Holy Fire (17 page)

Maya gazed respectfully at the machine. “That’s a big tank, but it’s not big enough for an elephant.”

“You make the elephant in pieces and then you laminate the sections together,” Eugene explained, rolling his eyes slightly.

She spoke carefully. “I’m sorry. I’m not normally this stupid, but I’m on drugs.”

Eugene burst into laughter. “You’re a lot of fun.”

“So you’re a sculptor? An artist?”

“Artifice isn’t art.”

“Are you an engineer, then?”

“Artifice isn’t engineering. Let me show you something else. You’re a couture model, right? You ought to find this intriguing.”

Eugene led her over to a life-sized plastic nude sprawling on the floor. The nude woman was lying on her back with her hands laced behind her head and a vague expression of animal bliss.

“Who’s your model?”

“She’s nobody. And everybody. See, Muncheners are very big on nude sunbathing. We just went down to the Flauchersteg one Sunday last summer, and we scanned a bunch of people with our spex. Then we did a physical composite of all the models, a collation in our virtuality. Then we output the collation in plastic, and we got her: The Average Nude Munchener Sunbathing Woman.” Eugene looked at the statue with pride, then jerked his thumb over his lab-coated shoulder. “We got her husband, Mr. Nude Munchener, stashed over there in the corner; he’s a little hard to see right now because his finish wore off and his substance is semi translucent.”

“Right.”

“You can see that as a model she’s not particularly compelling; I mean, entirely average people are unremarkable by definition, wouldn’t you say? But creating this image was just the first step. My next concept was to get about a hundred men to look at her—while wearing spex, of course, so we could track the movement of their attention.”

“How’d you get a hundred people to stare at a nude plastic statue?”

“Well, we just bicycled her down to the Marienplatz and made it a performance event. The tourists were real cooperative.”

“Oh.”

“Then we collated our attention statistics in an algorithm and plotted it in virtuality and fused it out. Come have a look.”

He strolled over to a corner and whipped away a thin black sheet.

“Wait a minute,” Maya said, “I … I
know
this thing. It’s the …”

“The
Venus of Willendorf.
”

“That’s it. That’s
her.
”

“My original conjecture was that we were going to output the most beautiful woman in the world,” Eugene said, “a feminine form that would absolutely compel male attention! But what we got here is basically a pretty good replica of something that a Paleolithic guy might have whittled out of mammoth tusk. You start messing with archetypal forms and this sort of thing turns up just like clockwork.”

“What’s the man look like?”

“The man as seen by men, or the man as seen by women?”

“The man as seen by women.”

Eugene shrugged. “Somehow I knew you’d ask that.… Well, have a look.” He crossed the floor of the studio and removed another sheet.

“What went wrong?” Maya said.

“Well, we’re not quite sure. We think maybe it was our sampling procedure. I mean, you get these two rather odd artificer guys, me and Franz, asking total female strangers in the Marienplatz to put on spex and stare at a naked plastic guy.… We got a few volunteers, but it was kind of a small self-selected crowd of women, and this is what we ended up with.”

The statue was a big angry-looking horned mask connected to a swollen bunch of bulging bubbles.

“It looks like they tried to boil him to death.”

“You see those three, um, leglike appendages here? They’re supposed to float detached in midair, but we couldn’t cast it that way. We still don’t get what happened to his nose; it looks like they just sort of stared right through him.”

Maya gazed meditatively at the statue. The initial impression of ugliness seemed to fade after a while. It was getting harder and harder to stop watching the thing. She
felt a growing sense of excitement. It was as if they’d dragged the statue whole and true from some sticky crevice deep in her own brain. “Eugene, this artwork is doing something to me. This feels very … unreal.”

“Thanks a lot.” Eugene shrugged. “We lost interest in this one, we figured we had a flaw in our procedurals. I’m thinking now that maybe self-portraits are the next conceptual step. We scan you, we show you yourself, then we plot out your attention algorithm as you’re looking at your own replicated body. That way we can cast your internal self-image in permanent plastic.”

“I think this boiling-bubble guy would be a lot less scary if he were really small,” Maya offered thoughtfully. “Like something I could wear on a charm bracelet, maybe.”

“You’d have to take that up with Franz. Franz does our merchandising.

Therese came up. “Franz says he’ll cut me a discount if we do six of you,” she told Maya.

