Islands in the Net

2

After breakfast, Laura helped her mother pack. It surprised her to see the sheer bulk of bric-a-brac her mother hauled around: hatboxes, bottles of hairspray and vitamins and contact-lens fluid, a video camera, a clothes steamer, a portable iron, hair curlers, a sleeping mask, six pairs of shoes with special wooden lasts to keep them from mashing down in her luggage. She even had a special intaglio box just for earrings.

Laura held up a red leather-bound travel diary. "Mother, why do you need this? Can't you just call up the Net?"

"I don't know, dear. I spend so much time on the road - it's like home for me, all of these things." She packed dresses with a swish of fabric. "Besides, I don't like the Net.

I never even liked cable television." She hesitated. "Your father and I used to fight about that. He'd be a real Net-head now, if he was still alive."

The idea sounded silly to Laura. "Oh, Mother, come on."

"He hated clutter, your father. He didn't care for nice things-lamps, carpets, dinner china. He was a dreamer, he liked abstractions. He called me a materialist." She shrugged.

"My generation always got bad press for that."

Laura waved her arm about the room. "But, Mother, look at these things. "

"Laura, I like my possessions and I've paid for all of them. Maybe people don't prize possessions now like we did in the premillennium. How could they? All their money goes into the Net. For games, or business, or television-things that come over the wires." She zipped her bag shut. "Young people these days, maybe they don't hanker after a Mercedes or a Jacuzzi. But they'll brag like sixty about their data access."

Laura felt impatient. "That's silly, Mother. There's noth- ing wrong with being proud of what you know. A Mercedes is just a machine. It doesn't prove anything about you as a person." Her watchphone beeped; the van had arrived downstairs.

She helped her mother take her luggage down. It took three trips. Laura knew she'd have a wait in the airport, so she took the baby along, in a canvas travel sling.

"Let me get this trip," her mother said. She slipped her card into the van's charge slot. The door clicked open and they loaded the bags and stepped in.

"Howdy," the van said. "Please announce your destina- tion clearly into the speaker. Anunce usted su destinacion claramente en el microfono por favor."

"Airport," Laura said, bored.

". .. sss... ank you! Estimated travel time is twelve minutes. Thank you for using the Galveston Transit System.

Alfred A. Magruder, Mayor." The van accelerated slug- gishly, its modest engine whining. Laura lifted her brows.

The van's spiel had ' been changed. "Alfred A. Magruder,

Mayor?" she murmured.

"Galveston is Fun City!" the van responded. Laura and her mother traded glances. Laura shrugged.

Highway 3005 was the main artery down-the-island. The road's glory days were long gone; it was haunted by the memories of cheap oil and private cars doing sixty miles per.

Long sections of tarmac had been potholed into ruin and replaced with plastic mesh. The mesh crackled loudly be- neath the tires.

On their left, to the west, bare cracked slabs of concrete fringed the road like fallen dominoes. Building foundations had no scrap value. They were always the last to go. Beach scrub flourished everywhere: salt grass, spreading mats of crisp glasswork, leathery clumps of reed. To their right, along the shore, surf washed the stilts from vanished beach homes.

The stilts leaned at strange angles, like the legs of wading flamingos.

Her mother touched Loretta's thin curls, and the baby gurgled. "Does it ever bother you, this place, Laura? All this ruin . "

"David loves it here," Laura said.

Her mother spoke with an effort. "Does he treat you all right, dear? You seem happy with him. I hope that's true."

"David's fine, mother." Laura had dreaded this talk.

"You've seen how we live, now. We have nothing to hide."

"Last time we met, Laura, you were working in Atlanta.

Rizome's headquarters. Now you're an innkeeper." She hesi- tated. "Not that it's not a nice place, but ... "

"You think it's a setback to my career." Laura shook her head. "Mother, Rizome's a democracy. If you want power, you have to be voted in. That means you have to know people. Personal contact means everything with us. And innkeeping, as you put it, is great exposure. The best people in our company stay in the Lodges as guests. And that's where they see us."

"That's not how I remember it," her mother said. "Power is where the action is."

"Mother, the action's everywhere now. That's why we have the Net." Laura struggled for politeness. "This. isn't something David and I just stumbled into. It's a showcase for us. We knew we'd need a place while the baby was small, so we drew up the plans, we carried it through the company, we showed initiative, flexibility.... It was our first big project as a team. People know us now."

"So," her mother said slowly. "You worked it all out very neatly. You have ambition and the baby. Career and the family. A husband and a job. It's all too pat, Laura. I can't believe it's that simple."

Laura was icy. "Of course you'd say that, wouldn't you?"

Silence fell heavily. Her mother picked at the hem of her skirt. "Laura, I know my visit hasn't been easy for you. It's been a long time since we went our separate ways, you and I.

I hope we can change that now."

Laura said nothing. Her mother went on stubbornly. "Things have changed since your grandmother died. It's been two years, and she's not there for either of us now. Laura, I want to help you, if I can. If there's anything you need. Anything.

If you have to travel-it would be fine if you left Loretta with me. Or if you just need someone to talk to."

She hesitated, reaching out to touch the baby, a gesture of open need. For the first time, Laura truly saw her mother's hands. The wrinkled hands of an old woman. "I know you miss your grandmother. You named the baby after her. Lo- retta." She stroked the baby's cheek. "I can't take her place.

But I want to do something, Laura. For my grandchild's sake."

It seemed like a decent, old-fashioned family gesture, Laura thought. But it was an unwelcome favor. She knew she'd have to pay for her mother's help-with obligations and intimacy. Laura hadn't asked for that and didn't want it. And didn't even need it-she and David had the company behind them, after all, good solid Rizome gemeineschaft. "That's very nice, mother," she said. "Thank you for the offer.

David and I appreciate it." She turned her face away, to the window.

The road improved as the van reached a section zoned for redevelopment. They passed a long marina clustered with autopilot sailboats for hire. Then a fortresslike mall, built, like the Lodge, from concretized beach sand. Vans crowded its parking lot. The mall flashed past in bright commercial garishness: T-SHIRTS BEER WINE VIDEO Come On In, It's Cool Inside!

"Business is good, for a weekday," Laura said. The crowd was mostly middle-aged Houstonians, freed for the day from their high-rise warrens. Scores of them wandered the beach, aimlessly, staring out to sea, glad of an unobstructed horizon.

Her mother continued to press. "Laura, I worry about you.

I don't want to run your life for you, if that's what you're thinking. You've done very well for yourself, and I'm glad for it, truly. But things can happen, through no fault of your own." She hesitated. "I want you to learn from our experience-mine, my mother's. Neither of us had good luck-with our men, with our children. And it wasn't that we didn't try."

Laura's patience was eroding. Her mother's experience-it was something that had haunted Laura every day of her life.

