Holy Fire

that you not humiliate me. I gave you freedom to do as you please—take a dozen lovers, take a hundred! Just don’t let me know. And yet you have to let me know, don’t you? You have to shatter my illusions with this … this last vile confidence.”

“Emil, stop it! You’re acting like a child.”

“Don’t call me your child, you tramp! I’m twice your age!”

“No, you’re not, Emil. Be quiet now. I am much, much older than you. I’m not a young girl named Maya. I’m old, I’m an old woman. My name is Mia Ziemann and I’m almost a hundred years old.” She began to weep.

Emil was stunned. A ghastly silence passed. Slowly, Emil withdrew by inches to his edge of the bed.

“You’re not joking?”

“No, I’m not joking. I’m ninety-four—ninety-five, something like that—and in my own way, I’m a lot like you. I underwent a very powerful upgrade. Just a few months ago. It made me this way, and it broke me into pieces, it put me on the far side of everything. ”

“You weren’t unfaithful to me?”

“No! Emil, no, that has nothing to do with reality! I’m telling you the truth here. Get it through your head.”

“You’re telling me you’re a hundred years old. Even though you’re very obviously about twenty.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re not an old woman. I know old women. I’ve even had old women. You may be a lot of things, my dear, but you’re not an old woman.” He sighed. “You’ve taken something. You’re tight.”

“The only thing I’m tight on is Neo-Telomeric Dissipative Cellular Detoxification, and believe me, compared to the harmless tincture dope you little kids like to mess with, this stuff is voodoo.”

“You’re telling me you’re a female gerontocrat? Why aren’t you snug in your penthouse with a hundred monitors on you?”

“Because I tore them all off and I skipped town, that’s why. I signed all their papers for very advanced treatment and then I broke every law in the book. I hitched a plane to Europe. I’m on the lam. I’m an illegal alien and a fugitive from a research program. And Emil, someday they’re going to catch me. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” She began sobbing bitterly.

He waited a while, and when he spoke again his voice had changed. Bewildered, quizzical. “Why are you telling me this?”

She choked on her tears, too wracked with anguish to go on.

He waited another while, and then spoke in yet another tone. Speculative, stunned. “What am I supposed to do with you now?”

She wailed aloud.

“I think I understand now,” Emil concluded at last, loudly and finally. “You’re something truly freakish, aren’t you? You’re like a little vampire! Feeding on me! Feeding on my life and my youth! You’re like a little lamia from the storybooks. A little … bloodsucking … posthuman … demon-lover … incubus!”

“Stop! Stop it! Don’t go on, I’m going to kill myself!”

“Something like this could only happen in Praha,” Emil declared slowly, and with increasingly obvious satisfaction. “Only here in the Golden City. The City of Alchemists. That’s a very, very odd story that you just told me. It’s almost too odd to think about! To have heard such a story! In a very strange way, it makes me feel very proud to be Czech.”

She wiped her streaming eyes with the edge of the sheet. “What’s all that?”

“I’m the victim in this tale, aren’t I? I’m the sacrificial victim. I’m the toy for a sexual golem. Why, it’s the most amazing thing … the most amazing, mystical … It’s so dark and strange and erotic.” He looked at her. “Why did you ever choose me?”

“I just … I just really liked your hands.”

“It’s too astonishing.” Emil adjusted his pillow. “You can stop crying now. Go ahead, stop it.” He leaned back and interlaced his fingers on his hairy chest. “I won’t tell a soul. Your terrible secrets are completely safe with me. No one would believe me anyway.”

The extent of his egotism stunned her so much that she almost forgot her despair. “You don’t think I should … kill myself?” she said in a small voice.

“My goodness, woman, what’s the point? There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re no criminal, you just defrauded the gerontocrats of a few of their lab-rat studies. What are they supposed to do to you—make you old again? Shrivel you up in daylight like an apple in a cellar? They can’t do that. They think they rule the world, but they’re all doomed, a gang of sick centenarians with their ridiculous technologies.… Trifling and tinkering with human flesh, when they have no concept of the power of imagination … And all to send me you! You! Like a little pink beach crab just pulled out of her shell!”

“I’m not a little beach crab. And I’m not an incubus.” She drew a harsh breath. “I’m an outlaw.”

He laughed.

“I am! I used to pretend that I was someone else, really someone else, so that I didn’t have to face up to what I really wanted. But I was lying, because I was Mia all along, I’ve always been Mia, and I’m Mia right now, and I hate them! They don’t want me to live! They only want me to exist and wear out the days and the years, just like they do! I could walk into the street right now—well, if I put on some clothes—and I could call the lab in the Bay, and I could say, ‘Hello everybody in California, it’s me, it’s Mia Ziemann, I just had a bad reaction to the treatment, I’m sorry, I’m in Europe, I lost my head for a while, please take me back, put all your things inside me and up me and on me, I’m all right now, I’ll be really good.’ And they would! They’d send a plane and probably a reporter, and they’d give me my job back and put a cold towel on my forehead. They’re so stupid, they should all die! I’ll never go back to that life, I’d rather be killed, I’d rather jump out the window.” She was trembling.

Emil touched her hand, and said nothing for a long time. Finally he got up and fetched her a glass of water. She drank it thirstily, and wiped at her eyes.

“That’s what you had to tell me, is it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all of it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Did you ever tell it to me before?”

“No, Emil, never. I’ve never told it to you or to anyone else. You’re the first one, truly.”

“Do you think you’ll have to tell it to me again?” She paused, considering. “Do you think that you’ll remember it?”

“I don’t know. I might remember it. I don’t often remember things that I’m told this late at night. I might not remember it with some other woman, either, but there’s something very deep about the two of us. You and me. I think … I think we were fated to meet.”

“Well … Maybe we … No. No, I can’t believe that, Emil. I’m not religious, I’m not superstitious, I’m not even mystical, I’m just posthuman. I’m posthuman, I made a moral choice to go beyond the limits. I made that choice with my eyes open, and now I have to learn how to survive in my own private nightmare.”

“I know a way out for you.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll have to be brave. But I can mold you all into one piece. No doubts, no secrets, no pains, just one whole new woman. If you wanted me to.”

“Oh, Emil …” She stared at him. “Not the amnesiac.”

“Of course the amnesiac. You wouldn’t think I could misplace a valuable thing like that, I hope. This Ziemann person you talk about, this old woman, this incubus that you have … We could brush her away from you. Clean away, just like a witch’s broom.”

“How would that help us? I’d still be an illegal alien.”

“No you wouldn’t. We’d brush that away too. You’d be my wife. You’d be young. And new. And fresh. And you’d love me. And I’d love you.” He sat up in bed, waving his hands. “We’d write it all down tonight. We’d explain