The Caryatids

perfect sleeves like black blood…

Bubbling wildly as it dribbled, spewing oxygen in fizzing sheets, it was the stuff of breath and life, this stinky chemo goo bubbling merrily like California champagne…

The radiation from the fusion bubbles was wildly stimulating the black slime bubbles, somehow it was exactly what the germs needed to do their magic. The radiation was a tonic to the magic germs, it made their metabolism a hundred times more efficient, no, a thousand times, a million times…

Her husband’s black boxes were slurping poison out of the air, just vacuuming carbon dioxide, fizzing like reverse geysers now, all yeasty and industrial…

She wanted to laugh wildly in her dread and ecstasy, for the two black bubbling boxes were sucking centuries of industrial poison out of the sky, just gobbling pollution and turning it back into coal and crude oil, literally tearing the filth right out of the firmament! The unhealthy sky under which she had passed her whole life was peeling back before her dreaming eyes like a wrinkled skin on badly scalded milk… and be­hind that skein of horror and decline and utter hopelessness, the revi­talized sky was blue, blue, bluer-than- bluebird blue…

Radmila’s eyes shocked open. She tore herself from the gentle grip of the hallucination. She pried herself from the oneiric pod… She lay breathing shallowly on the color-coded elastic floor of the new gym… Her head was reeling. What on Earth had that machine done to her? It had torn something loose within her, something dark and ugly and yet integral to her being… Ithad oiled and loosened up some an­cient trauma within her… Ithad popped off of her like a rust flake.

She had lost something dark and complicated deep within herself. She was a different person now. Freer, much easier at heart. She felt footloose. Mellowed. Agile and even giggly. Full of honest joy.

She stared at a fluffy morning cloud through the tinted panels of the roof. “Oh my God,” she told the cloud, “I’ve finally become a Cali­fornian.”

* * *

RADMILA AND TODDY HAD ALWAYS ATTENDED the same hairdressing lab. This salon lab was an intensely private place, likely the best such lab in the world. Staffed by committed cosmeceutical profes­sionals, it was chilly, hushed, and cheerless. That state-of-the-art estab­lishment was much frequented by the political elite. Generally Toddy and Radmila went there together, arriving in a Family limo with darkly tinted windows, then departing under deep cover.

Sometimes there were clouds of hobject spyplanes whizzing over the place, all run by paparazzi idiots with websites. These toys never got anywhere and never saw a thing, for the hairdressing lab was the single most secure locale that Radmila knew.

Radmila had spent a great deal of the Family’s money at the hair de­signers’ —for the Family partly owned the lab. This fact didn’t make the local hair designers treat Radmila any better. On the contrary.

Presented with a fresh surge of Family capital, they had simply and brusquely ripped out all of her hair. The new implants, their roots soaked in fresh stem cells, were state-of-the-art: radiant blond filaments that were genuine human hair, but with a much-enhanced ability to be­have.

Radmila’s damaged scalp was soaked with hot, wet, antiseptic foam. Her head was locked by a stainless fume hood where robot surgical arms whirred on tracks, took unerring aim, and deftly pierced her scalp. Im­planting fresh hair took forever, like being tattooed. And, of course, it hurt a great deal.

Any session at the hair lab was always boring and painful. Today it was extravagantly painful, but it was no longer boring.

Because her brother Djordje had demanded an audience with her. And, so as to show Glyn that she had fully renounced all her troubles­—she had agreed to meet Djordje in person.

With a final vindictive burst of needling at the nape of her neck, the hairdressing robot finished stitching her scalp. A somber, white-suited technician arrived, removed the metal hood, rinsed her deftly, and wrapped her head in a hot medicated turban.

The fresh implants twitched in her violated scalp, itching like lice.

Few women in modern Los Angeles knew what lice were like, but Radmila was one of them. Toddy Montgomery had known what lice were like, too. Lila Jane Dickey—the larval, teenage form of Toddy Montgomery —she had known about lice, and she had known much worse things.

“So—you really don’t hate me anymore?” Djordje said, rocking on his heels and watching her as she suffered. It was terrible to have Djordje standing so close to her. He was literally consuming her air.

Djordje—or “George Zweig”—was a tall, hefty, somewhat out-of­shape Viennese businessman in a tasteless European suit. He looked like he was wearing the clothes that his silly wife was buying him. He sported a thick, bristling mustache, and Radmila could swear he was carelessly losing his hair. Why didn’t he take care of all that?

“Djordje, you are one of my husband’s business associates. I don’t enjoy seeing you. But I’ll see you for political reasons, because I know that global politics has to trump my merely personal concerns.”

“That is great news,” said Djordje. “Your cordial attitude is very cheering. You talk much more sense than the other girls do. I am proud of you, Radmila, truly I am. Because you have become ‘Mila Montal­ban’! Your career is amazing! You’re the only one of us to truly suc­ceed… you’re an American superstar!”

Djordje pinched the bridge of his beefy nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Events went badly in Mljet. I don’t know what John has told you about that. Vera is hostile and ignorant. She is mentally unstable. She has fled into some disaster area in the mainland Balkans and she will not speak to anybody.”

“I don’t care. Do not mention her name to me. Please.”

“Right. Sure! Fine!”

There was a horrid silence between them.

“I have two children,” Djordje told her. “May I show you their pic­tures? They’re normal children.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine,” said Djordje. “Let me tell you why I flew here, all the way to Los Angeles.” He licked his mustached lip. “Your friend… your hus­band, Mr. John Montgomery Montalban, has met with a small business setback, as I said to you. A lot of Acquis capital was invested in reviving Mljet, and there was broad hope for a general consensus that—”

“I’m glad that part’s over, at least,” said Radmila.

“What?”

“Those atrocities that the Acquis were committing on that filthy little island. Those attention camps. The brainwashing. My head hurts all over just thinking about that. John may not own that island yet—that scheme was a stretch, even for John—but I’m sure that John has put a swift end to that business.”

“Mr. Montalban still hopes and plans to turn the island into an en­tertainment destination… I did my best to help him there, but… “

“I don’t want you to talk to John any longer. Or to Glyn, either. Leave Glyn alone. You have no place within my Family-Firm. Do you under­stand that? You’re an intruder and your presence isn’t welcome.”

Djordje’s face changed. It became much harder. “I do understand that,” he told her, “but I must point out that it was John Montgomery Montalban who came looking for me. I don’t have the vast wealth that you have slyly married into—because I made my own way in this world. I mind my own business. My logistics business. Primarily, interface lo­gistics between the Acquis and the Dispensation. Your husband has meddled in an Acquis project while enlisting my help. He has compro­mised my relationship with the Acquis.”

“Take your problems up with John.”

“You just told me not to take my problems up with John. I can cut my relations with your John—he’s a very charming fellow, but he’s not en­tirely faithful to his word. Still, I want to be made whole with the Acquis. I want a return to my status quo ante before your husband interfered with my business affairs. That’s only proper, isn’t it?”

“Suppose that I solve your problems. Do you promise you’ll stay far away from Los Angeles, Djordje? You won’t contact me, or anyone in my Family, anymore?”

“I might agree to those terms, Radmila. If Dr. Feininger also agrees to your terms. Dr. Feininger also flew with me here to Los Angeles. He wants to redress this unfortunate Mljet situation. Dr. Feininger is upset. He has