Islands in the Net

5

They were under the mansion's foundations with a hydraulic jack when they heard Sticky calling. "Yo

Bwana, Blondie! You be comin' out now, time to face the music...'

They wormed their way back into afternoon sunlight. Laura hauled herself through the foundation's concrete crawl hole and got to her feet. "Hello, Captain." She picked at her hair, and came away with strings of cobweb.

David crawled out after her. His jeans and denim work shirt were caked at the knees and elbows with stale mud.

Sticky Thompson grinned at David's darkened face. "You datin' locals now, Blondie? Where's the Great White Hunter?"

"Very funny," David said.

Sticky led them back around the mansion's west wing. As they walked under newly pruned ylang-ylang trees, David juggled his glasses and jammed the earplug in. "Who's online?

Oh. Hi. What? Hell, I got mud on my lenses." He cleaned them with his shirt tail, ruefully.

Two military jeeps were waiting on the gravel drive-olive- drab hardtops with silvered windows. Three uniformed mili- tiamen sat on the flat, square bumpers, sipping soft drinks from paper cartons. Sticky whistled sharply; the skinniest guard leapt to attention and opened one door. A colored decal flashed on the door panel: garish red, gold, and green-the

Grenadian flag. "Truth-tellin' time, Mrs. Webster. We ready when you are."

"She'll need to change-" David said.

"No, I won't," Laura broke in. "I'm ready at any time.

Unless your Bank thinks I'll soil their upholstery." She pulled her glasses from a buttoned shirt pocket.

Sticky turned to David, pointing to the second jeep. "We got a special tourist show for you, today. This other jeep be escort duty for you, they driving you down to the beach. We got some very special building projects. You be loving this one, Dave."

"Okay," David told him. "But I gotta finish some bracing work under the house first, or the kitchen falls in." He gave

Laura a sudden hard hug. "Looks like I'm taking the baby today." He whispered into her ear. "Luck, babe. Give 'em hell." She kissed him hard. The soldiers grinned at them.

Laura climbed up into the jeep's front passenger seat. One of the soldiers got in back, his assault rifle clattering. Sticky lingered outside. He had slipped on a pair of polarized glasses.

He scanned the sky carefully, shading his eyes with both hands. Satisfied, he vaulted into the driver's seat and slammed the door.

Sticky fired the engine with an old-fashioned ignition key.

He took the estate's winding curves at hair-raising speed, driving loosely, easily, one dark hand on the steering wheel.

Laura understood now why his skin color had varied. It wasn't makeup, but chameleon technical tricks, right down in the cells. Lots of changes-maybe too many. The little half- moons of his fingernails looked oddly yellowish. He'd been gnawing them, too.

He grinned at her breezily-now that he was driving, he seemed elated, high. Stimulants, Laura thought darkly. "Aren't you a sight," Sticky told her. "I can't believe you didn't call time for pattin' on a little rouge."

Laura touched her cheek involuntarily. "You mean video makeup, Captain? I understood this was to be a closed hearing."

"Oooh," Sticky said, amused at her formality. "That's seen, now. Long as the camera not lookin', you can run around in you grubbies, play dress-up all workin' class, huh?" He laughed. "What if you college-girl pal see you?

The one what dress up all southern belle slavery drag? Emily

Donato?"

"Emily's my closest friend," Laura told him tightly. "She's seen me a lot worse than this, believe me."

Sticky raised his brows. He spoke lightly. "You ever wonder about this Donato and your husband? She knew him before you did. Introduced you, even."

Laura throttled her instant spurt of anger. She waited a moment. "You been having fun, Sticky? Running barefoot through my personnel file? I'll bet that gives you a real feeling of power, huh? Kind of like bullying teenage guards in this toy militia of yours."

Sticky glanced sharply at the rearview mirror. The guard in the back pretended not to have heard.

They took the highway south. The sky was leaden with overcast, the greenish mounds of trees gone dusky and strange on misty volcanic slopes. "You think I don't know what you up to?" Sticky said. "All this workin' on the house? For no pay just to make an impression. Giving the servants propa- ganda tapes.... Tryin' to bribe our people."

"A position in Rizome is hardly bribery," Laura said coolly. "If they work with us, they deserve a place with us."

They passed an abandoned sugar factory. "It's tough on them, doing our housework and moonlighting as your domestic spies.

Sticky glared at her. "Those bloodclot fuckin' glasses," he hissed suddenly.

"Atlanta, I'm going offline,"- Laura said. She ripped off her rig and yanked open the map compartment. A cardboard egg carton of tanglegun ammo fell on her foot. She ignored it and stuffed the rig in-it was squawking-and slammed the little steel door.

Sticky sneered. "That'll be trouble for you. You'd better put them back on."

"Fuck it," Laura told him. "It's worth it just to hear you cut that goddamn accent." She grinned at him humorlessly.

"C'mon, soldier. Let's have it out. I'm not gonna have you pick on me all the way to the Bank, just to psych me out, or whatever the hell it is you think you're doing."

Sticky flexed his muscular hands on the steering wheel.

"Aren't you afraid to be alone with me? Now you're off the

Net, you're kind of soft and helpless, aren't you?" He gave her a sudden poke in the ribs with his finger, like testing a side of beef. "What if I drive off into those trees and get rude with your body?"

"Jesus." That had never even occurred to her. "I dunno,

Captain. I guess I tear your goddamned eyes out."

"Oh, tough!" He didn't look at her-he was watching the road, driving fast--but his right hand darted out with unbe- lievable quickness and caught her wrist with a slap of skin on skin. Her hand went funny-bone numb and a rolling pain shot up her arm. "Pull free," he told her. "Try."

She tugged, feeling the first surge of real fear. It was like pulling on a bench vise. He didn't even quiver.. He didn't look that strong, but his bare brown arm had locked like cast iron. Unnatural. "You're hurting me," she said, trying for calmness. A hateful little tremor in her voice.

Sticky laughed triumphantly. "Now, you listen to me, girl.

All this time, you-"

Laura sank suddenly in her seat and stamped the brake.

The jeep skidded wildly; the soldier in the back cried out.

Sticky let her go as if scalded; his hands slapped the wheel with panic speed. They swerved, hit potholes in the road shoulder. Their heads banged the hard ceiling. Two seconds'

of lurching chaos. Then they were back on the road, weaving.

Safe. Sticky drew a long breath.

Laura sat up and rubbed her wrist silently.

Something truly nasty had happened between them. She felt no fear yet, even though they'd almost died together. She hadn't known it would be so bad-a manual jeep-she'd just done it. On impulse. Rage that had boiled up suddenly, when their inhibitions had vanished, gone with the glass eye of the

Net's TV.

Both acting like raging drunks when the Net was gone.

It was over now. The soldier-the boy-in the. back seat was gripping his rifle in panic.' He hadn't been feeling the

Net it was all a mystery to him, that sudden gust of vio- lence, like a hurricane wind. There for no reason, gone for no reason... he didn't even know it was over yet.

Sticky drove on, his jaw set, his eyes straight ahead.

"Winston Stubbs," he said at last. "He was my father."

. Laura nodded. Sticky had told her this for a reason-it was the only way he knew how to apologize. The news didn't surprise her much, but for a moment she felt her eyes sting- ing. She leaned back against the seat, relaxing, breathing.

She had to be careful with him. People should be careful with each other... .

"You must have been very proud of him," she said.

Gently, tentatively. "He was a special kind of man." No answer. "From the way he looked at you, I know that-"

"I failed him," Sticky said. "I was his warrior and the enemy took him."

"We know who did it now," Laura told him. "It wasn't

Singapore. It was an African regime-the secret police in the

Republic of Mali."

Sticky stared at her as if she'd gone insane. His polarized shades had bounced off during the near wreck and his yellow- ish eyes gleamed like a weasel's. "Mali's an African coun- try," he said.

"Why should that make a difference?"

"We're fighting for African people! Mali ... they're not even a data haven. They a sufferation country. They have no reason." He blinked. "They're lying to you if they tell you that. "

"We know that Mali is the F.A.C.T.," Laura said.

