Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [58]
Maya yawned. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel so worn out today. I’m having a sinking spell. I think maybe a little nap …”
“[I’ll get you something,]” volunteered Klaudia, squirming onto her high heels, eyes gleaming. “[A tincture. How about caffeine?]”
“Caffeine? That’s addictive. And isn’t it awfully strong?”
“[It’s our day off! Let’s be daring! Let’s drink caffeine and get really sternhagelvoll! We’ll run around Praha all day! Praha, the Golden City!]”
“Okay,” Maya said, sinking into her pastel blue beanbag and fluttering one hand at the wrist. “Go, go. Bring me something.… ”
Maya slumped bonelessly into the luscious depths of her beanbag and gazed up at the roof of the train car. A blank expanse of gleaming metal. This railcar was a real antique. It had been designed for advertisements, before advertising had been outlawed worldwide. Light flashed by through the bare limbs of the trackside arbors against the gleaming expanse of the roof. Flash, flash, flash.
She emerged from her daze with a piercing ache behind both eyes. Something was really hurting her ear. She pulled it off. An earcuff. The skin of her ear was all pinched beneath it, as if she’d been wearing it for weeks. She plucked the little device off her head, held it in her hand, gazed at it blankly, then let it drop on the floor.… What was she wearing?
She was wearing a red jacket over a long-sleeved low-cut shirtdress, a slinky number that looked and clung like lace and snakeskin. The dress ended at midthigh. She wore spangled metallic hose and high-heeled ankle boots.
Mia got onto her feet, wobbling. She began walking unsteadily down the aisle of the train car, wobbling in the absurd boots. Her toes were pinched and her ankles ached. She felt very strange and weak—starved, headachy, shaky, really bad.
She was alone inside a train with twenty or thirty foreigners. An alien landscape was rushing at terrific speed by the window.
She had a very bad moment then, an all-over shudder of identity crisis and culture shock, so that she swayed where she stood and felt sweat break out all down her back. Then the nausea passed and she came out of it, and she felt extremely different.
She was Mia Ziemann. She was Mia Ziemann and she was having a very strange reaction to the treatment.
A dog was staring at her. It was the police dog belonging to the Magyar president. The dog was crouching on his beanbag at the edge of the aisle, looking very efficient in his strapped and buttoned police-dog uniform. His ears were cocked alertly and his eyes were fixed on Mia.
The president of Hungary sat next to the dog, together with a ten-year-old boy. She was showing the boy the screen of her notebook, pointing into its depths with a virtuality wand, a slim and elegant access device like an ivory chopstick. The boy was gazing into the woman’s screen in primal trust and fascination, and the president was teaching him something, speaking gently in Magyar.
The old woman had the most astonishing hands. Hands that were wrinkled and deft and strong. A face supernaturally full of character, a postmortal face. The face you had when you were a very strong-willed, very healthy, very intelligent woman a hundred and twenty years old, and you had seen many sorrows and had made many painful decisions, and you had lost all illusion, but had never lost your self-respect, or your desire to help.
Of course this lady would speak English. She was a European intellectual, she would speak English, along with her consummate mastery of five or six other languages. She had authority—no, she was authority. So Mia would totter over to this saintly woman, and beg her help, and say, I’m sick, I’m hungry, I’m weak, I’ve lost my way, I’ve run away, I’ve broken my faith and abandoned all my duties and my obligations, I’ve done something bad, and I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, please help me.
And the president would look at her and she would master the situation in an instant. She would not be embarrassed or upset, she would be very wise, and she would