The Caryatids

"Yes, he did say that, sir," Sonja told him.

"Red Sonja, you should tell your friends in Jiuquan not to send any more 'hunter-killer teams' into these steppes. Because we hunt them and we kill them."

"May I ask your name, sir?"

"I am Major General Cao Xilong, director of the army's General Political Department."

"You were a very able ideologist and military political thinker. You were a legend in your field."

"That," said Cao Xilong, "is why they have assigned me to oversee these fat Californian subversives in their ridiculous hats."

Montalban looked on, smiling benignly. Foreign languages had never been an American strong suit.

Sonja smiled politely at Cao Xilong. "May I inquire why your colleagues found it necessary to attempt to liquidate me with a flying bomb?"

"Yes. That matter is simple. We ca

Major General Cao Xilong paused heavily, mentally searching for something he had memorized from a screen.

" First, the demonstrated ability of the Jiuquan Space Launch Center to rival us in flourishing under postapocalyptic conditions."

The general was actually speaking aloud in bullet points. Sonja had never heard such a thing done before. It was deeply alarming.

" Second, the seamless, ubiquitous merging between security, corrections, surveillance, military, and entertainment industries within China, making conventional urban-guerrilla warfare useless.

" Third, the proliferating range of postglobalist private, public, and private-public bodies legitimized to act against nation-states, among whom we of the World Provisional Survival Empire must number ourselves."

The general stopped counting his fingers. "Contemporary cities are particularly vulnerable to focused disruption or appropriation, not merely of the technical systems on which urban life relies, but also to the liquidation of key human nodal figures who serve as the system's human capital."

The general then raised a fingertip. "The worst threats among those state ru

Sonja nodded. "I see. That's all very clear."

The general blinked, once. "You can follow our reasoning?"

"Yes I do. I know what you were doing when you tried to kill me, and the Badaulet. You wanted to kill our love."

Cao Xilong said nothing.

"You didn't need to kill me personally. I'm a former holy terror, but I've done nothing to you. You didn't need to kill him, either. He's just another ca

"Bourgeois sentiment of this sort does not clarify the strategic situation."

"Maybe it's a woman's way to put it, hero, but you knew that we were together. You knew. How did you find that out? You've got spies, informants in Jiuquan? Oh: I know. You've got a correlation engine!"

"Of course we exploit the best intelligence methods available, although those must remain confidential."

"Listen-young genius-I've been working around the military for years. You don't scare me with your homemade grassroots rebellion. I know we're both clones, you and me-but to Red Sonja, you're just another tribal bandit who climbed out of a hole in the ground. You want to kill the men who love Red Sonja? Why don't you kill him ?"

Sonja shot a sideways glance at John Montalban, who was standing and watching them debate, with his arms politely folded, and a look of intense pretended interest on his face. " He loves me fanatically, and while the Badaulet and I were in peaceful Jiuquan sharing a water bed, he was already here in the midst of your camp and he is buying you. You think you're a tactical genius? You are finished already! You are done."

"That would all be true," said Major General Cao Xilong, "except for one important factor which you have failed to grasp."

"And what 'factor' is that? Please do tell me."

"The Earth is doomed. The sun is proving unstable. And a giant volcano is on the point of eruption. The carrying capacity of this planet's biosphere under those conditions will fall by ninety-five percent. That means that, in fifty years or fewer, there will be only two kinds of society possible on Earth. The first is nomadic like ours, and runs lightly on the surface of the Earth. That society will survive.

"The second kind lives sealed inside technical bubbles, and they will go insane. Because that kind of life is a traumatic horror and it is an evil lie. So: This choice is not your choice, your weak and sentimental choice between your former lover and your current lover. Tomorrow's choice is between us and Jiuquan."

"You believe you can defeat Jiuquan? They are much more advanced than you are."

"I do not claim that we will defeat them immediately. At this moment, we could merely use our thousands of light aircraft to mine their roads, blow up the single points of failure in the electrical and water systems, and terrorize their population with mass slaughter of random civilians. They do already pay us tribute-to be frank, yes, they pay-but now you must imagine us attacking them from every point of the compass, around the clock, while the sky is black with volcanic ash. Of course we will win that battle. Because the world of tomorrow is hideous and we will own it. We will own the smoking ruins of the world. No one else. Us, and those we force to become like us. That is our great purpose."

John Montalban spoke up. "He just said 'world of tomorrow'! I don't know much Chinese, but I heard that. I'm very glad to see you and Major General Cao Xilong debating matters so cordially. That sounded like a fruitful exchange of views."

"Yes."

"I'm not surprised you would empathize so strongly with these strange and unfortunate people, Sonja. After all, their life experience-their sheltered upbringing, that traumatic exposure to the outer world-you can understand all that. You're a healer. I've seen you grasp the distress inside people, and change them for the better."

His fatuous words brought her nothing but pure dread. For all his tireless global meddling, he was from California, a place where people believed that the future was golden. While she was from the Balkans…a broken place, the cockpit of empires where the lost chickens pecked each other's eyes out…

The world to come was so much worse, so much more direly threatened than she had ever let herself believe…

But at least her mother was dead. No matter the city-killing look in the eyes of that nomad general-at least she had that transcendent joy to fully treasure. It was all she could do not to laugh in his masked, carnivorous face.

She suddenly broke from the general and strode into the middle of the tent, her ribs heaving.

Montalban followed her, touched her shoulder. "These people here…they're not beyond hope! They're just another runaway experiment." John rubbed his temples, suddenly weary. "I have so many colleagues working on 'Relinquishment' issues-colleagues in both the Dispensation and the Acquis…'Relinquishment, that's what we call it when we cram those techno-genies back into their bottles…'Relinquishment' is difficult-to-impossible, and this next stunt I hope to pull-it's beyond me. It does not walk the Earth, it is literally out of this world."