Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [141]
“Are you serious, Benedetta? Oh, you are. You’re serious. Oh, darling, that’s too bad.”
“Did you ever have a really good talk with Paul? I have. Despite everything.”
“Yes, I have,” Maya said. “He once patted me on the hand.”
“I think it’s the cop. That’s my working hypothesis. The Widow’s our real rival. It’s his crush. A terrible crush. Isn’t that the proper word in English, ‘crush’? Anyway, it’s Helene. He wants Helene. He loves to feast with panthers.”
“Oh, no. That can’t be true.”
“He respects Helene. He takes her very seriously. He talks to her, even when he doesn’t have to talk to her. He wants something from Helene. He wants her validation, isn’t that the word? He wants to conquer the Widow, like climbing the Matterhorn. He needs to make her believe in him.”
“Oh, poor Paul, poor Benedetta. Poor everybody.”
“What does this matter to me?” said Benedetta, all lighthearted bitterness. “I’ll live for a thousand years. If I had Paul even for a hundred years, it would only be an episode. If I had Paul now, what would I do with Paul later, when things become interesting? As for the Widow, he can forget all about that. Helene is a creature of habit. She’ll never love any man who will outlive her.”
“Oh. Well, that explains a lot. I guess.”
“See, Maya? You’re not human. We’re not human. But we can understand. We’re artifice people. We always know it, before we can speak it aloud. We always understand much better than we think.”
A gong rang. It was Marcel. He shouted something in Français, and then in Deutsch, and then in English. The time had come for the immersion.
“I’m not going in,” Maya said.
“You should swim with us, Maya. It’s good for you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“This isn’t serious virtuality. It’s not holy fire. The immersion pool is only a rich man’s toy. But it’s pretty. And technically sweet.”
Shimmering liquid gushed as the others whooped and dived in. No one surfaced.
Benedetta wrapped her lustrous hair in a Psyche knot and pinned it. “I’m going in. I think I’ll have sex today.”
“Who with, for heaven’s sake?”
“Well, if I can’t find someone willing to bother, maybe I’ll try by myself.” She smiled, ran, and dived headlong. White bubbles rose, and she was gone.
Paul patrolled the edge of the pool. Gazing in. Smiling. The picture of satisfaction.
“That’s everyone but you and me,” he called out.
She waved. “Don’t mind me, you go ahead.”
He shook his head. He drew near, walking slowly, barefooted. “I can’t leave you sitting here looking so sad.”
“Paul, why don’t you go?”
“You’ve been talking politics with Benedetta,” Paul concluded analytically. “We didn’t take these risks, and make this effort, just to add to our own unhappiness. That would only represent a moral defeat for us. We must have a good time with our youth, or there’s so little point in being young. So you see, you simply must come in with us.”
“Things like this frighten me.”
“Then I’ll teach you about it,” said Paul, perching cautiously on the foot of her lounge chair. “Think of the virtuality pool as a kind of crème de menthe. All right? On the top layer is a breathable silicone fluid. We’ve put a trace of anandamine in it, just for fun. On the bottom is a malleable liquid. It’s something like the fusible liquids that our friend Eugene uses to cast sculpture. But it’s much more advanced and much more friendly, so we can swim inside it. It’s a buoyant, tactile, breathable, immersible virtuality.”
Maya said nothing. She tried to look very attentive.
“The best part is the platform. The platform is a fluidic computer. It uses liquid moving through tiny locks and channels to form its logic gates. You see? We dive into the pool and we can actually breathe the very stuff of computation! And the computer instantiates itself as it runs. Soft liquid for software, hardened liquid for hardware. It abolishes certain crucial category distinctions. It’s a deeply poetic scheme. Also, it’s the sort of thing that makes gerontocrats