Holy Fire (43 page)

“Nothing much. Well, I’m very sorry that I lost my photographs.”

“Is that all?” Helene rummaged deftly in her desk. She produced a disk. “Here.”

“Oh!” Maya clutched the disk eagerly. “You copied them! Oh, I can’t believe I have them back.” She kissed the disk. “Thank you so much!”

“You know they’re bad photographs, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know that, but I’m getting better.”

“Well, you could hardly help
that
. You’ve managed some Novak pastiches. But you have no talent.”

Maya stared. “I don’t think that’s up to you to judge.”

“Of course it’s up to me to judge,” Helene said patiently. “Who better? I knew Patzelt and Pauli and Becker. I married Capasso. I knew Ingrid Harmon when no one else thought she could paint. You’re not an artist, Mrs. Ziemann.”

“I don’t think I’m doing so badly for a student only four months old.”

“Art doesn’t come out of a metabolic support tank. If art came out of support tanks, it would make a complete mockery of genuine talent and inspiration. Those photographs are banal.”

“Paul doesn’t think so.”

“Paul …” She sighed. “Paul is not an artist. He’s a theoretician, a very young and very self-involved and very bad theoretician. When they thought they could mix art and science like whiskey and soda, they made an elementary blunder. It is crass and it’s a solecism. Science is not art. Science is a set of objective techniques to reveal reproducible
results. Machines could do science. Art is not a reproducible result. Creativity is a profoundly subjective act. You’re a woman of damaged and fragmented subjectivity.”

“I’m a woman of a
different
subjectivity. And I’d sure rather mix art and science than mix art critique and police authority.”

“I’m not an artist. I only care for them.”

“If you despise science so much, why aren’t you dead?”

Helene said nothing.

“What are you so afraid of?” Maya said. “I hate to shatter your lovely mythos there, but if art can come out of a camera, it’s got no problem crawling out of a support tank. You haven’t been in the right support tanks. I have the holy fire now. That’s a silly name for it, I guess, but it’s as real as dirt, so why should I care what you call it?”

“Show me, then,” said Helene, folding her arms. “Show me one thing truly fine. Show me something truly impressive, that you or your little friends have done. I don’t count computer hacking, any idiot can break forty-year-old security systems. I don’t count new forms of media, any fool gets cheap novelty from a new medium. They’re clever, but they have no profundity! The Tête crowd loves to whine and complain, but artists today have every advantage. Education. Leisure. Excellent health. Free food, free shelter. Unlimited travel. All the time in the world to perfect their craft. All the information that the net can feed them, the world’s whole heritage of art. And what have they given us? Profoundly bad taste.”

“What do you want from them? Your world made them. Your world made me. What do you want from me?”

Helene shrugged. “What can I do with you?”

“Come on, Helene. Don’t tell me you haven’t already made up your mind about
that.
”

Helene spread her hands. “The children don’t understand. They truly think the world is fossilizing. They have
no idea how close we are to chaos. The children want power. Power without responsibility, discretion, or maturity. They want to alter their brains! And you helped them to try it! Aren’t your brains altered enough?”

“Maybe. I know they’re pretty altered. Believe me, I can feel it. But really, I couldn’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me. How very reassuring that is. Imagine if there were genuine rebels in the modern world. Crazy rebels, true old-fashioned fanatics, but crawling out of brand-new support tanks. Did you know you can take any common tincture set and make enough nerve gas to poison a city? Here you are, darling, wrapping up in your sweet little furoshiki scarf and breaking the laws of nature with uninhibited force.… They think that you are cute.
You
think that you are cute. They think everything is under stifling control.
Nothing
is under control. Half the modern population has given up on objective reality. They are out of their minds on entheogens. They all think they see God, and if it weren’t for the fact that they love and trust their government, they’d butcher each other.”

“It’s sure a good thing you government types are so lovable, then.”

“You were government. You’re a medical economist. Aren’t you? You know very well how much trouble we’ve taken. How much labor that great effort has been. You are robbing poor, honest people so that you can have fun running off with the public’s investment in your body. Is that fair? It’s a miracle that we’ve built a just society where the rich and powerful don’t trample and steal the very lives of other people.”

“Yeah, I voted for all that,” Maya said.

