Islands in the Net

10

The second year went faster than the first. She was used to it. It had become her life. She no longer thirsted for the things she had lost-she could no longer name them to herself, without an effort. She was past thirst: she was mummified. Monastic, sealed.

But she could sense the pace picking up, spiderweb tremors of movement in the distant world outside.

There were shootings almost every night now. When they took her down for exercise in the yard, she could see bullet- pounded patches in the wall, cratered, just like the Lodge had been. Below the pockmarks the baked bare earth had turned foul, carpeted with swarming flies and the coppery reek of blood.

One day the desert sky outside the wall hole of her cell showed endless dark skeins of drifting smoke. Trucks squealed in and out of the prison for hours, and they shot people all night. Assembly style: shouts, orders, screams, pleading, fierce chatter of machine-gun fire. Quick finishing shots. Doors slamming, engines. Then more. Then more. Then more again.

Jofuette had been frightened for days. Finally the goons came for her, two women. They came smiling and talking her language, seeming to tell her that it was over, they were going to let her go. The bigger goon grinned suggestively and put her hands on her hips and did a bump-and-grind. A

boyfriend, she was saying-or Jofuette's husband maybe. Or maybe she was suggesting a night on the town in glamorous downtown Bamako.

Jofuette smiled tremulously. One of the goons gave her a cigarette and lit it with a flourish.

Laura never saw her again.

When they brought in the video recorder for the usual weekly session Laura waited till they were gone. Then she picked up the machine with both hands and smashed it into the wall repeatedly. It came apart, a tangle of wiring and circuit cards. She was crushing them underfoot when the door rattled and two of the male goons burst in.

They had drawn clubs. She threw herself at them with her fists clenched.

They knocked her to the ground immediately, with con- temptuous ease.

Then they picked her up and began beating her. With thoroughness, methodically. They hit her on the neck, on the kidneys. They threw her onto the bunk and hit her across the spine. Lightning flared inside her, great electrocuting swathes, white-hot, bloody-red. They were hitting her with axes, chop- ping her body apart. She was being butchered with sticks.

Roaring filled her head. The world faded.

A woman sat across the cell, sitting in Jofuette's bunk. A

blond woman in a blue dress. How old-forty, fifty? Sad, composed face, laugh lines, yellow-green eyes. Coyote eyes.

Mother ... ?

The woman looked at her: remembrance, pity, strength. It was restful to look at the woman. Restful as dreaming: she's wearing my favorite shade of blue.

But who is it ...?

Laura recognized her self. Of course. Rush of relief and joy. That's who it is. It's me.

Her Persona rose from the bunk. She crossed the cell, drifting, graceful, soundless. Radiant. She knelt silently by

Laura's side and looked into her face: her own face. Older, stronger, wiser.

Here I am.

"I'm dying."

No, you'll live. You'll be as I am.

The hand stopped an inch from her face, caressed the air.

She could feel its warmth-she could see herself, face-down on the bunk, beaten, paralyzed. Sad Laura. She could feel the warm torrent of healing and sympathy rush in from outside,

Olympian, soaring. Poor beaten body, our Laura, but she won't die. She lives. I lived.

Now, sleep.

She was sick for a month. Her urine was tinged with blood: kidney damage. And she had huge aching patches of bruises on her back, her arms, her legs. Deep bruises, into the muscle, bumps swollen on the bone: hematomas, they were called in first-aid. She was sick and creaky, barely able to eat. Sleep was a struggle for position, for the least amount of pain.

They had taken away the wreckage of the video machine.

She was pretty sure that someone had shot her up with something, too: there seemed to be an injection bruise just above her wrist, one of the few spots the goons had missed.

A woman, she thought: she had seen a woman medic, maybe even spoken to-her semiconscious, and that was it: an Opti- mal Persona experience.

She had been beaten up by fascist goons. And she had seen her Optimal Persona. She wasn't sure which was the most important but she knew that they were both turning points.

It was probably a medic that she'd seen. She'd just slotted it in, dreamed of seeing herself. That was probably all that an

Optimal Persona ever was, for anybody: stress and illusion and some deep psychic need. But none of that mattered.

She had had a vision. It didn't matter where it came from.

She clung to it and she was glad they were leaving her in solitary because she could chuckle over it aloud and hug it to herself. And cherish it.

Hatred. She'd never really hated them before, not like she did now. She'd always been too small and too scared and too hopeful of figuring some angle, as if they were people like herself and could be dealt with like people. That's what they'd pretended, but now she knew their pretense was an- other of their lies. She would never, ever join them, or belong to them, or see the world through their eyes. She was their enemy till death. That was a peaceful thought.

She knew she would survive. Someday she would dance on their graves. It made no sense, not rationally. It was faith.

They had blundered and given her faith.

She was woken by a roar. It sounded like a giant water faucet, rush of water and the high-pitched. scream of a vibrat- ing pipe. Coming nearer. Louder. Wa-woosh.

Then: monster drumbeats. Boom. Boom. Boom-wham-bam, firecracker sounds. Her cell wall flashed as hot light flickered through the window hole. Then another flash. Then a sudden thunderous explosion, very near. Earthquake. The walls shook.

Hot red light-the horizon was on fire.

The goons ran up and down the hall, shouting at each other. They were afraid, and Laura heard the fear in their voices with a wild leap of animal joy. Outside, the feeble crackle of small-arms fire. Then, distantly, belatedly, the banshee wail of sirens.

A burst of pounding from inside the prison. Someone on level two was beating on his door, not the bathroom pounding, but sheer ferocious battering. Muffled shouts. The upper- level prisoners were yelling from their cells. She couldn't make out the words. But she knew the tone. Rage and glee.

She swung out her legs and sat up in the bunk. In the distance, belatedly, she heard antiaircraft guns. Crump, whump, cramp, spider webs of flak searing the sky.

Someone was bombing Bamako.

"Yeah!" Laura screamed. She jumped from bed and rushed to the door and kicked it for all she was worth.

Next night they came in strafing. That sudden wa-whoosh again, treetop-level fighter jets in close formation. She could hear their aircraft cannon cutting loose, a weird convulsive belching, thup-thup-thup-thup, the sound of it dopplering off as the jets peeled away over the city. Then the sound of bombs, or missiles maybe: whump, crump, sky flashbulb- white as explosions hit.

Then the belated antiaircraft. There was more of it this time, better organized. Batteries of cannon, and even the hollow roar of what must be rockets, surface-to-air missiles.

But the jets were already gone. Mali's radar must be down, she concluded smugly. Otherwise they would surely fire at the jets as they were coming in, not too late, after they'd already blasted the living bejeezus out of something or somebody.

The attackers had probably knocked out the radar first thing.

She had never heard anything that sounded so sublime. The sky was full of hell, the rage of angels. She didn't even care if they hit the prison. All the better.

Outside the guards were firing machine guns: staccato bursts into the black sky. Bullets would rain down somewhere on a slum. Fools. They were fools. Amateurs.

They came for her in the morning. Two goons. They were sweating, which was nothing new, everyone sweated in the prison, but they were twitchy and wired, their eyes wide, and they stank-of fear.

"How's the war going?" Laura said.

"No war," said goon #1, a middle-aged male thug she'd seen many times. He wasn't one of the ones who had hit her.

"Practice.

"Air-raid practice? In the middle of the night? In down- town Bamako?"

"Yes. Our army. Practice. Do not worry."

"You think I believe that bullshit?"

"No talking!" They clamped her into handcuffs, hard.

They hurt. She laughed at them, inside.

They marched her downstairs, and into the courtyard. Then they prodded her into the back of a truck. Not a secret-police paddy wagon but a canvas-topped military truck daubed in dun-and-yellow desert camouflage. It had wooden benches inside for troops, and jerry cans of water and gasohol.

They shackled her legs to one of the support bars beneath the wooden bench. She sat there exulting. She didn't know where she was going, but it was going to be different now.

She sat sweating in the heat for ten minutes. Then they brought in another woman. White, blond. They shackled her to the opposite bench, and jumped out; and slammed the tailgate.

The engine started up with a roar. They jolted into movement.

Laura examined the stranger. She was blond and thin. and bony and wearing striped canvas prison garb. She looked about thirty. She looked very familiar. Laura realized that she and the stranger looked enough alike to be sisters. They looked at each other and grinned shyly.

The truck cleared the gates.

"Laura Webster!" Laura said.

"Katje Selous." The stranger leaned forward, extending both cuffed hands. They grabbed at each other's wrists and shook hard, clumsily, smiling.

"Katie Selous, A.C.A. Corps!" Laura said triumphantly.

"What?"

"I don't know what it means... . But I saw it on a list of prisoners."

"Ah!" Selous said. "Azanian Civil Action Corps. Yes,

I'm a doctor. Relief camp."

Laura blinked. "You're from South Africa?"

"We call it Azania now. And you, you're American?"

"Rizome Industries Group."

"Rizome." Selous wiped sweat from her forehead, a jail- bird's pallor. "I can't tell them apart, the multinationals.... "

She brightened. "Do you make suntan oil? That oil that makes you turn black?"

"Huh? No!" Laura paused, thinking about it. "I dunno.

Maybe we do, nowadays. I've been out of touch."

"I think you do make it." Selous looked solemn. "It's very important and wonderful."

"My husband used that stuff," Laura said. "He might have given Rizome the idea. He's very bright, my husband.

David's his name." Speaking of David made a whole buried section of her soul rise suddenly from the tomb. Here she was, chained in the back of a truck headed for God knew where, but with a few revivifying words she was part of the world again. The big sane world of husbands and children and work. Tears gushed suddenly down her face. She smiled at Selous and shrugged apologetically and looked at the floor.

"They kept you in solitary, eh," Selous said gently.

"We have a baby, too," Laura babbled. "Her name's Loretta."

"They had you longer than me," Selous said. "It's been almost a year since they took me from camp."

Laura shook her head, hard. "Did, uh..." She cleared her throat. "Do you know what's going on?"

Selous nodded. "I know a little. What I heard from the other hostages. The last two nights--those were Azanian air raids. My people. Our commandos, too, maybe. I think they hit some fuel dumps-the sky burned all night!"

"Azanian," Laura said aloud. So that was it. What she'd just lived through. An armed clash between Mali and Azania.

It seemed obscure and improbable. Not that an African war was unlikely, they happened all the time. Back pages in newspapers, a few seconds on cable news. But that they were for real, they took place in a real world of dust and heat and flying metal.

The South Africans weren't in the news much. They weren't very fashionable. "Your people must have flown a long way."

"We have aircraft carriers," Selous said proudly. "We never signed your Vienna Convention."

"Oh. Uh-huh." Laura nodded blankly.

Selous looked at her clinically, a doctor hunting for signs of damage. "Were you tortured?"

"What? No." Laura paused. "About three months ago they beat me up. After I wrecked a machine." She felt embarrassed even to have mentioned it. It seemed so inade- quate. "Not like those poor people downstairs."

"Mmmm ... yes, they've suffered." It was a statement of fact. Curiously detached, a judgment by someone who'd seen a lot of it. Selous glanced out the back of the truck. They were in the middle of Bamako now, endless nightmare land- scape of foul shacks and huts. Wisps of evil yellowish smoke rose from a distant refinery.

"Were you tortured, Dr. Selous?"

"Yes. A little. At first." Selous paused. "Were you assaulted?

Raped?"

"No." Laura shook her head. "They never even seemed to think of it. I don't know why...."

Selous leaned back, nodding. "It's their policy. It must be true, I think. That the leader of FACT is a woman."

Laura felt stunned. "A woman."

Selous smiled sourly. "Yes ... we of the weaker sex do tend to get around these days."

"What kind of woman would. .."

"Rumor says she's a right-wing American billionaire. Or a

British aristocrat. Maybe both, eh-why not?" Selous tried to spread her hands skeptically; her cuffs rattled. "For years

FACT was nothing much... mercenaries. Then quite sud- denly ... very organized. A new leader, someone smart and determined-with a vision. One of us modem girls." She chuckled lightly.

There didn't seem to be more to say on that topic. It was probably a lie anyway. "Where do you think they're taking us?"

