The Caryatids (36 page)

"That is your weapon?"

"I thought I might have to use it. If you didn't simply shoot them dead. It is my best weapon."

"Where is this weapon? Give it to me."

"It is in orbit." She paused. "I mean to say, it is in Heaven, so you can't have it."

"I know what a satellite is, woman," he told her patiently. "A sharp-eyed man in the desert can see many satellites. Give me the trigger to your satellite weapon, and I will call down the fire. Then you can flee, and you might live."

"The trigger is inside me," she told him. "I swallowed it."

"You
swallowed
your weapon of vengeance?"

More bullets panged into the rock, for a fresh squadron of airplanes had appeared. Apparently these new planes had failed to share their data with the earlier assailants, for the dead cyborg in his skeleton was riddled with fresh bullets.

"It would be wrong to deploy a massive weapon such as you carry," he said thoughtfully, "for it would kill those gallant men fighting these air-craft along with us. I saw their truck through the scope of my rifle. I think they are Chinese. Chinese rapid-response, paramilitary. Brave men, hard men. I know such men well."

"Well," Sonja said, "then there will be some Dispensation coming here. Because there are Chinese military here . . . and the Acquis raiders like our skeleton friend, who is dead over there . . . the grass peo-ple in the tents . . . There has to be Dispensation. If they're not here al-ready, Dispensation will be coming here."

The Badaulet mulled this over. He agreed with her. "How many Dis-pensation, do you think?"

"I can't tell you that, but they will probably be Americans, they won't speak Chinese, and they will be trying to make some money from this trouble. That's the Dispensation, that happens every time."

"You forgot some important warriors also present here in this great battle, my bride."

"Who?"

"Us! You and me, my precious one!"

Three broken aircraft plummeted out of the sky. They tumbled like leaves and fell out of sight.

"I see that my rifle is properly grouping its shots," said the Badaulet, pleased. He then stood up and walked—not ran, he
walked,
sauntered almost—to the nearest source of handy rubble and brought back a heap-ing armful of new rocks.

"That's a good rifle, built by German professionals," he announced, dumping the rocks at her feet. Then he strolled off for more.

"Walk
faster!"
she yelled at him.

"You stack them," he said over his shoulder. He lugged back a boul-der. "It's a pity my fine rifle has so little ammunition."

One more such fearless venture —Lucky clawed out a few more rocks somewhere, his fingers were bleeding . . . then he grabbed the dead Ac-quis cyborg, doubled him over with some casual kicks at his humming robot bones, and embedded the body into the wall.

Then he squatted, breathing hard with his labors.

Suddenly—instead of the bare cliff that would have suited a firing squad—they had created a little fort for themselves. They had built a wall. Bullets simply could not reach them. They could even stretch their legs out a little, raise their heads, think.

"Now we are besieged!" he announced cheerfully. "We can stay safe and secluded until we starve here!" A useless bullet screamed off the dead man's ceramic bones. "We won't starve while he's lying here," she said. She regretted saying that—referring to cannibalism wasn't a wifely, romantic, supportive thing to say, and a cruel reward for Lucky's saving their lives . . . but the remark didn't bother him. They rewarded themselves with lavish sips from the dead man's can-teen.

Eventually, night fell. The besieging aircraft were not bothered by darkness, since they were firing at human heat. The machines fell into a parsimonious cycle, programmed to save their fuel. The rifle on the pack robot had run out of ammunition. This failure made the aircraft bolder. They swooped repeatedly by the rocky fortress, silently, scanning for any clear shot. When they failed to find one, their little motors would' catch with an audible click and hum, and they would struggle for altitude again.

Then the machines returned, again and again, flying out of darkness and seeking human warmth, like mosquitoes with guns. Her new ears could hear them with an insufferable keenness. The Earth spun on its axis. The stars emerged and strengthened. The Milky Way shone its celestial battle banner, so bright that she could see the dogged silhouette of killer aircraft flit across the bloody host of stars.

Then Sonja heard a low, symphonic rumble. It might have been a classical bass cello: a string and a bow. Taut strings of magnetic fire.

She shook him. "Do you hear that?"

The Badaulet woke from his cozy doze. "Hear what?"

"That voice from the sky. That huge electrical noise. Electronic."

"Is it a helicopter?"

"No."

