Islands in the Net

8

A monsoon breeze whipped at her hair. Laura looked over the city from the roof of the Rizome godown.

The Net was a broken spiderweb. No phones at all. Televi- sion shut down, except for a single, emergency government channel. Laura felt the dead electric silence in her bones.

The dozen Rizome associates were all on the roof, mo- rosely spooning up breakfasts of seaweed and kashi. Laura rubbed her bare, phoneless wrist, nervously. Below her, three stories down by the loading docks, a gang of Anti-Labourites practiced their morning Tai Chi Chuan. Soft, languorous, hypnotic movements. No one led them, but they moved in unison.

They had barricaded the streets, their bamboo rickshaws laden with stolen sacks of cement and rubber and coffee beans. They were defying the curfew, the government's sud- den and draconic declaration of martial law, which lay over

Singapore like a blanket of lead. The streets were the army's now. And the skies, too.... Tall monsoon clouds over the morning South China Sea, a glamorous tropic gleam like puffed gray silk. Against the clouds, the dragonfly cutouts of police helicopters.

At first, the Anti-Labourites had claimed, as before, that they were "observing for civil rights." But as more and more of them had gathered during the night of the fourteenth, the pretense had faded. They had broken into warehouses and offices, smashing windows, barricading doors. Now the reb- els were swarming through the Rizome godown, appropriat- ing anything they felt was useful... .

There were hundreds of them, up and down the waterfront, viper-eyed young radicals in blood-red headbands and wrinkled paper clothes, wearing disposable surgical masks to hide their identities from police video. Grouping on street corners, exchanging elaborate ritual handshakes. Some of them mut- tering into toy walkie-talkies.

They had gathered here deliberately. Some kind of contin- gency plan. The docklands of East Lagoon were their strong- hold, their natural turf.

The docks had been depressed for years, half abandoned from the global embargoes inflicted on Singapore. The pow- erful Longshoreman's Union had protested to the P.I.P. ruler- ship with increasing bitterness. Until the troublesome union had been simply and efficiently disemployed, as a deliberate act, by a government investment in industrial robots.

But with the embargoes, even the robots were idle much of the time. Which was why Rizome had been able to buy into the shipping business cheaply. It was hard for Singapore to turn down such a sucker bet: even knowing that Rizome's intentions were political, an industrial beachhead.

The P.I.P. 's attack on the union, like most of their actions, was smart and farsighted and ruthless. But none of it had worked out quite the way the Government had planned. The union hadn't broken, but bent, twisted, mutated, and spread.

Suddenly they had stopped demanding work at all, and started demanding permanent leisure.

Laura could see them down there now, in the streets. A

few were women, a few older men, but mostly classic young troublemakers. She'd read somewhere once that 90 percent of the world's havoc was committed by men between fifteen and twenty-five. They were branding the walls and streets with neat stenciled slogans. "PLAY FOR KEEPS! WORKERS OF THE

WORLD, RELAX!"

Razak's Rejects, their bellies full of cheap bacterial chow. For years they'd lived for next to nothing, dossing down in abandoned warehouses, drinking from public fountains. Politics filled their days, an elaborate ideology, as convoluted as a religion.

Like most Singaporeans, they were sports nuts. Day after day they gathered in their polite, penniless hordes, keeping fit with healthful exercise. Except in their case it was unarmed combat-a very cheap sport, requiring no equipment but the human body... .

You could tell them in the streets by the way they walked.

Heads held high, eyes glazed with that calm karate look that came from the knowledge that they could break human bones with their hands. They were worthless and proud, languidly accepting any handout the system offered, but showing noth- ing even close to gratitude. Legally and constitutionally speak- ing, it was hard to say why they shouldn't be allowed to do nothing.... Except, of course, that it struck at the very heart of the industrial ethic.

Laura left the parapet. Mr. Suvendra had jury-rigged a coat-hanger antenna for his battery-powered TV, and they were struggling to catch a broadcast from Johore. The broad- cast flickered on suddenly, and everyone crowded around the television. Laura shouldered her way in between Ali and

Suvendra's young niece, Derveet.

Emergency news. The anchorman was a Malay-speaking

Maphilindonesian. The image was scratchy. It was hard to tell whether it was a simple. TV screwup or deliberate jam- ming by Singapore.

"Invasion talk," Suvendra translated gloomily. "Vienna are not liking this state of emergency: they call it coup d'etat, la!"

A young newswoman in a chiffon Muslim chador gestured at a map of the Malay peninsula. Nasty-looking storm fronts showed the potential striking range of Singaporean planes and ships. A weather girl for warfare, Laura thought.

"Definitely, Vienna could not invasion against all that, la...."

"Singapore Air Force are flying up Nauru, to protect the launch sites!"

"I hope their giant lasers are not hitting their own fellow in orbit!"

"Those poor little Pacific Island fellows, they must bitterly regretting the day they started on Singapore client-state!"

Despite its awful news, the television was cheering every- one up. The sense of contact with the Net sent a quick, racing sense of community over them. Half circled, shoulder to shoulder before the TV, they were almost like a Rizome council session. Suvendra felt it, too-she looked up with her rust smile in hours.

Laura was discreetly silent. The crew were still chagrined at her for disappearing earlier. She had run off to get in touch with David and had come back unconscious in a cab. She had told them about meeting Sticky. Their first thought was to inform the Government-but the Government had all that news already. The spring guns, the pellets, the mines-the acting prime minister, Jeyaratnam, had announced all that on television. Warned the populace-and shut them up in their own homes.

Suvendra clapped her hands. "Council session?"

A young associate manned the television, off on the corner of the roof. The rest linked hands and briefly sang a Rizome song, in Malay. Amid the city's menacing silence, their raised voices felt good. It almost made Laura forget that

Rizome Singapore were now refugees skulking on the roof of their own property... .

"For me," Suvendra told them seriously, "I think we have done all we can. The Government is martial law now, isn't it?

Violence is coming, isn't it? Do any of us want to fight

Government? Hands?"

No one voted for violence. They'd already voted with their feet-by running upstairs to avoid the rebels.

Ali spoke up. "Could we escape the city?"

"Out to sea?" suggested Derveet hopefully.

They looked over the waterfront: the unmanned cargo ships, the giant idle cranes, the loading robots shut down by Anti-

Labourite longshoremen who had seized the control systems.

Out to sea were the skidding white plumes of navy hydrofoils on patrol.

"This isn't Grenada. They're not letting anyone go," Mr.

Suvendra said with finality. "They'd shoot at us."

"I agree," said Suvendra. "But we could demand arrest,

Ia. By the Government. "

The others looked gloomy.

"Here we are radicals," Suvendra told them. "We are economic democrats in authoritarian regime. It is Singapore reform we are demanding, but chance is spoilt, now. So the proper place for us in Singapore is jail."

Long, meditative silence. Monsoon thunder rolled in from, offshore.

"I like the idea," Laura said meekly.

Ali tugged at his lower lip. "Safe from voodoo terrorists, in jail."

"Also less chance that the fascist Army might accidentally shoot us on purpose, Ia. "

"We must decide for us. We can't ask Atlanta," Suvendra pointed out.

They looked unhappy. Laura had a brainstorm. "'Atlanta-it has a famous jail. Martin Luther King "stayed there."

They broke into eager discussion.

"But we shan't do any good from jail, la."

"Yes, we can. Embarrass the government! Martial law can't last."

"We do no good here anyway, if Parliament is spoilt. "

Distant echoed shouting rose from the streets. "I'll go look," Laura told them, standing up.

She strode across the hot, flat rooftop to the parapet again.

The noise grew louder: it was a police bullhorn. For a mo- ment she glimpsed it, two blocks away: a red-and-white police car moving cautiously across a deserted intersection. It stopped before the ragged burlap heap of a street barricade.

Ali joined her. "We voted," he told her. "It's jail."

"Okay. Good."

Ali studied the police car, listening to it. "It's Mr. bin

Awang," he said. "Malay M. P. from Bras Basah. "

"Oh, yeah," Laura said. "I remember him from the hearings. "

"Surrender talk. Go peacefully, back to families, he says."

Rebels emerged from the shadows. They swaggered toward the car, lazily, fearlessly. Laura could see them shouting at the bulletproof glass, gesturing to the cop behind the wheel- turn around, go back. Verboten. Liberated territory .. .

The roof-mounted bullhorn bleated arguments.

One of the kids began spray-painting a slogan onto the hood. The prowl car emitted an angry siren wail and began backing up.

Suddenly the kids pulled weapons. Short, heavy swords, hid- den in their shirts and pants. They began hacking furiously at the prowl can's tires and door hinges. Unbelievably, the car gave way, with tortured screeches of metal audible for blocks around....

Laura and Ali shouted in astonishment. The rebels were using those deadly ceramic machetes, the same as she'd seen in Grenada. The long high-tech knives that had chopped a desk in half.

The other Rizomians ran up. The rebels hacked the hood off in seconds and efficiently butchered the engine. They wrenched the door off with ear-torturing screeches.

They were pulling the car apart.

They fished out the astonished cops, rabbit-punching them into submission. They got the M. P., too.

But then, suddenly, there was a chopper overhead.

Tear-gas canisters fell, shrouding the scene in up-rushing columns of mist. The rebels scattered. A burly longshoreman, wearing a diving mask, lifted a stolen police blunderbuss and fired tangle-rounds upward. They splattered harmlessly on the chopper's undercarriage in wads of writhing plastic, but it backed off anyway.

More siren howls and three more backup prowl cars rushed into the intersection. They skidded to a halt before the shat- tered car. Kids were still running from the wreckage, doubled over, clutching stolen tangle-ammo and stenciled canisters.

Some wore rubber swim goggles, giving them a weirdly squinty, professorial look. Their surgical masks seemed to help against the tear gas.

Doors flung open and the cops deployed, wearing full riot gear: white helmets, perspex face shields, tangle-guns, and lathi sticks. Kids scuttled for cover into the surrounding buildings. The cops conferred briefly, pointing at a doorway, ready to charge.

There was a sudden feeble whump from the wreckage of the prowl car. The car seats belched flame.

In a few moments, a Molotov column of burning uphol- stery was rising over the waterfront.

Ali yelled in Malay and pointed. Half a dozen rebels had appeared a block away from the fight, hauling an unconscious cop through a rathole in the side of a warehouse. They had chopped their way through the concrete blocks with their machetes.

"They have parangs!" Ali said with a kind of horrified glee. "Like magic kung-fu swords, la!"

The cops looked unhappy about charging the doorways. No wonder. Laura could imagine it: dashing bravely forward with tangle-gun drawn ... only to feel a sudden pain and fall down and find that some rat-faced little anarchist behind the door had just razored your leg off at the knee.... Oh, Jesus, those fucking machetes! They were like goddamned lasers.... What kind of stupid short-term-thinking bastard had invented those?

She felt cold as the implications mounted... . All that stupid theatrical kung-fu, the dumbest idea in the world, that silly-ass martial artists with no tanks or guns could resist modern cops or trained soldiers... . No, the A-L.P. couldn't fight cops head-on, but room-to-room, with walls riddled with holes, they could sure as hell weasel up from ambush and .. .

