The Caryatids

"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.

"When will the full moon appear? I ask the sky with my wine cup in my hand, Wondering: What year might it be now, up in the lunar palace? I meant to be riding high up there, but I feared I could not bear the cold of that beautiful sanctuary. Accompanied with my shadow I dance; don't you agree that I am in heaven now? Moonlight sweeps my red pavilion, moonlight floods my decorated windows and shines on my sleepless soul. Oh Moon, without mortal sentiment: Why reveal your full face only when lovers part? Happy unions and sad departures are as common as your changing phases. May my lover and I both be safe and well, and may we share the Moon, although we are parted by a thousand miles."

"That was poetry," said the Badaulet.

"Yes, that was my favorite poem in the whole world. It was written in the T'ang dynasty, when China ruled the world."

"This system understands your sad poetry much better than it understands your fu

The flying bomb slammed into the fabric surface of the airlock, and it bounded off. It flopped and yawed and wobbled and caught itself in midair, and gained height for a second effort.

"I always wanted to die while making love or speaking poetry," Sonja explained.

"If this air smelled better, I would oblige you."

The bomb returned for its second pass. Sonja threw herself to the airlock floor, curled into a fetal position, and clamped her hands over her ears.

Another sullen thump followed and the bomb bounded off again, harmlessly.

"Oh, get up, woman," the Badaulet scolded. "Meet your death on your feet, for your girlish cowardice is so undignified."

"Get down here and hit the deck, stupid! This increases our odds of survival!"

"There are no 'odds for survival'! There is only what Heaven ordains!"

Having endured many bombs in her past, Sonja ignored him, and doubled up tightly on the spotless airlock floor. "For God's sake, why are they trying to hit me instead of that huge Mars dome over there? That is China's greatest prestige construction, it's got to be a much fatter target than I am!"

"Sonja, my dear wife Sonja: Let us swear to Heaven that if we survive this cowardly attack, we will track down these evildoers and personally kill them ourselves."

"I love you so much for saying that! That is the greatest thing you have ever said to me! I swear I'll do it, if you will do it with me."

The plane smashed into the airlock and shattered. Brittle pieces of airplane plummeted out of their sight.

"Built by amateurs," Sonja said, craning her neck to stare.

"I am glad that it broke to pieces," said the Badaulet, still on his feet but panting harder, "but now we will smother to death in this sealed, trapped room."

Sonja didn't much mind meeting her own death. Still, to lose him, another husband, right before her eyes…

Sonja never heard the bomb explode.

SONJA'S SUPPORT TENT was scarlet and the moon shone through it.

Any narrow escape from death always made Sonja keenly sentimental. Escaping death had taught her that life had many tags and rags, loose ends, unmet potentials. Sonja rather prided herself on her serene fatalism, but there were always issues she felt unhappy to leave unsettled.

Escape from death put her in a generous, easygoing, affirmative mood. Because, now, all the days ahead of her were a free gift. Like icing on a pretty cake hit by a grenade.

"That drone bomb blew both my eardrums out," she told her brother, George. "The overpressure broke both of them. So the state built me brand-new ears. I have new and advanced Chinese cyborg astronaut ears. My ears are officially fantastic."

George blinked from distant Europe, on his video screen. "Sonja, how many attempts does this make on your life?"

Sonja blinked back. "Do you mean me personally?"

"Of course I mean you personally! Stop acting crazy."

"Why would I keep count of that? After I went to New York and I saw that New York City had been nuked…Why does anyone ever bother to count the dead? I'm just one person! If you don't count Radmila. Radmila was also there in New York City."

"Are you talking to me openly about Radmila now?" George was amazed. "Are you on drugs, Sonja?"

"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. "