Holy Fire

“Fifty or sixty extra years. And counting.”

“[It’s a magnificent bribe,]” Ulrich admitted, “[but there are many people all over the world who refuse to be co-opted. They live outside the medical law. Outside of the polity.]”

“I know about the Amish. Amish aren’t outlaws. People admire the Amish. They envy their sincerity and simplicity. Plus the Amish still practice real agriculture. People find that very touching.”

Ulrich was wearing his sheepskin, as usual. He picked fretfully at a bare patch on the elbow. “[Yes, there’s a cheap popular vogue for the Amish. The polity turned the Amish into pop stars. That’s the polity’s primary means of subversive integration. They’ll make you a prized exhibit in their culture zoo. So they can boast of their so-called tolerance, while subverting the genuine cultural threat posed to their hegemony.]”

Maya tapped her ear. “I think my translator got all of that, but it didn’t seem to mean much.”

“[It’s all about freedom! Ways to seize and keep your freedom, and your individual autonomy. The way to live outside the law is to be an outlaw.]”

She thought it over. “Maybe you can steal some autonomy for a few years. But the cautious people will outlive you in the long run.”

“[That remains to be seen. The polity was created for old people, but the regime itself is not that old. At heart, they’re a bunch of panic-stricken dodderers wrapping everything in knitting yarn. They think they’ve created a thousand-year regime. The Amish have been the Amish for four hundred years. Let’s see these miserable grannies outlive the Amish.]”

The towers of Stuttgart rose over the horizon. They were four hundred stories tall and made of scaled gelatin and they looked like giant fish. Sweet little white pennants of the purest water vapor were being exhaled from the tops of the stacks. If you looked carefully you could see the walls of the towers gently breathing. Puckering and glistening, repeatedly.

“I had no idea Stuttgart looked so much like Indianapolis,” Maya said.

“You have visited Indianapolis?”

“Telepresence.”

“Oh, yes.”

She looked at the distant towers and sighed. “They say Stuttgart is the greatest city for the arts in the whole world.”

“Yes,” Ulrich said meditatively, “Stuttgart is very artificial.”

Large green hills surrounded the city. The hills were compacted rubble, from the former urban structure of Stuttgart. Stuttgart had suffered very harshly during the plagues of the forties. Most of the city had burned down after the panic-stricken population had abandoned town. The scorched infectious wreckage had been demolished by the returning survivors, and Stuttgart had been entirely rebuilt during the gaudy and visionary fifties and sixties. The architects of the new Stuttgart had had nothing left of their past to restrain them, so they’d rolled up their sleeves in a fine biomodernist frenzy and attempted to create compelling icons for their own cultural period. People often got a bit hysterical when they were trying to prove to themselves that they had some right to be survivors.

The car left the highway. The drizzle had cleared off and a pale winter sun emerged. The hillsides were very nicely wooded in leafless young chestnut trees. Occasional chunks of stained concrete rubble broke picturesquely through the topsoil.

They parked and climbed out. Ulrich set the car off to wander by itself, to come when he called for it. “[The car will be much safer out on the roads,]” he said, slipping the netlink inside his shirt on a cord. “[We don’t want to park a car next to these people.]”

They headed uphill, through the young woods. They passed two men in patchwork brown leather coats, with dark beards, metal necklaces, earrings. The men sat under a large umbrella, on folding chairs beside a small wicker table. One of the men methodically photographed every passerby. The other was chatting into a cellphone in a language Maya couldn’t recognize. As he talked and nodded and grinned, he deftly twirled a yard-long alpenstock. The stick was nicely polished, hefty, very solid. It looked as though it had seen a lot of nasty use against the sides of people’s heads.

The two guards nodded minimally as Maya and Ulrich worked their way past them, up the slope. A trickle of Euro bourgeoisie were working their way through the trees, interspersed with big knotted crowds of the aliens, who greeted one another with uncanny whoops of laughter.

They emerged in a clearing on the far side of the hill. The far slope had been taken over by big sloping black tents, smoldering campfires, and folding tables heaped with merchandise and junk. Dozens of used cars sat in roped-off lots, where gangs of bearded, beaded men in spangled hats and silver necklaces were loudly bargaining. Dark-eyed women walked through camp with bright striped skirts and braids and earrings and silver anklets. Astonishing numbers of children raced underfoot.

Ulrich was ill at ease, face tight, smiling mechanically. A lot of Deutschlanders picked their way among the junk tables, mostly young people, but they were far outnumbered by the aliens.

These people were truly extraordinary. She was seeing a cast of features on people’s faces like she hadn’t seen on any human being in forty years. Faces from outside of time. Crow’s-feet, age spotting, networks of crabbed lines. Women gone gray and sagging in ways in which women simply weren’t supposed to sag anymore. Ferociously patriarchal old men in barbaric finery whose walk and gestures radiated pride and even menace.

And the children—entire packs of shrieking little children. To see so many little children in one place at one time was very strange. To see large packs of children all from a single narrow ethnic group was an experience beyond the pale.

“Who are these people?” Maya said.

“[They’re tsiganes.]”

“Who?”

“[They call themselves Romany.]”

Maya tapped her ear. “My translator doesn’t seem to understand that word, either.”

Ulrich thought it over. “These people are gypsies,” he said in English. “This is a big gathering camp for European gypsies.”

“Wow. I’ve never seen so many people in one place who weren’t on medical treatments. I had no idea there were this many gypsies left in the whole world.”

Ulrich went back to Deutsch. “[Gypsies are not rare. They’re just hard to notice. The Romany have their own ways of movement and they are good at hiding. These people have been Europe’s outcasts for eight hundred years.]”

“Why aren’t the gypsies just like everybody else by now?”

“[That’s a very interesting question,]” Ulrich said, pleased to hear it brought up. “[I often wonder that myself. I might learn the truth if I became a gypsy, but they don’t let gajo do that. We’re both gajo, you know. You’re American and I’m Deutschlander, but we’re both just gajo to these people. These people are nomads, and outcasts, and thieves, and pickpockets, and swindlers, and anarchists, and dirty lumpenproletariate who don’t use life extension or birth control!]” Ulrich looked them over with a certain proprietary joy, then his smile slowly faded to a deeply troubled look. “[Still, all those fine qualities don’t prove that they’re entirely romantic and wonderful.]”

“Oh.”

“[We’re trying to sell these people some stolen property,]” Ulrich reminded her. “[They’re going to try to cheat us.]”

Three Romany men passed them, carrying a lamb. A crowd of gawking gajo gathered quickly. She couldn’t see over the shoulders of the jostling men, but she heard the lamb’s last anguished bleat, and the crowd’s eager gasp. Followed by delighted gasps and groans of shock and titillation.

“They’re killing that animal over there,” she said.

“[Yes, they are. And skinning it, and gutting it, and putting its carcass on a stick, and roasting it over a fire.]”

“Why?”

Ulrich smiled. “[Because roast mutton tastes lovely. A little bit of mutton can’t hurt you.]” His eyes narrowed. “[Also, eating the animal makes you feel better about the dirty pleasure you took in seeing it killed. The bourgeoisie … they will pay well to eat a thing that they saw killed.]”