Bruce Sterling - The Caryatids

“There’s no such thing as ‘too much time in a helmet.’”

“Well, there’s also no such thing as a proper Acquis officer skipping meals and failing to sleep. Eat.”

She was dying to eat from the simple bowl that Herbert used. That big warm spoon in her hand had just been inside Herbert’s mouth.

Herbert edged past her and zippered the entrance to his tent. This gesture was a pretense, since there was very little sense in fussing about privacy in an attention camp. People made a big fuss anyway, because life otherwise was unbearable.

Neither of them were wearing their helmets: not even neural scan­ning caps. Any emotion coursing through them would stay off the record. How dangerous that felt.

Reaching behind his polished rack of boneware, Herbert found an ancient, itchy hat of Australian yarn. He stretched this signature bonnet over his naked head. Then he scratched under it. “So. Let’s discuss your new assignment. An important visitor has arrived here. He’s a banker from Los Angeles, and he took a lot of trouble to come bother us. This man says he knows you. Do you know John Montgomery Montalban?”

Vera was shocked. This was the last news she had ever expected to hear from Herbert’s lips. She dropped the spoon, leaned forward on her stool, and began to cry.

Herbert contemplated this behavior. He was saddened by the dirty spoon. “You really should eat, Vera.”

“Just send me back down into the mine.”

“I know that you have a troubled family history,” said Herbert. “That’s not a big secret, especially on this island. Still, I just met this John Mont­gomery Montalban. I see no need for any panic about him. I have to say I rather liked Mr. Montalban. He’s a perfectly pleasant bloke. Very busi­nesslike.”

“Montalban is that stupid rich American who married Radmila. Make him go away. Hurry. He’s bad trouble.”

“Did you know that Mr. Montalban was coming here to this island? It was quite an epic journey for him, by his account. He took a slow boat all across the Pacific, he personally sailed through the Suez Canal… Making money all the way, I’d be guessing, by the look of him.”

“No. I have never met Montalban. Never. I don’t talk to him, I don’t know him. He isn’t supposed to be here, Herbert. I don’t want to know him. Not ever. I hate him. Don’t let him stay here.”

Herbert lowered his voice. “He’s brought his little girl with him.”

Vera raised her head. “He brought a child? To a neural camp?”

“That’s not illegal. It’s against Acquis policy for people in radical ex-perimental camps to have and bear children. After all, clearly, morally—we can’t put kids into little boneware jumpers and scan their brains without their adult consent. But it’s not against policy to bring children here, on a visit. So Little Mary Montalban—who is all of five years old­—came here all the way from California. She’s here to see you, Vera. That’s what I’m told.”

Vera’s shock lost its sharpness in her dark, gathering resentment.

“That little girl is Radmila’s child. Radmila sent her baby here. I was al­ways afraid it would come to this. This is all some kind of trick!” Vera caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Radmila can never be trusted. Radmila is a cheat!”

“‘Cheat’ in what sense? Enlighten me.”

“You can tell just by looking at Radmila that she has no morals.”

“But Radmila is your own clone. Radmila looks exactly like you do.”

Vera shifted in her chair in anguish. “That is not true! The fact that we’re genetically identical means nothing. We are very, very different. She’s a cheat, she’s evil, she’s wrong.”

There was no more “Radmila.” Once there had been a Radmila, and she and Radmila had been the same. They had been the great septet of caryatids: seven young women, superwomen, cherished and entirely spe­cial, designed and created for the single mighty purpose of averting the collapse of the world. They were meant to support and bear its every woe.

The world had collapsed and the caryatids were scattered all over: they were wrecked, shot, exposed, scattered and broken into pieces, their creator hunted and hounded like a monster… And in the place of beautiful Radmila, magical Radmila, that noble creature Vera had loved much better than herself, there was only the diseased and deca­dent “Mila Montalban.” A rich actress in Los Angeles. Mila Montalban took drugs and dressed like a prostitute.

“Vera, why do you say such cruel things? Your brother George—he suffered like you suffered, but he would never say such demeaning things about his sisters.”

Far from calming her, these words spurred instant, uncontrollable fury. “I hate Radmila! Radmila makes me sick! I wish that Radmila was dead! Bratislava died. Svetlana, Kosara, they died, too! I wish Radmila had died with them, she should have died! Running away from me, foreverthat was only a foul thing to do… “

“I know that you don’t really feel that way about your sisters.”

“They’re not my sisters, and of course I feel that way. They should never have existed, and never walked the Earth. They belong in the grave.”

“Your brother George is alive and he’s walking the Earth,” said Her­bert calmly. “You talk to George sometimes, you’re not entirely isolated from your family. You don’t hate George in that profound way, do you?”

Vera wiped hot tears from her cheeks. She deeply resented her brother Djordje. Djordje lived in Vienna. Djordje had disowned his past, built his shipping business, found some stupid Austrian girl to put up with him, and had two children. Nowadays, Djordje called himself “George Zweig.”

She didn’t exactly want Djordje dead—he was useful—but whenever Djordje tried to talk to her (which was far too often), Djordje scolded her. Djordje wanted her to leave Mljet, leave the Acquis, get married, and become limited and woodenheaded and stupid and useless to everybody and to the world, just like himself and his fat, ugly wife.

The existence of Djordje was a curse. Still, Djordje never gave her the absolute loathing that she felt in the core of her being at the very thought of her sisters. No one who had failed to know the depth of their union could ever know the rage and pain of their separation. And no­body knew the depth of their shattered union: not their tutors, not their machines, not even “George,” not even their so-called mother.

“Herbert, please. Stop debriefing me about my family. That is useless and stupid. I don’t have any family. We were never a family. We were a crazy pack of mutant creatures.”

“What about that tough girl, the army medic? George seems pretty close to her—they speak.”

“Sonja is far away. Sonja is on some battlefield in China. Sonja should be dead soon. People who go into China, they never come back out.”

“Where does your other sister ‘walk the Earth’ these days?”

Vera shouted at him. “We are Vera, Sonja, and Radmila! Those are our names. And our brother is Djordje. ‘George.’”

“Look, I know for a fact there are four of you girls.”

“Don’t you ever speak one word about Biserka! Biserka is like our mother: we never speak about that woman, ever. Our mother belongs in prison!”

“Isn’t orbit a kind of prison?”

An ugly dizziness seized Vera. She felt like a vivisected dog.

Finally she picked up the idle bowl of cooling breakfast and drank it all.

Moments passed. Herbert turned on a camp situation report, which flashed into its silent life on the luminescent fabric of his tent.

“You’re feeling better now,” he told her. “You’ve been purged of all that, a little, again.”