The caryatids, p.18
The Caryatids, page 18
Radmila had glimpsed a pretty woman in a Chinese military uniform, 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 Radmila. 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 famous 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 diplomat 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 Montalban, 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 mediation 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 political life, one also treads a fine line between public credibility and personal 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 heritage … 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 unsurprisingly. “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 station.”
“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 instincts 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 unpretentious 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 question, 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 remember 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.”
“Oh that!” said Radmila. “You mean our urban-renewal festival.”
“That behavior truly baffles us in the Acquis,” said Feininger.
“Please try not to worry,” said Radmila, wide-eyed. “I’m just an actress. It’s all for show.”
“Leaving aside the social-justice aspects of preferentially wrecking the neighborhoods of the poor,” said Feininger, “are you aware of what happens, technically speaking, within the legs of those tripods?”
“Should I be?”
“I know the sinister genius who constructed that device,” said Feininger. “His name is Frank Osbourne, and he repeatedly seeks out radical construction methods that are judged unsafe by Acquis central committee. Then Osbourne deploys those methods! Not in harmless simulations—in real life! He builds structures with dangerous crystalline iron and unproven nanocarbon piezo-cables, and then he uses those hazardous devices to demolish historical buildings. A deliberate provocation!”
“Frank is a very theoretical architect,” said Radmila. “I think you’re reading too much into his acts of whimsy.”
Toddy’s tea trolley rolled into the room. Toddy had gone to repeated effort to have tea served as she recovered from her hair-design interventions. Toddy would sit, sip tea, and stare into her hobject globes…
Toddy was no longer here, yet her infrastructure had survived her. Fresh tea had just arrived for the insane husk of a woman who’d been quietly fired into orbit.
“Oh, the tea is here!” Radmila chirped. “I do hope you like Indian tea, Dr. Feininger.”
“It’s Indian tea?”
“Yes of course! They’re restoring plantations in Assam!”
With surprising spryness and multicultural fluidity, Feininger sat cross-legged on the floor.
Radmila joined him, arranged the cups, and poured. Their ritual took a leisurely six minutes. They scarcely spoke. When they were done, the two of them had reached a certain level of rapport.
Radmila fully understood why the Acquis pundit had attacked Frank Osbourne. Osbourne was a Dispensation architect. So naturally Osbourne would push the limits of whatever the Acquis considered acceptable practice. Feininger was not truly upset about Osbourne. Feininger was angry because of Mljet.
Feininger wasn’t wearing a neural helmet or attention-camp blinders—Feininger was a professional, he wasn’t some crazy Acquis engineer of human souls—but Feininger knew that John had gone to Mljet to interfere with that effort.
The Acquis cadres in Mljet were cranks, radicals, and zealots. Of course some Dispensation agent had arrived there for containment and push-back. John had ventured to Mljet as a Dispensation activist.
John would lure the cranks aside with a tasty carrot if he could; if that effort failed, he would slide a stick straight through their spinning wheels.
Because John seemed so polite and refined, people underestimated him. His quietest attacks, always carried out in a low, scholarly voice while wearing a business suit, were brutally effective.
Feininger understood modern global realpolitik. His bluster about the architect was his counterploy. Feininger was radiating the obvious: she could sense that in the poised way he held his teacup.
Acquis interests had been threatened on a certain part of the global game board. Feininger could try to defend that dodgy Adriatic territory—those weirdos with helmets and skeletons—or he could boldly and swiftly fly over to counterattack within Los Angeles. That was what Feininger had come here to demonstrate.
All in all, his choice of a target—the Family’s favorite Los Angeles architect—that was a civilized gambit. Feininger had to know about Vera in Mljet. He could have been nastier with her.
Feininger would not get nasty, because Feininger was almost exactly like John. Dr. Feininger was an Acquis counter-John. Dr. Feininger, having learned what John could do, was planning to out-John John. Dropping by to put a scare into Mrs. John—there must be Acquis strategists chuckling over that tactic, behind a network screen someplace.
“Dr. Feininger, I’m only a pop star. While you are a moralist. A thought leader. You’re a global techno-social philosopher.”
Feininger laughed. “If it’s any help, we go through vogues just like you do.”
“I know about the Acquis. We Americans have a lot of Acquis people. In Boston, San Francisco, Seattle … Still, they can’t compare to the truly global Acquis thought leaders. The American Acquis don’t think as creatively as you do.”
“I didn’t expect to hear this from you,” Feininger allowed. “This might be significant.”
“I’m thinking: we need to try something unexpected. Fresh. Contemporary. Of the moment. Something unexpectable.”
“This should be interesting.”
“Mind you, this is just my own personal proposal. I’m in no position to dictate terms to my Family-Firm—I hope you understand that.”
“I know who Mila Montalban is,” said Feininger, smiling at her. “So do half the people in the world.”
“Well, I’m thinking: a public event. Nothing too ‘global.’ Because that word sounds so old-fashioned now. I’m thinking postglobal. Superglobal. A quiet, elite kind of political summit. Held in orbit.”
“A political summit held in orbit?”