Sticky shrugged. "Anyone can use those letters. They're asking shakedown money, and we know where that's going.

To Singapore." He shook his head slowly. "War's coming,

Laura. Very bad times. You should never have come to this island. "

"We had to come," Laura said. "We were witnesses."

"Witnesses," Sticky said with contempt. "We know what happened in Galveston, we never needed you for that. You're hostages, Laura. You, your man, even the lickle baby. Hos- tages for Rizome. Your company is in the middle, and if they favor Singapore against us, the Bank will kill you."

Laura licked her lips. She straightened in her seat. "If it comes to war, a lot of innocent people are going to die."

"They've played you for a fool. Your company. They sent you here, and they knew!"

"Wars kill people," Laura said. "David and I are not as innocent as some."

He slammed the wheel with his hand. "Aren't you afraid, girl?"

"Are you, Captain?"

"I'm a soldier."

Laura forced a shrug. "What does that mean in a terror war? They murdered a guest in my house. In front of me and my baby. I'm going to do what I can to get them. I know it's dangerous."

"You're a brave enemy," Sticky said. He pulled onto a secondary road, through a wretched little village of red dirt and rusted tin. They began winding uphill, into the interior.

The sun split the clouds for a moment and branches dappled the windshield.

From a hairpin turn high on a hillside, Laura saw the distant clustered harbor of colonial Grand Roy-sleepy red roofs, little white porch-pillars, crooked, sloping streets. A

drill rig crouched offshore like a spider from Mars.

"You're a fool," Sticky told her. "You're trying to. push some propaganda bullshit that you think will make everybody play nice. But this isn't some mama-papa Yankee shopping mall where you can sell everybody peace like Coca-Cola. It nah going to work... . But I don't think you ought to die for tryin'. It's not righteous."

He snapped orders. The militiaman reached behind him and passed Laura a flak jacket and a black, hooded robe. "Put these on," Sticky said.

"All right." Laura buckled the bulky jacket over her work shirt. "What's this bathrobe?"

"It's a chador. Islamic women wear them. Real modest

... and it'll hide that blond hair. There been spy planes where we're going. I don't want 'em seeing you."

Laura tunneled into the robe and pulled the hood over her head. Once inside the baggy thing, she caught a lingering whiff of its previous user-scented cigarettes and attar of roses. "It wasn't the Islamic Bank--

"We know it's the Bank. They been running spy planes in every day, puddle jumping over from Trinidad. We know the plantation they're using, everything. We have our own sources-we don't need you to tell us anything." He nodded at the map compartment. "You might as well put on your TV

rig. I've said everything I'm saying."

"We don't mean to hurt you or your people, Sticky. We don't mean you anything but good-"

He sighed. "Just do it."

She pulled the glasses out. Emily screeched into her ear.

["What are you doing!? Are you all right?"]

"I'm fine, Emily. Cut me some slack."

["Don't be stupid, Laura. You're gonna damage our credi- bility in this. No secret negotiations! It looks bad-like they might be getting at you. It's bad enough now, without people thinking that you're going through back channels offline."]

"We be goin' to Fedon's Camp," Sticky said loudly, liltingly. "You listenin', Atlanta? Julian Fedon, he was a

Free Coloured. His time was the French Revolution and he preach the Rights of Man. The French smuggle him guns, and he take over plantations, free the slaves, and arm them. He burned out the baccra slaveocrats with righteous fire. And he fight with a gun in his hand when the Redcoats invade... it took an army months to break his fort."

They had come into a broken bowl of hills-ragged, vol- canic wilderness. A tropical paradise, dotted with tall watch- towers. At first sight they looked blankly harmless, like water towers. But the rounded storage tanks were armored pillboxes, ridged with slotted gun slits. Their gleaming sides were pocked with searchlights and radar blisters, and their tops were flat- tened for helicopter pads. Thick elevator taproots plunged deep into the earth-no doors were visible anywhere.

They drove uphill on a tall stone roadway of hard, black blasted rock. Excavation rubble. There were mounds of it everywhere, leg-breaking dykes of sharp-edged boulders, half hidden under bird-twittery flowering vines and scrub... .

Fedon's Camp was a new kind of fortress. There were no sandbags, no barbed wire, no gates or guards. Just the ranked towers rising mutely from the quiet green earth like deadly mushrooms of ceramic and steel. Towers watching each other, watching the hills, watching the sky.

Tunnels, Laura thought. There must be underground tun- nels linking those death towers together-and storage rooms full of ammunition. Everything underground, the towers mush- rooming from under the surface in a geometry of strategic fire zones.

What would it be like to attack this place? Laura could imagine angry, hungry rioters with their pathetic torches and

Molotov cocktails-wandering under those towers like mice under furniture. Unable to find anything their own size- anything they could touch or hurt. Growing frightened as their yells were answered by silence-beginning to creep, in muttering groups, into the false protection of the rocks and trees. While every footstep sounded loud as drumbeats on buried microphones, while their bodies glowed like human candles on some gunner's infrared screens... .

The road simply ended, in a half-acre expanse of weedy tarmac. Sticky killed the engine and found his polarized glasses. He peered through the windshield. "Over there,

Laura. See?" He pointed into the sky. "By that gray cloud, shaped like a wolf s head... "

She couldn't see anything. Not even a speck. "A spy plane?"

"Yeah. From here, they can count your teeth on telephoto.

Just the right size, too.... Too small for a stupid missile to find, and the smart ones cost more than it does." A rhythmic thudding above them. Laura winced. A skeletal shadow crossed the tarmac. A cargo helicopter was hovering overhead.

Sticky left the jeep. She saw the shadow drop a line, heard it clunk as it hit the hard top of the jeep. Latches clacked shut and Sticky climbed back in. In a moment they were soaring upward. Jeep and all.

The ground fell dizzily. "Hold tight," Sticky said. He sounded bored. The chopper lowered them atop the nearest tower, into a broad yellow net. The net's arms creaked on heavy springs, the whole jeep listing drunkenly; then the arms lowered and they settled to the deck.

Laura climbed out, shaking. The air smelled like dawn in

Eden. All around them mountainsides too steep for farming: green-choked hills wreathed with ink-gray mist like a Chinese landscape. The other towers were like this one: their tops ringed by low ceramic parapets. On the nearest tower, fifty yards away, half-naked soldiers were playing volleyball.

The chopper landed, stuttering, on the black trefoil of its pad nearby. Rotor wind whipped Laura's hair. "What do you do during hurricanes?" she shouted.

Sticky took her elbow and led her toward a hatchway.

"There are ways in, besides choppers," he said. "But none you need to know about." He yanked the twin hatch covers open, revealing a short flight of stairs to an elevator.

["Hold it,"] came an unfamiliar voice in her ear. ["I can't handle both of you at once, and I'm not a military architect.

This seaside stuff is weird enough... . David, do you know of anyone in Rizome who can handle military? I didn't think so..Laura, could you kill about twenty minutes?")

Laura stopped short. Sticky looked impatient. "You won't be seeing much, if that's what's stopping you. We goin'

down fast."

"Another elevator," Laura told Atlanta. "I'll be going offline."

"It's wired," Sticky assured her. "They knew you were coming."

They dropped six stories, fast. They emerged into a striated stone tunnel the size of a two-lane highway. She saw military storage boxes stenciled in old Warsaw Pact Cyrillic. Sagging tarps over vast knobby heaps of God-knew-what. Sticky am- bled forward, his hands in his pockets. "You know the

Channel Tunnel? From Britain to France?"

It was cold. She hugged her arms through the chador's baggy sleeves. "Yeah?"

"They learned a lot about tunnel making. All on open databases, too. Handy." His words echoed eerily. Ceiling lights flickered on overhead as they walked and died as they moved on. They were walking the length of the tunnel in a moving pool of light. "You ever see the Maginot Line?"

"What's that?" Laura asked.

"Big line of forts the French dug ninety years ago. Against the Germans. I saw it once. Winston took me." He adjusted his beret. "Big old steel domes still rusting in the middle of pastures. There are railroad tunnels underneath. Sometimes tourists ride 'em." He shrugged. "That's all they're good for. This place, too, someday."

