The Caryatids

"This is Jiuquan, we don't trifle with stupid narcotics!" Sonja had a raging exfection. An "exfection" was very much like an infection. Except, instead of causing human flesh to waste away rapidly in a noisome mass of pus, an exfection was a kindly state-designed microbe that caused damaged human flesh to heal at more-than-human speed.

There were yellow, crusty, suppurating masses of exfection thriving all over Sonja's bomb-scorched shins and forearms. The crude bomb had shocked her and burned her, but since the airlock was made almost entirely of fabric, there had been no killing shrapnel.

The Badaulet had faced his own death boldly standing, so the bomb had broken both his feet. Her lucky husband was in a distant safe house hidden in the inflated bowels of the city, undergoing some much-embarrassed Chinese medical hospitality.

"Sonja," George told her, "if your brand-new ears are really working, then just for once, I want you to listen to me. I have an important proposal for you. I want you to accept it."

"Do you ever talk to Radmila, George?"

"Do I 'talk' to Radmila? I have met Radmila! We were in the same room together in Los Angeles, just last month! Radmila was kind to me!" George was sincerely thrilled.

"Then, Djordje, would you please tell Radmila-that I'm sorry I kicked her ass, that time in New York? That was wrong of me. I'm sorry that I snap-kicked her in the guts and I knocked her senseless. I was so jealous about her boyfriend, I was out of my head about Montalban. I should never have gone to New York no matter how much Montalban coaxed me. Never again, I'm through with him now: I promise."

"That may be more than Radmila wants to know. Radmila isn't very well right now. Things went badly in Los Angeles...there were riots. And huge fires."

"You do talk to Vera, though, don't you, Djordje?"

"I do sometimes talk to Vera, when Vera lets me-and stop calling me 'Djordje.'"

"So Djordje: Would you please tell Vera, just for me..." Sonja stopped, at a loss for words. She had no idea what to say to Vera. She hadn't said a word to Vera in nine years.

"Vera is not at her best lately either," said George, and his worried tone rang in her head like a bronze bell. "No one knows where Vera is-she's alive, but she's hiding in the woods somewhere in some death zone. Sonja, give up whatever you think you're doing there. Come stay with me in Vienna."

"What? Why on Earth would I do that?"

"Because you'll survive, woman! Like I'm surviving! I'm not like you, and Vera, and Radmila! I don't want to save the world! I'm just a fixer, I'm a logistics man! But listen: The world is changing. The world is not collapsing-or, at least, not as fast as it was doing before. The world is turning into something we never imagined. My shipping business is great! Global business is heading for a big, long, global boom!"

"I can't visit you there in Vienna, George. I just got married."

"You did what ? What, again? You married someone? Are you serious?"

"My husbands are always serious."

"Montalban doesn't know anything about this new marriage of yours," said George thoughtfully. "That's going to be big news to John Montalban."

"You tell John Montalban that I am his black angel. Tell John I'm your big, long, global boom. Tell John I'm his giant supervolcano."

"Oh Sonja, poor Sonja. Now I know you're not yourself. Come on: giant supervolcanoes? We don't believe in giant volcanoes, do we? That's talking nonsense."

"Here in Jiuquan, all the people believe in that nonsense. The Chinese are convinced that a volcano will explode in America and wreck the world's climate."

"Why, because the Chinese wrecked the climate the first time?"

"Yes they did. With American help. And because here in Jiuquan, tomorrow's second climate crisis won't even slow them down. Not anymore. Not in the glorious future!"

"Sonja, it is definitely time for you to leave those cult compounds in China and rejoin the real world," said George solemnly. "No volcano will do anything that matters for ten thousand aeons. Exotic Chinese superstitions from inside some weird space bubble, that's what you're talking about. You've had enough of that. That won't work out for you. Trust me."

"Weather scientists were right when they said that the Earth's climate would crash. Why should geologists be wrong when they're predicting the same thing? Science is the truth. Science is science. Science is the future."

"Oh, what astronaut crap you're talking now! How many rich and famous scientists do you know? Did you ever see one lousy scientist get his own way in the real world? They're all hopeless eggheads full of make-believe theories!"