Islands in the Net (57 page)

The Central Committee had gathered in Rizome's Stone Mountain Retreat. There was the new CEO, Cynthia Wu. And the committee itself, enough for a quorum: Garcia-Meza, McIntyre, Kaufmann, and de Valera. Gauss and Salazar were away at a summit, while the elderly Saito was off somewhere taking the waters. And, of course, Suvendra was there, happy to see Laura, unhappily chewing nicotine gum.

Rusticating. They were doing a lot of that lately. Atlanta was a major city. There was always the whispered suggestion that it might become Ground Zero.

It was a typical Central Committee feed. Lentil soup, salad, and whole-grain bread. Voluntary simplicity—they all ate it and attempted to look more high-minded than thou.

The telecom office was a Frank Lloyd Wright revival, gridded concrete block pierced with glass, stacked and undercut in severe geometrical elegance. The building seemed to fit Mrs. Wu, a school-teacherish Anglo in her sixties who had come up through the marine-engineering section. She called the meeting back to order.

“Thanks to contacts,” she told them, “we're getting this tape three days early, and before the network cuts it. I think this documentary serves as a capstone to the political work we pursued under my predecessor. I propose we use this opportunity, tonight, to reassess our policy. In retrospect, our former plans seem naive, and went seriously awry.” She noticed de Valera's hand. “Comment?”

“What exactly are you defining as success?”

“As I recall, our original strategy was to encourage the data havens to amalgamate. Thus maneuvering them into a bureaucratic,
gesellschaft
structure that would be more easily controlled—assimilated, if you will. Peacefully. Is there anyone here who thinks that policy worked?”

Kaufmann spoke. “It worked against the EFT Commerzbank—though I admit it wasn't our doing. Still—they're legally entangled now. Harmless.”

“Only because they fear being killed,” Suvendra said. “The anger of the Net is become an awesome force!”

“Let's face it,” de Valera said. “If we'd known the true nature of the F.A.C.T. we'd have never dared become involved! On the other hand, the havens did lose, didn't they? And we did win. Even our naivete worked to our advantage—at least no one can accuse Rizome of having ever supported FACT, no matter how badly the havens pestered us.”

“In other words our success was mostly luck,” Mrs. Wu said crisply. “I agree—we've been fortunate. With the exception of those Rizome associates who paid the price for our adventuring.” She didn't have to glance at Laura to make her point.

“True enough,” de Valera said. “But our motives were good and we fought the good fight.”

Mrs. Wu smiled. “I'm as proud of that as anyone. But I can hope we'll do better in the present political situation. Now that the truth is out—and we can make what we laughingly call informed decisions.” She sat down, touching her watchphone. “Let's roll the tape.”

The lights dimmed and the display screen at the head of the table flashed into life. “This is Dianne Arbright of 3N News, reporting from Tangiers. The exclusive interview you are about to see was made under conditions of great personal danger to our 3N news team. In the wilderness of Algeria's Air Mountains, isolated, without backup, we were little short of hostages in the hands of the now notorious Inadin Cultural Revolution.…”

“What a glory hog,” Garcia-Meza rumbled.

“Yeah,” McIntyre said from the comfortable
gemeineschaft
darkness. “I wish I knew her hairdresser.”

Footage followed, with Arbright's narrative. White jeeps jouncing cautiously through rugged mountain scenery. The news team in dashing safari outfits, hats, scarves, hiking boots.

A sudden crowd of Tuaregs on dune buggies, emerging from nowhere. The jeep surrounded. Leveled guns. Real alarm on the faces of the news team, jerky cinema verité. Cameras blocked by calloused hands.

Back to Arbright, somewhere in Tangiers. “We were searched for tracking devices, then blindfolded. They ignored our protests, bound us hand and foot, and loaded all four of us into their vehicles, like sheep. We were hauled for hours through some of the roughest and most desolate territory in Africa. The next footage you will see was taken in the depths of an ICR ‘liberated zone.' In this heavily guarded, supersecret mountain fortress, we were finally brought face to face with the so-called strategic genius of the ICR—ex-Special Forces Colonel Jonathan Gresham.”

More footage. They caught their breath. A cave, crude walls blasted out of living rock, dangling lightbulbs high overhead. Arbright sitting cross-legged on the carpet, her back to the camera.