"North, into the desert-I know that much." Selous thought it over. "Why did they keep you locked away from the rest of us? We never saw you. We used to see your maid, that's all."

"My what?"

"Your cellmate, the little Bambara informer from downstairs."

Selous shrugged. "Sorry. You know how it is in a cell block. People get crazy. We used to call you the' Princess.

Rapunzel, eh."

"People get crazy," Laura said. "I thought I saw my

Optimal Persona. But it was you, wasn't it, doctor. You and I look a lot alike. You came in and treated me after I was beaten, didn't you."

Selous blinked doubtfully. " `Optimal Persona.' That's very American.... Are you from California?"

"Texas. "

"It certainly wasn't me, Laura.... I've never seen you before in my life."

Long, strange pause.

"You really think we look alike?"

"Sure," Laura said.

"But I'm a Boer, an Afrikaaner. And you have that hybrid

American look."

They had reached an impasse. The conversation hung there as heat and dust boiled over the empty end of the truck. She was dealing with an alien. They had missed a connection somehow. Laura felt thirsty already and they were not even out of the city.

She struggled to pick up the thread.

"They kept me in solitary because they said I had atomic secrets. "

Selous sat upright, startled. "Have you seen a Bomb?"

"What?'

"There are rumors of a test site in the Malian desert.

Where the F.A.C.T. tried to build a Bomb."

"First I've ever heard of that," Laura said. "I saw their submarine, though. They said it had atomic warheads on- board. The sub did have some missiles. I know that much, because they hit and sank a ship I was on."

"Exocets?" Selous said gravely.

"Yes, that's right, exactly."

"But there could have been other missiles with a longer range, eh? Long enough to hit Pretoria?"

"I guess so. But it doesn't prove they were nuclear bombs."

"But if they take us to this test site, and we find a huge crater of sand melted into glass, that would prove something, wouldn't it?"

Laura said nothing.

"It ties in with something the warden told me once,"

Selous said. "That they didn't really need me as a hostage- that our cities were hostage if we only knew."

"God, why do people talk like that?" Laura said. "Gre- nada, Singapore... " It made her feel very tired.

"You know what I think, Laura? I think they are taking us to their test site. To make a statement, yes? Me, because I am

Azanian, and we Azanians are the people they need to im- press at the moment. You, because you have witnessed their weapon ship. Their delivery system."

"Could be, I guess." Laura thought it over. "What then?

Do they free us?"

Selous's greenish eyes went remote and distant. "I'm a hostage. They will not let Azania attack them without a price."

Laura could not accept it. "That's not much of a price, is it? Killing two helpless prisoners?"

"They'll probably kill us on camera. And send the tape to

Azanian Army Intelligence," Selous said.

"But you Azanians would tell everyone, anyway, wouldn't you?"

"We've been telling people about FACT from the beginning,"

Selous scoffed. "No one would trust us if we said

Mali had the bomb. No one believes what we say. They only sneer at us and call us an 'aggressive imperialist state.' "

"Oh," Laura hedged.

"We are an empire," Selous said firmly. "President Umtali is a great warrior. All Zulus are great warriors."

Laura nodded. "Yeah, we Americans, uh, we had a black president ourselves."

"Oh, that fellow of yours didn't amount to anything,"

Selous said. "You Yankees don't even have a real govern- ment-just capitalist cartels, eh. But President Umtali fought in our civil war. He brought order, where there was savagery.

A brilliant general. A true statesman."

"Glad to hear it's working out," Laura said.

"Azanian black people are the finest black people in the world!"

They sat there sweating. Laura could not let it pass. "Look,

I'm no big Yankee nationalist, but what about... you know

... jazz, blues, Martin Luther King?"

Selous shifted on her bench. "Martin King. He had a dinner party, compared to our Nelson Mandela."

"Yeah but ...'

"Your Yankee black people aren't even real black people, are they? They're all Coloureds, actually. They look like

Europeans. "

"Wait a minute ... '

"You've never seen my black people, but I've certainly seen yours. Your American blacks crowd all our best restau- rants and gamble their global hard currency in Sun City and so on.... They're rich, and soft."

"Yeah, I come from a tourist town, myself."

"We have a wartime economy, we need the exchange money.... Fighting the chaos...he endless nightmare that is Africa.... We Africans know what it means to sacri- fice." She paused. "It seems harsh, eh? I'm sorry. But you outsiders don't understand."

Laura looked out the back of the truck. "That's true."

"It seems to be the duty of my generation to pay for history's mistakes."

"You're really convinced they'll kill us, aren't you?"

She looked remote. "I'm sorry you should be involved."

"They killed a man in my house," Laura said. "That's where it all started for me. I know it doesn't seem like much, one death compared to what's happened in Africa. But I couldn't let it pass. I couldn't shrug off my responsibility for - what happened on my own home ground. Believe me, I've had a long time to think about it. And I still think I was right, even if it costs me everything."

Selous smiled.

They had picked up a convoy. Two armored half-tracks had swung into action behind them, jouncing over the rutted road, the long, ridged wands of machine guns swaying in the turrets.

"They think they have an answer," Selous said, looking at the half-tracks. "It was worse in Mali before they came."

"I can't imagine anything worse."

"It's not something you can imagine-you have to see it."

"Do you have an answer?"

"We hold on and wait for a miracle-save whoever we can.... We were getting somewhere in the camp, I think, before the F.A.C.T. seized it. They captured me, but the rest of our Corps escaped. We're used to raids-the desert is full of scorpions."

"Were you stationed in Mali?"

"Niger actually, but that's a formality only. No central authority. It's tribal warlords mostly, in the outback. Fulani

Tribal Front, the Sonrai Fraternal Forces, all kinds of bandit armies, thieves, militias. The desert crawls with them. And

FACT's machineries, too."

"What do you mean?"

"That's how they prefer to work. By remote control. When they locate the bandits, they attack them with robot planes.

They pounce on them in the desert. Like steel hyenas killing rats."

"Jesus."

"They're specialists, technicians. They learned things, in

Lebanon, Afghanistan, Namibia. How to fight Third Worlders without letting them touch you. They don't even look at them, except through computer screens."

Laura felt a thrill of recognition. "That's them all right.... I saw all that happen in Grenada."

Selous nodded. "The president of Mali thought they. did fine work. He made them his palace guard. He's a puppet now. I think they keep him drugged."

"I've seen the guy who runs Grenada-I bet this Mali president doesn't even exist. He's probably nothing but an image on a screen and some prerecorded speeches."

"Can they do that?" Selous said.

"Grenada can-I saw their prime minister disappear into thin air."

Selous thought it over. Laura could see it working in her face-wondering if Laura was insane, or she herself was insane, or whether the bright television world was brewing something dark and awful in its deepest voodoo corners. "It's as if they're magicians," she said at last. "And we're just people. "

"Yeah," Laura said. She lifted two fingers. "But we have solidarity, and they're busy killing each other."

Selous laughed.

"We're going to win, too."

They began talking about the others. Laura had long since memorized the list. Marianne Meredith, the television corre- spondent, had been the ringleader. It was she who had invented-or already knew, maybe-the best methods of smug- gling messages. Lacoste, the French diplomat, was their interpreter-his parents had been African émigrés, and he knew two of Mali's tribal languages.

They had tortured the three agents of Vienna. One of them had turned, the other two had been released or, probably, shot.

Steven Lawrence had been taken from an Oxfam camp.

The camps were often raided-they were dumping grounds for scop, the primary source of food for millions of Saharans.

The black market for single-cell protein was the major econ- omy of the region-the "government" of Mauritania, for instance, was little more than a scop cartel. Foreign handouts, a few potash mines, and an army-that was Mauritania.

Chad was a malignant welfare bureaucracy, a tiny fraction of aristocrats whose thugs periodically emptied automatic weapons into starving crowds. The Sudan was run by a radical Muslim lunatic who consulted dervishes while facto- ries washed away and airports cracked and burst. Algeria and

Libya were one-party states, more or less organized in the coastal provinces but roiling tribalist anarchy in their Saharan outback. Ethiopia's government was preserved by Vienna's fiat; it was as frail as a pressed bouquet, and under siege by a dozen rural "action fronts."

All of them drawing venom from the lethal inheritance of the last century, a staggering tonnage of outdated armaments, passed from government to government at knock-down prices.

From America to Pakistan to mujahideen to a Somalian splin- ter group with nothing to recommend it but a holy desperation for martyrdom. From Russia to a cadre of bug-eyed Marxist strongmen shooting anything that even looked like a bourgeois intellectual.... Billions in aid had been poured into the sub-Sahara, permanently warping governments into bizarre funnels of debt and greed, and as the situation worsened more and more arms were necessary for "order" and. "stability"

and "national security," the outside world heaved a cynical sigh of relief as its lethal junk was disposed of to people still desperate to kill each other....

At noon the convoy stopped. A soldier gave them water and gruel. They were in the Sahara now-they'd been driving all day. The driver unchained their legs. There was no place to run, not now.

Laura jumped out under the hammer blow of sun. A haze of heat distorted the horizons, marooning the convoy in a shimmering plaza of cracked red rock. The convoy had three trucks: the first carried soldiers, the second radio equipment, the third was theirs. And the two armored half-tracks in the rear. No one came out of the half-tracks or offered any food to their crews. Laura began to suspect that they had no crews.

They were robots, big carnivorous versions of a common taxi-bus.

The desert shimmer was seductive. She felt a hypnotic urge to run out into it, into the silver horizon. As if she would dissolve painlessly into the infinite landscape, vanish like dry ice and leave only pure thought and a voice from the whirlwind.

Too long inside a cell. The horizon was strange, it was pulling at her, as if it were trying too tug her soul out through the pupils of her eyes. Her head filled with strange pounding pulses of incipient heatstroke. She relieved herself quickly and climbed back into the canvas shade of the truck.

They drove all afternoon, all evening. There was no sand, it was various kinds of bedrock, blasted and Martian-looking.

Miles of heat-baked flints for hours and hours, then sandstone ridges in a million shades of dun and beige, each more tedious than the last. They passed another military convoy in the afternoon, and once a distant airplane flew across the south- ern horizon.

At night they left the road, drew the trucks in a circle. The soldiers set metal stakes, pitons, into the rock all around the camp. Monitors, Laura thought. They ate again and the sun fell, an eerie desert sunset that lit the horizon with roseate fire. The soldiers gave them each a cotton army blanket and they slept in the truck, on the benches, one foot cuffed to prevent them from sneaking up on a soldier in the dark and tearing him apart with their fingernails.

The heat fled out of the rocks as soon as the sun was gone.

It was bitterly cold all night, dry and arctic. In the first light of morning she could hear rocks cracking like gunshots as the sunlight hit.

The soldiers gassed up the trucks from jerry cans of fuel, which was too bad, because it occurred to her for the first time that a jerry can of fuel might be poured over the trucks and set alight, if she could get loose, and if she was strong enough to carry one, and if she had a match.

They had more gruel, with lentils in it this time. Then they were off again, the usual thirty miles an hour, jouncing hard, bruised and sucking dust from the two trucks ahead.

They had told each other everything by now. How Katje had grown up in a reeducation camp, because her parents were verkrampte, reactionaries, rather than verligte, liberals.

It was not bad as such camps went, she said. The Boers were used to camps. The British had invented them during the Boer

War, and in fact the very term "concentration camp" was invented by the British as a term for the place where they concentrated kidnapped Boer civilians. Katje's father had actually kept up his banking job in the city while rival black factions were busy "necklacing" one another, cramming tires full of petrol over the heads of victims and publicly roasting them alive... .

Azania had always been a series of camps, of migrant laborers crammed into barracks, or black townships kept in isolation by cops with rhino-hide whips and passcards, or intellectuals kept for years under "the ban," in which they were forbidden by law to join any group of human beings numbering more than three, and thus forming a kind of independent tribal homeland consisting of one person in a legal bell jar... .

Laura heard her say all this, this blond woman who looked so much like herself, and in return she could only say... well

... sure, I have problems too ... for instance my mother and

I don't get along all that well. I know it doesn't sound like much but I guess if you'd been me you'd think more of it....

