Holy Fire

6

America 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.

She liked Pennsylvania because there was so little fuss made about this particular corner of the world. She much preferred this sort of place now. All the fussy and glamorous places were far too brittle. Of course it was hard to find any genuine place to hide, in an era when all law, almost all media, and even most art could be phoned in; but the places that seemed entirely quotidian were the best locales for an exotic hopeful-monster like herself.

Europe was a boutique. America was a farm. Sometimes there were bicyclists in rural Pennsylvania. Occasionally hikers. There weren’t many like herself, people perfectly enchanted just to walk and look. This wasn’t a popular tourist niche in the North American continent, but the local Amish attracted a certain interest.

A car passed her outside Perkasie. The car pulled over, stopped, and a pair of well-dressed Indonesian tourists stepped out. They shrugged on shiny new backpacks and then headed her way. They walked hastily. Maya, who would not let anyone hurry her now, trudged along peaceably.

As the two approached her, the man tugged the woman’s sleeve. They waved excitedly, then shouted something.

Maya stopped and waited for them. “Ciao,” she said, a little warily.

“Hello?” the woman said.

Maya looked at her, and was thunderstruck. The stranger wore Indonesian couture, rather shiny and chic, but the stranger was American. She was familiar: much more than familiar. She looked and felt fantastically important, absolutely compelling, a personage like destiny. Maya was flooded with occult recognition, an impossible visceral surge of tenderness and heartache. She gaped as if an angel had descended.

“Are you Mia Ziemann?” the man said.

Maya closed her mouth and shook her head resolutely. “No, I’m Maya.”

“Then what have you done with my mother?” the woman demanded.

Maya stared at her. “Chloe!”

Chloe’s eyes widened. She relaxed a bit. She tried to smile. “Mom, it’s me.”

“No wonder I love you so much,” Maya said with relief, and she laughed.

It was funny to have lost so much, and yet lost so very little. The details were all gone sideways, somehow out of her mental reach now, but not the disorienting intensity of her love for her child. She scarcely knew this person, and yet she loved Chloe more than she could have thought possible.

It no longer felt much like motherhood. Motherhood had been very real, very quotidian, a primal human relationship, full of devotion and effort and strain, fraught with bitter calculation and the intimate battle of wills. But now, all those complexities had been blown away like sand. The presence of this strange woman filled her with oceanic joy. The very existence of Chloe was a cosmic triumph. It felt like walking with a boddhisattva.

“I hope you remember Suhaery?” Chloe said. “Surely you must remember him, right?”

“You look so well, Mia,” said Chloe’s husband very gallantly. This Indonesian guy had been married to Chloe for forty years now. That was easily twice as long as Mia had ever been able to manage her. Mia had been—she could still feel this, some dim tingle of ancient resentment—politely horrified to find her daughter running off with an Indonesian. The Indonesians, in their vast island nation, had gotten off rather easily during the plague years. They had played up that advantage enormously in the decades that followed.

But that was all far in the past now. Now Chloe and Suhaery were a middle-aged couple in their sixties. Sleek and rich and completely at ease with one another. They came from the richest country on Earth and they looked as though they were very proud about that.

“How did you manage to find me?” Maya said.

“Oh, it was terribly hard, Mom. We tried the net, the police, everything. Finally we thought to ask Mercedes. Your housekeeper.”

“Oh, I guess Mercedes would know.”

“She had some good guesses. Mercedes says to tell you that she’s sorry she scolded you so much. She still thinks what you did was totally immoral, but so many people have asked her for interviews now … well, you know how it is. Celebrity.”

Maya shrugged. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. How is my celebrity these days?”

“Mom,” said Chloe, and sighed, “you’ve really done it this time. Haven’t you? I always knew you were never as quiet as you looked. I could always tell you were faking it. I always knew someday you’d lose your grip and blow sky-high. That was your problem, Mom: you were never in touch with genuine spirituality.”

Maya looked at Suhaery. Her daughter’s husband was a stout and practical Asian businessman. He was in pillar-of-strength mode, playing the stellar role of psychic anchor. Suhaery was strolling along in his clean and pressed walking shorts on a weedy roadside in an alien country. Maya realized suddenly that Suhaery was finding this all very funny. He thought his wife’s relations were amusingly peculiar. He was right.

“What do you think about all this, Harry?” she asked.

“Mia, you look lovely. You’re like a blossoming rose. You look like Chloe on the first day I met her.”

“You shouldn’t tell her that,” Chloe scolded. “That sounds really strange and bad in about five different ways.”

Suhaery said something wicked in Malay and chuckled heartily.

