The Caryatids

"Heaven foretells great changes on Earth," he told her.

"The aurora comes from the Sun. It is the energy of solar particles. They fall in sheets through a hole in the Earth's magnetic field. Then they tear into the outer limits of the air, and the air must glow. That is what we see tonight. And I heard it!"

"This is important," he told her, "so you must stop talking that nonsense." He pulled the belt from his uniform. Then, without another word, he began to beat her with his belt: not angrily, just rhythmically and thoroughly.

Having been beaten by lovers before, Sonja knew how to react. With a howl of dismay, she fell to the earth, hugging his ankles and begging forgiveness in a gabble of sobs and shrieks.

When she clutched at his knees, his balance was poor, so he couldn't use the belt effectively. He stopped his attempts to beat her. She continued to shriek, beg, and grovel. This was the core of the performance.

It was never about how hard men beat you, or how many strokes, or what they hit you with. It was always about their need to break your will and impose their own.

After savoring her shrieks and sobs for a while, the Badaulet grew reluctant. Finally, he belted his pants and pulled her off his legs. "Woman, why do you always carry on so? Put on your clothes! What is wrong with you? I didn't hit you so hard! It's just-when Heaven is manifesting miracles, you can't talk nonsense! We could both go to Hell!"

He was a hundred times more frightened than herself. The basis of his universe had been kicked out like a hole though a bucket. "Forgive my stupid chatter, dear husband! Thank you for punishing me!"

This submission stymied him. Of course the Badaulet had no idea on Earth what to do about this tumult in the heavens. Otherwise he would not have beaten her in the first place.

The sky was writhing violently with silent electrical phantoms. The wind died. In the absence of her vanished screams there was a vast and awful silence with not so much as a cricket.

"There is a great danger to my soul tonight…" he muttered. "I know that much, I know that is certain truth…"

"Let's watch the sky together! Is that all right?"

"It's cold. You are shivering, your teeth are chattering."

"I'll bring the mat! This might be a splendid omen, and not an evil omen! Look how beautiful it is! Maybe heaven is blessing our love, and our lives are changing for the better!" Sonja scurried into the tent and brought out a wadded double armful. "Lie down! I will hide my eyes and hold you tightly. Because I'm afraid."

She made a nest for them. Grudgingly-for now he felt ashamed of himself-he climbed on the puffy mattress.

He was shivering with cold and fear, so she warmed him. Mollified, he relaxed a little.

Time passed. The Badaulet watched the heavens writhing in silent display. Ghostly colors were leaching out of the sky…with the planet's nightly twirling and the sun's axial tilt, some confluence of distant fields was fading. The tongues of fire were in retreat.

At last he spoke up. "Woman, I believe that Heaven has blessed me. The world is changing, and a life as hard as mine must surely change for the better. I ca

She said nothing. She loved him only slightly less than before he had beaten her. He was a man: angry, vulnerable.

With one pinch she could rip the i

But why should he die at this one moment among all other potential moments to die? Wouldn't he die soon enough no matter what she did, or what he did? Her tears would dry on their own.

She turned her face to the flickering, guttering cosmos. He was already asleep.

HE WOKE HER in the chilly predawn, fully dressed and insisting that she start the robot from its bed of dust. The aurora was long gone, vanished as the Earth wheeled on its axis.

She advised him that the robot would run better if they unrolled its solar panels in daylight and let it crack some grass for fuel. The Badaulet stiffly rejected this counsel. He didn't much like her for giving it.

The Badaulet had tired of the magic distorting his life. He sensed, correctly, that it was somehow her own fault.

So, at his imperious demand, they set off reeling in the predawn cold and dark. She was hungry and thirsty, so she tried to drink from the rumen bag, knowing it wasn't ready yet. There was protein cracked from the cellulose there, and the taste seemed all right.

The robot conveyed them, in a crazed dance step, up ragged slopes, down black canyons, and across declivities. It ran across ground that would break a human leg like a dry stick. Queasy and low in spirits, Sonja felt unable to speak, and when dawn redly stung the rim of the world, the Badaulet suddenly began to confess to her. He was making up to her: not because he had beaten her during the night, for he considered that act entirely proper; but to revive her morale. So he spoke about the subject that always engrossed him most: his enemies.

The Badaulet was an agent of Chinese order in the midst of the central Asian disorder. He was always outnumbered, if never outgu

His faith, to the extent that he could describe it to her, was a cargo-cult patchwork of militia training, radical Islam, herbal lore, hunting and herding, and the shattered, scrambled, pitiful remains of Asia's traditional nomadic life. The Badaulet was not from any historic Asian tribe: he had no ethnic group. He was a native of globalized chaos.

The Badaulet's brief stay in Jiuquan had unsettled his young mind yet further. They had shown their pet barbarian Jiuquan's proudest cultural achievements: chamber music, calligraphy, various sports that one could perform while sealed in a plastic bubble…The Badaulet had found these accomplishments contemptible.

Then his Chinese handlers had shown him something closer to his heart: something unknown to Sonja. He boasted to her about it, obliquely: he claimed that it was far greater than any gift that she had given him.

So it had to be some propaganda enterprise from a local laboratory. Some stereotypical "amazing secret weapon" meant to stiffen the spines of China's barbarian allies. The Badaulet called it the "Assassin's Mace." He didn't say precisely what this weapon was-clearly, that was not for her to know-but the technicians had promised him he could try the Assassin's Mace someday, and wield it against his enemies. If he were loyal and true, that day would come soon.

The Assassin's Mace-there were a host of oddities in the taut suburbs of Jiuquan, where the cream of Chinese techno-intelligentsia labored on their secret productions. Secret weapons labs-Sonja had seen a few, she never liked them or their blinkered inhabitants. Secret weapons labs were obscure and torpid and heavy and loathsome.

The Acquis and the Dispensation hated China's state secrecy, for they were obsessed with rogue technologies spi

Global regulation, transparency, verification…that was the supposed solution of the Acquis and Dispensation, and China despised such things. China had walls and barriers. The good old ways, the trusted ways. The old ways to hide all the new ways.