People were going to die here, she realized. They meant it.

Razak meant it. People were going to die... .

The cops got back into their prowl cars. They retreated. No one came out to yell or jeer, and somehow it was worse that they didn't... .

The rebels were busy elsewhere. Dramatic columns of smoke were rising all along the waterfront. Black, foul, billowing towers, bent like broken fingers by the monsoon breeze. No television, maybe, no phones-but now the whole of Singapore would know that hell was breaking loose. Smoke signals still worked. And their message was obvious.

Down on the docks behind the Rizome godown, three activists sloshed a ribbed jerry can over a heap of stolen truck tires. They stood well back and threw a lit cigarette. The untidy heap went up with a whump, tires jumping like a dropped plate of doughnuts. The tires settled to roast and crackle and spew... .

Derveet wiped at her eyes. "It stinks...."

"For me, I like up here better than down in those streets, definitely!"

"We could surrender to a helicopter," Suvendra said practi- cally. "There is room here up on the roof for setdown, and if we signal white flag, they could arrest us, quickly."

"Very good idea, la!"

"Getting a bed sheet if they have left us any.

Mr. Suvendra and an associate named Bima left for a raid downstairs.

Long, tiring minutes passed. There was no violence for the moment, but the quiet didn't help at all. It only made them feel more paranoiac, more besieged.

Down in the loading docks, groups of rebels clustered around their walkie-talkies. The radios were mass-produced kid's toys, Third World export, costing a few cents. Who the hell needed walkie-talkies when you could carry a telephone on your wrist? But the A-L.P. didn't think like that... .

"I don't think the cops can handle this," Laura said.

"They'll have to call in the Army."

Mr. Suvendra and Bima returned at last, with wadded bed sheets and a few packs of junk food overlooked by the looters. The rebels hadn't bothered them; they had scarcely, seemed to notice.

The crew spread a sheet out on the roof. Kneeling, Suvendra broke open a fibertip pen and smeared a thick black SOS

across the fabric. They tore up another sheet for a white flag and white armbands.

"Crude, but efficient," Suvendra said, rising.

"Now we flag up chopper, la...."

The kid monitoring the television yelled. "The Army is in

Johore!"

They dropped everything and rushed to the TV.

The, Johore announcers were stunned. Singapore's Army had blitzkrieged across the causeway into Johore Bahru. An armored column was racing through the city, meeting no resistance-not that Maphilindonesia could put up much, at the moment. Singapore described it as a "police action."

"Oh, God," Laura said, "how could they be so fucking stupid?"

"They are seizing the reservoirs," said Mr. Suvendra.

"What?"

"Main Singapore water supply on the mainland. Can't defending Singapore with no water."

"They did it before once, during Konfrontation," said

Mrs. Suvendra. "Malaysia government very angered at

Singapore try to shut off their water supply."'

"What happened then?" Laura said.

"They storm through Johore and head for Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysia capital... . Malaysia army runs away, stupid

Malaysia government falls ... next thing we know, is new

Maphilindonesia Federation. New federal government was very nice to Singapore, till they agree to go back in their borders,

"They learn not to bite the `Poisonous Shrimp,' " said Mr.

Suvendra. "Very hard-working Army in Singapore."

"Singapore Chinese work too hard," said Derveet. "Causing all these troubles, la."

"Now we are enemy aliens, too," said Bima unhappily.

"What to do."

They waited for a police chopper. Finding one wasn't difficult. By now a dozen lurked over the waterfront, silent, swaying, dodging the columns of smoke.

The Rizome crew waved their white flag enthusiastically as one cruised nearby, with insolent ease.

The chopper hovered above them, its invisible blades hiss- ing. A cop stuck his helmeted head from the bay, flipping up his face plate.

Confused yelling followed. "Not to worry, Rizome!" shouted the cop at last. "We rescue you, no problem!"

"How many of us?" Suvendra yelled, clamping her sun hat to the top of her head.

"Everyone! Whole thing!"

"In one chopper?" Suvendra shouted, confused. The little police craft might have held three passengers at most.

The chopper made no attempt to land. In a few seconds it rose again, heading north in a smooth, determined arc.

"They could hurry," said Suvendra, glancing at the mon- soon front. "Weather turning nasty soon, definitely!"

They wadded up their SOS. bed sheet, in case the rebels decided to come up and check on them. Negotiating with the

A-L.P. was a possibility, but in council session Rizome had decided not to press them. The rebels had already seized the

Rizome godown; they might just as easily seize the Rizome personnel. They'd already kidnapped two cops and a Member of Parliament.-The situation's hostage potential was obvious.

Another boring and horrible twenty minutes passed, a tense and morbid silence that fooled nobody. The sun topped the monsoon front, and tropical midmorning blazed over the silent city. So eerie, Laura thought-a blackout of people ...

Another chopper, larger this time and twin-rotored, buzzed the waterfront. It spun on its axis and hovered momentarily over a comer of the godown. Three black-clad men leapt from the bay doors onto the rooftop. The chopper rose again immediately.

The three men paused a moment, patting gear, then stalked toward them. They wore black fatigues, black combat boots, black webbing belts hung with brass-snapped holsters and utility pouches and ammo kits. They carried short-muzzled, arcane-looking submachine guns.

"Good morning, all!" said their leader cheerfully. He was a big, ruddy-faced Englishman with close-cropped white hair, a veiny nose, and a permanent tropical sunburn. He looked about sixty, but ominously well preserved, for his age. Blood fractionation? Laura thought.

"Morning..." someone said dazedly.

"Hotchkiss is the name. Colonel Hotchkiss, Special Weap- ons and Tactics. This is Officer Lu and Officer Aw. We're here for your safety, ladies and gentlemen. So not to worry, okay?" Hotchkiss showed them a rack of white teeth.

Hotchkiss was huge. Six and a half feet tall, well over two hundred pounds. Arms like tree trunks. She'd almost forgot- ten how big Caucasians could be. With his thick black boots and heavy, elaborate gear, he was like something from an- other planet. Hotchkiss nodded at Laura, surprised. "I've seen you on telly, dear."

"The hearings?"

"Yeah. I've---

There was a sudden bang as the sheet-metal door to the rooftop burst open. A shouting. gang of rebels scrambled forward, clutching bamboo clubs.

Hotchkiss spun from the hip and opened up on the doorway with his submachine gun. There was a nerve-shattering racket.

Two rebels sprawled, punched backward by impact. The others fled screaming, and suddenly everyone was down, gripping the pebbled surface of the roof in terror.

Lu and Aw kicked the door shut and fired a tangle-round against the jamb, sealing it. They pulled thin loops of plastic from their belts and handcuffed the two fallen, gasping rebels.

They sat them up.

"Okay, okay," Hotchkiss told the rest of them, waving his beefy hand. "Only jelly-rounds. See? No problem, la."

The Rizome group rose slowly. As the truth dawned on them, there were nervous, embarrassed titters. The two reb- els, teenagers, had been strafed across their chests, tearing gaping holes in their paper shirts. Beneath it, their skins showed fist-sized blotches of indelible purple dye.

Hotchkiss chivalrously helped Laura to her feet. "Jelly bullets don't kill," he announced. "Still pack plenty of sting, however. "

"You shot us with a machine gun!" said one of the rebels sullenly.

"Shut up, son," Hotchkiss offered kindly. "Lu, Aw, these two are too small. Throw 'em back, eh?"

"Door is secured, sir," Lu pointed out.

"Use your head, Lu. You have your ropes."

"Yes, sir," Lu said, grinning. He and Officer Aw frog- marched the two boys toward the front of the roof. They began snapping their first captive into a set of chromed rappelling gear. From the loading docks three stories below, furious, bloodthirsty yells rose from the roused A-L.P.

"Well," Hotchkiss said casually. "Seems the rioters have made an operations nexus out of your HQ." Lu kicked one captive over the edge of the roof and paid out rappelling line as the boy hissed helplessly downward.

"But not to worry," Hotchkiss said. "We can break them wherever they stand."Suvendra winced. "We saw them demolition your squad car....

"Sending that car in was the politicals' idea," Hotchkiss sniffed. "But now it's our business."

Laura noticed the SWAT leader's complex military watch- phone. "What can you tell us, Colonel? We're starved for news up here. Is the Army really in Johore?"

Hotchkiss smiled at her. "This isn't your Texas, dearie.

The Army's just on the other side of the causeway just a little bridge. A few minutes away." He held up two fingers, an inch apart. "All miniature, you see."

The two Chinese SWAT officers hooked the second rebel to their ropes. Below them, the angry rioters vented howls of frustrated abuse. Flung bricks arched up to crack on the roof.

"Throw a few dye-rounds into them," Hotchkiss shouted.

The two Chinese unlimbered their sidearms and cut loose over the parapet. The guns blasted a fearsome racket, spitting spent cartridges. Below them, the crowd shrieked in fear and pain. Laura heard them scatter. She felt a surge of nausea.

Hotchkiss gripped her elbow. "You all right?"

She swallowed hard. "I saw a man killed by a machine gun, once."

"Oh, really?" said Hotchkiss, interested. "You've been to

Africa?"

"No-"

"You look a bit young to have seen real action.... Oh,

Grenada, eh?" He let her go. Frenzied pounding was shaking the roof door. Hotchkiss fired the remaining jelly-rounds of his magazine against it. Brutal pounding and splattering. He flung the empty magazine away, and fitted a second with the casual look of a man chain-smoking cigarettes.

"Isn't this 'real action'?' Laura shouted. Her ears were ringing.

"This is only theater, dearie," Hotchkiss said patiently.

"These little parlor radicals don't even have carbines. Try something like this in the bad old days-in Belfast or Beirut- and we'd be lying here with great Armalite sniper holes in us. "

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

Hotchkiss chuckled. "I've fought real war! Falkland Is- lands, '82. That was a classic. Scarcely any televisions ..."

"So you're British, then, Colonel? European?"

"British. I was S.A.S." Hotchkiss wiped sweat. "Europe!

What kind of outfit is that, the European Common Army?

Bloody joke, is what that is. When we fought for Queen and

Country...h, hell, girl, you wouldn't understand any- way." He glanced at his watch. "Okay, here come our boys."

Hotchkiss stalked toward the front of the building. The

Rizome crew followed in his wake.

A six-wheeled armored personnel carrier, like some great gray, rubber-wheeled rhinoceros, surged easily over and through the street barricade. Bags burst and squashed aside. Its turret- mounted water cannon swung alertly.

Behind it came two wire-windowed paddy wagons. The wagons flung open rear double doors and cops decamped by the numbers, falling rapidly into disciplined ranks: shields, clubs, helmets.

No one showed to offer resistance. Wisely, because a pair of choppers hung like huge malignant wasps above the street.

Their side bays were open and cops crouching inside were manning tear-gas launchers and Gatling tangle-guns.

"Very simple," said Hotchkiss. "No use street-fighting when we can seize the riot's leaders at will. Now we'll grab ourselves a building full of them, and... oh, bloody hell."

The entire front of the godown collapsed like cardboard and six giant cargo robots roared into the street.

