Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Whoever goes will be online twenty-four hours. We'll know exactly where they are, exactly what they're doing. Every- thing they see and hear will be taped and distributed. All of

Rizome will be behind them, a media ghost on their shoulder.

Grenada will respect that. They've already agreed to those terms."

"I think Charlie's right," Garcia-Meza said, unexpectedly.

"They won't harm our diplomats. What's the point? If they want to savage Rizome, they won't start with the Websters just because they are close at hand. They are not so naive. If they shoot us, they will shoot for the head. They will go for us-the Committee."

"Jesus," de Valera said. .

"We are feasting with tigers here," Garcia-Meza insisted.

"This is a vital operation and we'll have to watch each step.

So I'm glad we have those Vienna glasses. We'll need them."

"Let me go," Ms. Emerson begged. "They're young and they have a baby."

"Actually," de Valera said, "I think that's the Websters'

major advantage as candidates. I think the Websters should go, and I think they should take their baby with them." He smiled at the circle, enjoying the stir he'd created. "Look, think about it. A peaceable young married couple, with a baby. It's a perfect diplomatic image for our company, because it's true. It's what they are, isn't it? It may sound cold-blooded, but it's a perfect psychological defense."

"Well," said Garcia-Meza, "I don't often agree with de

Valera, but that's clever. These pirates are macho. They would be ashamed to fight with babies."

Kaufmann spoke heavily. "I did not want to mention this.

But Debra's background in American intelligence... that is simply not something that a Third World country like Gre- nada will accept. And I do not want to send a Committee member, because, frankly, such a target is too tempting." He turned to them. "I hope you understand, David and Laura, that I mean no reflection on your own high value as associates. "

"I just don't like it," Cullen said. "Maybe there's no other choice, but I don't like risking company people."

"We're all in danger now," Garcia-Meza said darkly. "No matter what choices we make."

"I believe in this initiative!" de Valera declared. "I pushed for this from the beginning. I know the consequences. I truly believe the Grenadians will go for this-they're not barbar- ians, and they know their own best interests. If our diplomats . are hurt on duty, I'll take the heat and resign my post."

Emily was annoyed by this grab for the limelight. "Don't be non-R, de Valera! That won't do them much good."

De Valera shrugged off the accusation. "David, Laura, I hope you understand my offer in the meaning I intended.

We're associates, not bosses and pawns. If you're hurt, I won't walk from that. Solidarity."

"None of us will walk," Cullen said. "We don't have that luxury. Laura, David, you realize what's at stake. If we fail to smooth things with Grenada, it could plunge us into disas- ter. We're asking you to risk yourselves-but we're giving you the power to risk all of us. And that kind of power is very rare in this company."

Laura felt the weight of it. They wanted an answer. They were looking to the two of them. There was no one else for them to look to.

She and David had already talked it out, privately. They knew they could duck this assignment, without blame. But they had lost their home, and it would leave all their plans floundering. It seemed better to seize the risk, go with the flow of the crisis, and depend on their own abilities to deal with it. Better that than to sit back like victims and let terrorists trample their lives with impunity. Their minds were made up.

"We can do it," Laura said. "If you back us."

"It's settled then." And that was that. They all rose and folded up the picnic. And went back to the farmhouses.

Laura and David began training immediately with the videoglasses.

They were the first the company had bought, and they were grotesquely expensive. She'd never realized it before, but each set cost as much as a small house.

They looked it, too-at close range they had the strange aura of scientific instruments. Nonconsumer items, very spe- cialized, very clean. Heavy, too-a skin of tough black plas- tic, but packed tight with pricy superconductive circuitry.

They had no real lenses in hem-just thousands of bitmapped light detectors. The raw output was a prismatic blur- visual software handled all the imagery, depth of focus, and so on. Little invisible beams measured the position of the user's eyeballs. The operator, back at his screen, didn't have to depend on the user's gaze, though. With software he could examine anything in the entire field of vision.

You could see right through them, even though they were opaque from outside. They could even be set to adjust for astigmatism or what have you.

They made custom-fitted foam earpieces for both of them.

No problem there, that was old tech.

Chattahoochee Retreat had a telecom room that made the

Galveston Lodge's look premillennial,. They did a crash course in videoglass technique. Strictly hands-on, typical Rizome training. The two of them took turns wandering over the grounds, scanning things at random, refining their skills. A

lot to look at: greenhouses, aquaculture ponds, peach or- chards, windmills. A day-care crèche where a Retreat staffer was baby-sitting Loretta. Rizome had given the crèche system a shot, years ago, but people hadn't liked it-too kibbutzish, never caught on.

The Retreat had been a working farm once, before single cell protein came in and kicked the props out of agriculture. It was a bit Marie Antoinette now, like a lot of modem farms.

Specialty crops, greenhouse stuff. A lot of that commercial greenhouse work was in the cities now, where the markets were-..'

Then they would go inside, and watch their tapes, and get vertigo. And then try it again, but with books balanced on their heads. And then take turns, one monitoring the screen and the other out walking and taking instruction and bitching cheerfully about how tough it was. It was good to be working at something. They felt more in control.

It was going to work, Laura decided. They were going to run a propaganda number on the Grenadians and let the

Grenadians run a propaganda number on them, and that would be it. A risk, yes-but also the widest exposure they'd ever had within the company, and that meant plenty in itself. The

Committee hadn't been crass enough to talk directly about reward, but they didn't have to; that wasn't how things were done in Rizome. It was all understood.

Dangerous, yes. But the bastards had shot up her house.

She'd given up the illusion that anyplace would be truly safe anymore. She knew it wouldn't. Not until this was all over.

They had a two-hour layover in Havana. Laura fed the baby. David stretched out in his blue plastic seat, propping his sandaled feet one atop the other. Crude overhead speakers piped twinkling Russian pop music. No robot trolleys here- porters with handcarts, instead. Old janitors, too, who pushed brooms like they'd been born pushing them. In the next row of plastic seats, a bored Cuban kid dropped an empty soft- drink carton and stomped it. Laura watched dully as the mashed carton started to melt. "Let's get plastered, David said suddenly.

"What?"

David tucked his videoglasses into the pocket of his suit, careful not to smudge the lenses. "I look at it this way.

We're gonna be online the whole time in Grenada. No time to relax, no time for ourselves. But we got an eight-hour flight coming up. Eight hours in a goddamn airplane, right? That's free license to puke all over ourselves if we want. The stews'll take care of us. Let's get wasted."

Laura examined her husband. His face looked brittle. She felt the same way. These last days had been hell. "Okay,"