For her mother to mention it now-as if it were something that might have slipped her daughter's mind-struck Laura as grossly thoughtless and crass. "It's not enough to try, Mother.

You have to plan ahead. That was something your generation was never any good at." She gestured at the window. "Don't you see that out there?"

The van had reached the southern end of the Galveston

Seawall. They were passing a suburb, once a commuter's haven with fresh green lawns and a golf course. Now it was a barrio, with sprawling houses subdivided, converted into bars and Latin groceries.

"The people who built this suburb knew they were running out of oil," Laura said. "But they wouldn't plan for it. They built everything around their precious cars, even though they knew they were turning the downtowns into ghettos. Now the cars are gone, and everyone with money has rushed back downtown. So the poor are shoved out here instead. Only they can't afford the water bills, so the lawns are full of scrub. And they can't afford air conditioning, so they swelter in the heat. No one even had the sense to build porches. Even though every house built in Texas had porches, for two hundred years!"

Her mother stared obediently out the window. It was noon, and windows were flung open from the heat. Inside them, the unemployed sweated before their subsidized televisions. The poor lived cheap these days. Low-grade scop, fresh from the vats and dried like cornmeal, cost only a few cents a pound.

Everyone in the ghetto suburbs ate scop, single-cell protein.

The national food of the Third World.

"But. that's what I'm trying to tell you, dear," her mother said. "Things change. You can't control that. And bad luck happens."

Laura spoke tightly. "Mother, people built these crappy tract homes, they didn't grow there. They were built for rip-off quick profit, with no sense of the long term. I know those places, I've helped David smash them up. Look at them!"

Her mother looked pained. "I don't understand. They're cheap houses where poor people live. At least they have shelter, don't they?"

"Mother, they're energy sieves! They're lathwork and sheetrock and cheap tinsel crap!"

Her mother shook her head. "I'm not an architect's wife, dear. I can see you're upset by these places, but you talk as if it were my fault."

The van turned west up 83rd Street, heading for the air- field. The baby was asleep against her chest; Laura hugged her tighter, feeling depressed and angry. She didn't know how she could make it any clearer to her mother without

-being bluntly rude. If she could say: Mother, your marriage was like one of these cheap houses; you used it up and moved on.... You threw my father out of your life like last year's car, and you gave me to Grandmother to raise, like a house plant that no longer fit your decor.... But she couldn't say that. She couldn't force the words out.

A shadow passed low overhead, silently. A Boeing passen- ger plane, an intercontinental, its tail marked with the red and blue of Aero Cubana. It reminded Laura of an albatross, with vast, canted, razorlike wings on a long, narrow body. Its engines hummed.

The sight of planes always gave Laura a nostalgic lift. She had spent a lot of time in airports as a child, in the happy times before her life as a diplomat's kid fell apart. The plane dropped gently, with computer-guided precision, its wings extruding yellow braking films. Modern design, Laura thought proudly, watching it. The Boeing's thin ceramic wings looked frail. But they could have cut through a lousy tract house like a razor through cheese.

They entered the airport through gates in a chain-link fence of red plastic mesh. Outside the terminal, vans queued up in the taxi lane.

Laura helped her mother unload her bags onto a waiting luggage trolley. The terminal was built in early Organic

Baroque, with insulated, fortresslike walls and double sliding doors. It was blessedly cool inside, with a sharp reek of floor cleaner. Flat display screens hung from the ceiling, shuffling arrivals and departures. Their luggage trolley tagged along at their heels.

The crowd was light. Scholes Field was not a major air- port, no matter what the city claimed: The City Council had expanded it after the last hurricane, in a last-ditch attempt to boost Galveston's civic morale. A lot of taxpayers had quickly used it to leave Galveston for good.

They checked her mother's luggage. Laura watched her mother chat with the ticket clerk. Once again she was the woman Laura remembered: trim and cool and immaculate, self-contained in a diplomat's Teflon shell. Margaret Day: still an attractive woman at sixty-two. People lasted forever, these days. With any luck, her mother could live another forty years.

They walked together toward the departure lounge. "Let me hold her just once more," her mother said. Laura passed her the baby. Her mother carried Loretta like a sack of emeralds. "If I've said anything to upset you, you'll forgive me, won't you? I'm not as young as I was and there are things I don't understand."

Her voice was calm, but her face trembled for a moment, with a strange naked look of appeal. For the first time Laura realized how much it had cost her mother to go through this-how ruthlessly she had humbled herself. Laura felt a sudden empathetic shock-as if she'd met some injured stranger on her doorstep. "No, no," she mumbled, walking. "Every- thing was fine."

"You're modern people, you and David," her mother said.

"In a way you seem very innocent to us, oh, premillennium decadents." She smiled wryly. "So free of doubts."

Laura thought it over as they walked into the departure lounge. For the first time, she felt a muddy intuition of her mother's point of view. She stood by her mother's chair, out of earshot from the sprinkling of other passengers for Dallas.

"We seem dogmatic. Smug. Is that it?"

"Oh, no," her mother said hastily. "That's not what I meant at all."

Laura took a deep breath. "We don't live under terror,

Mother. That's the real difference.. No one's pointing missiles at my generation. That's why we think about the future, the long term. Because we know we'll have one." Laura spread her hands. "And we didn't earn that luxury. The luxury to look smug. You gave it to us." Laura relaxed a little, feeling virtuous.

"Well ..." Her mother struggled for words. "It's some- thing like that but.. The world you grew up in-every year it's more smooth and controlled. Like you've thrown a net over the Fates. But Laura, you haven't, not really. And I worry for you."

Laura was surprised. She'd never known her mother was such a morbid fatalist. It seemed a weirdly old-fashioned attitude. And she was in earnest, too-as if she were ready to nail up horseshoes or count rosary beads. And things had been going rather oddly lately... . Despite herself, Laura felt a light passing tingle of superstitious fear.

She shook her head. "All right, Mother. David and I-we know we can count on you."

"That's all I asked." Her mother smiled. "David was wonderful-give him my love." The other passengers rose, shuffling briefcases and garment bags. Her mother kissed the baby, then stood and handed her back. Loretta's face clouded and she began snuffling up to a wail.

"Uh-oh," Laura said lightly. She accepted a quick, awk- ward hug from her mother. "Bye."

"Call me."

"All right." Bouncing Loretta to shush her, Laura watched her mother leave, blending in with the crowd at the exit ramp.

One stranger among others. Ironic, Laura thought. She'd been waiting for this moment for seven days, and now that it was here, it hurt. Sort of. In a way.

Laura glanced at her watchphone. She had to kill an hour before the Grenadians arrived. She went to the coffee shop.

People stared at her and the baby. In a world so crammed with old people, babies had novelty value. Even total stran- gers turned mushy, making faces and doing little four-finger waves.