“I thought we were just going to do just one nice replica dummy of me for the store window.”

“Sure, but if we do six dummies then I can retail you. Assuming the product would move, that is.”

“Certainly this girl will sell,” said Franz with confidence.

“The problem with couture mannequins is they’re not very tactile,” Eugene opined. “We’ve been doing some great work in surfaces. We got some new finishing techniques that feel just like wet sealskin.”

Therese made a quick moue of distaste. “We don’t want people feeling up the mannequins, Eugene. It wrinkles the clothes.”

Eugene was crestfallen. He considered a further argument, then looked at his watch. “Well, I can’t stay chatting, I gotta see a dog about a man.… ” He looked at Maya. “Y’know, I enjoyed meeting you. You’re a really
fascinating conversationalist. If you’re not too busy, why don’t you drop by the Tête du Noyé in Praha next Tuesday? You know where that is?”

“No.”

“It’s in the Praha Old Town, the Staromestska. The Tête is a tincture joint for the artifice crowd. We got a crowd of very vivid people from the net, they meet there in Praha once a month. Someone like you—I think maybe you’d fit right in.”

F
ranz and Eugene delivered six Mayas next Monday. Eugene had jointed their shoulders, knees, elbows, and hips on plastic swivels. He had trimmed their skulls inside the design virtuality, so the finished mannequins had no hair.

The shop was now in possession of six tall plastic nudes with slightly startled expressions. The mannequins weighed about five kilos each, so lightweight and breezy that it was a good idea to weight their feet lest they topple over.

Maya and Klaudia spent the day dressing the plastic mannequins, doing their wigs and makeup, and assembling them in action tableaus outside the shop.

Klaudia was surprisingly good at this. Klaudia was no genius at making change but she was great at deploying mannequins—mannequins clambering over café tables, mannequins brandishing tennis rackets, mannequins chewing enthusiastically on each other’s feet. The outdoor orgy of well-dressed plastic Mayas was a powerful crowd draw. Maya would take her own place among the plastic stiffs and then suddenly move, on Klaudia’s cue. The effect was profound.

Maya found it lovely to be publicly admired. So publicly, and with such intense repetition. The romantic ingenue Maya; the big floral pink powderpuff Maya; the Maya in gallopades with gleaming wads of costume jewelry and big kicky wings of eyeliner; the Maya in the white neon
battery suit; the high-kicking hey-sailor Maya in red and white culottes; the sporty mountain-hiking Maya; the cool and classic draperied Maya with a fluted frappé glass. The Maya multiplicity was grand fun, a pocket spectacle. Still, when the day was over, Maya felt peculiarly thin and stretched. Strangely and terribly weary.

It was Therese’s biggest commercial day in months. They sold so much stock (including every last one of the Maya dolls) that Therese decided to leave town for an acquisition tour.

“You can run along and have some fun in Praha while I’m out of town,” Therese said to Maya. “You’d better take Klaudia with you. I never knew Eugene to ask any girl for a date before. Taking Klaudia will widen your options.”

“Eugene wasn’t making a date with me, and I don’t even like Eugene. Much. Besides, why should I go to Praha? There are plenty of vivid cafés here in Munchen.”

“Don’t be a mule, darling. Praha is a big fashion town. The Tête du Noyé is a scene. You’re a model in the rag trade, so it’s important for you to make scenes.”

“That kind of fun sounds like a lot of work.”

“Well, at least it’s work of a different kind. Klaudia deserves time off from the store, and so do you. Anyway, if Klaudia runs off to party without you to look after her, she’ll only get into trouble. Klaudia always does.”

“That’s all very clever and convenient, Therese. You’re always so full of wiles and angles.”

“I have to make arrangements. I can’t do business from an empty shop, you know that as well as I do. Get Klaudia off my hands for a little while—and take your camera, too. There are big armies of vivid women in Praha.” Therese narrowed her eyes. “Those Praha vivid girls … They have an iron grip on the fragile exotic look.”

There was no resisting a determined Therese. Maya and Klaudia loaded their backpacks and their hangered garment bags, and caught the Praha train late Tuesday
morning. Klaudia paid. Klaudia almost always paid; she had a little salary, plus a tidy allowance from her wealthy and influential Munchener parents.

