The Caryatids

Vera glanced up the beach at Karen. Karen and the little girl were getting along splendidly. Mary Montalban was scampering along the beach like a wound-up top, while Karen bounded over the child's head in boneware leaps that could have cleared the tops of trees.

"Have you ever had your brain scanned?" Vera asked him.

"I have regular medical checkups," said Montalban. "My brain is just fine. My brain is not a peripheral for heavy construction machinery."

"In other words, you believe we're monsters. You really hate us."

"I would never say that!" protested Montalban. "Look at me benignly tolerating all this! Am I denouncing you, or your crazy friend in the robot spacesuit there? Not a bit of it!"

"You hate what we do here. You're too American to understand us."

"Oh no, no no! Don't bring outdated nationalism into this, for heaven's sake! You've never even been to America! You don't understand how America works nowadays! Believe me, there are big patches of America that are extremely Acquis in their sentiments. Seattle is very Acquis. Raleigh; Madison, Wisconsin; Austin in Texas-they're all Acquis. San Francisco is Acquis! And Canada, too! Canada was Acquis before most of Europe was Acquis!"

"Do you think I'm a fanatic?"

"I never use pejorative terms like that, and I despise the evil demagogues who do! You're just-you're truly a woman of our age, that's what I think about you."

"Why are you here? What didn't you leave me alone here? I never wanted you here. I was happy here."

"Vera, I know that you think that you are evil. You have no esteem for yourself. But you are not evil. You were created through evil, but you are sweet and good. You're a very good person. You were born in an unhappy place at a time when that place was evil. That's the evil part. You-you've been part of everything that happened here to make things better. You raised this place from the rubble and you held the whole place up. You almost did it alone."

Vera burst into tears.

"Your colleagues here think the world of you," said Montalban. "They trust your judgment. They're proud of you. That's why you're the central figure here. If you move, the whole thing will move. You must sense that. You're intelligent, you must know that."

Vera choked on a sob. "I'm having an emotional fit."

"I've seen those fits," Montalban agreed. "Believe me, I know a lot about those."

"I'm just not all right without my helmet. I need a scan so I can know what I'm really feeling."

Montalban looked at her soberly. "You really look a lot prettier without that canteen on your head."

"Scanning helps me. It is a powerful tool."

"That," said Montalban, "is why that tool has been restricted to a very small group of users in an otherwise hopeless situation."

She could see that her tears were affecting him strongly. His face had grown much softer. He looked thoughtful and handsome, truly sympathetic. He looked at her as if he loved her more than anything in the world.

"If you never scan your own brain," said Vera, wiping at her cheeks, "how do you know what you feel about all this?"

Montalban looked at her slowly. "Vera, that is a truly weird question."

"I think you should put on a helmet," said Vera, sitting up. "You could put on Karen's helmet! You should put on her helmet, and then you and I should have a really good talk, heart to heart."

Montalban, instantly, went pale. "That's just not admissable," he told her. "That is just not a move that you and I should undertake."

"I was very scared of it too, at first," said Vera. "But I wear a scanner every day now. It's not bad for you. It's brilliant."

Montalban forced an uneasy smile. "I'll stay pretty dull, thanks! I know a thing or two about that practice! Shaving patches on my skull? No, we don't ruin an expensive haircut on impulse, do we?"

"You don't really need to shave any skin patches," said Vera. "Because you won't be running any boneware."

"I don't have the proper training for your helmets. You have to have your brain scrubbed first in those concentration camps."

"They're attention camps! How can you say such nasty things about us? You're a fool! You have no heart. You don't know anything real."

Montalban jumped to his feet and walked off down the beach. Vera caught up with him and seized his arm. "An attention camp saved my life," she said. "Can't you understand that?"

"That's for helpless refugees who are cornered and have no other choice," he said. "I'm not helpless and cornered. I don't care what you call that practice: that is an extreme form of sensory control."

"It's sensory analysis. See, you don't understand it, you're talking about it all wrong."

Montalban's opaque eyes, always rather shifty, began to dart from side to side. "You want to read my mind. You want to pry inside my own brain."

"John, don't hate me. I don't believe that you and I are enemies. We don't think alike, we can't, but...I know that I like you. I think we could have been good friends."