The cops scattered, stumbling. The robots rushed forward with vim. There was a crude dementia in their actions, the sign of rotten programming. Crude, but efficient. They were built to haul cargo the size of trailers. Now they were grap- pling wildly at anything remotely the right size.

The paddy wagons toppled over at once, sides denting loudly, tires whirling helplessly at the air. The APC opened up with its water cannon, as three robots tugged and mauled and punched at it with ruthless mechanical stupidity. Finally they levered it over, toppling it stupidly onto the exposed arm of the third robot, which tried to back away, screeching and buckling. The cannon fountained aimlessly, a furious white plume, four stories high.

The rebels were all over the cops. The streets gleamed with water, sloshed under charging feet. Headlong melee, mind- less and angry, like a bed of giant ants.

Laura watched in absolute amazement. She could not be- lieve that it had come to this. One of the best-organized cities in the world, and men were beating the shit out of each other in the streets with sticks.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," said Hotchkiss. "We're better armed, but our morale's blown.... The air support will tell, though."

The copters were firing tangle-rounds at the melee's edges- without much success. Too crowded, too chaotic and slip- pery. Laura flinched as a skidding dock robot knocked three cops headlong.

Renewed .pounding came from the door. Someone had jammed the ceramic edge of a machete through and was saw- ing vigorously at the tangle-tape. They turned to face it-and saw, beyond it, over the waterfront, one of the loading cranes.

The skeletal arm was spinning on its axis, gathering speed with ponderous grace. At the end of its cables was a cargo fridge container, rising high above the docks with centrifugal force.

Suddenly the crane let loose. The heavy cargo box, half the size of a house, spun free and arched dizzily through space. It flew almost gently, arcing and tumbling, like a softball tossed underhand.

Its flight ended suddenly. It slammed, with cybernetic precision, into a black police chopper hovering over the waterfront. There was an explosive burst as the fridge car ruptured, with gaseous jets of frost and the bright cartwheeling of hundreds of cardboard boxes. The chopper snapped, buckled, and splashed dramatically into dirty seawater. It lay sprawled amid the floating boxes like a dragonfly crushed by a car grill.

"Mrs. Srivijaya's Frozen Fish Sticks," little Derveet mur- mured, at Laura's elbow. She'd recognized the cargo.

The crane slithered downward, its claws clanking for an- other grab.

"How did they do that?" Hotchkiss demanded.

"It a very smart machine," said Mr. Suvendra.

"I'm getting old," Hotchkiss said sadly. "Where do they control that damned thing?"

"Inside the godown," Mr. Suvendra said. "There are consoles-"

"Fine." Hotchkiss grabbed Mr. Suvendra's skinny wrist.

"You take me there. Lu! Aw! We're moving!"

"No," Mr. Suvendra said.

Suvendra grabbed her husband's other arm. Suddenly they were tugging at him like a rag doll. "We don't do violence!"

she said.

"You what?" Hotchkiss said.

"We don't fight," Suvendra said passionately. "We don't like you! We don't like your government! We don't fight!

Arrest us!"

"That bloody crane is going to kill our pilots"

"Then you stop fighting! Send them away!" Suvendra lifted her voice, shrilly. "Everyone, sit!"

The Rizome crew froze wherever they stood and sat in place, as one person. Mr. Suvendra sat too, though he still dangled by one arm from Hotchkiss's huge, freckled paw.

"You fucking politicals," Hotchkiss said in amazed con- tempt. "I don't believe this. I'm ordering you, as citizens-"

"We're not your citizens," Suvendra said flatly. "We don't obey your illegal martial-law regime, either. Arrest us!"

"I bloody well will arrest you, the lot of you! Hell, you're as bad as they are. "

Suvendra nodded, taking a deep breath. "We are nonviolent.

But we are your Government's enemies, Colonel, believe it!"

Hotchkiss looked at Laura. "You too, eh?"

Laura glared up at him, angry to see him single her out from her people. "I can't help you," she told him. "I'm a globalist, and you're an arm of the State."

"Oh bloody Christ, you're a sorry bunch of milk-and-water sons-of-bitches," Hotchkiss said mournfully. He looked them over, making a decision. "You," he told Laura. He pounced on her, handcuffing her arms behind her back.

"He's stealing Laura!" Suvendra yelled, scandalized. "Get in his way!"

Hotchkiss levered Laura to her feet. She didn't want to go, but stumbled up quickly as agonizing pain hit her shoulder sockets. The Rizome crew crowded around him, waving their arms, shouting. Hotchkiss yelled something wordless, kicked

Ali in the kneecap, then pulled his tangle-pistol. Ali, and Mr.

Suvendra, and Bima went down, clawing at swarming blobs of tape. The others ran.

The rebels were breaking through again. A gap showed at the top of the door. Hotchkiss shouted at Officer Lu, who snatched a black knobby cylinder from his belt and tossed it through.

Two seconds passed. There was a cataclysmic flash from behind the door, a horrific bang, and the door jumped open, gushing smoke. "Go!" Hotchkiss yelled.

The upper stairwell was littered with rebels, deafened, blinded, howling. One was still on his feet, slashing frenziedly at empty air with a ceramic sword and screaming, "Martyr!

Martyr!" Lu knocked him flat with a burst of jelly-rounds.

Then they marched in, firing with their tangle-pistols into the heaving crowd.

Aw tossed another flash-grenade onto the landing below.

Another cataclysmic wham. "Okay," Hotchkiss said from behind Laura. "You wanna play Gandhi, you'll do it with two broken arms. March!'-' He shoved her forward through the door.

"I protest!" Laura shouted, dancing to avoid arms and legs.

Hotchkiss jerked her backward against his chest. "Look,

Yankee," he said with chilling sincerity. "You're a cute little blonde who looks real nice on telly. But if you muck about with me, I'll blow your brains out-and say the rebels did it.

Where are the goddamn controls?"

"Ground floor," Laura gasped. "In the back-glassed in. "

"Okay, we're moving. Go! Go!" Vicious racket as Lu opened up with the gun again. In the enclosed stairwell the hellish noise of it spiked right into her head. Laura felt a sudden burst of sweat drench her from head to foot. Hotchkiss yanked her along, his hand wedged under her armpit. He was crashing down two, three steps at a time, half carrying her. A

big man, unbelievably strong-like being dragged by a gorilla.

The throat-catching sting of smoke. Great bubbling spatters on the cheerful pastel walls: purple dye, or smeared blood.

Rebels down whimpering, some screaming, hands cupped over eyes or ears. Rebels glued to the stair railings, black-faced and gasping in the grip of tangle-tape. She stumbled on the sprawled legs of a boy, unconscious or dead, his face punched open by a jelly-bullet, blood streaming from a ruined eye... .

Then they were down on the first floor, and out the stair- well door. Distant sunlight poured through the smashed-out front of the godown, where the cops and rebels were still in pitched battle, the rebels getting the better of it. Inside the cavernous godown the A-L.P. were frenziedly rallying, machete-slicing tape from some of their tangle-victims, drag- ging captured, handcuffed cops behind a wall of crates.... They looked up in surprise, thirty sweat-drenched, blood-smeared, angry men, backlit by the street.

For a moment they all stood in frozen tableau. "Where's the control room?" Hotchkiss whispered.

"I lied," Laura hissed at him. "It's on the second floor."

"You fucking cow," Hotchkiss marveled.

The A-L.P. were edging forward. Some wore stolen police helmets and almost all had riot shields. One of them suddenly fired a tangle-round, which narrowly missed Officer Aw and writhed on the floor like a molten, spastic tumbleweed.

Laura sat down, heavily. Hotchkiss made a grab at her, thought better of it, and began backing up. Suddenly they broke and ran for the back of the godown.

Then it was maelstrom all around her. Men ran after the retreating SWAT team, shouting. Others dashed up the stairs, where Hotchkiss's stunned and blinded victims were moan- ing, cursing, crying out. Laura drew up her legs, clenched the hands cinched behind her back, tried to make herself small.

Her mind raced wildly. She should go back to the roof, rejoin her people. No---better to help the injured. No-try to escape, to find the police, get arrested. No, she should-

A mustached Malay teenager with a swollen, battered cheek menaced her with a drawn sword. He gestured her up, prodding her with his foot.

"My hands," Laura said.

The boy's eyes widened. He stepped behind her and sawed through the tough plastic strap of her cuffs. Her arms came free with a sudden grating rush of pleasure-pain in her shoulders.

He spat angry Malay at her. She stood up. Suddenly she was a head taller than he was. He backed off a step, hesi- tated, turned to someone else-

A wind and a sibilant hissing filled the godown. A chopper had dropped to street level-it was looking in on them through the hole in the godown's front wall. Expressionless helmets behind the cockpit glass. An explosive huff as a gun-metal canister jumped loose. It hit the godown floor,, rolling, careening, gushing mist

Oh fuck. Tear gas. A sudden parching, virulent wave of it struck and she could feel the acid grip of it on her eyeballs. Panic hit her then. She scrambled on her hands and knees. Tearblur, savage pain of it in her throat. No air. She bounced off people, blinded and pushing wildly, and suddenly she was running.

Running free ...

Tears, in poisoned torrents, drenched her face. Where they touched her lips she felt a stinging tingle and a taste like kerosene. She kept running, shying away from the gray blur of looming buildings on the side of the street. Her throat and lungs felt full of fish hooks.

She reached the end of her adrenaline. She was too shocked to feel her own fatigue, but her knees began to buckle on their own. She headed for a doorway and collapsed into its recess.

Just then the sky opened up, and it began to rain. Another vertical, bursting monsoon. Wave after wave of it pounded the empty street. Laura crouched miserably in the doorway, catch- ing rain in her cupped hands, bathing her face and the exposed skin of her arms. At first the water seemed to make it worse a vicious stinging, as if she'd been breathing Tabasco sauce.

She had two plastic bangles now, over the chafed raw skin of her wrists. Her feet were soaked in their cheap, clammy sandals-not from rain, but from the water-cannon puddles in the street outside the godown.

She had run right through the street battle, blind. No one had even touched her. Except-there was a long strip of tangle-tape on her shin, still wriggling feebly, like the shed tail of a lizard. She picked it off her jeans.

She could recognize the area now-she'd run all the way to the Victoria and Albert Docks, just west of East Lagoon. To the north she saw the high-rise of the Tanjong Pagar public- housing complex-bland, dun-colored government bricks.

She sat, breathing shallowly, coughing, spitting every once in a while. She wished she were back with her people in the godown. But there was no way she could reach them again-it was not a sane option.

She'd meet them in jail anyway. Get the hell out of this battle zone and somehow manage to get arrested. Nice quiet jail. Yeah. Sounded good.

She stood up, wiping her mouth. Three cycle-rickshaws raced past her toward East Lagoon, each one crowded with a clinging mass of drenched, staring rebels. They ignored her,

She made a break for it.

There were two wet, unstable street barricades between her and Tanjong Pagar. She climbed over them in pounding rain.

No one showed to stop her.

The glass doors of the Tanjong housing complex had been smashed out of their aluminum frames. Laura ducked into the place, over crunchy heaps of pebbly safety glass. Air condi- tioning bit into her wet clothes.

