Islands in the Net (53 page)

“You took tape of that nuclear test site, didn't you?” she said. “You can tag it on to my statement. Let's see 'em refute that one!”

“I'll do that, certainly—but they could refute it anyway.”

“You've heard my story,” she told him. “I made
you
believe it, didn't I? It happened, Gresham. It's the truth.”

“I know it is.” He handed her a leather canteen.

“I can do it,” she told him, feeling brittle. “Tackle the world. Not just some little corner of it, but the whole great grinding mass of it. I know I can do it. I'm good at it.”

“Vienna will step on it.”

“It's gonna step on Vienna.” She squeezed a stream of canteen water into her mouth and shoved the makeup kit out of camera range. She set the canteen by her knee.

“It's too big for me to hold anymore,” she said. “I've, got to tell it. Now. That's all I know.” At the sight of the camera, something was rising up within her, adrenaline-wild and strong. Electric. All that fear and weirdness and pain, packed down in an iron casing. “Put me on tape, Gresham. I'm ready. Go.”

“You're on.”

She looked into the world's glass eye. “My name is Laura Day Webster. I'm gonna start with what happened to me on the
Ali Khamenei
out of Singapore …”

She became pure glass, a conduit. No script, she was winging it, but it came out pure and strong. Like it would carry her forever. The truth, pouring through.

Gresham interrupted her with questions. He had a prepared list of them. Sharp, to the point. It was like he was stabbing her. It should have hurt, but it only broke open the flow. She reached some level that she'd never touched before. An ecstasy, pure fluid art. Possession.

She couldn't keep that edge. It was timeless while she had it, but then she could feel it go. She was hoarse and she began stumbling a little. Sliding off at the edges, passion slipping into babble.

“That's it,” he said at last.

“Repeat the question?”

“I don't have any more. That's it. It's over.” He shut off the camera.

“Oh.” She wiped her palms on the carpet, absently. Drenched. “How long was it?”

“You talked for ninety minutes. I think I can edit it down to an hour.”

Ninety minutes. It had felt like ten. “How was I?”

“Amazing.” He was respectful. “That business when they buzzed the camp—that's the sort of thing nobody could fake.”

She was puzzled. “What?”

“You know. When the jets came over just now.” He stared at her. “Jets. The Malians just buzzed the camp.”

“I didn't even hear it.”

“Well, you looked up, Laura. And you waited. Then you went right on talking.”

“The demon had me,” she said. “I don't even know what the hell I said.” She touched her cheek. It came away black with mascara. Of course—she'd been weeping. “I've run my makeup all over my goddamn face! And you let me.”

“Cinema verité,” he said. “It's real. Raw and real. Like a live grenade.”

“Then throw it,” she told him. Giddily. She let herself go and fell back where she sat. Her head hit a buried rock under the carpet, but the dull jolt of pain seemed a central part of the experience.

“I didn't know it would be like this,” he said. There was real fear in his voice. It was as if, for the first time, he had realized he had something to lose. “It might just happen—it could get loose in the Net. People might really
believe
it.” He shifted uneasily where he sat. “I've gotta figure the angles first. What if Vienna
falls?
That would be great, but they might just reform and come back with bigger teeth this time. In which case I've fucked myself and everything I've tried to create here. Crap like that can happen, when you throw live grenades.”

“It
has
to get loose,” she said passionately. “It
will
get loose, sometime. FACT knows, Vienna knows, maybe even governments.… A secret this huge is bound to come out, sooner or later. It's not just
our
doing. We just happen to be the people on the spot.”

“I like that line of reasoning, Laura. It'll sound good if they catch us.”

“That doesn't matter. Anyway, they can't
touch
us, if everybody learns the truth! Come on, Gresham! You've got goddamn satellites, think of a way to get though, damn it!”

He sighed. “I already have,” he said. He got to his feet and walked past her, unrolling a spool of cable. After a moment she rose on one elbow and looked out the triangular pie slice of door, after him. It was late afternoon now, and the Tuaregs were throwing two of the domes onto their backs. Yawning teacup mouths open to the dry Saharan sky.

Gresham came back. He looked down at her as she sprawled on the carpet, breathing. “You okay?”

“I'm hollow. Eviscerated. Absolved.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You talked just like that, the whole time.” He sat cross-legged before his console and typed away, carefully.

Minutes passed.

A woman's voice erupted from the console.

“Attention North Africa broadcast source, latitude eighteen degrees, ten minutes, fifteen seconds; longitude five degrees, ten minutes, eighteen seconds. You are broadcasting on a frequency reserved for the International Communications Convention for military use. You are advised to desist at once.”

Gresham cleared his throat. “Is Vassily there?”

“Vassily?”

“Yeah. Da.”

“Da, okay, looking good, hold on, please.”

Moments later a man's voice came on. His English wasn't as good as the woman's. “Is Jonathan, right?”

“Yeah. How's it goin'?”

“Very well, Jonathan! You are receiving the tapes I sent?”

“Yes, Vassily, thank you,
spaseba
, you're very generous. As always. I have something very special for you this time.”

The voice was cautious. “
Very
special, Jonathan?”

“Vassily, this is an item beyond price. Unobtainable elsewhere.”

Unhappy silence. “I must ask, can it wait for our next pass over your area. We are having small docking problem here at the moment. Very small docking problem.”

“I really think you'd better give this one your immediate attention, Vassily.”

“Very well. I will key in scrambler.” Moment's wait. “Ready for transmission.”

Gresham tapped his console. High-pitched whir. He leaned back, turning to Laura. “This'll take a while. The scramblers are kind of clunky up on old Gorbachev Memorial.”

“That was the Russian
space station?
”

“Yeah.” Gresham rubbed his hands briskly. “Things are looking up.”

