The Caryatids

"This isn't supposed to happen!" she shouted, and she could not hear her own voice. "This is wrong, Badaulet…there's something wrong with the sky! This could be the end of everything! This could be the end of the world!"

Lucky patted her thigh in a proprietory fashion, and gave her a little elbow jab in the ribs. His head was tilted back and she realized that he was laughing aloud. His black eyes were sparkling as he watched the blazing sky. He was enjoying himself.

A flooding gush of stellar energy hit the atmosphere, hard rain from outer space. The sky was frosted with bloody red sparks, as bits of man-made filth at the limits of the atmosphere lit up and fried.

Sonja's dry mouth hung open. Her head roared like an express train. Some orgasmic solar gush soaked the Earth's magnetic field, and utterly absurd things were pouring out of the sky now: rippling lozenges like children's toy balloons, fun-house snakes of accordion paper, roiling smoke rings and flaming jellied doughnuts…They had no business on Earth, they were not from the Earth at all. She could hear them, shrieking.

Sonja writhed in a desperate panic attack. The Badaulet reached out, grabbed her, pulled her to him, crushed her in his arms. He squeezed the screaming breath from her lungs. In her terror she sank her teeth into his bare shoulder…

He didn't mind. He was telling her something warm and kindly, over and over. She could feel his voice vibrating in his chest.

The convulsing aurora was so bright that it left shadows on the rock. Sonja clamped her eyes shut.

Suddenly, in trauma, she was speaking in the language of childhood. The first song, the first poetry, she had memorized. That little song she loved to sing with Vera and Svetlana and Kosara and Radmila and Biserka and Bratislava, and even pouting little Djordje, standing in a circle, arms out and palm to palm, with the machines watching their brains and eyes and their bridged and knotted fingers, to see that they were standing perfectly strong, all the same.

Sonja could hear her own voice. Her ears were trying to translate what she was saying to herself. The translation program blocked the noise pouring from the sky.

Sonja sang her song again and again, whimpering.

"We are the young pioneers Children of the real world We grow like trees to the sky We stand and support tomorrow For our strength belongs to the future And the future is our strength."

THE SOUND OF WIND woke Sonja. Her ears were working again. She heard the faint sound of sullen dripping from the bullet-pierced water cloak.

Dawn had come, and Lucky was sleeping. He had been holding her tightly, so that she did not raise her vulnerable head above the parapet during her nightmares.

Sonja sensed that the planes were gone. There was no way to know this as a fact, however. Not without testing that theory.

Tired of having Lucky assuming all the risks, Sonja untied her dust-proof tarpaulin gown, held it high over herself with her arms outspread to blur her target silhouette, and stepped, naked and deliberate, over the rocky wall.

She was not shot, she did not die, there were no sounds of planes.

Yawning and grainy-eyed, Sonja clambered to the top of the hill. The dutiful pack robot was standing there, its empty rifle methodically sca

Yet the robot was functional. Its pistoning, crooked, crazy legs were in fine condition. Sonja felt an affection for it now, the unwilling love one felt for a battlefield comrade. Poor thing, it was so dumb and ugly, but it was doing the best it could.

Sonja tore the rifle from its gun-mount and used its target scope to scan the landscape. What of their friends, allies, strangers-the ones pursued by a wheeling column of aircraft? No sign of them. Wait. Yes. A blackened spot on the ground, a ragged asterisk.

Heavy weaponry had hit something there, a truck, a tank, a half-track, whatever that had once been. Heavy weapons had knocked it not just to pieces, but to pieces of pieces. A falling meteor couldn't have crushed it more thoroughly: it was obliterated.

Sonja reviewed her tactical options. Retreat back to the den, pile up more rocks? Make a break for it, across country, back toward Jiuquan? Leave this hilltop, seek out a better overview? This hilltop's overview was excellent; the Acquis raiders had clearly chosen it on purpose.

Maintain the hardware. That action always made sense. Sonja searched through the baggage, found a clip, and reloaded the rifle. Then Sonja spread out the solar panels for the pack robot, tissue-thin sheets that stretched an astonishing distance down the hill.

This work done, she sipped some greenish yogurt from the rumen bag, which hung there, whole and unpierced. The ferment tasted all right now; during all the mayhem it had brewed up fine.

With nutrition her head cleared. She had survived and another day was at hand. Sonja took the rifle and carefully sca

Two riders were approaching.

They rode from the north, on two rugged Mongol ponies, ragged, burrolike beasts whose short legs almost seemed to scurry. These riders were men, and armed with rifles slung across their backs. The man in front wore furs-thick, bearlike furs-and a fur hat, and apparently some kind of furry face mask. The rider who followed him-incredibly-wore an American cowboy hat, blue jeans, boots, a checkered shirt, and a vest.

The quick temptation to pick them off with the rifle-for she did have the drop on them, and the rifle was loaded-evaporated. Who on Earth would ride out here, dressed in that fashion? It was almost worth dying to know.

The cowboy rode up to his friend, stopped him, and handed over his rifle. The cowboy dug into a saddlebag, and took out a white flag-apparently an undershirt. The cowboy then rode straight toward her hill, slowly and with care, waving his snowy white shirt over his head as he stood in his stirrups.

This man was surely one of the worst horseback riders Sonja had ever seen. She walked to the edge of the hilltop and waved back at him with her white sleeves.

Then she climbed downhill.

The cowboy was a young American, a teenager. He was strikingly handsome, and, seen closely, his clothes were vivid and gorgeous. His costume only mimicked the rugged proletarian gear of the American West. He was a cowboy prince: theatrical and dramatic.

He pulled up his snarl-maned, yellow-fanged mare-it appeared he had never ridden a horse in his life, for he drove the beast like a car-and he half tumbled out of his saddle. His cheeks were windburned. He was short of breath.

"Are you Biserka?" he said.

He spoke English, which did not surprise her. "No," she said.

"You sure do look like Biserka. I had to make sure. To meet you here, that's kind of unca

"Yes."

"What is that strange gown you're wearing? You've got, like, a white tablecloth with all kinds of yin-yangs and rosary beads."

Sonja stared at him silently. This man was certainly Dispensation. He had to be. No one else would behave like this.

"You look great in that getup, don't get me wrong," the cowboy said hastily, "that look is really you! I am Lionel Montalban. John Montgomery Montalban-you know him, I'm sure-he's my brother. You and me, we're family."

"John Montalban is here? Where is John?"

"John's in a camp with some of the locals. John sent me here to fetch you. I'm glad I was able to find you. You're all right?"

"If airplanes don't shoot at me, yes, I am all right."

Lionel Montalban nodded over his shoulder at his riding companion, who sat on his pony like a furred centaur. "The airplanes come from his people. So no, they won't be shooting you. Not when you are with us. Why are you on foot, Sonja? Where is George's robot?"