The trucks slowed. They were winding downhill.

"I think we're getting somewhere," Laura said, stirring.

"Let me look," Katje said casually, and got up and shuf- fled to the back of the truck and peered outside around the back of the canvas, bracing herself. "I was right," she said.

"I see some concrete bunkers. There are jeeps and... oh, dear, it's a crater, Laura, a crater as big as a valley."

Then the half-track behind them blew up. It simply flew to pieces like a china figurine, instantly, gracefully. Katje looked at it with an expression of childish delight and Laura suddenly found herself down .on the floor of the truck, where she'd flung herself, some reflex hitting her faster than she could think. Roaring filled the air and the maddened stammer of automatic weapons, bullets piercing the canvas in a smooth line of stitching that left glowing holes of daylight and crossed the figure of Katje where she stood. Katje jumped just a bit as the line of stitching crossed her and turned and looked at

Laura with an expression of puzzlement and fell to her knees.

And the second half-track tumbled hard as something hit it in the forward axle and it went over smoldering, and the air was full of the whine of bullets. Laura slithered to where

Katje crouched on her knees. Katje put both hands to her stomach and brought them away caked with blood, and she looked at Laura with the first sign of understanding, and lay down on the floor of the truck, clumsily, carefully.

They were killing the soldiers in the front truck. She could hear them, dying. They didn't seem to be shooting back, it was all happening instantly, with lethal quickness, in sec- onds. She heard machine-gun fire raking the cab of her own truck, glass flying, the elegant ticking of supersonic metal piercing metal. More bullets came and ripped the wooden floor of the truck and bits of splinter flung themselves gaily into the air like deadly confetti. And again it came across, the old sword-through-a-barrel trick, thumb-sized rounds punch- ing through the walls below the canvas mounting with joyful shouts of impact. Silence.

More shots, close, point-blank. Mercy shots.

A dark hand clutching a gun came over the back of the truck. A figure in dust-caked goggles with its face wrapped in a dark blue veil. The apparition looked at the two of them and murmured something unintelligible. A man's voice. The veiled man vaulted over the back of the truck; landed in a crouch and pointed the gun at Laura. Laura lay frozen, feeling invisible, gaseous, nothing there but the whites of eyes.

The veiled man shouted and waved one arm outside the truck. He wore a blue cloak and woolen robes and his chest was clustered with blackened leather bags hung on thongs. He had a bandolier of cartridges and a curved dagger almost the size of a machete and thick, filthy sandals over bare, cal- loused feet. He stank like a wild animal, the radiant musk of days of desert survival and sweat.

Moments passed. Katje made a noise deep in her throat.

Her legs jerked twice and her lids closed, showing rims of white. Shock.

Another veiled man appeared at the back of the truck. His eyes were hidden in tinted goggles and he was carrying a shoulder-launched rocket. He aimed it into the truck. Laura looked at it, saw the sheen of a lens, and realized for the first time that it was a video camera.

"Hey," she said. She sat up, and showed the camera her bound hands.

The first marauder looked up at the second and said some- thing, a long fluid rush of polysyllables. The second nodded and lowered his camera.

"Can you walk?" he said.

"Yes, but my friend's hurt."

"Come on out then." He yanked down the back of the truck, one-handed. It screeched-bullets had bent it out of shape. Laura crawled out quickly.

The cameraman looked at Katje. "She's bad. We'll have to leave her."

"She's a hostage. Azanian. She's important."

"The Malians will stitch her up, then."

"No, they won't, they'll kill her! You can't let her die here! She's a doctor, she works in the camps!"

The first marauder returned at a trot, bearing the belt of the dead driver, with rows of bullets and a ring of keys. He studied Laura's handcuffs alertly, picked the correct key at once, and clicked them loose. He gave her the cuffs and keys with a little half-bow and an elegant hand to his heart.

Other desert raiders-about two dozen-were looting the broken trucks. They were riding thin, skeletal dune buggies the size of jeeps, all tubes, spokes, and wire. The cars bounded along, agilely, quiet as bicycles, with a wiry scrunching of metal-mesh wheels and faint creak of springs. Their drivers were wrapped in cloaks and veils. They looked puffy, huge, and ghostlike. They steered from saddles over heaps of cargo lashed down under canvas.

"We don't have time." The big raider with the camera waved at the others and shouted in their language. They whooped in return and the men on foot began mounting up and stowing loot: ammo, guns, jerry cans.

"I want her to live!" Laura shouted.

He stared down at her. The tall marauder in his goggles, his masked and turbanned face, body cinched with belts and weaponry. Laura met his eyes without flinching.

"Okay," he told her. "It's your decision." She felt the weight of his words. He was telling her she was free again.

Out of prison, in the world of decisions and consequences. A

fierce sense of elation seized her.

"Take my camera. Don't touch its triggers." The stranger took Katje in his arms and carried her to his own buggy, parked five yards from the truck.

Laura followed him, lugging the camera. The bulldozed roadbed scorched her bare feet and she hopped and lurched to the shade of the buggy. She looked down the slope.

The iron stump of a vaporized tower marked Ground Zero.

The atomic crater was not as deep as she'd expected. It was shallow and broad, marked with eerie streaks, puddles of glassy slag broken like cracked mud. It looked mundane, wretched, forgotten, like an old toxic-waste excavation.

Jeeps were peeling away from the bunker, roaring upslope.

They had soldiers in back, the test site's garrison, manning swivel-mounted machine guns.

From half a mile away they opened fire. Laura saw impact dust puffing twenty yards below them, and following that, languidly, the distant chatter of the shots.

The stranger was rearranging his cargo. Carefully, thought- fully. He glanced briefly at the approaching enemy jeeps, the way a man would glance at a wristwatch. He turned to Laura.

"You ride in back and hold her."

"All right."

"Okay, help me with her." They set Katje into the vacated cargo space, on her side. Katje's eyes were open again but they looked glassy, stunned.

Machine-gun fire clattered off the wreckage of one of the half-tracks.

The lead jeep. suddenly lurched clumsily into the air. It came down hard, pancaking, men and wreckage flying. Then the sounds. of the exploding land mine reached them. The two other jeeps pulled up short, fishtailing in the shoulder of the road. Laura climbed on, throwing her arm over Katje.

"Keep your head down." The stranger saddled up, threw the buggy into motion. They whirred away. Off the track, into wasteland.

In moments they were out of sight. It was low, rolling desert, studded with red, cracked rubble and heat-varnished boulders. The occasional waist-high thornbush, tinsel-thin wisps of dry grass. The afternoon heat was deadly, blasting up from the surface like X-rays.

A slug had hit Katje about two inches left of the navel and exited her back, nicking the floating rib. In the fierce dry heat both wounds had clotted quickly, dark shiny wads of con- gealed blood on her back and stomach. She had a bad cut on her shin, splinter damage, Laura thought.

Laura herself was untouched. She had barked a knuckle a little, flopping down for cover in the back of the truck. That was all. She felt amazed at her luck-until she considered the luck of a woman who had been machine-gunned twice in her life without even joining a goddamned army.

They covered about three miles, careening and weaving.

The marauder slowed. "They'll be after us," he shouted back at her. "Not the jeeps-aircraft. I've got to keep moving, and we'll spend some time in the sun. Get her under the tarp. And cover your head. "

"With what?"

"Look in the kit bag there. No, not that one! Those are land mines."

Laura loosened the tarp and pulled a flap over Katje, then tugged the kit bag loose. Clothes-she found a grimy military shirt. She draped it over her head and neck like a burnoose, and turbanned it around her forehead with both sleeves.

With much jarring and fumbling she managed to get Katje's handcuffs off. Then she flung both sets of them off the back of the truck, flung away the keys. Evil things. Like metal parasites.

She climbed up onto the cargo heap, behind her rescuer.

He passed her his goggles. "Try these." His eyes were bright blue.

She put them on. Their rubber rims touched her face, chilled with his sweat. The torturing glare faded at once. She was grateful. "You're American, aren't you?"

"Californian." He tugged his veil down, showing her his face. It was an elaborate tribal veil, yards of fabric, wrapping his face and skull in a tall, ridged turban, the ends of it draping his shoulders. Crude vegetable dye had stained his cheeks and mouth, streaking his creased Anglo face with indigo.

He had about two weeks of reddish beard stubble, shot with gray. He smiled briefly, showing a rack of impossibly white

American teeth.

He looked like a TV journalist gone horribly and perma- nently wrong. She assumed at once that he was a mercenary, some kind of military adviser. "Who are you people?"

"We're the Inadin Cultural Revolution. You?"

"Rizome Industries Group. Laura Webster."

"Yeah? You must have some story to tell, Laura Web- ster." He looked at her with sudden intense interest, like a sleepy cat spotting prey.

Without warning, she felt a sudden powerful flash of deja vu. She remembered traveling out to an exotic game park as a child, with her grandmother. They'd pulled up in the car to watch a huge male lion gnawing a carcass at the side of the road. The memory struck her: those great white teeth, tawny fur, the muzzle flecked with blood up to the eyes. The lion had looked up calmly at her through the window glass, with a look just like the one the stranger was giving her now.

"What's an Inadin?" Laura said.

"You know the Tuaregs? A Saharan tribe? No, huh?" He pulled the brow of his turban lower, shading his bare eyes.

"Well, no matter. They call themselves the 'Kel Tamashek.'

`Tuareg' is what the Arabs call them-it means `the godforsaken.'

" He was picking up speed again, weaving expertly around the worst of the boulders. The suspension soaked up shock-good design, she thought through reflex. The broad wire wheels barely left a track.

"I'm a journalist," he told her. "Freelance. I cover their activities. "

"What's your name?"

"Gresham. "

"Jonathan Gresham?"

Gresham looked at her for a long moment. Surprised, thinking it over. He was judging her again. He always seemed to be judging her. "So much for deep cover," he said at last.

"What's the deal? Am I famous now?"

"You're Colonel Jonathan Gresham, author of The Lawrence Doctrine and Postindustrial Insurgency?"

Gresham looked embarrassed. "Look, I was all wrong in that book. I didn't know anything back then, it's theory, half-ass bullshit mostly. You didn't read it, did you?"

"No, but I know people who really thought the world of that book."

"Amateurs."

She looked at Gresham. He looked like he'd been born in limbo and raised on the floor of hell. "Yeah, I guess so."

Gresham mulled it over. "You heard about me from your jailers, huh? I know they've read my stuff. Vienna read it too-didn't seem to do them much good, though. "

"It must mean something! Your bunch of guys on little bicycles just wiped out a whole convoy!"

Gresham winced a little, like an avant-garde artist praised by a philistine. "If I'd had better intelligence.... Sorry about your friend. Fortunes of war, Laura. "

"It could have just as easily been me."

"Yeah, you learn that after a while."

"Do you think she'll make it?"

"No, I don't. If one of us took a wound that bad, we'd have just put a bullet in him." He glanced at Laura. "I could do it,"

he, said. He was being genuinely generous, she could see that.

"She doesn't need more bullets, she needs surgery. Is there a doctor we can reach?"

He shook his head. "There's an Azanian relief camp, three days from here. But we're not going there-we need to regroup at our local supply dump. We have our own survival to look after-we can't make chivalrous gestures."

Laura reached forward and grabbed the thick robe at Gresham's shoulder. "She's a dying woman!"

"You're in Africa now. Dying women aren't rare here."

Laura took a deep breath.

She had reached bedrock.

She tried hard to think. She looked around herself, trying to clear her head. Her mind was all rags and tatters. The desert around her seemed to be evaporating her. All the complexities were going-it was stark and simple and ele- mental. "I want you to save her life, Jonathan Gresham."

"It's bad tactics," Gresham said. He kept his eyes from her, watching the road. "They don't know she's mortally wounded. If she's an important hostage, they'll expect us to head for that camp. And we haven't lived this long by doing what FACT expects."

She backed away from him. Switched gears. "If they touch that camp the Azanian Air Force will stomp all over what's left of their capital."

