Islands in the Net (56 page)

She gave them a little speech that she'd written for them on the plane, coming in. About the Lodge—how the enemy had killed a guest, insulted their house and their company. About how they had fought back, not with machine guns, but with truth and solidarity. They had paid a price for resistance, in trouble and tragedy.

But today the Malian conspiracy was exposed and in utter wreckage. The Grenadian regime was wiped out. The Singaporeans had had a revolution. Even the European data bankers—
Los Morfinos
—had lost their safe havens and were scattered to the winds. (Applause.)

Even Vienna had been shattered in the world upheaval, but Rizome was stronger than ever. They had proven their right to the future. They—the Lodge personnel—could be proud of their role in global history.

Everyone applauded. They were shiny-eyed. She was getting much better at this sort of thing. She had done it so many times that all the fear was gone.

The formality broke up and people began circulating. Mrs. Delrosario, Mrs. Rodriguez, were both in tears. Laura consoled them. She was introduced to the Lodge's new coordinator and his pregnant wife. They bubbled on about how nice the place was and how much they were sure they'd enjoy it. Laura did her “humble Laura” number, patient, detached.

People always seemed surprised to see her speak reasonably, without hair-tearing or hysteria. They had all formed their first judgment of her from watching Gresham's tape. She had seen the tape (one of the innumerable pirated copies) exactly once, and had turned it off before the end, unable to bear the intensity. She knew what other people thought about it, though—she had read the commentaries. Her mother had sent her a little scrapbook of them, carefully clipped from the world press.

She would think about those comments sometimes when she was introduced to strangers, saw them judging her. Judging her, presumably, by the kind of crap they'd seen and read. “Mrs. Webster was thoroughly convincing, showing all the naive rage of an offended bourgeoise”—
Leningrad Free Press
. “She recited her grievances to the camera like a cavalier's mistress demanding vengeance for an insult”—
Paris-Despatch
. “Ugly, histrionic, gratingly insistent, a testament that was ultimately far too unpleasant to be disbelieved”—
The Guardian
. She had read that last one ten or twelve times, and had even considered calling up the snide little creep who'd written it—but what the hell. The tape had worked, that was enough. And it was nothing compared to what they said about the poor wretched bastards who used to run Vienna.

All that was old news now, anyway. Nowadays everybody talked about the submarine. Everyone was an expert. It was not, of course, an American Trident submarine—FACT had lied to her about that, small surprise there. She had told the whole world that she'd been on a “Trident” submarine, when a Trident was actually a kind of missile.

But Gresham had asked her for a description and the description had made it clear. The boat was a former Soviet Alfa-class missile sub, which had been sold years ago, to the African nation of Djibouti, and reported sunk with all hands. Of course it had not sunk at all—the hapless crew had been gassed by FACT saboteurs onboard as mercenaries, and the whole sub captured intact.

Almost the whole story was out now, new bits and pieces coming in every day. They had the FACT computer files, captured in Bamako. FACT agents overseas were surrendering right and left, naming their associates, ruining their former employers in a septic orgy of confession.

The Countess herself was dead. She had shot herself in her bunker at Bamako and had her remains cremated, leaving a long, rambling, lunatic testament about her vindication by history. So they claimed, anyway. No genuine proof of her death. She'd seen to that.

They still weren't even sure of the woman's true identity. There were at least five solid candidates wealthy right-wing women who had vanished at one point or another into the underworld of data piracy and global spookdom. That didn't even count the hundreds of goofy folk tales and bullshit conspiracy theories.

The weird, sick thing was that people
liked
it. They
liked
the idea of an evil countess and her minions, even though the testimony and confessions were showing how squalid it was. The woman had been mentally ill. Old and trembling and out of it, and surrounded by people who were part zealot and part profiteer.

But people couldn't see it like that—they couldn't grasp the genuine banality of corruption. On some deep unconscious level people liked the political upheaval, the insecurity, the perverse tang of nuclear terror. The fear was an aphrodisiac, a chance to chuck the long-term view and live for the moment. Once it had
always
been like that. Now that she was living it, hearing people talk it, she knew.

