The Caryatids

George blinked from distant Europe, on his video screen. “Sonja, how many attempts does this make on your life?”

Sonja blinked back. “Do you mean me personally?”

“Of course I mean you personally! Stop acting crazy.”

“Why would I keep count of that? After I went to New York and I saw that New York City had been nuked… Why does anyone ever bother to count the dead? I’m just one person! If you don’t count Radmila. Rad­mila was also there in New York City.”

“Are you talking to me openly about Radmila now?” George was amazed. “Are you on drugs, Sonja?”

“This is Jiuquan, we don’t trifle with stupid narcotics!” Sonja had a raging exfection. An “exfection” was very much like an infection. Ex­cept, instead of causing human flesh to waste away rapidly in a noisome mass of pus, an exfection was a kindly state-designed microbe that caused damaged human flesh to heal at more-than-human speed.

There were yellow, crusty, suppurating masses of exfection thriving all over Sonja’s bomb-scorched shins and forearms. The crude bomb had shocked her and burned her, but since the airlock was made almost entirely of fabric, there had been no killing shrapnel.

The Badaulet had faced his own death boldly standing, so the bomb had broken both his feet. Her lucky husband was in a distant safe house hidden in the inflated bowels of the city, undergoing some much­embarrassed Chinese medical hospitality.

“Sonja,” George told her, “if your brand-new ears are really working, then just for once, I want you to listen to me. I have an important pro­posal for you. I want you to accept it.”

“Do you ever talk to Radmila, George?”

“Do I ‘talk’ to Radmila? I have met Radmila! We were in the same room together in Los Angeles, just last month! Radmila was kind to me!” George was sincerely thrilled.

“Then, Djordje, would you please tell Radmila—that I’m sorry I kicked her ass, that time in New York? That was wrong of me. I’m sorry that I snap-kicked her in the guts and I knocked her senseless. I was so jealous about her boyfriend, I was out of my head about Montalban. I should never have gone to New York no matter how much Montalban coaxed me. Never again, I’m through with him now: I promise.”

“That may be more than Radmila wants to know. Radmila isn’t very well right now. Things went badly in Los Angeles… there were riots. And huge fires.”

“You do talk to Vera, though, don’t you, Djordje?”

“I do sometimes talk to Vera, when Vera lets me—and stop calling me ‘Djordje.’”

“So Djordje: Would you please tell Vera, just for me… “ Sonja stopped, at a loss for words. She had no idea what to say to Vera. She hadn’t said a word to Vera in nine years.

“Vera is not at her best lately either,” said George, and his worried tone rang in her head like a bronze bell. “No one knows where Vera is—she’s alive, but she’s hiding in the woods somewhere in some death zone. Sonja, give up whatever you think you’re doing there. Come stay with me in Vienna.”

“What? Why on Earth would I do that?”

“Because you’ll survive, woman! Like I’m surviving! I’m not like you, and Vera, and Radmila! I don’t want to save the world! I’m just a fixer, I’m a logistics man! But listen: The world is changing. The world is not collapsing —or, at least, not as fast as it was doing before. The world is turning into something we never imagined. My shipping business is great! Global business is heading for a big, long, global boom!”

“I can’t visit you there in Vienna, George. I just got married.”

“You did what? What, again? You married someone? Are you seri­ous?”

“My husbands are always serious.”

“Montalban doesn’t know anything about this new marriage of yours,” said George thoughtfully. “That’s going to be big news to John Montalban.”

“You tell John Montalban that I am his black angel. Tell John I’m your big, long, global boom. Tell John I’m his giant supervolcano.”

“Oh Sonja, poor Sonja. Now I know you’re not yourself. Come on: giant supervolcanoes? We don’t believe in giant volcanoes, do we? That’s talking nonsense.”

“Here in Jiuquan, all the people believe in that nonsense. The Chinese are convinced that a volcano will explode in America and wreck the world’s climate.”

“Why, because the Chinese wrecked the climate the first time?”

“Yes they did. With American help. And because here in Jiuquan, to­morrow’s second climate crisis won’t even slow them down. Not any­more. Not in the glorious future!”

“Sonja, it is definitely time for you to leave those cult compounds in China and rejoin the real world,” said George solemnly. “No volcano will do anything that matters for ten thousand aeons. Exotic Chinese supersti­tions from inside some weird space bubble, that’s what you’re talking about. You’ve had enough of that. That won’t work out for you. Trust me.”

“Weather scientists were right when they said that the Earth’s climate would crash. Why should geologists be wrong when they’re predicting the same thing? Science is the truth. Science is science. Science is the future.”

“Oh, what astronaut crap you’re talking now! How many rich and fa­mous scientists do you know? Did you ever see one lousy scientist get his own way in the real world? They’re all hopeless eggheads full of make­believe theories!”

George drew a breath—she could hear him puffing in the busy cores of her new eardrums. “Sonja, please. When you were out there in the field—crusading to save civilization, or whatever—I cared about that, I helped you! You remember how may times I helped you go save your fa­vorite Chinese civilization? But now they’re trying to kill you right there in their own spaceport! What kind of ‘civilization’ is that to save?”

“This is China. Their system works differently.”

“Look, I manage global logistics, so I learn something new every day,” George boasted. “I can traffic in people like you! I’ll export you from China. I’ll export you right here to Vienna! When Inke heard that you were hurt again, she cried!”

Finally, Sonja was touched. Inke Zweig. Good old Inke. She had once spent a family Christmas together with Inke, when George, thank­fully, wasn’t around.

First, Inke took her to Mass, insisting that she kneel and pray. Then Inke took her home, and Inke got very drunk on dainty, reeking, Ger­man herbal liqueurs. Then Inke, sobbingly, told Sonja all about her life. Inke vomited up her soul right at her kitchen table.

It was a boozy, sisterly, holiday heart-to-heart, all about Inke’s house, and her kitchen, and her kids, and her favorite cabbage and sausage recipes, and the will of God, and her husband, and Inke’s grinding, life­blighting fear of her hostile and terrible world.

Inke was intelligent—she was perceptive enough to know that the world “vas in lethal danger —but Inke was too timid to do anything useful.

So, Inke had married, instead. Inke had forfeited every aspect of human agency to the man in her life. Inke had hidden herself in her thick fog of housework and piety, where she could cook, pray, and have babies.

And this strategy even made sense for the woman, this self-abnegation was Inke’s version of a heroic act. Inke Zweig was a sweet and tender and vulnerable creature. Inke loved her kids dearly. Inke’s kids were even great kids, because they didn’t know one single useful thing about reality. They thought their mom and dad were terrific and all-knowing and proud and prosperous.

Her kids even loved their aunt Sonja, for no particular reason that Sonja understood. They gave their aunt Sonja fancy Christmas presents from prestigious Viennese stores.

“Sonja, you are family: Inke always says that. Inke would love to look after you,” George promised. “You wouldn’t have to see me at all! I’m on the road most days. You could have your own private wing of the man­sion! Or—if my global business keeps booming—you can have your own apartment building!”

“Vienna is pretty,” she told him. “I think you made a good choice, working there.”

“Sonja, you won’t survive. To get killed—like our others were killed? —that was tragic. But to want to be killed, like you so obviously want to be killed? That is sheer foolishness!”