The Caryatids (11 page)

"You don't believe in nature," she told him. "You don't believe what I believe. I even believe in reality."

"Well, I believe in ecotourism and the heritage industry. Because those are two major, wealth-creating industries."

Vera allowed him a nod.

"It won't be easy work, Vera. It's hard work. It'll take labor and invest-ment to bring a heritage mediation online here. But I know that we can do that, together. I'm sure we can. I can promise you that. In ten years, right here where we're sitting, the troops of Augustus Caesar will be massing to invade the Balkans."

Vera's heart sank a little. "Ten years . . . What? What did you say?"

"That's right, ten years. That has to take ten years. Because the Roman Empire has only recently conquered this island. You could see how new and raw that little town of Palatium is. The Pannonian Wars on the mainland, they will be going hot and heavy right through the reign of Tiberius. That will be our major tourist draw here."

"I don't understand."

Montalban chuckled. "I suppose not. Well, just take it from me, then: the theme-park business can be a very steady, long-term earner, as long as it's got a solid heritage connection and a unique value proposi-tion."

"I know that you must think that I'm stupid . . . Can't you talk to me like a normal person? Please?" Montalban gazed around the island a long moment, as if seeking some kind of solace from the sunshine, the flowers, and the foaming shore at low tide. "Vera: In the Dispensation, the businesspeople
are
the normal people."

"It's not normal to talk about history as if history was a business."

"You are absolutely wrong there, Vera. History
is
a business. History is the
only
business. It's abnormal to do business without history as the ab-solute and final business bottom line. That's why industry wrecked this planet: because people ran the world like a fire sale. They never understood the past, the future, and the proper human relationship to space and time. The only way to think sustainably is to think synchronically!"

Realization dawned. "Wait, now, I do see what you're saying! You're a Synchronist. You're from a Dispensation cult! You're stealing my island from my cult just so you can sell my island to your own cult!" Slowly, Montalban shook his head. He was feeling sorry for her.

"Vera, I am not the extremist in this discussion."

"Yes you are. Synchronists are cultists. You're crazy."

"No, I'm Californian. And I came here on behalf of investors, real-estate people, developers—the global mainstream. So that they can co-opt this extreme, experimental situation into a much more conventional, rational, profitable situation. Is that distinction clear to you yet?"

"No! It's not clear. You're not explaining
anything
to me. You're just letting a lot of big, mystical words fall out of your mouth that make you look good and make me look bad." Montalban thoughtfully examined the wavelets lapping. His hands twitched in his trouser pockets. "You know what they call this situation? This is a classic 'clash of paradigms.' " Vera set her lips. "You know what they call people from California? They call them 'flakes.' "

"Acquis people can be pretty stubborn," Montalban mused. "I've met a lot of Acquis people in my business life. They can be really wonderful people, don't get me wrong there, but somehow it always boils down to a paradigmatic culture war. We have two sets of mental software, and two different operating systems."

"Maybe we're lucky that there's just two sets and not a thousand of them." Montalban brushed sand from his walking shoes. "I suppose we are lucky, though we live in a world in disaster. Multiparty states never ac-complish anything."

"You're still talking nonsense, though, John. You know that, don't you?"

"All right. Fine. I'm talking nonsense. I apologize. You explain some-thing to me, then. Tell me why your friend there is playing with my daughter, while she's got her brain inside a kettle and she's wearing robot construction equipment that could break every single bone in my little girl's body." Vera glanced up the beach at Karen. Karen and the little girl were getting along splendidly. Mary Montalban was scampering along the beach like a wound-up top, while Karen bounded over the child's head in boneware leaps that could have cleared the tops of trees.

"Have you ever had your brain scanned?" Vera asked him.

"I have regular medical checkups," said Montalban. "My brain is just fine. My brain is not a peripheral for heavy construction machinery."

"In other words, you believe we're monsters. You really hate us."

"I would never say that!" protested Montalban. "Look at me benignly tolerating all this! Am I denouncing you, or your crazy friend in the robot spacesuit there? Not a bit of it!"

"You hate what we do here. You're too American to understand us."