Someone had invited the mayor. Magruder began explaining to her the complex legal niceties of reopening the Lodge. He was defensive about what he'd done, in his own aggressive way. She fended him off with empty pleasantries. “Oh, wait,” she said, “there's someone I simply must meet,” and she left him and walked at random toward a stranger. A black woman with a short fringed haircut, standing alone in the corner, sipping a soda-and-ricewater.

It was Emily Donate. She saw Laura coming and looked up with an expression of pure animal terror. Laura stopped short, jolted. “Emily,” she said. “Hi.”

“Hello, Laura.” She was going to be civilized. Laura saw the resolve for it stiffen her face, saw her control the urge to flee.

The hubbub of conversation dropped an octave. People were watching them over their drinks, from the corners of their eyes. “I need a drink,” Laura said. A meaningless utterance, she had to say something.

“I'll get you one.”

“No, let's get the hell out of here.” She pushed open the door and stepped out onto the walkway. A few people out on the landing, leaning on the rail, watching seagulls. Laura walked through them. Emily tagged after her, reluctantly.

They walked around the rampart, under the awning. It was getting cold and Emily, in her simple short-sleeved dress, clutched her bare brown arms. “I forgot my windbreaker.… No, it's okay. Really.” She put her drink on the wooden railing.

“You cut your hair,” Laura said.

“Yeah,” Emily said, “I travel pretty light these days.” Thudding silence. “Did you see Arthur's trial?”

Laura shook her head. “But I'm glad now you never introduced me to the son-of-a-bitch.”

“He made me feel like a whore,” Emily said. Simple, abject. “He was F.A.C.T.! I still can't believe that sometimes. That I was sleeping with the enemy, that I spilled the whole fucking thing, that it was all my fault.” She burst into tears. “And then this! I don't know why I even showed by face here. I wish we were back in Mexico. I wish we were in hell!”

“For God's sake, Emily, don't talk like that.”

“I disgraced my office. I disgraced the company. And God knows what I've done with my personal life.” She was sobbing. “Now look what I've done—I've betrayed my best friend. You were in prison and I was sleeping with your goddamned husband! You must wish I was dead.”

“No, I don't!” Laura blurted. “I know—I've been there. It's no good at all.”

Emily stared at her. The remark had stunned her. “I used to know you really well,” she said. “I used to
depend
on you. You were the best pal I ever had.… Y'know, when I first came down here, to see David, I thought I was doing you
a favor
. I mean, I
liked
him, but he wasn't exactly doing Rizome morale much good. Complaining, abusing people, drinking too much. I said, my dead pal would want me to look after David. I tried to do something really good, and it was the worst thing I've ever done.”

“I'd have done it too,” Laura said.

Emily sat in one of the folding lounge chairs and pulled in her legs. “That's not what I want,” she said. “I want you to tell me how much you hate me. I can't stand it if you're so much nobler than I am.”

“Okay, Emily.” The truth burst out of her like an abcess. “When I think of you and David sleeping together, I want to tear your fucking throat out.”

Emily sat there and took it. She shuddered and flung it off. “I can't make up for it. But I can run away.”

“Don't run, Emily. He doesn't need that. He's a good man. He doesn't love me anymore, but he can't help that. We're just too far apart now.”

Emily looked up. Hope dawned. “So it's true? You're not gonna take him away from me?”

“No.” She forced the words to come lightly. “We'll get the divorce. It won't be that much trouble.… Except for the journalists.”

Emily looked at her feet. She accepted it. The gift. “I do love him, you know. I mean, he's simple, and kind of dizzy sometimes, but he does have his good points.” She had nothing left to hide. “I don't even need the pills. I just love him. I'm used to him. We're even talking about having a baby.”

“Oh, really?” Laura sat down. It was such a strange thought that it somehow failed to touch her. It seemed pleasant somehow, homey. “Are you trying?”

