The Caryatids

Lionel looked surprised. "You mean, what am I doing here, officially ? Oh. Officially, I'm on an 'Asian wilderness vacation.' I'm giving up my 'juvenile delinquent drug habits.' I'm in rehab. My brother's gonna clean me all out in the fresh air with some bracing backwoods hikes."

Lionel turned on the charm: he grinned and winked. "What are you doing here, 'officially'? May I ask you that?"

Sonja said nothing.

"Never mind, Sonja! Whatever it is, it's okay by me! After that solar eruption-snarled communications all over the planet!-why sweat the small stuff? After a catastrophe like this one, nobody's gonna remember what I did, back in Los Angeles. Some riots, some burned-out neighborhoods, no problem! It's all part of the legend of Hollywood."

Lionel waved his arms gleefully, which spooked his horse. The beast jerked the reins and almost knocked Lionel from his feet.

Lionel recovered his booted footing with a gymnast's half skip. " You don't care about some derelict neighborhoods burned down in Los Angeles, do you? You don't care one bit, right? See, I'm almost home free!"

"What is John's assignment here?"

"Oh, this is John's usual work. We are shutting down an out-of-control tech operation. John never took me along for his work before, but, well, I learn fast." Lionel smiled. "Because I have to learn fast! Brilliancy, speed, lightness, and glory!"

It was a sinister business that the Acquis and Dispensation used the same slogan. Why had no one condemned them for that?

"Let me quickly brief you about my friend here," said Lionel. "The rider in the hairy wolf mask. He calls himself 'Vice Premier Li Rongji.' He is very serious about his name and his official Chinese title. He's a fanatic. So please don't tease him."

"Li Rongji was a great Chinese statesman."

"This man is the great Chinese statesman Li Rongji. He's a clone of a powerful Chinese official from twenty years ago. He's a clone, like you are. That's what John has discovered here. We found out that the Chinese state backed up its entire human regime. It cloned thirty-five key human politicians-I mean the real people inside the state, the crucial power brokers-and it hid them in a hole in the desert. The state even backed up itself. All of itself. It built itself a giant secret clone farm, and a giant secret library, and it hid that business underground in the Gobi, really deep underground, like nuclear-bomb-proof, in a kind of First Emperor of China airtight underground tomb."

Sonja scowled. "Why wasn't I informed about this matter?"

"Because you were five years old at the time. Sonja, you are this matter. You are informed, because I just informed you. I informed you because you are family." Lionel waved his arms again, and his horse, even angrier, almost succeeded in escaping him. When Lionel recovered-he was ominously strong, an athlete, an acrobat-his face was flushed.

"It took the Dispensation a long time to map and track down this rogue project," he said. "John has found fifteen different cloning projects that were all going on at the time you were born. The Balkans, that little island in the Adriatic: That was just the test bed for bigger projects elsewhere. Your project was small. This Chinese clone project was colossal. This one was the megaproject. And we're trying to buy it now. We're trying to buy whatever is left of it."

"There were sixteen cloning projects? Sixteen like me?"

"Most of those schemes never left the lab. Not one of those projects ever worked out as planned. Yours was a debacle for sure-and this Chinese one was the biggest debacle of them all. We're still dealing with the repercussions of it, right here and now. We got thirty-five extremely talented cloned people, running loose and walking the Earth, who were trained in an underground bunker to take over the world. They escaped from that bunker and they're still planning to take over the world. They were supposed to emerge after a world apocalypse and restore Chinese civilization. And they still want to take over the world, and they want it on their own terms. You see my friend there, riding the horse, the one with the tattoos and the necklace of human teeth? He's one of them."

This was appalling news. Sonja sensed that it should have stunned her, it should have been beyond her comprehension. But it wasn't. Sonja was used to appalling news. Every juncture in her life that had ever mattered had been appalling.

She gazed at the rogue, apocalypse cultist, as he sat on his Mongol horse. He was young and fully dressed to terrify.

"Your brother should mind his own business, Lionel. Someday John will get hurt."