She was in a shabby but neat entrance hall. Her foam sandals squelched messily on the scuffed linoleum. The place was deserted, its inhabitants, presumably, respecting the gov- ernment's curfew and keeping to their rooms upstairs. It was all mom-and-pop shops down here, little bicycle repair places, a fish market, a quack fractionation parlor. Cheerfully lit with fluorescents, ready for business, but all deserted.

She heard the distant murmur of voices. Calm, authorita- tive tones. She headed for them.

The sounds came from a glass-fronted television store.

Cheap low-res sets from Brazil and Maphilindonesia, color gone garish. They'd been turned on all over the store, a few showing the Government channel, others flickering over and over with a convulsive, maladjusted look.

Laura eased through the doorway. A string of brass bells jumped and rang-. Inside it reeked of jasmine incense. The shop's walls were papered with smiling, wholesome Singapore pop stars: cool guys in glitter tuxedos and cute babes in straw sun hats and peplums. Laura stepped carefully over a toppled, broken gum machine.

A little old Tamil lady had invaded the place. A wizened granny, white-haired and four feet tall, with a dowager's hump and wrists thin as bird bone. She sat in a canvas director's chair, staring at the empty screens and munching on a mouthful of gum.

"Hello?" Laura said. No response. The old woman looked deaf as a post-senile, even. Laura crept nearer, her shoes squelching moistly. The old woman gave her a sudden star- tled glance and adjusted her sari, draping the shoulder flap modestly over her head.

Laura combed at her hair with her fingers, feeling rainwa- ter trickle down her neck. "Ma'am, do you speak English?"

The old woman smiled shyly. She pointed at a stack of the canvas chairs, folded against the wall.

Laura fetched one. It had an inscription across the back in wacky-looking Tamil script-something witty and amusing, probably. Laura opened it and sat beside the old woman.

"Um, can you hear me at all, or, uh... "

The Tamil granny stared straight ahead.

Laura sighed, hard. It felt good -to be sitting down.

This poor dazed old woman-ninety if she was a day-had apparently come wandering downstairs, for canary food or something, too deaf or past-it to know about the curfew. To find-Jesus-an empty world.

With a sudden, surreptitious movement the old gal popped a little colored pebble into her mouth. Grape bubble gum. She munched triumphantly.

Laura examined the televisions. The old woman had set them for every possible channel.

Suddenly, on Channel Three, the flickering stabilized.

With the speed of, a gunfighter the old woman pulled a remote. The Government spokesman winked out. Channel

Three rose to a static-filled roar.

The image was scratchy home video. Laura saw the image bumping as the narrator aimed the camera at his own face. He was a Chinese Singaporean. He looked about twenty-five, chipmunk-cheeked, with thick glasses and a shirt crowded with pens.

Not a bad-looking guy, really, but definitely not TV mate- rial. Normal-looking. You wouldn't look twice at him in any street in Singapore.

The guy sat back on his dumpy, overstuffed couch. There was a tacky painting of a seascape behind his head. He sipped from a coffee cup and fiddled with a microphone paper- clipped to his collar. She could hear him swallowing, loudly.

"I think I'm on the air now," he announced.

Laura traded glances with the little old woman. The old gal looked disappointed. Didn't speak English.

"This is my home VCR, la," said Normal Guy. "It al- ways say: `do not hook to home antenna, can cause broadcast pollution.' Stray signal, you see? So, I did it. I'm broadcast- ing! I think so, anyway."

He poured himself more coffee, his hand shaking a little.

"Today," he said, "my girl and I. 1 was going to ask to marry. She maybe not such great girl, and I'm not such great fellow either, but we have standard. I think, when a fellow needs to ask to many, such a thing should at least be possi- ble. Nothing else is civilized."

He leaned in toward the lens, his head and shoulders swelling. "But then comes this curfew business. I am not liking this very much, but I am good citizen so I am deciding, okay. Go right ahead Jeyaratnam. Catch the terror rascals, give them what for, definitely. Then, the cops. are coming into my building."

He settled back a little, twitching, a light-trail flickering from his glasses. "I admire a cop. Cop is a fine, necessary fellow. Cop on the beat, I always say to him, `Good morning, fellow, good job, keep the peace.' Even ten cops are okay. A

hundred cops though, and I am changing mind rapidly. Sud- denly my neighborhood very plentiful in cop. Thousands.

Have real people outnumbered. Barging into my flat. Search every room, every gracious thing. Take my fingerprints, take my blood sample even."

He showed a sticking plaster on the ball of his thumb.

"Run me through computer, chop-chop, tell me to clean up that parking ticket. Then off they run, leave door open, no please or thank you, four million others needing botheration also. So I turn on telly for news. One channel only, la. Tell me we have seize Johore reservoir again. If we have so much water, then why is south side of city on fire apparently, la?

This I am asking myself."

He slammed down ,his coffee cup. "Can't call girl friend.

Can't call mother even. Can't even complain to local politico as Parliament is now all spoilt. What is use of all that voting and stupid campaigns, if it come to this, finish? Is anybody else feeling this way, I am wondering. I am not political, but

I am not trusting Government one millimeter. I am small person, but I am not nothing at all."

Normal Guy looked close to tears suddenly. "If this is for the good of city then where are citizens? Streets empty!

Where is everyone? What kind of city is this become? Where is Vienna police, they the terrorist experts? Why is this happening? Why no one ask me if I think it okay? It not one bit okay to me, definitely! I want to success like everyone, I am working hard and minding business, but this too much.

Soon come they arrest me for doing this telly business. Do you feel better off to hear of me? Is better than sit here and rot by myself...."

There was furious pounding on Normal Guy's door. He looked spooked. He leaned forward jerkily and the screen went back to nothingness.

Laura's cheeks were damp. She was crying again. Her eyes felt like they'd been scratched with steel wool. No control.

Oh, hell, that poor brave, scared little guy. Goddamn it all anyway....

Someone shouted at the shop's doorway. Laura looked up, startled. It was a tall, tough-looking, turbanned Sikh in a khaki shirt and Gurkha shorts. He had a badge and shoulder patches and he carried a leather-wrapped lathi stick. "What are you doing, madams?"

"Uh... " Laura scrambled to her feet. The canvas seat of her chair was soaked through with the rounded wet print of her butt. Her eyes were brimming tears-she felt terrified and deeply, obscurely humiliated.

"Don't..." She couldn't think of anything to say.

The Sikh guard looked at her as if she'd dropped from

Mars. "You are a tenant here, madam?"

"The riots," Laura said. "I thought there was shelter here. "

"Tourist madam? A Yankee!" He stared at her, then pulled black-rimmed glasses from a shirt-pocket case and put them on. "Oh!" He had recognized her.

"All right," Laura said. She stretched out her chafed wrists, still in their severed plastic handcuffs. "Arrest me, officer. Take me into custody.

The Sikh blushed. "Madam, I am only private security.

Cannot arrest you." The little old lady got up suddenly and shuffled directly at him. He sidestepped clumsily out of her way at the last moment. She wandered out into the hall. He stared after her meditatively.

"Thought you were looters," he said. "Very sorry."

Laura paused. "Can you take me to a police station?"

"Surely, Mrs.... Mrs. Vebbler. Madam, I am not helping to notice that you are all wet."

Laura tried to smile at him. "Rain. Water cannon too, actually."

The Sikh stiffened. "Is a very great sorrow to me that you experience this in our city while a guest of the Singapore government, Mrs. Webber."

"That's okay," Laura muttered. "What's your name, sir?"

"Singh, madam."

All Sikhs were named Singh. Of course. Laura felt like an idiot. "I could kind of use the police, Mr. Singh. I mean some nice calm police, well out of the riot area."

Singh tucked his lathi stick smartly under his arm. "Very well, madam." He was struggling not to salute. "You are following me, please."

They walked together down the empty hall. "Settling you very soon," Singh said encouragingly. "Duty is difficult in these times."

"You said it, Mr. Singh."

They stepped into a cargo elevator and went down a floor into a dusty parking area. Lots of bikes, a few cars, mostly old junkers. Singh pointed with his stick. "You are riding pillion on my motor scooter if agreeable?"

"Sure, okay." Singh unlocked his bike and switched it on.

They climbed aboard and drove up an exit ramp with a comical, high-pitched whir. The rain had died down for the moment. Singh eased into the street.

"There are roadblocks," Laura told him.

"Yes, but-" Singh hesitated. He hit the brakes.

One of the cant-winged fighter jets of the Singapore Air

Force flew above them with a silken roar. With snaky sud- denness, it flickered into a dive, as if sidestepping its own shadow. Real hotdog flying. They watched it open-mouthed.

Something streaked from beneath its wings. A missile. It left a pencil of smoke in the damp air. From the docklands came a sudden violent burst of white-orange fire. Tinkertoy chunks of ruptured loading crane balleted through the air.

Thunder rolled through the empty streets.

Singh swore and turned the bike around. "Enemies attack- ing! We go back to safety at once!"

They rode back down the ramp. "That was a Singaporean jet, Mr. Singh."

Singh pretended not to hear her. "Duty now is clear. You are coming with me, please."

They took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Singh was silent, his back ramrod-straight. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

He led her down the corridor to a hall apartment and knocked three times.

A plump woman in black slacks and a tunic opened the door. "My wife," said Singh. He gestured Laura inside.

The woman stared in amazement. "Laura Webster!" she said.

"Yes!" Laura said. She felt like hugging the woman.

It was a little three-room place. Very modest. Three bug- cute children bounded into the front room: a boy of nine, a girl, another boy still a toddler. "You have three children,

Mr. Singh?"

"Yes," Singh said, smiling. He picked up the littlest boy and mussed his hair. "Makes many tax problems. Working two jobs." He and his wife began talking rapidly in Bengali or Hindi maybe, something incomprehensible, but speckled with English loan words. Like fighter jet and television.

Mrs. Singh, whose name was Aratavari or something vaguely similar, took Laura into the parental bedroom. "We shall get you into some dry clothes," she said. She opened the closet and took a folded square cloth from the top shelf. It was breathtaking: emerald-green silk with gold embroidery. "A

sari will fit you," she said, shaking it out briskly. It was obviously her finest garment. It looked like something a rajah's wife would wear for ritual suttee.

Laura toweled her hair and face. "Your English is very good."

"I'm from Manchester," said Mrs. Singh. "Better oppor- tunity here however." She turned her back politely while

Laura stripped off her sopping blouse and jeans. She put on a sari blouse too big in the bustline and too tight around the ribs. The sari defeated her. Mrs. Singh helped her pleat and pin it.

Laura combed her hair in the mirror. Her gas-stung eyes looked like cracked marbles. But the beautiful sari gave her a hallucinatory look of exotic Sanskrit majesty. If only. David were here... . She felt a sudden total rush of culture shock, intense and queasy, like deja vu with a knife twist.

She followed Mrs. Singh back into the front room, barefoot and rustling. The children laughed, and Singh grinned at her.

"Oh. Very good, madam. You would like drinking something?"

"I could sure do with a shot of whiskey."

"No alcohol." "You got a cigarette?" she blurted. They looked shocked.

"Sorry," she muttered, wondering why she'd said it. "Very kind of y'all to put me up and everything."

