The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [84]
Dying of thirst from the shock of her abduction, unable to move her bound, numbed arms, Radmila stared in anguish at a wooden rack of California chardonnays.
After dark fell, Biserka returned from her busy wanderings. Biserka was still wearing the Family-Firm ninja costume she’d used when she had kidnapped Radmila, only now this fake, phony costume of hers—it was amazing how shoddy it looked now, it was a cheap, halfhearted effort like some kid’s Hollywood souvenir—it was ominously covered with freshly dug dirt.
Biserka plucked her black ninja hood off and ran her black-gloved fingers through her sweaty, smashed, blond hairdo. Biserka had six fancy emerald studs in her ears and green weepy eyeliner streaming down both cheeks. She’d been sweating like a pig inside that cheap costume.
“Time for Miss Montalban to go walkies,” Biserka remarked.
Radmila lashed out and kicked Biserka in the shin. Biserka stepped back, with a sour, tired expression. She then came around, leaned down, and pinched Radmila’s nose shut with her thumb and finger.
In moments Radmila had a scarlet agony in her lungs and fatal darkness roaring in her ears.
“You don’t do that again,” Biserka explained. She left, stooped behind the couch, opened a beautiful shoplifted Italian leather satchel. She removed a bloodstained parole breaker’s knife. It had the blackened chips, the melted plastic, and the stink.
She then seized a hank of Radmila’s hair and sawed loose a fistful of it.
She threw the hair into Radmila’s watering eyes. “Do you want to walk for me now, or will there be more attitude?”
Radmila gusted air through her nose and shook her head.
Biserka stuck her fingers through the network of cinched wires around Radmila’s chest. She hauled her upright, with an effort. Tired, she changed her mind and shoved Radmila onto an abandoned couch, which exploded with dust.
“I have a feeling we won’t see this locale again,” Biserka said, gazing around the mold-spotted walls and the damp-collapsed ceiling. “That is such a pity, but, you know, you get a sixth sense about a blackspot. I’m a girl who has a very negative rapport with ubiquitous systems.”
Biserka’s English had an odd foreign accent. It might have been French, or Chinese, or maybe both French and Chinese.
“I travel light,” said Biserka, “so we have to leave my toys here as a nice surprise for sneaky kids. Kids these days! They love to steal, because they have so little … But professional theft is over! All the smart players traffic in revenge! Vendetta. Venganza. Rache. That’s the universal language. It’s hard to steal from people—but to steal the people … Goods are trackable, but people are stalkable.”
Biserka gazed around her derelict hideout and sighed. “All my pretty toys! Should I burn the house down? You think?”
Biserka rummaged in a handcrafted box that might once have contained some fine hobject. “I do want my pearls. They’re my favorites. I’ll let you carry my pearls.” Biserka sank her clawed fingers into a mass of strung pearls and pulled them out like cold spaghetti.
“I was being funny, you know, because ‘Biserka’ means ‘Pearl.’ So I tell the jewelers: ‘I’m Mila Montalban, show me all your pearls.’ And they are like: ‘Oh yes certainly Miss Montalban! Such a pleasure to see you here in person! Would you like to see the wild pearls from the years before the seacoasts rose, or would you like to see the modern cultured pearls?’ And I reply: ‘Why not see both?’ ”
Biserka thrust the dripping mass of pearls into Radmila’s face. “So: They bring out all these for me! Little lumpy bastards—the wild pearls from the old days! And then—they bring out these really huge gleaming superperfect ones!” Biserka draped strands of pearls, one by one, over Radmila’s head.
“And I say to them, ‘What’s the damage?’ and they reply … what a fraud! These little stinking mean dirty ones cost a cut-off arm and one leg! And all these big white perfect round ones, pearls which didn’t even grow from mother oysters … they are so cheap!”
Biserka cinched the thick rope of pearls