Islands in the Net (39 page)

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 bulging rip-stop 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 expensive data pirates, like ambergris from the guts of a convalescent 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 vapor. Like claw scratches on muddy skin.

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

3 A 3 …

“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 announcing it.”

“Still, you gotta give 'em credit,” the Aussie said. “Invisible 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 passengers 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, clumsily 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 answered 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 cannibals 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 scattered 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 location 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 monsoon 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 treatments. 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. Singapore 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.