Laura sat, sipping the airport's lousy coffee, letting the tension wash out of her. She was glad that her mother was gone. She could feel repressed bits of her personality rising slowly back into place. Like continental shelves lifting after an ice age.

A young woman two booths away was interested in the baby. Her eyes were alight and she kept mugging at Loretta, big open-mouthed grins. Laura watched her, bemused. Some- thing about the woman's broad-cheeked, freckled face struck

Laura as quintessentially Texan. A kind of rugged, cracker look, Laura thought -a genetic legacy from some hard-eyed woman in calico, the sort who rode shotgun through Comanche country and had six kids without anesthetic. It showed even through the woman's garish makeup-blood-red waxy lipstick, dramatically lined eyes, hair teased into a mane.... Laura realized with a start that the woman was a hooker from the

Church of Ishtar.

The Grenadians' flight was announced, a connection from

Miami. The Church hooker leapt up at once, a flush of excitement on her face. Laura trailed her. She rushed at once to the embarkation lounge.

Laura joined her as the plane emptied. She cataloged pas- sengers at a glance, watching for her guests. A family of

Vietnamese shrimpers. A dozen shabby but optimistic Cubans with shopping bags. A group of serious, neatly dressed black collegians in fraternity sweaters. Three offshore oil-rig rough- necks, wrinkled old men wearing cowboy hats and engineer- ing boots.

Suddenly the Ishtar woman drew near and spoke to her.

"You're with Rizome, aren't you?"

"Rye-zoam," Laura said.

"Well, then, you'd be waiting for Sticky and the old man?" Her eyes sparkled. It gave her bony face a strange vivacity. "Did the Rev'rend Morgan talk to you?"

"I've met the reverend," Laura said carefully. She knew nothing about anyone named Sticky.

The woman smiled. "Y'all's baby is cute.... Oh, look, there they are!" She raised her arm over her head and waved excitedly, the deep-cut neckline of her blouse showing fringes of red brassiere. "Yoo-hoo! Sticky!"

An old-fashioned Rastaman in dreadlocks cut his way out of the crowd. The old man wore a long-sleeved dashiki of cheap synthetic, over baggy drawstring pants, and sandals.

The Rastaman's young companion wore a nylon wind- breaker, sunglasses, and jeans. The woman rushed forward and embraced him. "Sticky!" The younger man, with sudden wiry strength, lifted the Church woman off her feet and spun her half around. His dark, even face was expressionless be- hind the glasses.

"Laura?" A woman had appeared at Laura's elbow, si- lently. It was one of Rizome's security coordinators, Debra

Emerson. Emerson was a sad-looking Anglo woman in her sixties with etched, delicate features and thinning hair. Laura had often spoken to her over the Net and had met her once in

Atlanta.

They exchanged brief formal hugs and cheek kisses in the usual Rizome style. "Where are the bankers?" Laura said.

Emerson nodded at the Rastaman and his companion. Laura's heart sank. "That's them?"

"These offshore bankers don't follow our standards," Em- erson said, watching them.

Laura said, "Do you realize who that woman is? The group she's with?"

"Church of Ishtar," Emerson said. She didn't look happy about it. She glanced up into Laura's face. "We haven't told you all we should yet, for reasons of discretion. But I know you're not naive. You have good Net connections, Laura.

You must know how things stand in Grenada."

"I know Grenada's a data haven," Laura said cautiously.

She wasn't sure how far to go.

Debra Emerson had once been a high muckety-muck at the

CIA, back when there had been a CIA and its muckety-mucks were still in vogue. Security work had no such glamor nowa- days. Emerson had the look of someone who had suffered in silence, a sort of translucency around the eyes. She favored gray corduroy skirts and longsleeve blouses in meek beiges and duns.

The old Rastaman shambled over, smiling. "Winston

Stubbs," he said. He had the lilt of the Caribbean, softened vowels broken by crisp British consonants. He shook Laura's hand. "And Sticky Thompson, Michael Thompson that is."

He turned. "Sticky!"

Sticky came up, his arm around the Church girl's waist.

"I'm Laura Webster," Laura said.

"We know," Sticky said. "This is Carlotta."

"I'm their liaison," Carlotta drawled brightly. She pushed her hair back with both hands and Laura glimpsed an ankh tattooed on her right wrist. "Y'all bring much luggage? I got a van waiting."

"I-and-I have business up-the-island," Stubbs explained. "We be in to your Lodge later this night, call you on the Net, seen?"

Emerson broke in. "If that's the way you want it, Mr.

Stubbs. "

Stubbs nodded. "Later." The three of them left, calling a luggage trolley.

Laura watched them go, nonplussed. "Are they supposed to be running around loose?"

Emerson sighed. "It's a touchy situation. I'm sorry you were brought here for nothing, but it's just one of their little gestures." She tagged the strap of her heavy shoulder bag.

"Let's call a cab."

After their arrival, Emerson vanished upstairs into the Lodge's conference room. Usually, Laura and David ate in the dining room, where they could socialize with the guests. That night, however, they joined Emerson and ate in the tower, feeling uneasily conspiratorial.

David set the ' table. Laura opened a covered tray of chile rellenos and Spanish rice. David had health food.

"I want to be as open and straightforward with you as I possibly can," Emerson murmured. "By now, you must have realized the nature of your new guests."

"Yes," David said. He was far from happy about it.

"Then you can understand the need for security. Naturally we trust the discretion-of you and your staff."

David smiled a little. "That's nice to know."

Emerson looked troubled. "The Committee has been plan- ning this meeting for some time. These Europeans you've been sheltering are no ordinary bankers. They're from the

EFT Commerzbank of Luxembourg. And tomorrow night a third group arrives. The Yung Soo Chim Islamic Bank of

Singapore. "

David paused with a fork halfway to his mouth. "And they're also-?"

"Data pirates, yes."

"I see," Laura said. She felt a sudden surge of chilly excitement. "This is big."

"Very," Emerson said. She let that sink in for a while.

".We offered them any of six possible locations for the meet- ing. It could just as easily have been the Valenzuelas in

Puerto Vallarta. Or the Warburtons in Arkansas."

"How long do you expect this to last?" David said.

"Five days. Maybe a week at the outside." She sipped her iced tea. "It's up to us to supply airtight security once the meeting is under way. You understand? Locked doors, drawn curtains. No running in and out. "

David frowned. "We'll need supplies. I'll tell Mrs. Delrosario."

"I can take care of supplies."

"Mrs. Delrosario's very particular about where she shops,"

David said.

"Oh, dear," said Ms. Emerson sincerely. "Well, groceries are not a major problem." She picked carefully at the skin of her stuffed pepper. "Some of the attendees may bring their own food."

