The Caryatids

“That is not a reasonable option. Your little experiment here: It vio­lates civil rights, it violates human rights, it exploits desperate refugees as indentured labor with no access to the free market… This place is scary. I can rescue you from all that. I can save you from all those con­sequences. Because I will make you its queen.”

“I can’t even understand what you’re saying! What exactly do you want from me? Use some real words.”

“Okay: Here’s the elevator pitch. Instead of being a test bed for a weird neural cult, Mljet becomes what it should be: a tourist island. Mljet becomes a normal place. It’s decent, it’s noncontroversial. This island has been saved, redeemed, reconstructed. That work is over. The cult relocates elsewhere.”

“Where do my people go?”

“We give them an assignment that’s better suited to their talents and technologies.”

“Where are you putting my people?”

“The Lesser Antarctic Ice Shelf.”

“You’re exiling us to Antarctica.” Vera looked at the glimmering edge of her native hills. “All right, that part I finally understand. Thank you for finally telling me.”

“They go, Vera. You don’t go. You stay. You encourage them to leave this place and work on the ice, and you remain here under the new dis­ pensation. Because we’re not ‘exiling’ the cult to Antarctica: we’re pro­moting the cult to Antarctica.”

“Why would they go to a place like that? It’s horrible there. It’s flood­ing and melting, it’s like death.”

“Because they’re very good at redemption work and someone has to go there. The Big Ice is the front line of the climate crisis. Now, listen: Your boss, the Acquis commissar here, he’s a pretty hard nut to crack. But he can do a budget. He has ambitions. He’s an engineer: so he wants new hardware. They always do.”

Montalban bent and smoothed his pocket film against the ground. A monstrous apparition emerged on the flimsy screen.

This metal monster brandished a drill on one hand, a backhoe on the other, and its sloping feet were the size of two fishing boats.

“This is a neurally controlled continental reconstruction unit. It’s a giant robot exoskeleton that’s nuclear- powered and four stories tall. Every one of these psychotic things costs as much as a full-scale Missis­sippi mud dredge. They’re airtight, they’re fully heated, they’ve got inte­rior life-support systems, they’re basically Martian spacesuits with legs. Building these crazy things for him: That’s the price that he demands from us.”

Vera stared. “That big robot does looks kind of… weird.”

“This darling of his has been sitting on his drawing board ever since he was in graduate school. Frankly, no sane capitalist would ever fi­nance such a thing. Because it’s got no market pull at all. It’s a wild, macho, engineer’s power fantasy.”

Montalban leaned back on his slab of tarmac and tipped his sun hat.  “We have agreed to his terms. A monster machine like this makes no sense to me, but nobody thought his Mljet plan would ever work out, ei­ther. It turns out he was right, and we were wrong. We admit that now. He wins. Mljet is light, and speedy, and brilliant, and glorious. Your boss has proved himself to the smart money and the power players. He has won. So if your boss plays some ball with us, he gets whatever the hell he wants.”

Vera gazed at the bristling, fantastic monster. The giant robot had no head. She tried to imagine her Herbert sealed inside that giant, stamp­ing coffin, that rock-shattering hulk.

She knew that Herbert would do it. Of course he would do it.

“This was just an old dream of his.”

“That guy is no dreamer. That guy is a serial entrepreneur. We get it about guys like him. We know how to handle guys like him in Califor­nia. It’s no use logjamming him, or sabotaging him, or getting in his way, or ‘verifying’ him. No, all that kind of crap is counterproductive. The one effective way to deal with a guy like him is to double his ante. Just pony up the money and double his bet.”

Montalban leaned back and shrugged. “Well, I can do that for him. I can do it, I promise. Because I’ve done that kind of thing before. My whole family does it. We’ve been doing it for years.”

“What are you doing to Herbert?”

“I’m financing Herbert. The world needs Herbert. Herbert is a geek technofanatic who’s also a serious player, and those are rare people. He’s a great man. Really. It’s just that, politically speaking, it’s not great that he’s here in Mljet. We don’t really much want a guy like him, with a private army of brainwashed robot cultists, sited in a violently unstable region like the Balkans.”

“This is my home,” Vera murmured.

“Fine. It’s not his home. If he ventures off to Antarctica, that’s a dif­ferent matter. If he fails there, well, that’s one solution. If he tackles the Big Ice and he wins, well, then we all win. Because we’ve bought our world more time.”

Montalban wiped his sweating upper lip. “Personally, I really hope that he can somehow pull that off. Sincerely, I hope that. I do. I know that big Aussie is crazy, but I’m with him all the way. Los Angeles just can’t take many more refugee Australians.”

“I would never do anything against Herbert and what Herbert wants to do.”

“All right, good: now you’re talking sense. So: Let’s talk about you. Mljet and you: the public face of the New Mljet. The consortium needs an attractive young woman with skill and ambition who has some peo­ple smarts. We’ll be facing a big transition here, a complete change in the infrastructure. That would be your role.”

“So I’m the project manager.”

“That’s an Acquis title. Your title with us will be chief hospitality offi­cer. That is not a figurehead post, by the way: don’t get me wrong. You wouldn’t be the workaday prime minister here: you’d be the queen of this place. I’m offering you a crucial post with a lot of situational perquisites. You will be allocating resources over every inch of this is­land. And I mean major resources, world-class, world-scale. Instead of that ragtag of refugees that you reeducated in the camps, you’ll have a top-notch technical-support team! You’ll have your own office of PR girls from the environmental design group at San Jose State… They’re young people, young, like you and me. They’re very forward-thinking.”

“So it’s me here, and it’s not Herbert.”

“Exactly. We need a much calmer, gentler hand with this place. You have a much more sensitive, more feeling approach to Mljet than your robot commissar there.”

“Suppose that I say yes to you.”

Montalban leaned down, plucked up his film, and crumpled it briskly. He pocketed it, and smiled at her. “Then it’s simple. Our next step would be Vienna: a conference of the stakeholders. That’s a sum­mit of typical Acquis higher-circle drones, and some ranking Dispensa­tion activists. Your boss will be there, too, of course. Your brother Djordje will be hosting that event in Vienna. I’ll be there to present you to the money people. They’re some very seasoned investors. They were the trust behind the reconstruction of Catalina Island, after the big fires. They can handle this sort of thing.”

“Why are you doing all this, John?”

“Because I’m a white-knight investor, and I’m saving the world. And, through no coincidence, I’m also saving you.” He gazed at her for a long moment. ‘You don’t believe me. Well, you don’t believe me yet. I’ve done it before, Vera. I’ve already done it twice. I can prove to you that I know what I’m doing, though it will take me a while. A merger-and­acquisition like this can keep a banker happy for years.”

“You’re asking me to betray my comrades here. They’re the cadres who did all the work here.”

“Well, the cult will face a strategic choice,” said Montalban. “They can choose him, or they can choose you. The attention camps here will be shutting down—they’re too controversial. If the cadres are zealots for their great man and his brain intrusions, then they can join him in Antarctica. If they stay here with you—and you’re welcome to them­—then they can enlist in our repatriation program for the natives of Mljet. We’ll be restoring the people who properly belong here. We’ll be recon­secrating Catholic churches, restoring the picturesque rural villages… The national and religious elements in the Balkans, they’re stakeholders here too, you know.”

“So this is quite a big, fancy plan you’ve brought here from your big, fancy city.”

“It’s the way of the big, fancy world.”