"What do you mean?"

"The tankers are better. They move."

Laura matched his stride. She felt spooked. "It reeks down here, Sticky. Like the tankers... "

"That's tangle-gun, plastic," Sticky told her. "From war- game drills. You get hit by a tangle-gun, there's a funny stink while the plastic sets. Then it's like you're wrapped in barbed wire... .

He was lying. There were labs down here somewhere.

Somewhere off in the fungal darkness. She could feel it. That faint acid reek .. .

"These are the killing grounds," he said. "Where the invaders will pay. Not that we can stop them, any more than

Fedon did. But they'll pay blood. These tunnels, they're full of things to jump you out of darkness...." He sniffed.

"Don't worry, not your Yankees. Yankees nah have much nerve these days. But whoever. Babylon."

" `The Man,' " Laura said.

Sticky grinned.

The Bank's Directors were waiting for her. They were simply there, in the tunnel, under a pool of light. They had a long, rectangular meeting table and some comfortable leather chairs. Coffee thermoses, ashtrays, some keypads and pen- cils. They were chatting with each other. Smiling. Little curls of cigarette smoke rising under the light.

They rose when they saw her. Five black men. Four in well-tailored suits; one was wearing a uniform with starred shoulder boards. Three sat on the table's left, two on the right.

The chair at the head of the table was empty. So was the chair at its right-hand side. Sticky escorted her to the seat at the table's foot.

The general spoke. "That will be all, Captain." Sticky saluted sharply and turned on his heel. She heard his boots ring as he-marched off into darkness.

"Welcome to Grenada, Mrs. Webster. Please be seated."

Everyone sat, with . squeaks of leather. They all had brass nameplates, thoughtfully turned her way. DR. CASTLEMAN. MR.RAINEY.

MR. GOULD. GEN. CREFT. MR. GELLI. Mr. Gelli was the youngest man, among them. He looked about forty; he was

Italian, and his skin was black. The empty seats had name- plates, too. MR. STUBBS. And P.M. ERIC LOUISON ...

"My name is Mr. Gould," Mr. Gould announced. He was a heavyset, black-skinned Anglo, about sixty-five, wearing video rouge and a wiry toupee. "I'm acting as chairman for this special panel of inquiry, examining the circumstances of the death of a Grenadian citizen, Mr. Winston Stubbs. We are not a court and cannot decide legal issues, though we can offer advice and counsel to the prime minister. Under Grenadian law, Mrs. Webster, you are not entitled to counsel before a special panel of this kind; however, false testimony carries the penalty of perjury. Mr. Gelli will administer your oath.

Mr. Gelli?"

Mr. Gelli rose quickly to his feet. "Raise your right hand, please. Do you solemnly swear, or affirm ..." He read her the whole thing.

"I do," Laura said. Castleman was the weirdest of the lot.

He was grossly fat and had shoulder-length hair and a scrag- gly beard; he was smoking a cigarillo down to the filter. His eyes were blue and spacy. He tapped left-handed at a little keyboard deck.

Rainey was bored. He was doodling at his paper and touching his large black Anglo nose as if it ached. He had an emerald earring and a bracelet of heavy gold link. General

Creft looked like he might be a genuine black person, though his cream-and-coffee skin was the lightest of the lot. He had the unblinking eyes of a crocodile and a street brawler's scar-knuckled hands. Hands that would look natural clutching pliers or a rubber hose.

They quizzed her for an hour and a half. They were polite, low-key. Gould did most of the talking, pausing to page through notes on his deck. Rainey didn't care-the thrill level here was obviously too low for him; he would have been happier running speedboats past the Florida Coast Guard.

Creft took center stage when they asked about the killer drone. Creft had a whole portfolio of printout photos of the

Canadair CL-227-the orange peanut refitted with a dreadful variety of strafing guns, napalm squirters, gas dispensers.... She pointed out the model that looked closest to the profile she remembered. Creft passed it silently down the row. They all nodded... .

Gelli didn't say much. He was the junior partner. The older model of Gelli, obviously hadn't kept up with the times.

Somebody had scrapped him... .

She waited for the right moment to spring her news about the F.A.C.T. She called her deck back in the mansion, downloaded the evidence Emily had sent her, and spilled it in their laps. They looked it over, hemming and hawing.

(Castleman zipped through it at 2400 baud, his fat-shrouded eyes devouring whole paragraphs at once.)

They were polite. They were skeptical. The president of

Mali, one Moussa Diokite, was a personal friend of Prime

Minister Louison. The two countries shared fraternal bonds and had contemplated cultural-exchange missions. Unfortu- nately, plans for peaceful exchange had fallen through, be- cause of the constant state of crisis in all the Sahara countries.

Mali had nothing at all to gain from an attack on Grenada;

Mali was desperately poor and racked by civil disorder.

And the evidence was bad. Algeria and Mali had a long- standing border dispute; Algeria's State Department would say anything. 1. G. Farben's list of F.A.C.T. terrorist actions in Turkish Cyprus was impressive and useful, but proved nothing. Kymera Corporation were paranoid, always blaming foreigners for the actions of Japanese yakuza crime gangs.

Blaming Mali was a wild flight of fancy, when the Singaporeans were clearly the aggressors.

"How do you know it's Singapore?" Laura asked. "Can you prove that Singapore killed Mr. Stubbs? Did Singapore attack the Rizome Lodge in Galveston? If you can prove that you dealt faithfully, while the Islamic Bank broke the terms, I promise that I'll support your grievances in every way I can."

"We appreciate your position," said Mr. Gould. "Legal proof in a murder committed by remote control is, of course, rather difficult.... Have you ever been to Singapore?"

"No. Rizome has an office there, but ..."

"You've had a chance to see what we do here, on our own island. I think you understand now that we're not the mon- sters we've been painted. "

General Creft's lean face creased with a gleam of fangs. He was smiling at her, or trying to. Castleman stirred with a grunt and began hitting function keys.

"A trip to Singapore might enlighten you," Gould said.

"Would you be interested in going there?"

Laura paused. "In what capacity?"

"As our negotiator. As an officer in the United Bank of

Grenada." Mr. Gould tapped at his deck. "Let me point out," he said, watching the screen, "that Rizome operates under severe legal strictures. Very likely the Vienna Convention will soon shut down Rizome's investigations entirely."

He glanced up at her. "Unless you join us, Mrs. Webster, you will never learn the truth about who attacked you. You will have to go back to that bullet-riddled Lodge of yours, never knowing who your enemy was, or when they will strike again... .

Mr. Rainey spoke up. He had the drawl of an old-time

Florida cracker. "I reckon you know that we have a lot of data on you and your husband. This is no sudden decision on our part, Mrs. Webster. We know your abilities-we've even seen the work you -did, on that safehouse where we've been protecting you." He smiled. "We like your attitude. To put it short, we believe in you. We know how you had to fight within Rizome, to get a chance to build your Lodge and put your ideas into practice. With us, you'd have no such fight.

We know how to leave creative people to their work."

Laura touched her earphone. There was dead silence on the line. "You've cut me off the Net," she said.

Rainey spread his hands, his gold wristlet catching the light. "It did seem wisest."

"You want me to defect from my company."

"Defect. my, that's an ugly word! We want you to join us. Your husband, David, too. We can promise you both a level of support that might surprise you." Rainey nodded at the deck screen before her. A financial spreadsheet was com- ing up. "Of course, we know about your personal financial worth. We were surprised to see that, without Rizome, you scarcely own anything! Sure, you've got shares, but the things you've built don't belong to you-you just run them for your corporation. I've known plumbers with bigger salaries than you have! But things are different here. We know how to be generous."

"You seem to enjoy the plantation house," Gould said.

"It's yours-we could sign over title today. You can hire your own staff, of course. Transportation's no problem-we'll put a chopper and pilot at your disposal. And I can assure you that you'll be better protected under Bank security than you could ever be back in the States."

