The old woman looked at her for the first time, directly, eye to eye. Something quite strange happened between them then. The woman’s eyes widened and she turned pale. “Didn’t you say that you had an appointment,” she said at last in a tentative voice, “that you had an appointment, ma’am? Please don’t let me keep you.”
“Yes, okay,” Maya said, “good-bye, wiedersehen.” She left the Hofbrauhaus.
Ulrich was waiting for her outside in the street. He had put his woolly suit back on. “You take much too long,” he chided, turning. “Come with me.” He began walking up the street, to a tubestation.
On the way down the escalator Ulrich opened his brown backpack and began rooting in its depths. “Ah-hah! Yes, I knew it.” He pulled up a little featherlight earclamp. “Here, wear this on.”
Maya put the earclamp onto her right ear. Ulrich began speaking to her in Deutsch. A stream of Deutsch gibberish emerged from his lips, and the earclamp began translating on the fly.
“[This will be much better,]” the earclamp repeated, in dulcet mid-Atlantic English. “[Now we’ll be able to converse in something like intellectual parity.]”
“What?” Maya said.
“The translator works, isn’t it?” Ulrich spoke English and patted his ear anxiously.
“Oh.” Maya touched the earclamp. “Yes, it’s working.”
Ulrich slipped happily back into Deutsch. “[Well, then! Now I can demonstrate to you that I’m rather a more clever and resourceful fellow than my limited skills in English irregular grammar might indicate.]”
“You just stole that woman’s purse.”
“[Yes, I did that. It was expedient. It was too frustrating to speak to you otherwise. I was sure that a woman of her age and class would have a tourist’s translator. And who knows, perhaps there are other interesting things in the purse.]”
“What if they catch you? Catch us?”
“[They won’t catch us. When I took the purse I was in my leotards, and there was no one in brightly colored leotards recorded entering or leaving the building. There are certain techniques by which one does these appropriations safely. The craft is difficult to explain to a neophyte.]” Ulrich brushed briskly at the woolly sleeves of his jacket. “[But back to the point. I’m rather good at understanding English, not so good at speaking it.]” Ulrich laughed. “[So you can speak to me in English, and I will speak to your earpiece in Deutsch, and we’ll get on very well.]”
They reached the bottom of the escalator and began working their way through the maze of potted plants: cy-cads, ferns, gingkos. “[When someone speaks a pidgin version of your language,]” Ulrich told her, “[it’s hard not to underestimate their intellect. They always seem like such a fool. I wouldn’t care to have you underestimate me. That misapprehension would put us on entirely the wrong footing.]”
“Okay. I understand you. You can speak beautifully. But you’re a thief.”
“[Yes, we European purse-snatchers have traditionally benefited by an exquisite education.]” She could hear the tone of sarcasm in Ulrich’s Deutsch even as she heard the running translation in English. The translator had a way of punching bits of English, with just the right pitch and timbre, through the blocky syllables inside the Deutsch. This was going to take some getting used to.
They stepped aboard a tube train, and sat together in the back of the car. Ulrich didn’t bother to pay. “[It’s better to leave the scene of the crime in short order,]” he murmured. He took her handbag from her, opened it, and emptied the entire contents of the stolen purse into it, deftly hiding the operation in the cavernous depths of his own backpack. “[Here,]” he said, giving her back her own handbag. “[That’s all yours now. See what you can find that’s of use to you.]”
“This is very dishonest.”
“[Maya, you are dishonest. You are an illegal alien traveling without ID,]” Ulrich said. “[Are you ready to be honest and to go home? Do you want to honestly face the people that you ran away from?]”
“No. No, definitely, I don’t want that.”
“[Then you’re breaking the rules already. You will have to break a lot more such silly rules. You can’t get a real job without ID. You can’t get health checks, you can’t get insurance. If the police ever bother to formally question you, they will take one little sniff of your DNA and they will find out who you are. No matter where you came from in the whole wide world, no matter who you are. The polity’s medical databanks are very good.]” Ulrich rubbed his chin. “[Maya, do you know what an ‘Information Society’ is?]”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“[Europe is a true Information Society. A true Information Society is a society made of informers.]” Ulrich’s dark eyes narrowed. “[A society of ‘rats.’ ‘Sneaks.’ ‘Snitches.’ ‘Judases.’ ‘Stool pigeons.’ Is my rhetorical point penetrating that translator?]”
