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By Root 546 0

team of waiters converges on the table with silver platters and sets about spreading a kaleidoscopic palette of food on the table, every dish brightened with some exotic garnish or sauce—plantains with red guava paste, dark meats with white yucca, blackberries with glistening caramel, figs with coconut shavings. Ursula tries not to show it, but the sight of all this festive food being laid before her makes her feel unstoppable, as though it were not just food but raw power waiting to be put to use. She’s going to do it, she decides: she’s going to unleash the savage girl upon the world and let her wreak whatever havoc she can. And she’s going to keep wearing this blue suit, and other suits like it. And she’s going to make a point of ordering everything that’s popular. And she’s going to accept all the love this strange man is prepared to give her—this man who rhapsodizes about bubble pipes and weaves divinity into fishtail hems, who is just mad enough to think she’s strong and steady and cool and caring and beautiful, who seems ready to say or do just about anything to make her happy.

Wampum

The savage girl on the screen is both voluptuous and strong. Her thighs are soft, while her haunches are muscular. Her legs are long but not overly thin. Her Mohican stands up straight without looking stiff; on the contrary, it is silky and golden, adorned with downy blue feathers. Her hip juts boldly, though her eyes are down-turned, almost demure. Ursula has worked as hard on this airbrushed thing as she used to work on her art paintings, but this is nothing like her art paintings. This is magic. You can look and look and never see it, never as a whole; your eyes shift restlessly from paradox to paradox. High-heeled moccasins. A fur loincloth over waxed legs. A midriff-baring animal-hide top that looks as light and comfortable as rough-woven silk. A necklace of menacing incisors arranged in a floriated pattern. Warpaints of pastel pink and amber along her cheekbones. You can look and look and look and look, an endless whirligig of unsatiated desire.

Cabaj sits at the far end of the table. His in-house staff and his hired guns from the Mitchell and Chennault ad agency have arranged themselves around the table not by company but rather by job description—marketers to the left in skirt suits, hypererect postures, power ties, hair gel; creatives to the right in cotton and poly shirts, bangles and clips, canvas boat shoes. Chas, seated unobtrusively in the corner, settles back in his chair and nods at Ursula to begin. She gestures toward the screen.

“Call her the savage girl,” she says. “That’s what I call her, anyway. No one knows what she calls herself, because she doesn’t speak. Language is full of lies, and the savage girl wants nothing to do with lies. She’s sick of modernity, sick of all the cynicism in our culture that passes for sophistication. She tries to live authentically, honestly. She tries to live simply, in tune with the earth.”

The woman with the spiky hair in the charcoal dress suit knits her brows. The man in the black shirt with the gold stud in his ear nods agreement.

“You and I may find her glamorous, but she cares nothing for glamour. In this way she may be deeper than the rest of us. She may be superior. She doesn’t spend money. Rather, she makes things herself, using materials at hand. The experience of making things herself is valuable to her. It gives her power.”

The thin, gray-haired woman in pinstripes leans forward. Lucien, his curly hair pomaded flat against his temples, looks at his glittering watch. Ursula fights a moment of panic. She knows she’s reached the point of no return. She takes a breath, trying to flatten the tremor in her voice.

“So what do you have to offer her? The truth is, I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. She doesn’t trust you. Maybe she will never accept you, no matter what you offer. Maybe she will sense you’re the enemy, smell it on you, know you’re out to steal her secrets, to mine her resources. She knows your kind: you’re just one more emissary of the Imperium, trading wampum