“We tried to find you in San Francisco,” Chloe said, “but the people in the clinic weren’t helpful at all.”

“Yeah, I, uh, pretty much had it with all the clinic people.”

“It would have been smarter to go back under controlled care, Mom. I mean, obviously you’ve blown most of your value as an experimental subject. But still.”

“I thought about doing that, I really did,” Maya said. “I mean, if I’d run back to those meatheads and humbled myself and lived under medically defined circumstances, I probably could have repaired my medical ratings a lot, but you know something? I got no use for ’em. They’re the bourgeoisie, they’re philistines. I’m sick of ’em. It’s not that I blame them for what happened to me, but … well … I’m busy now. I have better things to do.”

“Such as?”

“I just like to walk around. Earth, sky, stars, sun. You know.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, I do photography.… The Amish, they’re such good material and they’re so good about it.… I mean, Amish children look incredibly like normal children, they are normal children, but then you can trace them decade by decade. Amish people around seventy … The natural human aging process … It’s amazing and terrifying! And yet there’s this strange organic quality to it.… The Amish are wonderful. They can tell I’m some kind of impossible monster by their standards, but they’re so sweet and good about it. They just put up with us posthumans. Like they are doing the rest of us a favor.”

Chloe thought about it. “What are you really doing with all this photography of Amish people?”

“Nothing much. My pictures still stink. I’m a lousy apprentice photographer and I got a lousy camera. But that’s okay; I need a lot of practice. Especially in framing shots properly …”

Suhaery and Chloe exchanged knowing glances. Then Chloe spoke up. “Mom, Harry and I think it would be a good idea if you came back with us to Djakarta for a while.”

“Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“There’s plenty of room in the condo, and in Asia they’re better about these things. They’re more understanding.”

“If only you had run to Indonesia,” said Suhaery indulgently. “In Europe, they’re all crazy. They never know how to rest, even when they’re rich. There is something very wrong with Europeans. They just don’t know how to live.”

“You really want your weird mother-in-law to live under your roof, Harry?”

“You’re a harmless little thing,” said Suhaery kindly. “I always liked you, Mia, even when you were very afraid of me.”

“Well, I can’t do that. No way. Sorry.”

“Mom, you need looking after. Let us look after you a little. You deserve it, you know. You sacrificed a lot for me. Years and years.”

“Forget it.”

Chloe sighed. “Mom, you’re almost a hundred years old. And they’ve cut off your treatment!”

“Do I look feeble to you? I can pass for twenty. Sure, I might live even longer if I went back to the lab and kissed up to them, but I’m okay, I’m not doing anything stupid. I eat right, I sleep like a top, and I get plenty of exercise. You see my legs now? Look at these legs! I could kick a hole right through the side of that hex barn over there.”

“Mom, stop that and listen. You’re living like a bum, like some kind of tramp. All right? You’re acting weird, you’re not acting responsibly. These other people that went through your same treatment, they all act pretty oddly, too. I think you people have got a serious legal case. You should stand up for your rights as abused patients. You should go through proper channels. What happened to you, it’s not your fault at all, and it never was. You should organize.”

“Darling, if we could organize, we wouldn’t be acting oddly in the first place.”

“You should talk to the others. Network with them.”

“I don’t have net access. And I bet they don’t, either.”

“Mom, why not? You should be calling us. Really, Harry and I, we’ve both been worried sick about you. Haven’t we, Harry?”

“It’s true, Mia,” said Suhaery loyally. “We are concerned.”

Chloe drew a breath. “I can see that you’re not human any longer, and I can accept that. It’s fine, it happens. But you are my mother. You can’t run off and do this to us. It’s unconscionable.”

“Your father did it.”

“No, he didn’t. Dad left you, but he never left me. Dad talks to me whenever I ask Dad to talk to me. And at least I always know where Dad is. I never know where you are anymore. Nobody knows. You know how long we’ve been searching for you on these back roads?”

“No. How long?”

“Long enough,” Suhaery said, smiling. “Maybe too long. Your daughter and I are very patient people.”

“Can’t you just call us, at least? So we won’t fret so much. Please, Mom. I don’t mind if you want to walk around, but Mom, you can’t ever walk away from your dharma and karma.”

“Look, I don’t have any money.”

Suhaery slipped his brown hands neatly into his creased trouser pockets. “That’s no problem. Twenty marks a week? Would that be too much?”

“Twenty marks? …” said Maya. “Wow.”

Suhaery nodded happily. “Take a little money. What’s wrong with that? It’s not enough money to make any trouble for any of us. A little allowance, Mia. A family remittance. We are your family, you know. It would make us so happy.”

