Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [59]
She stumbled forward.
The dog said something in Deutsch.
“What?” Mia said.
The dog switched to English. “Are you all right, miss? Shall I call a steward? You smell a little upset.”
The president looked up and smiled politely.
“No,” Mia said, “no. I’m feeling much better now.”
“What a lovely dress. What’s your name?” asked the president.
“Maya.”
“This fine young man is Laszlo Ferencsi,” the president said, patting the shoulder of the boy.
“I won the school essay contest!” Laszlo piped up in English. “I get to stay with the president today!”
Maya swallowed hard. “That’s great, kid. You must be really proud.”
“I am the future,” Laszlo confided shyly.
“I’m a big ragamuffin,” Maya said. She tottered to the back of the cabin, found the ladies’, knelt on the floor with a squeak of stockings, and had the dry heaves.
Klaudia found her in the ladies’, hauled her out, and bullied her into eating. Once the nutrient broth had hit her system, Maya’s morale began to soar.
Klaudia gently clipped the translator back onto Maya’s head. “[I knew you were in trouble when you left your earpiece.… It’s a good thing Therese sent me along to look after you! You don’t have any more sense than a rabbit! Even a rabbit knows enough to eat.]”
Maya dabbed cooling sweat from her forehead. “Rabbits never have my problems unless they’ve done something really postlagomorphian.”
“[No wonder Eugene likes you. You talk just as crazy as he does. You better stick close to me at this party tonight. These artifice characters are real stuck-up oddballs.]”
Maya gazed out the window and sipped pale broth from her spoon. It felt so good to be someone new. So good to be herself. So good to be alive. It was much, much more important to be alive than to be anyone in particular. Thick Bohemian forest outside the train window, the branches just beginning to leaf out for spring. Then they were silently sliding at very high velocity on skeletal arches over intensely cultivated green fields. Vast irrigated stands of tall and looming gasketfungus.
The giant fungi weren’t plants. They’d been designed to transmute air, water, and light into fats, carbohydrates, and protein, with a bioengineered efficiency previously unknown to the world of nature. A field of engineered gasketfungus could feed a small town. The fungi were two stories tall: dense, green, leafless, square edged, and as riddled as a sponge. Once you got used to the monsters, they were rather pretty. And it was nice that they were pretty, because they covered most of rural Europe.
They spent the afternoon in the center of Praha. In Mala Strana. In the Old Town, Stare Mesto. Cobbled squares. Cathedrals. Spires and ancient brick and footworn stone. Gilded steeples, railings, bridges, damply gleaming statuary. The river Vltava. Architecture centuries old.
Klaudia shopped frenetically, and methodically stuffed Maya with fast food from the street stalls. The tasty nourishing grease hit Maya like a drug, and her world grew easy and comfortable. Everything was cheerful, everything was making sense.
They took their cameras to the Karel Bridge. This was not the peak of the tourist season, but Praha was always in vogue. Praha was an artifice town, a couture town. People came here to show off.
Of course most of the tourists were old people. Most of everyone was old people. And old women had never dressed so beautifully, never carried chic so well into such advanced years. The bridge was aswarm with older women, Europe’s female gerontocrats, ladies who were poised, serene, deeply experienced, deliberate, and detached. Firm but gentle femmes du monde, who were all the more tolerant of human foibles since they were left with very few of their own.