The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling Page B

climbed every hill she could climb, and there was not one living soul to be found. She grew dirty, despondent, and thin. Finally Vera heard voices from the sky. Acquis people had arrived with boats, and those rescuers had a tiny, unmanned plane that soared around the island, a flying thing like a cicada, screeching aloud in a brilliant, penetrating voice. It yelled its canned rescue instructions in five or six global languages. Vera did as the tiny airplane suggested. She ventured to the appointed rendezvous, she found her surprised rescuers, and she was shipped to a rescue camp on the mainland. From there Vera immediately schemed and plotted to return to Mljet, to save her island as she herself had been saved. At length, she had succeeded.
    And now, after all that, here, again on Mljet, at last, was the next gen-eration: in the person of Mary. The idea that Mary Montalban existed had been a torment to Vera — but in person, in reality, as a living indi-vidual, someone on the ground within the general disaster zone, Mary was not bad. No: Mary was good.
    Mary was what she was: a little girl, a little hard to describe, but . . . Mary Montalban was the daughter of a rich banker and a cloned ac-tress, sharing a junk-strewn beach with her crazy, bone-rattling aunt. That was Mary Montalban. She had a world, too.
    Mary was visibly lonely, pitifully eager to win the approval of her over-worked, too-talkative dad. Mary was also afraid of her aunt, although she very much wanted her aunt to love her and to care about her. That knowledge was painful for Vera. Extremely painful. It was a strong, com-pelling, heart-crushing kind of pain. Pain like that could change a woman's life.
    Remotely chatting in their lively, distant voices, the father and daugh-ter tossed their big handsome beach ball. The girl missed a catch, and the ball skittered off wildly into the flowering bushes. In the silence of the ruins Vera heard the child laughing.
    Vera turned up the sensors in her helmet, determined to spy on them. The ruins of Polace were rather poorly instrumented, almost a blackspot in the island's net. Vera gamely tried a variety of cunning methods, but their voices were warped and pitted by hisses, hums, and drones. The year 2065 was turning out to be one of those "Loud Sun" years: sunspot activity with loud electrical noise. Any everyware technician could groom the signal relays, but there wasn't a lot to do about Acts of God. Montalban did not know that Vera was eavesdropping on him with such keen attention. His formality melted away. Montalban swung his arms high and low, he capered on the wrecked beach like a little boy.
    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 wis-dom. 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 is-land was the