David was stunned. "You mean they're afraid to eat our food? They think we'll poison them, is that it?"

"David, it's a sign of their great trust in Rizome that the three banks have agreed to meet here in the first place. It's not us that they distrust. It's one another."

David was alarmed. "What exactly are we getting into?

We have a small child here! Not to mention our staff."

Emerson looked hurt. "Would you feel better if this Lodge was full of armed guards from Rizome? Or if Rizome even had armed guards? We can't confront these people by force, and we shouldn't try to. That's our strength."

Laura spoke up. "You're saying that because we're harm- less, we won't be hurt."

"We want to reduce tension. We don t mean to arrest these pirates, prosecute them, crush them. We've decided to nego- tiate. That's a modern solution. It worked for the arms race, after all. It has been working for the Third World."

"Except for Africa," David said.

Emerson shrugged. "It's a long-term effort. The old East-

West Cold War, the North-South struggle... those were both old fights. Struggles we inherited. But now we face a truly modem challenge. This meeting is part of it."

David looked surprised. "Come on. These aren't nuclear arms talks. I've read about these havens. They're fleabag pirates. Sleazy rip-off artists who won't pull their own weight in the world. So they call themselves bankers, so they wear three-piece suits. Hell, they can fly private jets and shoot boars in the forests of Tuscany. They're still cheap rip-off bastards. "

"That's a very correct attitude," Emerson said. "But don't underestimate the havens. So far, as you say, they're only parasites. They steal software, they bootleg records arid vid- eos, they invade people's privacy. Those are annoyances, but it's not yet more than the system can bear. But what about the potential? There are potential black markets for genetic engi- neering, organ transplants, neurochemicals... a whole gal- axy of modern high-tech products. Hackers loose in the Net are trouble enough. What happens when a genetic engineer cuts one corner too many?"

David shuddered. "Well, that can't be allowed."

"But these are sovereign national governments," said Em- erson. "A small Third World nation like Grenada can profit by playing fast and loose with new technologies. They may well hope to become a center of innovation, just as the

Cayman Islands and Panama became financial centers. Regu- lation is a burden, and multinationals are always tempted to move out from under it What happens to Rizome.. if our competitors evade the rules, offshore?"

She let them mull over that for a while. "And there are deeper questions that affect the whole structure of the modern world. What happens when tomorrow's industries are pion- eered by criminals? We live on a crowded planet, and we need controls, but they have to be tight. Otherwise corruption seeps in like black water.

"It's a tough agenda," David said, thinking it over. "In fact, it sounds hopeless."

"So did the Abolition," said Emerson. "But the arsenals are gone." She smiled. The same old line, Laura thought.

The old baby-boom generation had been using it for years.

Maybe they thought it would help explain why they were still running everything. "But history never stops_ Modern society faces a new central crisis. Are we going to control the path of development for sane, human ends? Or is it going to be laissez-faire anarchy?"

Emerson polished off the last of her chile relleno. "These are real issues. If we want to live in a world we can recog- nize, we'll have to fight for the privilege. We at Rizome have to do our part. We are doing it. Here and now."

"You make a pretty good case," David said. "But I imagine the pirates see things differently."

"Oh, we'll be hearing their side soon enough." She smiled.

"But we may have some surprises for them. The havens are used to multinational corporations in the old style. But an economic democracy is a different animal. We must let them see that for themselves. Even if it means some risk to us."

David frowned. "You don't seriously think they'll try anything?"

"No, I don't. If they do, we'll simply call the local police.

It would be scandalous for us-this is, after all, a very confidential meeting-but worse scandal, I think, for them."

She placed fork and knife neatly across her plate. "We know there's some small risk. But Rizome has no private army. No fellows in dark glasses with briefcases full of cash and hand- guns. That's out of style." Her eyes flashed briefly. "We have to pay for that luxury of innocence, though. Because we have no one to take our risks for us. We have to spread the danger out, among Rizome associates. Now it's your turn.

You understand. Don't you?"

Laura thought it over, quietly. "Our number came up," she said at last.

"Exactly. "

"Just one of those things," David said. And it was.

The negotiators should have arrived at the Lodge all at the same time, on equal terms. But they didn't have that much sense. Instead they'd chosen to screw around and attempt to one-up each other.

The Europeans had arrived early-it was their attempt to show the others that they were close to the Rizome referees

.and dealing from a position of strength. But they soon grew bored and were full of peevish suspicion.

Emerson was still mollifying them when the Singapore contingent arrived. There were three of them as well: an ancient Chinese named Mr. Shaw and his two Malay compa- triots. Mr. Shaw was a bespectacled, balding man in an oversized suit, who spoke very little. The two Malays wore black songkak hats, peaked fore and aft, with sewn-on em- blems of their group, the Yung Soo Chim Islamic Bank. The

Malays were middle-aged men, very sober, very dignified.

Not like bankers, however. Like soldiers. They-walked erect, with their shoulders squared, and their eyes never stopped moving.

They brought mounds of luggage, including their own telephones and a refrigerated chest, packed with foil-sealed trays of food.

Emerson made introductions. Karageorgiu glared aggres- sively, Shaw was woodenly aloof. The escorts looked ready to arm-wrestle. Emerson took the Singaporeans upstairs to the conference room, where they could phone in and assure their home group that they had arrived in one piece.

No one had seen the Grenadians since the day before, at the airport. They hadn't called in, either, despite their vague promises. Time passed. The others saw this as a studied insult and fretted over their drinks. They broke at last for dinner.

The Singaporeans ate their own food, in their rooms. The

Europeans complained vigorously about the barbarous Tex-

Mex cuisine. Mrs. Delrosario, who had outdone herself, was almost reduced to tears.

The Grenadians finally showed up after dusk. Like Ms.

Emerson, Laura had become seriously worried. She greeted them in the front lobby. "So glad to see you. Was there any trouble?"

"Nuh," said Winston Stubbs, exposing his dentures in a sunny smile. "I-and-I were downtown, seen. Up-the-island. "

The. ancient Rastaman had perched a souvenir cowboy hat on his gray shoulder-length dreadlocks. He wore sandals and an explosive Hawaiian shirt.

His companion, Sticky Thompson, had a new haircut. He'd chosen to dress in slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and business vest, like a Rizome associate. It didn't quite work• on him though; Sticky looked almost aggressively conventional. Car- lotta, the Church girl, wore a sleeveless scarlet beach top, a short skirt, and heavy makeup. A brimming chalice was tattooed on her bare, freckled shoulder.

Laura introduced her husband and the Lodge staff to the

Grenadians. David gave the old pirate his best hostly grin: friendly and tolerant, we're all just-folks here at Rizome.

Overdoing it a bit maybe, because Winston Stubbs had the standard pirate image. Raffish. "Howdy," David said. "Hope y'all enjoy your stay with us."