He looked at her as if she'd gone mad.

"It's true. Four days ago the Azanians hit Bamako, hard.

Fuel dumps, commandos, everything. From their aircraft carrier. "

"Well, I'll be damned." Gresham grinned suddenly. No reassurance there-it was feral. "Tell me more, Laura

Webster. "

"That's why they were taking us to the atom-bomb test site. To make a propaganda statement, frighten the Azanians.

I've seen their nuclear submarine. I even lived aboard it. For weeks. "

"Jesus Christ," Gresham said. "You saw all that? An eyewitness?"

"Yes. I did."

He believed her. She could see it was hard for him, that it was news that was changing the basic assumptions of his life.

Or at least the basic assumptions of his war, if there was any difference between his living and his warring. But he recog- nized that she was telling him the truth. It was coming across between them, something basic and human.

"We gotta do an interview," he muttered.

An interview. He had a camera, didn't he? She felt con- fused, relieved, obscurely ashamed. She looked back for that moral bedrock. It was still there. "Save my friend's life."

"We can try it." He stood up in the saddle and yanked something from his belt-a white folding fan. He flicked it open and held it over his head, waved it, sharp semaphore motions. For the first time Laura realized that there was another Tuareg in sight-a buglike profile, almost lost in heat haze, a mile to the north. A dotlike answering flicker.

Katje groaned in the back, a raw animal sound. "Don't let her drink too much," Gresham warned. "Mop her down instead. "

Laura moved into the back.

Katje was awake, conscious. There was something vast and elemental, terrifying, about her ordeal. There was so little that talking or thinking could do about it-no way to debate with death. Her face was like a skull and she was fighting alone.

As hours passed Laura did what she could. A word or two with Gresham and she found what little he had that could help. Padding for Katje's head and shoulders. Leather bags of water that tasted flat and distilled. Some skin grease that smelled like animal fat. Black smudge on cheekbones to cut the glare.

The exit wound in the back was worst. It was ragged and

Laura feared it would' soon turn septic. The scab broke open twice during the worst jolts and a little rill of blood ran across

Katje's spine.

They stopped once when they hit a boulder and the right front wheel began complaining, Then again when Gresham spotted what he thought were patrol planes-it was a pair of vultures.

As the sun set Katje began muttering aloud. Bits and pieces of a life. Her brother the lawyer. Mother's letters on flowered stationery. Tea parties. Charm school. Her mind groped in delirium for some vision, miles and years away. A tiny center of human order in a circle of desolate horizon.

Gresham drove until well after twilight. He seemed to know the country. She never saw him look at a map.

Finally he stopped in the channeled depth of an arroyo-a

"wadi," he called it. The sandy depths of the dry river were crowded with waist-high bushes that stank of creosote and were full of tiny irritating burrs.

Gresham dismounted, shouldering a duffel bag. He pulled his curved machete and began chopping bushes. "The planes are worst after dark," he said. "They use infrareds. If they hit us at all, they'll probably take out the scoot." He began placing bushes over the buggy, camouflaging it. "So we'll sleep away from it. With the baggage."

"All right." Laura crawled from the back of the buggy, battered, filthy, bone-weary. "What can I do to help?"

"You can dress yourself for the desert. Try the knapsack."

She took the knapsack around the far side of the truck and fumbled it open. Shirts. Spare sandals.' A long, coarse tunic of washed-out blue, wrinkled and wadded and stained. She shrugged out of her prison blouse.

God, she was so thin. She could see every rib. Thin and old and exhausted, like something that ought to be killed. She tunneled into the tunic-its shoulder seams came halfway down her biceps and the sleeves hung to her knuckles. It was thick though, and beaten soft with long wear. It reeked of

Gresham, as if he had embraced her.

Strange thought, dizzying. She was embarrassed. She was a spectacle, pathetic. Gresham couldn't want a madwoman....

The ground rose up and struck her. She lay in a heap of her own arms and legs, wondering. A muddle of time passed, vague pain and rushing waves of dizziness.

Gresham was gripping her arms.

She looked at him blankly. He gave her water. The water revived her enough to feel her own distress. "You passed out," he said. She nodded, understanding for the first time.

Gresham picked her up. He carried her like a bundle of balloons; she felt light, hollow, bird-boned.

There was a lean-to pegged to the wall of the arroyo.' A

windbreak with a short arching tent roof of desert camo-cloth.

Under the roof a dark figure crouched over the white-striped prison form of Katje-another of the Tuareg raiders, a long sniper's rifle strapped to his back. Gresham set Laura down, exchanged words with the Tuareg, who nodded somberly.

Laura crawled into the tent, felt rough wool beneath her fingers-a carpet.

She curled up on it. The Tuareg was humming tonelessly to himself, under a ramp of blazing stars.

She was woken by the steaming smell of tea. It was barely dawn, a red auroral brightening in the east. Someone had thrown a warm rug over her during the night. She had a pillow too, a burlap bag stenciled in weird angular script. She sat up, aching.

The Tuareg handed her a cup, gently, courteously, as if it were something precious. The hot tea was dark brown and frothy and sweet, with a sharp minty reek. Laura sipped it. It had been boiled, not brewed, and it hit her like a hard narcotic, astringent and strong. It was foul, but she could feel it toughening her throat like tanned leather, bracing her for another day's survival.

The Tuareg half turned away, shyly, and discreetly lifted his veil. He slurped noisily, appreciatively. Then he opened a drawstring bag and offered it to her. Little brown pellets of something-like peanuts. Some kind of dried scop. It tasted like sugared sawdust. Breakfast. She ate two handfuls.

Gresham emerged from the lightening gloom, an enormous figure wrapped to the eyes, yet another bag slung over his shoulder. He was tossing handfuls of something over the dirt, with swift, ritual gestures. Tracer dust, maybe? She had no idea.

"She made it through the night," Gresham told her, dust- ing his hands. "Even spoke a little this morning. Stubborn, those Boers."

Laura stood up, painfully. She felt ashamed, "I'm not much use, am I?"

"It's not your world, is it." Gresham helped the Tuareg unpeg and fold the tent. "Not much pursuit, this time.... We planted some heat flares, maybe that sidetracked the planes.

Or they may think we were Azanian commandos.... I hope so. We might provoke something interesting."

His relish terrified her. "But if FACT has the Bomb.... You can't provoke people who can destroy whole cities!"

He was unimpressed. "The world's full of cities. " Gresham glanced at a wristwatch on a braided leather bracelet. "Got a long day ahead, let's move."

He'd repacked the buggy-shifted some of his cargo to another truck. Katje lay in a nest of carpet, shaded by the tarp, her eyes open.

"Good morning," she whispered.

Laura sat beside her, bracing her back and legs. Gresham kicked the buggy into motion. It whined reluctantly as it picked up speed-battery draining, she thought.

She took Katje's wrist. Light, fluttery pulse. "We're gonna get you back to your own people, Katje."

Katje blinked, her lids veiny and pale. She forced the words. "He is a savage, an anarchist...."

"Try to rest. You and I, we're gonna live through this.

Live to tell about it." The sun peered over the horizon, a vivid yellow blister of heat.

Time passed, and the heat mounted sullenly as the miles passed. They were leaving the deep Sahara and crossing country with something more akin to soil. This had been grazing land once-they passed the mummies of dead cattle, ancient bone stick-puppets in cracked rags of leather.

She had never realized the scale of the African disaster. It was continental, planetary. They had traveled hundreds of miles without glimpsing another human being, without seeing anything but a few wheeling birds and the tracks of lizards.

She'd thought Gresham was being cavalier, deliberately bru- tal, but she understood now how truly little he must care for

FACT and its weaponry. They lived here, it was their home.

Atomic bombardment could scarcely have made it worse. It would only make more of it.

At midafternoon a FACT pursuit plane found one of the

Tuareg buggies and torched it. Laura never even saw the plane, no sign of the deadly encounter except a distant column of smoke. They stopped and sought cover for half an hour, until the drone had exhausted its fuel or ammo.

Flies found them immediately as they waited. Huge, bold

Saharan flies that settled on Katje's blood-stained clothes like magnets. They had to be knocked loose, slapped away, be- fore they would leave. Even then they moved only in short buzzing arcs and lit again. Laura fought them grimly, wincing as they landed on her goggles, tried to sip moisture from her nose and lips.

At last the scattered caravan passed signals by their semaphore.

The driver had survived unwounded; a companion had picked him up and packed out the usable wreckage.

"Well, that's torn it," Gresham told her as they drove on.

From somewhere he had dug up a battered pair of mirrored sunglasses. "They know where we're heading now, if they didn't before. If we had any sense we'd lie low, rest up, work on the vehicles. "

"But she'll die."

"The odds say she won't even make it through the night."

"If she can make it, then we can, too."

"Not a bad bet," he said.

They stopped after dusk in a dead farming village of roof- less, wind-carved adobe walls. There were thornbushes in the ruins of a corral and a long, creeping gully had split the village threshing ground. The soil in the rudimentary irrigation ditches was so heavily salinized that it gleamed with a salted crust. The deep stone well was dry. People had lived here once-generation after generation, a thousand tribal years.

They left the buggy hidden in one of the ruined houses and set up camp in the depths of a gully, under the stars. Laura had more strength this time-she was no longer giddy and beaten. The desert had sand-blasted her down to some reflexive layer of vitality. She had given up worrying. It was an animal's asceticism.

Gresham set up the tent and heated a bowl of soup with an electric coil. Then he vanished, off on foot to check on some outflung post of his caravan. Laura sipped the oily protein broth gratefully. The smell of it woke Katje where she lay.

"Hungry," she whispered.

"No, you shouldn't eat."

"Please, I must. I must, just a little. I don't want to die hungry. "

Laura thought it over. Soup. It wasn't much worse than water, surely.

"You've been eating," Katje accused her, her eyes glazed and ghostly. "You had so much. And I had nothing."

"All right,- but not too much."

"You can spare it."

"I'm trying to think of what's best for you. No answer, just pain-brimming eyes full of suspicion and fever- ish hope. Laura tilted the bowl and Katje gulped desperately.

"God, that's so much better." She smiled, an act of heart- breaking courage. "I feel better.... Thank you so much."

She curled away, breathing harshly.

Laura leaned back in her sweat-stiff djellaba and dozed off.

She woke when she sensed Gresham climbing into the lean-to.

It was bitterly cold again, that lunar Saharan cold, and she could feet heat radiating off the bulk of him, large and male and carnivorous. She sat up and helped him kick his way under the carpet.

"We made good time today," he murmured. The soft voice of the desert, a bare disturbance of the silence. "If she lives, we can make it to her camp by midmorning. I hope the place isn't full of Azanian commandos. The long arm of imperialist law and order."

" `Imperialist.' That word doesn't mean anything to me."

"You gotta hand it to 'em," Gresham said. He was-looking down at Katje, who lay heavily, unconscious. "Once it looked like their little anthill was sure to go, but they pulled through somehow.... The rest of Africa has fallen apart, and every year they move a little farther north, them and their fucking cops and rule books."

"They're better than FACT! At least they help."

"Hell, Laura, half of FACT are white fascists who split when South Africa went one-man, one-vote. There's not a dime's worth of difference.... Your doctor friend may have a carrot instead of a stick, but the carrot's just the stick by other means. "

"I don't understand." It seemed so unfair. "What do you want?"

"I want freedom." He fumbled in his duffel bag. "There's more to us than you'd think, Laura, seeing us on the run like this. The Inadin Cultural Revolution-it's not just another bullshit cover name, they are cultural, they're fighting for it, dying for it.... Not that what we have is pure and noble, but the lines crossed here. The line of population and the line of resources. They crossed in Africa at a place called disaster.

And after that everything's more or less a muddle. And more or less a crime."

Deja vu swept over her. She laughed quietly. "I've heard this before. In Grenada and Singapore, in the havens. You're an islander too. A nomad island in a desert sea." She paused.

"I'm your enemy, Gresham."

"I know that," he told her. "I'm just pretending otherwise."

"I belong out there, if I ever get back."