Laura glanced at the screen before her. A sudden shock- they were talking millions. Millions of Grenadian roubles, she realized. Funny money. "I don't have anything to offer you that's worth this amount," she said.

"We have an unfortunate public image," Gould said sadly.

"We've turned our back on the Net, and we've been vilified for it. Repairing that damage would be your job in the long run, Mrs. Webster-it should suit your skills. In the short run, we have this Singapore crisis. There's no love lost between us and our rival bank. But escalating warfare doesn't suit either of us. And you are a perfect candidate for convey- ing a peace proposal."

"Pure as the driven snow," murmured Mr. Castleman. He was gazing at the shiny surface of his gold cigarillo case. He popped it open and fired up another.

"You do have a credibility with Singapore that our own ambassadors lack," Mr. Gould said. A little twitch of irritation had passed his face at Castleman's indiscretion.

"I can't possibly give you an answer without checking with my company," Laura said. "And my husband."

"Your husband seems to like the idea," Gould said. "Of course we broached the idea to him already. Does that affect your thinking?"

"My company is going to be very upset that you've cut me offline," Laura said. "That wasn't in our agreement."

"We haven't exactly cut you off," Castleman said. "The line's still up, but we're feeding it a simulation...." His pudgy fingers flickered in midair. "An easy graphics job-no backgrounds, just light, darkness, a tabletop and talking heads.

None of this exists, you see. We haven't been existing for some time now."

Gelli laughed nervously.

"Then I'm closing this meeting of our investigative panel,"

said Mr. Gould. "You could have told me, Castleman."

"Sorry," Castleman said lazily.

"I mean that I would have officially closed the investigation, even before we went offline for the recruitment effort."

"I'm sorry, Gould, really," Castleman said. "You know I don't have your flair for this sort of thing."

"But now we can reason together," Rainey said, with an air of relief. He bent and reached beneath the table. He rose clutching a Rastafarian hookah of speckled bamboo, with a bowl of curving ramshorn, burnt sticky-black with resin. It looked a thousand years old, mummy-wrapped in antique leather thongs and crude dangling beads. "Will His Excel- lency join us?" Rainey asked.

"I'll check," Castleman said. He tapped rapidly at his keyboard. The lights dimmed to a mellow glow.

Rainey slapped a leather bag onto the tabletop and pulled its drawstring with a hiss. "Lamb's bread!" he exulted, pulling a handful of chopped green weed. He began stuffing the pipe with deft, flashy gestures.

The prime minister was sitting at the head of the table. A

little black man wearing dark shades and a high-collared military jacket. He'd materialized out of nowhere.

"Welcome to Grenada," he said.

Laura stared.

"Please don't be alarmed, Mrs. Webster," said Prime

Minister Louison. "This is not a formal proceeding. We often reason together in this manner. In the sacrament of meditation."

Rainey slid the pipe across the table. Louison took it and fired it with a chrome lighter, puffing loudly. The marijuana ignited with an angry hiss and bluish flames danced above the bowl.

"Burn the Pope!" said General Creft.

Louison's head was wreathed in smog. He blew a stream to his right, across Stubbs's empty chair. "In memory of a good friend." He passed the pipe to Rainey. Rainey sucked loudly- the pipe bubbled. "Fire and water," he said, giving it to

Gelli.

Gelli huffed enthusiastically and leaned back in his chair.

He slid it to Laura. "Don't be scared," Gelli said. "None of this is happening, really."

Laura slid the pipe toward General Creft. The air was growing blue with sweetish smoke. Creft puffed and blew with great hyperventilating wheezes.

Laura sat tensely on the edge of her seat. "I'm sorry I can't join your ceremony,". she said. -"It would discredit me as a bargaining partner. In the eyes of my company."

Rainey cawed with laughter. They chuckled all around.

"They won't know," Gelli told her.

"They won't understand," Castleman said, breathing smoke.

"They won't believe," said Gould.

The prime minister leaned forward, his shades gleaming.

His medals glistened in the light. "Some mon deal with information," he told her. "And some mon deal with the concept of truth. But some mon deal with magic. Information flow around ya. And truth flow right at ya. But magic-it flow right through ya."

"These are tricks," Laura said. She gripped the table.

"You want me to join you-how can I trust you? I'm not a magician We know what you are," Gould said, as if talking to a child. "We know all about you. You, your Rizome, your

Net-you think that your world encompasses ours. But it doesn't. Your world is a subset of our world." He slapped the table with his open palm-a gunshot bang of noise. "You see, we know everything about you. But you know nothing at all about us."

"You have a little spark, maybe," Rainey said. He was leaning back in his chair, steepling his fingertips, his eyes slitted, and already reddening. "But you'll never see the future-the real future-until you learn to open up your mind. To see all the levels ... "

"All the levels under the world," Castleman said. - 'Tricks,'

you call it. Reality's nothing but levels and levels of tricks.

Take that stupid black glass off your eyes, and we can show you ... so many things...."

Laura jumped to her feet. "Put me back on the Net! You have no right to do this. Put me back at once."

The prime minister laughed. A dry little wizened chuckle.

He set the fuming pipe under the table. Then he sat back up, lifted both hands theatrically, and vaporized.

The Bank's Directors stood in a body, shoving their chairs back. They were laughing and shaking their heads. And ignoring her.

They strolled off together, chuckling, muttering, into the pitch blackness of the tunnel. Leaving Laura alone under the pool of light, with the glowing decks and cooling mugs of coffee. Castleman had forgotten his cigarette; case... .

["Oh my God,"] came a quiet voice in her ear. ["They all vanished! Laura, are you there? Are you all right?"]

Laura's knees buckled. She half fell backward into her chair.

"Ms. Emerson," she said. "Is that you?"

["Yes, dear. How did they do that?"]

"I'm not sure," Laura said. Her throat was sandpaper dry.

She poured herself some coffee, shakily, not caring what might be in it. "What exactly did you see them do?"

["Well... it seemed quite a reasonable discussion... .

They said that they appreciate our mediation, and don't blame us for Stubbs's death.... Then suddenly this. You're alone.

One moment they were sitting and talking, and the next, the chairs were empty and the air was full of smoke."] Ms.

Emerson paused. ["Like a video special effect. Is that what you saw, Laura?"]

"A special effect," Laura said. She gulped warm coffee.

"Yes... they chose this meeting ground, didn't they? I'm sure they could rig it somehow."

Ms. Emerson laughed quietly. ["Yes, of course. It did give me a turn.... For a moment I was afraid you'd tell me they were all Optimal Personas. Ha ha. What a cheap stunt." ]

Laura set her mug down carefully. "How did I, uh, do?"

["Oh, very well, dear. You were quite your usual self. I did offer a few minor suggestions online, but you seemed distracted.... Not surprising, in such an important meet- ing.... Anyway, you did well. "]

"Oh. Good," Laura said. She gazed upward. "I'm sure if

I could reach that ceiling and dig around behind those lights,

I'd find holograms or something."

["Why waste your time?"] Ms. Emerson chuckled. ["And spoil their harmless little touch of drama.... I notice that

David has also had a very interesting time.... They tried to recruit him! We've been expecting that."]

"What did he say?"

["He was very polite. He did well, too."]

She heard footsteps. Sticky ambled out of the darkness.

"So," he said. "You sittin' here talkin' to thin air again."

He sprawled carelessly into Gelli's chair. "You okay? You look a fickle pale." He glanced curiously at one of the screens. "They give you a hard time?"

"They're a hard bunch," Laura told him. "Your bosses."

"Well it's a hard world," Sticky shrugged. "You'll be wanting to get back to that baby of yours.... I got the jeep waitin' up on the roof.... Let's move."

The swaying descent from the tower turned her stomach.

She felt greenish and clammy as they took the winding road back to the coast. He drove far too fast, the steep, romantic hills lurching and dipping with the shocks, like cheap back- stage scenery. "Slow down, Sticky, she said. "I'll throw up if you don't. "

Sticky looked alarmed. "Why you nah tell me? Hell, we'll stop." He bounced off the road into the shelter of some trees, then killed the engine. "You stay here," he told the soldier.