The old man looked skeptical. David abandoned his drawl.

"Cool cunnings," he said tentatively.

"Cool runnings," Winston Stubbs mused. "Have nah hear that in forty year. You like those old reggae albums, Mr.

Webster?"

David smiled. "My folks used to play them when I was a kid."

"Oh, seen. That would be Dr. Martin Webster and Grace

Webster of Galveston."

"That's right," David said. His smile vanished.

"You designed this Lodge,". Stubbs said. "Concretized sand, built from the beach, eh?" He looked David up and down. "Mash-it-up appropriate technology. We could use you in the islands, mon."

"Thanks," David said, fidgeting. "That's very flattering."

"We could use a public relations, too," Stubbs said, grin- ning crookedly at Laura. His eye whites were veined with red, like cracked marbles. "I-and-I's reputation could use an upgrade. Pressure come down on I-and-I. From Babylon

Luddites. "

"Let's all gather in the conference room," Emerson said.

"It's early yet. Still time for us to talk."

They argued for two solid days. Laura sat in on the meet- ings as Debra Emerson's second, and she realized quickly that Rizome was a barely tolerated middleman. The data pirates had no interest whatsoever in taking up new careers as right-thinking postindustrialists. They had met to confront a threat.

All three pirate groups were being blackmailed.

The blackmailers, whoever they were, showed a firm grasp of data-haven dynamics. They had played cleverly on the divisions and rivalries among the havens; threatening one bank, then depositing the shakedown money in another. The havens, who naturally loathed publicity, had covered up the attacks. They were deliberately vague about the nature of the depredations. They feared publicizing their weaknesses. It was clear, too, that they suspected one another.

Laura had never known the true nature and extent of haven operations, but she sat quietly, listened and watched, and learned in a hurry.

The pirates dubbed commercial videotapes by the hundreds of thousands, selling them in poorly policed Third World markets. And their teams of software cracksters found a ready market for programs stripped of their copy protection. This brand of piracy was nothing new; it dated back to the early days of the information industry.

But Laura had never realized the profit to be gained by evading the developed world's privacy laws. Thousands of legitimate companies maintained dossiers on individuals: em- ployee records, medical histories, credit transactions. In the

Net economy, business was impossible without such informa- tion. In the legitimate world, companies purged this data periodically, as required by law.

But not all of it was purged. Reams of it ended up in the data havens, passed on through bribery of clerks, through taps of datalines, and by outright commercial espionage. Straight companies operated with specialized slivers of knowledge.

But the havens made a business of collecting it, offshore.

Memory was cheap, and their databanks were huge and growing.

And they had no shortage of clients. Credit companies, for instance, needed to avoid bad risks and pursue their debtors.

Insurers had similar problems. Market researchers hungered after precise data on individuals. So did fund raisers. Special- ized address lists found a thriving market. Journalists would pay for subscription lists, and a quick sneak call to a databank could dredge up painful rumors that governments and compa- nies suppressed.

Private security agencies were at home in the data demi- monde. Since the collapse of the Cold War intelligence apparats, there were legions of aging, demobilized spooks scrabbling out a living in the private sector. A shielded phone line to the havens-was a boon for a private investigator.

Even computer-dating services kicked in their bit.

The havens were bootstrapping their way up to Big Brother status, trading for scattered bits of information, then collating it and selling it back-as a new and sinister whole.

They made a business of abstracting, condensing, index- ing, and verifying-like any other modern commercial database.

Except, of course, that the pirates were carnivorous. They ate other databases when they could, blithely ignoring copyrights and simply storing everything they could filch. This didn't require state-of-the-art computer expertise. Just memory by the ton, and plenty of cast-iron gall.

Unlike old-fashioned smugglers, the haven pirates never had to physically touch their booty. Data had no substance.

EFT Commerzbank, for instance, was a legitimate corpora- tion in Luxembourg. Its illegal nerve centers were safely stowed away in Turkish Cyprus. The same went for the

Singaporeans-, they had the dignified cover of an address in

Bencoolen Street, while the machinery hummed merrily in

Nauru, a sovereign Pacific Island nation with a population of

12,000. For their part, the Grenadians simply brazened it out.

All three groups were monetary banks as well. This was handy for laundering client funds, and a ready source of necessary bribes. Since the invention of electronic funds trans- fer, money itself had become just another form of data. Their host governments were not inclined to quibble.

So, Laura thought, the basic principles of operation were clear enough. But they created, not solidarity, but bitter rivalry.

Names were freely exchanged during the more heated mo- ments. The ancestral lineage of the havens saddled them with an unhelpful and sometimes embarrassing heritage. During occasional bursts of frankness, whole whale-pods of these large and awkward facts surfaced and blew steam, while

Laura marveled.

The EFT Commerzbank, she learned, drew its roots mainly from the old heroin networks of the south of France, and from the Corsican Black Hand. After the Abolition, these clunky gutter operations had been modernized by former French spooks from

"La Piscine," the legendary Corsican school for paramilitary saboteurs. These right-wing commandos, tradi- tionally the rogue elephants of European espionage, drifted quite naturally into a life of crime once the French govern- ment had cut off their paychecks.

Additional muscle came from a minor galaxy of French right-wing action groups, who abandoned their old careers of bombing trains and burning synagogues, to join the data game. Further allies came from the criminal families of the

European Turkish minority, accomplished heroin smugglers who maintained an unholy linkage with the Turkish fascist underground.

All this had been poured into Luxembourg and allowed to set for twenty years, like some kind of horrible aspic. By now a kind of crust of respectability had formed, and the EFT

Commerzbank was making some attempt to disown its past.

The others refused to make it easy for them. Egged on by

Winston Stubbs, who remembered the event, Monsieur

Karageorgiu was forced to admit that a member of the Turkish

"Gray Wolves" had once shot a pope.

Karageorgiu defended the Wolves by insisting that the action was "business." He claimed it was a revenge opera- tion, recompense for a sting by the Vatican's corrupt Banco

Ambrosiano. The Ambrosiano, he explained, had been one of

Europe's first truly "underground" banks, before the present system had settled. Standards had been different then-back in the rough-and-tumble glory days of Italian terrorism.

Besides, Karageorgiu pointed out smoothly, the Turkish gunman had only wounded Pope John Paul II. No worse than a kneecapping, really. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia-who were so annoyed at the Banco's misdeeds that they had poisoned

Pope John Paul I stone dead.

Laura believed very little of this-she noticed Ms. Emer- son smiling quietly to herself-but it was clear that the other pirates had few doubts. The story fit precisely into the folk mythos of their enterprise. They shook their heads over it with a kind of rueful nostalgia. Even Mr. Shaw looked vaguely impressed.

