Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids

“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.”

Vera narrowed her eyes. “Suppose that I just say no to your way of the world.”

Montalban nodded slowly. “You can say no to the world. People often say that here in the Balkans. But it never makes any sense to do that. Why? Why would you say no to peace, and wealth, and power, and se­curity? This arrangement gives you everything that you wanted! It means that you win, it’s your personal victory! You took a failed, crimi­nal place that was an open sore, and you saved it, you healed it! You made your home island much better than it was in your whole lifetime, and you gave it back to the world! Things are finally as they should be. It’s justice.”

It took Vera three heartbeats to realize, with a pang of truth, that she wanted the island all to herself. She wanted Mljet to remain a quiet place outside the world. Its own place. An authentic place that was no­body’s tool or pawn or property. A wild and natural place, blooming under the sun, beholden to nobody. It had never occurred to her that her homeland might be saved for other people.

“You don’t believe in nature,” she told him. “You don’t believe what I believe. I even believe in reality.”

“Well, I believe in ecotourism and the heritage industry. Because those are two major, wealth-creating industries.”

Vera allowed him a nod.

“It won’t be easy work, Vera. It’s hard work. It’ll take labor and invest­ment to bring a heritage mediation online here. But I know that we can do that, together. I’m sure we can. I can promise you that. In ten years, right here where we’re sitting, the troops of Augustus Caesar will be massing to invade the Balkans.”

Vera’s heart sank a little. “Ten years… What? What did you say?”

“That’s right, ten years. That has to take ten years. Because the Roman Empire has only recently conquered this island. You could see how new and raw that little town of Palatium is. The Pannonian Wars on the mainland, they will be going hot and heavy right through the reign of Tiberius. That will be our major tourist draw here.”

“I don’t understand.”

Montalban chuckled. “I suppose not. Well, just take it from me, then: the theme-park business can be a very steady, long-term earner, as long as it’s got a solid heritage connection and a unique value proposi­tion.”

“I know that you must think that I’m stupid… Can’t you talk to me like a normal person? Please?”

Montalban gazed around the island a long moment, as if seeking some kind of solace from the sunshine, the flowers, and the foaming shore at low tide. “Vera: In the Dispensation, the businesspeople are the normal people.”

“It’s not normal to talk about history as if history was a business.”

“You are absolutely wrong there, Vera. History is a business. History is the only business. It’s abnormal to do business without history as the ab­solute and final business bottom line. That’s why industry wrecked this planet: because people ran the world like a fire sale. They never understood the past, the future, and the proper human relationship to space and time. The only way to think sustainably is to think synchronically!”

Realization dawned. “Wait, now, I do see what you’re saying! You’re a Synchronist. You’re from a Dispensation cult! You’re stealing my island from my cult just so you can sell my island to your own cult!”

Slowly, Montalban shook his head. He was feeling sorry for her.

“Vera, I am not the extremist in this discussion.”

“Yes you are. Synchronists are cultists. You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m Californian. And I came here on behalf of investors, real­estate people, developers—the global mainstream. So that they can co­opt this extreme, experimental situation into a much more conventional, rational, profitable situation. Is that distinction clear to you yet?”

“No! It’s not clear. You’re not explaining anything to me. You’re just letting a lot of big, mystical words fall out of your mouth that make you look good and make me look bad.”

Montalban thoughtfully examined the wavelets lapping. His hands twitched in his trouser pockets. “You know what they call this situation? This is a classic ‘clash of paradigms.’”

Vera set her lips. “You know what they call people from California? They call them ‘flakes.’”

“Acquis people can be pretty stubborn,” Montalban mused. “I’ve met a lot of Acquis people in my business life. They can be really wonderful people, don’t get me wrong there, but somehow it always boils down to a paradigmatic culture war. We have two sets of mental software, and two different operating systems.”

“Maybe we’re lucky that there’s just two sets and not a thousand of them.”