Mrs. Singh shook her head modestly. "I should take your clothes to the laundry. Only, curfew forbids it." The older boy brought Laura a can of chilled guava juice. It tasted like sugared spit.

They sat on the couch. The Government channel was on, with the sound low. A Chinese anchorman was interviewing the cosmonaut, who was still in orbit. The cosmonaut ex- pressed limitless faith in the authorities. "You like curry?"

Mrs. Singh said anxiously.

"I can't stay," Laura said, surprised.

"But you must!"

"No. My company voted. It's a policy matter. We're all going to jail."

The Singhs were not surprised, but they looked unhappy and troubled. She felt genuinely sorry for them. "Why,

Laura?" said Mrs. Singh.

"We came here to deal with Parliament. We don't care for this martial law at all. We're enemies of the state now. We can't work with you anymore."

Singh and his wife conversed rapidly while the children sat on the floor, big-eyed and grave. "You stay safely here, madam," Singh said at last. "It's our duty. You are important guest. The Government will understand."

"It's not the same Government," Laura said. "East

Lagoon-that whole area's a riot zone now. They're killing each other down there. I saw it happen. The Air Force just fired a missile into our property. Maybe killed some of my people too, I don't know."

Mrs. Singh went pale. "I heard the explosion-but it's not on the television She turned to her husband, who stared morosely at the throw rug. They began talking again, and Laura broke in.

"I have no right to get y'all in trouble." She stood up.

"Where are my sandals?"

Singh stood up too. "I am escorting you, madam."

"No," Laura said, "you'd better stay here and guard your own home. Look, the doors are broken in downstairs, if you haven't noticed. Those Anti-Labourites took over our godown- they might wander into this place too, any time they like, and take everybody hostage. They mean business, or antibusiness, or whatever the hell they believe in. And they're not afraid to die, either."

"I'm not afraid to die," Singh insisted stoutly. His wife began shouting at him. Laura found her sandals-the toddler was playing with them behind the couch. She slipped them on.

Singh, red-faced, stormed out of the flat. Laura heard him in the hall, shouting and whacking doors with his lathi stick.

"What's going on?" she said.

The two older children rushed Mrs. Singh and grabbed her, burying their faces in her tunic. "My husband says, that it was he who rescued you, a famous woman from television, who looked like a lost wet cat. And that you have broken bread in his house. And he will not send a helpless foreign woman to be killed in the streets like some kind of pariah dog."

"He's got quite a way with words, in his own language."

"Maybe that explains it," said Mrs. Singh and smiled.

"I don't think a can of guava juice really qualifies as

`breaking bread.'',

"Not guava. Soursop." She patted her little girl's head.

"He's a good man. He's honest, and works very hard, and is not stupid, or mean. And never hits me or the children. "

"That's very nice," Laura said.

Mrs. Singh locked eyes with her. "I tell you this, Laura

Webster, because I don't want you to throw my man's life away. Just because you're a political, and he doesn't count for much."

"I'm not a political," Laura protested. "I'm just a person, like you."

"If you were like me, you'd be home with your family."

Singh burst in suddenly, grabbed Laura by the arm, and hauled her out into the hall. Doors were open up and down the corridor, and it was crowded with confused and angry

Indian men in their undershirts. When they saw her they roared in amazement.

In seconds they were all around her. "Namaste, Namaste,"

the Indian greeting, nodding over hands pressed together, palm to palm. Some touched the trailing edge of the sari, respectfully. Uproar of voices. "My son, my son," a fat man kept shouting in English. "He's A-L.P., my son!"

The elevator opened and they hustled her inside. They crowded it to the limit, and other men ran for the stairs. The elevator sank slowly, its cables groaning, jammed like an overloaded bus.

Minutes later they had hustled her out into the street. Laura wasn't sure how the decision had been made or even if anyone had consciously made one. Windows had been flung open on every floor and people were shouting up and down in the soggy midafternoon heat. More and more were pouring out -a human tide. Not angry, but manic, like soldiers on furlough, or kids out of school-milling, shouting, slapping each other on the shoulders.

Laura grabbed Singh's khaki sleeve. "Look, I don't need all this-"

"It is the people," Singh mumbled. His eyes looked glazed and ecstatic.

"Let her speak," yelled a guy in a striped jubbah. "Let her speak!"

The shout spread. Two kids rolled a topped trash can into the street and set it down like a pedestal. They raised her onto it. There was frenzied applause. "Quiet, quiet ..."

Suddenly they were all looking at her.

Laura felt a terror so absolute that she felt like fainting. Say something, idiot-quick, before they kill you. "Thank you for trying to protect me," she squeaked. They cheered, not catching her words, just pleased that she could talk, like a real person.

Her voice came back. "No violence!" she shouted. "Sin- gapore is a modern city. " Men around her muttered transla- tions in an undertone. The crowd continued to grow and thicken around her. "Modem people don't kill each other,"

she shouted. The sari was slipping off her shoulder. She tugged it back into place. They applauded, jostling each other, whites showing around their eyes.

It was the damned sari, she thought dazedly. They loved it.

A tall foreign blonde on a pedestal, wrapped in gold and green, some kind of demented Kali juggernaut thing .. .

"I'm just a stupid foreigner!" she screeched. A few mo- ments before they decided to believe her-then they laughed, and clapped. "But I know better than to hurt anyone! So I want to go to jail!"

Blank looks. She had lost them. Inspiration saved her.

"Like Gandhi!" she shouted. "The Mahatma. Gandhiji:"

A sudden awesome silence.

"So just a few of you, very calmly, please, take me to a jail. Thank you very much." She jumped down.

Singh steadied her. "That was good!"

"You know the way," she said urgently. "You lead us, okay?"

"Okay!" Singh swung his lathi stick over his head. "Everyone, we are marching, la! To the jail!"

He offered Laura his arm. They moved quickly through the crowd, which melted away before them and re-formed behind.

"To the jail!" shouted Striped Jubbah, leaping up and down, striped arms flapping. "To Changi!"

Others took up the yell. "Changi, Changi." The destina- tion seemed to channel their energies. The giddy sense of explosiveness leached out of the situation, like a blowtorch settling to a steady burn. Children ran ahead of them, to turn and marvel at the advancing crowd. They gawked, and ca- pered, and punched each other. People watched from street- side buildings. Windows opened, and doors.

After three blocks, the crowd was still growing. They marched north, onto South Bridge Road. Ahead of them loomed the, cyclopean buildings downtown. A lean Chinese with slicked-back hair and a schoolteacherish look appeared at Laura's elbow: "Mrs. Webster?"

"Yes?"

"I am pleased to march with you on Changi! Amnesty

International was morally right!"

Laura blinked. "Huh?"

"The political prisoners..." The crowd surged suddenly and he was swept away. The crowd had an escort now-two police choppers, hissing above the street. Laura quailed, her eyes burning with remembrance, but the crowd waved and cheered, as if the choppers were some kind of party favor.

It dawned on her, then. She grabbed Singh's elbow. "Hey!

I just want to go to a police station. Not march on the goddamned Bastille!"

"What, madam?" Singh shouted, grinning dazedly. "What steel?"

Oh, God. If only she could make a break for it. She looked about wildly, and people waved at her and smiled. What an idiot she'd been to put on this sari. It was like being wrapped in green neon.

Now they were marching through the thick of Singapore's

Chinatown. Temple Street, Pagoda Street. The psychedelic, statue-covered stupa of a Hindu temple rose to her left. "Sri

Mariamman," it read. Polychrome goddesses leered at each other as if they'd planned all this, just for grins. There were sirens wailing ahead, at a major intersection. The sound of bullhorns. They were going to walk right into it. A thousand angry cops. A massacre.

And then it came into sight. Not cops at all, but another crowd of civilians. Pouring headlong into the intersection, men, women, children. Above them a banner, somebody's bed sheet stretched between bamboo poles. Hasty daubed lettering: LONG LIVE CHANNEL THREE ...

Laura's crowd emitted an amazing, heartfelt sigh, as if every person in it had spotted a long-lost lover. Suddenly everyone was running, arms outstretched. The two crowds hit, and merged, and mingled. The hair rose on Laura's neck.

There was something loose in this crowd, something purely magical-a mystic social electricity. She could feel it in her bones, some kind of glad triumphant opposite to the ugly crowd-madness she'd seen at the stadium. People fell, but they were helping each other up and embracing each other... .

She lost Singh. Suddenly she was alone in the crowd, tripping along in the middle of a long fractal swirl of it. She glanced down the street. A block away, another subcrowd, and a cluster of red-and-white police cars.

Her heart leapt. She broke from the crowd and ran toward them.

The cops were surrounded. They were embedded in the crowd, like ham in aspic. People-everyone, anyone-had simply clotted around the police, immobilizing them. The prowl cars' doors were open and the cops were trying to reason with them, without success.

Laura edged up through the crowd. Everyone was shout- ing, and their hands were full-not with weapons, but with all kinds of strange stuff: bags of bread rolls, transistor ra- dios, even a handful of marigolds snatched from some windowpot. They were thrusting them at the police, begging them to take them. A middle-aged Chinese matron was shout- ing passionately at a police captain. "You are our brothers!

We are all Singaporeans. Singaporeans do not kill each other!"

The police captain couldn't meet the woman's eyes. He sat on the edge of the driver's seat, tight-lipped, in an ecstasy of humiliation. There were three other cops in his car, decked out in full riot gear: helmets, vests, tangle-rifles. They could have flattened the crowd in a few instants, but they looked stunned, nonplussed.

A man in a silk business suit thrust his arm through the open backseat window. "Take my watch, officer! As a sou- venir! Please-this is a great day...." The cop shook his head, with a gentle, stunned look. Next to him, his fellow cop munched a rice cake.

Laura tapped the captain's shoulder. He looked up and recognized her. His eyes rolled a little in their sockets, as if she was all that was needed to make his experience complete.

"What do you want?"

Laura told him, discreetly. "Arrest you here?" the captain replied. "In front of these people?"

"I can get you away," Laura told him. She clambered onto the hood of the prowl car, stood up, and raised both arms.

"Everyone listen! You know me-I'm Laura Webster. Please let us through! We have very important business! Yes, that's right, move back away from the hood, ladies and gentlemen....

Thank you very much, you're such good people, I'm so grateful..:."

She sat on the hood, propping her feet on the front bumper.

The car crept forward and the crowd peeled away to either side, respectfully. Many of them obviously failed to recog- nize her. But they reacted instinctively to the totem symbol of a foreign woman in a green sari on the hood of a police car.

Laura stretched out her arms and made vague swimming motions. It worked. The crowd moved faster.

They reached the edge of the crowd. Laura wedged herself in the front seat, between the captain and a lieutenant. "Thank

God," she said.

"Mrs. Webster," the police captain said. His badge said his name was Hsiu. "You are under arrest for obstruction of justice and incitement to riot."

"Okay," Laura breathed. "Do you know what happened to the rest of my Rizome people?"

"They are also arrested. The helicopters got them."

Laura nodded eagerly, then stopped. "Uhmm... they're not in Changi, are they?"

"There's nothing wrong with Changi!" the cop said, net- tled. "Don't listen to globalist lies."

