The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [100]
“That may be more than Radmila wants to know. Radmila isn’t very well right now. Things went badly in Los Angeles … there were riots. And huge fires.”
“You do talk to Vera, though, don’t you, Djordje?”
“I do sometimes talk to Vera, when Vera lets me—and stop calling me ‘Djordje.’ ”
“So Djordje: Would you please tell Vera, just for me …” Sonja stopped, at a loss for words. She had no idea what to say to Vera. She hadn’t said a word to Vera in nine years.
“Vera is not at her best lately either,” said George, and his worried tone rang in her head like a bronze bell. “No one knows where Vera is—she’s alive, but she’s hiding in the woods somewhere in some death zone. Sonja, give up whatever you think you’re doing there. Come stay with me in Vienna.”
“What? Why on Earth would I do that?”
“Because you’ll survive, woman! Like I’m surviving! I’m not like you, and Vera, and Radmila! I don’t want to save the world! I’m just a fixer, I’m a logistics man! But listen: The world is changing. The world is not collapsing—or, at least, not as fast as it was doing before. The world is turning into something we never imagined. My shipping business is great! Global business is heading for a big, long, global boom!”
“I can’t visit you there in Vienna, George. I just got married.”
“You did what? What, again? You married someone? Are you serious?”
“My husbands are always serious.”
“Montalban doesn’t know anything about this new marriage of yours,” said George thoughtfully. “That’s going to be big news to John Montalban.”
“You tell John Montalban that I am his black angel. Tell John I’m your big, long, global boom. Tell John I’m his giant supervolcano.”
“Oh Sonja, poor Sonja. Now I know you’re not yourself. Come on: giant supervolcanoes? We don’t believe in giant volcanoes, do we? That’s talking nonsense.”
“Here in Jiuquan, all the people believe in that nonsense. The Chinese are convinced that a volcano will explode in America and wreck the world’s climate.”
“Why, because the Chinese wrecked the climate the first time?”
“Yes they did. With American help. And because here in Jiuquan, tomorrow’s second climate crisis won’t even slow them down. Not anymore. Not in the glorious future!”
“Sonja, it is definitely time for you to leave those cult compounds in China and rejoin the real world,” said George solemnly. “No volcano will do anything that matters for ten thousand aeons. Exotic Chinese superstitions from inside some weird space bubble, that’s what you’re talking about. You’ve had enough of that. That won’t work out for you. Trust me.”
“Weather scientists were right when they said that the Earth’s climate would crash. Why should geologists be wrong when they’re predicting the same thing? Science is the truth. Science is science. Science is the future.”
“Oh, what astronaut crap you’re talking now! How many rich and famous scientists do you know? Did you ever see one lousy scientist get his own way in the real world? They’re all hopeless eggheads full of make-believe theories!”
George drew a breath—she could hear him puffing in the busy cores of her new eardrums. “Sonja, please. When you were out there in the field—crusading to save civilization, or whatever—I cared about that, I helped you! You remember how may times I helped you go save your favorite Chinese civilization? But now they’re trying to kill you right there in their own spaceport! What kind of ‘civilization’ is that to save?”
“This is China. Their system works differently.”
“Look, I manage global logistics, so I learn something new every day,” George boasted. “I can traffic in people like you! I’ll export you from China. I’ll export you right here to Vienna! When Inke heard that you were hurt again, she cried!”
Finally, Sonja was touched. Inke Zweig. Good old Inke. She had once spent