“Yes, up in LilyPad. You wouldn’t exactly call LilyPad ‘the space frontier’ … because sweet LilyPad is not a primitive place, exactly … but it’s certainly remote. And, Dr. Feininger: We don’t want any boring, tedious people at our theory summit held in outer space. We should be inviting: the very exceptional, very high-level thinkers … visionary, nonpartisan people, the people far outside the global box … Not even one hundred people. The truly significant postglobal civil society thinkers. Maybe fifty of you.”
Feininger considered this suggestion. He was flattered to be one of the world’s fifty most important thinkers. Then it dawned on him that he was being asked to pick and validate the other forty-nine.
This was much more important to him than any small Adriatic island.
“Seventy people?” he said.
“Sixty, at the very most? We’d be stretching the launch services.”
“If you could launch fifty, the magnetic pad in Eastern Germany could launch twenty-five.”
“We could house seventy people. We could feed them and give them nice fresh air.”
“You could do that? You’re sure?”
“Not me personally as a society hostess, but the Montgomery-Montalban Family-Firm … Our guests rarely complain about our hospitality.”
A slow smile appeared on Feininger’s lips. “And would your space event have cachet, Miss Montalban?”
“Europe does cachet, sir. Here in California, we do glamour. And we do glamour by the metric ton.”
Feininger set his teacup down with a tender clink. “Glory, lightness, speed, and brilliancy.”
RADMILA WALKED THE ARTIFICIAL BEACH, vamped before the floating cameras, and gazed into the sun-glittering Pacific. Six lunatics were surfing out there. For the life of her, Radmila could not understand surfers in Los Angeles. Obviously riding on a wave was a nice stunt performance, but inside the ocean? There were whole chunks and shoals of broken China bobbing around out there, all glass, nails, slime, and toxic jellyfish.
The scanty fabric of Radmila’s swimsuit belonged to a sponsor. So did the hairstyle, the watch, the sunglasses, and the hat. This privatized beach, like all modern tourist beaches, was a fake, as elaborate as an immersive world.
Radmila was looking sexy today, as contractually required. Looking sexy was a basic theatrical craft. The critical problem came when the severe labor of looking sexy made one forget to actually be sexy. Radmila did not feel at all sexy, in this swimsuit, on this beach. She felt dread.
Certain men direly wanted to have sexy sex with professionally beautiful women: sex with the stars. Those men were delusionary. Sex with a star was an awful idea, like having sex with a rosebush. You were not supposed to get into bed with a rosebush. You were supposed to give it horse manure and sell the blossoms.
Radmila knew that her most loyal fans, her truest devotees, were not men gloating over her gym-toned body and her tawny, sunlit skin: her biggest fans were all women. They were humbled, jittery, self-critical women with an underlying streak of resentful violence. Her fans were women very much like herself, except less lucky and more stupid.
She, Radmila Mihajlovic, had become Miss Mila Montalban. She had done that because she had, almost by miracle, found the technical and financial capacity. There was just no way—no way at all, no way in hell—that the similar fantasies of her fans could ever be fulfilled.
The fans could never become like the stars. This body that flaunted its perfect female curves before the camera: she had created this body through an exhausting, comprehensive ordeal. Having seven children was easier, for that was the sort of thing untrained women had once done without anesthetic.
So she wasn’t walking on a beach, being pretty. She was tormenting her fans with her star glamour. In some strange way, this unity in frustrated suffering was the true relationship of stars and fans.
That was why her fans loved to see her suffer. Fans knew that she deployed her charm and beauty as a weapon to tantalize, and they were spiteful about that torment and they wished her the worst. Their hatred and envy of celebrities could be lethal.
It was especially awful to “confide” to one’s fans, artlessly discussing one’s starry hotness, through some low-life aggregator of planetary eyeballs … Pretending to reveal her personal secrets to the fans was the worst and vilest toil in the industry.
“Exclusive star interviews.” They were ancient rituals. They always made her long for death.
Yet the fans had to be fed. For the fans were forever hungry.
“Yes, my John brings truth and justice to some of the most desperate people in the world … I miss John every day. I want John to fly home to me. He promised he would break his own rules and he’ll fly here in a rocket. Yes, those rumors are true. No, not that we’re breaking up. That’ll never happen! The rumors are true that the fire is back in our relationship! John and I had our rough spots, we had our trouble and grief, but you just can’t keep us down! Just you wait and see, you’re going to see some very good, very happy news from both of us …”
When the interview at last expired in its puddle of flaccid lies, she fled in a Family limo, then went to join Lionel. Lionel was kind to her, because Lionel understood these things.
Lionel was having a late lunch at a posh restaurant. The restaurant was noted for its excellent seafood, because it marched on gleaming centipede legs deep into the restive ocean and it grew all its seafood by itself. The “swordfish,” for instance … that gleaming white flesh on Lionel’s platter was very far from a wild, sea-native swordfish, but a DNA scan would never tell.
Lionel had matured a great deal since Toddy had (as the Family privately phrased it) “passed up.” His personal upgrades had cost much more than Radmila’s makeover, and since Lionel was so young and ductile, the effects on him were drastic.
Lionel had put on kilos of male muscle in his back, legs, and shoulders. His eyebrows were thicker, and blue stubble haunted his lips and chin.
Most critically, Lionel had changed his signature look. The new personal dresser had swiftly ditched his Peter Pan delinquent street-kid costumes, and made Lionel sexier, more transgressive. He looked like a bad boy in power now. He looked slicker, like the upscale version of an undercover cop.