“You just sent our tape to a
cosmonaut?
”

“Yeah.” He tucked in his legs, resting his elbows on his knees. “I'll tell you what I think might happen. They're gonna look at it up there. They're gonna think it's craziness—at first. But they may believe it. And if they do, they won't be able to hold it back. Because the consequences are just too extreme.

“So—they'll pipe it down to Moscow, and that other place, Star City. And the ground teams will look it over, and the apparatchiks. And they'll copy it. Not because they think there
ought
to be a lot of copies, but because it needs study. And they're gonna start shipping it all around. To Vienna first, of course, because their people are all over Vienna. But to the rest of the Socialist bloc, too—just in case …”

He yawned into his fist. “And then those guys on the station are going to realize they've got the publicity coup of a lifetime. And if anyone's willing to fool with it, they are. I've got a lot of contacts, here and there, but they're the craziest bastards I know! Five will get you ten, they start dumping it, direct broadcast. If they can get permission from Star City. Or maybe even without permission.”

“I don't understand, Gresham. Direct broadcast? That just sounds lunatic.”

“You don't know what it's like up there! Wait a minute, you
do
know—you've lived on a submarine. But see, they've been just burning, ever since little Singapore threw that guy up with the laser launch. Because they've been up there for
years
, hanging their ass on the edge of the infinite, and nobody paying attention. Didn't you hear how
pathetic
Vassily was? Like some ham-radio geezer locked in a basement.”

“But they're cosmonauts! They're trained professionals, they do space science. Biology. Astronomy.”

“Yeah. Lot of girls and glory in those two. Boy.” Gresham shook his head. “I give it three days at the outside.”

“Okay … what then? If it doesn't work.”

“I call 'em again. Threaten to give it to somebody else. There are other contacts.… And we still have the original tape. We just keep trying, that's all. Till we get through. Or Vienna nails us. Or till FACT makes a demonstration on a city and makes the news obvious to everyone. Which is what we have to expect, isn't it?”

“My God! What we've just done could cause …
worldwidepanic
.…”

He sneered. “Yeah—I'm sure that's what Vienna has been telling itself while they sat on the truth. For years. And covered up, and protected the people who shot up your house.”

A bolt of rage short-circuited her fear. “That's right!”

He grinned at her. “It was one of the least of their crimes, actually. But I figured it'd bring you around.”

She thought aloud. “Vienna let them do it. They knew who killed Stubbs and they came into my house and lied to me. Because they were afraid of something worse.”

“Worse? I'll say. Think of the political consequences. Vienna exists to keep order against terrorism, and they've been sucking up to terries for years. They're gonna pay. The hypocrites.”

“But Gresham, what if they start bombing people? Millions could die.”

“Millions? Depends on how many warheads they have. They're not a superpower. Five warheads? Ten? How many launch racks in that submarine?”

“But they could really do it! They could murder whole cities of innocent people while they're sleeping, peacefully.… For no sane reason! Just stupid fascist politics and power mongering—” Her voice caught hoarsely.

“Laura—I'm older than you. I know that situation. I remember it vividly.” He smiled. “I'll tell you how it worked. We just waited and went on living, that's all. It didn't happen—maybe it'll never happen. In the meantime, what good is this doing you?” He stood up. “We're through here. Come with me, there are things I want you to see.”

She followed him unwillingly, feeling wretched, spooked. The way he talked about it so casually—
ten warheads
—but for him it
was
casual, wasn't it? He'd lived through a time where there were thousands of warheads, enough to exterminate
all human life
.

Responsible for mass death. It filled her with loathing. Her thoughts raced and suddenly she wanted to flee into the desert, vaporize. She never wanted to be near anyone who had ever touched such a thing, who was shadowed by that kind of horror.

And yet they were
everywhere
, weren't they? People who'd played politics with atomic weapons. Presidents, premiers, generals … little old men out in parks with grandkids and golf clubs. She had seen them, lived among them—

She
was one of them.

Her mind went numb.

Gresham slowed, took her elbow. “Look.”

It was evening now. A ragged crowd of about a hundred had gathered before one of the domes. The dome had been pulled in half, as a kind of crude amphitheater. The Inadin musicians were playing again, and one of them stood before the crowd, swaying, singing. His song had a wailing meter and many verses. The other Inadin swayed in time, sometimes giving a sharp cry of approval. The crowd looked on open-mouthed.

“What's he saying?”

Gresham began speaking again in his television voice. He was reciting poetry.

Listen, people of the Kel Tamashek
,

We are the Inadin, the blacksmiths
.

We have always wandered among the tribes and clans
,

We have always carried your messages
.

Our fathers' lives were better than ours
,

Our grandfathers' better still
.

Once our people traveled everywhere
,

Kano, Zanfara, Agadez
.

Now we live in the cities and are turned into numbers and letters
,

Now we live in the camps and eat magic food from tubes
.

Gresham stopped. “Their word for magic is
tisma
. It means, ‘the secret craft of blacksmiths.'”

“Go on,” she said.

Our fathers had sweet milk and dates
,

We have only nettles and thorns
.

Why do we suffer like this?

Is it the end of the world?

No, because we are not evil men
,

No, because now we have
tisma.

We are blacksmiths who have secret magic
,

We are silversmiths who see the past and future
.

In the past this was a rich and green land
,

Now it is rock and dust
.

Gresham paused, watching the Tuaregs. Two rose and began dancing, their outstretched arms curling and waving, their sandaled feet stamping in time. It was slow, waltzlike dancing, elegant, elegiac. The singer rose to his feet again. “Now comes the good part,” Gresham said.

But where there is rock, there can be grass
,

Where there is grass, the rain comes
.

The roots of grass will hold the rain
,

The leaves of grass will tame the sandstorm
.