The Islamic Bank's antecedents were similarly mixed. Triad syndicates were a major factor. Besides being criminal broth- erhoods, the Triads had always had a political side, ever since their ancient origins as anti-Manchu rebels in seventeenth- century China.

The Triads had whiled away the centuries in prostitution, gambling, and drugs, with occasional breaks for revolution, such as the Chinese Republic of 1912. But their ranks had swollen drastically after the People's Republic had absorbed

Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many diehard capitalists had fled to

Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, where the oil money still ran fast and deep. There they prospered, selling rifles and shoulder-launched rockets to Kurdish separatists and Afghani mujahideen, whose bloody acres abounded, in poppies and cannabis. And the Triads waited, with ghastly patience, for the new Red dynasty to crack.

According to Karageorgiu, the Triad secret societies had never forgotten the Opium Wars of the 1840s, in which the

British had deliberately and cynically hooked the Chinese populace on black opium. The Triads, he alleged, had delib- erately promoted heroin use in the West in an attempt to rot

Western morale.

Mr. Shaw acknowledged that such an action would only have been simple justice, but he denied the allegation. Be- sides, he pointed out, heroin was now out of favor in the

West. The drug-using populace had dwindled with the aging of the population, and modern users were more sophisticated.

They preferred untraceable neurochemicals to crude vegetable extracts. These very neurochemicals now boiled out of the high-tech drug vats of the Caribbean.

This accusation wounded Winston Stubbs. The Rastafarian underground had never favored "steel drugs." The substances they made were sacramental, like communion wine, meant to assist in "i-tal meditation."

Karageorgiu scoffed at this. He knew the real sources of the Grenadian syndicate and recited them with relish. Cocaine- crazed Colombians cruising the streets of Miami in armored vans crammed with Kalashnikovs. Degraded Cuban boat- lifters, speckled with prison tattoos, who would kill for a cigarette. Redneck American swindlers like "Big Bobby"

Vesco, who had specialized in the sucker's shell game with a series of offshore fronts.

Winston Stubbs heard the man out peaceably, trying to defuse Laura's horror with skeptical brow wrinkling and little pitying shakes of his head. But he bristled at this last remark.

Mr. Robert Vesco, he said indignantly, had at one point owned the government of Costa Rica. And in the legendary

LOS scam, Vesco had liberated $60 million of illegally in- vested CIA retirement funds. This action showed that Vesco's heart was righteous. There was no shame in having him as forefather. The man was a duppy conqueror.

After the second day's negotiations broke up, Laura shakily joined Debra Emerson out on the seaside verandah for a private conference. "Well," said Emerson cheerfully. "This has certainly cleared the air."

"Like lifting the lid of a cesspool," Laura said. A salt breeze blew in from offshore, and she shuddered. "We're getting nowhere with these negotiations. It's obvious they have no intention of reforming. They barely tolerate us. They think we're saps."

"Oh, I think we're progressing nicely," Emerson said.

Since the talks had started, she had relaxed into a glazed professional ease. Both she and Laura had made an effort to break past their formal roles and to establish the kind of gut-level personal trust that held Rizome together as a postindustrial company. Laura was reassured that Emerson took the company's principles so seriously.

It was good, too, that the Committee had fully acknowl- edged Laura's need to know. For a while she had been afraid that they would try some security bullshit, and that she would have to go on the company Net and make a stink about it.

Instead they had taken her into the core of negotiations. Not at all a bad thing, career-wise, for a woman still officially on infancy furlough. Laura now felt vaguely guilty about her earlier suspicions. She even wished that Emily Donato hadn't told her anything.

Emerson nibbled a praline and gazed out to sea. "It's all been skirmishing so far, just macho one-upmanship. But soon they'll be getting down to business. The critical point is their blackmailers. With our help, with a little guidance, they'll join forces in self-defense."

A seagull noticed Emerson eating. It swooped up and hovered hopefully above the walkway's railing, its flat yellow eyes gleaming. "Join forces?" Laura said.

"It's not as bad as it sounds, Laura. It's their small scale and fast reflexes that make the data havens dangerous. A

large, centralized group will become bureaucratic."

"You think so?"

"They have weaknesses we don't," Emerson said-,settling deeper into her reclining chair. She cracked off a chip of her praline and studied the floating bird. "The major weakness of criminal groups is their innate lack of trust. That's why so many of them rely on family blood ties. Especially families from oppressed minorities-a double reason for group loyalty against the outside world. But an organization that can't rely on the free loyalty of its members is forced to rely on gesellschaft. On industrial methods."

She smiled, lifting her hand. "And that means rule books, laws, stiff formal hierarchies. Violence is not Rizome's strong suit, Laura, but we do understand management structures.

Centralized bureaucracies always protect the status quo.. They don't innovate. And it's innovation that's the real threat. It's not so bad that they rip us off." She tossed her chip of candy and the gull caught it instantly. "The problem comes when they outthink us."

"The bigger, the stupider, is that the strategy?" Laura said. "What happened to good old divide and conquer?"

"This isn't politics. This is technology. It's not their power that threatens us, it's their imagination. Creativity comes from small groups. Small groups gave us the electric light, the automobile, the personal computer. Bureaucracies gave us the nuclear power plant, traffic jams, and network television. The first three changed everything. The last three are memories now."

Three more freeloading gulls swooped up from nowhere.

They jostled gracefully for space, with creaking screams of greed. Laura said, "Don't you think we ought to try some- thing a little more vigorous? Like, say, arresting them?"

"I don't blame you for thinking that," Emerson said. "But you don't know what these people have survived. They thrive on persecution, it unites them. It builds a class chasm be- tween them and society, it lets them prey on the rest of us without a twinge of conscience. No, we have to let them grow, Laura, we have to give them a stake in our status quo.

It's a long-term struggle. Decades long. Lifetimes. Just like the Abolition."

"Mmmm," Laura said, not liking this much. The older generation was always going on about the Abolition. As if abolishing bombs intended to destroy the planet had required transcendent genius. "Well, not everyone shares that philoso- phy. Or else these data sharks wouldn't be here now, trying to roll with the punches." She lowered her voice. "Who do you think is blackmailing them? One of them, maybe? Those

Singaporeans ... they're so aloof and contemptuous. They look pretty suspicious. "

"Could be," Emerson said placidly. "Whoever it is, they're professionals." She threw the last of her candy to the gulls and stood up, shivering. "It's getting chilly."

They went in. Inside the Lodge, a routine had emerged.

The Singaporeans always retired to their rooms after negotia- tions. The Europeans amused themselves in the conference room, running up the Lodge's telecom bills.

The Grenadians, on the other hand, seemed deeply inter- ested in the Lodge itself. They had inspected it from tower to foundation, asking flattering questions about computer design and concretized sand. Since then the Grenadians seemed to have taken-an awe liking to David. They had gathered with him in the downstairs lounge for the third night running.

