The Caryatids

"I would go up there," said Lionel. "I love orbit."

"Oh, I'm definitely going up there, if we somehow survive down here. I'm going to retrieve the body of my dear correspondent, Yelisaveta Mihajlovic. I wouldn't dream of having that lady jettisoned into outer space…I don't care how much space junk there is up there already; I swear she won't become part of it."

Sonja sat heavily on the comfortless floor of the desert. It had never occurred to Sonja that anyone would go to fetch her mother's body down to Earth. That concept had not crossed her mind for one instant.

She had been blind to that idea. She had always been blind to so many ideas. She was a rigid, staring, damaged creature. There were so many spaces within her own stony heart, places where she could not look.

"Don't cry," said Montalban.

"I'm not crying."

"You're about to cry," Montalban predicted, with accuracy. "You're about to crack up because you can't bear your burden. Your lifelong burden is finally overwhelming you. It's too heavy and it's just too much for you. We know about that, Lionel and I. So we are removing your burden preemptively. Just for once. As a mercy. Your war is all over, Sonja. We are pulling you out of the cold. You are never going back to that place in the world, because you are ours now. We own you. Just let them try to take you back from us."

"Look there," said Lionel, pointing.

"What do you see?"

"It's a contrail, some kind of arch across the sky. Not a satellite. Moving way too slow for that. Some kind of suborbital thing."

"I do see it! Right! That could be a Chinese ground-to-ground warhead," said Montalban cheerily.

"That is the west," said Lionel patiently. "That way over there, that's the east. China is east."

"Is that the east?" said Montalban, puzzled. "Really? I should have stepped outside of that tent more often."

"Sonja, do you have binoculars? A rifle? Anything with a telescope on it?"

Sonja muttered at them from the chilly ground. "All I own is this badly damaged robot, which my ex-husband left to me as an act of contempt."

But they were ignoring her words, for something had suddenly bloomed overhead in the darkening Asian sky. "Holy cow," said Lionel, "what the heck is that thing? I've never seen a thing like that in my life!"

"What is that, a comet? I hate to say this, but that looks like a flying squid."

"It's like some zeppelin bullet that opens up just like an umbrella! Who would build a thing like that?" Lionel paused. "Why haven't they sold us one of those?"

"The world is full of skunk labs, Lionel. We can't know every tech project in the world. I'd be guessing-well, I'd bet that these were just the first guys to hit the Return key. They must have scrambled whatever they had on the ground."

The exotic aircraft drew nearer to them. It was floating to Earth rather elegantly, silently, and emission-free. It was like a giant dandelion seed.

"Okay," said John authoritatively, "I think maybe I've heard of these after all. That's some kind of fibrous suborbital pod. It's Acquis. It's European and it's Acquis."

Lionel was unimpressed. "Of course it's Acquis, John. Anybody can tell from the design that it's Acquis. I think it's Italian."

"I think you're right."

"That craft is going to land precisely on our stated coordinates. Like, within a five-meter range. I think we'd better move before it lands and crushes us."

Arm in arm, the brothers took several measured steps away across the desert. The flying device drew nearer. It was stellar and radiant and huge. It was like a flying tinsel chandelier.

"No, it's going to land nearby us," Montalban decided, and the two of them strode back to the robot to await their airborne delivery.

"Los Angeles is the capital of the world," Montalban pronounced. "Say what you will about the Chinese-and I love them dearly, we do business every day-there are a hell of a lot more Chinese in Los Angeles than there will ever be Angelenos in Beijing."

"You sure got that right!"

Montalban drew a triumphant breath. "As we stand here in the gathering dusk of old Asia, it's the brilliant dawn of a new West Coast New Age! It's time to break out the Napa Valley champagne! Tomorrow's regime is Pax Californiana! As a bright and shining city on a hill, we, the last best hope of mankind, are pulling the planet's ashes straight out of the stellar fire!"

"That's the truth!" crowed Lionel.

"Even when we golden Californians were mere American citizens, it was never that great an idea to bet your future against us. I mean, you could bet against us, but-where's the fun in that? If you try to beat us, even if you win, you have to lose!"

Lionel slapped his brother's two extended hands. "We rock! We rule! It's because we've got a shine on our shoes and a melody in our heart! We've got the rhythm!"

The brothers capered like utter fools as Sonja sat in heartbreak, and they laughed uproariously. It was the most glorious day of their lives.

EPILOGUE

WHEN INKE ZWEIG HEARD of the burial plans for her husband's deceased mother, she sensed that such arrangements could not possibly end well. Inke had been to a host of funerals. She had hated every one of them. Every celebration of death permanently drained Inke of some spark of her own life force.

Inke envied the dead at funerals-since the dead didn't have to endure the poorly arranged conclusions to difficult modern lives. The lack of any decent and comforting ceremony was the signature of a world in a near-fatal moral confusion.

What were the so-called Acquis and the sinister Dispensation? How had they vulgarly elbowed their way to the forefront of modern life? Why were people so anxious nowadays to pile on proofs of the stricken mourning on their electronic networks? As if the modern dead had no parents, no cousins, no children, no parishioners, no friends next door, no ties of citizenship. Instead there would be vulgar gold-wrapped bouquets from distant Moscow, remote-control acquaintances burning heaps of Chinese paper cash for the departed on live video links above the coffin…A globalized travesty.

Inke begged George to allow her to stay quietly with the children in Vie

She should see Mljet, George argued, for it was his birthplace and also remarkably beautiful. There was money to be made on the island. John Montgomery Montalban, his firm's biggest business partner, was coordinating the funeral. The great man would certainly take things amiss if Inke did not show up.

All the sisters-Vera, Radmila, Sonja, even Biserka, the crazy one-they had all agreed to come see their mother buried. Inke had always nagged him (as George put it) about meeting all of his sisters. Here, at last, was the golden chance that she should not forgo.

The sisters were asking for her by name. They were also asking to see the three children. It was unthinkable that she not go to the funeral. She had to go.

None of this bullying convinced Inke. It only made her sense of a gathering catastrophe more gloomy and keen. These four harsh, implacable women, so tall, statuesque, blond, and icily identical-they all had high brainy foreheads, big beaky noses, and big flat cheekbones, like the female statues supporting Vie