They fell headlong into their beanbags. Maya felt cranky and exhausted. Klaudia was twenty-two; the previous day of excitement and frenzied labor had only improved her mood. Klaudia was ready for anything. “[You’d better eat something, Maya,]” she said in Deutsch. “[You never eat anything.]”

“I’m never hungry.”

Klaudia adjusted her own earpiece translator. Despite weary years of the finest state-assisted classroom training, Klaudia’s English was highly unstable. “[Well, you’ll eat something today, or I’ll sit on you. You look so pale. Look at that wig. Can’t you even try?]” Klaudia deftly adjusted Maya’s secondhand mop of blond curls. “[You have the strangest hair, girl, you know that? Your natural hair feels more like a wig than this wig does.]”

“That’s from my shampoo.”

“[What shampoo? Are you trying to kid me? You never shampoo. You should let me spritz you a nice protein strengthened I know you’re trying to grow your hair out, but you should let me trim it a little. Without that wig, you look like a big
ragazzina.
]”

“
Ja, Klaudia, ich bin die grosse Ragazzina
.”

Klaudia gave her the look that locals always gave her when she tried her broken Deutsch—a look as if her intelligence had suddenly plummeted.

The train pulled out of the station with the ease and silence of a skate skimming ice. The car was three-quarters full. Klaudia examined every one of the passengers in their car with her forthright Deutschlander stare. She elbowed Maya suddenly. “
Na
, Maya!”

“What?”

“[See that old lady sitting back there with the police dog and the little kid? That’s the president of the Magyar Koztarsasag.]”

“The president of
what
?”

“Hungary.”

“Oh.” Maya shook her head. “I know we’re all supposed to call people by their own proper names nowadays, but speaking Hungarian, that’s pushing it.”

“[She’s an important polity figure. You should go ask for the log-on address to her publicity palace.]”

“Me? I feel so sleepy,” Maya said. “[She’s a big politician. She’ll speak English to you. What a shame she’s so badly dressed. I wish I could remember her name. You could take my picture with her.]”

“If she’s really a politician, she’ll appreciate it if we respect her privacy.”

“[What?]” Klaudia demanded, skeptically. “[States-people
hate
privacy. Government people don’t do that privacy nonsense.]”

Maya yawned. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel so worn out today. I’m having a sinking spell. I think maybe a little nap …”

“[I’ll get you something,]” volunteered Klaudia, squirming onto her high heels, eyes gleaming. “[A tincture. How about caffeine?]”

“Caffeine? That’s addictive. And isn’t it awfully strong?”

“[It’s our day off! Let’s be daring! Let’s drink caffeine and get really
sternhagelvoll!
We’ll run around Praha all day! Praha, the Golden City!]”

“Okay,” Maya said, sinking into her pastel blue beanbag and fluttering one hand at the wrist. “Go, go. Bring me something.… ”

Maya slumped bonelessly into the luscious depths of her beanbag and gazed up at the roof of the train car. A blank expanse of gleaming metal. This railcar was a real antique. It had been designed for advertisements, before advertising had been outlawed worldwide. Light flashed by through the bare limbs of the trackside arbors against the gleaming expanse of the roof. Flash, flash, flash.

She emerged from her daze with a piercing ache behind both eyes. Something was really hurting her ear. She pulled it off. An earcuff. The skin of her ear was all pinched beneath it, as if she’d been wearing it for weeks. She plucked the little device off her head, held it in her hand, gazed at it blankly, then let it drop on the floor.… What
was
she wearing?

She was wearing a red jacket over a long-sleeved low-cut shirtdress, a slinky number that looked and clung like lace and snakeskin. The dress ended at midthigh. She wore spangled metallic hose and high-heeled ankle boots.

Mia got onto her feet, wobbling. She began walking unsteadily down the aisle of the train car, wobbling in the absurd boots. Her toes were pinched and her ankles ached. She felt very strange and weak—starved, headachy, shaky, really bad.

She was alone inside a train with twenty or thirty foreigners. An alien landscape was rushing at terrific speed by the window.

She had a very bad moment then, an all-over shudder of identity crisis and culture shock, so that she swayed where she stood and felt sweat break out all down her back. Then the nausea passed and she came out of it, and she felt extremely different.

She was Mia Ziemann. She was Mia Ziemann and she was having a very strange reaction to the treatment.