Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [77]
“I’m not a little beach crab. And I’m not an incubus.” She drew a harsh breath. “I’m an outlaw.”
He laughed.
“I am! I used to pretend that I was someone else, really someone else, so that I didn’t have to face up to what I really wanted. But I was lying, because I was Mia all along, I’ve always been Mia, and I’m Mia right now, and I hate them! They don’t want me to live! They only want me to exist and wear out the days and the years, just like they do! I could walk into the street right now—well, if I put on some clothes—and I could call the lab in the Bay, and I could say, ‘Hello everybody in California, it’s me, it’s Mia Ziemann, I just had a bad reaction to the treatment, I’m sorry, I’m in Europe, I lost my head for a while, please take me back, put all your things inside me and up me and on me, I’m all right now, I’ll be really good.’ And they would! They’d send a plane and probably a reporter, and they’d give me my job back and put a cold towel on my forehead. They’re so stupid, they should all die! I’ll never go back to that life, I’d rather be killed, I’d rather jump out the window.” She was trembling.
Emil touched her hand, and said nothing for a long time. Finally he got up and fetched her a glass of water. She drank it thirstily, and wiped at her eyes.
“That’s what you had to tell me, is it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all of it?”
“Well, yes.”
“Did you ever tell it to me before?”
“No, Emil, never. I’ve never told it to you or to anyone else. You’re the first one, truly.”
“Do you think you’ll have to tell it to me again?” She paused, considering. “Do you think that you’ll remember it?”
“I don’t know. I might remember it. I don’t often remember things that I’m told this late at night. I might not remember it with some other woman, either, but there’s something very deep about the two of us. You and me. I think … I think we were fated to meet.”
“Well … Maybe we … No. No, I can’t believe that, Emil. I’m not religious, I’m not superstitious, I’m not even mystical, I’m just posthuman. I’m posthuman, I made a moral choice to go beyond the limits. I made that choice with my eyes open, and now I have to learn how to survive in my own private nightmare.”
“I know a way out for you.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll have to be brave. But I can mold you all into one piece. No doubts, no secrets, no pains, just one whole new woman. If you wanted me to.”
“Oh, Emil …” She stared at him. “Not the amnesiac.”
“Of course the amnesiac. You wouldn’t think I could misplace a valuable thing like that, I hope. This Ziemann person you talk about, this old woman, this incubus that you have … We could brush her away from you. Clean away, just like a witch’s broom.”
“How would that help us? I’d still be an illegal alien.”
“No you wouldn’t. We’d brush that away too. You’d be my wife. You’d be young. And new. And fresh. And you’d love me. And I’d love you.” He sat up in bed, waving his hands. “We’d write it all down tonight. We’d explain to ourselves just how to go about it, so we could see it together in the morning. We’d get Paul to help us. Paul is good, he’s clever, he has friends and influence, he likes me. We’ll marry, we’ll leave the city, we’ll go into Bohemia. We’ll plant a garden and work clay. We’ll be two new creatures together in the countryside, and we’ll live outside bourgeois reality, forever!”
He was full of passionate excited inspiration and conviction, and she was trying to respond to him, when the black lightning of suspicion hit her and she knew, with a deep uneasy lurch, that he had made this offer to other women before.
When she woke in the morning there was no sign of Emil. The room reeked of blood. She’d bled all over the sheets. She crawled out of bed, stuffed a makeshift pad into her underwear, put on a robe, and made herself a pain tincture. She drank it, she stripped the sheets,