Грег Иган - Distress

I turned again to the woman beside me, one of Rajendra’s friends. "The limestone detritus… tiny particles like that, must lose all their oxygen, all their buoyancy. Why don’t they just… fall?"

"They do. The white comes from engineered diatoms. They scavenge calcium from the water, mineralize it—then migrate up and paste themselves into the rock when the waves dash them against it. Coral polyps can’t grow in the darkness, so the diatoms are the only repair mechanism." She smiled, hyperlucid; she’d been there to see for herself. "That’s what holds the island up: just a fine mist of calcium, fading away into the depths, and a few trillion microscopic creatures whose genes tell them what to do with it."

The winch started rewinding. No one was near it; there must have been a control button for the diver, which I’d missed, or maybe it was preprogrammed, the whole dive calculated in advance to limit the risk of decompression sickness. Rajendra put his hand in front of his face and waved to us. People laughed and joked as he began his ascent; it was nothing like the mood when I’d arrived.

I asked the woman, "Do you have a notepad?"

"In the bus."

"Do you want the communications software? You could keep the camera…"

She nodded enthusiastically. "Good idea. Thanks!" She went to fetch the notepad.

The camera had only cost me ten dollars, but the copy fee for the software turned out to be two hundred; I could hardly retract the offer, though. When she returned, I approved the transaction and the machines conversed in infrared. She’d have to pay for any more duplicates, but the program could be moved and erased for free, passed on to other groups of divers.

When Rajendra emerged he started whooping with joy. As soon as he was free of the safety line, he sprinted away across the plain, still carrying the scuba tanks, before doubling back and collapsing in a breathless heap. I didn’t know if he was hamming it up or not—he hadn’t seemed the type—but as he took off the diving gear, he was grinning like a madman in love, exhilarated, trembling.

Adrenaline, yes but he’d been diving for more than the thrill of it. He was back on solid ground… but it would never be the same, now that he’d seen exactly what lay beneath it: now that he’d swum right through the island’s tenuous foundations.

This was what the people of Stateless had in common: not merely the island itself, but the firsthand knowledge that they stood on rock which the founders had crystallized out of the ocean—and which was, forever, dissolving again, only enduring through a process of constant repair. Beneficent nature had nothing to do with it; conscious human effort, and cooperation, had built Stateless—and even the engineered life which maintained it couldn’t be treated as God-given, infallible; the balance could be disturbed in a thousand ways: mutants could arise, competitors could move in, phages could wipe out bacteria, climate change could shift vital equilibria. All the elaborate machinery had to be monitored, had to be understood.

In the long run, discord could literally sink the place. If it was no guarantee of harmony that nobody on Stateless wanted their society to disintegrate… maybe it helped focus the attention to realize that the land beneath their feet might do the same.

And if it was naive to think of this understanding as any kind of panacea, it had one undeniable advantage over all the contrived mythology of nationhood.

It was true.

I copied everything from the camera’s memory, to give me the scene in high resolution. When Rajendra had calmed down slightly, I asked for his permission to use the footage for broadcast; he agreed. I had no definite plans, but at the very least I could always smuggle it into the interactive version of Violet Mosala.

Munroe came with me, still shouldering his folded easel and rolled-up canvas, as I headed back for the terminus.

I said sheepishly, "I might try it for myself once the conference is over. Right now, it looks too… intense. I just don’t want to be distracted. I have a job to do."

He faked bewilderment. "It’s entirely your decision. You don’t have to justify anything to anyone, here."

"Yeah, sure. And I’ve died and gone to heaven."

At the terminus, I hit the call button; the box predicted a ten-minute wait.

Munroe fell silent for a while. Then he said, "I suppose you have all the inside information about everyone attending the conference?"

I laughed. "Not exactly. But I’m sure I’m not missing out on much. Soap operas staring physicists are just as dull as any other kind; I really don’t care who’s screwing whom, or who’s stealing whose brilliant ideas."

He frowned amiably. "Well, neither do I—but I wouldn’t mind knowing if the rumor about Violet Mosala has any substance."

I hesitated. "Which rumor did you have in mind? There are so many." It sounded pitiful even as I said it; I might as well have come right out and admitted that I had no idea what he was talking about.

"There’s only one serious question, isn’t there?"

I shrugged. Munroe looked irritated, as if he believed I was being disingenuous, and not just trying to conceal my ignorance.

I said candidly, "Violet Mosala and I aren’t exactly swapping intimate secrets. The way things are going, if I make it through to the end of the conference with decent coverage of all her public appearances, I’ll count myself lucky. Even if I have to spend the next six months chasing her between appointments in Cape Town, trying to flesh things out."

Munroe nodded with grim satisfaction, like a cynic whose opinions had just been confirmed. "Cape Town? Right. Thanks."

"For what?"

He said, "I never believed it; I just wanted to hear it put to rest by someone in a position to be sure. Violet Mosala—Nobel-prize-winning physicist, inspiration to millions, twenty-first-century Einstein, architect of the TOE most likely to succeed… abandons her home country— just when the peace in Natal is starting to look more solid than ever— not for Caltech, not for Bombay, not for CERN, not for Osaka… but to join the rabble on Stateless?

"Not in a million years."

Back at the hotel, climbing the stairs to my room, I asked Sisyphus:

"Can you name a group of political activists—with the initials AC—who might have taken an interest in Violet Mosala emigrating to Stateless?"

"No."

"Come on! A is for anarchy… ?"

"There are two thousand and seventy-three organizations with anarchy or a related word in their title, but they all contain more than two words."

"Okay." Maybe AC itself was shorthand, like US for USA. But then, if Munroe was to be believed, no serious anarchist would ever use the A-word.

I tried a different angle. "What about A for African, С for culture… with any number of other letters?"

"There are two hundred and seven matches."

I scrolled through the list; AC didn’t seem like a plausible abbreviation for any of them. One name was familiar, though; I replayed a section of the audio log from the morning’s press conference:

"William Savimbi, Proteus Information. You speak approvingly of a convergence of ideas which has no respect for ancestral cultures—as if your own heritage were of no importance to you at all. Is it true that you received death threats from the Pan-African Cultural Defense Front, after you publicly stated that you didn’t consider yourself to be an African woman?"

Mosala had put the quote in context—but she hadn’t answered the question. If a comment like that had been enough to result in death threats, what might rumors of "defection"—baseless or not—bring down on her?