"Oh no, no no! Don't bring outdated nationalism into this, for heaven's sake! You've never even been to America! You don't under-stand how America works nowadays! Believe me, there are big patches of America that are extremely Acquis in their sentiments. Seattle is very Acquis. Raleigh; Madison, Wisconsin; Austin in Texas—they're all Ac-quis. San Francisco is Acquis! And Canada, too! Canada was Acquis be-fore most of Europe was Acquis!"

"Do you think I'm a fanatic?"

"I never use pejorative terms like that, and I despise the evil dema-gogues who do! You're just—you're truly a woman of our age, that's what I think about you."

"Why are you here? What didn't you leave me alone here? I never wanted you here. I was happy here."

"Vera, I know that you think that you are evil. You have no esteem for yourself. But you are not evil. You were created through evil, but you are sweet and good. You're a very good person. You were born in an un-happy place at a time when that place was evil. That's the evil part. You—you've been part of everything that happened here to make things better. You raised this place from the rubble and you held the whole place up. You almost did it alone."

Vera burst into tears.

"Your colleagues here think the world of you," said Montalban. "They trust your judgment. They're proud of you. That's why you're the central figure here. If you move, the whole thing will move. You must sense that. You're intelligent, you must know that."

Vera choked on a sob. "I'm having an emotional fit."

"I've seen those fits," Montalban agreed. "Believe me, I know a lot about those."

"I'm just not all right without my helmet. I need a scan so I can know what I'm really feeling." Montalban looked at her soberly. "You really look a lot prettier with-out that canteen on your head."

"Scanning helps me. It is a powerful tool."

"That," said Montalban, "is why that tool has been restricted to a very small group of users in an otherwise hopeless situation."

She could see that her tears were affecting him strongly. His face had grown much-softer. He looked thoughtful and handsome, truly sympa-thetic. He looked at her as if he loved her more than anything in the world.

"If you never scan your own brain," said Vera, wiping at her cheeks, "how do you know what you feel about all this?"

Montalban looked at her slowly. "Vera, that is a truly weird question."

"I think you should put on a helmet," said Vera, sitting up. "You could put on Karen's helmet! You should put on her helmet, and then you and I should have a really good talk, heart to heart." Montalban, instantly, went pale. "That's just not admissable," he told her. "That is just not a move that you and I should undertake."

"I was very scared of it too, at first," said Vera. "But I wear a scanner every day now. It's not bad for you. It's brilliant."

Montalban forced an uneasy smile. "I'll stay pretty dull, thanks! I know a thing or two about that practice! Shaving patches on my skull? No, we don't ruin an expensive haircut on impulse, do we?"

"You don't really need to shave any skin patches," said Vera. "Because you won't be running any boneware."

"I don't have the proper training for your helmets. You have to have your brain scrubbed first in those concentration camps."

"They're
attention
camps! How can you say such nasty things about us? You're a fool! You have no heart. You don't know anything real."

Montalban jumped to his feet and walked off down the beach. Vera caught up with him and seized his arm. "An attention camp saved my life," she said. "Can't you understand that?"

"That's for helpless refugees who are cornered and have no other choice," he said. "I'm not helpless and cornered. I don't care what you call that practice: that is an extreme form of sensory control."

"It's sensory
analysis.
See, you don't understand it, you're talking about it all wrong." Montalban's opaque eyes, always rather shifty, began to dart from side to side. "You want to read my mind. You want to pry inside my own brain."

"John, don't hate me. I don't believe that you and I are enemies. We don't think alike, we can't, but . . . I know that I like you. I think we could have been good friends."

" 'Friends.'
Friends?
Hell, woman, I married you!" Montalban waved his hat at his reddening face. "I should never have come here. You don't know what it does to me to see you like this. To come here . . . and to bring the
child,
for God's sake . . . She's going to make me regret this."

"You mean Radmila. She didn't want you to do this."

"You said her name, not me! We don't have to discuss Radmila. Rad-mila Mihajlovic doesn't exist. My wife will never cross your path, ever. Because she hates your guts. For years, I could never understand why."

"Radmila hates me?"