"Corporate girl. "

"They're my people. I have a husband and child I haven't seen in two years."

The news didn't seem to surprise him. "You've been in the

War," he said: "You can go back to the place you called home, but it's never the same."

It was true. "I know it. I can feel it inside me. The burden of what I've seen."

He took her hand. "I want to hear all of it. All about you,

Laura, everything you know. I am a journalist. I work under other names. Sacramento Internet, City of Berkeley Munici- pal Video Cooperative, about a dozen others, off and on. I've got my backers.... And I've got video makeup in one of the bags. "

He was very serious. She began laughing. It turned her bones to water. She fell against him in the dark. His arms surrounded her. Suddenly they were kissing, his beard raking her face. Her lips and chin were sunburned and she could feel the bristles piercing through a greasy lacquer of oil and sweat.

Her heart began hammering wildly, a manic exaltation as if she'd been flung off a cliff. He was pinning her down. It was coming quick and she was ready for it-nothing mattered.

Katje groaned aloud at their feet, a creaking, unconscious sound. Gresham stopped, then rolled off her. "Oh, man," he said. "Sorry."

"Okay," Laura gasped.

"Too weird," he said reluctantly. He sat up, pulling his robed arm from under her head. "She's down there dying in that fucking Dachau getup ... and I left my condoms in the scoot."

"I guess we need those."

"Hell, yes, we do, this is Africa. Either one of us could have the virus and not know for years." He was blunt about it, not embarrassed. Strong.

She sat up. The air crackled with their intimacy. She took his hand, caressed it. It didn't hurt to do it. It was better now between them, the tension gone. She felt open to him and glad to be open. The best of human feelings.

"It's okay," she said. "Put your arm around me. Hold me. It's good."

"Yeah." Long silence. "You wanna eat?"

Her stomach lurched. "Scop, God, I'm sick of it."

"I've got some California abalone and a couple of tins of smoked oysters I've been saving for a special occasion."

Her mouth flooded with hunger. "Smoked oysters. No. Really?"

He patted his duffel bag. "Right here. In my bail-out bag.

Wouldn't want to lose 'em, even if they torched the scoot.

Hold on, I'll light a candle." He pulled the zip. Light flared.

Her eyes shrank. "Will the planes see. that?"

The candle caught, backlighting his head. Snarl of reddish- brown hair. "If they do, let's die eating oysters." He pulled three tins from the bottom of the bag. Their bright American paper gleamed. Treasure marvels from the empire of consumerism.

He opened one tin with his knife. They ate with their fingers, nomad style. The rich flavor hit Laura's shriveled taste buds like an avalanche. The aroma flooded her whole head; she felt dizzy with pleasure. Her face felt hot and there was a faint ringing in her ears. "In America, you can have these every day," she said. She had to say it aloud, just to test the miracle of it.

"They're better when you can't have them," he said. "It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? Perverse. Like hitting your head with a hammer 'cause it feels so good when you stop." He drank the juice out of the can. "Some people are wired that way."

"Is that why you came to the desert, Gresham?"

"Maybe," he said. "The desert's pure. The dunes-all lines and form. Like good computer graphics." He set the can aside. "But that's not all of it. This place is the core of disaster. Disaster is where I live."

"But you're an American," she said, looking down at

Katje. "You chose to come here."

He thought about it. She could feel him working up to something. Some deliberate confession.

"When I was a kid in grade school," he said, "some network guys with cameras showed up in my classroom one day. They wanted to know what we thought about the future.

They did some interviews. Half of us said they'd be doctors, or astronauts, and all that crap. And the other half just said they figured they'd fry at Ground Zero." He smiled distantly.

"I was one of those kids. A disaster freak. Y'know, you get used to it after a while. You get to where you feel uneasy when things start looking up." He met her eyes. "You're not like that, though."

"No," she said. "Born too late, I guess. I was sure I could make things better."

"Yeah," he said. "That's my excuse, too."

Katje stirred, listlessly.

"You want some abalone?"

Laura shook her head. "Thanks, but I can't. I can't enjoy it, not now, not in front of her." The rich food was flooding her system with a rush of drowsiness. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Is she going to die?"

No answer.

"If she dies, and you don't go to the camp, what'll you do with me?"

Long silence. "I'll take you to my harem where I'll cover your body with silver and emeralds."

"Good God." She stared at him. "What a wonderful lie."

"No, I won't. I'll find some way to get you back to your Net."

"After the interview?"

He closed his eyes. "I'm not sure that's a good idea after all. You might have a future in the outside world, if you kept your mouth shut, about FACT and the Bomb and Vienna. But if you try to tell what you know ... it's a long shot."

"I don't care," she said. "It's the truth and the world has to know it. I've got to tell it, Gresham. Everything."

"It's not smart," he said. "They'll put you away, they won't listen."

"I'll make them listen, I can do it."

"No, you can't. You'll end up a nonperson, like me.

Censored, forgotten. I know, I've tried. You're not big enough to change the Net."

"Nobody's big enough. But it's got to change."

He blew out the light.

Katje woke them before dawn. She had vomited and was coughing. Gresham lit the candle, quickly, and Laura knelt over her.

Katje was bloated, and radiant with fever. The scab had broken on her stomach and she was bleeding again. The wound smelled bad, a death smell, shit and infection. Gresham held the candle over her. "Peritonitis, I think."

Laura felt a rush of despair. "I shouldn't have fed her."

"You fed her?"

"She begged me to! I had to! It was a mercy...."

"Laura, you can't feed someone who's been gut-shot."

"Goddamn it! There isn't any right thing to do with some- one like this...." She brushed away tears: rage. "Goddamn it, she's going to die, after everything!"

"She's not dead yet. We don't have that far now. Let's go."

They loaded her into the truck, stumbling in darkness.

Amazingly, Katje began to speak. Mumbles, in English and

Afrikaans. Prayers. She wouldn't die and now she was calling on God. To whatever mad God ran Africa, as if He were watching and condoning all this.

The camp was a square mile of white concrete block- houses, surrounded by tall chain-link fence. They rolled up a roadway lined by fences on either side that led to the center of the place.

Children had rushed the fence. Hundreds of them, faces rushing past. Laura could not look at them. She stared at a single face among the crowd. A black teenaged girl in a bright red polyester pinafore from some charity bale of Amer- ican clothing. A dozen cheap plastic digital watches hung like bangles on her rail-thin forearms.

She had caught Laura's eye. It galvanized her. She thrust her arms through the chain-link and begged enthusiastically.

"Mam'selle, mam'selle! Le the de Chine, mam'selle! La canne a sucre!" Gresham drove on grimly. The girl screamed louder, shaking the fence with her thin arms, but her voice was drowned in the shouting of others. Laura almost turned to look back, but stopped at the last moment, humiliated.

There were gates ahead. A striped military parachute had been spread for shade. Black soldiers in speckled desert fa- tigues, with broad-brimmed ranger's hats pinned up on one side with a regimental badge. Commandos, she thought, Azanian troops. Beyond the closed gates was a smaller camp within a camp, with taller buildings, Quonset huts, a helicopter pad.

An administrative center. Gresham slowed. "I'm not going into this fucking place."

"It's all right, I'll handle it."

One of the guards blew a whistle, and held up his hand.

They looked curious about the lone buggy, not particularly concerned. They looked well fed. City soldiers. Amateurs.

Laura jumped down, flopping in Gresham's spare sandals.

"Medic!" she screamed. "I've got a wounded Azanian, she's camp personnel! Get a stretcher!"

They rushed forward to look. Gresham sat in his saddle, looming above them aloofly, in his flowing robes, his head wrapped in the veil and turban. A soldier with stripes ap- proached her. "Who the fuck are you?" he said.

"I'm the one who brought her in. Hurry it up, she's dying!

Him, he's an American journalist and he's wired for sound, so watch that language, Corporal."

The soldier stared down at her. Her stained tunic, a dirty shirt turbanned around her head, eyes undersmudged with black grease.

"Lieutenant," he said, hurt. "My rank is lieutenant, miss."

She talked with the Azanian administrators in one of their long Quonset huts. Wall shelves bulged with canned goods, medical equipment, spare parts packed in grease. Heavy insu- lation on the rounded walls and ceiling cut the roar of their air conditioners.

A camp trusty in a white jacket, his cheeks ridged with tribal scars, circled among them with iced bottles of Fanta orange pop.

She'd given them only the sketchiest version of events, but the Azanians were jumpy and confused, and didn't seem to expect much from a desert apparition like herself. The camp's director was a portly pipe-smoking black Azanian named

Edmund Mbaqane. Mbaqane was bravely attempting to look bureaucratically unflappable and very much on top of things.

"We're so very grateful, Mrs. Webster ... forgive me if I seemed abrupt at first. To hear yet another story of this genocidal Bamako regime-it does make one's blood boil."

Mbaqane hadn't boiled very vigorously-none of them had. They were civilians thousands of miles from home, and they were exposed, and they were twitchy. They were glad they had their hostage back-one of their own crew-but she hadn't come through government channels and they clearly wondered what it meant.

The Azanian Civil Action Corps seemed to have been assembled for multiracial political correctness. There were a pair of black ("Coloured") orderlies. Briefly, earlier, Laura had met a little slump-shouldered woman in braids and sneak- ers, Dr. Chandrasekhar-but she was now in the clinic, tend- ing to Katje. Laura surmised that little Dr. Chandrasekhar was the life and soul of the place-she was the one who talked fastest and looked most exhausted.

There was also an Afrikaaner named Barnaard, who seemed to be some kind of diplomat or liaison. His hair was brown, but his skin was a glossy, artificial black. Barnaard seemed to have a better grasp of the political situation than the others, which was probably why his breath smelled of whiskey and he stayed close to the paratroop captain. The captain was a Zulu, a bluff, ugly customer who looked like he'd be pretty good in a bar fight.

They were all scared to death. Which was why they kept reassuring her. "You may rest easy, Mrs. Webster," the director told her. "The Bamako regime will not be trying any more adventures! They won't be buzzing this camp again.

Not while the Azanian aircraft carrier Oom Paul is patrolling the Gulf of Guinea."

"She's a good ship," said the paratroop captain.

Barnaard nodded and lit a cigarette. He was smoking Chi- nese "Panda Brand" unfiltereds. "After yesterday's incident,

Niger protested the violation of her airspace in the strongest possible terms. And Niger is a Vienna signatory. We expect

Viennese personnel here, in this very camp, by tomorrow morning. Whatever their quarrel with us, .1 don't believe

Bamako would care to offend the Viennese."

Laura wondered if Barnaard believed what he'd said. The isolationist Azanians seemed to have far more faith in Vienna than people who were more in the swing of things. "You have any of that suntan oil?" Laura asked him.

He looked a bit offended. "Sorry."

"I wanted to see the label.... You know who makes it?"

He brightened. "Surely. A Brazilian concern. Unitika-something."

"Rizome-Unitika."

"Oh, so, they're one of yours, are they?" Barnaard nod- ded at her, as if it explained a lot. "Well, I have nothing against multinationals! Any time you fellows would like to begin your investments again-under proper supervision, of course ...

A printer began chattering. News from home. The others drifted over. Director Mbaqane moved closer to Laura. "I'm not sure I understand the role of this American journalist you mentioned. "

"He was with the Tuaregs."

The director tried not to look confused. "Yes, we do have some so-called Tuaregs here, or rather, Kel Tamashek.... I take it that he wants to assure himself that they are being treated in a fair and equal manner?"

"It's more of a cultural interest," Laura said. "He did mention something about wanting to talk to them."

"Cultural? They're coming along very nicely.... Perhaps

I could send out a deputation of tribal elders-put his mind to rest. We gladly shelter any ethnic group in need-Bambara,

Marka, Songhai... . We have quite a large contingent of

Sarakole, who are not even Nigeran nationals."

He seemed to expect an answer. Laura sipped her orange pop and nodded. Barnaard drifted back-he had quickly as- sessed the message as meaningless. "Oh, no. Not another journo, not now."

