Novak squinted, winced a bit, then lifted his artificial hand and flexed it gently.
He then shifted casually onto his left elbow in the beanbag and reached far across the room. The right arm stretched out, its hairless skin gone all bubbled and granular, his forearm shrinking to the width of bird bone. His distant hand grasped the decanter. He fetched it back, his arm reassuming normal size with a quiet internal rasp, like ashes crunching underfoot.
He gave Maya the decanter. She studied it in the candlelight.
“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “I lived inside it for a little while. It was a universe.”
Novak shrugged. With his new arm and shoulder attached, he shrugged in remarkable fashion. “Poets have said the same for a single grain of sand.”
She looked up. “This glass is made of sand, isn’t it? A camera’s lens is made from sand. A data bit is like a single grain of sand.”
Slowly, Novak smiled. “There’s good news,” he said. “I like you.”
“It’s such a wonder to hold the glass labyrinth,” she said, turning the decanter in her hands. “It seemed so much more real when it was virtual.” She gave it back to him.
Novak examined his decanter idly, stroking it with the left hand, the right one like a glove-shaped set of rubber forceps. “Well, it’s very old. A little shape from culture’s attic. Oh attic shape!” He began to recite aloud, in Czestina. “ ‘[Designed with marble men and marble women, and forest branches, and weeds crushed by the feet. You silent formation. You twist our minds as if you were eternity. You poem of ice! When old age kills this generation, you will remain in the thick of other people’s troubles. A friend to humanity. You say to us, “Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.” We know nothing else and we need to know no more.]’ ”
“Was that poetry?”
“An old English poem.”
“Why not recite the poem in English, then?”
“There is no poetry left in English. When they stretched that language to cover the whole earth, all the poetry fell out of it.”
Maya thought this over. It sounded very plausible, and seemed to explain a lot. “Does the poem still sound all right in Czestina, though?”
“Czestina is an obsolescent platform,” Novak said. He stood up, stretched his arm like plasticine, and put his decanter in place.
“When do we leave for Roma?” Maya said.
“In the morning. Early.”
“May I sit here and wait for you, then?”
“If you promise to blow out the candles,” Novak said. And he trudged upstairs. After ten minutes his arm hopped down and deftly put itself away.
They left for Roma in the morning. Mrs. Novakova had packed her husband an enormous shoulder-slung case. Novak didn’t bother to take his prosthetic arm.
Maya shouldered her backpack. Bravely she offered to carry Novak’s case. Novak handed it over at once. It weighed half a ton. Novak collected himself with a sigh of discontent, opened his front door with deep reluctance, and took three short steps across the ancient sidewalk into a very new and very polished limousine.
Maya put the case and her backpack in the trunk and climbed into the limo, which departed with silent efficiency. “Why won’t your wife come with us to Roma?”
“Oh, these business events, they are tiresomeness itself, they are completely obligatory. They bore her.”
“How long have you and Milena been married?”
“Since 1994,” Novak grunted. “A marriage in name only now. We live like brother and sister.” He stroked his chin. “No, that doesn’t put it correctly. We’re past any burden of gender. We live like commensal animals.”
“It’s very rare to be married for an entire century. You must be very proud.”
“It can be done. If you forgive one another that awesome vulgarity of intimate desire—well, Milena and I are both collectors, we hate to throw things away.” Novak reached one-handed to his collar and detached his netlink. He thumbed a net-address.
“Hello?” he barked. “Oh, voice mail, eh?” Novak slipped into angry Czestina. “[Still avoiding me? Well, listen to this, you drone! It’s unthinkable—it’s impossible!—that an aged invalid, missing his right arm, forgotten by the world, with no proper studio, and no professional help, could have a turnover of thirty thousand marks in a year! That assessment is preposterous! Especially for the year 2095, a year very poor in commissions! And what’s this needless claptrap about the ’92 extensions? Still demanding your late fees? And even penalties? After you bled us dry? An Artist of Merit of the Czech Republic! A five-time winner of the Praha Municipal Prize! Brought to his knees through your crazy persecutions! It’s an open scandal! You haven’t heard the last from me, you shiftless dodger.]” He shut the link.
“You tell them again and again,” he mourned. “You pile up attestations, applications, documents, years and years of legal correspondence! Oh, they’re senseless. They’re like Capek’s robots.” He shook his head, then smiled grimly. “But I don’t worry! Because I am very patient, so I will outlast them.”
A private business plane was waiting for them at the Praha tarmac, a vision of aviation elegance in white, silver, and peacock blue. “Look at this,” Novak fretted, at the foot of the hinged and perforated entry stairs. “Giancarlo should have sent a steward for me. He knows my grave state of decline.”
“I’m here, Josef, I’ll be your steward.” She opened the trunk and gathered their luggage.
“He’s such a creature di moda, Giancarlo. You should see his château in Gstaad, it’s infested with those Stuttgart lobsters. You know, if they go haywire those crazy machines can murder you. Clip your throat clean through with pincers while you sleep.” Novak stepped aside as Maya lugged the heavy baggage into the plane. Then he hopped spryly up the steps.
There were no beanbags. Maya paused, puzzled. Novak crouched where he stood, and a chair leapt into existence beneath him with silent blinding speed. The plane’s flooring resembled fine Italian marble, but when presented with a lowering human rump its tricky surface puffed up a translucent airtight chair like a supersonic blister. Maya sat at random and a new chair leapt up instantly and caught her. “What a lovely plane this is,” Maya said, patting the ductile arms of her chair.
“Thank you, madame,” said the plane. “Are we ready for departure?”
“I suppose we are,” Novak grumbled. The long slender wings underwent a silent high-speed vibration. The plane ascended vertically.
Novak gazed out the window with silent concentration until the last of his beloved Praha was out of sight. Then he turned to her.
“Do you model? Surely you must,” he said.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you have an agency?”
“No. I’ve never modeled for real money.” She paused. “I don’t want to do it for money. But I’ll model for you, if you want me to.”
“Can you show clothes? Do you know how to walk?”
“I’ve seen models walking.… But no, I don’t know how.”
“Then I’ll teach you,” Novak said. “Watch carefully, and see how I place my feet.” They stood and their chairs vanished instantly, like silent burst balloons. Without the clutter of chairs around, there was lots of room to learn.
In 2065, Innocent XIV had become the first pope to undergo life extension. The exact nature of the pope’s treatment was shrouded in mystery, a rare and very diplomatic exception to the usual political practice of full medical disclosure. The pope’s decision, with its profound violation of the natural God-given life span and its grave challenge to the normal processes of papal succession, had caused a crisis in the Church.
The College of Cardinals, meeting in council to discuss the implications of the pope’s action, had experienced an episode of divine possession. Their frenzied spiritual exaltation, ecstatic dancing, and babbling in tongues had looked to skeptics like chemically propelled hallucination. But those who had directly experienced the descent of holy fire had no doubt of its sacred origin. The Church had always survived the uncharitable speculations of skeptics.