Islands in the Net (26 page)

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

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

Carlotta looked at her pityingly. “Because you're a straight, Laura.”

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

“Look at you,” Carlotta said. “You're educated. You're smart. You're beautiful. You're married to a goddamn architect. You have a wonderful baby and friends in high places.”

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

She pulled her wimple back over her head. “And getting older, too. I bet you never even wondered what happens to old Church girls. When we can't work that old black magic on your precious husbands. Well, don't worry about me, Mrs. Webster. Our Goddess stands by Her own. Our Church runs hospitals, clinics, rest homes—we take care of people. The Goddess gave me my life, not you or your Net. So I don't owe you nothing!” She looked ready to spit. “Never forget that.”

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

“I'm jus' fine,” Carlotta said, smiling on him sunnily. “Y'all come visit me in Galveston, won't y'all? Our Reverend Morgan just won a seat on the City Council. We got big plans for Galveston.”

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

6

It was a nightmarish flight—like a cattle car. Luggage crammed everywhere, every seat taken, and refugees crouching in the aisles. Nothing to eat or drink. An instant black market, packed into a flying aluminum jail.

There were five armed Cuban flight marshals onboard. They kept fending back entrepreneurs—sweaty hustlers trying to scrape together some global cash. Their tinker-toy Grenadian roubles were meaningless now; they needed ecu and were selling anything—pinky rings, strips of drug stickers, sisters if they had them.… Cut off from the world, thirty thousand feet above the Caribbean, but still going through the ritual motions. But faster now, senselessly, jumping and flickering …

“Like a lizard throwing off its tail,” Laura said. “That's what the Bank did with these people. Let the Net have 'em, let the Vienna heat work 'em over. To distract attention.”

“You told Andrei you'd go to Singapore,” David said.

“Yeah.”

“No way,” David said. In his toughest voice.

“We're in too deep to back out now.”

“The hell,” he said. “We could have been killed today. This isn't our problem—not anymore. It's way too big for us.”

“So what do we do? Go back to our Lodge and hope they forget all about us?”

“There's lots of other Lodges,” David said. “We could go into a Retreat. You and I, we could do with a good Retreat sabbatical. Relax a little, get away from the televisions. Get our thoughts together.”

A Retreat. Laura didn't like the idea. Retreats were for Rizome's retired people, or failures, or blunderers. A place to rusticate while other people made the decisions. “That won't wash,” she said. “It would discredit Rizome's attempt to negotiate. But we were right to try it. We have to do something. It's coming to a head—this proves it.”

“Then it should be the U.S. State Department,” David said. “Or the Vienna heat—somebody global. Not our company.”

“Rizome is global! Besides, Grenada would shoot a Yankee diplomat on sight. State Department—come on, David, you might as well send in guys with big placards around their neck that say ‘hostage.'” She sniffed. “Besides, the Feds don't have any clout.”

“This is a war. Governments run wars. Not corporations.”

“That's premillennium talk,” Laura said. “The world's different now.”

“You could have been one of those dead bodies in the water. Or me, or the baby. Don't your realize that?”

“I know it better than you,” she said grimly. “You weren't standing next to me when they killed Stubbs.”

David flushed. “That's a shitty thing to say. I'm standing next to you now, aren't I?”

“Are you?”

His jaw muscles clenched and he stared at his hands as if willing them not to punch her. “Well, I guess that depends, doesn't it? On what you think you're doing.”

“I know my long-term goals,” Laura said. “Which is more than you can say.” She touched the baby's cheek. “What kind of world will she live in? That's what's at stake.”

“That sounds really noble,” he said. “And just a hair away from megalomania. The world's bigger than the two of us. We don't live in the ‘globe,' Laura. We live with each other. And our child.”

He took a deep breath, let it out. “I've had it, that's all. Maybe my number came up once—okay, I'll stand in the front lines for Rizome. I'll do one tour of duty. I'll watch dead bodies, I'll have my house burned over my head. But they don't pay me enough to die.”

“Nobody's ever paid that much,” Laura said. “But we can't watch people be murdered, and say it's fine and dandy and none of our business.”

“We're not indispensable. Let somebody else have a shot at playing Joan of Arc.”

“But I know what's happening,” she said. “That makes me valuable. I've seen things other people didn't. Even you, David.”

“Oh, great,” David said. “So now you're going to start in on how I walk through life in a fog. Listen,
Mrs. Webster
, I saw more of the real Grenada than you ever did. The
real
things—not this trivial power-play bullshit that you run with your old girls' network. Goddamn it, Laura! You've got to learn to take some setbacks and accept your limits!”

“You mean
your
limits,” Laura said.

He stared. “Sure. If you want to see it that way. My limits. I've reached them. That's it. End of discussion.”

She sank back into her seat, raging. Fine. He'd given up listening. Let's see how some silence suited him.

After a few hours of silence she realized she'd made a mistake. But it was too late to go back then.

Police boarded the plane at Havana Airport. The passengers were marched off—not exactly at gunpoint, but close enough not to matter much. It was dark and raining. Behind a distant line of striped sawhorses, the Spanish-language press lifted cameras and shouted questions. One exile tried to wander in their direction, waving his arms—he was quickly herded back.

They entered a wing of the terminal, surrounded by jeeps. It was crawling with customs men. And the Vienna heat—exquisitely dressed plainclothesmen with their portable terminals and speckled glasses.

Police began hustling the refugees into ragged lines. Cuban cops, locals, demanding ID. They escorted a group of triumphantly grinning techs past the glowering Viennese. Law-enforcement turf battles. Cuba had never been all that hot about the Convention.

