Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [145]
Helene was out of mufti and in a very dashing belted pink uniform. Other than that, there was a window and a chair and a desk. And a little white dog. From behind the desk rose a very big brown dog.
Maya stared. “Hello, Plato.”
The dog cocked his ears and said nothing.
“Plato doesn’t talk now,” Helene said. “He’s resting.”
The dog was still rather gaunt, but his coat was glossy and his nose was wet. He wore no clothing, but Helene had given him a lovely new collar. “Plato looks a lot better. I’m glad.”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Ziemann.”
“Why don’t we get on a first-name basis so I won’t have to mangle your beautiful last name with my terrible Français.”
Helene considered this. “Ciao Maya.”
“Ciao Helene.” She sat.
“I’m sorry, but business kept me out of the city a few days.”
“That’s all right. What’s a few days to the likes of us?”
“How good of you to be so public-spirited. I wish you’d shown that much patience under medical surveillance.”
“Touché,” Maya murmured.
Helene said nothing. She gazed dreamily out the office window.
Maya said nothing in return. She examined the peeling lacquer on her fingernails.
Maya was the first to break. “I can wait as long as you can,” Maya blurted, boasting, and lying. “I love your decor.”
“Do you know they spent a hundred thousand marks on your treatment?”
“A hundred thousand, three hundred and twelve.”
“And you took it in your head to dash off for a little European vacation.”
“Would it help if I said I was sorry? Of course I’m not a bit sorry, but if it would help anybody, then I’d act real polite.”
“What does make you sorry, Maya?”
“Nothing much. Well, I’m very sorry that I lost my photographs.”
“Is that all?” Helene rummaged deftly in her desk. She produced a disk. “Here.”
“Oh!” Maya clutched the disk eagerly. “You copied them! Oh, I can’t believe I have them back.” She kissed the disk. “Thank you so much!”
“You know they’re bad photographs, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know that, but I’m getting better.”
“Well, you could hardly help that. You’ve managed some Novak pastiches. But you have no talent.”
Maya stared. “I don’t think that’s up to you to judge.”
“Of course it’s up to me to judge,” Helene said patiently. “Who better? I knew Patzelt and Pauli and Becker. I married Capasso. I knew Ingrid Harmon when no one else thought she could paint. You’re not an artist, Mrs. Ziemann.”
“I don’t think I’m doing so badly for a student only four months old.”
“Art doesn’t come out of a metabolic support tank. If art came out of support tanks, it would make a complete mockery of genuine talent and inspiration. Those photographs are banal.”
“Paul doesn’t think so.”
“Paul …” She sighed. “Paul is not an artist. He’s a theoretician, a very young and very self-involved and very bad theoretician. When they thought they could mix art and science like whiskey and soda, they made an elementary blunder. It is crass and it’s a solecism. Science is not art. Science is a set of objective techniques to reveal reproducible results. Machines could do science. Art is not a reproducible result. Creativity is a profoundly subjective act. You’re a woman of damaged and fragmented subjectivity.”
“I’m a woman of a different subjectivity. And I’d sure rather mix art and science than mix art critique and police authority.”
“I’m not an artist. I only care for them.”
“If you despise science so much, why aren’t you dead?”
Helene said nothing.
“What are you so afraid of?” Maya said. “I hate to shatter your lovely mythos there, but if art can come out of a camera, it’s got no problem crawling out of a support tank. You haven’t been in the right support tanks. I have the holy fire now. That’s a silly name for it, I guess, but it’s as real as dirt, so why should I care what you call it?”
“Show me, then,” said Helene, folding her arms. “Show me one thing truly fine. Show me something truly impressive, that you or your little friends have done. I don’t count computer