Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [47]
Für den Körper, for the body: eau essentielle, le parfum. The perfume was voodoo. She happened to sample a traditional Parisian scent that Mia had once used on a special night sixty years ago. The evocative reek struck her such a blow of rapturous déjà vu that she dropped her bag and almost fell down in the street. Elixier des lebens! Some of it she photographed. Some of it she stole.
On the third day Ulrich piled her and a fat duffel bag of carefully chosen loot into a stolen car. They wove their way out of the city and headed for the outskirts of Stuttgart. She was wearing her jacket and a pair of slightly-too-tight sporty thermal ski pants and chic little stolen hiking boots. She had a new wig, a big curly blond mess. With a nice vivid scarf. Sunglasses. Foundation, blusher, mascara, lashes, lipstick. Nail polish, toenail polish, footwax, nutrient lotion, and a scent that made her feel more like Mia. When she felt sufficiently like Mia she knew that she could work her way out of anything.
The day was chill and drizzly. “[A friend stole this car,]” Ulrich told her. “[He took certain steps with its brain. I could rent us a car legally, of course, but then I considered our destination and cargo. I’m a bit concerned about geographical backtracking should they happen to remotely search the machine’s memory. A stolen and stupid car is safer for us.]”
“Natürlich.” He was so funny. She’d gotten used to him in very short order. Having sex with Ulrich was just like losing her virginity. She’d felt just the same mild disdain for the man involved and the same triumphant secret sense of having finally annihilated her childhood. Sex was like sleeping, only better exercise and more fun. It was something you did when you felt like jumbled-up blocks inside. It obliterated loneliness and when you came to on the far side of the experience there was a new sense of ease. Every time they had sex together, she came out of it feeling that much more settled inside her own skin. They’d been together three days so far and it had happened about ten times. Like ten pitons driven into a cliff, climbing high above everything that was old and Mia.
“[I wish I could strip this car completely and drive it with my own hands,]” mused Ulrich, watching Munchen’s old suburban sprawl roll by. “[That must have been a thrilling experience.]”
“Manual driving killed more people than wars.”
“[Oh, they’re always fussing about mortality rates, as if mortality rates were the only thing that mattered in life.… You should find this event rather interesting. There will be real enemies of the polity there.]”
The car found an autobahn and tore down it almost silently, at an inhumanly high rate of speed. The other European cars were streamlined and blisteringly fast, with lines and colors like half-sucked candy lozenges. Quite often you could see their owners snoozing or reading inside. “Does the polity have real enemies?”
“[Of course! Many! Countless hordes! A vast spectrum of refuseniks and dissidents! Amish. Anarchists. Andaman Islanders. Australian aborigines. A certain number of tribal Afghanis. Certain American Indians. And that’s just in the A’s!]”
“Prima,” Maya offered, tentatively.
“[You mustn’t think that every human being in the world has been bribed into submission and complacency, just because the polity can offer you a few rotten years of extra life.]”
“Fifty or sixty extra years. And counting.”
“[It’s a magnificent bribe,]” Ulrich admitted, “[but there are many people all over the world who refuse to be co-opted. They live outside the medical law. Outside of the polity.]”
“I know about the Amish. Amish aren’t outlaws. People admire the Amish. They envy their sincerity and simplicity. Plus the Amish still practice real agriculture. People find that very touching.”
Ulrich