“Yes, it is.”
“[Then that’s a fine translator! What an excellent grasp of the Deutsch vernacular!]” Ulrich laughed cheerfully, and lowered his voice. “[München is a good place to hide, because the police here move slowly. If you’re smart and you have good friends, then you can survive in München as a runaway. But if they ever take real notice of you, then the bulls will come to arrest you. You can count on that.]”
“Are you an illegal, Ulrich?”
“[Not at all, I’m a legal Deutschlander. Twenty-three years old.]” He stretched, putting his arm behind her shoulders. “[I simply enjoy pursuing the life of a petty criminal for reasons of pleasure and ideology. Too much honesty is bad for people.]”
Maya looked inside her handbag. She felt a vague urge to complain further, but she decided to shut up when she saw what a fine haul he’d made. The minibank was useless away from its proper owner, of course, but there were a couple of cashcards in there with pin money already slotted in them. Also a Munchen tubeticket. Sunglasses. Brush and comb set. Hair lacquer. Lipstick (not her color), night cream (hydrolyzer compound), internal pH chalk (peppermint flavored). Mineral tabs for tinctures. A hypo set. Tissues. A handsome little netlink. A scroller. And a camera.
Maya fished out the camera. A little digital tourist job. It fit her hand with lovely smoothness. She peered experimentally through the lens, then turned and framed Ulrich’s face. He flinched away, and quickly shook his head.
Maya examined the camera’s readout and cleared the internal disk of photos. “You really want me to keep all this stuff?”
“I know you need it,” Ulrich said in English.
“Great.” She began carefully polishing the camera with a paper tissue.
“[I happened to look inside your bag,]” Ulrich confided, “[while you were staring up at the steeple at those crazy Catholics. I saw that there was nothing much in your bag except a half-eaten welfare pretzel and some panties spotted with rat dung. This made me very curious.]” Ulrich leaned closer. “[I declined to appropriate your useless purse. I thought it much better that I offer you my protection. I don’t know who you are, little Californian. But you are very unworldly. You won’t last long in Munchen without a friend.]”
She smiled at him sunnily. Perfectly happy and confident. “So you’re my new friend?”
“[Certainly. I’m just the kind of bad company you need.]”
“You’re very generous. With other people’s property.”
“[I’d be generous with my own property if I were allowed to have any.]” He took her hand and squeezed it, very gently. “[Don’t you trust me? You might as well trust me. We’ll have much more fun that way.]” He lifted her fingers, and lightly touched them to his lips.
She pulled her hand free, clapped her palm against the back of his neck, and leaned into him. Their faces collided. Their lips met.
Kissing him was absolute rapture. Heat rose from his sleek young neck inside the woolly collar. The smell of male human flesh in close proximity hit a core of memory within her that lit her up all over. She could feel her whole personality pucker and collapse as if he
r bare brain had bitten into a lemon. She began to kiss the stuffing out of him.
“[Be careful, little mouse,]” Ulrich said, tearing free with a happy gasp. “[People are watching.]”
“Can’t I kiss a guy on a subway?” she said, wiping her mouth on her coatsleeve. “What’s the harm?”
“[Not much for us,]” he agreed. “[But it might make these people remember us. That’s not smart.]”
She looked up the length of the railway car. A dozen Muncheners were staring at them. Caught out, the Deutschlanders continued to stare, with deep and solemn interest and without one shred of inhibition. Maya frowned, and raised her camera to her face in self-defense. The Deutschlanders merely smiled and waved at her, clowning for the lens. Reluctantly, she put the camera back into her purse. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“[Where do you want to go?]”
“Where can we go lie down?”
Ulrich laughed delightedly. “[It’s just as I thought. You’re a madwoman.]”
She poked his ribs. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like that, you big faker.”