"Is it a bigger plane coming here to kill us with a bomb?"

"No! No, oh my God, the sound is
really loud
now . . . " Suddenly her husband's voice vanished, she could no longer hear him. She heard nothing but those voices of fire. Those colossal sounds were not touch-ing the, air. They were touching the circuits in her head.

There was no escaping them. She had no way to turn them off. Celestial voices were sheeting through her skull. The voices were be-yond good and evil, out of all human scale. She felt as if they were rip-ping through her, straight through the rocky core of Asia and out of the planet's other side. The aurora emerged in the heavens, and the glorious sight of it gave no pleasure, for it was enraged. Its fiery sheets were knotted and angry tonight, visibly breaking into gnarls and whorls and branches and furi-ous particles. The tongues of flame were spitting and frothing, with foams and blobs and disks and rabid whirlpools. Sheets of convulsive energy plunged across the sky, tearing and ripping. An annihilation.

"This isn't supposed to happen!" she shouted, and she could not hear her own voice. "This is wrong, Badaulet . . . there's something wrong with the sky! This could be the end of everything! This could be the end of the world!"

Lucky patted her thigh in a proprietory fashion, and gave her a little elbow jab in the ribs. His head was tilted back and she realized that he was laughing aloud. His black eyes were sparkling as he watched the blazing sky. He was enjoying himself.

A flooding gush of stellar energy hit the atmosphere, hard rain from outer space. The sky was frosted with bloody red sparks, as bits of man-made filth at the limits of the atmosphere lit up and fried. Sonja's dry mouth hung open. Her head roared like an express train. Some orgasmic solar gush soaked the Earth's magnetic field, and utterly absurd things were pouring out of the sky now: rippling lozenges like chil-dren's toy balloons, fun-house snakes of accordion paper, roiling smoke rings and flaming jellied doughnuts . . . They had no business on Earth, they were not from the Earth at all. She could
hear
them, shrieking.

Sonja writhed in a desperate panic attack. The Badaulet reached out, grabbed her, pulled her to him, crushed her in his arms. He squeezed the screaming breath from her lungs. In her terror she sank her teeth into his bare shoulder . . .

He didn't mind. He was telling her something warm and kindly, over and over. She could feel his voice vibrating in his chest.

The convulsing aurora was so bright that it left shadows on the rock. Sonja clamped her eyes shut. Suddenly, in trauma, she was speaking in the language of childhood. The first song, the first poetry, she had memorized. That little song she loved to sing with Vera and Svetlana and Kosara and Radmila and Bis-erka and Bratislava, and even pouting little Djordje, standing in a circle, arms out and palm to palm, with the machines watching their brains and eyes and their bridged and knotted fingers, to see that they were standing perfectly strong, all the same.

Sonja could hear her own voice. Her ears were trying to translate what she was saying to herself. The translation program blocked the noise pouring from the sky.

Sonja sang her song again and again, whimpering.

"We are the young pioneers

Children of the real world

We grow like trees to the sky

We stand and support tomorrow

For our strength belongs to the future

And the future is our strength."

??????????

THE SOUND OF WINDwoke Sonja. Her ears were working again. She heard the faint sound of sullen dripping from the bullet-pierced water cloak.

Dawn had come, and Lucky was sleeping. He had been holding her tightly, so that she did not raise her vulnerable head above the parapet during her nightmares.

Sonja sensed that the planes were gone. There was no way to know this as a fact, however. Not without testing that theory.

Tired of having Lucky assuming all the risks, Sonja untied her dust-proof tarpaulin gown, held it high over herself with her arms outspread to blur her target silhouette, and stepped, naked and deliberate, over the rocky wall.

She was not shot, she did not die, there were no sounds of planes. Yawning and grainy-eyed, Sonja clambered to the top of the hill. The dutiful pack robot was standing there, its empty rifle methodically scan-ning the empty skies. The pack robot had been shot an amazing num-ber of times, almost all of the rounds hitting its front prow, which looked like metal cheesecloth. A few holes adorned the thing's rear bumper, presumably the results of targeting error.

Yet the robot was functional. Its pistoning, crooked, crazy legs were in fine condition. Sonja felt an affection for it now, the unwilling love one felt for a battlefield comrade. Poor thing, it was so dumb and ugly, but it was doing the best it could.