“What do I have to do for this allowance?”

“Nothing! Just call us. Talk to us. Sometimes. That’s all. Is that so much to ask?”

Chloe nodded eagerly. “You need some looking after, Mom. We can do that now. We can set up a little account for you. We’re good at that now.”

“Well …”

“You’d have done that for me. Wouldn’t you? Heck, Mom, you did do it for me. Remember that allowance you gave me when I was on probation?”

“Did I?” Maya paused. “Well, okay, I guess that makes sense. Okay, have it your way.”

Chloe wiped her eyes sentimentally. “Oh, I’m glad now.… It’s funny to see you so pretty.”

The allowance made a difference of sorts. Maya was no good at all at controlling money now, but a steady dribble every week bumped her up from wanderjahr status to the crumbling lower edges of society. She still had no more possessions than she could carry, but she bathed more often, and ate nicer things, and sometimes accessed networks.

Networking was not without its risks, however. Networking was how the dog found her in Des Moines. Maya found the city of Des Moines much nicer than its press would indicate. Des Moines had some very interesting buildings, the regional Indianapolis influence. Paul had been a little cynical and shortsighted on the subject of modern architecture, she could see that now. Once you learned to look for modern architecture, you could perceive waves of architectural influence percolating right through the old urban structure; a cornice here, a door there, a fungarium windowbox, even the manhole covers.…

She spotted the postcanine dog and his producer having breakfast as she prepared to leave the hotel. She recognized the dog at once, and she felt sorry for him. She felt quite certain that the dog would continue to follow her if she somehow escaped the hotel. But she wasn’t afraid of the dog; she was no longer afraid of much of anything. The dog and his producer looked so sad to be in a cheap American hotel in Iowa, confronting flapjacks and a battery of specialized multicolored syrups.

She went to their booth. “Ciao Aquinas,” she said.

“Hello,” said the dog, startled. His normally perfect suit looked rumpled, perhaps because of the guide collar. His producer was blind.

The producer adjusted a translator clipped to his wattled ear. He was a Deutschlander, very elderly and very polite. “Please sit, Maya. Have you eated? Ate? Ated?”

“Okay.” Maya sat.

“We came to ask for an interview,” said Aquinas, in brisk and flawless English.

“Really.”

“We have had both Herr Cabaline and Signorina Barsotti already.”

“Who?”

“Paul and Benedetta,” said the dog.

The mention of their names touched her deeply. She missed them as she would miss a heartbeat. “How are Paul and Benedetta?”

“Famous of course; rather troubled, unfortunately.”

“But how are they really?”

“They escaped their legal difficulties. A great political success for them. But they have had a famous falling-out. A schism in their artistic movement. You hadn’t heard this?”

A human waitress came over. The human attention was a typical Des Moines touch. Maya ordered waffles.

“May we ask you about this matter, on camera?”

“I hadn’t heard anything about any schisms. I’m out of touch. I don’t have anything to say.”

“But they both speak so highly of you. They told us to come to you. They even helped us to locate you here.”

“I’m amazed that you can speak English so beautifully, Aquinas. I’ve seen you speak Deutsch, and I’ve even heard you dubbed into Czestina, but …”

“It’s all done with dubbing,” said the dog modestly. “Dubbing just above the level of the brain. Karl has brought a gift for you, from your friends. Go fetch it, Karl.”

“Good idea,” said Karl. He rose, picked up a white cane, switched it on, and trotted off unerringly.

“I really can’t appear on your show,” said Maya. “I don’t need to play roles anymore.”

“You have become an icon,” the dog said.

“I don’t much feel like an icon. Anyway, the best way to remain an icon is to avoid public overexposure. Isn’t it?”

“How Greta Garbo of you,” said the dog.

“You like old movies?” Maya said, surprised.

“Frankly, I hate old movies; I don’t even much like my own quite ancient medium of television. But I’m enormously interested in the processes of celebrity.”

“I’ve never had such a sophisticated conversation with a dog,” said Maya. “I can’t appear on your show, Aquinas, I hope you understand that. But I do like talking to you. In person, you’re so much smaller than you look on television. And you’re really interesting. I don’t know if you’re a dog or an artificial intelligence or whatever, but you’re definitely some kind of genuine entity. You’re deep. Aren’t you? I think you should get out of pop culture. Maybe write a book.”

“I can’t read,” the dog said.

Maya’s waffles arrived. She tucked in with gusto.

“It’s a shame to come to Des Moines for nothing,” the dog wheedled.

“Interview the mayor,” Maya said, chewing.

