Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

she said. David smiled.

He picked up the baby's tote -and they trudged to the nearest duty-free shop, a little cubbyhole full of cheap straw hats and goofy-looking heads carved from coconuts. David bought a liter flask of brown Cuban rum. He paid with cash.

The Committee had warned them against using plastic. Too.

Too easy to trace. Data havens were all over the electric money business.

The Cuban shopgirl kept the paper money in a locked drawer. David handed her a 100-ecu bill. She handed over his paper change with a sloe-eyed smile at David-she was dressed in red, chewing gum and listening to samba music over headphones. Little hip-swaying motions. David said some- thing witty in Spanish and she smiled at him.

The ground wouldn't settle under Laura's shoes. The ground in airports wasn't part of the world. It had its own logic-

Airport Culture. Global islands in a net of airline flight paths.

A nowhere node of sweat and jet lag with the smell of luggage.

They boarded their flight at Gate Diez-y-seis. Aero Cubana.

Cheapest in the Caribbean, because the Cuban government was subsidizing flights. The Cubans were still touchy about their Cold War decades of enforced isolation.

David ordered Cokes whenever the stewardess came by and topped them off with deadly layers of pungent rum. Long flight to Grenada. Distances were huge out here. The Carib- bean was flecked with cloud, far-down fractal wrinkles of greenish ocean surge. The stews showed a dubbed Russian film, some hot pop-music thing from Leningrad with lots of dance sequences, all hairdos and strobe lights. David watched it on headphones, humming and bouncing Loretta on his knee. Loretta was stupefied with travel-her eyes bulged and her sweet little face was blank as a kachina doll's.

The rum hit Laura like warm narcotic tar. The world became exotic. Businessmen in the aisles ahead had plugged their decks into the dataports overhead, next to the air vents.

Cruising forty thousand feet over Caribbean nowhere, but still plugged into the Net. Fiber-optics dangled like intravenous drips.

Laura leaned her seat back and adjusted the blower to puff her face. Airsickness lurked down there somewhere below the alcoholic numbness. She sank into a stunned doze. She dreamed... . She was wearing one of those Aero Cubana stewardess outfits, nifty blue numbers, kind of paramilitary

1940s with chunky shoulders and a pleated skirt, hauling her trolley down the aisle. Giving everyone little plastic tumblers full of something ... milk.... They were all reach- ing out demanding this milk with looks of parched despera- tion and pathetic gratitude. They were so glad she was there and really wanted her help-they knew she could make things better.... They all looked frightened, rubbing their sweating chests like something hurt there... .

A lurch woke her up. Night had fallen. David sat in a pool of light from the overhead, staring at his keyboard screen. For a moment Laura was totally disoriented, legs cramped, back aching, her cheek sticky with spit... . Someone, David prob- ably, had put a blanket over her. "My Optimal Persona," she muttered. The plane jumped three or four times.

"You awake?" David said, plucking out his Rizome ear- plug. "Hitting a little rough weather."

"Yeah?"

"September in the Caribbean." Hurricane season, she thought he didn't have to say it. He checked his new, elaborate watchphone. "We're still an hour out." On the screen, a Rizome associate in a cowboy hat gestured elo- quently at the camera, a mountain range looming behind him.

David froze the image with a keytouch.

"You're answering mail?"

"No, too drunk," David said. "Just looking at it. This guy

Anderson in Wyoming-he's a drip." David winked the screen's image off. "There's all kinds of bullshit-oh, sorry,

I mean democratic input- pilin' up for us in Atlanta. Just thought I'd get it down on disk before we leave the plane."

Laura sat up scrunchily. "I'm glad you're here with me, David."

He looked amused and touched. "Where else would I be?"

He squeezed her hand.

The baby was asleep in the seat between them, in a collaps- ible bassinet of chromed wire and padded yellow synthetic. It looked like something a high-tech Alpine climber would haul

Oxygen in. Laura touched the baby's cheek. "She all right?"

"Sure. I fed her some rum, she'll be sleeping for hours."

Laura stopped in mid-yawn. "You fed her-" He was kidding. "So you've come to that," Laura said. "Doping our innocent child." His joke had forced her awake. "Is there no limit? To your depravity?"

"All kinds of limits-while I'm online," David said. "As we're about to be, for God knows how many days. Gonna cramp our style, babe."

"Mmmm." Laura touched her face, reminded. No video makeup. She hauled her cosmetics kit from the depths of her shoulder bag and stood up. "Gotta get our vid stuff on before we land."

"Wanna try a quickie in the bathroom, standing up?"

"Probably bugged in there," Laura said, half stumbling past him into the aisle.

He whispered up at her, holding her wrist. "They say

Grenada has scuba diving, maybe we can mess around under water. Where no one can tape us."

She stared down at his tousled head. "Did you drink all that rum?"

"No use wasting it," he said.

"Oh, boy," she said. She used the bathroom, dabbed on makeup before the harsh steel mirror. By the time she re- turned to her seat they were starting their descent.

A stewardess thanked them as they stepped over the threshold. Down the scruffy carpeted runway into Point

Salines Airport. "Who's online?" Laura murmured.

["Emily,"] came the voice in her earplug. ["Right with you."] David stopped struggling with the baby's tote and reached up to adjust his volume. His eyes, like hers, hidden behind the gold-fretted videoshades. Laura felt nervously for her passport card, wondering what customs would be like. Airport hallway hung with dusty posters of white Grenadian beaches, ngratiating grinning locals in fashion colors ten years old, splashy holiday captions in Cyrillic and Japanese katakana.

A young, dark-skinned soldier leaned out from against the wall as they approached. "Webster party?"

"Yes?" Laura framed him with her videoglasses, then scanned him up and down. He wore a khaki shirt and trou- sers, a webbing belt with holstered gun, a starred beret, sunglasses after dark. Rolled-up sleeves revealed gleaming ebony biceps.

He fell into stride ahead of them, legs swinging in black lace-up combat boots. "This way." They paced rapidly across the clearing area, heads down, ignored by a sprinkling of fatigue-glazed travelers. At customs their escort flashed an ID

card and they breezed through without stopping.

"They be bringin' you luggage later," the escort muttered.

"Got a car waiting.", They ducked out a fire exit and down a flight of rusting stairs. For a brief blessed moment they touched actual soil, breathed actual, air. Damp and dark; it had rained. The car was a white Hyundai Luxury Saloon with one-way mirrored windows. Its doors popped, open as they approached.

Their escort slid into the front seat; Laura and David hustled in back with the baby. The doors thunked shut like armored tank hatches and the car slid into motion. Its suspen- sion whirled them with oily ease across the pitted and weedy tarmac. Laura glanced back at the airport as they left-pools of light over a dozen pedicabs and rust-riddled manual taxis.

The saloon's frigid AC wrapped them in antiseptic chill.

"Online, can you hear us in here?" Laura said.

["A little image static, but audio's fine,"] Emily whis- pered. ["Nice car, eh?"]

"Yeah," David said. Outside the airport grounds, they turned north onto a palm-bordered highway. David leaned forward toward their escort in the front seat. "Where we going, amigo?"