The Caryatids

"Are you nervous?" she asked him, the first remark that fluttered onto her tongue.

"Yes, I'm worried," Montalban lied briskly, "I always hate these formal presentations...Inke, you married George. So you're our expert on the subject at hand here. What on Earth can I properly say about Yelisaveta? At the end of the day, it seems that I knew Yelisaveta best. Yet she was-of course-a monster. What can I say about her that isn't completely shocking to propriety? The world is listening."

Inke considered the world-the poor, imperiled world. "Did the old woman ever tell you that she would come back to the world, down from orbit?"

"She did. Sometimes. She was stringing us on, from her lack of anything else to do with herself. It was like a long hostage negotiation. Please give me some good advice here, Inke, help me out. Tell me what I should say about this situation. The world needs closure on the issue. She was our relative, you know."

Why was he talking to her in this confiding way? In the past, he'd always talked to her with the hearty exaggeration of an English lordship treating one of the little people as his equal.

"I think," she said haltingly, "I think Yelisaveta was just...a dark story made by her own dark times."

"That makes some sense."

"She tried to build something and it broke into pieces. The pieces could not hold. So she lied, cheated, and killed for nothing...but the truth is...she believed in every last horrible thing that she did. She fully believed in all of it. She was sincere, that was her secret. It was all her sacrifice and her grand passion."

Montalban was truly interested. "That is fabulous. How well put! And George is one of the remaining pieces, too! Yet George is the piece that is least like the rest of the broken pieces. He's not much like them, they really hate him for that...Why is that, can you tell me that?"

"George is a man. Men take longer to mature."

"I see. That may indeed be the case...in which case, may I tell you something important now about your George? George has always led a dodgy, improvised life...between the Dispensation and our good friends the Acquis...he was cutting corners, making connections...After this funeral George will have a changed life. Because those two great parties are finding a bipartisan consensus. We have found the powers necessary to defeat the climate crisis...And in doing that, we have let so many genies out of bottles that our Earth is becoming unimaginable. Do you see what I mean here? Instead of being horribly unthinkable, the Earth is becoming radically unimaginable."

Montalban was so solemn and passionate in this assessment that all Inke could do was blink.

"Inke, I aspire to see a normal world. A normalized world. I have never yet lived in any normal world, but I hope to see one built and standing up, before I die."

"A 'normal' world, John?"

"Yes. 'Normal.' Like you, Inke. To be normal is a very conservative business. Your husband is going to become a conservative businessman. That is necessary, and I'm going to help him."

"You're not a conservative businessman?"

"No, Inke, alas, I'm a hip California swinger from Hollywood who has multiple wives. But I do need a conservative businessman, rather badly. And since your George is part-and-parcel of a Relinquished experiment, he is perfect for that role. I foresee a leadership role for George. He will become a modern captain of industry and a pillar of a new world consensus."

"My husband admires you very much," she told him, "and he would like to trust you, but really, John...Biserka. Why Biserka?"

"Yes," he said wistfully, "I know. 'Biserka.'"

"Why?"

Montalban looked at the gathered children-they were plunging through the crowd, bobbing like corks. "My little daughter Mary...she lacks for playmates. Mary doesn't have much of a peer group. Why don't you and the kids come and visit us this Christmas? We'll all go to LilyPad. Up in orbit. It's very quiet up there. It's private. We'll have a good long chat about certain matters. You and I, especially. We'll iron some things out."

"Why do you want to fly into outer space? That is dangerous."

"The Earth is dangerous. And the sun is also disquieting. If the sun grows seriously turbulent-then Mars wouldn't be far enough away for us. I commissioned some speculations on that topic. We've made some interesting findings. Should the Earth's sun become unstable, it turns out that, with the Earth's present level of industrial capacity, we could escape to the Oort Cloud with a biosphere ark of maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty people. Carrying our ubiquitous support machines, of course."

Montalban seemed to expect an answer to this extraordinary declaration. "Of course," Inke told him.

"The Earth would become a cinder. Mars would be irradiated. Hot gas would be blasting off the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. The only spark of living vitality left in the solar system would be a shiny bubble containing us. Us, a whole lot of our maintenance machinery, and mostly, microbes."