The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [53]
Radmila woke, and she knew that it had been a good dream. To have a dream so sweet and promising, at a time of such grief and confusion: It meant that she was strong. She would power her way through this impossible time. She would do her duty, she would bear up. Today, tomorrow, yesterday—the “event heap,” as Synchronists called it—the event heap would sort itself out.
Radmila was hungry. The body mattered. The Montgomery-Montalbans were early risers and convinced believers in a proper breakfast.
But there was nobody around to share her meal. There was one special sunlit breakfast nook overlooking the Family’s gardens, where she made a point of breakfasting with John and Mary, but John had gone away, and he’d taken the child with him. The breakfast nook, all Perspex and cellulose, was one of the prettiest spots in a beautiful building, but now it felt like a reproach to her.
Whenever John was gone on his business, Radmila would eat a more formal breakfast with Toddy, but Toddy Montgomery would not be dining this morning. No.
So Radmila ventured downstairs to the kitchen to eat with the staff. The mansion’s gleaming kitchen was weirdly deserted. The staffers were kind and good to her: they knew that the Family’s stars were just the graphic front ends for the Firm’s commercial interests, but the staff were big fans as well as Family employees, so it always meant a lot to them whenever Radmila dropped by.
The staffers had all left. They were all Dispensation people, so they’d swarmed out of the Bivouac to go fight the emergency.
Radmila sullenly turned on a countertop meatrix and printed out a light breakfast. She nourished herself in ominous silence. Then she went to her boudoir and costumed herself in a morning gown.
It was time to go and see about Toddy. Radmila had few illusions about what she would see there, but she knew it was the right Family thing to do.
Uncle Jack was in Toddy’s master bedroom. Jack was overseeing the family’s robots as they methodically pried Toddy’s treasures from their quake-proof sticky-wax.
It seemed that Jack hadn’t slept all night. Yet Jack still had his buoyant smile and he was beautifully dressed: the role of a Family star was to keep up appearances.
Radmila cued a soundtrack and made her entrance. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You, too,” said Uncle Jack.
Toddy owned a host of pretty knickknacks: fabjects, hobjects, govjects, all her awards, of course; her art collectibles, mementos, and her Twentieth-Century Modern-Antiques, for those had always been her particular favorites.
Uncle Jack was methodically stripping the bedroom of every trace of Toddy and her possessions. Every stick of Toddy’s famous furniture was already history.
Uncle Jack was in here, rather than out warring with the ongoing urban catastrophe, for Uncle Jack was old and sentimental. Even after retiring from his own stardom, he had devoted himself to running gentle simulation games for children. Jack preferred to rusticate in his play worlds rather than duke it out over politics and budgets.
Kindly Uncle Jack had been the first person in the Family-Firm to decide that she might be okay. “Our Johnny has found himself a pretty foreign girl,” Jack had said, “an illegal alien, no prospects, no capital, bizarre education, unspeakable heritage”—and then Jack made himself her friend.
In the sunlit, louvered spot where Toddy’s big, frilly bed had once stood, a bright-eyed entity was busy inside a medical bubble. The creature in that bubble was alive, but it was no longer Toddy Montgomery. The creature did not recognize Radmila. Random, empty expressions crossed its waxy face. It scratched at the black bruises on its long, skinny haunches, and it stared into