The Caryatids

Biserka shook her head in wonderment, then shrugged. "So you deserve to die, Radmila, but…first things first! First I drop you in a bar in Norwalk-tied up like this, in your underwear. You hop right in there, you call home, tell them you got drunk. You had a bad casting-couch date with your big-shot producer, whatever, I don't care. You handle that. But if you screw me over-and I know that you want to, because, wow wow wow! I'd certainly do that to you-well, I'm going to kill. Not you. Someone else. Not you-because you're too necessary to my plans. And not the governor here, because he got shot already."

Biserka paused to laugh. "But I will kill Glyn, you know, that down-market fat-assed clone of the superstar! That Glyn thing really a

"So I will kill your Glyn, because Glyn has no big bodyguards. So that's easy. Your Glyn will be out for a buttered bagel in her black turtleneck and her tummy-flattening girdle, and she will walk by some junker car and one instant, no warning, Glyn is Glynereens. She's Glyndust." Biserka chortled. "A smart car bomb in a world of sensorwebs! That's one afternoon's work!"

Biserka straightened in the hearse's pew. "So. You can do as I tell you, Radmila, which is easy and good. Or you can try to screw me out of what I want, and I will make you die of grief. You heard that, right? You remember my great plan, right? I don't have to beat it into you."

Radmila moaned violently and shook her head.

"It seems that you have something important to say about my plans for our future."

Radmila nodded.

"It must be really important, with you fussing like that so much."

Radmila nodded harder.

"Okay, I tell you what. You turn around, give me your hands. Then I cut off the tip of your left little finger. Just the tip, not all of it! Then I take that tape off your mouth and you tell me about your objections. Your crucial input is at least that important, right?"

Radmila shook her head.

"Oh, so it's not so important! I thought so. So: Now I tape your eyes shut. Before I kick you out of this car. Duct tape! It's wonderful! It holds the whole universe together."

Biserka undid the brass buckles on a splendid travel bag. She pawed inside it. Her bag held flat black rubber sandals, a sports bra, cotton pants, athletic socks, panties, an arsenal of fancy toiletries, sunglasses, tampons, chewing gum, a host of pills, and a long black rubber shotgun.

Biserka shook the bag upside down and mourned. "Oh, I left my duct tape back at my blackspot. Because I used it there. What a shame."

There was a loud thump on the roof of the rolling hearse.

"Okay, I didn't like that. Something hit the car. That was bad."

Radmila rolled her eyes upward, then crinkled her brows and hunched her shoulders in silent laughter.

"All right, what?" Biserka shouted. "What?" She tucked her nailed fingers into Radmila's cheek and ripped the tape from her face. "Tell me now."

Radmila worked her sore jaws.

"All right, what? What hit the car? Tell me."

"That was nothing. It was a bird."

"That was a lie! You lied to me."

"I'm not afraid of you, Biserka. You don't scare me. You have killed me with the shame of what you've done, I will never face my Family again, I will never work in this town again…But you are small and weak. You have no business here. I never did anything to you."

"You EXISTED!" Biserka shrieked. "Everybody who isn't on a desert island knows I look like 'Mila Montalban'!" She slapped the wrinkled tape back onto Radmila's lips. Being rumpled, the duct tape failed to stick well.

Biserka opened the window of the hearse. Snakelike, she jammed her ski

She came back with a toy gripped in her hand: a flying toy made of foamed propellers and plastic blocks and nakedly exposed circuits.

"I know what this is. I used to see a lot of these."

Radmila kept her face still. She'd never seen a flying spyplane of quite this type before, but she certainly knew what it was. Some fan had built that.

There were networks of those fans out there, happy little voyeur perverts who would swap their recipes for making spy toys and then share their spy photographs. The fans were scum. But there were always some of them around. Like mice: If you saw one, it meant a hundred.

"This one doesn't even have a gun," Biserka scoffed. "All it's got is stupid pirate media and big googly eyes!" She opened the hearse, stuck the toy airplane out, and smashed it in the slamming door. Cheap plastic parts flew everywhere. A broken wad of them landed in Radmila's lap. They were commodity pieces that had cost a few cents in a hardware store, and they'd been stuck together with hot-glue. A sloppy job. Some kid. Some fan kid with a kit-part and a bunch of other fans to egg him on.

One blurry picture, one snapshot…of a major star tied in bondage in her underwear. With a coffin, in the back of a hearse…Some fan spy must have seen that image, for at least a few seconds, a few hundred frames of stolen video.

An image like that would spread from fan to fan like ink on a towel.

So all this would be over. Not yet, but everything had to end. Those little pirate kids on networks-they'd even destroyed the movies.

Radmila stared out the window.

"Okay, princess, just for that, we go back to the safe house! No freedom for you! I wanted you free to carry my message, but now I keep you!"

Twenty minutes passed, in which Radmila said nothing. She had already lost everything.

Biserka had no safe house anymore. Her blackspot safe house was on fire. Rocket flares were flying. The glare of flames lit the dark interior of the hearse. The flames backlit capering figures, ru

"Oh Lionel, Lionel, that gangster bad boy…that tasty morsel, Lionel," mourned Biserka. "I had such plans and hopes for him. Now he's found my hideout and I want to kill myself. I think I will. Right now! I will ignite this hearse and I will blow both of us into little pieces and there won't be anything left here but a cloud of your own DNA."

Radmila rolled her eyes in contempt.

Biserka crawled into the front of the hearse, to mess at length with its interface. Distant sirens were howling, but the fabled rapid-response corps of Los Angeles were slow to fight these fires. Maybe because the fastest and most agile gangs on the street were the arsonists.

"Lionel and his friends are getting out of hand, Radmila! That's a whole lot of pretty fire! I've seen towns on fire in China that were burning less than your town is burning tonight."

Biserka was frightened suddenly. "All right, you're always claiming you love them so much. Go stop them from rioting. Go on, I'll untie you. Go be superhuman. You can do that. You're superperfect." She pulled the wadded tape from Radmila's lips.

"Kill us both," Radmila said. "It's easier."

"You stink," Biserka decided. "I think I'll go help them, instead. I'll say that I'm you, and I'll tell them to burn everything. I'll burn everything you ever built here! Because I look like you. I look more like you than you do."

Flames lit the horizon. A dense, oily wave of smoke rolled over them. Biserka kicked open the door, left the hearse, slammed it behind her.

Radmila hated her life.

The hearse suddenly started again. It rolled, slow as a minute hand and just as inexorable, into the Pacific surf. Like every form of networked machinery, the car showed a supreme contempt for its own survival.

The hearse wobbled. Pacific surf rolled rhythmically over the windows. Seawater seeped under the doors.