Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [85]
“[The mademoiselle will be having a bottle of eau minerale and two hundred micrograms of alcionage,]” said Paul. “[I’ll have a limoncello and … oh, bring us half a dozen croissants.]”
“Très bien.” It stalked away.
“What was that thing?” Maya said.
“That’s the steward.”
“I can guess that much, but what is it? Is it alive? Is it a robot? Is it some kind of lobster? It sounded like it was talking with real lips and a tongue!”
Paul looked exasperated. “Do you mind? This is the Stuttgart express, you know.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”
Paul gazed at her silently, meditatively. “Poor Emil,” he said at last.
“Don’t tell me that! You have no right to tell me that! I’m good for him. I know I’m good for him. You don’t know anything about it.”
“Are you good for Emil?”
“Look, what can I do to make you trust me? You can’t just write me off, you can’t just push me out. You say you want something really strange to happen in the world. Well, I’m really strange, all right? And I’m happening.”
Paul thought this over, tapping the edge of the table with his fingertips. “Let me test your blood,” he said.
“All right. Sure.” She pulled up the sleeve of her sweater.
He stood up, retrieved his backpack from the overhead compartment, opened it, rummaged about methodically and removed a blood-test mosquito. He placed the little device on the center of her forearm. It sniffed about, squatted, inserted its hair-thin beak. There was no pain at all. Maybe a tiny itch.
Paul retrieved the blood-glutted device. It bent down and unfolded its wings, which formed a display screen the width of a pair of thumbnails. Paul bent down close and stared.
“So,” he said at last. “If you want to keep your secret, you’d better not let anyone else try a blood test.”
“Okay.”
“You’re very anemic. In fact, there’s a lot of fluid inside you that isn’t even blood.”
“Yeah, those would be cellular detox detergents and some catalyzed oxygen transports.”
“I see. But there’s more than enough DNA in here for me to establish your identity. And to turn you in to civil support. If that ever should prove necessary.”
“Look, Paul, you don’t have to take the trouble to trace my medical records. We’ve come this far—I’ll just tell you who I am.”
Paul forced the mosquito to disgorge on a slip of Chromatograph and folded the stained paper neatly. “No,” he said, “that’s not necessary. In fact, I don’t even think it’s wise. I don’t want to know who you are. That’s not my responsibility. And that’s certainly not what I want from you.”
“What do you want from me?”
He looked her in the eye. “I want you to prove to me that you’re not human yet still an artist.”
Stuttgart was a big loud town. Big, loud, sticky, and green. A city of gasps, grunts, wheezes, complex organic gurglings. People liked to shout at each other in Stuttgart. People emerged in sudden pedestrian torrents from sphinctering holes in the walls.
The famous towers were frankly cyclopean but their rhythmic billowing made them seem soothingly oceanic, rather than mountainous. She could hear the monster towers breathing with a viscous, tubercular rasping. Their breath galed above the furry streets and smelled of steam and lemons.
“My family helped to build this city,” Paul volunteered, neatly skirting around a large splattered puddle of a substance much like muesli. “My parents were garbage miners.”
“ ‘Were?’ ”
“They gave it up. Garbage was like any other extractive industry. The best and richest landfills played out early. Nowadays garbage mining is mostly left to wildcatters, methane drillers, small-timers. The great garbage fortunes are gone.”
“I see.”
“No need to fret, my mother did very well by her career. I’m a child of privilege.” Paul smiled cheerfully. He was relaxed, he was glad to be home.
“Your parents are Français?”
“Yes. We’re from Avignon originally. Half the population of Stuttgart are Français.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Paris has become a museum.” The