He helped Laura out of her seat. She hung on his arm. "If

I could just walk a little," she said. Sticky led her away from the jeep, checking the sky again, by reflex.

A light pattering of rain rustled the leaves overhead. "What's this?" he said. "You hanging all over me. You been taking

Carlotta's pills or something?"

She let him go reluctantly. He felt warm and solid. Made of human flesh. Sticky laughed to see her swaying there flat-footed. "What's the matter? Uncle Dave not givin' you any?"

Laura flushed. "Didn't your mother teach you not to be such a fucking chauvinist? I can't believe this."

"Hey," Sticky said mildly. "My mother was just one of

Winston's gals. When he snap a finger, she jump like a gunshot. Not everyone touchy like you, you know." He squatted beneath a tree, bracing. his back, and picked up a long twig. "So. They give you a scare, do they?" He juggled the twig between his fingers. "Tell you anything about the war?"

"Some," Laura said. "Why?"

"Militia's been on full alert for three days," Sticky said.

"Barracks talk says the terries gave the Bank an ultimatum.

Threaten brimstone fire. But we through payin' shakedown money. So looks like we gonna start poppin' caps."

"Barracks talk," Laura said. Suddenly she felt stifled in the long black chador. She stripped it, over her head.

"Better keep the flak jacket," Sticky told her. There was a gleam in his eyes. He liked seeing her throw clothes off.

"Lickle gift from me to you."

She looked around herself, breathing hard. The fine wet smell of tropic woods. Bird calls. Rain. The world was still here. No matter what went on in people's heads... .

Sticky jabbed at a termite nest in the tree's roots, waiting for her.

She felt better now. She understood Sticky. The vicious fight they'd had earlier seemed almost comfortable now-like a necessary thing. Now he was giving her a look-not like a side of beef or an enemy, but a kind of look she was used to getting from men. He wasn't so different from other young men. Kind of a jerk maybe, but a human being. She felt a sudden gush of comradely human feeling for him-almost felt she could hug him. Or at least invite him to dinner.

Sticky looked down at his boots. "Did they say you a hostage?" he said tightly. "Say they were gonna shoot you?"

"No," Laura said. "They want to hire us. To work for Grenada."

Sticky began laughing. "That's good. That's real good.

That's funny." He stood up loosely, happily, as if shrugging off a weight. "You gonna do it?"

"No.'

"I nah think so." He paused. "You ought to, though."

"Why don't you have dinner with us tonight?" Laura said.

"Maybe Carlotta can come. We'll have a good talk together.

The four of us."

"I have to watch what I eat," Sticky said. Meaningless.

But it meant something to him.

Sticky left her at the mansion. David arrived an hour later.

He kicked open the door and came down the hall whooping, banging the baby on his hip. "Home again, home again.

Loretta was crowing with excitement.

Laura was waiting in the hideous living room, nursing her second rum punch. "Mother of my child!" David said. "Where are the diapers, and how was your day?"

"They're supposed to be in the tote."

"I used all of those. God, what smells so good? And what are you drinking?"

"Rita made planter's punch."

"Well, pour me some." He vanished with the baby and brought her back freshly changed, with her bottle.

Laura sighed. "You had a good time, David, didn't you?"

"You wouldn't believe what they have out there," David said, sprawling onto the couch with the baby in his lap. "I met another one of the Andreis. I mean his name's not

Andrei, but he acted just like him. Korean guy. Big Buckminster

Fuller fan. They're making massive arcologies out of noth- ing! For nothing! Concretized sand and seastone.... They sink these iron grates into the ocean, run some voltage through, and get this: solids begin to accrete ... calcium carbonate, right? Like seashells! They're growing buildings offshore.

Out of this 'seastone.' And no building permits... no impact statements... nothing."

He gulped three inches of cloudy rum and lime, then shuddered. "Man! I could do with another of these.... Laura, it was the hottest thing I ever saw. People are living in 'em.

Some of them are under water ... you can't tell where the walls end and the coral starts."

Little Loretta grabbed her bottle avidly. "And get this-I was walking around in my work clothes and nobody paid any attention. Just another black guy, right? Even with old uhmm

... Jesus, I forgot his name already, the Korean Andrei.... He was giving me the tour, but it was really low-key, I got to see everything. "

"They want you to work on it?" Laura said.

"More than that! Hell, they offered me a fifteen-million - rouble budget and carte blanche to get on with whatever I like." He took off his glasses and set them on the arm of the couch. "Of course I said no dice-no way I'm staying here without my wife and kid.-but if we could work out some kind of co-op thing with Rizome, hell, yes, I'd do it. I'd do it tomorrow."

"They want me to work for them, too," Laura said.

"They're worried about their public image. "

David stared at her and burst into laughter. "Well of course they are. Of course. Well, hell, pour me another one.

Tell me all about the meeting."

"It was bizarre," Laura said.

"Well, I believe that! Hell, you ought to see what they're up to out on the coast. They've got ten-year-old kids out there who were born-I mean literally born-in seawater. They have these maternity tanks... . They have women at term, right ... they take 'em out into these birthing tanks Did__

I mention the dolphins?" He sipped his drink.

"Dolphins."

"You ever hear of laser acupuncture? I mean right here along the spine...." He leaned forward, jostling the baby.

"Oh, sorry, Loretta." He switched arms. "Anyway, I can tell you all that later. So, you testified, huh? Were they tough?"

"Not tough exactly.... "

"If they want us to defect, it can't have been that bad."

"Well ..." Laura said. It was all slipping away from her.

She was feeling increasingly hopeless. There was no way she could tell him what had really happened... what she thought had happened... especially not online, in front of Atlanta's cameras. There'd be a better time later. Surely. "If we could only talk privately ..."

David smirked. "Yeah, it's a bitch, online... Well, I can have Atlanta send us back the tapes of your testimony. We'll look over 'em together, you can tell me all about it." Silence.

"Unless there's something you have to tell me right now."

"No...

"Well, I have something to tell you." He finished his drink. "I was gonna wait till after supper, but I just can't hold it." He grinned. "Carlotta made a pass at me."

"Carlotta?" Laura said, shocked. "She did what?" She sat up straighter.

"Yeah. She was there. We were offline together for just a second in one of the aquaculture rooms. It wasn't wired, see.

And she kind of sways over, slips her hand up under my shirt, and says... I don't remember exactly, but it was something like: `Ever wonder what it would be like? We know a lot of things Laura doesn't.' "

Laura turned livid. "What was that?" she demanded. "What about her hand?"

David blinked, his smile fading. "She just ran her hand over my ribs. To show she meant business, I guess." He was already defensive. "Don't blame me. I wasn't asking for it."

"I'm not blaming you, but I'm the one that means your business," Laura told him. Long silence. "And I kind of wish you weren't so gleeful about it."

David could not hide his grin. "Well ... I guess it was kind of flattering. I mean, everybody we know, knows we have a solid thing together, so it's not like the woods are full of women flinging themselves at me.... Y'know, it wasn't even so much that Carlotta herself was making a pass.... It was sort of a generic hooker pass. Like a business proposition."

He let Loretta grip his fingers. "Don't think too much of it. You were right when you said they were trying to get at us. It's like, they use whatever they can. Drugs-we don't go for that. Money-well, we're not breadheads.... Sex-I think they just told Carlotta to try it, and she said she would. None of that means much. But man--creative potential-I'm not ashamed to say that got me where I lived."

"What a shitty thing to do," Laura said. "At the very least, she could have sent some other Church girl. "

"Yeah," he mused, "but maybe another girl would have looked better... . Oh, sorry. Forget I said that. I'm drunk."

She forced herself to think about it. Maybe he'd been offline for just five minutes in that offline netherworld they had here, and maybe, just maybe, he'd done it. Maybe he'd slept with Carlotta. She could feel her world cracking at the thought, like ice over deep black water.

David played with the baby, a harmless tra-la-la expression on his face. No. No way he could have done it. She'd never even doubted him before. Never like this.

It was like a dozen years of confident adulthood had split open in black crevasses. Way down there, raw scars of the world-eating fear she'd felt, when she was nine years old and her parents broke up. Rum soured in her stomach, and she felt a sudden cramping pang.

