The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [146]
Montalban was so solemn and passionate in this assessment that all Inke could do was blink.
“Inke, I aspire to see a normal world. A normalized world. I have never yet lived in any normal world, but I hope to see one built and standing up, before I die.”
“A ‘normal’ world, John?”
“Yes. ‘Normal.’ Like you, Inke. To be normal is a very conservative business. Your husband is going to become a conservative businessman. That is necessary, and I’m going to help him.”
“You’re not a conservative businessman?”
“No, Inke, alas, I’m a hip California swinger from Hollywood who has multiple wives. But I do need a conservative businessman, rather badly. And since your George is part-and-parcel of a Relinquished experiment, he is perfect for that role. I foresee a leadership role for George. He will become a modern captain of industry and a pillar of a new world consensus.”
“My husband admires you very much,” she told him, “and he would like to trust you, but really, John … Biserka. Why Biserka?”
“Yes,” he said wistfully, “I know. ‘Biserka.’ ”
“Why?”
Montalban looked at the gathered children—they were plunging through the crowd, bobbing like corks. “My little daughter Mary … she lacks for playmates. Mary doesn’t have much of a peer group. Why don’t you and the kids come and visit us this Christmas? We’ll all go to Lily-Pad. Up in orbit. It’s very quiet up there. It’s private. We’ll have a good long chat about certain matters. You and I, especially. We’ll iron some things out.”
“Why do you want to fly into outer space? That is dangerous.”
“The Earth is dangerous. And the sun is also disquieting. If the sun grows seriously turbulent—then Mars wouldn’t be far enough away for us. I commissioned some speculations on that topic. We’ve made some interesting findings. Should the Earth’s sun become unstable, it turns out that, with the Earth’s present level of industrial capacity, we could escape to the Oort Cloud with a biosphere ark of maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty people. Carrying our ubiquitous support machines, of course.”
Montalban seemed to expect an answer to this extraordinary declaration. “Of course,” Inke told him.
“The Earth would become a cinder. Mars would be irradiated. Hot gas would be blasting off the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. The only spark of living vitality left in the solar system would be a shiny bubble containing us. Us, a whole lot of our maintenance machinery, and mostly, microbes.”
“ ‘Us,’ John.”
“Yes, I mean us, Inke.” He waved his hand at the funereal crowd. “You, me, the kids. People. There wouldn’t be much of us left, but we would be what there was.”
“You really think that way.”
“Yes, I have to think that way. It’s necessary.”
“You’re not a conservative businessman, Mr. Montalban.”
“No, I’m what people call a ‘Synchronic realist.’ We choose to look directly at the stark facts of science and history.” Montalban sighed. “Of course, whenever one does that in an honest spirit, everything becomes visionary, abnormal, and extreme.”
There was a bustle at the graveside. Somehow, amazingly, George had assembled his sisters into a public group.
Since they violently loathed one another, Vera, Sonja, Radmila, and Biserka had all been determined to stand out during the funeral. Rather than wear proper dark mourning clothes—as everyone else was doing—they had each, independently, decided to mark themselves out as free spirits by dressing entirely in white. So the sisters were all in white, identical, grim and chilly and marbled, pale as statues.
Making the most of this misstep, George had hastily borrowed a white jacket from an Acquis cadre. He’d ripped off the jacket’s political tags, pips, and braiding. So George was also in white.
Gathered there at the monster’s graveside, two by two with George standing at their head,