Before her sat Gresham, turbanned, veiled, and cloaked, his massive head and shoulders framed in a spreading wicker peacock chair. Behind him at left and right stood two Tuareg lieutenants, with slung automatic rifles, black bandoliers, ceremonial Tuareg swords with jeweled hilts and tasseled scabbards, combat knives, grenades, pistols.

“You may proceed,” Gresham announced.

Mrs. Wu froze the tape. “Laura, you're our situation expert. Is it him?”

“It's him,” Laura said. “He's been to a laundry, but that's Jonathan Gresham, all right.”

“Do they
always
look like that?” de Valera asked.

Laura laughed. “They wouldn't last five minutes like that, out on operations. Those silly swords, all that hardware—they've got everything but flyswatters. Gresham's trying to put the voodoo on her.”

“I've never seen a more terrifying figure,” said Mrs. Wu, sincerely. “Why is he hiding his face? His photo must be on file somewhere anyway.”

“He's wearing the
tagelmoust
,” Laura said. “That veil and turban—it's traditional for male Tuaregs. A kind of male
chador
.”

“That's a switch,” McIntyre said. Deliberate lightness. She was scared, too.

“Thank you, Colonel Gresham.” Arbright was shaken but she was going to tough it out. A professional. “Let me begin by asking, Why did you agree to this interview?”

“You mean why
you
—or why at all?”

“Let's begin with why at all.”

“I know what's happened in your world,” Gresham said. “We blew Vienna's shell game, and the Net wants to know why. What's in it for us? Who are we, what do we want? When the Net wants to know, it sends its army—journalists. So I'm willing to meet with exactly one—you. I depend on you to warn the rest off.”

“I'm not sure I follow you, Colonel. I can't speak for my media colleagues, but I'm certainly not a soldier.”

“The Malian regime gave us a war of extermination. We understand that. We also understand the far more insidious threat that you pose, with your armies of cameramen. We don't want your world. We don't respect your values and we don't care to be touched. We are not a tourist attraction—we are a revolution, not a zoo. We will not be tamed or assimilated. By your very nature, by your very presence, you would force assimilation on us. That will not be allowed.”

“Colonel, you've been a journalist yourself, as well as a soldier, and, ah, cultural theorist. You must be aware that popular interest in you and your activities is very intense.”

“Yes, I am. That's why I fully expect to litter this desert with the bones of your colleagues in years to come. But I'm a soldier—not a terrorist. When our enemies—your colleagues—are killed in our liberated zones, they'll die knowing the reason. Assuming, that is, that I can trust you to do your job.”

“I won't censor you, Colonel. I'm not Vienna, either.”

“Yes—I know that. I know you pushed the coverage of the Grenada terror attack well past Vienna's limits, at some risk to your career. That's why I chose you—you have some spine.”

The second cameraman had now wandered into range and got a reaction shot. Arbright smiled at Gresham. Dimples. Laura knew what she was feeling. She was fairly tight with Arbright these days. Had done an interview with her, a good one. She even knew the name of Arbright's hairdresser.

“Colonel, did you know that your book on the Lawrence Doctrine is now a best-seller?”

“It was pirated,” Gresham said. “And expurgated.”

“Could you explain a bit of the doctrine for our viewers?”

“I suppose it's preferable to having them read it,” Gresham said reluctantly. Feigned reluctance, Laura thought. “Over a century ago, Lawrence … he was British, First World War … discovered how a tribal society could defend itself from industrial imperialism.… The Arab Revolt stopped the Turkish cultural advance, literally in its tracks. They did this with guerrilla assaults on the railroads and telegraphs, the Turkish industrial control system. For success, however, the Arabs were forced to use industrial artifacts—namely, guncotton, dynamite, and canned food. For us it is solar power, plastique, and single-cell protein.”

He paused. “The Arabs made the mistake of trusting the British, who were simply the Turks by another name. The First World War was a proto-Net civil war, and the Arabs were thrust aside. 'Til oil came—then they were assimilated. Brave efforts like the Iranian revolt of 1979 were too little too late … they were already fighting for television.”

“Colonel—you speak as if you don't expect anyone to sympathize.”

