Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire

Bouboule led her through the junk-cluttered attic, and then up a black iron ladder. Bouboule threw back a heavy wooden trapdoor and they emerged on the slope of the ancient tiled roof of the Tête du Noyé. Now that it was spring, Praha’s winter overcast had finally been chased away. The night was full of young stars.

Bouboule closed the trapdoor with a clunk and spoke for the first time. “Now I think it’s safe to talk.”

“Why is that cop here?”

“Sometimes she comes, sometimes she doesn’t,” Bouboule said dourly. “There’s nothing we can do.”

It was a sharp night. Cold and still. The marmoset chattered in distress. “[Be good, my Patapouff,]” Bouboule chided in Français. “[Tonight you must guard me.]” The marmoset seemed to understand this. He adjusted his tiny top hat and looked about as fierce as a yellow two-kilo primate could manage.

Maya scrambled with Bouboule to the peak of the roof, where they sat without a trace of comfort on the narrow ridgeline of arched greenish tiles.

The trapdoor opened again. Benedetta and Niko emerged.

“Is she onto us tonight?” Benedetta said anxiously.

Bouboule shrugged, and sniffed. “[I didn’t tell. You and your little politicals, you are so secret with me that I couldn’t tell if I wanted.]”

“Ciao Niko,” Maya said. She reached down and helped Niko to the peak of the roof.

“We didn’t meet in flesh before,” said Niko, “but what you say on the net, it’s very funny.”

“You’re very sweet to say that.”

“I heal from that black eye your little friend Klaudia gave me, so I decide, I like you anyway.”

“That’s very good of you, Niko, dear. Considering.”

“It’s so cold,” complained Bouboule, hugging her arms. “It’s so stupid that the Widow can drive us to this. For two marks I’d run down there and slap her face.”

“Why do they call her the Widow?” Maya said. The four of them were now squatting like four vivid magpies on the peak of the roof. The question seemed ideal for the circumstances.

“Well,” said Bouboule, “most women get over sex in later life. But not the Widow. She keeps marrying.”

“She always marries men of a certain type,” said Benedetta. “Artists. Very self-destructive artists.”

“She marries the dead-at-forty,” said Niko. “Every time.”

“She tries to save the poor gifted boys from themselves,” said Benedetta.

“Had any luck?” Maya asked.

“So far, six dead ones,” Bouboule said.

“That’s got to hurt,” Maya said.

“I grant her this much,” said Benedetta. “She never marries them until they are really far gone. And I think she does keep them alive and working a little extra while.”

“Any boy in her bed is too afraid to die,” Niko said sweetly.

Bouboule nodded. “When she sells their work later, she always holds out for top mark! She makes their reputation in the art world! Such a lovely trick! Don’t you know.”

“I see,” said Maya. “It’s a coup de grâce, then. It’s a charity.”

Benedetta sneezed, then waved her hand. “You must be wondering why I called you here tonight.”

“Do tell us,” urged Maya, cupping her chin.

“Darling, we want to make you one of us tonight.”

“Really?”

“But we have a little test for you first.”

“A little test. But of course.”

Benedetta pointed down the length of the roof. The roofline stretched for the length of the bar. At the roof’s far edge rose the broad metal post of a shallow celestial bowl. Klaus’s satellite antenna. Maybe twenty meters away.

“Yes?” Maya said.

Benedetta plucked the stylus from her hair. She adjusted a tiny knob, then bent over carefully and touched the stylus to a ceramic tile. Sparks flew. Blackness etched its way into the tile.

“Sign our membership list,” Benedetta said. She handed Maya the stylus.

“Wonderful. Good idea. Where do I sign?”

“You sign on that post.” Benedetta pointed at the satellite dish.

“You walk,” Niko said.

“You mean I walk from here to there, along the peak of this roof.”

“She’s so clever,” said Bouboule to Niko. Niko nodded smugly.

“So I just walk twenty meters in the dark along the peak of a slippery tile roof with a four-story drop on both sides,” Maya said. “That’s what you want from me. Right?”

“Do you remember,” said Benedetta, quietly, “that vivid friend of yours in Roma? Little Natalie?”

“Natalie. Sure. What about her?”

“You asked me to look after your friend Natalie a little.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I did that for you,” Benedetta said. “Now I know your Natalie. She could never pass this test. You know why? Because she’ll stop in the middle, and she’ll know that she can’t win. Then the fear will kill her. The blackness and the badness will take her by her little beating heart, and she’ll slip. Down she goes. Off the edge, darling. Bang, bang, bang, down the tiles. And then hard onto the cold old streets of Praha. If she’s lucky, she’ll land on her head.”

“But since you are one of us,” Bouboule said, “it’s not risky.”

“It only looks risky,” offered Niko brightly.

“If these tiles were on the ground in the old town square, any fool could walk them,” said Benedetta. “No one would ever slip or fall. The tiles are not dangerous. The danger is inside you. In your head, in your heart. It’s your self that is the danger. If you can possess your self, then you go sign your name on the post and you walk back to us. It is safe as a pillow, safe as a bed; no, darling, it’s safer than that, because there are men in the world. But to walk beneath the stars—well, it’s in you, or it isn’t in you.”

“Go sign your name for us, darling,” said Bouboule.

“Then come back to us and be our sister,” said Niko.

Maya looked at them. They were perfectly serious. They meant it. This was how they lived.

“Well, I’m not gonna do it in heels,” she said. She pulled off her shoes and stood up. It was good that Novak had taught her to walk a little. She fixed her eyes on the distant glow of the dish and she walked the spine of the roof. Nothing could stop her. She was perfectly happy and confident. Then she wrote:

MIA ZIEMANN WAS HERE

In a blast of sparks. It looked very nice there on the post with all the other names. So she did a little drawing, too.

The way back was harder because her bare feet were so cold. The tiles hurt her, and she picked her way more slowly, and this gave her more time to think. She would not fall, but it occurred to her in a cold black flash that she might deliberately throw herself from the roof. There was bittersweet appeal in the idea. If she was Mia Ziemann, as she had just proclaimed herself to be, then there was part of Mia Ziemann she had not yet made her peace with. This was the large and deeply human part of Mia Ziemann that was truly tired of life and genuinely anxious to be dead.

But she was so much stronger than that now.

“We hoped you would blow us a kiss,” Benedetta said, scooting over to make room.

“I save that for gerontocrats,” Maya said. She gave Benedetta the stylus.

The trapdoor opened a bit. One of Helene’s dogs squirmed out. A little white dog had no business on a steep tile roof, but the dog walked like no dog had any business walking. It crept like a gecko, like a salamander. It saw them and it skidded a bit on the tile in surprise and it whimpered.

“ Voici un raton! ” Bouboule shouted. “Patapouff, de-fends-moi! ”

A screech, a catapulting flash of golden fur. Primates were smarter than canines. Primates could climb like anything. The dog yelped in terror and tumbled from the edge of the roof with a howl of despair.