The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [58]
The Directors went about the Family’s dire business, highlighting the stricken map with their wands and murmuring together. It struck Radmila, with a revelatory force, that Glyn had never been the clone of Theodora Montgomery. No, never. Glyn had always been the clone of a stranger: Lila Jane Dickey.
That was a sudden, boiling insight into her best friend’s basic character. Suddenly, Radmila held the golden key to Glyn’s role in the world. As an actress, she had captured Glyn’s character; she held Glyn right in the palm of her hand. Radmila felt a little stunned.
“Glyn,” she said tenderly, “I know that you’ll be all right.”
Glyn’s lips trembled. Glyn was anxious that no one else in the Family should know this, but Glyn was secretly overjoyed by the loss of Toddy. Glyn was grieving, her eyes were wet with hot tears, but the destruction of Toddy Montgomery was the happiest day of her whole life.
How many people in the world were like this? Radmila wondered. How many people had to conceal the shame and horror of their secret lives?
All of them, maybe. Everybody in the stricken world.
Glyn was muttering aloud. “I think, maybe … yes, maybe I’ll go lie down a little.”
“Eat, Glyn,” Radmila told her. “Sleep is good hygiene, too.”
“You can run this map now. You can do all this for us.”
“Sure I can, Glyn. You can depend on me.”
Glyn pulled herself slouching from her chair and trudged from the Situation Room. Glyn never made any poised entrances and exits, like a star would do. The Family had tried to make Glyn a star, they had sunk some money into improving her, but the treatments had just never taken on Glyn. Nobody knew why.
Radmila settled herself into running the disaster map. The Directors were cautiously projecting little chips of the Family’s resources into the ongoing swirl of relief. They did this interface work with long pointer wands. They looked soberly elegant yet slightly awkward, like socialites with badminton rackets.
Rishi chose to walk in front of the map, covering his suit with projected cityware. The map swiftly re-formed itself behind his body. Rishi was a younger member of the Family, so he lacked a Director’s wand. Instead, he held a fat black plastic brick in his hand, a gooey interface all dented with his fingers. “What are the stakeholder specs on Grandma’s celebrity endorsements?”
“They’ve still got her immersive-world endorsements,” Guillermo said. “Those endorsements don’t need any real Toddy.”
“Her investors say they need a guideline concept right away,” Rishi insisted.
“We tell them that my mother is ‘stable,’ ” said Freddy.
“Meaning?”
“Our guideline concept is ‘stable,’ ” said Freddy stoutly. “ ‘We are closely tracking developments as Toddy’s condition evolves. Her benchmarks now are consistent with her benchmarks yesterday.’ ”
“That’ll work.” Guillermo nodded. “Go feed ’em that, Rishi.”
Rishi stepped out of the projection, and clamped the gooey brick to his ear.
“Look at all that damage around the Showroom!” Freddy complained. “Why did we build that palace right on a fault line?”
“Because the land was cheap there,” said Guillermo. “Zoom that zone, Glyn. I mean, Mila.”
Radmila obediently zoomed.
“See, look there! Everything that we built there came through the quake like aces. That is so beautiful! Rishi, I want you to get through to that architect’s people—Frank Osbourne. We need to congratulate him! As a Family courtesy.”
“I’ll do that,” said Rishi.
“Let’s check housing values,” said Freddy.
Radmila stroked the touchscreen and peeled an onion of interpretative overlays. Real-estate values were the X-ray of the Angeleno soul. The real-estate map was already spattered with high-volume blobs of rapidly moving money.
As might be expected, a strong postquake surge of investment was already hitting the blue-ribbon districts of Watts, Crenshaw, La Mirada, Lakewood, and Paramount. And Norwalk, of course, that fortress of glamour and privilege where the Bivouac stood firm: there were some scattered blue and yellow trouble-dots in Norwalk, but nothing