“What do I have to do for this allowance?”
“Nothing! Just call us. Talk to us. Sometimes. That’s all. Is that so much to ask?”
Chloe nodded eagerly. “You need some looking after, Mom. We can do that now. We can set up a little account for you. We’re good at that now.”
“Well …”
“You’d have done that for me. Wouldn’t you? Heck, Mom, you did do it for me. Remember that allowance you gave me when I was on probation?”
“Did I?” Maya paused. “Well, okay, I guess that makes sense. Okay, have it your way.”
Chloe wiped her eyes sentimentally. “Oh, I’m glad now.… It’s funny to see you so pretty.”
The allowance made a difference of sorts. Maya was no good at all at controlling money now, but a steady dribble every week bumped her up from wanderjahr status to the crumbling lower edges of society. She still had no more possessions than she could carry, but she bathed more often, and ate nicer things, and sometimes accessed networks.
Networking was not without its risks, however. Networking was how the dog found her in Des Moines. Maya found the city of Des Moines much nicer than its press would indicate. Des Moines had some very interesting buildings, the regional Indianapolis influence. Paul had been a little cynical and shortsighted on the subject of modern architecture, she could see that now. Once you learned to look for modern architecture, you could perceive waves of architectural influence percolating right through the old urban structure; a cornice here, a door there, a fungarium windowbox, even the manhole covers.…
She spotted the postcanine dog and his producer having breakfast as she prepared to leave the hotel. She recognized the dog at once, and she felt sorry for him. She felt quite certain that the dog would continue to follow her if she somehow escaped the hotel. But she wasn’t afraid of the dog; she was no longer afraid of much of anything. The dog and his producer looked so sad to be in a cheap American hotel in Iowa, confronting flapjacks and a battery of specialized multicolored syrups.
She went to their booth. “Ciao Aquinas,” she said.
“Hello,” said the dog, startled. His normally perfect suit looked rumpled, perhaps because of the guide collar. His producer was blind.
The producer adjusted a translator clipped to his wattled ear. He was a Deutschlander, very elderly and very polite. “Please sit, Maya. Have you eated? Ate? Ated?”
“Okay.” Maya sat.
“We came to ask for an interview,” said Aquinas, in brisk and flawless English.
“Really.”
“We have had both Herr Cabaline and Signorina Barsotti already.”
“Who?”
“Paul and Benedetta,” said the dog.
The mention of their names touched her deeply. She missed them as she would miss a heartbeat. “How are Paul and Benedetta?”
“Famous of course; rather troubled, unfortunately.”
“But how are they really?”
“They escaped their legal difficulties. A great political success for them. But they have had a famous falling-out. A schism in their artistic movement. You hadn’t heard this?”
A human waitress came over. The human attention was a typical Des Moines touch. Maya ordered waffles.
“May we ask you about this matter, on camera?”
“I hadn’t heard anything about any schisms. I’m out of touch. I don’t have anything to say.”
“But they both speak so highly of you. They told us to come to you. They even helped us to locate you here.”
“I’m amazed that you can speak English so beautifully, Aquinas. I’ve seen you speak Deutsch, and I’ve even heard you dubbed into Czestina, but …”
“It’s all done with dubbing,” said the dog modestly. “Dubbing just above the level of the brain. Karl has brought a gift for you, from your friends. Go fetch it, Karl.”
“Good idea,” said Karl. He rose, picked up a white cane, switched it on, and trotted off unerringly.
“I really can’t appear on your show,” said Maya. “I don’t need to play roles anymore.”
“You have become an icon,” the dog said.
“I don’t much feel like an icon. Anyway, the best way to remain an icon is to avoid public overexposure. Isn’t it?”
“How Greta Garbo of you,” said the dog.
“You like old movies?” Maya said, surprised.
“Frankly, I hate old movies; I don’t even much like my own quite ancient medium of television. But I’m enormously interested in the processes of celebrity.”
“I’ve never had such a sophisticated conversation with a dog,” said Maya. “I can’t appear on your show, Aquinas, I hope you understand that. But I do like talking to you. In person, you’re so much smaller than you look on television. And you’re really interesting. I don’t know if you’re a dog or an artificial intelligence or whatever, but you’re definitely some kind of genuine entity. You’re deep. Aren’t you? I think you should get out of pop culture. Maybe write a book.”
“I can’t read,” the dog said.
Maya’s waffles arrived. She tucked in with gusto.
“It’s a shame to come to Des Moines for nothing,” the dog wheedled.
“Interview the mayor,” Maya said, chewing.
“I don’t think that will do.”
“Go back to Europe and interview Helene Vauxcelles-Serusier. Make her level with you.”
“Why should I do that?” said the dog, pricking up his hairy ears. “And where would I find her?”
Karl returned to the booth. The gift had come from Paul and Benedetta. Maya shoved her waffles aside and tore open the box, and then the padding. They had sent her an antique camera. The sort of hand camera that once had processed rolls of colored film. The antique machine had been retrofitted with a digital imaging plate, and a set of network jacks. It was heavy and solid and lovely. Compared to a modern camera it felt like chiseled granite.
And there was a card with it. Handwriting.
“Don’t ever believe what they say about us,” scrawled Benedetta.
“First and always we will love and forgive our heretics,” said Paul. His neat and perfect hand.
Daniel lived in Idaho now. He had gone to earth.
She could sense the border of his private little realm. Maybe twenty acres. Nothing like wire or a fence; the difference was present in the substance of the earth. Trace elements, maybe. Maybe some aspect of his peculiar practice of gardening. Could mere intelligence make trees grow faster?
The trees, the bushes, the birds, the insects even. They didn’t feel quite right here. They felt as if someone were paying fantastic amounts of sustained attention to them. The branches were painterly branches, and the birds sang with operatic precision.
Her ex-husband was digging in the earth with a shovel. Daniel was about four feet high now. The bones had shrunk and the spine had compacted and the muscle had pooled out around his calves and thighs in thick Neanderthal clumps. He was old and extremely strong; he looked as though he could snap the shovel in half.
“Hello, Mia,” he said in a voice rusty with disuse.
“Hello, Daniel.”
“You’ve changed,” he said, squinting. “Has it been long?”
“For me it has.”
“You look like Chloe. I’d have thought you were Chloe if I didn’t know better.”
“I still think of you as Daniel,” she confessed. “I don’t know why.”
Daniel said nothing. He retreated into his hut.
She followed him into his rude little shelter. It was lined with down and branches and dry shed leaves and perhaps eight trillion gigabytes of mycelial webbed information. He had put down roots here in Idaho. He had integrated himself into the depths of the Idaho landscape. He had become a genius loci, a spirit of place. Every tree, every bush, every flower, every caterpillar, genetically wired for sound. He didn’t merely watch over this place—in some profound sense he had become this place. He had become a little piece of Idaho. In the winters, he hibernated.