“These children take the world we built for granted. They think they’re immortals. They might even be right, but they think they
deserve
immortality. They think that the increase in human life span is some mystical technological impulse. It’s not mystical. There’s nothing mystical about it. Real people are working very hard to achieve
that progress. People are breaking their hearts, and giving everything they have, to invent new ways to postpone death. You’re not an artist, but at least once you were helping society. Now you’re actively doing harm.”

“They’ve really hurt you, haven’t they?”

“Yes, they have done real harm.”

“I’m glad they hurt you.”

“I’m glad that you said that,” Helene said serenely. “I thought you were crazy, a woman of diminished moral capacity. Now I can see that you’re actively malicious.”

“What are you going to do to me? You can’t make me be Mia.”

“Of course I can’t do that. I wish I could, but it’s too late for that. We can’t do anything about a failed experiment. Experiments fail, it happens, that’s why they are experiments. But we can stop the failures; and we can try something more productive.”

“Aha.”

“You’re a medical economist. You used to judge these processes yourself. Didn’t you? How would you judge a treatment that produces cheats and mad people?”

“Helene, are you really telling me that the other NTDCD patients are behaving as oddly as I am?”

“No, I certainly am not. More than half of them have been model patients. Those are the people I truly pity. They took those treatments in good faith and fulfilled their duty to society, and now they will be stranded. Marooned in a dead extension. Because of reckless malcontents like you.”

“That’s wonderful news.” Maya laughed. “That makes me feel so happy! It’s so lovely to know I have brothers and sisters.… And you’ve even given me my pictures back! They’re bad pictures, but at least they’re real proof I’m not Mia.”

“They’re not proof of anything.”

“They are. Well, they will be. I’ll prove that I’m better
now. I’ll prove that I’m
better
than Mia. Go ahead, cut me off of treatments. I’ll prove I’m valuable, I’ll make everybody admit it. I’m worth much more to this world than a hundred thousand lousy marks.”

“You won’t prove it to me.”

“We’ll see about that. What do you know, anyway? You’re rich and famous, and a lot of men adored you, and you’re one of the major art collectors of the twenty-first century. Big deal, what does all that prove? Tell me who’s your favorite photographer.”

“I’d have to think.” Helene thought about it. “Helmut Weisgerber.”

“What, the guy who did that Arctic landscape stuff? The mountain climber? You really like Weisgerber?”

“I liked him well enough to marry him.”

“You really think Weisgerber was better than Capasso? But Eric Capasso was so sensual and lively. Capasso must have been a lot of fun.”

“Capasso had a great gift, but he was melodramatic. At heart he was a stage designer. But Weisgerber—nothing can touch a classic Weisgerber.”

“I have to admit I really love Weisgerber’s
Dead Leaf
series.”

“I commissioned those.”

“Really, Helene? That must have been fantastic.… ”

There was a timid knock at the door.

“I ordered us a mineralka,” Helene explained. “They’re very slow here.” She raised her voice. “
Entrez.
”

The door opened. It was Brett.

“Come in, Brett. We were just having a little discussion on aesthetics.”

Brett put her backpack on the floor.

“Brett, this is Helene. Helene, Brett. I mean Natalie. Sorry.”

“This is a restricted area,” Helene said, rising from her chair. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“So I broke in,” Brett said, adjusting her spex. “I thought you might be beating her with a rubber hose or something, so I came in to document it.”

“We were talking about photography,” Maya said.

“She gonna give you behavior mod?”

“No, I think the plan is to shut down my extension treatment. Apparently it’s been causing a lot of civil trouble.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s real important. A bunch of rich gerontocrats and some twisted extension treatment. That must be really fascinating.” Brett wandered to the window and looked out. “Nice view. If you like power plants.”

Helene stared at her in astonishment. “Miss, this is a police interrogation. It’s confidential. You have no business here.”

“What are you going to do to those artifice kids?”

“That subject hasn’t come up yet,” Maya said.

“You mean, they’re disturbing the universe, and you two old cows are sitting here talking about photography.” Brett flipped the window latch with her thumb. “Typical.”

“I really must ask you to leave,” said Helene. “You’re not merely being rude, you are breaking the law.”

