Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire

On the third day she threw away the tiara. She couldn’t get the bracelets loose, however.

On the fourth day Helene had her brought out for interrogation. Helene had a tiny office on the top floor of the Access Bureau. Maya was astonished at how old and small and shabby Helene’s office was. It was definitely Helene’s own office, because there were neatly framed little hand-drawn originals on the walls that probably were worth more than the entire building. But Maya herself had worked for decades in offices far better equipped.

Helene was out of mufti and in a very dashing belted pink uniform. Other than that, there was a window and a chair and a desk. And a little white dog. From behind the desk rose a very big brown dog.

Maya stared. “Hello, Plato.”

The dog cocked his ears and said nothing.

“Plato doesn’t talk now,” Helene said. “He’s resting.”

The dog was still rather gaunt, but his coat was glossy and his nose was wet. He wore no clothing, but Helene had given him a lovely new collar. “Plato looks a lot better. I’m glad.”

“Please sit down, Mrs. Ziemann.”

“Why don’t we get on a first-name basis so I won’t have to mangle your beautiful last name with my terrible Français.”

Helene considered this. “Ciao Maya.”

“Ciao Helene.” She sat.

“I’m sorry, but business kept me out of the city a few days.”

“That’s all right. What’s a few days to the likes of us?”

“How good of you to be so public-spirited. I wish you’d shown that much patience under medical surveillance.”

“Touché,” Maya murmured.

Helene said nothing. She gazed dreamily out the office window.

Maya said nothing in return. She examined the peeling lacquer on her fingernails.

Maya was the first to break. “I can wait as long as you can,” Maya blurted, boasting, and lying. “I love your decor.”

“Do you know they spent a hundred thousand marks on your treatment?”

“A hundred thousand, three hundred and twelve.”

“And you took it in your head to dash off for a little European vacation.”

“Would it help if I said I was sorry? Of course I’m not a bit sorry, but if it would help anybody, then I’d act real polite.”

“What does make you sorry, Maya?”

“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.”