They were tooling slowly up Pickering Street, crammed with beauty salons and cosmetic-surgery joints. The side- walks were crowded with grinning, larking curfew breakers, but they hadn't yet thought to block the street. "You foreign- ers," the captain said slowly. "You cheated us. Singapore could have built a new world. But you poisoned our leader, and you robbed us. This is it. Enough. All finish."

"Grenada poisoned Kim."

Captain Hsiu shook his head. "I don't believe in Grenada."

"But it's your own people who are doing this," Laura told him. "At least you weren't invaded."

The cop gave her a salt-in-the-wounds look. "We are invaded. Didn't you know?"

She was stunned. "What? Vienna came in?"

"No," said a cop in the back with pessimistic relish. "It's the Red Cross."

For a moment she couldn't place the reference. "The Red

Cross," she said. "The health agency?"

"If an army came, we would chop them up," said Captain

Hsiu., "But no one shoots the Red Cross. They are already in

Ubin and Tekong and Sembawang. Hundreds of them."

"With bandages and medic kits," said the cop eating rice cakes. " `Civil disaster relief.' " He began laughing.

"Shut up, you," said the captain listlessly. Rice Cakes throttled it down to a snicker.

"I never heard of the Red Cross pulling a stunt like that,"

Laura said.

"It's the globalist corporations," said Captain Hsiu, darkly.

"They wanted to buy Vienna and have us all shot. But it too expensive, and take them too long. So they buy the Red

Cross instead-an army with no guns-and kill us with kindness.

They just walk in smiling, and never walk out of

Singapore again. Dirty cowards."

The police radio squawked wildly. A mob was invading the premises of Channel Four television, at Marina Centre. Cap- tain Hsiu growled something foul in Chinese and turned it off. "I knew they attack the tellies soon or later," he said.

"What to do ... '

"We getting brand-new orders tomorrow," said the lieu- tenant, speaking for the first time. "Probably big rise in pay, too. For us, plenty busy months ahead."

"Traitor," said Captain Hsiu without passion.

The lieutenant shrugged. "Got to live, la."

"Then we've won," Laura blurted. She was realizing it, in all its scope, for the first time. Ballooning inside her. All that craziness and all that sacrifice-it had worked, somehow. Not quite the way anyone had expected-but that was politics, wasn't it? It was over. The Net had won.

"That's right," said the captain. He turned right, onto

Clemenceau Avenue.

"Then I guess there's not much point in arresting me, is there? The protest is meaningless now. And I'll never stand trial for those charges." She laughed happily.

"Maybe we book you just for the fun of it," said the lieutenant. He watched a car full of teenagers zip past, one leaning through the open window, waving a huge Singapore flag.

"Oh, no!" said the captain. "Then we must watch her make more globalist moralizing speeches."

"No way!" Laura said hastily. "I'm getting the hell out of here as soon as I can, back to my husband and baby."

Captain Hsiu paused. "You want to leave the island?"

"More than anything! Believe me."

"Could arrest her anyway," suggested the lieutenant. "Probably take two, three week for the paperwork to find her."

"Especially if we don't file it," said the snickering cop.

He started laughing through his nose.

"If you think that scares me, go right ahead," Laura said, bluffing. "Anyway, I couldn't get out now if I tried. There's no way. Martial law closed the airports."

They drove across the Clemenceau Bridge. Tanks guarded it, but they looked abandoned, and the police car cruised past without pause.

"Not to worry," said the captain. "To be rid of Laura

Webster? No sacrifice too great!" And he took her to the Yung

Soo Chim Islamic Bank.

It was an eerie reprise. They were all on the top of the bank building-the personnel of Yung Soo Chim. Up there amid the white bristling forests of microwave antennas and fat rain-stained satellite dishes.

Laura wore her sari flap hooded snugly over her head and a pair of cop's mirrorshades that she'd begged from Captain

Hsiu. Once past the private security and into the bank build- ing, redolent with the stink of panic and the new-mown-hay aroma of shredded files, the rest had been easy. No one was checking ID-she had none to check, no luggage, either.

No one bothered her-she was passing for somebody's

Eurasian mistress, or maybe some exotic tech in high Hindu drag. If the pirates learned she was here among them, they might do almost anything. But Laura knew with thrilling certainty that they'd never touch her. Not here, not now, not after all she'd come through.

She wasn't afraid. She felt bulletproof, invincible, full of electricity. She knew now that she was stronger than they were. Her people were stronger than their people. She could walk in daylight, but they couldn't. They'd thought they had teeth, in all their corner-cutting crime conspiracies, but their bones were made of glass.

The criminal machine just didn't have it the gemeineschaft.

They were rip-off artists, flotsam, and there was nothing to hold them together, no basic trust. They'd been hiding under the protective crust of the Singapore Government, and now that it was gone the Bank was wrecked. It would take them years to stick it all back together, even if they were willing to try, and the momentum, the world tide, was against them.

This place and its dreams were over-the future was some- where else.

What a brag session this was going to make. How she'd crept out of Singapore in the very midst of the pirate bankers.

A steady procession of twin-tutored Singaporean military chop- pers was arriving on the plush landing pad on the Bank's roof. Two, three dozen refugees at a time would cram in helter-skelter and vanish into the leaden monsoon sky.

The others waited, perching like crows on the chain-linked parapet and the concrete anchor blocks of the microwave towers. Some clumped moodily around portable televisions: watching Jeyaratnam on Channel Two, weary and beaten and gray-faced, quoting the Constitution and urging the populace back to their homes.

Laura edged around a luggage trolley piled high with bulg- ing ripstop luggage in maroon and yellow synthetic. Three men sat on the far side of it, bent forward attentively with their elbows on their knees. 'Two Japanese guys and an

Anglo, all three in crisp new safari suits and bush hats. They were watching television.

It was Channel Four, "On the Air-For the People,"

featuring, as a stuttering, blushing anchorwoman, Miss Ting-

Kim's old flame.

Laura watched and listened from a discreet distance. She felt a strange sisterhood with Miss Ting, who had obviously been swept into her current situation through some kind of odd synchronistic karma.

It was all like that now, the whole of Singapore, giddy and brittle and suspended in midair. Up here it might be solid gloom, but below them the streets were full of honking cars, one vast street party, the populace out congratulating itself on its heroism. The last billows of smoke were fading in the docklands. Revolutionary Singapore-vomiting. out these ex- pensive data pirates, like ambergris from the guts of a conva- lescent whale.

The smaller Japanese guy lifted his bush hat, and picked at an itchy sales tag inside the brim. "Kiribati," he said.

"If we get the bloody choice we take Nauru," said the

Anglo. He was Australian.

The Japanese ripped the tag loose, his face pinched.

"Kiribati's nowhere, man. They don't have dedicated landlines."

"The heat will be all over Nauru. They're afraid of those launch sites... .

Nauru and Kiribati, Laura thought little Pacific island states whose "national sovereignty" could be had for a price.

Good dumping grounds for Bank gangsters, obviously. But that was okay by her. Both islands were on the Net, and where there were phones, there was credit. And where there was credit, there were airline tickets. And where there were jets, there was home.

Home, she thought, leaning giddily against the heaped trolley.

Not Galveston, not yet. The Lodge would open again sometime, but that wasn't home anyway. Home was David and the baby.

Lying in bed with David, in warm tangled sheets, breathing

American air, a nice twilight outside maybe. Trees, leaf shadows, red dirt and Georgia kudzu in a safe Rizome Retreat. Little

Loretta, her solid little ribs and crooked baby grin. Oh, Lord ...

The larger Japanese was staring at her. He thought she was drunk. She straightened self-consciously, and he looked away, bored. He muttered something Laura didn't catch.

"Bullshit," the Aussie said. "You think everybody's fire- wired. That `spontaneous combustion' voodoo bullshit .. .

They're good, but they're not that good."

The big guy rubbed the back of his neck and shuddered.

"They didn't burn that dog on our doorstep for nothing."

"I miss poor Jim Dae Jung," said the little Japanese, sadly. "Burnt feet still in his boots and his skull shrunk as small as an orange...."

The Aussie shook his head. "We don't know that he caught fire on his own toilet. Just 'cause we found his feet there...."

"Hey," said the larger Japanese, pointing.

The two others rose eagerly, expecting another chopper flight. But there was something going on in the sky. Against a leaden background of clouds: streaks of blood-colored va- por. Like claw scratches on muddy skin.

Monsoon wind began quickly to distort it. Symbols in red smoke, scrawled against the sky. Letters, numbers:

3A3...

"Skywriting," the Aussie said, sitting down again. "Wish we had some binocs. I don't see a plane."

"Very small drone," said the big Japanese. "Or maybe it's made of glass." By now everyone on the roof was looking, pointing, and shading their eyes.

3 A 3 v - 0\...

"It's code," the Aussie said. "Gotta be the voodoo boys."

The wind had blown the first letters to shreds, but there was more.... = A_-S.. .

"Three A Three Vee Blank Zero Back-slash Equals A

Blank Blank S," the Aussie repeated slowly. "What in bloody hell are they getting at?"

"Maybe it's their evacuation signal," said the big man.

"You wish," the Aussie said.

The smaller Japanese began laughing. "No verticals in the letters," he announced triumphantly. "Bad programming.

Grenada was never any good with drones."

"No verticals?" the Aussie said, staring upward. "Oh. I get it. `BABYLON FALLS,' eh? Cheeky bastards."

"I guess they never really thought this would happen," the small man said. "Or they'd have done a better job announc- ing it."

"Still, you gotta give 'em credit," the Aussie said. "Invis- ible finger, writing in blood on the sky... probably would have scared the living crap out of people, if they hadn't fucked it up." He chuckled. "Murphy's Law, huh? Now it's just more weirdness."

Laura left them on their luggage trolley. Another chopper had appeared, coming in-a small one. She decided she would take it if she could-the talk had unsettled her.

As she neared the pad she heard low, piteous sobbing. Not demonstrative just uncontrollable moans and snivels.

The sobbing man was crouched under the rounded bulk of a rooftop storage tank. He was scanning the sky again and again, as if in terror of another message.

He was a sharpie-like the villains on Chinese television.

Thirtyish bedroom-eyed guys who were all laser-cut hairdos and jade cig holders. Only now he was squatting on his heels, under the cool white bulk of the tank, his shoulders wrapped in a black felt blanket clutched two-handed across his chest.

He was twitchy as a basket of crabs.

As she watched him he somehow got a grip on himself, wiped his eyes. He looked like he'd once been important.

Years of tailored suits and handball and complaisant massage girls. But now he looked like some kind of rat-eating terrier from a sawdust pit.

One of those Grenadian pellets was in him somewhere, oozing its milligrams of liquid fear. He knew it, anyone who saw him knew it news about the pellets had been all over

Government TV But he hadn't had time to have it located and dug out of him.

The others were avoiding him. He was bad luck.

A twin-rotored Coast Guard chopper settled to the pad. Its . wind gust scoured the building and Laura tightened the sari over her head. Bad Luck jumped to his feet and made a run for it; he was there at the door, panting, before anyone else.

When it shunted open he scrambled aboard.

Laura followed him and buckled into one of the hard plastic benches at the back. A dozen, more refugees crowded on, avoiding Bad Luck.

