The Caryatids (22 page)

"So—you really don't hate me anymore?" Djordje said, rocking on his heels and watching her as she suffered. It was terrible to have Djordje standing so close to her. He was literally consuming her air. Djordje—or "George Zweig"—was a tall, hefty, somewhat out-of-shape Viennese businessman in a tasteless European suit. He looked like he was wearing the clothes that his silly wife was buying him. He sported a thick, bristling mustache, and Radmila could swear he was carelessly losing his hair. Why didn't he take care of all that?

"Djordje, you are one of my husband's business associates. I don't enjoy seeing you. But I'll
see
you for political reasons, because I know that global politics has to trump my merely personal concerns."

"That is great news," said Djordje. "Your cordial attitude is very cheering. You talk much more sense than the other girls do. I am proud of you, Radmila, truly I am. Because you have become 'Mila Montal-ban'! Your career is amazing! You're the only one of us to truly
suc-ceed . . .
you're an American superstar!"

Djordje pinched the bridge of his beefy nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Events went badly in Mljet. I don't know what John has told you about that. Vera is hostile and ignorant. She is mentally unstable. She has fled into some disaster area in the mainland Balkans and she will not speak to anybody."

"I don't care. Do not mention her name to me. Please."

"Right. Sure! Fine!"

There was a horrid silence between them.

"I have two children," Djordje told her. "May I show you their pic-tures? They're normal children."

"Shut up."

"Fine," said Djordje. "Let me tell you why I flew here, all the way to Los Angeles." He licked his mustached lip. "Your friend . . . your
hus-band,
Mr. John Montgomery Montalban, has met with a small business setback, as I said to you. A lot of Acquis capital was invested in reviving Mljet, and there was broad hope for a general consensus that—"

"I'm glad that part's over, at least," said Radmila.

"What?"

"Those atrocities that the Acquis were committing on that filthy little island. Those attention camps. The brainwashing. My head hurts all over just thinking about that. John may not own that island yet—that scheme was a stretch, even for John—but I'm sure that John has put a swift end to that business."

"Mr. Montalban still hopes and plans to turn the island into an en-tertainment destination . . . I did my best to help him there, but . . . "

"I don't want you to talk to John any longer. Or to Glyn, either. Leave Glyn alone. You have no place within my Family-Firm. Do you under-stand that? You're an intruder and your presence isn't welcome." Djordje's face changed. It became much harder. "I do understand that," he told her, "but I must point out that it was John Montgomery Montalban who came looking for
me.
I don't have the vast wealth that you have slyly married into—because I made my own way in this world. I mind my own business. My logistics business. Primarily, interface lo-gistics between the Acquis and the Dispensation. Your husband has meddled in an Acquis project while enlisting my help. He has compro-mised my relationship with the Acquis."

"Take your problems up with John."

"You just told me
not
to take my problems up with John. I can cut my relations with your John—he's a very charming fellow, but he's not en-tirely faithful to his word. Still, I want to be made whole with the Acquis. I want a return to my status quo ante before your husband interfered with my business affairs. That's only proper, isn't it?"

"Suppose that I solve your problems. Do you promise you'll stay far away from Los Angeles, Djordje?

You won't contact me, or anyone in my Family, anymore?"

"I might agree to those terms, Radmila. If Dr. Feininger also agrees to your terms. Dr. Feininger also flew with me here to Los Angeles. He wants to redress this unfortunate Mljet situation. Dr. Feininger is upset. He has good reasons for that. If you can mollify him, then I will do as you ask. Otherwise, you and I have a quarrel."

"You're threatening me."

"I'm glad that you noticed," Djordje said cheerily. "If you don't want my threats, then don't offend me. Let's just be reasonable . . . no, let's be pretty! You are so pretty, Radmila! What on Earth did they do to you, all those movie-star people?"

"We're not
movie
stars, for God's sake. We're just 'stars.' "

"In Vienna, we still love the old cinema. We love many fine, civilized things, in Vienna. It would be pleasant if you Americans would stop de-grading them."

Radmila ached to leap to her feet and slap the smirk off Djordje's face. It was a luminous, creeping, burning urge.

