Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids

“No, no, you look exactly the way girls were supposed to look in movie disasters,” Lionel marveled. “Sort of half naked, dirty, and ripped-up, but still intensely glamorous.”

Freeway lights flashed rhythmically on Lionel’s eager young face. Lionel was a Family star. He had a strong and growing pull in the male fifteen-to-twenty-two demographic.

Lionel still wore his black Kabuki stage gear, which had certainly come into its own in this dire situation. Lionel’s knightly security gear was scorch-proof,. rip-proof, well-nigh bulletproof, and full of handy pockets. Best of all, it was entirely independent of the net and it carried all its own software processing. Radmila felt safe with him.

Lionel generally dressed like a kick-ass, paramilitary LA street kid, but he was the kind of superbly eye-catching street kid that only a very rich kid could possibly be. Lionel was a child of advantage: he did hor­monal bloodwork, ate a strict nutraceutical diet, trained in gymnastics, and had three martial-arts coaches.

Radmila suffered in the high-tech Family gym, but Lionel lived in that gym. Lionel could walk on his hands better than most teens could walk on their own feet.

Radmila handed him a tissue from the glove compartment. Lionel took the hint, and wiped his grandmother’s stage makeup from his lips.

Lionel had puffed air into the old woman’s dead lungs. He’d pounded her heart into action with his fists. Lionel was core Dispensa­tion: he knew first aid.

“You did really good tonight, Lionel. You have saved your grand­mother’s life.”

Lionel held his chin high. “You have to use your head when you’re working security.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“I made the right choice,” he said artlessly. “See, that dead costume killed Grandma, right? It smothered her. I wanted to pull my knife and slice it off of her. But I didn’t. I waited for her power to reboot.”

“That was smart. You were thinking like a grown-up. Your brother will be proud.”

“The system crashed—but only for a little while,” Lionel said. “As soon as her underwear came back on, that got her breathing. We can’t panic and wreck the system. Because we are the system.” He nodded, pleased with his insight. “It takes three trained staffers to tuck her into that costume. So I’m sure glad I didn’t improvise.”

“When we get back home safe, I’ll improvise you a nice roast-beef sandwich.”

“Are you sure that I did the right thing tonight, Mila? I mean… Grandma was dead.”

“You did just fine, Lionel. You’re a wizard, you’re a true star.” Rad­mila propped her flip-flopped feet on the greenly blinking dashboard. “I sure wish John was home tonight. John would mix me a drink. Nobody mixes a nice Greenhouse Tequila like he can.”

Lionel pulled something large and ugly from a Velcro slot on his chest.

“So what’s that thing?” Radmila said.

“Hey, this is my cool street blade, sister!”

“Let me see it?”

He handed it over, hilt-first.

The knife’s awkward handle was wrapped in length after length of multicolored electrical wire. Lionel’s homemade knife was made en­tirely from junked computer parts. A dozen big silicon chips—all black and heat-discolored—had been set into a melted plastic handle. Those chips were like a jagged row of shark’s teeth.

“This stage prop sure is weird,” Radmila said. “It smells awful! Why does it stink so much?”

“Yeah, that’s the blood they put on it!” said Lionel. “When you make a prison shiv, you get, like, every guy in your prison gang to drip some blood on your blade! That screws up the DNA evidence.”

“California doesn’t have any ‘prison gangs.’ California doesn’t even have prisons.”

“Yeah, so this is, like, a modern electronic-parole prison shiv!”

Radmila held the makeshift weapon with one thumb and two fingers. It was more than merely strange and awkward: it looked insane.

The more she looked at this desperate, far-fetched contrivance, the worse it made her feel. It was not a stage prop at all. Some stranger somewhere had put a fanatical, psychopathic effort into making this strange parody of a knife. Its very crudeness was scary. It radiated a de­termined, lethal, sacramental feeling. Evil was pouring off of it, like the peppery dust from a shattered mass of concrete.

Radmila looked into the guileless young eyes of her brother-in-law. “Can I keep this knife for you?”

“Keep it? What, keep it where? Are you gonna tuck it into your bra?”

She wasn’t wearing a bra. “Well, you shouldn’t carry a thing like this.”

’’You can keep my knife if you want it,” Lionel said, putting a brave face on his wounded feelings. “You’re the one who gave that to me.”

“I never gave you this thing. This thing is not my style.”

Now Lionel was was upset. “But you did! You came onto my action set and gave that to me. It was all wrapped up in pink butcher paper.”

“Where would I get a prop like this? I haven’t done an action role in ages! I hate violent action roles. I do ingenue roles and supportive­girlfriend.”

“Okay,” Lionel said, blinking, “Fine, I get it. That’s all right.” He tucked the knife back into the slash in his suit. “See! It’s all gone! End of story, roll credits.”

His face had paled with her unmeant insult. There was some pro­found misunderstanding going on here.

Radmila knew that it had to be her own fault somehow. Because it was always her own fault. Innine years of knowing them, in becoming one of them: Every time she’d ever put a foot wrong with the Montgomery­-Montalbans, it had been her own fault.

She was always outthinking and outfeeling the Family-Firm. She was always failing to grasp how simple and clear they were.

The Montgomery-Montalbans were California aristocrats. They were rich and powerful and secretive and very civilized. Being aristo­crats, they were naturally slightly stupid, and in their utter devotion to their Family values, there was something sunny, airheaded, starry-eyed, and cosmically lucid about them.

That was their charm. They had a lot of charm. Charm was their stock-in-trade.

It was unthinkable that sweet Lionel, who doted on her, would ever lie to her. So, maybe she really had brought him the ugly knife. That was remotely possible. She often carried packages for Lionel whenever he was on his sets. Just as she would faithfully bring snacks and toys to her own daughter, whenever Mary was on. To show up with a gesture of support, to be there physically, breathing the same air, eating lunch on set—that was a steadying, reassuring Family thing. Family stars did that for each other all the time. Just to show that—no matter how weird things might get in Los Angeles—you had someone who understood and cared about you.

Mary. Mary. Mary Montalban. Her baby was so far away from her now. The baby’s father, too. John was so much like his brother Lionel. Except that Lionel was fine, or at least okay, while John was doomed to be her husband.

John was the smartest Montgomery-Montalban, the cleverest one. Nowadays, John understood a lot of things. He understood things much too well.

A pang of guilty love for her nearest and dearest rose within Radmila. Her fit of passion was strong enough to taste, like a taste of bloody iron. Her love for her family was a very blood-and-flesh kind of love. It was large and tragic and liquid and squishy.

Ever since the pain and terror of fleeing that nasty little island in the Adriatic, Radmila had known, with a heart-crushing clarity, that no human being could ever love a monster like herself. Still: The only thing of any value in life was to love and be loved. Knowing she would never find any love, she had despaired of love and tried hard to hide from love.