“I don't. You live by your system. Vienna, Mali, Azania—it's all imperial hardware, just different brand names.”

“The British political analyst Irwin Craighead has described you as ‘the first credible right-wing intellectual since T. E. Lawrence.'”

Gresham touched his veil. “I'm a postindustrial tribal anarchist. Is that considered ‘right-wing' these days? You'll have to ask Craig-head.”

“I'm sure Sir Irwin would be delighted to discuss definitions.”

“I'm not going to Britain—and if he tries to invade our zones, he'll be ambushed like anyone else.”

Mrs. Wu froze the tape. “This litany of death threats is very annoying.”

“Arbright's got him rattled,” de Valera gloated. “Typical right-winger—full of bullshit!”

“Hey!” Garcia-Meza objected. “You should talk, de Valera—you and your socialist internal-money system—”

“Please don't start on that again,” Kaufmann said. “Anyway, he's
interesting
, is he not? Here's a fellow who could be a world hero—not to everyone perhaps, but enough of us—and not only is he staying out there in hell, but he's talked these other poor souls into joining him!”

“His ideology sucks,” de Valera said. “If he wants to be a desert hermit, he could move to Arizona and stop paying his phone bills. He doesn't need the shoulder-launched rockets and the whole nine yards.”

“I'm with de Valera on this one,” McIntyre said. “And I still don't see how the Russian space station fits in.”

“He's confused,” Laura said. “He's not sure what he's doing is right. It's like—he wants to be as different from us as he can, but he can't get us out of himself. He's full of some kind of self-hatred I can't understand.”

“Let's give him his say,” Garcia-Meza said.

They ran more tape. Arbright asked Gresham about FACT. “The Malian regime is finished,” Gresham said, “the submarine is just a detail,” and he began talking about Azanian “imperialism.” Detailing how roads could be land-mined, convoys ambushed, communication links cut, until Azanian “expansionism” was “no longer economically tenable.”

Then without warning he started in on plans to heal the desert. “Agriculture is the oldest and most vicious of humanity's bio-technologies. Rather than deracinated farmers in Azanian sterilization camps, there should be wandering tribes of eco-decentralized activists.…”

“He's a screwball,” de Valera said.

“I think we're all agreed on that,” Mrs. Wu said. She turned down the sound. “The question is, what is our policy? Is Gresham any less threatening to us than Grenada or Singapore? He certainly cultivates a line in aggressive bluster.”

“Grenada and Singapore were pirates and parasites,” Laura said. “Grant him this much—he only wants to be left alone.”

“Come on,” de Valera said. “What about all that high-tech hardware? He didn't get that by selling handmade jewelry.”

“Aha!” said Garcia-Meza. “Then that is where he's vulnerable.”

“Why we should harm someone who fought the F.A.C.T.?” Suvendra said. “And if
they
could not frighten or defeat his people, could we?”

“Good point,” said Mrs. Wu. They watched Gresham lean back briefly in his peacock chair and mutter an order to the lieutenant on his left. The Tuareg saluted smartly and swaggered away, off-camera.

“He is in a desert no one wants,” Suvendra said. “Why force him to come after us?”

“What the hell could he do to us?” de Valera said. “He's a Luddite.”

Laura spoke heavily. “Can you run the tape back? I think that man who just walked off-camera was Sticky Thompson.”

They stirred in shock. Mrs. Wu ran it again. “Yeah,” Laura said. “That walk, that salute. Under that veil, it's got to be him. Sticky—Nesta Stubbs. Of course—where else would he go? I wondered what had become of him.”

“That's horrible,” de Valera said.

“No, it's not,” Laura told him. “He's over there in the desert with Gresham. He's not over here.”

“Oh, my God,” McIntyre said. “And to think I stay up at night worrying about atom bombs. We'd better tell Vienna immediately.”

They stared at her. “Smart move,” de Valera said at last. “Vienna. Wow. That'll really scare him.”

Mrs. Wu rubbed her forehead. “What do we do now?”

“I can think of one thing,” Laura said. “We can protect his supply lines, so no one else bothers him! And I know one supply that's got to mean more to him than anything. Iron Camels, from GoMotion Unlimited in Santa Clara, California. We should make inquiries.”