Toddy would never strike a man in the face. What would Toddy do?

Radmila smiled sweetly and touched one finger to her cheek.

Djordje's eyes widened.

"Djordje dear, your friend has come a long way to Los Angeles, under some trying circumstances. I apologize to you for your present difficulties. I promise that I did not intend those troubles. Why don't you check out of this clinic, retrieve your possessions from security, and send your Dr. Feininger in here to see me? I have an offer to make to your Acquis friend and I think he will be pleased to hear it."

"You mean all that?"

"Yes, I do, and I don't lack for resources. I plan to put things right, and I'll trust to your sense of decency not to trouble my Family further."

"That strange tone of voice, that way you move your lips," Djordje marveled. "That is
amazing.
You've truly changed, Radmila. You're gor-geous, you're famous, you're rich . . . You're a complete alien! I hope you're happy."

"I'm happy when the people I love are happy."

"What a wonderful, inspiring thing to say. Those words give me such hope. I watch all your performances! You truly have talent! Don't be-lieve those bad reviews. You're improving steadily!" Radmila said nothing. She assembled a smile.

"Radmila, you are so much closer to escaping our curse than the rest of us. Maybe that has been fated to happen. As children . . . we were created and raised as an evil plan for this world. But in a world as truly evil as our world truly is—maybe we can act for good. When I look at you, I can almost believe that."

"I'm glad that we had this heart-to-heart talk, George. It has cleared the air. Let's not keep your important friend waiting."

Djordje shuffled from polished foot to foot on the antiseptic clinic floor. He seemed genuinely moved.

"Listen, Radmila: Please be careful with him. Dr. Feininger is my friend. That doesn't make him
your
friend. He should have taken his issues up with your husband. For him to come here to confront you, instead: That's not good news for you."

"Oh, I may be only a humble star, but I am from a political family. I've met Acquis pundits before." Muttering, dithering, intolerable, Djordje finally left her alone. At last, Radmila was able to draw one clean, untainted breath. Her heart-beat slowed. That had been very bad.

But it was not so entirely bad as she had feared. She'd managed to play her way through that ordeal. She'd simply acted her way through it without ever breaking character. Stardom was full of suffering. Radmila even felt a little bit guilty about refusing to glance at the pic-tures of Djordje's children. Maybe someday she'd be able to meet Djordje's children and establish some kind of relationship with them. After Djordje was dead, of course. That was a pleasant thought: espe-cially the part about Djordje dying.

Once, and once only since leaving Mljet, Radmila had met one of her sisters: Sonja. They had simply blundered into each other: of all the people in the unlucky world. The horror had occurred on a peaceful tourist overlook above the glassy ruins of New York.

Radmila had glimpsed a pretty woman in a Chinese military uni-form, brandishing a pair of elaborate binoculars, leaning at the railing of the overlook, and carefully studying the blast pattern. Then that woman, sensing danger somehow, had turned and looked back, and that woman was Sonja. Before Radmila could decide on anything, to scream or to run, Sonja had stalked straight over, silently, fluidly, and kicked Radmila in the stomach. Sonja's black-booted foot came blasting forward with blinding, immediate, practiced speed and slammed all the wind out of Rad-mila. That devastating kick had knocked her cold.

Other tourists had helped her after Sonja had stomped away. When John arrived, deeply worried, Radmila had lied to him. She had claimed that she had fainted, overcome by the shocking sight of the fa-mous ruins of New York. John, who had loved her very much at the time, had known at once that she was lying to him. All kinds of trouble had followed from that.

The trauma of that event had been much worse than confronting Djordje, here in her home stronghold of Los Angeles. Being a man, and the last and the youngest, Djordje was less painful than the others. Djordje had always been different in that way.

At least she knew that Djordje would go away. Djordje was a traitor: he had always excelled at running away.

Now Dr. Feininger entered the hairdressing clinic. The Acquis diplo-mat seemed discomposed. The hairdressers' security people were even more ruthless to visitors than they were to the clientele.

"How do you do, Dr. Feininger? Let me persuade the staff to fetch you a chair."

