Antarctic glacier water,” offered the crab. “A deep core from Pleistocene deposits. Entirely unpolluted, undisturbed since the dawn of humanity. Profoundly pure.”

“What a delightful conceit,” said Novak. “Very Vietti.”

“We have lunar water,” said the crab. “Very interesting isotopic properties.”

“Did you ever drink water from the moon, my dear?” Novak asked her.

Maya shook her head.

“We’ll have the lunar water,” Novak ordered.

A second crab arrived with a vacuum-sealed vial. Using shining forceps, it dropped two dainty cubes of smoking blue ice into a pair of brandy glasses.

“Water is the perfect social pleasure,” said Daizaburo as the crabs stalked off to answer fresh demands. “We can’t all share the brute act of liquid consumption, but we surely can all share the ineffable pleasure of watching ice melt.”

The other woman at their little table leaned forward. She was small and shrunken and almost hairless, a person of profoundly indefinite ethnic origin who was wearing an enormous black chapeau. “It rode a comet from the rim of universe,” she lisped alertly. “Frozen six billion year. Never know the heat of life—until we drink it.”

Novak lifted his glass one-handed and swirled it, his craggy peasant face alight with anticipation. “I’m surprised there are still enough lunarians around to mine lunar ice.”

“There are seventeen survivors up there. Such a pity they all hate each other.” Daizaburo offered a brief and steely smile.

“Cosmic rebels, cosmic visionaries,” said Novak, carefully sniffing his glass. “Poor fellows, they discovered the existential difficulties of life without tradition.”

Maya looked at the people clustered at the other little tables and knowledge clicked within her like a light switch. She began cataloging treatments in her head. All these old people and all their old techniques. Wrinkle removal, hair growth, skin transplants. Blood filtration. Synthetic lymph. Nerve and muscle growth factor. Meiotic acceleration. Intracellular Antioxidant Enzymation: rejuvenant witches’ brews of arginines, ornithines and cysteines, glutathiones and catalases. Intestinal Villi Lamination (IVL). Affective Circadian Adjustment (ACA). Bone augmentation. Ceramic joint prostheses. Targeted aminoguanidines. Targeted dehydroepiandrosterone. Autoimmune Reprogramming Systematics (ARS). Atherosclerotic Microbial Scrubbing (AMS). Glial-Neural Dissipative Defibrillation (GNDD). Broad-Spectrum Kinetic Metabolic Acceleration (BSKMA). Those were old-fashioned techniques. After that they had begun getting ambitious.