“What do you want from them? Your world made them. Your world made me. What do you want from me?”
Helene shrugged. “What can I do with you?”
“Come on, Helene. Don’t tell me you haven’t already made up your mind about that.”
Helene spread her hands. “The children don’t understand. They truly think the world is fossilizing. They have no idea how close we are to chaos. The children want power. Power without responsibility, discretion, or maturity. They want to alter their brains! And you helped them to try it! Aren’t your brains altered enough?”
“Maybe. I know they’re pretty altered. Believe me, I can feel it. But really, I couldn’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me. How very reassuring that is. Imagine if there were genuine rebels in the modern world. Crazy rebels, true old-fashioned fanatics, but crawling out of brand-new support tanks. Did you know you can take any common tincture set and make enough nerve gas to poison a city? Here you are, darling, wrapping up in your sweet little furoshiki scarf and breaking the laws of nature with uninhibited force.… They think that you are cute. You think that you are cute. They think everything is under stifling control. Nothing is under control. Half the modern population has given up on objective reality. They are out of their minds on entheogens. They all think they see God, and if it weren’t for the fact that they love and trust their government, they’d butcher each other.”
“It’s sure a good thing you government types are so lovable, then.”
“You were government. You’re a medical economist. Aren’t you? You know very well how much trouble we’ve taken. How much labor that great effort has been. You are robbing poor, honest people so that you can have fun running off with the public’s investment in your body. Is that fair? It’s a miracle that we’ve built a just society where the rich and powerful don’t trample and steal the very lives of other people.”
“Yeah, I voted for all that,” Maya said.
“These children take the world we built for granted. They think they’re immortals. They might even be right, but they think they deserve immortality. They think that the increase in human life span is some mystical technological impulse. It’s not mystical. There’s nothing mystical about it. Real people are working very hard to achieve that progress. People are breaking their hearts, and giving everything they have, to invent new ways to postpone death. You’re not an artist, but at least once you were helping society. Now you’re actively doing harm.”
“They’ve really hurt you, haven’t they?”
“Yes, they have done real harm.”
“I’m glad they hurt you.”
“I’m glad that you said that,” Helene said serenely. “I thought you were crazy, a woman of diminished moral capacity. Now I can see that you’re actively malicious.”
“What are you going to do to me? You can’t make me be Mia.”
“Of course I can’t do that. I wish I could, but it’s too late for that. We can’t do anything about a failed experiment. Experiments fail, it happens, that’s why they are experiments. But we can stop the failures; and we can try something more productive.”
“Aha.”
“You’re a medical economist. You used to judge these processes yourself. Didn’t you? How would you judge a treatment that produces cheats and mad people?”
“Helene, are you really telling me that the other NTDCD patients are behaving as oddly as I am?”
“No, I certainly am not. More than half of them have been model patients. Those are the people I truly pity. They took those treatments in good faith and fulfilled their duty to society, and now they will be stranded. Marooned in a dead extension. Because of reckless malcontents like you.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Maya laughed. “That makes me feel so happy! It’s so lovely to know I have brothers and sisters.… And you’ve even given me my pictures back! They’re bad pictures, but at least they’re real proof I’m not Mia.”
“They’re not proof of anything.”
“They are. Well, they will be. I’ll prove that I’m better now. I’ll prove that I’m better than Mia. Go ahead, cut me off of treatments. I’ll prove I’m valuable, I’ll make everybody admit it. I’m worth much more to this world than a hundred thousand lousy marks.”
“You won’t prove it to me.”
“We’ll see about that. What do you know, anyway? You’re rich and famous, and a lot of men adored you, and you’re one of the major art collectors of the twenty-first century. Big deal, what does all that prove? Tell me who’s your favorite photographer.”
“I’d have to think.” Helene thought about it. “Helmut Weisgerber.”
“What, the guy who did that Arctic landscape stuff? The mountain climber? You really like Weisgerber?”
“I liked him well enough to marry him.”
“You really think Weisgerber was better than Capasso? But Eric Capasso was so sensual and lively. Capasso must have been a lot of fun.”
“Capasso had a great gift, but he was melodramatic. At heart he was a stage designer. But Weisgerber—nothing can touch a classic Weisgerber.”
“I have to admit I really love Weisgerber’s Dead Leaf series.”
“I commissioned those.”
“Really, Helene? That must have been fantastic.… ”
There was a timid knock at the door.
“I ordered us a mineralka,” Helene explained. “They’re very slow here.” She raised her voice. “Entrez. ”
The door opened. It was Brett.
“Come in, Brett. We were just having a little discussion on aesthetics.”
Brett put her backpack on the floor.
“Brett, this is Helene. Helene, Brett. I mean Natalie. Sorry.”
“This is a restricted area,” Helene said, rising from her chair. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“So I broke in,” Brett said, adjusting her spex. “I thought you might be beating her with a rubber hose or something, so I came in to document it.”
“We were talking about photography,” Maya said.
“She gonna give you behavior mod?”
“No, I think the plan is to shut down my extension treatment. Apparently it’s been causing a lot of civil trouble.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s real important. A bunch of rich gerontocrats and some twisted extension treatment. That must be really fascinating.” Brett wandered to the window and looked out. “Nice view. If you like power plants.”
Helene stared at her in astonishment. “Miss, this is a police interrogation. It’s confidential. You have no business here.”
“What are you going to do to those artifice kids?”
“That subject hasn’t come up yet,” Maya said.
“You mean, they’re disturbing the universe, and you two old cows are sitting here talking about photography.” Brett flipped the window latch with her thumb. “Typical.”
“I really must ask you to leave,” said Helene. “You’re not merely being rude, you are breaking the law.”
“If I only had a gun,” Brett said, “I’d kill both of you.” She opened the window.
“Brett, what are you doing?”