The director shut him up with a glance. "As you can see,

Mrs. Webster, we're rather pressed at the moment ... but if you require a tour, I'm sure that Mr. Barnaard would be more than happy to, ah, explain our policies to the international press."

"You're very thoughtful," Laura said. "Unfortunately I have to do an interview myself."

"Well, I can understand that-it must be quite a scoop.

Hostages, freed from the notorious prisons of Bamako." He fiddled with his pipe avuncularly. "It'll certainly be the talk of Azania. One of our own, returned to us from bondage.

Quite a boost for our morale-especially in the midst of this crisis." The director was talking over and through her for the benefit of his own people. It was working, too-he was cheering them up. She felt better about him.

He went on. "I know that you and Dr. Selous must be- are-very close. The sacred bond between those who have struggled together for freedom! But you needn't worry, Mrs.

Webster. Our prayers are with Katje Selous! I am sure she will pull through!"

"I hope so. Take good care of her. She was brave."

"A national heroine! Of course we will. And if there's anything we can do for you ... "

"I thought, maybe a shower."

Mbaqane laughed. "Good heavens. Of course, my dear.

And clothing.... Sara is about your size...."

"I'll keep this, uh, djellaba." She had puzzled him. "I'm going on camera with it, it's a better image."

"Oh, I see-... yes."

Gresham was doing a stand-up at the edge of camp. Laura circled him, careful to stay out of camera range.

She was shocked by the beauty of his face.. He had shaved and put on full video makeup: eyeliner, lip rouge, powder.

His voice had changed: it was mellifluous, each word pro- nounced with an anchorman's precision.

.. the image of a desolate wasteland. But the Sahel was once the home of black Africa's strongest, most prosperous states. The Songhai empire, the empires of Mali and Ghana, the holy city of Timbuktu with its scholars and libraries. To the Moslem world the Sahel was a byword for dazzling wealth, with. gold, ivory, crops of all kinds. Huge caravans crossed the Sahara, fleets of treasure canoes traveled the

Niger River ... "

She walked past him. The rest of his caravan had arrived, and the Tuaregs had set up camp. Not the rags and lean-tos they'd skulked under while raiding, but six large, sturdy- looking shelters. They were prefabricated domes, covered in desert camo-fabric. Inside they were braced with mesh-linked metallic ribs.

From the backs of their skeletal desert cars, the hooded nomads were unrolling long linked tracks that looked like tank treads. In harsh afternoon sunlight the treads gleamed with black silicon. They were long racks of solar-power cells.

They hooked the buggies' wheel hubs to long jumper cables from the power grid. They moved with fluid ease; it was as if they were watering camels. They chatted quietly in

Tamashek.

While one group was recharging their buggies, the others rolled out mats in the shade of one of the domes. They began brewing. tea with an electric heat coil. Laura joined them.

They seemed mildly embarrassed by her presence, but ac- cepted it as an interesting anomaly. One of them pulled a tube of protein from an ancient leather parcel and cracked it_ open over his knee. He offered her a wet handful, bowing. She scraped it from his long fingertips and ate it and thanked him.

Gresham arrived with his cameraman. He was wiping his powdered face with an oiled rag, fastidiously. "How'd it go in camp?"

"I wasn't sure they'd let me back out."

"They don't work that way," Gresham said. "It's the desert that locks people in there...." He sat beside her.

"Did you tell them about the Bomb?"

She shook her head. "I wanted to, but I just couldn't.

They're so jumpy already, and there's commandos with guns... . But Katje will tell them, if she comes around. It's all so confused-I'm confused. I was afraid they'd panic and lock me away. And you, too."

The thought amused him. "What, come out and tangle with us? I don't think so." He patted the camera. "I had a talk with that para captain, when he came out to give us the once-over... . I know how he's thinking. Classic Afrikaaner tactics: he's got his covered wagons- in a circle, every man to the ramparts, ready to repel the Zulus. Of course he's a Zulu himself, but he's read the rule books... . Got a camp full of childlike savage refugees to keep calm and pacified... . He's got us figured for friendlies, though. So far."

"Vienna's coming, too."

"Christ." Gresham thought about it. "A little Vienna, or a lot of Vienna?"

"They didn't say. I guess it depends on what Vienna wants. They gave me some song-and-dance about protests from the government of Niger."

"Well, Niger's no help, eighty-year-old Soviet tanks and an army that riots and burns down Niamey' every other year... . If there's a lot of Vienna, it could be trouble. But they wouldn't send a lot of Vienna to a refugee camp. If

Vienna were moving in force against Mali they'd just hit Bamako."

"They wouldn't ever do that. They're too afraid of the Bomb."

"I dunno. Spooks make lousy soldiers, but they took out

Grenada six months ago, and that was a tough nut to crack. "

"They did that? Invaded Grenada?"

"Wiped 'em out in their hacker ratholes.... Stupid tactics though, frontal assault, clumsy.... They lost over twelve hundred men." He raised his brows at her shock. "You've been to Grenada, Laura-I thought you knew. FACT should have told you-it was such a triumph for their goddamn policy. "

"They never told me. Anything."

"The cult of secrecy," he said. "They live by it." He paused, glancing toward the camp. "Oh, good. They've sent us but some of their tame Tamashek."

Gresham withdrew within the dome, motioning Laura with him. Half a dozen camp inmates arrived outside, trudging reluctantly.

They were old men. They wore T-shirts and paper baseball hats and Chinese rubber sandals and ragged polyester pants.

The Inadin Tuaregs greeted them with languid, ritual po- liteness. Gresham translated for her. Sir is well? Yes, very well, and yourself? Myself and mine are very well, thank you. And sir's people, they are also well? Yes, very well.

Thanks be to God, then. Yes, thanks be to God, sir.

One of the Inadin lifted the kettle high and began pouring tea with a long, ceremonial trickle. Everyone had tea. They then began boiling it again, pouring some coarse sugar over a kettle already half full of leaves. They spoke for some time about the tea, sitting politely, brushing without irritation at circling flies. The day's most virulent heat faded.

Gresham translated for her-strange bits of solemn plati- tude. They stayed in the back of the tent, out of the circle.

Time passed slowly, but she was happy enough to sit beside him, letting her mind go desert blank.

Then one of the Inadin produced a flute. A second found an intricate xylophone of wood and gourds, bound with leather.

He tapped it experimentally, tightening a cord, while a third reached inside his robe. He tugged a leather thong-at the end was a pocket synthesizer.

The man with the flute opened his veil; his black face was stained blue with sweat-soaked indigo dye. He blew a quick trill on the flute, and they were off.

The rhythm built up, high resonant notes from the buzzing xylophone, the off-scale dipping warble of the flute, the eerie, strangely primeval bass of the synthesizer.

The others punctuated the music with claps and sudden piercing shrieks from behind their veils. Suddenly one began to sing in Tamashek. "He sings about his synthesizer,"

Gresham murmured.

"What does he say?"

I humbly adore the acts of the Most High,

Who has given to the synthesizer what is better than a soul.

So that, when it plays, the men are silent,

And their hands cover their veils to hide their emotions.

The troubles of life were pushing me into the tomb,

But thanks to the synthesizer,

God has given me back my life.

The music stopped. The camp refugees clapped a little, then stopped, confused. Gresham glanced at his watch, then rose to his feet, lugging his camera. "That's just a taste of it," he told Laura. "They'll be back for more, later-and bring their families I hope...."

"Let's do the interview."

He hesitated. "You sure you're up for it?"

"Yeah."

She followed him to another tent. It was guarded by two of the Inadin Tuaregs and heaped with their baggage. There were carpets underfoot and a battery, a spare one from the buggies. Hooked to it, he had a keyboard and screen-a custom model with a console-of hand-carved redwood.

Gresham sat cross-legged before it. "I hate this goddamned machine," he announced, and ran his hand lingeringly over its sleek lines. He hooked his videocam to one of the con- sole's input ports.

"Gresham, where's your makeup case?"

He passed it to her. Laura opened the hand mirror. She was so gaunt and thin-a look like anorexia, rage turned help- lessly in on itself.

The hell. She jabbed her fingertips in powder, smeared her hollow cheeks. Somebody was going to pay.

She began rouging her lips. "Gresham, we have to figure how to hustle those Azanians. They're old-fashioned, funny about information. They wouldn't let me near their damned telex, and they'll want to clear everything with Pretoria."

"We don't need them," he said.

"We do if we want to reach the Net! And they'll want to see the tape first-they'll learn everything."

He shook his head. "Laura, look around you."

She put down the mirror and humored him. They were in a . dome. Fabric over metal ribs and chicken wire.

"You're sitting under a satellite dish," he told her.

She was stunned. "You access satellites?"

"How the hell else do you touch the Net from the middle of the Sahara? The coverage is spotty, but during the right tracking times you can make a pass."

"How can you do that? Where does the money come from?" An awful thought struck her. "Gresham, are you running a data haven?"

"No. I used to deal with them, though. All the time." He thought about it. "Maybe I should start my own haven now.

The competition's down, and I could use the bread."

"Don't do it. Don't even think it."

"You must know that biz pretty well. You could be my adviser." The joke fell completely flat. He looked at her, meditatively. "You'd come right after me, wouldn't you.

You and your little legions of straight-arrow corporate people."

She said nothing.

"Sorry," he said. "It hardly matters at the moment... .I wouldn't want to send this tape to a data haven anyway."

"What do you mean? Where would you send it?"

"To Vienna, of course. Let 'em see that I know-that I've got the goods on 'em. FACT has the Bomb, and they've blackmailed Vienna. So Vienna cut a deal with them-let 'em beat the crap out of the havens, while they covered up for nuclear terrorists. Vienna's failed, and I know they've failed.

To shut me up, they might try to hunt me down and kill me, but I've gotten pretty good at avoiding that. With any luck they'd buy me off instead. Then leave me alone-the way they've left Mali alone."

"That's not enough! Everyone must know. The whole world."

Gresham shook his head. "I think we could hustle Vienna, if we play it right. They don't mind buying people when they have to. They'll pay for our silence. More than you might think. "

She held the mirror-to her face. "I'm sorry, Gresham. I simply, truly don't care about Vienna or its money. That's not who I am. I care about the world I have to live in."

"I don't live in your world," he told her. "Too bad if that makes me sound crass. But I can tell you this much-if you want to go back, and be-who-you-are, and live your cozy life in that whole world of yours, you'd better not try to kick its jams out. Maybe I could survive a stunt like that, ducking and dodging out here in the desert, but I don't think you could.

The world doesn't give a shit how noble your motives are- it'll roll right over you.. That's how it works." He was lecturing her. "You can hustle-cut a corner here, a corner there-but you can't tackle the world...."

She examined her hair in the mirror. Wild prison hair.

She'd washed it in the Azanian camp and the dry heat had fluffed it out. It stood up all over her head, like an explosion.

He kept after her. "It's no use even trying. The Net will never run this tape, Laura. News services never run tapes of terrorist hostages. Except for Vienna, who knows it's true, everyone will think it's wild bullshit. That you're speaking under duress, or that the whole thing is bogus."

"You took tape of that nuclear test site, didn't you?" she said. "You can tag it on to my statement. Let's see 'em refute that one!"

"I'll do that, certainly-but they could refute it anyway."

"You've heard my story," she told him. "I made you believe it, didn't I? It happened, Gresham. It's the truth."

"I know it is." He handed her a leather canteen.

"I can do it," she told him, feeling brittle. "Tackle the world. Not just some little corner of-it, but the whole great grinding mass of it. I know I can do it. I'm good at it."

"Vienna will step on it."

"It's gonna step on Vienna." She squeezed a stream of canteen water into her mouth and shoved the makeup kit out of camera range. She set the canteen by her knee.

"It's too big for me to hold anymore," she said. "I've got to tell it. Now. That's all I know." At the sight of the camera, something was rising up within her, adrenaline-wild and strong. Electric. All that fear and weirdness and pain, packed down in an iron casing. "Put me on tape, Gresham.

I'm ready. Go."

"You're on."

She looked into the world's glass eye. "My name is Laura

Day Webster. I'm gonna start with what happened to me on the Ali Khamenei out of Singapore ... "

She became pure glass, a conduit. No script, she was winging it, but it came out pure and strong. Like it would carry her forever. The truth, pouring through.

