Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [110]
Ten, then a dozen, then a score of kids showed up at the villa netsite, in their street couture. Novak fed them into the shot. Faceless and crawling at her feet, their cheap and vivid gear gone half-grotesque in shadows.
When Maya saw the raw shots on Novak’s notebook screen, she was elated and appalled. Elated because he had made her so lovely. Appalled because Novak’s fantasy was so revelatory. He’d made her a bewitching atavism, a subterranean queen of illicit chic for a mob of half-monstrous children. Novak’s glamour was a lie that told the truth.
Novak took a cab back to the hotel at half past one in the morning. The old man had not given so much of himself in a long time. He was palsied with an exhaustion that only a man in his one hundred twenties could manifest.
With Novak’s departure, the Khornak brothers, who had been growing very nervous about the vivid kids, threw everyone out in a scattered welter of props and equipment.
The kids drifted off with cheery good-byes, rattling off on bicycles, or cramming half a dozen into a cab. When Brett and Maya inventoried the borrowed props they discovered that the extras had magpied off with a dozen or so small but valuable articles. Brett was reduced to tears by this discovery. “That’s so typical,” she said. “Really, you give people a chance, a real chance for once, and what do they do with it. They just slap you in the face.”
“They wanted souvenirs, Brett. They gave us their time and we didn’t pay them a thing, so I don’t mind. Really, a stuffed weasel can’t be worth all that much.”
“But I promised the store people I’d take good care of everything. And I let the kids in on something really special, and they robbed me.” Brett shook her head and sniffled. “They just don’t get it here, Maya. These Roman kids, they’re not like us. It’s like all the life has been squeezed out of them. They don’t do anything, they don’t even try, they just hang out on the Spanish Steps and drink frappés and read. Good heavens, these Roman kids read. You just give them some fat paper book and they’ll sit there and nod out for hours and hours.”
“Roman kids read?” Maya encouraged, sorting shoes. “Gosh, how classical of them.”
“It’s awful, a terrible habit! In virtuality at least you get to interact! Even with television you at least have to use visual processing centers and parse real dialogue with your ears! Really, reading is so bad for you, it destroys your eyes and hurts your posture and makes you fat.”
“Don’t you think reading can be useful sometimes?”
“Sure, that’s what they all say. You get some of these guys and they take lexic tinctures and they can read like a thousand words a minute! But still, they don’t ever do anything! They just read about doing things. It’s a disease.”
Maya stood up reluctantly. All the standing and all the fittings had made her legs ache and her feet swell. Striking and holding poses was more physically grueling than she had ever imagined. “Well, it’s too late to return any of this stuff tonight. You know any safe place we can store this junk overnight? Where do you live?”
“I don’t think my place will do.”
“You living up a tree again or something?”
Brett frowned, wounded. “No! I just don’t think my place will do, that’s all.”
“Well, I can’t carry all this weird stuff into that pricey hotel that I’m in, I’ll never even get it past the doordog.” Maya tossed her ringlets. She loved the new dark wig. It was infinitely better than hair. “Where can we squat with a closetful of prop junk at two in the morning?”
“Well, I know a really perfect place,” said Brett, “but I probably shouldn’t take you there.”
Brett’s friends were up at three