“[Of course I liked it. You’re the exact sort of madwoman I’ve been looking for all my life. You’re very pretty, you know. It’s very true. You should let your hair grow out.]”
“I’ll get a wig.”
“[I’ll get you seven wigs,]” Ulrich promised. He’d gone all heavy lidded. “[One for every day of the week. And clothes. You like nice clothes, don’t you? I can tell from that jacket that you’re a girl who likes nice clothes.]”
“I like vivid clothes.”
“[You ran away from home to be vivid, little mouse? Vivid people have a lot of fun.]” She’d taken his breath away for a moment, but all the kissing was having a delayed effect on Ulrich. He’d gotten his initiative back and he was having a hard time controlling his hands.
“[Necking always makes me stupid,]” Ulrich announced, meditatively massaging her left thigh. “[I should take you to a cheap hotel, but I’m going to take you to my favorite criminal den.]”
“A criminal den? How lovely. What more could I need?”
“[Better shoes,]” he told her, very seriously. “[Contact lenses. Cashcards. Wigs. Skin tint. Some pidgin Deutsch, to get by. Maps. Food. Plumbing. A nice warm bed.]”
They left the train in Schwabing. Ulrich took her to a squat. It was a four-story twentieth-century apartment house, in cheap and hideous yellow brick. Someone had methodically ripped all the electrical wiring out of the building, reducing it to unrentable junk. Ulrich picked up a wire-handled oil lamp from the stoop by the front door.
“[You can’t keep the health inspectors out of a squat,]” Ulrich warned her. They ignored the shattered elevator and headed up the first of several flights of darkened, reeking stairs. “[Civil-support people are stubborn pests, they are very brave. But Munchen police are very efficient and therefore lazy. They want machines to do their work, and it’s hard to bug or tap a squat when it has no electricity.]”
“How many people live in this dump?”
“[They come and they go. About fifty people. We are anarchists.]”
“All young people?”
“The dead-at-forty,” Ulrich said in English, and smiled. “[They call us young.… Old people don’t like squats. They don’t want freedom or privacy. They want their archives, cleaning machines, reclining chairs, real money, monitors and alarms everywhere, all the comforts. Truly old people never squat. They don’t feel the need.]” Ulrich leered halfheartedly. “[One of many such needs that old people no longer feel.… ]”
“Do you have parents, Ulrich?”
“[Everyone has parents. Sometimes we misplace them.]” They reached the landing on the third floor, and he lifted the hissing lamp to study her face. He looked very solemn. “[Don’t ask about my parents, and I won’t ask about yours.]”
“Mine are dead.”
“[How lovely for you,]” Ulrich said, patiently climbing stairs. “[I’d be sorry for you, if I believed that.]”
They reached a top flight, puffing for breath. They walked down a chilly hall with bare, graffiti-tagged walls. The graffiti was very subversive, neatly stenciled, highly politicized. Much of it was in English. TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE, insinuated one graffito. CONSUME MORE RESOURCES TO GRATIFY SHORT-TERM DESIRES, another suggested darkly.
Ulrich opened an ancient padlock with a metal key. The door shuddered open with a scream of hinges. The room within was dark and icy, and it stank. The interior walls had mostly been kicked out and replaced with blankets on ropes. The place smelled of slow decay and wild mice.
Ulrich slammed the door and shot a bolt. “[Isn’t this luxurious?]” he said, voice echoing in the fetid gloom. “[It’s real privacy! I don’t mean legal privacy, either. I mean that this area is physically inaccessible to surveillance.]”
“No wonder it smells like this, then.”
“[I can repair the smell.]” Ulrich methodically lit half a dozen scented candles. The room began to fill with the piercing waxy reek of tropical fruits: pineapple, mango. She doubted that Ulrich had ever tasted a pineapple or mango. Presumably that lack of direct experience made the scents more appealingly exotic.
Maya examined the stinking dive in the romantic glow of the candlelight. “You sure have a lot of electronic gizmos in here, considering that you got no electricity.”
“[Appropriated materials.]” Ulrich nodded. “[As it happens, I share this area with three other gentlemen with similar interests. We’ve found that pooling resources is a necessity for our life outside the law.]”