Gresham interrupted her with questions. He had a prepared list of them. Sharp, to the point. It was like he was stabbing her. It should have hurt, but it only broke open the flow. She reached some level that she'd never touched before. An ec- stasy, pure fluid art. Possession.

She couldn't keep that edge. It was timeless while she had it, but then she could feel it go. She was hoarse and she began stumbling a little. Sliding off at the edges, passion slipping into babble.

"That's it," he said at last.

"Repeat the question?"

"I don't have any more. That's it. It's over." He shut off the camera.

"Oh." She wiped her palms on the carpet, absently.

Drenched. "How long was it?"

"You talked for ninety minutes. I think I can edit it down to an hour."

Ninety minutes. It had felt like ten. "How was I?"

"Amazing." He was respectful. "That business when they buzzed the camp-that's the sort of thing nobody could fake."

She was puzzled. "What?

"You know. When the jets came over just now." He stared at her. "Jets. The Malians just buzzed the camp."

"I didn't even hear it."

"Well, you looked up, Laura. And you waited. Then you went right on talking."

"The demon had me," she said. "I don't even know what the hell I said." She touched her cheek. It came away black with mascara. Of course-she'd been weeping. "I've run my makeup all over my goddamn face! And you let me."

"Cinema verite," he said. "It's real. Raw and teal. Like a live grenade."

"Then throw it," she told him. Giddily. She let herself go and fell back where she sat. Her head hit a buried rock under the carpet, but the dull jolt of pain seemed a central part of the experience.

"I didn't know it would be like this," he said. There was real fear in his voice. It was as if, for the first time, he had realized he had something to lose. "It might just happen-it could get loose in the Net. People might really believe it."

He shifted uneasily where he sat. "I've gotta figure the angles first. What if Vienna falls? That would be great, but they might just reform and come back with bigger teeth this time. In which case I've fucked myself and everything I've tried to create here. Crap like that can happen, when you throw live grenades."

"It has to get loose," she said passionately. "It will get loose, sometime. FACT knows, Vienna knows, maybe even governments.... A secret this huge is bound to come out, sooner or later. It's not just our doing. We just happen to be the people on the spot."

"I like that line of reasoning, Laura. It'll sound good if they catch us."

"That doesn't matter. Anyway, they can't touch us, if everybody learns the truth! Come on, Gresham! You've got goddamn satellites, think of a way to get through, damn it!"

He sighed. "I already have," he said. He got to his feet and walked past her, unrolling a spool of cable. After a moment she rose on one elbow and looked out the triangular pie slice of door, after him. It was late afternoon now, and the Tuaregs were throwing two of the domes onto their backs.

Yawning teacup mouths open to the dry Saharan sky.

Gresham came back. He looked down at her as she sprawled on the carpet, breathing. "You okay?"

"I'm hollow. Eviscerated. Absolved."

"Yeah," he said. "You talked just like that, the whole time." He sat cross-legged before his console and typed away, carefully.

Minutes passed.

A woman's voice erupted from the console.

"Attention North Africa broadcast source, latitude eighteen degrees, ten minutes, fifteen seconds; longitude five degrees, ten minutes, eighteen seconds. You are broadcasting on a frequency reserved for the International Communications Con- vention for military use. You are advised to desist at once."

Gresham cleared his throat. "Is Vassily there?"

"Vassily?"

"Yeah. Da."

"Da, okay, looking good, hold on, please."

Moments later a man's voice came on. His English wasn't as good as the woman's. "Is Jonathan, right?"

"Yeah. How's it goin'?"

"Very well, Jonathan! You are receiving the tapes I sent?"

"Yes, Vassily, thank you, spaseba, you're very generous.

As always. I have something very special for you. this time."

The voice was cautious. "Very special, Jonathan?"

"Vassily, this is an item beyond price. Unobtainable elsewhere. "

Unhappy silence. "I must ask, can it wait for our next pass over your area. We are having small docking problem here at the moment. Very small docking problem."

"I really think you'd better give this one your immediate attention, Vassily."

"Very well. I will key in scrambler." Moment's wait.

"Ready for transmission."

Gresham tapped his console. High-pitched whir. He leaned back, turning to Laura. "This'll take a while. The scramblers are kind of clunky up on old Gorbachev Memorial."

"That was the Russian space station?"

"Yeah." Gresham rubbed his hands briskly. "Things are looking up."

"You just sent our tape to a cosmonaut?"

"Yeah." He tucked in his legs, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'll tell you what I think might happen. They're gonna look at it up there. They're gonna think it's craziness-at first. But they may believe it. And if they do, they won't be able to hold it back. Because the consequences are just too extreme.

"So-they'll pipe it down to Moscow, and that other place, Star City. And the ground teams will look it over, and the apparatchiks. And they'll copy it. Not because they think there ought to be a lot of copies, but because it needs study.

And they're gonna start shipping it all around. To Vienna first, of course, because their people are all over Vienna. But to the rest of the Socialist bloc, too-just in case ..."

He yawned into his fist. "And then those guys on the station are going to realize they've got the publicity coup of a lifetime.

And if anyone's willing to fool with it, they are. I've got a lot of contacts, here and there, but they're the craziest bastards I know! Five will get you ten, they start dumping it, direct broadcast. If they can get permission from Star City. Or maybe even without permission."

"I don't understand, Gresham. Direct broadcast? That just sounds lunatic."

"You don't know what it's like up there! Wait a minute, you do know-you've lived on a submarine. But see, they've been just burning, ever since little Singapore threw that guy up with the laser launch. Because they've been up there for years, hanging their ass on the edge of the-infinite, and nobody paying attention. Didn't you hear how pathetic Vassily was? Like some ham-radio geezer locked in a basement."

"But they're cosmonauts! They're trained professionals, they do space science. Biology. Astronomy."

"Yeah. Lot of girls and glory in those two. Boy. " Gresham shook his head. "I give it three days at the outside."

"Okay ... what then? If it doesn't work."

"I call 'em again. Threaten to give it to somebody else.

There are other contacts... . And we still have the original tape. We just keep trying, that's all. Till we get through. Or

Vienna nails us. Or till FACT makes a demonstration on a city and makes the news obvious to everyone. Which is what we have to expect, isn't it?"

"My God! What we've just done could cause... worldwide panic.... '

He sneered. "Yeah-I'm sure that's what Vienna has been telling itself while they sat on the truth. For years. And covered up, and protected the people who shot up your house."

A bolt of rage short-circuited her fear. "That's right!"

He grinned at her. "It was one of the least of their crimes, actually. But I figured it'd bring you around.

She thought aloud. "Vienna let them do it. They knew who killed Stubbs and they came into my house and lied to me. Because they were afraid of something worse."

"Worse? I'll say. Think of the political consequences.

Vienna exists to keep order against terrorism, and they've been sucking up to terries for years. They're gonna pay. The hypocrites. "

"But Gresham, what if they start bombing people? Millions could die."

"Millions? Depends on how many warheads they have.

They're not a superpower. Five warheads? Ten? How many launch racks in that submarine?"

"But they could really do it! They could murder whole cities of innocent people while they're sleeping, peacefully....

For no sane reason! Just stupid fascist politics and power mongering-" Her voice caught hoarsely.

"Laura-I'm older than you. I know that situation. I re- member it vividly." He smiled. "I'll tell you how it worked.

We just waited and went on living, that's all. It didn't happen- maybe it'll never happen. In the meantime, what good is this doing you?" He stood up. "We're through here. Come with me, there are things I want you to see."

She followed him unwillingly, feeling wretched, spooked.

The way he talked about it so casually-ten warheads-but for him it was casual, wasn't it? He'd lived through a time where there were thousands of warheads, enough to exterminate all human life.

Responsible for mass death. It filled her with loathing. Her thoughts raced and suddenly she wanted to flee into the desert, vaporize. She never wanted to be near anyone who had ever touched such a thing, who was shadowed by that kind of horror.

And yet they were everywhere, weren't they? People who'd played politics with atomic weapons. Presidents, premiers, generals... little old men out in parks with grandkids and golf clubs. She had seen them, lived among them-

She was one of them.

Her mind went numb.

Gresham slowed, took her elbow. "Look."

It was evening now. A ragged crowd of about a hundred had gathered before one of the domes. The dome had been pulled in half, as a kind of crude amphitheater. The Inadin musicians were playing again, and one of them stood before the crowd, swaying, singing. His song had a wailing meter and many verses. The other Inadin swayed in time, some- times giving a sharp cry of approval. The crowd looked on open-mouthed.

"What's he saying?"

Gresham began speaking again in his television voice. He was reciting poetry.

Listen, people of the Kel Tamashek,

We are the Inadin, the blacksmiths.

We have always wandered among the tribes and clans,

We have always carried your messages.

Our fathers' lives were better than ours,

Our grandfathers' better still..

Once our people traveled everywhere,

Kano, Zanfara, Agadez.

Now we live in the cities and are turned into numbers and letters,

Now we live in the camps and eat magic food from tubes.

Gresham stopped. "Their word for magic is tisma. It means,

`the secret craft of blacksmiths.' "

"Go on," she said.

Our fathers had sweet milk and dates,

We have only nettles and thorns.

Why do we sufffer like this?

Is it the end of the world?

No, because we are not evil men,

No, because now we have tisma.

We are blacksmiths who have secret magic,

We are silversmiths who see the past and future.

In the past this was a rich and green land,

Now it is rock and. dust.

Gresham paused, watching the Tuaregs. Two rose and began dancing, their outstretched arms curling and waving, their sandaled feet stamping in time. It was slow, waltzlike dancing, elegant, elegiac. The singer rose to his feet again.

"Now comes the good part," Gresham said.

But where there is rock, there can be grass,

Where there is grass, the rain comes.

The roots of grass will hold the rain,

The leaves of grass will tame the sandstorm.

But we were the enemies of grass,

That is why we suffer.

What our cows did not eat, the sheep ate.

What the sheep refused, the goats consumed.

What the goats left behind, the camels devoured.

Now we must be the friends of grass,

We must apologize to it and treat it kindly.

Its enemies are our enemies.

We must kill the cow and the sheep,

We must butcher the goat and behead the camel.

For a thousand years we loved our herds,

For a thousand years we must praise the grass.

We will eat the tisma food to live,

We will buy Iron Camels from GoMotion

Unlimited in Santa Clara California.

Gresham folded his arms. The singer continued. "There's a lot more," Gresham said, "but that's the gist of it."

The question was obvious. "Did you write it for them?"

"No," he said proudly. "It's an old song." He paused.

"Retrofitted."

"Yeah.'

"A few of this crowd may join us. A few of the few may stay. It's a hard life in the desert." He looked at her. "I'm gone in the morning."

"Tomorrow? That soon?"

"It has to be that way."

The cruelty of it hurt her badly. Not his cruelty but the pure cruelty of necessity. She knew immediately that she would never see him again. She felt lacerated, relieved, panicky.

"Well, you did it, didn't you?" she said hoarsely. "You rescued me and you saved my friend's life." She tried to embrace him.

He backed off. "No, not out here-not in front of them."

He took her elbow. "Let's go inside."

He led her back into the dome. The guards were still there, patrolling. Against thieves, she thought. They were afraid of thieves and vandals from the camp. Beggars. It seemed so pathetic that she began weeping.

Gresham flicked on the screen of his computer. Amber light flooded the tent. He returned to the door of the dome, spoke to the guards. One of them said something to him in a sharp, high-pitched voice and began laughing. Gresham swung the door shut, sealed it with a clamp.

He saw her tears. "What's all this?"

"You, me. The world. Everything." She wiped her cheek on her sleeve. "Those camp people have nothing. Even though you're trying to help them, they'd steal all this stuff of yours, if they could."

"Ah," Gresham said, lightly. "That's what we high-falutin'

cultural meddlers refer to as `the vital level of corruption.' "

"You don't have to talk that way to me. Now that I can see what you're trying to do."

