The Caryatids

Lucky was puzzled by this. He spoke rapidly, seriously and at some length, and the translator spat up one sentence. "They say that Harbin was the very worst of the very bad."

"Harbin was only typical. We had a good rescue plan in Harbin. We knew what we wanted to do and we knew how to win there. Now, Shenyang- that was bad. And Yinchuan, where they completely lost electrical power? Dead networks, no water, no sewer? For eighteen weeks? There was no body count there-because they ate the bodies. When we marched out there to dig in-I sent out my surveillance cams-I destroyed all that data. Everybody in that rescue team was on trauma drugs after Yinchuan. Nobody remembers Yinchuan. Nobody wants to remember that place. It is lost, it's nonhistory. Even the state conceals Yinchuan, and no human being will ever ask."

"You were fighting that gloriously?"

"We didn't think we were fighting at all! We were medical teams, we were there to save i

That was John Montalban again. Montalban always loved to quote old American poetry.

The Badaulet turned his level gaze upon her. It was his keen black eyes, his abstract, fearless, predatory look, that had first attracted and aroused her. He looked so different from other bandits, and now that she knew about his globe-trotting, jet-setting mother, she understood. Lucky was a native of the Disorder.

Sonja knew what Han Chinese people looked like, and also Tibetans, Manchus, Mongols. To any practiced eye they were easily as physically distinct as French, Germans, Italians, and Danes. Yet Lucky was none of those: he was a global guerrilla, a true modern barbarian. Her lover was one of the new kind.

"Sonja, I have to know: Are there seven of you? Seven sisters?"

"There were seven once-three are dead." Bratislava, Kosara, Svetlana: They had been the first people she had ever seen killed. They'd been killed by a pack of young soldiers, panicked kids really, drunken kids half stumbling over their cheap carbines, kids the age of the Badaulet.

That distant episode on that distant Adriatic island: How empty that seemed to her now. Her twisted world of childhood had exploded in a sudden bloody horror, but, in comparison with the vast bloody grandeur of China, it was such a small world and such a minor horror.

In Mljet, though: that was the first time Sonja herself had killed someone. One could never forget the first time.

"Please don't talk to me about my dead," she told him, "don't talk to me about the past, for I can't bear it. Just talk to me about the future, for I can bear as much of that as anyone…"

Lucky was deeply moved. "Here with you, in this locked bubble, the wind and sky are not free…Everything stinks in here…The future should not stink…Do you love me, Sonja?"

"Yes."

"Why do you love me?"

"I don't need reasons. Love just happens to me. I love you the way that any woman loves any man."

Lucky folded his sinewy arms in a brisk decision. "Then we should marry. Because marriage is proper and holy. A temporary Muslim marriage can be performed in necessity in pagan lands and times of war. So I will marry you, Sonja. Now, here."

Sonja laughed. "You haven't known me long."

"I don't want to know you better," Lucky said. "You have given me your woman's body: the utmost gift a woman gives a man, except for sons. So: I don't want to go to Hell for doing that. It is my warrior calling to serve Heaven, die for Heaven, and go to Heaven. So: You must certainly agree to marry me. Otherwise, you are oppressing me."

"Can we discuss this matter after we leave this airlock?"

Lucky sat cross-legged on the rubbery white tiles of the sterilized floor. "We ca

"You know a lot about me, don't you?"

"On the steppes, far outside China, I meet the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, from the Acquis and the Dispensation. They seek me out for my advice on how to survive, for they die there quickly. They know much about the Angel of Harbin. They know things about you that the state does not say. They say that Red Sonja killed five great generals."

"That is not true ! That's a lie! I have never killed any uniformed Chinese military perso

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 unma

"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 unma

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 cu