A tight-faced little Coast Guard sergeant in camo flight suit and helmet looked in on them. "Hey, missy," yelled the fat guy ahead of Laura. "When we getting salted almonds?" The other refugees chuckled dismally.

Power went into the rotors and the world fell away under them.

They flew southwest, through the brutal, thrusting skyscrapers of Queenstown. Then over a cluster of offshore islands with names like the bonging of gamelans: Samulun,

Merlimau, Seraya. Clumps of clotted tropical green cut with towering beachfront hotels. White, sandy shorelines cinched in by elaborate dams and jetties.

Good-bye, Singapore.

They changed course over the monsoon-ruffled waters of the Malacca Straits. It was loud inside the cabin. The passen- gers made a little hoarse, guarded conversation, but no one approached her. Laura leaned her head against the bare plastic by the little fist-sized porthole and fell into a stunned half-doze.

She came to as the chopper pulled up, yawing dizzily.

They were hovering over a cargo ship. Ships had become familiar to her at the loading docks: this was a tramp clipper, with the strange rotating wind columns that had been a big hit back in the 'teens.

Crewpeople-or rather, more refugees lurked on the deck, in a variety of rumpled skivvies.

The little sergeant came back again. She had a jelly-gun slung over her shoulder. "This is it," she shouted.

"There's no landing pad!" pointed out the fat guy.

"You jump." She slung open the cargo door. Wind gusted through. They were hovering five feet over the deck. The sergeant slapped another woman on the shoulder. "You first. Go!"

Somehow they all left. Thumping, falling, sprawling onto the gently rolling deck. Those onboard helped a little, clum- sily trying to catch them.

The last one out was Bad Luck. He tumbled out as if kicked. Then the chopper peeled away, showing them an underbelly lumpy with flotation pads. "Where are we?" Bad

Luck demanded, rubbing a bruised kneecap.

A mossy-toothed Chinese technician in a songkak hat an- swered him. "This is the Ali Khamenei. Bound for Abadan."

"Abadan!" Bad Luck screeched. "No! Not the fucking

Iranians!" People stared at him-recognizing his affliction, some began to edge away.

"Islamic Republic," the technician corrected.

"I knew it!" Bad Luck said. "They gave us to the damn Koran thumpers! They'll chop our hands off! I'll never punch deck again!"

"Calming down," advised the tech, giving Bad Luck a sidelong look.

"They sold us! They dumped us on this robot ship to starve to death!"

"Not to worry," said a hefty European woman, sensibly dressed for catastrophe in a sturdy denim work shirt and corduroy jeans. "We've examined the cargo-there's plenty of Soy Moo and Weetabix." She smirked, raising one plucked eyebrow. "And we met the ship's captain-poor little bloke!

He's got a retrovirus-no immune system left." Bad Luck went even paler.

"No! The captain has plague?"

"Who else would take such a rotten job, working all alone on this barge?" the woman said. "He's hiding now in the wheelhouse. Afraid of catching an infection from us. He's a lot more afraid of us than we are of him." She looked at

Laura curiously. "Do I know you?"

Laura looked down at the deck and muttered something about being in data processing. "Is there a phone here, la?"

"You'll have to stand in line, dearie. Everybody wants on the Net.... You kept money outside Singapore, yes? Very smart. "

"Singapore robbed us," Bad Luck grumbled.

"At least they got us out," said the European woman practically. "It's better than waiting for those voodoo canni- bals to poison us... . Or the globalist law courts... . The

Islamics aren't so bad."

Bad Luck stared at her. "They murder technicians! Anti-

Western purges!"

"That was years ago-anyway, maybe that's why they want us now! Stop fretting, eh! People like us, we can always find a place." She glanced at Laura. "You play bridge, dearie?"

Laura shook her head.

"Cribbage? Pinochle?"

"Sorry." Laura adjusted her hood.

"You getting used to the chador already?" The woman traipsed off, defeated.

Laura walked unobtrusively toward the bow, avoiding scat- tered groups of dazed, shiftless refugees. No one tried to bother her.

Around the Ali Khamenei the gray waters of the straits were full of shipping-reefers, dry-bulk carriers, pallet ships.

Korean, Chinese, Maphilindonesian, some with no flag at all, simply corporate logos.

There was real majesty in the sight. Distance-tinged blue ships, gray sea, the distant green-humped rise of Sumatra.

These straits, between the bulk of Asia and the offshore sprawl of Sumatra and Java and Borneo, had been one of the world's great routes since the dawn of civilization. The loca- tion had made Singapore; and lifting the embargoes on the island would be like unclogging a global artery.

She had been part of this, she thought. And it was no small thing. Now that she was standing alone at the bow's railing, with the primordial surging of the deck beneath her feet, she could feel what she'd done. A little moment of numinous prompting, a mystic satisfaction. She had been doing the work of the world-she could sense the subtle flow of its

Taoist tides, buoying her up, carrying her.

Standing there, shedding tension, breathing the damp mon- soon air under endless gray skies, she could no longer believe in her personal danger. She was bulletproof again.

The pirates were the ones with problems, now. The Bank's brass were all over the deck, in little conspiratorial groups, muttering and looking over their shoulders. There was a surprising number of brass on this ship-the first ones aboard, apparently. She could tell they were bosses, because they were well dressed, and snotty looking. And old.

They had that tight-stretched, spotty vampire look that came from years of Singapore's half-baked longevity treat- ments. Blood filtering, hormone therapy, vitamin-E, electric acupuncture, God knew what kind of insane black-market bullshit. Maybe they had stretched a few extra years out of their expensive meddling, but now they were going to have to go off their treatments cold-turkey. And she didn't imagine it would be easy.

At dusk, a large civilian chopper arrived with a final load of refugees. Laura stood by one of the tall, gently hissing wind columns as the refugees decamped. More top brass.

One of them was Mr. Shaw.

Laura flinched away in shock, and walked slowly toward the bow, not looking back. There must have been some kind of special arrangement, she thought-this Abadan business.

Probably Shaw and his people had set it up long ago. Singa- pore might be finished, but the top data pirates had their own survival instincts. No cheap-shot Naurus and Kiribatis for them-that was for suckers. They were headed where the oil money still ran fast and deep. The Islamic Republic was no friend of Vienna's.

She doubted that they'd make it there scot-free, though.

Singapore might try to ditch the Bank gangsters and the evidence, but too many people must know. There'd be a hot trail to a ship with this many big operators on it. The video press were already swarming into Singapore under the shadow of the Red Cross-eager pioneers of another gunless global army, packing mikes and minicams. Once the ship was out in international waters, Laura was half convinced that reporters would show up.

Should be interesting. The pirates wouldn't like it much- their skin blistered under publicity. But at least they'd es- caped the Grenadians.

There seemed to be an unspoken conviction among the

Singaporeans that the Grenadians had finished. That with the

Bank scattered, and the Government in ruin, there was simply no point left in their terror campaign.

Maybe they were right. Maybe successful terrorism had always worked like this-provoking a regime till it crumbled under the weight of its own repression. "Babylon Falls"

-they'd bragged about it. Maybe Sticky and his friends would now slip out of Singapore in the confusion of the revolt.

If there was any sanity left in them, they'd be glad to run, puffed and proud, triumphant. Probably amazed to be alive.

They could swagger back to their Caribbean shadows as true voodoo legends, new-millennium spooks nonpareil. Why not live? Why not enjoy it?

She wanted to believe that they'd do it. She wanted it to be over-she couldn't bear to think back to Sticky's feverish menu of technical atrocities.

A shudder struck her where she stood. A rocketing wave of intense, unfocused, ontological dread. For a moment she wondered if she'd been pellet-shot. Maybe Sticky had dosed her while she was unconscious and the fear drug was just now coming on... . God, what an awful suspicion.

She remembered suddenly the Vienna agent she'd met in

Galveston, the polite, handsome Russian who had talked about the "evil pressure in a bullet. "

Now, for the first time, she was grasping what the man had meant. The pressure of raw possibility. If something was possible-didn't that mean that somewhere, somehow, some- one had to do it? The voodoo urge to truck with demons. The imp of the perverse. Deep in the human spirit, the carnivo- rous shadow of science.

It was a dynamic, like gravity. Some legacy of evolution, deep in human nerves, invisible and potent, like software.

She turned around. No sign of Shaw. A few yards behind her, Bad Luck was retching, loudly, over the guard rail. He looked up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

She could have been him. Laura forced herself to smile at him.

He gave her a look of tremulous gratitude and came to join her. She almost fled at once, but he held up a hand. "It's okay," he said. "I know I'm dosed. It comes in waves. I'm better now."

"You're very brave," Laura said. "I'm sorry for you, sir. "

Bad Luck stared at her. "That's nice. You're nice. You don't treat me like a leper. " He paused, hot little rat eyes studying her. "You're not. one of us, are you? You're not with the Bank."

"What makes you say that?" Laura said.

"You're somebody's girl friend, is it?" He grinned in a cadaverous parody of flirtation. "Lot of bosses on this ship.

Top brass goes for those hot Eurasian girls."

"We're getting married, la," Laura said, "so you can forget all about it, fellow."

He dug into his jacket. "Want a cigarette?"

"Maybe you'd better save them," Laura said, accepting one.

"No, no. No problem. I can get anything! Cigarettes, blood components. Megavitamins, embryos.... My name's

Desmond, miss. Desmond Yaobang."

"Hi," Laura said. She accepted a light. Her mouth imme- diately filled with choking poisoned soot.

She couldn't understand why she was doing this.

Except that it was better than doing nothing. Except that she felt sorry for him. And maybe the presence of Desmond

Yaobang would keep everyone else at a distance.

"What do you think they'll do to us, in Abadan? Do with us, I mean." Yaobang's head just topped her shoulder. There was nothing obviously repulsive about him, but the chemical fear had etched itself into the set of his eyes, the lines of his face. It had soaked him through with an aura of creepiness.

She felt the strong, irrational urge to kick him. The way a flock of crows will peck an injured one to death.

"I dunno," Laura drawled, contempt making her careless.

She looked at her sandaled feet, avoiding his eyes. "Maybe they'll give me some decent shoes.... I'll be okay if I can make a few phone calls."

"Phone calls," Yaobang parroted nervously, "capital idea.

Yes, get Desmond to a phone and he can get you anything.

Shoes. Surely. You want to try it?"

"Mmm. Not just yet. Too crowded."

"Tonight then. Fine, miss. Splendid. I won't be sleeping anyway."

She turned away from him and put her back to the rail. The sun was setting between two of the whirling wind columns.

Vast underlit cloud banks of mellow Renaissance gold. Yaobang turned and looked as well, biting his lip, mercifully silent.

Along with the filthy brain buzz of the cigarette, it gave

Laura an expansive feeling of sublimity. Beautiful, but it wouldn't last long-the sun sank fast in the tropics.

Yaobang straightened, pointed. "What is that?"

Laura looked. His paranoia-sharpened senses had caught something-a distant, airborne glint.

Yaobang squinted. "Some little kind of chopper, maybe?"

"It's too small!" Laura said. "It's a drone!" Light had winked briefly from its blades and now she'd lost it against the clouds.

