Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids

This Dark Age stonemason had taken amazing care with his hand tools. Somehow, across the gulf and abysm of time, Vera sensed a fellow spirit there.

A proper “sarcophagus,” a genuine imperial Roman tomb, should have been carved from fine Italian marble. The local mason didn’t have any marble, because he was from a lonely, Dark Age Balkan island. So he’d had to fake it. He’d made a stone coffin from the crumbly local white dolomite.

A proper Roman coffin required an elegant carved frieze of Roman heroes and demigods. This Dark Age mason didn’t know much about proper Roman tastes. So his coffin had a lumpy, ill-proportioned tum­ble of what seemed to be horses, or maybe large pigs.

The outside of the faked sarcophagus looked decent, or at least pub­licly presentable, but the inside of it—that dark stone niche where they’d dumped the corpse in her sticky paste of arsenic-that was rough work. That was faked and hurried. That was the work of fear.

The Duchess had been hastily buried right in her dayclothes: sixteen­hundred-year-old rags that had once been linen and silk. They’d drenched her in poisonous paste and then banged down her big stone lid.

Her shriveled leather ears featured two big golden earrings: bull’s heads. Her bony shoulder had a big bronze fibula safety pin that might have served her as a stiletto.

The Duchess had also been buried with three fine bronze hand mir­rors. It was unclear why this dead lady in her poisoned black stone niche had needed so many mirrors. The sacred mirrors might have been the last syncretic gasp of some ecoglobal Greco-Egypto-Roman-Balkan cult of Isis. Dr. Radic never lacked for theories.

“May I?” asked Montalban. He caressed the cold stone coffin with one fingertip. “Remarkable handiwork!”

“It is derivative,” sniffed Dr. Radic. “The local distortion of a decay­ing imperial influence.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I like best about it!”

From his tone, Vera knew that this was not what he liked best about it. He was Dispensation, so what he liked best was that someone had taken a horrible mess and boxed it up with an appearance of propriety. So he was lying. Vera could not restrain herself. “Why are you so happy about this?”

Montalban aimed a cordial nod at their host. “European Synchronic philosophy is so highly advanced! I have to admit that, as a mere Ange­leno boy, sometimes Synchronic theory is a bit beyond me.”

“Oh, no no no, our American friend is too modest!” said Radic, beaming at the compliment. “We Europeans are too often lost in our theoretical practices! We look to California for pragmatic technical de­velopments.”

Montalban removed his fancy spex and framed them against the faint light overhead. He removed an imaginary fleck of dust with a writhing square of yellow fabric. “Her body flora,” he remarked.

“Yes?” said Radic.

“Are her body flora still viable? Do you think they might grow?”

“There’s no further decay within this specimen,” said Radic.

“I don’t mean the decay organisms. I mean the natural microbes that once lived inside her while she was still alive. Those microbes have commercial value. This woman is medieval, so she never used antibi­otics. There’s a big vogue in California for all-natural probiotic body flora.”

Vera found herself blurting the unspeakable. “Do you mean the germs inside the corpse?”

Montalban pursed his lips. “’Germs inside the corpse.’ That’s not the proper terminology.”

’’You want to sell the germs inside this corpse?”

“This is a public-health issue! It’s more than just a market opportu­nity!”

“He’s right, you know,” Radic piped up. “Archaeo-microbiology is a rapidly expanding field.”

“At UC Berkeley,” said Montalban, donning his spex again, “they call their new department ‘Archaeo-Microbial Human Ecology.’”

“Very apt.” Radic nodded.

“A whole lot of hot start-up labs around UC Berkeley now. Venture money just pouring in.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it was ever thus in California,” said Radic.

“Microbe work is huge in China, too. The Jiuquan center, reviving the Gobi Desert… Microbes are the keystone of sustainable ecology.”

“I don’t understand this,” said Vera.

Radic shrugged. “That’s because you’re Acquis!”

The old man’s tactless remark hung in the damp air. Itdied and began to stink.

“I would never dismiss the microbe technology of the Acquis,” said Montalban, demonstrating a tender concern. “Acquis medical troops lead the world at public sanitation.”

Vera felt her blood begin to simmer.

Despite his lack of accurate neural information about her emotions, Montalban sensed her discontent. “The skill sets differ within the global civil societies. We should expect that: that’s a source of valuable trade.”

“So, what do you call this business? ‘Frankenstein genetic graverob­bing?”

Montalban contemplated this insult. He twirled the earpiece of his spex gently between his fingers. “I suggest that we break for lunch now. I’m sure Little Miss Mary Montalban is hungry.” Montalban carefully placed his spex inside his flowered shirt.

“Don’t you want to use your fancy spex to scan the corpse here?” said Vera.

“Yes, I do. Still, it might be wiser if we ate first.”

“You make quite a fuss about your scanning capabilities.”

Montalban lifted one suntanned hand and plucked at his lower lip. “No, I don’t ‘make fusses,’ Vera. I’m a facilitator.”

“How could you eat? How could you eat today, now, after staring at this rotten woman and her rotten flesh? And then planning to sell it? How can you do that?”

Now even Radic knew that somebody had put a foot wrong. “Please don’t get angry at our foreign guest, dear Vera, my domorodac! After all, this is your heritage!”

“Are you always like this, John? You invent all kinds of lies, and big fake words, to cover up what you do in secret?”

Montalban was suddenly and deeply wounded. A flush ran up his neck His face was turning both red and white at the same time, like a freshly sliced turnip.

Vera realized, with a giddy intuition, that yes, John Montalban was always like this. She wasn’t the first woman to tell him that about him­self. Because he was married to Radmila.

Vera had touched him on some sore spot that Radmila had lacerated. Montalban had never yet breathed a word about Radmila, yet Vera could almost smell Radmila now. Radmila was very near to them. It was as if Radmila were lying there in the coffin somehow. Disgustingly undead.

That black intuition—so true, and so immediate—panicked Vera. She felt a strong urge to strike Montalban, to hit him right across his handsome face.

Dr. Radic looked from her, to Montalban, and back again. The old man was completely bewildered and alarmed. “I’ll see to our lunch,” he blurted. Then he hurried through the zipper of the airtight tent and left it flapping.

The two of them were standing alone with the dead thing in its cof­fin. Hair rose all over Vera’s arms. Very soon, she would scream.

“Here,” said Montalban. He gently handed her the spex.

Hastily, Vera jammed the Californian hardware over her eyes. A galaxy of sparkling pixels swarmed across her vision.

The sarcophagus glimmered before her. The coffin went blurry for just a moment, then snapped into sharp focus.

The ancient sarcophagus was shiny, polished, precious, and entirely new.

A stranger lay in state inside of it. A woman who was freshly dead.

Newly laid to rest within her stony casement, the stately Duchess looked as detailed as a celebrity waxwork Her silken robe shimmered. Her linen was white and fine. Gray tendrils threaded her oiled black hair. Her golden earrings, two little bull’s heads, gleamed aggressively. Her death-pale cheeks and eyelids had been brightly smeared with un­dertaker’s colors: lead-white cosmetics, black kohl, rouge, and antimony.