“You think that you are getting a smart horse-trading bargain from me, woman, but you are wrong! So: Yes, I am happy now. We are married now, you are my bride. Congratulations.” The Badaulet rose and pressed his nose to the finely scratched plastic of the porthole. “Now, wife of mine: Tell me about that light unmanned aircraft at ten o’clock, which is vectoring our way.”
“What? Where?”
Lucky tapped at the porthole with his newly trimmed, newly cleaned fingernails. He had just spotted one single, tiny, black, distant speck, wafting high above the clotted and polychrome city. It could have been one speck of black Gobi dust on their porthole. He had better eyes than an eagle.
“I think that’s a space probe,” she said. “You generally hear, a big thump from the coil gun whenever they launch a probe, but they make them so light these days-they’re like space chickens.”
“That is not a chicken or a satellite, because I eat chickens and I know satellites. That is an unmanned light aircraft. It is a precision antipersonnel bomb.” Lucky turned to face her. “It was God who blessed me to marry you just now, for that aircraft is flying here to kill me.”
Sonja blinked. “Are you entirely sure about that?”
“Yes I am sure. They have trapped me in here without my weapons. I know these aircraft, for I use them to kill. The Badaulet has many enemies. Soon I will die. And you, the bride of the Badaulet, you will die at my side. Heaven ordains all of this.”
“Okay, maybe Heaven does ordain it. Or maybe
“No, your enemies are only soft and womanly political enemies who live indoors. You don’t have my fierce, warlike enemies of the steppes.”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself, my husband! Once a teenage girl came to see me, she said to me, ‘Are you Sonja Mihajlovic?’ and I said, Yes I am, where does it hurt?’ and she
The Badaulet hadn’t understood a single word of this blurted confession, but his black eyes were wet with tender marital sympathy. “Are you afraid to die, my bride?”
“Oh no. Not really. Not anymore.” Sonja had once felt tremendous fear about dying, but all that nonsense had left her years ago.
The airborne bomb took on visible dimensions. It might have been a child’s kite, or a dried leaf, or a bedraggled crow. It was none of these things, for it was death on the wing. It was a small, sneaking, radar transparent aircraft, so it flew rather clumsily.
“My comrades will avenge me for this,” declared the Badaulet, “because I have faithfully avenged so many friends who perished in similar ways. Also, I have consummated my marriage before my wedding, which seemed a wicked thing to me—but now I
Sonja stood and spread her arms. She began to sing verse in Chinese.
“That was poetry,” said the Badaulet.
“Yes, that was my favorite poem in the whole world. It was written in the Tang dynasty, when China ruled the world.”
“This system understands your sad poetry much better than it understands your funny jokes.”
The flying bomb slammed into the fabric surface of the airlock, and it bounded off. It flopped and yawed and wobbled and caught itself in midair, and gained height for a second effort.
“I always wanted to die while making love or speaking poetry,” Sonja explained.
“If this air smelled better, I would oblige you.”
The bomb returned for its second pass. Sonja threw herself to the airlock floor, curled into a fetal position, and clamped her hands over her ears.
Another sullen thump followed and the bomb bounded off again, harmlessly.
“Oh, get up, woman,” the Badaulet scolded. “Meet your death on your feet, for your girlish cowardice is so undignified.”
“Get down here and hit the deck, stupid! This increases our odds of survival!”
“There are no ‘odds for survival’! There is only what Heaven ordains!”
Having endured many bombs in her past, Sonja ignored him, and doubled up tightly on the spotless airlock floor. “For God’s sake, why are they trying to hit me instead of that huge Mars dome over there? That is China’s greatest prestige construction, it’s got to be a much fatter target than I am!”
“Sonja, my dear wife Sonja: Let us swear to Heaven that if we survive this cowardly attack, we will track down these evildoers and personally kill them ourselves.”
“I love you so much for saying that! That is the greatest thing you have ever said to me! I swear I’ll do it, if you will do it with me.”
The plane smashed into the airlock and shattered. Brittle pieces of airplane plummeted out of their sight.
“Built by amateurs,” Sonja said, craning her neck to stare.
“I am glad that it broke to pieces,” said the Badaulet, still on his feet but panting harder, “but now we will smother to death in this sealed, trapped room.”
Sonja didn’t much mind meeting her own death. Still, to lose
Sonja never heard the bomb explode.
SONJA’S SUPPORT TENT was scarlet and the moon shone through it.
Any narrow escape from death always made Sonja keenly sentimental. Escaping death had taught her that life had many tags and rags, loose ends, unmet potentials. Sonja rather prided herself on her serene fatalism, but there were always issues she felt unhappy to leave unsettled.
Escape from death put her in a generous, easygoing, affirmative mood. Because, now, all the days ahead of her were a free gift. Like icing on a pretty cake hit by a grenade.
“That drone bomb blew both my eardrums out,” she told her brother, George. “The overpressure broke both of them. So the state built me brand-new ears. I have new and advanced Chinese cyborg astronaut ears. My ears are officially fantastic.”