"A drone?" he said, alarmed by her tone of voice. "Is it voodoo? Can it hurt us?"

"Shut up!" Laura shoved away from the rail. "I'm gonna climb up to the crow's nest-I want a better look." She hurried across the deck, her sandals flopping.

The ship's foremast had a radar horn and video for the guidance computer. But there was access for repair and hu- man backup: a crow's nest, three stories above the deck.

Laura grabbed the cool iron rungs, then stopped in frustra- tion. The damned sari-it would tangle her feet. She turned and beckoned to Yaobang.

There was a shout from above. "Hey!"

A man in a popsicle-red rain slicker was leaning over the crow's-nest railing. "What are you doing?"

"Are you crew?" Laura shouted, hesitating.

"No, are you?"

She shook her head. "I thought I saw something"-she pointed--over there!"

"What did you see?"

"I think it was a Canadair CL-227!"

The man's shoes clattered as he came down quickly to the deck. "What's a canadare?" Yaobang demanded plaintively, hopping from foot to foot. He noticed a pair of Zeiss binocu- lars around the other's neck. "Where'd you get those?"

"Deck room," said Red Raincoat, meaninglessly.

"I know you, right? Henderson? I'm Desmond Yaobang.

Countertrade section."

"Hennessey," Red Raincoat said.

"Hennessey, yes ..."

"Give me those," Laura demanded. She grabbed the bin- oculars. Under the flimsy poncho, Hennessey's chest was padded and huge. He was wearing something. Bulletproof vest?

A life jacket.

Laura tore her sunglasses off, felt hastily for a pocket- none, in a sari-and propped them on her head. She focused the binoculars.

She found the thing almost at once. There it was, hovering malignantly at the twilit skyline. It had been in her night- mares so many times that she couldn't believe she was seeing it.

It was the drone that had strafed her Lodge. Not the identical one, because this one was military green, but the same model-double rotors, dumbbell shape. Even the stupid landing gear.

"Let me see!" Yaobang demanded frantically. To shut him up, Laura passed him the binoculars.

"Hey," Hennessey protested mildly. "Those are mine."

He was a thirtyish Anglo with prominent cheekbones and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. He had no accent-straight

Mid-Atlantic Net talk. Below the baggy plastic poncho there was something lithe and weaselish about him.

He smiled at her, tightly, looking into her eyes. "You

American? USA?"

Laura felt for her sunglasses. They'd pushed the sari back, showing her blond hair.

"I see it!" Yaobang burst out excitedly. "A flying ground nut!"

Hennessey's eyes widened. He'd recognized her. He was thinking fast. She could see him shift forward onto the balls of his feet.

"Maybe it's Grenadian!" Yaobang said. "Better warn everyone!

I'll watch the thing-missy, you go running!"

"No, don't do that," Hennessey told her. He reached under his poncho and tugged out a piece of machinery. It was small and skeletal and looked like a cross between a vice-grip wrench and a putty applicator. He stepped near Yaobang, holding the device with both hands.

"Oh, God," Yaobang said blindly. Another wave of it was hitting him-he was trembling so hard he could barely hold up the binoculars. "I'm frightened," he sniveled. A cracked, reflexive, little-boy voice. "I can see it coming.... I'm afraid!"

Hennessey pointed the machine at Yaobang's ribs and pulled its trigger, twice. There were two discreet little coughs, barely audible, but the thing jumped viciously in Hennessey's hands.

Yaobang convulsed with impact, arms flying, chest buckling as if hit with an axe. He fell over his own feet and hit the deck with a clatter of binoculars.

Laura stared at him in stunned horror. Hennessey had just blown two great smoking holes in Yaobang's jacket. Yaobang lay unmoving, face livid and black. "You killed him!"

"No. No problem. Special narcotic dye," Hennessey blurted.

She looked again. Just for a second. Yaobang's mouth was clogged with blood. She stared at Hennessey and began back- ing away.

With a sudden smooth, reflexive motion Hennessey cen- tered the gun on her chest. She saw the cavernous barrel of it and knew suddenly that she was looking at death. "Laura

Webster!" Hennessey said. "Don't run, don't make me shoot!"

Laura froze.

"Police officer," Hennessey said. He glanced nervously off the port bow. "Vienna Convention, Special Operations

Task Force. Just obey orders and everything will be fine."

"That's a lie!" Laura shouted. "There's no such thing!"

He wasn't looking at her. He kept looking out to sea. She followed his gaze.

Something was coming toward the ship. It was rushing over the waves, with astonishing, magic swiftness. A long white stick, like a wand, with sharp square wings. Behind it a slim straight billow of contrail air.

It rushed toward the bridge, at the stem, a needle on a thread of steam. Into it. Through it.

Raw fire bloomed, taller than houses. A wall of heat and sound surged up the deck and knocked her from her feet. She was down, bruised, flash-blinded. The bow of the ship bucked under her like a huge steel animal.

Roaring seconds. Pieces of plastic and steel were pattering onto the deck. The bridge superstructure-the radar mast, the phone antennas-was one vast, ugly conflagration. It was like someone had built a volcano in it-thermite heat and white- hot twisting spars of metal and lava globs of molten ceramic and plastic. Like a firecracker in a white wedding cake.

Below them, the ship was still pitching. Hennessey had lurched to his feet and made a run for the railing. For a moment she thought he was going to jump. Then he was back with a life preserver-a big ceremonial flotation ring marked in Parsi script. He stumbled and rolled and got back to her.

There was no sign of his gun now-he'd folded it again, tucked it away.

"Get this on!" he shouted in her face.

Laura grabbed it reflexively. "The lifeboat!" she shouted back.

He shook his head. "No! No good! Booby-trapped!"

"You bastard!"

He ignored her. "When she goes down, you have to swim hard, Laura! Hard, away from the undertow!"

"No!" She jumped to her feet, dancing away from his lunging attempt to tackle her. The back of the ship was vomiting smoke now, huge black explosive volumes of it.

People were scrambling across the deck.

She turned back to Hennessey. He was down and doubled over, hands knotted behind his neck, bent legs crossed at the ankles. She gaped at him, then looked to sea again.

Another missile. It slid just above the waves, its jet flare lighting the rippled water with flashbulb briefness. It hit.

A catastrophic explosion belowdecks. Hatch covers leapt free from their hinges and tumbled skyward like flaming dominoes. Up-leaping geysers of fire. The ship lurched like a gut-shot elephant.

The deck tilted, slowly, inexorably, gravity clutching at them like the end of the world. Steam rose with a stink of scalded seawater. She fell to her knees and slid.

Hennessey had crawled to the bow rail. He had an elbow hooked around it and was talking into something-a military field telephone. He paused and yanked its long antenna out and resumed shouting. Gleefully. He caught her eye and waved and gestured at her. Jump! Swim!

She lurched to her feet again, lusting blindly to get at him and kill him. Strangle him, claw his eyes out. The deck dropped under her like a broken elevator and she fell again, bruising her knees. She almost lost the flotation ring.

Her shins were wet. She turned. The sea was coming up over the starboard bow. Gray ugly waves thick with blasted chunks of flotsam. The ship was eviscerated, its guts spewing out.

Fear overwhelmed her. A panic strength to live. She ripped and kicked her way out of the enveloping sari. Her sandals were long gone. She pulled the ring over her. head and shoulders. Then she scrambled to the bow rail, clambered over it, and jumped.

The water rushed over her, warm and dank. Twilight was leaching from the sky, but the ship's blaze lit the straits like a battlefield.

Another minor explosion, and a flare of light by the ship's single lifeboat. He'd killed them. Good God, they were going to kill them all! How many people-a hundred, a hundred and fifty? They'd been herded into a cattle car and taken out to sea and butchered! Burned and drowned, like vermin!

A drone hummed angrily just over her head. She felt the wind of it on her sodden hair.

She got the ring wedged under her armpits and started swimming hard.

The sea seemed to be boiling. She thought of sharks.

Suddenly the opaque depths beneath her naked legs were full of lurking presences. She-swam hard, until the panic strength faded into chilly shock. She turned and looked.

It was going. Stern last, rising above the sea in the last hissing remnants of flame, like a distant candlelit tombstone.

She watched it for long, thudding heartbeat seconds. Then it was gone, sinking into nothingness, blackness, and ooze.

The night was overcast. Darkness came on like a shroud.

The rush of afterwash hit her and bobbed her like a buoy.

Another hum overhead. Then, in the distance, in the dark- ness, the chatter of machine-gun fire.

They were killing the survivors in the water. Shooting them from drones, out of darkness, with infrareds. She began swimming again, desperately, away.

She couldn't die out here. No, not blown to shreds out here, killed like a statistic... . David, the baby .. .

An inflatable boat surged by, dark man-shapes and the quiet mutter of an engine. A slap in the water-someone had tossed her a line. She heard Hennessey's voice. "Grab it.

Hurry up!"

She did it. It was that, or die here. They tugged her in and hauled her up, over the inflatable's hull. Hennessey grinned at her in his drenched clothes. He had companions: four sailors in white round hats, neat silky uniforms, dark with a gleam of gold.

She sprawled in the rippling bottom of the boat, against a hull black and slick as a gut, in her sari blouse and under- wear. One of the sailors tossed the flotation ring overboard.

They picked up speed, heading away, up the straits.

The closest sailor leaned toward her, an Anglo about forty.

His face looked as white as a sliced apple. "Cigarette, lady?"

She stared at him. He leaned back, shrugging.

She coughed on seawater, then gathered her legs in, trembling, wretched. A long time passed. Then her brain began to work again.

The ship had never had a chance. Not even to scream out an SOS. The first missile had wiped out the bridge-radio, radar, and all. The killers had cut their throat first thing.

But to kill a hundred people in the middle of the Malacca

Straits! To commit an atrocity like that-surely other ships must have seen the explosion, the smoke. To have done such a thing, so viciously, so blatantly .. .

Her voice, when she, finally got, it out, was cracked and weak. "Hennessey... ?"

"Henderson," he told her. He tugged his drenched red rain slicker over his head. Beneath it was a bright orange life jacket. Under that a sleeveless utility vest, bulges and little metal zips and Velcro flaps. "Here, put this slicker on."

He shoved it at her. She held it numbly.

Henderson chuckled. "Put it on! You want to meet a hundred red-blooded sailors in wet underwear?"

The words didn't quite register, but she started on it any- way. They were speeding in darkness, the boat bouncing, the wind tearing and flapping at the raincoat. She struggled with it for what seemed an endless time. It clung to her bare wet skin like a bloody hide.

"Looks like you need a hand," Henderson said. He crawled forward and helped her into it. "There. That's better."

"You killed them all," Laura croaked.

Henderson aimed amused glances at the sailors. "None of that, now," he said loudly. "Besides, I had a little help from the attack ship!" He laughed.

Sailor number two cut back the engine. They were coasting forward in darkness. "Boat," he said. "A sub is a `boat.'

Sir. "

In the darkness, she heard water cascading and the gurgle of surf. She could barely see it in the dimness, a vague blue-black sheen. But she could smell it and feel it, almost taste it on her skin.

It was huge. It was close. A vast black rectangle of painted steel. A conning tower.

A monstrous submarine.