Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire

Bruno heartily pinched his own goosefleshed hide to show where the needle should go in. Into the thighbones. Into the meat of the calves. Into the biceps. Into the buttocks. Into the skull. He had a little canister of some highly carnivorous rot bacterium. Eating its way out from the injection sites, the decomposer would cook him down like tallow.

After he was settled nicely into the pit, they would have to shovel the dirt around him and carefully replace the lid of sod. It was best to leave a dome of extra dirt below the lid. This looked suspicious at first, but it would look much better in the long run because of the settling. The leftover dirt had to be scattered in the forest. And of course they must remove his clothes and the tools. Nothing metal to be left around the site. Nothing to attract attention.

“Ask him if he has any metal inside of him,” Maya said. “Dental work, anything like that?”

“He says he’s not old enough to have dental work made of metal,” Therese translated. “He says the only thing on him made of solid iron is his manhood.” She began to cry.

Bruno took two canisters the size of his thumbs from the pockets of his discarded pants. He then climbed, naked and peaceable, into his grave.

He stood there, leaned back casually, and shook the first of the thumb-sized objects in his fist. He sprayed a fine layer of black paint over his right hand. He beckoned to Therese, calling out something in the argot. She came over, trudging, reluctant, afraid. He gripped her hand gently with the black-painted hand, shook her hand firmly, pulled her close, whispered, kissed her.

Then he called Maya over. He kissed her as well. A long and deep and contemplative and very bitter kiss. He trapped the nape of her neck with his left hand. He didn’t touch her with the painted black hand.

At last he released her. Maya gasped for breath, stumbled back, and almost slid into the pit with him. Bruno watched Therese for a moment. He seemed to be fighting tears. Therese was sprawled on the ground, watching him, sobbing bitterly.

He then picked up the second object, an inhaler. He stuck the muzzle into his mouth, squeezed the trigger, and sucked in a breath. He tossed the thing aside like a dead cigar, and went into instant convulsions. He was dead in five seconds.

“Get it off!” Therese screamed. “Get it off me, get it off!” She was waving her black-stained hand, clamping her wrist left-handed.

Maya began scrubbing the painted hand with Bruno’s discarded jacket. “What is it?”

“Lacrimogen!”

“Oh my goodness.” She scrubbed harder, but rather more carefully.

“Oh, I loved him so much,” Therese howled, rocketing into hysterical grief. “Oh, I thought he’d beat me again and have sex with me in the grave. I never thought he’d give me the black hand. I wish I was dead.” She broke into frantic Deutsch. “[Where is the poison? Spray it in my mouth. No, let me kiss him, there must be poison on his tongue to kill a hundred women.]”

She began crawling toward the lip of the grave, exploding with drug-propelled grief. Maya caught her by the ankle, and hauled her back. “Stay away from him, I mean it. Get away from him, and keep away. I’m going to cut him up now.”

“[Maya, how can you! How can you saw him up and make him rot? It’s not some piece of meat, it’s Bruno!]”

“I’m sorry, darling, but once you’ve lived through the great plagues like I have, you really do learn that when people are dead, they’re just plain dead.” She could have bitten her tongue for that confession, but it didn’t matter; Therese was too far gone, beyond listening. Therese began to howl till the woods rang, great horrid wails of primal bereavement and anguish.

Maya found a sheet of alcionage in Therese’s backpack. It was pretty mild stuff, alcionage, so she reeled off six of them. Therese made no resistance when Maya stickered her neck. The impetus of her grief kept her rocking and moaning in a fetal position, clutching her tainted hand. Then the tranquilizer sandbagged her.

Maya fetched out the last of a mineralka and gave Therese’s hand a thorough wet scrubbing. It was nasty stuff, that spray-on lacrimogen. You could murder somebody with it easily. She could hardly imagine a defter way to kill.

She walked over to the lip of the grave. Bruno was still dead. A little more dead, if anything. She closed his eyes for him. Then she filled the hypodermic.

“Well, big guy,” she told him, “rest easy. You’ve found yourself a little girl who is truly happy to do this.”

It was dark by the time she was done. It had been a very nasty job. It was like some macabre parody of medical practice. But it was enough like medical practice that it felt like honest work.

Therese had recovered. Therese was young and strong. Young people could whip their way through more moods in a day than old people managed in a month. Therese tottered back with Maya to the car.

“Where’s his suitcase?” Therese said, red-eyed and trembling.

“I put it in the boot with all the clothes and tools.”

“Get it out for me.”

Therese searched through Bruno’s case with frantic eagerness. She came up with a long rectangular tray of gray metalglass alloy. She opened it.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, looking into it with awestruck joy. “I was sure he was going to cheat me.”

“I think he meant to kill you.”

“No, he didn’t. That was only a little bit of spray. He just wanted a woman to cry for him. I feel better now that I cried so much. I feel all right. I’ll never cry for him anymore ever again. Look, Maya, look what he gave me. Look at my wonderful heirloom from my dead old man.” She showed her the little hinged tray.

It was lined in black velvet and held two dozen little spotted seashells.

“Seashells?” Maya said.

“Cowries,” Therese said. “I’m rich!” She carefully shut the tray, then slammed the suitcase shut and kicked it into the boot. “Let’s go now,” she said, clutching the tray with both hands. “Let’s go get a drink. I cried so much, and I’m so thirsty. Oh, I can’t believe I’ve really done this.” She opened the door and climbed inside.

They drove away with a rattle and crunch of brush. Suddenly Therese gazed over her shoulder, and laughed. “I can’t believe it, but I won. I’m getting away with it. Now life will be so different for me.”

“A box of little seashells,” Maya mused. The car threaded its way through the darkened woodlands, heading for an autobahn.

“It’s something that’s not trash. The world is full of trash now,” Therese said, settling back into her seat. “Virtualities and fakes. We’ve turned everything into trash. Diamonds and jewels are cheap. Coins, anyone can forge coins now. Stamps, they’re so easy to forge, it’s a laugh. Money is nothing but ones and zeroes. But Maya— seashells ! Nobody can forge seashells.”

“Maybe those are just cheap fake trashy seashells.”

Therese opened the tray again, stabbed with anxiety. Then she smiled. “No, no. Look at these growth marks, look at this mottling. Only years and years of organic process can create a real seashell. Cowries are much too complex to be faked. These are real . Extinct species! So very rare! There will never be any more, ever. They’re worth a fortune! So much—so much that I can do everything now.”

“So what are you going to do with them, exactly?”

“I’m going to grow up, of course! I can leave that little dump in the Viktualienmarkt. I can start a real store. In a real building, a high-rise! For real customers who will pay me real money. I’m very young to be a store owner, but with this in my hands, I can do it. I can get old people to work for me. I’ll hire my own accountant, and my own business lawyer. I’ll start over legally. Everything above-board. Real business books, and I’ll pay taxes!”