The Caryatids

Having been publicly befriended by the important Mr. Zeng, Sonja had become a de facto member of Zeng's "clique," or "power center," or "faction," or "guan-xi network," as those terms were generally phrased by offshore Beijingologists. The twelve weeks Sonja had spent in high-society Beijing as Zeng's "protegee," or "client," or "escort," or, not to put too fine a point on it, as one of his mistresses, was the closest Sonja had ever come to achieving true power within the Chinese power structure.

Mr. Zeng was a top domestic spy in an authoritarian, cybernetically hyperorganized, ultrawealthy nation-state in a calamitous public emergency. So Mr. Zeng had extreme and scary and even lunatic amounts of power. This power did not make Zeng happy. He faced many serious problems.

His beloved country was measled all over with Manhattan Project-style technofixes for his nation's desperate distress. As state secrets, these bold, wild projects were so opaque that nobody could number them. Furthermore, Beijing's cliques were so corrupted that they might well have sold these projects to somebody. The Acquis and Dispensation doted on buying China's crazy projects, and, mostly, shutting them down.

Mr. Zeng clearly derived some benefit from his personal liaison with Sonja. As a woman, Sonja lightened a few of his many cares of office. Sonja would not have called their activity a "love affair," as she didn't much care for him personally. Still, for her, it was definitely a transformative encounter.

Mr. Zeng was not merely a top spy, but also a Stanford-educated biochemist who spoke four languages. Zeng was a searingly intelligent workaholic. The only trace of whimsy in Zeng's character was the guilty pleasure he took in the garish and decadent entertainment vehicles of Mila Montalban. Everyone in Zeng's sophisticated social circle doted on gaudy American pop entertainment. Hollywood was so entirely alien to their deadly crises that it seemed to refresh their spirits as nothing else could.

Mr. Zeng was an icily rational gentleman. It showed in the methodically sacrificial way that he played board games with his cronies.

In their pillow conversations, Zeng gently explained to Sonja that "saving civilization" (her professed goal in life) had very little to do with her brashly tackling emergencies with her own two hands. No, if any civilization was going to be "saved" at all-said Mr. Zeng-the planet's civilization was in so much trouble that it could only be saved by something new, huge, unexpected, extreme, and indeed almost indescribable.

The planet's current power structure: the sudden rise of the Acquis and the Dispensation, and the abject collapse of nation-states generally, with the large exception of China-that power structure was predicated on arranging just such a situation. The planet was dotted all over with radically extreme experiments intended to "save civilization."

The problem was that most of these innovations did not work. They could never work, because they were too far-fetched. It cost a lot to try such experiments. Worse yet, it was much harder to shut down failed experiments that it was to invent brand-new ones.

The largest such intervention in the world was, of course, Chinese. It was the Chinese effort to geologically engineer the Himalayas so that China's rivers would once again flow. China had performed this feat with the twentieth century's single most radical world-changing technology: massive hydrogen bombs.

Mr. Zeng had been among the people planning and executing that national effort. Chinese geoengineering had not been an easy plan to explain to concerned foreigners. China had gotten its way in the matter by offering to drop hydrogen bombs on anyone who objected.

Glumly recognizing China's implacable need to survive, the planet's other power players had bowed to the Chinese ultimatum. There was a gentleman's agreement to let the Chinese get on with it, and to not dwell too painfully and too publicly on their insane explosions digging monster ice lakes in the Himalayas. Instead, the Acquis and Dispensation turned up their quiet diplomatic pressure, while enjoying the benefits of some ancillary planetary cooling.

That was how the serious players worked while literally saving the modern world.