"Oh, Lord," Gresham said unhappily. He stalked across the dome in the mellow light of the monitor and gathered an armload of burlap bags. He lugged them next to his screen and terminal and spread them for pillows. "Come on, sit here with me."

She joined him. The pillows had a pleasant, resinous smell.

They were full of grass seed. She saw that some were already half empty. They'd been sowing the grass in the gullies as they ran from pursuit.

"Don't get to thinking I'm too much like you," he said.

"Honest and sweet and wishing everybody the best... . I grant you good intentions, but intentions don't count for much. Corruption-that's what counts."

He meant it. They were sitting together inches apart, but something was eating at him so badly that he wouldn't look at her. "What you just said-it doesn't make any sense to me."

"I was in Miami once," he said. "A long time ago. The sky was pink! I stopped this rudie on the boardwalk, I said: looks like you got some bad particulate problems here. He told me the sky was full of Africa. And it was true!. It was the harmattan, the sandstorms. Topsoil from the Sahara, blown right across the Atlantic. And I said to myself: there, that place, that's your home."

He looked at her, into her eyes. "You know when it really got bad here? When they tried to help. With medicine. And irrigation. They sank deep wells, with sweet, flowing water, and of course the nomads settled there. So instead of moving their herds on, leaving the pastures a chance to recover, they ate everything down to bare rock, for miles around every well. And the eight, nine children that African women have borne from time immemorial-they all lived. It wasn't that the world didn't care. They struggled heroically, for gen- erations, selflessly and nobly. To achieve an atrocity."

"That's too complicated for me, Gresham. It's perverse!"

"You're grateful to me, because you think I saved you.

The hell. We did our best to kill. everyone in that convoy. We raked that truck with machine-gun fire, three times. I don't know how the hell you lived."

" `Fortunes of war

"I love war, Laura. I enjoy it, like the F.A.C.T. Them, they enjoy murdering rag-heads with robots. Me, I'm more visceral. Somewhere inside me, I wanted Armageddon, and this is as close as it ever got. Where the Earth is blasted and all the sickness comes to a head."

He leaned closer. "But that's not all of it. I'm not innocent enough to let chaos alone. I stink of the Net, Laura. Of power and planning and data, and the Western method, and the pure inability to let anything alone. Ever. Even if it destroys my own freedom. The Net lost Africa once, blew it so badly that it went bad and wild, but the Net will get it back, someday.

Green and pleasant and controlled, and just like everywhere else. "

"So I win, and you lose-is. that what you're telling me?

That we're enemies? Maybe we are enemies, in some abstract way that's all in your head. But as people, we're friends, aren't we? And I'd never hurt you if I could help it."

"You can't help it. You were hurting me even before I knew you existed." He leaned back. "Maybe my abstractions aren't your abstractions, so I'll give you some of your own.

How do you think I financed all this? Grenada. They were my biggest backers. Winston Stubbs... now there was a man with vision. We didn't always see eye to eye, but we were allies. It hurt a lot to lose him."

She was shocked. "I remember.... They said he gave money to terrorist groups."

"I haven't been picky. I can't afford to be-this project of mine, it's all Net stuff, money, and money's corruption is in the very heart of it. The Tuaregs have nothing to sell, they're

Saharan nomads, destitute. They don't have anything the Net wants-so I beg and scrape. A few rich Arabs, nostalgic for the desert while they tool around in their limousines.... Arms dealers, not many of those left I even took money from FACT, back in the old days, before the Countess went batshit. "

"Katje told me that! That it's a woman who runs FACT.

The Countess! Is it true?"

He was surprised, sidetracked. "She doesn't `run it,' ex- actly, and she's not really a countess, that's just her nom de guerre... . But, yeah, I knew her, in the old days. I knew her very well, when we were younger. As well as I know you."

"You were lovers?"

He smiled. "Are we lovers, Laura?"

The silence stretched, a desert silence broken by the distant whooping of the Tuaregs. She looked into his eyes.

"I talk too much," he said sadly. "A theorist."

She stood and pulled the tunic over her head, threw it to her feet. She sat beside him, naked, in the light of the screen.

He was silent. Clumsily, she pulled at his shirt, ran her hand over his chest. He opened his robe and put his weight on her.

He fumbled at her gently. For the first time, something vital, deep within her, realized that she was alive again. As if her soul had gone to sleep like a handcuffed arm, and now blood was returning. A torrent of sensation.

A moment passed with the muted crinkling of contraceptive plastic. Then he was on her, inside her. She wrapped her legs around him, her skin aflame. Flesh and muscle moving in darkness, the smell of sex. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed.

He stopped for a moment. She opened her eyes. He was looking at her, his face alight. Then he reached out with one arm and tapped the keyboard.

The machine scanned channels. Light flashed over them as it blasted one-second gouts of satellite video into the tent.

Unable to stop herself, she turned her head to look.

Cityscape / cityscape / trees / a woman I brand names /

Arabic script / image / image / image/

They were moving in time. They were moving in rhythm to the set, eyes lifted up, fixed on the screen.

Pleasure shot through her like channeled lightning. She cried out.

He gripped her hard and closed his eyes. He was going to finish soon. She did what she could to help him.

And it was over. He slid aside, touched the screen. The image froze on a weather station, ranks of silent numbers, cool computer-graphic blues of. lows and highs.

"Thank you," he said. "You were good to me."

She was shaking in reaction. She found her robe and put it on, body-mind whirling in turmoil. As reality came seeping back, she felt a sudden giddy wash of joy, of pure release.

It was over, there was nothing to fear. They were people together, a man and woman. She felt a sudden rush of affection for him. She reached out. Surprised, he patted her hand. Then he rose and moved into the television dimness.

She heard him fumbling, opening a bag. He was back in a moment. Bright gleam of tin. "Abalone."

She sat up. Her stomach rumbled loudly. They laughed, comfortable in their embarrassment, the erotic squalor of intimacy. He pried open the can and they ate. "God, it's so good," she told him.

"I never eat anything grown in topsoil. Plants are full of deadly natural insecticides. People are nuts to eat that stuff."

"My husband used to say that all the time."

He looked up, slowly. "I'm gone tomorrow," he repeated.

"Don't worry about anything."

"It's fine, I'll be all right." Meaningless words, but the concern was there-it was as if they had kissed. Night had fallen, it had grown cold. She shivered.

"I'll take you back to camp."

"I'll stay, if you want."

He stood up, helped to her feet. "No. It's warmer there."

Katje lay in a camp bed, white sheets, the floral smell of an air spray over the reek of disinfectant. There was not much machinery by modern standards, but it was a clinic and they had pulled her through.

"Where did you find such clothes?" she whispered.

Laura touched her blouse self-consciously. It was a red off-the-shoulder number, with a ruffled skirt. "One of the nurses--Sara ... I can't pronounce her last name."

Katje seemed to think it was funny. It was the first time

Laura had ever seen her smile. "Yes .... there's such a girl in every camp... . You must be popular."

"They're good people, they've treated me very well."

"You didn't tell them... about the Bomb."

"No-I thought I'd leave that too you. I didn't think they'd believe me."

Katje let the lie float over her, not taken in, but letting it pass. Noblesse oblige, or maybe the anesthetic. "I told them

... now I don't worry ... let them worry."

"Good idea, save your strength."

"I won't do this anymore I'm going home. To be happy." She closed her eyes.

The door opened. The director, Mbaqane, barged through, followed by Barnaard the political man, and the- paratroop captain.

And then the Vienna personnel. There were three of them.

Two men in safari suits and speckled glasses, and a stylish, middle-aged Russian woman in a. jacket, sleek khaki pants, and patent-leather boots.

They stopped by the bed. "So these are our heroes," the woman said brightly.

"Indeed, yes," said Mbaqane.

"My name is Tamara Frolova-this is Mr. Easton, and

Mr. Neguib from our Cairo office."

"How do you do," Laura said reflexively. She almost rose to shake hands, then stopped herself. "This is Dr. Selous....

She's very tired, I'm afraid."

"And small wonder, yes? After such narrow escapes."

"Ms. Frolova has very good news for us," Mbaqane said.

"A cease-fire is declared. The camp is out of danger! It seems the Malian regime is prepared to sue for peace!"

"Wow," Laura said. "Are they handing over the bombs?"

Unhappy silence.

"A natural question," said Frolova. "But there have been some errors. Honest mistakes." She shook her head. "There are no bombs, Mrs. Webster."

Laura jumped to her feet. "I expected that!"

"Please sit down, Mrs. Webster."

"Ms. Frolova-Tamara-let me speak to you as a person.

I don't know what your bosses ordered you to say, but it's over now. You can't walk away from it anymore."

Frolova's face froze. "I know you have suffered an ordeal,

Mrs. Webster. Laura. But one should not act irresponsibly.

You must think first. Reckless allegations of such a kind- they are a clear public danger to the international order."

"They were taking me-both of us--to an atomic test site!

For nuclear blackmail! To Azania, this time--God knows they already had you intimidated."

"The area you saw was not a test site."

"Stop being stupid! It doesn't even need Gresham's tape.

You may have fast-talked these poor medicos, but the Azanian spooks aren't going to settle for words. They'll want to fly over the desert and look for the crater."

"I'm sure that could be arranged!" Frolova said. "After the current hostilities settle."

Laura laughed. "I knew you'd say that, too. That's an arrangement you'll never make, if you can help it. But the cover-up is still finished. You forget-we've been there. The air was full of dust. They can test our clothes, and they'll find radioactivity. Maybe not much, but enough for proof." She turned to Mbaqane. "Don't let them anywhere near those clothes. Because they'll grab the evidence, after they've grabbed us."

"We are not 'grabbing' anyone," Frolova said.

Mbaqane cleared his throat. "You did say you wanted them for debriefing. Interrogation. "

"The clothes prove nothing! These women have been in the hands of a provocateur and terrorist! He has already committed a serious information crime, with the help of Mrs.

Webster. And now that I hear her, I can see that it was not unwitting help." She turned to Laura. "Mrs. Webster, I must forbid you to speak any further!, You are under arrest."

"Good heavens," Mbaqane said. "You can't mean that journalist fellow."

"This woman is his accomplice! Mr. Easton! Please draw your weapon."

Easton pulled a tangle-gun from his armpit.

Katje opened her eyes. "So much yelling ... please don't shoot me, too."

Laura laughed recklessly. "That's funny ... it's all ridicu- lous! Tamara, listen to what you're saying. Gresham saved us from the Malian death cells-so he could cover our clothes with sifted uranium. Can you expect anyone to believe that?

What are you going to say after Mali nukes Pretoria? You should be ashamed."

Barnaard spoke to the Viennese. Wonderingly. "You encouraged us to attack Mali: You said we would have your support-secretly. You said-Vienna said-that we were Af- rica's great power, and we should restore order.... But you

..." His voice trembled. "You knew they had the Bomb!

You wanted to see if they would use it on us!"

"I resent that accusation in the gravest possible way! None of you are global diplomats, you are acting outside your experience-"

"How good do we have to be before we can judge you?"

Laura said.

Easton aimed his gun. Mbaqane struck his wrist and the gun fell with a clatter. The two men stared at one another, amazed. Mbaqane found his voice: high-pitched, livid. "Cap- tain! Arrest these miscreants at once!"

"Director Mbaqane," the captain rumbled. "You are a civilian. I take my orders from Pretoria."

"You cannot arrest us!" Frolova said. "You have no jurisdiction!

The captain spoke again. "But I accept your suggestion with thanks. For an Azanian soldier, the course of honor is clear. " He pulled his .45 sidearm and leveled it at Mr.

Neguib's head. "Throw down your weapon."

Neguib pulled his tangle-gun carefully. "You are creating a serious international complication. "

"Our diplomats will apologize if you force me to open fire.'

Neguib dropped the gun.

"Leave this clinic. Keep your hands in plain sight. My soldiers will take you into custody."

He herded them slowly toward the door.

Barnaard could not resist a taunt. "Did you forget our country also has uranium?"

Frolova spun in her tracks. She flung her arm out, pointing at Laura. "You see? You see now? It's starting all over again!"