The Caryatids

Herbert gently drummed his thick red fingers on his folding camp table. Heaven only knew what labyrinth of second-guessing was going on within his naked head. He seemed to expect her to make the next emotional move, to impulsively spit something out.

What was he feeling? Had Herbert finally learned to hate her? Yes! In a single heart-stabbing instant, this suspicion flamed into conviction.

Herbert despised her now. He hated all the trouble she had given him.

He'd just claimed that he was "reassigning" her. He meant to fire her from the project. He would throw her onto a supply boat and kick her off Mljet. She would be expelled, shipped to some other Acquis reclamation project: Chernobyl, Cyprus, New Orleans. She would never proudly wear her boneware again, she'd be reduced to a newbie peon. This meant the end of everything.

Herbert touched his chin. "Vera, did you sleep at all last night?"

"Not well," she confessed. "My barracks are so full of dirty newbies..." Vera had tossed and turned, hating herself for panicking in the mine, and dreading this encounter.

"A good night's sleep is elementary neural hygiene. You need to teach yourself to sleep. That's a discipline."

She gnawed at a fingernail.

"Eat," he commanded. He shoved his soup bowl across the little camp table. She reluctantly unfolded a camp stool and sat.

"Breakfast will stabilize your affect. You've spent too much time in a helmet lately. You need a change of pace." He was coaxing her.

"There's no such thing as 'too much time in a helmet.'"

"Well, there's also no such thing as a proper Acquis officer skipping meals and failing to sleep. Eat."

She was dying to eat from the simple bowl that Herbert used. That big warm spoon in her hand had just been inside Herbert's mouth.

Herbert edged past her and zippered the entrance to his tent. This gesture was a pretense, since there was very little sense in fussing about privacy in an attention camp. People made a big fuss anyway, because life otherwise was unbearable.

Neither of them were wearing their helmets: not even neural scanning caps. Any emotion coursing through them would stay off the record. How dangerous that felt.

Reaching behind his polished rack of boneware, Herbert found an ancient, itchy hat of Australian yarn. He stretched this signature bonnet over his naked head. Then he scratched under it. "So. Let's discuss your new assignment. An important visitor has arrived here. He's a banker from Los Angeles, and he took a lot of trouble to come bother us. This man says he knows you. Do you know John Montgomery Montalban?"

Vera was shocked. This was the last news she had ever expected to hear from Herbert's lips. She dropped the spoon, leaned forward on her stool, and began to cry.

Herbert contemplated this behavior. He was saddened by the dirty spoon. "You really should eat, Vera."

"Just send me back down into the mine."

"I know that you have a troubled family history," said Herbert. "That's not a big secret, especially on this island. Still, I just met this John Montgomery Montalban. I see no need for any panic about him. I have to say I rather liked Mr. Montalban. He's a perfectly pleasant bloke. Very businesslike."

"Montalban is that stupid rich American who married Radmila. Make him go away. Hurry. He's bad trouble."

"Did you know that Mr. Montalban was coming here to this island? It was quite an epic journey for him, by his account. He took a slow boat all across the Pacific, he personally sailed through the Suez Canal...Making money all the way, I'd be guessing, by the look of him."

"No. I have never met Montalban. Never. I don't talk to him, I don't know him. He isn't supposed to be here, Herbert. I don't want to know him. Not ever. I hate him. Don't let him stay here."

Herbert lowered his voice. "He's brought his little girl with him."

Vera raised her head. "He brought a child? To a neural camp?"

"That's not illegal. It's against Acquis policy for people in radical experimental camps to have and bear children. After all, clearly, morally-we can't put kids into little boneware jumpers and scan their brains without their adult consent. But it's not against policy to bring children here, on a visit. So Little Mary Montalban-who is all of five years old-came here all the way from California. She's here to see you, Vera. That's what I'm told."

Vera's shock lost its sharpness in her dark, gathering resentment. "That little girl is Radmila's child. Radmila sent her baby here. I was always afraid it would come to this. This is all some kind of trick!" Vera caught her lower lip between her teeth. "Radmila can never be trusted. Radmila is a cheat!"

"'Cheat' in what sense? Enlighten me."

"You can tell just by looking at Radmila that she has no morals."

"But Radmila is your own clone. Radmila looks exactly like you do."

Vera shifted in her chair in anguish. "That is not true! The fact that we're genetically identical means nothing. We are very, very different. She's a cheat, she's evil, she's wrong."