He hooked the lantern on a rope that dangled from the ceiling, and set it swaying gently. Shadows swam the walls. “[We don’t live here. Under no circumstances would one keep appropriated materials in one’s regular domicile. Any serious commercial fencing operation is also quite difficult, thanks to time-based currencies, the informant network, panoptic tracing measures, and other means of gérontocratie oppression. So my comrades and I use this area as our joint storeroom, and occasionally we sleep with women in it.]”
“It’s a real mess. Fantastic. Can I take a picture of it?”
“No.”
She gazed in wonder at the ugly clutter: bags, shoes, sporting goods, recorders, dismembered laptops, heaps of tourist clothes from raided luggage. “This place is a real archive. You got any touchscreens in here that can recognize a gestural passtouch and get me into a memory palace set up back in the sixties?”
“[I’m sorry, darling,]” said Ulrich, “[but I have no idea what you’re talking about.]” He advanced on her, arms spread.
They began kissing feverishly. The room began warming up nicely, but not so warm as to make it fun to step out of your clothes. “Where can we do it?”
“[There’s a sleeping bag over there. I stole it from a skier and it’s very warm. Big enough for two.]”
“Okay,” she said, pulling free from his insistent grip, “I want to do it, and you know that I want to do it. Right? But I know that you want to do it, worse than I want to do it. So that means I get to make the rules. Okay?”
Ulrich raised his sloping brows. “ ‘Rules?’ ”
“That’s right, Ulrich, rules. Rule number one, you don’t know who I am, or where I came from. And you don’t ever try to find out.”
“Oh, I like your idea of rules, treasure. This could be fun.”
“Rule two, you don’t brag about me to any of your ratty friends. You don’t ever say anything about me to anybody.”
“That’s very good, I am certainly no informer. That’s two rules, but …” Ulrich paused. “[You are rapidly expanding the conceptual territory.]”
“Rule three, I get to stay in this squat until you get tired of me, and you have to make sure I don’t freeze to death, and you have to watch me and make sure that I eat.”
“[We’d better work on all those proposals later,]” Ulrich said. “[They sound ambitious. Anyway, I’ve never been able to obey more than two r
ules at a time even under the best of circumstances.]”
That seemed sensible, given the situation. She climbed into the sleeping bag with him. They shed their clothing and embraced. There was sweet delightful groping and stroking and some vigorous heaving. It seemed to take the usual nice long time, but in reality it took about eight minutes. Which was just as well.
When he was done, she sat up in the bag. The skier’s stolen bag was lined with woven foil and by now it felt like a kitchen toaster. “That was lovely. I feel very happy now.”
“[I’m also delighted,]” Ulrich declared gallantly. He was postcoitally morose, and visibly trying to assemble a state of consciousness that was not hormonally driven. It had been a long time since she had seen this happen to a man in her company, but in its own way it was a touchingly familiar sight. She’d come to terms with the realities of male physiology a very long time ago. It would have been lovely to kiss him some more, but if he ran true to form, he would want to either eat a sandwich or go right to sleep.
“I should get us some nice food to eat,” Ulrich offered, with machinelike behavioral accuracy. “What do you like?”
“Oh, something colloidal. Something very cross-linked and tryptophan-ish.”
“[I’m sorry, what?]”
“Anything but vegetables or dead animals.”
“Okay.” Ulrich climbed methodically into his clothing. He managed a cheery wink. “[I love it when a girl wears nothing but a translation earpiece. A sight like that makes life seem so full of promise.]” He left. She heard him padlocking the door shut behind him, heard his footsteps down the hall.
The thought of being locked within the criminal den did not disturb her in the least. She got up immediately and began compulsively to clean the room. The state of disorder had been driving her crazy.
She stopped her cleaning frenzy when she discovered a little stolen laptop television. Genuine televisions, with their broadcast datastream, lack of keyboards, and miserably unilateral interface, were real oddities. She’d spent years collecting kitschy oddities from the enormous freakish garbage heaps of twentieth-century television culture, before she’d discovered the even odder CD-ROM and software media niches.
Holy Fire Page 10