Laura went to help with the washing. The staff was bearing up well, despite the security requirements. They found it exciting to have actual live criminals in the place. Mrs.

Rodriguez had stuck appropriate nicknames on the guests:

Los Opios, Los Morfinos, and, of course, Los Marijuanos.

Winston Stubbs, El Jefe de los Marijuanos, was a staff favor- ite. Not only did he look most like a proper pirate, but he had tried to tip them several times. The Morfino Europeans, however, were on everyone's shit list.

Debra Emerson had not escaped-no one called her any- thing but "La Espia." Everyone agreed that she was weird.

Poca loca. But she was Rizome, so it was okay. .

Laura had not gone running in three days. Her ankle was better now but the forced confinement was making her antsy.

She needed a drink. She joined David and the Grenadians in the bar.

David was showing off his music collection. He collected old Texas pop music-western swing, blues, polkas, conjunto border ballads. A sixty-year-old conjunto tape played over the lounge's speakers, rapid accordion riffs punctuated with high- pitched wails. Laura, who had grown up with synthesizers and Russian pop music, still found the stuff eerie as hell.

She poured herself a glass of the house red and joined them around a low table. The old man sat slumped in a chair, looking drowsy. Sticky Thompson and the Church woman sat together on a couch.

During the debates, Sticky had been very animated, almost hyper at. times. Among his luggage, Sticky had brought a thermos of what he claimed was acidophilus milk. He was drinking it now. Laura wondered what was in it. Sticky couldn't be older than twenty-two or three, she thought. He was a little young to have ulcers.

Carlotta had a glass of orange juice. She had made it clear that she never touched coffee or alcohol. She sat intimately close to Sticky, pressing her black-stockinged thigh against his leg, tugging lightly at the curls at the back of his neck.

Carlotta had never taken part in the debates, but she shared

Sticky's room. She watched him with animal raptness-like the gulls outside.

The sight of Carlotta and Sticky-young love played at 78

rpm-gave Laura a sense of unease. There was something horribly bogus about their ambience, as if they were deliber- ately mimicking a romance. She pulled a chair close to David's.

"So what do y'all think?" David said.

"It's better than those yodeling cowboys," Sticky said, his amber eyes gleaming. "But you can't say this is your roots, mon. This is Third World music."

"The hell you `say," David said mildly. "It's Texas music,

I'm a Texan."

"That's Spanish they're singing, mon."

"Well, I speak Spanish," David said. "Maybe you didn't notice our staff are Texan, Hispanics."

"Oh, seen, I notice them," Sticky said. This was the first time Sticky had used such a thick patois. "I noticed you sleep up in the castle tower." Sticky pointed upstairs. "While they sleep down here by the kitchen."

"Oh, you reckon so?" David drawled, stung. "You want those old folks to walk up two flights of stairs, I guess. While we keep the baby down here to wake our guests.

"I see what I see," Sticky said. "You say, no more wage slaves, equal rights in the big mother Rizome. Everybody votes. No bosses--coordinators. No board-a Central Com- mittee. But your wife still give orders and they still cook and clean. "

"Sure," Laura broke in. "But not for us, Sticky. For you."

"That's a good one," Sticky said, riveting his hot eyes on

Laura. "You talk a good line after those P.R. courses at the university. Diplomatic, like your mother. "

There was a sudden silence. "Chill out, Sticky," the old man murmured. "You gettin' red, boy."

"Yeah," David said, still smarting. "Maybe you better take it a little easy on that milk."

"There's nothing in this milk," Sticky said. He shoved the thermos at Laura, who was closest. "You try it."

"All right, Laura said abruptly. She had a sip. It was cloyingly sweet. She handed it back. "That reminds me.

David, did you feed the baby?"

David grinned, admiring her bravado. "Yeah."

There was nothing in the milk, she decided. Nothing was going to happen to her. She sipped her wine to wash the taste away.

Carlotta laughed suddenly, breaking the tension. "You're a caution, Sticky." She started rubbing his shoulders, "It's no use you bein' down on Mr. and Mrs. Married Life. They're straights, that's all. Not like us."

"You don't see it yet, girl. You haven't heard 'em talk upstairs." Sticky had lost his temper, and his accent. He was starting to sound more and more like a cable news announcer,

Laura thought. That flat Mid-Atlantic television English. Global

Net talk. Sticky pulled Carlotta's hand away and held it.

"Straights aren't what they used to be. They want it all now-the whole world. One world. Their world." He stood up, pulling her to her feet. "Come on, girl. The bed needs shaking."

"Buenas noches," David called out as they left. "Suenos dukes, cuidado con las chinches!" Sticky ignored him.

Laura poured herself another glass and knocked back half of it. The old man opened his eyes. "He's young," he said.

"I was rude," David said contritely. "But I dunno, that old Imperialist America line-it gets me where I live. Sorry."

"Not America, no," the old man said. "You Yankees aren't Babylon. You only part of her, now. Babylon-she- multinational, Babylon-she-multilateral." He chanted the words.

"Babylon she come to get us where we live." He sighed.

"You like it here, I know. I ask the old women, they say they like it too. They say you nice, you baby's cute. But where she growing up, that baby, in your nice one world with its nice one set of rules? She have no place to run. You think that over, seen? Before you come down on us. " He stood up, yawning. "Tomorrow, eh? Tomorrow." He left.

Silence fell. "Let's go to bed," Laura said at last. They went upstairs.

The baby was sleeping peacefully. Laura had been check- ing her crib monitor with the watchphone. They pulled their clothes off and slid into bed together. "What a weird old duck that Stubbs is," David said. "Full of stories. He said

... he said he was in Grenada in '83 when the U.S. Marines invaded. The sky was full of choppers shooting Cubans. They took over the radio station and played Yankee pop music. The

Beach Boys, he said. I thought he meant the Marines at first.

Beach boys."

Laura frowned. "You're letting him get to you, David.

That nice old codger and his poor little island. His poor little island is taking a big bite out of our ass. That snotty remark about Mother-they must have dossiers on both of us, the size of phone books. And what about that Church girl, huh? I don't like that business one bit."

"We've got a lot in common with Grenada," David said.

"Galveston was a pirate haven, once upon a time. Good old

Jean Lafitte, remember? Back in 1817. Hijacking shipping, yo-ho-ho, bottle of rum, the whole routine. David grinned.

"Maybe you and I could start a haven, okay? Just a snug little one that we could run from the conference room. We'd find out how many teeth old Sticky's grandmother has."

"Don't even think it," Laura said. She paused. "That girl.

Carlotta. You think she's attractive?"

He sank down into his pillow. "A little," he said. "Sure."

