Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

They responded with wounded pride. They were skilled house staff, not no-account rudies from the government yards.

They had certain places to fill and certain work that came with the places. Everybody knew this. It had always been so.

David laughed. They were acting like nineteenth-century colonials, he said; what about Grenada's high-tech, anti- imperialist revolution? Surprisingly, this argument failed to move them. Fine, David said at last. If they didn't want to help, it was no problem of his. They could prop up their feet and drink pina coladas.

Or maybe they could watch some television, Laura sug- gested. As it happened, she had some Rizome recruiting tapes that might help explain how Rizome felt about things... .

After lunch Laura and David continued their inspection remorselessly. They climbed up into the turrets, where the servants had their quarters. The floors were splintery, the roofs leaked, and the intercoms had shorted out. Before they left Laura and David deliberately made all the beds.

During the afternoon David caught some sun in the bottom of the dead pool. Laura played with the baby. Later David checked the electrical system while she answered the mail.

Supper was fantastic, again. They were tired and made an early night of it.

The Bank was ignoring them. They returned the favor.

Next day David got out his tool chest. He made a little unconscious ritual of it, like a duke inspecting his emeralds.

The toolbox weighed fifteen pounds, was the size of a large breadbox, and had been lovingly assembled by Rizome crafts- men in Kyoto. Looking inside; with the gleam of chromed ceramic and neat foam sockets for everything, you could get a kind of mental picture of the guys who had made it-white- robed Zen priests of the overhead lathe, guys who lived on brown rice and machine oil... .

Pry bar, tin snips, cute little propane torch; plumbing snake, pipe wrench, telescoping auger; ohm meter, wire stripper, needlenose pliers... Ribbed ebony handles that popped off and reattached-to push drills and screwdriver bits...avid's tool set was by far the most expensive possession they owned.

They worked on the plumbing all morning-starting on the servants' bathroom. Hard, filthy work, with lots of creeping about on one's back. After his afternoon sun worship David stayed outside. He'd found some gardening tools in a shed and tackled the front acreage, stripped to the waist and wear- ing his videoshades. Laura saw that he had fast-talked the two gate guards into helping him. They were trimming wild ivy and pruning dead branches and joking together.

She had nothing to report to Atlanta, so she spent her time catching flack. Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of gratuitous advice from every comer of the compass. Several idiots expressed grave disappointment that they had not yet toured a secret Grenadian drug lab. A Rizome graphics program was showing up as a pirate knock-off in Cuba-was the Bank involved? Rizome had contacted the Polish government-

Warsaw said Andrei Tarkovsky was a black-market operator, wanted for forging false passports.

The Rizome elections were heating up. It looked like the

Suvendra race was going to be close. Pereira-Mr. Nice

Guy-was making a surprisingly strong showing.

David came in to shower for supper. "You're gonna burn up out there," she told him.

"No, I won't, smell." He reeked of rank male sweat with an undertone of mint. His skin looked waxed.

"Oh no!" she said., "You haven't been using that tube stuff, have you?"

"Sure," David said, surprised. "Prentis claimed it was the best ever-you don't expect me to take that on faith, surely."

He examined his forearms. "I used it yesterday, too. I'd swear I'm darker already, and no burn either."

"David, you're hopeless...."

He only smiled. "I think I may have a cigar tonight!"

They had supper. The servants were upset by the recruiting tapes. They wanted to know how much of it was true. All of it, Laura said innocently.

As they lay in bed, she got Atlanta to slot her a Japanese- language tape-mystery stories of Edogawa Rampo. David fell asleep at once, lulled by the meaningless polysyllables.

Laura listened as she drifted off, letting the alien grammar soak in to those odd itchy places where the brain stored language. She like Rampo's straight journalistic Japanese, none of those involved circumlocutions and maddening veiled allusions....

Hours later she was shaken awake in darkness. Harsh babble of English. "Babe, wake up, it's news...."

Emily Donato spoke out of the darkness. ["Laura, it's me."]

Laura twisted in the lurching waterbed. The room was dim purples and grays. "Lights, turn on!" she croaked. Flash of overhead glare. She winced at the clock. Two A.M. "What is it, Emily?"

["We got the fact,"] the clock proclaimed, in Emily's familiar voice.

Laura felt a pang of headache. "What fact?"

["The F.A.C.T., Laura. We know who's behind them.

Who they really are. It's Molly."]

"Oh, the terrorists," Laura said. A little jolt of shock and fear coursed through her. Now she was awake. "Molly?

Molly who?"

["The government of Molly,"] Emily said.

"It's a country in North Africa," David said from his side of the bed. "The Republic of Mali. Capital Bamako, main export cotton, population rate two percent. " David, the

Worldrun player.

"Mali." The name sounded only vaguely familiar. "What do they have to do with anything?"

["We're working on that. Mali's one of those Sahara famine countries, with an army regime, it's nasty there.... The

F.A.C.T. is their front group. We've got it from three differ- ent sources."]

"Who?" Laura said.

["Kymera, I. G. Farben, and the Algerian State Department."]

"Sounds good," Laura said. She trusted Kymera Corporation

-the Japanese didn't throw accusations lightly. "What does the Vienna heat say?"

["Nothing. To butt out. They're covering something up, I think. Mali never signed the Vienna Convention.... "] Em- ily paused. ["The Central Committee meets tomorrow. Some people from Kymera and Farben are flying in. We all think it smells."I

"What do you want us to do?" Laura said.

["Tell the Bank when you testify. It wasn't Singapore that killed their man. Or the European Commerzbank either. It was the secret police in Mali."]

"Jesus," Laura said. "Okay ..."

["I'm sending you some backup data on a coded line....

Good night, Laura. I'm up late, too, if it helps."]

Emily signed off.

"Wow ..." Laura shook her head, clearing the last cob- webs. "Things are really moving...." She turned to her husband-''Yike!"

"Yeah," David said. He stretched out one arm, showing it to her. "I'm, uh, black."

"David ... you're black!" Laura yanked the sheet back, revealing his bare chest and stomach. She could feel her neck bristle in astonishment. "David, look at you. Your skin is black! All over!"

"Yeah ... I was sunbathing nude in the pool. " He shrugged sheepishly, his shoulders dark against the crisp white pillow.

"You remember that ship's officer-a blond, black guy-back on the Charles Nogues? I wondered, when I saw him... "

Laura blinked, trying to think back. "The blond black man

... Yeah, but I thought he'd dyed his hair...."

"His hair was natural, but he'd changed his skin. It's that suntan oil Prentis gave me. It affects the skin pigment, the melanin, I guess. It's a little patchy down here by my, uh, crotch ... like I got very dark freckles, but big, kinda splotchy.... I should've asked how it works."

"It's obvious how it works, David-it makes you black!"

Laura began laughing, her mind pinched between the shock- ing and the ridiculous. He looked so different.... "Do you feel all right, sweetheart?"

"I feel fine," he said coolly. "How do you feel about it?"