It was another ploy, she thought grimly. They weren't going to do this to her. Everyone had insecurities. They knew about hers-they knew her personal history. But they weren't going to play on her private feelings of dread and make her start doubting reality. She wouldn't let them. No. No more weaknesses. Nothing but stern resolve. Until she'd put an end to this.

She stood up and walked quickly through the bedroom, to the bath. She threw off her filthy clothes. There was a stain.

Her period had started. The first she'd had since the. preg- nancy. "Oh, fuck," she said, and burst into tears. She got into the shower and let the needle-thin gush of odd-smelling water blast her face.

The weeping helped. She flushed the weakness out like poison in her tears. Then she put on mascara and eye shadow, so he wouldn't see the redness. And she wore a dress for dinner.

David was still full of the things he'd seen, so she let him talk, and just smiled and nodded, in Rita's candlelight.

He was serious about staying in Grenada. "The tech is more important than the politics," he told her blithely. "That crap never lasts, but a real innovation's like a permanent infrastructural asset!" The two of them could form a real

`Rizome Grenada'-it would be like arranging the Lodge, but on a scale twenty times bigger, and with free money. They would show them what a Rizome architect could do-and it'd be a foothold for some sane social values. Sooner or later the

Net would civilize the place-wean them away from their crazy piracy bullshit. Grenada didn't need dope, it needed food and shelter.

They went to bed, and David reached for her. And she had to tell him she had her period. He was surprised, and glad. "I thought you were looking a little stressed," he said. "It's been a whole year, hasn't it? Must feel pretty weird to have it back. "

"No," she said, "it's just... natural. You get used to it."

"You haven't said much tonight," he said. He rubbed her stomach gently. "Kind of mysterious."

"I'm just tired," she said. "I can't really talk about it just now."

"Don't let 'em get you down. Those Bank creeps aren't so much," he said. "I hope we get a chance to meet old

Louison, the prime minister. Down in the projects, people were talking about him like these Bank hustlers were just his errand boys." He hesitated. "I don't like the way they talked about Louison. Like they were really scared."

"Sticky told me there's a lot of war talk," Laura told him.

"The army's on alert. People are tense."

"You're tense," he said, rubbing her. "Your shoulders are like wood." He yawned. "You know you can. tell me any- thing, Laura. We don't keep secrets, you know that."

"I want to see the tapes tomorrow," she said. "We'll go over 'em together, like you said." There was bound to be a flaw in them, she thought. Somewhere, a little flicker, or a misplaced chunk of pixels. Something that would prove that they were faked, and that she wasn't crazy. She couldn't have people thinking she was cracking up. It would ruin everything.

She was unable to sleep. The day tossed through her mind, over and over. And the cramps were bad. At half past mid- night she gave up and put on a robe.

David had made Loretta a crib-a little square corral, padded all around with blankets. Laura looked over her little girl and cradled her with a glance. Then back at David. It was funny how much they looked alike when they slept. Father and daughter. Some strange human vitality that had passed through her, that she'd nurtured within herself. Wonderful, painful, eerie. The house was still as death.

She heard distant thunder. From the north. Hollow, re- peated booms. It was going to rain. That would be nice. A

little tropic rain to soothe her nerves.

She walked silently through the living room onto the porch.

She and David had cleared the junk away and swept the place; it was comfortable there now. She swung out the arms of an old Morris chair and reclined in it, propping up her tired legs. Warm garden air with the heavy-lidded perfume reek of ylang-ylang. No rain yet. The air was full of tension.

The distant lights at the gate flashed on. Laura winced and lifted her head. The two night guards-she didn't know their names yet-had come out and were conferring over their belt phones.

She heard a pop overhead. Very quiet, unobtrusive, like a rafter settling. Then another one: a faint metallic bonk, and a rustle. Very quiet, like birds landing.

Something had dropped onto the roof. Something had hit the top of one of the turrets-bonked off its tin roof onto the shingles.

White glare sheeted over the yard, silently. White glare from the top of the mansion. The guards looked up, startled.

They flung their arms up in surprise, like bad actors.

The roof began crackling.

Laura stood up and screamed at the top of her lungs.

She dashed through the darkened house to the bedroom.

The baby had jerked awake and was howling in fear. David was sitting up in bed, dazed. "We're on fire," she told him.

He catapulted out of bed and stumbled into his pants.

"Where?"

"The roof. In two places. Fire bombs, I think."

"Oh, Jesus," he said. "You grab Loretta and I'll get the others. "

She strapped Loretta into her tote and tossed their decks into a suitcase. She could smell smoke by the time she'd finished. And there was a steady crackling roar.

She hauled the baby and the suitcase out into the yard. She left Loretta in her tote, behind the fountain, then turned to look. One of the turrets was wrapped in flames. A leaping ulcer of fire spread over the west wing.

Rajiv and Jimmy came out, half carrying a coughing, weeping Rita. Laura ran to them. She sank her nails into

Rajiv's naked arm. "Where's my husband, you stupid bastard!"

"Very sorry, madam," Rajiv whimpered. He tugged ner- vously at his drooping pants. "Sorry, madam, very sorry... "

She shoved him aside so hard' that he spun and fell. She vaulted the stairs and rushed back in, ignoring their yells.

David was in the bedroom. He was crouched almost dou- ble, with a wet washcloth pressed to his face. He was wearing his videoglasses, and had hers propped on his head. The bedside clock was clamped under his armpit. "Just a sec," he muttered, fixing her with blank, gold-etched eyes. "Gotta find my toolbox."

"Fuck it, David, go!" She hauled at his arm. He went reluctantly, stumbling.

Once outside, they had to back away from the heat. One by one, the upper rooms were beginning to explode. David dropped his washcloth, numbly. "Flashover," he said, staring.

A fist of dirty flame punched out an upstairs window.

Shards of glass fountained across the lawn. "The heat builds up," David muttered clinically. "The whole room ignites at once. And the gas pressure just blows the walls out."

The soldiers pushed them back, holding their stupid, use- less tangle-guns at chest level, like police batons. David went reluctantly, hypnotized by destruction. "I've run simulations of this, but I've never seen it happen," he said, to no one in particular. "Jesus, what a sight!"

Laura shoved one of the teenage soldiers as he trampled her bare foot. "Some help you are, asshole! Where in hell is the fire department or whatever you use in this godforsaken place?"

The boy backed off, trembling, and dropped his gun. "Look at the sky!" He pointed northeast.

Low scud of burning clouds on the northern horizon. Lit like dawn with ugly, burning amber. "What the hell," David said, marveling. "That's miles away.... Laura, that's Point

Sauteur. It's the whole fucking complex off there. That's a refinery fire!"

"Brimstone fire," the soldier wailed. He started sobbing, dabbing at his face. The other soldier, a bigger man, kicked him hard in the leg. "Pick up you weapon, bloodclot!"

A distant dirty flash lit the clouds. "Man, I hope they haven't hit the tankers," David said. "Man, I hope the poor bastards on those rigs have lifeboats. " He tugged at his earpiece. "You getting all this, Atlanta?"

Laura pulled her own rig off his head. She backed away and fetched Loretta in her tote. She pulled the screaming baby free of the thing and cradled her against her chest, rocking her and murmuring.

Then she put the glasses on.

Now she could watch it without hurting so much.

The mansion burned to the ground. It took all night. Their little group huddled together in the guardhouse, listening to tales of disaster on the phones.

Around seven A.M., a spidery military chopper arrived and set down by the fountain.

Andrei, the Polish émigré, hopped out. He took a large box from the pilot and joined them at the gates.

Andréi's left arm was wrapped in medicinal gauze, and he stank of chemical soot. "I have brought shoes and uniforms for all survivors," he announced. The box was full of flat, plastic-wrapped packs: the standard cadre's jeans and short-sleeved shirts. "Very sorry to be such bad hosts," Andrei told them somberly. "The Grenadian People apologize to you."

"At least we survived," Laura told him. She slipped her bare feet gratefully into the soft deck shoes. "Who took credit?"