"You kept looking at her."

"I think she was high on those Church pills," he said.

"Romance. It does something for a woman, to have that glow. Even if it's fake."

"I could take one of those pills," Laura said carefully.

"I've been totally nuts about you before. It didn't do any permanent damage."

David laughed. "What's gotten into you tonight? I couldn't believe you drank that milk. You're lucky you're not seeing little blue dogs leaping out of the wall. " He sat up in bed, waving his hand. "How many fingers?"

"Forty," she said, smiling.

"Laura, you're drunk. " He pinned her down and kissed her. It felt good. It was good to be crushed under his weight.

A warm, solid, comfortable crush. "Good," she said. "Give me ten more." His face was an inch away and she smelled wine on her own breath.

He kissed her twice, then reached down and gave her a deep, intimate caress. She threw her arms around him and closed her eyes, enjoying it. Good strong warm hand. She relaxed, sinking into the mood. A nice little trough of chemis- try there, as scratchy pleasure melted into lust. The wariness that took her through the day evaporated as she relaxed into arousal. Good-bye, calculating Laura; hello, connubial Laura, long time no see. She started kissing him seriously, the kind she knew he liked. It was great to do it, and know he liked it.

Here we go, she thought. A nice solid slide inside her.

Surely nothing was ever better than this. She smiled up into

David's face.

That look in his eyes. It had scared her sometimes, the first times, and excited her. That look of sweet David gone and something else in his place. Some other part of him, primal.

Something that she couldn't control, that could take her own control away. Sex had been like that in the first days of their affair, something wild and strong and romantic, and not entirely pleasurable. Too close to fainting, too close to pain.

Too strange...

But not tonight. They slipped into a good thumping rhythm.

A good mauling hug and a good solid pounding. Fine' solid, dependable sex. Building up to orgasm like laying bricks.

Angel architects laid bricks like this in the walls of heaven.

Level one, level two, taking their time, level three, almost done now, and there it was. Climax washed through her, and she moaned happily. He was still at it. It was no use aiming for another one, and she didn't try, but it came anyway, a small little twinge with a pleasure all its own, like smelling brandy in another room.

Then he was through. He rolled onto his side of the bed, and she felt his sweat cooling on her skin. A good feeling, intimate as a kiss. "Oh, lord," he said, not meaning any- thing, just breathing the words out. He slid his legs under the covers. He was happy, they were lovers, all was right in the world. They would be sleeping soon.

"David?"

"Yes, light of my life?"

She smiled. "Do you think we're straight?"

He laced his hands behind his head against the pillow. He looked at her sidelong. "Tired of the missionary position?"

"You're such a help. No, I mean it."

He saw that she was serious and shrugged. "I don't know, angel. We're people, that's all. We have a kid and a place in the. world.... I don't know what that means." He grinned tiredly, then rolled onto his side, throwing one leg over hers,

She dimmed the lights with her watchphone. She didn't say anything more, and in a few minutes he was asleep.

The baby woke her, whimpering. This time Laura managed to force herself from bed. David sprawled himself over, into her space. Fine, she thought. Let him sleep in the wet spot.

She got the baby up, changed her diaper. This had to be a sign of something, she thought sourly. Surely avant-garde rebel enemies of the system never had to change diapers.

Laura warmed Loretta's formula and tried to feed her, but she wouldn't be comforted. She was kicking and. arching her spine and wadding up her little face... . She was a very good-tempered baby, in daylight at least, but if she woke at night she became a bag of nerves.

The sound wasn't her hungry cry, or her lonely cry, but tremulous, high-pitched noises that said she didn't know what to do with herself. Laura decided to take her out on the walkway. That usually calmed her down. It looked like a nice night, anyway. She shrugged into her night-robe.

A three-quarter moon was up. Laura walked barefoot on the damp boards. Moonlight on the surf. It had a numinous look. It was so beautiful that it was almost funny, as if nature had decided to imitate, not Art, but a sofa-sized velvet painting.

She walked back and forth, crooning to Loretta, whose wails had finally died into crotchety whimpers. Laura thought about her mother. Mothers and daughters. This time around it would be different.

A sudden prickling sensation washed over her. Without warning, it turned to fear. She looked up, feeling startled, and saw something she didn't believe.

It perched in midair in the moonlight, humming. An hour- glass, cut by a shimmering disk. Laura shrieked aloud. The apparition hung there for a moment, as if defying her to believe in it. Then it tilted in midair and headed out to sea. In a few moments she had lost it.

The baby was too scared to cry. Laura had crushed her to her breasts in panic, and it seemed to have scared the baby into some primeval reflex. A reflex from cave times when voodoo horrors stalked outside the firelight, things that smelled milk and knew young flesh was tender. A spasm of trembling shook Laura from head to foot.

One of the guest room doors opened. Moonlight glinted on the gray hair of Winston Stubbs. A shaman's dreadlocks. He stepped out onto the boardwalk, wearing only his jeans. His grizzled chest had the sunken look of age, but he was strong.

And he was someone else.

"I hear a scream," he said. "What's wrong, daughter?"

"I saw something," Laura said. Her voice shook. "It scared me. I'm sorry."

"I was awake," he said. "I hear the baby outside. Us old people, I-and-I don't sleep much. A prowler, maybe?" He scanned the beach. "I need my glasses."

Shock began seeping out of her. "I saw something in the air," she said, more firmly. "A kind of machine, I think."

"A machine," said Stubbs. "Not a ghost."

"No."

"You look like a duppy come ready to grab your child, girl," Stubbs said. "A machine, though.... I don't like that. There are machines and machines, seen? Could be a spy."

"A spy," Laura said. It was an explanation, and it got her brain working again. "I don't know. I've seen drone aircraft.

People use them to crop-dust. But they have wings. They're not like flying saucers."

"You saw a flying saucer?" Stubbs said, impressed. "Cru- cial! Where did it go?"

"Let's go in," Laura said, shivering. "You don't want to see it, Mr. Stubbs."

"But I do see," said Stubbs. He pointed. Laura turned to look.

The thing was sweeping toward them, from over the water.

It whirred. It. swept over the beach at high speed. As it closed on them, it opened fire. A chattering gout of bullets slammed into Stubbs's chest and belly, flinging him against the wall.

His body bloomed open under the impact.

The flying thing veered off above the roof, its whine dying as it slipped into darkness. Stubbs slid to the boards of the walkway. His dreadlocks had slipped askew. They were a wig. Below them, his skull was bald.

Laura lifted one hand to her cheek. Something had stung her there. Little bits of sand, she thought vaguely. Little bits of sand that had jumped from those impact holes. Those pockmarks in the wall of her house, where the bullets had passed through the old man. The holes looked dark in the moonlight. They were full of his blood.