Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [87]
“What’s this place? A morgue?”
“It’s a public bathhouse.”
“Where’s the water?”
“It’s not water bathing, it’s exfoliation. You’re dipped in jelly and you lie under the lights. They dust you in spores and those filaments of mold take root in your skin. When the mold stops growing the machines scrape you clean with strigils. The mold peels off in sheets. All the body dirt and skin flora come away with the web. It’s very exhilarating.”
“It’s a bath in living mold?”
“Yes, an exacting process. They offer a little virtuality to pass the time in the tank, as you see. It’s an amenity, especially for those who live rough in the edible quarter. It’s a public service. When you’re done they paint you with the local blend of human microbes.”
“Yes, but it’s mold.”
“A very tame and pleasant mold. There’s no harm in it.” He paused. “I hope you’re not shocked by something as harmless as public nudity. That’s very common in Stuttgart.”
“Of course I’m not shocked by nudity, but it’s mold!”
“Such provincialism,” Paul said, half smiling. He was clearly piqued. “This was designed to be the friendliest city in Europe. Not that the citizens are particularly friendly—they’re like people in big cities anywhere. Rather, the city’s structure is uniquely friendly to its users.”
Paul pointed across the street, where a swarm of gnats was congregating in midair with a collective basso hum. “If you were lucky enough to acquire a room in that exclusive hostel over there—why, it’s all lattice. You can eat the walls. You can carry out any human excretory function wherever you please. Wherever you sleep, a bed of moss grows beneath you to cushion you. It’s always warm and damp. Very tactile, very epidermal, very sensual, extremely civilized. Here, the microbes are all domesticated. Life is recycled, but morbid decay has been beaten. Decay is gone like a bad dream.”
“Hmmm.” She studied the side of the hostel, a shaggy damp cascade of multicolored mosses. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound half bad.”
They ducked together into a doorway as a truck passed, soaking the environment with a dense yellow fog.
“It was a visionary scheme. A city to free its users of material bioconstraint. A source of shelter, nourishment, inspiration, and, of course, permanent safety from the terrors of plague. Perhaps this final result wasn’t intended, but the city itself is so generous that it annihilates economics. It requires a peculiarly nonpossessive nature to live here in the long term. Rebels, dreamers, philosophers … The mentally retarded also find this quarter very convenient and popular.… Over the years, the quarter has become infested with mystics.”
“Penitentes?”
“Yes, Catholic extremists of all sorts, but also many Submissionaries. Ecstatic Submissionaries, and Charismatic Submissionaries. Mohammed’s disciples. Unfortunately the Ecstatics and Charismatics are intense rivals and bitterly hate one another.”
“Isn’t that always the way.” They stepped aside as three nude women shot by on bicycles, their swollen, bricklike calves pumping furiously.
“Fanatics always hate and fear their own dissidents far more than they loathe the bourgeoisie. By that symptom shall you know them.… That failing is what cripples the fanatics. There has been violence here in Stuttgart, street brawls, even a few killings.… Did you ever take an entheogen, Maya?”
“Never, no.”
“I did. I took it here.”
She looked around. Shaggy walls, greenness, hot misty light, an urban universe of little crawling things. “What happened?”
“I saw God. God was very warm and caring and wise. I felt enormous gratitude and love for Him. It was clear strong Platonic reality, totally authentic, the light of the cosmos. It was reality as God sees it, not the fragmentary halting rationality of a human mind. It was raw mystical insight, beyond all argument. I was in the living presence of my Maker.”
“Why did you do that? Were your parents religious?”
“No, not at all. I did it because I had seen religion consume other people. I wanted to see if I would be strong enough to come out of the far side of