"Like a passion. Like a curse. She's eaten up with it. Then I met Djordje. Djordje told me some things about what happened here. Ter-rible things. Then I met Sonja. And oh, my God. Now I do understand it, all of it, and that is much, much worse."

Vera put her head in her hands. She began to cry again, much harder. "I can almost fix that damage," he told her. "I've come so close to fix-ing it, so many times. Djordje is almost all right — he's a tough business-man, but he's smart, he's no weakling. Sonja fights for what she thinks is right. Mila has done amazing things—she's truly gifted. And you-—you're the
good
one. You're kind and sweet, you're the one with the best intentions."

Vera made a choice in her heart. "If I could believe you, John, I would do what you say."

"You would do what I say? You mean agree to the deal, go through with it?"

"Yes. But I have to know. I have to know it's the truth."

"All right, if that's what you want from me, then I guess we'll really talk. I guess we have no other choice. So: Fine, let's do it. Go get your lie-detector helmet. It doesn't scare me. I've seen worse. Just pull that crazy thing off your girlfriend's head before she tears my little girl into pieces." They retreated up the trail and into the pine woods. They found a ragged clearing there. It took Vera half an hour to properly fit the scan-ner to Montalban's skull. His daughter sobbed in fear. Karen had to take the child away. Karen hated leaving Vera in this moment of crisis, but when Vera ordered her to leave, Karen did as she was told. The emotional rejection cut Karen to the quick. Tears ran down Karen's face in streams. She and Mary Montalban clung to one another, sobbing as if they'd just seen someone die.

Montalban was entirely new to neural tech. His brain had not been properly calibrated over a long period of use. So, when Vera examined his neural output, his affect showed her nothing much. He had a kind of flatness. Almost an unnatural despair.

"Are you sick, John? You're not very spiky."

"Tranquilizers," he said.

"You take mood medication?"

"I hav a very complex personal life," Montalban muttered. The bluff, cheery, American look had vanished from his face. With his head stuffed uncomfortably into Karen's dusty helmet, Montalban looked like a martyr in a crown of thorns.

"So," he demanded. "Do you see everything that I'm thinking now?"

"Well . . . no, of course not. I do see a lot of slow P300 recognition waves." That meant that Montalban recognized her. He knew her very well He had been looking at her for years. His brain lacked the sparkly affect of Acquis male cadres, who saw her, mostly, as a pretty woman. Men did that. At the bottom of any vir-ile psyche, there was always some brisk neural reaction to a pretty woman.

There had never been any man on Mljet who looked at her with so much heartfelt confusion and grief. Montalban was looking at her as if the very sight of her were killing him.

"What do you see inside of me?" Montalban grated. "Do you think I'm crazy? Am I lying to you? Or is it all just as I told you?"

"John, this technology is not like you imagine it. Try to relax."

"These knobs
hurt,"
he whined. "How can you let big rubber knobs squeeze your skull like that? Can't you crackpots build some more
sen-sitive
scanners? Build them into a nice little sun hat, a beret or some-thing."

"That's a safety helmet. It's designed for construction work."

"There's another part I just don't get. Helmets and skeletons! Why don't you just
buy a bulldozer?

Bulldozers are cheap! Get a dragline, get an excavator!"

"We tried working that way," Vera told him. "But it
feels
wrong to us. It
means
more to our people when they can save the world with their own hands."

"You can't save the world on gusts of emotion!" he shouted. "That idea is for fanatics and losers!"

"You are so bitterly unhappy," Vera told him. "You're depressed! Your affect is very low and bad—that means you've lost heart in what you're doing. You know what? You're working much too hard at something that you don't like. You need a vacation."

Montalban's affect leaped violently. He began to laugh. He was at this quite awhile, "That was a really good joke," he said at last. "Thank you for telling me that one."

"She's made you so miserable," Vera said,

"No," said Montalban, "she was great to me. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to rescue Radmila. And I did that, I won. The Dispensation is a great force for good, I found a lost young girl and I turned her into a star. I transformed her. Although Mila was always bound for glory. We really know what glory is, in Hollywood."