"The malefactors of the F.A.C.T. have broken all civilized bounds. "

"I figured," Laura said, taking the box. "We'll take turns changing inside the guardhouse. David and I will go first."

Inside, she shucked out of her flimsy nightrobe and buttoned on the stiff, fresh shirt and heavy jeans. David put on a shirt and shoes.

They stepped out and Rita went in, shivering. "Now, you will please join me in the helicopter," Andrei said. "The world must know of this atrocity...."

"All right," Laura said. "Who's online?"

["Practically everybody,"] Emily told her. ["We got you on a live feed throughout the company, and to a couple of news services. Vienna's gonna have a hard time holding this one.... It's just too big."]

Andrei paused at the chopper's hatchway. "Can you leave the baby?"

"No way," David said flatly. They climbed into two crash couches in the back, and David held Loretta's tote in his lap.

Andrei took the copilot's seat and they buckled in.

Up and away in a quiet hiss of rotor blades.

David glanced out the bulletproof window at the mansion's black wreckage. "Any idea what hit our house?"

"Yes. There were many of them. Very small, cheap planes-paper and bamboo, like children's kites. Radar- transparent. Many have crashed now, but not before they dropped their many bombs. Little thermite sticks with flaming jelly."

"Were they hitting us in particular? Rizome, I mean?"

Andrei shrugged in his shoulder harness. "It is hard to say.

Many such houses have burned. The communiqué does men- tion you.... I have it here." He passed them a printout.

Laura glanced at it: date and tag line, and block after block of the usual Stalinist garbage. "Do you have a casualty count?"

"Seven hundred so far. It is rising. They are still pulling bodies from the offshore rigs. They hit us with antiship 'missiles."

"Good God," David said.

"Those were heavy armaments. We have choppers out looking for ships. There may have been several. But there are many ships in the Caribbean, and missiles have a long range."

He reached into his shirt pocket. "Have you seen these before?"

Laura took the object from his fingers. It looked like a big plastic paper clip. It was speckled camo-green and brown, and weighed almost nothing. "No."

"This one is defused-it is plastic explosive. A mine. It can blow the tire off a truck. Or the leg off a woman or child." His voice was cold. "The small planes scattered many, many hundreds of them. You will not be traveling by the road anymore. And we will not set foot around the complex. "

"What kind of crazy bastard-" David said.

"They mean to deny us our own country," Andrei said.

"These devices will shed our blood for months to come."

Land slid below them; suddenly they were over the Carib- bean. The chopper wheeled. "Do not fly into the smoke,"

Andrei told the pilot. "It is toxic."

Smoke still billowed from two of the offshore rigs. They resembled giant tabletops piled high with burning cars. A pair of fire barges spewed long, feathered plumes of chemical foam over them.

The jackleg rigs had cranked themselves down to the sur- face; their ornate hydraulics were awash with saltwater. The water was full of blackened flotsam-blobs of fabric, writh- ing plastic snakes of cable. And stiff-armed floating things that looked like dummies. Laura looked away with a gasp of pain

"No, look very well," Andrei told her. "They never even showed us a face.... Let these people have faces, at least."

"I can't look," she said tightly.

"Then close your eyes behind the glasses."

"All right." She pressed her blind face to the window.

"Andrei. What are you going to do?"

"You are leaving this afternoon," he said. "As you see, we can no longer guarantee your safety. You will leave as soon as the airport is swept for mines." He paused. "These will be the last flights out. We want no more foreigners. No prying journalists. And none of the vermin from the Vienna

Convention. We are sealing our borders."

She opened her eyes. They were hovering over the shoreline. Half-naked Rastas were pulling corpses up onto the docks. A dead little girl, limp clothes sheeting water. Laura bit back a shriek, grabbing David's arm. Her gorge rose. She slumped back into the seat, fighting her stomach.

"Can't you see my wife is sick?" David said sharply.

"This is enough."

"No," Laura said shakily. "Andrei's right.... Andrei, listen. There's no way that Singapore could have done this.

That's not gang war. This is atrocity."

"They tell us the same," Andrei admitted. "I think they are afraid. This morning, we captured their agents in Trini- dad. It seems they have been playing with toy planes and matches."

"You can't attack Singapore!" Laura said. "More killing can't help you!"

"We are not Christs or Gandhis," Andrei said. He spoke slowly, carefully. "This is terrorism. But there is a deeper kind of terror than this... a fear far older and darker. You could tell Singapore about that terror. You know something about it, Laura, I think."

"You want me to go to Singapore?" Laura said. "Yes. I'll go there. If it'll stop this."

"They need not fear little toy planes," Andrei said. "But you can tell them to be afraid of the dark. To be afraid of food-and air-and water-and their own shadows."

David looked at Andrei, his jaw dropping.

Andrei sighed. "If they are innocent of this, then they must prove it and join us immediately."

"Yes, of course," Laura said quickly. "You have to make common cause. Together. Rizome can help."

"Otherwise I pity Singapore," Andrei said. He had a look in his eyes that she had never seen in a human face. It was the farthest thing from pity.

Andrei left them at the little military airstrip at Pearls. But the evacuation flight he'd promised never showed-some kind of foulup. Eventually, after dark, a cargo chopper ferried

Laura and David to the civilian airport at Point Salines.

The night was pierced with headlights and the airport road was snarled with traffic. A company of mechanized infantry had seized the airport gates. A blasted truck on the roadside smoldered gently-it had wandered through a scattering of paper-clip mines.

Their chopper carried them smoothly over the fence. In- side, the airport was a jumble of luxury saloons and limos.

Militia in flak jackets and riot helmets were beating the airport bounds with long bamboo poles. Minesweepers. As the chopper settled to the weedy tarmac, Laura heard a sharp crack and flash as a pole connected.

"Watch you step," the pilot said cheerily, flinging open the hatch. A militia kid in camo, about nineteen-he looked excited by the night's action. Any kind of destruction was thrilling-it didn't seem to matter that it was his own people.

Laura and David decamped onto the tarmac, carrying the sleeping baby in her tote.

The chopper lifted silently. A little baggage cart scurried past them in the darkness. Someone had crudely wired a pair of push brooms to the cart's front. Laura and David shuffled carefully toward. the lights of the terminal. It was only thirty yards away. Surely somebody had swept it for mines already... . They eased their way around a mauve sports car.

Two fat men, wearing elaborate video makeup, were asleep or drunk in the car's plush bucket seats.

Soldiers yelled at them, beckoning. " 'Ey! Get away! You people! No robbin', no lootin'!"

They stepped into the long floodlit portico of the terminal.

Some of the glass frontage had been smashed or blown out; inside, the place was crammed. Excited crowd noise, waft of body heat, popping, scuffling. A Cuban airliner lifted off, its graceful hiss of takeoff drowned by the crowd.

A soldier in shoulder bars grabbed David's arm. "Papers.

Passport card."

"Don't have 'em," David said. "We were burned out."

"No reservation, no tickets?" the colonel said. "Can nah come in without tickets." He examined their cadre's uni- forms, puzzled. "Where you get those telly-glasses?"

"Gould and Castleman sent us," Laura lied smoothly. She touched her glasses. "Havana's just a stopover for us. We're witnesses. Outside contacts. You understand."

"Yah," the colonel said, flinching. He waved them inside.

They filtered quickly into the crowd. "That was brilliant!"

David told her. "But we still got no tickets."

["We can handle that,"] Emerson said. ["We have the

Cuban airline online now. They're running the evacuation-we can get you the next flight."

"Great. "

["You're almost back-try not to worry. "]

"Thanks, Atlanta. Solidarity." David scanned the crowd.

At least three hundred of them. "Man, it's a mad doctor's convention

Like kicking over a rotten log, Laura thought. The airport was crawling with tight-faced Anglos and Europeans-they seemed split pretty evenly between well-dressed gangster ex- iles and vice-dazzled techies gone native. Dozens of refugees sprawled on the floor, nervously clutching their loot. Laura stepped over the feet of a slim black woman passed out on a heap of designer luggage, a dope sticker glued to her neck.