“If I only had a gun,” Brett said, “I’d kill both of you.” She opened the window.

“Brett, what are you doing?”

Brett ducked under the window frame and stepped out onto the ledge.

“Stop her,” Maya said quickly. “Arrest her!”

“Stop her how? I don’t have a weapon.”

“Why don’t you have a weapon, for heaven’s sake?”

“Do I look like I carry a weapon?” Helene walked to the window. “Young woman, please come in at once.”

“I’m going to jump,” Brett said indistinctly.

Maya rushed to the window. Brett sidled away rapidly out of their reach.

“Brett, this is stupid. Please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. You can talk to us, Brett. Come back inside now.”

“You don’t want to talk to me. I can’t say anything that matters to you. You just don’t want to be embarrassed, that’s all.”

“Please come in,” Maya begged. “I know you’re brave. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Brett raised her cupped hands to her face. There was a stiff breeze outside and her hair was flying. “Hey, everybody!” she shouted down into the street. “I’m gonna jump!”

Maya and Helene jostled for space inside the window frame. “I’m going out after her,” Maya announced, putting her knee on the sill.

“No, you’re not. You’re in police custody. Sit down.”

“I won’t!”

Helene turned and said something in Français to the dogs. The white dog left at a brisk little run, slipping through the open door. Plato stood up, fixed his silent eyes on Maya, and growled deep in his throat. Maya sat down.

Helene leaned out the window.

“Get out of my sight, cop,” shouted Brett. “I have a perfect right to kill myself. You can’t take that away from me.”

“I agree that is your civil right,” Helene said. “No one is trying to deprive you of your rights. But you’re not thinking clearly. You’re very distraught, and it’s clear you have been taking drugs. Killing yourself will not change anything.”

“Of course it will,” said Brett. “It will change everything, for me.”

“This is very wrong,” said Helene intensely. She was doing her best to be soothing. “It will hurt everyone who loves you. If you’re doing this for a cause, it will only
discredit you in the eyes of all sensible people.” Helene glanced back hastily into the room. “Is she one of Paul’s people?” she hissed. “I’ve never seen her.”

“She’s just some kid,” Maya said.

“What was her name again?”

“Natalie.”

Helene stuck her head out again. “Natalie, look here! Natalie, stop it! Natalie, talk to me.”

“You think I want to live forever,” Natalie said. And she jumped.

Maya rushed to the window. Natalie was lying crushed in the midst of a distant little crowd. People were talking into netlinks, calling for help and advice.

“I can’t bear to look,” Helene said, and shuddered. She pulled back into the room, and took Maya by the arm.

Maya wrenched free.

“I’ve seen this so many times,” Helene said wearily. “They just do it. They just take possession of themselves and end their lives. It’s an act of enormous will.”

“You should have let me go out there after her.”

Helene shut the window with a bang. “You are in my charge, you are under arrest. You are not going anywhere, and you are not killing yourself. Sit down.”

Plato rose and began to bark. Helene caught at his collar. “Poor things,” she said, and wiped her eyes. “We have to let them go. There is no choice.… Poor things, they are only human beings.”

Maya slapped her face.

Helene looked at her in shocked surprise, then, slowly, turned her other cheek. “Do you feel better now, darling? Try the other one.”

A
merica had never quite caught on about trains. Americans were historically obsessed with individual cars. Maya couldn’t afford a car. She could hitchhike sometimes if she wanted to. Mostly she could walk.

So she was walking through rural Pennsylvania. She had come to love the simple physical process of putting one foot in front of another. She liked the clarity of walking, the way that walking put you outside the rules and deep inside a tangible, immediate world. Nothing illegal about walking all by yourself. Walking cost nothing, and it wasn’t traceable. A sweet and quiet way to drop off somebody else’s stupid official map.

She had a sun hat, and a backpack, and a change of clothes. She had a cheap camera. She had a canteen and a little spare food; the sort of food one could chew on quite a while. She had a rather old but very decent pair of well-engineered and highly indestructible
walking shoes. And she had nobody bothering her. She was alone, she was just herself now. To gently become herself, with no one watching and counting her heartbeats, free to savor the infinite thereness of the world, free to get her own grip on the quotidian—it was a series of little astonishments.