"Oh no no, please, I don't want to speak with those people." Dr. Feininger had an overly perfect, German-accented English. She could hear him carefully machining his verb tenses. "So: Miss Mila Montal-ban, at last we meet. In person, so much smaller you seem than in your simulations!" Radmila offered him a tender smile. "You flew here from Europe just to meet me? How exceptional!"

"Yes, I have what they used to call 'jet lag'!" Feininger pretended to yawn into his manicured hand.

"Please tell me all about your fascinating trip!"

"I logged every minute on my pundit site," said Feininger, shifting on his feet. "Round and round we spin inside that ring of magnets, many gravities . . . We were fired into suborbital arc . . . Free-fall, truly weightless . . . ! You could see all of it! Though I don't compare my me-diation with yours."

"I'm sure that your pundit site is very popular with your viewers." Feininger's enthusiasm for his toys reminded her of John. She had Feininger tagged by now: he was what they called an Acquis "thought leader."

As a postgovernmental organization, the Acquis was peppered all over with radical, crazy extremists, but pompous, netcentric blowhards like this guy were the organization's meat and bread. Nothing ever made pious, politically correct Acquis geeks happier than some dully public "frank exchange of views." Radmila had met so many of them, at so many tiresome, life-draining political events, that she could literally smell Acquis thought leaders. Dr. Feininger smelled of cologne.

"What city is your own home base, Dr. Feininger?"

"My base is Cologne."

Radmila laughed musically. "Such a beautiful city!"

"I never expected to meet an American star so simply and modestly dressed," said Feininger, eyeing her cleavage in her terry-cloth gown. "One expects an American star to . . . well . . . billow, if that's the right word."

"Oh, we stars do billow. But this is my private life, and I chose to meet you here very privately."

"I understand that important distinction," said Feininger. "In politi-cal life, one also treads a fine line between public credibility and per-sonal authenticity."

"It was brave of you to personally fly to Los Angeles," said Radmila. "I'm so proud that spaceflight is finally returning to vogue! Aerospace once meant a lot to California. We're so sentimental about our her-itage . . . New attitudes from Europe, that's encouraging. We have some new American launch methods—those giant slingshots, I forget what you men call those . . . "

"Those are called 'tensile accelerators.' "

"Yes, that was it." Radmila nodded respectfully. "Dr. Feininger, do you suppose, someday, those two methods might be combined? Then we could settle outer space—mankind's dream come true!"

"I happen to know rather a lot about this topic," said Feininger un-surprisingly. "Sadly I must inform you that no, the Acquis spaceflight methods, which are very extensively tested and constructed on the strictest precautionary principles, are by no means the same techniques as the aberrant efforts of certain American zealots who fling giant nanocarbon slingshots up the slopes of the Rocky Mountains."

"Have you ever seen that kind of space launch performed, Dr. Feininger?"

"What, me? No, certainly not."

"Would you
like
to see that done? My Family-Firm has a private launchpad."

"I see. I wasn't aware of that."

"Yes, we need that private launchpad in order to reach our private space station."

"I did know that the Montgomery-Montalbans had built a space sta-tion."

"Well, we didn't exactly
build
that. The Government of India built LilyPad. We simply took over management when India suffered their difficulties."

"Terrible business about India."

"Very terrible. We have so much to learn from Indian spiritual values." Feininger wasn't happy about his lack of a chair or the way he'd been treated by the local staff, but he was clearly pleased to meet a Hollywood star so willing to talk his kind of utter crap.

"I like to think," said Feininger slowly, "that I have rather good in-stincts about people. You are not at all like your public image. I can sense that the private Mila Montalban is a rather fresh, direct, and un-pretentious woman."

"I hope you won't tell anybody that," Radmila twinkled. "My public-relations people get all upset with me when I fail to allure and mystify."

"May I ask you something, Miss Montalban? Not a personal ques-tion, but a public political issue? Why do you own a giant war machine that destroys the homes of helpless refugees with heat rays?"

"What, you mean in an immersive-world simulation? I can't remem-ber my roles in immersive worlds—

there are just too many."

"No, I meant last August," said Feininger politely. "In the streets of Los Angeles. You were lasciviously dancing on the top of a giant walking tripod that fired laser weapons into people's homes."