Half a dozen hustlers in Trinidadian shirts were shooting craps on the floor, shouting excitedly in some East European language. Two screaming ten-year-olds chased each other through a group of men methodically smashing tape cassettes.

"Look," David said, pointing. A group of white-clad women stood at the edge of the crowd. Faint looks of disdain on their faces. Nurses, Laura thought. Or nuns.

"Church hookers!" David said. "Look, that's Carlotta!"

They shouldered their way through, skidding on trash.

Suddenly a scream erupted to their left. "What do you mean, you can't change it?" The shouter was waving a Grenadian credit card in the face of a militia captain. "There's fucking millions on this card, asshole!" A portly Anglo in a suit and jogging shoes-the shoes flickered with readouts. "You'd better call your fucking boss, Jack!"

"Sit down," the captain ordered. He gave the man a shove.

"Okay," the man said, not sitting. He stuffed the card inside his lapel. "Okay. I changed my mind. I'm choosing the tunnels instead. Take me back to the tunnels, pal." No response. "Don't you know who you're fucking talking to?"

He grabbed the captain's sleeve.

The captain knocked the grasping hand loose with a quick chop to the arm. Then he kicked the man's feet out from under him. The complainer fell heavily on his ass. He lurched back to his feet, his fists clenching.

The captain shrugged his tangle-gun free and shot the man pointblank. A high-speed splattering punch of wet plastic. A

serpent's nest of stinking ribbon flew over the Anglo's chest, trapping his arms, his neck, his face, and a nearby piece of luggage. He hit the floor squalling.

A roar of alarm from the crowd. Three militia privates rushed to their captain's aid, guns drawn. "Sit down!" the captain shouted, pumping another round into the chamber.

"Everyone! Down, now!" The tangle-victim started to choke.

People sat. Laura and David, too. people sat in a spreading wave, like a sporting event. Some laced their hands behind their heads, as if by reflex. The captain grinned and bran- dished his gun over them. "Better." He kicked the man, casually.

Suddenly the nuns approached in a body. Their leader was a black woman; she pulled back her wimple, revealing gray hair, a lined face. "Captain," she said calmly. "This man is choking. "

"He a t'ief, Sister," the captain said.

"That may be, Captain, but he still needs to breathe."

Three of the Church women knelt by the victim, tugging at the strands around his throat. The old woman-an Abbess,

Laura thought unwillingly-turned to the crowd and spread her hands in the crook-fingered Church blessing. "Violence serves no one," she said. "Please be silent."

She walked away, her sisters following without a word.

They left the tangle-victim where he lay, wheezing quietly.

The captain shrugged, and slung his gun again, and turned away, gesturing to his men. After a moment people began to stand up.

["That was well done,"] Emerson said.

David helped Laura to her feet and picked up the baby's tote. "Hey! Carlotta!" They followed her.

Carlotta spoke briefly to the Abbess, pulled her wimple back, and stepped away from her sisters.

"Hello," she said. Her frizzy mane of hair was pulled back. Her sharp-cheeked face looked naked and bleak. It was the first time they'd ever seen Carlotta without makeup.

"I'm surprised to see you leaving," Laura told her.

Carlotta shook her head. "They hit our temple. A temporary setback."

"Sorry," David said. "We were burned out, too."

"We'll be back," Carlotta shrugged. "Where there's war, there's whores."

The speakers crackled into life-a Cuban stewardess speak- ing Spanish. "Hey, that's us," David said suddenly. "They want us at the desk." He paused. "You hold Loretta, I'll go." He hurried off.

Laura and Carlotta stared at each other.

"He told me what you did," Laura said. "In case you were wondering."

Carlotta half smirked. "Orders, Laura."

"I thought we were friends."

"Friends maybe. But not Sisters," Carlotta said. "I know where my loyalties lie. Just as well as you do."

Laura-hefted Loretta's tote and slipped its strap onto her shoulder. "Loyalty doesn't give you the right to trash my family life."

Carlotta blinked. "Family, huh? If family meant so much to you, you'd be taking care of your man and baby in Texas, not dragging them here into the line of fire."

"How dare you," Laura said. "David believes in this as much as I do. "

"No, he doesn't. You hustled him into this so you could crawl up your company hierarchy." She raised a hand. "Laura, he's just a man. You need to get him away from the guns.

The old evil's loose again. Men are full of war poison."

"That's craziness!"

Carlotta shook her head. "You're out of your league,

Laura. Are you willing to put your body between a gun and a victim? I am. But you're not, are you? You don't have faith."

"I'm faithful to David," Laura said tightly. "I'm faithful to my company. What about you? What about faithful old

Sticky?"

"Sticky's a buffalo soldier," Carlotta said. "Cannon fodder, full of war evil."

"So that's it?" Laura said, amazed. "You just drop him?

Write him off, just like that?"

"I'm off Romance now," Carlotta said, as if that ex- plained everything. She reached into her robes and handed

Laura a vial of red pills. "Look, take these, I don't need 'em now-and stop being so stupid. All that crap you think is so important two of these'll put it all out of your mind. Go back to Galveston, Laura, check into a hotel somewhere, and fuck David's brains out. Snuggle up under the covers and stay out of the way where you won't get hurt."

Carlotta folded her arms and refused to take the vial back.

Laura stuffed it angrily into her jeans pocket. "So it really was completely artificial," she said. "You never felt any- thing genuine for Sticky at all."

"I was watching him for the Church," she said. "He kills people."

"I can't believe this," Laura said, staring at her. "I don't much like Sticky, but I accept him. As a person. Not a monster. "

"He's a professional hit man," Carlotta said. "He's killed over a dozen people."

"I don't believe you."

"What did you expect-that he'd carry an axe and drool?

Captain Thompson doesn't follow your rules. The houngans have been workin' on him for years. He's not an 'acceptable person'-he's like an armed warhead! You wondered about drug factories-Sticky Thompson is a drug factory."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Laura said.

"I mean his guts are full, of bacteria. Special ones-little drug factories. Where do you think he got that nickname

Sticky? He can eat a carton of yogurt and it turns him into a killing machine."

"A killing machine?" Laura said. "A carton of yogurt?"

"It's the enzymes. The bugs eat 'em. Make him fast- strong-feeling no pain, no doubt at all. They're gonna sic him on Singapore, and wow, I feel sorry for that little island. "

Sticky Thompson-a drug-crazed assassin. She still couldn't believe it. But what did hit men look like, anyway? Laura's head spun. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?"

Carlotta looked at her pityingly. "Because you're a straight,

Laura.'

"Stop calling me that!" Laura said. "What makes you so different?"

"Look at you," Carlotta said. "You're educated. You're smart. You're beautiful. You're married to a goddamn archi- tect. You have a wonderful baby and friends in high places."

Her eyes narrowed; she began to hiss. "Then look at me.

I'm a cracker. Ugly. No family. Daddy used to beat me up. I never finished school-I can't hardly read and write. I'm diselxic, or whatever they call it. You ever wonder what happens to people who can't read and write? In your fucking beautiful Net world with all its fucking data? No, you never thought of that, did you? If I found a place for myself, it was in the teeth of people like -you."

She pulled her wimple back over her head. "And getting older, too. I bet you never even wondered what happens to old Church girls. When we can't work that old black magic on your precious husbands. Well, don't worry about me,

Mrs. Webster. Our Goddess stands by Her own. Our Church runs hospitals, clinics, rest homes-we take care of people.

The Goddess gave me my life, not you or your Net. So I don't owe you nothing!" She looked ready to spit. "Never forget that."

David came up with the tickets. "It's all set. We're out of here. Thank God." The speaker announced a flight the crowd broke into hubbub. The baby began whimpering. David took her tote. "You okay, Carlotta?"

"I'm jus' fine," Carlotta said, smiling on him sunnily.

"Y'all come visit me in Galveston, won't y'all? Our Rever- end Morgan just won a seat on the City Council. We got big plans for Galveston."

"This is our flight," David said. "Good thing we don't have any luggage--but man, I'm gonna miss that toolbox."