“Not yet but …” She paused. “Laura? We're gonna survive this, aren't we? I mean it won't be like it was, but we won't have to kill ourselves. We'll be okay.”

“Yeah.” Long silence.

She leaned toward Emily. Now that it was out between them some ghost of the old vibe was coming back. A kind of subterranean tingle as their buried friendship stirred.

Emily brightened. She could feel it too.

It lasted long enough for them to go back in with their arms around each other.

Everyone smiled.

She spent Christmas at her mother's place in Dallas. And there was Loretta. A little girl who ran when she saw the lady in the hat and sunglasses, and hid her face in her grandmother's dress.

She was such a cute little thing. Spiky blond pigtails, greenish eyes. Quite a talker, too, once she got going. She said, “Gramma spill the milk,” and laughed. She sang a little song about Christmas in which most of the verses were “na na na na” at top volume. After she got used to her, she sat in Laura's lap and called her “Rarra.”

“She's wonderful,” Laura told her mother. “You've done really well with her.”

“She's such a joy to me,” said Margaret Alice Day Garfield Nakamura Simpson. “I lost you—then I had her—now I have both of you. It's like a miracle. Not a day passes that I don't marvel at it. I've never been this happy in my life.”

“Really, Mother?”

“I've had good times, and I've had bad times—this is the best time, for me. Since I've retired—shrugged the yoke off—it's me and Loretta. We're a family—it's like we're a little team.”

“You must have been happy when you and Dad were together. I remember it. I always thought we were happy.”

“Well, we were, yes. It wasn't quite this good, but it was good. Till the Abolition. Till I started doing eighteen-hour days. I could have chucked it—your father wanted me to—but I thought, no, this is it, the greatest turning point I'll ever see in my lifetime. If I want to live in the world, I have to do this first. So I did it, and I lost him. Both of you.”

“It must have hurt you terribly. I was young and didn't know—I only knew that it hurt me.”

“I'm sorry, Laura. I know it's late, but I apologize to you.”

“Thank you for saying that, Mother. I'm sorry too.” She laughed. “It's funny that it should come to this. After all these years. Just a few words.”

Her mother took her glasses off, dabbed at her eyes. “Your grandmother understood.… We never have much luck, Laura. But you know, I think we're working it out! It's not the old way, but it's something. What are nuclear families, anyway? Preindustrial.”

“Maybe we can work it better this time around,” Laura said. “I blew it so much worse than you did that maybe it won't hurt her so much.”

“I should have seen more of you when you were growing up,” her mother said. “But there was work and—oh, dear, I hate to say this—the world's full of men.” She hesitated. “I know you don't want to think about that right now, but believe me, it does come back.”

“That's nice to know, I guess.” She watched the Christmas tree, flickering between two Japanese wall hangings. “Right now the only men I see are journalists. Not much fun there. Ever since Vienna took the leash off, they're running hog wild.”

“Nakamura was a journalist,” her mother said thoughtfully. “You know, I was never very
happy
with him, but it was certainly
intense
.”

They had supper together, in her mother's elegant little dining nook. There was wine, and Christmas ham, and a little spread of newly invented scop from Britain that tasted like paté. They could have eaten pounds of it.

“It's good, but it doesn't taste much like paté,” her mother complained. “It's a bit more like, oh, salmon mousse.”

“It's too expensive,” Laura said. “Probably costs about ten cents to make.”

“Well,” her mother said tolerantly, “they have to recoup the research fees.”

“It'll be cheaper when Loretta grows up.”

“By then they'll be making scop that tastes like everything, or anything, or nothing ever seen.”

The thought was a little horrifying. I'm getting older, Laura thought. Change itself is beginning to scare me.

She put the thought away. They played with Loretta until it was her bedtime. Then they talked for another couple of hours, sipping wine and eating cheese and being civilized. Laura wasn't happy, but the edges were off, and she was something close to content. No one knew where she was, and that was a blessing. She slept well.

In the morning they exchanged presents.