Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids

“Did you make any mistakes here, Herbert?”

“In one sense, yes, I was blind. The children! No society thrives with­out children! When I saw how deeply you felt about that child, that niece of yours—then I knew what I had failed to offer you. Yes. I failed you. That tore me up.”

“I’m sorry you were hurt, Herbert.”

“Yes, that did hurt me, but the pain has opened my eyes. I once had children. They died in Australia. That ended that part of my world, I never got over that grief. But if we beat the Big Ice, you and me, then it will rain in Australia.”

“‘Australia Fair,’” said Vera. Herbert had talked about his own home island, sometimes. A place much bigger than Mljet. The biggest island in the world. He spoke of how he had loved his homeland.

“I may never set my foot in a renewed, revived, redeemed Australia. But our children will live there. Vera, our children will laugh and sing. They’ll be free. They’ll be happy.”

There was a violent snap as the boat came about. The yachtsman tied off his mainsail, and tramped the little deck in his cheap rubber shoes. He spoke in Croatian. “ Srecno i mnogo! Muske dece! ”

Vera blinked.

“ Dobrodosao, zete! ” The sailor clapped Herbert across the back. Then he reached out his glad hand to Vera, and she realized, with a shock of revulsion, that the sailor was Djordje.

“You have really screwed up,” Djordje told her cheerfully, in his German-tinged English. “I told John Montgomery that you would never do it his way—the smart way. All the world for love! Well, you cost me a lot of good business, Vera. But I forgive you. Because I am so happy, very happy, to see you settled in this way.”

“You should express some sympathy for your sister,” Herbert told him. “On the Big Ice, I’ll work her harder than ever.”

“There is no pleasing you global politicals,” said Djordje. He found himself another deck chair, one even shabbier and more mildewed than the one that Vera perched on. “You spent nine years on that god­forsaken island there? That evil hellhole? And you never took one vaca­tion? Truly, you people kill me.”

Vera grabbed hard for the shards of her sanity. “How have you been, Djordje? This is such a surprise for me.”

“Call me ‘George,’ “ he corrected. “My life is good. I have another baby on the way. That would be number three.”

“Oh my.”

Djordje helped himself to a fizzing glass of prosecco. “That’s not what you say to wonderful news like mine, Vera. You say: ‘ Mnogo muske dece!’ ‘ Hope it’s a son!’”

Vera had not seen Djordje face-to-face in ten years. He’d been a scrawny seventeen-year-old kid on the night he’d sabotaged the sensor­web, jumped the bunker wall, and fled their compound forever. The agony of having their little brother rebel, defect, and vanish was the first irrefutable sign that all was not well in caryatid fairyland.

The seven world-princesses, Vera, Biserka, Sonja, Bratislava, Svetlana, Kosara, and Radmila: they all had joined hands, eyes, and minds in their mystic circle, and sworn to eradicate every memory of their traitor-to-­futurity. Yet he had left their ranks incomplete, and the tremendous en­ergies that unified them were turning to chaos.

Toward chaos, hatred, and an explosion of violence, and yet here was Djordje, their traitor, not vanished, not eradicated, as he so deserved to be: no, he was prosperous, pleased with himself, and as big as life. Bigger. Because Djordje was all grown-up. Grown-up, Djordje was very big.

He was half a head taller than she was. His face was her face, but big and broad and male. Djordje had a bull’s forehead, a bristling blond mustache, and a forest of blond bristles on his chin and cheeks and neck. His chest was flat and his gut was like a barrel and his big male legs were like tree trunks.

She was horribly afraid of him. He was here and smiling at her, yet he should not be. His existence was wrong.

“Your brother has lent us this boat,” said Herbert. “So that we could be alone—just for once! Out of surveillance. So I could ask you to marry me.”

“It was my honor to lend you my old boat,” said Djordje nobly. “And I approve of your aims.”

“Nine years under a sensorweb,” mourned Herbert. “Nine years in at­tention camps where the system watches your eyeballs! My God, it was Acquis-officer this, boss-and-subordinate that; no wonder we both were so stifled! You know what the next step is—after we marry? We need to work together to widen the emotional register of the neural society! No more of that hothouse atmosphere: half barracks, half brothel… something grand, something decent!”

“How?” said Vera.

“In Antarctica! It’s a huge frontier.”

“There’s grass in Antarctica,” said Djordje. “There’s grain growing there. They’re brewing beer off the melting glaciers. Truly!”

Herbert burst into deep, rumbling laughter. “I love this guy. He is such a funny guy.”

Vera sipped her bubbling wine.

“You’ll do all right, Vera,” said Djordje. “You never had a father fig­ure. Life with an older man suits you.”

“Oh my God,” said Herbert, “please don’t tell her that!”

“Herbert, you are a genius,” Djordje told him. “Every one of those girls has got a genius on the hook, someplace! The caryatids pick men up like carpet tacks. They are like a magnetic field.”

Djordje emptied his glass. “Do you know what makes me so happy, tonight? I have both of you here, on my old boat. At last, I am saving you. It’s like I dug you two out of a coffin. No skull helmets on you, no skeleton bones on you! We’re all free! I took you offshore! We are far outside the limits of the Mljet everyware!”

Djordje wildly waved his arms at the cloud-streaked twilight. “So: Go ahead! Access your mediation! Boot an augment! There’s nothing out here! We’re free and out at sea! I haven’t been this happy since I stole this boat ten years ago.”

“Can I have more of that wine?” said Vera. The two men clashed as they grabbed for the bottle. Herbert hastily topped up her glass.

“My children love this boat,” said Djordje.

“I would imagine,” said Herbert.

“They love life aboard here, nothing but wind and sea,” said Djordje. “Because kids are kids! Kids are the ultimate check on reality! You can’t have a posthuman, brain-mapped toddler.”

“There’s a lot to what this man says,” Herbert offered. He found a wheel of soft cheese inside the picnic basket. “When I was a kid, my granddad had a sheep station. We didn’t even have television out there. Life was life.”

The sun was fading over distant Italy, and the evening breeze grew sharper. The little yacht held its course across the Adriatic, leaning, jumping the chop.

“I stole this boat because it is a simple boat,” said Djordje. “I could have stolen a fancy boat. The harbor was so full of them. The boats of rich idiots. All hooked up to their maps and global satellites.” He laughed. “I cut that chip out of my arm—they never found me. This boat was just wood and water. Nothing else! The web ran out of ways to spy.”

Vera found her voice. It was raw, but it was her own. “Do you spy on me with your web, Djordje?”

“A little, Vera. I have to look after you a little. You’re a danger to yourself and others.”

“How is your wife, Djordje?”

“Call me George,” he said. “My dear wife, Inke, is just fine.”

“Inke doesn’t get a little bored with you? With her church, and her kids, and her kitchen?”

“That’s right, Your Highness,” said Djordje, with a level stare. “My Inke is a boring woman. She is nothing like you. My Inke believes in God, she’s a mother, she’s a housewife. She’s a real human being, and she’s worth about a thousand of you.”