The Caryatids

Sonja puffed on the thin, stale air. "My head hurts so badly. Something's gone wrong. We're supposed to dress for that big state banquet. The Martian taikonauts are there, and they'll want us to drink! Lots of toasts with maotai...Five years, those three flyboys were stuck, without a woman, in their tiny capsule-good God, no wonder they're like that...Do you drink alcohol, Lucky?"

"I can drink kumiss!"

"You drink kumiss horse milk? Really? That's so cute."

"I will introduce you to these heroes as my wife!"

"I'm a soldier's woman," Sonja told him, pressing the heels of her hands to her throbbing temples. "That's what I'm good for. So: fine. Since you need marriage so much, for the sake of your soul and whatever: fine, I'll do that for you. I will be your concubine. I can do that."

"Truly?"

"Shut up! Because-I will only be your Earthly wife. Outside of this place-out in your desert-where the green grass grows sometimes, and the sky is sometimes blue, and there are horses and tents and land mines and sniper rifles-sure, out there I am your wife and I accept you as my husband. I do. However! Inside this space center, or in orbit, or on Mars, or inside that biosphere, or inside this airlock, any other area that is not of this Earth, then I am not your wife, Lucky. Instead, I own you. You are my slave."

"On the Earth, I am your husband, that's what you just declared to me?"

" Only on the Earth. Everywhere else, to be with Sonja is to be in trouble. I never lie to my men-no matter how much that hurts them."

"You think that you are getting a smart horse-trading bargain from me, woman, but you are wrong! So: Yes, I am happy now. We are married now, you are my bride. Congratulations." The Badaulet rose and pressed his nose to the finely scratched plastic of the porthole. "Now, wife of mine: Tell me about that light unmanned aircraft at ten o'clock, which is vectoring our way."

"What? Where?"

Lucky tapped at the porthole with his newly trimmed, newly cleaned fingernails. He had just spotted one single, tiny, black, distant speck, wafting high above the clotted and polychrome city. It could have been one speck of black Gobi dust on their porthole. He had better eyes than an eagle.

"I think that's a space probe," she said. "You generally hear a big thump from the coil gun whenever they launch a probe, but they make them so light these days-they're like space chickens."

"That is not a chicken or a satellite, because I eat chickens and I know satellites. That is an unmanned light aircraft. It is a precision anti-personnel bomb." Lucky turned to face her. "It was God who blessed me to marry you just now, for that aircraft is flying here to kill me."

Sonja blinked. "Are you entirely sure about that?"

"Yes I am sure. They have trapped me in here without my weapons. I know these aircraft, for I use them to kill. The Badaulet has many enemies. Soon I will die. And you, the bride of the Badaulet, you will die at my side. Heaven ordains all of this."

"Okay, maybe Heaven does ordain it. Or maybe you will die at my side, Lucky. Because I am Red Sonja, I am the Angel of Harbin, and I have more enemies than you do. My enemies are more advanced and more cunning enemies than your enemies."

"No, your enemies are only soft and womanly political enemies who live indoors. You don't have my fierce, warlike enemies of the steppes."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, my husband! Once a teenage girl came to see me, she said to me, 'Are you Sonja Mihajlovic?' and I said, 'Yes I am, where does it hurt?' and she exploded. That girl blew herself up with a belt bomb! Pieces of her body flew into my body. She almost killed me! Just because of some stupid little nowhere village massacre that happened many years ago! And I didn't even burn those villages-my mother did all that! But I was inside a triage facility, so they slapped me right back together-wonderful work for a field hospital!"

The Badaulet hadn't understood a single word of this blurted confession, but his black eyes were wet with tender marital sympathy. "Are you afraid to die, my bride?"

"Oh no. Not really. Not anymore." Sonja had once felt tremendous fear about dying, but all that nonsense had left her years ago.

The airborne bomb took on visible dimensions. It might have been a child's kite, or a dried leaf, or a bedraggled crow. It was none of these things, for it was death on the wing. It was a small, sneaking, radar-transparent aircraft, so it flew rather clumsily.

"My comrades will avenge me for this," declared the Badaulet, "because I have faithfully avenged so many friends who perished in similar ways. Also, I have consummated my marriage before my wedding, which seemed a wicked thing to me-but now I know that part was surely divinely ordained. So I die happily!"

Sonja stood and spread her arms. She began to sing verse in Chinese.