“I don’t think that will do.”

“Go back to Europe and interview Helene Vauxcelles-Serusier. Make her level with you.”

“Why should I do that?” said the dog, pricking up his hairy ears. “And where would I find her?”

Karl returned to the booth. The gift had come from Paul and Benedetta. Maya shoved her waffles aside and tore open the box, and then the padding. They had sent her an antique camera. The sort of hand camera that once had processed rolls of colored film. The antique machine had been retrofitted with a digital imaging plate, and a set of network jacks. It was heavy and solid and lovely. Compared to a modern camera it felt like chiseled granite.

And there was a card with it. Handwriting.

“Don’t ever believe what they say about us,” scrawled Benedetta.

“First and always we will love and forgive our heretics,” said Paul. His neat and perfect hand.

Daniel lived in Idaho now. He had gone to earth.

She could sense the border of his private little realm. Maybe twenty acres. Nothing like wire or a fence; the difference was present in the substance of the earth. Trace elements, maybe. Maybe some aspect of his peculiar practice of gardening. Could mere intelligence make trees grow faster?

The trees, the bushes, the birds, the insects even. They didn’t feel quite right here. They felt as if someone were paying fantastic amounts of sustained attention to them. The branches were painterly branches, and the birds sang with operatic precision.

Her ex-husband was digging in the earth with a shovel. Daniel was about four feet high now. The bones had shrunk and the spine had compacted and the muscle had pooled out around his calves and thighs in thick Neanderthal clumps. He was old and extremely strong; he looked as though he could snap the shovel in half.

“Hello, Mia,” he said in a voice rusty with disuse.

“Hello, Daniel.”

“You’ve changed,” he said, squinting. “Has it been long?”

“For me it has.”

“You look like Chloe. I’d have thought you were Chloe if I didn’t know better.”

“I still think of you as Daniel,” she confessed. “I don’t know why.”

Daniel said nothing. He retreated into his hut.

She followed him into his rude little shelter. It was lined with down and branches and dry shed leaves and perhaps eight trillion gigabytes of mycelial webbed information. He had put down roots here in Idaho. He had integrated himself into the depths of the Idaho landscape. He had become a genius loci, a spirit of place. Every tree, every bush, every flower, every caterpillar, genetically wired for sound. He didn’t merely watch over this place—in some profound sense he had become this place. He had become a little piece of Idaho. In the winters, he hibernated.

“Take a little water?” Daniel croaked.

“No, thanks.”

Daniel sipped collected dew from a leaf-shaped cup.

“What’s new, Daniel?”

“New,” Daniel mused. “Oh, there’s always something new. Do something about the sky, they say. Clean it up. With spores.”

“Spores,” she said.

He drank more water, wiped his fantastically furrowed brow, and seemed to rally. “Yes, the sky will be the color of fungus for a while. Should make for some interesting sunsets. Atmospheric repair techniques. Very useful. Very farsighted, very wise. Good husbandry practice.” Daniel was trying hard to talk to her in a language she could understand. They were both bipedal creatures who walked beneath the sky, who lived in the world of daylight. That was a kind of commonality.

“I can’t believe the polity would really try a scheme like seeding the sky with fungus. I didn’t think the polity had that much imagination anymore.”

“Well, they don’t have imagination, but it’s not their idea. Other people hurt the sky in the first place. It’s a response. New monster versus old monstrosity. We are as gods, Mia. We might as well get good at it.”

“Are you a monster, Daniel? Whoever told you you were a god?”

“What do you think?”

He turned his lumpish back on her, left the hut, and went back to his work. He was a god, she decided. He hadn’t been a god when he’d been with her. He’d been her man then, a good man. He wasn’t a man any longer. Daniel was a very primitive god. A very small-scale god. A primitive steam-engine god. An amphibian god dutifully slogging the mud for some coming race of reptiles. A very minor god, maybe something like a garden gnome, a dryad, a tommy-knocker. He’d done his best with the allowable technology, but the allowable technology was just barely enough. Machines were so evanescent. Machines just flitted through the fabric of the universe like a fit through the brain of God, and in their wake people stopped being people. But people didn’t stop going on.

“I need to take your picture, Daniel,” she told him. “Stand under the light for me.”

He didn’t seem to mind. She lifted the new camera. She framed him. She knew suddenly that this was it. This was going to be her first really good picture. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, in that astonishing landscape that he called his face. The starkness of a living soul placed far beyond necessity. She understood the two of them and the world revolving, all whole and all at once, in a bright hot blaze. Her first true picture. So real and beautiful.

The camera clicked.