"No, my crime always matters."

"Get over yourself. Become a different woman. This is not some little secret island in the Balkans twenty-seven years ago where they happened to clone some people. This is Los Angeles, stupid! This is the big time, in a big town! In the years to come, we'll move Toddy's investments into you. There are no technical limits there. When you swan around this city, all brilliancy, speed, lightness, and glamour, you will be so huge, so gorgeous, so totally vested in stardom they won't even have words for you. The past will be done. Finished. Sealed inside a plastic bubble dribbling on itself."

Radmila was sweating. "But I never asked for that. I don't want it. I can't believe you're telling me to have seven children!"

"Radmila, we've never been part of the human race. This is how we buy into all of that."

"I did buy into it. There's Mary."

"Your children will all be fine children. Seven is not too many. You are making up for the rest of us decadent aristocrats. You will be proud of your children. I know Mary. I love Mary. Mary is my favorite niece. I know her better than you do. Mary is not one of you-and-yours. Mary Montalban is definitely one of us-and-ours."

Radmila smiled and wiped her eyes. "Well, thank God for that, at least."

"Mila, you are really close to achieving a huge, lasting, major, public success. Just wise up a little. You are the perfect person to revive this Family and lead it into futurity. You are a lovable person. Toddy loved you. John loves you. Jack loves you. I love you very much. The other Family people, they all respect you, they've decided you're all right for us. But that kid of yours: Everybody loves little Mary. Everybody. She is adorable and she is destined to be huge. This is your golden chance to turn yourself into the source of unity in our sad, strange little clan. If you turn down that chance because you'd rather be so hurt and proud and emotionally remote from us, you will never get another. Because you won't deserve it. So do you hold it up, or do you kick it down? That is your choice."

"Okay," said Radmila, "I just heard your big, passionate set-speech. That one was pretty good. You obviously rehearsed that thoroughly, so it was great. So: I choose to hold it up."

Glyn brightened. "Really?"

"Yeah. You have just talked me into it, Glyn. Because you talked me into it with my own advice. I can't be such a hypocrite as to deny what I said to my own Family. Yes. You are right about putting the past behind us. We absolutely have to do that, we both have to do it. We must. We will get over ourselves, we will turn our faces straight to whatever comes next. I love your big bold plan. Your plan makes perfect sense to me. I will make up with my estranged husband. Fine. I will step into the ruby slippers of the dead superstar. Great. Somebody has to do all that: of course I'll do it."

Radmila leaned in. "And you, Glyn Montgomery: You think you're pretty smart, but you'd better work like you've never worked before. Because the Firm's gotten fat and lazy. We need skill and discipline. You think you know what pain and trouble is all about? You are the fair-haired child of fortune, girl! You don't know half of what it means to suffer in this world. Well, I do know that: and you will know it. So you just get ready."

Glyn stared at her in astonishment. Glyn was genuinely frightened. But Glyn was frightened in a new and different and much more constructive way.

This was going to work. This had to work. Radmila would make it work.

RADMILA'S FAMILY COUP D'ETAT went according to Glyn's careful plan. If the new Montgomery-Montalban system was not yet a regime, it was at least a provisional government. It was a huge emotional relief to the Family-Firm that someone-anyone-had stepped into the aching gap left by Toddy Montgomery.

So that first bold act would carry Radmila a little ways, but to cement her position, she would need a Dispensation-style juggernaut of rapid and effective action.

So: a major household remodeling project. The Bivouac was well overdue for a remake and remodel, and it was one arena where Radmila would not be challenged.

Toddy Montgomery had placed the gymnasium in the basement of the mansion, for a lady did not show her public that she had to sweat. Obviously, in the modern Los Angeles star system, where stars were physically dominant, swaggering street presences, the gym had to become the lady's power base.

So: Radmila moved the gymnasium into the former Situation Room. Radmila hired-not Frank Osbourne, he was too much the seasoned establishment starchitect-but one of Osbourne's best disciples, a younger woman freshly gone into her own practice. This young architect was ambitious, modish, and contemporary, and she badly needed a leg-up.

Grateful for her big break, the new decorator didn't dawdle. Radmila's new gym was transformed. It was no longer a dusty place of clanking iron and steroidal machismo. No, it was the "Transformation Spa," a gleaming balletic wonderland of Zen river pebbles embedded in clear Perspex, reactive areogel yoga mats, sunlight-friendly, semitranslucent, ultra-high-strength oxide ceramic roof panels, with a one-way treatment that repelled passing spyplanes…

Furthermore-lest the Family-Firm feel neglected-the newly emptied basement was swiftly transmuted into the new Situation Room, or rather, the Montgomery-Montalban Situation Bunker.

If California was facing a looming supervolcano, then the revived and vigorous Family-Firm would not wring their hands about that challenge. Their new Situation Bunker was entirely mounted on tremor-proof springs, and fully sealable against volcanic, seismic, atomic, biological, and chemical mishaps.

The Situation Bunker was soberly traditional in its design philosophy-American Superpower traditional. It was a bunker fit for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Planning for D-Day: pragmatic, sleek, no-nonsense, efficient, incorruptible, and continental in scale. Very Bell System, very Westinghouse, very General Motors.

There was some mild grumbling about Radmila's ambitious reforms, but Glyn held up her end, Uncle Jack was with her all the way, Lionel was infallibly enthusiastic, and there were no Family arguments at all about the new nursery.

Furthermore, no one could deny that a young matriarch was much more fun than an elderly matriarch. For all Toddy's wisdom and street smarts, Toddy's last years had had a Hapsburg Empire feeling, an over-wrought, enfeebled system tottering toward its grave on a baroquely gilt walker. With Radmila in charge, the Family-Firm had a spring in its step again. There was a clear dynamic visible. There was forward motion.

Since the house was not finished, the Family could not die.

Radmila moved more of the star budget into the coming generation: Lionel and Mary. Let it not be said of her that she was personally hogging the limelight and eating the Family's seed corn. No: she aspired to be steady, dutiful, fully professional, an engine of production.

Radmila still went to her gym, but not with the fanatical intensity of a front-line diva. A woman planning for motherhood needed some body fat. Even if Radmila didn't bear the biblical horde of kids that Glyn demanded, there would have to be one. One or two. Three. There would have to be children, no matter how one felt about one's husband: any Queen of England knew that. That was a dynast's reality.

Early October arrived. Soon John would return from his meanderings in the Adriatic. The Family-Firm would be watching that reunion with care; it was a crucial performance for Radmila. She was determined to ace it.

Radmila performed her gym routine-"the worst thing that would happen all day"-and retired into her new oneiric pod for beauty sleep. This brand-new gym pod-oblate, speckled, seamed, it looked like a giant hemp seed-was said to feature all kinds of exotic benefits to neural well-being. It was like a Zen spa with a hinge.