The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [21]
Now Montalban was telling Mary something about Polace, pointing out some details in the rusting, sour ruins. Montalban was summing it all up for his daughter somehow, in some sober piece of fatherly wisdom. Montalban respected his daughter, and was intent and serious about teaching her. He was trying to instruct her about how the world worked, about its eerie promises and its carnivorous threats and dangers, phrasing that in some way that a five-year-old might comprehend and never forget. A fairy tale, maybe.
Thrilled to be the focus of her dad’s attention, Mary twisted her feet and chewed at her fingers.
Montalban had brought his daughter here to Mljet, all this way across the aching planet, for some compelling reason. Vera couldn’t quite hear what he was telling his child. Whatever it was, it certainly meant the world to him.
Vera sensed suddenly, and with a terrible conviction, that the two of them had come to Mljet to get far away from Radmila.
Yes, that was it. That was the secret. Montalban had not come here to spy on her, or the Acquis, or the island’s high technology, or anything else. Whatever those other purported motives might be, they were merely his excuses.
Mljet was a precious place for the two of them—because Radmila was not here. The two of them were here alone together, because this island was the one place on Earth that Radmila would never, ever go.
Radmila Mihajlovic, “Mila Montalban” in distant Los Angeles: Radmila was the vital clue here, Radmila was the missing part of this story. Radmila had renounced Mljet, fleeing the distorted horror of her own being, a refugee washing across the planet’s seas, like bloody driftwood.
Somehow, Radmila had found this man. She must have fallen on him like an anvil.
Remorseless as the rise of day, the world had continued, and now the father and the daughter had ventured here in order to be together.
Montalban flung the child’s beach ball high. He waved his hands at the hobject, gesturing like a wizard.
Suddenly, startlingly, the beach ball tripled in size. It soared above the shoreline, a striped and glittering balloon. The bubble hung there, serene and full of impossible promise, painted on the sullen storm clouds.
The beach ball wafted downward, with all the eerie airiness of a dandelion seed. It fell as if rescuing them from their misery.
The girl screeched with glee at her father’s cleverness. Montalban, his whole being radiating joy and mastery, waved his hands. The ball plummeted to Earth. It bounded off with rubbery energy.
The two of them gleefully chased down their weird toy in their oddly posh clothing.
Mljet’s newest tourists were thrilled to be here. They were entirely happy to treat the dismal wreck of Polace as their private playground. No ruin less awful, less desolate, could suit them and their love for one another.
Vera turned her helmeted head away. Her eyes stung, her cheeks were burning.
She waded into the cooling waters of the sea.
A dead water heater, poxed with barnacles, lay pillowed in a deathbed of mud. Vera bent and fetched it up. With one comprehensive nervous heave, she threw full power into her boneware.
The wrecked machine tumbled end over end and crashed hard above the tide line.
The child stared at her in joy and awe.
Vera hopped through the sea, splashing. She found a submerged car. She tore the rusty hood from its hinges. She flung the bent metal to shore, and it sailed like a leaf. She put her boot against a submerged door and tore that free as well. She threw it hard enough to skip it across the water.
Mary ran down the beach, skipping in glee. “Do it, Vera! Do it, Vera! Do that again!”
Montalban hastened after his child, his face the picture of worry. He half dragged Mary away from the wreckage and to a safer distance.
Up went his beach ball again, sudden and bloated and wobbling. The bubble rose with a wild enthusiasm, its crayon-bright colors daubing the troubled sky.
Montalban ran beneath