Someone called out in Japanese. “
Laura-san ni o-banashi shitai no desu ga
!”

“
Wakarimashita
,” she answered. She spotted them—a young Japanese couple, standing near an exit door beside a uniformed Cuban cop. “C'mon,” she told David—her first word to him in hours—and walked toward them. “
Donata ni goyo desu ka?
”

The woman smiled shyly, bowing, “Rara Rebsta?”

“
Hai
,” Laura said. “That's me.” She gestured at David. “
Kore wa
David Webster
to iu mono desu
.”

The woman reached for Loretta's tote. Surprised, David let her take it. The woman wrinkled her nose. “
O-mutsu o torikaete kudasai
.”

“Yeah, we ran out of them,” Laura said. Blank looks. “Diapers.
Eigo wa shabere masuka?
” They shook their heads glumly. “They don't speak English,” she told David.

“¿
Qué tal?
” David said. “
Yo no hablo japones
—
un poquito solo. Uhh … ¿quien es ustedes? ¿Y su amigo interesante?
”

“
Somos de
Kymera Havana,” the man said happily. He bowed and shook David's hand. “
Bienvenidos a Cuba, Señor Rebsta! Soy Yoshio, y mi esposa, Mika. Y el Capitan Reyes, del Habana Securidad
…”

“It's Kymera Corporation,” David said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Looks like they've made some kind of arrangement with the local police.” He paused. “Kymera—they're with us, right? Economic democrats.”

“Solidaridad,” Yoshio told him, holding up two fingers. He winked and opened the door.

Kymera had a car waiting.

Kymera was very well prepared. They had everything. New passports for them—legal ones. New decks. Diapers and baby formula. A change of clothes that almost fit, or would have if they hadn't been eating Rita's banquets. And they'd cooled things with the Cuban police. Laura thought it was best not to ask how.

They spent a quiet evening in miraculous, cozy safety at one of Kymera's Havana compounds. And off the Net, in privacy—a kind of ecstasy, like getting over an illness. Their rooms were smaller and everything was closer to the floor, but otherwise it was like old home week in a Rizome Lodge. They chatted in Japanese and Spanish over seafood and sake, and met the Takedas' adorable four-year-old.

“Rizome has shown us some of your tapes,” Yoshio said, pausing for translations. “We are coordinating. Putting all cards on the table between us.”

“You saw the terrorist attack, then,” Laura said.

Yoshio nodded. “Mali has gone too far.”

“You're sure it's Mali?”

“We know,” Yoshio said. “We used to hire them.”

Laura was stunned. “Kymera hired the F.A.C.T.?”

Yoshio looked sheepish, but determined to have it out. “We suffered much from piracy. The ‘Army of Counter-Terrorism' offered us their services. To frighten the pirates, discourage them. Yes, even kill them. They were efficient. We paid them secretly for years. So did many other companies. It seemed better than making armies of our own people.”

David and Laura conferred. David was scandalized. “The Japanese hired terrorist mercenaries?”

Yoshio looked impatient. “We're not Japanese! Kymera is incorporated in Mexico.”

“Oh.”

“You know how things are in Japan,” Yoshio scoffed. “Fat! Lazy! Full of elderly people, far behind the times …” He tapped his cup and Mika poured him sake. “Too much success in Japan! It's Japanese politics that created this world crisis. Too much behind the scenes. Too many polite lies—
hipokurasi
…” He used the English word. The Japanese terms for the word
hyprocrisy
sounded too much like compliments.

“We thought the Free Army was a necessary evil,” he continued. “We never knew they were so ambitious. So smart, so fast. The Free Army is the dark side of our own conglomerates—our
keiretsu
.”

“But what does Mali have to gain?”

“Nothing! The Free Army owns that country. They conquered it while it was weak with famine. They've grown stronger and stronger, while we quietly paid them and pretended not to know that they existed. They used to hide, like a rat—now they are grown large, like a tiger.”

More translations. “What are you saying?” David said.

“I say the Net has too many holes. All these criminals—Singapore, Cyprus, Grenada, even Mali itself, which we created—must be crushed. It had to happen. It is happening today. The Third World War is here.”

Mika giggled.

“It is a little war,” Yoshio admitted. “Does not live up to its press, eh? Small, quiet, run by remote control. Fighting in places where no one looks, like Africa. Places we neglected, because we could not make profit there. Now we must stop being so blind.”

“Is this Kymera's official policy line these days?” Laura said.

“Not just ours,” Yoshio said. “Talk is spreading fast, since the attack. We were prepared for something like this. Kymera is launching a diplomatic offensive. We are taking our case to many other multinationals. East, West, South, North. If we can act in concert, our power is very great.”

“You're proposing some kind of global security cartel?” Laura said.

“Global Co-Prosperity Sphere!” Mika said. “How does that sound?”

“Uhmm,” David mused. “In America, that's known as ‘conspiracy in restraint of trade.'”

“What is your loyalty?” Yoshio asked soberly. “America or Rizome?”

Laura and David exchanged glances. “Surely it wouldn't come to that,” Laura said.

“Do you think America can set things to rights? Rearm, invade the data havens, and impose peace?”

“No way,” David said. “The other Vienna signatories would be all over us.… ‘Imperial America'—Christ, it wouldn't be six months before people were car-bombing us all over the world.” He prodded glumly with his chopsticks at a lump of sukiyaki. “And
ay de mi, los Rusos
—not that the Soviets amount to much these days, but would they ever be pissed.… Look, the real agency to handle these matters is the Vienna Convention. The Vienna spooks are licensed to stop terrorism—that's their job.”