Sonja tore the rifle from its gun-mount and used its target scope to scan the landscape. What of their friends, allies, strangers—the ones pursued by a wheeling column of aircraft? No sign of them. Wait. Yes. A blackened spot on the ground, a ragged asterisk.

Heavy weaponry had hit something there, a truck, a tank, a half-track, whatever that had once been. Heavy weapons had knocked it not just to pieces, but to pieces of pieces. A falling meteor couldn't have crushed it more thoroughly: it was obliterated.

Sonja reviewed her tactical options. Retreat back to the den, pile up more rocks? Make a break for it, across country, back toward Jiuquan? Leave this hilltop, seek out a better overview? This hilltop's overview was excellent; the Acquis raiders had clearly chosen it on purpose. Maintain the hardware. That action always made sense. Sonja searched through the baggage, found a clip, and reloaded the rifle. Then Sonja spread out the solar panels for the pack robot, tissue-thin sheets that stretched an astonishing distance down the hill.

This work done, she sipped some greenish yogurt from the rumen bag, which hung there, whole and unpierced. The ferment tasted all right now; during all the mayhem it had brewed up fine. With nutrition her head cleared. She had survived and another day was at hand. Sonja took the rifle and carefully scanned the horizon.

Two riders were approaching.

They rode from the north, on two rugged Mongol ponies, ragged, burrolike beasts whose short legs almost seemed to scurry. These riders were men, and armed with rifles slung across their backs. The man in front wore furs—thick, bearlike furs—and a fur hat, and apparently some kind of furry face mask. The rider who followed him—incredibly—wore an American cowboy hat, blue jeans, boots, a checkered shirt, and a vest.

The quick temptation to pick them off with the rifle—for she did have the drop on them, and the rifle was loaded—evaporated. Who on Earth would ride out here, dressed in that fashiori? It was almost worth dying to know.

The cowboy rode up to his friend, stopped him, and handed over his rifle. The cowboy dug into a saddlebag, and took out a white flag-apparently an undershirt. The cowboy then rode straight toward her hill, slowly and with care, waving his snowy white shirt over his head as he stood in his stirrups. This man was surely one of the worst horseback riders Sonja had ever seen. She walked to the edge of the hilltop and waved back at him with her white sleeves.

Then she climbed downhill.

The cowboy was a young American, a teenager. He was strikingly handsome, and, seen closely, his clothes were vivid and gorgeous. His costume only mimicked the rugged proletarian gear of the American West. He was a cowboy prince: theatrical and dramatic.

He pulled up his snarl-maned, yellow-fanged mare—it appeared he had never ridden a horse in his life, for he drove the beast like a car-—and he half tumbled out of his saddle. His cheeks were windburned. He was short of breath.

"Are you Biserka?" he said.

He spoke English, which did not surprise her. "No," she said.

"You sure do look like Biserka. I had to make sure. To meet you here, that's kind of uncanny. You are Sonja, though. You're Sonja Mihaj-lovic."

"Yes."

"What is that strange gown you're wearing? You've got, like, a white tablecloth with all kinds of yin-yangs and rosary beads."

Sonja stared at him silently. This man was certainly Dispensation. He had to be. No one else would behave like this.

"You look great in that getup, don't get me wrong," the cowboy said hastily, "that look is really you! I am Lionel Montalban. John Mont-gomery Montalban—you know him, I'm sure—he's my brother. You and me, we're family."

"John Montalban is here? Where is John?"

"John's in a camp with some of the locals. John sent me here to fetch you. I'm glad I was able to find you. You're all right?"

"If airplanes don't shoot at me, yes, I am all right."

Lionel Montalban nodded over his shoulder at his riding compan-ion, who sat on his pony like a furred centaur. "The airplanes come from his people. So no, they won't be shooting you. Not when you are with us. Why are you on foot, Sonja? Where is George's robot?"

So: George had told John Montalban about the robot. Of course George would do that. George adored John Montalban. George was the man's factotum. His fixer. His butler. His slave. Lionel was busy apologizing to her. "We lost track of your robot's po-sition when those solar flares hit. That solar noise was sudden. Really sudden. And bad. Did you see the sun rise this morning? I saw it!" Li-onel yawned. "There were
visible sun spots
on the sun's surface. I could
see those spots with
my
naked eyes."