They would claw each other's eyes out. There would be nothing left of them.

It had taken Inke years just to learn to manage George. George was the manageable one of the group-and George had a streak of true ferocity in his soul. George was cunning and devoid of scruples.

When she'd first met George, he'd been a teenage illegal laboring in her father's river shipyard, sleeping in there, probably eating the wharf rats. George scared her, yet he had a genius for putting the workshop in order. Her family's fortunes were collapsing and the world was violently spinning out of control. Inke had sensed that George might be capable of protecting her during the coming Dark Age. At least, he often darkly spoke of such necessities.

It would certainly take someone like George to protect her, in that murky world of slaughter that awaited everyone in the future: the seas rising, the poles melting, coral reefs turning to foul brown ooze, droughts, floods, fires, plagues, storms the size of Mexico: nothing was safe anymore. Nothing was sure, nothing was decent. Her world was horribly transformed, and this man who seemed to want her so much: he was also different, and somehow, in much the same way as the world.

She was just a common Viennese girl, round, brown, small, not the prettiest, no man ever looked twice, no one but George was fiercely demanding her hand, her heart, her soul. Since anything could happen to a girl whose father was ill, Inke had given in to him.

In the years that followed that fateful choice of hers, people had indeed died in unparalleled numbers and in awful, tragic circumstances, a terrible business, the whole Earth in disaster, a true calamity, a global crisis, enough to make any normal, decent woman tremble like a dry leaf and tear out her hair in handfuls…

Yet not all that many people had died in Vienna. As George rightly pointed out-George always had an eye out for the main chance-life in Vienna was rather good.

Because-as George said-the world couldn't possibly fall apart, all over, at the same speed, at the same moment. There simply had to be lags, holes, exceptions, safe spots, and blackspots-even if it was nothing more than a snug attic room where Inke could curl up with a good Jane Austen novel.

Even when the whole Earth was literally bathed in a stellar blast straight from the surface of the sun itself…an insane idea as awful as the black dreams of some of her favorite book authors, Edgar Poe and Howard Lovecraft-even in a natural catastrophe literally ten times bigger than the whole Earth, there were some people on Earth who hadn't much noticed it. They couldn't be bothered.

The passing years had taught Inke to count her blessings, rather than the innumerable threats to her well-being. She had three loving children, a handsome home, a relatively faithful husband. In the past few months-as his sisters had all collapsed, one by one, into abject puddles of misery-George was becoming a pillar of the global business community. George had been traveling the world, mixing with much better company than usual. He was better dressed, better spoken, suave, and self-contained. George had matured.

The death of his mother had been a particular tonic for George. Suddenly he was calling her "Mother." There were handsome new gifts for Inke, and, when George was at home, he was markedly kind and attentive. Even the children noticed George's improved behavior. The children had always adored George, especially when he was at his worst.

"You only have to bury a mother once," George coaxed, "it's not like I'm asking you to bury my damnable sisters." This was a typical fib on his part because, in all truth, his mother and his sisters were cloned bananas from the same stem. Inke held her tongue about that, though. Everybody knew the truth, of course: the Mihajlovic brood were the worst-kept «secret» scandal in history. Everyone who loved them learned not to say anything in earshot.

Then George further announced that his mother's burial was to be a traditional Catholic ceremony. Not the kind of ceremony George preferred: those newfangled Dispensational Catholic ceremonies, with ubiquitous computing inside the church. No: George was firmly resolved on proper committal rites, with a vigil, a Mass, and a wake. Conducted in Latin. The Latin was the final straw.

At this overwhelming gesture, Inke had to give in. Her surrender meant the tiresome chore of shopping for proper funeral clothes for herself, George, and the children. For George wanted no expense spared.

Inke soon found, from the unctuous behavior of the tailors, that this was no ordinary funeral. It was to be a famous funeral. A world-changing funeral, a glamorous climacteric. In particular, everyone asked if George's children were going to meet "Little Mary Montalban."

There seemed no use in Inke's obscuring the fact that her children were the cousins of Little Mary Montalban. Lukas, Lena, and even baby Ivan would personally meet the simpering, capering Little Mary Montalban, the "girl with the world at her feet"…

Mljet proved a keen disappointment. The island looked so mystical and lovely from the deck of a ferry, yet the landscape was a fetid, reeking wilderness, swarming with insects even in November, a rank place like an overgrown parking lot, and with scarcely any civilized amenities.

Inke's little German guidebook made a great deal of pious green fuss about the returning fish and the swarming bugs and the glorious birds of prey and so forth, but-just like the "Treasure Island" of her older son's favorite book author, Robert Louis Stevenson-Mljet must have been an excellent place to be marooned and go totally mad.

Inke remarked on this to the older boy but, although Lukas was not yet eight, and huge-headed, with missing teeth and spindly schoolboy limbs, Lukas already had his father's wild look in his eyes. "Marooned and going mad!" Lukas thought that was wonderful. He would maroon his little sister Lena and make her go mad, by stealing all her dolls and leaving her without any playmates.

Construction work was booming at the island's new tourist port, which was named Palatium. Someone highly competent was sinking a great deal of investment money here. Given that George was so deeply involved in those logistics, this was a heartening sight to Inke. It almost made up for the fact that the sea trip had badly upset the baby.

Palatium's newly consecrated Catholic church seemed to be the first building formally completed. It was certainly the first decent place of worship consecrated in Mljet since who knew when. The church had a proper crying room with a trained nursemaid in it, a quiet American girl. This girl was Dispensation-it was annoying how many of them dressed themselves to show their politics-but she loved babies.

Nerves jangled, Inke dipped at the holy water, led the older children up the aisle, genuflected, and slipped into a front pew. Peace at last. Peace, and safety. Thank God. Thank God for the mercies of God.

The coffin was candlelit with its feet toward the holy-of-holies. Inke and the children shared the shining new pew with an old man sitting alone. Some threadbare Balkan scholar, by the look of him.

The poor old man seemed genuinely shaken and grieved by the death of Yelisaveta Mihajlovic.

Inke could not believe that Yelisaveta Mihajlovic had been any kind of decent Catholic. If she had been, she would have trained her children in the catechism, instead of stuffing their cloned heads like cabbage rolls with insane notions about how computers were going to take over the world. Yelisaveta Mihajlovic was nobody's saint, that was for certain. That dead creature in the elaborate casket there was the widow of a violent warlord, a Balkan Lady Macbeth.

Still, there had to be some redeeming qualities to any woman lying dead in church. After all was said and done, Yelisaveta Mihajlovic had created George. Inke knew well that George wasn't quite human, but she considered that a distinct advantage in a husband.